Disorderly Knights - Dorothy Dunnett [60]
With Upton, tireless in full armour, swinging sword and axe in the lead, knights and Maltese came across band after band on that ride, burning, destroying, plundering the poor wreckage of the empty pueblos on their way to the plains of Curmi to muster for battle. Because of Upton, the Ottoman landing parties came to Curmi not in well-groomed companies, but angry and harried by stinging attacks, by the small, orderly army of Upton’s light horse.
And the knights endured remarkably well. Rarely conscious of them as faces, Upton was yet aware that both they and the Maltese like a single arm obeyed his desires; that no order of his remained ambiguous, that no slip went unrectified; and later, drawing them together among the low hills at the edge of the great plain, where to cries and drumbeats the white figures streamed and mingled, he realized that throughout he had directed through the mouth and limbs of the Scotsman, in his plated jerkin, riding back and forth at his side. And naturally, as it seemed to him, in acknowledgement of this powerful staff work at his shoulder, he said to Lymond, ‘We can do no more, once they have mustered, unless.…’
‘Unless we give the illusion of charging?’ said Lymond, answering the bold thought.
The lunacy of the notion was plain: Nick Upton wanted to feel his hands on a Turk. But there was some sense in it, too. Behind them were thirty knights and four hundred Maltese; in front, the rallying-ground of twelve thousand Turks. Not all had landed; not all had reached the plain; not all were as whole or as single-minded as when leaving their ships. It was possible that, without horses and heavy cannon ashore, they might not relish yet a pitched battle against the whole strength of the Order, as it might appear. The Order they would rightly expect to remain tight in St Angelo until besieged. The Turk might run. He might equally stand fast and attack. Nicholas Upton had no intention of crossing that plain, but he stood a good chance, if his bluff were called, of being chased all the way back to St Angelo.
Before odds so great, there was no advantage in too much delay or too much thought. Shouting as loudly as their dry throats would allow, and followed by a thunderous torrent of brown figures screeching, ‘Allâh! Allâh!’ in the very timbre of Barbary; deployed to look like more than they were and the vanguard of more still, the Knights of St John pounded down the low hills.
They were seen. For a moment, swirled like pond life under a cataract, the Turkish troops leaped patternless about the wide plain. Then, perceptibly, they began to move purposefully, to coalesce, to stream slowly, scimitars flashing, in a single direction. Nicholas Upton put out an arm and, obedient, the cavalcade behind him reduced speed. There was no need to hurry; only to give the illusion of haste. The Turks were running away.
Leaving the plain, hazed with their dust, they ran back: back through the smoking ruins of Maltese farm and casal; back through Birchircara; back to the weedy rocks sliding under gloved feet, the salt crusting their gauzy brocades, the stinging air cracking gaped lips. They ran to their boats and rowed swiftly, accurately, sullenly (for someone had commanded them not to take risks) back to their ships.
Hearts thudding; parched with excitement, with heat, with relief, the knights followed. Not so fast that they overtook the main body of Ottomans,