Pawn in Frankincense - Dorothy Dunnett [144]
There was a Majorca Knight, one of the most powerful in his Langue, just behind. Between them, Jerott and he lifted the Prior, and with Toreillas carrying him in his arms and Jerott at his side, the other Knights shoulder to shoulder about them, they plunged out into the surf. With the din of the sea in his ears, drowning the musket shot and the cries, the clash of weapons and the pounding of hooves far behind him, Jerott forced his way through the water, using his sword as he went.
It was shallow. The smallest shallops had already come in as far as they dared and had taken off again, laden with soldiers: except for the Knights, most of the fighting men now surviving must be on board. For the bigger skiffs, deep water was needed. Straining his eyes, he could see far out, black against the lit galleys behind, a shape which must be the longboat of the Admiral galley, waiting for them. It seemed to him that he ran alongside the stumbling Toreillas with his burden for an eternity before the water deepened and, pursuit falling off, they forced their way through the current until the sea was waist high.
How many, Jerott wondered, could swim? Very few. Wearing a hundred pounds of plate armour, none at all. Some, with soaked fingers, he saw attempting to unbuckle back- or breast-plate: some succeeded, and at the next, careful burst of arquebus fire fell, sagging, into the sea.
Jerott sheathed his sword. With his good hand under Toreillas’s elbow he guided him from rock to rock and ledge to ledge under the water until finally they were on the last spit of the long underwater shelf, and the longboat was bobbing there at their sides. Jerott waited to see Leone Strozzi and the Majorcan Knight safely aboard, and then, turning, made his way grimly back to the shore.
For a second, as he raced to help Strozzi, Jerott might have seen relief and another, unguarded expression on Lymond’s face. Then, moving faster even than Gabriel’s horse, surging through sand dunes towards him, Lymond turned, ducked as a scimitar skimmed him, and, seizing the man’s stirrups as he fled past, drove his knife into his attacker. He left it there. Then, running hard, Lymond vaulted into the saddle as the other man tumbled out and, gathering the reins, pulled the little horse round on its haunches as a sword flashed red in the air where he had been.
Opposite him, reined in also after that single, opportunist cut of his blade, Graham Malett sat still in the saddle, the fire striking sparks from the gold of his turban, his big-boned classical face as calm as his voice. ‘Francis Crawford, who was once a slight inconvenience … does your life please you at present?’
The blue eyes were wide. ‘It has brought me here,’ Lymond said. He could sense horses behind him. The little mare sidled, under his knees; and Gabriel’s horse edged round also in front of him, keeping his distance. He added, paraphrasing the Qur’ân, ‘Let not pity for me detain you in the matter of obedience to Allâh.’ The sea, where every movement was magnified, was not very far off. He continued edging towards it.
‘You know the Qur’ân,’ said Gabriel. His pace, following, was entirely leisurely. ‘It is a dramatic work. And those of the left hand: how wretched are those of the left hand,’ he quoted, the deep voice enriching the phrases. ‘In hot wind and boiling water and the shade of black smoke, neither cool nor honourable. I am afraid,’ said Sir Graham Reid Malett gently, ‘that you, my dear Francis, are of the left hand.’ He thought, seeking the words, and then added to it, mournfully: ‘And if they cry for water, they shall be given water like molten brass which will scald their faces … Evil the drink; and ill the resting-place … Sour-gutted devils, the Ottomans. A lesson in Western civilization is going to do them no harm.’
They were in the sea. The counter-attack, which had followed the attack on the Prior, had spent itself, although for a while the Knights still on the shore had made the Aga Morat prudently order his men to withdraw and, dismounting, rake the beaches with fire. Anger