Pawn in Frankincense - Dorothy Dunnett [44]
It seemed unlikely that Lymond would hear him, and if he did, in the violent pendulum of that night’s events, that he would understand, or even care. That he did come was perhaps as much an automatic response as Jerott’s. He came in the only way possible, running unseen along the white wall and dropping hard on the mêlée, his sword already driving through the dark press of bodies; his left arm, furled in his burnous, up and taking their blows.
He felled two men with the impact and killed the third who came at him, brushing his side with his club. Then, as Jerott deflected the blow of a fourth, Lymond used the second’s respite to drive his blade, twice, through the scrambling men at his feet. Jerott, his own hands more than full, saw him offer his bared head to the sweep of a cudgel as he tugged, freeing his sword; but the blow when it came flung the striker on his side in the alley, impaled on that hungry blade. Then Lymond, at Jerott’s side, faced his two remaining assailants.
One of them, with a muttered exclamation, broke away and, turning, ran into the darkness. The other, ignoring his prayers, Lymond also ran through.
On a sobbing breath, Jerott started to talk, pointing after the running dark figure. Lymond said, ‘I know. I saw him,’ and smiled. Then he had gone, leaving behind him the smell of fresh blood from his clothes.
In the alley it was very quiet. Whoever had noticed the incident, lights remained out and shutters were closed. On the ground in the dim starlight the fallen shapes might have been those of ewes resting, their jaws moving softly, thought Jerott with sudden stupid incongruity, after nightfall in a green Scottish field. Only in the silence a man’s voice suddenly began to pray as he had prayed, but in Arabic; and was as suddenly cut off. Jerott could not see whose it was.
It had not occurred to him to go after Lymond and the running man who had been their felt-capped messenger of Dragut Rais’s house. He was very sore, for one thing; and breathless; and the man who had carried out this piece of butchery, single-handed and scatheless, was a stranger to him. So he waited; but not very long; for presently Lymond returned, with two mules; their hooves clicking up the stony mud of the souk. The felt-capped man sat on one of them. He was not bound, which didn’t matter, as he could not, Jerott noticed, have walked. Lymond said, ‘Are you hurt?’
It was an inquiry aimed merely at resolving how he, Jerott, was to be placed on the mule. Jerott said, ‘I’m all right,’ and watched Lymond mount behind the dark, thickset man. The man said nothing but Jerott, mounting slowly himself, saw his face twitch as the mule moved into motion. Jerott said, ‘Where are we going?’
He did not expect a reply: it had been like addressing the thousand-year stones of a broch, a longhouse, a settlement laid suddenly bare by cold, sea-sucked sand and having, edgily, the form of house, hearth and dear human practices in its long-decayed stones. Then Lymond said, succinctly, ‘There’s a postern up there, and a path leading up to the hills. When Dragut left, the unwanted slaves were sold off, with most of the babies. The promising ones go in part-tribute to the Sublime Porte. The young in the next échelon are farmed out to learn hardship and Turkish and grow up to be good little Moslems. And the sick and the feeble go to whoever thinks he can flog a day’s work out of them. I found out at Dragut’s house where …’
His voice died of its own accord on the unspoken name. The little mule’s feet, trampling steadily onwards, pocked the brief silence. Jerott said, ‘Where she’d been taken when Dragut left? Oh, I see. And where she wrote that letter from, of course. She was … she was brought back to Dragut’s garden after that. I imagine Dragut himself would be told nothing of what happened then. Have you found out … was it Gabriel’s doing?’
Ahead, clear in the moonlight, was the double town wall, with the postern. A little gold, Jerott knew, would see them easily through it.