Race of Scorpions - Dorothy Dunnett [114]
‘They may see us, and go into hiding,’ said Nicholas. ‘If you’re coming, get up.’
As she swung into the saddle, Tobie received a view of one arching limb, clean from ankle to garter to thigh. To white and gold glimmering thigh. He dropped a rein and, fumbling for it, cursed Nicholas all over again.
There were only seven now in their group. On horseback, Astorre and Tobie, Nicholas and one of Primaflora’s protectors, with the two women still riding pillion. On foot Loppe, known to all but his colleagues as Lopez. As the light left the sky, the party grew silent. Loppe, striding ahead, spoke or called in a low voice, and sometimes one of the men spoke to him, or to each other. Sometimes they stood still, the salty wind tugging their clothing, while two or three cast about on foot. Far off, others were doing the same. Above the blustering noise of the elements could be heard distant voices; but never the sound of the trumpet that would announce the end of the search.
It was an intolerant country in winter, when the sun no longer smiled on its children, and the oleanders were dead, and the cots round the shores were in ashes. The windmills creaked. The fortresses stood on their hills; the crumbled temples of the Greeks, the staunch keeps of the Genoese, the stout castles of the Knights; and round them the cottages huddled, with the pigs indoors, and the goats safely penned, and the geese and hens secure from the fox, or the Turks.
They saw few such houses, for their task was to search the marshy areas, where men on foot might try to escape men on horseback. On rising land, they passed patches of ploughed ground, and put up hares, and smelled a plantation of carob trees. There were olives, some long stripped; some with their January windfalls half gathered. Twice, Loppe found deer slots. Then he found something else: the clear print of a spurred boot in the mud.
Its owner must have slipped sideways, and recovered himself. Further on, there was an impress of the same sole, overlaid this time by another. Nicholas dismounted, peered, and straightening, whipped off his wig by the plait and sent it whirling into the gloom like a pelican. Elation? No. Satisfaction, the doctor diagnosed. The satisfaction of an engineer, when the engine performs. The Lion said nothing but Captain Astorre said, ‘See? See, demoiselle? We’ll find them!’
The sky to the east had grown dark, and the sugarloaf mountain ahead was now dim. The Knights had provided pitch torches. Lighting their own, they saw where others jumped in the distance like woodsparks. Astorre said, ‘Will we call them?’
Nicholas said, ‘Numbers won’t make any difference. We’ll call when we’ve found something. Look. The prints lead to that dip.’
Primaflora’s protector said, ‘They hoped to get to the monastery, perhaps. They were making for Kalopetra, and were headed off. The dip is a ravine: half a mile of it, with hiding places in plenty. But the first search party passed this way earlier, and no one answered their call.’
Loppe said, ‘Here. They have come down the bank and followed the water to escape from the horses. One is hurt.’
He was speaking ostensibly to the soldier but always, Tobie felt, indirectly to Nicholas. They spread out, and the men dismounted. Here and there, in the light that was half flame and half twilight, Tobie could see the uneven track that Loppe had deciphered. One of the men was indeed injured. Tristão, who had married the sister of the hated Simon? Or Tristão’s son Diniz who – perhaps – Nicholas thought his first cousin?
That was why Loppe was speaking to Nicholas. Because of that, or because everything he said confirmed something Nicholas expected to hear. Death tended to come very often to kinsmen of Nicholas.
The ravine wound on, sometimes broadening to enclose trees and bushes and patches of meadow, sometimes narrowing to the extent of a footpath skirting a deep, tumbling pond. The rush of water shot back from the cliffs on either side and the groves of oak and pine masked the darkening sky with