Race of Scorpions - Dorothy Dunnett [171]
The hackbut smoke was beginning to clear. It showed that the wall-walks above were half-empty, and the upper stretch of the tiltground full of men running backwards and forwards. Beyond and higher was smoke. Beyond that, at the top of the castle, was a coronet of clear, transparent flame. As he watched, the flames spread, with men running downhill before them, their clothing alight.
Nicholas was nowhere to be seen. Zacco said, ‘Advance to the wall. Mount, and open the gates.’
Before he ended, the scaling-ladders were there, and men were up them and over. No one opposed them. When the gates were dragged open, the first to fall out were members of Carlotta’s garrison – voiceless, naked, their faces raw meat flecked with carbon. One was a living torch of a woman with a child in her arms. They dropped as Tobie touched them and lay, a heap of sticks and black paper. He got up and ran into the castle, his orderlies following. The King said, ‘Stand to take prisoners. Doctors, set up your hospital. Captain, put out those fires. Do we want to inhabit a ruin?’
There was a stable with straw where the burned and dying were brought, and Tobie and Abul set up their trestles. In time some wounded arrived, but none of consequence. What resistance Zacco had found on the heights had clearly been small. As the doctors worked, the noise outside dwindled to sobbing, with the occasional command, the thud of lumber, and the sharp voices of men working in crisis. The cisterns were brought into use. There came the sound of water trickling, and the random hiss of flames being doused in the thatched roofs and storehouses; the vats of grain and powder and oil. The hiss of a goffering iron, turned in gnarled hands in the laundry of his mother’s home in Pavia. Above the stench of singed hair and hide and charred wood rose the scent of roast flesh. The hiss of a basket of scorpions. After a long time, Tobie walked to the door of the stable and stood, looking dully about him.
The fires were out. Around him, the lower ward was singed but intact, and part of the sector above. Above that were soot-blackened buildings and a haze of dark smoke, pierced by plumes of dazzling steam. Here and there, against the grey sky, an object glowed crimson: a shank of wood; a roll of felt heaped with red spangles. The dome of the church was half gold and half black. Outside it stood Nicholas, small in the distance. Transfixed, Tobie drew breath and shouted.
Nicholas turned, but made no audible answer. Tobie shouted again, rising to shrillness. Abul, unexpectedly near, said, ‘They are counting the dead. Go up, if you wish him to hear you. Go. There is little more to be done.’
The wind had risen. The sea wind, that had forced the flames down from the north. Tobie climbed to the church. Nicholas stood where he had first seen him, his face expressionless. He smelled of singeing, and was covered with soot and abrasions, but was neither wounded nor burned. Tobie cleared his throat, an official and orderly sound, as at the opening of a tribunal. He said, ‘Your men made an assault up the back cliff?’
It was not, certainly, what Nicholas had expected. He paused, then replied with equal formality. ‘It was the plan. The goats were sent up last night, to disarm them. Today the climbers were men. We sent them up the back wall while Zacco drew their fire from the front.’ In the black and red face, his eyes were large, bright and clean.
Tobie said, ‘The climbers were Mamelukes. What were their orders precisely?’
Nicholas said, ‘To get in at any cost. Some of them fell. Some of them got in and died. We have taken the castle.’
‘I am sure you have,’ Tobie said. ‘You must show me your dead. Then I will take and show you my dying.’ He paused and then said, ‘How could you do this? Even you?’
Nicholas said slowly, ‘I didn’t order the naphtha.’
‘No.