Race of Scorpions - Dorothy Dunnett [209]
Nicholas smiled. Abul Ismail smiled even more widely, showing spaced yellow teeth. He added, ‘Jealous of me, as who would not be? But I speak, of course, of a different congress.’
Even so, the character of the King was such that his anger could not always be avoided. At the beginning of June, Nicholas set in motion an action against Kyrenia designed to accelerate the pressure on the fortress and to help exhaust its ammunition. The King was absent, as sometimes happened, now that the days of great heat had arrived, and cooler sport could be found in the mountains. The short, hard-hitting attack on the castle took place, and Nicholas, returning from it tired and triumphant was struck, on entering the compound of his camp, by a change in the quality of the sound which told him, before ever he saw the activity, that the King had come back. He had barely reached his own tent before a messenger stopped him. The King was breaking in a new horse, and required his assistance.
The signs were ominous. James de Lusignan well knew the magnificent figure he cut, alone with his whip and a rope and an unbroken stallion. In temper, and especially out of it, he would choose this perilous means of exerting himself. Now, half-naked in a fog of white dust, he hurled a rope at his mercenary and spoke through his white teeth. ‘You come filthy into my presence?’ ‘I have fought for you,’ Nicholas said. It emerged as a gasp. He took the strain of the rope and his sinews, settling, took up the burden. The horse was broad-built and powerful and angry.
‘Why?’ said Zacco. ‘Did I ask it of you? Did we not agree to wait? Why should the garrison trouble to respond to a pinprick? They must know that we know that they still have some food?’
‘They didn’t,’ said Nicholas, panting. ‘They thought we thought they were starving. They thought we were going to throw the whole army against them. Behind those walls, they were terrified.’ His shoulder, where the axe sank, was burning violently.
Zacco turned round, got pulled half off his feet, and turned back, twisting the rope round his wrist and cracking his whip. He yelled, ‘If the blockade’s as good as you say, how did they know we thought that?’
It was getting to be like a piece of jester-dwarves’ dialogue. Nicholas began to laugh and let go his rope; Zacco looked angry and then, beginning to smile, jerked his head to bring over a groom. He transferred the plunging horse and flung a sticky arm round the shoulders of Nicholas. He smelt of perfume and sweat and his limbs were heavy with dangerous muscle. ‘It was a ruse?’
‘Ask Astorre,’ Nicholas said. ‘Andrea Corner, Marco’s brother, works for Queen Carlotta. We know Marco is loyal, but no one in there would be surprised if a letter came over the wall on an arrow, warning Andrea that we were about to storm the castle because we thought they were starving.’
‘And they believed this?’ Zacco said. ‘They wasted ammunition, replying?’ He withdrew his arm, bestowing playfully on Nicholas a vicious, upward blow with the side of his palm in passing. He placed his fists on his hips and breathed deeply several times, lips tight, expanding his chest with firm regularity. Then he jerked up his chin and walked on to the cisterns. ‘This is nonsense. You’ve invented it to avoid some hard work with that horse. You hardly thought the castle was going to surrender?’
‘My lord King,’ Nicholas said, ‘the last thing we planned to do was sacrifice the royal troops to some vain expectation. There was a mounted charge, immediately following cannon-fire. Half were Egyptians; half were our men disguised as Egyptians with armour under their robes. And hackbuts, of course. Not expecting Christians, the men on the walls were not ready for firearms. We picked off their archers; sent fire-bolts into their palisades and viewed the state of the walls from much closer. A quick foray, soon over, and not expensive of men.’
At the sluice, he was made to take the slave’s role