Race of Scorpions - Dorothy Dunnett [268]
John le Grant said, ‘Nicholas? We would go. They’ve broken through, and the tunnel is ready.’ And very willingly, he got up to prepare.
They wore brigandines and soft boots and dulled metal helms strapped over a coif of thick wool. Each had a heavy satchel, a pick, and a knife sheathed at his belt. In addition, Nicholas carried a short bow at his shoulder, with a quiver. They entered the trench, leaving Astorre and Thomas and Pesaro standing silently at the entrance. Then they made their way crouching along it, their feet splashing through muddy water. The way was lined with long narrow carts, each piled with stone, ready for its last journey. They avoided them by touch, for here there was no glimmer of light. Overhead, the nightly bombardment had started.
The night was so dark that the end of the trench was perceptible only as a lightening of the murk, where the ditch of the town lay ahead. Before that, on their left, was a speck of light that didn’t come from ditch or cutting, but from the tunnel so laboriously bored, and whose end John’s sappers had now finally opened. The men who had pierced the final aperture were waiting to greet them: identifiable as a body of sweat, and heat and small movements that resolved into a murmur, a clink of spade and a clap on shoulder or back. Then they withdrew, leaving the task force of four at the foot of the ditch of Famagusta.
This was immense, and hewn out of bare rock, although clothed now with dirt and bushes and rubbish. Walking to the right in its shadowy depths, one would come sooner or later to one of the three great heaps of rubble that now patched it. Further south was another, and bigger one. But to reach the third, Nicholas bent low and, crossing the ditch like a lizard, reached the base of the wall and, in its shadow, followed it round to the left, John and the other two following.
No challenge came from above. The wall towered, impossibly high, its profile distorted by the hide-covered galleries. Designed long ago, the defences of Famagusta consisted of towers and wall-walks, battlements and arrow slits, without proper seating for cannon, or for the ventilation that cannon demanded. And on this stretch, in particular, there was no provision for crossfire. So the wall here was stronger and higher, and the manning of its towers stretched thinnest. Especially when the defending force was painfully slight. And especially when all its fire was being drawn to the southern stretch. All the time he was running, Nicholas was half deaf from the open-air thud of Astorre’s guns, maintaining their pre-arranged and regular sequence. In response, there came the pop of fire from the battlements. Against that noise, their presence would hardly be heard, or the stealthy sounds John would make, sinking his petards. Or, later, the manhandling of the carts and the completion of the bridge that, sooner or later, would conduct the whole army across to a ruined wall.
Before he expected, his feet met blocks of stone, and he realised that he had come to the edge of the great sprawling tip of the infill. He waited, and stopped John and the others. Then, keeping close to the wall, they began the swift, careful climb over the rubble. Then John gripped his arm briefly and left him. One of the sappers went with him. The other went on and up, his hand holding his satchel. Nicholas stood, watching the place where the wails met the sky, and the towers, and the galleries, and unslung his bow and bent it.
They had practised this, through these last days. Pesaro knew Famagusta, and had found others who could describe the walls, and their thickness, and their character. From as close as he dared, John had surveyed them himself, over and over. He knew exactly where he wished to slot his explosive, and how long a fuse he needed