Race of Scorpions - Dorothy Dunnett [269]
Someone or something had tumbled. Someone. One of the sappers, from a precarious perch a third of the way up the wall. Nicholas could see where he lay, his limbs cocked and black against the paler stone of the wall. Whoever he was, he had had the guts not to shout. John? John?
No. John was ahead of him, softly running and climbing. Nicholas followed, his eyes searching above. The line of the wall-walk was not suddenly crowded. Of the two galleries he could see, he had already decided that one was unmanned. But the other had somebody in it. Several men, all of them at the end closest above them, and peering.
Nicholas caught John by the arm and they stood, their backs pressed to the wall. Far to one side, Nicholas now saw the remaining sapper, also frozen, his eyes on the gallery. The fallen man lay in the ditch, black upon black, and made no sound. A long moment passed. A gun boomed; then another, blanching the sky to the south. They stood in the shadows, unmoving. Then suddenly the sky above them flashed a stuttering crimson, and iron balls and lead shot rapped into the ditch from above, in a din of sharp hackbut explosions. Chipped rock flew, and the noise of it ricochetted from wall to wall of the ditch and then faded. He could hear John breathing, and in the distance, distinguish the dim shape of the sapper. He hadn’t moved. They hadn’t been seen. It had been a nervous reaction – a test – an act of meaningless defiance from the worn soldiers watching above. They waited. Voices came from the battlements, and a twinkle of steel. Voices from the gallery. A more authoritative voice from above, and dwindling noise, and an absence of glitter. And finally, only the gallery, silent again, with the men on duty watching unspeaking.
After a long spell, John touched Nicholas on the shoulder and pointed. Nicholas nodded. Then, as John began to climb to where the other had been, Nicholas felt his way to the fallen sapper.
He was dead. Nicholas knelt, then lifted him to the base of the wall and knelt again, to make certain. He felt a touch on his shoulder. The other sapper was looking at his partner. Then he whispered, ‘Ser Niccolò? You too?’
After that scything spray of stone he had felt the blood, but whatever had cut him, it was minor. He shook his head. The man said, ‘Broke my arm. You’ve to finish mine off. Master John’s going up for the high one.’
A one-armed man was no use. Nicholas sent him off back to the tunnel, and glanced upwards. Master John, a natural chimpanzee, was always going for the high one. If he had been able to shout, Nicholas would have told John to let well alone. But he couldn’t, so he climbed to the disabled man’s perch, and began a sensitive, confident probe, and discovered quite soon how far the man had progressed, and finished the work, fast and easily. He had wanted to do this job with John alone, but miners were professionals, and didn’t like laymen interfering. He cut the correct length of fuse, and set it, and lit it, and looked to see how John was doing.
The last mine was giving him trouble, partly because his position on the wall was so insecure. Once, this had been an expanse of perfect, squared masonry, but three years of siege and three months of heavy bombardment had produced enough gouges and bruising to offer some kind of a foothold. Where there was a real flaw was where the explosive itself was being planted.
Because it was difficult, John was unable, he could