Race of Scorpions - Dorothy Dunnett [304]
A trumpet blew. The emir’s eyes flickered, in his glistening face. Then he returned his attention to Nicholas. Blood soaked the handsome Syrian surcoat, as it blotched and stained his own padded jupa and linen and shirt. He felt the weakness of it, but not yet the pains. The old wound was the worst: his white-hot shoulder beat and rang like a forge. The trumpet blew again, and a herald called something. No shouting; no surge of action; no summons to battle. Just a command from the King to cease fighting.
Nicholas laughed at Tzani-bey and the emir, surprisingly, showed his teeth in return. The emir said, ‘You do not scamper when called? I commend you.’ Then he leaped, his scimitar in the air. But the mace, in his other hand, was whistling down to the Christian sword.
His eyes had not given him away, but his mind did. To avoid the scimitar completely was not possible. But Nicholas took only half of its slice in his body, and his own arm was positioned for all it had to do. As Tzani-bey brought down the mace, Nicholas cut off the emir’s right hand.
Warm, thick blood sprayed in his face. The emir’s own features were blank. Then the man dropped to his knees, his left hand crossing to grip his right arm with its core of white bone. The mud flooded with crimson. Around them, silence exploded into a herring-gull screaming. Nicholas raised the point of his sword, and pressed it against Tzani-bey’s chest and said, ‘You are defeated.’
The blood pumped: the weakened fingers could not quite stem it. But the emir’s gaze was steady in a face of pallid olive. He said, ‘I acknowledge it. I have said my prayers. Dispatch me.’
‘Why?’ said Nicholas. ‘I was to be your entertainment. May I not reserve you for mine? Allow me to help you.’ He pulled off his gloves and, freeing the strap of his helm, bound it crudely about the emir’s arm over the artery. The emir closed his eyes. He said, ‘Of course. Who could gainsay you? I have brought you, in any case, a token of my submission. In the saddlebag of my horse. I had hoped not to have to present it.’
‘Is it of the nature of your other gift?’ Nicholas said. He rose, and felt himself swaying.
The emir opened his eyes. ‘It follows the pattern,’ he said. ‘Here is your mistress.’
Zacco hit him with his open hand, first on one cheek, then the other. He said to Nicholas, ‘You heard the trumpet. I will do that, the next time you disobey me. What is he saying?’ The King had run alone on to the field. The others were only now racing after him. His arms were round Nicholas, his face anguished as in Nicosia, the first time.
Nicholas said, ‘There is something in his saddlebag. His horse is there.’
The object was a bag made of finely-sewn leather. Tzani-bey, a soldier at either side, knelt in the mud and smiled up at Nicholas. Zacco released him. Nicholas opened the draw-string and tipped to the ground the single object it contained. It lay in the mud, but not contaminated by it; the beard combed, the eyes closed, the mind, with all its learning, withdrawn from the service of mankind. The head of Abul Ismail, the physician.
The emir said, ‘If I have misjudged him, he will be in his pavilion in Paradise. But I think he was a traitor. There is a demon, Ser Niccolò, within that artisan clay that forms your nature. Or perhaps you would call it a siren like Melusine; a serpent; a scorpion. An island of scorpions has invited another. I wish you and your lord of Lusignan well of each other.’
‘Abul Ismail. Who told you he was a traitor?’ Nicholas said.
The Mameluke was gasping now, but his teeth were still set in a smile. He said, ‘The King will tell you.’
‘The King does not know,’ said Zacco steadily. ‘A brave man has died, but disloyalty has met the punishment it deserves. But for Abul Ismail,