Race of Scorpions - Dorothy Dunnett [38]
‘Five to two?’ Tobie said.
Darkness fell, and no one slept. Just after midnight, the scouts came back with news. Malatesta’s army had gone.
Urbino’s bellow could be heard all round the camp. ‘What!’
It was true. The tents were empty. Malatesta had withdrawn his troops in the first darkness and was on his way north to the safety of the town of Fano. He had sixteen miles of country to cover. ‘Then let’s catch him!’ roared the Count; and set his buglers to rousing the camp.
The first squadrons of cavalry were mounted and left at a speed that Nicholas thoroughly admired. He set himself to catch and keep up with them. Among the firelit uproar and glitter, he caught sight of Tobie, mounting a stocky horse with a helmet on his floss-circled head and a cuirass bulging in front of him. Then the whole army set off behind Urbino’s vanguard, the foot scrambling to sort itself out as they went. They had had a day spent on watch, after a forced march at a speed better suited for winter than August. But the faces were eager. Urbino was leading, and Malatesta of Rimini was the traditional, the dishonourable, the joyfully despicable foe.
For Nicholas, it was curiously like and unlike November, when he had whooped through the snow with the Bentivoglio men after the carts which had once contained sugar. Again, he was pursuing an enemy unsuspected – or initially unlooked-for, at least. That was clear, even at night, by the circumspect pace Malatesta was setting. Believing Urbino’s army exhausted, he had denied himself light and speed in his resolve not to arouse them. So, instead of a double line of bright flares, there was only moonlight to help spy out where, far ahead, he might be, over the churned fields of cabbage and wheat and beyond the ranks of bruised vines and the black mushroom shapes of the olive trees. But the moon, it soon proved, was enough. The pursuers climbed a low ridge, and looked into the darkness before them. There, in the distance, the undulating columns of Rimini twinkled like pins in a music-box. Like a dumb music-box, exercising in silence.
Urbino, too, used no flares to begin with. The bright moonlight showed him the way, and the rumble of hooves from his little company was too far off to be heard by his quarry. Soon, as his whole army moved up to follow, there could be no concealment. This, his spearhead, rode meanwhile on earth and on plants, and the scents of crushed fruit and greenery hung where they passed. The man next to Nicholas said, ‘The Cesano’s over there somewhere. It’s only a stream, but Malatesta has got to get all his men over it. It’ll slow him down.’
‘What will the Count do?’ Nicholas said.
‘Catch them in midstream, if there’s time for it. Ah. There’s the order. Light the torches.’
They were still lighting them when the next order came: Blow the trumpets.
‘Panic them,’ said the man next to Nicholas. ‘It’ll be muddy, that stream. No joke for Malatesta, trying to force an army to cross and scramble up banks in the darkness.’
He spoke in jerks, riding flat out as they all were. Now, among the sloping trees and the juniper bushes they could see the dark line of the little river, and the beachhead of jostling helmets on the far bank, and the main body of enemy troops plunging over to join them. Nicholas said, ‘They’ll be over before we can get there. And now they can see just how few we are.’
‘That’s the idea, isn’t it?’ said his companion. ‘Malatesta thinks we’re a skirmishing party. Who’d expect the Count’s army to be roused and marching already? So, with any luck, Malatesta doesn’t ride off. He instructs his rearguard to form up and deal with us. Deal with us very thoroughly, so that no one rides back with the story. What he doesn’t know is that Urbino’s whole army is coming.’
‘You think they’re coming,’ said Nicholas.
‘Well, they’d better come,’ said the man. ‘I haven’t heard an order to stop. It’s my belief that the next sound you hear from that trumpet will be the order to charge.’
The trumpet sounded the charge while there were still quite