The Spring of the Ram - Dorothy Dunnett [248]
“I’ll give you warning,” Nicholas said.
Astorre’s eyes were still on him. He said, “She’s a grand woman, the demoiselle. You and her, you can count on Astorre.”
Without turning, Nicholas smiled: the wide, unstinted smile of his boyhood. “I know,” he said. “Look. It’s beginning.”
Of course John, who understood the whole scheme, was at Kerasous. Astorre had taken a more than vigorous share, and the Greek commander had supplied engineers, and Tobie himself, now and then, had stumbled across some of the more esoteric of the pitfalls Nicholas had arranged for the followers of the Prophet in the eastern suburb of Trebizond. For most of it, he was hardly prepared. The first of the longboats slid on to the coarse pebbled shore: the Turks leapt ashore, turbanned, booted, their coats tucked into their cotton breeches, their short curved blades in the air, and scattered, stumbled, and fell fiat before a series of sharp explosions. The approaching boats veered; the agitated shouts of the landing parties could be heard from the tower. Groups of men, reluctant details, set off over the beaches, weapons in hand. “Tripwires and gunpowder,” Nicholas said. “Watch the sheds.”
The sheds contained a counterlever system involving timber and rocks. Searching for hidden handgunners, the advance parties suffered. An officer, using his wits, set a party to clearing and testing the beach, after which the incoming flotilla was waved on. Filing ashore, the troops were collected in bands and given instructions. Astorre sniggered. “Watch out for tripwires and levers,” he said. “And much good may it do them.”
“There’s more?” Godscalc said.
There was more. Sometimes Astorre explained, sometimes Tobie. Seven feet deep, covered mantraps had been dug in the roads, and the dirt floors of houses. Crossbows had been carefully set up, and triggered by twine. There was a bull in one orchard; a wild boar in another. Where one of the steep slopes invited running, a thin, murderous wire had been stretched; there was a cartload of stones ready to sweep down another. Pulley systems existed, geared to unload a killing series of objects, from sacks of dirt to vats of blistering oil. All of them gnat bites to an invading army; but humiliating gnat bites that caused disarray; engendering caution and a disinclination to jump to orders. Across the ravine, the roar of men’s voices was continuous, as the disembarked men raggedly invested the suburb, absorbing mishap and accident, expressing frustration or excitement. Sometimes a prize had been abandoned or forgotten, and a sudden clamour would emerge. What they found they mobbed, like crows over meat.
On the other side of the gorge, the people of Trebizond watched. Now the enemy had reached the buildings and trees of the suburb, their movements could be followed mostly by sound, with occasional glimpses of turbans racing across the space of the Meidan, or on roofs, or within a garden or yard. Tobie said, “Is that all?”
“No,” said Nicholas. He looked expectant, and solemn. Tobie was wondering why, when the explosions began.
Where exactly they took place could not be seen. Only, somewhere among the villas and trees on the other side of the gorge, there would appear a cloud of black smoke, a toss of flame and a roar, loud as a cannon, followed by screaming. Astorre listened, satisfaction on his face. “Candles,” he said. “This fellow here had them moulding tallow like squirrels. Burning down, you see, at different rates into barrels of gunpowder. Kill the whoresons already inside, and ruin the houses for living in.” Some of the explosions were coloured, like joy-fire. Some were preceded by a sequence of other sharp noises, as if a teasing trail of some sort had been added. After the first, the men on the Trebizond rooftops began to mark each with a hard cheer. What they were seeing was the destruction of their own houses. They cheered defiantly.
After the fifth or sixth blast, when the fires had taken hold and were beginning to spread, the shouting over the gorge changed in character, as a hive