The Religion (84 page)

Tannhauser recognized Davud.

Bors's Syrian long gun bucked across the merlon and Davud's head was shrouded in crimson mist. When the mist cleared, his body stood erect for a moment, his skull a half-sheared nubbin, bubbling and obscene, then he keeled over into the still-convulsing bodies of his mates, his impact exacerbating their agony.

Tannhauser turned away.

From the escarpment a thousand feet distant he watched the second wave of Turkish infantry hazard the anguished plain. He looked along the enceinte. Beyond Galley Creek flames and smoke marked embattled Saint Michel. Before the breach in the ruins of Castile, the sacrificial remnant of the first Turkish wave had faltered as the wildfire bloomed. Those few who scrabbled up the talus were speared and hacked to pieces by the knights. The arquebusiers on the ramparts recharged their pieces and unleashed a volley into the charge renewed. The tumbling bodies were trampled into the filth by the oncoming tide. On the left flank of the advance, an
orta
of Tüfekchi marksmen drew up at the limit of arquebus range and laid down a blanket of fire with their nine-palm muskets. A blare of horns released a third torrential wave that rolled in hard on the second. The Grande Terre Plein now seethed with martial finery and with fluttering pennants of red and yellow and green. Iayalars, dervishes,
Mamelukes, Azebs. Their blood was up and their cries had gained conviction and so numerous they were, and so quickly did they close ranks, that the cannon shot scything through them now left hardly a wake.

Oliver Starkey joined Tannhauser at the bastion of Germany and brought the English langue with him, all two of them, the Catholic adventurers John Smith and Edward Stanley. They each unloaded a musket into the advance. Then Starkey grounded his gun against a crenel and drew his sword. He evinced an adamantine ruthlessness, made the more unnerving by his scholarly mien. Tannhauser noted, with chagrin, that the Germans, Swedes, and Poles were unlimbering axes and swords.

"With me," said Starkey to the brethren. "To the post of Castile."

They were more than ready. Starkey glanced at Tannhauser, as if for comment. Tannhauser pointed to the rubble of the post of Castile, where Turkish lassoes whirred above the fray and barbed spears and melee arms glinted in the rising sun. From the second wave a formation of chainarmored janissaries braved the wildfire and came up short against the thin and wavering echelon of Christian knights. Another fight boiled about the foot of the captured siege tower, from the top of which a crew of Maltese and
tercios
poured gunfire and incendiary pipkins into the mob.

"If Mustafa's sent in the Zirhli Nefer at this early stage," said Tannhauser, "he's gambling on a rapid victory."

"Then we'll deny him," said Starkey. "Close quarters it is." He addressed the score or so knights of the German langue. "Our brothers won't hold the line without us. Form up in a wedge to their rear and keep your order. Drive through on my word. And remember, when the Turk breaks, we are not to pursue."

Tannhauser hefted his rifle. With bullets he could reliably drop a man every five or six minutes, a better rate than was likely at close quarters. "I can lay more to rest from up here."

Starkey did not quarrel. "As you will," he said.

"God's wounds!" said Bors, staring over the parapet.

A dull subterranean rumble reached Tannhauser's ears and he turned.

Before his eyes two broad deep trenches unraveled across the Grande Terre Plein and palisades of orange flame, stoked high by the sudden draft, erupted through the advancing Moslem ranks. The horde swerved in confusion and as if Satan had drawn the bolts on Hell's roof, droves of men vanished wholesale into the fire-choked chasms underfoot.

Tannhauser understood at once that the underground galleries Munatones had set ablaze earlier that morning had collapsed under the weight of the charge. No doubt Starkey understood it too, but that did not dissuade him from a deft invocation of Divine favor.

"There is our sign!" said Starkey. "God is with us yet."

Bors roared, "For Christ and the Baptist!"

Tannhauser looked at him with horror. The German langue echoed the cry with zeal. With Starkey and his Englishmen in the van they clanked along the wall walk toward the stair. Tannhauser grabbed Bors's arm. Bors unslung a two-hander and shook his head.

"Prithee peace," said Bors. "The English langue will not go in without me."

Bors stumped off after his compatriots. Tannhauser quelled a sudden uprising in his belly. The sweat running down his back and chest in pints turned icy cold and he shivered in his armor. He threw the rifle to his shoulder and aimed at the tall white bonnets pressing the breach and fired. Without marking the result he stacked the rifle with the rest and pulled his gauntlets from his belt. His heart sank. He dreaded the grinding toil that lay in store. He looked out to the east across Monte San Salvatore. The Turkish tents and trenches were deserted. Only the Topchu artillery crews remained. Come nightfall, freedom was a brisk stroll hence; but the sun had only just cleared San Salvatore's rim. As he was about to don his gauntlets he saw the gold bangle on his wrist. The mouths of the lions still roared. On a superstitious impulse he slipped it off and read the Arabic graving on its inner face.

I come to Malta not for riches or honor, but to save my soul.

That prospect seemed as unlikely as ever, yet the motto gave him comfort. He replaced the bangle and pulled on his armored gloves. He drew his sword and headed for the stair. Moments later he joined Bors and the other Northmen in the wedge of steel, and Bors laughed at him, and Tannhauser devil-damned him black. On Starkey's command they mounted the talus and, to the dismay of the Zirhli Nefer who crowded the breach, the langues of Germany and England plowed into the delirium.

Shortly after midday, and with a hushed urgency, the staff of the Sacred Infirmary were assembled in the laundry room and Carla listened to Fra
Lazaro impart the Grand Master's command that every wounded man who could make the journey was to join the defenders on the ramparts, and with all possible speed.

Since patients no longer qualified for admission without losing a limb, or sustaining the most heinous mutilations, a moment of incredulity greeted this decree. The look in Lazaro's eyes, and the grayness of his pallor, suggested that he shared their confusion, but he had had more time, and the benefit of La Valette's presence, to accept that the order was in earnest. There was no great expectation that the wounded plunge into combat, but they were to dress in helmets and red surcoats-this was most important-and display themselves at the battlements to give the Grande Turke the impression of a strength they no longer possessed. Hundreds of women and boys were already wielding spears alongside the soldiers. To fight to the last drop of blood was no longer rhetoric. It fell to the assembled to prepare the volunteers and help to convey them to their posts.

Lazaro asked Carla to stand by him while he harangued the casualties in the great ward, for her presence, he said, would stir them more than his words. The alacrity with which the sick tried to rise from their beds moved them both to near tears, and when they repeated La Valette's plea to those carpeting the piazza and choking the nearby streets, the response was just as valiant. Lazaro calmed their fervor while gear was collected and some form of order imposed, for chaos threatened to overwhelm the endeavor before it could begin. Carla and Amparo were in the crew sent to gather up helmets and it was here, more than during the harangue, that Carla's emotions overcame her.

They rounded the rear of the Arsenal and she found herself confronted by a mountain of discarded steel helms. Thousands of them, banked up against the wall to thrice her height like some profane and careless monument to the slain. Many were dented and tarnished with blood, and fat blue flies took flight and buzzed around the pile in swarms, as if to defend their squalid treasure trove. The infirmary had inured her to a stream of afflicted individuals, but not to loss represented on this huge scale. Beyond the mountain of helms lay stacks of pikes and short swords in similar abundance. A pair of monks pulled up a twowheeled handcart and they helped them fill it to the brim with clattering refuse. The monks hauled the cart back to the piazza. As Amparo,
mute and dispirited, made to follow, Carla took her hand and held her back.

"Amparo, Mattias plans to leave the island-tonight." It didn't seem likely to her that there would be a tonight, but now was the time to broach the matter of escape.

Amparo looked at her. "How?"

"He has a boat hidden up the coast and will guide us through the Turkish lines. Are you happy to come with us, back to Italy and home?"

"With Tannhauser? And with you? But of course." She started to smile, then stopped in a frown. "What will become of Buraq?"

"You must ask Mattias."

"Buraq can't come with us?"

Carla didn't have the heart to shake her head. "You must ask Mattias."

Amparo turned and hurried toward the stables. Carla almost called after her, then reasoned that it was safer to leave her at the stables than to drag her about the battlefield. At least she'd know where the girl was. Carla returned to the infirmary to prepare La Valette's brigade of the infirm and lame.

Despite their willingness, most of the casualties would never reach the front, short of being portered there on wattles and laid along the breach flat on their backs. Several had already died from the effort they'd made in standing, as fragile membranes ruptured inside and dropped them on the spot. Others were defeated by lungs so ravaged by smoke that they couldn't rise. Those with severe burns, and they were many, couldn't move at all. Nevertheless, three hundred or so volunteers were deemed fit enough to make their march plausible. They helped one another into the surcoats and swapped helms to find their right size. They bound sashes and belts around newly sutured wounds. They improvised crutches out of pike shafts and shovels and timbers from demolished homes. They hung on to one another and to the monks and surgeons who accompanied them. They did these things without ado, with the practical stolidity of peasants and common soldiers. In their bloodstained and battered casques and their crimson surcoats splashed with the white Latin cross, they seemed like a ramshackle army of lost crusaders resurrected from the tombs of Outremer. That or a cruel allegory of Folly Unbound. A young Maltese rendered sightless by burns grabbed Carla's arm. He recoiled and begged forgiveness as he realized she was a woman. She was
reminded of her first charge in the infirmary, Angelu, the man with no face and no hands. She took the youth's arm in hers.

The battalion of the maimed set out from the piazza and Father Lazaro led them forth toward the roar of the guns. He began to chant a Psalm of David in plainsong, with a high clear wavering voice that pierced her heart. Another monk joined in, accompanying Lazaro's cantus an octave below, then others joined in counterpoint at the fourth tone and the fifth, and a sound as if of cherubim lifted their spirits and carried them forward to the final encounter.

Their city crumbled around them as they marched. Here and there a wall collapsed as a ball from a Turkish culverin hurtled home. The debris entombed a handful of the men stumbling by, but no one dithered. Carla saw groups of old women sink to their knees and they wept and lamented and pressed crosses and beads and icons of the saints to their cracked and wrinkled lips as they passed by. Occasionally one of the valiant would stumble and fall as his wounds took their toll, and sometimes he would get up again and sometimes not, but the monks of the infirmary-now, like their brethren, monks of war-did not pause in their march or in their singing, nor did their legion, for they marched and sang to save the Holy Religion.

They reached an apron of broken ground at the limit of what passed muster for the city and a screaming pandemonium there unfolded before her eyes.

Turbid drifts of powder smoke roiled the contested brim-from the siege tower's roof, from artillery mounted on the crownworks, from whirling incendiary hoops and the volleys of the musketeers. Yellow sheets of wildfire leapt skyward and danced above the ditch beyond the massive breaches in the wall. Against this incandescence she saw the twisted silhouettes of the fighting knights, warped and quaking in the heat like the nightmares of the crazed as they harvested heads and limbs from the gaudy throng. Among the soldiers lurked the shapes of the Maltese women, scattering sweat from the long hair dangling beneath their helms and brandishing short swords and pikes, and crawling along the line dragging tubs of gruel, and squatting to slay the Moslem wounded with their knives, like viragoes reincarnate from some bleak and ancient saga of retribution.

Somewhere within this hallucination fought Mattias too. There, on
the post of Castile, where sprays of blood arced hither and sizzled on plated armor like frying fat. Where wounded mauled wounded to a finish with bare hands and teeth, squirming one atop the other like mutant creatures mating in swill. Where men flapped wings of flame in a fiery epilepsis. Where the air clamored with gun blasts and clashing steel and with screams of dying and screams of rage and with curses and entreaties and mad laughter. Where above the deafening lunacy of Holy War, the magisterial calm of Lazaro's choir swooped and soared. Where-Carla prayed-Mattias might yet live.

Havoc unconstrained was master of the field and Carla could make no sense of it, nor see with whom the battle's advantage lay. She followed with the rest as Lazaro conducted the ragtags up the wall stair. They filed along the ramparts to left and right, filling the alure to the post of France and the posts of Auvergne and Italy. Some retrieved arquebuses, powder, and ball. Those with the means declined the stair and muddled into the fray where she saw them slain. The remainder breasted the crenels with their warcoats and let the implacable sun wink from their casques. They drew a hail of Turkish musket fire, and though many of them fell those still standing didn't flinch. If they could take a bullet meant for a man in the line, they would die justified.