The Religion (94 page)

"Come," said Ludovico, and let him go. "We must to horse and away from this broil. Our part in it is done. Our part in ventures more glorious we've yet to play."

Ludovico caught up his reins and they climbed back up the beach. A young knight with only one eye handed him the reins of the Arabian Orlandu
had guarded, and Ludovico held the beast steady while he leapt on bareback. Ludovico mounted too. The four knights drew up in a box around Orlandu. He felt a tingle down his spine. He was no less bewildered than before but this was a marvel. More marvelous yet, Ludovico drew a spare sword from a sheath buckled onto his saddle. He gave it to Orlandu.

"To Mdina," said Ludovico.

Orlandu clenched the Arabian's sides with his knees and rode toward the battle line, the four noble knights packed tight around him.

Tannhauser scanned the calamity without success. As always the field of battle was a shifting patchwork of exertion and sudden stasis. Fit as the fighting men were, and they were the fittest men alive, none could wield their arms for more than moments at a burst without catching their wind. Mounts as well as men stood with nostrils flared and forefeet splayed as they wheezed for air, and here and there knights murdered by the heat lay prostrate in their kiln-hot armor. A triangular spit of land separated the waters of Salina from those of Saint Paul's Bay, and as the disordered press of combatants shunted yard by relentless yard toward the beachhead, ruptures broke apart in the contention. Through one of these gaps, Tannhauser saw Abbas bin Murad as he was blown from his saddle.

Abbas's horse went down with him, then struggled to its feet, its hooves treading its master as it scrambled away. At Abbas's either side, the regimental standard-bearer and two other officers were felled by the same volley. Tannhauser pulled Buraq's head about.

"Mattias!"

Tannhauser turned. Bors pointed down the line with the barrel of his musket. From another breach, two hundred feet down the ever-changing front, a knot of five riders spilled out onto the open plain to the rear of the fighting. Their horses were lathered, almost blown. The group started back across the basin toward the defile. The knight at their head wore a peerless black carapace of Negroli armor. The three knights behind him completed a diamond-shaped square and in the square's center rode Orlandu.

He was naked to the waist and looked as proud as a gamecock.

Tannhauser looked back at Abbas. He stood swaying on his feet among the knot of dead, leaning on the shaft of the yellow standard in his
hands. A knight rode down on him and Abbas tilted the shaft and wedged its butt against his foot and speared the horse through the chest on its spiked finial. He stumbled aside from the collapse of man and beast and dropped to one knee, and came up with a scarlet sword, and fell on the downed knight with the last of his strength. Thirty yards behind him, another knight wheeled about and made to charge him down.

Tannhauser sheathed his sword and turned back to Bors.

"Follow them but don't engage. I'll join you."

Bors nodded and set forth. Tannhauser crunched back the dog of his pistol and shortened his grip on the reins and Buraq kicked into a gallop from a standing start. He rose forward in the stirrups as they bolted through the gap toward Abbas, closing the distance between them as the knight with lowered lance did just the same from the farther side. Abbas rose from his victim and with a flick of his head saw both his seeming executioners bearing down. He raised his sword to meet Tannhauser's charge, and Tannhauser thumbed the strap from under his chin and threw his helmet aside. At thirty feet Abbas blinked with recognition and Tannhauser pointed past him with the pistol. With the halting gait of one badly hurt, Abbas turned to meet the oncoming lance. Tannhauser gave Buraq a free head and leaned forward into the jump. Buraq cleared the mound of dead to Abbas's left and landed without breaking stride. The head of the onrushing knight flicked toward him in surprise. At ten-foot range Tannhauser aimed and shot him in the chest.

The steel ball punched through the breastplate and the knight reeled back against the cantle, the lance flying wide and falling as his mount carried on. Tannhauser pulled Buraq to a sliding stop and wheeled. The knight was slumped forward. Abbas flashed the point of his blade at the horse's face and it swung aside, and as its rider toppled to the ground, his hand tangled in the reins and pulled the beast to a halt. Abbas fell to his knees and leaned on his sword.

Tannhauser dismounted beside him. Abbas was covered with so much blood it was futile to seek out the wounds. He looked up.

"Ibrahim."

"Father," said Tannhauser. "Have faith."

He hauled Abbas to his feet and manhandled him against Buraq's flank. He stooped and laced his hands under Abbas's foot. "With me now." He heaved and Abbas threw his leg and made the saddle and lay with his arms round Buraq's neck. Tannhauser took the bridle.

"Pray," he said. "
Adh-Dhariyat
."

As Tannhauser led Abbas toward the stranded horse, they sang the verses together.

"By the winds that winnow with a winnowing, And those that bear the burden of the rain, And those that glide with ease upon the sea, And those Angels who scatter blessings by Allah's command, Verily that which you are promised is surely true, And verily Judgment and Justice will come to pass."

Tannhauser stooped over the fallen knight. A red froth bubbled from his nostrils and his beard gleamed with gore. He clung on to the reins of his mount and Tannhauser stomped on his arm and ripped them free. He mounted the warhorse, and it reared beneath him and he dug in his knees and mastered it, and Buraq pulled up close and his presence seemed to gentle the other. Abbas hung on to the short flaxen mane, his lips now moving without sound. Tannhauser took Buraq's rein and led them back through the gap into the open basin.

He glanced south and saw the knot of Ludovico's band, now halfway up the vale toward the defile. Orlandu was safe. Some way behind them and to their left another pair of riders followed: Gullu Cakie and Bors. Since the vale was randomly populated with the to and fro of Corna's messengers, a trickle of knights from the Borgo newly arrived, and with stumbling coveys of wounded, mounted and afoot, neither group drew attention. To the north, the battle had shifted to the grassy slopes and sandstone shelves that rimmed Saint Paul's Bay. Beyond it lay the turmoil of boats, and the long voyage home to the Golden Horn.

Tannhauser worked the horses to a trot and skirted the Christian rear where the Sari Bayrak continued their fighting retreat. Between this action and the main engagement lay a section where the tumult was less fierce, and Tannhauser set toward it. They rode within the great arc of killing like beings transported by sorcery into someone else's dream, for none appeared able to see them and no one barred their way. The horses high-stepped the carcasses littering their path and among these latter no Moslem wounded were seen, for the succedent waves of Christians had butchered them all. They passed through a hiatus in the line and reached the foreshore, where fifteen thousand men fought hand to hand across a mile of sand.

The beaches teemed with Turks struggling to embark. In places the contest had spilled into the shallows and the surf crested red about the
soldiers' knees. From the longboats pulling for the transports, janissaries exchanged fire with the
mangas
on the slopes, and the cannon of the galleys plowed shot into the Christian pikemen. The battle had hours yet to go, but the only question was how many dead the Turks would leave behind them. Tannhauser no longer cared. He pushed his mount through the press, the warhorse shouldering the crowd aside and treading with imperious scorn on those who fell.

"
Agasi sari bayrak
," Tannhauser barked, and the ranks parted as they saw the bloodied general he led behind him.

At the water's edge three longboats were loading. Tannhauser swung down and went to Abbas. Abbas's eyes were slitted with pain. He let himself slide from the saddle into Tannhauser's arms. Tannhauser carried him to the shallows, the child now the father of the man. In the stern of the second longboat he saw Salih Ali, who seemed to be in charge of the loading for he brandished a pistol at the refugees crowding the water, desperate to board.

"Salih!" Tannhauser called.

The corsair knew him at once. His eyes widened at the panoplied general in his arms. Tannhauser waded to the gunwale.

"Staunch the aga's wounds," said Tannhauser. "To you he's worth a fortune if he lives."

Despite the anarchy abounding thereabouts, Salih recognized a rich source of profit-and no little glory to boot-when it was dumped in his lap. He tapped his forehead in salute and helped Tannhauser lower Abbas into the boat. Salih screamed at the oarsmen to push off at once and they ran out their looms into the water.

Tannhauser slipped off his treasured gold bangle and wrapped the lions' heads around Abbas's arm. Abbas opened his eyes and Tannhauser took his hand and squeezed it.

Tannhauser said, "I came to Malta not for riches or honor, but to save my soul."

Abbas squeezed back, his fingers feeble. He raised his head and stared into Tannhauser's eyes. Tannhauser saw his unvoiced agony. Beyond the agony, there was concern: for him.

"My son," said Abbas. "Have you found salvation among the infidel?"

"I found you," said Tannhauser. "And I found Love. That is salvation enough."

Abbas said, "Then you're not coming with me."

Tannhauser felt pain lance his heart. He smiled and shook his head.

"No, Father. Not this time."

Abbas smiled back. "This time I travel to the Golden Horn without you."

"Only in body. In spirit I am by your side. As you have always been by mine."

Abbas squeezed his hand for the last time. He said, "
Astowda Okomallah
."

"Assalaamu alaykum
," said Tannhauser. "
Fee iman Allah
."

Tannhauser let go his hand and Abbas sank into Salih's lap. Tannhauser stepped back. He watched the boat pull away through the blood-crested foam, with Abbas bin Murad in its prow. Then he turned and remounted Buraq, and he rode back through the crowd and up the foreshore, and he left the final slaughter to its disputants, for he'd yet to settle one last quarrel of his own.

The Feast of the Nativity of the Virgin: Saturday, September 8, 1565

Naxxar Ridge-The Corradino Heights

At its narrowest point the road between the mountains was almost throttled with bodies. Those Turkish wounded who'd crawled this way had been butchered where they lay, and a dozen or so Spanish foot soldiers were stripping the bodies of ornaments and gold. They looked up as Tannhauser rode by and their faces were as bright children caught at play. As he debouched from the defile and onto the plain, he saw three riderless warhorses cropping the browned grass in the haze up ahead, and a sense of desolation swept through his chest. The sirocco stirred whorls of dust from the trail and in the warping heat thrown up from the sun-flayed earth the mounts appeared towering and misshapen, like imaginary monsters compounded of incongruous parts. A fourth horse was tethered by the roadside, in the shade of a withered tree, and two human figures appeared seated against its trunk. Tannhauser coaxed a canter out of Buraq and as he got closer his heart sank yet further.

A pair of armored hulks lay cooking and spread-eagled in the noontide
sun. The first was Bruno Marra. Blood poured from his ears and from out the rims of his eyeballs, and his helm was creviced so deep into the underlying skull that tools would have been required to lever it off. The breastplate of the second knight still rose and fell. Amongst other wounds the shaft of a broken lance jutted from his groin. It was Escobar de Corro. Tannhauser swung down and drew his sword and Corro looked up at him. The Castilian's features trembled with the effort of containing his screams, for he was unwilling to give his enemy that satisfaction. Beyond that, his face wrote nothing that could be read, and Tannhauser cut his throat, and walked to the tree.

Gullu Cakie held a Turkish water flask to Bors's lips, and Bors drank with a vengeance, then spit a stream into his hand and mopped his face. Gullu seemed unharmed and for that Tannhauser gave thanks. Bors was bareheaded, his hair curled and matted with sweat, and he boasted multiple gashes to the scalp and face. His left arm was half detached at the tip of the shoulder and bone and tendril-like sinews gleamed in the gap. From beneath his cuirass, blood had pooled and curdled in his lap. His silver-and-ebony musket was cradled upright by his ear, as if he'd carry it as his staff in the afterworld to come.

Tannhauser squatted beside him and Bors smiled.

"Only one dead out of four?" said Tannhauser. "Those days in the hole must have left you weak in the arm as well as in the head."

"Time would have given me claim on three but for you showing up," growled Bors.

"Three?"

"The Black Hand shouldn't over-trouble you. I finally put one through that cursed Negroli plate. Steel shot, double load, at a hundred and fifty feet."

"That will get the job done," said Tannhauser.

"Anacleto I left for you."

Tannhauser looked at Gullu Cakie.

"I tracked them as far as the Mdina road," Gullu said. "Ludovico wasn't fit to make the climb. They turned toward the Borgo instead."