Medi-Evil 3 (23 page)

 
Hasif
forgotten, de
Vesqui
forgotten, all else forgotten, they’d staggered breathlessly forward and now were wandering dazed among monuments of a size and grandeur neither Rome nor Athens had ever dreamed of. Much of what they saw was green with age, cracked, overgrown by vines and brambles, yet still it bespoke the pomp and richness of a lost heroic era. On all sides, gargantuan columns – cut from onyx or marble, veined with quartz – soared to portico roofs. Triumphal arches led through to vast squares and amphitheatres floored with intricate mosaics. There were statues of shimmering bronze, ornate friezes, temples adorned with ancient symbols and arcane glyphs.

 
Of course neither of the Norman warlords was overly entranced by this. They were hard men, cold men, whose court was the military camp. They had no real taste for things they had never known, like beauty, luxury. Wealth, on the other hand – wealth was a different matter. Eagerly, they sought it out.

*

They battled on the rope bridge, blow for blow.

 
De
Vesqui
struck with savage, swiping strokes, which Ramon needed every ounce of his strength to parry. His own counterattack, vigorous and repeated, was deflected with ease, and already blood streamed from fresh slashes on his face and hands. His bone-weary legs quivered beneath him.

 
The
longswords
clashed and clashed, the combatants grunted, the ropes and timbers squealed and hummed. Ulf could only encourage his master. The narrow passage prevented him coming alongside to help, and in any case such a thing would have been
dishonourable
. Not that he cared about that now. His lord, he saw, was exhausted, mouth agape, face running with sweat. Again de
Vesqui
caught Ramon, this time across the belly, the ripping sword point laying bare the felt beneath the mail. However, on this occasion Ramon responded well with a hefty thrust to the
Aquitainian’s
throat, causing him to grimace and draw back a step – and to overbalance. De
Vesqui
grabbed wildly at the support ropes, briefly leaving himself unguarded, allowing Ramon to thrust again, catching him in the shoulder with insufficient strength to punch through the chain and leather padding. Enraged, the Leopard’s man fought back, aiming hack after hack at Ramon’s head, the aged timbers groaning beneath his stamping feet.

 
Ulf found himself clinging on for dear life as the bridge swung and tilted. He needed to act, he
realised
, or they’d
all
be drowned – and his moment came sooner than he’d expected. For with a chilling
crunch
, part of the footing suddenly gave, the timbers under Ramon breaking.

 
Desperately, Ramon flung himself to one side, trusting his entire weight to the support rope. De
Vesqui
leaped after him, slamming an elbow into his throat, forcing him back further. Ramon gagged and chopped downwards with his sword. De
Vesqui
, now chest-to-chest with him, was too close for it to make impact – but this left the way open for Ulf. The boy launched a terrific stroke, which, if it had caught de
Vesqui
on the cranium would have split his head in two. In the last fleeting second, de
Vesqui
sensed it. He wheeled, parried the blow, and crashed his fist into Ulf’s chin – only for Ramon to seize the advantage, throw himself forward and butt the
Aquitainian
on the bridge of the nose.

 
A scarlet ribbon fell down de
Vesqui’s
face, and he squawked, lurching backwards – and stepping into the gap left by the broken plank, dropping through it to the depth of his thigh. His sword flew from his grasp, his guard was lost, and both Ramon and Ulf swept in with their own blades, hitting him simultaneously. The knight slashed deeply into de
Vesqui’s
neck; the squire drove his steel under the flailing left arm, jamming it hard between the ribs. De
Vesqui
gave a hideous, gargling groan. Black lung-blood sprayed from his mouth, from the wound in his side, from the severed arteries in his neck. He clawed the air, twisting where he was lodged.

 
With an angry curse, but more through mercy than viciousness, Ramon raised his foot and stamped as hard as he could, twice. With a rending
crackle
of wood, the shattered corpse slipped through and dropped into the river.

 
It vanished quickly, leaving only a reddish smudge on the surface.

*

Was there any person in the world
Thurstan
could not slay in single combat?

 
Always before, he’d been able to rely on his prodigious strength, his lightning speed, his precision of hand and eye – yet now, in the midst of this swirling torrent of heat and dust, the figure which danced before him seemed always to flit out of reach just as his sword struck home. So swiftly did it move that he caught only flickering details of it: blink-of-eye glimpses of filed teeth, slanted, cat-like eyes, long hands with knife-blade fingernails. But this alone was not the deadliest force he dealt with. From all sides, mighty blows were driven into him – his legs, his arms,
his
torso. Unseen talons rent and tore. He was thrown in all directions, side to side, up and down, round and round like a dervish, nauseated, confused, hurled to the brink of madness.

 
He tried to focus, cutting and stabbing at the prancing, darting figure with everything he had, but never once did he make contact – if contact was even possible. And when a savage but invisible fist smashed into his ribs with battering ram force, and the bones simply cracked, the knight knew his death was upon him.

*

The Leopard of
Gerberoi
and his brutish son had searched a dozen streets and courts before they noticed the
filthied
, rotted shades slowly emerging from the dark places between the temples.

 
At first they were too incredulous to
respond,
and many more of the diabolic things – shambling, stinking wrecks all – had appeared by the time they understood that the guardians of
Uruk
at last were stirring.

 
It might have occurred to Count Gilles that this, in essence, was unfair; neither he nor his son had collected so much as pewter goblet yet – they hadn’t even found one, if the truth was told – but fairness had never been an important factor in the nobleman’s long, violent life. In any case, his thoughts were now otherwise engaged, for as the rancid, crumbling
spectres
spilled out ant-like from every nook and hidey-hole, cramming the streets in an army of walking putrescence, fully encircling the baron and his wildly-shrieking son, he saw them for what they truly were: formless globs of death itself, each one some lost or forgotten soul, either trampled and broken in his own battle steed’s wake, or maybe bled white on the sacrificial slabs of ancient, barbarous Sumer.

 
Count Gilles drew his sword and laid about him, to no avail. The guardians converged steadily, limbless, mindless, surging like the sea; no blade could wound them, no mailed fist stun them. In a silent tide of suffocation, they closed around the intruders, cloying, all-enveloping, until at last the Leopard’s half-choked screech joined that of
Joubert’s
– in abrupt and smothering silence.
 

*

The thing
Thurstan
fought was invincible.

 
It was lithe and ferocious as a jungle cat, and it now clung to him with irresistible strength as his life ebbed out in ruby rivers. His weapons long broken, the knight could only grapple with it bare-handed, though its slick and oily flesh was firm with iron muscle, invulnerable to his clenching fingers. Every part of
Thurstan’s
body was bruised, broken, pulped. His vision flashed with stars, a bottomless chasm opened slowly beneath him.

 
And then – in an instant, it was over.

 
But
Thurstan
wasn’t dead. At least, he didn’t think he was.

 
Briefly he was a bird, weightless, floating in warm air, the
jewelled
and rippling Euphrates far below. Next he was a man again, awkward, heavy as clay,
plummeting
.

 
He fell faster than he’d ever believed possible. Before he could draw breath, the icy waters hit him with a clap of thunder, enclosing him in green, glinting shadow. For a short, strangely comforting time,
Thurstan
drifted careless, wrapped in fronds. And then foul fluid was pouring into his nose and throat, and he was coughing, choking – and suddenly hands were dragging at him, hauling him upwards and out.

 
Thurstan
opened his eyes properly.

 
At once, the pain began – all over his body. He winced, gasped. In the space of a second he recalled every inch of his fight with the
djinn
, and he wondered how he’d survived it.

 
“Surely I’m drowned?” he croaked.

 
“Almost,”
came
a tired voice.

 
Thurstan
looked left, though it hurt to do so, and saw that he was lying on a shingle shore. Ulf was sitting there, staring over the river. Ramon was also visible. The knight’s mail was hacked and freshly blood-stained, but he seemed unharmed.

 
“Lucky we saw you,” Ulf added, almost indifferently.

 
With some effort,
Thurstan
glanced down and noted that he’d been ravaged as if by a wild animal. Scraps of mail and leather remained, but the flesh that was visible was black and blue, and riddled with bleeding gashes. With much cringing, and no little coughing up mud and water, he managed to lever himself into a sitting posture. From the row of gibbeted corpses on the far side of the river, he surmised that he was now on the eastern bank. About thirty yards upstream, he saw the rope bridge. He looked at his rescuers again – they still seemed distant, perplexed.

 
“Don’t tell me,” he said. “Not a brick standing on a brick?”

 
Ulf shook his head. “There’s nothing there at all … not even rubble. We went through a gully … the same way the Leopard did. But it’s just an empty plain.
A sun-baked wilderness.”

 
“And where is His High and Mightiness?”

 
Again Ulf shook his head. “There’s no trace of him.
None.”

 
Thurstan
switched his gaze to Ramon. “And what did
you
find?”

 
“As the boy says, there’s nothing there.” Ramon sniffed, shrugged. “I doubt there ever was.”

 
Thurstan
was about to reply when he spotted movement on the high ground to the east. They looked and saw
Hasif
on the crest of the ridge. He rested a spear on his shoulder and stared down boldly at them, before drawing a strip of turban across his lower face and strolling out of view.

 
“He knew what we’d find here,” Ulf said.

 
“So did
we
,”
Thurstan
replied, climbing painfully to his feet. “There’s no sorcery in that.”

 
“But why have we been spared?”

 
Ramon snorted. “Who says we have?” He pointed west. “Christendom is a thousand miles that way.”

 
“We’ll get there,” Ulf said, moving towards the bridge.
“If God wills it.”

 
“Aye.”
Thurstan
limped after him.
“Perhaps.”
He was feeble from blood loss, and promptly staggered. He would have fallen had Ramon not put an arm out to steady him.

 
Their eyes met,
Thurstan’s
registering surprise.

 
“If God wills it,” Ramon agreed.

COLOSSUS