Siege of Heaven (20 page)

I opened my eyes and was back in the desert.

The second night’s march was worse than the first. A chasm of hunger had been opening inside me since the previous morning; now it engulfed me. Cramps of pain shot through my stomach and I was forced to bend almost double, leaning on my spear for support like an old man.
Halfway through the night we ran out of water. We had hoarded it as long as we could, taking sips so small they barely wet our lips, but even so we could not eke it out for ever. Unfortunately for Aelfric, he was holding the goatskin when it happened – and he did not help matters by upending the empty sack and shaking the last few drops out into his mouth. Jorol stared at him with covetous anger.

‘Who said you should have more than your share?’

Aelfric met his stare with haggard eyes, but did not answer. That in itself was a goad to Jorol. The Patzinak stepped towards Aelfric, snatched the empty skin from his hands and dashed it to the ground.

‘What will we drink now? Dust?’

‘You can drink my piss if you like.’

Even through the haze of despair and exhaustion, Aelfric must have known what he said; indeed, his fists were already rising as he spoke. But Jorol was too demented by thirst to be satisfied with that. He swung his spear around and lunged towards Aelfric.

The sneer died on Aelfric’s face and he flung himself away. He tripped on a stone, lost his balance and sprawled backwards. Jorol sprang after him, and the wild look on his face left no doubt what he intended.

A heavy staff swept through the moonlight, humming with its speed. It struck Jorol in mid-air, square on the chest, and he dropped like a bird felled by a sling. As he bent over in pain, Nikephoros slapped the spear-haft across his shoulder blades; then he turned to Aelfric, still
lying on the ground, and kicked him hard in the ribs.

‘If you lose your discipline again, it will be the sharp end of this spear you feel. Get up.’

The two men staggered to their feet, breathing hard. For a moment, I feared they might both attack Nikephoros, but the desert had not yet stripped all habits of obedience from them.

‘If we quarrel among ourselves, we will never escape this desert,’ said Nikephoros.

‘We will never escape anyway. Not without water to drink.’ Beneath the despair, I sensed a sly mischief in Jorol’s words, like a child who cannot help provoking his father to beat him.

Nikephoros’ shoulders stiffened, and the spear twitched in his hand.

‘Say that again, and I will see your body rot in the desert.’ Before Jorol could decide whether to test the threat, Nikephoros spun around to face me. ‘We will take the waterskins with us in case we find another well. You will carry them.’

I started. ‘Why me?’

‘Because the others carried them when they were full.’

Behind him, I saw Aelfric and Jorol smirking with satisfaction. I did not think we would find another well, but I shouldered the two empty waterskins without a word.

The next day, we did not stop at dawn. Without water, every hour brought death closer. Nikephoros led the way, his hand perpetually raised to shield his eyes as he scanned
the horizon. Aelfric followed, then Jorol, then me. Even empty, the waterskins I carried weighed as much as a coat of armour.

The desert had already broken my defences; now it began to devour me. My sight closed in, so that despite the glaring sun the world seemed indistinct around me. I could barely see beyond Jorol in front of me; he had lost the half of his tunic that covered his head and looked more like Christ than ever with only a single white cloth wrapped about his waist.

I began to hate Him. How could He have brought me to die in this wilderness? Surely even a grave in Babylon would have been better than this torment? After all my prayers, my faithful service, was this all I had earned at the close of my life? Did He delight in inflicting this pain on me – and on my family, my daughters, and the grandchild I would never see? Would He watch over Anna’s shoulder as she stood at the harbour at Saint Simeon, day after day, searching in vain for the ship that would never bring me home? Would He laugh at her? How did I deserve this?

But you are a sinner
, an unbidden voice hissed in my mind.
You have killed and lain with whores. What else do you deserve? Christ has turned his back on you and left you desolate. See?

I lifted my eyes. The world was dark around me, as though a black cloth had been tied over my eyes, but through the haze I could see a hunched figure dressed only in a loincloth, walking away alone across the sands.
He looked back at me for a moment, and behind his ragged beard I thought I saw him smile. Then he turned away.

I would not let him abandon me. Anger seized my limbs and drove me forward; the soft sand swallowed the noise of my footsteps, and he did not hear me until I was almost upon him. He twisted around, just as my shoulder thumped into his side, and we went down together. He screamed in surprise, and screamed some more as I began beating him with my fists. Famished by the desert, I had little strength to punish him, but he had little more strength to resist. He wrapped his arms around his face and drew his knees in like a child, while I rained down feeble blows.

Strong arms pulled me back and wrestled me to the ground. I could not resist them.

‘What are you doing?’ Nikephoros was bellowing with anger, his face almost touching mine, but his words were faint and vague. I had lifted myself on one arm and was staring over his shoulder, to where a column of dust rose across the horizon behind us. I pointed.

‘A pillar of cloud,’ I murmured, dazed. ‘A pillar of cloud to guide us.’

Nikephoros glanced back, then gave a savage laugh and kicked my hand out from beneath me, so that I collapsed back to the ground. ‘Fool. That is not your salvation. That is the dust rising from beneath the wheels of Pharaoh’s chariots. Our pursuers have come.’

Nikephoros was right: it was not a pillar of cloud, but
billowing dust kicked up by a squadron of horsemen. As yet they were little more than specks against the storm, but that would not last long. I turned around and looked east, as if some vestigial piece of faith still expected God to provide a refuge, a sea to cross or a flight of angels to carry us up. Instead, all I saw was a solitary rock, rising like a boil out of the desert a mile or so distant. I had not seen it before, though it was the only feature on an otherwise flat plain, and I realised that the impending danger – or perhaps the prospect of release from my suffering – had at last swept back the darkness that shrouded my eyes.

‘That’s as good a place as any to die,’ said Aelfric.

At last I knew how I had survived Antioch. Not because I was stronger, or because my faith was more steadfast, but because I had no choice. How else to explain the new strength that seized me? After the shadows that had engulfed it, the world seemed bright again – brighter even than it had before. I dropped the waterskins in the dust, for we would have no need of them now or ever again, and felt that I grew instantly a foot taller. Even my stride seemed longer.

But wherever you look in the desert, the sights deceive you. The land between us and the outcropping rock was furrowed with row upon row of dunes and ridges: from a distance they looked like little more than ripples blown by the wind, but once among them we found ourselves toiling up and down long, grinding inclines. Even at their summits there was no respite, for there we saw how far
we still had to go. And all the while, the pursuing dustcloud menaced us ever closer.

Even fear can only drive a man so far. I found I could no longer breathe except in the shallowest gasps, as if my lungs had filled so full of sand that there was no room for air. My legs buckled and swayed; I fell, dragged myself to my feet, fell once more and might never have risen again if a firm hand had not pinched around my neck and hauled me up. Still holding me, Nikephoros spun my face so that it was barely an inch from his own. His eyes blazed with demented purpose; he did not speak, but pursed his lips and spat a thin gob of saliva straight at me. It landed on my lips, and before I knew what I was doing I had licked it off, sucking the moisture greedily in.

‘
Come on
.’

We staggered forward to the top of the next rise and halted, leaning on each other for support. Even the desert could not disguise our situation now. From the ridge where we stood, a gentle slope descended away, until it ended abruptly in the sheer wall of rock, barely three hundred yards away.

I cannot tell where we found the strength to run, but run we did. Arms flapping, legs splaying, shoulders hunched and faces contorted in gruesome snarls, we ran like men possessed by demons. All I could hear was the thump of my footsteps and the roaring blood in my ears. Halfway to the rock I looked back and saw the dust cloud billowing up; when I looked again, the horsemen had crested the ridge. Lances glittered in the sun, while the
archers among them loosed a volley of arrows. They dropped harmlessly into the sand behind me – but near enough that I could see where the next flight would fall.

A square black banner waved them forward. The horsemen charged down the slope, and I ran.

More arrows flew; I could hear them striking the ground, stalking up behind me, drawing level and overtaking me. I thought to try and weave between them, to make a harder target for the archers, but that would have cost me precious speed. I had to hope my lurching progress was enough to confuse them. Now the sound changed: ahead of me, I heard the crack of an arrow striking stone. I looked up. A wall of rock rose before me – and splitting open its face, a ravine. I hurled myself in as a hail of arrows clattered on the walls beside me.

The world went dark again. The two halves of the fractured rock rose so steep and close that even the sun could not prise its way between them, except to touch the very tops of the walls high above me. As my eyes balanced the gloom, I saw where I had entered: a sandy lagoon cupped between the rocky walls. Grasses and flowers grew out of the rock above me – stunted and pale, but the first green things I had seen since the Nile. There must be water somewhere, though that was my last concern at that moment.

I had been the last of our company to enter the ravine. Ahead of me, where the gap widened, I saw Nikephoros and the others scrambling up the steep slope, trying to find a path to the top. I followed them, though it seemed
a hopeless task. Even if we had the strength to climb this mountain, the Egyptian archers would shoot us off its side long before we reached the summit.

But not yet. Whether they feared to bring their horses into the narrow defile, or whether they had sent some men around the rock to be sure we did not escape through the other side, they did not follow us in straight away. Meanwhile, Nikephoros seemed to have found some sort of goat path up the cliff, and we climbed it desperately, crawling on our hands and knees as it steepened. How could goats ever have come here? I wondered.

About a third of the way up, the path ended. I would have surrendered there, but Nikephoros was already moving on, scuttling up the sheer cliff like a spider. I was astonished, until I saw what he had seen: a ladder of recesses and handholds cut into the cliff, rising straight to the sky. Some were so freshly made I could still see the chisel scrapes on them, though I did not think to question who had carved them.

Fifty feet below, the horsemen swept into the ravine and dismounted. With cruel deliberation, I saw the archers pull fistfuls of arrows from the quivers on their backs and plant them in the sand beside them. They would not need so many, I thought. The others were already halfway up the cliff, caught like flies, while I still stood on the ledge where the path ended. I was safer there from the archers below – but that was no solace, for soon the spearmen scrambling up the path would reach me. The sharp snap of bowstrings echoed around the ravine, immediately
drowned by the quick-fire rattle of iron on stone. Not only stone – several hit flesh, and a mortal screaming joined the cacophony that filled the air. A shadow fell from the sky as the arrows plucked one of my companions from the wall above. I did not see who it was; he fell into the sand at the foot of the cliff, and in its soft embrace I did not even hear his neck break.

Pebbles rained down on me as my companions climbed on. To my right, the spearmen were only a few yards down the path, though something seemed to have delayed them. They crouched behind their shields, looking up and across the ravine. Following their gaze I saw the dark shapes of more archers silhouetted against the sky on the opposite summit. Now they could rain arrows on us from above and below. There would be no escape.

Yet even where there is no hope of escape, men will try beyond reason. I could not get past the spearmen; the only other path was up. I scooped a handful of pebbles and threw them down on the archers in the ravine, a vain gesture of defiance, then turned and began hauling myself up the cliff.

It was easier than I had thought it would be. Whoever had cut the footholds had placed them well, so that my feet found grooves and fissures exactly where they expected. I pulled myself up, hand over hand, deaf now to the sounds of battle, to the arrows around me, to the voice in my heart that pleaded this was madness. The discipline of climbing brought a rare order to my body, and I embraced it eagerly. Perhaps I might even reach the
summit, I thought, though I did not know what I would do when I reached it.

An arrow tore into my shoulder, and as I screamed my hand let go of the rock. I tried to cling on with my other hand, but I did not have the strength. I fell, felt a rush of air and then a life-emptying thud.

I lay back, and let the desert take me at last.