"03 - King and Emperor" - читать интересную книгу автора (Harrison Harry)

He turned away, calling to his commanders of divisions. Behind him the young man raised his spyglass again, seemed to be attempting to gain a clearer view by moving his eye in and out from the eyepiece.
From time to time in his babbling flow of talk, the Mallorcan villager cast a fearful glance sideways. He had reason to feel fear. The villager had seen the fleet of great red galleys pull round the point, having burned to the waterline the ships that had brought the circumcised to Mallorca long months before. He had realized they must be searching for water, and theorized that whoever they were, the enemies of Muhammad must be his friends. So, when they came ashore and began to set up their camp, and after he had crept close enough to see the crucifixes and the saints' images raised, he had come shyly and slowly forward to volunteer his services: hoping for some reward that might keep him from starvation. Hoping too for revenge on the fierce dark-faced raiders who had stolen from him wife and son and daughters.
Yet he had not reckoned on facing quite such strange and menacing allies. The villager had no language in common with the Greek sailors, or with the German soldiers whom they transported. He had been passed on, though, from guard-post to guard-post till they found a Latin-speaking chaplain. If he spoke slowly and listened carefully, he and the Mallorcan could understand each other, for the Mallorcan's peculiar dialect was no more than the Vulgar Latin of old time, spoken badly and without a schoolmaster for generation after forgotten generation. So much the Mallorcan had expected. He had not expected to find anyone like the man who stood with a scowl on his face next to the Christian priest and his wizened informant.
Agilulf, Ritter of the Lanzenorden, once companion of the great Emperor Bruno himself, and now commander of the expedition against the Moors, stood a foot taller than either priest or villager. His height was increased by the visored iron helmet he wore, and the black plume in it that marked his rank. Yet what the villager could not understand, or hardly believe, was not the man but his dress. From head to foot Agilulf seemed to be made of iron. He wore helmet, mail shirt hanging to his knees, greaves on his calves and beneath them iron-plated boots. Iron studded his gauntlets and rimmed the long kite-shaped shield he carried: a horseman's shield, drawn out in a kite shape to protect the lancer's left leg when he charged, but carried by Agilulf on foot as if weight meant nothing to him. Nor heat. Beneath the iron he wore leather to prevent links being beaten into his flesh, beneath the leather he wore hemp to soak up the sweat. In the late afternoon heat of the Balearics in spring time, the sweat sprang out from under the hairline and dripped steadily down into his beard. He took no notice, as if to notice discomfort was beneath his dignity. To the villager, who had never seen more iron in his life than it would take to sheathe the spike on his primitive plow, the German seemed a creature from another world. The cross painted on his shield was little comfort.
"What does he say?" demanded Agilulf, tiring of listening to slow exchanges in a language he could not follow.
"He says there is a good spring half a mile away, where we could fill as many water-barrels as we wish. But he says the Moslems know of it and use it too. They will have seen us already. The main army of the invaders is a bare ten miles off. They move with the speed of the wind, he says. That is how he lost his family: taken before anyone in his village knew raiders had landed."
Agilulf nodded. He showed none of the dismay that Pedro the villager had expected. "Does he know how many men the Moslems have?"
The priest shrugged. "He says ten thousand thousand. That could mean anything over a couple of hundred."
Agilulf nodded again. "Very well. Give him some grain and a flask of wine, and let him go. I expect there are many like him skulking in these hills. Tell him when the Moslems have broken there will be a reward for heads. They can round up the stragglers for us."
Agilulf turned away, shouting orders to his men to form up the watering-party. As usual, protest and expostulation from the Greek sailors, uneasy on land, convinced that at any moment a horde of ghazis would rush from the woods and overwhelm them. Agilulf paused for a moment to explain his plan to the Greek commander.
"Of course they'll rush us," he said. "At dawn. My cross-bowmen and your rowers will hold them in front for a few minutes. Then I and my knights and companions will take them from behind. I wish we had horses to make our charge swifter. But it will come to the same thing in the end."
The Greek looked after the iron man as he stalked on his way. The Franks, he thought. Clumsy, illiterate, heretical peasants. Why are they so confident so suddenly? They have swept out of the West like the followers of Muhammad from the East two hundred years ago. I wonder if we will find them any better than the wine-haters?
Ma'mun made no effort to conceal his dawn attack, once his men were in place. He had counted the ships of the enemy: a bare score. No matter how crowded with men they were, they could not hold more than two thousand at the very most. He had ten thousand. Now was the time to avenge the destruction of his ships. The Greek fire, he knew, could not be transported overland. He feared nothing else. He allowed his priests to call out the dawn salat, regardless of the warning it gave, and led his men in their ceremonial prayers. Then he drew his saber, and signaled to his commanders-of-a-thousand to lead the assault.
In full daylight the army of the faithful ran forward in the tactic that had led them to victory over army after army of Christians: in Spain, in France, in Sicily, at the gates of Rome itself. A loose wave of men with spears and swords, without the locked shields and heavy body-armor of the West, but driven on by contempt for death, assurance that those who died fighting the unbelievers would live for ever amid the houris of Paradise.
Ma'mun knew that the Christians would have some trick or other. Otherwise they would not have ventured to set up their camp on land. He had seen many tricks, seen them all fail. The sudden appearance of a row of helmeted heads, the leveled crossbows beneath them did not surprise him. He had not heard the metallic twang of the crossbows before, and watched with interest as his first wave of stormers fell or were hurled off their feet by the thump of crossbow quarrels at short range. Weapons to use against armor, he guessed, the besetting vice of Frankish tactics: eager to kill, reluctant to die. They would be slow to reload, whatever they were. The followers of Islam ran on undeterred, reached the low palisade, began to hack and stab at the defenders. Ma'mun could hear his priests calling ritual curses on those who added gods to God. He walked slowly forward, waiting for the resistance to break.
His guard-captain touched his arm, pointed silently behind him. Ma'mun frowned. Another trick, indeed! Coming out of a rocky gully to his left flank, already swinging round in a wide arc as if to cut off his retreatЧhis retreat!Чwas a line of men.
Iron men. Gray steel glittered from their weapons, their armor, their shields, their very hands and feet. Not many of them. They seemed barely two deep in file, their line a mere two hundred yards. They came on slowly. Why did they look so strange? Pulling his beard, Ma'mun realized that each carried the same weapreconisedons, carried them in the same way, even at the same angle: a short pike in the right hand, a kite-shaped shield on the left side. Had they no left-handed men in their ranks? What could make men walk together like that, as if they were a machine, as unvarying as the scoops on a noria, a water-wheel. With incredulity Ma'mun saw that each man was putting his foot forward at the same time, so that the line came on like a single animal, like the limbs of a crawling hundred-legged beast. He could hear a great voice shouting something in the barbarous tongue of the ferengi, the same word repeated again and again: "Links... links... links." At every word the feet came down again.
Ma'mun shook himself, sent runners to turn the rearmost of those attacking the palisade, called his guards round him and ran forward himself, saber drawn, to engage the iron men. A moment of delay and his men would turn, swarm round the Franks now out in the open, drag them down from all sides. Breathing hard, for he was a man of fifty winters, he reached the slowly advancing line, hacked at an iron figure with his saber of best Toledo steel.
The German facing him, no knight or Ritter but only a poor brother of the Lanzenorden, ignored the blow, merely ducking his helmet into it. He concentrated on keeping the step, keeping the line, following the battle-drill his sergeants had shouted into him. Left foot forward, thrust with the shield, lift the man in front of you back. Right foot forward, stab with the pike. Not at the man in front, ignore him. At the man to your right. Bruder Manfred to your left will kill the man in front of you, you kill the man in front of Bruder Wolfi to your right. Stab at the armpit as he raises his weapon.
Ma'mun struck one stroke against the unbelievers and died, killed by a blow he never saw. His guardsmen were cut down and trampled under foot by a line that did not even check its pace. The wave that turned back from the palisades and rushed at the iron men did not break and retire but was accepted and trodden under like stalks beneath a scythe. Their cries of encouragement and praise to God were answered only by the hoarse bellows of the sergeants: "Links... links. Straighten up there! Close up, close up! Second rank, keep your points down, stab him again, Hartman, he's only wounded. Right wheel, right shoulders there!"
As the dust rose over the churning battle, Mu'atiyah, who had not followed Ma'mun and his guards to glorious death, heard the strange machine-soldiers of the Franks grunting like laborers who have heavy loads to carry in the cornfields. From the palisades the Frankish bowmen were preparing a second volley, while the lightly-armed Greek oarsmen swarmed out, ready to drive a demoralized enemy onto the points of the iron line now fully behind them.
It was the duty of a learned man to learn, and to report his learning, Mu'atiyah reflected, dodging through the rocks and scattered scrub of the hillside. Some of the lower-born among the army were following his example, mere Berbers and Goths. He called a dozen of them round him, to act as a guard against the Christian peasants who would surely be out to avenge their stolen fields and children. They obeyed, recognizing his dress and the pure Arabic of a descendant of the Quraysh.
Somewhere on the island there would be a boat. He would take the news to his master bin-Firnas. And to the Caliph of Cordova himself. But best to speak to his master first. It would be wise to appear not as one who had fled from battle, but as one who had braved dangers to know the truth. At a safe distance Mu'atiyah turned, produced his spyglass, and looked again across the hillside to where Agilulf was directing the passionless slaughter of a mass of men trapped too close together by their enemies to lift a hand against the pikes and pole-axes.
Iron Franks, he thought. And Greek fire. It will take more than the courage of the ghazis to defeat those together.
Far away, in his sleep, the King of the North felt a pang of warning, a chill that seemed to strike up from the ground beneath his stout-timbered bed and down mattress. He tossed in his sleep, trying to wake up as a swimmer before sharks tries to throw himself out of the water. As unavailing. Over the years Shef had come to recognize the difference between one kind of vision and another.
This would be one of the worst kind: the kind that took him not across the surface of the earth, like a bird, or back into the old histories of men. One that took him down into the deep strongholds of the gods, the Helworld, past the Grind, the grating that separates the living from the dead.
He seemed now to be sinking deeper and deeper, unable to see anything but earth and rock, a stink of mold in his nostrils. Yet some sense warned him that he was going to a place he had seen before. Glimpsed before. Not a place for mere men to visit.
The darkness did not lift, but a feeling of space grew around him, as if he were in some enormous cavern. Light over there, or at least a glow. He did not think his father and patron would let him go without showing him something.
Suddenly the shadows turned into a shape. A shape that without warning struck at his face, slashing out of the dark with a hiss of hatred so fierce it was like a shriek. Shef jerked convulsively in his bed, his muscles trying to hurl him back. Too late, his eye recognized the head of a monstrous serpent glaring at him, striking again, the poison fangs jerking down bare yards from his face.
The serpent was fettered, he realized. It could not reach him. It struck again, but this time not at him. Again at a target it could not reach. Not quite reach.
Below him Shef could now make it an enormous human shape, stretched out in the darkness. It was chained down by great iron fetters to a table of stone. Shef's flesh crawled as he realized what he was seeing. For this could only be Loki, the bane of Balder, father of the monster-brood, enemy of gods and men. Chained here on the orders of his father Othin to live in everlasting torment till Doomsday. Till RagnarЎk.
The harsh face twisted in agony as Shef watched. He could see that the snake, while it could not reach its chained enemy, could sweep its fangs within inches of his head. The venom from them ran out, splashed on the face that could not turn away, ate away skin and flesh, not like venom, likeЧsomething Shef could not name.
But while the face twisted, something about it did not change. A set purpose, an air of craft. Looking carefully round, Shef saw that the great body was concentrating its force, was heaving all the time, heaving on the seemingly unmovable, deep-anchored fetter on the right hand. He had seen this before, Shef remembered. And he had seen that the fetter was working loose.
Yes, there was his father now. Seemingly dwarfed by the shape of Loki, by the great serpent, but standing there with perfect self-possession, ignoring the fangs now striking hatefully at him.
"You have come to gloat over my pain, Rig?" A hoarse whisper from Loki.
"No, I have come to look at your fetters."
The face of the tormented god closed, as if determined to show neither fear nor disappointment.
"No fetter can hold me for ever. Nor will my son Fenris-wolf be bound for ever by Gleipnir."
"I know. But I have come to speed things up."
Incredulously, Shef saw his father, the trickster-god, stoop, produce some metal instrument from his sleeve, begin to lever at the places where Loki's right wrist-manacle was set into the rock. The bound god seemed unable to believe what he saw either, watching motionless till the eating venom from above ran into his very eyes.
As he felt himself drawn away, returned to the world of men, Shef heard another hoarse whisper: "Why are you doing this, deceiver?"
"Think, if you wish, that I find RagnarЎk too long in coming. Or that I desire freedom for Loki as well as for Thor. In any case, there is someone I mean you to meet..."
Shef crashed into wakefulness again, heart pounding. Me? he thought. Not me. Not me.

Chapter Three
Shef eyed his royal guests broodingly as they emerged from the guest hall he had had built for them. The dread of the night was still on him. It had turned the whole world a darker shade. He found himself even walking more lightly, more warily, as if at any moment the earth might split and hurl him down to what he knew lay beneath.
And yet all seemed well enough. There was his friend and partner Alfred, turning on the steps and stretching his arms out encouragingly to the sturdy toddler behind him. Little Edward half-running, half-falling into his father's catch. Behind them both, stepping forward with pleased maternal smile and a second baby slung familiarly on her hip, the face Shef could not forget. His own love, long-lost to him now, Godive, once his childhood sweetheart from the marshes, now known and loved far and wide as the Lady of Wessex. They could not see him for a moment as he stood in the shadow of the strange contrivance he meant to show off that day. He could observe unobserved.
Unobserved by those he watched. Not by his own men, who shifted uneasily and glanced at each other as they saw his silent concentration.
He ought, he knew, to at least fear and resent them. To be making plans forЧif not their death, their removal. For making them safe. Many would say, though they did not dare to say it to his face, that it was a king's first duty to think of his own successor. Years ago, in the dark days of the double invasion by Charles the Bald's Franks and Ivar the Boneless's pagans, Shef and Alfred had agreed to share their luck, and their kingdoms, if they should ever hold them again. They had agreed too that each would be the other's successor if either died without an heir, and that any heir of either would inherit from both in the same situation. The deal had not seemed important at the time. Neither had much chance of living to see another winter, let alone another spring. And Godive had slept in Shef's tent, if not in his bed. He had thought, if they lived, it would only be a matter of time till her love returned, and his desire.
He had been wrong. If he died now, his kingdom fell to Alfred. And after him to the laughing toddler now being carried towards him, baby Edward. The sub-kings would ignore the agreement, of course. There was no chance that the Scandinavian kings, Olaf or Guthmund or any of the dozen others, would agree to obey an English Christian. It was doubtful if even the Mercians or Northumbrian English would accept rule by a Wessex Saxon. The One King of the North was truly One King. No-one else would be accepted by the rest.