The Tournament

by Matthew Reilly

  I saw the fellow’s feet first and I noticed immediately that his left sandal had a prominent V-shaped nick in its wooden sole beside his big toe.

  My gaze rose upward and as it did I beheld the owner of those mysterious sandals—sandals that had left their mark in the slaughter room where the chef and his wife had been found hanged and in the fresh mud outside the menagerie after my teacher had been lured there to die—and as my eyes came up I found myself meeting the cold impassive stare of Sinon, the towering manservant of Cardinal Cardoza.

  THE CARDINAL’S MAN

  ‘SINON,’ MY TEACHER SAID. ‘I had wondered if the cardinal would send you to kill me.’

  The manservant said, ‘The cardinal says you know too much, Englishman. He has ordered you and your girl to die, and I am here to carry out the sentence.’

  He loomed above us, his face completely devoid of emotion. He stood with an unnerving stillness, a stillness, I realised with a start, that I had seen before: on the night my teacher and I had observed the cardinal’s debauched gathering in his embassy, I had glimpsed a tall shadowy figure observing us from behind a lattice screen by the lawn, standing with a similar eerie stillness. It had been Sinon watching us that night.

  He stepped down into the shallow water of the cistern, advancing on my teacher and me. Mr Ascham pushed me back protectively. Zubaida just scurried away.

  ‘You hanged the chef and his wife for your master,’ Mr Ascham said.

  ‘I do as my master commands.’

  ‘And you laid that trap for me in the menagerie.’

  Sinon kept advancing. ‘I do as my master commands.’

  My teacher kept backing away. ‘Including murder?’

  Sinon kept advancing. ‘For your murder, he has given me absolution in advance.’ He nodded at me. ‘And for hers. My master says I will go to heaven for this.’

  ‘Your master is a pederast. There is no place in heaven for him or any who serve him.’

  ‘We shall let God decide,’ Sinon said, drawing a short glistening sword. ‘The Lord will guide my hands.’

  We were now standing among the scattered rubbish that had been carelessly tossed into the cistern: the heaped piles of discarded wooden objects overlaid with rusted iron poles and heavy barred gates.

  ‘Bess, get back,’ Mr Ascham whispered. ‘If this fellow gets the better of me, flee into the cisterns and get out some other way. Then tell the Sultan everything.’ He glanced at me. ‘And know that I cared for you deeply.’

  I backed farther away as instructed, as suddenly, with a great cry, Sinon lunged at Mr Ascham.

  But my teacher had been moving with a purpose I had not noticed: as Sinon lunged at him, Mr Ascham found himself standing beside a heap on top of which sat a length of iron piping, and he quickly grabbed it and used it to parry Sinon’s blow and a mighty clang rang out.

  The manservant raged and he advanced on my teacher with greater speed, swinging his sword with shocking violence. My teacher fended off his blows with the pipe, backing down an alleyway. Every clang rang out in the vast cistern.

  At one point, they came together and Sinon—a full head and shoulders taller than my teacher—used his free hand to punch Mr Ascham in the face most powerfully and Mr Ascham fell into the knee-deep water with an ungainly splash and the manservant leapt forward and swung down with his sword, only for my teacher to roll sideways in the water, spraying it everywhere, and the blade struck empty waves.

  Mr Ascham moved desperately, his body now soaked through. Sinon chased him into another alley, yelling with rage, his lusty swipes missing my teacher by inches.

  But then Mr Ascham saw that he had made an error. In his desperation, he’d fled into an alleyway that finished at a dead end.

  He was trapped.

  Sinon now advanced slowly. He regripped his sword menacingly.

  Mr Ascham backed up against the rubbish heap behind him, but there was nowhere for him to go.

  I watched from the entrance to the next cistern, helpless and horrified.

  ‘God will decide . . .’ Sinon said in a monotone as he closed in on my trapped teacher. ‘The Lord will guide my hands . . .’

  He stood over Mr Ascham and raised his sword for the death blow when suddenly my teacher did something most unexpected: he kicked with all his strength not at Sinon but at the leg of one of the broken wooden tables in the rubbish pile immediately to his left.

  The table leg snapped, causing the table to dislodge from its place in the heap and jerk suddenly downward, which in turn caused a heavy iron gate lying on top of the table to slide with considerable force off the pile . . . right into Sinon’s face.

  The big iron gate struck him with all its weight and a sickening crack echoed throughout the cistern—the sound of the gate’s leading edge breaking Sinon’s nose and some of his teeth—and the tall manservant fell, his head jerking unnaturally backwards.

  The gate’s leading edge drove his head under the surface of the water with a great splash, before the rest of the huge iron thing landed flat on top of his body.

  Sinon now lay before my teacher, trapped under the bars of the heavy gate, his face a gruesome mess, his nose smashed inward, bloody and deformed. He was lying in barely two feet of water, but he was gasping for air as the water sloshed over the wreckage of his nose, the weight of the gate pinning him down. Both of his hands were trapped underwater, including his sword hand, held down by the gate.

  Mr Ascham stood over Sinon, the cruel assassin now a helpless soul trying desperately to breathe. As the water sluiced over his face, it mixed with his blood and invaded his mouth and Sinon started gagging, coughing.

  My teacher did nothing.

  Sinon strained to lift the gate, but it was no use. It was far too heavy. The water flowed more freely over his face.

  Still my teacher did nothing.

  ‘Help . . . me . . .’ Sinon said between the waves lapping over his face.

  Mr Ascham looked down at the struggling killer. My teacher’s usually kind and open face had gone hard, not with coldness or anger, but with what can only be described as a look of calm justice. He said, ‘To those who show no mercy, no mercy shall be shown. Brunello and his wife died in helpless fear at your hands, Sinon. It is only fair that you die in the same state of terror.’

  And to the end Mr Ascham did nothing as the great weight of the iron gate pushed Sinon’s face fully under the water’s surface. Sinon began to kick desperately, and the water around him began to churn. A few moments later, however, he went completely still and the water did, too. In two feet of water, the assassin had drowned.

  When I rejoined Mr Ascham, I saw Sinon’s face under the water’s surface, broken and bloody, the eyes staring at nothing. The angel of death was himself dead and he had died in abject fear. His death had not been a pleasant thing to watch, but somehow, even at that tender age, I knew it was a just and fitting end for a cruel man.

  ‘Come, Bess.’ Mr Ascham led me to the stairs. ‘It is time to end this. It is time to confront Cardinal Cardoza.’

  INTO THE CARDINAL’S DEN

  IT WAS NEARING SUNSET when we emerged from the underground world. My teacher—saturated from head to toe and bearing many scrapes and scratches from his fight with Sinon—led the way, striding quickly and strongly. Zubaida had rejoined us and simply followed behind, silent and no doubt unsure what to make of it all.

  We had gone but a few steps when Latif arrived in the rose garden. He paused momentarily when he saw my teacher, sopping wet, bloody and filthy, but he just said, ‘Mr Roger Ascham, the cardinal is in his embassy. By all appearances, he has been waiting there for someone, someone who had not yet arrived by the time I came here to find you. However, he sent his manservant, Sinon, on an errand soon after I began my observation of the embassy.’

  ‘He sent his manservant to kill us,’ my teacher said as he strode right past Latif, heading for the lawn that ringed the Catholic embassy. ‘But it was the manservant who will meet his maker today.
Bess, go and fetch the nearest guards, any you can find, and send them immediately to Cardinal Cardoza’s embassy. Latif and I will go there now.’

  And so we separated: my teacher and his escort hastened southward while Zubaida and I hurried back into the Third Courtyard to find some guards.

  We had gone perhaps thirty yards when I noticed two palace guards standing in the arcade to our left, in an alcove there, peering through a lattice window that overlooked the Church’s embassy.

  ‘Guards!’ I cried in Greek. I ran over to them. ‘Guards! Please! A moment—’

  ‘Let us be, child,’ one of them said tersely, waving me away.

  ‘But—!’

  ‘Be gone, little girl!’ he barked and I stepped away, shocked.

  I looked at the guard and suddenly I stopped. I had seen this man before but I could not picture where. He had a neatly trimmed beard and a Y-shaped scar on his right cheek—

  The dungeon.

  He had been one of the guards in the Sultan’s main dungeon.

  I spun where I stood, taking in the two guards in their alcove. They were observing the Catholic embassy through the lattice screen, and nervously, too. The one who had just dismissed us so rudely carried a set of empty manacles in his right hand.

  Empty manacles . . .

  My eyes darted further down the arcade . . .

  . . . where I beheld another pair of dungeon guards also keeping watch over the embassy.

  Then I looked through the lattice itself and saw my teacher and Latif entering the embassy’s front door.

  Zubaida said, ‘Come, Bess, there will be more guards over by the entrance to the Harem—’

  But I wasn’t listening.

  My veins had turned to ice as I realised what I was seeing.

  Empty manacles . . .

  ‘The queen commands the loyalty of a small group of palace guards,’ I said aloud, recalling Elsie’s words. ‘Including those who control the Sultan’s dungeon.’

  I spun again, to face the first two guards. ‘And just now the cardinal was called from the chess to his embassy, where he has been waiting, presumably for someone important enough to warrant his immediate presence . . . someone like the queen . . .’

  My eyes locked again on the manacles dangling from the first guard’s hands.

  These two dungeon guards had conveyed someone in manacles to the cardinal’s embassy . . .

  A prisoner of some sort . . .

  A dangerous prisoner . . .

  A wave of horror flooded through me.

  The queen had finally made her play against the cardinal: she had sent her assassin.

  But my teacher, my beloved teacher, was right at that moment entering the cardinal’s embassy, unaware that he was walking into her deadly trap.

  ‘What are you doing!’ Zubaida shouted, but I had already broken into a run, racing out into the Fourth Courtyard in the direction of the cardinal’s embassy.

  I can’t imagine how I must have looked: a gangly girl of thirteen running at breakneck speed out across the wide green lawn that surrounded the Holy See’s embassy to the Sultan.

  I think one or two of the watching dungeon guards gave chase, but I didn’t care. I just ran for all I was worth.

  The great white two-storey embassy rose before me, sombre and silent in the light of the setting sun; the only sign that something was amiss: its massive front door was slightly ajar.

  I hurried toward it, desperate to save my teacher, heedless of the very danger I sought to rescue him from.

  I dashed inside the wide ornate door and found the atrium of the embassy enveloped in shadow, all of the wooden shutters drawn. Shafts of dusty sunlight shot sideways through the gloom.

  Three bodies lay on the floor before me—Mr Ascham and Latif were nearest to me, several paces inside the atrium. They both lay face-down, slumped and unmoving. I saw a welt on the back of Mr Ascham’s neck and a slick of blood trickling from a wound to the back of Latif’s bald head.

  Farther from me, by one of the shuttered windows to my right, I saw the body of Cardinal Cardoza, lying face-up, also still, but I didn’t care about the cardinal. I was concerned only for my beloved teacher.

  I slid to the floor beside Mr Ascham and cradled his head in my lap.

  He groaned. My heart leapt. He wasn’t dead—

  Thud.

  The big front door slammed shut behind me and the room was plunged into deeper darkness.

  There came a grunt from over by the door.

  I turned—

  —and the concern that had drawn me to the embassy turned to outright terror as I beheld a figure standing by the now-closed door, his dirty body hunched like that of an ape, his harelip twitching, his insane eyes opened unnaturally wide.

  It was the demented fiend who had terrified the peasants of Constantinople before our arrival, the same unholy soul my teacher had seen in the Sultan’s dungeon on the night of the banquet—only now he had been released by the queen’s men, released here to carry out the queen’s plot and kill Cardinal Cardoza in the foulest possible way as revenge for his blackmail and degradation of her lover, Darius.

  The fiend grunted again, snorting like a pig, blocking the way out. His head was bald, his skin leathery and brown, like the skin of one who has laboured too long in a tannery. And he held in his hands two blood-smeared blades: the first, a rusty scimitar like those carried by the dungeon guards, and the second, one of Latif’s glistening short-bladed cutlasses.

  I stood up very slowly, like someone confronting a wild animal, my eyes searching the room for some kind of escape, when suddenly a pained moan called my attention to Cardinal Cardoza’s upturned body.

  I hadn’t been able to see his face before, but now I saw it: the skin of the cardinal’s jaw had been crudely and violently torn from his face, exposing flesh, teeth and bone. A shocking amount of blood stained the shoulders of his robe. The fiend had begun his mutilation of the cardinal while he was still alive. My teacher and Latif must have interrupted him while he had been skinning the cardinal.

  I held back the vomit in my throat.

  Suddenly the fiend scurried forward, his knuckles propelling him across the floor.

  He was circling me.

  The only avenue of escape open to me was the nearby door to the embassy’s little chapel.

  I dashed through it and he gave chase, his footfalls thumping loudly behind me.

  I rushed inside the little chapel and saw a half-dozen pews on either side of a central aisle that led to a small elevated altar.

  I dived over the nearest pew, flinging my body over it in one desperate leap, then rolled under the pew in front of it in a scrambling attempt to hide myself from my attacker.

  Thud. The wooden pew above me rocked as he landed on it. In the distance, I heard some guards banging helplessly on the embassy’s closed front door.

  Moving madly, I crawled under the next pew on my hands and knees, sliding over a kneeler, when suddenly my pursuer dropped down in front of me and brought down his scimitar in a great lusty swipe but I rolled away and it lodged in the kneeler and as he tried to extract it, I slithered under the next three pews before leaping up and over the first pew, landing in a clumsy heap before the altar—

  —just as I was yanked up by the scruff of the neck and hurled onto the altar.

  I landed on my back with a smack and looked up into the yellow-rimmed eyes of the insane fiend. He panted like an animal and I saw his hideous harelip surmounting a collection of deformed teeth and malnourished gums.

  He had abandoned his scimitar but still had Latif’s cutlass and now as he raised it above my throat, he began to laugh a crude idiot’s guffaw.

  I was done for. What could a child do to hold off one so much larger and stronger?

  And then it came to me.

  With all my fingers extended, I thrust my hand forward with all my might and hit his left eye square and his right in a glancing way, but it was enough to make the fiend cry out in pain an
d lean back, clutching at his eyes, giving me the moment I needed to roll off the altar—

  —only to have him reach out and snatch my arm at the last instant.

  No!

  He hauled me back onto the altar, pushing me down with one firm hand, raising his cutlass with the other. Saliva from his mouth dripped onto my face as he stared into my eyes with his hideous demented grin. Then he brought the cutlass down with shocking violence.

  THE BATTLE WITH THE FIEND

  I HEARD IT BEFORE I saw it. The sound of a speeding arrow penetrating the insane fiend’s flesh was horrible: a thick wet slap.

  The arrow struck him in the right shoulder—hard—causing him to snap backwards and drop his cutlass.

  I looked up . . . and saw a sight that I shall remember to my dying day.

  I saw my teacher—my kind teacher, my glorious teacher, my magnificent teacher—in the doorway of the chapel, at the far end of the central aisle, crouched on one knee in a perfect firing stance, Latif’s bow held in his outstretched left hand, having just loosed the arrow.

  ‘Run, Bess! Run!’

  I needed no second urging.

  With my assailant recoiling, I rolled off the altar and dashed down the carpeted aisle, running toward the crouched figure of my teacher.

  A terrifying howl rang out behind me.

  I glanced back to see that the fiend had yanked the arrow from his shoulder—spraying flesh and blood—and was now giving chase, bounding after me, slashing the air with his retrieved cutlass.

  I ran. Ran as fast as my knock-kneed legs would carry me.

  And then, in a strange way, all time slowed.

  I could hear nothing but the sound of my own breathing and the pounding of my heart inside my head.

  I saw everything clearly. I saw my teacher ahead of me, crouched on one knee in the doorway at the end of the aisle, trying to notch a second arrow in his bow—I even saw the leather archer’s ring on his right thumb. I could also see the shadow of the fiend looming up behind me, flashing over the pews as I passed them—and in the deepest corner of my mind I knew that this could only end in one of two ways: either my teacher notched that arrow and loosed it or the madman caught up with me and slashed his cutlass across the back of my neck and ended my short life.