Religion: A Novel

by Tim Willocks

  Tannhauser, Bors, and Gullu Cakie rode fanned out and abreast, crossing this scourged estate like three apocalyptic horsemen who were missing only Famine from their rank. None spoke for there was nothing to say, nor words to do the job even if there had been. To the outer limit of sight in every direction was a land laid desolate by war. The collapsed galleries of the mines, some smoking still, split the flatland’s surface like the evidence of some vast geological rupture. The hacked entrenchments that gutted the slopes lay vacant, as if their aim had only ever been to violate the hills. The gullies running from the heights were contaminate with gun waste and cannon swabs and mounds of human feces. To their right the broken façade of Fort Saint Michel was striped with an impasto of blood and soot and lard. Its ditch heaved and stank with a charred human humus infested with worms. As they crossed the Ruins of Bormula, across which so many charges had been launched only to be broken, weapons and bones and fragments of rotting gear, and the fleshless skulls of horses and men, and stacks of yellowed carrion half consumed, were heaped and scattered in profusion. The horses shied as affronted vultures flapped and waddled about them, and Buraq in particular trembled with an equine horror, as if the beast’s great soul could not incorporate such ugliness into its ken.

  They climbed the slopes of Corradino and took in the Marsa.

  The once-fertile plain was pocked with dead campfires by the thousand and mottled with poisoned wells and humming latrines. A sirocco had begun its laggardly rise from Africa, and on its desert breath smoke in numberless tendrils spiraled aloft from dumps of provender torched and abandoned by the Turk. It drifted in filthy scuds through tattered tents, flapping empty and forlorn, and wove notes that were bitter and harsh through the sweet and yellow stench of decomposition. Out by one far rim hundreds of clay-brick bread kilns stood in geometric clusters, like villages built by dwarfs who feared the sunlight. And where once the wretched hospital had sprawled across the landscape like disease, pyramids of corpses drew colonies of hunchbacked birds, and the sordid awnings thrown together from poles and canvas shifted like boneless scarecrows in the wind. And in all that bleak and godforsaken detritus, nothing human stirred except those three.

  Beyond the scarred back of Monte Sciberras to the north, the white-on-scarlet banner of the Knights flew above the shell of Fort Saint Elmo. In Marsamxett Harbor, the tail of the Turkish fleet pulled out into the offing and struck north for Saint Paul’s Bay. They left behind them scores of galleys in flames, for they’d neither mariners to crew them nor passengers to bear away. The harbor smoldered black as if the sea were brewed from brimstone, and as this ghost fleet burned and sank beneath the blue, huge white plumes of steam erupted skyward and shreds of fiery sail feathered the beach, and though no living man had seen such sights before, they three said naught, nor felt any wonder, for Hell held no more marvels for such as they.

  They rode on and left this terra damnata behind them and Gullu Cakie led them north toward the rim of Naxxar Ridge. There they heard the sounds of battle joined: the final battle, one more needless even than the rest, and which would choke the waters of Saint Paul’s Bay with its slain.

  At the crest of the ridge they found the Knight Commander of the relief, Ascanio de la Corna. From an excited aide-de-camp Tannhauser gleaned the news.

  The Turkish army—still near thirty thousand strong including supports, but in fear of twenty thousand fresh Christian combat troops—had spent most of the previous twenty-four hours boarding the ships and galleys of Piyale’s fleet. In the early hours of that morning, Sipahi scouts of the Sari Bayrak had confirmed that the relief was in fact less than half that number, and Mustafa’s notorious rage had consumed him. Determined to reclaim some honor from impending disaster, he’d at once disembarked nine thousand of his best remaining men at Marsamxett and at their head had marched to Naxxar Ridge to offer battle. Rage or not, a famous victory would so restore the Turks’ morale that the conquest of Malta might even now be achieved. Piyale’s fleet had sailed up the coast and anchored in Saint Paul’s Bay, where the army could evacuate from the beach in the event of catastrophe.

  Catastrophe was where Mustafa had led his men.

  Between Naxxar and the Wardija Ridge, under a mile farther north, the Bingemma basin opened out from the defile and rolled down to the bay. At dawn Corna’s Spanish infantry and the knights of the Order newly arrived from Sicily had charged down the hill to meet the Turkish sally head-on. At the same time, De Lugny’s cavalry had debouched from Mdina along the high road to Mgarr, and had swept down from the west to take Mustafa’s column in the flank. After an hour of ferocious fighting, the weary Moslem army had broken and fled for the bay.

  Tannhauser took in the prospect. Neglected all summer long, the Bingemma basin was a broad vale of parched grass and fields. Once the island’s breadbasket, it was now a bloody circus bepopulate with half a thousand dead and the totter of walking wounded and the thrashing forms of scores of dying horses. It shimmered in the rising heat like a melancholiac’s fantasy of Gehenna and Tannhauser wondered if Orlandu had managed to cross it.

  If he’d done so, then he’d reached Saint Paul’s Bay, which was hardly a more appealing location. It was dark with galleys and transports and its waters foamed with the oars of the longboats that desperately ferried the soldiers back to the ships. The beaches milled with thousands of disorganized men. On the apron of flatland that guarded the approach, and along the low hills that commanded the southern foreshore, a valiant rearguard braced the Christian onslaught to buy their comrades time. Along this line, amid dense thickets of musket smoke, the battle raged hand to hand. Among the Turkish pennants there planted, Tannhauser recognized the Sanjak i-sherif and Mustafa’s standard in the center. The stubborn old general and his garibs—the guardians of the Prophet’s banner—would be the last to board the ships. To his right were the mailed janissaries of the Zirhli Nefer. Hassem’s Algerian musketmen occupied the hillocks. And at the opposite extremity of the line, to Mustafa’s left and hard against Salina Bay, flew the Yellow Banners of the Sari Bayrak. Abbas’s cavalry regiment.

  “Look at them,” said Bors. The brawny Cumbrian sat on his horse with his Damascus musket laid across his thighs. He seemed to speak for the Turk. “So much valor has been squandered on this rock it’s obscene.”

  “Today we’re not here for the Turk,” said Tannhauser.

  Bors said, “I know whose blood we’re here for.” He blinked and looked away, as if he felt less than the man he once had been. Then he turned back to Tannhauser. “I told him everything.”

  “I would have told him too,” said Tannhauser. He’d heard the tale of Sabato Svi’s head. “But there’s no harm done, for it gave him the rope he needed to tie his own noose.”

  Bors took no comfort from this. He looked down the bloody vale to the seething swath of violence that truncated the basin. “Where will we find him?”

  Tannhauser turned to Gullu Cakie, who was observing the destruction of Turkish pride with greater relish than either of his companions. Tannhauser pointed.

  “The Yellow Banners,” he said. Gullu nodded. “Can we reach them quickly, without daring the front? If Orlandu’s down there, that’s where he’ll be.”

  Gullu started his horse down the ridge. Tannhauser turned to Bors.

  “That’s where we’ll find Ludovico, too.”

  Bors nudged his horse after Gullu Cakie.

  “Bors,” said Tannhauser.

  Bors stopped. Tannhauser motioned Buraq closer. He said, “Usque ad finem.”

  He held out his hand. Bors took it and squeezed.

  They followed Gullu north down the ridge’s sloping spine toward Salina Bay. To their right the sea was white with reflected light. Piyale’s squadrons patrolled just off the coast. As the ridge narrowed to a low saddle, and then unfolded into an easy decline of undulating hills, the clamor of the fight grew louder and drifts of burned powder stung their eyes. They passed by men with hideous wounds and amputated limbs and arrows
protruding from their bellies in the gullies where they’d dragged themselves to die. They pulled their mounts up two hundred feet short of the melee and Tannhauser studied the chaos there unleashed.

  A full squadron of tercios—there must have been fifteen hundred—harried the Turkish line with halberds and pikes while five mangas of black-lipped arquebusiers, with two hundred men in each and well protected by the hedged fortress of polearms, tore cartridges with their teeth and fumbled in their pouches for shot, rotating the front rank and keeping up an intermittent volley fire that inflicted dire carnage on the luckless Turks. Panicked and riderless horses reared and plunged as they fled the field, trampling wailing wounded under their hooves. As far as Tannhauser could tell, the Turkish cavalry, thwarted by the Christian pikemen, were fighting for the most part on foot.

  On the gentle slope of the basin two hundred yards removed from the battle line, several hundred mounted knights had re-formed in a wedge, and these now lowered their lances and rode at the hinge of the Turkish left. The Spanish infantry felt their thunder through the ground and the sargento mayor roared an order, which was taken up at once by the abanderados. The genius of the tercio squadron was in the strict cooperation between pikemen and gunmen in the same formation. To the blue-and-green signals of the flag bearers they now peeled back from the battlefront like a huge pair of gates swinging open, volleys still raking the gap, and through this widening aperture the charging knights roared. They plowed the Turkish ranks with cold steel and burst through into their rear. As the horsemen hacked a swath of the basin clear of life, a block of pikemen—six deep and a hundred wide—wheeled through the breach and commenced to roll the Sari Bayrak into the sea.

  Tannhauser turned to Gullu Cakie and held out his hand for the dog-lock pistol.

  “Wait here, for the sake of your great-grandson.”

  With this spectacle of Turkish misery to entertain him, Gullu seemed content to do so. Tannhauser belted the pistol and drew his sword and Bors blew on the match of his Damascus musket. They rode down from the escarpment and into the widening gap in the battle line. The ground was thick with Turkish slain and the horses picked their way among them with the fastidiousness of dancers. As Tannhauser and Bors circled the rear of the pikemen, the outflanked Moslems abandoned the neck of the basin. With the iron courage of Mustafa himself holding their center, the rearguard pulled back toward the foreshore of Saint Paul’s Bay.

  In a desperate attempt to join them the remains of the Sari Bayrak—now cut off—remounted and fought their way through the closing gap between the basin and Salina Bay. While the pikemen relentlessly narrowed their window of escape, the mangas of arquebusiers sloshed them with shot and the mounted knights attacked with the vengeance of the righteous. The ground was boggy with blood, the air a throat-stripping haze of gun smoke and dust. The pipes, the war cries, the gunfire, and the braying of horses hamstrung and disemboweled sent tremors through Buraq’s withers, and Tannhauser whispered a gazel in his ear to calm him. He scanned the fog-dimmed melee and recognized no one. He urged Buraq closer and stood high in the stirrups as he traversed the rear of the line. Where, in all this havoc, was Orlandu?

  Having endured the snarling madness of Saint Elmo’s final days, Orlandu had kept his head throughout the retreat. Even so, the fight for Saint Elmo had been confined to a strip of stones and the capricious spasms of battle on open ground demanded all his wits. He’d been charged with the care of three spare war mounts and he’d dragged them by their bridles since dark. With so much noise and violence, and trained to such though they were, the horses took frequent fright and the greater part of his effort was consumed in calming them. He murmured the Shahada over and over, in the belief that the Arabic sounds would be familiar. For the most part it worked, but he was bruised from head to toe with kicks and had forgotten the number of times he’d escaped being brained.

  Other grooms were not so lucky. He saw two trampled insensible and a third struck down by a musket ball in the face. From their abandoned strings he replenished his own, for time after time cavalrymen would stagger over on foot and snatch a fresh set of reins from his hands. Some rode away bareback, others hauled their saddles with them. The suffering of the horses felled by the battle was atrocious and moved him more than the screams of the men. The beasts floundered in wallows of blood, crippled and bewildered, or charged about blinded and insane, or hauled great unraveling sacs of yellow intestines between their hind legs as they stumbled for the plain.

  Orlandu considered fleeing to the Borgo many times, but the moment never came and he was borne along like a stick on a crimson tide. Most of the time he couldn’t tell where was the front and where the rear, and desertion carried a high chance of death. The Sari Bayrak fought like demons unchained, but the toll from the banks of musket fire was high. He tried to keep Abbas’s standard in sight, but it disappeared for what seemed like hours at a time as the valiant general led charge after charge into the heart of the Christian ranks.

  The regiment now seemed trapped against the shores of Salina Bay. A broad arc of smoke and mounted combatants was the limit of Orlandu’s horizon and he tried to ignore the confusion and control his fear and clear his mind. As Tannhauser would. Orlandu had but one mount left in his keeping, and he covered its eyes with a discarded pennant and murmured the Shahada into its ear: “There is no God but Allah and Mohammed is His Prophet.” The knights were giving no quarter that he could see. If they broke through, they’d as likely cut him down as any other Turk. He glanced at the water a hundred feet distant and came up with a plan. He stopped and dragged off his boots, the grass clean and cool between his toes. He wouldn’t abandon the horse, not yet. But if this one was claimed, or the battle drew too close, he’d sprint for the sea and swim away. No one would follow him into the water, and if need be he could hold his own there for hours.

  No sooner had he conceived this strategy than a knot of ferocious knights hacked their way through the Turkish line and rode directly toward him. They were led by a man wearing striking black armor that glimmered like liquid obsidian in the sun. Despite no shortage of targets, the whole band bore down on Orlandu as if he were the only Turk whose blood was worthy of spilling. He ditched his helm and dropped the horse’s reins and ducked under its neck and sprinted for his life toward the bay. He stripped his shirt as he ran and threw it aside. He heard the pounding of hooves and the snort of the animals. He picked up his knees as his feet hit the sand and he threw his weight forward with his arms cartwheeling for balance. As the waves loomed closer, he heard a deep voice roar out behind him.

  “Orlandu!”

  The name bounced around his brain as his feet hit the water. He didn’t stop. He slowed as the waves hit his knees, and he waded on.

  “Orlandu!”

  He chanced a look over his shoulder without stopping.

  The Black Knight had hauled up at the water’s edge. He held his sword inverted by its blade, the hilt aloft like a crucifix. With his free hand he beckoned. The face that stared out from the visor was gaunt and brave, the eyes as black as his armor and just as bright. Orlandu didn’t know the man, but he was a knight of the Religion. Orlandu turned but continued walking backward. Three other knights fanned out behind the first in a defensive arc. The Black Knight called again and nudged his mount into the shallows.

  “Orlandu! I am Fra Ludovico, of the Langue of Italy! We’ve come for you! For you, my boy! To return you to your mother!”

  Orlandu stopped, the sea waist-deep and splashing over his chest. The Black Knight dismounted. He seemed huge. He waded toward him. Then stopped. Orlandu saw that there were tears in his eyes. He raised his inverted sword up to the heavens.

  “All praises be to You, my Lord Jesus Christ.” Ludovico lowered the sword and looked at Orlandu. Again, his emotion seemed almost to overwhelm him and now the tears rolled freely down his cheeks. He held out his arm.

  “Come here, my boy, and let me embrace you.”

  Orlandu was too bewilde
red not to comply. He waded back toward the shore and stood before his rescuer. He was indeed gigantic. As tall and broad as Tannhauser. A steel arm circled Orlandu’s shoulders and he was clasped to the man’s breast. The armor against his skin was hot and smeared with gore. He looked up into the liquid eyes and again he saw something he had only seen before in the eyes of Tannhauser. It was love.

  “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.