Navigator tt-3

by Stephen Baxter

  But there had been no serious fighting for months, not since the spring when the siege had been set. There had been deaths among Fernando's forces, a steady stream of fatalities from drought, accident, and especially the plagues that coursed through the polyglot army. It didn't matter much to the generals, Michael said. There were always more volunteers willing to come and join an army on the brink of victory, trickling here from across Spain, indeed across Christendom. And a smart general always factored in the likelihood of losing a proportion of his army to disease. You planned for it, said Michael.

  It wasn't really a surprise that Hanse was the first of the three of them to succumb, for he had fried in the Spanish sun. Michael, though, had darkened, his face turning leathery. Saladin wondered if he had a bit of Trojan blood in him, for it was said that it had been Trojans who were the first to colonise England.

  'He had been talking of joining King Louis,' Michael said now. 'Hanse, I mean.' King Louis of France was generally believed to be the most pious and accomplished crusader king since Richard the Lionheart. 'Louis is sailing about now, for Cyprus, then on to Egypt.'

  'He should have gone,' Saladin said. 'Better than this, sitting around in your own filth for month after month.'

  'Maybe. Well, the poor bastard has missed out.'

  'On what?'

  'The city, when we get into it. They know some tricks, these Saracen women.'

  'They are Moors, not Saracens.'

  'The emir's whores are the best, if you can get hold of one the other lads haven't been up first. They'll know some tricks.' He laughed lazily. 'If the emir hasn't eaten his women by now. Try to find a whore without a bite taken out of her tits, ha ha!'

  'I thought you said Moors eat babies.'

  'Everybody knows that. But they'll have scoffed them all down by now, mate.'

  Michael had never, in fact, met a Muslim in his life, save for a few mudejar farmers who had fled at the advance of the Christian army south from Cordoba. He knew nothing of Islam save the name. And yet here he was participating in a world-wide war against it.

  Saladin had learned not to express such thoughts. He had had a difficult enough time being accepted by these western Christians without coming across as a Moorish sympathiser.

  Their sergeant came by. He was a blunt-spoken Englishman called George, whose father had once fought with Richard the Lionheart, or so he claimed. He carried a big water flask, and an armed soldier watched his back to make sure none was stolen. 'Daily ration for you two arseholes,' he said, pouring the water out into their own flask. He glanced around. 'Where's the other arsehole? Pulling his cock?'

  'He's dead,' Saladin said. 'He's a dead arsehole.'

  'What, the sickness?'

  'I think so.'

  'Fair enough. Take him over there.' He pointed to a site near the base of the city walls where units of the army were gathering.

  'Why?' Saladin asked.

  'New orders. Captain says we're to catapult any dead arseholes over the wall. Let the Moors get the benefit of it.'

  Michael laughed. 'They'll probably eat him. Poor old Hanse. He came a long way to be eaten by a starving Saracen whore.'

  'Just do it,' the sergeant said, and he moved on.

  It took the two of them to shift Hanse out of the tent, Michael at his shoulders, Saladin at his feet. Hanse's guts had emptied before he died. His tunic was crusted with vomit, and pale shit dribbled out of his trousers when they lifted him. What a waste of water, Saladin thought. He tried not to touch Hanse's flesh, or the shit.

  'This isn't so bad,' Michael said, grunting as he worked.

  XXV

  Each day, in the middle of the afternoon, Subh visited Ibrahim at the palace. They were in a city under siege; Ibrahim wanted to be sure his mother was safe, and insisted on seeing her daily. As he was too busy to go to her, she came to him.

  Today he found her with Peter, sitting in a well-appointed room that opened onto a broad patio. It was cool in the oven heat of the city. Save only for the loss of the fountain's trickling sound – the fountains had all been dry for months – the room was as it had been for centuries, and the light reflected from the carved stonework washed over Subh's cream-softened skin. She didn't look as if she had been affected by the long months of the siege at all. 'Such a beautiful place,' she said. 'What do you think will happen if the Christians do take the city, Ibrahim? Will they smash up this place? Will all this be lost?'

  'I don't think so,' Ibrahim said. 'They're Christians, but not utter barbarians. I hear Fernando is already employing mudejar artisans. Perhaps they will continue to use the palace. They may renovate it, even extend it. Where else in Seville is fit for a king?'

  Peter nodded. 'It's more beautiful than anything Christians could build.'

  Ibrahim was faintly revolted by the way he disparaged his own culture. In the six years since he had met her Peter had truly become a creature of Subh, subsumed by her more powerful personality.

  'But the Christians may disapprove of our decadence,' Subh said. 'They can be stern, these Christians. And we like our luxuries! Speaking of which, you should treat yourself a little more, Ibrahim. You look like a ghost. I told you, you should ignore your own silly rules and eat what you need.'

  'I can't break the rationing I myself administer.'

  She snorted. 'The common herd can die off and nobody will miss them. You are important, and deserve keeping alive.'

  'As you are important, I suppose, Mother,' he said. 'And this Christian whelp of yours.'

  Peter was indignant. 'I resent that. I don't have to be here. I could just walk out and surrender to Fernando's forces. I only need take my turban off to look like a Christian again.'

  'Then why are you here?'

  Peter smiled. 'How could I leave when the project is so close to fruition?'

  'Ah. Your mysterious engines.'

  'We have some news about that, Ibrahim,' Subh said. 'Something to distract you from your grubbing around in this city of the dead and dying.'

  Ibrahim glared. 'I'm too busy for riddles. Just tell me what you mean.'

  'The thunder-mouth,' the scholar said, 'is ready. My men are hauling it up onto the walls even now. You need to come and see it, Ibrahim.'

  Ibrahim was unimpressed, and no doubt it showed in his face.

  Subh snapped, 'You disapprove. How typical of you. What if we are saved through my vision, Ibrahim, you toiler, you ant? How will that make you feel?' She turned away from him.

  'Just come and see it,' Peter urged gently.

  XXVI

  Saladin was astonished when plump old Thomas Busshe came riding down from Cordoba to see him in the camp.

  'You want to be careful, brother,' Michael said to Thomas, laughing. 'Fernando's soldiers will eat that mule for you if you don't keep an eye on it. And if the Saracens get hold of you they'll eat you.'

  Thomas glanced at him, gasping with exertion. 'My son, in Seville they are Moors, not Saracens.'

  'Same thing.' Michael went back to stirring the thick broth of root vegetables, rice and unidentifiable meat that bubbled slowly in the pot on the fire.

  Thomas sat on the ground beside Saladin with a thump that sent dust flying up from his mule-blanket. His habit, heavy wool that was completely unsuitable for the climate, was caked with dust and mud and sweat.

  'You made a hazardous journey, brother,' Saladin said, offering him his water cup. 'The country is not yet subdued. And this, after all, is a siege.'

  'So I was advised. But your mother in Cordoba insisted I come to see you.' He accepted a sip of water gratefully.

  'Why? What's so important?'

  'Joan has had a letter,' the monk said. 'From Roger Bacon.' And he produced a parchment.

  It was more than a year since Bacon had successfully decoded the Incendium Dei scrap. Since then he had thrown himself into a vast and secretive project of experimental research, spending his time and energy and all the money he could get hold of on books and instruments and tables, hirin
g assistants and instructing savants.

  'He has been puffed up by his own success in cracking the code.'

  'That doesn't surprise me,' Saladin said.

  'And now he's looking for engines that can deliver God's fire.'

  'But the Codex is buried under the mosque.'

  'True. But he's scoured Christendom and beyond for ideas on what might be possible. Look at what he speaks of – wagons that move without horses by means of a miraculous force, like the reaping chariots of the ancients, and machines for flight, and so on. He even says there is no doubt that such instruments were built in ancient times and are still being built today. He says he knows of a scholar who tried to build the flying machine…'

  'He speaks of this Aethelmaer of the legend.'

  'Perhaps. Or he may mean Ibn Firnas of Cordoba, who also built a flying machine some centuries ago.'

  Saladin smiled thinly. 'In Jerusalem I knew a man who sold flying carpets making much the same sort of promises. Well, Bacon is undoubtedly eager to keep our money flowing. Is it possible the ancients really did have such machines, Thomas? In a way it makes the Sihtric designs more plausible, if they are memories of the past, rather than dreams of the future.'

  'Well, Aristotle proposes that time is like a great wheel, going around and around endlessly, so that the past is the future, and there's no difference. But such speculations don't help us in any practical way. What we need is to get our hands on the Codex, and get it to Bacon, and then see what he can do with it-'

  There was a spark of light. It came from one of the towers that bristled on the walls of the city, there and gone in a flash, like the sun reflecting from a bit of armour. Saladin stood up to see better. A tiny cloud of white smoke rose from the tower.

  All around the camp, men were standing, pointing. In the flat light they looked skinny, skeletal, dead men besieging a city of the dead.

  Long heartbeats after the flash of light, a muffled crump reached Saladin's ears, like thunder from a distant storm.

  'What,' Thomas asked, 'was that?'

  'I think we'd better go and find out,' Saladin said.

  'I'll get your mule for you, friar,' Michael said. 'If it isn't in somebody's pot by now.'

  XXVII

  The thunder-mouth had been set up on a look-out platform on top of a tower set in the city walls. Peter and Subh had led Ibrahim up there to see.

  The thunder-mouth was a copper tube, shining in the sun. Its muzzle protruded over the battlements, pointing at the Christians' scattered camp. A brazier enclosed the rear of the tube, and when Ibrahim got there a fire was already burning hotly, so intense that it had turned that part of the cylinder red-hot. The brazier was being tended by two of Peter's scholars, who poked at the fire nervously.

  Subh looked on with a complacent pride.

  Ibrahim walked around the thunder-mouth cautiously. 'Quite a job to haul this thing up here,' he said.

  'Oh, yes,' said his mother. 'That alone was a marvel.'

  'Well, I hope it's worth the effort.' But, looking at the device now, he doubted it. In the glimmering shadows of the old Roman water tank Peter's machines had looked mysterious, potent, even magical. But here the slim copper tube and the brazier looked absurd, a toy beside the massive stone reality of the walls. 'Does the emir know about this?'

  'You're his eyes and ears,' Subh murmured. 'When it all goes to plan, when Christian soldiers are scattered like wheat stalks in a storm, then you can tell him what we have done.'

  Ibrahim looked at Peter. This mention of the slaughter of Christians didn't evoke any reaction in him. Obsessed with his machines and his ambitions, in the thrall of Subh, the man was quite without conscience, Ibrahim saw; he was a lost soul.

  Peter nodded at the scholars. 'Let's get on with it.'

  The two of them approached the thunder-mouth carrying a heavy pail of water between them. Ibrahim saw they were going to tip the water into a kind of funnel mounted over the brazier.

  'All that water is coming out of somebody's ration,' Ibrahim said weakly.

  'This will put an end to rationing,' Subh said.

  Peter pointed. 'The water, poured in here, goes straight down into the hot barrel. It immediately flashes to steam. And steam, as you know, requires more space than water. The steam will roar up the tube and shoot the iron lump out over the walls, as a man spits out a pea, propelling it with his breath, spit it away and into the Christian lines. I am confident of the range. We have tested smaller models; the arithmetic is simple.'

  'It will seem a miracle,' Subh said. 'The explosion of the steam, the roar of it as it gushes out of the thunder-mouth – and the iron ball itself, a mass heavier than a man, flying miles through the air. A mouth of thunder indeed.'

  'But you haven't tested it,' Ibrahim said.

  'Only smaller models. What else could we do, in the conditions of the siege?'

  'And what better way to prove it,' Subh said silkily, 'than against live Christians?'

  Peter stood straight. 'Do it,' he said to the scholars.

  The cowering scholars tipped their great bucket. The water gurgled into the funnel, and through a length of copper pipe that fed it straight through the brazier's coals and into the cylinder. The thunder-mouth shuddered. And in that last heartbeat Ibrahim snatched his mother's arm and pulled her back, putting his body between her and the engine.

  Ibrahim was slammed in the back as if by an immense hot fist, and he was thrown forward. An enormous noise crashed painfully into his head. Steam washed over him in a moment, scorching, gone.

  He found himself sprawled over his mother. He pushed himself up. His back was tight and sore, burned. His mother seemed unharmed. Lying on the floor, looking up at him, her lips moved. But he could not hear a word she said.

  In fact, he realised, he couldn't hear anything at all. He noticed blood trickling from his mother's ears and pooling in her throat. When he touched the sides of his own face, his fingers came away sticky with blood. He felt shocked. He had never heard such a noise, never in his life.

  He stood up and turned around.

  The thunder-mouth was destroyed, ripped open. The brazier was shattered, its hot coals scattered smoking on the platform. The two scholars lay on their backs, unmoving. He saw with wonder that misshapen bits of copper were embedded in the stone wall.

  And Peter writhed on the floor. Blood pumped from a dozen wounds punched into body. His face was all but gone, Ibrahim saw, horrified, the skin scorched away, though some awful chance had left his eyeballs intact, staring terrified from lidless sockets.

  The thunder-mouth tipped up silently. Ibrahim saw the tube nod down over the battlements, and an iron ball rolled harmlessly out to fall straight down the wall to the ground below.

  XXVIII

  Saladin and Thomas were not permitted to go with the scouting party to the foot of the walls beneath the strange explosion. But they were able to inspect what was recovered: some twisted bits of metal, and an immense ball of iron.

  'An engine,' Thomas said darkly. 'Or the remains of one that failed.'

  'Subh,' Saladin said. 'My mother's cousin. She is in there. This proves it.' He glanced at the city walls, and wondered if this remote relative whom he had never met was looking back at him now. 'She must have the engine plans. She must have dug them up from the mosque-'

  'Not necessarily. Fernando has the city riddled with his spies. If that were going on we'd have heard about it. Subh's letter to your mother hinted of other designs, sketches developed by Sihtric and his co-workers from the originals – sketches that were not entirely lost when Sihtric died. Perhaps that's what we're seeing here.' He grunted, poking tentatively at a bit of torn copper sheet. 'It would certainly explain why it failed. We may yet not be too late to get to those originals first.'

  'I hope so. Or mother will be furious.'

  XXIX

  Word came from the vizier's office that King Fernando was prepared to accept the surrender of the city on the twenty-third of November. T
hree days before that cut-off the emir's ministers were to meet with representatives of the King and the Pope, where Fernando's terms would be presented.

  Ibrahim was dulled by the months of siege. But Ibn Shaprut counselled him to be hopeful. Perhaps in this moment of surrender the Christians might discover in themselves the mercy of Jesus of which they boasted so loudly.

  On the morning of the meeting, Ibrahim woke from a restless night, soon after dawn. He could hear rain hissing down.

  Ibrahim left the palace and walked the streets of the city, hoping to clear his head. The rain on his upturned face was light and fresh. The people were coming out of their houses, men and women with scrawny arms protruding from grimy sleeves. They put out pots and bowls and cups to catch the rain. This was the first significant rainfall of the winter, and Ibrahim imagined it cleaning the air, washing away the last of the heat and stench of the filthy summer of siege. The world was being kind to Seville, then, at last.

  But it had come too late. The bodies bundled into doorways or heaped in alleyways told him that: the night's dead, dumped by those too weak or apathetic to dispose of them properly. Ibrahim made a mental note of where the corpses lay, so he could brief the day's working parties. But he supposed that in a few more days such problems would be the concern of some Christian soldier, and he, at last, could rest.

  He walked down to the river, where no ships sailed this morning, and the waterwheels stood idle. It struck him how very quiet the city was now. There were few animals around; in a starving city the dogs and cats had gone into the pot before the rats. Even the songbirds had been netted, plucked and consumed. Few children too, and fewer old people. Ibn Shaprut the doctor had told him how hunger and disease and drought always took away the very old and the very young, always the most vulnerable.