Quino scowled, though it seemed a great effort for him. ‘You are no priest. You are not even a true Christian.’
‘Truer than you.’
Quino suddenly seemed to forget our conversation. He twisted around and stared through the embrasure. ‘They are massing again. Soon, when the day is hottest, they will come. We will not withstand them here.’
‘All the better, then, to ease your soul. Before you go to join Drogo and Rainauld – and Odard.’
His eyes flickered up. ‘Odard? Odard is dead?’
‘Three days ago. He died fighting.’
‘Then I am the last to live. It will not be long. Soon the curse we drew down on ourselves will run its course. And you, Greek, the scorpion who comes to prick my conscience, you will be ruined with us.’
‘The curse you drew down?’ I repeated. ‘The curse you drew down when you allied yourselves with a sect of heretics?’
Quino coughed – or perhaps he laughed, a dry sound, as though the skin had been stripped from his throat and only the bones rattled. ‘You have been busy. Are the Pure Ones dead also? I saw a column of smoke rising from the city yesterday.’
‘Some of them have died. But enough live to betray you.’
Again that terrible laugh. ‘And what of it? Will the bishop come here, scuttling along that wall to put me on my pyre? He will have to hurry.’ A bent arm clawed at me to come nearer. ‘Come. Come and see.’
All this while, Sigurd had sat in silence, ordering the scattered arrows into piles by the embrasures. Reluctantly, I passed him the crossbow and crawled across the floor to the far wall.
‘Look out there.’
Keeping an arm’s distance from Quino, I lifted my head to the battlements and looked out. The tower faced east, away from Antioch and into the mountains behind. A high, broad valley stretched out before us, a cradle between Mount Silpius and the peaks beyond. I had seen it before, on a foraging expedition the previous autumn, when small fields still sprouted the stalks of the harvest and the land was green. The farms, the fields, the crops and the trees were long gone, wasted by the siege: now, in their place, an army had grown. They spread out over the rolling plateau in their thousands, some in makeshift camps, others marching in columns of ominous purpose.
‘You see the pavilion with the purple banner? That is Kerbogha.’
I looked where Quino pointed, filled with a thrilling dread to see our terrible enemy, but amid so many men and arms I could not make out the tent.
Despite that, it seemed clear that the army was moving, that its shimmering legions were swarming towards the citadel. I turned back to Quino with new urgency.
‘Did you kill Simon?’
‘Ask him yourself. You will see him soon enough.’
‘And you will not, if you take your sins to the grave.’
Quino bared his teeth. Possibly it was a smile. ‘We have been living in the tomb for months – I do not fear death. And I have followed enough gods in this life that surely one will take pity on me in the next.’
‘I can see movement in the citadel,’ Sigurd interrupted. ‘There are banners waving behind the walls.’
‘I was at Amalfi with Bohemond when the news came.’ From the distance in his voice, I thought Quino might be there in Amalfi again, though I did not know where it was. ‘The city was in rebellion, and we besieged it. High summer. A Frankish army passed nearby – bound for Jerusalem, they said. They sent envoys to us, proclaiming their pilgrimage. That very afternoon Bohemond declared he would follow them. He unclasped his cloak and tore it into pieces; the women sewed them into crosses. Red, like his banner. He gave them to his captains and swore that all who followed him to the Holy Land would win honour, riches, blessings. Had there been a ship in the harbour, I think we would have sailed it to Tyre that very day. Imagine it, Greek. The promise of salvation, of casting off our sins and starting anew on holy ground. A second baptism.’ He broke off, choking as if his lungs were seized with dust. ‘It has not happened as I thought.’
There was a long pause. Sigurd was peering out at the citadel, looking anxious, and I felt the weight of every passing second.
‘Did you kill Simon?’
‘Yes.’
His voice was so hoarse that I thought for a moment it was merely his armour scraping over the stone.
‘Because you thought he had betrayed your heresy to me?’
‘Yes.’ If this was a confession, there was no taint of remorse in it.
‘You followed the priestess Sarah in her false religion. You received her baptism and knew their mysteries.’
‘Yes.’
There was a ritual in his answers like the rhythm of a prayer. I looked to see if he even heard my questions but his eyes were shut, his head bowed.
‘The gates are opening,’ Sigurd warned.
‘Did you kill Drogo and Rainauld as well? Because they threatened to confess? What was the mark you put on Drogo’s forehead?’
‘No.’ His voice had been ground down to a whisper.
‘Was Drogo unwilling to follow you in your blasphemy?’
‘Hah.’ Quino looked up, a terrible smirk contorting his skull. ‘In pursuit of secret truths, Drogo followed none save the priest. It was Drogo whom Sarah first converted, and Drogo who tired of her religion soonest.’ He grimaced. ‘After we had scarred ourselves with their cross.’
‘And afterwards you turned to the pagan gods – at the cave in Daphne?’
Quino nodded, like a condemned man offering his neck to the executioner.
‘You did not take the bullock to eat. You sacrificed him to Mithra, according to some ancient evil rite.’
‘Mithra?’ Quino’s voice was parched of all emotion, yet he seemed confused. ‘He said we sacrificed to Ahriman.’
‘Who said this? Drogo?’
‘The priest. The priest who led us there.’
A strange reticence, almost like fear, seemed to have come over Quino. My whole mind was stretched taut, screaming to hear who this priest had been, but a sharp crack from the far side of the tower broke my train of thought. Sigurd was crouching by the battlements, struggling to reload the crossbow.
‘They’re coming.’
I took another bow from the floor and braced my feet against its horns, then tugged back like a rower on the galleys. The string snapped into its lock, and I slipped the bolt into the groove. From within the tower, I could hear feet hurrying up the ladder.
‘Look to the east,’ croaked Quino. He still sat slumped against the walls; I doubted there was enough strength in his arms even to nock an arrow. ‘They will try and gain the walls.’
I glanced down. As he had said, there were companies of Turks running towards us in loose order, ladders held between them. Archers followed behind them, loosing arrows into the sky to keep us pinned down. One arced into the nest of the turret, though it struck no one.
‘More over here,’ shouted Sigurd. I crawled across to join him. Inside the walls, in the valley between the summits, Turks were pouring out of the citadel. There seemed no end to them: they covered the land in a wave of steel and iron. There was no tactic or strategy, for the ground did not allow it – they simply surged forward, borne on their own momentum.
Yet even within a wave there are eddies and currents. The cistern in the middle of the valley which Bohemond had smashed open served as a breakwater, and the Turkish advance slowed as they split around it, squeezed against the walls on one side and the precipice on the other. Many were caught at the foot of our tower.
‘Fire,’ I shouted, though I doubt whether anyone heeded me. We were no longer Byzantines and Normans, merely desperate men trapped in an ocean of our enemies. What the Emperor’s diplomacy and Adhemar’s prayers had failed to achieve, battle now wrought. Quino had called me a scorpion, and a scorpion I had become, trapped in a corner and stabbing my sting at all who approached. I had never been an archer, but the crossbow is an easy
