The King's Gold

“Go on! Keep going!” shouted the men behind me, driving one another onward.

Teeth gritted, head hunched right down between my shoulders, I climbed what remained of the ladder as quickly as possible, clambered over the edge, stepped onto the deck, and immediately slipped in a huge puddle of blood. I got to my feet, sticky and stunned, leaning on the motionless body of the slain sailor, and behind me the bearded face of Bartolo Cagafuego appeared over the edge, his eyes bulging with tension, his gap-toothed grimace made even fiercer by the enormous machete gripped between his few remaining teeth. We were standing at the foot of the mizzenmast, next to the ladder that led up to the quarterdeck. More of our group had now reached the deck via the ropes secured by grappling hooks, and it was a miracle that the whole galleon wasn’t awake to give us a warm welcome, what with that single harquebus shot and the racket made by sundry noises—the clatter of footsteps and the hiss of swords as they left their sheaths.

I took my sword in my right hand and my dagger in my left, looking wildly about in search of the enemy. And then I saw a whole horde of armed men swarming onto the deck from down below, and I saw that most were as blond and burly as the men I had known in Flanders, and that there were more of them to the stern and in the waist, between the quarterdeck and the forecastle, and I saw as well that there were far too many of them, and that Captain Alatriste was fighting like a madman to reach the quarterdeck. I rushed to help my master, without waiting to see if Cagafuego and the others were following or not. I did so muttering the name of Angelica as a final prayer, and my last lucid thought, as I hurled myself into the fight with a furious howl, was that if Sebastian Copons did not arrive in time, the Niklaasbergen adventure would be our last.

9. OLD FRIENDS AND OLD ENEMIES

The hand and the arm grow tired of killing too. Diego Alatriste would gladly have given what remained of his life—which was perhaps very little—to lay down his weapons and lie quietly in a corner, just for a while. At that stage, he was fighting out of a mixture of fatalism and habit, and his feeling of indifference as to the result may, paradoxically, have been what kept him alive in the midst of all the clash and confusion. He was fighting with his usual serenity, without thinking, trusting in his keen eye and swift reactions. For men like him and in situations like that, the most effective way of keeping fate at bay was to leave imagination aside and put one’s trust in pure instinct.

Using his foot for leverage, he wrenched his sword from the body of the man he had just skewered. All around him there were shouts, curses, moans, and from time to time the gloom was lit up by a shot from a pistol or from a Flemish harquebus, offering a glimpse of groups of men furiously knifing one another and of puddles of blood that slithered into the scuppers as the ship tilted.

In the grip of a singular clarity, he parried a thrust from a scimitar, dodged another, and responded by plunging his sword vainly into the void, yet he gave this error no thought. The other man drew back and turned his attention to someone else, who was attacking him from behind. Alatriste took advantage of that pause to lean against the bulkhead for a moment and rest. The steps to the quarterdeck stood before him, lit from above by a lantern; they appeared to be free. He had had to fight three men to get there; no one had warned him that there would be such a large company on board. The high poop deck, he thought, would provide a useful stronghold until Copons arrived with his men, but when Alatriste looked around him, he found that most of his party were engaged in fighting for their lives and had barely moved from the spot where they had boarded.

He forgot about the quarterdeck and returned to the fray. He encountered someone’s back, possibly that of the man who had escaped him before, and plunged his dagger into his opponent’s kidneys, turning the blade so as to cause as much damage as possible, and then yanking it out as the fellow dropped to the floor, screaming like a man condemned. A shot nearby dazzled him, and knowing that none of his men was carrying a pistol, he slashed his way blindly toward the source of that flash. He collided with someone, made a grab for him, but skidded and fell on the blood-washed deck, meanwhile headbutting the other man in the face, again and again, until he could get a grip on his own dagger and slip it in between them. The Fleming screamed as he felt the knife go in and crawled away on all fours. Alatriste spun around, and a body fell on top of him, murmuring in Spanish, “Holy Mother of God, Holy Mother of God.” He had no idea who the man was and had no time to find out. He pushed the body away and, sword in his right hand and dagger in his left, scrambled to his feet, with a sense that the darkness around him was growing red. The screams and the shouting were truly horrendous, and it was impossible now to take more than three steps without slipping in the blood.

Cling, clang. Everything seemed to happen so slowly that he was surprised that in between each thrust he made his adversaries did not dish out ten or twelve in return. He felt a blow to his cheek, very hard, and his mouth filled with the familiar, metallic taste of blood. He raised his sword up high in order to slash a nearby face—a whitish blur that vanished with a yelp. In the come-and-go of battle, Alatriste found himself back at the steps leading to the quarterdeck, where there was more light. Then he realized that he was still clutching under his arm a sword he had taken off someone who knows how long ago. He dropped it and whirled around, dagger at the ready, sensing that there were enemies behind him, and at that moment, just as he was about to deal a counterblow with his sword, he recognized the fierce, bearded face of Bartolo Cagafuego, who was crazily hitting out at anyone in his path, his lips flecked with foam. Alatriste turned in the other direction, seeking someone to fight, just in time to see a boarding pike being propelled toward his face. He dodged, parried, thrust, and then drove his sword in, bruising his fingers when the point of his blade stopped with a crunch as it hit bone. He stepped back to free his weapon and, when he did so, stumbled over some coiled cordage and fell so heavily against the ladder that he thought for a moment he had broken his spine. Now someone was trying to batter him with the butt of a harquebus and so he crouched down to protect his head. He collided with yet another man, whether friend or foe he could not tell; he hesitated, then stuck his knife in and drew it out again. His back really hurt, and he longed to cry out to gain some relief—emitting a long, half-suppressed moan was always a good way to take the edge off pain—but not a sound did he utter. His head was buzzing, he could still taste blood in his mouth, and his fingers were numb from gripping sword and dagger. For a moment, he was filled by a desire to jump overboard. I’m too old for this, he thought desolately.

He paused long enough to catch his breath, then returned reluctantly to the fray. This is where you die, he said to himself. And at that precise moment, as he stood at the foot of the steps, encircled by the light from the lantern, someone shouted his name. Bewildered, Alatriste turned, sword at the ready. And he swallowed hard, scarcely able to believe his eyes. May they crucify me on Golgotha, he thought, if it isn’t Gualterio Malatesta.

Pencho Bullas died at my side. The Murcian was caught up in a knife fight with a Flemish sailor, when, suddenly, the latter shot him in the head, at such close range that his head was ripped off at the jaw, spattering me with blood and brain. However, even before the Fleming had lowered his pistol, I had slit his throat with my sword, very hard and fast, and the man fell on top of Bullas, gurgling something in his own strange tongue. I whirled my sword about my head to fend off anyone attempting to close on me. The steps up to the quarterdeck were too far away for me to reach, and so I did as everyone else was trying to do: tried to keep myself alive long enough for Sebastian Copons to get us out of there. I didn’t even have breath enough to utter the names of Angelica or Christ himself; I needed all the breath I had to save my own skin. For a while, I managed to dodge whatever thrusts and blows came my way, returning as many as I could. Sometimes, amid the confusion of the fight, I thought I could see Captain Alatriste in the distance, but my efforts to reach him were in vain. We were separated by too many men killing and being killed.

Our comrades were putting on a brave face like the practiced swordsmen they were, fighting with the professional resolve of someone who has bet all his money on the knave of spades, but there were far more men on board the galleon than we had expected, and they were gradually driving us back toward the gunwale over which we had boarded. At least I can swim, I thought. The deck was full of motionless bodies or moaning figures dragging themselves along, and causing us to stumble at every step. I started to feel afraid, not of death exactly—death is of no importance, Nicasio Ganzua had said in the prison in Seville—but of shame, mutilation, defeat, and failure.

Someone else attacked. He wasn’t tall and blond like most Flemings but sallow-skinned and bearded. He struck out at me, grasping his sword with both hands, but had little luck. I kept my head and stood firm, and the third or fourth time that he drew back his arm, I stuck my sword into his breast swift as lightning, right up to the guard. My face almost touched his when I did so—I could feel his breath on mine—and we crashed to the floor together, with me still grasping the hilt, and I heard the blade of my sword snap as his back hit the deck. Then, for good measure, I stabbed him five or six times in the belly. At first, I was surprised to hear him cry out in Spanish and, for a moment, thought I must have made a mistake and killed one of my own. The light from a lantern near the