XXXIV

 

 

WHEN GISBURNE CAME to, he was lying with half his face buried in hot sand and grit. He had no memory of what had happened, but his left arm, stretched out above his head, burned as if on fire – and the hand felt wet. The realisation made him start. His right hand went to his head. There was a swollen gash there, on his forehead, now dry and gritty. Something had struck him, although he had no memory of it. Perhaps as he fell; or perhaps it was what caused him to fall.

One eye was open, the other crusted with what he supposed was blood. He blinked, forced the lids apart, and looked at his raised limb. His forearm had been skinned on the upper side. Still wrapped around his wrist, pulled tight, was his horse’s rein, now soaked in his blood. It had since clotted and dried, sticking the leather strap to the bloody, sand-flecked crust of his exposed flesh. The remainder of the rein lay on the sand, trailing off to a broken end.

Slowly, the realisation came upon him that he must have fallen, and been dragged. How the rein had become detached from his mount, and what had become of the beast, he could not guess. But it had probably saved his life – what little of it there was left. His left hand, he now understood, was not wet. Not any more. It was cold. Numb. Beneath the dried blood and grey grit he saw it was deathly pale, and drawn into a claw. Tentatively, he flexed the fingers. They moved slowly, with a kind of agonising remoteness, like something no longer fully part of him – something in a dream. As they straightened, a sensation like needles made him wince.

He went to lift himself up, and a sickening pain shot through his left shoulder. It felt like it had been pulled from its socket. Quite possibly, it had. Pushing against the ground with his right fist, he raised himself inch by inch, leaning into the rock at his back. He lifted his head and looked about him. His was just one of dozens of bodies dotted about, both Saracen and Christian, some whole, many mutilated. One, just a yard or so away – a handsome Muslim foot-soldier who could not have been more than eighteen, his staring eyes now dead and glassy – was crawling with scorpions. Gisburne shuddered at the sound of their movements. They mingled with the groans of the dying that drifted on the hot breeze. As he raised himself further, he saw the bodies repeated, over and over. He heaved himself up onto unsteady legs, swaying, gazing about him. Hundreds. Thousands. He could not see to the edge of it.

A movement made him start – an upright figure looming nearby. Not twenty paces away, an Arab passed, steadily picking some small objects from the bodies strewn about – Gisburne knew not what – and placing them in a leather sack. He took not the slightest notice of Gisburne.

He was alive. It made no sense – could only have been by the most bizarre fluke – but he was alive. For now.

Examining his injured arm, he picked at the twisted strips of leather wound round the bloody wrist, his own skin bunched up before it. They resisted, stiffened by blood, stuck fast to his flesh. He knew he had to remove the rein or else lose his hand. And so he clenched his teeth and began to unwind. It pulled away, taking skin and dried blood with it, the pain like a red hot iron raking across his forearm. The cry stuck in his dry throat. Fresh blood gushed. Sweat that he did not know he had broke out on him, making him shudder with sudden violence. But he was free. He threw the bloody scrap to the gore-strewn ground, his heart pounding in his chest, panting with wheezing lungs, and flexed his hand.

Yes, he was alive.

He stared into the west. Behind him, he knew, was the unimaginable carnage of battle, and the victorious army of the Sultan. Ahead, nothing but desert. But beyond it, Saffuriya. And beyond that, Acre. The sea. England. It was an impossible, absurd dream. But the pain had awakened something within him – some spirit that refused to acknowledge impossibilities.

He took a single faltering step, staggered, and swayed. He had no water, no food. Barely the strength to stand. He knew the wise move was to turn around, back to the east – to surrender to Saladin’s men, to make himself their prisoner. He at least stood a chance that way.

Then, with a will that seemed to come from some other place, he began to walk slowly into the west.