The Religion by Tim Willocks

Author:Tim Willocks [Willocks, Tim]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Action & Adventure
ISBN: 9781429934947
Google: 0MTazZni9DQC
Publisher: Macmillan
Published: 2008-04-28T16:00:00+00:00

The violent circus of murder and prayer recommenced at first light and raged throughout another broiling day. The Turks wallowed through a moat of corrupting bodies and spilled viscera, their feet puncturing distended bellies that sometimes exploded into flame from the vapors therein. As the sun crawled past its meridian, griddle-hot armor sizzled and smoked with sprayed gore and men collapsed for want of air in the fetor and their brains boiled inside their skulls and they spasmed and died, and if the Devil was looking on he must have rubbed his hands, for even in his own demesne there could be no spectacle more demoniac than this.

Tannhauser wished for the fort's final hour to come, for with it-according to his plan-would come his only chance of survival. Yet each time the line of defenders wavered or was breached, and the crazed escalade of the Turks seemed about to overwhelm them, some madman would rally-Lanfreducci, Guaras, or, time and again, Le Mas-and in a delirium of butchery that would spread like a contagion, the Christians would drive the slithering invaders backward into the ditch.

Tannhauser plied his rifle from the alure, cursing God, cursing them all, cursing the recalcitrant boy at his heels. He kept Orlandu alive. He fought vertiginous waves of lunacy of his own, when the urge to plunge in would importune him and reason itself seemed insane and death the only logic to be embraced. The hallowed music of self-sacrifice rang in his ears, with its promise of eternal renown and a swift release from sorrow; but he'd heard it before and the tune was false and its notes were the screams of the dying.

"Keep your head down, boy," he roared.

He grabbed Orlandu by the throat and hauled him to cover. In the storm of unhinged courage, the fear in the boy's rolling eyes was a beacon to steer by. He let go and squeezed the bewildered youth by the arm. "We will see this day through, do you hear me?"

Orlandu nodded. At that moment Tannhauser was down on one knee, his rifle canted on his thigh. A vicious blow took him in the side and spun him around and almost pitched him over the alure. He teetered over a drop of forty feet onto jagged rubble. Orlandu grabbed the arm that squeezed him and held his master fast. Tannhauser righted himself and shuffled behind the protection of the merlon and explored himself with his fingers.

He'd taken numerous hits on his fluted cuirass, and a couple more to his helmet, without sustaining anything worse than bruises. This ball had caught his left hipbone below the plating's edge and had plowed on into the muscle of his lower back. He could feel the hard lump of lead beneath the skin. It hadn't gone deep into his organs and wouldn't kill him soon. Putrefaction, however, though slower, was as sure a way to go. From his pouch he took a damp rag in which he'd wrapped pellets of comfrey and featherfew.

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