One dropped to his knees and tried to come in under Yevgeny’s pike, but the Russian, who was turning slowly round and round even as he spun the weapon, canted the plane of its movement in such a way that its sharpened end swept the fellow’s cap off, and might have scalped him had he been an inch closer. He collapsed to his belly and crept back away—which was not possible to do quickly.
All this presented itself to Jack’s eyes in the first moment that he came into this tiny plaza. His first thought was that Yevgeny would be defenseless against anyone who came upon the scene with a projectile weapon. Scarcely had this entered his mind when one of the two standing Janissaries backed into a door-nook, withdrew a discharged pistol from his waist-sash, and set about loading it. Jack picked up a fist-sized stone and flung it at this man. Yevgeny stopped his pike in mid-whirl, swung the butt high into the air, and drove the point into the body of the man who’d dropped to his stomach. The third, construing this as an opening, gathered his feet under him so as to spring at Yevgeny. Noting this, Jack let out a scream that astonished the man and made him have second thoughts and go all tangle-footed. He turned towards Jack and, distracted as he was by Yevgeny on his flank, parried an imagined attack from Jack, and mounted a weak one of his own. Yevgeny meanwhile chucked the pike at the pistol-loader, who had dropped his weapon into the dirt when Jack’s rock had caught him amidships (which was understandable) and gone down on both knees to retrieve it (a fatal mistake, as it had turned him into a stationary target).
The one who was fighting with Jack swooped his blade wildly from side to side. This was not a good technique, but its sheer recklessness set Jack back on his heels long enough for him to turn and run away. Yevgeny noted this, and pursued him hotly.
Three ways joined together in this little space. Jack had entered along one of them. That poor unnerved Janissary, and Yevgeny, had exited along the way that led off to Jack’s left. This was the way Jack needed to probe if there was to be any hope of outflanking the musketeers. It led imperceptibly downhill, away from the caravanserai and towards the canal. To Jack’s right, then, was a needle’s eye, which is to say a very narrow arch built to admit humans while preventing camels from passing out of the stables. Peering through that, he saw that beyond it the alley broadened and ran straight for about ten yards to a side entrance of the caravanserai, which was sucking in a palpable draft of air to feed the howling and cackling flames. A squad of some eight or ten French soldiers were just emerging from the smoke. They had prudently cast off their muskets and powder-horns, but otherwise looked none the worse for wear—they must have found some way to circumvent the fire.
But Jack’s view of these was suddenly blocked by a figure in a black ankle-length robe: Gabriel Goto, who stepped out from the shelter of a doorway and took up a position blocking the eye of the needle. At the moment he appeared to be unarmed; but he stopped the Frenchmen in their tracks anyway, by raising up his right hand and uttering some solemn words in Latin. Jack was no Papist, but he’d been in enough battles and poorhouses to recognize the rite of extreme unction, the last sacrament given to men who were about to die.
Hearing musket-fire from the opposite way out—the way Yevgeny had gone—Jack turned to look, and saw a somewhat wider street that wound off in the direction of where those musketeers had established their road-block. Ten or twelve yards away, just where it curved out of view, a corpse lay sprawled on its back.