Each step was excruciating, and André fought the urge to cry out in pain, but he allowed himself to be carried by the general farther from the tumult and into the dark, shaded space. He noticed they were near some sort of entryway to the sealed pyramid. Here the sunlight was blocked out and the air was moist. Centuries of shadow had made the stones cool.
“Drink.” Murat was panting but appeared entirely unharmed from the battle. He held out his waterskin, which André took, noticing, as he did so, how parched his lips and throat were.
“Thank you, sir.” André gulped the water greedily, allowing himself to be distracted by this cooling drink so that, for just a moment, he forgot about the bleeding wound in his right thigh.
After he had drunk his fill, he lowered the waterskin. As he did so, he saw the pistol pointed directly at his face. Behind it stared the sea-gray eyes of Nicolai Murat, filled with the look of hatred that André had seen so many times before. Only this time, they were alone—just the two of them, in this dark and hidden doorway, out of sight or earshot from the rest of their countrymen. So, André realized, Murat had simply saved him so that he could be the one to finish him off.
“I’ve waited years for this moment,” Murat said, his voice low but animated, a grim sneer showing beneath his mustache. “Make peace with your God, if you have one.”
André acted on instinct, throwing the waterskin at Murat. His aim was true, mercifully, and it knocked the general in the face as André ripped the pistol loose from Murat’s grip. The weapon fell to the ground, firing as it did so, smashing against the impenetrable stone of the building. Disregarding the pain in his leg, André threw himself at the general, knocking him backward as they both fell to the ground, a tangle of limbs and sweat.
Murat was strong—stronger than André had expected—and certainly strong enough that André, with his incapacitated leg, struggled to contain his writhing frame.
“I’ll kill you, Valière,” Murat hissed, his face just inches from André’s, his lips contorting in a menacing snarl beneath his thick mustache.
André cried out in excruciating pain when Murat groped the wound in his leg with his sandy fingers, gnashing at the pulp of flesh and blood.
Just then three Mamelukes rode into view, no doubt drawn by the sounds of André’s cries. Both André and Murat froze as they saw their tall frames carving out dark silhouettes against the daylight. The horsemen saw the two Frenchmen struggling on the stone floor and muttered a few words to one another in a foreign dialect. They dismounted.
André and Murat pulled apart, each one of them now thinking about his own defense against these three warriors. One of the Mamelukes muttered something in his native tongue, causing the other two to laugh, a mirthless, spine-chilling sound.
One of them, a giant with a red turban and rubies adorning his earlobes, charged André. André pulled his sword from its scabbard and parried the blow. To his right, he saw that two of them had engaged Murat, probably believing the Frenchman with the bloody wound in his thigh to be the easier prey.
André screamed, lunging desperately with his sword. The thrust was easily dodged with a quick movement by the Mameluke. Up close now André saw the man’s features: an ageless face, a hard face, black eyes, and a long beard that swayed as he lunged.
His sword locked with the Mameluke’s and André moved his left hand quickly, taking it off the sword to reach for his waist. Groaning against the effort of holding the Mameluke’s sword back, he reached with his free hand for his dagger. With one quick motion he raised the dagger, thrusting it into the Mameluke’s belly. The man dropped his sword with a loud clamor onto the stone floor, stepping back from André, his black eyes wide in disbelief. And then he fell, his body landing next to his dropped sword.
André saw that Murat and the two Mamelukes were still struggling, the general fighting savagely even as he was being backed up against the wall. André remembered Murat’s dropped pistol; he looked around, spotting it several paces away, and lunged for it.
One of the Mamelukes had pinned Murat against the wall and was trying to stab him in the neck. There was blood coming from Murat’s arm; the general had been injured in the fight. André loaded the pistol quickly, aimed, and fired. One of the enemy stiffened before collapsing on top of Murat. Both Murat and the surviving fighter turned and saw from where the bullet had issued. The third Mameluke, stunned by the shot, bolted from this entryway, leaving the bodies of his two dead friends.