Assassins of Kantara

by James Boschert

  Assassins of Kantara by James Boschert

  Copyright © 2017 James Boschert

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotation embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  ISBN-13: 978-1-942756-90-3(Paperback)

  ISBN :978-1-942756-91-0 (e-book)

  BISAC Subject Headings:

  FIC014000FICTION / Historical

  FIC032000FICTION / War & Military

  FIC031020FICTION / Thrillers / Historical

  Editing: Chris Wozney, Terri Carter, Danielle Boschert

  Cover Illustration by Christine Horner

  Address all correspondence to:

  Penmore Press LLC

  920 N Javelina Pl

  Tucson AZ 85748

  Table of Contents

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Map of Middle East

  Prologue

  Chapter 1 Information

  Chapter 2 Assassins

  Chapter 3 A Voyage to Somewhere

  Chapter 4 A Close Encounter

  Chapter 5 Audience with a King

  Chapter 6 Acre

  Chapter 7 Persecution

  Chapter8 Plans for Escape

  Chapter 9 A Hurried Departure

  Chapter 10 Paphos

  Chapter 11 A Scouting Party

  Chapter 12 A Castle called Kantara

  Chapter 13 Thunderbolt

  Chapter 14 Checkmate

  Chapter 15 Emperor of Cyprus

  Chapter 16 Night Visits

  Chapter 17 Tamura the Concubine

  Chapter 18 To Be a Spy

  Chapter 19 Andronicus, Emperor

  Chapter 20 Exazenos

  Chapter 21 Flight

  Chapter 22 A Royal Killing

  Chapter 23 Chinese Powder

  Chapter 24 Alarms and New Arrivals

  Chapter 25 A Clash of Spies

  Chapter 26 An Appointment

  Chapter 27 A Byzantine Standoff

  Chapter 28 The Herb Garden

  Chapter 29 Prison

  Chapter 30 A Good Chase

  Chapter 31 Murder in a Palace

  Chapter 32 An Unlikely Alliance

  Chapter 33 News from Jerusalem

  Chapter 34 The Terror

  Chapter 35 Capture and Revenge

  Chapter 36 The Tribute and a Warning

  Author’s Note

  About the author

  Other books by James Boschert

  Dedication

  To Danielle, who is my rock of support.

  And

  Sophia and Eva

  Acknowledgements

  My sincere thanks to Christine Horner, Chris Wozney and Danielle Boschert for their tireless efforts and help.

  Middle East in 1185

  Knights of Christ, your ranks are broken;

  Close your front, the foe is nigh;

  —Robert Morris

  Prologue

  August 23, 1179 Jacob’s Ford

  Sir Guy de Veres stood on the unfinished battlements of the fortification called Chastellet and observed a host gathering on the Syrian side of the river Jordan. He knew with chilling certainty that Salah Ed Din had finally come to besiege the castle and intended to take it. Sir Guy’s men and the other Templar officers gathered on the parapet to watch the Saracen army begin to cross the ford. They all looked equally grim.

  “Where is the army of the King, Sir Guy?” one of them exclaimed, hammering his fist onto the newly mortared stone of the parapet. There was more than a hint of worry in his tone. He was the officer in charge of the castle, but Sir Guy was the person they all turned to, because he was the best informed and without doubt was the most capable of divining the intentions of Salah Ed Din.

  “The messenger was sent a week ago,” Sir Guy replied. “We should have heard something by now.” He, too, was very worried.

  “What are they going to do?” Another jerked his head at the horsemen splashing across the river, which was shallow after the long summer. Even the infantry would be able to walk across.

  “Salah Ed Din knows this is strategically one of the most important corners of our kingdom. It is the easiest path to Jerusalem for a large army—look how easily they cross the river, even now. He does not want this castle in place,” Sir Guy responded, his tone terse. “We need to prepare for the worst as best we can.”

  “Then God protect us all. Go to your stations,” the officer in charge ordered. “Bring the archers up here.”

  Deep in thought, Sir Guy walked down the steps of the battlements. As he had stated, a messenger had been sent off a week before to inform the King of the pending threat. The spies Sir Guy employed had told him of the build up of Salah Ed Din’s forces, and the information they had provided had proved only too correct. Now he was trapped inside the castle with nearly seven hundred other Knights Templar and a large crew of masons, with no escape unless the King’s army arrived to relieve them.

  He glanced around as he walked across the courtyard to the unfinished bailey. His practiced eye took in the new masonry, which would not withstand siege weapons of the kind that Salah Ed Din could deploy; nor would the foundations be mature enough to block a determined sapping effort. Nor were the men inside the castle prepared for a lengthy siege.

  Jerusalem was approximately one hundred leagues south of Chastellet. The messenger would have stopped at Tiberius before riding on, for Sir Guy wanted the Duke of Tripoli to be aware of the danger. Sir Guy had no doubt in his mind that if the king had received the message, he would have either sent an army to intercept Salah Ed Din or taken to the road in person. He hoped the former because of the king’s sickness, but he knew the boy king would come himself if he could.

  He became aware that the siege had begun when an arrow thudded into the dirt nearby, and shouts arose from the battlements above. He ignored the noise and walked the entire circumference of the inside of the castle wall to better understand its vulnerabilities. Unfortunately these were many, and he had no doubt that an experienced engineer on the other side could see the same.

  Finally, he climbed the steps and joined a small group of armored men, who were peering over the parapet at the cavalry and infantry clustered just out of bowshot. The longbow men were taking a toll of anyone foolish enough to come within range: their accuracy was deadly at a hundred paces, and their arrows were a menace even at two hundred for any of the enemy who grouped together for too long. Their skill kept the foot soldiers away from the walls, but the enemy’s mounted archers would courageously gallop their horses rapidly past the gate area and loose off their own arrows against the men on the walls. Their aim was uncanny, and unwary men had already suffered. The enemy were also preparing some nasty contraptions called Scorpions, which could hurl a large arrow like a spear over long distances.

  Sir Guy had an uneasy feeling. He left the gate area to go to the northeast corner of the castle, and what he saw there confirmed his worst fears. The enemy had already begun digging trenches. They were going to get as close as they could, and then begin a tunnel which would take them to the foundations. Once there, they would use wood and large bladders full of fat from animals to burn, creating an intense fire which would weaken the foundations of the walls and eventually bring them down. The officer in charge, Sir Edmond, joined him, and the two men watched impotently as the furious digging went on for the rest of the day. They had nothing with which to stop the sappers.

  Had the message been lost? Where was the king’s army?

  In Tiberius, a town only half a day’s hard ride from Jacob’s Ford, the King’s army sat on its hands while the lords argued. Baldwin IV, the Leper K
ing, was in the middle of an argument with Grand Master Odo and his other lords.

  “My lords,” he sighed, impatiently flicking away a fly. With its broiling sun and innumerable flies, the torment of this climate could be unbearable at times. “It is almost a week since the rider came from Sir Guy at Chastellet and informed us of an approaching army. It is time to move, regardless of how small our army is. We must intercept Saladin at the river and demonstrate that we will not permit him to come and go at will.”

  “My Liege,” Lord Joscelin responded, his tone wheedling, “our army is still preparing. There are equipment problems, and we are understrength.”

  “I am not always sure of Sir Guy de Veres’ information,” Sir Gerard de Ridefort said in a low, dismissive tone. He was one of the Templars who believed that knowledge of the ways of the Saracen was not necessary because a good charge could settle any argument with them.

  Sir Arnold of Torroja, another senior Templar and well known for his hot-headed behavior, nodded agreement. Neither Templar liked the man they deemed a maverick Knight, one who was far too close to the Duke of Tripoli and the King for their liking. Sir Guy and the Duke shared a long association, and their knowledge of the Saracen bordered on the heretical. It was significant that Sir Odo de St Armand, the current Grand Master, did not contradict Sir Gerard. He merely pulled on his long beard and looked away.

  “They are only half a day away in any case, My Liege,” Sir Arnold said. “We would know very quickly should there be a problem, and could deal with it swiftly enough.”

  Perhaps it was because Baldwin did not have sufficient energy to overrule his Lords that he failed to insist, and so the army of the King languished in Tiberius and offered no relief to a garrison that was under siege and unable to send more messengers.

  One man who knew Sir Guy very well fumed at the delay. Max, Talon’s friend and companion of many years, and also Sir Guy’s, wanted to ride on, but Odo had forbidden him to do so, saying that the army would be leaving soon and he could accompany them. However, the army did not leave soon, and Max raged, unable to inform Sir Guy as to his whereabouts.

  It wasn’t until October the 3oth, almost a week after the messenger had arrived, that the army of the King of Jerusalem eventually set out.

  Salah Ed Din’s sappers finally managed to create sufficient heat in the tunnel to cause an explosion in the confined space, weakening the foundations of the north-eastern corner of the castle of Chastellet. The men inside the castle were worn down by the constant attacks on the gates and had devoted much effort to reinforcing them, all the while watching impotently as the sappers dug their way to the base of the walls.

  They were out of food and water, and utterly exhausted by the incessant hail of arrows, and now large rocks, launched over the walls to maim and kill. A dirty and exhausted Sir Guy stared out towards the south in the vain hope that an army would appear, but it failed to do so, and as night fell on the 29th of October they heard the first sharp reports from the stressed masonry behind them.

  As morning dawned on the 30th, the weary and dispirited men fought on, but later in the day Sir Guy heard what he had been dreading: the rumble of falling stones as the sapped walls collapsed. He and his closest companions rushed to defend the gaps, but the enemy charged into the openings over the rubble with great shouts of victory to overwhelm the defenders. The slaughter began.

  Sir Guy and his men met them with flashing swords and stabbing spears. Theirs was the desperation of men who knew they were about to die but were determined to take down as many as they could.

  Sweating and hoarse, Sir Guy and his companions fought on, faces distorted by hate and fury. He parried blows, struck and stabbed until he felt so weary he could barely stand. He parried a side swipe from an attacker, then stabbed the large man under his small shield deep into his abdomen. The man doubled over and fell aside with a groan of agony.

  Sir Guy whirled to slash at another who was aiming a spear at him. He blocked the spear, but there were too many behind this one, the numbers were simply too great. Yelling enemy warriors surrounded him now, his companions having gone down one by one amid the screaming and howling of men in mortal combat; the rocks of the fallen walls were slippery with blood, making standing difficult. Roaring with battle rage, he cleared a space around himself at the top of the rubble. There was a short pause as the enemy men stopped to stare at the torn and bleeding Templar staggering and alone, on the hill of the dead and wounded; all of them were warriors who could admire a fighting man for his sheer courage, but then the yelling began again, and they surged forward. Sir Guy went down under the swords and stabbing spears of the enemy, the last obstruction to the army of Salah Ed Din’s invaders at the fall of Chastellet.

  Some few leagues away, Max in the vanguard of the slowly moving army stared towards the northeast and saw, to his horror, a black column of smoke rising into the sky. It was evening, and as the army approached the castle they could see, even from this distance, that the Saracen army had breached the walls. The castle was lost.

  The Grand Master and his Knights were for attacking in the hope that the enemy could be caught off guard. Their first priority, however, was to keep the king safe. As the army turned to head back to Tiberius, Odo left a guard of Templars with the King, while he and the remainder of his knights rode forward to see what could be done. Max rode with Odo, desperate to see if there was any chance that Sir Guy might have lived through the battle.

  They were ambushed before they could even get close, and in the growing darkness it became impossible to maintain the solid block of armed horsemen that had been so effective against the Saracens in the past. Max and several of his companions stayed close together and fought as hard as they could, but the skirmishing was haphazard, while the enemy spearmen and cavalry seemed to be everywhere.

  The Templars gained no ground in their desperate push to reach the castle, which was now just a dark shadow in the distance with flames flickering against the night sky from inside. Finally, Max took charge of his embattled little group and ordered a retreat. There was no sight of Odo or the others who had charged recklessly ahead. Max was wounded, as were his companions, but eventually they managed to break off contact with the enemy in the darkness and make their way back towards Tiberius, where they arrived just as dawn was breaking.

  The news they received from other stragglers was all bad. Odo had been captured, the castle taken, and over seven hundred Templar Knights slain. Sir Guy had been killed defending the gap in the collapsed walls. Others had been taken into slavery. While the army of the King of Jerusalem licked its wounds and its nobles assigned blame to everyone but themselves, Salah Ed Din proceeded to completely demolish the castle before leaving for his own lands.

  Max and several of the other Knights eventually made their way back to Acre to deliver the appalling news and to recover from their wounds. Max reeled from the death of his friend and mentor, and fumed at the incompetence that had caused the loss of Jacob’s Ford, but there was nothing he could do.

  There was a sober and apprehensive mood in the city because of the huge losses; and yet, there was one person in Acre who was not saddened by the defeat. Brother Jonathan, still investigating witchcraft on behalf of the Bishop, heard that Sir Guy de Veres had been killed, and smiled to himself.

  Pass on from the name,

  and look closer at the source.

  The source will show you what you seek.

  Leave the form behind.

  —Rumi

  Chapter 1

  Information

  High in the Alborz Mountains of northern Persia, there is a castle. The Eagle’s Nest, or Alamut as it is known far and wide, stands on a crag overlooking the deep, narrow valley of the Alamut Rud. Alamut has been the home of the Masters of the Hashashini, or Assassins, as they were known to the Franks, going on for four generations. The names Alamut and Hashashini are synonymous and have struck fear into the hearts of men in high places, from the rugged coasts of the Med
iterranean to the Hindu Kush. Vizier and Sultan alike have good reason to fear the wrath and deadly cunning of the Master and his minions. Again and again the Master has sent out his messengers of death to right a perceived wrong to his name, for revenge, or simply to shift the balance of power in another direction, and no one was safe.

  The Master usually spent his winters in Alamut, which served as both his home and his refuge during the cold months, and this year had been no exception. However, spring was in the air, shifting from the bleak North Wind that froze everything in its path to a more easterly and warmer southerly wind, which melted the snow in the passes. This allowed travelers to move about from one city-state to another, or to join the huge caravans which had been halted by the winter blizzards but could now resume their journeys, either towards Tabriz in the far north, or east towards the fabled city of Samarkand and beyond.

  The melting snows also allowed the Master’s network of spies to re-circulate, to arrive at the gates of Alamut in small groups or as single travelers. In every instance they brought news from afar to the Master, who listened patiently and intently to every one. Slowly but surely, he built up a picture of events and incidents that had taken place while the mantle of winter isolated him. He and his shadowy people discussed situations, ranging as widely as the activities of the Crusaders in Palestine and Salah Ed Din, now in Aleppo, to the discord in Constantinople.