‘Shall I kill the crane, Afandi?’ said the falconer, his crossbow at the ready.
The Amir glanced first at the princess, then at Hartelius. He seemed deep in thought. ‘I think not,’ he said at last. ‘No. Such a bird, clearly beloved of Allah, must be allowed to live. Must he not, Hartelius?’
‘Yes, Amir. The exception must always prove the rule.’
The Amir smiled, content that Hartelius had understood the significance of his action. ‘Just as in the case of our princess. From henceforth she must accompany us whenever she wills. I had heard that the women of the West are unlike those of the East. Now I have proof of this for myself.’ He locked gazes with Hartelius. ‘I believe I am only now, thanks to the actions of this wily crane, beginning to understand quite what forces have brought us all together in this place.’
TWENTY-THREE
Barely an hour passed before the Amir’s hawk killed a desert hare. The Amir allowed her to taste the liver and pick at the lights. When he was satisfied that she had bloodied herself and eaten her fill, he sent her back with his falconer to roost with her companions. It was then that they saw the scout riding towards them. His red banner was unfurled.
‘There is danger ahead.’
‘Is that the significance of the red banner, Amir?’
‘Yes. If the way was clear it would be blue. The colour of the sea and not of blood. This is why I sent him out.’
They watched the scout approach.
‘It is von Drachenhertz, isn’t it?’ said Hartelius.
‘I believe so,’ said the Amir. ‘I should have expected this. But I did not allow for the days the Khamsin held us up. This has given von Drachenhertz the necessary time to put his arrangements in place. The man bribes half the country to inform him of what is going on. Even those who hate him serve him. That is the way of the world.’
Hartelius stood beside the princess while the Amir spoke to his scout.
‘Von Drachenhertz is here?’ said the princess. ‘He has come for me?’
‘Yes. I am afraid so.’
‘And will the Amir not give me up? He could negotiate much that was to his advantage if he did so.’
‘He will not give you up. No.’
‘You are sure of this?’
‘Yes.’
The princess nodded. ‘Then there will be a fight.’
Hartelius glanced across at her, but she had turned her face away from him and was watching the Amir.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘There will be a fight. Von Drachenhertz is barring the Amir from returning to the Chouf. Such a thing is unacceptable even in peacetime. The country through which we are passing belongs to no one. It is the mutually accepted no-man’s-land separating Saracen from Frank. If von Drachenhertz pitches his camp on the plain leading to the pass, it is an insult to the Amir. An insult no Saracen can afford to ignore without losing face.’
‘And your Templars? Men like von Szellen over there? They will not fight alongside the Saracens, surely? They will not turn on their own people?’
‘Von Drachenhertz is nobody’s people but his own. He will kill us all simply for his own amusement. My Templars know that. There is no law but his out here.’
‘Are his people more numerous than ours?’
‘The Amir’s party consists of one hundred and fifty men. They are tired from the trail. They are armed for skirmishing, not for pitched battles. When they left the Chouf they did so on the understanding that they were a patrol and not an army. Von Drachenhertz’s men are fresh. They will be armed to the teeth. He will have offered each man a bounty for my head, and an even greater one for your capture. He set out with the sole intention of finding us and of overwhelming us when he did. He has only this one aim. So yes. He will have more men.’
The Amir beckoned Hartelius to approach. The princess, without being asked, rode alongside him. All four, accompanied by von Szellen and their five Saracen escorts, cantered to the crest of the nearby hill.
The Amir pointed at the plain below them. ‘He knows we are here. Look. They have spread themselves like honey. There is no way past them.’
‘Can we not retreat?’
‘The Assassins are behind us. Von Drachenhertz will have paid them well. The truth is that we are hemmed in both from the back and from the front. Below us is only the sea. And above us are the mountains. If we could fly into the air like my hawk we would be safe.’
‘Then hand us over and be done with it. You have no need to be involved in this. The fault is mine and mine alone.’
‘You are my guests. A host does not hand his guests over to the executioner.’
As they watched, a detachment of soldiers broke away from the Frankish lines and started towards them up the valley.
The Amir leaned in towards his scout. The two men spoke in undertones.
The Amir straightened up. He pulled back the sleeve of his besht and pointed towards the approaching party with his riding crop. ‘See? The man in silver armour at the front? With the plumed helm? My scout tells me that this is von Drachenhertz himself. He must be very confident indeed of his position to approach our lines with so few men.’
‘You will parley with him?’
‘Of course. I am looking forward to seeing the monster for myself.’
‘I will come too,’ said Hartelius.
‘And I,’ said the princess. ‘I want him to see what he cannot have.’
The Amir threw back his head and laughed, showing all his teeth. ‘Come then, both of you. We will ride with my escort to meet him below the skyline. I do not want him to see the paucity of our numbers when compared to his own. That would be to allow the monster too much.”
TWENTY-FOUR
At first it seemed to everyone present as if the Margrave Adalfuns von Drachenhertz did not intend to remove his helmet. The Amir regarded him quizzically – it would have represented an even more studied insult than the man’s placing of his troops across the mouth of the one serviceable pass back towards the Chouf.
But even the margrave, it appeared, drew the line at alienating his audience before he had had a chance to influence their way of thinking. He wrenched off his helmet and tossed it to one of his subordinates. Every move he made indicated domination. He had the face of an angry lion and the demeanour of an autarch. His hair hung down in sweaty strands, and there were dark patches beneath his eyes, as if his rage at being defied had been preventing him from sleeping.
‘Princess,’ he said, with an unctuous inclination of his torso. ‘What a joy it is to meet my future bride at last. May I assume that you have been kidnapped, and that the Baron von Hartelius, together with his Saracen subordinates, has come here to negotiate the details of your release?’
‘I have not been kidnapped,’ said the princess. She took a step closer to Hartelius, as if unconsciously to emphasize her point. ‘Your spies will have told you that much.’
The margrave straightened up from his false bow. ‘Then you are guilty of treason. The king made me a formal promise. I expect that promise to be kept.’
The princess drew herself up too, her face pallid. ‘The promise was made in my brother’s name, not mine.’
The margrave sent his gauntlets flying after his helmet. ‘They are one and the same thing. You owe a duty both to the king, your brother, and to the king, your sovereign. By whatever name you choose to call them.’
‘I owe a duty only to myself.’
Von Drachenhertz shrugged. His mouth twitched as if he were about to laugh. He rubbed his hands down his cuisses to dry them. ‘Be that as it may. The end result is the same. It will take months for your brother to send me another wife. And I want one now. So I have decided to forgive your dalliances with this Bavarian upstart and marry you as arranged.’
The princess gave a physical start. ‘My dowry and my name are what you want. Not me. We both know that.’
‘Amongst other things.’
‘The Holy Spear and the Copper Scroll, you mean?’
There was an almost palpable silence following her words. Von Drachenhertz broke the silence with a grunt. He followed it up with a triumphant grin.
‘No. I was thinking, of course, of what little I might be able to salvage of your virginity. And musing, too, on what von Hartelius’s guts would look like wrapped around my lance – with his rod and testicles riding on top as a pennant.’ Von Drachenhertz extended his grin for a second, and then switched expression, so that his forehead creased in a spirit of fake enquiry. ‘But what you have just said intrigues me. How do you happen to know of the Copper Scroll? The king, your brother, led me to believe that only he and I knew of its presence amongst your accoutrements.’
Hartelius felt sick. The princess had spent more than half her life in a convent. She was unused to the cut and thrust of male power play. The shattering significance of detail. He was tempted to draw his sword and have at von Drachenhertz without further ado – but by doing this he would simply be heaping insult upon injury onto his host, whose good name would be the one to suffer. An acknowledged parley was sacrosanct. Even a slug like von Drachenhertz would think twice before violating it. ‘The Copper Scroll has been stolen from the Templars. It is not the property of the king, and never was. It is not for him, or you, to decide on its fate.’
Von Drachenhertz, like many fundamentally immoral men, was clearly relishing his brief sojourn on the moral high ground. ‘Everything belongs to the king. Even you belong to the king, Hartelius. And now you belong to me. The only way either you or the princess could know of the Copper Scroll would be from the breaking of the Royal Seal. And such a thing is punishable by death. But as you are already a dead man, the actual details of what triggers your execution are unimportant.’
The Amir raised one hand. ‘This is all beside the point. Both the baron and the princess are my honoured guests. They therefore benefit from my protection, and that of my men.’
Von Drachenhertz started back in mock surprise. ‘What men are you talking about, Amir? Not the one hundred and fifty Khamsin-emptied wrecks that await the onslaught of my army? The ones whimpering over the crest of that hillock you have so carefully avoided me broaching? You are joking, surely? You have seen the quality of my host. I have heard reports of the quality of yours. The result is foreordained. Unless, of course, you have a vast force riding to your rescue that I know nothing about?’ Von Drachenhertz paused, as if he was genuinely expecting a reply. ‘Look. I will tell you what I will do. Give me Hartelius and the princess and I will afford you and your men free passage through to the Chouf. That is a fair bargain, is it not? I cannot now offer you a ransom, because the princess has made it clear to me that she has not been kidnapped. The payment of a ransom would therefore be both insulting and inappropriate. And I am the first person not to wish to insult such a great eminence as yourself. Such a thing would be tantamount to blasphemy, would it not?’
‘There is only one blasphemy,’ said the Amir, his eyes never leaving von Drachenhertz’s face, ‘and that is the one that you perpetrate during your forcible conversions of my people.’
‘There is only one true faith,’ replied von Drachenhertz, ‘and that is ours. Those of your people we deign to convert are blessed. I am surprised you don’t appreciate that.’
Hartelius stepped between the two men. ‘Would you agree to single combat, Margrave? To settle our differences that way?’
Von Drachenhertz roared with laughter. ‘And give up the pleasure of killing you slowly? Of monitoring the incremental damage to your nerve endings hour by hour, day by day, and week by week? I have the best torturer in the seven kingdoms, Hartelius. He needs someone new to practise on. Not the dross I am feeding him at present. And I have a perfect audience in the princess. I will tie her to a whore-stool and feed her your tallow like soup. Only then will I marry her. I like my women suitably tamed.’
If von Szellen had not wrapped his arms round Hartelius’s shoulders and borne his commander to the ground, the story would have ended there. The Amir’s Saracens drew their scimitars and formed a wall round their master and the princess. Von Drachenhertz’s men did not even bother to draw their swords. The parley had gone exactly as expected. Strength was speaking to weakness. And weakness needed to assert itself. All present understood the dynamic. It was what informed their lives.
‘You have until dawn tomorrow, Amir. I have no desire to fight you. Now is neither the time nor the place. Give up these traitors and you and your men walk free. If you do not give them up I will slaughter you. Then I will hang you and your men upside down on crosses all the way along the shoreline as a warning to your people not to meddle in affairs that do not concern them.’
TWENTY-FIVE
‘This Copper Scroll the tyrant speaks of,’ said the Amir. ‘It is the one you Templars believe holds the secrets of King Solomon, is it not?’
Hartelius hesitated. But now was not the time to hold back. He and the Amir were alone. Or at least as alone as they would ever be, given the plethora of attendants who catered to the Amir’s every whim. ‘Yes. The princess’s brother stole it from us. He was sending it secretly with her, under cover of the Holy Lance, so that von Drachenhertz could use it to drum up support for a new Crusade.’ Hartelius shrugged. ‘I am telling you nothing you don’t suspect already.’
The Amir allowed one of his servants to slide on his chainmail. ‘I will never understand this obsession you Christians have with meaningless relics.’
Hartelius sighed – for he, too, despite his Guardianship of the Holy Lance, instinctively mistrusted relics. ‘They are simply a means to an end. They carry messages the way banners carry epiphanies. And your people are the masters of banners.’
‘This is true.’ The Amir eased the chainmail down over his shoulders and belted it across his hips. ‘And you have translated all these secrets? You have them at your fingertips?’ The Amir drew on his gauntlets, his eyes still fixed on Hartelius. ‘Perhaps your people are, even now, preparing to build your new Temple in Jerusalem, Hartelius, over the dead bodies of their enemies?’
Hartelius grimaced. ‘Truthfully? No. More than half the scroll remains to be translated. It is written in a language no one understands. Our scholars have been trying to decipher it for seventy years. Only when this is done will its secrets be revealed and the Temple started.’
The Amir nodded, as if he had been expecting Hartelius’s answer. ‘Then you must show it to my Sufi master.’
‘Why would I do that?’
‘Because he speaks every language known to man. If anyone can read it, he can.’
‘And he would help us? Even though we are his enemies?’
The Amir smiled. ‘He is Sufi. As am I. As, I suspect, are you, although you do not know it yet. We Sufis do not conform to what we are expected to conform to. There are greater things to adhere to in this world than meaningless dogma. Greater passions to be driven by than fear.’ The Amir closed his eyes and inhaled deeply, as though he were savouring something only he had immediate access to. ‘There is only one truth. And that is God. All else is meaningless. You believe that too, don’t you, Hartelius? I am not talking to the air?’
Hartelius gave a brief nod of the head. But he could not quite bring himself to speak – to bring the whole thing out into the open by placing his mouth upon it. The Knight Templar priests who had been responsible for his education had done their work well. Hell was a very real place to Hartelius – and the quickest way to get there, in his opinion, was to betray the dictates of the religion one happened to be born into, even if one did not fully concur with certain of its finer points.
Hartelius watched as the Amir completed his preparations, his face clearly reflecting his reservations about his friend’s intended course of action. ‘So you really intend to attack? Even though you are massively outnumbered?’
‘There is no alternative.’
‘You will be slaughtered.’
‘That is the will of Allah.’
‘You will be slaughtered becaus
e of us.’
‘No. The tyrant von Drachenhertz has been seeking an excuse to tame us for years. Now he has found one. It is nothing to do with you. This is between him and me.’
‘Have you thought about what we shall do with the princess during the fight?’
The Amir refused to meet Hartelius’s gaze. ‘You and your men are not going to be fighting alongside us, Hartelius. My Saracens would never accept such a thing, despite their utter dedication and loyalty to me. I am therefore sending you and your Templars over the mountains with a guide who knows every defile, every canyon, and every pass. A few well-equipped men may travel where an army may not. My Sufi master I am sending with you also. The death of such a man in a meaningless battle would be a tragedy not to be borne.’
‘I will not leave you now. This is an impossible thing that you ask of me.’
‘You will leave me because I ask it of you as a friend. The sacrifice of myself and my men is purposeless unless it be in the interests of the laws of hospitality. I gave you and the princess my word that you would be protected. The monster expects his answer tomorrow morning at dawn. He shall have it tonight, while his camp is asleep. I gave my word to no one. It is he who has chosen to bar my way into my own country. We will hew through them like the wind.’
‘You know that will not be so.’
‘But that is the way it will be written. There are worse ways to die. And tonight there is no moon. And the Franks will be blinded by their campfires. We have a better chance than you are crediting us with.’
‘Still. I should come with you. I can understand your reservations about my men. But I could fight in disguise. No one would need to know.’
‘Your place is with the princess, not with me.’ The Amir touched Hartelius lightly on the arm. ‘We will meet again, my friend, if it is written.’ He grinned. ‘And please remember this. Your stallion still has my mares to cover. That was your solemn promise to me. It is therefore of him and him alone that I am thinking in this matter. I am counting on you to fulfil your part of our bargain by keeping him safe for my girls. You understand me, Hartelius? What happens to you is entirely coincidental as far as I am concerned.’
The Templar Inheritance Page 12