Arnau wasn’t so sure. In his opinion, when you were wielding only a pointy stick and surrounded by a pack of hungry wolves, the last thing you did was leap at one and poke it in the face. Still, he had been given instructions by a brother of the Temple, and was not about to shirk his duty. Plus, despite his worries, there was a deep, parched thirst for revenge in his soul that needed assuaging. These men had killed Brother Lütolf, and little would give Arnau more pleasure than gutting the man responsible.
The horses ready and tethered near the stable doorway, Arnau and Mateu hurried across to the armoury. Miquel was already there, his sandy hair soaked with sweat where it poked out from the mail coif around the side of his face. Together they armoured and then fastened on their sword belts, took their maces, shields and lances.
‘You won’t need the sticks,’ Brother Ramon said as he hurried through the door, already armoured and ready, and grabbed his shield. ‘We need to be quick and precise but also flexible and prepared for anything. Hard to be flexible with ten feet of wood tucked under your arm. Come on. We need to be fast. Dawn is upon us and I want to strike while we still have the poor light on our side.’
They were out in the courtyard a moment later and hurrying across to their horses, attracting surprised glances from the other occupants of Rourell as they passed. Arnau hurried inside the stable and grasped the reins, preparing to lead the horses out into the pre-dawn air. He noted with interest the empty stall nearby where Guillem’s own horse was kept, as the man in charge of the place. With a shrug, he dismissed the absence and led the beasts out of the stable.
Mounting swiftly, they walked their mounts out towards the west gate where Simo and Lorenç were busy gathering timber and nails and mallets, preparing, presumably, to seal the great timber portal.
‘Where are you lot going?’ demanded an authoritative voice, and they turned to see Brother Balthesar crossing the yard towards them.
‘Leave one gate for a little longer, Balthesar,’ Ramon said.
‘What are you planning?’ the white-haired knight asked, eyes narrowed suspiciously.
‘To put a pin beneath the enemy’s backside, Balthesar. They are altogether too confident right now, and that worries me. I would like to shake their faith in easy victory.’
The older brother stood for a moment, scratching his chin, then finally nodded. ‘Perhaps you’re right, Ramon. We’ll hold the gate until you return, but mind that you do so. No foolish heroics. Put the fear of Jesu into them and then get back here straight away. We’ve lost Lütolf. I will not relish holding vespers and vigil for another departed brother.’
The older man nodded to Simo, who pulled open the gate. The four men, one in glorious white, the other three in the black habits of sergeants, emerged into the gloom. There was a growing mauve tint to the darkness as the sun’s appearance neared, but the enemy campfires still burned low, almost extinguished, marking out the camps’ positions.
‘We need to be Odysseus and Diomedes,’ Ramon said, ‘attacking Dolon and the Thracians tonight. Or Brennus leading the Gauls into unsuspecting Rome, perhaps. But we should take more care. I do not want to be thwarted by geese like the Gauls or mess around duelling heroically like Odysseus. Straight in, kill like a laughing butcher, then straight out.’
They all nodded. ‘Do you have a plan, Brother?’ Miquel asked as they started to pick up pace a little, heading for the twinkling light where the track met the main road.
‘Ride in, kill villains, ride out,’ Ramon said, simply. ‘Be flexible. Be careful. Do not land yourself in danger and do not get yourself entangled or trapped. Ride through their camp and cut and kill, then turn and ride back doing the same. If by the time we have made two sweeps they are getting themselves together, we ride for Rourell. If they are still disorganised, we might try another strike. No singing or shouting, though. Stay silent. A silent enemy is a frightening one, for they cannot as easily be identified and numbered. And we do not want other camps rushing to cut off our escape due to the noise. Are we all clear?’
There was an affirmative chorus.
‘Good, because we need to go now. The sun is almost here, and they will hear and see us coming shortly. Put hoof to stone at speed. Ride.’
The four men kicked their horses into a faster pace, breaking from a trot into a canter. Then, as they covered half the distance to the main road and their objective, they moved up to a gallop. Ramon, Miquel and Mateu drew their swords, shields settled in place with those hands also holding the reins. Remembering Lütolf’s scathing remarks, Arnau almost followed suit, but still found himself unhooking the mace from his saddle and looping the leather thong around his wrist. Old habits were hard to break, and he wasn’t wholly sure he really wanted to break this one.
The enemy camp was sheltered by the dotted trees of a disorderly olive grove with thick grass beneath, just to the far side of the junction. Even in the dim glow of pre-dawn, Arnau could see the shapes of their tents cast into stark shadow by the low golden glow of the dying fire. There was not a sign of movement, though it would be a foolish force who had not left even one pair of eyes on the night landscape beyond the fire. Arnau found himself praying to the good Lord that the brigands in the pay of della Cadeneta were so sure of themselves in their overwhelming numbers that they could not envisage danger and had left insufficient guard.
Brother Ramon directed the attack in silence, beneath just the drum of sixteen hooves. His sword jabbed towards Mateu and then out left. Towards Miquel and right. Towards Arnau and forward.
The lookout was asleep.
Arnau grinned and threw his thanks up to God. The man in the drab brown tunic, his shield propped against the rock upon which he sat and his sword still sheathed, blinked awake in shock at the thunder of hooves so close. He rose, wide-eyed and desperate, hand going to the hilt of his sword as he opened his mouth to yell a warning to his fellows.
He got as far as ‘Ah— urk,’ as Ramon’s sword took him in the side of the neck, robbing him of life and cutting through windpipe and gullet in the process, ending his warning before it began. The man fell in a heap, hand still on the undrawn sword.
Mateu and Miquel disappeared now on the other side of the nearest tents, and Arnau followed the knight as he passed between two more and into the ring by the campfire. Their luck had been astonishing for its element of surprise, but before they could begin to cause havoc, a second picket, sitting on the far side, somewhere in the olive grove, began to yell.
The commotion kicked in an instant later. Voices called from the tents in a panic, accompanied by the distinctive sounds of people arming themselves in a hurry. Ramon glanced over his shoulder at Arnau and used his sword to indicate the second watchman out in the field.
‘Kill that one.’
As Arnau nodded and galloped past the knight, skirting the glowing remains of the night’s fire, Brother Ramon began God’s work. A bandit, drawn by the commotion, emerged from his tent, sword in hand, and barely had time to straighten and look up before his face sprouted three feet of gleaming steel. Ramon reined in his horse, wrenching his blade back from the brigand’s head, twisting it as he did to ease its withdrawal. The man, dead before he could land a blow, toppled back into his tent doorway, earning a cry of shock from a fellow within. Ramon, sharp-eared, estimated the location of the voice, drove his mount three steps around the tent and slammed his blade through the canvas. He was rewarded with a meaty thud and a scream as the man whose shout had betrayed his location even in the gloom died without even leaving his tent.
Arnau watched all this in the blink of an eye as he passed through the camp, making an almost cursory swipe at a body emerging from a tent and being rewarded with a grunt of pain. He’d not killed the brigand, but had left a mark the man would remember him by if he lived.
Then he was in the trees.
The second lookout had been watching the dreadful events unfold in his camp, trembling. He’d picked up his shield and drawn his own sword, standing beside a g
narled log upon which he’d been sitting, but the sounds of butchery and death, and the sudden sight of a black-clad Templar on a horse bearing down on him was too much.
He ran.
Arnau, briefly, considered turning and riding back, leaving the man. He was only one cowardly thug, after all. But somehow the memory of having let those two red-tunicked men of della Cadeneta flee into another treeline so many days ago robbed him of the will to abandon pursuit. He charged, picking up speed once more.
The man hurtled between the olive trees, casting away his shield as an unnecessary encumbrance and trying to put as many twisted ancient trunks between him and his black-clad pursuer as possible. Arnau was having none of it this time. He’d let those men go that once. He’d not had the chance to strike the men who attacked Maria. He’d had to flee the farmhouse and leave the men who’d killed the German knight to their wicked victory. Not this time.
Ignoring the whipping of branches against his mail, habit and skin, he ducked low to reduce the chances of being unhorsed and bore down on the terrified lookout, who as he ran was beseeching God at the top of his voice to help him.
‘God has no mercy for the wicked,’ Arnau snarled as he rounded an ancient bole and found himself less than ten paces from the desperate bandit.
‘Please,’ the man begged, head turning to implore Arnau for mercy even as his legs carried him onwards.
The Lord was with the Templar, needless to say. Without his eyes on the path ahead, the man’s foot caught a half-buried root and he stumbled. He did not fall, for all his momentum and desperation, but slipped into a strange circling lope as he tried to retain his footing, even unbalanced as he was.
Arnau’s mace swung out and struck the back of the man’s head.
The result was appalling even to the young horseman. The villain was bare-headed, and the mace’s iron points smashed through the skull as though it were little more than eggshell, mashing the brain within and peppering it with shards of broken white bone.
The body continued loping forward for a moment, conscious will ripped away but maintaining momentum. Then, in a graceless tangle, the figure slumped to the ground, spilling brain and mush and blood out onto the dark grass.
Arnau felt his gorge rise at the sight, turned his head away from the twitching, spasming corpse with half a head. Hardening himself, he remembered how these men and their devious master were responsible not only for this mess as a whole, but also specifically for the death of two brothers of the Temple.
Wheeling his horse and leaving the dreadful shaking mess in the grass, Arnau put heel to flank and rode back for the camp.
The sun suddenly put in its first appearance, a blade of bright light cutting across the world.
Moving at a slightly more careful pace now, swerving around trees, Arnau reached the camp to find the job all but done. As he emerged from the trees, he could see that a few of the brigands had managed to arm and gather in a small group, backs to one another. Seemingly Ramon had deemed it sensible to continue the fight after their first sweep, since all three of them were there, two men in black and one in white, hacking and slashing at the small group of desperate defenders, all that remained of a camp taken horribly unawares in the dark.
Arnau saw it from his vantage point away from the fight, and his blood ran cold.
Not again.
Almost a repeat of the death of his lord Berenguer. Ramon and Mateu were busy smashing steel into desperate flesh, and Miquel was with them in the fight, but from here Arnau could see death closing in on the sergeant in charge of the mill. One of the fallen, presumed dead, was rising unsteadily to his feet, clutching at a wound, but with wicked blade in hand, right behind the Templar.
‘Miquel!’ Arnau bellowed at the top of his voice, urgently, once more kicking his steed into a thundering pace, desperate to stop what he could see coming.
The sergeant heard the shout, turned in surprise, looking for the source of his called name. The fallen bandit struck, his blade slamming into Miquel’s unprepared side. Arnau felt a tiny thrill of hope. He’d seen such sword wounds plenty of times, and even from a distance, it looked as though the armour had repelled the blow. At least, if the blade had penetrated Miquel’s mail hauberk, it had not been the deep and direct killing blow the bandit had intended. With God’s grace, Miquel would survive the attack.
The sergeant, taken completely off guard by the stab, yelped in pain, suggesting that the blow had been at least partly successful. Miquel turned, attempting to bring his own sword down on the already wounded thug, but the pain in his side was too much and he cried out, and instead tried to dance his horse around. But Arnau was there. Leaping two fallen bodies and a planted spear, he leaned left in the saddle, grunting at the ache this brought in his own stitched cut there, and swept out with his mace. The iron head, still coated in the hair and gore of the watchman, slammed into the bandit’s arm just below the shoulder, snapping it like dry, brittle kindling. The man screamed, sword falling from his hand, and collapsed to the ground.
‘Time to go,’ shouted Brother Ramon, his concerned gaze levelled at this latest incident. Arnau, ignoring the howling man he’d just ruined, pulled in next to Miquel as the four of them made to depart the camp. The black habit at the man’s side was ripped, and Arnau could see the shattered links of the broken mail beneath, turned gleaming red with the man’s blood. His heart skipped but, as the man hissed in pain, Arnau noted the brightness of the blood, which gave him hope. A damaged liver produced dark blood, and the blade would be unlikely to have cut the bowel so close to the sergeant’s side.
They broke from the villains’ camp and hurtled back along the access track at breakneck pace on rapidly tiring horses, making for the walls of Rourell, which now glowed a welcoming golden brown in the dawn sun amid the still-dark fields below.
They were perhaps halfway back to the preceptory when the alarms began to sound throughout the surrounding camps in response to their raid. Enveloped in the din, they reached the walls of the preceptory just as Simo and Lorenç wrenched the gate wide open. The four men rode in and came to a halt. Simo and Lorenç slipped the locking bar in place and then began, with the latter’s twin brother helping, to move barrels and tables in front of the timber, blocking it and bolstering it against damage.
Preceptrix Ermengarda had two of the sisters with her in the centre of the courtyard, both struggling under the weight of quivers of quarrels. Titborga and Carima. The four men slid from their saddles, and as he did so Miquel squawked at the pain in his side and dropped his shield to clutch his ribs. The preceptrix, eyes suddenly sharp and concerned, moved towards them, beckoning to Carima.
‘How is it?’ she asked, approaching Miquel, who carefully, gingerly, lifted the habit out from the wound, tearing the black cloth to make the hole larger and display the broken mail and torn flesh beneath. There was quite a bit of blood.
‘Carima?’
The Jewish-blooded sister hurried to the sergeant’s side, dropping the quivers to the ground in the process, and started to wipe away blood carefully with her white habit. She frowned at the wound beneath.
‘Worse than Vallbona’s, I’m afraid. Debilitating for now. I will need to clean out the wound, as there are metal and cloth fragments inside that will fester and cause rot. Then he must be stitched and bound. But I believe his organs to be intact. As long as fever does not take him Brother Miquel should recover, but he will be of no use in the coming days.’ She turned from the preceptrix to the wounded Brother. ‘We will go to your dormitory. I will stitch you there and settle you for the time being. You must not stand or even rise to a seated position without consulting me first. Do you understand?’
Arnau marvelled at the authority in the sister’s voice. What was it about the women of Rourell that made them more fearsome and more commanding than any Crusader lord surrounded by men at arms?
The young sister turned to her mistress for confirmation, and Ermengarda nodded. It was, of course, as forbidden for a nu
n to enter the male dormitory as it was the other way around, but when it came to the practical application of medical care, the preceptrix was not about to let a man suffer for a simple rule. Besides, the chances of any of the men spending time in there with her at the moment were rather small.
Miquel and Carima made their way across the courtyard, the former grunting with every step, the latter fussing over him and sending Simo for her medical bag. The preceptrix took two more steps and stopped in front of Brother Ramon.
‘Tell me it was worth it.’
‘It is never worth seeing a comrade wounded, Sister,’ Ramon replied seriously.
‘Quite. But since there is nothing we can do about that, did you achieve success in your endeavour?’
Brother Ramon nodded. ‘I believe so. We killed more than twelve of them and put the fear of God in them. You can hear the alarm going around their camps even now.’
‘You are aware that this act might precipitate an attack earlier than we might otherwise expect?’
‘Yes, Preceptrix. But it is a calculated risk. We may have spurred things on and brought forward the coming cataclysm, but in doing so we have made several subtle changes to the enemy. Their confidence will be shaken. They have lost a dozen men, which means a dozen fewer to climb these walls. They will no longer be calm and confident. They will be watchful and alert, which means they are not getting as much rest and preparation as they were. And we have got the measure of them. They may be numerous, but they are not soldiers. I do not fear their approach as I would the men at arms of Cadeneta. In being forced to rely upon mercenaries for appearances’ sake, he has by necessity scraped the bottom of the barrel.’
‘And I have cast my dice,’ the preceptrix said mysteriously. ‘I hope you are right.’
‘And those?’ Ramon asked, gesturing at Carima’s quivers of bolts that Titborga was struggling to gather up with her own burden.
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