The Last Emir

by S. J. A. Turney

  ‘We have no choice. We’re trapped. Go back and we’re entering the noose you created for us. We have to cross the bridge, even if we have to kill those horsemen to do it. With luck the guards at the bridge have not heard about us yet.’

  It appeared that kill the horsemen was precisely what they would have to do. The two Almohad warriors spotted their quarry and, realising that they had ensnared them, roared victorious-sounding cries, then ripped their blades free of their scabbards and put heel to flank, charging towards the two Templars.

  Arnau had time, as he drew his own sword, to register the shock of the two local guards at the bridge. They were arguing urgently and dithering, perhaps unsure whether to intervene or to remain at their assigned place by the bridge.

  Beside Arnau, Balthesar also drew his blade. ‘Keep your mouth shut,’ he commanded, ‘if we are to get out of Al-Bulānsa alive.’

  Then, as the four riders converged, swords brandished, Balthesar suddenly whooped loudly and let loose a cry that Arnau had never thought he would hear from the lips of a Templar.

  ‘Allāhu akbar!’

  Arnau stared at the man, but still the old brother bellowed the Arabic refrain as he swept his sword around, whooping. Then Arnau had to concentrate on his own troubles. The man coming for him wore a fine mail shirt and an elaborate helmet with a pointed spike, and neck guards and a veil of chain that hid all but his eyes. He had no shield, but held his sword in his right hand and clutched the reins with his left, much the same as Arnau.

  This would be difficult, the young sergeant knew, for the man was well armoured, while Arnau wore none. He would have to be clever to land a solid blow on the Almohad, whereas any strike by the enemy that landed would likely end the fight.

  Give me, O Lord, a steadfast heart, which no unworthy affection may drag downwards; give me an unconquered heart, which no tribulation can wear out; give me an upright heart, which no unworthy purpose may tempt aside. Amen.

  The two men met even as Arnau ended the prayer, a shortened form of one by Saint Thomas Aquinas that had been a favourite of the knights at Rourell.

  Arnau’s saving grace, he reflected as they clashed, was that the man he faced was perhaps overconfident, assured of his superiority in both skill and equipment. His horse was bigger and more powerful than Arnau’s diminutive nag, he was armoured and strong. Arnau appeared little more than a ragged beggar with a sword.

  But while they might be the ‘Poor Knights of Christ’, the men of the Temple were no beggars.

  The Almohad warrior sliced with his sword almost nonchalantly, as if expecting to simply behead this ragged infidel with his first blow. Arnau ducked the swing, feeling the sword sweep out mere inches above his head. In answer to the attack, he swung with his own blade, a backslash that could have been devastating in other circumstances. While the Moor’s strike had missed Arnau entirely, his blow slammed into the man’s back. It lacked a great deal of strength, of course, since the mail shirt and the sword were not meeting head on, and the armour would rob the strike of much of its effectiveness, but it would certainly hurt. Most of all, though, it might unsettle the bastard.

  Arnau hauled on his reins. For a brief moment he considered riding on, making for the bridge, but two things stopped him. Firstly, the two green-clad men of the emir’s forces had moved onto the narrow bridge to block it, having perhaps decided that prudence was the better part of valour. Secondly, Balthesar had not made to escape, but had turned and was moving for a second encounter with his own opponent.

  Arnau spun to see that the Almohad had done the same. This time when they met there was no speed to the clash, and their swords met in the air with a metallic clang and a grating noise as blade slid down blade.

  What was it Lütolf had taught him? Quiet calm and mastery, maintaining his mental peace with prayer. But there simply wasn’t time. This was the heat of battle, not some duel.

  The swords flicked apart from another clash

  Arnau tried to force himself to calm. Concentration and serenity might be hard to come by in the press of a brutal fight, but despite everything, as he pictured the moves he had practised time and again in the dusty ground around Rourell, the words of Colossians 3:15 flowed through him.

  And the peace of Christ enjoy in your hearts, in which ye be called in one body, and be ye kind.

  With barely a breath of exertion, his sword as he turned met that of the other rider, knocking it aside. Peace and serenity, though, could only take a man so far, as the apostle Matthew knew…

  Do not ye deem that I came to send peace into earth. I came not to send peace, but the sword.

  His counter-attack was brutal, and clearly surprised the Almohad, who dodged and parried the first four blows and took the fifth across his mailed shoulder. The man cried out, but his shout of pain changed quickly into one of anger, and he came back with his sword sweeping this way and that like a scythe seeking a crop. Arnau found himself in trouble once more and, as the Almohad pulled back to strike hard, Arnau slammed into him. It had been a calculated move to throw the man off balance, but it almost went horribly wrong. The Moor remained safely in his saddle, his feet anchored in his stirrups, while Arnau, having no such support, almost went backwards off his horse.

  Recovering badly, he instinctively jerked the reins, pulling his steed away to buy himself time to straighten and prepare once more. Unfortunately, the Moor was not about to grant him the peace to do so, and danced his own horse close again, hacking down with his blade. With no protection and no shield, Arnau was left with no option but to throw up his own blade to block his opponent’s. The two weapons met with such force that the shock ran up Arnau’s arm to the shoulder and he felt his wrist go numb. Still, he managed somehow to deflect the blow and tried valiantly to counter-attack with his weakening arm. His blow landed, miraculously, but once more was turned aside by the fine mail shirt of the Almohad, which hung down, forming a divided skirt to the knee.

  This was ridiculous. He was fighting a losing battle. He could barely get in a blow and when he did he couldn’t cause any damage with it. Moreover, this street was not over-wide, and with each loss of ground he was getting closer to the house walls that would enclose him.

  It was with a heavy heart that he silently acknowledged the only path open to him. He positioned himself as best he could to encourage another horizontal sweep of the sword, rather than a chop against which he could only parry. He was rewarded with just that, the Almohad pulling back his blade and thrumming it through the air.

  Arnau threw himself forward over his pony’s neck. He was already lower, thanks to the relative heights of the horses, and his retaliation was simple. Leaning forward, he drove his blade into the enemy horse’s throat, ripping it open as he pulled the blade back.

  He hated doing that. Horses were such noble creatures. The lifeblood of this particular noble creature came out in a deluge that soaked the road before them. The horse did not run in panic. It did not rear, eyes rolling. It had suffered catastrophic damage, and all it did was fold up and topple. The Almohad fell away, and Arnau had just a moment to note the wide-eyed panic in the only part of the man’s face not hidden by the chain veil. Then he was gone.

  Arnau straightened in his saddle and watched as the horse fell to the road, jerking and thrashing. The Almohad stood no chance. He’d had no time, and there was no room. He disappeared beneath the horse with a crunch of bone and when he next appeared he was shrieking, his leg and pelvis flattened and misshapen, blood pouring from half a dozen places.

  Arnau heaved in a breath. It was no heroic victory, but at least it was a victory. He looked up to see Balthesar despatch the other rider with a deft flick of his blade. The second Almohad lurched back in his saddle, sword falling from dying fingers as his horse trotted off up the street, carrying the swaying body.

  ‘Say nothing,’ hissed the older Templar as he pulled close for a moment.

  A commotion drew their attention, and they turned to look back up the street
whence they had come. The Lion of Alarcos sat astride his mount at the crest of the hill, half a dozen men around him.

  Behind Arnau, the two men of the emir’s force started shouting angrily. The young Templar felt a moment of panic, but Balthesar threw him that warning glance once more and as they turned, Arnau realised the two green-clad guards were, in fact, shouting at the Almohads up the street, and not the two shabby men before them.

  Balthesar led the way and reined in just before the bridge, bowing respectfully to the guards. Arnau glanced back. The Almohads were not pursuing them down the street, and the horse that carried the dead warrior was now milling about somewhere in the middle.

  ‘As-salāmu ʿalayka,’ the old knight said to the two guards in greeting, and then rattled out a stream of Arabic that baffled Arnau, yet sounded apologetic, contrite, and a little bit sad. Whatever he said seemed to satisfy the emir’s men, and the two guards stepped aside and waved them on across the bridge. Arnau turned as they crossed that narrow high arch. The Almohad lord and his men were still at the top of the street, and had not moved. Somehow there was more menace in that than there would be had he been racing after them and bellowing. It was somehow proprietorial, as though the two knights were trespassing on the man’s land and he would round them up and punish them in his own good time. The thought sent a shiver through Arnau.

  They crossed the bridge and made for a narrow trail through the olive grove. As they passed the nearest trees first the Almohads, then the town, and finally the bridge were all lost from sight. Walking the beasts along between the ancient gnarled trunks in the sizzling noon sun, Arnau took a deep breath.

  ‘I apologise, Brother. That was foolish.’

  Balthesar nodded. ‘That it was.’ He seemed to un-tense and relax. ‘In the end no harm came of it, and we are moving once more. All will be as it shall be, for God’s plan is unknowable, but it is all.’

  ‘I hope you’re right. How did we get out of that? At the very least I expected to be arrested by the emir’s men.’

  Balthesar shrugged. ‘I told them we were travellers from Egypt. It explains any slight quirk in my accent, and also means that we belong to a different branch of Islam to the Almohads. I planted a faint suggestion that our presence offended the fanatical Almohad.’

  ‘How do you know all these things?’

  ‘I told you before, Arnau, I was not born a Templar.’

  ‘I’m starting to wonder if you were born a Moor.’

  Balthesar chuckled. ‘Not quite. All right. It would seem that our path is somehow intertwined with that of Abd al-Azīz back there. If we are to work together effectively, perhaps it is time I told you a few things. We have a long and fairly solitary journey ahead of us now.’

  ‘And perhaps you could teach me a little Arabic? It could be very useful.’

  Balthesar nodded. ‘Perhaps. One thing I did learn before you ran into the market screaming my name and elbowing innocent shoppers was our route onwards.’

  Arnau felt his face flush again at the reminder of his impetuous actions.

  ‘It seems that there is a lesser-used path,’ Balthesar went on, ‘that crosses the entire range of hills and mountains in the north of the island. It should take between two and three days to traverse, for it is apparently high, narrow and quite difficult in places, but will eventually bring us within a few miles of the fortress of Alaró. It is also a trail that has been used since ancient times, by traders and mountain folk. Given those facts, I am almost certain that it is the very path that Father Lucas took with the relic. And if that is the case then it is somewhere on that road, in the next few days, that we will reach the place where the bone stopped.’

  To Arnau’s mind that was still a little feeble as plans went, but it was more than he’d expected at least, and it would be good to move to somewhere a little secluded. He would be able to talk openly.

  ‘Unfortunately,’ the older knight added, ‘you attracted the enemy before I could properly resupply. We have melon and fresh bread, but no meat. Until we find a village or farm, we’re back on the salted fish.’

  Arnau’s grimace said it all.

  Chapter Five

  Saturday, 5 June 1199

  The lesser-known rural road of which Balthesar had learned spent its first three or four miles winding up a wide, cultivated vale of fields and olive groves, the sides of the valley gradually rising higher and higher with each pace of the horses. Arnau might have been lulled into a false sense of security over the ease of the route ahead, had those rising hills not presaged harder terrain in the coming hours and days.

  As they passed along the dirt road, the only other sign of life occasional farm workers visible in the distance tending to their crops, Balthesar remained irritatingly silent, though Arnau quickly realised the old knight was marshalling his thoughts on events of long ago, of which he had probably rarely spoken. Indeed, he was probably sifting through his life story and selecting only the parts that were pertinent to their current situation, and which were not overwhelmingly private.

  They were beginning to climb at the end of the flat land, the road snaking up the side of the valley and becoming more difficult with each minute when Brother Balthesar finally began.

  ‘I have said more than once that I was not born a Templar,’ the old warrior said simply. ‘None of us were, not even you. And one day, when you are grey-bearded and accompanied on some journey by a plucky youth with more hunger for glory than sense, you will end up relating the tale of Sister Titborga, the villainous Don della Cadeneta, and your strange arrival at the house of Rourell. For even at your tender age your story is already full of dark deeds and mystery. Can you even begin to imagine what men like Brother Ramon and myself have been through in our long years?’

  He coughed and peered up ahead at the rising track which stretched ahead as a grey line in a mostly grey landscape. ‘Like this road, my own journey has had its ups and downs and has not been the easiest of paths. I will not delve too much into my youth, for I see no need. Suffice it to say that I was brought up as a Christian in a true Christian household, but that my family paid their extortionate taxes to a Moorish lord, for I was born in the south of the peninsula. As a young man I lived among Moors, and I came to see them as a simple fact of life, rather than an enemy overlord. When my father decided that I needed to learn a trade, I studied as a carpenter with a Moorish craftsman, and if I say so myself I had some talent in that area. When I tired of that life, and my parents had joined the host in heaven above, I took what money I had accrued, bought a cheap sword and sought out a teacher.’

  ‘You were not a knight? You were a carpenter?’ Arnau said, surprised, though more than once over the winter he had seen Balthesar turn his hand to some matter of woodworking in the repairs to the preceptory, so he should have suspected something of the sort.

  ‘Jesus was but a simple carpenter, Arnau de Vallbona,’ the old knight reminded him. ‘Let us not show undue pomposity.’

  ‘It wasn’t meant to sound arrogant. I was just… surprised.’

  ‘Yes, well. Anyway, I found a good trainer. He was old, and unusually cheap, but he had good skills, and he put me firmly on my path. By the time I ended a year with him, I was a competent swordsman.’

  ‘But why choose the sword, if carpentry was what you knew?’

  The older brother threw him an irritated look. ‘Are you planning on interrupting constantly?’ His gaze strayed across the hills and peaks ahead, and he settled back into his story. ‘I knew there was good money to be made with the sword. There was endless trouble with bandits, and the local emir preferred to pay mercenaries to deal with his problems than waste good men. And so I joined one of the bands of hunters. For five years I did nothing but track and kill bandits. If a man needs practice at war, I heartily recommend such a path. It is a solid way to learn, as long as you can stay alive.’

  He breathed deeply in the pause that followed, and Arnau could see something – pain? – in the old man’s eyes.
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  ‘One day my band was on the trail of a dozen black-skins from across the water in Moorland who had been terrorising certain villages. There were a score of us, and we were experienced, so we had little fear of this particular group. We were, in fact, overconfident. We tracked them to a group of caves high in the hills near a gorge, clustered around an old, rock-carved ruin. We had split into four groups of five. I only knew things had gone wrong when we closed on the ruin from the heights above – we were the group given the difficult and slow route around behind the enemy camp, climbing rocks much of the time.’

  A shadow of grief passed across his face. ‘I watched with my companions from the high rock as our captain was led out into the open ground with his hands bound behind his head, along with his own four men in a similar state. Our intelligence had been wrong. There were not a dozen of them, but at least three times that number, and they had had men in position all around the valley watching the approaches. As we watched, the other two groups of hunters were gradually brought in until fifteen warriors were lined up. We five had somehow escaped their notice, perhaps because we had come by such a difficult route.’

  He fell silent. There was a difficult pause, and finally he sighed. ‘I watched all fifteen of my friends pushed from a cliff to fall, screaming, to their doom. It is a scene that replays behind my eyes on all bad nights, even after all these years. And I think I must stop the tale there for now.’

  The silence reigned supreme then for more than an hour, Balthesar unwilling to speak further, and Arnau too respectful to push for it, though he itched to hear more. The terrain became more and more difficult now, with the grassy plain having long gone, and the scrub-covered green and grey slopes now giving way to sharp, bare rock all around. Underfoot, the path was dusty and uneven, a slope fell away vertiginously to the left, and high forbidding peaks rose to the right.

  Finally, as they struggled on, Balthesar cleared his throat. ‘Soon, I fear, we will need to dismount and lead the horses. They will be suffering, even this small hardy breed.’