The Last Emir

by S. J. A. Turney

  He approached the next turn and lifted the hammer, ready.

  No wonder the cellar door crashing open had gone unheard in the populated areas of the palace, for as he turned the corner, the roar of the furnace thundered along the corridor. A man in ragged clothes, stained with sweat and soot, was digging around in an alcove stacked with logs, filling a basket, his back to the young Templar, blissfully unaware. A bath slave, tending to the furnace. He could be Christian, Jew or Moor, since their colouring was almost identical in these lands, and they all by necessity spoke Arabic.

  With a profound sense of regret that he needed to do this, Arnau paced quietly along the stone floor, approaching the slave. The ragged man collected two more logs, turned to put them in his basket and looked up, wide eyed. Before he could utter a word, the young sergeant smacked him on the forehead with the wooden mallet, pulling the blow considerably, hoping simply to knock the man out rather than crack his skull like an egg. Clearly he had pulled the blow too much, for the slave staggered, a shocked expression crossing his face, and fell back against the filthy wall, struggling to stand. Before he could recover, Arnau hit him again, and could not tell whether it was the mallet blow that knocked the sense from the man, or the fact that his head then ricocheted off the wall. Whatever the case, the man fell in a heap. Nervously, Arnau checked the slave and his chest continued to rise and fall, so he lived.

  He contemplated for a moment taking the basket and masquerading as the slave, but to do it properly he would have to change clothes, and if he carried the logs, he could not wield the weapons. Moreover to do so would waste precious moments. Instead, he gripped his blade and hammer and moved on.

  He remembered the directions from this part of the palace, and quickly slipped through the bathhouse’s support system, briefly noting a side passage that led to a door which would emerge into the main bath area, hoping that with this being only a small complex there would be only one slave down here. A beam of white light, dazzling in the gloom, pierced the darkness mid-corridor, and Arnau paused, blinking, and looked up. Ladder rungs were pinned into the side wall, rising up into the light, and the temptation to climb them was strong. Up there was the roof of the baths, the access here for the slave to reach the top where he could open all the small, star-shaped windows above the rooms to vent steam and cool the chambers below. To emerge on the roof would see him out of these tunnels, but he would then be trapped in the heart of the Al-Mudaina, visible to all.

  Reluctantly, he passed the beam of light and moved on. He slipped past a side junction, which glowed gold, blasted him with heat and carried the roar of the furnace, and wondered briefly if he would fit through the narrow hole that was used to empty the place of spent ashes. Possibly, but like the ladder going upwards, he had been warned that escape that way would simply lead to another trap.

  He pressed on, the heat and noise diminishing now as he moved away from the baths. Three more corners, which he hoped he remembered correctly from his instructions, and there it was.

  A door.

  Not just any door, though, since this one was etched all around with a narrow line of silvery light. A door to the outside. Of course, if he had gone wrong in his directions since the baths, and this was not the door he had been sent to, then he could easily emerge into the waiting arms of Almohad soldiers, and he knew exactly how much chance he would have to escape a second time. He dithered for some moments, nervous about even trying it. If it was the wrong door…

  Lord, bow down thine ear and hear me, for I am needy and poor.

  Keep thou my life for I am holy, my Lord, and make thou safe thy servant hoping in thee.

  In the day of my tribulation I cry to thee, for thou heardest me.

  Lord, lead thou me forth in thy way, and I shall enter in thy truth; mine heart be glad, that it dread thy name.

  Not the full Psalm, of course. Surely the Lord would forgive him brevity and omission in the circumstances, but while he felt the need to beseech God for aid in this moment, he was equally aware of how little time he now had before his absence was noted, and his trail would not take too long to discover, given the unconscious bath slave he’d left in the tunnel.

  Knife or hammer? He’d been warned what would await him, and he needed a hand for the door, so the choice had to be made now. Could he – should he – kill? But then, would the mallet be enough?

  The thirty-fourth Psalm crept into his mind.

  Turn thou away from evil, and do good; seek thou peace, and perfectly follow thou it.

  The eyes of the Lord be on just men.

  Carefully, he tucked the knife away in his belt and hefted the mallet. His free hand went to the door. He probed it in the gloom, searching for locks and latches. There was indeed a lock, but his keen gaze noted no bar interrupting the narrow vein of light surrounding the heavy wooden door. Unlocked. Perfect. His hand found the handle and he turned it, pulling the door towards him.

  At first he tried to just inch it open gently, but the door was old and warped for all its strength, and it gave a long groan like an ancient giant rising from his chair. Realising that his cover was already blown with that noise, he yanked it wide and leaped out.

  He was momentarily blinded by the brightness as he emerged into the open air. The light was so intense and all-consuming that the soldier was almost on him by the time the shape had resolved in the dazzling blur.

  He was not an Almohad warrior, but one of the common palace guard, a green garment covering his mail shirt. He wore a sword, sheathed, at his side and his head was protected by a pointed helm surrounded with a white, turban-like covering. He had levelled his spear as the door croaked open, and even as Arnau’s sight cleared, he realised that the man was deliberating whether to strike. While the guard had not been expecting anyone to emerge from the substructures through that door, clearly slaves sometimes did, else why have a door at all, and why leave it unlocked?

  Had the man been certain Arnau was an enemy the blow would have come fast, and the Templar would likely have died, skewered here in the doorway. Instead, by the time the guard had made the split-second decision that Arnau was not supposed to be here and lunged with the weapon, the young Templar had reacted, ducking to the side. The spear shaft whispered past his ribs, and he swung the hammer high and hard, not pulling his blow at all this time. The wooden weight smacked into the man’s head with a ding, denting the helmet within the turban. No matter how much his fellow brothers had tried to persuade Arnau that the sword was the weapon of a knight, he still favoured his mace above all; this mallet might be crude and rough, but its usefulness in combat was much the same. The guard staggered and spun, one hand falling free of the spear which swung wildly in an arc, scraping along the wall of the Al-Mudaina.

  The man was a professional. He was dazed, but otherwise unharmed. Aware that he was now in danger from this unexpected visitor, the guard stepped back once, twice, thrice, letting go of the spear entirely as he drew his sword, shaking his head to clear it of the ringing. Arnau pressed forward, unwilling to let his momentum slow and the guard find sense.

  The sword came free of the sheath and Arnau leaped, his hammer swinging once more. The guard had backed away too far now and hit the wall, his elbow striking stone and the sword flailing uselessly out to the side, but even as Arnau’s hand came round wielding the hammer, the man ducked and the wooden head of the mallet missed him, thudding hard into the stone of the wall and sending shockwaves up the Templar’s arm and into his shoulder, bringing back waves of the pain that had begun to dull until now. All right, perhaps that would not have happened with a sword…

  The two men both staggered now, one still fighting the ringing in his ears and the difficult position of being backed against a wall, the other shaken and suffering from intense pain in the shoulders. It took precious moments for them to strike once more, and when they did so, they parried one another, the weapons bouncing away harmlessly. Another strike and this time Arnau had his hammer in place, descending, the guar
d’s sword blocking it, and the two became locked in that position, Arnau forcing his weapon down towards the man’s face as his arm slowly buckled under the pressure. The hammer would do little damage at such speed, but the man’s head was against the wall, so the Templar stood a chance at least of causing sufficient damage. The guard’s other hand came up now and gripped his sword blade, pushing back, and suddenly Arnau’s mallet was moving up and away again, the balance of strength shifted. Arnau threw his own left hand into the struggle, trying to force the mallet down, but that shoulder was the one he’d thrown three times against the cellar door and it had become far too weak, strained and achy even beyond the damage done by torture. It made no difference. The guard was pushing him back, and Arnau, tired and injured, was almost out of strength. Damn it, but what would Lütolf think? He was fighting like a street urchin now, like a wrestler or pugilist in the back alleys, and not the sergeant he was. He was going to lose this struggle, and when he did, there was little chance of recovering enough to win the fight.

  With a sigh of regret, he dropped his left hand once more from the hammer. The guard redoubled his effort and forced Arnau back, grinning a savage rictus of victory which suddenly fell away into shock. The Moor’s eyes widened in horror and all the pressure against the sword disappeared as his gaze slid downwards to where Arnau’s left hand had slipped his narrow blade from his belt, turned it in a single, smooth move, and thrust it between the man’s ribs. The chain mail shirt the man wore would have turned most blades, and even arrow points, but the knife Arnau had taken from the cellar table was so slender and sharp as to resemble the point of a bodkin arrow, and had slid with surprising ease into the mail, snapping links as it sank into shirt, then garments, then flesh, like a misericorde, designed to deliver the coup de grâce.

  Arnau stepped back, his hand falling away from the knife handle. It had taken every ounce of strength he commanded to punch the knife in through the armour, and now he was spent, so weak that he no longer had even the power to pull the blade back out.

  Blood ran from the man’s wound down the knife and dripped from the hilt. Arnau staggered, weak and feeble, away. He’d truly not wanted to kill the man, but in the end it had come down to that simple equation: him or me. He had to fight not to collapse to his knees, and watched with distaste as the guard did just that before toppling face first to the stone with a final sigh.

  For the first time, Arnau looked around and took in his surroundings. He was indeed outside the Al-Mudaina, and exactly where the wazir had said he would be. Before him stretched the private dock of the palace. To his right he could see an ornate gateway leading into the public areas of the palace. Directly in front, the Aragonese ship wallowed at its jetty, rising and falling gently with the low waves. To the left, through that great brick arch, lay open sea.

  He realised with a shock that figures were standing on the foreign ship, halted in their work by the sight of the brutal fight across the dock, and panic flittered through him. He’d been seen. Not by the Almohads or even the palace guard, mind, but even the common sailors of the Aragonese vessel would carry dangerous news. Word of this fight would undoubtedly reach Moorish ears swiftly, and from there the news would spread through the Al-Mudaina until someone important heard.

  He had to go, and he had to go now.

  Swallowing his fears and summoning up reserves of strength he didn’t believe he possessed, he staggered across the dock and toppled gracelessly into the water. The cold, salty sea closed over him, and far from bringing fear it felt more like a soothing balm as it washed his dirty and bruised skin, though the salt as it seeped through his braies brought a stinging sensation to the stripes of pain on his rear. It was long moments before he began to kick and rise through the dark currents towards the air once more.

  When he finally broke the surface and heaved in a breath, he was surprisingly close to the prow of the ship. Realising that the closer he was to the vessel the harder he would be to see from it, he closed on the hull and then swam slowly around the prow to the far side. Every pull of the arms through the water was almost cripplingly painful and he knew even as he rounded the ship that he would not be able to do this for long before his strength failed and he began to sink unstoppably to a watery end.

  Heaving in breaths and forcing every last ounce of strength from his ravaged shoulders, he pushed on through the water. At the far side of the dock lay another pier with two small warehouses, presumably where supplies could be unloaded for the Al-Mudaina’s ancillary structures, but to the left of them, where the dock opened out to sea beyond the arch, it was protected from the worst waves by a breakwater, which, as the wazir had suggested, was connected to the harbour walls of the main city port.

  He reached the stone jetty even as the last of his strength ebbed away, and it took him four painful attempts to haul himself up onto it. Even then, he could not stop, though his body shook with effort and pain. He was not being watched from the ship now. They had not seen him slip around the prow and to the far side of the dock, but sooner or later someone from either the ship or the palace itself would spot him lying on the stone and all would be swiftly undone.

  Exhausted and fragile he forced himself up, first to his knees and then to his feet, and staggered and limped away. At the end of the private dock, he took a small jump out onto the breakwater, almost failing to make it and plummeting back into the water. Wobbling a little, he regained his balance and staggered a few more paces. Then succumbing finally, his energy sapped, he sank to the ground and lay there, shaking, chest rising and falling in ragged breaths.

  He was free.

  He had no idea how long he lay there. Sleep was not possible, even had he wanted it, but his body needed to stop moving and rest, and would not even allow him to rise to his knees for some time. He simply lay there, shivering, staring upwards like a washed-up corpse, watching the sun move across the sky with infinitesimal slowness. He tried to estimate the time. Late afternoon, he figured. Perhaps an hour and a half from sundown.

  It took him some time to realise what it was he was hearing. There was a muffled cacophony around him, of sailors and port activity, the creaking of ships and the lapping of waves, the shrieking of gulls and the general hum and drone of life. But over it all there was a more urgent melody now, and hearing it brought back his sense of urgency. The body of the guard had been brought to the attention of someone who mattered, and the palace had burst into frantic life as investigations ensued. Perhaps they had already found the unconscious body of the bath slave? It would not take long before the furnace heat dropped without being fed, and the baths cooled. And the dead guard, the open door and the battered slave would inevitably lead to the cellar and the knowledge that the Templar had escaped.

  He had to go. He was outside the palace and free, but they would soon know exactly who had left and where he had exited and it would not take long for a search of the dock area to reveal the prone form of Arnau de Vallbona lying on the breakwater. Gulping in air and praying that he had strength to go on, Arnau half crawled, half rolled across the breakwater and down to the far slope, on the city port side, where he lay half submerged in the water for precious seconds.

  The shouting at the Al-Mudaina had increased in volume and urgency. No time to stop, though he felt almost willing to fail now rather than push any more.

  I slept and rested and I rose up, for the Lord received me.

  I shall not dread thousands of people encompassing me.

  Lord, arise thou; my God, make me safe.

  Arnau pulled himself wearily to his feet and staggered towards the port. He counted every step as he went, all the time alert to the rising tension and troubles in the palace off to his right, and at the thirty-third step, he passed a wall and the Al-Mudaina disappeared from view. Still, he would not be safe for long. He had to keep moving. Had to run.

  But at least he was free. He had escaped the Lion of Alarcos’s grip. He had escaped the dungeon of the Al-Mudaina. He would never again hav
e to visit that fortress and place his head in the Lion’s mouth. He continued to stagger and reel as he moved up onto the dock, passing a fisherman who seemed only half surprised to see an exhausted, bewildered and bedraggled man emerge from the breakwater. Arnau ignored him and moved across the port, passing along the dock, threading between seamen and merchants heading this way and that, unburdened or carrying documents, or weighed down with ropes or sacks. He ducked between stacks of cargo and gradually passed across the huge port to the far side, where he clenched his teeth against possible danger and made to pass inside the city walls. He could so easily have just disappeared into the wilds without entering the city again, but the wazir had been shrewd enough to prepare a horse for him, and Arnau was under no illusion as to how far he would get on foot today.

  Braced against potential danger, Arnau limped and staggered towards the gate. There were no black-and-white Almohad figures there, at least, but even the emir’s men could be dangerous now that in the city they answered to the Lion. Had word of an escaped prisoner already spread from the palace to the city walls? If so, this would be a very short walk.

  He approached the gate into the city chewing on his lip nervously, but as he neared the portal his fears abated somewhat. The two guards looked thoroughly bored, and were making no attempt to stop or interrupt the flow of humanity passing back and forth between port and city streets. In a trice he was through, past the walls and into the heart of Madina once more. His pulse slowed again, and his shivering subsided to just that caused by standing in cold, wet, clinging apparel.

  It did not take long to move through the streets and locate the next gate. He raised barely a look from the busy populace, and as he neared that exit the buildings thinned out to farmland and orchards once more. Only half a dozen structures huddled close to the gate, and the stable was easy to identify.