‘It cost England dear.’
‘Further reason why I stay remote and afar in the east. Yet life has been dull since Cœur de Lion left.’
Seated cross-legged, his face eager, Kurt chewed on a piece of salted fish. ‘Was King Richard the greatest of all warriors?’
‘None equalled him. He was impulsive, reckless, brave, strong, fought like no other man I ever saw. If he committed to battle, it would turn in an instant. If he charged the Saracen, they would melt to his strike.’
‘They say he killed many men.’
‘Scores by his own hand. On the route down to Ascalon, I was at his side when he led the Hospitallers and Templars and put the infidel to flight. He must have slain twelve with his lance and two dozen more by his sword.’
‘And you?’
‘Sufficient to merit my post as his chief protector.’
‘You must be proud of such exploits.’
Sergeant Hugh paused to reflect and take a pull of his drink. ‘Satisfied at a role performed, ashamed of excesses committed.’
‘You did wrong?’ Kurt had stopped eating.
‘There is such a thing as too much slaughter. At Acre I partook in the bloody and joyous killing of near three thousand unarmed souls surrendered to our charge. At Daron the following year I was with Richard when we threw the captured garrison to their deaths over the ramparts.’
The Franciscan reached and held his arm. ‘All sinners may repent, Hugh.’
‘Not this one, Brother Luke.’ The Englishman held up a hand, his thumb and fingers splayed. ‘See, the fingernails are vanished. They were lost to the disease we call arnaldia as our troops besieged Acre. Twenty years on and these are my keepsakes, reminder that I am but a common brute, am unchanged and beyond repair.’
‘In the eyes of God we are equal.’
‘The conclusions of men are not so generous.’ He emptied the contents of the bottle into his throat.
‘Yet you help us, and that itself is step towards salvation and the light.’
Sergeant Hugh yawned. ‘My charity is bought; my endeavour lasts until I deliver you to safe keeping at the monastery of Belmont in the hills above Tripoli.’
‘How many else have you saved in this manner?’
‘Too few to earn my fortune, a handful of half-drowned young. The rest?’ He poked a stick into the fire. ‘Who may tell what has befallen them?’
Discussion concluded, the soldier settled himself down to sleep. It was only later, when darkness fell and the quiet conversation of the children had lapsed to slumber, that the Englishman stirred again. While Brother Luke prayed on his knees in the blackness, the sergeant prowled by dying firelight among his weapons, tightening the horn nocks of his bow, oiling with linseed the blade of his axe, applying a clove of garlic to the tips of his arrowheads.
The low and gentle voice of the friar intruded. ‘Habit is difficult to break, my brother Hugh.’
‘We each of us make our preparation for death.’
‘Garlic?’
Sergeant Hugh rubbed the clove along a steel barb. ‘It spreads the poison, ensures a wound will never cleanse.’
‘I prefer to spread the Word of God.’
‘My creed is simpler: is one of wenching, carousing and killing. Does it make me a bad man, Brother Luke?’
‘A lost one.’
The sergeant chuckled. ‘A fellow countryman is with me, and a holy one at that. I consider myself found.’
Morning came obscure and grey across the mountains. Brother Luke was at prayer, Otto and Sergeant Hugh rebuilt the fire, and Kurt and Isolda had wandered to inspect the remains of a collapsed necropolis some two hundred yards distant. Alexander the Great had once marched this way, the route of his army littered with signs of civilizations destroyed and imposed. Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans, Semites and Franks, all had left their mark and buried their dead, all had conquered and in turn been vanquished. New arrivals had disembarked, a Franciscan and three children. Their footprints were unlikely to be noticed in the sand-buried tracts of history.
‘Razzia!’
A single word from Brother Luke, a warning in Arabic that a raiding-party approached. Sergeant Hugh rolled to the ground, motioned for Otto to do the same, and crawled up beside the friar to peer to the east. He was about to speak, prepared to dismiss the alert as nothing more than the hallucination of an aged mind, the illusion thrown up by weakening eyes. But he blinked and the shadows had gained size and formed into recognizable shape. Horsemen, perhaps twenty, maybe thirty, and they were hostile.
The soldier whispered back to the youth. ‘Stay low, young Otto. Don your cuirie and keep your sword close.’
‘I must rescue Kurt and Isolda.’
‘You will keep where you are.’ Brother Luke reversed sinuously into cover. ‘To show yourself is to invite the onslaught. Signal my lambs to remain mute and unmoving. They are wiser to go to ground.’
As though called, Kurt appeared in the chamber entrance to a tomb. He smiled and waved, took the gestures of the noble boy as encouragement to shout. His words carried faint, his movements suggested elation at a great find. He was not the only one to make a discovery.
‘They perceive us.’ Sergeant Hugh scowled at the evolving formation.
The friar added his own observation. ‘Now the cavalry spread.’
‘The easier to overwhelm us.’ The archer selected an arrow and stood to fit it to his bow. ‘What pity they fail to conceive the artistry of my craft.’
‘Will they not parley?’
‘Saracens on horseback have no time for settlement, no use for talk.’
‘Then may God be with us all.’
‘Amen to that, friar.’
Sister and brother had started to walk back towards their companions. They were ignorant of events, unaware of the developing pace. The Saracens were readying for the charge. A command was given, the horses moving from trot into canter and pounding to a gallop, the mouths of their riders opening in full battle-cry. Earth vibrated. Kurt and Isolda halted. Across the divide, Otto was gesticulating violently, pointing, his face contorting to give voice to a call that had acquired the accompaniment of distant and more disturbing sound. The children turned. Before them, bearing down, was something they had never met, a vision they had not expected. Hand in hand, they ran for a hiding-place and for their lives.
Sergeant Hugh discharged the arrow, a prized she-devil that accelerated with unnatural scream towards its closing target. Impact was abrupt and catastrophic. The horse reared at the onrush of noise, the steel arrowhead piercing its neck, driving through to pinion the rider in the chest. The cavalryman dropped his curved Turkish scimitar, rode the dying and bucking beast groundward as he himself died.
‘Welcome to the Holy Land, my friends.’
Collected and fluent, the longbowman released another flight. His indolence was departed, replaced by the confident ease, the focus, the trained actions of one who might have been vying in Sunday contest at the butts. This was his element and his very being. Otto cheered. The second shard had made contact and penetrated mail, the hit quarry flung aside in bloody confusion. Sergeant Hugh worked on, methodical and rhythmic, aiming at the leadership, taking out front-runners. He had moved forward for better view, stood alone at the periphery.
‘My second quiver. Fetch it to me, Otto.’
‘You must get back, Sergeant Hugh.’
‘When moment is right.’ He shied a little as a volley of Saracen darts bracketed his position in puff-bursts of powdered stone. ‘If I put them from their horses, I diminish their advantage.’
‘They still outnumber and engulf us.’
‘By whose estimation?’ The Englishman aimed and shot, his muscles bunched and straining to the effort.
Behind him, the friar and young noble made preparation for the fray. At any moment the travelling force of the attack would reach them, the Mohammedan horsemen arrive in their midst. The cries of the foe became louder, the wet and heavy impact of arrows
on flesh closer on the ear. Otto crouched and waited. Brother Luke seized a burning brand from the fire and toyed with it in his hand.
In a cascade of loose chippings, Sergeant Hugh vaulted a fallen slab, his inelegant retreat chased by mounted Mamluks. A javelin flew straight and missed his vanishing back. He laughed, spun low, and drew his sword.
‘Calm yourself, Zephyr. We shall prevail.’
Tethered to a pillar, his decrepit mount champed and whinnied anxiously at the spiralling scene. His master had often led him into rash and desperate venture, and this was such occasion. In demonstration, a large Turcoman in fur-edged helmet and brandishing a sword filled the space vacated by the soldier. The man twisted to shout to his comrades, encouraging them on, urging them forward to erase the cowering band of infidels. He had the advantage, the higher ground. The pelt and scalp of the fleet-footed longbowman were his for the peeling.
His grunted exhalation was one of surprise. He faltered, poised in the interlude between bafflement and realization, a warrior whose advance had been strangely checked. The Turcoman looked down. Protruding from his abdomen was the unwelcome head of a battleaxe, its blade buried deep, the hands of a young and handsome Unbeliever wrapped around its haft. Surely the boy was too untried to have inflicted so grievous a blow. With a hiss, the Moslem teetered and dropped.
‘They are among us, Otto. Withdraw to the centre.’
‘There is no centre.’
‘So make your quarrel with them.’
Sergeant Hugh ducked, a blade striking the column above his head and sending sparks and fragments showering down. He slashed with his sword, cut through to the bone. Another assailant dispatched. It was a fighting retreat that was disorderly brawl. Otto darted among the ruins, parrying, thrusting, attempting to hold the ever-diminishing line. He emerged from behind a block, but tripped and fell, rolling ungainly to escape a downward stab. A Mamluk held his sword high, prepared for the finish. Something caught his eye, a rock hurtling fast and connecting hard. As he clutched his shattered face, Otto completed the assignment.
‘May God forgive me, my lamb.’ It was the familiar voice of Brother Luke.
The Rhineland boy called back. ‘That is for Him, but I am grateful.’
More were closing in, pushing the three Christians to a point of no breakout or return. Archers had dismounted to join the fray, and the terminal phase would not take long. Trapped, the Franciscan fended off approach with his firebrand, harrying and baiting with the aplomb of an acrobat. Yet he would not kill. That was for ardent and noble youths who wore cuirie breastplates and had learned to joust from the cradle. That was for soldiers who had rediscovered their form. He would go to his Maker with clear conscience and clean hands.
Chapter 12
Through the drifting haze and pounding commotion, a trumpet-blast echoed. The sound of salvation, of ambushers being ambushed. Within seconds, tempo had changed, direction altered, and the Saracens were pulling back in blind haste. Inward rush had become outward torrent, men stumbling to flee, fumbling for bridles and reins, mounting up, spurring on. They did not get far. A detachment of Frankish cavalry, its lances couched and horizontal with deadly intent, struck them at a gallop.
The screams were of a different timbre. Fear displaced the joyful ululation of pursuit; cries of anguished panic filled the air once loud with expectation of quick victory. Defeat could be equally rapid. Token resistance was bludgeoned aside, stragglers soon dealt with. In the wavering aftershock, only the wild and terrified dash of a riderless horse, the wasted pleas of wounded Mohammedans, encroached on the silence.
A Templar knight rested on his bloodied sword and surveyed the unusual trio of survivors emerging from the debris-field of stones and corpses. The knight did not speak. He was exemplar of his kind, a Christian warrior clad in mail, his hauberk and chausses draped in the white mantle of his Order, his padded shoulder espaliers worn and rusted through patrol and skirmish. God’s work was never restful. Behind him, mounted on warhorses, men of his squadron trotted by, armoured and clattering behemoths hidden by triangular shields and the steel helms encasing their heads. Even their chargers seemed of unearthly form, their powerful chests double-strapped, their immensity swathed in hanging caparisons. It was a picture at once disturbing and reassuring.
Sergeant Hugh crouched to frisk a cadaver. ‘I cannot fault your intervention or its timing, knight.’
‘As I cannot claim surprise to find you at the midst of this escapade.’
‘You honour me.’
‘It is not intended as praise.’ The Templar nodded cursorily at Otto and Brother Luke. ‘And these?’
‘Otto of Alzey and Brother Luke of Assisi, voyaging pilgrims to our holy shores.’
‘They could not choose more bleak or brutal incident for their arrival.’
The Franciscan offered a calm and pious look. ‘We embrace such happening as we find.’
‘You will need to, should you live.’
‘If it be the will of God, I shall carry His message of light and love throughout these desolate parts.’
‘We too strive to spread it, through the point of a lance.’
At his feet, the English soldier had expertly stripped one body of its valuables, was tugging free a silver ring from the finger of another. The knight made no attempt to disguise his scorn.
‘You scavenge like a jackal, Hugh of York.’
‘And you preach like a bishop, knight.’ The souvenir-hunter relieved the carcass of a trinket and began to unbuckle an ornate belt. ‘Observe the hiyasa. Its plates are gilded, its patterns intricate and finely worked. These are no militia, no random group of foragers. They are the best the Saracens may send against us.’
‘We have noticed it of late. They strive to test our mettle.’
‘At least we are not found wanting.’ Sergeant Hugh bundled his trophies into a linen bag and stood to scan for further plunder.
‘Where now do you go, archer?’
‘Wherever my fancy or my new-acquainted friends direct me, knight. Perchance I will rest awhile on the shore, or take my spoils of war to sell, or pick over fresh cadavers that I find.’
‘You trifle with me, Hugh of York.’
‘I do not take orders from you.’
The eyes of the Templar narrowed. ‘Take care with your impudence. You are far from Acre and protection of your kind, beyond the bounds of your customary refuge.’
Sergeant Hugh shouldered his quiver. ‘I am fortunate to have ability and arrows that may outmatch the thickest of mail jerkins.’
‘Is that so?’ The point of the sword ground harder in the earth.
Coolly, the soldier drew a small knife and held it at his side. ‘Proof will lie in the heads and shafts I liberate from my kills.’
There was intensity in the passing seconds that might have escalated to violence or petered to nothing. With Templars it was hard to calculate. Their justice was often summary and extreme, their hand forced or guided by the spirit of the Lord. God was plainly a mercurial creature.
‘Brother Luke, Sergeant Hugh, come quick!’
At wordless instruction of the friar, Otto had slipped away to determine the fate and well-being of Kurt and Isolda. Now he reappeared, hurdling obstacles in his haste, his face pallid-white with shock, his voice cracked by discovery. The Franciscan seized and held his shoulders, gazed with forceful understanding in his eyes. Dread answer was already given. The two children had vanished.
‘What is to become of us, Kurt?’
He did not know, had never considered in his bleakest imaginings their voyage would finish this way. Otto dead, Brother Luke dead, Hugh the rough and vulgar bowman dead. And he and his sister snatched from their hiding-hole and carried off by rampaging heathen. The Franciscan had encouraged him to be strong, to be brave. Simple words and easy to heed when horsemen were not yipping and wheeling in threatening display, when despair did not envelop, when Isolda was not beside him weeping soft and silent tears.
The rop
e tugged and they jolted forward again, their hands bound, their pace determined by the plodding tread of the horse to which they were tied. Details were muddied, actions distorted in the chaos of the battle. There had been the noble boy calling, the dark insect-cloud of mounted enemy, the glint of swords and the dream-like wrench from sanctuary. He hoped his friends had not suffered greatly in their dying moments. But tales of Saracen cruelty abounded, were fed with breast-milk to every infant in the Christian world. A new reality, and he could scarcely pretend he was not terrified.
‘I am with you, Isolda. That is to the good.’
‘You have no choice.’
He twisted his hand to touch her fingers, attempted to show solidarity, to transmit support. Confidence that was nothing more than a confidence trick.
‘While we live there is hope, Isolda.’
‘I see none. I see evil men on horseback who carry us towards hell, infidel warriors who do not speak our tongue or share our God.’
‘But we still breathe, sweet sister. They have no wish or cause to harm us.’
‘I would rather they did, prefer it should they put us from our misery.’
‘Hush, Isolda.’ His whisper was harsher than he intended, was directed as much to his own aching fears. ‘We must keep faith.’
‘Why do they seize us? Why do they drag us onward for their sport?’
‘It is their way.’
She staggered and recovered, held upright by Kurt, pulled forward by the straining tether. Her brother murmured encouragement, willed her on. If she fell, they might beat her; should she faint, they might dispatch her with a blade. He let her lean on his shoulder.
With frenzied whoops, a Saracen horseman circled in from the flank and decelerated beside the children in virtuoso performance of balance and control. Silently he observed the captives, a remote figure with dark eyes and long moustache. Then a single cry, and he spurred away in a flourish of martial showmanship.
‘His stare, Kurt. It held such hate for us.’
‘He was curious.’
She turned her head to glance at him, seeking reassurance. He bit his lip and concentrated on the path in front, on the flicking tail of the horse, on bringing circulation back into his wrists. Surely these infidel would not have made the effort of their capture only to kill them at the wayside. Yet nor would they be rejoicing at the manner in which Hugh of York had peppered them with his arrows. Decision on survival could be a finely balanced thing.
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