Dagger of the Martyrs

by Steven Savile

  ◆◆◆

  They found the King trapped in a market square in the centre of the city.

  His guardsmen were packed in a tight circle around him, steel drawn, shields raised, but despite their swords and mail, the angry crowd of townsfolk with nothing more than clubs, crude cudgels, pitchforks and scythes had them pinned down, besieged and hemmed in on all sides.

  The mood was ugly.

  This King had never been well liked, and in recent months the dislike had turned to a deeper, darker, hatred with his extravagances in stark contrast to the trials and tribulations crippling the honest, decent people of the city after a harvest ruined by a damp summer, hardship made worse by brutal taxation in terms of tribute to both the Crown and Church.

  Over the last two weeks more and more people had gathered in the city from outside Paris to protest at the King’s door. Now, mere sight of Philip had proved too much for them, and the ill-feeling had spilled over into riot.

  Three of the mob already lay, bloodied and cleaved at the King’s Guards feet, and the clash of sword against wood and metal rang loud around the square.

  The crowd pressed ever closer, baying like a pack of dogs for blood, furious in their frenzy to get at the King and tear into him.

  Aymeric’s father led the men of the Order into the square.

  Lucian De Bologna’s voice cut above all other noise when he shouted, “Desist. Lay down your weapons. In the name of the King.”

  The mob fell quiet, but Aymeric saw the anger still blazing in their faces. A hefty man in a leather butcher’s apron brandished a long heavy knife. He waved it in Aymeric’s face. The urge to run him through his fat belly was there, but his training, and his father’s command in tandem with it, was enough to hold his blow in check. For now.

  The aspirants of the Order walked slowly into the centre of the square, while the Knights themselves rode slowly into position. Aymeric realized that his father was ensuring that all present saw their weaponry, their mail armour, but more than that, the strength of their resolve. There might only be two dozen of them, but fear and intimidation made it seem like they were legion. It was the aura of strength would keep the mob at bay while they got the King to safety.

  His father reached the ring of the King’s guardsmen.

  “Your Majesty,” he said, loudly enough for all in the crowd to hear. “It is too far through the mob to the palace. The men of the Order offer their protection until such time as your full guard can be called. Will you accept it?”

  Aymeric excepted the King to be grateful for a rescue, but he saw doubt in the man’s eyes, and more than a hint of fear.

  Doesn’t he trust my father?

  Or is it the Order he is afraid of?

  There was more going on here than he was immediately understanding, but Aymeric didn’t have time to ponder on the implications of that look. The angry mob, sensing their quarry might be slipping through their fingers, found their voice again. Brutal, brash, raw, the cries went up again, and the crowd on the north side of the square surged forward, as though an unspoken attack had been signalled.

  That was all the incentive the King needed.

  He looked Aymeric’s father in the eye and nodded. “I accept your offer of hospitality,” he said. “But only until the body of the guard can be brought to me.”

  Lucian nodded back in return, then addressed the King’s guard.

  “We will shelter his Majesty in the Chapterhouse and keep him safe. You must fetch your brothers and return as quickly as you are able. But take care; this throng is in an ugly mood.” The King’s men left, taking the western exit, having to bully and shove their way through the press of bodies to make their escape.

  The unruly mob on the northern side swarmed in closer and closer to the men of the Order. It would be so easy for first blood to be spilled, and it all go to hell, but Lucian was not about to lose lives here if they could be saved. He waited until he was sure the King’s Guard had retreated, before turning to the Templars.

  “To the Chapterhouse,” he said. “And remember, there will be no killing here today. We protect the King, and we protect the people, each is as important as the other.”

  Lucian did not see it, but Aymeric did; the King was not at all pleased with that edict. There was pure loathing in that look. Lucian would be as well to watch his back in future. Aymeric wondered if his father hadn’t made a powerful enemy that day, then had no time for anything but movement and action as the men of the Order, with the King in their centre, left the courtyard on the southernmost side, shielding the monarch from the angry mob on the journey back to their Chapterhouse and safety.

  ◆◆◆

  It didn’t take long for Aymeric to realize that obeying his father’s order not to kill wasn’t going to as simple as it should have been; the streets were narrow and the mob had them penned them in on every side, pressing up into their faces, all rancid breath and rage. Every yard gained toward the Chapterhouse was bitterly earned.

  A youth, no older than Aymeric himself, shoved a long-hooked scythe over the young knight’s head in a wild attempt to leave the King on his backside looking stupid.

  Aymeric halved the wooden shaft with one sweep of his sword.

  All his training and instinct demanded he pivot, swing, and cut again—the assailant’s neck was exposed. Not only was he vulnerable, he had no great skill with his broken tool. He would make an easy kill. Aymeric’s muscles, the movement ingrained, had already started to execute the killing blow. It was all he could do to turn the blade so that the flat rather than the edge caught the lad’s skull, but even that was enough to fell him. He hit the cobbles, blood at his ear and in his hair.

  It was the first cut Aymeric had made in anger. He felt no remorse for it, and never gave it a second’s thought. He didn’t have the luxury. Even as the boy fell, Aymeric was forced to counter another desperate attack, slamming the hilt of his weapon into the forehead of a screaming, spittle-flying face of a lunatic desperate to take a bite out of his neck.

  He followed in, delivering a brutal kick to the groin of a peasant taking a wild swing of his own—with a cudgel at the King’s head. Even before that man had fallen, he’d hamstrung another with a cut that would have taken the leg clean off if he hadn’t pulled the full of weight his blow.

  All around him the mob screamed and bayed and jostled, and now there was blood, which only made it more dizzyingly insane. They fell, injured, unconscious, bloodied…but not dead.

  Yard by yard the Men of the Order fought a tightly controlled and disciplined path through the city streets, while the King cowered, tears staining his dirty cheeks, pathetic and humbled, in their centre. He fell and needed a hand to help him back to his feet. The front of his robes were smeared from chest to knee in manure and muck. The man wiped at it, then look in horror at his hands, the crap on them worse than the horrors threatened by the hoes and ploughshares.

  Aymeric saw his father look over, a grim smile crossing his face before he had to fend off another attacker.

  If nothing else, this was a day of learning. Just as it had been painfully obvious the King did not care for his father, there was no mistaking the fact that the distaste was entirely mutual.

  ◆◆◆

  It took more than an hour of fighting to forge a pathway through the streets to reach the Chapterhouse doors. As they neared, more Men of the Order came, securing the streets from the masses. The wall of red crosses advancing toward them, swords raised, drained the mob’s courage. Outnumbered, outmatched, their angers gave way to sensible fears, and they scattered, running like rain off a slate roof.

  Aymeric, at the King’s side, helped hurry the man inside the gate, across the courtyard and into the safety of the Great Tower, glad it was finally over.

  Aymeric assumed that would be an end to the day’s excitement, but as the other aspirants were dismissed, he was told to linger.

  He joined his father, the two of them showing the King into the chambers normally
reserved for the Grand Master of the Order.

  “My guards must be brought to me,” the King said before the door was even closed, “I require clean robes; the best quality that you have and none of your tabards or smocks with that vulgar cross of your order. I am your King, so before you open your mouth to argue with, Knight, you would do well to remember that.”

  “I am unlikely to forget it, your Majesty,” Aymeric’s father said, with no effort to mask the sarcasm in his voice. The King was either too stupid, or too distracted by the horse shit, to realise he was being mocked.

  “And draw a bath, for God’s sake, I need to get this smell of shit off me,” the King said.

  “And water will do that?”

  The monarch bristled. “Just because I have accepted your hospitality, does not mean I will accept your insolence.”

  Lucian nodded. “As your Majesty pleases. I only meant you might require some perfumes or scented soaps. I have some experience with animals.” If looks could have killed, the knight would have clutched his heart and fallen. “But, be that as it may, it would be remiss of me not to note that our hospitality is the very least you have accepted from us in recent times. You owe us for your throne. So, forgive me for being blunt, but I am a believer that debts ought to be settled in a timely manner, even if His Majesty is not.”

  And with that, without waiting to be dismissed, Lucian headed for the door. Aymeric thought it best to follow. His father walked, not down the stairwell to the courtyard, but up, to the platform at the turrets overlooking the city.

  To the north, smoke rose in many of the districts, and large fires burned. He recognised one such pyre as the square where they had rescued the King.

  “There is a lesson here, boy. This is what happens when weak men rule,” Aymeric’s father said. “A King, a true noble man, commands the respect of his people or he is no King at all.”

  The inference was plain; in his father’s eyes Philip was no King at all.

  “What did you mean, father, about the King’s debts?”

  Lucian stared out over the smoke clouds rising over the city.

  “A time of reckoning is coming, boy. Our Order has shored up this feckless child’s base nature for too long, propping up his failures with our gold, lands we have subdued on his whim, and treasures we have recovered that, believe me, are beyond imagining. He has a debt to us that must be repaid. The Order must maintain its own power. But this King only knows how to take. So, he must be made to face the consequences of his greed. To do otherwise tells that bastard he can ignore us. And that can’t happen.”

  “You will stand against the throne?”

  “In the name of what is right, always.”

  Aymeric’s head spun. This was a new reality, but before he could even begin to wrestle with the implications this revelation presented, his father said, “I have another thing to ask of you,” Lucian said, finally turning away from the view. “Will you take first guard at the King’s door? I need someone I can trust watching over him.”

  His heart swelled with pride; his throat choked up and he almost had to whisper the answer, but it was the same one he had given, years before on the same spot.

  “I will serve.”

  ◆◆◆

  Aymeric stood guard for three days and nights at the door to the Grand Master’s chambers, his only breaks for food and four hours of sleep at a time. Out in the city the rioting continued with a ferocity that cut right to the heart of dissatisfaction. The people out there weren’t just angry. It was more than rage driving them. Rooted deeper. So many of the ancient dwellings had stood since the foundations of the grand city were laid now burned, others were already ash on the ground. The cowards who hid behind their walls had fled to their country estates. The King’s Guard had not come to the Chapterhouse; rumours were rife that the palace itself was under siege, the King’s Men forced to fight a desperate defence.

  The King didn’t take well to his confinement.

  He railed against his protectors, spitting curses and stamping around the quarters every bit as petulantly as Lucian had predicted he would. “Am I guest or prisoner here, tell me that, and remember you are talking your King.” he demanded, facing off with Lucian. He hadn’t taken the news he must stay at least one more night well.

  “Which one would you prefer, your majesty?” Lucian asked, not bothering to mask his enjoyment of the other man’s frustration.

  The King slammed the chamber door in his face.

  Later that same night, while Aymeric was alone on the landing, guarding the door when the unmistakable sound of splintering wood came from within the chamber behind him. His father’s orders had been explicit; he wasn’t to let anyone enter the room. There were plenty beyond the Chapterhouse walls who would take delight in dragging the King’s corpse through the streets to the howls of derision and delight from their riot. He steeled himself, ready to fight to save the man.

  He opened the door.

  The King stood by the left-hand wall of the chamber, one of the wall’s oak panels at his feet. There was a hollow dug into the stonework behind the panel. There were still several scrolls inside. The King was in the process of secreting something inside the folds of his robes.

  Aymeric knew better than to accuse a monarch of wrongdoing, even here in the Grand Master’s Chambers, so he merely walked over, picked up the wooden panel, and hammered it back into place with the hilt of his sword, making sure it was firmly fixed into place. The King, for his part, would not look Aymeric in the eye. He crossed the room to stand by the fireplace until the young aspirant turned to leave.

  “You saw nothing untoward here, boy,” Philip said. “There is nothing to report. That is the command of your monarch. Do we have an understanding?”

  In the morning, Lucian arrived with the King’s Guard, who finally led a contented King off and away through the quieter streets.

  The reason behind his change of mood became clear when the broken panel and missing papers were discovered.

  “Hell’s teeth!” Lucian spat, barging passed Aymeric and rushing through the passages to the chambers and the damaged panelling. By the time Aymeric caught up his father had heaved the oak off the wall and thrown it aside, and was on his hands and knees rifling through the scrolls. He only read as much of the contents as he needed to identify them before discarding them, until there were none left to discard. He stuffed them all back into the concealed safe place.

  “He has it, damn his bastard black heart.”

  “Has what?”

  “He knows everything.” It wasn’t an answer, but it was the only one he was getting. Lucian stormed away, face like thunder.

  Aymeric did not know what he’d allowed to happen, or what the King had stolen from them.

  But he knew it wasn’t good.

  1307

  THE YAZIDI VALLEY

  Samira stood in the blackness, as blind as she would have been under the night-black waters of the tarn. At least here she knew which way was up and which was down. She felt the cold, damp rock under her bare feet. Those two things were the sum total of what she sensed around her.

  She breathed, softly and slowly.

  Although she knew that Javed had left the cave some minutes ago to cover the entrance to ensure that the desert moon’s light could not penetrate it. The old man was both silent and cunning. And after the attack at the tarn, she wasn’t about to trust him.

  She listened intently, but the only thing she heard was the thud of her heartbeat, as loud as a great drum in the absence of any other noise.

  Be still.

  That was the only command Javed had given; there had been no mention of any number of breaths. He hadn’t called her by that affectionate pet name. He had given her a single command.

  Be still.

  She stood, her eyes not adjusting to the darkness without a glimmer of light to help. She knew the hearth was three feet in front of her, knew that the rock shelves on which they made their beds were behind her an
d to the right, and that there were goatskin bags of water alongside dried meat and filleted fish hanging from ropes to her left. But she could see none of these things. She could smell the fish, and taste remnants of smoke from the fire at the back of her throat.

  Suddenly that was all she tasted; the smoke, and resultant dryness at her tonsils threatened to make her cough.

  Be still.

  It was as if she heard the old man’s demand loud in her head.

  But now that she had smelled the smoke and the fish, every smell in the cave swarmed her senses. The damp furs that served as bedding reeked of wet goat; the strong black tea that Javed drank in profusion, the sweet, almost honey-like water that dripped constantly at the back of the cave. The darkness was alive with aromas, not all of them pleasant. There was something else, something she couldn’t place at first, even as she concentrated on it, trying to discern its true nature: her own sweat, running freely in the warmth now that the cave was sheltered from the mountain winds.

  Be still!

  The command was more insistent now, angrier. Demanding. She pushed any and every thought from her mind, focussing only on her next breath. It was the same technique she used when floating under the surface of the water. One by one she closed down her senses; the smells went first, dispelled into the dark, followed by the sounds, the drum of her heart fading into the far distance as she banished it. There was no need to close her eyes against the dark, but she did so anyway, and dispatched the yellow and green and red flashes that hid there away to join her heartbeat in the far away place. She felt the cold rock underfoot. She sent the cold spinning away from her.

  There was nothing.

  She closed her mouth, barely breathing, slowing with each breath until her body found the rhythm it needed for the dark.

  Finally, she was still.

  A cold hand fell on her shoulder.

  Samira’s screams echoed across the mountainside.