Dagger of the Martyrs

by Steven Savile

  ◆◆◆

  Javed’s laughter was every bit as loud as he pulled the goatskins aside and let the sun into the cave. Samira looked frantically around their dwelling; she was alone.

  “Somebody touched me,” she said, moving to join the old man in the welcome warmth of the sun at the entrance.

  The old man laughed again, then coughed and had to catch his breath.

  “Your spirit has made itself known to you,” he said. “You have felt the breath of creation that lies within you. Be at peace, little fish. There is nothing to fear apart from what you carry every day, what you have carried every day since birth.”

  He set a fire in the stone hearth and began brewing a pot of his strong black tea. He motioned Samira to join him.

  “It did not feel like some disconnected spirit,” she said when she sat, cross-legged, across the fire from him.

  Javed smiled.

  “That is because it is yours,” he said, “and part of you knows that to be true by instinct, if not by thought.”

  Samira remembered the cold touch of the hand on her shoulder. There had been no malicious intent there, she was sure of that. But how could she know that?

  “I do not believe in spirits,” Samira said boldly.

  “That is of no consequence,” Javed said. “But if you refuse to use what the breath of Allah can give you, you will be leaving your best weapon sheathed, and will never fully be Fidai. It is the last thing I must teach you, and the lesson is a long one, but if you do not wish to learn, you may leave.”

  The last three words struck like ice in her heart.

  “Where would I go?”

  “Your fabled Bologna, perhaps?” Javed said. “But as your you’re your friend and master, it is my duty to tell you that you are not ready for that trial. You know too much about too little, and too little about too much.” She heard the admonishment in the old man’s voice. That, and disappointment. Samira took the cup from him when it was offered and bowed her head.

  “I am sorry, master,” she replied. “As you name me, I am but a little fish. Please, tell me about my spirit, about the breath of Allah and the magic of creation, and how it connects. I wish to learn all of it, so that I may understand.”

  “It is not a thing of telling,” Javed said. “It is a thing of doing. What you need to know is in the darkness, in the stillness of that place. When you are ready, we will try again.”

  Samira cradled the hot tea, trying to draw every part of its warmth into her. She wasn’t ready to feel that cold hand on her shoulder in the dark.

  I might never be ready.

  1307

  THE PALACE, PARIS

  Aymeric stood alongside his father. Ahead of them, a tall red-bearded Templar Knight, Hugues de Pairaud, and his father’s left hand, Theirn Charbonneau, a Knight Sergeant, stood at the main gate of the King’s Palace. On either side of the heavily defended causeway, men at arms, the King’s men, stood, swords drawn, or bows raised.

  “I need you to bear witness to what you saw yesterday in the Grand Master’s chamber,” his father said.

  The thought of accusing the King as a thief mad him sick to the core, but he had promised to serve, and serve he would. Whatever the cost.

  The walk through the pre-dawn streets had been a strange one. They had been cheered on their way by the few townspeople up and about their morning tasks. The air of violence was gone from the city, but not forgotten. Standing before the huge iron gates it was different. The anger lingered in the swords and arrows of the King’s men. Aymeric felt vulnerable despite the full mail he wore beneath his tabard and cloak.

  “What is your business?” A rough voice called from the other side of the portcullis barring the way to the inner courtyard.

  De Pairaud answered, his voice echoing around the causeway. “We seek an audience with Phillip. We are on the business of Jacques de Molay, Grand Master of the Knight’s Templar. There are debts to be repaid and wrongs to be corrected.”

  Aymeric noted the slight shift in his father’s demeanour. The warrior was on edge; alert, despite remaining perfectly still. His gaze flicked between the portcullis, the defences above it, and the armed men on either side of them. Aymeric allowed his hand to fall onto the hilt of his blade where the steel was scabbarded on his hip. He had no intention of drawing the weapon. They weren’t here in numbers to fight. This was a time for talking, if the King was willing to listen.

  Aymeric began to suspect they had walked here for no reason; the portcullis remained resolutely closed against them. But they waited. And they waited. And finally, as the sun rose over the causeway, the immense iron portcullis rose slowly, just high enough to allow entry.

  They walked beneath the huge stone arch into the courtyard.

  No sooner were they through than the portcullis fell again, locking them within the King’s stronghold. The Knights were surrounded on all sides by heavily armed guards, but no one dared suggest they surrender their weapons. Aymeric waited, not sure what to expect. It was a servant, not a soldier, who eventually showed them the way to his Majesty’s staterooms.

  Perhaps the King wanted to talk after all?

  ◆◆◆

  Aymeric had thought the King’s chambers would match the opulence and splendour of the Grand Master’s quarters in the Chapterhouse, but the room they were shown to was stark and bleak. Cold grey stone ran damp and a chill wind swept through windows open to the elements.

  Philip the Fourth sat on a tall golden throne. Aymeric saw the flakes where the gilding had peeled off to expose the rotted timber beneath the veneer of wealth. If ever there were a metaphor for this man and his kingdom it was this. In this dour chamber, with the huge drapes blocking out most of the sun, the King himself looked diminished on the decaying throne. The fact that he was already small of stature, and frail of bone meant he looked like a child sitting in a man’s chair, pretending at majesty. It was a pitiful sight where it should have been an awe inspiring one, Aymeric thought, walking the length of the room to stand before him.

  The man didn’t acknowledge their presence until De Pairaud, his big red beard bristling, brought all four of them to a halt, several paces short of the throne.

  “Why have you come here?” Phillip asked, finally looking up.

  De Pairaud answered. “We bring a message from the Grand Master of our Order,” the redheaded Knight said.

  “Oh yes?”

  “He demands restitution of all debts owed, all lands seized and all treasures held in bond by the Crown.”

  “You would make demands of your King?” Phillip said, shaking his head as though he couldn’t quite believe what he was hearing. “Here, in his own house?”

  “We require restitution,” De Pairaud repeated. It was obvious that the big man was struggling to keep calm. “If it is not forthcoming, we will be forced to take action, repatriating the lands we have lent, and the monies you have squandered.”

  “You dare to threaten me?”

  “It is no threat. We merely ask for what is owed,” De Pairaud said, and Aymeric noted a tremor in the big man’s voice, the anger bubbling up.

  “Owed?” Phillip replied, almost shouting as he rose in his seat. “Owed? It is you who owe me! You have a debt of duty and service to your King. But do you fulfil it? No. Your precious Order has been plotting against me all this time.”

  He took out a scroll from inside his robes and made a show of unrolling it. He licked at his lips. “Or are you going to deny the evidence, written in Molay’s own hand, detailed plans for the sequestering of lands in the Languedoc for a City State of Templars? The Holy Church has forbidden the Order from any such activities, and Molay knows it. Does he intend to go against both Pope and King?”

  “That is not why we are here, your majesty. We are…”

  The King’s rage boiled over. “But it is why I am here. I am God’s servant in this land, not you. And this…” He stood from the throne, stepped down off the dais, tore the scroll to scraps and threw
them in De Pairaud’s face. “This heresy shall not stand.”

  De Pairaud’s hand moved instinctively toward his sword, but the big man was held back by Aymeric’s father’s firm grip on his wrist. “This is not the time,” Lucian assured him.

  “This farce is over,” Phillip said. “You may leave, and trouble me no more with your talk of debts and restitution, for there will be none. Furthermore, I am of a mind to admonish your Order. I shall consider your punishment; a decree will be forthcoming.”

  De Pairaud’s anger could not be contained. He took a step towards the King, his hand an inch from flying. “Do not do this. It will not go well for you.”

  Phillip showed no such restraint. He slapped the redhead, hard on his left cheek, the skin flaring to match the colour of the big man’s beard.

  “That was a mistake,” Pairaud said, coldly. It was as though the shock of the challenge had centred the big man, calming his temper.

  “Who are you guttersnipes and warrior monks to tell me what I can and cannot do? I am your King, and you shall bow before me. Bow, or die.”

  “The Order only bows before God,” Aymeric’s father said, holding tight to the redhead’s arm to prevent Philip’s blow being answered.

  The King shouted in Lucian’s face.

  “Then death it is. Just remember this, you made this choice. It could have gone differently for you. Now, go and prepare yourselves, for if it was restitution you required, I am of a mind to give it to you.”

  “Do not act in anger, your Majesty,” Lucian said. “We apologize if you have taken offence, but…”

  “Shut up, warrior. Your words will not be heard.” The King turned his back. The audience was over.

  Lucian had to drag De Pairaud away. Aymeric realise that without his father’s presence the redhead might well have cleaved the King in two there and then and be damned with the consequences. It didn’t bear thinking about.

  The three older knights made for the door, with Aymeric following along a few steps behind. He was lost in thought, wrestling with the implications of what had just happened, which meant that he was not paying full attention to his surroundings.

  He walked straight into someone coming through the doorway in the other direction. Aymeric had to look up to look into the man’s thin face, and saw a pair of dead, dark eyes stare back at him from stony, chiselled features that had spent too many days in dark places long hidden from the sun. The man’s eyes were buried deep in their sockets, and his cheekbones looked ready to split the paper-thin skin. Aymeric had seen rats show more emotion, although the man cursed, loudly, addressing Aymeric’s father.

  “Keep your brats under control, Templar, lest I choose to do it for you,” he said.

  Aymeric’s father did not answer.

  No one spoke until they were once again out in the causeway beyond the portcullis and safely free of the King’s house and making their way back to the Chapterhouse.

  “Who was that man on his way to see the King?” Aymeric asked.

  “That, lad, was Bernard Gui of Toulouse, the church’s Head Inquisitor. Mark his face. He is nothing short of a rat bastard, lad.”

  1307

  THE YAZIDI VALLEY

  Samira stood in the dark.

  It had taken her all day to bring herself to face it, but she had made her choice years before to obey and learn, this was merely another step on her way to Bologna. At least, that is what she tried to tell herself as Javed pulled the goatskins into place across the cave entrance, plunging her once more into the quiet black void.

  It might be night out on the hill, but it was darker still, here in the confines of the cave.

  “The breath of Allah is your part of the grace of God,” Javed had said over more of the strong black tea at supper. “And it is as unique to you as your skin, but is still part of the whole, the all powerful one’s gift to that which was first made. It is breath, it is spirit, it is the whisper of creation, and it knows all, it sees all, and it will tell all, should you learn how to ask of it.”

  “And how do I ask?”

  Javed had laughed at that.

  “Before seeking to bind it to your will, you must learn to believe in it, little fish.”

  So here she stood again, in the dark, in the quiet, with the smell of black tea in her nose and more than a hint of fear in her heart.

  At least the tea masks the smell of fish.

  She went through the ritual as she had done before, closing her senses one by one, and banishing the smells, sounds, feel and sights of the cave swirling away from her into the dark. Her heartbeat was the last to leave her, the dull thud of the drum echoing in her chest, persistent and insistent for long minutes before she was finally able to dispel it.

  Then there was only the fear to deal with, the cold, bone shaking trembling in her legs and tightness in her shoulders as she tensed, waiting for the return of the cold hand on her skin.

  “It is part of you,” Javed had said, but that was easy to hear, less easy to believe.

  “You dream, do you not, little fish?” the old man had asked, and Samira nodded. “Well then, you already know the breath moves inside you, for your dreams are its dreams and one and one are all the same.”

  None of it made much sense.

  It is not a thing of telling, it is a thing of doing.

  And at the memory of those words, finally, she found her still place, the quiet, lonely spot in the dark that was solely hers. She sank into it, gratefully.

  She didn’t recoil when the cold touch settled on her shoulder again. This time she steeled herself, drawing on her curiosity to examine it dispassionately, concentrating on the roughness of the skin, and hearing something new in the absolute darkness–her spirit, if Javed was to be believed–exhale and inhale. Her senses returned. She could smell its breath in her face.

  It smelled of black tea.

  “It is yours,” Javed had said. “If you have a question, you only have to ask.”

  She knew what she was going to ask. She had held the question in her mind all of these long years, waiting for the right moment.

  She whispered it to her spirit, there in the dark.

  “How do I find Bologna?”

  There was a curious doubling sensation in her mind.

  Her rational mind knew that she stood in the dark of the cave on the rocky mountainside. But she was also, somehow, somewhere else, looking down on a strange scene that the struggled to give meaning to. It had the strange otherwordly feeling of a dream, yet the sights, sounds and smells spoke all too clearly of its really.

  ◆◆◆

  The room is full of hot steam and cloying odours; a high sweet perfume, like spring flowers, but far more heady and exotic to Samira’s senses. The steam slowly cleared around her and she found herself looking down her high vantage to a water-filled room containing half a dozen huge stone baths full of bubble and froth as if heated from somewhere below.

  She did not understand, but did not waste her energy trying to for fear that it would pull her out of the vision.

  A large pale-skinned man, with a mane of flame-red hair and a beard to match that fell halfway down his broad chest, walked into view through a doorway. Samira has never seen hair like it. Flame red. It takes several seconds for her to realise that he is naked. His flesh is covered in so many small scars they might as well be his armour. He is a giant of a man, but there is no fat on him. He has the taut, corded body of a fighter and one who works to stay that way. He crosses to the far side of the room and ladles more water onto the cone of hot coals, sending more steam and perfumed fumes hissing and billowing into the air before he settles down into one of the great stone baths.

  She watches the man as he lies there luxuriating in the heat and comfort of the water, his hand idly rubbing at his belly. He is not content. Something worries this man, Samira can see it in his eyes. Even so the steam and the perfumes work subtle magics on him and he finally relaxes, and even goes so far as to close his eyes.


  It is his undoing.

  Five men, all of them armoured and wielding wicked swords, surround the bath before he realises that they are there. Samira understands the words spoken by the largest of the five newcomers, although they sound strange to her ears.

  “Hugues de Pairaud, you are charged with heresy against the Holy Church, and conspiracy against the Crown. You will come with us to answer for it.”

  The redheaded man nods his head, and casually reaches up a hand, as if seeking aid to get out of the large bath. The youngest of the surrounding men drops his guard and offers his left hand. It is all the welcome that De Pairaud requires. In one lithe movement he pulls the younger man off balance, toppling him forward into the tub. As the redhead climbs out over the rim it is over the floundering body of the youngster, face down in the water, his sword already in De Pairaud’s hand.

  And now it was one against four, naked against armoured, but the redhead fights with a swift silent ruthlessness that almost wins the savage conflict despite all of the disadvantages arrayed against him. Samira cannot help but marvel at his calm, and the way he always grasps the limitations of his surroundings; how much space he has to make his dance, how to draw opponents in to areas where only one to one combat is possible. Blades clash, steel on steel echoing around the bathhouse. The redhead moves among the steam and spilled blood like a great, prowling cat. He has already dispatched one of the five to meet his God, and although the soaked youngster has climbed out of the bath to join his brethren, Samira, having seen the big man fight, does not fancy their chances of leaving the place alive.

  Javed is right. I am not ready to fight such a man as this. Even as she thinks it, the battle swings away from the redhead, the wet tiles not suitable for fancy swordplay, and while the attackers get a measure of traction from their leather shoes, De Piraud’s feet are bare, and finally betray him. He lunges, skewering another of the attackers in the groin and twisting the blade hard. He lets out a cry of triumph, the first sound he has made since rising from the bath, but his left foot slides on a patch of spilled blood and gives way from below him.