Dagger of the Martyrs

by Steven Savile

  ◆◆◆

  The other women were keen to tell Samira what to expect, though to her ears their stories sounded more like threats than promises. Even so, Samira maintained her deception, pretending not to understand as they washed and bathed her and clucked around like hens. The women rubbed scented oils into her skin, and dressed her in fine shirt and pantaloons comprised of three layers of bright silks. It felt as soft as goat’s kid hair to the touch, and as light as a mountain breeze, and left her feeling naked despite the layers.

  While the women combed her hair over and over again, they laughed at the Khan killing the shaman, as though the old man had deserved his master’s wrath for daring to suggest the gods weren’t with them; they seemed more concerned about the fate of the horse, which was a fine beast. A champion of the horde.

  Finally, after what felt like an age, the light went from the sky outside, and the women fell quiet, leaving Samira to her own thoughts. She needed to retrieve the Dagger of the Martyrs; she could not return to Javed without it. And that meant taking it from the Kahn.

  But at that moment, she did not see how it could be done.

  The Khan sent for her as the sliver of moon rose up over the valley, etching the sharper edges of the landscape out in silver. She was led the short distance from one tent to the other, flanked on either side by armed tribesmen who would be happy to honour the dead shaman by sending her to death if she showed any hint of resistance.

  She walked into the Khan’s tent calm and focussed; she needed to be there, no matter the risks it threatened. In her mind it was just another of Javed’s training exercises, a task to be performed and rated, no different from all the others over the long years. She found her calm centre and parted the tent flaps to allow her entry to the Khan’s inner sanctum. As soon as she was inside the dim light in the interior offered her hope.

  ◆◆◆

  “You still owe me a horse, little one,” the Khan said. She had no liking of the way he diminished her with the epithet; little one made her sound helpless and weak, with no affection. It wasn’t like Javed’s little fish, which she had grown up with all of her life and wore as comfortably as her own name.

  He reclined on a bed of thick furs.

  The whole interior of the tent was lined with either fur or leather. It was a bewildering array of animal pelts. Samira recognised goat of course, and bear, for Javed had killed an old one on the hill some years past, but as to the nature of the rest of the beasts, some were more confusing. A single oil lamp at the head of a great bed was the only source of light. The glow was enough to reveal the Khan’s naked body. His leathery skin was the same tone of deep, wrinkled brown all over, and gleamed where he had been oiled in readiness for the night. His clothing: kilt, belt, jerkin and the Dagger of the Martyrs lay in a small folded pile. She noted that he kept it near his right hand, where the dagger might always be in easy reach.

  He is right not to trust me, Samira thought.

  “Come here,” the Khan said, but Samira maintained her pretence of not understanding, and did not move forward until he motioned her on with a curt wave of his left hand, summoning her to his side.

  Samira took a slow step towards the bed, intent on not betraying her emotions. She did not want him reading her. Or, rather, she wanted him to misread her. To think she was coy. It was something she’d practiced with Javed.

  “You would do well to learn,” the old man had said on many occasions, “for you have an advantage that a man would not have in your place; the pretence may gain you a precious moment, and that is all you need to strike.”

  Without a weapon in hand any strike was going to be difficult against such a man of the Kahn’s physicality; but Samira had a plan fermenting that might just add an element of advantage. She had the upper hand already in this dance, although the Khan did not know it.

  As she took another step, she closed her senses, drawing on the spirit she knew so well. The breath of Allah felt cool in her face, its touch dry and soft at her cheek.

  “Turn down the lamp,” she whispered.

  “What did you say, girl? Come here. I tire of this game.”

  The Khan motioned her to join him on the mattress of skins. The lamp flickered, and the light dimmed to only the barest flicker of flame, like a distant fire on a mountain slope, too dim to cut through the blackness.

  ◆◆◆

  The Kahn cursed as the tent was plunged into near total darkness.

  “Stay where you are, girl,” he ordered. “I will have someone light the lamp.”

  Samira smiled, knowing this was her moment, and spoke, in the Khan’s own language, her girlish giggle purely an act. “But my Khan, surely we have no need if others. You can find me in the dark…”

  The Khan liked that. “So, you are not some little mute after all, little one? I tell you what I will do with you when I find you; I will split you from gash to tits like a cord of wood before I am done having my fun with you.”

  “Ah, but you shall have to find me first, my Khan,” she said, then fell quiet, moving swiftly, on feet of air, to the Khan’s left, ensuring that he could not track by her voice alone.

  She found her calm centre again, and opened her spirit eyes; her breath stood on the other side of the tent near the oil lamp. The ripples of its presence were starkly visible against the dark furs. The Khan hadn’t remained still, he moved to his right. Samira saw him stoop to claim the Dagger of the Martyrs. Through her spirit eyes the emerald at the hilt shimmered and glowed; the Khan did not know it, but his fear made him even easier to track.

  “I do not like games,” the Khan spat, all easy flirtation gone from his voice. “I think I will simply gut you the way I gutted the shaman. I don’t need to fuck you.”

  Samira wasn’t about to bite.

  She kept moving, circling the mattress of skins. The Khan’s twisting, shifting, posture betrayed the fact that he had no idea where she was. Enjoying that, she crept round until she stood no more than three feet behind him, close enough to prickle the fine hairs on the nape of his neck with her breath; he still tried to peer into the darkness at the other side of the tent, assuming she would run. It was the natural reaction against his power; flight. But there was nothing natural about this little fish.

  Samira whispered, so softly it was little more than a breath, “Let the flame rise.” And saw the ripple of her spirit moving. In the same instant that the oil lamp flared bright, she leapt onto the Khan’s back, wrapping her legs around his waist and her left forearm across his neck, locking it in place with the grip of her right hand. The Khan thrashed, threw himself back trying to knock the wind out of her, but the mattress of soft furs of the floor deadened the blow and left the Khan rolling on the floor, with Samira locked to his back like a parasite.

  She tightened her grip, cutting off his breath so that he could not find his voice. His thrashing became frantic but once again the soft furs on the floors deadened the sound, and if any guard should take note, they would only mistake it for the rape he’d intended for her.

  The Khan died ignominiously, farting and pissing himself at the same time as the last of his life went out of him.

  Samira broke his neck before she let him go; just to make sure.

  ◆◆◆

  She stood, breathing softly, listening.

  There was no alarm, no sound of running guards.

  She retrieved the dagger from the corpse, then stripped and dressed in the dead man’s clothes; the Khan’s kilt, belt and jerkin would offer warmth in the desert night. Before she left the tent, Samira knocked the oil lamp over, spilling flame on the furs.

  She was off and away, slipping quietly into the night as the fire took hold in the Kahn’s tent and, finally, heard shouts of alarm behind her as the flames licked at the night. By then Samira was mounted and riding away as fast as she dared, south down the Alamut valley.

  She looked back over her shoulder once, to watch the Khan’s tent burn and thought grimly: Now I owe you two horses.r />
  She turned her gaze in the direction of her mountain home. The task was complete, and she had done as Javed asked. She had spilled no blood, and she had retrieved the Dagger of the Martyrs.

  1309

  BOLOGNA

  Aymeric arrived in Bologna more than two weeks after his run in with the King’s men.

  The risk of heavy patrols had necessitated a circuitous route, travelling mainly on byways and rough tracks to avoid being caught on the open road. Mercifully, he’d seen no sign of pursuit since leaving the men tied up at the campsite; his hope was that they had given up the idea of chasing him so far from Rome, and gone back to tell their master he was gone.

  He’d stopped briefly in Florence, hoping to find information in the Chapterhouse of the Order there, but the place was a shell. It had been emptied, the corridors bearing the scorch marks of the fire that had been set as. He didn’t linger. The only news he garnered was that the Order was in flight; there were rumours of treasure being spirited away in the night to boats fleeing west, but such rumours were nothing new. He had been born on a similar night, after all.

  Aymeric was none the wiser by the time he rode into Bologna. An early winter chill blew down from the north, bringing with it a fine drizzle that did little to improve his mood. The wound in his side still ached, the hours in the saddle meaning it hadn’t had sufficient healing time. He was constantly hungry, forced to live on the scraps he could scavenge, and the charity of the few travellers he had met on the road. His clothing was damp, muddy and torn. He needed a wash, a decent meal, and information. The first two would have to wait, for the third was by far the more important, and the reason he had left Rome in the first place. That was why he made for the Auberge of the Knights Hospitaller rather than seeking out his father’s family home; he prayed that his father spoke truly and that Renfeld Barbarossa the Bailli held the secret that would be the salvation of the Order.

  ◆◆◆

  Barbarossa was the commander of the knights in this bailiwick, one of eight in Christendom, and one of the richest. The opulence and splendour was evident even at the huge marble gateway to the Auberge.

  Despite his rough and ready demeanour, the guards allowed him entry when he took his tunic from his satchel and told his lineage. He did not show the scroll from Chinon.

  “Your commander has information that my father needs in Rome,” Aymeric explained, seeing the look that passed between the guards. He did not understand it, for surely it was pity he saw in their eyes?

  He rode along an avenue of tall poplars to a magnificent two-storey house in the centre of the grounds. The whole estate was heavily guarded, as though expecting an attack at any moment. Each man wore the white cross on black tabard that denoted their order. Everyone looked clean and polished, and Aymeric felt like a beggar in their kingdom, coming looking for scraps.

  He dismounted at the main entrance to the house. He w was shown directly through to an antechamber for an audience with the Bailli, Barbarossa.

  Barbarossa was a giant of a man, broad across the chest that was a stark reminder of the the strength of his youth, but with a belly grown stout on good living and luxury. He wore the tabard of the Hospitallers, stretched tight over his gut. Unlike the Templars, he went clean shaven although his hair, black with strands of silver, hung like a well-oiled cape across his shoulders. He sat at a large ornate desk in a room lined with fine tapestries, thick woven rugs and mounted heads of victims of the hunt; boar and deer, wolf and bear. There was no mistaking the wealth here in this heart of the Order. He looked up at Aymeric’s entrance.

  “So it is true… You truly are your father’s son, boy, that is plain to see for anyone who chooses to look. But why have you come here? This land is not safe for men of the Templar.”

  “You know why I have come, Bailli,” Aymeric replied. “You have information my father needs in Rome. You sent word did you not? He sent me here to retrieve this evidence. I would have it and make haste to return to the council.”

  Barbarossa did not reply, but his eyes betrayed the same pity and sadness Aymeric had seen in the guards.

  His heart twisted, knowing the pain that what was to come even as as Barbarossa waved him into a chair across the desk from where he sat.

  “There are things you need to know, and things you do not know, lad,” the Bailli began after Aymeric was seated. “Firstly, you should know that I sent no such word to Rome; I had nothing to tell your father that he did not already know. No evidence that might save him beyond what he already possessed. Though I have come into new information, brought from that city this past week, via an emissary from the Holy Church who is on his way to Paris.” Barbarossa looked grim. “The news is not good for you, young de Bologna. The court in Rome has denied your Order’s petition, and your father has been reported missing; he has not been seen since the night you were last seen with him before the court. Your Order is now being represented in Rome by the Archbishop of Sens, Philippe de Marigny.”

  “De Marigny? But his brother is one of the signatories on the King’s decree,” Aymeric said, disbelieving. “He is no friend of the Order.”

  Barbarossa spoke quietly, deliberately.

  “The Order has few friends in these troubled times, lad.”

  “And my father?”

  “As I said, missing. But I am no fool. I read between the lines. He will never be found.”

  Aymeric knew only too well what that meant.

  “He is dead?”

  Barbarossa did not reply.

  ◆◆◆

  A servant arrived bearing bread, cheese and wine, a veritable feast after the road. Aymeric was in no position to turn down the Bailli’s hospitality without giving offence, although it was uncomfortably given. The big man didn’t want a Templar under his roof.

  “You said is, the emissary is on his way to Paris, not was. So I take it he is under this same roof? I would very much like to speak with him,” Aymeric said after the food was cleared away, leaving the each with a tall cup of wine.

  “And no doubt he would like to speak to you,” Barbarossa replied. “But not a cosy fireside chat. He would see you in the dungeon again, strapped to the table for torturous confession under the pokers of the Inquisition. Have you not realised the full extent of your troubles yet?”

  “What else has this emissary said?” Aymeric asked

  Barbarossa again took a time before replying.

  “I cannot lie to Lucian de Bologna’s son,” he finally said, “for your father was like a brother to me. The church has offered the Hospitallers a share of Templar lands and assets. We are to have the Italy and Provence tongues, a full quarter of your Order’s holdings.”

  “In exchange for your aid in prosecuting the King’s case?”

  Barbarossa nodded.

  “Although I have said I cannot promise that, I can only promise not to stand in their way.”

  Aymeric’s grip tightened around the goblet in his hand as he considered throwing his wine in the man’s face. It would have been a mistake. He fought down his anger. “Friend of my father indeed,” he replied sarcastically, instead.

  “This is a political game now, lad, you need to grasp the full implications of that and what they mean for you,” the Bailli replied. “Believe me, you would be better off out of it. Visit your family home; you have a grandmother there who has never seen you, and there is a tutor of your father’s in the University, old Barberino, who would be happy to teach you philosophy until he dies. You could still have a good life.”

  “I will not, I cannot, step aside. The honour of the Order is at stake.”

  “What is honour to a corpse, lad? Believe me, whatever honour the Order had is long lost,” Barbarossa replied. “It was lost when the people learned what was found below Reynard’s altar in Paris.”

  ◆◆◆

  Aymeric was not sure he had heard properly.

  “Reynard’s altar? They left poor Reynard dead, run through, on that very altar. I know. I was
there. I saw the offal and the blood. I walked in in.”

  “I would not tell that to a soul outside of this room,” the Bailli said, “for the King’s case has been bolstered by what was found.”

  “Bolstered? It will not be bolstered when they see this.” Aymeric removed the Chinon scroll from its pouch under his shirt. “This is a full pardon for the Order, signed by the Cardinal of Chinon.”

  “You may as well rip it up,” Barbarossa replied. “These new heresies are too great to be swept aside. Reynard has done for you all.”

  “And I tell you, Reynard was a good man. There was no heresy in him beyond a desire to help the poor rather than the rich.”

  “That is not what Gui has said, not what the King has said, and not what the Church has now agreed upon. Reynard was harbouring the devil himself, in the form of the head of Baphomet. They have the head on display in the King’s Palace in Paris to prove the Templar perfidy. There are confessions, from men of your Order, that it spoke to them in ceremonies in the crypt, that they kissed the Devil’s cock and renounced Christ, that they spat on the Cross, and that Reynard was the master of these ceremonies, ceremonies that involved De Molay himself. Even your father’s name has been mentioned.”

  “No. My father was a good Christian, and a Templar,” Aymeric replied. “And any man who says otherwise will have to fight me to prove it.”

  “Do not go looking so easily for a fight, young master, for one is coming for you if you do not step aside, here, today. “

  “Is that a threat, Bailli?”

  The big man sighed.

  “No, Aymeric Moro de Bologna, it is a warning, from a friend of your father. Take it in the spirit in which it is delivered. I could have you secreted away and on a boat to Valletta before the week is out if you wish?”