Behold the Dawn

  A hacking sound that might have been a laugh quivered in Werinbert’s jowls. “Do you really think there is anything I would want that you could give me?”

  “I can give you your life.” He leaned closer, his lips almost brushing the stubble in the hermit’s ear. “Tell me.”

  Werinbert laughed again. The sound degenerated into a groan as he forced his body upright. “That depends on what your questions may be.”

  “Just this. Was the Lady Mairead killed? And where have they gone?”

  Werinbert closed his eyes, and a red-green worm of a vein in his temple quivered. “No, Lord Knight, I cannot tell you.”

  Hugh roared at him and backhanded him so hard he skittered across the floor. “Take him!”

  Esmè and his companion dragged the hermit out by his disconnected arms, the monk hanging half-conscious between them, blood from his temple interfering with the Pater Noster on his lips.

  Bertrand started after them, probably hoping to avoid a similar edict spoken on his behalf. Hugh stopped him with a chopping motion. “Stay.”

  “Lord?”

  Hugh glowered. “Don’t think this is over.”

  “Nay, my lord.”

  “There will be tracks, and I will find her.” He would not fail Roderic and Veritas. And he would not fail himself. He filled his nostrils with the smell of the earth-laden air and rose to his feet. He came within a few steps of Bertrand and waited until the other man flinched beneath his hot gaze. “But this is the end for you.”

  Bertrand’s lips parted, then sealed.

  “You’re to return to the bishop.”

  The man-at-arm’s features relaxed just visibly.

  “Be glad for what faithful service you have given me in the past. Deliver a good report to Roderic, and tell him what you like about your dismissal.”

  Bertrand saluted, his fist against his chest, and waited for the leave to go.

  “Tell the men to tend the horses as soon as they have finished with the monk.” Hugh turned back to the windy sky outside the window. “And then, we search for tracks.”

  * * *

  Annan lost the murderer’s trail even before the first day was out. He kept to a mostly southern route, determined that he should run across him sooner or later. Rumor placed the Crusading army at Jaffa, and he set his face in that direction, knowing that was where Father Roderic was most likely to be found.

  Where Father Roderic was, Lord Hugh would eventually come; and where Lord Hugh was, there also would be his blood-filthy minion. Annan would stamp out two at once, and leave Roderic only to gape in horror.

  He was three days from the hermitage and approaching Antioch when he saw the unmistakably gay colors and banners of a tourney. For the space of just a heartbeat, his stomach warmed. He reined Airn to a halt atop the hill and braced both hands against the pommel, watching the pennons of green and red and yellow snap in the wind.

  The tournament was encamped on the outskirts of Antioch, looking for all the world like a little city of its own, differing from its greater sister only in the glory of its spectacle and the transience of its dwellings. He could hear the clatter of arms practice, the stamp of restless hooves, and he smelled the smoke that came as much from the fire suddenly kindled within his own blood as from the dry wood burning in front of the various tents.

  Airn lifted his head, ears pricked, and blew through both nostrils. Without looking down, Annan patted the courser’s shoulder. “Aye. The first sight is like that. One gets used to it.”

  But why any sight at all? His brow furrowed. Since his arrival in the Holy Land, he’d had it on good authority, more than once, that this sort of thing wasn’t looked upon too highly by either man or God. Mayhap the Saracens were sponsoring it in an effort to lure a few more Christians to Hell. The curl of his lip was as close as he came to laughing at his own joke.

  He touched his spur to Airn’s side, and after one more snort, the horse lowered its head and started down the hill.

  Annan detoured through the tourney camp on his way into the city. He kept Airn to a walk, his own shoulders hunched, as much to prevent anyone from recognizing him as from weariness.

  The storm from the mountains had followed him to the seaside, and the clouds sagged with the humidity. The rain would descend soon, probably before the day was out.

  A freckled squire walked past with two gaily bedecked horses, and Annan turned his head, watching them until they were far down the muddy alley between the tents. A burly, sun-darkened servant raised an eyebrow at his curiosity, but Annan let the look pass without even a frown.

  Right now he had the feeling—a feeling every bit as old as he was himself—that everything would be right with the world if only he could gallop across a melee field, sword in hand, his legendary prowess clearing the field before him like the wind against a pile of chaff.

  But no. He filled his lungs with the wet air, making himself douse the fire. All would be right with the world—for a few hours. But those few hours would just add to the cache of hours he had been gathering all his life, the cache that had held his sins from the very beginning.

  He turned away and rode on. There would be no tourney this time. For once in his life, he had a greater purpose upon which to spend his rage. He pricked Airn’s side again, and the courser broke into a trot.

  Even still, it beckoned.

  * * *

  Annan found an inn on the edge of town, close to the tourney, where the competitors’ gossip would be rifest. He left Airn bedded down in the stable and sought an empty table amid the shouted jests and dancing lantern shadows.

  Sitting with his sword arm to the door, he nursed a pot of watered-down ale and waited until the innkeeper’s wife slid a wooden trencher onto the table before him. “Eat hearty, luv.”

  He leaned back just enough to keep out of her way and grunted his reply. The simple fare of black bread and hard cheese was hardly the best he’d seen proffered during a festival week, but as he stared at it in the wavering light, it didn’t really seem to matter. His teeth ached, and even the motion of swallowing his ale hardly seemed worth the effort.

  He swirled the dregs, wondering absently how much sludge he would find in the bottom. Someone at a table behind him erupted in raucous laughter, but he afforded them not a glance. It was careless to ignore his surroundings, he knew. If he’d ever caught Marek doing the same, he’d have scalded the laddie’s ears.

  But he was tired. He was losing his edge. And if that was something to be worried about, he couldn’t remember quite why.

  He sighed and rubbed his face. Sleep. He needed sleep. Things would be clear—or at least as clear as they ever were—come morning. He drained the last of the ale, and as he reached to gather his meal into his purse, a rosy-faced little knight stepped up to one of the empty chairs. “Mind if I join ye, good master?” His eyes twinkled in the redness of his wind-slapped face.

  Annan nodded. “Make yourself welcome.”

  “Thankee.” The man set his beaker on the edge of the round table and pulled his chair in close. He propped both elbows on the table, took a long draught of his ale, then peered at Annan. “Here for the exhibition then, are ye?”

  Annan shook his head and pulled the flap of his purse down over his supper. “I think not.”

  “Pity. You’ve the look of one who could be doing a fine job of exhibiting.” The man laughed and sipped his beaker. “If you haven’t an invitation I shouldn’t think ‘twould be too hard for a man of your sort to obtain one. They’d be glad to have ye, no doubt.”

  “No doubt.” He pressed both hands against the edge of the table, ready to rise to his feet. But then he stopped and gave the knight another look. Here was as good an opportunity as any to seek a few answers. And this fellow was a good bit more talkative than the likes of the sullen innkeeper.

  He settled back down and pulled his chair in closer. “Why’s there a tourney here at all? In the Holy Land, during a Crusade?”

  “Not a tourney. A
s I said, ‘tis an exhibition.”

  Annan’s brows came together. “Why? Is the army here?”

  “Nay. Just some bishop or other.”

  The hair on his arm prickled. “What bishop?”

  “Roderic, I think. An advisor to King Richard.”

  “Roderic.” Annan slumped against the back of his chair.

  “That’s right. Not that I rightly care, you know. After all a bishop’s as good an excuse for a tournament as any other, hey?” The knight smacked his lips. “A little bit of play between battles is just the thing, I say, wot?”

  “What’s he here for?” Was this the hand of God, then, that he should stumble upon Father Roderic and his nest of vipers, when his search was only yet begun?

  The other man shrugged. “To oversee the defense and all that, I suppose. Though we were doing not so bad on our own, methinks.”

  “Did he come alone?”

  “You mean is His Majesty with him? Nay. The king’s more interested in Mohammedans than he is in fortifying dusty Antioch.”

  Annan leaned across the table, forcing his eyes to focus. “What about Roderic’s lieutenants? A Norman and a Templar?”

  “The Norman, Hugh de Guerrant?”

  “Aye.” Despite his effort to maintain a level tone, his voice rumbled.

  The man gave him a long look. “I haven’t seen aught of him here. And if you’re thinking you’d like to engage him in a little test of strength, then it’s well for you he isn’t. They don’t make many finer knights than he.”

  “Too bad he’s not less of a knight and more of a Christian.”

  “Could be. But if you’ve a quarrel with the nobleman, then I’d warn you twice over not to challenge him.” He sniffed and returned to his ale. “Anyway, I saw one of his men reporting to the bishop only this morning, saying the earl wouldn’t be here.”

  Annan’s skin burned. “One of Hugh’s men?”

  “Aye, though I’ve not heard if he’s staying for the demonstration tomorrow. Probably will, I expect. I know I would, if’n I was in his saddle and had the opportunity. Right?” The knight gave a wink and nudged Annan’s arm with his elbow.

  “Aye.” Annan pushed away from the table, seeing vaguely that the innkeeper’s wife had stepped into his path, awaiting payment for the meal.

  He had no way of knowing if this messenger of Hugh’s was the same who had tried to kill Mairead. But the stutter of his heart told him that it was, that it must be. Whatever winds had blown the man here had blown him into Annan’s waiting arms, and right now that was assurance enough.

  His companion leaned his head back to see Annan’s face. “And have you changed your mind about plying that brawny arm of yours after all, friend knight?”

  “Aye.” Annan started for the door. “I have.”

  * * *

  Mairead opened her eyes to a haze of gray. Her lips parted to release a breath, and the fist of pain that hovered relentlessly in her foggy dreams battered her left side. The air, rich with the taste of rain, caught in her throat and tangled with her whimper.

  “Lady.”

  She hadn’t realized her whole body had been jostling, rocking gently from front to back, until it stopped in concert with the voice. It was a familiar voice, friendly, despite the high pitch of its worry.

  Above her head, sounds of movement, of creaking wood and the brief clang of metal, reached her. A horse snorted and stamped a foot.

  “My lady?” Footsteps brought the voice alongside her head, and this time she recognized its tentative tone.

  And then she remembered. Her side burned with pain, and she managed to slide a trembling hand across her stomach until she found the wrinkle of the bandage that swelled beneath her left armpit.

  “Don’t—don’t.” Marek’s fingers slipped beneath the coverlet to catch her hand before she could press the wound. He moved her hand back to her stomach and pulled the blanket all the way up to her chin. “You’re going to be just fine.”

  She made herself open her eyes, and this time she was fully aware of her eyelids’ great weight and the scrape of grit against her eyes. “Annan—”

  Marek’s face shaded her gaze from the gray light of the clouded sky. “He’s not here.” He smoothed her hair back from her face, inviting the cold sting of the wind against her skin.

  She blinked and turned her head enough to see mottled crags, striped here and there with the green of cypresses. They were somewhere in the hills, in a day that bespoke of rain, herself on a pallet rigged with a horse on either end. The drowsy face of the bay charger given to Annan by Lord Stephen blinked at her from above her feet.

  But Annan did not ride its saddle.

  “Where is he?” The question thrummed in her chest, the words thrusting past her lips. A painful blackness threatened for a moment to wash out her vision, and she clenched her eyes. “Marek—?”

  “He’s… gone to find the man who did this to you.”

  “Why?” But she knew why. Annan had gone because he was driven to go. Because by entering his life, she had perhaps brought greater pain to him than all the unspeakable horrors of the years gone past.

  “I don’t want him to go…” Tears, welling from the pain of her side and the pain of fears laid bare by her injury, bled at the corners of her raw eyes.

  “I know.” Marek’s hand was warm on her shoulder, even through the thickness of the coverlet. “I told him. But he’ll come back. He always does.”

  She shook her head, but she didn’t have the strength to speak the thought that filled her head: He couldn’t come back every time. And when the day came when he didn’t come back… she would spend the rest of her life, however long it might be, knowing she had been unable to save him from the darkness. She had been unable to save him from himself.

  The tears flooded from her eyelids, falling warm upon her cheeks and turning cold in the breeze.

  “Don’t cry, lady. Please—you’ll hurt yourself.”

  But she had to cry. What else besides her tears did she have left to bring before Heaven’s throne?

  * * *

  A knight clad in the blue livery of the earldom of Guerrant galloped toward his enemy, spear couched beneath his arm, shoulders hunched in readiness for the impact.

  From where he sat his horse between two striped tents, Annan watched. His chest tightened and, inside the confines of his helm, his breath echoed with an intensity that burned deep within his nostrils.

  Only minutes earlier, this man, this minion of the accursed Hugh de Guerrant, had raised his helm in respect to Bishop Roderic, and in that instant Annan had no more doubts that he had found Mairead’s would-be murderer. Whether or not it was the hand of God that had led him here, he knew not. But one way or another, here they were, together in the same place, in the same time.

  The knight, toes forced down in his stirrups and his whole body braced for the impact, spurred his horse’s side. The animal’s stride lengthened, and the two combatants crashed one into another, lances splintering.

  The blunted end of the murderer’s spear caught his opponent in the shoulder and flung him from his horse. The man landed hard, facedown, and lay there a moment, windless, while his conqueror waited until he was helped from the field. As a squire ran to catch the riderless horse, the victor trotted to the purple-shrouded dais that bore Father Roderic and his company.

  Annan’s fingers closed round the axe that lay across his saddlebow. Sweat stood out on his limbs, trickling its heat down his chest, infecting his blood.

  It was time. And he was ready.

  Chapter XXII

  LORD HUGH’S LIEUTENANT—a Norman who had been with Hugh since childhood, as far as Roderic knew—had acquitted himself well. Better than well, in fact; he had swept the field before him. Not one knight had been able to challenge him.

  Whatever Bertrand had done to displease Hugh must have been unpardonable for Hugh to have deprived himself of such an able soldier. Roderic rose from his cushioned seat of honor at the fro
nt of the dais and applauded against the back of his hand. Hugh’s loss was about to become Roderic’s gain.

  In the absence of Brother Warin, Roderic’s need of a new lieutenant was growing most inconvenient. Bertrand’s crime against Hugh, whatever it may have been, was about to become the means to his promotion. Roderic’s lip curled. What would Master Hugh think of that development?

  For now though, plots and successions would have to wait. Roderic stepped to the front of the box and lifted his hands to still the crowd’s excitement.

  “Yeomen!” He raised his hands higher still. “Your silence, please. Come forward, Sir Bertrand!”

  The knight’s chest rose beneath the black griffin de Guerrant. He approached, lance raised before his face in a salute.

  The crowd’s murmuring swelled, changing from adulation to alarm. Across the meadow, a lone knight galloped, the raindrops dashing against his helm.

  Roderic’s limbs jerked taut, his speech freezing in his throat. He had walked among the greatest political leaders of the world for too long not to hear the silent scream of danger that flew before the strange knight. The hair on his arms prickled; gooseflesh rose and pinched his skin.

  Almost before Bertrand could turn his head to see through the eye slits of his helmet, the knight was upon him. The knight’s right arm rose behind his head, the blade of his axe glinting against the raindrops.

  Time slowed. All Roderic could hear was the beat of his heart. His vision faltered. He watched, mouth still parted, wanting to believe this was just another specter raising itself from the red murk of the dreams that had haunted him since Acre. But it wasn’t.

  The knight cut Bertrand down without slowing and without looking back. As he galloped past, the silver of his blade dull with blood, he turned his head in Roderic’s direction, and behind the faceless, expressionless mask, Roderic could feel the man’s gaze burning into his.