Medi-Evil 3

by Paul Finch

“It’s my home, isn’t it? I was born there.”

  “Norman blood flows in your veins, my friend. It’ll take more than a few jugs of Wessex cider to wash that away.”

  Ramon shook his head darkly. “Let me tell you something, Thurstan … when I joined the Leopard’s household at Cerne, it was the greatest moment of my life. My errant days were over. At last I had a roof over my head, a future. Now I could ride in the tourney as part of a company; now my devices were a mark of pride rather than poverty. Yet, in my first week, at the request of the drunken scoundrel who was Abbot of Glastonbury, we forced entry to the chapter house there and slaughtered all the monks who refused to accept his rule. We slaughtered them, Thurstan … unarmed monks, ten or more. Purely to salve one man’s pride.”

  “And like Saul to Paul, you were instantly converted.”

  “It’s a pity you can mock so great a saint. Especially now that our souls are in peril.”

  “As household champion, my soul is always in peril. It’s a state I’ve come to live with.”

  Ramon shook his head. “Household champion? You mean protector of the robber’s hoard. Cerne Castle is a fine place, is it not? Yet the tapestries and hangings that deck its halls once hung in Earl Ethred’s longhouse. The fine garb, the precious vessels, the heaped silver plate was the property of his lady … whose raped carcass, incidentally, adorned a gallows for seven years. Then of course there are the fishponds and ploughland in his former demesnes, the orchards and deer-chase, the flocks and herds … seized from common folk whose only weapons were sticks and stones and maybe a thatching-knife.”

  “Seized by right of arms.”

  “From people who, equally by right of arms, are now refused their liberty as well. Enclosed as villeins on the great manor estates, denied even tenancy rights.”

  Thurstan shrugged. “The king’s law is our guiding light.”

  “And yet we came East?”

  “To be shriven.”

  “Aye, to be shriven of the king’s law.”

  Thurstan chuckled again. “You surprise me, Ramon. You’re quite the philosopher. So how do you perceive us now, after Jerusalem?”

  “Now?” Ramon peered ahead – the distant line of the horizon was blurred with oily mist. “Devils all, riding back to Tartarus. We seek Eden, but if Adam and Eve were still there, no doubt we’d rob and kill them too.”

  Just then, as they spoke, a plume of dust rose up about sixty yards to the front. Not wind-borne dust, but soft earth, kicked or back-heeled.

  “Did you see that?” Ramon said.

  “I did.”

  Ramon glanced left to right. “I don’t like this ground. It’s uneven.”

  Thurstan gripped the hilt of his longsword. “Flanking guard, I think.”

  Ramon nodded and turned back to his overlord, signalling with his hand. The Leopard broke off conversation instantly, and word passed back through the ranks. In less than a minute, the attack came – but the hardened war-band was already expecting it.

  First off, a shoal of arrows rattled down on them, but they’d ridden out into spearhead formation, Thurstan at the tip, and bore through it with ease, their thick hauberks and heavy limewood shields invulnerable to the light Turkish missiles. The ground assault followed, a wave of ghostly howls blowing across the desert like wind as enemy companies rose up from the surrounding brush, several hundred at least, their horses and camels running neck and neck, the sun glinting on their crescent scimitars, arrows still flying from their double-curved bows.

  Ulf was at the rear, but as always he found battle a terrifying experience. The angry shrieks of his comrades filled him with dread. He cringed with every thwack of arrow on shield or buckler. Sweat ran in rivulets down his face, the confines of his steel helmet baking like an oven tin. He only had a brief clear view of the Turks before the two forces collided. Apart from their mail shirts and spiked helms, they were clad all over in black. Cloth obscured their lower faces; only their frenzied eyes were visible.

  For all that, they were only men. The heavier-armed Christians crashed through their first rank with an explosion of sparks and splinters. Turkish mares reared – blood spurting in fountains from their flaring nostrils, their riders cart-wheeling to earth, transfixed on spear-point or gashed to the brain by axe and sword. Their horsemen behind charged bravely in, but they too were vanquished, struck from the saddle, slashed to pieces as they rode. The fight was far from over of course. Wave after wave of Turkish foot now came forward in the wake of their cavalry, but the men-at-arms in the Christian company reined up sharply and drove crossbow bolts at them, while the Leopard’s knights galloped gamely into the enemy midst, blades rising and falling in shimmering crimson patterns.

  Several Christians were also unhorsed. One got to his feet, but was cut across the throat, and, as he toppled onto his back, clawing at the livid wound, a tasselled javelin pinned him to the ground. As Ulf watched, a sweeping scimitar struck blood from his own cheek. He spun around in the saddle, trying to rip his sword from its scabbard, and in his efforts to do so, tipped over and fell. The next thing he knew he was prone, a Turkish lancer bearing mercilessly down – only for Thurstan to sweep in from nowhere and intercept, dispatching the lancer with a sword-stroke to the skull. A Turkish footman now came at the boy, screaming. He had already been wounded, for his black pantaloons were slick with gore, and though he aimed a wild blow with his flail, Ulf was able to parry, then swipe furiously down and hack the Turk’s knees from under him.

  All order and formation had disintegrated, but the ferocious Christian charge, as had happened so frequently in this war, was overwhelming to the lighter-armed Moslem forces. It had ploughed deeply into them, inflicting an instant and fatal wound to their morale. Though the struggle spread in all directions, men scrambling through rocks and scrub, riderless horses careering out of control, far more Turks had fallen than Christians. Their dead and injured littered the ground in a ghastly flotsam, and those still able to fight were in slow retreat.

  Ulf saw Ramon take a spear in his shield, and with a single backhand slice, lop off the head of the Turk who’d thrust it. The Leopard was felling them left and right, striking out with great butchering blows, his mail glittering with their blood. De Vesqui had been unhorsed, but chopped his way through a phalanx of foes. When his sword broke, he battled on by hand, seizing a Turk by the head and twisting sharply, snapping the man’s neck like a branch, laughing like a hyena as he did.

  *

  In the end, the ambushers left leaving forty-four of their number behind; thirty of these were dead, the rest grievously wounded. Among the Christians, there were eight fatalities, though this was eight too many for the Leopard of Gerberoi. His vengeance began as darkness fell and campfires blazed into the velvet night. The first four prisoners were stripped, then pegged out on the ground, arms and legs splayed – in which position, de Vesqui and his minions proceeded to push clods of earth into their frothing mouths, forcing them down their gullets with sticks or knives.

  “Pack them full!” Joubert said with a laugh. “They can eat this whole country if they want, earth, rocks, roots, the lot. We’ll stuff them ’til their bellies burst, but we’ll have words out of them.”

  Ulf went sick at the sight, and had to turn away and clap his hands over his ears to drown out the retching, the gagging, the rattling gasps for air. Arch-Deacon d’Etoille refused outright to be party to it. Earlier that day he’d fought as bravely as the rest, but this, he said, was a cruelty he could scarce believe. The Leopard had smiled at that, then given orders for the torture to commence. The rest of the company, cut, bruised and tired from the fight, watched in brooding silence, though at length Ramon turned to Thurstan.

  “You think this will avail us anything at all?” he wondered.

  Thurstan shrugged. “Depends what they know. We’ve fought Saracens of every tribe … Seljuks, Fatamids. But there are some among these I’ve never seen before … the ones in black. We need to know who they are, at lea
st.”

  Ramon shook his head. “There’ll be an answer for it. There always is.”

  Initially that answer was a positive one, for one of those captives not yet put to the test, finally fell on his knees, begging mercy.

  “Bismil lah atlubukal rahma,” he jabbered, eyes bulging like black jewels in his bearded, wood-brown face. “Atlubuka hayati wasawfa akoolo lak ma tawoodu an ta’arif.”

  De Vesqui strode forward. Before he’d come to the Anglo-Norman camp during the Scottish war, the surly Aquitainian had served many times as a mercenary with the armies of Aragon and Castille in their ceaseless strife with the Moors. As such, he had a rudimentary understanding of the Arabic tongue. He grinned as he wiped his bloody hands on a piece of rag. “He wants to make a bargain with us, my lord.”

  The Leopard gazed down at the cowering captive. “Ask him who sent them?”

  De Vesqui did, and their prisoner spoke eagerly, though many times he glanced over his shoulder as if in fear of his former comrades, who were still bound but listening intently. When he had finished, even de Vesqui was briefly silent.

  “They are Ashishin,” he finally said. “Sent by Hasan bin Sabah, the ‘Old Man of the Mountain’.”

  “You know them?” the Leopard asked.

  De Vesqui nodded. “I’ve heard of them. But I thought them myth. They’re a Persian sect by origin, and fanatics. Totally dedicated to serving their master. He is a prophet and, by rumour, a sorcerer. He lives purely to destroy the enemies of Islam. Even the caliphs of Bagdhad, whom he has called heretics, fear his influence … so Salib-een like us are particularly loathed. These are truly dangerous men, my lord.”

  The Leopard smiled, and drew his hunting-knife. “Not this one.”

  Again the Turk fell onto his face, weeping and pleading. “Arjook la taqtalani!”

  “He still wishes to talk,” de Vesqui said.

  “Does he know of Uruk?” the Leopard asked.

  De Vesqui relayed the question, and though the captive at first seemed surprised, he nodded eagerly, babbling a response.

  De Vesqui grinned. “He says it lies to the east … in ruins. But he also says we might find treasure there, if we search hard enough.”

  Arch-Deacon d’Etoille immediately interrupted. “Treasure is not our quest, my lord.”

  Ignoring the priest, the Leopard placed a foot on his prisoner’s shoulder and stared down at him. “Tell him that if he can lead us to Uruk, his life is spared.”

  De Vesqui passed the message on, and the Turk rolled his eyes in glee, planting kisses on his captor’s boot. “Ashluruka ya sayiddi lihikmatika wa rahmatika.”

  “He will do as we ask,” de Vesqui said.

  “Good.” The Leopard kicked the man away. “But kill the rest. We’ve no use for them.”

  “Lord Gilles!” d’Etoille cried. “You have them in your grasp. They are no threat to you.”

  “Until they clamour for shares in our food and drink.”

  “Can’t you release them unarmed?”

  “When they’ve overheard this conversation? Out of the question!”

  A succession of thuds and gasps followed, as heavy blades ripped into heaving breastbones. The Turk who had betrayed his friends could only kneel and watch, red phantoms of firelight playing over him.

  D’Etoille lurched off to hide, though Thurstan briefly stopped him. “I wouldn’t despair too much, Father. Didn’t we christen the Lord’s own lance, when we found it at Antioch, by plunging it through the entrails of every heathen dog we came to?”

  The priest gave him a haunted, horrified look before staggering into the darkness.

  “Anyone would think you approved of this,” Ramon remarked.

  “All I approve of at present, my friend, is my own survival.” Thurstan peered beyond the lights of the paltry camp, and for the first time saw strange, amorphous things in the swollen night. “But I think we finally agree on something … there’ll be answers had for this.”

  *

  For another week they pressed on, though now through a blighted wilderness, a blasted empty terrain, bare of water or vegetation, yet strewn – bizarrely – with boulders of colossal size. Their scout and apparent new friend, whose name was Hasif, told them Uruk was still a regal place of colonnades, statues and fabulous temples, but that it stood on a spur of land between the rivers Tigris and Euphrates, and that to reach it they must first cross the burned waste of Arabia’s northern desert. This would be an arduous journey of a week or more, in the fiercest heat imaginable. To illustrate his point, the guide bound his hands and face with strips of cloth so that he looked like a bedouin, and advised his captors to do the same.

  “This is blasphemy,” Ramon said, as they decked themselves.

  Thurstan chuckled. “To adapt to barbaric conditions, Ramon, we must first become barbaric men.”

  “More so than we already are? That would be a miraculous feat.”

  Ulf made no comment. Before them now lay an empty vista of sand, flurries billowing up like ghosts. There were also insects – huge, black, stinging things, which clustered on the horses and swarmed around the men, adding torment to torment. The boy wasn’t sure if he could take much more. He’d drunk his water ration not five minutes before, yet his mouth was already dry as salt. There was grit in his eyes and in his cracked lips, and a deep weariness in his bones. The cool English greenwood, with its carpet of mist and scent of earth and rain, was as unreal to him now as Jerusalem had been when he was back in Wessex. In those days, the Holy City had seemed the furthest destination possible, and indeed years had passed in the getting there, yet everything he knew, including that now desecrated shrine, lay uncountable leagues behind him. What lay in front was anyone’s guess.

  Or maybe, anyone’s nightmare.

  For the true ordeal began a day later.

  They’d pitched their animal-hide tents on a barren wadi, but arose early – to find their three piquets missing. Searches revealed no trace.

  “Ashishin?” Ramon wondered.

  The Leopard looked to de Vesqui, who slammed a fist into Hasif’s guts.

  “Ma’ariffi la ya’khidoon asra,” the Turk gasped as he writhed in the dust.

  De Vesqui stepped back. “He says the Ashishin take no prisoners. And they’d have left the bodies here to frighten us.”

  The Leopard stared out across the rolling desert. Again, nothing was visible except swirling eddies of sand. The only sound was a faint hiss of wind. Infinitesimally, the great baron’s eyes narrowed, and for the first time Ulf wondered if he saw foreboding there. Was such a thing possible? Had this brute warrior, this iron-fisted man-bear with a mutilated face, who’d served two kings with such ferocity, and at Gerberoi slew so many rebel knights with his scything longsword that the jongleurs had named him for it, finally found something to frighten him?

  “Their horses are still here,” Thurstan said, coming back from the corral. “So they haven’t deserted. Tonight we’ll post a fuller watch.”

  The Leopard nodded.

  But that night too there were disasters. Six sentries were posted, yet all had vanished by dawn. What was worse, the sand lay smooth around their posts like fresh-fallen snow. Had they fled on foot or been approached through the dark, either by murderous man or predatory beast, the tracks would have been clearly visible. In the space of a few days, the company was down to twenty-three; almost half the number they’d struck out with from Jerusalem, less than a third of those who’d originally departed Cerne.

  A silent dread passed through them, though it was worse for Ulf, for during the past two nights he’d suffered the same frightful dream. In it, he lay senseless on an arid plain, too weak to move. The sky was filled with circling vultures, but on all sides of him towered statues of cyclopean stone: titanic effigies of kings and popes. So vast were they that their grim, tyrannical features completely filled his vision, yet in the way of all dream-selves he had seen more than this. A living being was also present, a quick-darting thing
of vaguely human shape. It first appeared some distance away, scurrying here and there, peeping about between the statues’ gargantuan feet, but drawing ever closer to him.

  Of course he never mentioned this. A dream was only a dream. But on the third night, when eight men were dispatched to sentry, he was torn with indecision. If this group was lost too and he’d sounded no alarum, didn’t that make it his fault? He bedded down in Ramon’s tent, his mind filled with doubt. Their entire world was collapsing: scarcely a word was spoken in friendship any more, food stocks were down to rinds of bread and withered citrus fruit, the water was almost spent. Ulf himself was neglecting his squire’s duties – his tending to horse, apparel, weaponry – yet Ramon was too uninterested to upbraid him.

  So thinking, the boy drifted again into his dreams, where, as before, the darting, peeping thing awaited, though now it had approached to a distance of several yards and was creeping stealthily closer. Ulf tried to shout, for this time he could see it in all its grisly glory: manlike, yes, almost, but with dark and gleaming skin and a face of fantastic malevolence. Crocodile teeth gleamed between lips curved in a manic grin; oriental eyes flashed cruelty beneath a heavy brocade of blue Moorish shadow; pearls glistened in its ears; its hair was black as oil and hung in slick, perfumed knots. As it reached down towards him, he saw the nails on its fingers; they were sharp and twisting, like talons.

  Ulf woke, thinking he was shrieking aloud, but really only whimpering.

  Gasping, he scrambled out from the tent into the silent camp. The stillness out there was awesome. To all sides the desert lay vast and empty, so pale that it reminded him of snow-shrouded December morns in England, though now strawberry streaks of dawn filled the sky and the icy chill was diminishing. The squire shivered, and began to pace. Already the horror of the dream was fading, though its memory remained vivid. Had the thing screamed back at him? Hadn’t he just heard some ghastly falsetto screech?

  He halted his pacing, and looked out beyond the tents – the sentries were absent.