The Mask of Loki

by Roger Zelazny

  King Guy put his hand up against the high sun of late June, shielding his eyes. The hand swayed in the air with the gait of his horse, and the palm-sized patch of shade danced across his face.

  "Stormclouds have black bottoms and sail above the earth, My Lord," Amnet said mildly. "They are seldom yellow—and never rise directly from the plain."

  Grand Master Gerard, who rode on King Guy's other side, made a face at Thomas across his monarch's pommel.

  "Then we are in sight of the beggars?" Guy asked, with a note of shrill enthusiasm in his voice.

  "We are perhaps a day's ride behind their rearguard."

  "And possibly two," the King observed. "No chance of catching them this afternoon, is there?" He looked up at the sun. "We have ridden these mounts hard since dawn. I suggest we make camp and plan our strategy."

  "Surely, My Lord, these horses are good for another hour or two. We should not make camp until vespers."

  "And I tell you, Master Gerard, that here we have good forage and clear water. What can you say of the land ahead?"

  Amnet leaned forward, around the King's paunch, to watch Gerard chew his beard. It was not in Thomas to enjoy his master's discomfort—or not overmuch. After Saladin's army had passed over this land, little more grass remained than they might find sprouting at a crossroads. What water might be found had been trampled to a mudflat and left to dry in the sun. No place in this valley was suitable for a campsite, nor would it be for a year to come.

  Would King Guy consent to wait that long in pursuit of Saladin? It appeared that he might.

  The Templars had bought this army for Guy—twenty thousand mounted knights of mixed French and English stock—with the last of the conscience money that King Henry had paid to the warrior Orders for his part in the murder of Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury. As Guy had feared, for them to raise this army they had taken every second man from the walls of Jerusalem and from all the other Christian strongholds in Outremer. It would certainly be the last great army that France would raise in this unholy land. And to make that prediction, Amnet had not needed to call upon his own powers of prophecy.

  As a self-proclaimed Champion of the Cross, King Guy had insisted that his army take with them a piece of the True Cross, as guide and protector in this venture. It was carried in a casket of gold and crystal, and had been displayed for each of the knights as they rode out of the gates at Jerusalem, past the hill of Golgotha. (Not a route that Amnet himself would have chosen to begin a march against a force outnumbering their own by five to one.) Now the Casket of the Cross rode across the saddle of the strongest and bravest of their knights. And when one man felt the weight of the honor too much for his humble soul—and his humbler thigh muscles—he would pass it on to another more worthy.

  Amnet had declined the honor twice.

  But he had, in the days of preparation, chanced to approach the casket in its chapel. In the evening, when there was none to look on, he had slipped the lock, raised its lid, and laid a finger against the dry wood. He had expected to feel a thrill, a sense of power such as came to him through the Stone. He had felt nothing, no more than he might feel at touching a board in the refectory table or a gatepost. He did feel the dim throb of a once-living tree, now just a memory in the cells; that sense came to him with the touch of any wood. But the agony of Our Lord? The shame of the living tree that bore him? The displeasure of God at seeing his Only Son sacrificed? None of this lived in the wood. Amnet would know.

  The debate between King Guy and Grand Master Gerard continued while Thomas dwelt on the holiness—and the authenticity—of ancient relics. Amnet knew that the outcome, whether to proceed or to make camp, would depend on the fears of King Guy: whether he more feared Saladin or the Grand Master of the Temple.

  "It was the Count of Tripoli," Guy was saying, "who warned me that the day I fought Saladin would be the day I lost the Kingdom of Jerusalem."

  "And you believe this?" Gerard was outraged. "The Count's dealings with the enemy are well proved. Sire, would you trust a known traitor?"

  "He was not in the pay of the Saracen when he foretold me."

  "But his heart was, surely... My Lord, the Templars have sworn an oath in this. We will disband before we lose this one chance to crush Saladin."

  "I hear you, Gerard. But I am still the King."

  "Yes, Sire."

  "We will camp here."

  * * *

  General Saladin looked out upon a field of corpses, men and horses alike. Each was pinned to the ground with one or more long arrow shafts, which had been fired by the English archers.

  None of the corpses had lain there so long that they might begin emitting the vapors of corruption. But the days were passing and the summer sun was hot. Soon, he knew, the bodies would begin exploding from the pressure of their internal gases. The horses would go first, making a sound that he might hear back at his tents, well behind the skirmish line. After that, even his bravest, fiercest warriors would not cross this bit of plain.

  The ditches surrounding the Kerak of Moab had not defeated Saladin. He knew he could order his men forward, in the name of Allah, until their fallen bodies had filled up the gap and created a ramp upon which he might ride to the base of the fortress walls.

  It was those walls themselves that had defeated him. One hundred hands high, his surveyors said. They were built of dressed stone fitted so tightly that even an Assassin's slipper could not find a toehold, let alone a lancer's heavy boot. Waiting above were the French yeomen, armed with pikes to push over any ladder that might reach within a body length of the top. There, too, waited the English archers, whose missiles could easily be launched down upon the Saracens' heads. And Reynald de Chatillon would have other resources atop the wall: heavy stones, braziers to heat vats of oil, baskets of pitch to ignite and drop.

  Saladin had set his surveyors to explore other possibilities. They might, they said, tunnel beneath the walls, shoring their holes with posts and beams as they went. When the tunnel was complete, they would fire these supports and so sap the walls' underlying strength. But, in this rocky ground, a tunnel that would be long enough to place its mouth beyond a bowshot from the walls would require at least two months to dig. And the walls themselves, judging from their height, must be eight to ten walking paces wide at the base; such a depth would redouble the strength of the whole. The surveyors taxed even Saladin's great imagination with the size of the pillared cavern they said must be dug there.

  The Sultan had, for a time, considered taking the stronghold by ruse. He might arrange a parley with Reynald and his captains—after the European fashion, which was founded on a love of talk. At such a meeting, he might have one of the Hashishiyun, by prior arrangement, put a cord around the Prince of Antioch's neck. And then let Shaitan look after the consequences.

  Saladin could find only one fault with this approach: the Hashishiyun, to a man, had refused his summons to jihad. And none of his own servants were so deft with their hands.

  The alternatives were few. Saladin and his army might sit beyond Reynald's walls, counting the dried blades of grass in the sand and remembering blurred dreams of water running free over the land, while they waited for the Prince to surrender. But Saladin knew that Reynald had within his fortress a spring of good water, sheep in a great herd, storerooms of dried grain and jerked meat, and shade to cover every head. Saladin's own men, even ignited as they were by holy ardor, would quickly tire of that game. Then, jihad or no jihad, they would slip away at night, two and three at a time, until his vast sea of men and horses became a mere puddle among the dunes.

  Or he could wait until the army of King Guy—for the tongues in the bazaar had spoken of this, too—came up to take him in the rear. It would not be such a bite, Saladin knew, as could take him down whole. But, coming at the end of a valley-long rush, it might cost more of his lancers' lives than would be prudent to waste.

  It would be better to take Guy's head in a place wh
ere Saladin might spread his jaws wide to receive it.

  "Mustafa!" he called.

  "Yes, My Lord?"

  "Ready the army for departure."

  "Which direction would most please you, Lord?"

  "North, I think. Toward Tiberias."

  "Very good, Lord."

  "We shall see what raiding there might be among the Christian strongholds along the way. Prince Reynald will surely wait for us here."

  "Yes, Lord."

  * * *

  "Gone? What do you mean, gone?"

  "Gone from the plain, My Lord."

  "They can't be! Here, boy! You've still got sleep in your eyes. Been dozing on watch, have you?"

  "No, sir! The Saracens have truly fled the valley."

  "I won't believe that 'till I see it for myself."

  Gerard de Ridefort heaved himself up from his campstool and looked north, across the backs of the Frenchmen's tents.

  "Can't see a thing but canvas. Thomas, give me your shoulder!"

  The Grand Master planted a foot on the seat of the stool and, hardly waiting for Amnet to put himself in position, levered up until his head was above the ridgepoles.

  "Hard to say, with so much dust in the air."

  "Do you see their standards?" Amnet asked.

  "Not a one... Do they fly them at dawn, do you think? Or take them in?"

  "I understood that they were fixed to the poles, as our own pennants are."

  "Then the Saracens are gone. Blast it!"

  "That's not good?" Amnet ventured.

  "Not when I'd hoped to pin them against the Kerak and get Reynald's help in crushing them, front and back."

  "Was Reynald party to this plan, My Lord?"

  "Not yet. We'd have gotten a message through to him, somehow, as soon as we got close enough to formulate a proper strategy."

  "Ah, a message. With a bird of some sort, I suppose?"

  Gerald looked down at Amnet with a frown. "Of some sort, yes." The Grand Master jumped down and dusted off his palms. "Someone had better inform the King."

  "Yes, won't Guy be pleased!"

  Gerard frowned at him again. "Are you playing the fool with me, Thomas?"

  "No, My Lord."

  "See that you don't."

  * * *

  "Gone are they?" King Guy asked, lifting his face from the laving basin. Water and rose oil ran down through his thin beard, making a drizzle in the bowl.

  "Most surely, My Lord," Gerard answered.

  He and the other Masters of the Temple had gathered before King Guy's tent. This facility was a masterwork of the tentmaker's—and the baggage master's—art. The central pavilion covered a circular space wide enough that the titled nobility who traveled with the King might stand shoulder to shoulder before him and not touch elbows. Yet the weight of all this canvas was supported by a cunning set of poles that could be made to collapse to the length of a quarterstaff. Adjoining this pavilion, by means of vaulted groins which mimicked in canvas a cathedral's groins of stone, were four squared-off wings or porticoes, useful for sleeping, eating, holding private audience, or entertaining.

  That no one might mistake it, the canvas of the King's tent was dyed a brilliant vermilion. The flaps and the keyed hems about the eaves were done in red brocade. The stitching there bore the likenesses of the Twelve Apostles and the heraldry of those French duchies which were represented in the Holy Land. This tent and its decoration were said to be the gift of Sibylla, Guy's queen consort and the author, by marriage, of his kingly good fortune.

  "Ahem!" The sound distracted Gerard from his covert inspection of this castle in canvas. King Guy had put out his hand, palm up. The Grand Master hurriedly laid a square of clean linen across it. Guy wiped at his face.

  "Then we've scared them off," the King declared.

  "So it would appear, Sire."

  "Which way did they go?"

  Gerard seemed to weigh the gravity of this question. Amnet, looking on, admired his master's diplomacy.

  There was only one direction a force of that size could have gone: north, around Moab and on toward Tiberias. Saladin was leading a column of a hundred thousand men, only an eighth of them mounted, with at least half again that number in servants and slave boys, cooks and grooms, lackeys and spies, supported by supply animals and baggage trains, all moving at a walking pace over the land. To take them across the mountain ridges either to the east or west would have been a feat of madness. No one since Hannibal would have tried it. And to have brought them back south again would have lost Saladin the element of surprise—because he would have had to walk that horde through King Guy's own camp. The Templars and the King's levies would have awakened dead, with footprints on their backs and bellies. No, the only possible direction was north, slipping around Reynald's stronghold and away.

  If the King could not see that at a glance, then he had never looked at a map and he had no business leading an army in pursuit of Saladin. It was that simple, Amnet finally decided: Guy had no business being here. Now, how would Gerard choose to phrase it?

  "I hardly know how to advise you, Sire. Does it seem possible they have gone north?"

  "North?" Guy appeared to be considering a new thought.

  "North, My Lord."

  "North ... and bypass Reynald entirely?"

  "Difficult to understand, Sire."

  "Yes, indeed. I thought our friend Reynald was the whole object of this excursion."

  "So it was said. But who can fathom the mind of the Arab?"

  "Who indeed?" Gerard agreed.

  Amnet felt like screaming. Didn't they see what Saladin was doing? Having evaded Gerald's clumsy attempt at trapping his column against a stationary position—as if a field mouse could trap a wild bear!—and having no further interest in digging Reynald out of his hole at the Kerak, Saladin was now leading the Christian army on into the desert. The barren desert. The empty desert. The Saracen desert, where every rock and passing shepherd would be his potential ally—as if the bear ever needed allies in his own forest!

  "We should follow them, of course," King Guy observed.

  "Yes, My Lord," Gerard replied. "That is my deepest desire."

  "Now that we have them on the run, eh?"

  * * *

  Amid the jingle of harness bits, the snort and stamp of horses, the rattle of mail coats against scabbards and saddle bows, Thomas Amnet made peace for himself. He gathered his traveling kit of powders and essences under his cloak and walked straight east, away from the bustle of the breaking camp.

  "Master?" Leo called after him. "Where are you going?"

  Amnet half-turned and made a downward motion with his arm.

  "Shall I leave your horse?"

  Amnet nodded once, not caring if Leo would catch the motion. Then he put his face away from the camp and went into the desert. Thorns from the sparse brambles thereabouts snagged in his cloak and broke off in the skirts of his mail.

  "Where's Thomas off to?" he heard someone ask, faintly.

  By the time any answer came, he was beyond earshot.

  After he had gone two thousand paces, even the pounding hooves of King Guy's army on the march were lost in the whisper of the east wind.

  He walked down the bank of a dry wadi, where the sand spread in curves and deltas, and the vegetation was more plentiful. Amnet sank down in the shelter of the bank and tested the wind against his face. The air was almost still here.

  He cleared a level space with his hand and laid out his bundle of goods. Several of the thorn bushes nearby were overdry in the summer heat, and he could with some difficulty tear off the outer woody branches and their dead leaves. As he broke these into short sticks and crumbled bits, the thorns cut into his calloused hands.

  Returning to his cleared space, he piled the sticks for a fire. From the bundle he took out a small alembic of thick green glass, a lens for igniting the fuel, and a pot of mixed herbs and oils—the kind to make
a thick smoke that he could read out of doors in the daylight. The last to come forth, from a secure place at the bottom of the bundle, was the Stone in its leather purse.

  Kneeling in the shadow of the bank, Amnet scooped out a shallow bowl in the sand beside the pile of brush and placed the Stone in it. He poured the herb-and-oil mixture into the alembic and settled it atop the twigs. With the burning lens, he started a whitely glowing point of heat in among the crumbled leaves, then blew it into a tiny, smokeless fire.

  As the flames gained strength, Amnet removed his white wool cloak and arranged it along his arm, weighted with stones at the hem like a half-tent, to shield the fire and the Stone from any chance wind and from sunlight reflected off the surrounding sand.

  He settled onto his haunches and waited.

  The mixture in the alembic hissed once and released a puff of oily smoke. The scent of thyme and myrrh rose around Amnet's face. The bulb sizzled and released a longer stream of mixed smoke and steam.

  Amnet studied the roilings and foldings of the vapor, seeking hints in the daylight.

  The plane of a cheek, the curve of a mustache, the hollow of an eyesocket formed. The same face that had foiled Amnet's vision for months recurred in the smoke. At first, Thomas had assumed that the face was Saladin's, foremost of the Saracen generals and de facto ruler of the native population in Outremer. Such a person would figure in any prophecy Amnet might cast for the Templars, for the French Kingdom of Jerusalem, or for the land between the Jordan and the sea. That interpretation of the phantom visage made perfect sense—except that Amnet had now come face to face with Saladin, and he was not the man of the smokes.

  With a new exhalation of steam and oily vapor, the face's left eyesocket seemed to swell up and expand, with the seed of a globe developing deep within it. The globe grew into an opaque ball of cloudlike steam, smooth and blank-as the moon at full. It was not an eye. The eyes of this face, as revealed before, had been defined by extremely dark pupils; they had blazed with black glints of meaning and menace. This eye was covered by a cataract of pale smoke. As he watched, the blank eyeball began to rotate in its socket.