The Red Cross of Gold I:. The Knight of Death

by Brendan Carroll

  He had to stay awake or else tumble from the horse. To occupy his mind, he tried to fathom how Beaujold's hatred could have eluded him all those years and why he had not realized the depths of the man’s feelings sooner. He had thought the matter settled and had assumed that time had glossed over the pain for Beaujold as it had for him. Before he lapsed into semi-unconsciousness, another uninvited, unpleasant memory assaulted: the image of Beaujold on his knees, pleading with him to spare his friend and Brother’s life. He had always thought Beaujold would get over it, but he had been wrong. He remembered with electric lucidity the look on the Knight of Sword’s face after he had administered the Final Rites to their fallen Brother and beheaded him with the Flaming Sword. There had been no hope for their Brother. A land mine had obliterated most of his lower body and they could not carry him over the mountain trails without endangering every soldier’s life on the mission. The late Knight of the Holy City had been the last of them to fall and that had been almost sixty years ago. For one fleeting moment, he almost remembered the words of the final rites, the Key of Death, but then everything was gone along with his consciousness.

  ((((((((((((()))))))))))))

  Maxie carried Merry into the library and deposited her on the sofa at Valentino’s instruction. She stood with her arms folded across her chest patting one foot rapidly, angrily on the carpet.

  “Merry!” Valentino leaned over her as Maxie retreated.

  He had to take care of their prisoners while he still had help.

  “Wake up!” She shook the young woman’s shoulder.

  Merry raised her head and then let it fall back, groaning and pressing one hand to her brow.

  “What the hell were you doing down there?” the angry woman demanded immediately.

  “Nothing but trying to put right what you left undone,” Merry told her and frowned as her head spun. She swung her feet to the floor and the woman shimmered in and out of darkness in front of her eyes. “Isn’t that just like you, Cecile? Don’t ask how I’m doing. Don’t ask if I’m hurt. Just yell at me for nothing. I was trying to stop them from taking him. I discovered him missing and then found them all in the basement.” It was the truth… in a roundabout way.

  “Oh?” Valentino eyed her suspiciously. “Why didn’t you tell me first? Did you think you could handle them all by yourself? Dressed like a prima donna?”

  “Yes! No! I don’t know!” Merry set her jaw stubbornly. She was desperate to know what had happened after she had been knocked out, but was afraid to ask anything. If Valentino sensed her concern for Mark Andrew, she would never tell her a thing. She knew that Valentino would eventually tell her what had happened… in her own time and as long as she didn’t ask.

  “Well, it didn’t look like you were trying to help,” Valentino frowned at her. “I don’t understand how you found them in the basement. Did they make you go? I should have known something was up with Herr Schroeder. That guy wasn’t Herr Schroeder! These guys are real slick. I guess that’s how they manage to live so long fooling stupid people like us. I should have known something was up when Schroeder tried to flirt with me. Everybody knows he’s a flaming fucking faggot. Men! I guess that one thinks he’s a bad-ass like Ramsay,” the woman muttered this last under her breath and went to pour herself a glass of water at the desk. Typical of her self-centered nature, she offered Merry nothing.

  “Now we have prisoners to worry about, but we almost got all of them,” she announced proudly after a few moments. Her tone was one of satisfaction. “And one of them is real scary,” she grinned at Merry. “You’d better be glad that he wasn’t the one that came looking for Anthony.”

  “The dark one all dressed in black?” Merry asked and narrowed her eyes. She would have to pull the information out of her. Play her along. “He was scary, wasn’t he?” she added, trying to egg her on.

  “Uh, huh,” Valentino drank the water in tiny sips as if to intentionally irritate Merry. “He’s been praying constantly since we nabbed him. Not at all like your oh-so-friendly Ramsay, huh? He has a decidedly evil aura about him. Strange, isn’t it? And Ramsay is supposed to be the Knight of Death. I wonder what this one’s secret is? It must be really, really deep, dark and mysterious.”

  “Yeah. I guess so,” Merry didn’t want to think about it. “Who did we miss? Are we still looking?”

  “Just Ramsay.” Valentino looked disgusted. “We got four. Your precious Knight made off on Raven. The bastard stole my horse! Boy, he’s really something. Now he’s a horse thief. That saddle cost twelve hundred bucks. Didn’t they used to hang horse thieves in Coryelle County? I think we got the young one that used the two weapons. He’s probably an apprentice. Too young to be a Knight, I think.”

  “What?” Merry frowned as her head ached miserably.

  There should have been five prisoners if only Mark had escaped. There had been five Templars in the basement with him. Mark made six. She wondered how many more of them would come out of the woodwork. What had they gotten themselves into and how would they ever get out? Valentino had no idea what she was doing. Prisoners?! Did she really think they were going to be able to outmatch these men? These guys were serious. Especially the skinny blond one who wanted Mark’s head, but not all of them seemed to want him dead. It had looked as if they were divided on the issue of what to do with him. The short blond one might have taken his head, but the younger one and the one disguised as Schroeder seemed unwilling to actually kill him. The one Cecile thought was evil was definitely on Mark’s side. That would possibly be three against three if…

  “He took your horse?” she asked. Schroeder. Not Schroeder. She wondered what his name was. Perhaps she would have the chance to ask him personally if all went well and she could somehow survive long enough to see things set right.

  “Yes and he took Chevaliere Davenport’s palomino as well,” Valentino moaned and poured herself another drink of water. “What will she say when she finds out? The bitch will probably expect me to pay damages.”

  Merry hoped that the one on the palomino was not the horrid Frenchman with the thinning hair. The rude one that had shouted for Mark’s head.

  “My head really hurts, Cecile.” Merry rubbed the back of her neck. “What happened to the ceremony?”

  “Everyone left,” Valentino moaned again. “This thing cost me six thousand dollars plus nits and now we’ve had to put it off. Everything was ruined. It took a great deal of fancy footwork just to keep Brother Sentiment from calling the constable. I assured him that Maxie would handle it, but some of the guys stayed to help look for the horses for a while. I told Mr. Petrie that Maxie had already called the police before he left. Oh, he was in a fine mood. He’ll never trust me with anything again. They think the horses just ran off by themselves in the uproar. They also think the Templars are a gang of burglars. At least I was able to salvage that much. The last thing we need is the constable poking around. I have to think of a follow up story. You know I’ll have to tell what happened to them eventually.”

  “Would you mind then if I just went up to bed?” Merry asked sweetly. “I need a nice, long bath and some aspirin.”

  “Of course,” Valentino said with more sympathy as she put the water down and finally showed a bit of concern for Merry by patting her head as she passed her. “You go on up now. I have to go see what those idiots are doing out there.”

  Merry stood up slowly, deliberately trying not to seem in a hurry, but she was desperate to get away. Her heart raced. She had to go after Mark Andrew. He had seemed awfully sick when she had seen him in the basement office. She remembered how he had staggered out of the room and how the perspiration had gleamed on his face under the lights in the corridor. He had been half-blind and the bloody foam he had spit on the floor had not been a good sign either. There was no telling what the dark Knight had done to him in the basement. And now this other one was after him before he’d had half a chance to recover. He needed her help and he needed it now.

  “Goo
dnight then,” Merry called after Valentino as she headed out of the library by way of the patio doors.

  As soon as Valentino was out of sight, Merry rushed up the stairs to her room, she considered changing clothes, but only grabbed a light sweater and threw it on over her gown. Creeping down the back stairs, she met no one on her way out. She went out the laundry room door into the moonlight and made a mad dash across the open ground to the stables.

  The gentle bay mare that she called her own was happy to see her. She was ready to join her companions for a moonlight ride. Taking only enough time to put a bridle on her, Merry kicked off her shoes, cursing herself for not having at least put on her socks and boots. She hoisted her long skirt and leaped onto the mare’s back. It would be easier to control her without the heels as long as she didn’t get stranded in a prickly pear patch. She rode the mare around in front of the stables briefly, looking for signs of the other two horses while the distant sounds of four-wheelers rumbling around the hills indicated that Valentino's friends were still bumbling in the dark.

  Scouting was not in Merry’s list of skilled accomplishments, but the signs of two horses’ recent passing were easy enough to follow. She kicked the horse to a gallop as the sounds of jeeps and four-wheelers somewhere off to her right grew louder. They would be good for a few loops through the nearby trails that Valentino had constructed for recreational purposes and they would be gone. Of this, she was quite sure. Most of them had been up in the rocks before, riding and acting like fools whenever they threw parties. At the moment, she didn’t give a damn about any of it any more. Her only thought was to get to Mark before the rest of them did.

  The further she rode from the house, the harder the trail was to follow as the ground became increasingly rocky and hard packed. Her progress slowed to a painstaking walk and twice she lost the trail altogether and had to backtrack. In the hills on either side of the dry wash, coyotes yapped and howled at the moon, causing chills to course up her spine. It wouldn’t do to get stranded in the rough countryside, in the dark with no shoes, no rifle and no radio. She hadn’t even thought to bring her cell phone, not that there was a signal out here.

  Mark had been right about everything. Valentino was a fraud. The entire Order of the Rose was a fraud and she had been brainwashed into thinking it was all magick and nonsense. Now, here she was, in the middle of nowhere in the dead of night, trying to save an assassin who was being chased by a homicidal maniac with a sword. If she had any sense, she would turn around and go back to her bath, after calling the police, but that wouldn’t help matters and she would be arrested as well. Just as Mark had said: Kidnapping was a serious crime.

  There was no time for further thinking when the double trail of hoof prints became an odd mess in the waning light of the setting moon. The tracks went in circles and the ground was covered with deep prints and lighter prints. The riders must have dismounted at some point. There were dark, almost black, splotches on the light-colored soil in the moon light, numerous gouges and scuff marks in the dark soil and as far as she could tell, only one set of boot prints. With a sinking feeling, she slid from the horse and looked more closely at the dark spots on the ground. She touched one with her finger. It was still damp. No doubt blood.

  The site where Mark had lain impaled with his own sword, stopped her dead in her tracks. Here and there, puddles glistened in the hollows of small rocks embedded in the dry riverbed. Obviously, this was where they had met. One, if not both of the Knights were in serious trouble. Here she also found human footprints. Smeared and bloody. One set of bloody boot tracks and another without blood. Both had remounted their horses, nearby. As best as she could determine, it looked like one of them had turned back south and east headed toward the highway, but the horse trailed off to the west toward the creek. There was only one explanation. One of them had left the other for dead.

  She mounted the bay and kicked him into a gallop, heading west. The blood was easier to follow and the tracks were deeper, indicating a heavier horse and rider. Mrs. Davenport’s pony was a much smaller horse than Cecile’s stallion and Mark was at least thirty or forty pounds heavier than the skinny French Knight. She reasoned that Mark had chosen the best horse in the stables, therefore, it was Mark she was following… she hoped. It was Mark who had suffered the massive blood loss and Mark that she would eventually find at the end of the trail.

  After an hour or so the dark spots gradually disappeared and she had to slow down enough to look for the hoof prints again. Her mind raced and her nerves were on end as she allowed her horse to walk along slowly, while she leaned over its neck, searching the ground. Her shoulders hurt and she was beginning to appreciate Lady Godiva’s troubles more and more. Horseback riding required sturdy clothes. Her flimsy gown and undergarments were far from appropriate attire and she regretted not having taken two minutes to change into jeans before leaving the house.

  She tried to redirect her attention from her aches and pains by laying some sort of plan. What would she do when she finally caught up with whomever was ahead of her? What if she was wrong? What if she were following the wrong man? How could he have lost that much blood and stayed mounted on a horse at all? No coherent plans of action came to mind only more questions she could not answer.

  Time dragged on and the horse she followed showed no signs of stopping. She felt truly alone for the first time in her life, somewhere between the comfort of her old life and the desperate situation into which Mark had fallen, without friends and no safe haven. She was being forced to make the first real decisions in her life and those decisions would have profound effects on the remaining portion of it, however long that might be.

  The first gray light of dawn had just begun to make the sky lighter behind her when a dark stand of cottonwoods loomed up in front of her. She had reached the creek bottom and she was a long way from home, but certainly not as far from home as Mark Andrew Ramsay. The track she was following began to zigzag lazily as the stallion finally tired and began to forage for food along the ancient river banks. It was obvious that the rider was not controlling the horse’s movement any more, if he ever had been. With the growing light to aid her, she kicked the bay to a gallop and headed straight for the creek where she assumed the big stallion would go for water after such a long ride and there would be green grass there to graze on.

  Merry tied her horse to a small bush on the creek bank and edged her way down to the water, very glad to be off horseback again. Valentino's stallion had tramped around under the trees for quite some time and she could not tell which way he had gone after he finally entered the stream. A flat rock over-hanging the gurgling stream offered an inviting place for her to sit for a short rest. Merry let her tired feet hang in the water and stretched her arms over her head, arching her aching back, trying to pop out the kinks she had accumulated on the ride. It was a wonderful relief to be off the horse, but the early morning air was almost chilly in the deep shade under the cottonwoods. The headache dissipated, but she felt hollow, unable to remember when she had last eaten solid food. She was miserable, but at least she still had all her blood in her veins. It must have taken a great deal of dogged determination to hang onto the skittish stallion to make it this far with such a devastating wound.

  She lay flat on her stomach and dipped her hands in the cold water, splashing some in her face and drinking some of the sweet spring water.

  Any idea of running away with Mark faded with the brightening of day under the trees. The sun always chased away dreams and put the light of harsh reality into every picture. He would surely leave as soon as he could and she would never see him again. Tears welled up in her eyes at the thought of losing him and then she realized that he had never belonged to her. If he had any real thoughts about her, he surely thought her a rotten individual, capable of anything and certainly not worthy of love, a loose woman without morals or decency. She knew a bit about history and how severe the punishment had been for adulterous women, prostitutes and common whores. His
opinion of her would surely be low if it registered on the scale at all. Tears of frustration and anger joined the spring water on her face.

  A splashing sound coming from upstream interrupted her misery. She froze on with one hand shading her eyes and waited for the source of the noise to come into view. The sound was methodical and as it drew nearer, she recognized the hollow clomping of hooves against rocks submerged in the water. No doubt, Raven was walking down stream, nibbling at the sweet clumps of grass growing along the bank. She scooted back off the rock and took cover beside it under the leaves of a tall weed laden with purple berries.

  The black stallion wandered aimlessly into view. The subdued light under the trees slanted through millions of translucent green leaves and the trunks of the trees cast deep shadows across the stream. Their gnarled roots formed fantastic shapes along the banks, piling up against one another in a slow, but inexorable struggle for space. A few yards upstream from where she waited, a graceful weeping willow of considerable age added mystery to the beauty of the backdrop against which the velvet animal assumed the proportions of a mythical creature. She half-expected to see wings on his back. The trailing tendrils of the willow partially obscured the dark rider atop the black horse like a living beaded curtain of light green.

  He did not appear to be seated in the saddle, but rather perched precariously on top of the stallion. The horse moved out of the willow’s covering branches and she drew a sharp breath. She had followed the right man. He sat with his knees up, his head leaning into the horse’s neck. One pale hand was visible, entangled in the long mane while the reins dragged in the water. Was he dead in the saddle? Was that possible? The horse slowly made its way toward her until a break in the trees allowed the slanting rays of the morning sun to illuminate the area like a stage provided by nature and just for a moment, she thought she saw dozens of tiny green, yellow and blue orbs floating around him. Then the illusion was gone as the lights seemed to flee in every direction at the very instant she drew the breath. The horse took a step or two and then stopped.