They had made a semi-circle about Acre and were approaching from the north-east, but the Saracens were sure to be hunting still through the sandhills, and they must quit their shelter and dash for the camp. Dawn was close upon them, already paling the eastern stars, and there was no time to waste. Landry whispered his orders. The men bunched their captured horses in the centre; two of the brothers rode on either flank, and Ramiro took station at the rear. The horses were the most valuable booty of the venture, not lightly to be abandoned. Piers and Landry formed the striking-point of the whole force. Rodriga, in her place behind them, needed no reminder of her particular duty, and her father did not insult her by offering one. She balanced her javelin for instant action, glanced aside at the silent renegade who was her target, and decided treachery at this late moment would only serve to bring him speedy death. She relaxed slightly. For all their distrust, he had done nothing blameworthy since he joined them.
“Now!” said Landry softly, and moved out, noiseless as a ghost over the silver sand. The little cavalcade followed from cover, clear in the moonlight. All they needed was a good start, but it was nerve-racking to ride gently in the full brilliance of that white light when one ached to break into a thundering gallop. Then Almansor suddenly lifted his head, his ears pricking, and startled the night with a ringing trumpet-cry. Mares were near, and some shift of the wind had brought their scent to his nostrils. The Saracens preferred mares to stallions even for war. A high voice shouted in Arabic, and Landry swore and touched spurs to Almansor’s flanks. The five Catalans screeched wildly and lashed at the led horses with the halters, and they churned down the slope in clouds of flying sand, ploughed through to firmer ground and stretched into a gallop.
Half a mile to the south other dim figures, dark against the pale sand, erupted from the dunes. A high shaking yell pealed from them. Loose pale robes flapped and the moon glittered on brandished weapons and spiked helmets. They were racing to cut the Christians off from Acre, and since they had the shorter distance to cover they would intercept them half-way between their present position and the trenches.
The sky turned grey, rose and then blue. Light flooded the world. The moon dimmed to a faint ghost and slid unnoticed to the sea. The grey and silver sands now spurted brown and yellow from spurning hooves; the burned tawny grass blurred from sight and the stunted thorns flashed past. By the bright sea’s edge the honey-hued ramparts shone sharp and clear, and the thronging tents and battered earthworks were already alive with scurrying figures. An arrow whistled over their heads and was gone.
The Turks were closing on them fast, yelling the Name of Allah as they came, in a flurry of robes, a glitter of steel, a storm of golden dust. A few arrows whistled about them, but most had their bows slung behind them and waved swords, clubs and light lances. There were over a score of them, confident that they would overwhelm the little Christian force at the first onfall. Rodriga could see the white gleam of teeth and eyeballs in their dark faces, and her heart was hammering fast.
“Bear right—right!” called Landry, and signalled with his hand, reining Almansor over as he did so. They veered away as though shirking the onfall, edging towards the sea, and the Saracens screeched in anticipated triumph. Marco, beside Rodriga, pulled the hood he wore up and over his head. At the movement she half-raised her javelin. He adjusted it unhurriedly, and his eyes met hers calmly.
“If I am recognised, next time I go among them my neck will feel a bowstring.”
“God’s Teeth! You go—you openly admit trafficking with the Infidel!” Piers exclaimed, risking his mount’s footing to glare over his shoulder.
“They are not my enemy.”
“That we can well believe, renegade, and you deal with them—”
“I find them more courteous than most Christians,” Marco said pleasantly.
“Heaven send you sense, whelp!” snarled Landry without turning his head. “Look to your mount and the enemy! The hound will keep, and he must fight his kinsmen now to save his hide!”
The Saracens, shrieking triumph, had driven between them and the trenches and were closing the narrow gap. Rodriga saw her father lift his hand, glimpsed a grin twitching the corner of his mouth, and then he uttered one great roar of, “Aid us, Holy Sepulchre!” and swung Almansor round, charging straight for the enemy flank. Yelling, lashing at the led horses, wrenching at halters, the Catalans whirled after him, and he and Piers spurred headlong at the Turks.
Before Landry a squealing horse reared up in terror, and his sword whirled in a shining arc across Rodriga’s vision. Teeth and eyes flashed white in shocked, shouting brown faces. A curved blade met Landry’s sword in a clang of steel and was beaten back; a red turban reeled away and was gone; the horse’s head that had towered above him flung back and down. Piers battered with shortened sword at a robed body that ducked under his blows and lunged at him, clawing at his hauberk for a purchase. Blood broke over the dark face, but the Saracen wound himself about Piers like a snake, borne from his saddle along with him, and lifted a knife.
Rodriga thrust, and felt her javelin check on the resistance of mail, her buttocks slam painfully against her crupper, her teeth clack together with the impact. Then the resistance was gone, her point free, and white robes, knife and bloody snarling face were sprawling away. A hard hand on her arm restored her balance. Piers smashed backhanded at a green-wreathed helmet that leaped sideways, her father granted curses as he hewed at shouting heads, something wet and warm splashed her cheek, and Caliph stumbled slightly over a body that cried out under his hooves. Marco had crowded his grey mare as close to her near side and in front of her as he safely could, and shielded her. His knife was in his hand, but unstained; the Saracens were no foes of his.
Then there were no more blows to strike, no more Saracens before them, and the brief clamour of battle was behind them. After the clashing and screaming, the drumming of hooves on the sandy earth seemed uncannily quiet for a moment. Rodriga risked a swift glance behind her, to see the wreckage of that Infidel force strewn about the sand, the scattered survivors gathering together again, and further back the dunes swarming horsemen to avenge them.
Almansor and Caliph were flagging. They were gaunt and weakened by weeks of inadequate feeding, and Landry was too heavy for the destrier in his poor condition. They could not match the large-eyed Arab mares, fleet as desert winds. It would be a close-run thing. The trenches were near, rushing towards them, and along the ramparts open-mouthed men were prancing and bellowing encouragement. The camp had roused like a wasps’ nest that boys had stoned. Horns and trumpets blared. A few riders were already issuing to their succour. Men on foot were scurrying to posts on the rampart, arbalesters stooping to set their bows, archers nocking their shafts, knights shouting orders and waving swords.
Rodriga glanced back again, and her scalp prickled. The sandhills were spewing Infidels, a-twinkle with mail and weapons, gay with flaring robes and tumultuous with wild cries and the metallic din of cymbals, drums and trumpets. She suddenly began to grin. All this alarm and fury, two armies stirred to battle, and all because an impoverished knight chose to fill his purse at the enemy’s expense as the only alternative to brigandage!
She was riding like a lad, exhilarated by the wild gallop and the peril that set her pulses bounding. Her long plaits with their gay red ribbons leaped back from her head, a flush coloured her brown skin, and her teeth flashed in amusement. Marco, at her side, was watching her intently. The hooves behind, the yells and drums and cymbals, were gaining fast, but the ramparts and the shouting defenders were racing towards them. Then horsemen were all about them, cheering, questioning, sweeping them back to the trenches under a hail of arrows. They tumbled across a narrow causeway left between the crumbling earthworks and turned to look on battle, a confusion of flesh and blood and steel in a mounting fog of dust, from which incredible uproar assailed the burning sky. Landry sat his blown and lathered destrier and drew a long breath as he surveyed his triumphant men and
the plunging horses. He mopped his face with his sleeve. Marco had vanished, but Piers was laughing and panting, his stained sword drooping in his hand as he turned his flushed face to Rodriga’s.
“Miguel, Esteban, take the spoil straightway back to camp!” Landry ordered, swinging heavily from Almansor’s back and tossing the reins to Miguel. “Young man, get you to your own lord before anyone blown with authority starts asking questions!”
Piers hesitated, looking from him to Rodriga, and opened his mouth to protest at this summary dismissal. Landry flared at him.
“Do you reckon we shall cheat you of your share? Ten to one King Richard himself will be thrusting his red head into this coil before all is done! Go before all Acre knows you were one of us!” The lad’s scowl yielded to comprehension, and he swung his destrier away for the cover of the nearest tents. Landry gestured to his men with his red-smeared sword and started for the assailed ramparts at a lumbering trot. “We stirred up the hornets; only just we should help put them down!” he growled.
Rodriga halted a little to their rear. The air was streaked with arrows singing in both directions, and the short vicious quarrels that whirred from the cross-bows. Through the boiling dust Turks stormed up to the trenches. They poured over the counter-scarp, sliding and scrambling, leaping from their squealing horses to fling themselves up at the defenders. Metal clashed in a din like a hundred smithies. The ditch seethed with Saracens, flooding into it as though they would fill it and give their fellows passage over their own bodies. The trilling war-cries, the shrieks and the clanging deafened her, while as she peered through the fog of dust some imp in her brain kept whispering, “All this because our purse was empty!” She waited, her javelin poised. Her father’s solid bulk was firmly planted on the rampart, with a Catalan on either hand to shield him.
Fresh defenders were hurrying up from the camp, adjusting mail and tugging out weapons as they ran. The Saracen assault wavered, spent itself and began sullenly to roll back. Howling triumphantly, men leaped down into the trench, gleefully hacking and stabbing at the writhing bodies, falling furiously on those who tried to scramble clear too late. Fierce little combats clanged and threshed the length of the ditch. Ramiro yelled an order; one of the lads was gone from Landry’s side. As Rodriga started forward he and Pablo both sprang down into the ditch. She reached it in time to see the end of a scuffle almost at her feet, and Pablo’s javelin through the body of a Turk who fell across Juan’s legs as he lay sprawled among the dead. Then they had him by shoulders and feet and were stumbling up the scarp to Landry’s side.
Rodriga cried out, her midriff numb with horror, and Landry stared, his face suddenly sick and old. Almost at their feet lay a stringy little man with more grey than black in his beard. Rodriga sprang at him, ripping off his white turban with frantic hands. As the Catalans lifted the dripping body over the rampart, she was tearing it into long strips and rolling them hurriedly.
They laid Juan at her feet and slashed his tunic away. His slack white face was senseless, and blood poured down into the thirsty dust from a gaping wound along the top of his shoulder and a ragged gash from navel to breast-bone that had been meant to disembowel him. Ramiro took his head on his knees and held the shoulder-wound pressed shut with his fingers, while Landry closed the other. Cold with dismay, Rodriga folded cloth into a pad and clapped it in place, winding on bandages that would not grip firmly enough in so awkward a part. Pablo and her father worked over the lesser wound, swearing disjointedly in pity and dread.
“You are the knight who started this affray?” a self-important young voice inquired over their heads. Landry grunted affirmation and knotted on another strip of cotton, without looking up. “King Richard summons you!” the voice announced.
“All in good time,” Landry growled. Rodriga wrapped on more bandage to check the slackening flow, and did not lift her eyes. No royal summons was of any moment now.
“The King commands you!” the voice protested peevishly. “Will you keep him waiting?”
“Until my man is seen to,” said Landry curtly.
“Stand aside!” snapped a second strange voice, and a shadow fell across Juan’s face. Brown bony hands pushed Rodriga’s aside, produced a wad of stout white linen from somewhere, and set it over the sodden red dressing she had applied. She glanced up into a gaunt brown face framed in a mail coif, into bright hazel eyes under a conical helmet, dropped her gaze to the eight-pointed white cross on the black surcoat, and silently handed the Hospitaller her lengths of flimsy turban cloth and watched his deft hands secure them. She stared intently, her bloody hand clenched at her breast, but the cloth remained white, and she released her breath in a long sigh of thankfulness. Tears dimmed her sight as she looked up into the leathery face of the knight.
“Oh, I thank you—I thank you more than I can say!”
He smiled at her and scrambled to his feet with a kind of angular awkwardness, and brushed the dust from his surcoat. He was a very tall man, raw-boned and ugly, but his eyes and mouth were kind. “The Saints had more care for the young hot-head than he deserved,” he assured her dryly. “The Saracens are not commonly such bunglers.”
“You are keeping King Richard waiting!” the peevish voice persisted.
“And will do so until the lad is safely bestowed!” Landry retorted without looking round. Ramiro bent over his son, whispering under his breath to him and stroking his black hair that was all dulled with sandy dust. The Knight of Saint John stooped again, laid a hand on Juan’s breast, and nodded.
“Better let us take him,” he suggested. “He will need skilled care.” He beckoned, and four serving-brothers in the Hospital black came forward with an open litter. After a moment’s hesitation Landry gave reluctant agreement, and Juan, still senseless, was gently lifted into it and borne away.
The petulant voice spoke in open anger. “If you will not come instantly, I shall return to King Richard and tell him you refuse to obey his summons!”
Landry and Rodriga turned together upon the King’s messenger, a stripling of some sixteen years, sleekly combed and very beautiful in a fine silken tunic. Landry’s face darkened, and he blared at him like an angry bull. “Speak so to your betters, mannerless whelp, and I pull down your braies and baste you across my knee! You will return to King Richard with no hide on your rump if you use such insolence to a knight!”
The Hospitaller chuckled aloud and jumped down into the trench in search of more work. The royal messenger, scarlet with fury, backed beyond arm’s length, recovered some of his poise that had been damaged by the outrageous threat to his person, disdainfully surveyed the shabby knight and bare-headed girl and sniffed audibly. As the two Catalans closed in, wolfish in rags and bloodstains, his expression of scorn intensified, until he saw the frown darken ferociously on Landry’s brow. Some sprig of a noble stock gracing the King’s household until he should be of an age to receive unmerited knighthood, Rodriga reflected uncharitably, and he had been first ignored and then threatened ignominiously with a leathered rump by this battered old ruffian who looked more like a routier captain than a gentle knight. He sneered down his nose, an expression rendered comical rather than impressive by the snubness of that feature, and flounced ahead of them.
The King was waiting just beyond the siege-works, lying on the litter from which he insisted on directing the assault. A little group stood round him; the litter-bearers and several of the great leaders. Rodriga recognised James d’Avennes, who had commanded the siege on King Guy’s behalf these past two years; the tough little Earl of Leicester, newly arrived Outremer, and the gentle, charming, rather effeminate young Humphrey de Toron, divorced husband of Isabella the heiress to the Kingdom of Jerusalem. They moved apart, and Landry limped heavily up to the litter and went down briefly on one knee.
The King lifted himself on his elbow. He should have been in his bed, but no physician could confine him to it until he was too near death’s scythe to be capable of opposition. His fiery hair was disordered,
his blue eyes brilliant, his fair skin, which the sun burned rather than tanned, scarlet with fever. He was, however, perfectly clear-headed, and in a flaming Plantagenet temper that waiting had not cooled. He heaved himself further up, his blunt strong features alight with wrath, and surveyed Landry in one scalding glance.
“God’s Throat, are you the blundering bull that stirred up that fight?” he demanded, his voice hoarse and cracking. “You are of an age to have more sense!”
“Aye, my lord,” Landry agreed calmly.
“Splendour of God, if it were not for those spurs at your heels I should have you strung up on the nearest gallows! You came here to free the Holy Sepulchre, not to go seeking out Saladin in his own place!”
Secure in the fact that a knight was not liable to summary execution, Landry gazed coolly into the brilliant blue eyes. “Fair sire, I am no man of yours,” he declared bluntly.
“Your name and your lord’s, you insolent knave?” the King demanded savagely.
“Landry de Parolles, and I have no lord.”
“God’s Teeth! A masterless mercenary, and you dare argue with me? We have it now! Raiding for plunder, eh? You all but get the camp attacked, good Christian knights and soldiers slain, so that you may debauch yourself among the strumpets of Acre!” He had observed Rodriga, standing behind her father, and dismissed her with one contemptuous glance.
“No, fair sire.” Like his father, the King would always try to storm down opposition, and respected only the few who refused to be cowed.
“The Devil fly away with you, body and bones! You should be considering your latter end, not flaunting your harlot under my very nose—and Saladin’s also!”
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