“They want us to see it. They know how to hide a fire.” He laughed to himself. “It’s Hattin. Herding us into a trap along a narrow path, and baffling us with smoke... Hood’s idea of a joke.”
“So what do we do?” asked Aldric.
“What he thinks we will not,” said Gisburne. “We head towards the smoke. Clearly somebody was there.”
But before they could head off, they were interrupted by sounds of movement from the forest behind them and to their right. The cracking of twigs and rustling of leaves—hurried, rough, and heading their way.
“Boar?” whispered de Rosseley.
“Boar with two legs...” muttered Galfrid.
They drew back to the clearing’s edge with readied bows and drawn weapons.
Three men burst through the trees, red-faced and panicked. They were lean, their clothes ragged, the first with crusted blood about his mouth where teeth had recently been knocked out. Behind him, the tallest had a scabbardless sword shoved through his belt, and a rusted helm which wobbled above his thatch of thick hair and scrubby black beard. The third had lost a shoe, and now walked with what looked like an arming cap tied about his foot. All were grasping bows that were nocked and ready to shoot. They were Hood’s men, fled from the battle.
Black Beard was first to see them. He stopped dead, saying simply: “Oh!” Bloody Mouth turned to him, then looked back—just in time to meet de Rosseley’s mace. The blow felled him instantly.
The others turned, saw that Tancred was already behind them, and—terrified at the sight of him—bolted across the glade.
“Get them alive!” barked Gisburne.
Galfrid took off after One Shoe while Asif drew a chakkar from his belt and hurled it at Black Beard.
Black Beard collapsed in an ugly tangle of limbs, a fountain of blood gushing where the blade had almost taken his head clean off.
One Shoe crashed into the forest ahead—but there Galfrid skidded to a halt, instinctively stopping Tancred with a hand against his chest.
“What is it?” said Gisburne.
“Not sure,” said Galfrid.
Beneath One Shoe’s crashing, there was a low creak, then a loud crack. A sound like a great hand swatting the bushes flat, then a terrible scream. They gaped in horror as One Shoe came spinning, flailing through the clear sky above their heads, hurled a hundred yards into the forest and a good forty into the air. He sailed out of view, and there was a crash, a cracking of branches and a sickening thud.
The scream stopped.
Galfrid looked down and realised his hand was still on Tancred’s chest. Only then did he realise he had saved the Templar’s life. He withdrew his hand as if from a scorpion.
“So much for getting them alive,” said Mélisande.
“I must apologise,” said Asif. “I meant only to knock him down, but he put his neck in the way.”
Gisburne advanced to the edge of the clearing and stood next to Galfrid, peering into the gloom where One Shoe had met his horrid end. “Aldric?” he called.
Aldric came up beside him. “Traps,” he said.
Gisburne nodded and put his hand on the young enginer’s shoulder. “You go first.”
LXII
GISBURNE HAD ONCE had occasion to cross a moor which, he was told, had deadly sucking bogs that could pull a horse under and were indistinguishable from solid ground. Being young and reckless, he had laughed at the warning—until he stepped upon what was clearly a patch of solid, mossy ground and found it no more solid than milk-skin.
That had been a long day.
Now, as they crept forward, eyeing everything about them with suspicion, Aldric prodding and testing gingerly as they went, he was reminded of that moor. Except that this time, the dangers weren’t just on the ground, they were in the branches of the trees, lurking in the bushes on every side, in the very air. Within twenty yards of One Shoe’s death trap, Aldric had ordered them to halt. He studied the trees for a good minute, then said: “We must go around. Walk where I walk. Nowhere else.”
“Unless you get killed,” said Galfrid.
“Yes. Unless that.”
They picked their way slowly, placing footsteps as carefully as if stepping on thin ice. When they finally rejoined the path, Gisburne looked back and saw, up in the tree, cunningly concealed behind a low bough, a timber arm upon a pivot. At its far end, poised, ready to swing down when its catch was triggered, was a heavy lump of stone and a scythe blade. Gisburne shuddered and moved on.
There had been no more sign of the mysterious crossbowman, which made him wonder. He, surely, was familiar with the positions of these devices. Had they lost him? Was he watching even now?
“Hold!” said Aldric. All stopped dead.
Aldric knelt and gingerly lifted a dead, grey stem of bramble that snaked across the path. It looked like nothing—like a hundred other twigs—until Gisburne saw, tucked beneath it, a hempen string.
“Step back,” Aldric said. “But only where you have already stepped!” The company did so—four, eight, twelve paces. “Enough. That should be enough.”
“Should be...?” said Galfrid.
But Aldric simply crouched as low as possible, took a deep breath, and pulled hard on the string.
From either side of the path came a sudden, jarring chorus of sharp thunks—an array of crossbows shooting almost, but not quite, in unison. The branches shook; bolts zipped over Aldric’s head, driving into trees or hissing unseen into bushes.
Aldric lay low for some time, and appeared to be listening. Finally, satisfied, he stood and motioned them forward.
“Steady,” he said, looking up into the trees. “Step clear of the string. One did not shoot...” As they hurried past, Galfrid—the last in line—paused for a moment, patted him on the shoulder, and with something akin to contrition, muttered: “You’re doing good, lad.”
Aldric smiled, then worked his way once more to the head of the party.
Further traps followed—sometimes a hundred paces apart, sometimes mere yards—but so many that Gisburne lost count. At first, he had thought them focused solely around the path; but then, as they were passing one trap, they found the trap makers had anticipated their move and placed another—a set of ragged iron blades, ready to spring from beneath a holly bush.
Some threats were familiar enough: cords that whipped across the path to decapitate them; axes that swung down; rocks that fell. But every once in a while there was a flash of genius. A mass of innocent-looking brambles that when disturbed spun violently and flailed its thorns. Thin withies, stressed like catapults and bristling with needles—each tipped, Aldric was certain, with deadly poison. So subtle was the first of these that Aldric had not seen it, and it was only discovered when it whipped out and struck the top of his helm. Pure luck had saved him that time: he had stooped to look at the forest floor. The needles were meant for his face.
Some traps were so bizarre that Gisburne could not begin to divine their purpose. One that they bypassed consisted of a huge, loosely covered cauldron, ready to tip its contents upon those passing below. What was the nature of the liquid, Gisburne did not know, or wish to find out.
Another fact struck him during their slow advance. Some of these traps might have been set a week, a month, a year ago; but some, clearly, were not. He knew, just as Aldric knew, that a crossbow could not be left under full tension for long—not if it was to retain any kind of power or accuracy. The string would stretch, the bow would warp, the trigger bend or break. Someone was tending these traps, and with same the care Gisburne gave his horses.
“Does this take you back to the Forêt de Boulogne?” said Mélisande. She smiled weakly; they were all tired and drawn after the day’s events. In the past hour a fine rain had begun to fall, and was now dripping off the edges of their hoods.
“Another of Hood’s little jokes, I have no doubt,” Gisburne replied.
It was in the Forêt de Boulogne that Gisburne had set his own traps against Tancred’s men. Th
ey were crude efforts compared to these, though it occurred to him that, but for an order from a captain to stay with the horses, those traps would have killed Aldric Fitz Rolf—the very man upon whom his life now depended.
“You are speaking of your attack on my castle,” came a voice, sudden and unexpected. Tancred spoke so rarely now—this was the first time that he had volunteered conversation in days. “It rained then, too.”
Gisburne shuddered to his bones.
“You remember that?” said Galfrid, his voice hard.
“A fleeting image,” came the reply.
“What else do you remember?” said the squire.
“Galfrid...” said Gisburne.
“The torture? The fires of Jerusalem? The day we came to that Godforsaken island of yours, intent on...”
“Galfrid!” Gisburne turned and glared at him.
Galfrid lowered his head, but the muttering continued. “How do we know what’s going through that head? How do we know what—?”
It was Aldric who stopped him this time, halting so suddenly that Gisburne walked into his back, and Galfrid into Gisburne’s.
“That branch,” he said, blinking through the rain. “It does not belong to that tree.”
“Are you sure?” said Asif, squinting at it.
“How often have you seen an oak tree sprout a beech branch?”
“These trees of yours are still a novelty to me,” said Asif with a shrug.
“I don’t trust going under or around. I’ll have to trigger it.”
“Do what you must,” said Gisburne.
Aldric had them all stand back and crouch down. He threw a cord over a higher bough and, with the delicacy of a tailor threading a needle, tied one end around the rogue beech branch. With the other end held loosely in his hand, he crept back, crouched, lowered his head, and as they all braced themselves, pulled.
The branch made a loud crack and jolted upward. Something rattled, and Gisburne risked raising his head. There, some ten yards ahead, he saw a lump of stone, barely bigger than a child’s head, descending on the end of a rope. For a moment he almost laughed; but then came another sound, utterly incongruous in this remote place: a bell sounding, over and over, growing louder and more insistent by the second. Gisburne covered his head, waiting for what was to come next.
Nothing did. The striking of the bell slowed and stopped. The stone thumped to wet earth. No blades, no arrows, no wires. They crouched there for several minutes, until the resonating of the bell had faded to nothing.
“Did I miss something?” muttered de Rosseley.
“I don’t think so,” said Gisburne.
“What was its purpose?” said Asif. “To scare?”
Aldric sighed. He was exhausted, Gisburne could tell; they all were. “A marker,” said Aldric. “Announcing our progress. When Hood hears it, he knows someone is here. And when the noises stop, he knows we’re dead.”
“Or that we’ve made it through,” says Gisburne.
But that, at this moment, seemed a vain hope. The rain was growing heavier, and now the light, too, was beginning to fail. Gisburne was too tired to care about a soaking, but he knew the deepening shadows would hamper Aldric’s efforts, who was already drained...
They only needed to make one mistake.
Gisburne had them press on for another hundred yards—a safe distance from the bell trap—and there, in a small clearing around an outcrop of rock, he finally called a halt.
Aldric, dog-tired as he was, insisted on checking every inch of it. Then, with the rock declared safe, tired to their bones, they slumped against the lee side and prepared for another night in the wild.
LXIII
GISBURNE HAD BEEN against lighting a fire, but Mélisande overruled him. There was a way, she assured him, that would put them at no risk of discovery—and she was already setting about it before he could protest. He was beyond arguing.
She cleared a small pit beneath the overhang of the rock—which also shielded the fire completely from view to the north and west—and within minutes had a small blaze going. The heat was meagre, but the effect it had on the company was immediate. Huddling closer, they smiled and rubbed their hands and chattered in low voices about insignificant things—relieved, for the moment, that they did not have to regard every leaf and twig as a threat to life. Gisburne smiled and, as Mélisande caught his eye, bowed to her superior wisdom.
“Your skills are remarkable, my lady,” said Asif. “How anyone encourages wood to burn in this damp place is beyond me.”
“Necessity is a great teacher,” said Mélisande.
“You also fight as well as any man here. That is surely not a necessity.”
Mélisande had an odd expression—half smile, half frown. “I would perhaps argue that point...”
“Such a thing is quite unknown in my country.”
“In ours, too,” said Gisburne. “Do not think Lady Mélisande is in any way typical.”
“Oh, I do not,” Asif continued, chewing upon some dried fruit. “But the way you fight... Many claim to have the skills of the hashashin—and mostly it is a boast meant to strike fear into those who would challenge them. But in your case, I think not.”
“You are most perceptive, Asif,” she said, staring into the flames.
“You also have great knowledge of the Arab world. I am curious about your time spent in the Holy Land. You did spend time there, did you not?”
For a moment she said nothing. Then she fixed her eyes on him. “I was in Acre when it fell to Salah al-Din.”
Asif stopped chewing, and Gisburne stared at her across the fire. This was a story he had never heard. She glanced back at him—almost apologetically, he thought—then, blushing, but as serious as he had ever seen her, looked back to the fire and took a deep breath.
“I was in the Holy Land with my father and brothers when the Christian army was destroyed at Hattin. Everything was in chaos. They had me stay in Acre, telling me I would be safer there. And there they left me. I was nineteen years old.
“Acre fell to Salah al-Din without a fight. Being the kind of girl I was, I tried to effect an escape to Tyre; but I was caught. The guards laughed at me—at the audacity of my plan. That it was a woman attempting it.” She shook her head. “Anyway... My noble heritage was revealed, and I was ransomed. This was not an unusual state of affairs. It happens often, in every kingdom and duchy of Europe. All very civilised, very orderly.
“So I waited for ransom to come. I knew I wouldn’t have to wait long—my father was rich as Croesus. The ransom was high, but after all, I was his daughter.
“After three months, when still no ransom had been received, I convinced myself that my father and brothers were bringing an army to rescue me. I worked out how I believed it would be done, where the weak points were, what I would do to help when I heard the alarm and knew they were coming.
“They never came. I was in captivity for fifteen months. I later learned that my father had simply refused the ransom, complaining that it was too high. I was not worth it. Nor had he or my brothers any intention of fighting. All those years training, day in, day out, in the use of the sword and the lance—and for what? What use was it? Where was it when I needed it?
“But life was not bad. I was lucky. My captors treated me with respect, for the most part. I learned their customs, and their language—partly so I might better understand what I overheard. I even learned to read some Arabic. That pleased them greatly. But there was one of them, an older man named Hassan... He was fida’i of the Nizari—what we call hashashin. He had been an acolyte of Rashid ad-Din Sinan—the Old Man of the Mountains, leader of the fanatical sect—but had come over to Saladin. He had simply awoken one morning, he said, and saw, as if a fog had lifted, that his life was madness. Just like that. So he rode away and never went back.
“To do so was death, and every night he expected it to come to him, on the tip of a poisoned blade. One might think that would make him morose, but the opposite was
true: he lived each day as if it were his last.
“Strange as it may sound, we found a common bond. He told me things of the hashashin that I do not believe he would ever have divulged to others. I told him of my brother’s training, and how I had bettered him with a sword. That gave him great amusement. I went on to suggest that the greatest hashashin of all would be a woman, for no one would believe a woman capable of such deeds. He laughed at this too—but I could tell he also saw something in it. And he could see in me the willingness to fight—the desire to be strong, while deceiving with apparent weakness.
“And so, bit by bit, I became not a prisoner, nor a guest, nor even a companion, but a pupil. It delighted him, I think, to know he was creating something quite new—something of which Sinan would never approve. That I would be his final legacy.
“One day, he announced he was leaving. I believed the long-expected threat was finally coming. Only later did I discover the truth: that he had begun to suffer the effects of leprosy, and so was taking himself far from me. To spare me.
“I was distraught, of course, but he just smiled. He said he had one final test, and if I passed, I would never need him again. When I asked what it was, he said I must stop waiting. I must walk out of the door by myself, and go home.
“And so I did. That night, I passed by my captors unseen. Climbed across roofs and over walls. And those city guards who had laughed at me... They never laughed again.”
She wiped a tear from her face and looked about, as if suddenly returned to the present. “And here I am.”
And here she was. They sat in silence for a moment, Asif nodding gently. All the things that Gisburne knew of her now found their place. He did not know why she had chosen to tell them here, now, but it did not matter. Strange as it was to hear about her life before they had met—when it had so long been kept from him—it somehow only made him feel closer to her.
“We’re almost there,” said Tancred.
All turned and looked at the Templar. He sat motionless, staring—like a gargoyle.
Guy of Gisburne- The Omnibus Page 123