Master of Shadows

by Neil Oliver

  The Moor had wondered what so appealed to the boy about such a meagre weapon, and had concluded it was the intimacy of the act. Killing should leave a good man with feelings of taint, of having been made unclean. If the opponent was to be deprived of life, robbed of every thing and every moment, then for some it seemed only right to commit the act while close enough to touch. Badr Khassan, himself a master, had been amazed by his student’s aptitude, and by now, after years of practice and hundreds of encounters, not even he would have willingly faced down the Scot.

  John Grant walked forward with a swagger. His back was straight, his arms loose by his sides. When it was over, he knew, he would have no memory of drawing his knife; it would appear in his left hand when the moment required it. The key was in never letting the foe catch so much as a glimpse of the thing. He must only feel it, Badr had said.

  He was circling the archer now, taking his time and listening to his heartbeat, allowing his breathing to slow down, when Badr called his name for a second time. Hearing something new in the wounded man’s tone – something as desperate as it was insistent – John Grant turned from the fight and towards his friend.

  14

  The opium had dulled Badr’s pain, and now he listened to the sound of his own breathing. He was lying on his side in the half-dark of a cave. In front of him a shaft of sunlight split the darkness and pooled on to the floor. He raised one arm, felt a stab of pain that made him grunt. Determined, however, in spite of the discomfort, he reached his hand forward until it was bathed in the light.

  ‘Keep still, Badr,’ said John Grant.

  The younger man had returned from the mouth of the cave, where he had stood for a minute or so to content himself they were alone – that none of the crusaders had chosen to follow. Already the battlefield was busy with scavengers, birds of prey, dogs and other scurrying, scuttling forms.

  It had taken an agonising effort to move Badr from where he had fallen. At first, in spite of the arrow thrusting from his abdomen, he had been able to walk, slowly and leaning heavily on his companion. John Grant had seen many wounds in his short life, caused by all manner of weapons and projectiles. He had seen faces cloven in two from crown to chin and heads hacked from necks; chests and bellies laid open and their contents spilled upon the ground; the brittle ends of snapped bones protruding from ragged wounds in arms and legs.

  He had inflicted all of these himself over the years, and more besides. But the sight of the arrow piercing Badr’s Khassan’s body from back to front gave rise to feelings of horror he had not felt since that day long ago, at the cottage, when he had first beheld the corpses of the slain troopers. Those dead had seemed unreal, like broken toys, but the blood and the gore of their wounds had stayed with him for weeks. Glimpses of the scene had featured in his dreams and he had awakened cold and nauseated.

  Those days were far behind him now, however; his profession had hardened him. But Badr’s pain unmanned him.

  They had made their way towards a cliff face that bordered one side of the plain. The enemy had appeared upon its heights in the prelude to the fighting and John Grant had noted caves and shallow rock shelters there. The sunlight had added to Badr’s misery and the priority had been to get him somewhere shaded and cool. After a few tens of yards of treacle-slow progress, stumbling over the broken, rock-strewn terrain that lay between them and the cliff, Badr had suddenly slumped to his knees as though his legs had transformed into strings. The shock of the impact jarred the arrow and he bit down on a rasping cry. The pain braided through the sound reached deep into John Grant’s own body and pulled hard on something there, so that he almost retched.

  The position of the arrow meant Badr could only lie on his side, and John Grant felt him slowly twisting towards the ground in search of rest.

  ‘No, Badr,’ he said, stepping around to his back, reaching his hands into the big man’s armpits and using all of his strength to pull him backwards over the ground. ‘We can’t stop here.’

  If their progress had been slow before, it deteriorated then almost to a standstill. John Grant could manage only a few yards of hauling at a time. Whenever he stopped, he had no option but to support Badr’s almost unconscious weight on his knees and shins, the feathered end of the arrow protruding insolently from between his lower legs. A snail’s trail of blood stretched darkly across the rocks and dust, evidence of the severity of the wound and of the meagre distance covered.

  The sun was high in the sky by the time they reached the blessed shadow of the cliff. The closest cave entrance was narrow, like a mean mouth, but widened into a large chamber beyond. A stream of water flowed sluggishly from somewhere high in the roof and then gathered in a shallow depression before snaking towards the entrance and beyond. As John Grant pulled Badr inside, his blood mingled with the water and flowed rosy pink over the pale bedrock.

  It mattered to get properly out of sight, away from prying eyes, but when John Grant stopped, thankfully, and lowered Badr down on to his side by the stream, the Moor spoke for the first time in the hour it had taken to cover the ground.

  ‘Not the dark – don’t have me lie in the dark,’ he said. ‘I want to see you while we speak.’

  At the rear of the cave a narrow blade of sunlight cut a golden scar on to the floor. A crack in the roof reached all the way to the clifftop high above them, and it was through this that the water seeped, filling its pool before spilling into the shallow channel that led to the cave mouth.

  John Grant set about moving Badr further into the cave and to a point where he might benefit both from cool shade and the light of day. The presence of water made the shelter ideal, and John Grant wished with all his heart they had been settling down only to make a meal and spend the night.

  Badr wanted to lie on his right side with his face close to the sunlight. Once he was in position, John Grant made him as comfortable as was possible – raising his head slightly on a folded cloak and positioning the big man’s arms and legs in an attitude of rest.

  More than anything he wanted to deal with the arrow, but experience of such wounds had taught him there were terrible dangers. Removal of the shaft might increase the flow of blood, doing more damage. The thought, the realisation indeed, that the wound was a fatal one, circled like a vulture and he failed to drive it off. For the time being, and until he could think of how or even if help might be obtained, the Bear would have to lie there in the cave.

  Misery radiated from him like heat from a fire, and John Grant reeled before it, his vision blurred and swimming in sympathy with his friend’s suffering.

  From a bag on his hip he took a glass bottle, sheathed in leather decorated with worn and tattered stitching. There in the cave it was more precious than gold or diamonds, and John Grant removed its stopper with a care that bordered on reverence. The soft popping sound brought a sigh from Badr.

  ‘Af-yon,’ he said, returning in his misery to the tongue of the Muslim.

  John Grant crawled over to Badr on his knees and stooped to raise the great dark head. Holding the bottle, which contained a tincture of opium, he allowed a little of the dark liquid to pour into the Moor’s mouth. Content that he had given him as much as was appropriate, he settled Badr once more and took up a position close by, close enough that he might gently caress the big man’s shoulder from time to time, hear his breathing.

  All at once, and for the first time, John Grant took in the sight of his friend lying helpless, perhaps beyond help. The enormity of it broke over him, threatening to wash him away. The memory of a night long ago, back in the land of his birth, was suddenly before his eyes. Badr’s shape disappeared and it was Jessie, his mother, that he saw, her face lit not by a shaft of sun but by silver-blue moonlight.

  It was then that he had risen quickly to his feet and made for the cave mouth and fresh air.

  After a few minutes spent staring at the blue through a mist of tears, he had allowed his gaze to settle upon the birds and dogs busying themselves among the dead and ne
arly dead.

  How many more, before day’s end? he wondered.

  He scanned the landscape around him with all possible concentration. Once more he reprimanded himself for breaking off from dealing with Angus Armstrong. Never before had their tormentor been so exposed and vulnerable. The moment had finally come, and then … and then the sound of Badr’s anguished cry had made him turn from his quarry.

  The need to help his friend had overwhelmed the opportunity finally to dispatch the man who had caused so much pain. He must surely be out there now somewhere. Perhaps he was far away, licking his wounds and plotting; maybe he was watching from some hidey-hole and weighing his chances.

  Without his bow John Grant doubted Armstrong would come close, far less seek to tackle them. At close quarters Armstrong was likely dangerous enough, but not as lethal as he. The archer, his wing clipped, had wisely chosen to flee from the scene, and now they were well hidden.

  Over the years, John Grant had begun to suspect Armstrong wanted something other than their deaths – that his objective after all was to create a situation where one or other of them was left alive and at his mercy. He clenched his fists until the bones in his knuckles shone white, and then turned back into the cave.

  Badr’s breathing had grown deeper, easier. The rasp of it – and the pain that caused it – had been smoothed by the drug, jagged edges turned to ridges and creases. John Grant watched as the Moor turned his hand in the shaft of light, considering first the back and then the palm. Aware of the younger man’s return, Badr lifted his eyes and looked at him.

  ‘Did I ever tell you how af-yon came into the hands of men?’ he asked.

  John Grant shook his head and sat down cross-legged, close enough that his back was almost touching the Moor’s chest. It was easier to listen to him, and be with him, if he did not have to see the discomfort etched into his face. Badr’s relief, however temporary, crossed the gap between them and seeped into him. He would have no need to feel for a pulse, since he could feel the irregular tempo of the big man’s heart as vibrations on his own skin.

  ‘Once, long ago, when the world was younger, a saintly holy man lived on the banks of a great and holy river, far away in the east,’ said Badr.

  John Grant would have been happier if Badr had been content to rest rather than using his energy for the business of storytelling – but he made no protest.

  ‘The holy man shared his little hut of reeds and grass with a tiny brown mouse. The mouse was quick, very quick, and mischievous, always on the move and on the lookout for crumbs. As is always the case, the mouse was also much troubled by larger creatures that wanted to eat her, and one day she asked the holy man to transform her into a cat. The holy man smiled and thought about it, and then did as the mouse had asked. Instead of a mouse crouched before him on its hind legs, attending to its whiskers as before, there was now a sleek white cat.

  ‘All was well for a few days until the cat realised she now faced the attentions of the dogs that prowled the land around the holy man’s house from time to time, always on the lookout for food. Since the holy man ate next to nothing, the pickings were meagre indeed, but still the dogs came. If there were no scraps to be had, then perhaps they might kill and eat the white cat.’

  Badr broke off from his storytelling to smile at his charge. John Grant was looking down at his hands, folded in his lap. As he listened to his own words, Badr could not be sure he had not told the story before, perhaps more than once. The rhythm of the telling was soothing, however, and he kept going for his own sake as well as that of John Grant.

  ‘So the cat asked to be transformed into a dog, the better to fight off her latest foes, and the holy man obliged. When the novelty of a canine existence wore off, she had the holy man make of her a wild boar, and then a mighty elephant. All too soon thereafter, and no longer content with life on the ground and all its many travails, she asked for the form of a monkey.

  ‘Each time the holy man granted the wish and each time she found reasons to change again.

  ‘Finally she asked to be transformed into a beautiful maiden so that she might find a rich man and marry him. Once more the holy man granted her wish, and in no time at all the maiden, who was named Postomoni, had found herself a king, who fell in love with her at once and married her and made her his queen.

  ‘All was well until the day when Postomoni, who had never retained any form long enough to master the intricacies of its being, stumbled while crossing the palace courtyard and fell into a well and drowned. The king was broken-hearted and sought out the holy man.

  ‘“Grieve not,” he said, when the king had broken the news and finished weeping. “Postomoni began life as a mouse. I made her into a cat, and then a dog, and then a boar, and then an elephant and finally a monkey before at last I made her into the beautiful maiden who became your wife and queen. Now I shall make her immortal.

  ‘“Let her body stay where it lies. Fill the well to the top with earth and in time a plant will grow there, from her flesh and bones. This plant shall be called posto – the poppy – and from within its flower buds you will harvest a thick sap.”

  ‘The king dabbed at his tears with the cuff of his robe and asked what use the sap might be to him. The holy man explained that all men would come to taste it. Once tasted, they would hunger for it, just as the king hungered for Postomoni.

  ‘“Each man who eats or drinks the sap, which is called af-yon, will find within himself the characters of all the animals. He shall be fast and mischievous as the mouse; he shall lap milk like the cat and fight like the dog. He shall be savage like the boar, mighty as the elephant and filthy in his habits like the monkey. Finally he shall be lofty and imperious as a queen.”’

  The telling of the tale had sapped Badr’s strength, his energy drawn from him just as opium was drawn from poppy heads.

  ‘Af-yon,’ he said once more, and John Grant brought him the bottle.

  ‘Why now, Badr?’ he asked. ‘Why do you tell me this now, in this place?’

  The Moor was silent for a while, letting the dark and bitter liquid flow down his throat.

  ‘I was thinking on the women I have known.’

  John Grant moved restlessly, easing muscles and joints that had stiffened while he sat listening to the story.

  ‘And …?’ he asked.

  ‘I had a child once,’ said Badr. ‘A daughter.’

  John Grant’s eyes opened wide with astonishment. He wondered first of all if the big man might be dreaming, or hallucinating.

  ‘Then where is she?’ he asked.

  Badr did not answer right away. His eyes were open to the shaft of sunlight and he was smiling at whatever he saw there.

  ‘Your father made me your guardian,’ he said. ‘And I count myself the luckiest of men. I would ask that you take care of my daughter if needs be – see to it that she is safe.’

  ‘Where would I find her?’ asked John Grant. He felt as though he was playing along with a game of make-believe.

  ‘At the centre of the world,’ said Badr, his voice as dry as autumn leaves. ‘In the Great City of Constantinople. May God forgive me … I do not even know her name, but her mother was Isabella … Isabella Kritovoulos … Izzi.’

  Badr seemed at peace, and John Grant studied him, committing the details to memory.

  A daughter? A lost love? Another life – other lives? He felt time slipping away from him, sands through the narrows of an hourglass – and with those moments would go the truth of it.

  ‘Why have you spent these years with me?’ he asked. ‘Why are you here, at war, and not at home?’

  There was yet another pause, and Badr winced as he shifted his position in search of more drops of peace before continuing. The drug began to reach his brain like a rising tide of warmth.

  ‘Constantinople was never my home,’ he said. ‘No more than this cave.’ He wanted to laugh, but the sound that left his lips was more of a growl.

  ‘But what of your child?’ asked Joh
n Grant. ‘And what of Isabella?’

  Badr pulled in a long, slow breath.

  ‘She was not mine either,’ he said at last. ‘I wanted her … I wanted them …’

  ‘And so why have you lived without them?’ asked John Grant. ‘How … how have you lived without … without your flesh and blood?’

  ‘However long we love them, however much we love them, we can never truly know them – not completely,’ Badr said.

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked John Grant.

  Badr drifted, his consciousness weightless as a boat upon an ocean.

  ‘I was thinking about your mother,’ he said at last.

  ‘How so?’ asked John Grant.

  He wanted more of Izzi and the girl, but Badr’s words were leading them both on a dance, his thoughts flickering like spectral lights in northern skies so that there was nothing to be done but follow wherever they might lead.

  ‘I mean that there was more to Jessie Grant than met the eye,’ said Badr.

  He felt another tide of warmth rising beyond his chest, past his chin, until it filled his head and washed out his next thought unformed and unfinished. Then the wave broke and receded, giving him back his senses. It had been a matter of seconds, but the world had moved on for him, as though an hour had passed between breaths.

  John Grant paid attention once more to the faint percussion of heartbeats pulsing against his cheekbones and fingertips. They were coming faster, harder than before. In his anxiety, he failed to realise they were not the irregular beats of one, troubled heart, but the mingling of two.

  15

  ‘Jessie Grant was your mother, but she was more besides,’ said Badr Khassan. ‘She was the woman who loved your father. She was the woman who loved you and raised you.’

  ‘I know all of that,’ said John Grant. He felt uncertainty prickling upon his skin, a sense of impending doom or of foundations shifting beneath him. For the first time in a long time he felt the tilt of the earth and almost gave in to it.