by R. A. Jones
“All will be made clear soon,” the Eye replied.
“I hope that by ‘soon’ – you mean right now.”
The Eye’s smile deepened at the sound of Aman’s impertinence and impatience, both the hallmarks of youth.
“May I see the ring you wear, Aman?” he said softly.
Puzzled, Aman nonetheless thrust his right hand forward without hesitation. When he did, the Eye reached out and placed his left hand atop that of Aman.
Aman’s face showed none of the surprise he felt when he looked down and saw that the Eye was wearing an identical ring. Even when his own ring began to vibrate in tune with the Eye’s, he kept his emotions to himself.
Nor did he flinch when the Fantom leaned forward and laid his hand atop those of Aman and the Eye.
“Big deal,” Ferret grumped. “We all have one o’ those fancy rings. But what does it all mean?”
“May I be allowed to explain?” said a new voice.
All eyes turned to see that the masked man called the Clock had now entered the chamber and was walking toward them.
“May I?” he repeated, smiling tightly as he came to stand beside the Eye.
“By all means,” the sorcerer replied.
“Sometimes,” the Clock began, swinging his gaze toward the others, “the only way to fully understand where you are … is to look back at where you’ve been.”
“What does that mean?” asked Iron Skull. The harshness of his voice caused Ferret to take a step away from him. He still didn’t fully trust this … robot.
“What it means,” said the Clock, “is that you have all been invited to join the most select group of individuals known to man.”
“The Steel Ring,” Aman said softly.
“The Steel Ring,” the Clock repeated. “But again, to fully understand what that means, to know what a great honor and crushing responsibility it represents, you must know whereof it came.” He exhaled deeply.
“And to know that … you must let your minds drift back in time nearly a thousand years!”
CHAPTER XXVII
Bithynia, 1096 AD
How could something that began with such lofty goals, with such noble and righteous purpose … have ended so horribly, horribly wrong?
As Aaron Windham, Earl of Colchester, stood gasping, sweating and bleeding in the blazing sun, this was the thought uppermost on his mind, more so even than the very real probability that he would soon be dead.
He had been set on this path nearly a year earlier, when he was among the many who had attended the great Council at Clermont.
Windham had listened, enraptured, as the holy man known as Peter the Hermit had addressed the congregates. The monk had begun with a history lesson of sorts. He told them of the many pilgrimages that had been made for centuries by the Christian faithful of Europe to the Holy Land, where they had prayed and walked in the footsteps of Christ Jesus Himself.
Even when the Saracens, followers of Mohammed, had conquered Palestine, the caliphs tolerated the comings and goings of such pilgrims. All that changed in 1071, however, when the Seljuk Turks captured the city of Jerusalem. A Tartar tribe fanatical in its loyalty to the faith of the prophet, they held no place in their hard hearts for tolerance.
The Hermit told his audience of the insults and injuries the Seljuks were inflicting on pilgrims, including the charging of exorbitant fees before they could even enter the gates of the holy city.
Both clergymen and laymen alike were stirred by Peter’s narrative, as had been true of every crowd he had addressed since returning from his own recent pilgrimage. The fires of rage in the hearts of the true believers were stoked even higher at Clermont when Pope Urban II, Bishop of Rome, rose to add his own words to those of the monk.
“Do we need a clearer message?” he asked rhetorically. “For too long, now, we have stood by while the godless heathen has made a mockery of our Lord and our faith. Remained idle while he desecrated the very soil sanctified by the blood of Jesus. Mumbled prayers while the Holy Land has been turned into a temple of depravity.
“I say enough!” he fairly screamed. “I say no more!”
The crowd roared its approval and agreement, and none yelled louder than the Earl of Colchester did.
“Prayer without action is meaningless,” the Pope continued. “I call upon all of you here today, and upon all who are not here but are even the humblest members of the See of Rome.
“You must take up arms against the heathen hordes. Descend upon Jerusalem with fire and the sword. You must take back that which the Lord Almighty has given to his children. You must wipe their blasphemy from the face of the Earth.”
Urban paused to catch his breath. His eyes seemed almost to spit fire and his right hand, raised above his head, clenched tightly into a fist.
“God wills it!”
That clenched fist trembled with emotion and a silence so deep you could almost hear the heartbeats of those assembled fell over the crowd.
“God wills it!”
This repetition of the shout came not from the Pope, but from the throat of Aaron Windham.
“God wills it!” yet another man echoed.
“God wills it! God wills it!” Within seconds, every man and boy there that day began to shout what would become the battle cry for this and all subsequent Crusades.
After the fervor of the moment subsided into the calmness of the evening, Aaron Windham was approached by a fellow nobleman, Robert of Normandy.
Robert had already held an impromptu strategy session with such nobles as Godfrey de Bouillon, Raymond of Toulouse and Robert of Flanders. All had agreed to accept Pope Urban’s call to arms, all had agreed to coordinate their efforts. Now, the invitation to join their sacred campaign was being extended to Windham.
He gladly accepted the offer – until he learned they intended to take their time in organizing and outfitting their respective armies before setting out for Jerusalem: it might take as long as a year for them to do so.
The fire in his belly that had been ignited by the words of Peter and Urban demanded that Windham act immediately. He could not, would not wait.
“My men and I are leaving now, Robert,” he said firmly. He then smiled confidently (arrogantly?).
“If there are any Mohammedans left when you reach Palestine … you’ll be welcome to them!”
By the time the utter folly of his rash decision became clear to the Earl of Colchester, it was far too late.
It was not an army with which he and his men marched across Europe, but an undisciplined and ill-prepared rabble. It soon became evident to him that the motives of many of his fellow Crusaders were far less lofty than his own.
There were those paladins who rode to the call of any good adventure; soldiers seeking military glory; merchants who smelled the potential for profit from any war. Still others harbored political ambitions: After all, if they succeeded in driving out the infidels, someone would have to assume a position of authority in the Holy Land.
Serfs seeking any life more tolerable than what they had now and criminals fleeing the courts of justice also swelled the ranks of the Crusaders.
For weeks the only military action Windham and his men saw was in their efforts to beat back depraved Crusaders who attempted to plunder and rape their own fellow Christians.
Hunger descended first upon the impetuous and poorly provisioned army, followed all too quickly by its brother, disease.
By the time they reached the gates of Constantinople, nearly all who had set out on this grand adventure were dead. They had left the highways of Europe littered with their rotting and pestilent corpses without ever laying eyes on the declared enemy.
Because of their training and discipline, and thanks to the large purse of their patron and commander, the small army of Aaron Windham had reached the Bosporus largely intact.
Windham had stood on shore, watching as men and horses disembarked from the ship he had commissioned to bring them to Lycia, and his heart swelled wit
h pride. He had christened his army the Knights of the Sacred Heart. Emblazoned on the breasts of their doublets was the image of a bleeding heart pierced by a sword, symbolic of the suffering of Blessed Virgin Mary, the mother of God.
Each night, in their prayers, they asked that she serve as the intermediary between them and Christ Jesus, that she might act as their supplicant and ask her son to watch over them, bless their sacred endeavor and bring them victory over the godless.
They sang as they marched by twos through Pamphylia, bound for Syria. They laughed and boasted of the great triumphs that they were sure lay ahead of them.
In a narrow valley in Cilicia, the singing, the laughing and the boasting had all died.
So had most of Aaron Windham’s proud knights.
They had been taken completely by surprise when the sky suddenly blackened above them, the sun blotted out by the waves of arrows unleashed from the rocks above and to either side of them.
Windham’s horse collapsed beneath him, screaming in pain as a swarm of arrows swept over them. As the horse fell to one side, the nobleman sought to kick loose from his stirrups and leap to safety. He would have succeeded, had not yet another arrow driven through his right leg, pinning him to the horse’s belly.
Dying and afraid, the animal thrashed about wildly, threatening to crush him. Reacting instantly, he pulled his twin-edged dagger and drew it across his steed’s throat, hastening its death.
Ignoring the deadly shafts whistling all about him, he then used the tip of the dagger to dig out the head of the arrow pinning him to his mount. Snapping the barbed tip off, he grabbed the feathered end of the arrow and pulled it through and out of his leg, biting down the pain and tossing the bloody shaft aside.
His heart went cold as he looked about him. Not a single horse was still standing. Fully half his men were down as well, staked to the ground in multiple poses of death.
“Get your shields up!” he shouted to those still alive. “Converge on me!”
They were trained to obey their feudal lord without question, so to hear his command was to act. Shoulder to shoulder they circled around him and his fallen steed, shields together to form a nearly impenetrable roof above them.
Like hailstones against boulders, the arrows began to bounce away harmlessly. A very few found gaps between the knights’ shields, and fewer still met flesh on the other side.
When the arrows stopped falling, Windham lowered his shield just enough to peek over its upper rim. No sound save that of the furnace-like wind came to his ears.
Then, from above, came a piercing, ululating trill. At the sound of this alien cry, turbaned heads popped up from behind the uppermost levels of the ridges on either side of the Crusaders. These were followed by shoulders and torsos, then legs pumping to drive the Seljuk soldiers down toward the floor of the valley.
“Form two ranks,” Windham barked. “Back to back. Take them as they come, gentlemen … and God bless you all.”
The Knights of the Sacred Heart braced themselves in the face of the twin waves of infidels. The leading edges of the Seljuk charge smashed into their shields without regard for life or limb.
Windham deftly deflected a curved scimitar with his shield while thrusting forward with his broadsword. He was rewarded with the sucking sound of steel cleaving through flesh and the warm splash of blood over his fist.
The flashing point of another scimitar slid off his ribs, and he thanked heaven for the chain mail he and his men alike had been cursing in the heat of the day less than an hour past.
He flicked his sword, and the hand holding the scimitar was hacked from its wrist. The infidel to whom it had belonged screamed in pain until Windham silenced him by smashing him in the mouth with the pommel of his sword.
A Seljuk who had fallen to his knees now scrambled forward crab-like, attempting to encircle Windham’s legs and thus bring him down. Before he could do so, the Crusader brought the edge of his shield down on the infidel’s back, crushing a section of his spine.
Windham himself felt a hot, searing pain in his back as the point of a Seljuk blade slipped between links of armor and penetrated into his body.
Roaring with anger as much as agony, Windham spun, swinging his shield. It clanged against the head of the Seljuk who had just stabbed him. As the man fell to the ground, his blade pulled out of Windham’s back, its passage inflicting fresh injury.
Windham straddled the fallen soldier and brought his sword down point first. The Seljuk’s upper and lower body both sprang up as his middle was pinioned by cold steel.
Windham sagged against his sword, using it to support his weight as he sucked in fresh gulps of hot air. He shook his head vigorously to clear his eyes of the stinging sweat pouring into them.
Knowing he dare not remain thus for long, he pulled free his sword and crouched behind his shield, turning quickly from side to side as he knew not from which direction the next attack against him might come.
Only … there were no more attackers.
His eyes darting about, his body almost hopping as he executed a circular movement, Windham saw that every man who had descended from the heights had fallen.
So, alas, had all but a handful of his own men. Those of both sides who were not yet dead but soon would be, lay moaning, crying, screaming, invoking the name and mercy of their respective gods.
“Is it over, milord?” one of his men wheezed. “Have we won?”
“Won?” Windham repeated, gazing with horror at the carnage all about them.
“Only the vultures are winners here.”
Nor, as he learned in the next moment, had the scavengers’ meal yet been fully prepared.
Fresh screams came from the mouth of the valley, and the Crusaders wearily turned to see a dozen Seljuk horsemen charging toward them. Grim-faced, the remaining knights took up positions to either side of their commander.
“Sell your lives dearly, men,” Windham exhorted, “and send as many of them to Hell as you can.”
As they raced across the valley floor, the cluster of horsemen spread out until they formed a single line. Scimitars held out before them, shouts of “God is great” on their lips, they bore down upon the resolute Christian invaders.
Windham narrowed his focus to the Seljuk headed straight for him, silently calculating speed and distance separating them.
At the last possible instant, the nobleman took two steps to his left and dropped to one knee. Ignoring the rider, he instead slashed the edge of his sword across the front legs of the Seljuk’s steed.
Both horse and rider screamed, one in pain, the other in surprise. The horse’s front legs buckled beneath it, causing its head to slam into the ground with such force as to break its neck.
Its rider was sent flying uncontrollably. He flipped, falling and impaling himself upon a jagged piece of rock jutting up from the valley floor.
Yet another Seljuk rider raced past, leaping free of his saddle and slamming full force into Windham, driving him to the ground. The two rolled for several feet, Windham gasping for breath. Weighed down as he was with his armor, he had no chance to regain his footing before the Seljuk could leap back up.
Sword raised, the infidel rushed toward the fallen Crusader. In desperation, Windham seized a handful of loose dirt and flung it at his attacker’s face.
Momentarily blinded, the Seljuk pulled up, giving Windham the precious second he needed to retrieve his sword and lunge forward with it. Its blade slid easily and brutally below the Seljuk’s rib cage and up into his heart.
Knowing the man was as good as dead, Windham pulled his sword free and turned away quickly, scanning for further danger. It came rushing toward him in the form of a third Seljuk rider bearing down on him.
This one was too near for him to dodge, so he simply dropped to both knees, jammed the hilt of his sword into the ground so it thrust up and forward like a lance and uttered a quick and urgent prayer.
Unable to stop or turn, the charging steed impaled itself
on the sword blade. Its forward momentum carried it onward and its left shoulder slammed full on into the crouching Crusader.
Windham was thrown back and down. The back of his helmeted head slammed so mightily against the rocky earth that his entire body convulsed as if it had been struck by lightning.
Then total darkness descended.
CHAPTER XVIII
Aaron Windham awoke to find himself staring into a pair of red, rheumy eyes.
Crying out in fear, he bolted partly upright, causing the vulture that had been perched atop his chest to shriek and take to the sky.
A nearly blinding bolt of pain seared through Windham’s skull, and he fell back to the ground. Gradually the pain subsided and he again pushed himself up on his elbows, this time more carefully.
He sat thus for several minutes, until the dancing pinpoints of lights before his eyes finally faded away. Steeling himself, he rolled over so as to get on his hands and knees, then pushed himself erect. Weaving on unsteady feet, he assayed the scene around him.
All he saw was death.
He stood in the middle of a ring of corpses, both human and animal. Slowly turning his head, he saw the contorted body of the horse that had impaled itself upon his sword. Partially beneath it was its rider, his neck twisted so horribly that his face was nearly turned backwards on his shoulders.
Windham staggered about, looking in vain for any sign of other survivors. Even the horses, those that had not fled, were dead. He could read of the ferocity of the final assault in the dark places where blood had soaked into sandy soil, on the faces locked in grimaces of agony and hatred, in the hands still clawed around enemy necks.
Only he had survived.
As he thought on this, his mind reeled. A harsh, croaking sound rose in his throat and spilled out of his mouth. Though virtually unrecognizable as such, it was the sound of dry, hysterical laughter.
“I guess this means we won,” he gasped.
His head swam and he dropped to his knees. He fought to retain consciousness, knowing the vulture that had been eyeing him so hungrily would soon return, probably with comrades. Four-legged scavengers would doubtless soon appear as well.