“How do you know all this?” Ríg asked, breaking the quiet that fell when the scholar finished his story.
“I came upon two of the pillars where the captives hadn’t yet died.”
“What happened to them?” Perdieu asked.
Ibn-Khaldun grimaced. “I couldn’t free the three men from the cement, so I beheaded them. It was the only solace that I could offer – besides being barely alive, they’d watched their women raped and killed before their eyes.”
“And the Codex? What do you think of its part in all this?” Perdieu pressed.
“Raj’al-Jared repeatedly promised freedom to any man who could decipher the Codex. No one could.”
“Except Ríg just read parts of it,” Mercedier said.
“That he did,” Ibn-Khaldun agreed, turning quickly away from Ríg because he was saddened by the utter dread he saw on the young man’s countenance.
Faltering in this moment of confusion was all the confidence and stature that the boy had gained in the last five years since arriving at the Krak as a refugee from Mecina. Ibn-Khaldun dispelled the inclination to go and offer comforting words to his apprentice. There’d be time for that later, when they could return to the scriptorium and analyze the book properly.
So, the elderly scholar ignored Ríg’s attempt to get his attention and looked at each of the gathered men. “This brings us to the obvious questions of, ‘What does it say?’ and ‘What do we do with the information, if any, that it provides?’”
Power, Hospitaller. Power greater than any wielded by Asgardians or Norns.
Ríg glanced around, but no one seemed to notice that he was being spoken to!
The life of a friend.
He shuddered at the simplicity of the words, and at the horror lying behind what seemed to be an explicit offer from the Codex Lacrimae. But, offer of what? ‘ Power?‘ What did that even mean, Ríg wondered, and if the book were actually making an offer, how could anyone ever seriously consider such a ghastly transaction?
Silence fell in the chamber, the thoughts of each man his own.
Chapter 13
A Grand Master Makes His Move
Earlier in the week, Clarinda sloshed through the wavelets of Caesarea’s harbor and began running onto the beach with two members of her crew beside her. Rapier in hand, she focused on fury instead of grief and sprinted on the wet sand to the closest cement stairwell that would get her back to the top of the wharf.
A glance upward and to her left showed that Kenezki still fought with Alex on the quay in front of the shipwrecked galley, but the sound of their clashing blades was lost amid the shouts of men and clamor from dozens of sword fights taking place throughout the port city. The chaos of war engulfed Caesarea, from the roaring of fires that erupted after the ship-based trebuchets of the Calypso and Maritina cast burning pitch into buildings to the neighing of horses driven semi-mad as their riders galloped them through the streets of the blazing city.
“Mario! Raul!” she shouted to her companions as the three reached the top of the stairs and began running back to the ruin of the Genoese galley, “When we get there, flank Alex and me, and this time don’t worry about any of us! I want Kenezki taken alive, but in any event don’t let him escape.”
“Si, Signorina,” both men said in unison.
She appreciated her sailors’ loyalty, but would’ve preferred that the two men had stayed with Alex instead of diving into the harbor after her when Kenezki had kicked her overboard! Her left side still ached from the pirate’s booted heel, but she ignored it as she had everything else since discovering Kenezki next to the still-warm body of Angelo Trevisan.
Padre...did we walk right past you yesterday? We did. You were still alive, and we walked by you, thinking that no one could be on the ghost ship. Evremar intentionally called it a plague ship so no one would think to look there!
Outrage turned into molten savagery as Clarinda ran harder on the limestoned cement of the wharf, closing the distance to the two fighting men.
The realization that her father might be imprisoned on the shipwreck changed the strategy she’d crafted the night before with Fatima and Khalil. Namely, while Clarinda’s two ships would still provide naval support to the bedouin and Guy of Lusignan’s land forces, she and Alex boarded the shipwrecked galley to find her father. They’d made their way back to the pier in a dinghy just as Pasquale ordered the first of the Greek Fire launches from catapults on the Maritina and Calypso.
Clarinda’s orders for Pasquale were that his men should target anything combustible in the port city and, if possible, to aim most of the payloads at two areas: the Templar castle of Evremar of Choques and the Church buildings of Archbishop Monachus.
The burning naptha and saltpeter missiles that arced overhead showed her that Pasquale’s men were firing at will, the booming explosions and ensuing fires destroying Caesarea.
No time worrying about civilian casualties — with Kenezki, its kill or be killed, only you need him alive. Focus!
She’d almost reached Kenezki and Alex, and all reflections ended as she loosened her sword-arm and prepared for renewing the battle. She felt overwhelmed by an urge to kill Kenezki, but there were too many mysteries that needed solving first.
Padre, I’m sorry! I need to do more than take vengeance for your death. There’s something happening here that I need to understand.
Curse the Norns and their demands, anyway! Whatever Urd had done to her during their conversation in Hagia Sophia, the “gift” had endowed Clarinda with a farseeing comprehension, a widening understanding of the world that went beyond her new role as il capitano of the Trevisan flotilla, and also seemed to be interfering with her desire for vengeance on Evremar, Monachus, and Kenezki.
Mostly her thoughts remained in the present, but too often she found herself drifting into contemplation of other places, different times, and, most oddly, strange worlds.
She’d even felt disconnected after boarding the shipwreck with Alex. Like one standing outside of herself, when she’d descended the ladder into the galley and saw her father strapped to the mast in the kitchen area. She knew instantly — knew in a place deep inside her with a conviction that she’d never be able to explain to anyone — that he’d been dead for at least a few hours.
Blood and corpses seemed everywhere — covering the long common table, walls, and body of her father. Grief came only as she looked again to Padre’s wounds. Then the anger came as she realized she wasn’t alone. She’d turned to see Kenezki grinning in the doorway under the ladder, a long sword in his hand dripping blood, and for all the world looking like a butcher in an abattoir whose daily meat quota has been filled for going to market. On some intuitive level, she’d also known that — although Kenezki had been in the cabin obviously waiting for her — he’d not been the only one responsible for her father’s death.
Alex drew his sword and attacked the pirate upon seeing the situation. The fight then somehow got above-deck and she found herself being cast into the water at the receiving end of Kenezki’s boot.
Now there was nothing for it but to subdue Kenezki and force him to talk as a captive. Clarinda knew that Alex had understood this, even if he’d looked at her as if she’d lost her mind when she’d first shouted not to kill the pirate. As matters stood, though, she could tell that both men were fighting for their lives.
That feeling of disassociation, of unreality, of being in two places at once, got more pronounced as Clarinda closed on Kenezki. As had occurred at the feast, her normally linear thoughts fragmented, splitting the logical foundations on which she’d built her life into shards. She wiped her free left hand under her nose, smearing blood, but pressed forward, as if by bringing her sword into range of his she might prevent the internal collapse that began to cascade within her whenever he was nearby.
Clarinda tried to ignore the vision that began to layer itself onto the pier, descending like a warped curtain between the two realities she was seeing simultaneously.
<
br /> Not now, Urd! I don’t have time for this — he’s wickedly fast with a blade and I need to concentrate!
She might as well have wished that she and her parents were together again, playing backgammon on a cold winter night where they lived in the Castello district as they sipped at Mamma’s hot apple cider. As with all the dreams featuring Aurelius, some wishes couldn’t be denied.
In this vision, she saw a large campfire appear on the pier before her, and the Hospitaller knight was sitting near it talking to two shadowed figures, a heavy cloak over his shoulders and his body steaming from the heat of the blaze. Steaming because he was thoroughly drenched and air seemed laden with icy vapors and danger.
Why am I not with him? Where am I watching this from?
Then reality — the present reality — came to the foreground, and the vision dissipated.
The world had become a waking nightmare of war. Blood was being shed all over Caesarea, and fires raged in the heart of the waterfront stores, and just a few minutes ago she’d found the corpse of her father strapped in cruciform fashion beneath the deck of the shipwreck.
She closed upon Alex and Kenezki. The blades of the pirate and hoplitarch seemed natural extensions of their bodies as they slashed, thrusted, and parried in a conflict of shimmering metal whose glinting arcs and horizontal-and-vertical strokes sparked like fireworks.
Then Clarinda was in the midst of them, but somehow Kenezki sensed Clarinda’s approach and jumped backwards onto the galley’s gangplank. He laughed at the drenched Venetian girl and said something crude in a harsh Scandinavian language.
Alex pressed forward, intent on not letting the pirate regain the wharf. When Clarinda’s sword joined his own, their combined momentum forced Kenezki backward to a hatch that led belowdecks.
“Let’s see whether dead men tell any tales, and go ask ‘ Padre,’ one last time about those caskets, eh?” sneered the pirate before disappearing through the hatch.
They followed and found him in the galley, near her crucified father. She and Alex both held back Kenezki with their swords, not coming within fighting distance because they blocked the only exit to the deck.
“He didn’t have to die, Kenezki,” Clarinda exclaimed. “You and Evremar are going to pay for this!”
“Oh, Ho, and la-di-dah !” The corsair grinned again, mischievously saying, “Give the girl a taste of Norn’s Sight, and suddenly she’s making threats she’ll never be able to keep.” He bowed low and dropped his sword. “Dear me, I find that I’m... under whelmed by you two, and tiring quickly of disguises.”
His next action caught both Clarinda and Alex off-guard, because in the hesitant half-second when they both reflexively lowered their swords to better see what Kenezki was doing, the pirate moved with a speed faster than either of them would’ve credited anyone capable.
Kenezki lunged forward into a somersault that surged upward into Clarinda and Alex, catching them on the upsurge with left- and right-handed jabs to their abdomens.
Blackness enveloped Clarinda as sight and breath fled from her. She collapsed next to Alex, gasping for any air at all, but unable to get it into her lungs. Kenezki barked a victorious laugh and clamped a bloodstained hand over her mouth and nose. She convulsed, panic taking hold as she smelled nothing but copper and dirt and sweat and a primal hunger from him that threatened to devour her mind. Distantly, she felt a hand grab her chin, and Kenezki’s breath hot on her cheek.
“At the end, while Evremar had his way with him, all your father could say was, ‘ Sono solo, sono solo. Dove’e Clarinda? Sono solo. ’” Kenezki mocked his own tone with a high-pitched recitation, “‘I’m alone, I’m alone. Where’s Clarinda?’ Not a very manly way to go, was it?”
Clarinda struggled against Kenezki, but his was a horrible strength that kept her pinned.
“Don’t mourn for long, Norn,” he hissed, “and don’t get used to Urd’s gift. She, her sisters...you’ll all fail because no one could’ve have anticipated my presence here. Enjoy the conquest of Caesarea — keep the caskets, kill Evremar, go back to Constantinople, I care not. All that matters is we finally know where and who the Codex Wielder is, thanks to a doddering old Muslim who never thought to simply leave the Dark Book where he found it! The Codex could have lain there for another three hundred years — three thousand years — and I’d have been none the wiser. But, we’ve found it. The cursed elvish trick is done, and all will be as it once was, as it needs to be.”
The pirate released her then, throwing Clarinda downward onto the harsh planks of the deck and kicking her aside as her head bounced hard against the wood.
“Go, take your father. You certainly worked hard enough to find him.”
Clarinda’s head spun and pain laced its way along her spine where she’d hit the wood. She saw Alex lash out with his foot to trip Kenezki, but the pirate made a stumbling dodge over the attempt and then the hoplitarch, too, was on his feet.
“Oh, not you again!” Kenezki growled with irritation. “The limits of this form are beyond endurance!”
The two men grappled, with Alex scoring a solid punch on Kenezki’s cheek that sent him reeling and laughing toward the open hatch to the captain’s quarters.
Clarinda rose and sprinted, beating Alex to the ladder and sliding down it with all the speed that life on a ship could muster. She stopped when she saw no one in the compartment.
He was gone, leaving only an open porthole on the aft side. She walked over to it, trying to ignore the presence of her dead father, and peered through to the harbor beyond. An enormous bluefin tuna leapt once from the waters before flitting away into the deeps.
She turned, unable to ignore her father back in the galley, and incapable of stopping the tears that were coming again as she stared at the elder Trevisan’s mutilated body.
“Oh, God. Alex, he’s just,…,” she started to say, her hand motioning helplessly toward the crucified man, “Help me cut…, help me.”
Alex was already at Angelo Trevisan’s side, slicing the thick rope thongs that bound the dead mariner’s arms and legs to the galley’s main mast.
Clarinda threw herself against her father’s chest before the corpse could topple over, trying to will life back into him by the strength of her hug, sobbing into him and caressing his matted hair as she and Alex lowered him to the floor.
Ignoring the dead men who lay sprawled around her and focusing on the strength emanating from Alex’s arm around her shoulder, Clarinda keeled over her father and held him for a long while.
She prayed that her murmured words of explanation, of sorrow, and, ultimately, of farewell might cast some kind of protective power to safeguard his spirit in death, even if her actions hadn’t been able to do so in life. Except for Alex’s presence, there was nothing in that soul-harrowing galley to offer solace, save the quiet creaking of the ship at anchor and the distant sounds of men battling and dying in combat.
******
Outside the fortified walls of Caesarea, an explosion shook part of the Templar castle, and Khalil glanced up from the corpse of Thaqib and his grieving wife to see the battlements on the seaside wall collapse, its masonry falling onto the remains of the ancient sea road itself.
Genevieve knelt beside Fatima, heaving from the momentary break in the battle as she wiped an enemy’s blood from her eyes and tried to comfort the distraught Arabian woman.
“I’m sorry, Fatima. I’m so sorry…,” Genie said.
“Get up, both of you!” Khalil shouted, his own rage and grief controlled only by the fact that — in spite of fending off the initial wave of the Templars’ attack – his tribe remained in peril.
“By Allah, Fatima, get up!” He roared again. “Would Thaqib want us dead as well?”
“He…was…in…our…tent, Khalil!” Fatima screamed, whipping her head in his direction. Tears and passion transformed her beautiful features into a savage mask of such naked hatred that he almost lowered his sword and went to her. Almost. In the flickering light
of the blazing tent fires he saw that the fight was coming to them again! Although the damnable Templars were outnumbered — fighting against both nomads and the crusader knights whom Guy had lent to Khalil – he and the two women weren’t out of danger. They had to move !
“Those animals,” Fatima said, her hands splayed firmly over her brother’s chest as if the force of her touch might revive him, “aaahh, Allah!” she screamed again. “They left him hidden in our tent for two days, Khal—”
“Enough!” Khalil interrupted, reaching forward to yank her to her feet.
“Fatima,” Genie urged, as she, too, leapt to her feet, “here’s your sword, they’re coming again over that hi–“
“There they are!”
The shout came from the Jaffa Gate and Khalil released his wife’s arm and spun to see the familiar hulk of Evremar of Choques sitting astride a great white Arabian stallion. So great was the man’s girth that Khalil sardonically felt a pang of sympathy for the horse. What, we can’t jest when you’re dead? We’d be laughing ourselves to tears at the sight of that horse buckling under his weight! You were my best friend, Brother, but I hope you’d be yourself, if it were me lying there. Family doesn’t change because one passes beyond, and we’re going to honor you by destroying this entire garrison. In fact, I’m going to be making jokes as I drive a sword down that fat bastard’s throat! With sudden alarm Khalil realized that the Grand Master had spurred the beast into a charge.
Evremar barked a command to at least five other Templars close to him, waving his sword in Khalil’s direction. All six knights came rushing at the sheik and two women across the destroyed camp, but even upon horses, wrecked tents and dead bodies impeded their movements.
A movement flashed by him, and Khalil watched in horror as Fatima and Genie rushed headlong at the advancing Templars. He ran to keep up with them, knowing that his wife could handle herself against any westerner, but fearful that her rage would make her careless. Two bedouin who put themselves protectively in front of the sheik’s wife were struck down by the steady, almost-rhythmical strokes of Evremar’s sword. Khalil growled as he overtook both women – by the Prophet’s Eyes, the fat man could wield a blade! Soon no one stood between the Grand Master and his goal, and he advanced on the trio with a battle cry erupting from his mouth.
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