Knights of the Black and White

by Jack Whyte

  He snapped awake when someone called his name, and by then he had already registered the first warning shouts that rang out, and his sergeants were beginning to deploy their men in their fighting formations while the two light commissary wagons were wheeling into their positions in what would be the center of their defensive perimeter. Of his co-commander he saw nothing in those first few moments, learning only later that Rossal had ridden off with a small party a short time earlier to examine a large swathe of tracks found by their scouts. Frowning at his own ignorance of what was happening, he kicked his horse forward, reining it in where Bernard de la Pierre, their senior sergeant, sat with two of his subordinates, scrutinizing the cliffs to the north of the road.

  “What is it, Sergeant Bernard?”

  The sergeant pointed almost casually towards the cliffs. “Over there, sir, among the rocks at the bottom, on the right. Only one man, so far, but he’s making no effort to conceal himself, so it’s almost certainly a trap. He must think we are really stupid if he expects us to go charging after him without an exploration first.”

  St. Clair could not see the man at first, but eventually the fellow moved, and as he focused on the movement, St. Clair suddenly sat up straighter in his saddle and shaded his eyes against the sun’s glare, peering forward to where the distant stranger stood on the blurred edge between two blocks of brightness and shade. The fellow, whoever he was, was afoot, but too far away for anyone in their group to see him clearly. St. Clair felt a tiny tugging at his gut.

  “He may think we are stupid, Sergeant, but then again, he may not. Follow me, two ranks, line abreast.” He kicked his horse to a walk and moved off the road, directly towards the distant man, and as he did so, sunlight flashed off metal as the fellow moved again. Now he will run away, St. Clair thought, and expect us to follow him to where his friends can kill us all. But when he looked again, the distant man was in the same place, still partially obscured in shadow but growing easier to see as St. Clair and his double line of mounted sergeants approached. And then, when he judged the time to be right, he stepped out into the full glare of the sun.

  Shocked by his first clear sight of the fellow, St. Clair threw up his hand immediately, stopping the troopers advancing behind him. There could be no mistaking the identity of the stranger facing them. It was Hassan the Shi’a warrior, dressed exactly as he had been the last time St. Clair had seen him, from the tip of his high, slender helmet to the bottom of his high black boots.

  “Sergeant Bernard, hold your line here, if you will. I will go forward alone. I know this man. He is a friend. He saved my life when I was lost and dying of thirst in the desert, then led me home. He obviously wants to speak with me. Wait here.”

  “But Sir Stephen, if harm should come to you—”

  “I told you, Sergeant, he is a friend. No harm will come to me.”

  He left his patrol behind and rode forward steadily until he was within a few paces of Hassan.

  “Well met, Hassan, if unexpectedly. What brings you here?” He swung his leg over the saddle’s high cantle and slid to the ground, then embraced the other man, inhaling the familiar, strangely masculine scent of cinnamon that always clung to him. Hassan returned the embrace with a smile.

  “Sala’am Aleikhem, Sanglahr, and accept the gratitude of this humble wayfarer that you have chosen to smell more like a man than a camel since last we met. Allah be praised. As for what brings me here, the answer is that you bring me here. What else would? This region is not exactly the Garden of the Houris. I have information for you, and a favor to request. I also have a camp nearby with sweet water, among these rocks. Will you come there?”

  St. Clair shook his head. “No, my friend, I cannot do that and leave my men sitting out in the midday sun, but you will be welcome to ride with us to where we are going.”

  Hassan’s teeth flashed in a sardonic smile. “To Jaffa, amid an armed throng of ferenghi, and dressed like this? I think not, my friend. But I am grateful for the offer of companionship, none the less. So come, sit with me here in the shade, upon Allah’s firm ground, and let us talk, you and I.”

  To sit thus and talk was more easily said than done in St. Clair’s case, for he was wearing his mailed hauberk, a hooded, ankle-length overcoat of heavy leather entirely covered by chain-mail links. It was bulky, uncomfortable, and unyielding, and he had to unlace the front of it and spread its armored skirts about him as a woman does before he could lower himself to sit with his legs comfortably crossed in the manner of the desert nomads. When he was eventually seated, he laid his sword belt down by his side, removed his metal helmet, and undid the thong beneath his chin before pushing the mailed hood back off his head and scrubbing at his scalp with clawed fingers.

  The Arab grinned, watching him. “I find it remarkable that, no matter what a man’s faith or belief may be, and no matter how far away he may have been born from any other people, the first instinct of any warrior, on baring his head, is to scrub at his scalp like a dog scratching at fleas.” Both men laughed, and then Hassan reached into an ornate silver-buckled, black leather bag at his waist and withdrew a carefully wrapped and bound package, less than a foot long by one third of that in width. He held it out to St. Clair. “I have a cousin in Jerusalem, with whom I share my name. He is Hassan the horse trader, and he has a permanent stall in the central market there.”

  St. Clair took the package and hefted it in one hand. It was very light, wrapped in soft, supple leather of a bright yellow hue, and he noticed the beaded emblem of a tiny crescent moon, barely the size of his smallest fingernail, sewn into one edge of it with silver thread. Judging from its size and weight, he guessed it contained a document of some kind. “Hassan the horse trader,” he said, smiling. “I know that name. I know exactly where his stall is, too. It stands close to the premises of Suleiman, the trader in rugs.”

  Hassan cocked his head, clearly surprised. “That is correct, Sanglahr, it does. But how would you know Suleiman? You are a monk, are you not? What need does a monk have of costly rugs?”

  St. Clair was on the point of saying that he had visited the stall to meet a lady, but realizing how that might sound, he hesitated. “No need at all,” he said. “But a monk does not forsake either his eyesight or his ability to speak when he forsakes the world. I am not blind to beauty, be it in rugs or horses. I had occasion to pause at Suleiman’s one day, and spoke with him while I admired his merchandise, just as I had stopped to admire your cousin’s horses in passing, moments before that.” He indicated the package he was still holding. “I presume you would like me to deliver this to your cousin?”

  “I would, Sanglahr, and you will earn my gratitude by doing so. My cousin will not be there when you arrive, as I discovered only days ago, in talking to a sheikh whose fire I shared and who knows him well. Hassan will be gone for most of a month, according to the sheikh, and I have other matters to look after. That is why, when I knew it was you approaching, I decided to ask you to deliver the package for me on your return to Jerusalem. If you would leave it with Nabib, who runs the place when my cousin goes away in search of new stock, he will see that it reaches the person for whom it is intended, and I will be most grateful.”

  “Of course I will.” St. Clair was already stuffing the package into the breast of his hauberk. “You said you had information for me, although I am mystified how you could know I … But then, had anyone told me, a minute before you first appeared out of the night when we first met, that you would come and rescue me, I would not have believed them. So, what startling information do you have for me on this occasion?”

  “Sufficiently startling to save your life, Sanglahr, and the lives of all your men.”

  St. Clair’s face sobered instantly. “That is more than startling, my friend. It is alarming. Tell me about it, for it is a subject on which I have no wish to jest.”

  “There is a group of brigands close by here—a large group.”

  “I know that. We are hunting them.”

&
nbsp; The shake of Hassan’s head made his veil of fine mail hiss and rattle. “No, Sanglahr, they are hunting you. They found you yesterday and have been leading you ever since. Your companion—the other knight—”

  “Rossal?”

  “I do not know his name—the one who rides with you, in joint command. He was lured away an hour ago to look at the tracks of many mounted men, leading from here out into the high desert, tracks that your scouts were led to today, deliberately—tracks that were carefully prepared and then disguised last night to make them appear older than they are. He will return soon, with word that he has found these tracks and that they lead to an encampment by an oasis, less than ten miles from here, and that you and your men can be close to there by nightfall, in time to rest and attack with the morning light at your back.”

  “I see. You are telling me to pay no heed to his advice.”

  “No, I am telling you that no matter what you do, or where you decide to go, you are already in a trap. Your enemy is at your back even as we speak. Those who prepared the tracks leading into the trap near the oasis are but a few, leading riderless horses. They know you are ferenghi, that you have no skill in tracking in the sand. They know you will follow the tracks, and they will follow you. Then, when you lie down to rest before your dawn attack, they will fall upon you from behind and wipe you out.”

  St. Clair drew back his head and looked steadily at the other man, no trace of humor or raillery to be seen now in his expression. “How come you to know all this?”

  Hassan shrugged his shoulders and dipped his head, an elegant gesture. “I have informants among them. I have spoken with two of them, one last night and another this morning. That is how I knew you were coming this way, although I did not know until I saw your face myself that you were leading the patrol.”

  “When did you see my face?” St. Clair made no attempt to hide the nascent hostility in his voice, and Hassan shrugged again.

  “Earlier today. You passed within a score of paces from where I lay watching. I would have called a greeting, save that I might not have lived to hear you return it. Your men are vigilant.”

  “Not vigilant enough, it seems, if you could come that close and these others could manipulate us so easily. Tell me about these informants of yours.”

  Hassan extended a cupped fist, then opened it to demonstrate that it was empty. “Do not blame yourself for failing to stop the wind, Sanglahr. Its power lies in the will of Allah. There was but one way you could come here, and I had been in hiding by the pathway long before you and your people came along. Your men could not possibly have found me unless I betrayed myself. The same applies to what your enemy has done to you. Do you imagine your pattern of patrols has not been noted? Your every move is charted nowadays and you have been under constant watch from the moment you first emerged from your city gates. Even the variances that you use are carefully scrutinized. The people against whom you are now pitted have been waiting for you to come back for more than a month, and they have been patient, their plans laid long since. Everything that happens takes place in accordance with the will of Allah. If you are to die tomorrow, it is already written. If you are to prevail, that, too, is written. But until the outcome of whatever happens, only Allah Himself will know how it is written.”

  “Hmm. And these informants of yours?”

  “What of them? They told me everything they know.”

  “And why would they do that?”

  “Because I asked them, and they are in my debt and have no wish to anger me. Besides, why should they not tell me? I am no ferenghi. I represent no threat to them. It would never occur to any of them that I might have a friend among your ranks.”

  St. Clair sat silent for a moment longer, then asked, “Well, then, tell me this. Had you not seen me here, would you have warned whoever came along instead of me?”

  “I have been asking myself that same question, Sanglahr, and the answer is, I do not know. I may have, and I may not. But you did come, and thus I was spared the pain of having to decide.”

  “Why would you even be concerned? As a Muslim warrior, you should regard us as your enemies.”

  “But I am Ismaili Shi’a, of the Nizari, in the land you call Persia, and these people of whom we speak are of the Abassid. That will mean nothing to you, Sanglahr, but it has great significance among my people, the fedayeen. The Abassid are Sunni, followers of the caliphs, and they believe we are not true Muslims. They have a word for us, ‘Batini,’ which is a slur, suggesting that we are not true followers of the Prophet. They would deny us life itself, not merely the freedom to worship as we please, and thus they are no friends of mine. I would probably have warned your friends, therefore, even had you not been with them. But it was written that you would be with them.”

  “Well then,” St. Clair said, shaking his head in wonderment, “we should be glad that you are … What was the word you used? Batini?”

  Hassan frowned. “You should never use that word, Sanglahr, even in friendly jest. Heard by the wrong ears, it could be the death of you. Trust me in this.”

  “I will. The word will never cross my lips again, for I can see how it offends you. Now, what should I do in this matter of the trap that is set for us? Can you advise me?”

  “Of course. They are all around you now, so there is nothing you can do to avoid them, and thus you must turn the trap on them. Proceed as they expect you to, and make camp where you would have made it had you been unwarned—there is only one suitable place, set among the dunes but within striking distance of the oasis. Then have your men prepare under cover of darkness for the attack that will come in the dead of night. The Abassid will come on foot, in silence, with knives and swords, to take you while you sleep. They have three to every one of you, but they will not expect to find you waiting for them. It will be a hard and bitter fight, but the advantage will be yours. And it appears that Allah Himself is watching over you, for the moon will be full tonight and you will have light by which to fight.”

  “And where will you be then? Will you watch from a distance?”

  The Shi’a smiled. “Aye, I will, from within bowshot. I too will have light by which to add my contribution, for the sand is pale there, almost white, and moving men will stand out clearly in the moonlight. Besides, I cannot be too far away, for if you are killed I will have to reclaim my cousin’s package and deliver it myself. And now you should go, before one of the Abassid sees us together. But before you do, there is one other thing I wished to ask you. My friend Ad-Kamil, whose fire I shared two nights ago, asked me about one of your churchmen, a bishop by the name of Odo. Do you know anything of this man?”

  St. Clair snorted, half laugh, half grunt. “Odo de St. Florent, Bishop of Fontainebleau. I know him well enough to have spent some time with him several days ago. What would you care to know of him?”

  “What manner of man is he, Sanglahr?”

  St. Clair shook his head slowly and deliberately. “That I cannot tell you, my friend, other than that he is a very pompous and humorless bishop, much given to the enjoyment of listening to his own voice. He is secretary and amanuensis to Warmund de Picquigny, who, as you no doubt know, is the senior churchman in Jerusalem, the Patriarch Archbishop.”

  “Aman—amanuen—What is this word?”

  “An amanuensis is what you would call a scribe, a cleric so skilled in writing that he can capture and write down words as they are spoken. He is a keeper, and a creator, of written records. Odo keeps written records of all the affairs upon which the Patriarch is engaged.”

  “Ah, I see. So this man is an intimate of your Patriarch?”

  “A close associate, but not an intimate. I do not believe Odo has intimates. The man appears to have no friends among his peers. He is not amiable.”

  “You do not like him, Sanglahr?”

  St. Clair smiled. “No, Hassan, I do not like him, but I do not know him well at all, so he will not die of my dislike.”

  “But he might of the dislike
of others. Is that what you are saying?”

  “No, not at all. That was no more than a silly comment, a Frankish way of speaking.”

  Hassan stood up and stepped deeper into the shade beneath the rock face. “So be it, Sanglahr. Go you now and prepare your men, and may Allah watch over you this night and keep you and my cousin’s package safe. Go with God.”

  “And you too, my friend. But tell me, if I were to set out men with crossbows among the dunes, would they be able to see well enough to shoot?”

  “As well as I will, but they will be visible, too, in the light of the full moon. How will you deal with that?”

  “They may not be too visible at the outset. Their cloaks are brown. I’ll have them lie down in the sand and cover themselves until the time comes to attack. As soon as the fighting starts, it will be every man for himself.”

  “Allah willing, that should succeed, giving you surprise. But they had best be all in place before the rise of the moon, Sanglahr, and that will be soon after nightfall.”

  SEVEN

  St. Clair had assured Hassan that his men would be safely in position before moonrise, but it was a promise made without any more forethought than a feeling in his gut. In spite of that, however, he made sure to keep his word. Rossal had returned from his reconnaissance soon after St. Clair took his leave of Hassan, and he had brought exactly the tidings that the Shi’a had said he would. He had then led the patrol slightly north and east towards the oasis where the trap was to be set for them.

  It was only long after they had set out on the route they were supposed to follow that St. Clair, by now having developed a plan that he believed would have a chance of success, pulled Rossal aside to ride with him in private and told him of Hassan’s warning. Rossal listened without interrupting, then called their troop leaders to gather around. When they were all there, riding in a tight cluster, St. Clair quickly explained the situation and what he proposed to do about it. St. Clair had expected some skepticism, if not outright resistance, and had been marshaling an argument strong enough to convince them, he hoped, to trust him, but they had accepted what he told them without demur, and he realized, humbly, that they trusted him completely, in spite of all his recent scandals, accepting his own trust of Hassan and according him a degree of confidence that went beyond mere loyalty to a patrol commander, although bolstered, perhaps, by a desire not to put their own lives at risk unnecessarily.