Knights of the Black and White

by Jack Whyte

  Of the forty sergeants in their company, eighteen carried crossbows, and in one of the wagons they had an ample supply of the steel bolts they used as ammunition. Rossal assumed command of the eighteen as a separate contingent, and throughout the afternoon, each time they paused to rest themselves and their mounts, he had two, and sometimes three, of his eighteen chosen sergeants pass by the wagon and help themselves unceremoniously to an extra bundle of ammunition, while the rest of the patrol moved around busily enough to disguise what was going on from the people they now knew were watching them from the surrounding dunes.

  The transition from daylight to darkness is very brief in the desert, so St. Clair, riding knee to knee with Rossal, found himself governing the approach to the oasis with care, relying heavily on the reports and observations of his scouts, for he had no wish to arrive at the designated camping spot too soon, and he wanted to do nothing that might arouse suspicion in the minds of those undoubtedly watching. And yet he knew they could not afford to be one moment later arriving there than they must be, since the interval between the set of the sun and the rise of the moon that night would be a short one. He had planned well, however, and everything went smoothly, aided by an unusual accumulation of heavy cloud banks that added to the gathering darkness.

  The men made camp among the dunes, within striking distance of the oasis to the north, and although they all knew that the attack would come from behind them, they gave no indication to any watching eyes that they were even mildly suspicious or apprehensive. As darkness finally fell, while the horses were being roped in their lines on the outer edge of the encampment, Rossal and his half of the group calmly positioned their bedrolls to make it appear they were asleep, and then they moved swiftly and stealthily away from the campsite and buried themselves under their spread brown cloaks in the sand on the sides of the dunes overlooking the tiny cooking fires. They were within easy bowshot of the camp, and thereafter they lay in utter stillness and silence, waiting for the enemy to come to them.

  For a long time that night, the skies remained obscured with clouds, and the moonlight broke through only intermittently and unpredictably, keeping the watching enemy pinned down and hampered, unwilling to risk being exposed by a sudden gap in the clouds before they were ready to attack. And so they stayed concealed for so long that St. Clair began to fret that the attack was taking too long to develop, for absolutely nothing marred the stillness of the desert. He sat for so long, his eyes and ears straining against the utter stillness, that he had to stand up, eventually, and move around quietly, even while he knew the movement might bring arrows from the blackness beyond the fires. Even as he did so, however, the clouds parted and the moonlight broke through, shining even more brilliantly than it might have otherwise, thanks to the darkness of the night to that point.

  He was aware, of course, that no one else in the entire camp had been able to sleep either, and that they had all been lying as tense and as wide awake as he was, and so he forced himself to walk around the fires for a while after the moonlight sprang up, affecting unconcern and talking quietly with the guards, while encouraging everyone else, in a lower voice, to remain as they were and pretend to be asleep. Then, when he judged the time to be about right, he sat down by the fire and allowed himself, to all outward appearances, to slump towards sleep, although his every nerve was strained to catch the first sounds of anyone approaching.

  He found it amazingly difficult to sit still, and quite impossible to empty his mind of worries, and as time passed and nothing happened, he began to experience difficulty in breathing normally. No matter how much air he inhaled, he felt that he could not fill up his lungs, and so he began to breathe more and more rapidly until finally, afraid that he was about to swoon, he had to stand up, cautiously and with tooth-grinding difficulty, and move about. That helped, and as his breathing slowly returned to normal he realized that the attack he had just undergone, whatever it had been, had been caused by fear. He stood erect, holding his head high, and turned slowly in a complete circle, gazing out into the darkness of the desert night, and he saw and heard nothing. Then, in an effort to distract himself, he sat down again and made himself think back to Jerusalem, and to the night in the tunnels when he had almost suffocated on the foul air, and he began to feel calmer. He remembered sprawling at the foot of the dirt pile after thrusting himself back out from the tiny entrance and into the clean air. His entire body had been thickly coated with clinging dust and his mouth had felt full of it, devoid of moisture, and he remembered the pleasure with which he had spat his mouth clear and then rolled onto his back against the wall, feeling the cool breeze blowing from the side against his face …

  He heard a gasp and a curse, followed immediately by a loud challenge that was drowned in a warlike, ululating wail, and then the night was full of sounds, the clashing of steel blades and the hissing of crossbow bolts that terminated in solid, meaty thumps, and a rising chorus of battle cries that quickly gave way to screams of panic and alarm as the attackers realized that the enemy was at their backs and that they had been tricked. They had penetrated the camp as they had planned to do, and in so doing they had passed through and among Rossal’s buried crossbowmen without discovering a single one of them. Rossal’s people had watched them pass by and had then waited, high on the sides of the dunes, choosing their time deliberately and then opening fire in volleys, with murderous effect.

  “Hold still!” he shouted to the men around him. “Count the volleys! Then on three, rise up with me!”

  The second volley struck home, causing carnage among the attacking Muslims while the sergeants around the fires remained on the ground, leaving the killing to the crossbowmen for the third and final volley, and then, as the enemy began to rally slightly in the pause that followed the second flight of bolts, he shouted again, warning his men to stay where they were and wait for the third volley. It came, and those of the enemy who were left on their feet in the aftermath were turning about, first one way and then another, not knowing what to do or where to run.

  “Now, lads! Take them!” As he scrambled to his feet, the loose sand making him feel unusually slow and cumbersome, a man came charging at him, waving a long-bladed scimitar, but before he could come within striking distance, he jerked forward headlong, grunting as if in surprise, and fell to his knees. His open mouth filled up with blood, black in the moonlight, that spewed down the front of his clothing, and he came to rest face down between St. Clair’s feet. Stephen leapt forward over the man’s body, his sword swinging as he sought an opponent close enough to fight. It was all over quickly, however, and he failed to cross swords with a single attacker.

  His remaining sergeants were swarming everywhere, relieved now of the strain of having to lie helpless in the face of an advancing enemy while their companions above on the dunes did all the killing, and the attackers who had planned on slaughtering them as they slept had lost all appetite for the contest now that they had chain-mailed and angry opponents in front of them and at their backs with long-bladed swords and maces and axes. Those among them who were fleet enough of foot vanished into the desert in any direction they could reach, and within minutes of the first blow being struck, the fighting was over.

  Rossal was already restoring calm, enquiring after casualties, and he glanced at Stephen and winked. “One man dead, two wounded, neither one seriously. And as far as I can tell, perhaps a score and a half on the other side of the tally. Are we taking prisoners?”

  St. Clair had been looking about him, half expecting to see Hassan somewhere close by, but there was no sign of the Shi’a warrior, and now he shook his head in response to Rossal’s question. “No time for that, not if we’re to hit the oasis as we planned. Put the dead man and the two wounded on one of the wagons. I’ll rally the others and get us underway.” He raised his voice. “Sergeant Bernard, to me, if you will. All men to be mounted and ready to move out within the quarter hour. See to it.”

  They hit the encampment shortly more t
han an hour later, and found the place empty of life, although there was much evidence around to show that the camp had been hurriedly abandoned mere minutes before they arrived. They set up a perimeter then and settled down to make use of the water hole, and within the day, they established that they had slain approximately one in four or five of the men they had been seeking. They found no wounded Muslims, although there were bloodstains aplenty, and their scouts estimated that the remnants of the enemy band had scattered to the four winds. St. Clair did not disagree, but he wondered what had happened to Hassan.

  That night, before he fell asleep, he lay in his bedroll by the fire, talking to Rossal, and the last question he asked him before falling silent left Rossal frowning and wondering what his friend was thinking of.

  “Imagine yourself lying on the floor in one of the tunnels under the Mount,” St. Clair had said. “The wall is against you, on your left, and you are flat on your back, and there’s a breeze blowing over you … You’ve been digging and sweating and the breeze is cool and fresh. Delightful. But it’s blowing sideways, cooling your neck and the side of your face … The left side of your face. What can you learn from that?”

  EIGHT

  “Well, what did you learn from that?” It was eight days later, and Hugh de Payens’s face was unreadable, but there was no doubting his curiosity, and across from him, Godfrey St. Omer was leaning forward, his eyes intent on St. Clair, who shrugged, the beginnings of a smile tugging at his lips.

  “Nothing that I can prove, Brethren. Not yet, at least. I came here directly from stabling my horse, leaving Rossal to dismiss the men and complete the patrol, my first duty being to report to you on our progress and condition. Now that I have done so, I am free, I presume, to tend to my own affairs for a while. As soon as I leave here and remove this armor, therefore, I intend to go underground and investigate my suspicions. After that, I will be able to answer your question.”

  The two senior brothers exchanged glances, and de Payens inclined his head. “So be it, then. Our business here is concluded, but I think I am safe in saying that Brother Godfrey here is as curious as I am about your tidings. Would it displease you if I asked you to take us with you when you go down into the tunnels?”

  It was only a very short time later when the three men passed the vertical rift in the tunnel floor where the tunnelers had been disposing of their detritus for many months, and less than a hundred paces beyond that, St. Clair hesitated and stopped, holding his flaming torch high as he gazed about him, looking back the way they had come and then turning to stare down the passageway that stretched into darkness ahead of them.

  “This should be the place,” he said at length. “It should be, but it looks nothing like what I remember. There was a wall of rubble here, filling the passageway completely, last time I was here. I climbed over it and squeezed through the opening at the top, then almost suffocated on the other side and barely made it back out. That’s when I collapsed against the wall and felt the fresh air. There has been a lot of work down here since then, to clear the debris away, but in the doing of that, the few reference points I had have been removed, too. The spot where I lay and felt the draft could be anywhere from where I’m standing up to a score of paces in either direction.” He looked around again and then waved his hand towards the passageway stretching ahead of them. “The only thing I know with certainty is that I was lying with my feet pointing down that way, towards the blockage, so the draft came from somewhere along this wall here, on the left.”

  “Taper,” St. Omer said. “We need a taper, or a candle, and a long handle.” He glanced from one to the other of his listeners and shrugged. “Alternatively, you could get down on your hands and knees and crawl the length of the passage, feeling for the draft, but it strikes me that it would be easier to tie a lit taper to the end of a long stick of some kind, or even a sword, and walk along the wall with it. If there’s still a current of air blowing through, it will affect the flame.”

  “No tapers down here,” St. Clair responded. “But we have oil lamps and mattocks, so we should be able to achieve the same effect. I’ll attach a lamp to the blade of a mattock. We’ll have to be careful not to tilt the lamp and spill the oil. There are some old tools over here, against the wall. Now, then …”

  It took no more than a few minutes to attach a lamp to the end of a mattock shaft, and when they had it firmly bound there, they lit the wick with one of their torches. The lamp burned slowly, its bare wick generating much sooty smoke, but that was an advantage, and they found the vent in the wall almost as soon as they began to search for it. The lamp’s flame guttered quickly, blown sideways with surprising strength and sending black, greasy smoke swirling fitfully across the passageway. St. Clair looked at his two companions from beneath raised eyebrows, then brought the open flame back to the same spot, holding it this time in a stream of air so strong and steady that it set the lamp’s flame fluttering audibly. He knelt quickly then, setting the lamp aside and reaching out with his bare hands to feel the flow of cool air from the base of the wall.

  “It’s strong, but the hole is very small. Bring one of those torches down here and give me some light.” He lowered himself farther, taking his weight on his hands and moving his legs back until he could lie on his belly, then he thrust his fingers into the small hole. The other two men moved back to give him room, although St. Omer held the torch carefully out and down at arm’s length to provide the light he had been asked for.

  St. Clair inched forward until his face was ludicrously close to the wall, and then he shook his head and rolled away. “The air’s blowing upward, but where could it be coming from? This tunnel wall is solid stone, so what we have found must be some kind of a crack in the rock. It makes no sense.” He looked around, then pushed himself back up to his feet and crossed to the pile of tools, where he selected a long pry bar of solid steel and returned to attack the tiny air vent, trying to enlarge it. Moments later, the wedge-shaped point of the bar broke through, enlarging the hole considerably, and once the penetration had begun it progressed swiftly until the opening was the size of a man’s head. It had begun with the chink at the base of the wall, but as St. Clair kept chipping and picking away at it, the cavity proved to be more in the floor than in the wall, and at one point, prizing at a jagged edge that gave way more suddenly than expected, he staggered and lost his grip on the bar, and it disappeared into the blackness of the hole. All three men stood motionless, listening to the silence until the clanging echo of the bar’s landing came up to them. None of them needed to point out to the others that it had fallen a long way.

  Shortly after that, they tied one of their torches to a length of rope and lowered it into the darkness below, but it showed them nothing other than an apparently vast blackness, and watching the flame flicker and eventually burn out far below—the rope was more than twenty paces long—St. Clair shivered, feeling apprehension crawling between his shoulder blades.

  They would not appreciate the reality of what had happened until long afterwards, when logic and exploration had made it clear beyond any doubt, but there, at the beginning of it all, the three men were completely at a loss for understanding of what they had found. It was St. Omer who would eventually arrive at the analogy that explained it to all of them, comparing the chamber below—for it was a vast, square chamber that they had found—and the tunnel in which they stood to a cube and a tube. The cylindrical tube of the tunnel had touched precisely on one of the upper corners of the chamber, closely enough to break through at that single point and create the hole that became the conduit for the air from the chamber beneath. Had the tunnel been dug as little as a hand’s breadth to the right of where it was, the discovery would never have been made and the presence of the chamber underneath might never have been suspected. But the contact was made, the flow of air was noted, and therein some men thought afterwards to see the Hand of God.

  None of the three men present that afternoon had a single thought in his mind of God
or divine intervention. They were nonplussed and unsure of what to do next, and as they stood there, gazing down into the hole in the floor, their last remaining torch began to flicker towards oblivion, its fuel depleted.

  “Whatever we do next, it is going to require thought, and planning,” de Payens growled, “and we are going to need the others down here. Come, we’ll return later, once we have decided what we should do.”

  They returned to the surface, replenishing their torches as they went, and the climb up through the excavations was a silent one, each of the three men involved with his own thoughts on what they had found. As soon as they regained the stables, de Payens called all the brothers to attend a Gathering. St. Agnan and Payn de Montdidier had been on the point of riding out at the head of their scheduled patrol, but the sergeant messenger caught them in time and they came to the Gathering room with everyone else, wondering what was afoot.

  De Payens cut to the essence of his summons as soon as the outer door was securely locked and guarded, once again by Geoffrey Bissot, whose duties as guard of the Gatherings seemed to occur on every occasion when something new and important had to be discussed. Hugh began by acknowledging St. Agnan and Montdidier, and the fact that their projected patrol would take them out of the city for the following eight days, but he assured them that by the time they returned, God willing, there would be much for them to do. He instructed St. Agnan to have his men stand down for the night but be prepared for an early departure the following morning.