Dark Wolves

by J A Deriu

  “Yes, this bay is perfect for landing. Ah, you mean how the force has grown. You are right. We were lucky if we had twenty-five at the Qing desert fortress. But victory will do wonderous things.” He took off his cap and brushed the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. He tasted the peach and nodded. “Our numbers have swelled. The Black Swans are double what they were in the Qing. And more coming. The recruiters in the Black Swan State say the quarters are flooded with those wanting to join the cause.”

  “Hmm, all well. Although other problems arise.”

  “I know. I expelled two caught with each other in a bunk, both men.”

  She nodded.

  “The manual says worse punishment for such sins, but I am satisfied to strip them of their enlistment and send them home.”

  “You did the right thing. There is punishment, but we must expand our numbers and wear a friendly face.” She studied him as his observant eyes looked across the beach. She took her time to consider him. He was a textbook Templar, obedient and fearless. He had a rugged elegance that did not know hesitation or doubt. She had a strange thought for a moment. If she were to partner – and it was not unknown for senior Templars to partner – he would be the type of man she would seek. The thought brought a smile to her lips. She watched as his eyes narrowed.

  “Look, here comes Deen of the Janissaries,” he said.

  General Tobias Deen strode along the sandy path toward them. He was wearing the blue of the Janissaries, his sleeves rolled up, and had no markings to signify his rank, which was the way he always appeared.

  He stopped in front of them. “Lord Commander. Captain.”

  “Tobias. General,” Clavdia responded.

  His posture relaxed like a man accustomed to command. “I can see there is a problem here.” He pointed his head to the citadel.

  “Some local diehards,” Miles replied. “Nothing drastic.”

  “May I suggest something?”

  Clavdia lifted her hand to shield the sun from her eyes. “Go ahead, General.”

  “I will use my men to take the garrison.” The soldier returned to a rigid stance. “I know you would think this strange. But why not? We are keen to prove ourselves. Since our surrender and change of sides, we have been met with suspicious looks, kept at a distance, and weapons mysteriously disappear when we are about. But here we are. The perfect chance to prove ourselves.” Miles looked at Clavdia. The Janissary continued. “What have you to lose? If we succeed this island is perfectly secured, and if we fail, well, you need not be uncomfortable about us anymore.”

  Clavdia stood. “You make a valid case, Tobias, but how do you intend to take it?”

  Tobias Deen smirked. “Ha! This is nothing to us, an hour of work at most.”

  Clavdia looked at Miles. He shrugged, perplexed.

  “That is, Lord Commander, if you will allow us arms?”

  She looked over his shoulder to where Greta was standing on a mound discreetly watching over the meeting, one of her hands rested on her saber, which was hanging from her hip, its point touching the sand. Clavdia signaled for her to come to them. “Captain, arm the Janissaries – rifles, bayonets, sabers.” Greta quizzingly looked at her. “They are going to take the citadel.”

  Greta tilted her head dispassionately. “That will be something to watch, Lord Commander.”

  Greta marched away. Clavdia looked back at Tobias Deen. His lips slightly curled to look like a smile.

  “My thanks and gratitude, Lord Commander,” he said with a slight nod of his head before he lifted it as though sniffing the air. He sped away toward his men, who had grouped to await his return after watching him expectantly. The Janissaries had grown their hair long and carefree. Their faces were ruddy. They had been the unwanted camp followers of the expeditionary force since their defeat and surrender. Most of them, like Tobias Deen, were fair skinned and light eyed. In appearance they resembled many of the Templars, but they felt alien, from the food they ate, such as smelly skewers, and although most kept quiet, when they spoke, they could not be understood, even if they tried to speak in English, except their general, who spoke as if he came from a Metropolitan university.

  The group moved away with sprightly steps to follow where Greta had gone.

  “They have willingly joined the cause.” She spoke before Miles could. “They deserve the opportunity.”

  “I suppose so, Lord Commander,” he replied. “But what is ‘willingly’ when the alternative would have been a loss of head?”

  “The Qing didn’t execute many. They preferred the ransom.”

  “Most defected, followed their general. I find it strange. Very strange. When it comes to myself, Lord Commander, I prefer a death on the battlefield than surrender.”

  “I take it then, Captain, that there has not been any Templar-Janissary bonding.”

  “You would be correct. I don’t think you could get more different than the two. The Templar, austere, dedicated to the cause. The Janissary, show-off, looking to make a fortune. Nothing more than glorified mercenaries, really.”

  “Yet we need all the numbers we can scrounge for what is ahead.”

  Miles scoffed. “We did fine without them in the Qing Kingdom.”

  She looked into his eyes. “I expect the battles to come will dwarf those of the Qing.” She could still vividly see the battle on the plain before the fortress, when they had surprised the enemy by attacking rather than defending. In a few hours, they had strangled the feared Janissaries, resulting in the mass surrenders. Captain Miles and his Black Swan Templars had carved into the enemy with reckless daring that was already being sung about. The main army of the invaders was defeated on that morning. The rest was met in two other battles. A reinforcement army of twenty-thousand Mughals was ambushed in a mountain wood by Qing Dragoons and five thousand Templars. She saw little action on the battlefield, with the danger of stumbling over the mangled bodies left by the Dragoons the most serious. The third fight, was with the remainder of the Ottomans on their exit, after they had abandoned the campaign. Their retreat had been disorganized, the loss of their general calamitous. The Templars rode with the reinvigorated Qing Imperial Army to the borderlands. The Ottomans could not establish defensive positions in the flat terrain. They were hunted by the mad Qing Calvary and Templars. The annals would record three victories.

  Miles tossed the pip from his fruit to the side and lifted his head. “There seems to be action.”

  “So soon.” She looked toward the beach, her mind already thinking how the rapidly expanded expeditionary force was going to be accommodated. They had finished the Qing campaign with over twenty thousand Templars. Three thousand had died or planned to return to New Europa. The success had swelled their numbers. Thirty thousand more came from New Europa. She brushed her hand over hair that was pulled tight to her scalp and gathered at the back in a firm knot. The Janissaries had formed into groups and were hurrying along the beach while inspecting their newly acquired weapons.

  “I don’t think I trust him, Lord Commander,” Miles said.

  “He was a general in the most effective army in the world. He knows things. How to do things, when an army is moving, how it breathes, how many latrines it needs, how many potatoes. This knowledge will be valuable as we build an army and the problems that come with this.”

  She finished the peach and tossed the stone into the sand. She stood and looked at the progress of the latest batch of boats that had made the beach. Miles stood and shooed the children away.

  Deen placed his snipers on a nearby hill. One of the holdouts casually put his head above the parapet, and his chin was shorn off. Another was hit when he passed a crenel. A third also, although it was unsure how he was picked off. With the defenders too scared to look over the walls, the Janissaries smashed open the doors to the citadel and charged inside with their general leading. The shooting cea
sed within minutes.

  Clavdia could see out through the flaps of the tent. Nightfall had come. It was habit to set a fire, but with the sultriness of the climate, it had not been done. The noise of the local insects gave the sense that it would be a perpetual background accompaniment. The Templars sat on the canvas, most with their legs crossed. Marco, a young Templar captain from Pisa City in the sugar cane lands, recited the prayers. It had been over an hour. Clavdia could not feel her legs and began needling them for life. He had boyish eyes and a dull tone. He took a long breath, and prepared to commence another set.

  “Thanks to you, Captain Marco, we have ample gratitude to the Blessed Virgin Mary for the safe passage,” Fulke the Bear announced with enough guile to convince that he had thought the Templar had finished. “We could continue to the dawn, but alas, there is much else to take our time.” He looked across to Clavdia, paving the way for her to speak.

  “The prayers are well spoken. I agree. We have landed safely. This is the day of Saint Cecelia. A worthy day to begin this expedition. We are only two hours’ sail from the African continent, and this island will give us the security we will need to consolidate so that when we land on the continent, we will have a functioning and lethal army. Tell me, Bear, have we accommodated all that have landed?”

  “Hmm. Lord Commander, it depends, if you call sleeping on sand under the stars accommodated, then yes, but no, we won’t have all the tents ashore until we can start ferrying supplies from the ships in the light. It will be a different night, but in my opinion, preferred to the belly of a ship. Templars are made for the land, not the sea.”

  “Lord Commander, I cannot see much in the way of food that would be easily procurable,” Richord said. “I have scouted the surrounds. I would reckon that the people here are subsisting at best, and our supplies will only last so long.”

  Miles scoffed. He sat in the nearest group to Clavdia and opened his eyes after having them squeezed tightly shut throughout the prayers, as if in a trance. “Did you have your eyes open?”

  “What are you saying?” Richord frowned.

  “I saw well-nourished people. There is an ocean full of fish and something growing from every tree. Our cooks will have endless uses for bananas alone.”

  “Ah, Richord,” Fulke said, “leave these worries to Miles. The Black Swan are famous for making the arid land of their country livable.”

  “I know this, Bear, but I do not want to live on bananas alone. And with this thought on my mind, how do we pay for the upkeep of the army, and for all these bananas?” Richord turned toward Clavdia. “It may not be right to ask in this forum, Lord Commander, but the costs are obvious, and they would appear to be as steep as a cliff. I am sure you would not want us to be one of those marauding armies that alienates the local populace and acts as an occupying force.”

  “No Captain Richord, that won’t be us,” Clavdia said. “I can state in this forum that we are well resourced. The negotiations with the Qing Dynasty were hard, but we achieved terms that have supplied us well, including the shipping.”

  “I should think so.” Fulke scoffed. “We saved their kingdom for them.”

  “Yes, we did. Some of them agreed with that. Some of them did not.”

  “There is word that we were paid with Fugger assets,” Captain Jodi said, touching her face with concerned fingers. “If this is true, Lord Commander, there will be action from Fugger. That outfit would chase to the end of the would one sterling that they believed belonged to them.”

  “Hmm.” Clavdia squeezed her hands together. “The Qing are messy to negotiate with. It is like playing a carnival game. It has been a long day, and I am sure you are all keen to settle into the new surrounds, those that have not bivouacked yet, so perhaps, we should leave the events of the Qing behind and focus on our mission in this theater.”

  “Yes, certainly, Lord Commander,” Richord answered. “We have traveled from a theater of hostility to one of hostility morefold.”

  “As it should be,” Miles said plainly. “That is the lot of a Templar.”

  “Yes, I agree, Captain Miles, but here we are in the lands of the Persians without an ally. At least in the Qing, we were not trespassing on the lands of the Mohammedans, and we had an ally, no matter how unreliable.”

  “What is that noise?”

  “It is coming from outside.”

  “Open the tent flap.”

  “It is the Janissaries. They are gathering outside.”

  “Oh, terrible calamity!” Richord cried out. “Haven’t they been armed?”

  “Those aren’t weapons. They are holding musical instruments.”

  Clavdia could see the Janissaries bunching outside the tent in the stark moonlight. She stood like the others to see better. She could see that they were holding flutes, horns, and cymbals. One was blowing into a trumpet and others feeling beats on a kettledrum. They were tuning their instruments. General Tobias Deen stood at the front and held up his arms for them to be quiet. He turned and looked into the tent. His eyes settled on Clavdia and then turned back to the band. He dropped his hands for them to start playing. Their music started slowly and then hurried into rapid marching chords. Deen moved like a conductor, and they started singing. Their voices came from strong lungs, building to a crescendo. The song was in Turk, and the chorus was sung with gusto. They hung onto the final words and clanged their instruments for the finish. Deen expelled a long breath of air and looked again at Clavdia. He held his arms toward her. “For you, Lord Commander.”

  Some Templars looked confused. Others smiled and moved as though humming. “All right, Templars, let’s show them what we can do,” Clavdia declared, turning to the Templars around her. “What’s our best song?”

  Greta stepped to the front of the group. “Ride, Templars, ride,” she said and began singing. Pedro joined her with his sturdy voice, and with the other Templars drawn to the concert, a good chorus rang out. Clavdia also joined, and all the Templars instinctively knew the words to the favorite of the barrack songs.

  “Ride, Templars, ride. Two to a horse. Poor soldiers we are. With the Virgin our protector. Hard blows will banish the sin. Onward. Ride, Templars, ride.”

  She had slept with her body still living the movement of the sea and woke from a dreamless sleep with the face of a Templar looking down at her. “Lord Commander, they have arrived.”

  “Tell them that they won’t be kept waiting.”

  She had desired to pray long and devoutly from the first glimpses of daylight. Instead, she was hurrying, straightening her tunic, her rosary beads dangling from her fingers, a harried prayer on her lips. Captains Miles and Fulke the Bear were waiting for her under the shadow of an archway. They were looking across the empty marketplace of the village to a dramatic stone building that stood out in the run-down surrounds like a cathedral. “They are in there, Lord Commander,” Fulke advised.

  “Have you met them?” she asked.

  “I have, Lord Commander,” Miles answered. “I escorted them from their boat.”

  “What do you know?”

  “I can’t say much, Lord Commander. It was dark, and they did not talk. They appeared to be a brother and sister, although I cannot say this for certain. There were five others with them, all armed.”

  “All right, I will meet them with Captain Miles. Fulke, you wake the camp. I want intense training to commence from this day. Of the standard to be battle ready.”

  “Yes, Lord Commander.”

  There were a dozen steep steps to the entrance. The door was ajar, and from inside, there was the glow of a fire. A soldier aimed a gun at them when they stepped through the doorway. His uniform sparkled in the firelight, a golden tunic and a flame red scarf at his neck. Clavdia moved her hand away from the pistol holster at her belt. A bearded man with an imposing chest stepped in front of them. “Welcome, Lord Commander. We will conduct the t
alks in your language, English, if it pleases you. Come this way. I am Tulock.”

  Both of them were sitting upright regally in front of the fire. Miles was correct. They looked like brother and sister. Their eyebrows creased as they studied the Templars. Clavdia bowed her neck. She had not been informed on protocol. Miles stood rigid, his hands nervously lifted in front of him. There were no chairs for them to sit on.

  Tulock held a short staff. The carved head of a lion at its top. “Welcome, Templars. You are meeting with royals of the House of Solomon. They will speak for the Negus, the Conquering Lion. Their true names are not to be spoken at this meeting, so they will be referred to as the Queen of Sheba and Prester John. These names are chosen, as no doubt you will know, for the love of history and to echo its beauty. Templars are part of our history. Your men have walked on our land before. We honor you for your recent victory. Your forces are impressive. We have observed as each of you have set foot on this island with the gallantry of lions. You have come as your Grand Master promised. Our goals are aligned, which is always the best mixture for success.”

  Clavdia regarded the two royals. They were youths with sharp upper-class features and skin of unblemished fawn. The boy had his black hair cut aggressively short like a soldier, and the girl had long hair that curled around her face as though it were made of silk.

  “The Order of the Temple of Solomon is honored to have provided its part of the bargain made by the Grand Master and your monarch. We have been at sea, our communications have been poor, and our advance scouts have not reported as yet, so would you tell me the status in the Kingdom of Abyssinia?”

  Tulock replied, “Yes, and proudly. The rebellion has begun.” He smiled in a firm, soldierly manner. “Gondor is secure. The garrisons of the Persians have been vacated throughout the kingdom. Many have run in such a hurry that they left their families behind.”

  “And when do you expect they will return?” Clavdia asked, glancing at the brother and sister. Their grave faces indicated that they understood what was being spoken. She calculated young royals would be educated in the languages of the world, and with so much of the past history and knowledge recorded in English, it would be one of those learned.