Blades of Valor (6 page)

Her arms pulled him close and she kissed him and a flare of ecstasy filled him, yet something was wrong. Her kiss was one of death, for now he could not breathe, and she would not pull away.

He struggled, trying to push her away, but his arms were still trapped at his side, and she only pressed harder.

Breath, find breath, for he must live …

Thomas opened his eyes wide in panic. For a single heartbeat, he relaxed. It had only been a dream.

Yet he still could not breathe. And above him, a giant of a man blocked the flickering light of the tent lamp.

In the next heartbeat of awareness, he realized a heavy open hand pressed down upon his mouth and nostrils.

“Silence or death,” a voice whispered.

To fulfill that promise, the figure above placed the tip of a knife against Thomas’s throat.

“Silence or death,” the voice repeated. “Nod if you choose life.”

Thomas nodded. The slightness of that movement proved the sharpness of the knife and the seriousness of the intruder; Thomas felt the knife’s tip break skin.

The hand over his nose and mouth was removed.

Thomas drew breath, but slowly, for he did not want the intruder to consider a gasp to be unnecessary noise.

Several more heartbeats passed until the figure eased backward and the pressure of the knife left Thomas’s throat.

“We leave camp,” the voice said. “You will not return. If we are caught, we both die.”

Eleven

T
homas nodded again and hoped his agreement would be visible in the dimness of the tent.

He dressed hurriedly, careful to place around his neck the long strap that held his pouch of gold beneath the clothing. When ready moments later, Thomas reached for the sealed package that had served as his pillow, for even the threat of death did not take its importance from his mind.

“Do not forget your sword,” the voice said. “For you shall travel alone and without friends.”

Thomas took the sword, grateful that this stranger would not see it as a threat.

And why fight now? For if the stranger had meant harm, Thomas would already be dead in his sleep.

The stranger turned. Thomas followed.

They moved between the tents. Something seemed unnatural, and it did not take long for Thomas to understand. The camp did not stir with the slight movements of guards at night, the occasional scurrying of servant girls, the restless muttering of slaves in their tortured sleep. Only the grunts and stampings of the camels showed any life.

The stranger led Thomas away from the edge of the caravan.

To their left was the camp of the other caravan, the traders headed for St. Jean d’Acre. This camp, too, was unnaturally still.

The stranger continued his steady pace away from the camps.

Thomas held his questions.

Five long minutes they traveled.

The sky above was ebony black, broken by brilliant diamonds of starlight. The moon was high and full, and cast enough pale light for Thomas to see the outlines of the far hills.

Finally, the figure stopped and turned.

“It does not matter my name,” the stranger said. “I was among the slaves. Yet we were not slaves. Rather bandits, biding our time.”

“Band—”

The stranger held up his hand. “I have little time until my absence is discovered. What I can explain is this. It is well known that Muzzamar’s caravan has many riches and is too well guarded for attack. Instead of raiding, we chose to pose as slaves until Muzzamar believed himself safe. The cook was bribed before we departed St. Jean d’Acre, before we let ourselves be put into bondage. And this night? As planned long before, all the food of the feast was drugged. It was great fortune that brought us the other caravan to be plundered as well.”

The stranger smiled as a look of comprehension crossed Thomas’s face. Time and again his plate had been filled before he could rise to join Muzzamar and the others with their feasting. And each time his plate had been filled by a large slave.

“Yes,” the figure said as if reading Thomas’s thoughts. “I ensured that you were kept from the food that all others ate. They sleep now. It was a simple matter for the cook to release us from our bonds and supply us with their very own weapons. It is an easy way for us to plunder, much simpler than open attack from the hills.”

“Those weapons shall be used against them?” Thomas asked. “Many in camp are innocent slaves.”

“Only the men shall die. This is a harsh land.”

Thomas said nothing. He pondered the merits of attempting to warn Muzzamar. Yes, he had seen men die, but always in battle, not as helpless sheep.

“Your silence says much,” the slave said. “Yet there is nothing you can do to prevent this. The men are heavily drugged, and your return will only ensure your death, and mine for assisting you now.”

Thomas realized this was so. For a moment, wildness tempted him. To die, useless as his death might be, in attempting to warn others might prove to be a lesser evil than a haunting guilt later. But ahead was his future: Katherine, Sir William, his father, and the fight of the Immortals.

“My own life has been spared,” Thomas said, his tone flat and emotionless.

“You gave us water,” the slave answered Thomas. “And I have decided to repay you in kind. I wish I could give you a camel, but while your absence will be undiscovered in the confusion to come, the loss of a camel is too easily noticed. Our own leader is without mercy and cannot know you have been spared.”

Thomas absorbed this information.

Others would die, and he was helpless against it. The stranger in front of him had risked his own life to save Thomas. The gift could not be discarded. Thomas must leave.

“Truly,” Thomas said, “there is no way I can repay you.”

“I have heard of the man who walked this land, the man you blue eyes claim was the Son of God. Did He not say we are all brothers? And did you not prove it with your kindness?”

It was as if the stranger had listened to the thoughts that had been echoing through Thomas’s mind during the travels. This was the Holy Land. The Christ was not merely someone from the stories of the Gospels, but a living and breathing man who had walked these same roads, and had died a horrible and tortured death before appearing to His friends again.

The stranger extended his hand in a clasp of friendship. “Brother, may your God protect you.
Shalom.
Go in peace.”

The stranger untied a full waterskin from his belt, handed it to Thomas, and took a step away. “You must reach the hills by daybreak. It will cost us both our lives for you to be found.”

Thomas reached for the stranger’s arm at a sudden memory of a brave and noble face.

“The slave from my own land, Lord Baldwin?” Thomas asked. “Will he, too, be slain?”

The stranger snorted in irony. “During this journey, we have discovered the hell of slavery ourselves. All slaves in both caravans shall be spared and released.”

Then a pause before the stranger spoke more soberly. “Whether they survive this land is an entirely different matter.”

Twelve

T
homas entered Nazareth at dawn. Behind him, three days of cautious travel—slow movement along the roads at night, sleep in shadows of safety during the day. Behind him, the long and rolling hills of Galilee.

Among these hills, forests of cedar and pine, olive orchards and vineyards, fields with wheat and oats and barley. It had almost been a joy to contemplate the land as he rested, hidden, during the day.

Nazareth! Again, he could not help but marvel at the thought that, centuries earlier, a man had traveled this land and that the stories of His miracles and His love were passed from generation to generation.

Those thoughts of wonder were almost enough to stop the rumblings of his belly. Almost.

He was not thirsty. His waterskin was still half full from a well fifteen miles earlier; and travel during the night had spared him the searing daytime heat that sucked so much moisture.

But Thomas was hungry, for he had not dared stop at any inns or allow himself to be seen during the day. Time and again, Thomas had shifted his focus from his tightened belly to think of Nazareth. There he would reach Sir William and Katherine. There he would be in relative safety.

What if Sir William and Katherine had not survived their journey? How would he find his father?

No, he must trust the knight would arrive with Katherine. But he would not be foolish as he waited. They might arrive in a day or a week—time enough for Thomas to be noticed by Mameluke soldiers or other assassins. Because of that, Thomas had long ago decided he would satisfy his hunger, then find a place in Nazareth to wait, quiet and hidden as he surveyed arriving travelers.

A rooster’s triumphant crow broke the silence of his thoughts. The town ahead grew more distinct in dawn’s soft light.

Thomas chose a large boulder to use as support and leaned back to survey the buildings ahead. Nazareth seemed small and quiet and ordinary, hardly a place to be remembered by generations, and yet there was a timelessness about its small, flat buildings, as ancient as the hills. Thomas let himself contemplate again the burden of history that had given Nazareth and the rest of the Holy Land such significance.

In this land, Moses had climbed hills much the same to look across the Jordan River and fill his eyes with the awesome beauty of the Promised Land. In this land, a great king named David had defeated invincible armies and composed psalms of praise and love. And here, in the very town Thomas now surveyed, a Child had played in the dust of the streets and grown to be the Man called Christ, who had allowed Himself to die so cruelly on a cross.

Thomas shivered, even as the sun warmed his back.

This contemplation led him to another memory, one of a scene far away in a land he hoped to see again. There, a woman had started every morning in a cold, bare room, silhouetted against the light of the rising sun with her head bowed in prayer and a young boy at her side.

Thomas blinked back a tear. As that young boy, he had barely understood her daily silence. In this moment, as he remembered, his hunger faded and he knew that now, before Katherine and Sir William arrived in Nazareth, he could afford the luxury and demand of grief. Some instinct—the
instinct that compels all men and women to formalize and honor the departure of life—told him he must perform his own ceremony for the woman who had given him so much in that faraway monastery so many years ago.

Thomas tightened his jaw to keep his face firm and stepped away from the boulder to seek a path into the hills above Nazareth.

Thomas sat on the edge of a rock near the top of the highest hill overlooking Nazareth. Here, enough of a breeze flowed to cool him. It brought the bleating of a flock of sheep grazing on a neighboring hill. But for that, the hills were silent.

Thomas closed his eyes and remembered again Sarah.

Sarah had patiently taught him in the ways of Merlin, unable then to reveal to him his duty.

Thomas bowed his head and sat for two hours, holding the sadness without trying to deny it. His tears and his gratitude were all that he could give to the memory of Sarah.

He stood. Ahead, he could give more to the same duty that had called her.

For that, he would have to hide openly in Nazareth. He had already chosen the method.

He would bribe an innkeeper to give him a room and keep it secret. During the day, he would pose as a beggar at the town gates.

After two days of begging, Thomas saw Katherine and Sir William arrive at the gates at midmorning. With them traveled the two Mameluke assassins who had vowed to kill Thomas in St. Jean d’Acre.

Thirteen

I
sabelle enjoyed the relative comfort of her room at an inn in the center of the town of Nazareth. To be sure, it had its share of fleas and lice, but a person couldn’t expect anything else. While she could have found something to complain about, there was something undignified about using Rowan as a translator to discuss whether fat floating in a soup was actually fat, so she’d held her silence over the few days that she’d been there.