Hounds of God (49 page)

“Balian, of course,” said the other.

“Balian,” the knight agreed. “Of course. We’ve all done our
share of listening to troubadours. So, obviously, had the boy from the west. Of
course we tried to talk the young fool out of it. Balian is a man in his full
strength, Balian is seasoned, Balian is the unconquered champion of Outremer.

“‘Therefore,’ said the westerner, ‘I will fight with him.’

“He meant it. Lances first, then if neither would yield,
swords, until one either yielded or was hurt too badly to go on. Balian was
hardly willing. He’s a gentle enough soul, when he’s not breaking lances. But a
challenge is a challenge, and Balian understands young men’s hunger for honor.
He could give that even with defeat.

“You know how it goes in any tourney. The knights take their
places at the ends of the lists. The destriers champ and snort and shake the
ground with their pawing. The world holds its breath. Then the lord raises his
hand. The lances come down. The shields come up. The horses lumber into motion.
It’s dream-slow; then it’s blurringly fast.

“Even before the lances met, we knew what we were seeing.
God knows, there are no knights in the world to compare with ours in Outremer;
and often we’ve seen it proven, with every ship that comes out of the west, and
every sunstruck cockerel who fancies himself a champion.

“This one was cockerel enough, but he could ride a joust. He
broke his lance on Balian’s shield, and Balian broke his on the westerner’s,
and neither even swayed in the saddle. They’d been testing, we could see.
Neither said a word that we could hear, but they stopped in the same instant,
dismounted, and set to with swords.

“Now, Balian can ride, but it’s with the sword that he excels,
and it’s with the sword that he’s held his title so long. His arm is made of
iron and his wind is unbreakable, and he has an eye like a Cairene cutpurse.
There are men who’d swear that he sees a stroke coming before his opponent has
even thought of it.

“And here he’d met his match. Soon enough they had their
helms off, and they were grinning like boys on a lark, but going at it with all
they had. Or Balian was. The other was still — still! — holding back. Till
Balian saw, and his grin went wild, and he struck in grim earnest. Struck, if
the other slipped the merest degree, to kill.

“And the other saw, and he smile never wavered, but I saw
the glitter in his eye. He turned that stroke, and he sent the sword spinning
out of Balian’s hands, and he laid his point against Balian’s throat, gentle as
a mother’s kiss. ‘You’ll make a swordsman,’ he said.”

There was a long pause, with breaths drawn sharply in it.
Then: “By the Cross! Did Balian kill him for it?”

“Balian? Balian cursed him in three languages, and then
asked him if he’d mind taking on a pupil.”

Thibaut grinned to himself. The tale had won an audience,
and they were all trying not to goggle. No one was suggesting, Thibaut noticed,
that the young cockerel was not as young as he seemed. Rhiyana was small and
very far away, and played little part in western wars and none in those of the
east. No one here knew what its king was. And as for his brother...

People would believe what they wanted to believe. That had
always been Gereint’s wisdom and his safety. His lineage was not a thing to
speak of where a stranger could hear it. He had been a little afraid,
sometimes, when he talked of his uncle’s coming, though he laughed at himself. “He’s
older than I, and wiser, and he’s long learned to seem, if not ordinary, at
least human. And yet... he is what he is. He never lies about it. If someone
asks him direct...”

So far, no one had. Thibaut intended to keep it so. Though
it meant coming within reach of his mother’s eye, he stationed himself in Aidan’s
shadow, armed with a bland stare and an air of squirely watchfulness.

oOo

They laid Gereint in his tomb under the chapel of Aqua
Bella, and although he might have had a bishop to sing him to his rest, his
lady would have none but her own humble chaplain. Old and all but blind, he
still had a sweet voice, and his wits did not wander overmuch, although he
forgot once and called Gereint by the name of Margaret’s father.

It was as Gereint would have wished it.

“He was blessed in the end,” said Margaret when it was over.
“He died without pain, in the prime of his life. He had nothing to regret.”

Hall and solar were full of people who would need, soon, to
think that their presence comforted her. But for this little while, in the cool
dimness of the crypt, they let her be. Thibaut did not want to be there, but he
could not make himself go elsewhere. Under dust and incense and old stone, he
thought he smelled death. Foolish. His grandfather’s tomb held naught now but
old bones, dry and clean under the effigy. Gereint was sealed tight in the
niche that would have been Margaret’s, embalmed in spices and wrapped in lead
and laid under a slab that had needed four strong men-at-arms to shift it.
Later his effigy would lie there, all in armor, with the cross of Crusade on
its breast.

Aidan knelt by the niche. If he prayed, it was a warrior’s
prayer, a fierce intensity. A saint might look like that as he labored to raise
the dead.

Thibaut shivered. That, he already knew, was beyond Aidan’s
power.

Margaret moved slowly through the crypt. Her shadow was huge
in the light of the lamp over her father’s tomb. She paused by Gereint’s, and
laid her hand on its lid. A tremor rocked her. Thibaut looked at her in
something very like horror. Margaret was the strongest person in the world.
Margaret never lost her temper, or her composure, or her wits. Margaret never
wept.

It was if the castle itself had begun to crumble and fall.
Thibaut was frozen in shock, helpless. Aidan moved as if he had never been rapt
in prayer, rising, touching her. And she let him. She came to him as to a
haven. He sank down, cradling her as if she had been a child, rocking her,
saying nothing. His face was deathly still. His cheeks were wet.

Thibaut did not know what he did until he had done it. He
crept close to them, and huddled by them. There was room for him, and warmth
and strength to spare. They held at bay the cold of death. They began, slowly,
to heal him.

4.

For Aidan there would be no healing while Gereint’s assassin
lived unpunished. He worked, ate, spoke, even laughed, but the memory never
left him, nor the grief.
Even an hour,
his
heart mourned.
Even an hour sooner...

But beneath that, infinitely darker, infinitely more
terrible:
I never knew. I in all my power, in my
pride, in my certainty that the world was mine to do with as I chose — I was as
blind as any mortal worm.

Gereint had died, and Aidan had had not the slightest
suspicion. He had been all joy, looking to the road’s end, knowing how Gereint
would be when Aidan came: trying to be a man, to remember his dignity, but
damning it all and whooping like a boy. He was dead before he knew it, gone,
taken away where mortal men went; where Aidan could never go.

The hall of Aqua Bella saw a prince at the lady’s table,
eating little, but calm, composed. Behind the mask, he wept and raged.

The Assassin had left no trace, no memory of presence. The
cake was gone, cast away in fear. Gereint was in his tomb.

But Aidan knew where to hunt. Masyaf had sent the murderer
out; to Masyaf, inevitably, the murderer must return. Aidan would be waiting
for him.

Aidan stopped pretending to eat. His kind needed little
sustenance, and even that, now, was more than he could stomach. The guests were
quiet as befit a funeral, but they seemed hungry enough, and thirsty for the
wine that came out of Bethlehem. At the high table, Margaret ate and drank
sparingly but calmly. Thibaut, who was young enough to find healing in tears
and a strong embrace, was eating as if he had had nothing for days. Maybe he
had not. He did not often glance at Aidan, but his awareness was palpable, like
a hand on Aidan’s shoulder.

Gereint had been like that. It was not adoration; nothing so
foolish. It was kinship, deeper even than blood.

It was a gift. Aidan did not want it; it did not fill the
place that was empty. Yet he could not more refuse it than he had refused
Gereint.

The air was stifling. So many human bodies, so many human
minds, pressing on him. He rose, not too ungracefully, murmuring something. The
Lady Margaret inclined her head. Her eyes saw too clearly by far. She endured
this because she must. So must he, if he could be courteous, but courtesy was
beyond him. He bowed low to her and fled.

oOo

The garderobe was a brief refuge, but its air was too thick
for his senses. He found a courtyard to pace in, not caring what it was, or
where, or who saw. Only the thinnest veneer of sanity kept him from launching
himself into the sky.

Watchers did not longer long. Perhaps he frightened them.
But one stood in shade, as still as he was restless, and slowly the stillness
touched him. A monk, he thought: a Benedictine, swathed in black. But under the
habit was mail; on the breast was a cross, not large, of simple shape, stark
white against the robe.

The Hospitaller. Gilles, his name was. He was not what Aidan
had been led to expect. He was fastidiously clean, his hair cropped short
around his tonsure, his beard long but well kept. It aged him, as perhaps he
intended: under it he could not have been much past thirty.

His eyes widened a little as Aidan halted in front of him.
The glamour had lost itself, baring the truth of what Aidan was; he cared
neither to restore it nor to befuddle the man’s mind, churchman or no. Gilles
had Saracens enough to hunt. This one lone witch-man was no prey of his.

“So,” said the Hospitaller without greeting or pretense. “It’s
true, the tale I’ve heard.”

Aidan bared teeth longer and sharper than a man’s. “What
tale might that be, Brother?”

“I think you need not ask, my prince,” said the Hospitaller.
He leaned against the wall and folded his arm, at ease, half smiling. “They say
the king your brother is your very image, as like as man and mirror.”

“How not? We’re twinborn. That’s a power in itself, the old
wives say.”

“Are you both left-handed?”

Aidan laughed, startled, beginning to like this soldier-monk.
“Both of us. How did you know?”

The blue eyes glinted. “No magic, my lord. I watched you in
hall. You should learn to eat with your right hand if you intend to go among
the infidels. They take very unkindly to a man who does not.”

“Why is that?”

“A teaching of their Prophet. He ordained every smallest
action. The right hand, he decreed, shall be for eating and for cleanly things.
The left is for wiping oneself, and for giving the devil his due.”

“Do they all fight left-handed, then?”

“Oh, no,” said the Hospitaller. “War is holy, as holy as
prayer. The blood of infidels is their Eucharist.”

“What makes you think that I should care for an infidel’s
mummery? I came to kill them, not to dine with them.”

The Hospitaller’s eye rested on the cross that Aidan wore,
blood-red on black: the Crusader’s sign and seal. “A most devout sentiment. You’d
make a fine Templar.”

“Would they take me?”

“The Poor Knights of the Temple of Solomon will take any who
hungers after Saracen blood.”

He did not, Aidan noticed, say any man. “You of the
Hospital, no doubt, are more discriminating.”

“Less zealous, perhaps. Our concern is not only with war but
with its aftermath. We tend the sick and the wounded; we do what we may to
bring the infidels to the light of the true faith.”

Aidan began to pace again. The Hospitaller followed, shorter
by a little but long-legged enough, though he walked lame.

“A wound?” Aidan asked him.

He shrugged, deprecating it. “A small one, inconveniently
placed. I mend.”

“There’s been fighting, then?”

“There’s always fighting. Syria has a new sultan. We pacted
with him for a truce, but — ”

“You pacted with a Saracen sultan?”

Gilles laughed, not quite in mockery. “So shocked, prince?
Did you think it was all holy war without respite? The kings of Jerusalem
themselves have done more than swear truce with their enemies; they’ve been
known to enter into active alliances, pitting Saracen against Saracen and
taking the side of the stronger.”

Aidan shook it off, enormity though it should have seemed to
an innocent from the farthest west. “Kings, yes. Kings do whatever they must.
But the Church is the Church, and Saracens are unbelievers.”

“They are also men, and they surround us. We do as we must.
We hold the Holy Sepulcher. We will do anything — anything at all, short of
mortal sin — to continue to hold it.”

Aidan nodded slowly. That, he could understand.

“And you,” said the Hospitaller. “Have you come for
holiness, or for the fighting?”

“Both,” Aidan said. “And for my kinsman who went before me.”

“You loved him.”

That was presumptuous, from a stranger. “He was my kin.”

There was a silence. Aidan paced in it, but slower now,
calmer.

“Masyaf,” said Gilles, “abuts, and some would say is part
of, a fief of the Hospitallers.”

Aidan whipped about.

Gilles backed a step, but he went on steadily enough. “It
stands near the demesne of our fortress of Krak. Its master has, on occasion,
been persuaded to acknowledge our dominion.”

“What are you telling me?”

The Hospitaller had paled, as well he might. “The Sheikh
al-Jabal is not a vassal of our Order. He pays us no tribute, as the Templars
have forced him to do, and thereby won his enmity. Yet there may be somewhat
that we may do, to win reparation for this murder.”

“Why? Are you responsible for it?”

“God knows,” said Gilles, “that we are not. Our way is the
clean way, in battle, against proven enemies. And Lord Gereint was in all ways
a friend of the Knights of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem.”