Medi-Evil 3 (19 page)

 
“Not at all … at
Dorylaeum
I saw you break lances with twenty or more Saracen horsemen, and kill at least that number on foot. It was most impressive.”

 
“Courage doesn’t necessarily translate to cruelty.”

 
Now
Thurstan
laughed. “
Splendour
of God, you’re even sounding like an Englishman.”

 
“It’s my home, isn’t it? I was born there.”

 
“Norman blood flows in your veins, my friend. It’ll take more than a few jugs of
Wessex
cider to wash that away.”

 
Ramon shook his head darkly. “Let me tell you something,
Thurstan
… when I joined the Leopard’s household at
Cerne
, it was the greatest moment of my life. My errant days were over. At last I had a roof over my head, a future. Now I could ride in the tourney as part of a company; now my devices were a mark of pride rather than poverty. Yet, in my first week, at the request of the drunken scoundrel who was Abbot of Glastonbury, we forced entry to the chapter house there and slaughtered all the monks who refused to accept his rule. We
slaughtered
them,
Thurstan
… unarmed monks, ten or more. Purely to salve one man’s pride.”

 
“And like Saul to Paul, you were instantly converted.”

 
“It’s a pity you can mock so great a saint.
Especially now that our souls are in peril.”
 

 
“As household champion, my soul is always in peril. It’s a state I’ve come to live with.”

 
Ramon shook his head.
“Household champion?
You mean protector of the robber’s hoard.
Cerne
Castle is a fine place, is it not? Yet the tapestries and hangings that deck its halls once hung in Earl
Ethred’s
longhouse. The fine garb, the precious vessels, the heaped silver plate was the property of his lady … whose raped carcass, incidentally, adorned a gallows for seven years. Then of course there are the fishponds and
ploughland
in his former
demesnes
, the orchards and deer-chase, the flocks and herds … seized from common folk whose only weapons were sticks and stones and maybe a thatching-knife.”

 
“Seized by right of arms.”

 
“From people who, equally by right of arms, are now refused their liberty as well.
Enclosed as
villeins
on the great manor estates, denied even tenancy rights.”

 
Thurstan
shrugged. “The king’s law is our guiding light.”

 
“And yet we came
East
?”

 
“To be shriven.”

 
“Aye, to be shriven of the king’s law.”

 
Thurstan
chuckled again. “You surprise me, Ramon. You’re quite the philosopher. So how do you perceive us now, after Jerusalem?”

 
“Now?”
Ramon peered ahead – the distant line of the horizon was blurred with oily mist.
“Devils all, riding back to
Tartarus
.
We seek Eden, but if Adam and Eve were still there, no doubt we’d rob and kill them too.”

 
Just then, as they spoke, a plume of dust rose up about sixty yards to the front. Not wind-borne dust, but soft earth, kicked or back-heeled.

 
“Did you see that?” Ramon said.

 
“I did.”

 
Ramon glanced left to right. “I don’t like this ground. It’s uneven.”

 
Thurstan
gripped the hilt of his
longsword
. “Flanking guard, I think.”

 
Ramon nodded and turned back to his overlord,
signalling
with his hand. The Leopard broke off conversation instantly, and word passed back through the ranks. In less than a minute, the attack came – but the hardened war-band was already expecting it.

 
First off, a shoal of arrows rattled down on them, but they’d ridden out into spearhead formation,
Thurstan
at the tip, and bore through it with ease, their thick hauberks and heavy
limewood
shields invulnerable to the light Turkish missiles. The ground assault followed, a wave of ghostly howls blowing across the desert like wind as enemy companies rose up from the surrounding brush, several hundred at least, their horses and camels running neck and neck, the sun glinting on their crescent scimitars, arrows still flying from their double-curved bows.

 
Ulf was at the rear, but as always he found battle a terrifying experience. The angry shrieks of his comrades filled him with dread. He cringed with every
thwack
of arrow on shield or buckler. Sweat ran in rivulets down his face, the confines of his steel helmet baking like an oven tin. He only had a brief clear view of the Turks before the two forces collided. Apart from their mail shirts and spiked helms, they were clad all over in black. Cloth obscured their lower faces; only their frenzied eyes were visible.

 
For all that, they were only men. The heavier-armed Christians crashed through their first rank with an explosion of sparks and splinters. Turkish mares reared – blood spurting in fountains from their flaring nostrils, their riders cart-wheeling to earth, transfixed on spear-point or gashed to the brain by axe and sword. Their horsemen behind charged bravely in, but they too were vanquished, struck from the saddle, slashed to pieces as they rode. The fight was far from over of course. Wave after wave of Turkish foot now came forward in the wake of their cavalry, but the men-at-arms in the Christian company reined up sharply and drove crossbow bolts at them, while the Leopard’s knights galloped gamely into the enemy midst, blades rising and falling in shimmering crimson patterns.

 
Several Christians were also unhorsed. One got to his feet, but was cut across the throat, and, as he toppled onto his back, clawing at the livid wound, a
tasselled
javelin pinned him to the ground. As Ulf watched, a sweeping scimitar struck blood from his own cheek. He spun around in the saddle, trying to rip his sword from its scabbard, and in his efforts to do so, tipped over and fell. The next thing he knew he was prone, a Turkish lancer bearing mercilessly down – only for
Thurstan
to sweep in from nowhere and intercept, dispatching the lancer with a sword-stroke to the skull. A Turkish footman now came at the boy, screaming. He had already been wounded, for his black pantaloons were slick with gore, and though he aimed a wild blow with his flail, Ulf was able to parry, then swipe furiously down and hack the Turk’s knees from under him.

 
All order and formation had disintegrated, but the ferocious Christian charge, as had happened so frequently in this war, was overwhelming to the lighter-armed Moslem forces. It had ploughed deeply into them, inflicting an instant and fatal wound to their morale. Though the struggle spread in all directions, men scrambling through rocks and scrub,
riderless
horses careering out of control, far more Turks had fallen than Christians. Their dead and injured littered the ground in a ghastly flotsam, and those still able to fight were in slow retreat.

 
Ulf saw Ramon take a spear in his shield, and with a single backhand slice, lop off the head of the Turk who’d thrust it. The Leopard was felling them left and right, striking out with great butchering blows, his mail glittering with their blood. De
Vesqui
had been unhorsed, but chopped his way through a phalanx of foes. When his sword broke, he battled on by hand, seizing a Turk by the head and twisting sharply, snapping the man’s neck like a branch, laughing like a hyena as he did.

*

In the end, the ambushers left leaving forty-four of their number behind; thirty of these were dead, the rest grievously wounded. Among the Christians, there were eight fatalities, though this was eight too many for the Leopard of
Gerberoi
. His vengeance began as darkness fell and campfires blazed into the velvet night. The first four prisoners were stripped, then pegged out on the ground, arms and legs splayed – in which position, de
Vesqui
and his minions proceeded to push clods of earth into their frothing mouths, forcing them down their gullets with sticks or knives.

 
“Pack them full!”
Joubert
said with a laugh. “They can eat this whole country if they want, earth, rocks, roots, the lot. We’ll stuff them ’til their bellies burst, but we’ll have words out of them.”

 
Ulf went sick at the sight, and had to turn away and clap his hands over his ears to drown out the retching, the gagging,
the
rattling gasps for air. Arch-Deacon
d’Etoille
refused outright to be party to it. Earlier that day he’d fought as bravely as the rest, but this, he said, was a cruelty he could scarce believe. The Leopard had smiled at that,
then
given orders for the torture to commence. The rest of the company, cut, bruised and tired from the fight, watched in brooding silence, though at length Ramon turned to
Thurstan
.

 
“You think this will avail us anything at all?” he wondered.

 
Thurstan
shrugged. “Depends what they know. We’ve fought Saracens of every tribe …
Seljuks
,
Fatamids
. But there are some among these I’ve never seen before … the ones in black. We need to know who
they
are, at least.”

 
Ramon shook his head. “There’ll be an answer for it. There always is.”

 
Initially that answer was a positive one, for one of those captives not yet put to the test, finally fell on his knees, begging mercy.

 
“
Bismil
lah
atlubukal
rahma
,” he jabbered, eyes bulging like black jewels in his bearded, wood-brown face. “
Atlubuka
hayati
wasawfa
akoolo
lak
ma
tawoodu
an
ta’arif
.”

 
De
Vesqui
strode forward. Before he’d come to the Anglo-Norman camp during the Scottish war, the surly
Aquitainian
had served many times as a mercenary with the armies of Aragon and
Castille
in their ceaseless strife with the Moors. As such, he had a rudimentary understanding of the Arabic tongue. He grinned as he wiped his bloody hands on a piece of rag. “He wants to make a bargain with us, my lord.”

 
The Leopard gazed down at the cowering captive. “Ask him who sent them?”

 
De
Vesqui
did, and their prisoner spoke eagerly, though many times he glanced over his shoulder as if in fear of his former comrades, who were still bound but listening intently. When he had finished, even de
Vesqui
was briefly silent.

 
“They are
Ashishin
,” he finally said.
“Sent by
Hasan
bin Sabah, the ‘Old Man of the Mountain’.”

 
“You know them?” the Leopard asked.

 
De
Vesqui
nodded. “I’ve heard of them. But I thought them myth. They’re a Persian sect by origin, and fanatics.
Totally dedicated to serving their master.
He is a prophet and, by
rumour
, a sorcerer. He lives purely to destroy the enemies of Islam. Even the caliphs of
Bagdhad
, whom he has called heretics, fear his influence … so
Salib-een
like us
are
particularly loathed. These are truly dangerous men, my lord.”

 
The Leopard smiled, and drew his hunting-knife. “Not this one.”

 
Again the Turk fell onto his face, weeping and pleading.
“
Arjook
la
taqtalani
!
”

 
“He still wishes to talk,” de
Vesqui
said.

 
“Does he know of
Uruk
?” the Leopard asked.

 
De
Vesqui
relayed the question, and though the captive at first seemed surprised, he nodded eagerly, babbling a response.