The Dagger and the Cross (27 page)

They gave way. He allowed himself the fleeting warmth of a
smile. With Aidan for his shadow, he entered the king’s tent.

o0o

The king was no coward, however much he feared ensorcelment.
He remained where he was, sitting in his carven chair, and his eye on the
brothers was cold. “Majesty,” he said. “Highness.”

Gwydion inclined his head. He did not sit. The silence
hummed and sang; then, abruptly, stilled. It was only silence. No maddening,
buzzing wall. Nothing but what it ought to be, human silence, full of the
babble of human minds.

Gwydion, braced for an assault, gasped in its absence and
nearly fell. His brother steadied him. The eyes on them were human all, no
power in them.

There was fear enough. There was always fear, soon or late.

Gwydion was out of charity, if not quite of prudence. He did
not say the words that were on his tongue. He stood before the king and let his
shadow stretch behind him, and a glimmer in it that might have been eyes. “Messire,”
he said, soft and almost gentle. “What is this that you would do?”

Guy sat straighter in his chair. “I do what I must,” he
said. He sounded quite properly a king.

“What you must do,” said Gwydion, “is to forbear to march.”

Guy’s jaw set. “Are you commanding me?”

“You know that I am not.” Gwydion was quiet still. “Nor
shall I lay a spell on you.”

“You would not dare,” said the Master of the Templars.

“And who are you,” Gwydion asked of him, “to say what I
would and would not venture?” He spread his hands. The lamplight gathered in
them, spilled over his fingers. “My lord of Jerusalem, what you propose to do
is rash and far from wise. Will you not heed your brother king? Will you not
return to the wisdom of yestereve?”

Guy tugged at his beard. His eyes were fixed on Gwydion’s
hands. His mind was nothing that Gwydion could grasp.

“My lord!” The Templar’s voice was harsh, peremptory. “Will
you listen to him? Will you let him bewitch you? You heard them all without. He
is their weapon. Who is to tell why he yields to
their
commands?”

“Perhaps,” said Gwydion, softer than ever, “I am your equal
and a king, and I have erred even as you propose to do, and suffered for it.”

“Indeed,” said the Templar. “Remember, sire, what he is.
Remember how long he has been a king. Has he gained wisdom from it? Or only
damnation?”

That was too subtle for Guy’s intelligence. He looked at
Gwydion, and Gwydion saw himself reflected in those eyes, tall and fair and
terrible. There was nothing in Gwydion that Guy could understand.

Gwydion’s power waited for him to gather it. He could bend
that mind, weak as it was, the mind of a mortal and a fool. A touch only, and
it could be done. The march halted, the battle averted, all this madness turned
to sanity.

Guy thrust himself to his feet. His voice came high and
quick. “Swear,” he said. “Swear that you’ll work no sorceries.”

Even the blind, on occasion, could seem to see. Gwydion
stood face to face with Jerusalem’s king and raised his hands. Guy flinched.
But there was no light in them, no glimmer of magic. Gwydion let him see it;
then, slowly, let them fall. “Will you swear to remain at Cresson?”

“I will do what I will do,” Guy said.

“Then I will not swear to trammel my power.”

“Not even for your life’s sake?” asked the Master of the
Templars.

Gwydion kept his eyes on the king, his temper rigidly in
hand. “Even if you will not stay, there is much that I can do. You have but to
ask.”

“Yes,” said the Templar. “He will ask, and you will take.
All; all that is his and ours and the enemy’s. Do you take us for fools, my
lord of Rhiyana? Do you think that we cannot see?”

“I see that you have chosen the counsel of a fool,” said
Gwydion to the king. “So be it. But there may be hope, if you will take what I
will give.”

Guy looked away from him, biting his lip, worrying at his
beard. But not, dear God, in indecision. He was more set than ever upon his
course. It was fear that swayed him; and temptation.

“Hear the voice of God’s Adversary,” said the Templar,
buzzing in his ear as the strangeness, rising anew, buzzed in Gwydion’s mind.
Yet it was not from the Templar that it came. It was all about them, throbbing
in them, robbing him of wits and will.

“No!” said Guy. “No. I will take nothing from you except
your oath. There will be no magic in this fight.”

Gwydion’s hands ached. They were knotted, clenched tight. “My
lord. Will you not reconsider?”

“You won’t witch me into it,” said Guy. “I won’t let you. I
need you and your men, but not as much as that.”

“Are you asking me to leave you?”

Guy blinked rapidly. “You said you’d fight for me. But not
with sorcery. I won’t endanger our immortal souls.”

“Even to save your lives?”

“Damnation is eternal,” said the Templar.

“Fight for me,” said Guy. “But not as—your kind—fight.”

“Our kind.” Gwydion’s mouth was bitter. “I gave you my word
that I would not enchant you. I swore before your court that this is your war;
that I will aid but never seek to command. Both oath and promise have force to
bind me. And yet, my lord—”

Guy had heard all that he wished to hear. “Good, then. We
need you, you know that. As long as our souls are safe...” He stopped, shook
his head. “Of course they are. You aren’t a devil. Will you excuse us now?
There’s more to do if we’re to march by morning.”

Gwydion stood still. There was no yielding in the man; no
hope of it. Gwydion’s own word had bound him, his honor and his temper between
them, colluding in this folly.

Aidan was a banked fire behind him. What Aidan would do, he
knew too well. Loose the name of his anger. Blaze up in white light. Show them
truly what it was that they feared, and what they had renounced, and what they
would gain from it.

That was Aidan’s way. Gwydion could not follow it. If that
made him a weakling, then so be it.

He turned on his heel. In one long stride he was out of the
tent.

Aidan was face to face with him. His expression must have
been appalling: even Aidan checked a little at the sight of it.

“The king has spoken,” Aidan said with bitter irony. “Our
task is simply to obey.”

“And to do what we may to head disaster aside.”

Gwydion had his temper in hand at last. The barons were
waiting, knowing from his face that he had failed, but in their human fashion
insisting that he set it in words. “I can do nothing,” he said. “The king
refuses to hear me. Even I can do no other than he commands.”

“Then God help us all,” said Humphrey of Toron.

o0o

God seemed far away from that bitter march. The heat of the
night gave way to the furnace heat of the day. They had taken all the water
that they might, but thirty thousand of them, in high summer, under the hammer
that was the sun, needed an ocean to keep themselves and their horses from
thirst. They had nothing approaching an ocean; no wagons, no barrels to carry
water in. Only flasks for the men and skins for the horses, barely enough for a
day’s march.

It was bad, Aidan thought, but not quite intolerable. Not
yet. He had his men on strict orders to waste no water; to drink only when he
commanded. They marched in silence, with none of the joyful clamor that usually
hung about an army on its way to a battle. No one sang to set the pace; the
trumpets were silent, the drums mute. When a stallion screamed, down the line,
some of the men started, and one fell out of formation.

He scrambled back in again before Aidan could do more than
glance at him. At least they did not have to breathe the army’s dust: they were
in the van, just behind Count Raymond. The king was farther back, in the
center; the rearguard was the Templar’s.

They crossed the plain of Sepphoris with its dry scrub and
its sere grasses, no tree, no water, not even a stone to cast a patch of shade.
The ground was rough, treacherous with stones and hollows. They scrambled and
stumbled more than they marched; the horses were hard put to keep their
footing. It was like a passage in hell: for every step forward, two steps round
or about an obstacle, and the devil’s own task to keep the line steady.

The infantry were wretched enough without horses to carry
them, in their iron helmets and their heavy coats, some of mail, some of
leather, most of felt so thick that arrows could not pierce it. But the knights
were in torment. Shirt under padded gambeson under ringmail; breeches of
leather, chausses of mail from loin to toe, padded caps and coifs of mail on
their heads, and helmets over that. Surcoats kept off the worst of the sun, but
there was no escaping the heat; and with the heat, the burning, maddening
thirst.

Aidan was stronger than most. That was part of what he was;
and he could do somewhat to cool himself, even to spare his men the torment at
least of flies, and to make a breeze for them. But he had no power to veil the
sun, or to conjure water where there was none.

He kept a careful eye on Gwydion. His brother was doing the
same for his own men, young knights of Rhiyana where the sun was never so
strong, the land never so appallingly dry, who had never imagined such a horror
of heat. Within an hour of sunrise, some of them were near to fainting. One had
to be held back by main force from draining his flask dry and falling on the
skin of water that was meant for the horses. Gwydion dealt him summary justice:
put him down off his horse and set him to walking with the footsoldiers. It was
not as cruel as it seemed. He was rid of his chausses, and he could hold to a
comrade’s stirrup, and the horse did most of the walking; and it kept his mind
off his torment in raging at the king.

The enemy came out soon after Gofannwy became an
infantryman: small bands of skirmishers on light swift horses, armed with bows,
shooting from just within the limit of their range, and galloping away when
their arrows were exhausted. They did no great damage, but they were a hindrance,
like stinging flies. And they were aiming at the horses.

A knight without a horse, as Gofannwy well knew, was like a
turtle without its shell: soft, slow, and helpless. To protect their mounts,
they had to move more slowly, watch more warily, hold the line more firmly.

Aidan’s Turks would happily have done something about the
skirmishers. But the order had gone out. No return of fire. No pauses to fight.
The army must move, must escape this waterless wasteland, must cross the five
leagues to Tiberias.

“Five leagues as the eagle flies,” Aidan said between
harryings, when he had allowed himself a sip of water. “We’ll be lucky if we
make two in the straight line, at this pace, and by the road we’re taking.”

Gwydion had his helmet off but his coif up. His face was a
mask of dust and sweat, but his eyes were clear in it, the color of flint. He
nodded at Aidan’s words, looked ahead through the column. They were not aiming
straight for Tiberias: there was an army in the way, on the other side of the
ridge. The northern road was open, scouts said, and there was water to be had
at the end of it, in the village of Hattin.

Aidan did not want to think about water. There was a whole
sea of it over the hill, with the whole army of Islam between.

He could have been on their side. He had been asked, and
more than once. Saladin, when he was not being sultan, was a friend. Aidan had
more friends than that in the sultan’s army, men with whom he had ridden and
hunted, even shared bread and salt, and been a guest in their houses.

Now he was here, under the hammer of the sun, bound to
follow an idiot king. His men were hardly pleased to obey Guy’s commands, but
their loyalty to Aidan was unshaken. His Saracens looked to him for their
protection. He would keep them safe, their eyes said. He would give them a good
fight, and if any was hurt, he would protect that one from the Angel of Death.
It was an article of their doctrine. Had they not fought on a hundred
battlefields in the years since he came to Outremer? Had he not brought them
all out alive, and most of them unscathed?

He ran his tongue over dry and cracking lips. It was well
that they could have such faith in him, when he did not. He could raise fire,
bring down the lightnings, shake the earth under their feet. And what, after
that? There would still be the war, still the enmity of Christian and Muslim,
Frank and Saracen, as old as Muhammad and as implacable as the sun that beat
down upon them. Saladin would have Jerusalem, or die in the trying. Guy would
keep it or perish. There was no middle ground.

Magic is a little thing beside human will,
Gwydion
said in Aidan’s mind, sparing their parched throats and swollen tongues.

Aidan smiled thinly. We could do it, you know. If you would
break your word. Drive the army back with a storm of fire, hold it at Cresson,
herd the enemy back into his own country.

From which he would promptly return, thrice as furious as
before. Gwydion shook his head. No. Even were I not a man of my word, I would
not do it. If we were to rule this country with power, we would have to rule it
absolutely, and never leave it. Then all of Christendom would rise up against
us, as well as all of Islam. There are too few of us; our strength is too
little. We can’t hold humanity’s most holy places, not against the full tide of
them.

We’re too long-sighted, Aidan said.

So we are.
Gwydion threw up a hand. An arrow shot by
a shrilling Turk rebounded as from a wall. A thin hail of them fell about the
column. One of the horses squealed and bucked, stung in the flank.

With sudden fury Gwydion lashed out. The second flight of
arrows arced high over them and shattered, falling in a rain of dust and
splinters.

A cheer went up. Count Raymond’s rearguard, looking back,
gaped at the spectacle. The Turks shrieked and bolted.