Angel of Death: Book One of the Chosen Chronicles (17 page)

Once the remaining attackers fled, there was a pile of corpses littered around my boy. His sword gleamed and dripped red in the firelight. Exposed, his white hair mottled red with drying blood; he quickly covered his head with the hood of his cloak. It was too late; too many surviving soldiers stared in dumb shock. Whether at his colouring or at his massacre I do not know. Probably both.

Centuries had made my son a very efficient killer, but the soul within despised it, and it showed. Bending down, he wiped the blood off his blade and strode into the solitude of the wagon, pushing me from the door.

I was surprised by his actions, not about what he did to the attackers, but how he basically ran me over with no thought or recognition of my presence. And that was when he rounded on me, his voice husky from disuse and filled with raw anger. “Don’t. Do not say one word,” he commanded, and violently sheathed his sword.

I stood there, my mouth ready to praise him, and stared in shock. Never before had I heard my son speak like this, with such venom and self-loathing. I was just as unprepared for the rest of it.

“Do not praise me for murdering those men. Killing to feed or in defence of life is one thing, but this … this was senseless slaughter by people defending their land, not ours!”

“Those were not men,” I hotly replied, caught up by his anger and fuelled by my disjointed beliefs; the old arguments rushing to fill my hurt. “They are Saracens – barbarians. They took the Holy Land away from God!”

I know now that I should have said nothing. I was as fanatical as the King himself. I was out of my reason. Even the horrified expression on my son’s face should have brought me to my senses. Instead I came down even harder. “They must be driven out at any cost.”

I shudder to think that I actually spoke these baleful words, words that would haunt me to this day and cause my son so much hardship and pain.

Anger flashed in my son’s eyes, suddenly making me fearful. “If God wants Jerusalem then He can take it. He does not need us,” he said slowly in measured tones.

My own anger flared, or was it his that I felt, I will never know, but before I could retaliate with words of my own a new din took up outside. The King had come to our portion of the encampment! Cries from the soldiers, hailing the Lion, swung my attention from my son. My anger dissipated into excitement. The King was here!

I left the wagon to stand in the precarious twilight of dawn, hoping to see this great man I have only heard of. I was oblivious that my son followed me, the anger still smouldering within him.

“Where’s the fight?” hollered the Coer de Leon, in his resplendent plate armour, flanked by his banner men, guard and collected nobles. His voice was commanding, authority driven and charismatic. Everything about the man, even to the way he sat his horse, demanded and expected obedience.

The soldiers cried their garbled replies of how they drove off the Saracens. Richard looked impressed, it was obvious the fight had gone harder elsewhere, and nodded knowingly. Again his voice boomed over his men. “The desecrators flee!” A roar resounded from the crowd, my voice added to the cacophony. “They retreat, screaming that Shai’tan fights for us.”

All sound stopped. Only that of distant continued fighting and dying screams of fleeing Saracens filled the predawn. It was then that many of the soldiers now gawked openly at my son standing silently cloaked and hooded behind me. Richard followed their gazes and turned his horse towards us, his face set in stone.

I ignored my son’s rising panic. I was too caught up in the attention of the King. He nodded at me and joy filled my soul, and then he did the undreamable, he spoke to me.

“Father, is this the one those dogs are running from?”

Too stunned to reply, the soldiers around us filled my silence.

“- killed a dozen before they knew it –”

“- moved faster than the eye –”

“- swoosh an ‘e took off ‘is ead –”

“- saved me from bein’ chopped in two –”

“All those o’er there are his, Your Highness.”

“Is this true, sirra?” Richard tried to get a glance under my son’s cowl, wanting to see whom the enemy was calling the devil, and who his troops declared as saviour.

Silence fell between us. I could feel the rage and the fear in my son and knew he had fallen silent again. He would not speak to the man he perceived to be the cause of my madness.

“It is true, Your Highness,” I piped in. The look on that rock hard face forced me to continue. I did. I was elated. I, Father Paul Notus, was talking to the King! “Please forgive my intrusion. I am Father Notus –“

“Does he have a name?”

I could hear the word “no” form in my son’s mind and interrupted before he could speak. “Gwyn, Your Majesty. His name is Gwyn and he is my Warder.”

The King studied me up and down, and then he did the same to my son. I was excited. Reining his nervous brown horse to stand still, he ordered, “Pack your things and move them next to my palisade. You now serve me.” With that he turned his horse and rode back to his camp, his nobles following.

I bade David to pack our things and hitch the horses. We were in service to the King. So elated, I once again ignored my son and completely forgot our fight – our first and only fight.

In the weeks that followed I became more involved with the people who surrounded Richard, and at times spoke with him. Other nights I enjoyed the songs and tales with which Blondel, Richard’s minstrel, entertained us. But more often than naught I spent the nights with the wounded, nursing those who would heal and giving the dying to God.

Once I asked my son why he would not join me with the wounded as he had at other battles in other times. I did not expect an answer and was surprised to hear him state, “Here I am the Devil, not Death,” before he stalked away from me.
 

My son now worked for King Richard and he seemed resigned to the fact. He did not speak, nor did he allow the King to see what he truly looked like. His Highness seemed content with that so long as my son followed orders successfully.

In the weeks that followed it became my son’s duty to go out and hunt down bands of Saracens. If the group was small enough my son was to slaughter them all; if they were too large he would come back and write down where the allied forces could find them. When he came back from a slaughter he always brought a strand of ears as proof for the King and a wineskin filled with blood for me. Praise he ignored, thanks he scorned, and he withdrew further into himself, doing what others wanted him to do so that I could get what I foolishly thought I wanted – to see Jerusalem freed.

I did not see his sacrifice until it was almost too late.

It was two months before Acre, and in retaliation for a failed assassination attempt on the King’s person, King Richard sent my son to assassinate Salah al Din ben Yusif, better known amongst the ranks as Saladin. I know now how self absorbed and obsessed with his own ego the King truly was, but at the time I believed that a great honour had been bestowed upon my son. Oh how wrong I was!

Clad only in black leathers, his cloak and a band of braided black leather circling his head to keep his long white hair out of his face, my son left on the black charger the King had given him. His cloak merged two dark figures into one.

Saladin’s army was several leagues away and it was up to my son to sneak into the encampment filled with thousands of soldiers so as to fulfill the King’s quest to kill his rival. It was suicidal, but he went anyways, leaving as the new moon slowly dipped westward. I watched his lonely solitary figure shrink and disappear in the distance. Having no comprehension how large an army Saladin actually possessed I assumed it would be an easy task and that my son would return triumphant and Richard would reward our presence. I went about my nightly routine spurred by excitement.

I did not realize my son was overdue until the texture of the night shifted to predawn and the Lion came out of his tent roaring to start the day. It was then that I truly began to worry. If my son did not return, and return quickly, the sun would kill him. My focus had finally been brought back to my son, and I frantically paced the departure point, waiting and reaching out through our connection to find nothing.

The sky shifted from indigo to a paler shade of blue. It was going to be a gloriously clear day. I put my hood up to give some protection. I would have to retire to my wagon soon and mourn my loss – a thought that terrified me.

I waited as long as I could when I saw two horses ride over the dune, kicking up sand that obscured my sight, but not before I could make out my son’s horse. Panic strangled me. I could not see my boy!

With what seemed hours but were only moments, the two horses reined in by me. The scent of horse blood mingled with other blood. The soldier on the other horse, who I discovered was on perimeter patrol, screamed for the surgeon. I was numb with shock. I could not move. My son, still astride his saddle by some miracle of God’s, lay on his panting black horse. His cloak covered him, but not so much that one could dismiss the spear head with the broken shaft protruding from his left thigh, his blood on his breeches glimmered in the approaching light.

Time was of the essence, and berating myself, I acted. Slowly, gently, ever so carefully, we lowered my son’s unconscious form to the ground, careful not to touch the haft. I knew what they would find and was too late before the surgeon declared my son to be dead. Kneeling down beside my boy, I willed him to breathe and slapped his face. The show was convincing enough. The surgeon was wrong; my boy was still alive, but barely. We carried him under the canopy covering that curtained the door to the wagon. With David’s help the surgeon and I got my boy inside.

All this time I had managed to hide my son’s distinct appearance. Only David knew the truth, not even the King knew, but now the surgeon was going to find out. Swearing the confused man to silence, we took off the bloodied clothing. The astonishment was expected, even the fear, but he was bound to help. Cutting the breeches revealed the damage. The spear point was fully embedded in mangled and bleeding flesh, it had to come out.

The surgeon studied the wound, probing and pulling, gazed up at me, and sadly shook his head. “’Tis barbed. Pullin’ will rip the flesh. Through is the only way.”

I nodded and held down my son’s hot – hot!- shoulders. It was impossible to believe, but my boy was burning up with fever. The spear point was made of iron! On the count of three the surgeon pushed, my son screamed and my heart shattered. The spear point would not come out. The frown on the surgeons face deepened.

“What is it?” I demanded in near hysteria. The iron was slowly poisoning my boy.

“The long bone is shattered and the spear is lodged in it. Pushin’ it through won’t work,” he explained. “There’s only two ways, and at best he loses the leg.”