Behold the Dawn (5 page)

Teeth bared, Annan pivoted on his heel and brought his sword into both his hands. His blade smashed against the lofted
scimitars
, cleaving flesh and bone, mowing through the Turks. At his side, Marek darted and plunged. His shorter blade flashed once and emerged dark with blood. The laddie fought like the peregrine falcon whose name he had taken: quick and darting. He would have made a decent enough soldier in a few years had he possessed the temperament and the inclination.

A hulking Moor, his mouth gaped to reveal a row of missing teeth, took a running leap at Annan, launching himself an arm’s length above the deck. With a cry, he hurled his body forward, his
pike
aimed at Annan’s throat. Annan swiped his own blade in front of his face, caught the Moor’s pike just beneath the spearhead and smacked it aside, spinning his opponent half off his feet. He planted his foot in front of the Moor and hammered his fist into the back of the man’s neck. With a gasped inhalation, the Moor fell and lay tremoring.

Grappling hooks clattered against the side of the ship, and more Moslems poured onto the quarterdeck. The
Bonfilia
tilted off course, dragged aside by the enemy’s heavier ship. Half a dozen native tongues shrieked as one: Venetian and Frankish and Mohammedan words tangling in a guttural howl. The knights to either side of Annan fell, one of them toppling overboard and sinking beneath the weight of his armor.

Annan dragged a Moslem off a flailing squire and caught the youth’s tabard before he could follow his master over the side. He snagged the squire’s fallen sword from the deck and slapped it back into his hands. “Did you come to this land to fight or to die?”

The youth’s white eyes stared up at him, and Annan spun him around to face the new onslaught.

Annan charged, his blood firing at the sound of his own wordless roar. He flung himself upon the enemy, scattering them before his blade, gaining ground step by step across the bloody deck. Marek darted to his side, and the rest of the men fell in behind him. He heard their shouts and felt the deck shudder beneath their blows and their fallen adversaries.

He emptied himself into the battle. For months, he had been pent up on this itinerant island, bereft of any outlet for his frustrations and his memories. The men around him, knights and squires and sailors alike, stared in wonder to see him flaying the infidels. No doubt they thought he did it to save his soul. But he fought today for the same reason he always fought: it was the only thing his life had left him fit for.

The Moslems’ ranks waned, and at last the captain managed to get his men to the rails to hack the ship free of the grappling hooks.

The deck heaved beneath his feet, and Annan snarled in the faces of the few wild-eyed Moslems who remained. One of the infidels, sweat drenching his brow, retreated to the prow, and Annan stalked him one step after the other.

The
Bonfilia
’s oars finally scraped free, and the prow swung back to its proper trajectory. A parting volley of arrows rent the sails and clattered against the deck. Only half a dozen Moslems remained aboard, trapped by their fear of the water and their inability to swim. Shouting, the knights fell upon them.

Annan’s Moslem fought blindly, wildly, his blows flashing with a speed Annan’s heavier sword couldn’t match. From Annan’s right, Marek bounded into view, sword lofted, screaming.

The Moslem’s attention broke between Marek and Annan. Annan took one step, stopped to brace his footing against the deck, and swung. The Moslem yelped and fell.

Marek skidded to a stop, just short of the man’s death throes, and blew out his cheeks. “Why can’t saving one’s soul ever be a nice, clean operation? Tell me that, eh?”

Annan smacked the flat of his blade against Marek’s backside.

“’Ey!” Marek whipped around, his sword darting back up. “What was that for?”

“When you kill an enemy, you don’t stand over him philosophizing! They’ll be throwing you over the side with a blade in your back.”

“He was the last one!”

“This time. Doesn’t mean it’ll always be that way. If you plan on making it out of this place alive, you’d do well not to wait around on luck.”

Scowling, Marek limped off, rubbing his rump. “Yeh, well, you smile on luck, and she’ll smile on you, I always say.”

“Keep your smiles to yourself, bucko.”

“You can bet I won’t be sharing them with the likes of you.”

Annan bent to wipe his bloodied sword on the infidel’s naked back. The oars still pounded beneath his feet, and to the rear the Moslems were turning their galley, preparing for one last attempt on the
Bonfilia
before any Christian ships could intervene. But they wouldn’t get another opportunity. The
Bonfilia
was safe.

Dead and wounded strewed the decks, and already the sailors were pitching the Moslem corpses into the sea, lest they curse their ship. The captain shouted orders, sending his surgeon and the Knight
Hospitaler
passengers to tend the wounded. The surviving Christians knelt, hands propped on the crossguards of their swords, heads bowed. And then, one by one, their heads rose from their prayers, and their eyes flitted to the ship’s prow and to Annan.

He turned away. If he had harbored any hope of hiding his identity, it was now lost. Most of Europe had heard tales, both true and false, of the giant tourneyer and his skill on the battlefield. As soon as the
Bonfilia
reached land, word of his arrival would gallop ahead of him, and all men—his enemies chief among them—would know he had arrived in the Holy Land.

He rested the point of his sword against the deck, a hand on either side of the hilt, and stared across the water. Spread on the shore in front of him were the finest armies of Christendom. They waited to crush beneath their feet these rebellious Turks who dared defile the sand that had borne the feet of the Christ—but only if they could first defeat their own squabbling and inertia.

Lurking in the hills beyond, harrying the besiegers, searching for the opportunity to scatter English and French alike with one well-aimed blow, was the mighty Saladin.

And somewhere, in the midst of it all, was the twisted path that had led Annan thus far, and would lead him on evermore, even to the very end of the horizon.

The Holy Land would not bring him redemption; neither did he ask for it. He had come here for one reason only: to still a flutter that had not been felt in his breast for many a long year.

He did not share the Baptist’s need for vengeance on Bishop Roderic. He had already bought his vengeance, long years ago, and at a horrible price.

Nor did he care about saving Jerusalem from the tyranny of the infidels. False prophets would rise and fall without the aid of his sword.

And he was not even sure he desired to find Lord William, Earl of Keaton. The man who had been both father and brother to him for so many years was now just another shadow in his past.

Yet here he was, infidel blood red upon his sword, watching as Acre, gateway to Jerusalem, loomed ever nearer off the starboard bow. He filled his lungs with the heat-laden air, trying not to taste the fish and rot that permeated it.

He was here, he supposed, simply because he, who had seen the birth of this struggle in the gloomy corridors of St. Dunstan’s, had the perverse urge to see if it would at last find its end here on holy ground amidst the greater struggle for dominion over Islam.

“Nice place, this,” Marek sniffed.

Annan kept silent and resisted the urge to close his knees around his horse. He and Marek and the other knights had disembarked from the
Bonfilia
in time for the sinking sun to illuminate the great siege engine in construction just outside of enemy range. The sight had sent the blood rushing through his veins in a way that even the skirmish at the blockade had been unable to do. A decisive battle—something that had been in sharp dearth before the English King Richard’s arrival last month—was obviously imminent.

But beyond that one glorious sight and its equally glorious revelation, Annan saw little to brighten his mood.

The squalid camps were arranged with scant attempt at order, save to delineate the tents of one nobleman’s entourage from another or from that of the commoners. The women’s camp was isolated on the outskirts. Limp banners hung before each tent, and beneath them lounged Europe’s greatest fighting force, some too ill to rise from their own filth, others too indolent or apathetic to stir themselves at all, save to cast an indifferent glance in the newcomers’ direction.

Had his reason for coming here been to lift the heathen blight from God’s Holy Land, he would have been appalled to the very core of his soul. But having accepted long ago that his soul was lost, he merely rode on.

They found an empty space of ground, barely large enough for themselves and their horses, in surprisingly prime area, though not without its price.

“Vacated just this morning,” commented the sharp-faced lad who held out his hand for the price in silver. “Lots of folks woulda liked to keep this spot. But I find it a much more lucrative proposition to be in the settling and selling business, rather than the just plain settling kind. Know what I mean, Master Knight?”

Annan dug the price out of his pouch but kept the coin in his fingers as he nodded to the
siege tower
looming against the red sky. “How soon ‘til an attack?”

The lad shrugged, hand still outstretched. “We expect to see some action on the morrow.”

“Who’s building it?”

“The English, though King Richard’s sick in his bed last I heard. Him and the French King Philip both.”

Marek snorted and tugged his girth strap loose. “Doesn’t sound like a healthy environment, if you’re asking me.”

The lad grinned. “T’ain’t. But if you’re bound to die, at least you’ll be skipping over Hell on the way out. My coin, if you please, good Sir.”

Annan looked at the tents massed to his left, where England’s scarlet and gold banner and the blue diamond of the royal Plantagenets fluttered above all the rest. “Is there a bishop named Roderic with the English king?”

“Aye, without doubt.”

Annan flicked the coin at him, and the boy caught it in both hands. “Have you heard aught of the man called the Baptist?”

“Nay, not here. And if you’re one of his followers, I’d mark a healthy distance from the bishop. His guards don’t take kindly to threats on his Holiness. Good even, Sir Knight, and to you, young Master.”

Marek grunted a reply that was mostly the result of hoisting the saddle from his palfrey’s back.

The lad replaced his doffed cap and took two steps before Annan again raised his voice. “One thing more. Have you heard of an Englishman, the Earl of Keaton?”

“Nay. But this here’s a war where most fall nameless, bondmen and earls alike. Good even, Master.” The lad touched his cap and left.

“Aye.” Annan jerked straight the flap of his coin pouch and turned to take his cloak from his cantle before Marek could pull the saddle off the destrier’s back. He shook his head. “They all die nameless, but what’s it matter if you’re skipping Hell?”

Marek scowled. “Hell’s no place to be jesting about.”

Annan threw his cloak onto the ground near the pile of tent canvas and thrust his chin toward the English king’s camp. “They can follow the likes of Father Roderic to the grave if they want, but what they find beyond won’t be the arms of the saints, no matter how many pagan hearts they’ve bled dry.”

“Eh. Well, pardon me if I keep tight hold on me own ideas. That Baptist fellow’s a heretic, if you want my opinion, no matter who it is you think him. You can’t go preaching against holy Fathers without calling horrible punishments down on your head.”

“Roderic’s no holy Father.”

Marek’s eyes narrowed. “Annan, you haven’t— you didn’t come here to kill this bishop? Did you? A mongrel dog with half a brain could see you haven’t come here to save the Holy City.”

Annan filled his lungs with the stink that permeated the camp. Through the labyrinth of tents, some hundred paces away, standing over the shoulder of a king, was a man who would one day burn in Hell, no matter how many times he had been granted absolution.

Another lifetime ago, hatred of that man would have smoldered in Annan’s gut, seared his throat, overwhelmed even the flame of self-preservation.

He had not come here to kill the one-time father of St. Dunstan’s. But that didn’t stop the anger, cold as the hatred had been hot, from battering his innards. If he could condemn Roderic’s soul to a Hell any deeper than that to which he was already destined, he would do it in an instant.

“I didn’t come here to kill a bishop,” he said. “But neither did I come to die a nameless death.”

Bishop Roderic of Devonshire stood within the relative cool of a crowded outer room in the king’s tent, trying to ignore the blood-red sunlight that leaked through the canvas above his head. Visions of gore had been swimming in his sleeping mind for weeks now. He would be more than glad to leave behind this accursed land and its accursed way of making war.

Time is running out.

He felt it distinctly, with every passing moment.

The past is catching up.

He glared into the tanned face of the
Norman
knight who stood beside him, leather gauntlets clasped before him with both hands. “Is the king’s health improving, or is it not?”

Hugh de Guerrant was the recent heir of considerable holdings in southern Normandy and a staunch supporter of Roderic’s ambitions, if only because Roderic knew enough of his past to sentence him to Hell in a single sentence. “No improvement. But tomorrow’s attack against the city proceeds.”

Roderic fingered a handful of vellum. “And who is to lead?”

“I know not. The king is still in conference with his knights.”

“The skin sloughing off his very body, and still he deems himself fit to direct a battle!”

“What would you have me do?” Hugh asked. “Insist he remain abed? The day King Richard allows any man to insist anything of him, is the day he
will
be abed—forever.”