Behold the Dawn (7 page)

“Indeed, I have an interest, Bishop.” He looked back at Richard. “The holy Father speaks the truth, Sire. Any contest between us could end no better than my meetings with Norman
jongleurs
posing as tourneymen.” He flicked his gaze in Hugh’s direction.

Hugh straightened, and his right hand darted across his body for his sword. His dark eyes flashed, surpassing in venom even the oath upon his lips.

“Have a care, Scot.” Richard’s own eyes narrowed in his wan face. “I would rather have my feet on Normandy soil than on any of your little isles.”

“Then perhaps you should have remained there.”

“By St. George! Is this your accustomed manner of dealing with kings?

Annan held his ground, though he could feel several of the knights behind him take a step forward. He knew Richard would not place him under guard. In affairs of honor, the English king was famous both for his rages and his need for personal retribution.

“Marcus Annan, if you remain in Acre when I have regained my bodily strength, I shall cleave you from skull to foot!”

Hugh’s hand tightened on his sword. “Perhaps I shall save His Majesty the trouble.”

“Or perhaps Heaven shall exact its own
penance
,” Roderic said. “Perhaps the Saracens will find him first.” The intense questioning look had not left his face. “Those who have not taken the holy oath have no place in a Crusade—especially if they bear the sins of an
assassin
.”

The probing tone in his voice was unmistakable. But if Roderic sought to convict Annan as a tourneyer, he was going to be disappointed. Annan answered to no man.

“God’s will be done.” His eyelid twitched. He turned back to the king and bowed from the waist as one knight might bow to another. “I have your leave to go?”

Richard, blue eyes snapping, lay back on his cushions, the whiteness of his skin visible beneath his beard. He said nothing, only waved at the tent flap. The minstrel stepped into the opening to escort Annan back outside.

As they walked into the cool darkness of the antechamber, voices erupted behind them. He had provided enough of a scandal to amuse them for tonight at least, though he would make certain he and Richard never met in the
lists
. Killing a king or being killed by one—both begot the same outcome. He hadn’t stayed alive this long by throwing himself against opponents who would win no matter how well he fought.

The minstrel stopped at the exit, one hand on the tent flap’s cord. “You are either a brave man, Sir, or a very foolhardy one.”

Annan ducked through the opening. “There is so much difference between them?”

The minstrel snorted and turned back.

High above the horizon, the moon drifted in a clear sky, its rays illuminating the hundreds of canvas tents, like so many white-bellied fish in a black sea. A breeze, cold compared to the afternoon’s stagnant air, tingled through the damp roots of Annan’s hair. Marek—and the shadow he was supposed to have been watching—was nowhere to be seen. Whatever precious amount of good sense knocked around in that lad’s brain was too often outweighed by his insatiable curiosity. And Marek wasn’t often curious of that which was harmless.

In the distance, the glow of firelight and the murmur of laughter and song wafted across the camp. But round the king’s tent, there was nothing—only the breeze slapping against loose canvas.

Annan’s frown deepened. That clumsy
varlet
would prove more trouble than he was worth yet. The thought of leaving Marek to find his own way home from whatever woe he’d got himself into sputtered long enough to give him pause. But Marek’s was a good sword to have guarding one’s back, if not quite good enough to keep himself out of trouble.

He sighed and started down the narrow, twisting alley between tents.

Perhaps he had made a mistake in coming here. It was always possible that the Baptist had whispered his hints about Roderic’s treachery with no other motive than forcing a battle with the bishop. It was a battle Annan had no desire to consummate.

Self-mockery rose again within him. Here he was, hands red with the blood of innocents, forswearing to kill perhaps the one man who deserved to fall beneath his blade. He forced himself to keep an even stride.

Ahead, a silhouette crouched against a wall of canvas, leaning forward in a hesitant manner that could only have belonged to Marek. Annan cast a glance ahead, trying to spot whomever, or whatever, Marek was trying so diligently to stay hidden from.

Most likely, it had been their watcher from earlier in the evening. Annan wasn’t exactly surprised that Marek had managed to frighten him off. At least they wouldn’t have to deal with whatever the shadowy individual wanted. And Marek, apparently, had managed to keep himself out of trouble. That almost—
almost
—brought a smile to Annan’s face.

He stepped behind Marek and laid a hand on his shoulder.

Marek jumped and spun around. “Don’t do that to me! You know I have a nervous stomach.”

“If yours is nervous, the rest of Christendom’s must be terrified.”

“Chortle all you like, but you’ve no doubt gone and scared him off now.”

“
Him
?” Annan peered down the dark alley, lit only by moonlight and a distant campfire’s dull orange. “Who?”

“Him. You know, the bloke you told me to keep a watch on.”

Nothing out of the ordinary appeared to Annan’s eye. He turned back, intent on a shortcut to their own tent. “Quite a few shadows out tonight. Certain you had the right one?”

“How many shadows do you know who skulk around in long dark robes? An infidel spy’s probably what it was.”

Annan canted his shoulders to squeeze through a narrow opening between tents. “I rather think the holy Crusaders have more reason to spy among themselves than do the Saracens.”

“Aye, well, you just wait ‘til you get a better look at him. Then you’ll be thanking me for me quick eye.”

“The only thing I’ll be thanking you for, young Marek, is to give your clacking jaws a rest.”

“How’d your meeting wi’ His Royalty go?”

“Two invitations for battle in the lists.”

“Wha, only two?”

“Watch the mouth, laddie.”

“You didn’t accept, I hope? Do you have any idea what the penance would be for fighting in the lists here in the Holy Land?”

They came around the edge of a tent, almost in view of their own camp, and Annan drew to a sharp halt.

“Mark me,” Marek said, “if you kill a Christian here, you can bid farewell to your absolution— Oh—” That last sound meant that he had seen him too: a helmed knight standing in front of them, one hand propped on his sword.

The man was easily a
hand
’s breadth shorter than Annan, but his build was broad and deep. Here was someone who had hefted a heavy weapon for the majority of his life. And he was obviously waiting for someone—
them
from all appearances.

Without turning his head, Annan shot a quick glance to both the left and the right. If it became necessary, they could make an escape in either direction. He stood as he was, Marek behind him, waiting.

The stranger stepped forward, and a shaft of moonlight illuminated the red cross on his white blouse. Annan’s chin lifted in recognition of the uniform.
A Knight Templar.
The sworn protectors of Jerusalem’s Temple had a murky fame, sometimes hailed for their fatalistic bravery, sometimes shunned for their intractable defiance to any authority save their own.

“I seek Marcus Annan. You are he, are you not?”

“Mayhap.”

Behind Annan’s shoulder, Marek blew out a noisy breath. The irony was not lost on Annan either. The last time someone had asked that question, they’d barely escaped groveling in the damp murk of an Italian prison.

The Templar lifted his chin, as if to see Annan better through the helmet’s eye slits. “My master bids me ask for your services. If that piques your interest, meet me before the night begins to wane on the shore near the women’s camp.”

Annan’s gaze flicked to the knight’s sword and then back to the dull gleam of the brass cross on the helm’s front. The Templars, more than most, would have reason to destroy rebellious soldiers who refused to take the Crusading oath.

At the edge of Annan’s vision, Marek gave his head a small shake. Annan brought his hand up to rest on his sword. “And your master is?”

“Someone who admires your skills.” The knight bowed his head. “And that is all I am allowed to say.”

Annan lifted an eyebrow. A Templar who lauded the talents of a tourneyer?

He tilted his head in a brief nod, but the flicker of a shadow between the tents to the Templar’s right caught his eye. He froze, only for a second, and managed to make the glance he cast in the shadow’s direction as casual as possible. If this was an ambush, he didn’t want his attackers to know he was aware. And if it wasn’t—if he and Marek had merely reacquired their follower from earlier in the evening—he didn’t want the Templar to know that either.

The newcomer was already withdrawing, slipping back to where the deep shadows mingled with even deeper night. Annan’s gaze narrowed.

He glanced back at the Templar, who waited patiently, not even tilting his head in the shadow’s direction. “Have it as you will,” Annan said. “If I choose to be there, I will be there.”

The Templar inclined his upper body in a bow, and the chin plate of his helm clinked against the mail shirt beneath his blouse. “It will be worth your while, Master Knight.”

Annan grunted, already using the brief moment when the knight’s eyes were averted to check the shadows once more. Nothing. He and Marek stayed their ground, unmoving, and waited as the Templar retreated toward the English camp. Annan watched ‘til he was out of earshot, then motioned Marek up to his side. “Did you see him?”

“Who?”

“Your shadow, laddie buck.” He strode forward, reaching for the dagger sheathed in the small of his back. He entered the opening between the tents and quickened his pace.

If this shadow and the Templar were in collusion, he and Marek were probably walking into a trap. But he didn’t think so. Before the dark-robed stranger had disappeared, Annan had seen the strength of his chest, the almost imperceptible slouch of his shoulders, the flash of his eyes.

The Baptist had arrived in Acre.

He gripped the hilt of his long dagger, grimacing at the glint of the blade in the moonlight. Had he known he was going to spend the night trysting with less-than-orthodox Knights Templars and heretic monks, he would have blacked the blade with ash.

They followed the ragged alley some five hundred paces to a dead end where two tents were placed back to back. Annan growled through his teeth and turned back.

Marek dodged out of the way. “Now what?”

Annan started to run. “Split up at the first opening. Yell like fury if you find him, but don’t attack unless he has a sword.”

“Who is it?”

“The Baptist.”

“Eh.” The sound was more a fully formed word than it was a grunt, and Annan could imagine the wrinkled nose that accompanied it. “If you don’t want me to attack the blinking thing, then why go after him at all?”

Annan didn’t slow. The Baptist would not escape him so easily this time. Too many questions begged an answer.

They reached the first opening in the wall of tents, and Annan sent Marek racing down the new lane. The lad had hardly the time to reach the end when his call staggered through the groggy night. “Annan!”

Annan jerked to a stop and spun around, abandoning caution and lengthening his stride. Ahead of him, Marek broke into the opening, and his short sword flashed through the darkness as he ran. Annan’s legs pumped, the heavy eastern air clogging in his lungs.

They entered the open space near the edge of the Christian camp, and some two hundred paces in front of Marek, the Baptist hauled himself onto a gray horse, his dark robes gusting in the wind. Annan nodded in satisfaction. They had him.

But five hundred paces later, as Annan reached the boundaries that separated the Christian lines from Saladin’s barricades, they did not have him.

Marek skidded to a stop near the last of the Christian fortifications and sheathed his blade in a gesture of finality. Annan caught up with him and stopped, managing to make his panting sound as disgusted as he felt. All that lay in the darkness far beyond them was a Moslem prison camp.

“I told ye he was an infidel spy,” Marek said.

Annan grunted. “It was the Baptist.”

“Mayhap the Baptist’s a spy.”

“Mayhap.” But Annan didn’t think so. The monk had led him here deliberately. He had been trying to tell him something. An answer? Or another question?

“Come on.” He burned one last look into the darkness of the Moslem lines and turned back to the camp. If the Baptist had indeed been dictating another question, the answer just might be found in his meeting with the Templar.

Chapter V

CLOUDS DRIFTED ACROSS the moon, besmearing peerless gold with sodden gray. Annan dismounted some two hundred paces down the shore from the women’s camp and handed his reins to Marek. “Use those sharp eyes of yours to some purpose, eh, bucko?”

“To live is to serve, Master Knight.”

“If you don’t swallow that wagging tongue you may
not
live.”

“A silent existence doesn’t strike me as worth the effort of keeping.”

Annan straightened his tunic and loosened the dagger at his back. “A lot of questions could be answered tonight.”

“Or else we’ll never get the chance to be asking anymore. I still say this Templar is dangerous. Holy Orders don’t go around wanting people stabbed in the back.”

“We’ll see.”

Marek started to rein the horses back. “When you get into trouble, see if you can’t give a try to getting out of it on your own, huh?”

Annan trudged through the damp sand. Waiting, feet almost in the foam of the surf, stood a man, the shrouded moon flickering against the red Templar cross on his chest. Annan filled his lungs and stopped five paces from the knight.

“I’m almost surprised to see you,” the Templar said. He stepped closer and removed his great helm from his head. In the darkness of the clouds, only the vague outline of his movements were visible, but Annan perceived that he was a young man, younger than himself at least.