God's Lions - The Dark Ruin (54 page)

Looking back over his shoulder, John whispered to Ariella. “Which way, madam navigator?”

Ariella grinned back in the darkness before turning serious. “As long as this trail continues to parallel the road, we’re in danger.”

“What do you mean?”

“The beach road winds around to the northwest and begins a steep climb into the mountains. The terrain there is made up mostly of rolling pastureland, which means if we follow the road, we’ll be out in the open by daybreak. Nava said she saw a heavily forested valley from the air that looked like a pass through the mountains. We need to find that valley so we’ll have some cover, because when the sun comes up I’m pretty sure they’ll be searching for us by air.”

“They will be,”
a voice called out from the darkness.

John and Ariella literally jumped as they pointed their rifles in the direction of the phantom voice. Peering through the narrow, tunnel-like view of their night vision goggles, they could see the hazy green image of a man carrying a crossbow as he stepped out onto the trail in front of them.

“Freeze right where you are!”

John’s shouts brought Alon and several others rushing forward. Within seconds the solitary figure was surrounded, and as their hearts beat in their chests and their fingers tightened on their triggers, the man slowly lowered his crossbow to the ground and raised his hands in the air.

“It appears that I am outnumbered.”

“Who are you?” John said, circling the man as he looked off into the woods to see if there were any others.

“My name is Gael Acerbi, and I’ve come to take you to Cardinal Leo.”

The man who called himself Gael Acerbi reached into his hand-woven tunic and handed John a note wrapped around a ring.

“It’s from Leo,” John said.

“Let me see that.”

John turned around to see an out-of-breath Lev Wasserman, followed by Morelli and Francois. “Here, see for yourself, Professor. It says that we’re to follow this man and trust him with our lives.” John quickly pushed the note and ring into Lev’s outstretched hands.

“That’s definitely Leo’s ring,” Morelli said, peering over Lev’s shoulder at the sapphire in the cardinal’s ring.

As he read the hand-written note, Lev tried to slow his breathing. When he was finished, he glanced up with the sudden realization that he was staring at a man who looked like he had just stepped from a time machine. “You say your last name is Acerbi?”

“Yes, Professor. I’m from a different branch of the family. It’s a long story ... one I’d be most happy to share with you at a later time, but right now I suggest you come with me. We have a lot of ground to cover before it gets light, and if we don’t make it to the valley in time we’ll all be spotted by the spy satellite circling overhead.”

“He’s right, Daddy,” Ariella chimed in. “The only way though the mountains is through a pass, which means we need to find the right valley. He’s telling the truth.”

Lev looked down at the ring in his hand before fixing the man with a gaze that would make most men think twice about lying to him. “OK, but if you’re leading us into some kind of trap I’m sending you back to the Middle Ages where you came from.”

The man smiled before picking up his crossbow and motioning them forward into the leafy unknown.

* *

The arduous trek through a narrow pass in the Pyrenees had taken four days. Along the way, Gael had shown the group where to camp and which water sources were safe to drink from as they headed deeper into a forest that lay sandwiched between two snow-capped peaks. At first, Lev and the others had been skeptical, but as they came to know the gentle but capable man with the notorious surname, they slowly began to trust him.

For the group as a whole it seemed as though they were being led into a magical land of unspoiled beauty far from the worries of the civilized world that was slowly fading behind them. For days they hadn’t spotted another human being, and the sounds of the outside world had been replaced with songs of nature that called out from the overhanging trees that protected them from the probing eyes of orbiting satellites in the sky above.

Walking at Gael’s side on a forest trail locked in shadows, Lev looked up though the verdant green canopy above their heads. “How much farther?”

“We should be there before nightfall, Professor.” Gael noticed Lev was twisting Leo’s ring on his right ring finger where he had placed it for safekeeping.

“Don’t lose that,” Gael laughed. “The Cardinal told me he would be very unhappy if I failed to return with his ring.”

“Sounds like Leo. He must really trust you. What’s it like where we’re headed?”

“I’m afraid I’m bound by an oath of secrecy, Professor. I’d love to describe it to you, but if by some chance we were ambushed and taken prisoner by Adrian’s men, it would be better if you had no knowledge of our destination.”

“I suppose you’re right. I’d probably do the same thing in your position. What about you? Can you tell me a little about how you came to carry the Acerbi name?”

“That I can do, but I’ll have to go back seven hundred years.”

“It appears we have some more time. I’d love to hear the story.”

“Well, like I said, I have to go back seven hundred years to the time of the Crusades against my people. It was in this very area of France where my ancestors were hunted down and burned at the stake for their beliefs. Needless to say we’ve been a rather secretive bunch ever since. I don’t know if you realize it, Professor, but you once lived in my ancestral home.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“The castle ... the one you purchased a few years back and had restored.”

“Oh ... the castle by the Aude River. I loved that place. I bought the property several years ago because it had once belonged to my great-grandparents. They moved onto the land sometime around the turn of the last century but everyone had to flee when the Nazis invaded France. I tried to trace the history of the castle during the reconstruction of the ruins, but we couldn’t find any records that went back past the 13
^th
century. We never knew who the original builders were, but my grandfather always suspected that it was an ancient Cathar castle. Unfortunately it was destroyed last year by Rene Acerbi after he sent helicopters to attack us.”

Gael grimaced. “Yes, I know. That was the second time the castle was destroyed, and I can now clear up the mystery for you. The castle originally belonged to the Acerbi family, and in the summer of 1292 it was attacked by the army of the north after they discovered my ancestors were Cathars. A knight by the name of Armand Acerbi was the master of the castle, and he had a wife who went by the name of Marie. She is the woman all modern-day Acerbi’s are descended from. Together they had a daughter, Catherine Acerbi, who was only nine at the time of the attack on her family’s home. Legend has it that Marie gave the sacred scrolls of the Cathars to her daughter before two knights took the child and escaped through the forest when the castle was overrun. Catherine grew up to become a great fighter against the crusade, but she was eventually given up by a spy and burned at the stake.”

“I never realized that castle had once belonged to the Acerbi clan. I’m surprised Eduardo never mentioned it to me.”

“Eduardo was famous for keeping family secrets, Professor, and one of the secrets he kept was the fact that there was another branch of the Acerbi family. Before Catherine Acerbi was burned at the stake she had given birth to a son. His name was Guillaume Acerbi, and his father was said to be a Templar Knight. On the day of the execution, the abbot who had condemned Catherine to death ordered her aunt to bring Catherine’s son to the site where she was to be burned.”

Both men suddenly ducked as a red-tailed hawk swooped down from the trees and scooped up a field mouse before flapping its way back up into the sky. “We’re getting close to our destination,” Gael said. “That’s one of my hawks.”

Lev stared back at the man with obvious admiration. It was like walking with someone from a different age and listening to a fascinating tale of family history from someone who seemed to have a vast knowledge of things past.

“To continue, Professor, something happened on the day Catherine died at the stake. Witnesses to the event stated that she locked eyes with her son and mistakenly called out to the devil to deliver her from the flames. After that, people said the child was never the same. A year later, after the aunt suffered an untimely death, another family took the boy in, but by that time he had already begun to show a cruel and vicious nature. Because of this, he was passed off from one home to another until at the tender age of fourteen he ran away to become a mercenary. Despite his cruelty, or maybe because of it, he eventually became very rich. Some say it was because of the pact his dying mother had mistakenly made with the devil, but whatever the reason, the Acerbi clan eventually became the vast dynasty you see around you today.”

“But what about you? Why aren’t you a part of that dynasty?”

“That part of the story has been lost to history, and for very good reason. Although the story has been squashed, it was widely reported that Guillaume Acerbi murdered his first wife in a drunken rage, but not until after she had bore him a son. The boy was discovered crying next to his mother’s body near the Aude River, giving rise to speculation that Guillaume had probably thrown the child into the river and believed he was dead. The child was spirited away by a man named Wehling who hid him from sight before Guillaume discovered the child was still alive. From that day forward there have been two branches of the Acerbi clan, because the man who found the boy was a Cathar, and even though Guillaume himself had been born a Cathar, he had tossed off his faith, becoming a soldier for hire and a famous killer of Cathars.”

“So the family that took him in allowed the boy to keep the Acerbi name?”

“Yes, because that is our bloodline. It is who we are, and according to our beliefs we can never deny that fact. Needless to say none of us use the name in public for obvious reasons. My ancestors always went by the name Wehling out of respect for the man who saved Guillaume’s son. When I first met you on the trail in Spain I gave you my real ancestral name.”

“But we were strangers to you.”

“Yes and no. I was one of several men who had been dispatched along the coast to watch for your yacht. I knew you and Eduardo had been close and that you had visited him in his house in Foix, so I decided to use my real surname as a sign of trust.”

Lev unconsciously reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a cigar as they walked. “I have to say that was a smart move on your part, because when you said your name was Acerbi I knew I could trust you. If you had been one of Adrian’s men you would have avoided using that name.”

“I always trust my instincts, Professor. You’ll be meeting another Wehling after we arrive at the village tonight.”

“Your brother?”

“Yes. I think you’ll like him. I don’t know anyone who doesn’t.”

As the two men continued to talk, the lengthening shadows began to spread out over the valley floor, bringing darkness to the creases in the earth lying between the sunlit mountaintops surrounding them. The daytime buzz of insects drawn to the fragrance given off by sun-baked flowers and leaves gave way to the chirping nighttime sounds of the insects and animals that preferred darkness over light. Trees that shimmered in the sunlight slowly became forbidding dark giants that hovered overhead, and chalky gray boulders became monsters that lined the path that wound through the forest.

Up ahead a bird called out. Gael stopped and cupped his hands, calling back in a perfect imitation. “Tell your people not to raise their weapons, Professor. We’re here.”

Signs of movement on the ridge above the trail gave way to voices as men carrying crossbows and dressed in the same type of homespun clothing as Gael descended down a tree-filled slope and gathered along the trail.

“These are some men from the village,” Gael said. “They’ll be walking with us the rest of the way.”

Sitting on a boulder at the side of the trail, Morelli wiped his face with a well-used handkerchief and stared up at Gael with pleading eyes. “I don’t think I can walk another mile. How far are we from the village?”

Gael smiled as he pointed straight up.

“You mean it’s at the top of the mountain?”

“Yes, Bishop, but don’t worry. We’ll be taking the elevator.”

Adrian Acerbi sat at a table on the back deck of the Carmela and fumed as he stared up at the trembling young officer from the gray ship. “How did everyone on this boat manage to escape without being seen?”

“We’re not sure, sir. We watched them ferrying everyone back to the boat from the beach. Our lookouts saw nothing after that.”

“It looks like you didn’t see anything before that either. Did you ever consider having men stationed on land to keep an eye on what they were doing?”

The officer looked around at all the senior officers who were scowling back at him. “We didn’t see the need, sir.”

“Apparently you didn’t see a lot of things. They must have used some kind of magician’s diversion while they all escaped from the beach right under your noses. You’re relieved of your command. I don’t have time to deal with ineffectual officers.” Acerbi looked over his shoulder at the most senior man standing behind him. “Find something else for this young man to do ... something that doesn’t involve a lot of brain power.”

Adrian pounded his fist on the table before standing and staring out at the empty beach as he ran his hand over the polished surface of the yacht’s wooden railing. “Did someone say this boat has a state-of-the-art communications system?”

A senior officer stepped forward. “Yes, sir ... the best. The area behind the bridge looks like the communications room on a warship.”

“Good. I want the name
Carmela
removed and replaced with the name
Acerbi One.
I’ll use this boat until I have a larger yacht built.” Adrian turned around and ran his black eyes over the khaki-uniformed officers standing before him. “Is anyone brave enough to give me an intelligence report this morning?”