Authors: Paul Finch
De
Vesqui
grinned. “He says it lies to the east … in ruins. But he also says we might find treasure there, if we search hard enough.”
Arch-Deacon
d’Etoille
immediately interrupted. “Treasure is not our quest, my lord.”
Ignoring the priest, the Leopard placed a foot on his prisoner’s shoulder and stared down at him. “Tell him that if he can lead us to
Uruk
, his life is spared.”
De
Vesqui
passed the message on, and the Turk rolled his eyes in glee, planting kisses on his captor’s boot. “
Ashluruka
ya
sayiddi
lihikmatika
wa
rahmatika
.”
“He will do as we ask,” de
Vesqui
said.
“Good.” The Leopard kicked the man away. “But kill the rest. We’ve no use for them.”
“Lord Gilles!”
d’Etoille
cried. “You have them in your grasp. They are no threat to you.”
“Until they
clamour
for shares in our food and drink.”
“Can’t you release them unarmed?”
“When they’ve overheard this conversation?
Out of the question!”
A succession of thuds and gasps followed, as heavy blades ripped into heaving breastbones. The Turk who had betrayed his friends could only kneel and watch, red phantoms of firelight playing over him.
D’Etoille
lurched off to hide, though
Thurstan
briefly stopped him. “I wouldn’t despair too much, Father. Didn’t we christen the Lord’s own lance, when we found it at Antioch, by plunging it through the entrails of every heathen dog we came to?”
The priest gave him a haunted, horrified look before staggering into the darkness.
“Anyone would think you approved of this,” Ramon remarked.
“All I approve of at present, my friend, is my own survival.”
Thurstan
peered beyond the lights of the paltry camp, and for the first time saw strange, amorphous things in the swollen night. “But I think we finally agree on something … there’ll be answers had for this.”
*
For another week they pressed on, though now through a blighted wilderness, a blasted empty terrain, bare of water or vegetation, yet strewn – bizarrely – with boulders of colossal size. Their scout and apparent new friend, whose name was
Hasif
, told them
Uruk
was still a regal place of colonnades, statues and fabulous temples, but that it stood on a spur of land between the rivers Tigris and Euphrates, and that to reach it they must first cross the burned waste of Arabia’s northern desert. This would be an arduous journey of a week or more, in the fiercest heat imaginable. To illustrate his point, the guide bound his hands and face with strips of cloth so that he looked like a
bedouin
, and advised his captors to do the same.
“This is blasphemy,” Ramon said, as they decked themselves.
Thurstan
chuckled. “To adapt to barbaric conditions, Ramon, we must first become barbaric men.”
“More so than we already are?
That would be a miraculous feat.”
Ulf made no comment. Before them now lay an empty vista of sand, flurries billowing up like ghosts. There were also insects – huge, black, stinging things, which clustered on the horses and swarmed around the men, adding torment to torment. The boy wasn’t sure if he could take much more. He’d drunk his water ration not five minutes before, yet his mouth was already dry as salt. There was grit in his eyes and in his cracked lips, and a deep weariness in his bones. The cool English greenwood, with its carpet of mist and scent of earth and rain, was as unreal to him now as Jerusalem had been when he was back in
Wessex
. In those days, the Holy City had seemed the furthest destination possible, and indeed years had passed in the getting there, yet everything he knew, including that now desecrated shrine,
lay
uncountable leagues behind him. What lay in front was anyone’s guess.
Or maybe, anyone’s nightmare.
For the true ordeal began a day later.
They’d pitched their animal-hide tents on a barren
wadi
, but arose early – to find their three
piquets
missing. Searches revealed no trace.
“
Ashishin
?”
Ramon wondered.
The Leopard looked to de
Vesqui
, who slammed a fist into
Hasif’s
guts.
“
Ma’ariffi
la
ya’khidoon
asra
,
” the Turk gasped as he writhed in the dust.
De
Vesqui
stepped back. “He says the
Ashishin
take no prisoners. And they’d have left the bodies here to frighten us.”
The Leopard stared out across the rolling desert. Again, nothing was visible except swirling eddies of sand. The only sound was a faint hiss of wind. Infinitesimally, the great baron’s eyes narrowed, and for the first time Ulf wondered if he saw foreboding there. Was such a thing possible? Had this brute warrior, this iron-fisted man-bear with a mutilated face, who’d served two kings with such ferocity, and at
Gerberoi
slew so many rebel knights with his scything
longsword
that the
jongleurs
had named him for it, finally found something to frighten him?
“Their horses are still here,”
Thurstan
said, coming back from the corral. “So they haven’t deserted. Tonight we’ll post a fuller watch.”
The Leopard nodded.
But that night too there were disasters. Six sentries were posted, yet all had vanished by dawn. What was worse, the sand lay smooth around their posts like fresh-fallen snow. Had they fled on foot or been approached through the dark, either by murderous man or predatory beast, the tracks would have been clearly visible. In the space of a few days, the company was down to twenty-three; almost half the number they’d struck out with from Jerusalem, less than a third of those who’d originally departed
Cerne
.
A silent dread passed through them, though it was worse for Ulf, for during the past two nights he’d suffered the same frightful dream. In it, he lay senseless on an arid plain, too weak to move. The sky was filled with circling vultures, but on all sides of him towered statues of cyclopean stone: titanic effigies of kings and popes. So vast were they that their grim, tyrannical features completely filled his vision, yet in the way of all dream-selves he had seen more than this. A living being was also present, a quick-darting thing of vaguely human shape. It first appeared some distance away, scurrying here and there, peeping about between the statues’ gargantuan feet, but drawing ever closer to him.
Of course he never mentioned this. A dream was only a dream. But on the third night, when eight men were dispatched to sentry, he was torn with indecision. If this group was lost too and he’d sounded no alarum, didn’t that make it his fault? He bedded down in Ramon’s tent, his mind filled with doubt. Their entire world was collapsing: scarcely a word was spoken in friendship any more, food stocks were down to rinds of bread and withered citrus fruit, the water was almost spent. Ulf himself was neglecting his squire’s duties – his tending to horse, apparel, weaponry – yet Ramon was too uninterested to upbraid him.
So thinking, the boy drifted again into his dreams, where, as before, the darting, peeping thing awaited, though now it had approached to a distance of several yards and was creeping stealthily closer. Ulf tried to shout, for this time he could see it in all its grisly glory: manlike, yes, almost, but with dark and gleaming skin and a face of fantastic malevolence. Crocodile teeth gleamed between lips curved in a manic grin; oriental eyes flashed cruelty beneath a heavy brocade of blue Moorish shadow; pearls glistened in its ears; its hair was black as oil and hung in slick, perfumed knots. As it reached down towards him, he saw the nails on its fingers; they were sharp and twisting, like talons.
Ulf woke, thinking he was shrieking aloud, but really only whimpering.
Gasping, he scrambled out from the tent into the silent camp. The stillness out there was awesome. To all sides the desert lay vast and empty, so pale that it reminded him of snow-shrouded December morns in England, though now strawberry streaks of dawn filled the sky and the icy chill was diminishing. The squire shivered, and began to pace. Already the horror of the dream was fading, though its memory remained vivid. Had the thing screamed back at him? Hadn’t he just heard some ghastly falsetto screech?
He halted his pacing, and looked out beyond the tents –
the sentries were absent
.
He ventured to the boundary, where stones and spears had been set in a makeshift palisade. Nobody patrolled it. He glanced left to right. There was no mistake. The eight guards posted the night before were definitely missing. Once more he surveyed the shifting dunes, half expecting to see that peeping, darting
form
. Still there was nothing – only twists of billowing sand. And then a hand clamped his shoulder. Ulf whirled around.
Joubert
was standing there, his face dark with hatred. “
FitzUrz
!” he said. “I might’ve guessed an English pig would be at the root of this. Stealing out again to murder our people?”
Ulf gazed at the Leopard’s son, perplexed. He had no idea why, but from the day he’d arrived at
Cerne
as a stable-lad, he’d found
Joubert
his enemy. The young nobleman was the worst kind of boor: strong, thick of limb, barrel of body, but famously arrogant, cold and treacherous. He liked nothing better than to
brutalise
those below him.
“I … I couldn’t sleep, my lord,” Ulf tried to explain.
“Neither could I,”
Joubert
replied. “Which was fortunate … was it not?”
“I’m no murderer.”
“Like all English, a coward too.”
And at that, Ulf – still dazed, still frightened – was finally stung. “Unlike you Normans, of course, who, after the fall of King Harold, festooned your gibbets with his wounded
carls
.
”
The baron’s son lashed out, slapping Ulf fiercely on the cheek. It was a terrific blow, and the lad was staggered where he stood.
“King Harold was a perjured usurper!”
Joubert
snarled. “My father can tell you. He was newly-knighted that day. No older than you. Yet he cut his way with ease to your so-called king. He took the royal bollocks on the tip of his sword.”
Ulf spat at
Joubert’s
feet. “Aye … after the king had already fallen, an arrow-barb buried in his eye! And you Normans have the gall to call us cowards!”
*
Ramon came out from his tent, his ears filled with ribald shouts. He saw members of the
mesnie
leaping about excitedly as if at a cock-fight or ratting pit. At first he was too fuddled with sleep to
realise
what was happening – then it struck him that two of the men were fighting, wrestling on the ground like drunken peasants. He stepped forward, only half interested – but was stunned when he saw the flopping yellow mane of Ulf.
“What the devil!” Ramon pushed his way through, only for a second revelation to strike him:
Joubert
! Dear God!
This was the way it should be, the way all men – from gallant knights to stinking
Brabancons
– ought to settle quarrels: head to head on the field of
honour
. But
this
was no fair duel.
Joubert
might be an insufferable braggart who rated his powers more highly than he should, but he was still a knight, whereas Ulf was only a squire.
Joubert
was ruthless enough to go for the kill, because that was the way he had been taught; Ulf, on the other hand, would balk at inflicting serious injury – and rightly so, for his opponent was a magnate-in-waiting.