Al-Adil waited a moment before prompting his brother. “âYet,' what?”
The man who'd conquered Egypt, who'd spent years consolidating his base of power to match that of the Caliph in Baghdad, looked uneasily at his counselor.
“I feel death very close here,” Saladin finally said. “The moment we saw the ramparts of this fortress, I've wanted to take the army from this place as quickly as we could muster the troops.”
“Our men,” Al-Adil murmured, “it'll be hard to explain such a decision, but they'll follow you anywhere.”
“Oh, we shall stay here, Brother,” Saladin looked again to the entrance flap of the tent, as if he were talking now to his departed treacherous allies. “I said that I felt death near, not that we would succumb to it. We will stay, and we will watch how these three Westerners try to make us play.”
Saladin rose to his feet again, moved through the flap and stopped on the porch of the pavilion. He looked at the bonfires of the camp and waited until his brother stood beside him, then nodded to the eastern darkness where the Krak des Chevaliers stood. “It's always been our intention that the Krak should fall, so we stay.”
“But fall to whom?” Al-Adil countered quietly. “Whether they show their stingers or not, these Westerners are scorpions.”
Saladin clasped a hand on his brother's shoulder.
“There are scorpions and there are scorpions,” he said, “but there are other dangers in the desert, and I don't think that our new âfriends' have quite realized that fact. Farbauti and Morpeth have demonstrated part of their ignorance about local conditions by perceiving me simply as another emir bent on revenge against the
nazaros
.
” He hesitated, then said firmly, “I want to meet the other army's commander. Have Al-Tarusi make it so.”
He looked up at the star-filled sky, appreciating the silence that his brother now gave him.
What if Farbauti and Morpeth are trying to betray us through this alliance?” Al-Adil asked finally. “Other forces seem to be at work here. I don't like relying on westerners.”
Saladin's eyes caught his brother's, the moonshine and bonfires making the ruler's eyes glitter dangerously.
“There are many scorpions in the desert, Hamzah, and death or extreme prolonged pain follows the jab of their stingers. If they betray us, they'll not long survive the venom in mine.”
Chapter 16
Three Mornings' Journey and A Hoplitarch Undone
i. First Morning: The Return of the Norns
Later in the afternoon after the Battle of Caesarea, Clarinda and Alexander rode two of Evremar of Choques' stallions at a trot some distance behind Fatima, Khalil, and their retinue.
Clarinda looked around at the long caravan wending its way at a fast pace into the Al-Ansariyah Mountains and thought about the last few hours.
Once Fatima and Khalil had agreed to Clarinda's request to join the tribe for the march to the Krak des Chevaliers, much work had been necessary among both the camel-traders and sailors to implement their leaders' commands.
Now that the tribe was underway, the animals and traders had equally settled into the familiar routine of making an overland journey. Indeed, the most striking and unsettling aspects of this subsequent trip were the sounds of wailing women and the funerary songs for the
bedouin
who had been killed in battle, the presence of the westerners â Clarinda and ten of her ship-mates (including Alexander and Genevieve) â and a destination that wasn't a trading city, but the army encampment of the great warrior, Saladin.
For the sailors of the
Maritina
and
Calypso
,
on the other hand, the revelation of Angelo Trevisan's death had required a briefing by Clarinda and Pasquale. The speech she'd given had included a reorientation for everyone to the new chain-of-command that positioned Clarinda as
il capitano
,
and Pasquale as
mate primo
.
Since Clarinda touched the carpet-wrapped body of her father as she spoke about him, the look that she gave all the
crew members as she finished had a ferocity to it that brooked no further debate.
She pulled the linen
aba
that Fatima had given her closer to her face, glad for the protection of it and the accompanying kaftan against the cool morning wind pelting the caravan with sand and pebbles as the tribe made its way northeastwards. She marveled at the camels' collective speed, sensing also that the animals wanted to stretch their legs after being cooped up at Caesarea.
Caesarea. She wondered if the choice to not watch her father buried at sea would come back to haunt her.
No, I said, âArrividerci,' to you in that galley, Padre. I'll not forget that moment quite yet, not in a way that a funeral makes things final. Pasquale assured me he'd cast you into the waters close to Jerusalem, as far away as possible from the God-forsaken crusader town of Caesarea. If I'm not there when the crew casts your body overboard, in the future, I'll be able to look to the sea and find you everywhere.
She shut her eyes, trying to will herself to rest by relaxing into the rhythm of the mount's trot beneath her.
“What's in those crates?” Alex asked.
So much for sleep
,
Clarinda groaned.
“Padre never told me, and you saw how successful force was in prying them open back there,” she paused, then finished, “and now they've killed him. We'll leave them be for a while.”
“Why not simply burn them?” he pressed.
“They're made of a strange wood that seems impervious to harm.”
“So, then we're taking them to this Krak des Chevaliers becauseâ¦?” Alexander said in a leading tone, but the doubt in his voice reflected her own misgivings and she became irritated.
“Alex, can't you just trust me?” she snapped.
His reply was another injured expression.
Damn his lovesick eyes!
“Please. I'll tell you later, but I don't think you'd believe the true reason. Look, if you don't want to be here, there might still be time to ride back and catch the
Calypso
with Pasquale.”
“Clareâ¦Clarinda. I
do
trust you. I'm not going to ride back to Caesarea. I just want you to talk to me.”
This is it. I'll tell him now and be done with it.
Clarinda took a deep breath and then spoke in an exasperated rush of words because the tale seemed so unreal.
“A woman named Urd approached me after mass in Hagia Sophia. She prophesied all that we're doing now, so I've got to trust in her telling me to go to the Krak.”
“It's well that you do, Child, well that you do.”
Clarinda looked at Alexander. He was smiling.
“Alex?”
“You know better, Clarinda Trevisan. I told you that the time would come when we would meet again.”
Clarinda wanted to reach for her sword as anger flushed through her but she found herself unable to move. She glared at what appeared to be her childhood friend yet who now was also something â some
one
â different.
“You're Urd?” she asked, seeing Alex, but hearing the other's voice.
“Listen to me, Clarinda, and keep your blade in its sheathe. Killing me won't bring your father back. Knowledge of events doesn't necessarily translate to assuming responsibility for them.”
“You could have warned me earlier!” Clarinda shouted into the harsh wind. She was furious and ignored the approach of Fatima and Genevieve.
“Padre died only a short time after I arrived, Urd! He was still alive in that shipwreck when I walked by him!”
“You needn't shout, Sister,” Urd/Alex said with the same infuriating calmness.
“I could have saved him!” Clarinda's hand remained on her sword-hilt, and in her anguished grief and fury, only Urd's use of Alex's body restrained her from striking.
“We speak now without voices,” Urd continued, morphing Alex's features into ones similar to Clarinda's mother. “And, yes,” Urd continued, “if you struck me now, your friend Alexander would die, too. For some reason â and contrary to my own hopes about my prediction â any chance to save your father evaporated the moment you left Constantinople.”
“You
told
me to go to Caesarea so that I could find him. You
told
me to take these damned caskets!” Clarinda looked downwards as she lost her voice in a sob.
She sounded pathetic even to herself, and the Norn's icy calm made her self-conscious. Evremar of Choques, his cronies, Kenezki and Monachus â all of those wretched men were as ultimately responsible for her father's death as Angelo Trevisan himself had been.
“It
was
the one time your father let greed get the better part of his generally even-tempered sensibilities,” Urd agreed, reading Clarinda's thoughts. “One could almost say that he began dying the moment that he took the down payment from Morpeth.”
“I don't think that he ever had a chance to make things right,” Clarinda protested softly, wiping away the tears. “He'd never made a mistake like that before â one error in judgment, and it's all over?”
“Sometimes, Child,” Urd said, “one error is all it takes. It depends on how far the skein has been cast, and what allies or enemies get caught in the net.”
“You said I'm training to be a Norn,” Clarinda said, “shouldn't that have helped
Padre
? What good are all your predictions if we can't save one old sailor?”
Oh, Padre, I miss you! I don't want to talk like this â I'm beginning to sound like her!
“We
are
sorry for your grief, Clarinda, please know that. Don't mistake our response to the Worlds' Need as any lack of compassion for your loss. But, time is moving swiftly, and the Huntsmen have cast their own far-reaching nets. Your larger question is the richer one: how was your father's death possible when we were forewarned, and when you made haste as soon as learning of Caesarea?” Urd became thoughtful. “I told you not to hope for your father, but the three of us truly believed that the nudge we gave to lead you to him would prove out in the end. Unfortunately...sadly, it didn't.”
“Kenezki.” Clarinda stated flatly.
“Who?” Urd asked.
“The pirate, the rat, the barnacle â
Kenezki
,
” Clarinda repeated. “You, of all people, should know about Kenezki. He almost killed me, well, us,” she pointed to Urd and then dropped her hand, still unable to fathom how the Norn and Alex were in the same body. She continued, “He told me that no one could have anticipated him.”
Urd looked upwards and asked a short question of Fatima on her high camel saddle. After receiving a negative reply, the Norn leaned forward and asked of Genevieve (who rode on the other side of Clarinda), “Verdandi, do you know of a âKenezki?'”
“Nay, Sister,” Genevieve replied in a voice not hers. Clarinda looked sharply at her girlfriend and saw that her features, too, were reshaping before her eyes.
Alex/Urd nodded at Clarinda's transformed friends. “These are our sisters, Verdandi, whom you'd know as Genevieve â she is the Present, ever-changing and constant only in the Happening. And this one here is Skuld, the Future, whose visage you know as Fatima â deliberate in the arcs she sets in motion, and precise in following their trajectories.”
“My friends will be fine, though? After you're done speaking with me?” Clarinda asked.
Alex/Urd gave her another confirming nod. “We wouldn't have chosen these vessels if they didn't have the requisite strengths. They'll be returned when we're done talking.”
Skuld responded to Clarinda's disbelieving expression with Fatima's laugh: “Urd, you've chosen a fine one. I do believe that Clarinda here would like to fight!”
“No, I don't want to fight you â not anymore,” Clarinda replied, wondering if all these women could hear the thoughts in her mind.
“Good,” Skuld said. “As Urd told you, time is short and there's much for you to learn.”
“What
am
I to learn, Urd?” Clarinda asked. “Honestly, what? I was too late to save my father, and your advice so far hasn't done me much good. How will reaching the Krak des Chevaliers help to destroy these caskets?”
“No,” Urd countered, “the first question that needs to be answered is this: who is this Kenezki? We've never heard of him, which means that he exists outside the Skein of Fate.”
“Impossible,” Verdandi commented, “but I see him nowhere in the lines of this world or the other eight. In this moment, I
See
no âKenezki.'”
“There's a darkness in the future that blocks my Sight of late, too,” Skuld added, as Fatima's compassion filled her eyes. The effect startled Clarinda and she momentarily thought that she was again talking to Khalil's spouse. “I can't see him, Sisters, and I see all trajectories into the future. What does it mean?”