Blades of Valor (3 page)

And later, on the ramparts of the castle, when he had been tempted to share a kiss with her, the same certainty. What a bond they must have forged as small children, laughing and playing here in St. Jean d’Acre, unaware of the roles they must later play in a battle against the very Druids who had slain so many.

Yet how had those childhood memories been taken from him? Should he not have remembered?

Thomas pushed those questions aside and pursued the one thought that had first caused his voice to falter.

“When I was a boy, Sarah raised me in the monastery to pretend I was an orphan. I discovered that money had been given for me, but the greedy pigs masquerading as men of God stole it from me and treated me worse than a slave following my mother’s death. She never explained what it meant to be an Immortal. You have only just begun to explain to me the battle waged by the unseen Druids. Both my parents were part of that battle, but it becomes apparent that I am some sort of long-awaited keystone in the fight.”

Thomas shook his head. “I can scarcely take all of this in.” His voice grew shakier. “I have known you and yet I feel you are more a stranger to me than ever. You do not trust me. Still, we both believe in the goodness of Sir William, and he aids us both. If he seeks my death, he has sentenced you to yours as well. If he rescues me, he also spares you. What am I to make of all this tangled intrigue?”

Silence reclaimed the darkness of the tunnel.

Neither had a chance to compose more conversation. For above the steady dripping of water against stone came the faraway echo of footsteps. Approaching from ahead of them, not from behind, as though in pursuit.

Sir William had sent them into a trap.

Five

I
mmediately, Katherine reached between them to pinch the wick of the lamp. Thomas grasped her wrist and held it steady before she could extinguish it.

“This light will betray our presence,” she protested.

Thomas thought of another time, beneath the castle of Magnus, when blind stumbling through secret passageways had nearly cost him his life, and this time, there was no eager puppy to warn him of sudden drop-offs and poisonous snakes. He did not release her wrist.

“How shall we light the lamp again?” he asked. “Without light, we might never leave this tunnel.” He smiled. “And did not your training as an Immortal teach you the words of a wise general, now long dead?” He paused. “All warfare is deception.”

Her answer was a silent stare. Almost as if to deny their moment of unexpected closeness earlier, she was too proud to smile in return, too proud to attempt to free her wrist from his grip, and too proud to admit unfamiliarity with the quote.

The footsteps grew louder. Yet Katherine was more of a distraction for Thomas than the possible danger. It took effort not to reach upward with his free hand to softly touch the curves of her face as she stared with a steadiness that seemed to pierce his heart.

So he took a deep breath and forced himself to concentrate on the conversation. “Deception is what we will practice now.”

“Set the light elsewhere,” she confirmed. “We keep the flame alive, and it serves us by drawing our enemies to the light instead of us.”

Thomas released Katherine’s wrist, lifted the lamp, and carried it forty steps back in the direction from which they had started.

He set the lamp down and rejoined Katherine in the darkness.

“You have been schooled well,” he said.

First, Katherine and Thomas saw an approaching glow, then the light of the visitor’s lamp, yet still too far away to let them identify the holder of that lamp. The visitor’s footsteps slowed, however, and stopped almost as soon as the light had appeared.

This stranger sees our light ahead,
Thomas thought,
and hesitates.

In the next moment, that faraway light disappeared.

The visitor chooses to approach now in darkness. From caution born of fear or of evil intent?

No longer could Thomas or Katherine hear footsteps.

This visitor must pass close enough to touch us. But how soon?

Thomas nearly yelped at a sudden touch against his hand. His heart slowed quickly, though, as soon as he realized Katherine had slipped her fingers through his.

They waited, side by side.

Then Thomas felt, rather than heard, the nearness of a stranger, almost as if the only hint of another person was air pushed ahead in the stillness of the tunnel.

Does this stranger walk with dagger or sword poised? Will I leap ahead into a sudden death?

Thomas did not answer his own silent question, for he had been taught that hesitation was the greatest enemy in the moment of action in any battle. He had also been taught the advantage of the terror of noise.

Thomas bellowed a rage that filled the tunnel as he charged into the stranger. His shoulder rammed a solid bulk. Hands were upon him instantly and Thomas punched back. Twice he hit only air, but three times his knuckles jarred against bone, and Thomas continued to roar anger as he lashed out again and again at the unseen stranger.

They tumbled and rolled.

The stranger was heavier, but Thomas was faster and more desperate.

Their fight soon became silent, for Thomas had no energy to continue the roar of attack. Heavy breathing filled his face. Hands once managed to wrap around his neck, but Thomas lashed out with his knee to strike hard flesh, and the hands released with a grunt of pain, only to seek him again from the darkness.

Thomas felt a face and tried to dig his fingers into the eye sockets, anything to gain the advantage in a fight that meant life or death.

In response, a sudden blow pounded his cheekbone, and he fell back with flashes of light filling his eyes.

Then dimly, he heard it.

“Stop!” Katherine was yelling. “Both of you stop!”

And Thomas realized the light in his eyes was now the light of the lamp that Katherine had brought closer.

“Stop!” Katherine repeated from where she stood above them both.

Thomas felt his opponent relax and roll away from him, so he too relaxed and struggled to his feet.

The voice that greeted him was all too familiar.

“Should a lion ever assume human form,” Sir William said, attempting a chuckle of humor that became a cough of pain, “that form would closely resemble Thomas of Magnus.”

Thomas groaned and began to feel his body for broken bones. “And should humans ever assume the forms of ghosts,” he said as he probed his mouth for shattered teeth, “they would do well to imitate Sir William. For considerate humans would announce their presence to friends.”

Sir William staggered slightly as he tried to straighten. “I saw the lamp, but no one near. I could only assume the worst and wonder how best to approach the enemies that had captured you.”

Katherine moved forward and examined Sir William’s face for cuts. “We thought you dead,” she said softly.

“My own face fares poorly,” Thomas hinted. “This is not the treatment that the Lord of Magnus expects.”

She ignored him.

“What happened?” Katherine asked Sir William. “The house? The fire?”

“Fine, then. I shall tend to my own bruises,” Thomas announced, but still Katherine ignored him.

Sir William wordlessly took the lamp from Katherine’s hand, returned to his own lamp, and relit it. In the circle of renewed light, he sat and leaned against the tunnel wall with a moan.

“Join me,” he said. “In the little time before the caravan leaves, I have much to explain, and here in the tunnel is much safer than above.”

Six

K
atherine stepped forward and Thomas limped closer. It hurt him to sit. But it also hurt to stand. He leaned awkwardly against the stone walls and awaited Sir William’s words.

Sir William fixed a meditative gaze upon the dancing flame of the lantern. “I wanted to lead them away from the house, but I also feared if I explained my intentions to fight and flee by another door, neither of you would agree to accept the safety of this tunnel. So I fought briefly, escaped the house, led the assassins on a merry chase before entering this tunnel by the hidden exit we shall reach soon.”

He turned to Thomas. “As you might guess, this escape had been ready for years. The Immortals have been in possession of the house for generations—almost since the beginning of the Crusades—and have often used the tunnel for the arrival and departure of visitors who should not be seen in the town.”

“But why here in St. Jean d’Acre?” Thomas asked. It was difficult not to continue probing his ribs for bruises, but he did not want to give Sir William the satisfaction. “We are across the world from Magnus. What significance has this town to us? Or to the Druids?”

Sir William nodded. “The town itself has significance only because it is the traditional entry for those bound to the Holy Land by ship.”

He let that statement hang in the silence until Thomas spoke.

“You say, then, that it is the Holy Land that draws both Immortals and Druids?”

Sir William nodded. “And their spies, as do ours, watch the ships as passengers enter the town. I am not surprised they discovered you so soon.”

Thomas was given no time to ponder, for the knight continued to speak.

“Both sides seek a great secret lost here in the Holy Land centuries ago. The search has stretched over generations. The side that first discovers the secret will have the power to destroy the other.”

Thomas laughed softly.

Sir William frowned at him, his furrowed brow clear even in the flickering light of the lamps. “You find humor in this?”

Thomas stood and spoke as he ran his fingers along the rough stone of the tunnel walls.

“It is only because I feel the coldness of this stone that I can believe this is not a dream of madness,” Thomas said. “How else but with laughter can one face the storms of life?”

“Well spoken,” Sir William said. “And this is indeed a storm. I have not yet heard what troubles have led you here to the Holy Land. Katherine, I am sure, will tell me the sad news later, during the long hours of travel that face us.”

Thomas raised an eyebrow. “Katherine? Not I?” Instinctively, he dropped his hand to his sword. “Do you imply that I will not be there?”

Sir William groaned and raised a hand as if fending off attack. “Must you be so untrusting? Did I not help you secure Magnus from the Druids?”

“Trust is the one thing I wish I could possess,” Thomas said softly. “While much has been explained, too little knowledge has yet been given me.

“That day at the gallows last year,” Thomas challenged. “Why was the old man there, the same old man who so mysteriously appeared later with Katherine as they followed me throughout England? And you, Sir William—why were you there at the gallows with the old man? I cannot believe in coincidence.”

The knight answered, “Think back, Thomas. Had Sarah not always told you about a knight who would appear from the land of the sun?”

Thomas nodded. He remembered that. He remembered her instructions. He remembered, too, the chant Sarah had taught him, the chant he had heard later from the people of Magnus, that the one to reconquer Magnus would arrive as if delivered on the wings of an angel. Thomas remembered how Sarah had again and again told him to wait for the one knight he would need to free Magnus.

Thomas exhaled. His voice remained steady as he spoke again. “You expected me to appear at the gallows that day?”

“Yes,” Sir William said. “How else might we get you to come forth without exposing ourselves to unseen and unknown Druids?”

“Yet had I not appeared,” Thomas countered, “you would have swung from the rope.”

Sir William shook his head in gentle disagreement. “The old man was there. Had you not appeared, he would have ensured my life and we would have begun our search for you.”

“Ensured your life?” Thomas asked.

Sir William now nodded. “After all, he had arranged the time of execution to match that of the darkness of the sun.”

Thomas gaped. “The old man had such worldly power?”

The knight chuckled. “Hawkwood’s powers are vast and seemingly unlimited, eh, Katherine? Oh, the stories we could tell you! When we are all reunited, I’ll ask him to recount the time he convinced an entire army of Moors to remove all their—”

“Hawkwood is dead, Sir William,” Katherine whispered.

“Dead?” The word was uttered in disbelief. “But you did not speak of—”

“Dead,” Katherine repeated. “Magnus is in the hands of the Druids. They rapidly expand their power among the people of northern England, and the old man is dead.”

The knight stood quickly. Urgency now filled his voice. “Thomas, our continued survival is of utmost importance. All the more reason, then, that we separate now and travel apart. The assassins will be searching for three. And you, or Katherine and I, must reach our destination.”

Sir William turned to Katherine. “He shall go by caravan. You and I on foot. Tell me all during our journey. I must not delay in giving instructions to Thomas.”

“Katherine,” Thomas said, “we cannot leave Beast to die at the inn.”

“Your puppy shall be taken care of,” Sir William said, already gripping his lamp and leading them forward. Some sixty steps later, Sir William stooped to retrieve a package.

He gave it to Thomas.

“This must remain sealed. Guard it with every fiber of your body and soul,” Sir William said. “Too much of our battle against the Druids depends on its safe arrival—with you—in Jerusalem. After we visit Nazareth.”

“Nazareth,” Thomas repeated.

“Yes. For your father awaits you there.”

Thomas felt as though he’d been punched in the gut. “Impossible,” he whispered. “My father died in Magnus—burned, along with my sister and brother.”

The knight nodded. “I know that is what you believe. There is much for you to learn, as you will see. But for now we must move.”

Seven

M
y father, Lord Mewburn, extends his greetings,” Isabelle said to the older man in front of her.