Doctor Who and the Crusaders (3 page)

The man, whose red-gold hair was barely visible beneath his hunting cap, shaded his eyes and followed the battle eagerly. He watched as the birds circled, darted, joined and fell apart, noting a feather shoot away from the smaller of the two fighters and drift to the ground listlessly. Then the prey took flight and darted down into the trees, closely followed by the hawk, and both hunter and hunted disappeared. The man let his hand fall to his side and glanced at a companion dressed similarly in simple hunting clothes, who was sitting on the mossy ground of the forest glade, struggling to bend the clasp of a jewelled belt with his fingers. Another man, also in hunting clothes,
leaned against a tree with his eyes closed, his face turned up into the sun, enjoying the peace of the afternoon, and he also received the amused attention of the one who had followed the battle in the skies with such fascination.

‘It seems my friends have no interest in the battles of nature,’ he murmured. His two friends looked at him, the one leaning against the tree flushing rather guiltily at his inattention. Before either of the men could reply, however, the hawk reappeared in the sky. Although normally rather quiet, the bird was clearly excited now, uttering a sharp ‘taket, taket, taket’, as if protesting at some insulting treatment it had received from within the depths of the forest, where it had pursued its prey. Finally, the hawk dived down and settled quietly on the extended arm of its master, who extracted a small leather pouch from his belt and slipped it over the bird’s head.

‘I am the only day and night for you, hunter,’ murmured King Richard the First of England, stroking the back of the hawk’s body gently. ‘But why no success today?’ He continued, reprovingly, ‘I bring you all this way from England to see you made foolish. I hope this is not an omen, bird.’

He handed the hawk to a waiting servant. The man leaning against the tree folded his arms and watched the servant walk away with the bird on his arm.

‘I wish I were a hawk, Sire, and Saladin my prey.’

‘Now there is a subject for our troubadours and actors,’ laughed the King. ‘Speak to the Chamberlain about it, I beg you, de Marun.’

‘I will, My Lord. And I shall have the players call the entertainment, “The Defeat of Saladin, the Sparrow of the East!”’

The three men’s laughter echoed through the wood and the man who had been trying to bend the clasp of the jewel-studded
gold belt, Sir William de Tornebu, put his work aside and joined in the merriment, until they heard the sound of footsteps through the bushes. Branches were thrust aside and a tall, dark-haired man, a sword held firmly in his right hand, stepped into view. Richard held up a hand in mock surrender.

‘No, des Preaux, I will not fight today!’

Sir William des Preaux lowered the sword with a slight smile.

‘I think he means to slay us all,’ murmured de Marun.

‘Aye, and eat us for his dinner,’ added de Tornebu, who had returned to work on the clasp again. Des Preaux glanced at the three men and rather surprised them by not replying to their jokes in a similar vein.

‘I have heard sounds in these woods, Sire,’ he said seriously, walking over to the King. ‘You are too far from Jaffa and the Saracens too near.’

The King shrugged, stooped down and picked up a skin of water and a silver goblet from a little pile of refreshments laid out by the servant. He poured himself a long drink of clear water and drank deeply.

‘Have you seen any Saracens?’ asked de Tornebu, and des Preaux shook his head.

‘No, but I sense them about us. This wood might have been designed for ambush. We have none of Nature’s warning voices on our side.’ He looked at the three men, one after another, significantly. ‘There is not one bird in a tree.’

‘Put up your sword,’ murmured the King. ‘My hawk has frightened away the birds. Come, come, des Preaux, you sound like an old woman surrounded by shadows.’ He spread himself on the ground, rummaged among the provisions and found a bunch of grapes and began to eat them. Des Preaux looked at him anxiously.

‘I have put Alun and Luke de L’Etable with the horses, Sire. All is ready for the return to Jaffa.’

King Richard’s eyes moved from his contemplation of the bunch of grapes and stared into those of the man with the sword coldly, the lazy air of relaxation dropping away from his reclining body and changing to a stiff tension. Des Preaux shifted uncomfortably, conscious that he had presumed to make a decision before referring it. But he held the King’s gaze because of his genuine concern, and his belief that danger was everywhere around the man he had sworn to serve.

Richard said: ‘We will stay here.’

There was a moment’s pause as the two men stared at each other, the one completely certain of his right to decide, the other afraid to give way. Finally, des Preaux reddened and dropped his eyes. Immediately a change came over the King and he smiled. Not because he had won a battle of wills or because he had achieved his own purpose. Richard, although impulsive, was not the man to feel any triumph in succeeding when he had no chance to lose. The reason men followed him, fought and died for him, was that his fairness and judgement of character were acute.

‘Yes, we will all stay here,’ he continued, ‘until, William the Wary, you recover your composure. And, I hope, your sense of humour.’

As the King and his three friends gathered around the refreshments and ate and drank, a man with a vivid scar running down the right side of his face, parted some bushes about a hundred yards away and peered at them. He watched the four men intently for a moment, let the bushes close together again and sank down under cover, beckoning slightly with one hand, each finger of which was holding a jewelled ring. His dark eyes glittered and there was an air of suppressed excitement written all over his swarthy face. The
Saracen soldier he had commanded crept up to him, and lay beside him patiently.

‘One of these four men is the English King, Malec Ric,’ the man with the scar whispered. ‘We will come at them at close quarters. They are dressed too much alike for me to tell which is the King and which are servants or friends. But one will declare himself as they fight for their lives. He who takes command is the King and he must be taken alive.’

He looked at the soldier beside him, their faces close together.

‘Alive, do you understand?’ he muttered viciously. The soldier licked his lips and nodded.

‘Then get my men placed well, and when I move tell them they are all to show themselves. Now go!’

The man with the scar pushed at the soldier roughly, watched him squirm back the way he had come then turned his attentions to the unsuspecting men in the little forest clearing.

In another part of the wood, the
Tardis
found itself a clear patch and materialized, its safety precaution selector deliberately choosing a place well screened by tall thick bushes. It was one of the features of the Doctor’s ship that it always assessed the place it landed in in one millionth of a second before it materialized, and was thus able to avoid appearing in busy streets or under water, or any of the hundred and one hazards which might endanger the safety of the ship and its occupants. Had its safety device been of a much wider sort, of course, it is more than likely it would have detected the presence of the coming struggle in the little forest outside Jaffa. But, of course, if its sensitivity had been so fine there would be no chronicles about Doctor Who.

Ian was first out of the ship. He crept over to the screen
of tall bushes and peered through them. Barbara came across from the
Tardis
and stood beside him quietly.

‘It’s all right,’ he said, ‘I don’t know where we are, but it looks like an ordinary wood.’

‘The Doctor says we’ve landed on Earth again.’

Ian pushed his way through the bushes, holding them back for the girl to follow him, and together they wandered a few paces through the trees.

Barbara said, ‘Have you ever thought what you’d do, Ian, if the Doctor landed us back in our own time in England?’

He looked at the sunlight filtering through the trees above their heads, occasionally catching in her eyes as they walked. It was a question which had often occurred to him, one he had frequently thought of asking her. Before he could answer, a sudden shout broke the silence of the forest, stopping them in their tracks. The word itself meant nothing to them at that particular moment, and it’s doubtful if they even realized it gave them the key to where they were on Earth and the period of its history. All they did know was that the sound was the beginning of danger, of trouble.

‘Saladin!’

The one word pierced out of the silence and hung around them in the short silence that followed. Barbara glanced quickly at the man beside her.

‘That wasn’t either of you calling, was it?’ they heard the Doctor say from the other side of the ring of bushes. Ian took hold of Barbara’s hand as other cries and shouts began to ring out from the forest and the sharp ring of metal striking metal.

‘We’ll get back to the ship,’ said Ian.

They were just moving back to the safety of the bushes when a man came running through the trees, a curved sword in his hand. He wore a metal helmet with a long point and a short cape was pinned at the neck and hung behind him. Under the sleeveless breast-plate of small chain metal, a rich dark-blue jacket finished just below his elbows and the rest of the arms were covered with leather wrist protectors studded with metal buttons. A dark-red sash was tied round his waist and the loose, baggy trousers were thrust into soft leather boots with pointed toes. As soon as he saw Ian and Barbara he raised his sword, changed direction slightly and rushed at them, his dark face tightening into fury and hatred.

Ian dropped on one knee and gripped the sword hand of his new enemy, but fell with him in the power of the man’s approaching rush.

‘Run, Barbara!’ he shouted.

Barbara looked around quickly for a stone or a thick piece of wood to help Ian as the two men rolled and wrestled on the ground. Finally she saw a thick branch some yards away to her
left, partially hidden by some bushes. She ran to it and started pulling it out from the grass which had overgrown it. A hand appeared from nowhere, clamped itself around her mouth and pulled her through the bushes, the other arm pinioning itself around her threshing body. Barbara looked up wildly at her captor, who was dressed in a similar fashion to the man with whom Ian was fighting only a few yards away. She kicked out with her legs to try and break the man’s hold on her, nearly got free and then slumped to the earth unconscious, as a sharp blow from the man’s fist caught her at the base of the neck.

The Doctor and Vicki peered out from the bushes at Ian’s struggles. The soldier had lost his sword by this time, but he had a very good stranglehold on Ian’s neck and was doing his best to squeeze the life out of him.

‘Get me a rock or something, my child,’ murmured the Doctor mildly as he watched the fight. Ian managed to break the stranglehold, half rose from beneath the soldier’s body, intending to throw him to the ground but fell back as one of the man’s leather and metal wristlets smashed into the side of his head, the effort causing the Saracen’s helmet to fall off.

‘Be careful, Chesterton,’ said the Doctor, ‘he’s going to butt you with his head. Ah! I told you he would.’

The soldier, conscious now that he had a new enemy behind him, was trying to get away from Ian and reach for his sword. The Doctor walked over a few paces and stepped on the sword firmly. Vicki ran up with a small stone and handed it to the Doctor, who weighed it in his hand reflectively.

‘Well, don’t just stand there,’ panted Ian.

‘Oh, very well. Hold him still, then.’

Ian rolled so that the soldier lay on top of him and the Doctor stepped nearer and brought the stone down on top of his head sharply. The soldier groaned and rolled away. Ian picked himself up, and Vicki helped him to brush the dirt and
leaves from his clothes.

‘Thanks very much,’ he said, sarcastically. The Doctor suddenly pitched the stone away from him and hurried his two friends into the cover of the ring of bushes as he heard the sound of approaching men.

In a second, they watched as four or five men in simple hunting clothes, obviously retreating through the wood, fought a rearguard action against twice as many soldiers with the pointed helmets. One of the men in hunting clothes was badly wounded, a short arrow sticking out of his body at the top of his right shoulder, the blood coursing down his tunic, the red stain showing up clearly in the dappled sunlight. Another of the hunters fell, an arrow through his heart, while the tallest of the huntsmen, different only from his companions by his head of red-gold hair, fought a violent, hand-to-hand battle with three of the pursuing soldiers, running his sword through one and crashing the hilt on top of another’s face. The third, who carried a lance, reversed it suddenly and swung it in an arc. The end of it just struck the top of the red-headed giant’s forehead. With a roar of rage and pain, he fell into some bushes and disappeared from sight.

‘We ought to help them,’ said Ian urgently, but the Doctor held on to Ian’s arm.