The Dagger and the Cross (32 page)

Gwydion was gone from Aidan’s side. That was the blur of
him, leaping toward the fallen man, the kneeling boy, the guards with their
spears and their cold eyes. Aidan sprang after him.

It was Ranulf down, Aimery with him. The boy tried to shield
his father from the guards’ spears. Gwydion fell on the foremost. The snap of
the man’s neck was hideously distinct.

Spears whipped round. Gwydion laughed, light and mad. The
guards cried out. Their weapons writhed in their hands, raising fanged heads to
strike. The Saracens flung them away in horror. They fell as plain lifeless
wood, but their heads were gone.

Gwydion left the dead guardsman and turned back to Ranulf.
Aimery’s face turned up toward him, white under dirt and blood and soot. It was
not grief, not horror, not even fear. It was rage as pure as Gwydion’s own. “They
killed him,” the boy said. His voice was perfectly calm.

Ranulf was not quite dead. But he was beyond Gwydion’s
strength to heal. A great torn wound in his thigh had drained his life away;
there were other wounds on him, and ribs broken where a mace had caught him.
How he had lived this long, walked this far, only God knew. That Aimery had
done his best to carry him was clear to see.

Gwydion could do no more than ease his pain, give him the
illusion of water in his burning throat, let him see that his son was with him.
He could not speak, but he smiled at the boy. He had fought well; he had seen
that his son was brave, and would make a man. He was content. He went softly
into the great dark, with no fear at all.

Aidan stood guard over them, little need though there was of
that. Even Saladin’s warriors were not about to pick a quarrel with a lord of
the afarit.

Aidan’s mamluks had followed him, unmolested for a miracle,
and the Rhiyanans stumbling after. They made an honor guard for Ranulf’s body.
The one who still had a whole cloak, Gwydion’s squire Urien, spread it over the
knight. Aimery raised a hand as if to protest, but then he stilled.

Aidan did not like the look of him. But there was nothing in
this place or this circumstance to like. The boy was quiet, at least, and stood
by Aidan when he was bidden, even let Aidan rest an arm about his shoulders.

It was not long after that, that the sultan came out of his
tent. A mamluk went before him with a spear, and on it a head which all of them
knew. Reynaud de Châtillon, the reiver of Kerak, had broken his last compact
with the infidel. King Guy followed, head up, walking free, but his eyes were
haunted.

The line of knights stiffened as the sultan approached. The
warrior monks, Templars and Hospitallers, glanced at one another and, in one
concerted motion, turned their backs on him. The guards would have forced them
about, but Saladin shook his head. Aidan heard him in strangely doubled
fashion: first in Arabic, then in the interpreter’s
langue d’oeil.
“They
know what hope they have here.” He raised his voice slightly. “Any of you who
wishes to accept Islam, may do so and live.”

None of them moved. Someone near Aidan was trying not to
laugh. It was one of the Kipchaks. Aidan hissed at him to be still.

The sultan was too far away to hear. He called out his sufis
and his men of religion, one for each Templar and Hospitaller, each armed with
a sword. Some of them looked as if they hardly knew which end to hold, but they
were all alight with holy zeal.

“Now,” the sultan said.

The warrior monks fell. Some did not fall easily: poorly or
weakly smitten, or roused to resistance at the end. Those the guards finished
off, as one gives the grace-stroke to a fallen animal. Only the Grand Master of
the Temple was spared at the sultan’s command, with two hulking Nubians holding
him in his place while his brothers in the cross died. His curses were
inventive, and quite surprising in a man of God. The interpreter conveyed some
of them to Saladin, who was grimly amused. “Take that one away,” he said to the
Nubians, “and see that he is kept from mischief. He is a fouler dog than any of
those who followed him, but he is a prince of his people; and a prince owes
courtesy to a prince.”

Gerard de Ridefort clearly did not think so, but he was not
strong enough to escape his captors, still less to tear out the sultan’s
throat. He was still roaring maledictions as they carried him off.

That left the knights of Outremer, a pitiful straggling few,
too worn with exhaustion even to beg for mercy. They could only stand, and wait
mute for what would come.

Saladin bade the great lords be led forward. It was shocking
to see how few they were. Besides King Guy, there were only Amalric his
brother, and Humphrey of Toron, and the Marquis of Montferrat, and Joscelin de
Courtenay, Count of fallen Edessa, and a bare handful of lesser lords. Gwydion
would not go; Aidan would not go without him. Their knights and their mamluks
stirred, growling softly. One of the guards, his patience exhausted, raised his
fist.

“No.”

Clear, that voice, and oddly sexless. It was not deep enough
for a man’s, but for a woman’s it was very low. The one who owned it came from
behind the sultan. A young emir, it seemed, in a coat of amber silk over mail,
and a helmet with a turban wound about it, and long Turkish braids; but that
face was never a Turk’s, white as ivory and carved as pure as any face in
Persia. There was no beard on it, nor would one ever grow there. Though not, as
the army might think, because the warrior was a eunuch.

Aidan had been strong enough until then. Numb, yes, and
powerless, and worn to a rag, and desperate for water; but he could keep his
feet, he could do what he must, he could will himself not to think.

Now he felt all the strength drain out of him. Only Gwydion’s
arm kept him from falling.

“No,” said Morgiana. “Let them be.”

She had some power here, and ample presence. She was obeyed.
The sultan, occupied in winnowing barons from plain knights, paused to glance
down the line. What he saw made him hand the task to his son, who was close by
him and more than pleased to take it, and with but a pair of mamluks, stride
toward the knot of Franks and Saracens.

Saladin looked well, Aidan thought distantly. Older, yes;
that was inevitable. He was nigh fifty years old. His beard was still black,
still trimmed neatly, close to his jaw. He was still slender, still quick on
his feet, with fine eyes in a face somewhat thickened with age. The scar of an
Assassin’s blade seamed one cheek; the years marked it more deeply, and the asceticism
to which he was given, king of kings though he was. He was not in the plain
black robes he preferred, but then this was war, and he had, for that, to look
a king.

What Saladin saw could hardly be as pleasant: two battered
and filthy knights with the same face, a boy whose eyes on him flashed hate, a
bare handful of warriors who tried, even weaponless, to guard them.

Five of those warriors made the sultan’s eyes narrow. “So,
sirs. You’re still with him.”

Aidan spoke before one of them could do it and earn a spear
in the vitals. “They’re still with me,” he said. “A better gift I’ve seldom
had, nor ever one more faithful.”

“Faith,” said Saladin. “Yes. They are Muslims. How came they
to fight against their own people?”

“We fought for our prince,” said Timur, always the one to
open his mouth when anyone else would have known better. “You gave us to him,
my lord. You must have known what would come of it.”

“As you must have known what the price would be,” Saladin
said.

Timur nodded, but his eyes were fearless. “We’re glad you
won, my lord. We’re good Muslims, after all. But we had to fight for the master
you gave us.”

Saladin looked him up and down, then each of the others in
turn. “Five of you,” he said. “Seven dead. That must be grievous to bear.”

“They are in Paradise,” Timur said steadily.

“For fighting Muslims?”

“For fighting for their prince.”

Saladin almost smiled. “You haven’t lost your impudence,” he
said. He paused. “Your prince is beaten now and in my power. Will you come back
to serve me?”

They glanced at one another. Timur, for once, gave
precedence to Arslan. The captain said, “With all respect, my sultan, no. We
belong to our prince. We can serve no other master.”

“I was your master once,” Saladin said, dangerously soft.

“We are his now,” said Arslan.

Saladin turned the fire of his glance on Aidan. “You would
have refused them once. Will you relinquish them?”

“Will it save their lives?” Aidan asked.

Saladin nodded.

“We won’t go,” Timur said.

It was Conrad who added, “We’d rather be dead and yours, my
lord, than alive and any other man’s. Not to insult my lord sultan. If we could
serve any other master, it would be he. But we cannot.”

“Loyal servants indeed,” said Saladin. He seemed torn
between anger and admiration. “Your master will have to ransom you if he wishes
you to live.”

“I shall ransom them,” Morgiana said. “All of them.”

Saladin turned to her, not startled, not entirely, but
somewhat disconcerted. “All? I count a dozen here, drawn together like an army
in ambush. One of them is a royal prince. Another, if I am not mistaken, is a
king. Can you pay a king’s ransom, my lady of the afarit?”

“Set it, and I shall pay it,” she said calmly. “The only
grudge you bear them is that they fought under an idiot. They could hardly do
otherwise, being idiots themselves when it comes to the swearing of oaths.”

“I won’t have you—” Aidan began hotly.

A force like a hand stopped his tongue. He was in no state
to defeat it, although he raged against it. Morgiana never spared him a glance.
“I stand hostage for their honor,” she went on, placidly giving her wealth and
her life away. “I will answer for them, and pay the ransom you require.”

Amusement conquered anger in the sultan’s face. He had
always found the afarit highly entertaining, even when they terrified him. “I
give you their lives,” he said, “to do with as you will. Of ransom I ask but a
token. Their oaths, given singly and sincerely, that they will not again take
up arms against me.”

He was smiling as he said it, but there was no laughter in
his eyes. If they refused, they would very likely die. Saladin was a knight and
a gentleman, but he was also a Muslim and a king. He had sworn holy war against
all of Christendom.

“I can swear that oath,” Gwydion said, startling them. His
voice was low, as if he spoke in a dream. “You will live to take Jerusalem. You
will even hold it, and face the Crusade that will come. But you are a mortal
man, and when your days are done you will die. I will swear never to fight
against you. I will not swear never again to raise my sword against Islam.”

Saladin paled a little under the bronze of sun and wind and
years of war. “You are a seer, then, lord king.”

Gwydion’s eyes turned to the sultan. They were the color of
steel in the sun, seeing clear through him, to what, only Gwydion knew. “I am
nothing but what God has made me. I will not again take arms against you,
though all the kings of Europe shall raise the Crusade.”

It was not an oath to comfort any man, even with his victory
promised him. Saladin took no joy in it. But he accepted it as graciously as he
might, as years of kingship had taught him.

The Rhiyanans followed their lord, not liking it, but loyal
enough, and well tamed by the battle and the defeat. Aidan was slower. It was
not that he feared to be called a coward, or that he had ever intended to stay
in Outremer past Michaelmas. But he did not like, ever, to be told whom he
could not fight.

His mamluks would do as he did. They were no happier than he
to have their sword-hands trammeled, but they were Muslims, and they had been
Saladin’s. It would save them grief to be forbidden to fight him or his armies.

But to take such an oath. To bind himself to what the world
would perceive as cowardice. To break his given word, that he would defend the
Holy Sepulcher...

He opened his mouth to refuse. What held his tongue, he
hardly knew. Conrad’s face, perhaps, bruised and bloodied. Gwydion’s steel-cold
eyes. Morgiana’s white face, half-turned away from him.

It was for his mamluks, and for Gwydion, and—yes—for
Morgiana, that Aidan bent his head and swore. He felt the lighter for it,
though never the more joyful. Defeat could not be aught but bitter, however
swiftly he drank it down.

Then there was only Aimery. He would not swear. “I can’t,”
he said, though it shook him almost to the ground. “I am of Outremer. I can’t
swear never to defend it again. I
can’t.”

Aidan could not be
the one to break the impasse, to
compel him to swear the oath. Gwydion would not. Saladin looked at the boy and
frowned. “The lion’s cub grows into a lion. Would you die, then, for the threat
that you will be when you are grown?”

Aimery swallowed hard. “Yes. Yes, I’ll die. You killed my
father. You can kill me, or sell me for a slave. I don’t care. I won’t unman
myself to save my skin.”

“You intend, my lord,” said Morgiana quietly, “to ransom the
king and his barons, and such knights as have the wherewithal. None of them
will be bound to keep his sword sheathed against you. I allow that binding for
my kin and for their following, because it can do them no harm and may teach
them sense. But this will be a knight of Jerusalem. You can kill him, or you
can ask his kin to ransom him. They will do that, my lord. You have my word on
it.”

Saladin had never had much stomach for murdering children,
though men who opposed him did well to be afraid. He looked long at Aimery, as
if he would remember that tired young face. In the end he said, “I give you
into the lady’s governance. Will you, in return, give me your word of honor
that you will purchase your life as I shall determine?”