The Falcons of Montabard (31 page)

Strongfist grunted and Sabin concealed a wry smile. Unusually for a nobleman, Strongfist had no great interest in the hunt. He used the event to exercise his horse and hone his equestrian skills, but he had no desire to perch a hawk on his wrist and his eyes would glaze over when other men began to discuss falcons and dogs with zeal.

'He should save the reward until after the rescue.' Strongfist's tone was jaundiced.

'You must admit that he has worked like a Trojan to secure the administration and ensure that the state of Edessa will not crumble for want of a guiding hand. You have seen the way the lamplight shines through his tent until near dawn. Surely he deserves a day's leisure.'

'Aye, you're right,' Strongfist conceded with a wave of his hand. 'I suppose I should not carp.'

'And would do so less if you did not have to hunt this morn.'

That brought a reluctant chuckle from the older man. He reined his horse about and went to take his place amongst Baldwin's assembling bodyguard.

The King hunted joyously and hard, flushing out cranes from the riverbank and partridge and francolin. Sabin flung his borrowed saker into the sky, watched it hover and then stoop upon a fleeing rock dove far below. In a puff and flurry of grey-feathers, the saker struck and bore its prey groundwards. Bright-faced with excitement, Amalric galloped his pony to

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retrieve the first kill and Sabin followed at a trot. The sun was warm on the elbow-length quilted tunic he wore and he began to think about taking it off. Dismounting, he took the saker back onto his wrist.

Eyes shining, Amalric attached the limp dove to his belt. Sabin gestured and smiled. 'You can eat it for supper,' he said and, remounting, swung around to rejoin the hunt. The King had just launched his gyrfalcon at another crane. His arm was still extended, the smile still parting his lips, when an unearthly ululation split the air and hoofbeats thrummed the ground. Faster than a spring storm, Saracen cavalry galloped out of the brush, lances brandished, arrows nocked.

'Christ on the Cross!' Sabin hurled his newly retrieved saker aloft in a bate of wings and drew his sword. 'Into those bushes!' he snapped at Amalric. 'Lie down and don't move ... on peril of your life!'

Without waiting to see if the boy did his bidding, he spurred Lucifer towards the knot of hunters with the King at the centre. No one was wearing armour, and even if they all carried swords, they were outnumbered and disadvantaged. It was death, sudden and fierce as the strike of a hawk.

He was intercepted by a Saracen warrior who jabbed his lance at Sabm's side. The blade pierced through the layers of the gambeson and slid along Sabin's ribs without doing damage, but the force and angle of the blow twisted him from the saddle. He landed hard, all the air slammed from his lungs and a glancing kick from Lucifer's off hind sent black stars rippling; across his vision. He heard the plunge of hooves close to his head and tried to protect himself with his hands, but they refused to obey his will. Through an encroaching blur, he saw a yelling Saracen hurl himself across Lucifer's back. The grey reared and came down stiff-legged, and as Sabin's vision darkened beyond sight, he heard the swish of a leather whip and a stallion neigh of terror and fury.

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Chapter 19

Someone was shaking his shoulder. Sabin groaned and opened his eyes. His vision blurred and cleared, blurred and cleared. Pain hammered through his skull and each blow went straight down to his belly.

'Christ, are you alive? Get up!'

The voice was Gerbert's, and it was raw with pain and anxiety. Sabin crawled to his knees, hung his head and vomited. The hand shook him again, harder, rattling the few wits remaining in his skull. Sabin decided that he didn't want to be alive.

'They've taken the King!'

Slowly Sabin raised his head. Although his stomach was churning like a brewer's vat, he staggered to his feet. Gerbert was hunched over him. A rag was bound tightly about his upper arm, stanching a wound that had obviously bled copiously. His face was as grey as his eyes and he was dripping wet.

'Who has?' Sabin asked. Beyond Gerbert he was slowly becoming aware of a scene of bloody carnage. Bodies of men and horses were strewed in the dust and the sweet tang of blood filled his nostrils. Birds circled in the sky - not the hawks they had flung aloft at the first onslaught, but red kites and vultures.

'Balak, who do you think?'

'But . . . but his army wasn't anywhere near this place ..." Sabin rubbed his temple and felt a tender egg-sized lump beneath his fingertips. He was going to vomit again.

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'Not yesterday it wasn't, but plainly he moved up at speed,' Gerbert said grimly.

Sabin lurched to the water's edge and heaved. When he had recovered, he looked round to find Amalric watching him. Tear-streaks stained the boy's ashen face, but his jaw was set and he was holding Lucifer firmly by the cheekstrap of his bridle. 'He bolted, sir, but came back.' He swallowed and kept his head turned from the scene of the battle. 'I did as you said ... I hid in the bushes and no one saw me . . .'

'Good lad,' Sabin said vaguely. Gerbert had stumbled over to the bodies and was inspecting them, Even from here it was obvious that no one had survived and Sabin wondered what Gerbert was doing. Then he realised.

'Stay back,' he said to Amalric, then tottered over to join the baron.

Expression contorted with pain, Gerbert closed the eyes of the yellow-haired knight over whom he had been stooping. 'Strongfist's not among the dead,' he said. 'They have taken him too.'

'Did you not see?'

Gerbert shook his head. 'I was forced into the river ... By the time I'd stopped myself and the horse from drowning, it was over. They didn't stay to gloat over their victory.' He bared his teeth. 'First Joscelin of Edessa, now King Baldwin. Balak has the means to bring us to our knees.'

Sabin had to wobble aside to be sick again. He wanted to lie down with the rest of the men: brutally slaughtered, but mercifully dead. Knowing that Gerbert would only badger him and shake him until his brains poured from his ears, he turned drunkenly back towards Amalric and Lucifer. 'Naught we can do save carry the news,' he said, struggling to enunciate the words through the waves of pain and nausea. How far was the nearest Christian village? Too far . . . His legs were made of wet rope. Gathering every ounce of will, he staggered to Amalric. Grasping the reins, he somehow found the strength to set his foot in the stirrup and was dimly aware of

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the lad boosting him up and across. Then Amalric swung up behind him, pillion fashion. Gerbert had mounted his bay, although the horse was much the worse for wear, weak in the legs and bearing several grazes and superficial sword cuts. Had their circumstances not been so dire, Sabin would have laughed. The cream of the Frankish army reduced to two wounded, unarmoured knights and a squire. How were the mighty fallen.

Another supply cart rolled into the compound at Montabard and soldiers ran to unload its cargo of olive oil and honey. Annais studied the industry from her chamber window, Ginllaiime rrndjpd in
hpr
arms For two Hav« now/ the bailey had been as busy as a dockside.

'Do you think that we will be threatened, my lady?'

She looked over her shoulder at Soraya. With her liquid brown eyes and shy manner, she reminded Annais of a gazelle. 'I do not know. That is the honest truth,' she said. 'All I have to guide me is that one message from my husband. I hope not.' Four days ago, a rider had come from Gerbert who was in Antioch. The message had been brief, but then her husband was not a man of words. He wrote that the Emir Balak had captured King Baldwin, that he himself was on his way back to Montabard. She should stock the castle to the roof spaces with supplies and be on her guard. A duplicate of the letter had gone to Thierry, the constable.

Soraya looked down at the linen bandages she was preparing. 'I thought that my son and I were going to die when the Franks raided our caravan,' she said quietly. 'I had heard terrible tales of what the Franks did to their captives.'

'Probably the same tales that we hear about what the Saracens do to Frankish prisoners,' Annais said. 'And I do not doubt that some of it is true, even as much is false.'

Soraya busied herself with the linens. 'I was terrified of Durand at first,' she said. 'Even though he protected me from the others, I knew that it was because he wanted me for himself.

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Then I realised that if I did his bidding, I would be helping my child and myself. I did not love him then . . .'

Annais nodded, for she had an inkling of how the other woman felt. She had wed Gerbert out of duty. However, like a seed planted in good soil, affection had grown, and there had always been respect. Was there love now? She thought perhaps there was. Imagining him in danger made her stomach churn and she had missed the comfort of his body beside her at night.

'Durand is a good man,' she murmured.

Soraya found a tenuous smile. 'I know that now, and I am happy here. I do not want it to change.'

'It won't,' Annais said more firmly than she felt.

She had fed Guillaume and was rocking him to afternoon sleep in his cradle when a panting garrison soldier came to the chamber door and gasped out that Lord Gerbert had been sighted with a small escort of men, including Sabin and the boy, Amalric. Instructing a maid to watch the baby, Annais hurried to the wall walk and shaded her eyes against the late April sun. The riders were too distant for her to see clearly, although she recognised Gerbert's banner and his tall bay stallion, and pacing beside it Sabin's slighter grey. His escort contained far fewer men than had ridden out and she felt cold, knowing that some of the garrison wives would be mourning the loss of their husbands, and children would suddenly be fatherless. Murmuring a prayer to the Holy Virgin, she crossed herself and sped from the wall walk to issue instructions to the cook and the kitchen servants, to the grooms and squires. Water was set to heating for bathtubs and fresh clothing shaken from storage in the coffers.

When the men rode beneath the gatehouse tower, its grisly decorations now no more than incomplete skeletons dangling by shreds of dried, leathery flesh, Annais was waiting to greet them with the women of her chamber. Two knights rode into the bailey, then came Gerbert on his bay with Sabin pressed up hard to the bay's flank one side and a serjeant on the other. Annais frowned, first in puzzlement, then in worry as she

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realised that they were making sure Gerbert did not fall from the saddle.

Amalric dismounted from his pony and hastened to grasp the bay's bridle. Sabin flung from the grey and, issuing terse commands to the closest of the garrison troops, prepared to catch Gerbert. Annais ran forward and was in time to see Gerbert raise himself from the saddle and swing to the ground. His skin was sheened with sweat and pallid, except for a burning spot of colour on either cheekbone. Fever had stripped his flesh. The creases that showed when he smiled were gaunt hollows and his grey eyes were as opaque as chips of polished flint. He swayed where he stood, but he refused the support of his knights.

'There is nothing wrong with me that the sight of my wife and son and a good night's sleep in my own bed will not cure.' His gaze drank Annais as if she were a pool of cold water in the desert. He extended his right arm like a wing and Annais moved into his embrace. His lips were cracked, his breath sour as he kissed her, and the heat emanating from his body was hot enough for a smith to forge horseshoes.

She broke from him in consternation. 'Jesu, you are burning up!' Sabin removed his helm and told a hovering attendant to fetch a litter.

'I have felt better, but there is no cause for all this fuss,' Gerbert growled with a glare for Sabin. 'I took on a wild young man and he has turned into an old woman overnight. Come, lead me to the hall and my son. I want to see my son.'

The querulous way he spoke the last words filled Annais with fear, for she could hear that same fear in Gerbert's own voice. He took three steps and staggered, a fourth and his legs buckled. As his weight sagged against her, Sabin nudged her aside, looping himself under Gerbert's arm to bear his weight.

'He should not have ridden,' he said, 'but pride makes fools of everyone.' Staggering slightly himself, he helped Gerbert towards the hall.

'What is wrong with him?' Feeling sick and cold, Annais hurried at his side. 'Why are there so few of you?'

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'That is two questions at once,' Sabin gasped through clenched teeth. 'Only let me set him down, and I will tell you.'

He made his way to the hall and laboriously climbed the outer stairs to the solar and bedchamber. A maid had seen them coming and opened the door. Sabin bore Gerbert to the vast bed and carefully eased him down upon it.

'I'm all right,' Gerbert muttered. 'I could have walked without help.'

'As far as a goat can fly,' Sabin retorted, breathing hard. He turned to Annais. 'When King Baldwin was taken, there was savage fighting. Gerbert took a scimitar cut to his left arm and it has gone bad.'

Her eyes widened. She knew how dangerous a festering wound was in this climate. Sabin's gaze was knowing and compassionate, but there was also a sardonic glint that told her he was remembering the way she had treated his infected foot.

'A chirurgeon looked at it in Antioch and cleaned and stitched the wound,' he added. 'But he needs rest and intensive tending. I am afraid I make a good battle companion but a poor nursemaid.'

'At least you have brought him home.' Leaning over the bed, Annais unpmned Gerbert's cloak and pulled it wide. His left arm, which thus far she had not seen, was bound in a sling and heavily bandaged. She did not touch it
—
that would be for Montabard's new chirurgeon to do — but she removed his boots and bathed his face tenderly with a damp cloth.

Gerbert found a smile. 'I am in heaven and you are an angel,' he said.

'Not yet. I intend to keep you on this earth until you are as old as Methuselah.' Annais wagged an admonitory finger and managed to keep the tears out of her voice.