The Templar Salvation (2010) (57 page)

The local midwife who doubled as the town’s physician helped Conrad splint and dress Maysoon’s wrist, and they were offered food and drink. By nightfall, the two of them were huddled together by a window high in a carved-out cone of rock whose sole occupier had recently passed away, watching the sky above the rim of the canyon run the gamut of imaginable pinks and purples before settling into a crisp, uniform blackness.

Conrad hadn’t said much all evening, and he hadn’t said a word for the last half hour. Every breath he exhaled was swirling with despair.

Maysoon pulled back from his chest and scrutinized his face.

“What is it?” she asked.

He didn’t answer or meet her eyes at first, seemingly lost in his melancholy. After a long moment, he said, “This. What I’m doing. It’s pointless.”

“Why do you say that?”

“It’s pointless. Hector, Miguel … they’re gone. God knows what’s waiting for me in Cyprus.” He sighed heavily. “I can’t do this alone.”

“You’re not alone.”

He looked at her, and his face brightened a touch. “You’ve been magnificent. But it’s still pointless. Even together, we can’t do this. I was a fool to think I’d ever be able to make a difference.”

She edged closer. “No, you weren’t. You were right to go after it, you were right to find those books and get them back. But if you can’t achieve what you set out to do … it doesn’t mean you still can’t change the world.”

“What do you mean?”

“You wanted to use these writings, this knowledge, the same way it’s been used for the last couple of hundred years. You wanted to blackmail the pope with it and get him to free your friends and reinstate your Order. Which is a noble goal, of course. You had to try and make that happen. But if you’d succeeded … the knowledge in these books would have stayed locked away and hidden from the rest of the world.”

Conrad’s face crinkled with confusion. “Keeping it secret was why the popes gave us anything we wanted. It’s what allowed us to build up our strength and our standing while waiting for the right time to share it all with everyone out there.”

“Was there ever going to be a right time? Or is it always the right time?” She shook her head. “People have kept these texts hidden for a thousand years. You and the Templars who came before you have been using them as a weapon for centuries, and if Hector and Miguel were still alive, you’d still be trying to use them that way. Maybe the time has come to look at things differently. Maybe it’s time you started thinking about how to bring these writings to light instead of keeping them locked away.”

“It’s not possible,” Conrad countered. “Not now. Not when the pope is as strong as he is. Look at what happened to the Cathars. The Vatican has inquisitors everywhere. Nothing heretical can ever be allowed to make itself heard.”

“There’s always a way. Look at Rumi. His preachings were all about love and looking inside ourselves for enlightenment. His words would have been considered blasphemous by any conservative cleric, but they caught the heart of the sultan himself, who invited him to live and preach in his capital and became his protector.”

“I’m not a preacher.”

She smiled. “No, but maybe it’s time you started thinking like one.” She drew nearer and kissed him before slipping her tunic off her shoulders. “But not in every sense of the word.”

THEY SPENT THE NEXT DAYS working the wheat fields with the villagers by day and debating their options by night. How to transport the texts was still a central problem. They only had one horse to their name, and—not that they had the means to pay for it—there was only one open wagon in the settlement, one the villagers couldn’t do without.

Conrad couldn’t see a way out of their quandary, and with each passing day, his anger and frustration grew. The thought of his brethren rotting away in French jails and his impotence at doing anything to help them was eating away at him. A week earlier, he believed he could make a difference. All that had changed with the ambush in the canyon.

Then on the morning of the ninth day, everything changed again when half a dozen pairs of hooves and a familiar voice echoed through the village.

“Maysoon,” the man bellowed. “Conrad. Show yourselves if you don’t want every man, woman, and child in this village to perish.”

Conrad hurried to the window, closely followed by Maysoon. They looked out to see her Qassem and the two surviving hired hands trotting slowly down the central alley of the cone houses. Her brother had a woman with him, sitting side-saddle on his horse. He held a dagger to her throat. They recognized her from the fields. She was the sister of the midwife who had tended to Maysoon’s wrist.

“How did they know it was us?” Maysoon asked.

“The woman,” Conrad said, indicating the hostage with a nod. “She knows our names.”

“But how did they find us?”

“Greed and revenge,” he said. “There are no better motivators.”

“What are we going we do?”

Conrad glared at the three men, men who had killed his friends, men who had scuttled his plans and sealed his brethren’s fate.

Men who had to pay.

“End this,” he replied. He then leaned out and shouted, “Let the woman go. I’m coming out.”

Qassem looked up, saw Conrad, and said nothing. He just threw the woman to the ground and glared at him.

Conrad spotted his prosthetic hand, dangling from the side of the Turk’s saddle. It only made him angrier. He pulled back from the window and strode across to a wall niche and reached for his scimitar.

“You’re not going down there alone,” Maysoon told him, finding her crossbow, but as she grabbed it, her wrist gave way under its weight. She winced with pain as the crossbow clattered to the floor.

“No,” he flared. “Not with your wrist like that. I need you to stay here. This is my fight.”

“I want to help,” she insisted.

“You’ve done more than enough, more than I ever had the right to ask for,” he said, his eyes burning with determination. “I need to do this alone.”

His tone made it clear he wasn’t open to negotiation.

She breathed long and hard, then nodded grudgingly.

He picked up the crossbow, set it down in the niche, and picked up her dagger. “Help me with this,” he said, placing it against his left forearm. “Tie it to my arm.”

“Conrad …”

“Do it, please.”

She found some leather straps and used them to attach the dagger’s handle to the stump of his left arm.

“Tighter,” he said.

She tightened the straps to a solid, tourniquet-level pinch. The blade was now an extension of his arm.

He picked up the scimitar with his right hand. Felt his veins swell with fury. Looked at her. Moved in and swept her up in a long, feverish kiss.

And stepped out into the sun.

“Where’s my whore of a sister?” Qassem barked.

“Inside,” Conrad replied, sidestepping, moving into wider, open ground. “But you’ll need to get through me first.”

Qassem’s eyes flattened to narrow slits, and he smiled. “That was my plan.”

The Turk nodded to his men. The two riders drew their scimitars, spurred their mounts, and charged.

Conrad watched them hurtle toward him, side by side, and put himself into a defensive crouch, knees bent, shoulders tight, the blade of his sword held straight up in front of his face. Old instincts flared back to life and slowed down time, putting every detail of his approaching opponents into hard focus, allowing him time to read them and plan his blows with deadly accuracy. He spotted a vulnerability in the stance of the rider to his left, who was right-handed, and decided to take him out first. With the riders less than ten yards away, he charged them, bolting at an angle, beelining for the man to his left. The move startled his opponents, who had to yank on their horses’ reins viciously to adjust course. Conrad timed it perfectly and got right up to the horseman to his left before the one to his right could correct course fast enough. His target was also struggling to control his mount, opening him up to Conrad’s blade that struck him across his midsection and sliced right through his side. The Turk flinched sideways and fell off his mount. Just as he hit the ground, Conrad was on him and finished him off with a dagger to the heart.

The second rider pulled his horse around and, angered by the knight’s counterattack, came storming back. Conrad didn’t move. He stood his ground, giving his mind the time it needed to find an opening in the man’s reckless charge, coiling his muscles for the next assault.

He saw it and made his move, darting sideways, putting the dead Turk’s body between himself and the horseman to confuse his advance. The rider made the same mistake his crony had and allowed Conrad to get onto the wrong side of his blade, giving the knight the advantage of going for his undefended flank. Conrad let his sword rip, swinging with ferocious strength and opening up a wide gash right through the man’s thigh, virtually chopping it off. The rider instinctively pulled on his reins, shocked by the sight of his exposed muscle and flesh. Conrad didn’t give him any breathing space. He charged after him and was on him before the rider even realized he was there, striking him from the right, ripping his back open before shoving him off his saddle and finishing him off with another blow.

And that’s when the bolt struck his shoulder.

It rammed into him from behind with a violent, silent impact.

Conrad staggered forward a couple of steps under the momentum of the hit, then turned around, heavy-footed. Qassem had dismounted. He was standing by his horse, staring at Conrad, the spent crossbow in his hand. He threw it to the ground, drew his scimitar, and strode toward Conrad, his brow gnarled in an infernal scowl.

Conrad knew it was bad. It had hit him in the right shoulder. His good arm. His only good one. The one he needed to work the sword. The arrow was lodged firmly in his shoulder blade, unleashing a cascade of pain with the slightest movement of his right arm.

A cascade he would have to ignore if he was going to defend himself.

Qassem didn’t break step, his eyes locked on Conrad, his sword held low to his side. Then his stride turned to a trot, then a sprint, and with a loud howl, he raised his sword and, with a running leap, brought it crashing down onto Conrad.

Conrad lunged sideways, putting his body out of reach and blocking the blow with his own sword. The blades clanged heavily into each other, the strike reverberating through Conrad and shooting a spasm of white-hot pain across his shoulder. He felt his knees buckle, but he couldn’t let them fail him now, couldn’t let the pain cripple him. Qassem spun around and swung again, his blade flying through a full loop before crashing back down against Conrad’s sword.

The third strike flung the scimitar out of Conrad’s hand, his fingers unable to ignore the agony in his shoulder.

Qassem stood still, breathing in deep snorts, and smiled. His eyes dropped to the dagger strapped to Conrad’s forearm and his smile turned into a mocking grin.

“I don’t know whether to kill you, or just take your other hand off—maybe your feet too—and let you live on like a pathetic, crippled maggot,” he chortled. “Maybe I should do that to you both.”

Conrad’s feet faltered. He was having trouble breathing, and he felt a taste of blood in his mouth. His heart spasmed at the realization. The arrow hadn’t just lodged in his shoulder. It had punctured his lung.

He knew how that would end.

He’d seen it enough times.

He looked up at Qassem, and saw a reflection of his realization in the Turk’s face. The man held his gaze for a moment, then raised his scimitar like an executioner and held it there.

“What the hell. Maybe I’d better do it now before you rob me of the pleasure—”

And his face froze in a tight clench just as something thumped into him from behind and crunched its way out of his chest.

A bolt.

He stared down at the arrowhead that was sticking out of his rib cage and dripping with blood, and surprise flooded his face. He turned around, slowly, Conrad following his gaze.

Maysoon was standing in the clearing, by his horse.

A crossbow in her hands.

Pain visibly etched into her face.

The woman from the fields, the one the Turk had taken hostage, was there, beside her. A clutch of bolts in her hand.

Qassem moved to head toward them, but Conrad wasn’t about to give him that chance. He pushed hard on his legs and rose up, using his body’s momentum to tackle the Turk and plunge his dagger deep into his back, twisting and turning and grinding it in, making sure he cut through as many organs and ducts and arteries as possible.

The two men tumbled to the ground in a bloody, dusty heap.

The Turk spasmed and gurgled for a few seconds, his eyes wide and locked on to Conrad with silent rage, before he gave out a final shudder and his body went limp.