The Last Emir

by The Last Emir (retail) (epub)

  They paused at the bottom of a flight of stairs where a green-clad soldier impeded them until Balthesar spoke to him and gained them access to the estate’s master.

  The emir sat on an octagonal patio at one end of a long esplanade, his seat offering an excellent view down the valley back towards the coast. A dozen guards stood close by, near enough to react to danger but not close enough to be intrusive. A small table held a bowl of fruit and a jug of water with ice floating in it. Arnau tried not to puzzle over how they had managed to find ice in this balmy climate and instead turned as they approached and peered down the valley. He half expected to see Madina from here. Still half expected to see a small column of Almohad soldiers, too, though in fact he could see neither, just the beauty of this splendid location.

  Balthesar greeted the emir and the two exchanged words briefly in Arabic before the island’s ruler rose and bowed his head to Arnau, who bent at the waist in respectful response. Then, the old brother pressed for something in rattled Arabic, which seemed to irritate the emir, who waved him aside. Still, Balthesar insisted and finally, with a resigned slump, the emir turned to Arnau. His face changed suddenly to an expression of companionable interest.

  ‘You escaped the clutches of the Almohad intruders, then, young Templar? I am suitably impressed. I myself slipped away, narrowly avoiding a similar fate.’

  Arnau sighed. ‘I did not escape without aid, Majesty. It was your wazir who found me bound in a cellar, tortured for information. He freed me and explained how I could exit the palace through the slave tunnels and out into the private dock. He also supplied me with horse and uniform and I travelled here by a roundabout route to discourage pursuit, carrying a message for you from him.’

  ‘And what does my faithful wazir say?’

  ‘He begs you to return to Madina Mayūrqa, Majesty, and retake your throne from the Lion of Alarcos.’

  The emir nodded slowly. ‘Of course, the Lion does not actually sit upon my throne, young man, for all the power he currently exerts. He threatens to rule, but he does not yet do so. Not while I live as emir, which is precisely why I took myself out from under his grasp.’

  Arnau shrugged. ‘An absent ruler is powerless, while a present usurper controls all. Look at what happened in England just a few short years ago: their king held captive by Duke Leopold and his despicable brother ruining the country in his absence. You cannot allow a similar situation to develop here.’

  The emir looked at Balthesar. ‘The young man is almost as persuasive as you, Qātil wariʻa. You teach him well.’

  The old knight laughed. ‘He was taught by a better man than I. But he is correct, Sidi. Blunt, but correct. The longer you leave Abd al-Azīz in command in Madina, the more power will drain from you until you are little more than an empty title and the Almohads rule these islands.’

  ‘What you ask is neither practical, nor even possible, for all its truth,’ the emir replied sadly. ‘Do you believe that if I could have retained a hold on my throne, I would have left the city and exiled myself here?’

  ‘Why, though?’ demanded Arnau. ‘If your wazir thinks you can fight back, why not?’

  ‘Because he is an able administrator, but not a politician or a warrior, and the practicalities of what such an action would entail escape him. While I am here there is still a chance, young Templar. If I return to Madina, though, I will die, and then there will be no impediment to Abd al-Azīz’s rise. He ships in men daily now, bolstering his force while my own army diminishes as men defect to him. And I had precious few to rely upon even before they began to seek his approval. Earlier in the year, I launched a campaign. Did you know of this?’

  Arnau and Balthesar both shook their heads.

  ‘It was my presumption that brought about Almohad interest in the first place. They controlled the island of Yabisah sixty miles south-west, which had historically been ruled from Mayūrqa, and so I launched a campaign to seize it. I mistakenly believed that it was of such little value to the caliphate that they would surrender it rather than devote strength to its defence, since they were still consolidating against the north. I was wrong. They fought like lions and threw together an armada from the mainland with which they massacred my invading force. I failed to take the island and in doing so lost the bulk of my veteran fighting men, while drawing the ireful attention of the caliph.’

  Arnau shivered at the thought of such a disaster.

  ‘So you see, I have only a diminished guard now. I do not have the strength to fight off the Almohads if they decide to come to Mayūrqa in force, while they have a sizeable garrison on Yabisah. Military action is simply not possible without the support of another leader, which is why I sought Aragon’s aid – in vain, sadly. I have treaties with Pisa and Genoa, but only commercial ones. They will not supply men or ships for my cause. No, we cannot fight the caliph. But as long as I stay in Madina I risk a knife in the night, and my death will leave Abd al-Azīz unopposed. I stayed as long as I could, but with the failure of the Aragonese embassy and the rise in strength of Abd al-Azīz, things were becoming untenable. Two nights ago, I narrowly avoided meeting my maker when one of my own guard, his loyalty swayed by Almohad coin, tried to slip a knife in my ribs. I left that morning, taking only those men of whom I could be certain.’

  Balthesar nodded. ‘It is a thorny problem. Madina is not safe for you. And perhaps Aragon could be persuaded to aid you, especially with the aid of the order, but such help would not come swiftly, for the Christian kings will not risk weakening their southern borders for your sake. No aid will come in time to help you against the Lion.’

  ‘Murder,’ Arnau said suddenly.

  ‘What?’ Balthesar turned a frown upon him, and the emir too furrowed his brow.

  The young sergeant shrugged. ‘If you were murdered in your sleep, you say the island would fall unopposed to the Lion of Alarcos.’

  ‘Yes. Mayūrqa would become a vassal of the caliph.’

  ‘But the same is as true of him as of you. He is the one with the authority in Madina, who draws troops over from this other island and seeks to supplant you. Without him, there will be no more ships brought and his men will still not significantly outnumber you. If the Lion were to die, you would regain your throne without a great deal of effort, I believe.’

  Balthesar and the emir shared a look, then the older knight turned to Arnau once more. ‘What you suggest is not only against the rules of our order, but it is forbidden by all ethical powers, both Christian and Moorish. War can be justified, but murder is still murder. You could be expelled from the order for even suggesting it.’

  ‘No, Balthesar. Perhaps according by law and custom it is forbidden, but by ethical codes it is not. You once told me that the Order of the Temple was not about Christian and heathen – it was about protecting the good from the wicked. And if the death of a wicked man protects the good on a grand scale, then that is the very duty of the order. That is why the order exists, is it not?’

  Balthesar chuckled. ‘I fear you missed your vocation, young Vallbona. You should have studied law.’

  ‘Is it not?’ pressed Arnau.

  ‘I suppose it is,’ the older knight agreed. ‘Though it still sits badly with me, for regardless of the reason, murder is still murder and I will not be a party to knives in the dark. That is not the Christian way.’

  ‘Nor will I,’ Arnau said. ‘And in fact, the shadowy death of the man would not be enough, I think. He has to be seen to die, and to die hard and for the right reasons. I used the wrong term. It is not a murder, but an execution, of which I speak.’

  ‘What are you suggesting?’ the emir probed.

  ‘We need to kill the Lion of Alarcos, man to man, in the open and both armed.’

  ‘A duel?’ Balthesar frowned. ‘You cannot believe he would accept such a proposition?’

  ‘No, probably not. Se we must corner him and force him into it.’

  The old knight chewed on his lip. ‘You seem curiously keen on this, Vallb
ona. Little more than a day ago, you wanted nothing more than to flee Mayūrqa altogether and abandon our quest.’

  Arnau’s face hardened. ‘It’s astounding what a few hours of torture will do. It rather focuses one’s mind. I would love to be back in Rourell, and I still believe our quest to be a failure, but mark my words: if it is remotely possible to leave this island having sent the Lion of Alarcos to his grave, then I will not board a ship until it is done.’ The determination that had been growing on his journey from Madina was now burning like a brand.

  The emir smiled. ‘You are a rare jewel, young Templar. Such valour. Beware the lure of vengeance, though. It is a heady drug, but like all drugs, it leaves you hollow and poor in the end.’

  Arnau shook his head. ‘Revenge is a drive, certainly, but this is more than that. This is duty. It is right. It is necessary.’ And after all, revenge was what had turned the Lion of Alarcos into the hollow monster he was.

  Balthesar folded his arms. ‘You are correct, I think. But it needs careful planning, and it needs to be a proper response to a usurping noble. He needs to be dealt with formally, and the emir here should be present in the city, ready to step in and take control, suppressing any dissent when it happens. We need to be seen to be doing the emir’s work, not our own.’

  ‘We?’ Arnau said archly.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘And what of your own quest – our quest,’ Arnau reminded him. ‘What of the relic?’ he turned to the emir. ‘Will you still give us the arm of Saint Stephen if we do this?’

  A look crossed the emir’s face now, and it took Arnau a moment to realise what it was: guilt. His brow furrowed, and he bit his sore, tender lip. ‘There isn’t one, is there? The relic. It doesn’t exist.’

  The emir nodded slowly. ‘It did not take long to find the record. The clerks located it swiftly. The bone was taken away in the purge of Muhàmmad and added to the rest of the confiscated Christian artefacts, which were classed as refuse and dumped somewhere. Their location will forever be a mystery, for the location of their disposal is not recorded. They could be anywhere on Mayūrqa, or even out to sea.’

  Arnau huffed. ‘You found this out straight away. Were you planning on telling us this, or continuing to hold the information against us aiding you?’

  Balthesar leaned in. ‘I believe the emir intended to show us the record. It was removed from the office and taken to him. That was why I could not locate it in my search. But it matters not, right now. The relic is gone and that quest is over. And whether we could ever find it or not, we would still lend our aid to the emir, because it is the right thing to do. Do you disagree?’

  There was a difficult silence as the three men looked at one another, the emir oddly chastened, Arnau simmering, Balthesar determined. Finally, Arnau nodded. ‘You are right. We should help the emir. And I never believed we would find the arm anyway. What we are doing now is far more important than the reason we came here in the first place. You kept telling me to have faith, and I do. I think your whole quest was always a fool’s errand, but I see now how God set us upon the path so that we could be here to do his true work and battle the evil to be found on Mayūrqa.’

  Balthesar straightened, his face working through a number of expressions before settling on a smile. ‘Faith. ’Tis an odd thing, eh, Vallbona? We must plan our course of action, then, and afterwards you can tell me why the Lion no longer hunts me.’

  Chapter Seventeen

  Friday, 11 June 1199

  10.30 a.m.

  It felt like war – like a campaign of invasion, if only on a minimal scale. The emir’s guard numbered less than fifty on the rural estate, those men upon whom he claimed he could faithfully rely, and they had set out as a small military column, armed and armoured for trouble, at dawn. The dust from the road rose like a grey curtain behind their horses as the party closed on the walls of Madina once more, the emir and his close advisers to the fore, his guard behind, including Balthesar and Arnau, both still clad in mail and green burnous.

  This was not what Arnau had ever envisaged upon taking his vows. Far from defending Christian pilgrims from the machinations of wicked men, he was now dressed in the colours of a prince of the Moors, denying his own cross as he prepared to fight both against the crescent and for the crescent. Would Lütolf have agreed to do such a thing? He doubted it, though somehow in Balthesar’s company such things seemed so reasonable, so acceptable. He shuddered to think what the preceptrix would think. And yet, as he had reasoned a hundred times since he had dressed that morning, no matter that he now wore green instead of black, he was still fighting for the good against the evil. And that was what counted. Still, a small part of him yearned to strip this burnous from his torso and return to the red cross of the order.

  So much could go wrong. The success of the day relied upon the persuasiveness of the emir himself, the loyalty of his people, the strength and stealth of the two Templars, and even, when it came down to it, basic luck.

  The first obstacle would be the city walls. Nominally, the emir still had authority in Madina, and certainly his wazir held official control in the city in his absence. But the fact remained that the real power in Madina was the Almohad lord Abd al-Azīz, and if his influence and power had grown sufficiently, it was at least possible that he could seal the city against its own ruler.

  Thus it was that Arnau felt the tension rise as they approached the gate. It was late morning now and plenty of people filled the road, surging in through the gate on foot or on horseback, unburdened or bearing baskets or hauling carts of goods, the two green-clad men at the gates only occasionally taking an interest in someone who drew their attention.

  As the emir’s party approached the gate, two riders moved out in front of their lord to make sure the populace moved respectfully out of their ruler’s path, and as the crowd parted the gate guards peered at the approaching group. Arnau tensed yet further, his teeth indenting his lower lip behind the chain mail veil attached to the pointed steel helm. Not all the soldiers were so veiled, but some were, and Arnau felt considerably more comfortable behind the mask than in open view.

  The last of the public shifted aside and waited on the verge, close to the riverbank, leaving the party of guardsmen with their master closing on the soldiers at the gate. Arnau watched between the heads of the men in front, half expecting a shout to go up from those above the parapet and the gate itself to swing shut. It came as a great relief when the two soldiers at the side of the huge doorway instead bowed deeply. The emir nodded his acknowledgement to them and the party rode through the gatehouse and into the city without incident.

  Inside, they passed first between the stable where Arnau had first collected his horse the previous day and a small knot of houses, then into open arable land, spotted with fruit orchards. Gradually they moved on into the urban centre, approaching the bridge across the river, the heart of Madina rising on the slope beyond. The people in the city streets swept out of the way of the mounted party, waiting with respect, surprise and thankfully joy in many cases, as their ruler passed by. The city’s residents came to their doorsteps and windows to see their emir as he returned to his palace.

  Up the slope they rode, approaching the Al-Mudaina. Arnau shifted uncomfortably in the saddle. Since he was ostensibly a soldier of the emir, hidden among others, he had foregone the two folded blankets between his rump and the leather, but had managed one smaller garment folded beneath him which did not look as out of place yet relieved the worst of his posterior pain. Fortunately those wounds had healed further overnight and he was no longer in quite the same pain or discomfort. Even his shoulders had recovered a little, though they’d stiffened up again with clutching his reins during the ride.

  The young sergeant’s eyes now swivelled up to the walls of the palace. Men in green stood there along with men in black and white. Unlike the city gate, which stood open during the day in times of peace, the palace gates naturally remained shut until they were opened for someone, then
closed again. The question was whether they would open for their master today. The green figures atop the walls did outnumber the others, but that was no guarantee that their loyalties continued to lie with the emir. The sheer power of the Lion of Alarcos would have swayed more of the island’s people than mere gold.

  It was a bad sign, if not an entirely unexpected one, when the gate failed to swing open at the approach of the emir’s party. The wide street outside and the gardens that lay beyond, between the palace and that pleasant little tavern, had been thronged with people as the riders first crested the slope but now, as they bore down on the closed gate, the entire area had miraculously emptied as though the populace expected some kind of fight. They might get one, too, pondered Arnau as the lead riders came to a halt before the gate, the rest of the party slowing behind them.

  The number of figures atop the wall had gradually increased over the past minute, and there were clearly officers and higher palace functionaries among them.

  One of the leading riders untied his chain veil, allowing it to drop to the side, cleared his throat and barked out a long order, which included among its commands the name ‘Abd-Allāh ibn Ishāq ibn Ghāniya’, and the words ‘emir’ and ‘Mayūrqa’. A command to open the gate, as Arnau knew full well. Though he still could translate only a few basic words of the language, he was comfortable with whatever was said here, since it had all been planned in his own tongue back at the Al-Fabia estate, with Arnau present and participating.

  Silence greeted the order and Arnau could feel the tension rising in the air, prickling his skin, as men atop the gate huddled and argued. The gate remained resolutely shut. The rider who had spoken was counting under his breath. His lips moved with each iteration, and finally he took another deep breath and then barked out a second order, this time adding a little force and sounding more than a touch angry.