Mamluk

by J. K. Swift

  King Henry was already seated at the front of the room on a raised platform, his pale face pinched and tired under the delicate gold crown on his head. He had on a suit of mail no more robust than his crown, but it was of a proper size for his physique and he wore it well. His brother, Prince Amalric, was noticeably absent, for if he had been in the room, he would have no doubt been sitting at the front with the king.

  The marshal of the city stepped forward and bent to one knee before his king. They exchanged a few words that Foulques could not hear, and then the marshal rose and turned to the crowd. He stomped the heel of his boot three times at the foot of the raised platform and all murmurs from the crowd ceased.

  “King Henry has graced us with forty ships laden with supplies and soldiers from Cyprus, including lamb enough for every man on the wall. Tonight we feast on meat! Praise God for answering our prayers!”

  A cheer went up through those gathered. “Praise God!”

  The cheering went on for what seemed like a long time but not once did Henry smile or acknowledge it. He sat in his chair, staring straight ahead. Foulques wondered if, perhaps, he was having one of his seizures. But once the room quieted down, King Henry stirred, and pushed himself to his feet.

  “I thank you, commanders, for your support and warm welcome. And God thanks you for your bravery and dedication to the faith of our lord, Jesus Christ. I have been to the walls. I have seen the unholy forces you have faced, and I commend each and every one of you. You have served the Kingdom of Jerusalem with honor and dignity. Now, go back to your men, repeat my words to them, and tell them their king said he finds himself blessed to have such subjects. Go with God. Marshal, clear the room.”

  Foulques turned, eager to step outside, but a hand on his shoulder stopped him. He turned to find a Cypriot knight he did not know.

  “Admiral. The king requires your presence.”

  “Of course,” Foulques said, unable to keep the surprise from his voice.

  He and the knight pressed themselves up against one side wall to allow those leaving access to the door. Soon there were only a few men left in the room, standing before the king. Foulques and the knight joined them. Among a few others, those present included Grand Master Villiers, Marshal Clermont, and the Grand Master of the Temple.

  King Henry turned to the marshal of the city. “Give me your report.”

  Marshal Levesque cleared his throat. “We are holding the outer wall, but for how long, I cannot say. Their cursed trebuchets are taking the towers apart stone by stone. Meanwhile, the Pisans’ war machine has broken down again, though their engineers claim they will have it repaired soon. I suggest we use the two thousand soldiers you brought from Cypress—”

  “Two thousand?” Marshal Clermont said. “With all due respect Your Grace, that seems a poor number for forty ships.”

  The other men cast stern glances at the marshal for interrupting, but the logic of his words soon had their eyes straying back to the king, who remained silent for a long moment before he spoke.

  “I agree. It is a poor number. But it is all I had. Cyprus has been left virtually undefended.”

  “Then why bring so many ships?” Foulques was surprised the voice asking the question was his own.

  Henry looked at him. “In part, for morale, Admiral Foulques.”

  “And the other part?” Foulques asked.

  “To evacuate as many of my people as possible before I capitulate the city.”

  The only sound in the room was the exhalation of every man present.

  “The beginning of the end,” Marshal Clermont said under his breath.

  Then everyone spoke at once.

  “What of Longshanks’s forces?”

  “Surely reinforcements are possible if we hold out long enough,” Grand Master Beaujeu said.

  “No one is coming,” Henry said. “The Christian world has other problems, it seems. I have made up my mind. A party of my choosing will go to the sultan and negotiate terms for our surrender.”

  He met the open-mouthed stares of every man in the room. When he was convinced no one was going to interrupt, he continued. “My secretary, Robert, will be in charge of negotiations. Master Beaujeu, I would like Brother Guillaume de Cafran to accompany Robert as I hear his Arabic is excellent, and I am told the new sultan does not speak French. Admiral Foulques. You speak Turkic, do you not?”

  It took Foulques a second to find his voice. “I do, Your Grace. Though my understanding of it is better than my speech. I definitely do not have a diplomat’s mastery of the language.”

  Henry waved his protest away. “Arabic is the language of diplomacy. I would merely like someone there that can understand what the infidels are saying behind our backs, if necessary. Will you go?”

  It was framed as a question, for no king had the authority to command a Knight of Saint John or a Templar. They were the subjects of His Eminence the Pope, and God Himself, and by divine law accountable to no one else. But Foulques had learned long ago, when answering a request made by a member of a royal family, no matter who you were, there were very few choices in how one responded. No Christian in his right mind would willingly walk into a Saracen army’s camp to beg for his life and the lives of others. But that was not the weight bearing down on Foulques’s mind when he considered the question. He did not want to go because Foulques knew he would be there. It would be unlikely that Badru Hashim would be present for the negotiations themselves, but he would be somewhere in the enemy camp, and that was enough.

  You are not ready.

  Marshal Clermont’s voice sounded so clearly in his head, Foulques glanced his way to see if he had spoken, but he was staring at his feet.

  Foulques could not bring the king’s frail face into focus as he looked in his direction and said, “Of course, Your Grace. When do we leave?”

  Badru watched the Royal Mamluks escort the Franks into the sultan’s Dihliz. Their pale eyes flitted about nervously as they took in the decadence of color and fabric all about them. The awe with which they beheld the carpets and tapestries of the red tent only served to illustrate just how barbaric these people were.

  The silk carpet they tread upon with dusty boots had images of a hundred different windows weaved into its design. As they trampled it underfoot, each window caught the light in a different manner, all but blinding the Franks with the splendor of the dancing hues of red and gold.

  Badru shook his head. This was a tent on a battlefield. Whatever would they do if allowed into the sultan’s palace in Cairo?

  His heart picked up a beat when he saw the sharp blue eyes and long hair of the last man to enter. He was strongly built, with the rocking, easy stride of one who was equally at home on the ground, with sword in hand, or on the back of a horse. Confidence, not bravado, was built into his every movement, until his eyes settled on Badru kneeling on the floor at the sultan’s side. He met Badru’s look with a fierce gaze of his own, but not before Badru saw what was behind it.

  This brought a keen sense of disappointment to Badru, for he and the Hospitaller had a shared past. One that had not yet resolved itself. The Hospitaller and his Genoan accomplice had humiliated Badru eight years ago, and lived. Although he did not go out of his way to actively search for the Knight of Saint John, his face frequented Badru’s mind, and he kept himself open to any news of his whereabouts. Their fates were intertwined in a way Badru did not yet understand, but he had faith that Allah would reward him by bringing the two of them together once again. And he had been right.

  Though he had tried many times, Badru was never able to recreate the intensity of the experience he had felt when the two of them fought on the dock of Gibelet eight years ago. It was a hard thing to describe, even to himself. Simply put, he had never felt so… alive.

  It had been a meeting worthy of the Furusiyya. Although he had been furious at the man’s escape at the time, looking back on it years later, he was glad he had not taken the Hospitaller’s life then. For it meant there wa
s a chance they could meet again, and perhaps recreate that perfect moment.

  But that dream died there in the sultan’s tent, when he looked behind the eyes of the man called Foulques de Villaret and saw what he eventually saw in every other man: Fear. Badru had broken him in their fight and he had never regained his sense of worth. Or perhaps Badru’s mind had simply painted his own memories with a fondness that had never existed in the first place. Whatever the case, he recognized that the Hospitaller was a broken man now, and it saddened Badru deeply.

  Perhaps he should give the man back his sword. He once had fantasies of using it against him in a second battle, but that no longer held any interest for him.

  No. No, he would not retrieve the weapon from his tent and return it to the Hospitaller. If he was as broken as Badru suspected, it would not be fair to the sword-smith who had put so much of his soul into the forging of that fine weapon.

  Badru realized the vizier and one of the Franks, a Templar, had been speaking together for some time.

  “My Sultan says seven days is too long. He will give you two and grant you safe passage. You may vacate the city by ship, or by foot from the front gate, but you must lay down your weapons and leave all your horses behind.”

  The Templar looked to the diplomat of the three, who shook his head. “That is impossible,” the Templar began. “We cannot leave by foot, for where would we go? There are no cities in the Levant that would take us in. And we need more than two days to arrange for ships—”

  A thunderous crash shook the earth and everything in the tent. A lantern tipped over and its glass shield shattered, spraying fire over the carpet at the sultan’s feet. Men’s screams could be heard just outside the tent.

  The sultan let out a yelp and jumped up on his chair to avoid the flames.

  Badru leapt to his feet, ripped a small carpet from beneath a table, and began beating the fire out before it could spread. Smoke billowed up, but he was successful.

  A Royal Mamluk burst into the tent.

  “What is happening?” the sultan asked in a high-pitched voice.

  “The Franks have launched an attack with their catapult, My Sultan!”

  Khalil’s eyes went wide. He leveled a finger at the Franks and said in Turkic, “You dare attack during a peace negotiation?” His eyes grew wider still as a new thought occurred to him. “You waited until you knew I would be here and then you launched your attack. You are merely bait! Sacrifices!”

  The Hospitaller was the only one who seemed to understand the sultan’s Turkic.

  “You are mistaken, Sultan. It was an accident. Our engineers were repairing our war engine and it must have unintentionally gone off—”

  “Seize them!” The sultan said, growing more frantic with every second. His eyes darted madly about, like he expected a boulder to come crashing through the tent walls at any moment. “Execute them all! Send their heads back to their treacherous king tied to the balls of a donkey!”

  Badru stood up to his full height. “Secure the prisoners,” he shouted, then dared to put his hand protectively on Khalil’s arm. “Come with me, Sultan. I will escort you to safety.”

  Khalil cast one surprised look at the huge hand on his arm, but then obediently climbed down off his chair. Vice-Sultan Baydara appeared on the other side of Khalil and took his other arm. “Perhaps I should accompany you as well,” the older man said to Badru, looking every bit as disoriented as Khalil. “The sultan may have need of me.”

  “Of course,” Badru said. He maneuvered the two of them through the flurry of activity erupting within the tent as the Royal Mamluks forced the emissaries turned prisoners to their knees.

  As he passed by them, Badru called out. “Do not execute anyone until I return!”

  His scimitar was in his hand and he used it to swat the flaps of the tent doorway aside.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  The Royal Mamluks dragged Foulques, Robert, and the Templar, Guillaume de Cafran, out of the tent and forced the knights to strip off their armor and boots. They left them squinting in the sun, bare-chested and on their knees with nothing on save their breeches.

  Foulques and Guillaume resisted at first, but they had been relieved of their weapons before entering the sultan’s tent so there was little they could do. And these were no ordinary Mamluks. They were the sultan’s personal guard, highly trained and brutally efficient with the pommels of their swords. When they were finished, Foulques and Guillaume were both bleeding from their noses and mouths and Foulques could feel his right eye beginning to swell and color.

  Robert, however, had not been wearing armor and had not resisted. Still fully clothed, he lowered himself to the ground between Foulques and the Templar, brushing pebbles from under his knees as he did so.

  “Will they truly kill us?” Robert asked.

  “Not you,” Guillaume said. “You are headed to the sultan’s harem, I suspect.”

  They remained there for the better part of an hour. By the time the large shadow of Badru Hashim fell over Foulques, his back was burnt, and he actually welcomed the reprieve. That feeling quickly dissipated when Badru walked around in front of the Christians and stared at each man in turn with his gray eyes.

  Robert could not take the silence of the Mamluk’s appraisal. “We are peaceful emissaries. Executing us is not the proper etiquette, no matter what your perceived offense. If you release us immediately, I guarantee King Henry will—”

  Badru’s hand snaked out and grabbed Robert by the throat, choking off whatever he was going to say next. He lifted the man to his feet with one arm, like he was nothing but a pile of fine clothes. Guillaume cursed and attempted to stand, but got the flat of a Mamluk blade across his back for the effort. Badru kept his grip on Robert and looked at Foulques, who was still on his knees and had not moved.

  “I have convinced my sultan to spare your lives,” Badru said.

  “Why would you do that?” Foulques asked. The words came out with a slur to them. Apparently he had some swelling in his jaw he was not even aware of.

  “Perhaps because you are already dead inside.”

  Badru gave Robert a shake and tossed him to the ground. He scrabbled around in the sand, coughing, and sucking in great mouthfuls of air.

  “Do you still have my sword?”

  Badru nodded. “Now I have two.”

  “And I have two hundred young men you once mistakenly thought were yours.”

  Badru smiled. The gesture looked out of place on his broad face. “There was a time when that statement would have driven me into a rage. Back when I was the simple pawn of a slaver. But that was a long time ago. Now I serve the most powerful man in the world and I have no need to live in the past.” He put his hands on his knees and leaned over to look into Foulques’s face. “Unlike some.”

  He stayed like that for a long moment, staring at the Hospitaller, looking for something only he could know. He must have found it, for he stood up abruptly and spoke to the Mamluks standing behind the three men. “Let them go. It is the sultan’s command.”

  “Their armor and weapons, Emir?”

  Badru shook his head. “I am sure their god will provide everything they need.” He turned his back on Foulques and the others and began walking away.

  “Hashim!” Foulques called out.

  The large man’s head turned back but his body did not.

  “I will come for that sword some day,” Foulques said.

  Badru gave his head a sad shake. “No, Hospitaller. No, you will not.”

  Shouting in Turkic, the Mamluks pulled off Robert’s boots and then kicked the men to their feet. They shoved and prodded them in their backs with the points of their swords. The message was clear, even to those who had no knowledge of the language.

  Run back to your city.

  The three of them marched barefoot and bleeding back to the Gate of Saint Anthony. Leaning outside the open gate was Goodyear Jimmy. He nodded and pursed his lips as he gave Foulques’s near nakedness
the once over. He handed him a full wineskin.

  “So. Would you say your first peace negotiation went well?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Much like any other day in the Levant, the sun rose into a sky bluer than the Mid-Earth Sea. However, there were two things that set this day apart from all others. First of all, it was Foulques’s birthday. He was thirty-two years old. The second thing that made this day so different from all the previous ones, was the long line of siege towers on the horizon, blocking out the rays of the sun.

  The enemy engineers must have had a sleepless night, for there were nearly a hundred of the structures. There was no uniform design to them. Some were tall and gangly, with large wooden wheels at their bases. Others were squat and broad enough to hold fifty men on their upper platforms. A third design was wheel-less, and really nothing more than a twelve-foot-wide ladder, but with rope netting instead of rungs. Its bearers would flip it up against the wall for men to scramble up like spiders.

  The compact form of Glynn appeared next to Foulques. “Well, is that not a cheery sight to greet one with first thing in the mornin’?”

  The knights and sergeants assumed their places at dawn, but the towers did not begin their rumbling approach until three hours later. Instead, the Saracens unleashed “the Furious,” “the Victorious,” and countless “black bulls,” the lesser catapults. The barrage was devastating.

  The Tower of the Countess of Blois was the first to fall, crumbling in upon itself leaving nothing more than a great heap of rubble that no one could have hoped to survive. An hour later, “the Furious” made a direct hit at the base of the Tower of Saint Nicholas. It pitched forward, spilling thousands of pounds of stone across the killing field and creating an enticingly low obstacle for the enemy to target and gain access to the outer wall.