Ignoring the bruises and the warm ache in his muscles, Aymeric hefted the sword, moving it from hand to hand as he rolled his shoulders, working his muscles. He raised the flat of the blade up before his face, as though honouring an opponent, and then with blistering speed made a savage sweep, the blade cutting at the pulp of the tree. This time, rather than hammer the blade deep into the wood, he compensated correctly, shifting his weight and balance on the balls of his feet, and moved nimbly to the left, reversing his swing to deliver a deeper cut to the other side of the tree trunk.
The Master at Arms said nothing, but smiled, which was enough.
This then was Aymeric’s young life. Sword practice in the morning until he was too tired to lift the weapon, Latin and Greek after lunch, language, history and philosophy, then more sword practice in the evening before supper, prayers and duties in between, and finally bed in the aspirant’s dormitory.
So, it had gone for several months, but today was different.
Today he was excited, and distracted, which was the main cause of his blunders at practice.
“Go and get yourself cleaned up. Your father is waiting for you in the refectory.”
◆◆◆
His father sat at alone at one of the long trestle tables.
There were a dozen young aspirants in line to receive their bread and vitals at the far end of the courtyard. Aymeric eschewed eating, instead joining the man at the table. He hadn’t seen father in almost a year. He had aged hard in that time. There was a deep-set weariness about the man. Aymeric sat. For the first time in his life, it was obvious that his father was getting older. It wasn’t a comforting thought.
“It is time we had words, my boy,” Lucian De Bologna said. “Boy?” He inclined his head, studying Aymeric across the table. “You’re hardly that anymore, are you?”
“I am still your son.”
“That you are. But more than that, you will be a man soon, and a man should know his beginnings.”
“I know all I need to know,” Aymeric said. “You are my father.”
The man smiled, but there was a melancholy sadness about that smile that threw Aymeric. He couldn’t recall seeing such vulnerability in his father before.
“It is kind of you to humour an old man, but I have had time aplenty to dwell on this and come to my own truth. You deserved to know your mother, and that you didn’t is my fault. I failed you both. All I can say is that I was young and foolish, and I repent my failings before the Lord every day. He may forgive me, but I never will.” Before Aymeric could answer, his father went on, describing the flight from Acre, and the woman and child who were left behind in the dark.
“Did they…die?” he asked, softly, once the tale was done.
“I do not know. I will never know, and it eats at me like a festering wound. But it is not them that concerns me at this juncture, at least not only them. I came to ask you two things. One, and the first, is your forgiveness. Do I have it?”
“Of course, father. Gladly given. No son has a better father.”
“And no father has a better son,” Lucian replied, although the sadness did not leave his eyes. “The Master at Arms tells me you are progressing well.”
Aymeric smiled at that.
“It is more than he tells me,” he replied. “Only this morning he likened me to an ox.”
“Better that than a sow,” Lucian replied, and suddenly a cloud lifted from between them. Aymeric was glad to see his father smile.
“The second thing?”
The man grew serious again. “Walk with me, son,” he said. “And we shall talk, man to man, for this requires a man’s decision.”
◆◆◆
They did not speak again until they stood on the turrets of the Grosse Tour, looking out over the sprawling city.
“There is a change in the air,” father said. “I can feel it in my bones. The Order is strong, too strong perhaps for the liking of the Pope or the King. A challenge is coming. I fear we will be forced to make hard choices. Ones that might require choosing between duty to the King and duty to the Lord.”
“That is no choice at all,” Aymeric said.
“The King and the Pope might not see it that way.”
“We all serve the Lord’s will.”
Lucian looked sad again. “That we do, my boy. That we do. You already know enough of your histories to understand the ways of men and power can so easily be corrupted from the way of the Lord. The time is coming, maybe not this year or the next, but it is coming. And that is why I brought you up here, to look over this place, and to consider what lies ahead. You are on a path here in the Chapterhouse, one that leads to service, and the highest calling I can imagine. But you have your own choices to make, after all it is your life to lead, son, not mine to impose on you. So, I give you this, last chance. You may leave this place and go to Bologna. My mother would be glad to meet you, finally. You would want for nothing, and you could live a life of learning and take over the management of the lands when you come of age.”
“Or?”
“Or you can stay, stay here, work hard, live frugally, and follow me in the Order, to fight for what is right, and when the time comes, die with that sword in your hand.”
Once again there was not the slightest hesitation in Aymeric’s response. “That is no choice at all, father.”
1307
THE YAZIDI VALLEY
“Again,” Javed said. Samira drew back the bow and sighted down the hill on the sack of grain that she knew was there. She could barely see the silhouette in the gathering gloom. The sun had gone down ten minutes ago, and the last of its influence left the sky as stars appeared in the dome above.
She calmed her breathing, feeling her pulse in her fingers where they held the string. She concentrated on the tension in her arm, following it out to the arrow, and on the journey it must take.
Every day of the last five years had brought her to this place of stillness.
She felt the ripple of the breeze in her hair and compensated her aim for it, then moved a fraction more when the evening chill came.
She breathed in, held that breath for three seconds, the loosed it, the arrow eager to fly. Just as she let go, Javed screamed wordlessly in her ear. The arrow whistled wide of the mark, disappearing into the night to clatter off a rock somewhere.
The old man laughed at her cursing.
“You’re a bastard, Javed.”
“That I am, little fish,” he cackled, infinitely amused by her miss. “We have trained the body, but the spirit still has much to learn. It is time we made a start on that.”
◆◆◆
She followed Javed back up the hill, but rather than head for the sheltered cave she had called home for the last five years, the old man stopped by the side of the tarn.
“Sixty of my breaths for one of yours.”
It was not a request; she had learned, from many beatings, that refusal was not allowed, even when the order came at the end of a strenuous, muscle aching, lung bursting, day.
In the cool of the night, she knew that diving into the tarn fully clothed would only lead to a freezing night beside the tiny fire that was all Javed would allow in the cave mouth, so she stripped off and plunged, naked, into the black waters.
She hung, just under the surface, maintaining her position with only small movements of palms and feet, counting out the time in her head. Sixty would be a new barrier; until tonight fifty-five had been the most he had asked of her, and that had been a day when she was rested and strong. She still felt the tension of that last bow-pull in her arms, and tried to relax, knowing that any movement, any strain of muscles, would only use up what precious little gasps of air she had left inside her.
She looked up, but there was nothing to see within the shifting blackness, above, ahead and below.
Panic threatened to rise.
For a second she was unsure of her bearings, unable to tell up from down.
She pushed such thoughts away.
Calmness was what was needed.
Calm and focus.
Her mind began to drift to thoughts of Bologna and revenge. Her hate bubbled, never too far from the forefront of her thoughts. A twenty-five count, but already her thinking was muddled and her chest craved air.
Thirty-five. Something moved above her in the darkness.
A spear lanced through the water, its tip slicing a shallow wound, small, but intensely painful, in the muscle of her left biceps. Samira stopped paddling with her hands, letting a few precious bubbles of air, and sank lower, judging herself out of reach of Javed’s taunting.
Forty-five, it would be good for a good day, but not enough for this dark night. The urge to breathe was almost overwhelming, and everything was dark, a deep black in which nothing existed but her pain, her hate, and her will not to fail the old man. She sank farther into the waters, but barely noticed. She felt slight eddies in the water over her head; Javed trying to rile her into revealing herself.
Not tonight.
Fifty-five.
Now she wasn’t alone in the dark.
Her mother Lilane smiled at her.
Thunder roared in her ears, as if a great storm rushed thorough all her empty spaces, and her chest felt like it was buried under a slab of stone.
She began to let the last of her air leak out between her lips as she began to rise.
Fifty-six.
Off to her right the moon was high in the night sky, lending a silvery shimmer to the surface above her. The temptation was to kick fast, to take that first precious gulp under the sky.
But not yet.
Fifty-seven.
She could reach out and break the surface with her hand if she wanted to.
Fifty-eight.
Javed’s spear came lancing down again, aimed square at the middle of her chest. Without thought, she grabbed at it, hand closing around the wooden shaft, and tugged hard; and was pulled harder in return as Javed almost lifted her up and out of the tarn, her head breaking the water.
Her body betrayed her by swallowing down a huge, gulping, breath as soon as that precious air was there to be breathed.
Javed let go of the spear and Samira flopped back into the tarn with a splash.
When she rolled over and looked up again, the old man was gone from his perch on the rock.
By the time she got herself dressed and walked up to the cave, Javed had the small fire going, and sat by it, his back to her, not speaking as he stirred a pot of thin goat stew.
“I am sorry,” she said. “It was the spear. It would have gutted me if I hadn’t moved.”
“You should have let it, rather than give away your position,” the old man said. “You had your command, and you did not obey. What kind of servant of Allah do you wish to be?”
This was an old argument, ground they had covered on many dark nights.
“I serve no one but you.”
“Then learn when to breathe, and when not to breathe,” Javed replied. “For the breath is all we have that is ours, and if we let another control it, we are lost.”
He repeated what he had said earlier out on the hill.
“We have trained the body, but the spirit still has much to learn.”
It was a lesson that was taking a long time for her to master.
But she would.
For six years she’d undergone physical training so strict that there were days, weeks even, when she wished that she were dead, especially in those first years.
“A hundred of my breaths to the tarn and back,” Javed would say, and off she would run, head down, arms and legs pumping furiously as she drove herself on faster and faster, the goats bounding with her, no time for thought, all focus on fleetness and sound footing. It took a year to reach the old man’s target, and another year before she could do it carrying an adult goat across her shoulders, with it bleating in her ear with every step, but she did it, every morning before breaking fast.
After breakfast had come weapons training, with Javed proving to be the master of blade and bow, spear and shield. He fought her like a Roman would, or a Greek, or a blond barbarian from the north. He fought like a mounted man, like a man on foot, like an injured man, like a dying man. And Samira learned, not how to fight them, but how to kill them, as quickly as possible and with the minimum of effort. That was a different lesson. She learned the dance of the blade, became proficient in its steps, although never entirely to Javed’s satisfaction. Her greatest success was always with the bow; she had the eyes of a predator, the patience akin to that of one of the great night owls, and over time her skills with the arrows even impressed the old man.
Lunch was goat or fish and whatever berries and roots could be gathered from the mountain, then it was time for more training, sometimes in the tarn, more often on the hill. The old man taught her how to climb a sheer face of rock, when to grip it like a lover, when to lean away from it to give it space. She carried endless pails of water up and down slopes. She ran with the goats. She walked untold miles in the sun, even more miles under the great cape of desert stars.
The old man taught her languages; Latin and Greek, the Frankish tongue spoken by the men of Christ, the many dialects of the mountains and deserts, even a smattering of the outlandish speech patterns of the Mongol horsemen far to the East.
And she had listened, taking in everything the old man had to say.
She would need it all when she got to Bologna.
Until this night she had thought she was almost ready. But it appeared the old man did not agree.
◆◆◆
After supper, over a brew of strong tea, Javed spoke and Samira listened.
Some nights he spoke of war, relaying details and strategies of great battles of the past. On other nights he spoke of his own life as a young man, in service to a master of his own. Sometimes, but not often, he spoke of the men he had killed, and their bravery. But most often of all, he spoke of service, obedience, and the will of Allah. Samira would not, could not bend from her hate; Bologna was too big in her mind to let anything in, especially not a god who had allowed a mother to be so casually slain, and a daughter so casually abandoned.
But tonight, she would not argue.
She had failed the old man at the tarn; she would not fail him twice in the same day. So, she listened, and a story unfurled.
“There was once a Man of Christ, a great man, known among our people as Al-kond Herri, a ruler of Jerusalem when it was held by their kind. He sought out Rashid ad-Din Sinan, The Old Man of the Mountain in al-Kahf, to demand an annual tribute, promising war and death if his terms were not met and reminding Sinan that his army was vastly superior in numbers and arms. The Men of Christ held the stronghold of the Holy City.
“Sinan replied that his army might be smaller, but it was far stronger in spirit. He signalled to a Fidai standing at the highest point of the castle.
“The Fidai called out ‘God is Great’ and dived, headfirst, down, far down, to perish on the sharp rocks in the valley below.
“‘Why would a man do that?’ the Man of Christ asked?
“‘Because his God wills it, and because the man’s spirit is the only thing important to him.’
“He motioned again. Another Fidai took the place of the first, and, with a cry of ‘God is Great’ he too leapt, gladly, to the rocks below.
“‘Every man in my service is willing to do this for their god,’ Sinan said. ‘Is yours?’
“When the Man of Christ left Sinan and the mountain, it was under terms of peace between them, and he never again returned with offers of war.”
◆◆◆
Samira knew only too well what she was supposed to take away from this particular story.
“Surely, master, after all these years you do not doubt my spirit?”
Javed looked up over the top of his cup.
“I do not doubt your hate, little fish,” he said. “But hate only goes in two ways; it either consumes or is burnt out. And neither
way goes well. It is not your will I am concerned with; as you say, it is strong enough for what you require of it. No, by spirit I mean your ability to take a stand when all is hopeless, to die if that is what is required, or to live, if that is required more. Spirit is more than will, more than hate. Spirit is the breath of life and is not to be burned away on the whims of emotion.”
“I do not understand,” Samira said.
“But you will, little fish. I promise you that. We shall begin in the morning.”
1307
THE STREETS OF PARIS
Aymeric’s heart thudded hard in his chest, the blood pounding through his flesh. He heard it as drumming in his ears.
His legs were weak beneath him, but it was excitement he felt more than anything as the Great Gate of the Chapterhouse swung open to allow the Templars and aspirants access to the city beyond.
The call to arms had come only five minutes before; the King was in peril, the Order was needed.
Aymeric’s father organized the troops required for the mission, raising a dozen of the seasoned old hands, and a dozen of the more capable aspirants, Aymeric included. There had been time for only the simplest of briefings in the courtyard. “There is a revolt in the city. The King is cut off from the bulk of his guard. Haste is required, for the mob calls for Philip’s head.”
“Then we must ensure they do not get it!” one of the younger men called.
“Indeed, but heed my words, there is to be no killing here today, no matter how nasty things turn. These are our people, and like the King himself, they are under our protection.”
There had been no dissent, and the gate was opened to them.
They hurried through the streets, hooves sparking on the cobbles, the crowds parting ahead of them, as they rode deeper into the city, towards the rising sound of riot and the baying mob.
Dagger of the Martyrs Page 2
