The Templar Salvation (2010)

by Raymond Khoury

  He pictured the fate that now awaited him, and wished that an arrow had found him too.

  THE HEAT WAS STIFLING, and it wasn’t just because of the sun.

  It was because of the horse.

  The one he’d been sewn into.

  They’d taken Hector’s dying horse and sliced it open, pulled most of its innards out, then stuffed Conrad inside it, back to front, before suturing it shut around him. They had him on his back, with his head sticking out of what had been the animal’s anus. His arms and legs were also protruding, out of holes they’d cut into the stallion’s hide, and except for the stump of his left arm, his limbs were securely tied to wooden stakes that had been driven into the hard ground.

  They’d left him like that, crucified against the canyon floor, before trotting off with the horses and the wagon and everything they’d been carrying.

  It was unbearably hot in there. Worse than the heat, though, was the smell. And the insects. Putrescent flesh and gelling blood littered the ground around him, rotting in the sun. With the trader and his men still in view and receding down the canyon, flies and wasps were already swarming over him and over his dead brethren’s corpses, feasting on the abundance of spoils, buzzing and landing and nibbling away at the open cuts on his lips and across the rest of his face.

  That would just be the start of it.

  The real agony would come courtesy of the three vultures that were hovering overhead. They’d swoop in, sink their claws into the horse’s carcass and tear away at it with their sharp beaks. Eventually, they’d break through the horse’s skin and start feasting on Conrad’s body, morsel by morsel, pulling the flesh off him before moving on to his internal organs.

  He knew death wouldn’t come quickly.

  He’d heard of this form of scaphism before—the name was derived from the Greek word, skaphe, which meant “vessels,” as the original method involved sealing the victim inside back-to-back, canoe-like rowboats. Some victims were covered with honey and made to drink milk and honey until they could no longer hold their bowels, then they were set afloat on stagnant ponds—hence the boats. The feces made sure the insects showed up. Other victims were left under the sun, in a hollowed-out tree or an animal’s carcass. Conrad had heard how the Turks and the Persians were fond of scaphism, heard how horrific the remains looked when they were ultimately found, but he’d never witnessed it himself. In a way, he was lucky the buzzards were there. In areas where there were only insects to feed on the victim, death could take days. Conrad had heard of a Greek priest who had survived them breeding inside him along with gangrene fermenting across his body for seventeen days before his body finally gave in.

  It was a particularly vile way to die, he thought as he stared up at the circling vultures, knowing they wouldn’t be circling much longer.

  They didn’t.

  Two of them came down in quick succession and landed heavily on the horse, with the third settling for the Spanish knight’s corpse. They began tearing away at the exposed flesh, their beaks and claws working in a ravenous frenzy, like they hadn’t eaten for weeks. Conrad spasmed left and right to try to shake them off, but his frantic moves were strictly limited by his ties and he didn’t make any impression on the birds. They just ignored him and kept on digging away, ripping and pulling and chewing and flinging bits of flesh off the carcass and splattering Conrad with dripping wet morsels. Then the one closest to his head spun around, eyed him for a beat, and dove its beak in for a taste. Conrad flicked his head from side of side and yelled fiercely, but the buzzard knew what it was doing and kept going, undeterred. Conrad buried his head as far into the carcass as he could, but he couldn’t get in far enough, and he was staring straight into the bird’s wide-open beak as it darted in for a bite, when something thudded into it and slammed it clear off him, too fast for him to see what it was, too sudden for his dulled senses to process what had happened.

  He heard the predator’s wings do a little death-swat against the ground, out of view, behind the carcass. The second vulture didn’t flinch. It just sidestepped across the horse’s hide to take its dead friend’s place, but something slammed into it too and flung it to the ground, this time closer to Conrad, giving him a clear view of what had happened:

  The vulture had an arrow through it.

  He spun his head around, his heart pumping wildly, his senses frazzled, straining to see who was there, wondering who had saved his life—and he saw her, sprinting over to him, a crossbow in her hands.

  Maysoon.

  Elation crackled through him.

  He watched her charging in and saw her let go of her crossbow and pull out a big dagger just as he felt a sudden beating of air around him and something bristly brush up against his face. The third vulture thudded heavily on his chest, its claws biting into the horse hide, and just as it dove in for a taste, Maysoon was already in midair, pouncing onto it like a panther, grabbing its neck with one hand and slitting it open with the other.

  She tossed the vulture aside and turned to face him, breathing heavily, her face dripping with sweat, her eyes fierce with determination. She swatted the air a few times to disperse the swarm of insects, then bent down and cut the ties off his hand and feet before getting to work on freeing him from his gruesome coffin.

  He watched her slicing away at the sutures. Her eyes found his and she held his gaze without blinking as her hands kept moving, working expertly, her face locked in concentration. In his groggy, dehydrated state, he still couldn’t quite believe she was actually there, couldn’t believe he was still alive, even as she helped him out of the carcass and onto his feet.

  He just stood there, hunched, breathing hard, dripping with blood and guts, staring at her with a mix of awe and confusion. “How … What are you doing here?”

  The edge of her mouth curled upward with a cheeky grin. “Saving your life.”

  He shook his head, still bewildered. “Besides that.” He smiled. It hurt his bruised lips. “How did you get here?”

  “I followed you. You, my brother, my father. I followed you all the way from Constantinople.”

  His thoughts were taking a moment longer than normal to formulate themselves. “Why?”

  “I heard them talking. They suspected you were after something big. They had a feeling you wouldn’t be splitting it with them. So they decided they’d take it all for themselves. I wanted to warn you, but I couldn’t get away. You know how they are with me.”

  “But they’re … your father? Your brother?”

  She shrugged. “They’re bad men. I knew you wouldn’t give up whatever it was you were after without a fight. I knew what they’d do to you to take it.”

  “So you followed them … for me?”

  She kept her eyes firmly locked on his, and nodded. “You would have done the same for me, wouldn’t you?”

  The simple honesty of her reply sank in with startling clarity. Of course, he would have. He didn’t doubt that for a second. There was an unspoken connection between them, an attraction that had built up over weeks and months of frustrating encounters. He was well aware of that. But for her to risk her life like this was beyond anything he’d imagined.

  She handed him a leather wineskin. “You need water. Drink.”

  He uncorked it and took a long chug from it.

  “What’s this all about?” she asked as she watched him. “What did you want from that monastery?”

  He handed it back to her, studied her for a beat, then led her to some shade under an outcropping in the canyon wall and told her everything.

  From the very beginning.

  The whole truth and nothing but the truth.

  The origin of the Order. What the Keepers set out to do. How it all went well. How it all went wrong. Everard and his men in Constantinople. The defeat at Acre. The disappearance of the Falcon Temple. The lost years in Cyprus. The king of France’s move against the Order. Friday the thirteenth. His rebirth in Constantinople. Meeting her. The swords. The monastery. The
texts. The ambush.

  It was the least she deserved.

  Throughout, she listened intently, not interrupting more than a couple of times, for some clarification. And when he was done, they just sat there in silence for a long moment, she letting the information sink in, he assessing his current situation and trying to decide what his next move should be.

  She watched him rub the stump of his forearm and nodded to indicate it. “Did they take it?”

  He nodded back. “Yes.”

  She watched him silently for a long second, then said, “I know what you’re thinking.”

  He exhaled heavily. “I have to try and get it back.”

  “There’s six of them and two of us.”

  He held his stump up and gave her a self-deprecating grin. “One and a half.” He frowned. “One more thing I need to get back. Your father said they’d take it to Konya. Do you know where that is?”

  “Of course. It’s where we’re from, it’s where I grew up.”

  “How far is it?”

  She thought about it for a beat. “Four days’ ride? Maybe three at a good gallop.”

  “They’re weighed down by the wagon and what it’s carrying. We’ll be much faster than them. And they’ll have to find somewhere sheltered to stop for the night, out of view. Less easy when you’ve got all those horses.” He let his thoughts sink in, looked around, and made a decision. “I need you to help me with something first.”

  “What?”

  “I need to bury my friends.”

  “We’ll have to do it fast. We don’t want to give them too much of a head start.”

  ” ‘We’?”

  She gave him a knowing, sardonic glance. “I saved your life, remember?”

  “They’re your family.”

  She frowned. It was evidently not easy on her. “You don’t know enough about me.”

  “And if I did?”

  “You’d understand better.” Her tone was level and clear, and didn’t leave much room for debate. “Let’s not waste time. We can talk on the way.” She smiled. “But you’ll need to ride downwind of me until you bathe.”

  “They took our horses. I can’t be downwind of you if we’re sharing a saddle.”

  She shot him a look. “I brought two horses. In case one of them got hurt. It’s a long way from Constantinople.”

  Conrad nodded, then glanced over at Hector’s corpse. “Hector’s more or less my size. I’ll take his garments. Until we find a stream to wash in.”

  They used her dagger and their bare hands to open up a rectangular hole in the ground, at the base of the rock face. They placed Hector and Miguel’s bodies in it, side by side, before covering them with stones, to protect them from any more buzzards and other scavengers that roamed the valleys, and topping it all off with a layer of soil. Conrad used the dagger to scrape their names into the rocky wall behind the grave, then added a croix pattee above them.

  He stood up and stared at the flattened earth and the carving in the rock. It wasn’t as fitting a grave for his fallen brethren as he would have liked, but it was the best he could do.

  Maysoon read the grief etched into his face. “’It may look like the end,’” she said. “’It may seem like a sunset, but in reality it’s a dawn. For when the grave locks you in is when your soul is freed.’”

  He looked a question at her.

  “Rumi,” she said.

  He still didn’t understand.

  “I’ll explain later,” she said. “We need to go.”

  “Very well.” He contemplated the grave for a final moment, but before turning away, he decided to do something else.

  He carved his own name as well. Below theirs.

  It was Maysoon’s turn to look a question at him.

  “Just in case anyone else should ever come looking for me,” he said.

  Then they rode off, thundering down to the end of the canyon before emerging into open flatlands and following the trail the Turk and his outfit had left behind.

  They didn’t get too far on that first day. The sun was already sinking fast by the time they reached a small stream that wove its way through some forested, rolling hills. It was a good, safe place to spend the night. They’d catch up with their quarry the next day.

  Conrad cleaned himself in the stream, relishing the feel of the cool water on his wounds. As he did, he thought about the past few days, about the abrupt disruption to his life, about the trapdoor that fate had conjured up and dropped him into. He didn’t have much time to think about it. The sight of Maysoon stepping out of her robes and joining him in the stream yanked his thoughts to a far better place. And right there and then, he decided he would suffer no more dilemmas about long-dead oaths and self-denying rules.

  He pulled her toward him and kissed her with a feverish hunger. And then he buried himself inside her, and with it, he buried the last vestiges of his life as a warrior-monk.

  From here on, the monk part of his life was definitely over.

  He was just a warrior now.

  Chapter 38

  The hands. They’re all here, all four of them,” Tess grumbled. “Neither one of these is Conrad. He didn’t die here.”

  Abdulkerim stared at her with utter confusion. “So why is his name carved into that wall?”

  Tess ignored the question and slid down onto her haunches, cupping her face in her hands and blocking the world out for a moment. She wanted it all to go away, all of it. She just wanted to be back home, in New York, with Kim and her mom close by, spending her days filling her laptop’s blank screen with words and her nights curled up with a cool glass of sauvignon blanc, Corinne Bailey Rae’s dreamy swoons in the background, and Reilly by her side. The mundane never felt so attractive, or out of reach, and she wondered if she’d ever enjoy such simple times again.

  “Tess? Our friend asked you a question.”

  The Iranian’s eerily dispassionate voice yanked her back to the bleakness of the canyon.

  She looked up, half-dazed, struggling to order her thoughts. They were both still there, of course, the Iranian looming over her impatiently and the Byzantinist sitting on a wide boulder opposite her.

  “Why is Conrad’s name on this wall?” she asked, her tone reeking with exasperation. “How the hell should I know?”

  “Think,” the Iranian insisted dryly.

  Tess felt the walls of the canyon creeping in on her. She wondered if it was better for her to remain useful to him, very much doubting that he’d actually just let her go if his quest did hit a brick wall, but her brain wasn’t playing ball. No epiphanies were forthcoming.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Think harder.” The Iranian’s words had an unsettling finality to them.

  “I don’t know,” she shot back angrily. “I don’t know any more than you do. I mean, God knows what happened here. We don’t even know if these skeletons are really those of the other Templars.”

  “Well, let’s look at both possibilities. What if they are?”

  She shrugged. “If they’re really the bones of the knights who went to the monastery with Conrad, then he’s the only one of them left. And if that’s the case, then I’d expect that he was the one who buried his buddies here and carved the names on the wall—including his own.”

  “Why would he do that?”

  An answer quickly formed in Tess’s mind, and much as she didn’t want to voice it, she didn’t have much of a choice. “To buy himself some peace. To put off anyone who was on his trail.”

  “Which makes sense if he’s carrying something important. Something he wants to protect.”

  “Maybe,” Tess fumed. “It’s not here, is it? But if he didn’t die here, he could be anywhere … Though I can’t imagine that a one-armed man alone in enemy territory could get too far, even if he was a Templar knight.”

  “Unless he found refuge with one of the Christian communities just north of here,” the Iranian speculated.

  Just then, something caught her eye.
A reaction, small but perceptible, in the Byzantinist’s expression.

  The Iranian caught it too. “What?” he asked.

  “Me? No, it’s nothing,” Abdulkerim muttered, not very convincingly.

  The Iranian’s hand flew out so fast neither Tess nor the Turk saw it coming. The slap hammered the Byzantinist’s jaw, rocking it sideways and sending him flying off his perch and crashing onto the ground in a heavy thud and a plume of dust.

  “I won’t ask you again,” the Iranian told him.

  Abdulkerim stayed down, trembling. After a moment, he raised his eyes to the Iranian. He looked pulverized by fear. “There might be something,” he stammered. “Not far from here.” He turned to Tess. “Do you know which hand Conrad was missing?”

  “The left one. Why?”

  Abdulkerim frowned, like he wasn’t sure he should be saying this. “There’s a fresco, in the rock church, in the Zelve Valley. The church is in ruins, like all the other, but … the painting is still there. It shows a man, a warrior. Someone the villager there thought highly of. A protector.”

  “What does that have to do with Conrad?” the Iranian asked.

  “The warrior was referred to on the mural as ‘the one true hand,’ fighting off the heathen. One of his hand is visible while the other is missing—the left one. I always assumed it was a metaphor, you know, one of those crazy legend from the times of the Crusade.” He paused, then pointedly added, “The man in the fresco is buried in the church’s crypt. I think it could be your Conrad.”

  “‘The one true hand,’” the Iranian repeated. He gave Tess a satisfied, “this sounds promising” look. “I think I’d like to see that church.”

  REILLY’S HORSE SLOWED as it reached the ridge that bordered the yayla he had traversed. Patches of wild lavender and wormwood scrub covered the slope, beyond which was a wide plain that spread south all the way to distant mountains. He paused there to get his bearings, his back and thighs aching from the long, saddleless ride. The horse, panting heavily after the uninterrupted journey, was also in bad need of a breather.