The Dagger and the Cross

by Judith Tarr

  “No!” Raymond’s vehemence brought them all upright. “No, my lords. It is my city, yes, my wife and my children. But this is my army and my kingdom. The plain of Sepphoris lies between us and the city. There is no water on it before the village of Hattin; none at all, but for one small spring, which is never enough for an army. If the enemy harries us, if he holds the wells of Hattin, if we cannot reach Tiberias before we run dry, then we shall be lost. We cannot fight in summer’s heat, in our armor, with our horses, without water. That, we have here. It would be mad for us to leave it.”

  “But the city,” said Guy. “Your city—how can you let it fall?”

  “It may fall,” said Raymond, “and that is bitter. But walls can be built again. My lady and my children are not so easily restored; but the enemy is a knight and a gentleman, though he be an infidel. I shall trust to that and to him. He will not have such mercy on this kingdom. You know what he has sworn: to break the back of every man of us, and to drive our folk into the sea. And that, as God is my witness, he shall do if we march on Tiberias.”

  “That is cowardice!” cried the Master of the Templars. “We must march; we must take the city back. Else the infidel will overrun us as he overran Tiberias, and our kingdom is lost.” He turned to the king. “My lord. Remember how you held back from just such a fight four years ago, at Goliath’s Well, and the Saracen drove you ignominiously from the field? That is what you are about to do now. As for my lord count”—his voice dripped with malice—”we all know whose fault it was that I lost my knights and well-nigh my life, here in this very place. He let the Saracen over our borders then. Now he would do it again, and destroy us all.”

  Guy looked from one to the other of them, pulling nervously at his beard. “We were going to stay here and let Saladin wear himself out trying to get past us. But if he has one of our greatest cities, right on the Sea of Galilee...we can hardly let him keep it.”

  “His army will settle it for us,” Raymond said. “My lord, believe me. They are as innumerable as the sands of the sea, but unlike the sand they need to be fed and paid and given fighting to do, or they scatter back to their own places. Saladin knows it very well. He wants us to come to him; he wants us to fall into his trap. He knows that we are the full strength of our kingdom. He prays that we may all come into his hands at once, and be destroyed. We must not do it, my lord. We must not march on Tiberias.”

  Raymond leaned forward as he spoke. His voice was low, but it shook with the intensity of his pleading. Guy, rapt, lowered his hand from his beard. He drew a breath; he pulled himself erect. “Yes,” he said. “Yes. We must not march.”

  Gerard let out a wordless cry of protest. Reynaud scowled but said nothing. The others were silent.

  Guy nodded firmly. “We stay. We let the Saracen dig his own grave.”

  o0o

  It was nigh on midnight when the lords went to their own places. Gerard cursed Raymond in no uncertain terms, all the way to his tent and his Templars.

  Aidan, camped on the other side of the army near Raymond’s own troops, did not need to hear Gerard in order to know what fury was on him. Most of the army slept, now that the word had gone out that they were not to march in the morning. Even the newest recruits had picked up a little seasoning in a month and more of playing cat-and-mouse with the infidel, and had learned to sleep when they could.

  Gwydion appeared out of the darkness and sat by Aidan under the roof of the tent, with its walls rolled up to take what breezes there were. Aidan shifted slightly to make room for him. He was still in armor, his blue surcoat black in the starlight, the silver seabird of his blazon glinting as he moved. He crouched down in a clinking of mail-rings, raising a brow at Aidan’s own armored discomfort. “You, too, brother?”

  Aidan shrugged. “It’s something in the air. Raymond is right. Guy seems to understand it, for once. But somehow I can’t stop twitching.”

  “Nor I.” Gwydion, who never twitched, frowned at the carpet in front of him. “This is no kind of warfare for the impetuous.”

  “Gerard de Ridefort goes beyond impetuous. He’s obsessed.”

  Gwydion seemed hardly to have heard. “I swore that I would not interfere. I’ve kept that oath. I’ve marched as the army marched, commanded my men as my brother king commanded, waged this war as the council of the kingdom wished it. I have done nothing that any man can question. And they’ve forgotten what I am. Have you noticed that? They don’t stop and stare any longer. Their eyes don’t roll white when I pass them.”

  “Some remember,” Aidan said. “Just this morning someone asked me if I knew any spells to drive back the Saracen.”

  “Do you?”

  “Of course I do,” said Aidan. “But I’m not about to use them. Human will is doing well enough without help from me.”

  “Human will often does.” Gwydion sighed. “I could wish that I were one of them. Then I could sleep.”

  “Even in the heat?”

  Gwydion did not rise to the bait. “I pity my poor Rhiyanans. They never bargained for this when they asked to come to your wedding.”

  “Nor did I,” Aidan said. He did not speak of it often. He did not want to speak of it now. She was still gone, still lost, still cut off from him as if she had never been. His fault purely for listening to ill counsel, and worse by far, for letting it rule him.

  Messire Evrard was with the army. Likewise the men who had made him their messenger. They did not speak to Aidan, and Aidan did not speak to them. They reckoned the deed well done; some, even, that they had done him a kindness. Surely now he was one of them, heart-whole and undivided.

  Surely, he thought. The thought was bitter. But there was no anger in it. Not any longer. That, he kept for himself.

  He levered himself up, stiff in chausses and hauberk, walking out under the bitter-bright stars of the desert. He was aware as a man is of his own body, of his men about him: his mamluks asleep or on guard, his sergeants amid their troops of infantry, his irregulars about the edges, the horse-archers whom his Turks had trained. Close by them were his brother’s Rhiyanans, his own people, knights and men-at-arms tossing restlessly in the heat and the buzzing of flies. Flies were no great torment in the Elvenking’s presence, or in Aidan’s either, but there was no escaping their endless, maddening song, as they lived and bred and thrived in Cresson’s pools.

  The army was quiet, the enemy out of reach, waiting for a march that would not, God and King Guy willing, be undertaken. Aidan yawned, but there was no sleep in him. There seldom was when he was on campaign; and the more so now. He needed a fight. They had had none yet, simply a game of hide-and-seek, a pattern of marches and pauses, feints and counterfeints. Mostly they had waited, and seen their army grow to half again what had mustered in Acre.

  It was still no match for Saladin’s. Nor need it be, if it kept the high ground and ruled the battle from it.

  Gwydion came out beside his brother. Aidan glanced at him, sensing the darkness that was on him, no closer to naming it than Gwydion himself was. It was nothing as distinct as foreseeing. Gwydion had had no more visions since he stood on the Mount of Olives and saw Jerusalem fall. But he was uneasy.

  Neither needed to speak, to agree to walk the lines. But for the sentries, no one else was abroad.

  No one but Raymond. He stood stone-still on the camp’s eastern edge, face turned toward the shadow on shadow that was Mount Turan. There was a light low in the sky beyond it, a ruddiness like dawn, but that was an hour away still.

  “They burn Tiberias,” he said as the brothers came up beside him. Even in his grief, he could smile to see them, tall in firelight and starlight, and the same face on either side of him.

  Aidan laid a hand on his shoulder. He did not shake it off: rare concession for a man as reserved as he was. “My stepsons are cursing me,” he said, “as spiritedly as ever that madman from Ridefort. Their mother is in the city, they cry to me. My wife; my children, their half-kin. How can I be so cold as to forsake them?” H
e laughed, brief and bitter. “How indeed? What is this kingdom to me, or its upstart king? They say of me that I would have turned Muslim and sworn fealty to Saladin, for rage that I should be cheated of the crown.”

  “They say it of me, and no one ever accused me of wanting to be king.” Aidan shook him lightly. “Raymond, you chose as you could hardly help but choose. Eschiva will hold the citadel until you can come to it; or if she has to surrender it, she’ll win terms that honor you both. Saladin won’t touch her or the children. It hasn’t come to that kind of war. Not yet.”

  “I know that,” Raymond said with a touch of sharpness. “But it’s my city and my wife, and I stand here because I convinced our witless beauty of a king that we should abandon them. She may understand it, but she won’t be quick to forgive.”

  “She’ll be less forgiving if you die of thirst trying to ride to her rescue.”

  “There is that,” Raymond admitted. He glanced at Gwydion. “You’ve been silent, my lord king. Is there something we haven’t thought of?”

  “Nothing,” Gwydion said. He walked a little away from them, almost to the sentry’s line.

  “Nothing?” Raymond paused. “Nothing human, do you mean?”

  Gwydion would not answer. Aidan almost did not, but the devil of restlessness in him made him say, “Nothing unhuman, either, that we can see. I wish we hadn’t stripped the castles and the cities so bare to make up our army. But it makes us strong here; and it’s here that Saladin will come, if he’s to fight us.”

  “Or from here that he will retreat, if his army bleeds away through out inaction.” Gwydion turned to face them. “Did anyone think to keep a watch on the Master of the Templars?”

  Aidan went cold. Raymond, without power to guide him, said irritably, “When have we started spying on our own commanders? Ridefort is a damned bloody fool, but he’s not a traitor. If anything, he’s too fervent in defense of the kingdom.”

  “Fervor can kill,” Gwydion said, “as easily as its opposite.”

  Aidan shook his head, not at Gwydion’s words but at what they implied. “He can’t get at Guy now. Raymond made up his mind for him.”

  “Can you be sure of that?”

  Gwydion spoke with more than simple apprehension. Aidan, cursing himself for an idiot, unfolded his power as Gwydion already had, and spat a curse.

  Before Raymond could open his mouth to ask, a trumpet brayed from the king’s tent. One long, brazen peal; then a pattern of notes they all knew. Rise and arm. Prepare to march.

  The Templar had had the last word. They were marching on Tiberias.

  19.

  The king’s tent was in uproar. The king would not come out of it. His mind, at last and immovably, was made up. The barons, kept out by a determined wall of guards, had begun to howl like dogs. “This is mad!” roared the strongest-lunged of them. “Mad!”

  As the tumult wavered on the edge of violence, Guy came out. He was in full armor, his white surcoat embroidered with the golden crosses of the kingdom, his head bare and impeccably barbered. The torchlight made him seem made all of gold and silver. The clamor died to a growling mutter.

  Guy ran his eyes over the lot of them. His mouth was set; his glance was fierce. “Do you argue with your king?”

  Only if the king was mad. That thought was as loud as a shout, but no one dared, quite, to utter it.

  The king raised his chin. “This is the course on which I have decided. On my head, and mine alone, be it. My duty is to command; yours is to obey. Go then and do it.”

  There was nothing that anyone could say. None but Raymond had the power or the courage, and he was not there. When he heard the trumpets, he had thrown up his hands and said what they all said in extremity; what the Muslims themselves said. “God wills it.”

  As the barons retreated, cursing the world and its laws that made them subject to such a king, some of them saw who stood on the edge of the torchlight, one shape twice over, one in blue and silver, one in scarlet. Lord Humphrey, Lord Balian, a handful of lesser luminaries, turned toward them.

  Humphrey spoke for them all. “My lords. Is there nothing you can do?”

  Gwydion shook his head.

  But Humphrey was not prepared to accept that. “My lord, you’re his equal in rank. He has to listen to you.”

  “No,” Gwydion said. “Not in his own kingdom. Not by the oath I swore. This is his war, as he himself says. I have no power to command him.”

  “You can persuade him,” Humphrey said. “You can talk to him, my lord. For the kingdom’s sake, we beg you.”

  Gwydion looked toward the tent. The barons were nearly all gone from it. The king had gone back within with the Templar and the Constable. They were well content. They reckoned this a bold stroke, and a necessity; they hated to sit still while the Saracen ravaged their lands. Better to force a battle now and end it, than to wear themselves away with doing nothing.

  Suddenly there were no minds to read; only a buzzing emptiness. Gwydion swayed, shocked. It was as if there had been a power in the tent, and it had roused to his presence. But he had sensed nothing at all. Only human minds turning over human thoughts, planning a battle. Then a hum of silence.

  His temper, never as thoroughly mastered as people liked to think, pricked him to say, “I shall do what I can. Come, brother.”

  The guards closed up as he approached with his brother just behind him and the barons hovering within earshot. He halted. Their uneasiness was palpable even over the power, or lack thereof, that walled the tent. “May I pass?” he asked, courteous, but not as one who expects to be refused.

  The guards did not move.

  Gwydion raised his voice slightly. “My lord king. May I come in?”

  It was not an answer that came back. The king’s voice was low, but audible to such ears as his. “Don’t let him cast a spell on me.” Then the Templar spoke in Latin. A prayer against evil.

  Gwydion’s back went stiff. Almost he raised his hand. Almost he struck the guards aside.

  Almost he did more than that.

  No. He mastered himself. He met the eyes of each guard in turn, setting no power in it but what was in his kingship.

  They gave way. He allowed himself the fleeting warmth of a smile. With Aidan for his shadow, he entered the king’s tent.

  o0o

  The king was no coward, however much he feared ensorcelment. He remained where he was, sitting in his carven chair, and his eye on the brothers was cold. “Majesty,” he said. “Highness.”

  Gwydion inclined his head. He did not sit. The silence hummed and sang; then, abruptly, stilled. It was only silence. No maddening, buzzing wall. Nothing but what it ought to be, human silence, full of the babble of human minds.

  Gwydion, braced for an assault, gasped in its absence and nearly fell. His brother steadied him. The eyes on them were human all, no power in them.

  There was fear enough. There was always fear, soon or late.

  Gwydion was out of charity, if not quite of prudence. He did not say the words that were on his tongue. He stood before the king and let his shadow stretch behind him, and a glimmer in it that might have been eyes. “Messire,” he said, soft and almost gentle. “What is this that you would do?”

  Guy sat straighter in his chair. “I do what I must,” he said. He sounded quite properly a king.

  “What you must do,” said Gwydion, “is to forbear to march.”

  Guy’s jaw set. “Are you commanding me?”

  “You know that I am not.” Gwydion was quiet still. “Nor shall I lay a spell on you.”

  “You would not dare,” said the Master of the Templars.

  “And who are you,” Gwydion asked of him, “to say what I would and would not venture?” He spread his hands. The lamplight gathered in them, spilled over his fingers. “My lord of Jerusalem, what you propose to do is rash and far from wise. Will you not heed your brother king? Will you not return to the wisdom of yestereve?”

  Guy tugged at his beard. Hi
s eyes were fixed on Gwydion’s hands. His mind was nothing that Gwydion could grasp.

  “My lord!” The Templar’s voice was harsh, peremptory. “Will you listen to him? Will you let him bewitch you? You heard them all without. He is their weapon. Who is to tell why he yields to their commands?”

  “Perhaps,” said Gwydion, softer than ever, “I am your equal and a king, and I have erred even as you propose to do, and suffered for it.”

  “Indeed,” said the Templar. “Remember, sire, what he is. Remember how long he has been a king. Has he gained wisdom from it? Or only damnation?”

  That was too subtle for Guy’s intelligence. He looked at Gwydion, and Gwydion saw himself reflected in those eyes, tall and fair and terrible. There was nothing in Gwydion that Guy could understand.

  Gwydion’s power waited for him to gather it. He could bend that mind, weak as it was, the mind of a mortal and a fool. A touch only, and it could be done. The march halted, the battle averted, all this madness turned to sanity.

  Guy thrust himself to his feet. His voice came high and quick. “Swear,” he said. “Swear that you’ll work no sorceries.”

  Even the blind, on occasion, could seem to see. Gwydion stood face to face with Jerusalem’s king and raised his hands. Guy flinched. But there was no light in them, no glimmer of magic. Gwydion let him see it; then, slowly, let them fall. “Will you swear to remain at Cresson?”

  “I will do what I will do,” Guy said.

  “Then I will not swear to trammel my power.”

  “Not even for your life’s sake?” asked the Master of the Templars.

  Gwydion kept his eyes on the king, his temper rigidly in hand. “Even if you will not stay, there is much that I can do. You have but to ask.”

  “Yes,” said the Templar. “He will ask, and you will take. All; all that is his and ours and the enemy’s. Do you take us for fools, my lord of Rhiyana? Do you think that we cannot see?”

  “I see that you have chosen the counsel of a fool,” said Gwydion to the king. “So be it. But there may be hope, if you will take what I will give.”