The Dagger and the Cross

by Judith Tarr

There was no way now but forward. No hope but in Hattin, or in Tiberias. Saladin did not take their challenge. Nor would he. He nipped at their flanks. He brought down their stragglers. When they would have resisted, his men melted away, only to come back fourfold in another place, laughing and jeering. They were all that there was of the army of Outremer. Their attackers were an endless river, never weary, always fresh, on fresh horses, fat and sleek with good food and clean water.

  The advance slowed to a standstill. They could not keep their ranks against the pressing of the enemy. The bleak dun plain spread about them. The Templars were over the ridge, past Marescallia, fighting as only Templars could fight. But it was like fighting sand. The more they battled against it, the more it eluded them.

  The infantry had had enough. They stopped and would not go on, even for their commanders’ curses, even under the flats of blades. “No water,” they said, “no march.”

  “You won’t get any water if you stay here!” Amalric raged at them. But they were adamant.

  His brother had reached his own limit of endurance. “We camp,” Guy said, “and hold on till the Templars can win through to us.”

  “Mad.” Even Amalric said it, but Guy was as obdurate as his footsoldiers.

  Although it was barely midday, they pitched camp amid the stones near the upland of Hattin. The Saracens were all about them now, making small sallies, shooting flights of arrows, simply sitting their horses and grinning at the tired, dusty, bone-dry Franks.

  Saladin himself was on the ridge. They saw him up there under his banners, the caliph’s black standard and his own golden eagle: the golden gleam of his corselet and the whiteness of the shawl that he wore to shield his head from the sun, and the yellow coats of the mamluks who were his personal guard.

  It was a hot, dry, hungry camp. The blue water of Galilee sparkled in the sun, taunting them more bitterly than any of their enemies. Tiberias, burning, offered neither hope nor help. Reinforcements could not come, even if a messenger could pass the infidels’ lines. Worse than that, neither food nor water could be had. They had no wagons, only what each man and horse could carry. They had been depending on the stores at Cresson, or failing that, at Tiberias.

  “I may have been in more desperate straits,” Raymond said. “If so, I don’t recall it.”

  His tent was pitched in sight of the Sea of Galilee, as if he wanted to remind himself of his lost demesne. The air was still, and breathing it was cruel, parching the nose as well as the mouth. His page offered wine. It was thick sweet wine of Bethlehem, meant to be well weakened with water; it fed the thirst almost more than it quenched it. But it was wet, and it filled the stomach. The page stood near with the bottle, in part to be of service but in part to seek comfort in the others’ presence.

  Aidan caught the boy’s eye and smiled. Aimery looked down, pricking Aidan’s senses with embarrassment. His mother had not wanted him to go, but Count Raymond had settled it by asking for him. It was time, the count said, that the boy acquired some seasoning in war.

  Even Raymond could not have expected such seasoning as this. The count had wiped off some of the dirt and sweat, but had kept on full mail except for the coif, as had they all. He gestured toward the ridge and the figures on it. They were out of bowshot: that had already been tested. “Rats in a trap,” he said. “We should have known what would happen with so many of them to hem us in. They can fall on us in waves, each fresher than the last.”

  “We might break through,” Aidan said. “A miracle might save us. Who knows, until we’ve seen the end of this?”

  “A miracle?” Raymond’s brows went up. “Have you one to offer?”

  “Not we,” said Gwydion.

  Raymond might have said more, but chose instead to beckon to Aimery. The boy came willingly enough, and lively enough still, though he was filthy and his leather coat must have itched abominably. He bowed politely and waited for his lord to speak.

  Raymond smiled. “I’ve trained you well, I think, messire. Will you do something for me?”

  Aimery’s eyes were full of worship for his lord and teacher. Anything! they cried. Aloud he said, “Surely, my lord.”

  “I am not sending you away,” Raymond said, “even if that were possible now. But I would like you to go where you may be safer than with me. If your kinsmen will agree to it, will you enter their service until this battle is over?”

  Aimery’s face was a study in ambivalence. He looked from his kinsmen to his lord and back again. “There will be a battle, my lord?”

  “You can be sure of it.” Raymond tilted his shaggy grey-gold head. “Well?”

  “My lord—” Aimery looked again at Gwydion, and at Aidan. “My lord, what would they do with me?”

  Aidan bit back a smile. Raymond made no such effort. “Guard you,” he answered, “as they always guard their own. I may not be able to do it; and I should hate to have to tell your mother that I lost you.”

  “I’m not a child, my lord,” Aimery said, stung.

  “Surely not,” said Aidan. “I could do with a squire, at that. I’ve been sharing Gwydion’s Urien, and it’s hard on the poor lad, looking after two of us.”

  Aimery sucked in a breath. “You want me, my lord?” He caught himself. “I mean—my lord Raymond, I don’t want to leave you, but if I have to—”

  “But if you have to,” Raymond said, “you’re more than happy to be squire to the prince.” He smiled. “I don’t blame you.”

  “After the battle,” said Aimery, “my lord, I’ll want to come back to you. If you’ll have me.”

  “If I live, and if I can offer you anything to come back to, yes, I’ll have you.” Raymond inclined his head to Aidan. “I’m grateful, my lord. That’s as good a page as I’ve had in long years; I’d not be pleased to lose him for a king’s folly.”

  Aimery blushed and ducked his head. He was given to thinking too little of himself, Aidan noticed. That would have to be seen to.

  He was also thinking, with no little malice, Just let Ysabel do better than this!

  Aidan quelled a sigh. She at least was safe. He would do what he could to protect her brother. As little love as there had ever been between them, neither would forgive him if he let the other be hurt. They reserved that privilege for themselves.

  o0o

  Aimery, as Prince Aidan’s squire, had expected to serve his new lord as he had Count Raymond: well out of the way except when he was needed, well back in the column when they marched, and quiet in the tent when his lord attended councils or called on others of the great ones of Outremer. But Aidan seemed to take it for granted that Aimery should follow him wherever he went. Aimery wondered at least once, who was guarding whom.

  Not that Aidan went anywhere at first except back to the tent he shared with his brother. Urien was there already, a tall slender young man almost old enough to be a knight, and like enough to the king to be one of his kin. He was in fact a cousin, if a distant one. Rhiyanan nobles, Aimery had heard someone say, all looked alike, as if God had stamped them in the same mold.

  “That’s the mark of Rhiannon,” Aidan said, startling Aimery half out of his skin. He laid his hand easily on Aimery’s shoulder, though Aimery would have liked to sink into the earth, so torn was he between joy and mortification. “Urien, I’ve got myself a new squire. He’s had good training in Count Raymond’s court, but there’s a thing or two he may need to know of how we do things here. Will you teach him tonight, after I’m done with him?”

  He asked it as if the squire had a choice, and Urien answered in the same vein. “Surely, my prince.” He looked Aimery over. “He looks like a good one. Is he a Mortmain?”

  “The eldest of them,” Aidan said.

  “Ah,” said Urien. “I remember, from Acre.” He bestowed a smile on Aimery. “Well met again, messire.”

  Aimery bowed, which felt like the proper thing to do, and murmured an answer. Urien seemed pleased enough, though Aidan was in one of his moods: bright, wicked, and more tha
n a little fey. He kept Aimery with him, not asking anything of him, while he inspected his portion of the camp.

  Aimery had noticed before how Aidan’s people loved him. It was palpable now, with the camp sunk in desperation and Saracens surrounding it and a skirmish apt to break out almost anywhere at all. Aidan’s people were not as desperate as the rest. They were thirsty, but they bore up bravely, even showed their prince how they had kept a little water still, and wine in remarkable plenty. “Enough to get us through the night,” one said proudly.

  He did not say what everyone was thinking, that there would never be enough for the day that would follow the night, and that would be a day of battle.

  Sensible soldiers kept their armor on but rested as much as they could. They did not talk much, or dice round the tents the way they usually did. Many looked after their gear. They expected to fight in the morning, if not sooner.

  Aidan’s mamluks kept a little apart. That was always so, but today more than ever. People did not forget that they were infidels, or that they looked and fought like the enemies who ringed the camp.

  They were proud; they did not seem to think of themselves as turncoats. Saladin had given them to their prince, and they were loyal to a fault. If it dismayed them to find themselves pitted against the whole army of their people, they were not about to show it.

  They would be useful when it came to a battle. Franks were strong beside the Saracens, whether mounted or afoot: bigger, better armed, often better trained. Nothing in the east could hold against a charge of full-armed knights on their great horses. But Saladin was a wily general, and wise in fighting Franks. He knew that their strength was of little use against his light swift cavalry with their bows and their slender lances, who could dart in and then out again like wolves harrying a bull. He had numbers to throw against them, numbers enough to surround them and pen them in, and still keep an army in reserve. And worst of all he had water, and clear lines of supply, so that his men fought with full bellies.

  Aidan’s mamluks were hungry and thirsty, but they were as tough as old leather; and they fought as the enemy fought. One of Aimery’s favorite lessons in Count Raymond’s house had been the one in which the pages learned how the lord of Millefleurs disposed his forces: infantry to anchor them, knights to strike the heaviest blows, and mamluk cavalry to dart in where they were needed, then out again before they could be trapped. Saracens were not great masters of formation or of discipline, but Aidan’s Saracens knew both. Even Saladin was said to be, if not afraid of them, then justly wary.

  Aimery, who had grown up with all twelve of them, found that he was glad to have them there. They would not turn traitor. Not Conrad who had taught him to sing, or Raihan who had set him on his first pony, or Arslan who had shown him how to shoot from that pony’s back. They looked at the hordes of their fellow infidels and shrugged. “One of us is worth a dozen of them,” said Timur.

  “That about evens the odds,” drawled Andronikos.

  “It can’t be more than five to one,” Raihan said.

  “Five well-fed, well-watered Muslims, to one of us.” Andronikos covered his face with a corner of his sun-shawl and seemed to go to sleep, until he said. “Even odds, children. My wager on it.”

  “Done!” said Raihan.

  “What, you’ll wager on our losing?”

  “We won’t lose,” Raihan said. “I can’t speak for the rest of the army. Or, Allah help us, for the king.”

  “No one speaks for the king,” Andronikos said, muffled in the cloth. “Not even himself.”

  20.

  The Templars came in at sunset, haggard and limping and panting with thirst, but grinning through the dirt. They had beaten back the skirmishers: the rear was safe, for the moment.

  The wail of the muezzin sounded high and eerie through the heavy air, sending that whole terrible army down abject in prayer. The army of Outremer had little strength to jeer at the spectacle of so many rumps upturned, so many turbaned heads bent toward Mecca. No one ventured a sortie during the prayer. It was all too brief, and the enemy all too adept at leaping up from rapt contemplation of the Infinite to blood-red battle.

  Night brought no coolness, only a heavy dark and a redoubled buzzing of flies. The enemy’s fires flickered all about the camp, innumerable as stars in the sky, but illuminating little. The Franks, huddled in their camp, heard more than they saw: men speaking in the rhythms of Arabic or Turkish or Nubian or even once, to Aidan’s ears, high-court Persian; horses whinnying, camels roaring, now and then a falcon’s scream; bodies moving in the dark, the clink of metal on metal, the song of arrow shot from the bow.

  What little water was left, the king ordered kept for the horses. Men lay gasping in the sultry night, trying to sleep.

  The king’s council met again in his tent. Again it was a great deal of sound and fury, and all for very little. Guy could not have moved now if he had wanted to. Ridefort was all for a forced march to Tiberias, but even Guy laughed at him. “March? How? Through the whole army of Islam?”

  “Yes!” Ridefort shot back.

  “Suicide is against canon law,” Raymond said mildly. “My lord, we have no choice but to fight. If I may offer any advice at all, it is this: Keep the knights in hand. Don’t let them charge at will, and don’t use them up too soon. The horses are the greatest resource we have, and the most fragile. If we lose them, we lose the war.”

  “We’ll have to charge,” said Amalric. “It’s our strongest weapon.”

  “But not too often; not too soon.” Raymond rubbed his jaw. The rasp of callused fingers on stubble set Aidan’s teeth on edge. Mercifully, he did not do it long. “We may yet get out of this. If we can break their line. If we can make Tiberias, or failing that, win back to Marescallia, or even Cresson.”

  “Retreat?” Ridefort was outraged. “Not I. I’ll break through to Tiberias, or die trying.”

  “You well may,” Aidan said. He was running out of patience. “You ran soon enough the last time you faced an army of infidels. Do you have anything useful to say? Or will you hold your peace?”

  “We all know what you are,” Ridefort said through clenched teeth. “How do we know that it wasn’t you who told the infidel where to find us?”

  Aidan smiled. “You don’t.” Their faces were shocked; he laughed, though it made him cough. “I didn’t need to tell him. He has scouts enough, and he has a brain in his head. Nor were we exactly quiet about coming here.”

  “We weren’t,” said Guy, rather surprisingly. He fretted in his seat, worrying at his beard. His eyes kept darting from Gwydion to Aidan. Suddenly he said it. “Can you do anything?”

  Gwydion said nothing. Whatsoever. It was Aidan who spoke in the sudden and profound silence. “What would you have us do?”

  Guy gnawed his mustache. This was ghastly hard for him, and Aidan did not intend to make it easier. “You know,” the king said. “Get us out of this. Call up a devil, or something.”

  The priests were properly horrified. The barons either pretended to be, or were honest: narrowed their eyes and considered the usefulness of sorcery.

  Aidan was almost sorry to disillusion them. “We’re not black enchanters. What we could have done, should have been accomplished before we fell into this trap.”

  Guy barely flinched. He never troubled to remember what was inconvenient. “But you can do something. You—your brother—told us—there are tricks, magics—”

  “We can’t drive away the whole army,” Aidan said. “Still less smite it dead where it stands.”

  “A murrain on the camels?” Amalric suggested. “A fright among the horses?”

  Aidan stilled. There was something in the Constable’s expression...

  It passed. Aidan put it out of mind. “Nothing that will last.”

  “You’re not much good, are you?”

  Guy’s bluntness made Aidan laugh aloud, though it was laughter without mirth. “No, we’re not. Not this late in the race. Not against a hundred thousand Sar
acens.”

  “What of one?” Amalric asked. “What of the sultan? If he’s killed or disabled, his army will fall to pieces.”

  “This is appalling,” said the Bishop of Acre, who was a good enough knight when he was not being a man of the Church.

  “Yes, it is.” Gwydion’s voice was soft. “So is all this war, and this place in which we find ourselves. I might be willing to consider something of the sort, though not perhaps as you would wish: a sortie into the sultan’s camp, a swift stroke of the dagger, and what matter whether the assassin escapes or is killed? But that is not possible. He has his own protection, my lords. We have no power against it.”

  “Not even you?” Amalric demanded.

  “We are not gods,” Gwydion said. “We are not even lesser demons.”

  “I think,” said Amalric, “that it’s less a case of can’t than of won’t. For God and Jerusalem’s sake, can’t you stop being a good Christian long enough to save this kingdom from the infidel?”

  The bishop gasped. One or two of the barons hid smiles behind their hands.

  “And if I stop being a good Christian,” Gwydion said, “then I become a witch for burning. I see your logic, my lord Constable. Yet I would do what you ask, if there were any way to do it. Unfortunately there is not. The enemy is protected against me. I cannot even turn spy for you and let you know his mind.”

  “You’ve tried,” Raymond said. He was considerably less perturbed than most of them were to have it spoken of openly at last. “Is there anything at all that you can do?”

  Gwydion sat still on his stool. He did not laugh in the lords’ faces, which was more than Aidan could have done. His eyes were faintly blurred, with thought, with testing the limits of his power. How sorely circumscribed they were, Aidan knew all too well. “Very little,” Gwydion answered the count. “Except fight as any man may, and look after the wounded.”

  “The wounded?” Raymond asked. “You are a physician, then?”

  “Of sorts,” Gwydion said.

  “He touches them,” said one of the barons, “and they heal.” He blanched under the force of their eyes, and Aidan’s keener than any, but he went on boldly enough. “I saw, on the march. One of my men was horse-kicked, and my lord king was near, and touched him, and he walked away whole.”