Foreworld Saga 01 SideQuest Adventures No. 1 The lion in chains, the beast of Calarrava, the shield maiden

by HISTORY Stephenson, Neal

  An army that size would get, as Crespin put it, restless. Over the last few weeks, he and Crespin had watched their master, Arnaud Amairic, preach on the glory of fighting the enemies of Christendom. The priest’s rhetoric was noisy and inflammatory, prone to hyperbolic rhapsody; more than once, Lazare had found himself politely excusing himself from such sermons, citing distemper of his bowels.

  He felt a loose tremor pass through his body now as he accepted Crespin’s hand and got to his feet. “Do you think the Templars mean to harm the residents of Toledo?” he asked, though he feared he already knew the answer to his question. His visit with Marcos of Toledo had opened his eyes to the broad civility of the disparate cultures living in Iberia—Muslim, Jew, and Christian coexisted. It was as if the region thought itself to be autonomous, immune to the greater conflicts that ebbed and flowed across the Holy Land and Christendom. But such equality and peaceful coexistence could easily be overlooked by zealous crusaders. Men who had marched far from their homes and who were easily inflamed by fiery oratory.

  Crespin nodded solemnly. “I do, Brother Lazare. I truly do.”

  They could see a muted glow in the north as they walked hurriedly along the dry track. Wisps of black clouds floated low in the sky. Lazare walked quickly, Crespin huffing a step or two behind him, and within a half hour, they were able to see that the light and smoke were coming from fires burning within the city.

  In the foreground, dark shapes moved, and Lazare pulled Crespin off the beaten road as the horsemen galloped past them. The white tabards of the Templars were dirty and stained, and Lazare held Crespin back as the other man shouted and raged at the Templars as they rode back to their compound. In a few moments, the company was gone, and the only sound was the echo of the hooves against the hard ground and a sobbing wail from Crespin.

  Lazare tried to get Crespin’s attention, but the portly Cistercian had fallen to his knees and refused to budge. Lazare left him there and kept walking, anger propelling his steps.

  By the time he reached the outskirts of the city, the fires had been contained. A swath of burned timbers and soot-blackened stone cut through the Jewish quarter like a ragged ax wound. The surrounding buildings had been soaked—over and again—with water in the efforts to keep the fire at bay in much the same way that a wound is smothered with poultices and ointments to stop the spread of infection. All such ministrations were after the fact. The Templars had come, and their passage was savage and bloody.

  Lazare helped as best he could: hauling buckets of water, attempting to console the grief-stricken, finding cloth that could be used for bandages, distributing food and drink to the exhausted survivors, and assisting families in finding each other among the chaotic aftermath of the Templar assault.

  Shortly before dawn, he recognized one of the soot-stained men staggering through the streets, lugging a pair of heavy buckets. He approached Marcos and took one of the two water-filled buckets from the translator. Marcos stirred, rising out of his exhausted daze, as Lazare reduced his load, and he stared at the Cistercian brother, his tongue slowly wetting his blackened lips.

  Lazare nodded, indicating there was no need for speech, and he fell in beside Marcos, silently hauling water for the wounded. Carrying the heavy weight of Marcos’s unspoken recrimination.

  EIGHT

  A half-day’s ride from Almuradiel, when the grasses gave way to shrubs and stands of trees, Ramiro took the pair of horses off the narrow track and began to look for a suitable place to dispose of the three dead Moors. There were several washes, narrow tracks between nascent hillocks where winter runoff carved transitory streams. Some were deeper than others, but he didn’t think he would find one deep enough that scavengers wouldn’t get to the bodies. In fact, he needed one deep enough that only the scavengers would find them.

  As the shadows of the mountains started to darken the terrain, he found a suitable place. Two of the corpses were slung across one horse, and he pulled those two off first, rolling them into the rocky stream bed. The third had been slung across the rump of the horse he had been riding, and the animal kicked lightly as he undid the ties holding the body in place. After dragging the third body into the gully, he spent some time hauling rocks in place, obscuring the corpses.

  He hadn’t bothered striping them naked. He kept their swords and what other trinkets about their persons that might have value, but otherwise he left them alone. It was monstrous enough that he wasn’t burying them, but he hoped that anyone who might find them would think they had been waylaid by bandits.

  Unencumbered, he led the horses back to the path, and when he looked to the north, he spotted a horse approaching. It was carrying two riders, and as it got closer, he recognized the pair. He stood, letting his horses crop the isolated clumps of grass.

  Fernando slowed his horse as it reached Ramiro. Maria spoke first. “Your wife needs someone to care for her,” she said.

  “Aye.” Ramiro nodded, not trusting himself to say any more than simple acknowledgement. He had let his temper get the better of him, and the death of the riders had not only put the lives of Fernando and Maria in danger but Louisa as well. He had failed to secure the services of the midwife; in order to find another one, he would have to travel over the mountains—a journey of several days. He would do it, if that is what it took, but it meant leaving Louisa alone for nearly a week. In her condition, he feared what might happen.

  This fear made him angry, which only fueled his self-recrimination for what had happened in Almuradiel. He knew this never-ending cycle—it was what had sustained him for years after Alarcos—but it would not help Louisa. That which had kept him alive was only going to kill the one thing that he cared about.

  Which only increased his fear.

  “You will do anything I ask of you,” Maria continued. “Including staying away from her.”

  “Aye,” Ramiro agreed.

  “I will stay until I am confident that she and the child are strong enough, and you will provide food and shelter for me and my husband during that time.”

  “Aye,” Ramiro said. “You and Fernando may stay in the villa; I will sleep in the stables with the horses.”

  Maria nodded, finding this acceptable. “You will pay us well when we leave so that we might have enough to start a new life,” she said.

  Ramiro hesitated for a moment before agreeing.

  Maria nodded, and turned her head to say something quietly to Fernando. He slid off the horse and she nudged it into a walk. She did not look at Ramiro as her horse ambled past, leaving Fernando and Ramiro and the two remaining horses in her wake.

  Ramiro and Fernando stood awkwardly, unsure of what to say to one another. The horses noisily cropped grass nearby. Finally, Fernando cleared his throat. “We couldn’t stay in Almuradiel,” he said. “Other riders would come. They’d ask questions. The bag of silver you left would not have done away with all the questions, and then…” He shrugged. “My father was a farmer; I never cared for the back-breaking work, and so I sold it when he died and bought the tavern. This land has been both Christian and Muslim for many years, and no one ever cared much. Just as long as we knew who to give tribute to.” He glanced down at his boots, seemingly embarrassed by these words. “If the caliph comes north and means to make these lands his, I fear Maria and I would not be safe. We need to make a new life somewhere.”

  Ramiro struggled to find the right words. He knew he was responsible for their decision to leave Almuradiel, and while it would benefit Louisa, it was not the way he had meant to engage Maria’s services. “I am as rough and broken as I appear,” he said. “I do not know how to apologize for what I did and more silver cannot undo the grief I have brought to you and Maria, but know that I am grateful nonetheless for the decision you have made to aid me and mine.” It was the longest speech he had made in a long time.

  Fernando tried to smile, but his mouth kept drooping down. “Where else would we have gone?” he asked.

  Louisa was waiting for t
hem outside the house. The day was overcast and cool, and she stood mutely, one of the heavy wool blankets wrapped around her slight frame. Ramiro did not know how long she had been standing outside, waiting for them, but it had been long enough that she was over any surprise at seeing three people and three horses instead of just Ramiro.

  Fernando helped Maria down from her horse, and the midwife went to Louisa and began asking questions about her health. Louisa offered terse replies, her eyes not leaving Ramiro. When Maria started to lift the blanket to peer at Louisa’s belly, she finally looked down at the inquisitive midwife and caught the older woman’s hands with her own. “In a moment,” she said, politely but firmly.

  Maria frowned, and then glancing back and forth between Louisa and Ramiro, waved Fernando over. “I will go prepare some water,” she said curtly. Louisa nodded absently, and Maria marched into the villa as if she owned the place—Fernando following behind her.

  “What happened?” Louisa asked when she and Ramiro were alone with the horses.

  “I brought the midwife,” Ramiro said. “And her man. They’ll stay with us until the baby comes.”

  Louisa touched a horse lightly above its nose and then let her hands trail along the bridle and the neck of the animal until she could finger the fringe on the saddle. “This is Moorish tack,” she said.

  “It is,” Ramiro nodded, aware of the three swords wrapped in an oilskin bundle across the back of the horse. They, too, were Moorish blades.

  Louisa looked at him, staring at his face. In the past, he had disliked her attention, and he had, on more than one occasion, shouted at her to stop looking at him. His scars would never go away. He would never be anything other than the wrecked man standing in front of her—no matter how hard and long she looked at his face. But, over time, he had come to realize that such a reaction sprung from his own guilt and fear. For too many years, his face had frightened people—much like that dying mercenary weeks ago—and he had come to believe that was the only way he would ever be seen.

  Louisa wasn’t afraid of him, which only made her inquisitive stare so difficult to bear. She saw past the scars and the anger and the rest of the armor that he had carefully built over the years; she saw him, and what she saw sometimes saddened her.

  “Go inside,” he snarled.

  She lifted her hand from the saddle and reached out to him, but he took a step back, turning his ruined face away.

  “Ramiro…” she trailed off into a sigh, and then with a slight shake of her head, she turned away from him and began her slow walk back to the villa.

  He watched her go. He knew that she would get the story from Maria and Fernando, and he knew he should have offered her his version. But what would that be? One of the riders took offense to his face and so he killed the man? And he killed the other two simply because…well, why? What reason could he give to Louisa that she would understand?

  The fire in his chest had not gone out, not even after his speech to Fernando. It had died down, but it was still there, deep in his chest. Fueled by a tiny refrain, the thing he told himself over and over: I did it to protect you, Louisa.

  NINE

  Alfonso VIII, the king of Castile, stalked about the choir of the cathedral, his dark cloak trailing behind him like a shadow struggling to keep up. When Lazare had arrived with the other Cistercians, including Abbot Amairic, Alfonso had been sitting in a cedar chair that had been brought out to the main altar, but the king had not remained in his seat very long. The gathered council—the Cistercians, a pair of men representing Pedro II, the archbishop Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada, a few rabbis from the Jewish community, elders and scholars from the city, and the other commanders of the force camped outside Toledo—had quietly listened to the king’s heated condemnation of the Templar action. The king paused after a few minutes of railing at the group when he realized the target of his invective was not present.

  His face purpling with rage, Alfonso shouted for someone to fetch the impudent and insubordinate Templar, Helyssent de Verdelay.

  As the king stormed about the cavernous space, those in attendance did their best to avoid his ire. Lazare tried to eavesdrop on the terse conversation between the archbishop and Abbot Amairic, but the pair separated themselves enough from the rest of the group that Lazare’s efforts would be readily obvious. Instead, Lazare wandered around the cathedral, feigning interest in the stained-glass panels as he listened to other conversations that were not so carefully conducted.

  The Jews were conversing in Hebrew, and while he did not understand what they were saying, he had seen enough of the aftermath of the Templar attack to know what they were talking about. One synagogue had been completely destroyed by fire, and nearly a dozen surrounding homes had been lost as well. Nearly three dozen had died, and double that had sustained injuries from sword and smoke. He had heard stories that the Templars had looted as well, but the amount of goods and silver taken varied widely in the stories. Crespin and the three other Cistercians who had accompanied Amairic moved among the commanders, offering conciliatory comments and nodding a great deal in response to expressions of outrage and disbelief. The scholars kept to themselves, a clump of bearded men who muttered quietly to one another while they looked on like nervous sheep regarding a pack of circling wolves.

  Lazare caught sight of Marcos, and indicated with his head that the translator should join him at a shrine to the Virgin Mary. Lazare lit a candle and placed it in the rack of melted stumps, offering a quick prayer to the Virgin to guide those who had suffered greatly the previous night. He heard Marcos step up beside him, and he waited for the translator to offer his own candle and prayer.

  “He is much calmer today,” Marcos said, nodding toward the distant figure of the pacing king. “I heard he had to be restrained from donning his armor and riding out to the Templar camp.”

  Lazare shivered briefly at the idea. “Was there any provocation?” he asked.

  Marcos peered at him. “You were there last night,” he said. “The Templars didn’t discriminate between men and women. The Jews do not have a militia. What provocation could there have been?” His manner was terse and his words clipped, revealing his frustration at Lazare’s question.

  Lazare flushed and shook his head.

  “Do you know of the crusade led by Boniface of Montferrat?” Marcos asked. “They were bound for the Holy Land, and the doge of Venice offered them ships to sail across the Mediterranean. The crusaders accepted but were diverted to Constantinople. Do you know what happened next?”

  “Aye,” Lazare said. “I have heard the stories. The crusaders attacked and sacked Constantinople instead.”

  “Rome threatened to excommunicate the doge and Boniface, but they offered to pledge allegiance to Rome once they took the throne. Constantinople was the seat of the Eastern Church—they were still Christian, but they were not subjects of Rome. The Pope withdrew his threat of excommunication and the crusade never made it to the Holy Land. There was more than enough plunder in Constantinople to satisfy the venal desires of these knights. Nor did they care. They were far from home, fighting in the name of God. Their salvation was assured. It did not matter whom they were killing.”

  “The attack last night is similar,” Lazare said, “But…”

  “What? Is it less of a crime because they were Jews and not other Christians? Their god is not so different from the Christian God, not like the pagans in the north or those marauding tribes of Vikings.”

  “You could argue that the Muslim God is not dissimilar to the Christian God too.”

  “I have made that argument,” Marcos said. “I have translated too many of their treatises not to see that we are more similar than not. We are all descendents of Abraham.” He grabbed Lazare’s arm. “The archbishop understands. That is why he has been tolerant of the others in Toledo. That is why the king of Castile is so angry. Toledo is a center of great knowledge because we strive to live in harmony with other cultures and beliefs. We want to learn from them. A
nd your Templars—”

  “They’re not my Templars,” Lazare interrupted.

  “These Frankish Templars,” Marcos corrected. “They’re like the barbarian tribes in the north. They kill indiscriminately. They only see the other and think the other must be subjugated and conquered. They think of their kings like Charlemagne—and his hero, Roland—and want to finish what their forefathers could not.”

  “But Alfonso called upon Rome for aid. These crusaders want to strike against the enemies of Christendom. Is that not what your king wanted?” Lazare asked.

  Marcos stared at the flickering light of the newly lit candles. “It’s Toledo,” he said, and when that didn’t seem to be enough, he clarified. “It’s complicated.”

  Lazare recalled his conversation with Crespin when he had been working on the sword. “Aye,” he agreed. “But I fear the Templars—and Rome—care little for these complications. They have a more simplistic view. The victor can always lay claim to righteousness.”

  “Aye,” Marcos said. “And therein lies our greatest fear. If the Moors are defeated, who among the Christian leaders will claim this victory? And what will be the cost?”

  Eventually the heavy doors of the cathedral opened, and all conversation within the cathedral stopped. A single figure trotted slowly up the nave, and while it was clear almost immediately that the individual was not the Templar commander, everyone waited expectantly for the message he would deliver. As soon as the sweating man reached the choir, he dropped to his knees, and without waiting for the king to recognize him, he blurted out his news. “They’re gone.”