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

by HISTORY Stephenson, Neal

  “Now he has a sword,” Don Ruy said. “If he would swear to wield it in the service of the Order of Calatrava, then he would come under that same protection.” He glanced over at Helyssent. “Templar,” he called. “Is that not how it is done in your ranks?”

  Helyssent bristled, but said nothing. He let go of his sword and indicated to his men that they should relent as well. “This foolishness is no concern of mine,” the Templar commander said. “You may play these games as much as you like after we have departed.”

  His words sparked the arguments again, and the room was once again filled with agitated voices. The king leaned his head back and stared up at the ceiling.

  Lazare handed Don Ruy’s sword back, ignoring the abbot’s heated gaze. Instead, he tried to make sense of the arguments billowing around him. There was talk of abandoning the crusade, of spoils of war, of fighting Miramamolin’s army, and a lack of leadership. He glanced at Helyssent out of the corner of his eye and realized why the Templar commander appeared in control of the room.

  The Templars were leaving, and a not-insignificant portion of the northern armies were going with them.

  Finally, the king lowered his head, looking no less weary than he had a few minutes before. He banged the flat of his hand against the arm of his chair until the hammering sound broke through the impassioned discussion. Once the room was quiet, he cleared his throat and addressed the Templar commander.

  “Your mind is set?” King Alfonso asked. “You will return to France?”

  “Aye, Your Majesty,” Helyssent said with false dignity. “Your command constrains us too greatly. We cannot hope to uphold our commandment to God and Rome under your leadership.”

  “And for you to stay?”

  “Your Majesty knows what must be done.”

  The king shook his head. “I will not condone the murder of innocents. Nor will I allow you to wantonly pillage my kingdom or the lands of the caliph.”

  Helyssent nodded curtly. “Then we have nothing else to discuss.” Without another word, he strode for the entrance of the tent, his men and a number of other commanders falling in behind him. Lazare, Crespin, and the men of the Order of Calatrava got out of the way. Those who remained stood silently, watching, as the strongest part of the assembled army abandoned the crusade. As the last man exited the tent, the abbot stirred and scuttled after them.

  After the abbot’s departure, no one spoke, and the only sound was the crackling pop of the torches. Finally, a timorous voice rose up from the few remaining commanders. “What…what are we going to do?”

  The king looked at the men standing beside his chair. The one on the left lowered his hood, drawing a collective gasp from the group as his face was revealed.

  “We fight,” King Sancho the Strong of Navarre said. “We fight—not for Rome, but for our homes and families.”

  FOURTEEN

  She came out to the stables every few nights, and he said little when she crept into his bed, and he spoke of her nocturnal company even less during the day. It was as if she were a dream that visited him, and if he spoke of the phantom that filled his arms, she would never visit him again. He would never feel the tiny life dancing and jumping under her skin. As the sky turned black and the stars scattered across the sky, he would lie on his bed, unwilling to sleep. Waiting for her to come.

  The nights she didn’t, he slept poorly. Restlessly. Waking every few hours when one of the horses stirred, making noises that never became familiar to him. Dreams, much like the one that had come to him the afternoon and evening he had spent watching the Castillo del Ferral, began to visit again. He would wake, sweating and gasping—screaming occasionally. In the morning, his body would ache as if he had spent the night running. Or fighting. Or dying.

  The nights she came, he slept soundly. Deeply. Repairing the nervous damage he suffered on the other nights. For a time, he thought her visits would be enough to keep the demons at bay. Each night with her in his arms, with his unborn child close, would offset the two or three nights in which the past haunted him.

  And the night when he started awake and found himself curled up beneath the old oak behind the orchard, he knew her visits weren’t going to be enough. He knew the past was too close. He knew the Moors were too close. He had to become what he had been once before. One last time.

  He knew where to dig. The moon hovered over his shoulder, shining ghostly white light on the roots of the tree so that he could see what his hands were doing. He dug, scraping at the hard ground with his bare hands. When his fingers started to bleed, he found a stick and scratched at the ground with that. It took hours, but much later, when the moon was teetering on the tip of the mountains, he crept into the stable and fell onto his bed, utterly exhausted.

  In his arms, he clutched the dirty scabbard of a longsword.

  It remained cold, and he could not feel any heartbeat in the steel. Nor did it kick and twitch in his arms. But it was familiar, more familiar than anything else, and he slept soundlessly for the rest of the night, free of the dreams.

  In the morning, Ramiro studiously ignored the dirt-caked scabbard lying on his bed as he went about his other chores. After feeding and watering the horses, he walked the perimeter of the farm. The goats called to him from their pen, and he let them out so they could roam around the orchard. They bounced happily past him, eager to explore the fragrant, budding apple trees. The pasture was covered with a fine sheen of dew, and there was deer sign among a few of the rows in his garden. He would have to set up a blind in the next few days and see if he could bring one of them down. The leather and meat would be welcome in the main house.

  The ground around the old oak was disturbed, mounds of dirt piled around a gaping hole. Half buried in the loose dirt near the hole was a tattered piece of clothing that had been white once, before years in the ground had permanently discolored it. The surcoat was falling apart, and it tore as he tried to pull it free of the dirt. He brushed some of the clinging dirt off the piece in his hands, revealing a portion of the elaborate sigil of the Order of Calatrava.

  He dropped the scrap of cloth in the hole, and as he shoved dirt back into the hole with his foot, he made sure to rebury the torn surcoat as well.

  He heard his name being called and he turned toward the house, spotting Fernando, who waved. Ramiro kicked the dirt around the oak a final time and walked away from the tree.

  “We need herbs, cloth, and some other supplies,” Fernando said. “I have to go north, perhaps as far as Valdepeñas, where there is a good market.”

  “I will come with you,” Ramiro said.

  “Is that wise?” Fernando asked, ducking his head so he wouldn’t have to look upon Ramiro’s face.

  “I need to hear the gossip. I need to know who is traveling on the campo. I will not make trouble,” he promised.

  Fernando nodded, though his expression suggested he was not entirely convinced. “Very well,” he sighed. “I will tell Maria. We should depart soon. We have a long day ahead of us.”

  They separated—Fernando returning to the main house, Ramiro, to the stables where he began to prepare two of the horses for the ride. Almost as an afterthought, he picked up the dirty scabbard and tried to brush most of the grime and dirt off, and then he covered it with his sleeping blanket. He would not need it in Valdepeñas; not if he was going to hold to his word.

  Fernando arrived shortly after he had finished hiding the sword, and they finished readying the horses. They led them outside and mounted. Ramiro looked toward the villa as they rode down the lane, but he did not see Louisa. He wondered, briefly, if he should go back and say good-bye, but he set that worry aside. He would see her again, tomorrow morning at the latest. There was no reason to fear otherwise.

  They reached Valdepeñas in the early afternoon, and despite the heat, the market was busy. While Fernando sought to buy the supplies Maria needed, Ramiro sought out a tavern and found one that was filled with boisterous customers. He managed to drag a stool into a c
orner where he would not be jostled or disturbed overmuch by the noisy patrons. With his face obscured by a heavy hood, he sat and listened to the raucous stories.

  There was an army on the plain—crusaders and Castilians—and it was slowly moving south. The Moorish garrisons in a number of citadels had been defeated. Calatrava had been retaken. A lesser topic, but one that cast a pall on any celebratory oration, was the caliph’s army, marching up from Seville. The naysayers in the audience—who were shouted down more often that not—said the Moorish army was three times the size of the Castilian army. Others said that Miramamolin meant to march all the way to Rome, and that he was allowing all the Christian victories in the last few days so that the northern forces would become arrogant and careless with these minor conquests. They had not faced a real threat, and when Miramamolin managed to cross the Sierra Morena, the armies of the north would run in terror.

  Ramiro nursed his cup of wine, his heart pounding in his chest. Calatrava had been retaken! What of the other citadels along the road to Castile? Were they in Christian hands again? Malagón. Benavente. Torre de Guadalferza.

  Alarcos.

  Would they even remember who had been left behind at Alarcos? After the Lord of Vizcaya had negotiated the terms of his surrender, assuring the safety of the women and children who had been trapped by the Moors at Alarcos, some of the knights of Calatrava had been held as an assurance of the ransom being paid. After a month, it was clear to the Moorish commander that Vizcaya had no intention of paying the ransom. He had left the knights to die.

  A pair of dusty travelers came into the tavern, and after they quenched their thirsts, they told new stories. Rumors that the northern armies were splitting up. The Templars, having been disgraced in some dispute with the king of Castile, were leaving. They were taking most of the northerners with them too, and Ramiro listened intently to the speculative bedlam that filled the room in the wake of these rumors.

  Fifty thousand fighters were leaving the field. Miramamolin’s army now outnumbered the Christians, four to one. There were no knights left. Without the Templars, the king of Castile only had the military orders of Iberia to call upon, and everyone agreed that these orders were not suitable replacements for the fabled Templars. Someone tried to start a rumor that the Templars had left because the Shield-Brethren were coming, and everyone knew the Shield-Brethren and the Templars would not fight on the same field, but this story was quickly shouted down as utter nonsense.

  After awhile, the tenor of the room slid from chaotic celebration to somber rumination. If the stories were true—and the dust-stained travelers stood by their news—then the plain of La Mancha was going to be a bloody battlefield again, and many recalled the last time the Almohad caliph and the kings of Iberia hurled themselves at one another. Ramiro finished his wine and pushed his way through the crowd toward the door.

  “The Beast,” someone shouted. “We need the Beast of Calatrava!”

  He froze, fearing someone had seen his face in the shadows of his hood, but no one was paying any attention to him. The room was focused on a drunken man near the hearth who was too fair-haired to have been born in Iberia. He waited, swaying slightly, until he had everyone’s attention, and then he launched into a wild tale, filled with the sort of poetic nonsense that only a troubadour could find possible, and Ramiro pushed his way through the crowd.

  It hadn’t been like that, he thought as he shoved the door open and left the tavern and the troubadour’s tale of the battle at Alarcos. It hadn’t been like that at all.

  The name wasn’t even used until four years later, after two garrisons around Calatrava had been killed by the scarred madman who always left one survivor so that the Moors would know who was killing them.

  FIFTEEN

  “That is a beautiful blade.”

  Lazare faltered, struggling to steady himself as his rhythm with the grindstones was interrupted. The sword blade on the anvil was nearly finished, less than a hand’s breadth near the tang remained unpolished. He had been working on it extensively over the last few days, since the Templars had abandoned the crusade. Since he had been cast out of the Cistercian order by the abbot. There had been little else to occupy his time. Like everyone else, he was waiting for the kings of Castile and Navarre to reach a decision.

  “Thank you, Your Grace,” Lazare said as he looked up and recognized the three men who were gathered at his makeshift smithy.

  His visitors this morning were the archbishop, Don Ruy, and Brother Crespin. The archbishop had been the other mysterious figure in the tent when Helyssent had refused to aid the king of Castile. He and the king of Navarre had arrived during the night, and they had secretly waited to see the outcome of the dispute between Castile and the crusaders before revealing themselves.

  “Toledo steel?” Don Ruy asked as he stepped closer and inspected the shaped blade.

  “Aye,” Lazare said, lightly brushing off some of the dust clinging to the sword. He squinted at Brother Crespin, who was standing a little separate from the other two. He and Crespin had not spoken in several days, and the few times he had seen the other man in the camp, Crespin had avoided his gaze. Crespin smiled weakly as Lazare looked at him, but said nothing.

  “The king has received word from Al-Andalus,” the archbishop said as casually as he had spoken of Lazare’s smithing. “Al-Nasir’s army numbers nearly two hundred thousand men. More than four times our number. The king has been consulting with King Sancho day and night in an effort to assemble a successful battle plan, but…”

  Lazare nodded. The loss of the Templars was devastating, not just in pure numbers—each knight was invaluable on the battlefield—but in morale as well. Campaigns had been won with worse odds, but to willingly engage in battle at such a deficit was the sign of an ill-prepared commander. Miramamolin might show mercy on the field, but the other kings of Iberia would be less forgiving.

  “But he needs an edge,” Lazare finished for the archbishop. “He needs an advantage that is not simply numbers.”

  “Yes,” the archbishop said. “An edge.” He flicked his thumb against the tip of Lazare’s sword. “Something that will give his men a reason to fight. A reason to believe they will win.”

  Lazare thought about what King Sancho had said in the meeting. “For hearth and home isn’t enough?” he asked.

  “If it were, would you be here?” the archbishop asked. “Marcos of Toledo told me you spoke of seeking symbols that would rally men’s hearts.” He flicked his thumb against the sword again.

  “Durendal,” Lazare explained to Don Ruy who was following the conversation with a raised eyebrow. “Tizona.”

  “Ah,” Don Ruy said, his face brightening. “Now I understand.”

  “Good,” the archbishop nodded. He held out his hand to Lazare, who took it without fully understanding why. The archbishop clasped his other hand over Lazare’s. “Good luck,” he said, staring intently at Lazare, and then he let go of Lazare’s hand. As he turned away, he laid his hand on Brother Crespin’s shoulder and whispered a blessing to the Cistercian, who nodded sagely.

  Lazare watched the archbishop walk away. “I don’t understand,” he said to Don Ruy.

  Don Ruy cast about for something to sit on, and finding a stool, he pulled it close and leaned toward Lazare. “We need a symbol,” he said. “It could be a sword such as this one. Or it could be a man. Or it could be both.”

  “Me?” Lazare said, trying to figure out what Don Ruy was suggesting.

  Don Ruy shook his head. “You are not Castilian,” he said. “The archbishop trusts you. He says you understand what it is to be an Iberian, even though you are from…where? England?”

  “France,” Lazare corrected, stealing a guilty glance at Brother Crespin, who gave no indication he had heard or cared about Don Ruy’s slip.

  “It is okay to be English,” Don Ruy said, mistaking Lazare’s correction. “King Alfonso’s wife is English. Sister of the Lionheart, in fact.”

  “So I ha
ve heard,” Lazare said, licking his suddenly dry lips.

  “Have you heard the local legend of Calatrava?” Don Ruy asked. “The monster that is neither man nor beast, but who haunts this plain, slaughtering Moors in their sleep?”

  “I have not,” Lazare admitted.

  “Nearly twenty years ago, the Moors drove my order out of Calatrava. After the battle at Alarcos. Those of us who survived became knights without a castle. We even changed our name for a while, but such a decision diminished the sacrifice of our fallen brothers, more so when stories started to circulate about the Beast of Calatrava. Whoever he was, he didn’t accept the loss—he would never accept the loss—of our namesake. How could we call ourselves the Order of Calatrava if we did not fight for what was ours? Calatrava was abandoned by the Templars long ago, because they were not Castilian. They did not belong here. This is our home, and our name reflects who we are and who we protect. For many years, we have been less than we should have been.”

  “You want me to masquerade as this man?” Lazare asked.

  “No, no,” Don Ruy said with a chuckle. “I want you to help me find him.”

  “Me? Why me?”

  “Because you believe in the stories, and because you believe in the truth that lies behind the stories.” Don Ruy fumbled with his hands in his lap. “And because you are not from Iberia. Sometimes we listen to a stranger more readily than we do our own countrymen.”

  “This man is a legend,” Lazare said. “A twenty-year-old legend. How is this not a fool’s errand?”

  “Because he has been seen. Less than a month ago. In a tiny village named Almuradiel, near the Sierra Morena.”