He turned in his saddle and saw the worst sight he could ever have imagined. Twenty paces away, a solid phalanx of white-clad, armored knights was bearing down on him, their lances lowered and their faces hidden by a glinting mass of steel helmets. He shouted a warning and desperately tried to turn his horse towards the coming onslaught, but before his mount could respond they were on him.
His last image on earth was of one of the leading knights rising slightly out of his saddle to heave his lance towards him with the blow that would end his life.
The sudden flurry of activity on their right now caused a number of his comrades to turn their attention from the caravan, just in time to see the steel juggernaut crash into them. Unlike most Western warriors, the Templars rode together with almost perfectly tight alignment, leaving no room for anyone to escape between riders. The knights rode so closely together that the knees of each man touched those of the man on either side and their V-shaped formation cut into the charging Arabs like an axe head.
The left and center of the Saracen line, still totally absorbed by their prey in front of them, saw nothing of this, but a few noticed with surprise that some of the men of the caravan now stood on their wall with their arms raised, not in supplication or with pleas of surrender, but in what looked to be triumph.
The solid wedge of Templars now smashed through the right flank of the charging Saracens and hacked their way along it like a reaper along a stand of wheat. Templar lances and iron maces rose and fell like threshing tools, methodically turning the line of charging Arabs into bloody pulp. The chain-mailed horses of the knights smashed forward, through, and often over, their opponents, their nostrils flaring and their hooves crashing down on their lightly protected foes.
The collision brought the Arab line to a scrambling halt. Those on the far left glanced towards the Templars and immediately broke for safety, but for those in the center there was no escape. Some of them were simply smashed from their mounts and trampled under the Templars' horses. A few literally bounced off the line of shields and found themselves unhorsed. Their respite was brief. Behind the knights, a charging line of Templar sergeants came and swept over them.
A group of Saracens managed to form a line facing the onslaught and rode at the knights in a hopeless counter-charge, screaming their desperate defiance.
The Templars, almost impervious to the light Arab weapons behind their armor and mounted on mailed horses simply rode over them creating a terrible, screaming crash that echoed off the rocky landscape. Behind them, they left a trail of mangled and broken bodies in the dust.
Despite the violence of the impact, two dazed Saracens who had survived staggered to their feet. The sight of this seemed to enrage the caravan guardians and some of them leapt forward from their position and swarmed over them, several even dropping their weapons in their lust to revenge themselves on their tormentors. The mob literally tore the Arab fighters to pieces.
Of the fifty or so Saracens, fewer than a dozen made it to safety. They were pursued for a distance by the line of sergeants until they escaped into the low hills to their left, a final volley of Templar crossbow bolts flying after them.
A silence broke over the scene, pierced only by the wild cheering of the men of the caravan, several of whom now dropped to their knees, weeping in gratitude.
Wheeling his horse, the Commander brought his troop to a slow canter and, still in formation, rode over the small, but bloody, battlefield.
Satisfied that all was well, he led his men over to the caravan, stopping a dozen paces short.
One knight now broke from the tight formation and rode to the caravan, dismounted and stepped over the low wall and into the encampment.
Without removing his helmet, Salvatore walked in amongst the cheering men, shrugging off their delirious embraces. "The Bishop. Where is he?" he said.
The man, beaming with joy, gestured to the smallest wagon, an elaborate, fully enclosed carriage. Salvatore walked over to it and pulled the door open.
Inside, the Bishop screamed as the sunlight burst into the carriage, and fell to his knees. "Not me, not me. I am the Bishop of Tripoli. Take the others but spare a man of God. The others are you enemies, not me."
He squinted at the menacing figure silhouetted against the rising sun and realized that he was not facing a furious enemy, but a westerner, a knight of the Order of the Templars.
"My son!" he exclaimed, "you have saved me."
"You are the Bishop of Tripoli?"
"Yes, yes, I am, and you are a blessed relief. A salvation sent for me."
"Listen to me," said Salvatore coldly. “In Tripoli, a man will come to you soon and ask for a service. You will do well to remember today and grant that favor without question."
"Anything," said the Bishop, unable to hold back his tears of gratitude. "Any favor I can do is too small."
France
Exhaustion was already overcoming the long line of refugees winding their way through the lush French countryside. The fields were fat with crops, but they would rot, unharvested, where they stood.
Cherished possessions were being dropped in the dust as villagers gave up fighting to keep a grip on them. Those following behind lacked the will and the energy to pick them up and they trudged forward, all keeping their eyes fixed on the ground before them to avoid looking back at the pall of smoke that marked where their former homes now burned.
"Two hundred, maybe more," said the armored man to the priest beside him.
"And what is your duty, my Lord?" said Massimo.
"My duty? My men and I are here to help you root out this nest of Cathars. My duty is to wipe out this heresy, Father Massimo. We, the sword-arm of the Inquisition."
Massimo nodded, satisfied with the answer. He shifted in the saddle. Like his brother Salvatore, Massimo had ridden since he was old enough to walk, but he did not think it seemly for a priest to be seen mounted. It lacked the dignity of his office. Their father had been a crusader in the wars against the pagans in the Baltic lands and Massimo had lived amongst weapons and men of violence. He knew fighting men to be dull creatures, much in need of constant advice.
"Now their village is destroyed," Massimo said. "This nest full of vipers is walking away right in front of you. You will do nothing?"
"You will have us arrest them all?" said the knight. "Will you interrogate each one to assess their innocence?"
"The innocent are not my concern. The Church has laid upon me the weight of returning this land to the path of righteousness. It is the guilty we must seek."
The knight looked at Massimo, waiting for him to continue. The weeks spent in his company during this crusade against the remaining Cathars in southern France had taught him to allow Massimo as much time to speak as he wished.
"You have fifty men here, my lord," said Massimo. "They are armed and committed to our mission. Will you hold them back from executing the full fury of the Church?"
"Those villagers, some of them are heretics, many are innocents."
Massimo turned in his saddle to look directly into the eyes of the knight.
"If they are innocent, they have nothing to fear from the acts of the Church, or am I wrong?"
The knight looked down at the line of people below them. "What are your orders?"
"You already know the answer. Kill them all. God will welcome his own into his arms."
Karin
Sparke pulled his phone from the inside pocket of his new jacket and looked at the screen. He had a long list of missed calls, numerous texts and several emails. He looked at the small sheaf of paper messages from the hotel receptionist in his other hand.
Karin, or her office, had made about twenty attempts to contact him in the past two days and now they had somehow tracked him down to a hotel in Siena that he didn't even know he was going to stay at himself until this morning, and had told no one about since he checked in. His credit card was in his own name, so his former company could not have traced that. Apart from not kn
owing how they had found him, he could not understand why they would need to do so, and particularly why Karin was so desperate to reach him. She was now the CEO of the whole group and had little contact with day-to-day activities.
His separation from the firm had been done with Germanic thoroughness. There was no form unsigned, no personal property left in his office, no password to a computer system that they needed. For more than a decade he had made sure that his record keeping was so meticulous that any trained expert could step into any project he was running and pick up the reins immediately.
Whatever last threads that still connected Sparke to his old life with the company and to Karin needed to be cut he decided.
Almost every phone call that Sparke had made for many years had been work-related and thoroughly fact-based. Since he had never found his work stressful, he had never had to approach a call with any thought as to the emotional tone he should take. In fact, one of the reasons that he had been so successful in his job was that he was one of those few people who responded to extreme stress by becoming calmer. He knew that in situations where other people began to panic, his heart rate and blood pressure tended to reduce, his breathing deepened and peripheral thoughts faded away. He could feel the same process happening now as he reached for the phone. Karin answered on the second ring.
"Peter, we have been trying to contact you for a while.”
"I am surprised you found me here."
"It wasn't easy. When we had no reply, I eventually found a number for your friend Tilly Pink and she told me you had gone to Siena. We had our people call all the large hotels in the city and found you there."
"You called Tilly? What made you think of that?"
There was a silence at the end of the phone for a moment.
"Well, Peter, in all the years we have known each other, she is the only person I could ever remember you talking about from outside work."
"Really? I am surprised you remembered her name. You only met her once at your engagement party."
"Yes, but you probably mentioned her every time you and I spoke. You told me where she worked more than once, so it was not a hard thing to find her office."
This was news to Sparke. Had he really spoken so much about Tilly?
"Anyway," he said, "what is so important that you launch a manhunt for a former employee?"
"Peter," began Karin, "this is important, or I would not have called, but our friend in Taiwan has been calling, he wants to speak to you."
"What for?"
"They have a situation in the China Sea and he wants you to handle it."
"Did you tell him you’ve fired me and that I’m not available?”
The harshness of Sparke's language stopped Karin for a moment.
"We explained that you are no longer with the company, yes, but I did not go into the specific circumstances. He is not happy. He has made it clear that he will not accept anyone else except you. If he does not have you, he has told us that our contract with his firm will be cancelled."
"He places a lot of value on personal relationships," said Sparke.
"He places a lot of value on his personal relationship with you, Peter. When his container ship hit the rocks off the African coast last year, he believed that your actions saved the lives of several people, not to mention saving his company hundreds of millions of dollars."
Sparke knew that both of these facts were true. He also knew that the Taiwanese ship owner had built his company from a borrowed desk and a few thousand dollars lent to him by his family and he had a near obsession about only working with trusted individuals.
"All right, do you want me to call him and tell him that I left behind a great team and they can handle anything he needs in this situation of his?"
"I think we both know that will not work."
"Can I make sure I am understanding you correctly?" said Sparke. "A few months ago you tell me you want to have a relationship with me, then you dump me by email in order to marry Dieter from the Compliance department, then you sack me, and now you want me to hop over to Taiwan for you?"
"Peter, you are totally within your rights to hang up and forget this whole idea. I just want you to know that our Taiwanese friend acquired the controlling interest in our largest offshore oil exploration client. If we lose him, we lose our biggest customer and that will be a big hit on the team you created."
"Am I being stupid or is that emotional blackmail?"
"It's emotional blackmail, but it is also the truth."
Peter dropped his arm away from his ear. The team he had created was world class, probably the best in the world at risk assessment and incident response. He knew that Karin was not lying when she said that the loss of the Taiwan connection would be a body blow to the firm.
"How could this even work?" he asked. "Surely a terminated employee cannot be brought back to work for the firm?"
"We have had this looked into by Compliance," she said.
"And Dieter from Compliance has a solution?"
"We cannot hire you, either as an employee or as a consultant, but if you work for another firm there is no issue."
"But I don't work for another firm."
"We have already created one for you."
"You've what?"
“Dieter and Legal have created a shell company with all the paperwork already. All you have to do is sign the paperwork and it is a legal entity which employs you. We have contracts prepared between our firm and your new company."
"And this paperwork?"
"We have engaged a lawyer in Siena. The documents will be delivered to your suite within the hour.”
"This is a one-off thing, Karin. You need to send someone else from the team, probably Markus, to build bridges with this man."
"Markus is already en route to Taiwan."
"Good move," said Sparke. "I guess I better call our friend."
Two minutes later, Sparke scrolled through his contacts list and called Taiwan.
"Mr. Sparke, I am very glad to hear from you," said the Taiwanese shipping owner. "Mr. Sparke. I am sending a plane for you."
Celebration
The vast hall of the cathedral echoed with the sounds of the celebration mass held to mark the Bishop's victory over the Saracen forces who had tried to seize him.
Modesty prohibited him from too openly discussing his role in leading the Christian forces to victory, but it was widely known that he had led the caravan to safety personally, leading from the front and smiting scores of the enemy with his mace like a true warrior of the Church. It was said that he had killed the leader of the enemy forces in a final single combat.
According to those who knew, a group of passing Templars had arrived towards the end of the three-day battle just in time to escort the convoy back to Tripoli. This was true, said the best informed of the wine drinkers in the city.
In the taverns and brothels, it was said that over three hundred of the attackers met their deaths at the hands of the Bishop's men, while only a dozen or so of his escort were killed.
As soon as he returned to the city, the bishop had gathered all of the survivors of his escort and, thanking them for their loyal support in his victory, had dispensed a considerable sum in coin to each, reminding them of their duty to obey the Church in all things and the value of humble silence. Two of those men who had fallen had left widows who were made pensioners of the Church.
After the mass, a simple meal of celebration was prepared by the leading families of the city for two hundred or so guests which lasted until the early hours, and the Bishop was prevailed upon to share a few of the key moments in his stunning victory.
"I was merely the vessel of God's will, but I trust I was a vessel strong enough to carry out my duties," he said, slurring his words slightly. "God has plans for me that required me to triumph, and live to carry out his will."
Eventually, he retired to his personal chambers, helped by his chamber servant, and after a private engagement with a young woman of the
town, he retired to bed, weary but satisfied with his survival and his newly enhanced status as both a churchman and a Christian warrior.
"You promised to do a service," said a voice from the corner of his darkened rooms.
"Who is there? Show yourself. My guards are at the door." The Bishop fumbled for the small lamp that stood by his bed.
"A service," said Salvatore calmly. “A simple thing that will cost you nothing. Nothing you did not promise."
"Who are you? I made no promise."
"You did."
"You are a liar and a thief in the night. I will have my guards on you. What do you want?"
"You made your promise. That was not all. You also said, 'take the others, but spare me', perhaps you remember now."
The Bishop stared at Salvatore.
"It is not possible. The man who came to my carriage was of the Templar Order. You cannot be the same man."
"I am no one, but you are someone, someone who made a promise."
"Leave me,” said the Bishop, pulling the covers of his bed tight around him and composing himself again. “Do you seek money?” he said.
"I have no interest in your money."
"You have a soul though. If you threaten me you will be cast from the Church into the darkness of anathema."
"Save your words and listen to mine. Tomorrow night I will enter the cathedral alone, I will stay until matins prayers and leave immediately after."
"Impossible. The property of the Church is sacrosanct, to steal from the cathedral is the darkest sin."
"Nothing belonging to the Church will be taken. I will leave no trace."
The bishop looked keenly at Salvatore.
"There is nothing else?"
"Yes, but for the moment all I require is your help in accessing the Cathedral for a night."
"Why?"
"Why?" said Salvatore. "I have had many difficult journeys. I wish to spend a night of personal vigil in the Cathedral."
The Templar Thief: Peter Sparke book 4 Page 7
