The Templar Salvation (2010) ts-2

by Raymond Khoury

  “There’s nothing here to tell us who this was,” she remarked as she stood up and wiped her forehead with her sleeve. She was exhausted, the arduous effort having drained what little strength she’d had left after the sleepless night at the mountain stakeout. Adding to her discomfort, the bomb belt had been straining against her ribs and digging into her with every move, bruising the edge of her rib cage, but she knew there wasn’t anything she could do about that.

  The Iranian stood next to her, eyeing the remains. He checked his watch, then said, “Okay, good work. Let’s keep going.”

  Tess shook her head with disdain and despair, and drank some water from the canteen Abdulkerim had given her. Then she got back down on her knees and kept going.

  An hour or so later, she and the Byzantinist had uncovered the remains of one more corpse.

  One more—not two.

  Tess dug small exploratory holes on either side of the communal grave, but came up blank. There were no layers of rocks there either, confirming that no one else had been buried there, not close to the two skeletons anyway.

  Which meant the trail wasn’t dead.

  Which also meant her ordeal wasn’t over.

  She got up, drenched in sweat, and leaned back against the rock face, taking in deep breaths to slow her heart rate down. Abdulkerim rummaged in his backpack and shared the last of his honey cakes with her. She chewed on the soft, gooey pastry slowly, relishing the taste, feeling their effect suffuse her body, and tried to give her mind a break from wondering what their find meant.

  “Two bodies, not three … And yet, there are three names on the grave,” the Iranian announced, clearly pleased with the outcome. “Which raises so many questions, wouldn’t you say?”

  He fixed her with a curious, slightly amused gaze.

  She was too worn out to play games—but she had to try something. She replied, “Such as, which two are they, right? Well, hey, you want to play CSI and come up with an answer for that one, be my guest.”

  He kept staring at her with the same bemused smirk on his face. “Really, Tess? That’s the best you can do?”

  Abdulkerim spoke up, stepping in to defend Tess. “They’re seven-hundred-year-old skeletons. How can we possibly know who they were?”

  The Iranian gave her a “come, now” dubious look. “Tess?”

  He said it like he knew already. A spasm of dread shot through Tess as she considered the consequences of being found out—again.

  She relented, wondering how much Jed had told the Iranian. “I don’t think either of these is Conrad.”

  “Why not?” Abdulkerim asked.

  She looked at the Iranian. He nodded his approval. “These skeletons … they’re complete. Both of them.”

  The Byzantinist seemed lost. “And … ?”

  “Conrad was hurt at the battle of Acre. Badly.” A sense of doom flooded her face, her spirits drowning at the thought of not finding closure in the grave she’d just opened up. “This isn’t him.”

  Chapter 37

  CAPPADOCIA

  MAY 1310

  They spent the first night in a narrow valley down the mountain from the monastery, camped out around a tall, rectangular rock that had crosses and other markings chiseled into it. They rode out early the next morning, spread out from one another with Hector riding point, Conrad farther back in the heavily laden wagon, and Miguel trailing far behind to watch their backs, all three of them acutely aware of the dangers they might encounter and keen to get to the relatively safer territory farther south as quickly as possible.

  Conrad still wasn’t sure what their best move would be. It had all happened too fast, and it wasn’t something that he’d ever thought he’d be doing. He had some important decisions to make. The first of which was where to stash their consignment. Once that was settled, he’d need to figure out how to go about using it to get the pope to release his brethren and rescind the charges against their Order.

  He thought of taking the consignment to France. The pope, a Frenchman, was now based there, in Avignon. Conrad’s imprisoned brothers were also in France, as was their nemesis, King Philip. Any approach to the pope and any monitoring of its results would need to happen there. But France was dangerous. The king’s seneschals were everywhere. It would be difficult to travel around with a conspicuous cargo in tow, and Conrad didn’t know whom he could still trust there. The other option was Cyprus. He had friends there, and there was little Frankish presence on the island. They could hide their trove there, he could leave Hector and Miguel in place to guard it and venture alone to France to make his play. Either way, they had to get to a port first, the one they’d landed in when they’d left Cyprus: Corycus. Heading there made sense in another way: Once they got across the Taurus Mountains, they’d be in the Armenian kingdom of Cilicia, which was Christian territory.

  The problem was, the going was slow. The old wagon was lumbering along, its twin horses straining from the heavy load under its canvas cover. Harder still was that the knights had to avoid the easy route. The last thing they wanted was to meet up with some roaming Ghazi warriors, which meant they needed to keep away from any well-trodden trails. Instead, they were trudging up rocky, less stable terrain and cutting through dense forests, which was delaying their progress even more.

  By the end of the next day, they’d reached a wide plain that stretched all the way to the distant mountain range they needed to cross. The open ground ahead of them provided little in terms of cover, which made Conrad uncomfortable. His only other choice was just as unattractive: the long, narrow canyons that snaked across the plain, cut into the flatlands as if gouged out by a set of gargantuan claws. Given the load they were carrying and their lack of chain mail and battle weaponry, coming across a horde of bandits in one of the canyons would lead to a certain defeat. The odds of encountering one, though, had to be less likely than being spotted out in the open. After a short debate, they opted to take the canyon route and camped out on a ridge at the mouth of the one they thought would be their best bet, using some unusual rock spires for cover.

  Their reasoning was sound—except that the threat came from elsewhere.

  The first arrows struck the next morning, a couple of hours after they had set off. Hector was on point, leading the small convoy through the twists and turns of the canyon, when one of the bolts slammed into his chest, far enough under his right shoulder to cut into his lung. Two others buried themselves into his horse, one of them hitting it in its foreleg and causing its leg to collapse under it. Hector hung on as his mare neighed in agony and came down in a messy cloud of blood and dust.

  Conrad spotted two archers at the top of the canyon, ahead of them, and pulled hard on the reins of his steed to spin it around, anticipating what was coming up behind them and hoping he was wrong.

  He was right.

  Four riders were charging at them, riders that he recognized.

  The trader, his son, and two of the men they’d brought with them.

  He felt a flush of acid in the pit of his stomach. He knew the trader was greedy, but they’d been careful about covering their tracks and had Miguel making sure they hadn’t been followed.

  Clearly, they hadn’t been careful enough.

  Twenty years earlier, in the heat of battle, Conrad wouldn’t have bat-ted an eyelid about engaging them. With a helmet and chain mail, a lance, broadsword, and mace, and a well-shielded horse, any Templar knight would have thought nothing of taking on four enemy fighters.

  This was different.

  This wasn’t twenty years ago. It was now. After Acre.

  After the defeat that had cost him his hand.

  He’d lost it in the heat of battle to a Mameluke scimitar, sheared right off at the wrist, a clean cut that came close to costing him his life. He had never experienced pain like what he felt when the infirmarer had fought to sear his wound shut with a red-hot blade. He’d lost a bucketload of blood, and as he and his surviving brethren sailed away from the fallen city, he h
overed at the precipice of death for days on end, until a gust of life somehow found him and dragged him back from it. During his long recovery in Cyprus, he tried to find some comfort in the fact that it had been his left hand and not the hand with which he held his sword, but that didn’t cheer him much. He knew he would never be the formidable warrior he had once been. Then he found a talented Cypriot blacksmith who said he could help and made him a copper prosthesis, a false hand that fit snugly onto the stump of his forearm with leather straps to hold it in place. It was beautifully crafted and had five fixed fingers that were a reasonable rendition of what he had lost and were fixed in a bent position that allowed him to do certain key tasks such as holding on to his horse’s reins, lifting a jug of water, carrying a shield, or punching the jaw off anyone who crossed him.

  Still, given his handicap, he knew the odds weren’t favoring him and Miguel. The odds shrank to four-to-one an instant later when another arrow thudded into the Spaniard’s back and threw him off his horse.

  Conrad drew his scimitar and struggled to control his rearing horse as Mehmet and his men thundered in. The two hired riders were at full gallop and streaked past him, one on either side, right up against the wagon. He whipped his blade across in a wide, upward arc and caught one of them across the face, opening up a wide gash under the man’s ear and flinging a wake of blood through the air behind it, but the other rider cut him in the thigh as he threw himself onto him and knocked him off his perch.

  He fell heavily to the ground, his arms breaking the fall but losing the scimitar in the process. He pushed himself to his feet, surveying the situation through hazy eyes. All three of them were now down: Hector, trapped under his wounded horse, blood gurgling out of his mouth, gasping for breath; Miguel, back on his feet now, but staggering like a drunkard from his injury; and Conrad, limping now, blood flooding down his leg, straightening up in time to see the trader and his son riding in for the kill.

  Qassem was bearing down on him, fast. Conrad’s eyes scanned the ground around him, looking for something, anything he could use as a weapon. There was nothing within reach, no time to think of anything fancy. His body reacted instinctively and he just leapt up at the Turk as he blew past, leading with his metal hand and letting it take the brunt of the blade’s strike while grabbing the man’s belt with the other hand and pulling him off his horse.

  They fell in a heap of flesh and bone and a frenzy of elbows and fists, but it was a fight Conrad knew he’d lose. A kick to the gash in his thigh sent a shock of pain through him and brought him to his knees. An elbow to the cheekbone floored him. He squirmed on the hot canyon bed, a metallic taste of blood back in his mouth, a sensory blast to a long-gone era, one that had also ended in defeat.

  He looked up. The trader had dismounted and was sauntering over to join his son, who loomed proudly over his vanquished opponent. Behind them, Conrad saw Miguel, lying dead at the feet of the two riders who had rushed him, and, farther away, he saw the prone body of Hector.

  “I told you these lands weren’t safe,” the trader chortled. “You should have listened to me.”

  Conrad sat up and spat some blood out, hitting the son’s boots. Qassem pulled his leg back and was about to launch a kick at the knight’s face when his father’s shout stilled him.

  “Stop,” Mehmet ordered. “I need him awake.” He scowled at his son for a moment, then turned his attention at something up the canyon and smiled contentedly.

  Conrad followed his gaze. The archers had climbed down from their ambush positions and were bringing the wagon back.

  The trader waved them over. “So this is how you treat your partners?” he told Conrad. “You call on me to help you with all your little swindles, then when a big deal shows up, you decide to keep it to yourself and brush me away like some pustular servant?”

  “This doesn’t concern you,” Conrad hissed back.

  “If it’s worth something, it concerns me,” the trader replied as he stepped away to examine the packhorses’ cargo. “And I have a feeling it’s worth quite a lot.”

  He climbed onto the body of the wagon and nodded to the men. They loosened the clasp around the first of the chests and opened it up.

  The trader looked inside it, then turned to Conrad, his face crinkled with confusion. “What is this?”

  “It doesn’t concern you,” the knight repeated.

  Mehmet blurted out some orders while waving his hands manically, clearly displeased. His men moved furiously, unlocking and opening the other two chests.

  His expression only darkened further as he looked inside each one.

  He jumped off the wagon, stormed over to Conrad, and shoved him back onto the ground with a vicious flick of his leg. He then drew a dagger from under his belt and dropped down to face him, pulling the knight’s hair to yank his head back and pushing the dagger’s blade right up against his neck. “What is the meaning of this travesty?” he rasped. “What kind of a treasure is this?”

  “It’s of no value to you.”

  Mehmet pushed the blade harder. “Tell me what these are. Tell me why you wanted them this badly.”

  “Go to hell,” the knight replied and lunged up like an uncoiled spring, shoving the trader’s dagger away with one hand while landing a crushing blow from his metal hand with the other.

  The trader shrieked as he flew off him and hit the ground, an airborne rivulet of blood trailing out of his mouth and nose. Conrad threw himself after him, but Qassem jumped in and pulled him off his father before he and his hired hands pummeled Conrad into subservience.

  Barely conscious, Conrad looked on helplessly through veiled vision as the trader’s son, dagger in hand, came in for what looked like the final blow. He braced himself for it, but it wasn’t what he expected. Qassem didn’t gut him or slit his throat. Instead, he bent down and set one knee firmly against Conrad’s chest to hold him in place, then used the blade to cut the leather straps of Conrad’s copper prosthesis and yank it off. He held it up, gloating, staring at it like some kind of prize scalp before holding it up proudly to the others.

  The trader pushed himself to his feet and faltered before steadying himself against his son, spitting blood, his eyes bloodshot with rage. “You always were a stubborn bastard, weren’t you?”

  Qassem held his dagger up and hunched down over Conrad. “I’ll make the infidel talk.”

  The trader shot his arm out and stopped his son. “No,” he said, still glaring down at the fallen knight. “I don’t trust what he’d tell us. Besides, we don’t need him. What’s in these trunks is clearly of great value. And I’m sure we can find someone in Konya who can tell that it is.”

  “What about him?” Qassem asked.

  The trader frowned and looked around, casting his eye about the deserted canyon. It was quiet, apart from the groans of the fallen horse. The sun had risen well clear of the canyon’s walls and was now beating down on them with all its mid-summer might.

  Conrad saw the trader glance up at the sky. Three griffon vultures were circling high above them, attracted by the dead and the dying. He watched as the trader then dropped his gaze to the bloodied horse, turned to his son, and managed what was clearly a painful half grin.

  He pictured the fate that now awaited him, and wished that an arrow had found him too.

  THE HEAT WAS STIFLING, and it wasn’t just because of the sun.

  It was because of the horse.

  The one he’d been sewn into.

  They’d taken Hector’s dying horse and sliced it open, pulled most of its innards out, then stuffed Conrad inside it, back to front, before suturing it shut around him. They had him on his back, with his head sticking out of what had been the animal’s anus. His arms and legs were also protruding, out of holes they’d cut into the stallion’s hide, and except for the stump of his left arm, his limbs were securely tied to wooden stakes that had been driven into the hard ground.

  They’d left him like that, crucified against the canyon floor, before trott
ing off with the horses and the wagon and everything they’d been carrying.

  It was unbearably hot in there. Worse than the heat, though, was the smell. And the insects. Putrescent flesh and gelling blood littered the ground around him, rotting in the sun. With the trader and his men still in view and receding down the canyon, flies and wasps were already swarming over him and over his dead brethren’s corpses, feasting on the abundance of spoils, buzzing and landing and nibbling away at the open cuts on his lips and across the rest of his face.

  That would just be the start of it.

  The real agony would come courtesy of the three vultures that were hovering overhead. They’d swoop in, sink their claws into the horse’s carcass and tear away at it with their sharp beaks. Eventually, they’d break through the horse’s skin and start feasting on Conrad’s body, morsel by morsel, pulling the flesh off him before moving on to his internal organs.

  He knew death wouldn’t come quickly.

  He’d heard of this form of scaphism before—the name was derived from the Greek word, skaphe, which meant “vessels,” as the original method involved sealing the victim inside back-to-back, canoe-like rowboats. Some victims were covered with honey and made to drink milk and honey until they could no longer hold their bowels, then they were set afloat on stagnant ponds—hence the boats. The feces made sure the insects showed up. Other victims were left under the sun, in a hollowed-out tree or an animal’s carcass. Conrad had heard how the Turks and the Persians were fond of scaphism, heard how horrific the remains looked when they were ultimately found, but he’d never witnessed it himself. In a way, he was lucky the buzzards were there. In areas where there were only insects to feed on the victim, death could take days. Conrad had heard of a Greek priest who had survived them breeding inside him along with gangrene fermenting across his body for seventeen days before his body finally gave in.