Blades of Valor

by Sigmund Brouwer

  “We are not fools,” the bandit who had first spoken replied as he edged to the tree. “Why should we believe that the scroll leads to treasure?”

  “Because we will remain your prisoners until we will lead you to this treasure,” Katherine said evenly. “Our lives will be payment enough for a lie.”

  “Yes, I understand,” the bandit said. He moved again.

  “No!” Katherine said sharply.

  “No?” The voice faked hurt surprise.

  “No, you will not be able to reach me soon enough to get the scroll,” Katherine said. She began to tear the scroll into shreds, an action easy to see in the moonlight. Pieces of the scroll fluttered away with the breeze.

  “We carry the knowledge of this treasure in our heads. Now you must let us live.”

  Long moments of silence followed.

  “This is acceptable,” the bandit said. “You have made a bargain.” He raised his voice. “Men! Hold your swords!”

  Thomas let out a breath that he hadn’t realized he’d been holding.

  “Yet listen to my words, woman,” the bandit finished with silky menace. “Should you not lead us to the treasure, you shall all discover how it feels to die when your skin is peeled slowly from your bodies.”

  Thirty-Three

  You do remember all those marks upon the scroll?” Katherine whispered to Thomas. “We shall find that treasure?”

  “Or die,” Thomas answered with a wry grin. “Last night, I wanted to dance for joy that you had found a way to save our lives. This morning …”

  He shrugged and inclined his head toward the busy camp around them. Growing sunlight showed evidence of at least twenty men. The movement brought a wince to his face. Hours earlier, the bandits had savagely bound his hands behind his back with strips of wet leather. Now dry, the leather bit even deeper into his skin.

  Katherine interpreted his wince as doubt.

  “I had no choice,” she said quietly. “Your knowledge was our only hope.”

  “Is our only hope,” Thomas corrected her. “And at the very least, you have gained us time.”

  Thomas did not add that he wondered how little value there was in gained time. The odds of escaping, together or at all, seemed pitifully small. Katherine was bound, and, though an hour had passed since dawn, this was the first moment she had been able to speak privately with him. Sir William sat well guarded on a flat rock on the opposite side of the makeshift camp. Thomas watched the bandits carefully, gauging their alertness. All of them, lean and wary, moved with fast, certain efficiency as they performed their tasks. Men who hunt, Thomas thought. And who have been hunted. They would not be easy to deceive.

  Their own guard was now returning with a bowl of water. Like most of the others, he had a ragged black beard. A short sword attached to one side of his belt. A scimitar, its heavy blade curved in a most wicked grin, lay against the captor’s other hip.

  Water slopped over the edge of the bowl as the guard approached. Thomas gingerly licked his cracked lips as he watched the water soak into the ground.

  The guard stopped in front of them. Thomas shook his head at the offered bowl.

  “Slake the woman first,” Thomas said.

  The guard stared, blinked, then grudgingly smiled. “The woman first,” he repeated. “She is not only protected by Rashim, but also protected by one with his hands bound.”

  Katherine leaned forward to drink from the offered bowl. Since her hands were tied behind her back, she had to rely on the guard to tip the bowl as she drank.

  Protected by Rashim. The words echoed through Thomas’s mind. The leader of the bandits had seen Katherine at dawn’s first light and smiled with evil.

  “She is not to be harmed in any way,” Rashim had said, his face dark as he stood against the light of the sun. He had stroked his beard and smiled coldly. “Not an angel with this beauty.”

  There had been no threat in his words, but Thomas shivered every time he remembered the cruelty in his tone.

  And now Rashim paced long, unhurried strides toward them again. He wore the long white cloth of a wanderer accustomed to endless hours in the heat. The top of his head was covered and a black band across his forehead held the veils away from his face. His eyes glittered black above a giant hooked nose. The lines around his mouth were etched deep into a permanent snarl.

  “This day has already burned long,” Rashim announced. “I have readied my men for travel. At this moment, finally, I will listen to you bargain for your lives.”

  “Last night—” Katherine began to protest.

  “Last night only saved you until morning. Convince me first the treasure exists, then we depart. If not …” Rashim shrugged. “The vultures will feast upon your flesh.”

  He stared at Thomas, trying to cow him with a harsh, unblinking gaze.

  Thomas stared back, forcing his own eyes to hide all thoughts.

  “Tell me the story,” Rashim commanded.

  Thomas began, in a low and calm voice, to explain. “The story begins sixteen hundred years ago—”

  “Impossible!” Rashim exploded.

  “Sixteen hundred years ago,” Thomas continued as if he had not been interrupted, “in the land from whence we came. Britain. Then, before the Romans conquered, Druids ruled the land. They knew secrets of science and astronomy and kept that power hidden for themselves.”

  Rashim’s eyes narrowed in concentration.

  “When the Romans conquered, the Druid leaders in Britain formed a hidden circle within society, a hidden circle with great wealth. Later, a Roman general discovered this Druid circle. The general, Julius Severus, who ruled Britain some hundred years after the death of Christ, did not expose what he knew of the Druids and their accumulated gold. Instead, Severus plundered the Druids and their fortune for himself.”

  Thomas did not add the rest of what he knew—that Julius Severus also managed to find and keep the book of the most valued Druid secrets. A book to stagger the imagination with the power it might yield its owner.

  “You have my interest,” Rashim admitted. “But the story is old, from a land halfway across the world.” Rashim took a dagger from his belt and with its tip, casually began to pick dirt from beneath his fingernails. “How did such a treasure come to be hidden here?”

  “You searched us,” Thomas replied. “In my possession you found a small, tightly bound book of parchment.”

  Rashim nodded.

  “That book contains the notes of many who searched through the centuries for clues to the treasure. It is meant to assist any who held the scroll that Katherine destroyed last night. Without the scrolled map, this book is useless.”

  “A book in your possession because …”

  “That story is long and tedious.” Thomas affected a sigh of weariness, hoping Rashim would not press him. It was not the time to reveal the Immortals or their battle against Druids. It was not the time to reveal that the small book had contained directions to the monastery in Jerusalem where Thomas had sought the scholars who would help him continue his search.

  “Then make me believe that the gold did reach this land,” Rashim demanded. The dagger was now clenched in his fist. “Force me to believe how it might still be hidden.”

  “The Roman general was summoned from Britain to quell a revolt of the Jews, here in the Holy Land. Severus could not trust his treasure to be left behind, so he arranged to take it with him. Once here, he and his Roman soldiers destroyed nearly a thousand Jewish villages, and a half million were slain. The Jewish rebels were finally defeated in their last refuge—caves in the Judean desert, near the Dead Sea.”

  Rashim’s eyes flashed greed that belied his disbelief. “The Caves of Letters! We all know of those myths,” he said. “Entire families living for months inside the earth. Bah!”

  “Severus was recalled to Rome almost immediately after his victory in the Holy Land,” Thomas continued. “The treasure he had taken with him from Britain, he could not take to Rome, for discover
y of it by Roman officials would mean his death. And shortly after arriving in Rome, he died of sudden illness, taking his secret to the grave.”

  “Why the caves?” Rashim persisted. “In this entire land, how can you be certain the treasure lies in the caves?”

  Thomas closed his eyes and recited the letter of a man now dead. “General Julius Severus lost twenty men in battle against a handful of unarmed rebels. These twenty men, Severus reported, died as a portion of the cave collapsed upon them, and their bodies could not be recovered. But is it not more likely that these twenty men transported the treasure? Wealth that great would take such assistance. Is it not likely that that the surest way for Julius Severus to guard his secret would be to bury those twenty in the cave alongside his treasure?”

  “Aha,” Rashim purred.

  Thomas nodded.

  Before Rashim could speak next, a bandit, almost exhausted, ran into camp and called for him.

  Rashim scowled and hurried away. He spent several minutes with his head bent low, listening to the man. Several times Rashim glanced back at Thomas and Katherine. Then he spun and returned.

  For a moment, he did not speak. Only stared downward at Thomas.

  Without warning, Rashim lashed out with his open hand and slapped Thomas across the side of his head.

  “You have deceived us!”

  Thirty-Four

  Thomas tasted warm, wet salt. Blood. He refused to lick it away from the corner of his mouth as it began to dribble into tiny spots onto the rocks at his feet.

  Another wild lash.

  Thomas stared back. He concentrated on the pain, knowing that to think of anything else would weaken his resolve not to show response.

  “You have deceived us!” Rashim repeated again. He raised his hand again, but Thomas did not flinch.

  Rashim dropped his hand without striking.

  Had he decided Thomas could not be intimidated?

  He studied Thomas. In return, Thomas studied him.

  A long moment of silence, broken only by the buzzing of nearby flies. An idle part of Thomas’s mind noted the flies were swarming the blood at his feet.

  “You told us of treasure,” Rashim thundered. “But you did not tell us of soldiers!”

  “Neither did we tell you of the ocean. Or of mountains. Or of birds. Or of anything else that exists in this world. What significance is there in soldiers?” It took effort for Thomas not to slur the words as his lips began to swell from the blows.

  Rashim narrowed his eyes, as if exerting great control over his rage. He opened them wide again. “One is not followed by the ocean. Nor by mountains. And the birds that follow you may soon find their efforts rewarded, for they shall feast upon your dead bodies.”

  Rashim pointed past Thomas. “Soldiers have followed your tracks away from Jerusalem. They are nearly within sight of these hills. Barely an hour away.”

  “We did not know,” Thomas said. “And it does not change the matter of the wealth promised last night. Moreover, if I am dead or my friends harmed, the treasure will never be yours.”

  Men scurried in all directions as they loaded donkeys.

  “Indeed, indeed.” Rashim smiled cruelly. “Fortunately for you, the soldiers’ pursuit readily confirms there is truth in your story.”

  Rashim lashed out one final time, hitting Thomas with such force that it loosened several of his teeth.

  “Take care we don’t leave you behind to be crucified,” Rashim said.

  “His death means you forfeit the treasure,” Katherine said quietly. “He is the only one of us who studied the scroll.”

  Rashim snarled and touched the tip of his sword to Katherine’s throat.

  She didn’t flinch, but met his gaze without blinking, until he lowered the sword and was forced to look away.

  “If we can’t outrun soldiers,” he said finally, “we don’t deserve the treasure.”

  On the morning of the third day, Thomas almost wished instead Rashim had removed his skin in slowly as threatened.

  They had left the rugged hills near Jerusalem, traveled quickly through valleys filled with fields and olive trees for only a short distance more, then abruptly reached great and desolate ravines carved through steep ridges of sandstone and limestone.

  It was difficult enough to stumble ahead with his hands bound behind his back. The pressing heat squeezed sweat from every pore, sweat that immediately turned to tiny balls of mud from the choking dust. Despite the pain on the inside of his mouth, Thomas refused to ask for water, and it was rarely given.

  The path took them through twists and turns and difficult climbs and descents as they followed the course of the ravines. The bandits were hampered by their lack of knowledge of this forbidding terrain, and they could not race forward and risk trapping themselves in a ravine with no exit. Instead, scouts had been sent ahead in various directions to report back the safest routes. They moved so slowly that it had taken the two full days to cover a mere twenty-five miles; on each of the two nights, because of pursuit by the Mameluke soldiers, the camp had been without the comfort of fires.

  Thus far, they had made no effort to cover their tracks. To do so properly would have taken too much time, a luxury they did not have with over one hundred soldiers advancing steadily behind them, at an equally slow pace because of the bulk of their numbers and the heat that worsened as they neared the massive rift that held the Dead Sea, some thirteen hundred feet below sea level.

  Now, despite the early hour, the heat was already oppressive and progress was still slow. The bandits hugged the base of cliffs so tall on each side of the narrow valley that Thomas had to crane his head backward to see where the rugged edges cut into the sky. Ahead, where the valley broke to open horizon, was their destination—the Dead Sea.

  Thomas wished he could speak with Katherine. Or with Sir William. But Rashim kept them separated to prevent them from planning escape.

  Thomas despaired. Hands bound, stripped of everything but his clothes, without water, and exhausted from heat and pain, his outlook seemed hopeless. He knew the same applied to Sir William. While Katherine’s hands had been unbound—Rashim now treated her more gently—she, too, had nothing that would help them in a fight or in escape.

  And they could not leave without the priceless parchment book that had been taken from the Druids so many centuries earlier. Even if escape were possible, they could not turn back now.

  Thomas forced his mind to wander away from the pain and thirst to review what must lie ahead.

  “When you reach the Dead Sea, go south.”

  Directions spoken by shy, elderly scholars, nestled in Jerusalem near the ruins of the Temple that had been destroyed by the Romans twelve hundred years earlier. Thomas had visited their monastery, which had been spared by the Mamelukes, who found their work both harmless and useful. They had not been surprised to see Thomas, nor the small book with its directions to their monastery. When Thomas had asked of the Caves of Letters and the Dead Sea, two of the scholars had stood as quickly as their old bones would allow and retrieved ancient scrolls from nearby chambers. They swept their long white beards over their shoulders as they hunched over the unfurled parchment to retrace the markings onto another, smaller scroll, and accepted quietly the gold offered by Thomas.

  “It is a land so bleak you will discover no towns on the edge of the shores. You will easily find the ruins of Engedi, for there are no other ruins, and this one is marked clearly by the dozens of collapsed stone buildings. The Dead Sea will be on your left, and deep ravines on your right. Pass by the ravine that leads from the hills into Engedi. Do not enter the next ravine, nor the next. The fourth ravine will lead you to the caves of Bar Kokhba, where he and the last Jewish rebels died. There are five caves high on the sandstone walls. Bar Kokhba took his last stand in the fifth cave, the one farthest west from the Dead Sea.”

  Despite each painful step across the scorching earth, Thomas smiled to remember the curiosity that had shone from the luminous
eyes of the Jerusalem scholars as they posed him their final questions: “Why is it you want to know, young one? How is it that you even have the knowledge to ask of a rebel so obscure?”

  “From an old one such as yourselves,” Thomas had answered. “One who would have loved to spend endless hours poring through these scrolls with you.”

  They had smiled mysteriously in return and nodded as Thomas left them in the quiet chambers of study.

  “What cause have you to smile?” demanded Rashim.

  In his thoughts, Thomas had not noticed the attention of the bandit leader.

  “I think merely of the treasure that will buy our lives,” Thomas replied after a moment, for he had been so engrossed in recollection that it was not easy to close his mind’s eye to the dark, cool chambers of the Jerusalem monastery. “You will fulfill your end of the bargain, will you not? You will release us after we have led you to the wealth?”

  “You have my word of honor,” Rashim said.

  Anger surged inside Thomas like the suddenness of fire exploding in dry brush. This monster meant to take from him his life and, far worse, perhaps take Katherine’s.

  The rage so completely replaced his despair that Thomas forgot his helplessness, forgot that he had no weapons, no means of using any secrets from his precious tomes of knowledge. Somehow, Rashim would be defeated.

  Long after his captor walked away, the anger smoldered within Thomas, then became cold determination. Thomas would keep his life and return to England with Katherine and the knight.

  A shout rose at the first sight of the water of the Dead Sea.

  Thomas gritted his teeth. The Dead Sea. It meant he had until nightfall to find a way to live.