Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap.
“I speak for every knight in this castle,” the man said. “We are grateful for how you encourage us. Day by day, our men have died by arrows fired from below. Yet despite the danger, you run boldly from turret to turret, bringing water skins, passing along news, lifting our spirits. Without doubt, you are truly noble. No one could deny you are Count Reynald’s son.”
Count Reynald? Mok wondered. And “night”? This man calls himself a “night”? Are there those who call themselves “days”? Mok reminded himself of his decision to watch and wait. He held his tongue.
The man seemed of great physical power, yet he slumped with worry. This was no moment for Mok to interrupt.
“The castle shall fall soon,” the man said. “Leave us here and join your father as he has requested. If you outlive us—as I hope you shall—honor us by remembering how bravely we fought.”
Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap.
“This tapping . . . ,” Mok said. He cocked his head as if listening to the castle walls.
“Yes, m’lord. It bothers me too. As if you or I need reminder of pickax against stone. The miners beneath the great castle walls chip at the foundations like a toothache gnaws at our skulls. I almost welcome the final fight when the castle walls will tumble, if it will stop the sound.”
The knight pointed at a stone stairway. “Your father waits in the inner courtyard. Please inform him we are prepared to fight to the end. We knights are his soldiers, and we will not go gently.”
Mok nodded, trying to understand everything he had heard. His father? A count? From these words, could Mok assume the count ruled the castle?
Mok accepted the man’s handshake and walked away in silence. At the stairway, he glanced again over the castle walls at the activity below. Deep ditches had been filled with rubble and broken stones. Hundreds of men pushed great wooden machines over the filled ditches and advanced toward the castle. Thousands of soldiers stood behind them in motionless columns, their distant lances tiny upright lines of black.
Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap.
And below, miners dug at the stones that supported the castle’s walls.
Mok took a deep breath and descended the stone stairway.
Chapter 3
After his long descent to the bottom of the stairs, Mok saw two groups of men ahead in the courtyard. One group stood with horses behind them. Some twenty steps away, the smaller group waited. These men were dressed in the same armor as the knights. One of them motioned for Mok to draw closer.
Mok did so. This was much more than a dream. He had accepted that he could not escape from this strange world. And with no escape, he must live by his wits. It was the only possession he’d carried here from Old Newyork. Mok would listen and try to survive. If they believed he was the count’s son, he would act in that manner.
“My son,” the man said gently as Mok approached. This, then, was Count Reynald. He placed his hands on Mok’s shoulders.
Mok looked at the man with cropped dark hair and a tired face. He wore a purple cloak. There was a long sword belted to his side.
Count Reynald took his hands off Mok’s shoulders and nodded in the direction of the other group. At the front was a short man, red-faced and bald. He, too, wore a fine robe. His fingers were heavy with gold rings. The sword in his sheath was short and curved.
“This is Tabarie, the sultan’s messenger,” Count Reynald explained. “A brief truce was arranged. He is here under a safe conduct, which I issued. He shall inform us of the sultan’s terms of surrender.”
“Not until your wife joins us,” Tabarie said in a high-pitched voice. “Your entire family should hear this message.”
The count pointed at two approaching figures. “She arrives. Along with her servant.”
Mok’s eyes followed Count Reynald’s gesture. And he nearly fainted. Not at the sight of Count Reynald’s wife, a tall woman who walked with dignity. But at the younger woman behind her. The servant was the beautiful Raha—the pharaoh’s daughter from the land of Egypt! Here in the castle!
Mok nearly cried out in surprise, but Raha noticed the look on Mok’s face. With a grave, gentle shake of her head, she warned against it. Had Mok not been staring at her, he would not have noticed her signal. No one else saw their brief glances of recognition.
Mok had no chance to wonder about the girl.
Tabarie puffed out his chest and spoke with self-importance. “Listen to me carefully. For your lives are in my hands.”
Chapter 4
Tabarie paused for effect. The sun was hot on Mok’s shoulders. When his lungs began to hurt, he realized he was holding his breath.
“No,” Count Reynald broke the silence. “Our lives are not in your hands. Nor in those of the sultan who commands you. Our lives are in God’s hands.”
“Bah,” Tabarie said and spit. “Because of that stubborn belief, you face death instead of freedom.”
Tabarie raised his right hand. With chubby fingers, he pointed behind him. “Outside waits one of the greatest armies of all time.”
He spit again. “This castle was thought to be a stronghold that no one could conquer. Yet, it took us less than a week to destroy your outer walls. Your moats? Hah! Filled with the rubble of your outer walls. We are already using your castle against you.”
Tabarie paused for breath. He was so fat that just the effort of speaking made him wheeze. “And how long did it take us to kill most of your soldiers? Even though you had boiling oil and arrows raining down on us. Although twenty of our soldiers died for every one of yours, in the end, your efforts were useless against us.”
Tabarie sneered. “Your peasants—except for this foolishly loyal servant girl—have deserted you. All that remain are your inner walls, protecting you and a small miserable group of knights. You are running out of food and water. Could it be worse? Hardly. And below, our miners dig at the—”
“We know our situation,” Count Reynald said. “I doubt your sultan sent you here to boast.”
Tabarie’s eyes turned to dark coals. “No, he sent me here to give you his terms of surrender. Give up your castle and faith. In return, you will receive safe conduct to the harbor. Ships can take you, your family, and your knights to England.”
“Why do you want surrender?” Count Reynald asked. “You already claim certain victory despite anything we do.”
“Two reasons. When the foundation of this castle gives way and the walls fall in, we will destroy you. But it will take time and many lives. The sultan would prefer to save both.”
“And the other reason?”
“You and your family will set an example,” Tabarie replied. “Give up your castle. Denounce your faith. The people must know that the Christians can no longer claim this land as their Holy Land.”
“This is the Holy Land,” Count Reynald said. “Even if we deny it, the truth will remain. Christ himself walked these lands. He died on a cross in Jerusalem and rose again. That truth will ring throughout the centuries, regardless of how many small and petty men try to defeat its glorious sound.”
Mok felt his heart leap. He thought once more of the audiobook he had listened to again and again. It had spoken of a man named Christ, the man of Galilee.
Blake, the dwarf now long gone, had also spoken of the man of Galilee. And now the name of Christ again! Others did know of him!
Was the man legend? Or real? Mok wanted to step between the men and blurt out his questions. He held himself back and vowed he would approach Count Reynald with these questions later. If later they were still alive.
“You will not publicly deny the man called Christ?” Tabarie asked Count Reynald.
“No,” Count Reynald replied.
“Then you will die a horrible death.”
Count Reynald smiled. Peace shone from his face. “No matter how horrible the death, it will only be fleeting in the face of eternity. We will all pass through the curtain of death to be welcomed home by him.”
Tab
arie looked at the others. “And you, servant girl, are you thus prepared? You may still turn your back on these people.”
“Because of my loyalty, they treat me as their daughter,” she said. “I will stay with them to the end. I am not afraid of death.”
Mok listened with intensity. Count Reynald was repeating much of what Mok had heard in the audiobook. Yet how could it be? Living beyond death? A home with the Galilee Man? How could a person believe with such strength that death held no fear?
Tabarie spoke again. “I will give the sultan your foolish answer.”
Tabarie turned his back on Count Reynald. The fat man tried to mount his horse. After several clumsy attempts to lift his heavy body, he snapped his fingers. Two of his soldiers helped him into the saddle.
As Tabarie took the reins of his horse, he gave a final backward glance.
“Everything is ready for our final attack,” Tabarie said. “In less than two days the sultan’s army will be inside this castle. Not one of you will walk out of here alive.”
Tabarie settled his cloak over his shoulders. He rode out. After his departure, the clatter of horses’ hooves continued to echo in the courtyard.
Chapter 5
Mainside.
One of the Committee members waited for the chance to disappear from the conference room. As he had done earlier, he found an empty stairwell. Again, he pulled a satellite-phone from his pocket. He flipped to the tiny vidscreen, dialed a number, and waited for the screen to come to life.
It took five rings for His Worldship to answer his private line. The vidscreen in front of the Committee member remained dark—the president had only answered on audio, choosing to leave the visual button alone.
“What is it?” His Worldship spoke with irritation.
The Committee member’s own face, then, showed on the vidscreen on His Worldship’s end. “This is when you scheduled me to call, Your Worldship. On a scrambled signal of course.”
“Wipe that smug look off your face,” His Worldship said. “Give me the latest report and then get off this line.”
While it was considered rude to take incoming video without returning video during a call, the president of the World United could do what he wanted. He was the most powerful person among the billions who had survived the Water Wars.
“As you know, the candidate is fully awake in a Holy Land castle, Your Worldship. And the castle is about to fall. Everyone inside will die. I doubt the candidate will find a way to survive. So Cambridge loses both ways. If he leaves the candidate in cyberspace, the candidate is dead. If Cambridge brings him back to real time, the test is over. Either way, the final candidate is finished. And you will win. ”
“Let me remind you, he did not die in Egypt as you promised he would.”
“I am far from worried, Your Worldship. There are many ways for the candidate to die.”
“Tell me.”
“It takes millions of gigabytes to construct a cyberspace world real enough for the subject to believe he exists within it. Because of that, there are boundaries.”
“Boundaries?”
“Think of it as a movie set, Your Worldship. The Welfaro is in a thirteenth-century castle. He sees the people within the castle walls and the army beyond. But a program this complex strains the available memory on the supercomputer. Only enough cy-berspace setting is built to make it believable. Beyond the castle walls, there is a cybervacuum. In this program, if Mok actually leaves the castle, he will step into that cybervacuum. The shock will short-circuit his brain.”
“In other words,” His Worldship said, his voice less harsh and more satisfied, “if he stays in the castle, he will be killed. If he survives and flees the castle, he will die.”
“Yes, Your Worldship.”
“Good.”
His Worldship then hung up on the Committee member.
In the stairwell, the man took several minutes to compose himself before returning to the Committee.
Chapter 6
Cyberspace——The holy land.
After the sultan’s messenger left, Count Reynald barked out orders for his knights to guard against an attack. In the confusion, Mok was left to wander.
He followed the count’s wife and her servant, determined to wait until the servant girl was by herself. If she truly was Raha, the pharaoh’s daughter, she could explain to Mok how they both had gotten here from ancient Egypt.
For twenty minutes, Mok did not get the chance to question her. He followed at a slow pace, always staying just out of sight of the two women.
And always, he heard the quiet sound of miners digging at the foundations of the walls, the quiet sound of horror. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap.
Mok tried not to think what the sound meant. He tried not to think of the sultan’s threat and the army beyond the walls. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap.
Mok found it easier to ignore the sound when he put his mind on the servant girl. How had she followed him through time? Did she know how he had been taken from Old Newyork? And, more important, did she know why?
As the two women walked along the castle’s inner walls, they stopped to encourage knights and soldiers at their various posts. During their wide-ranging stroll, Mok began to understand the defense system of the castle.
The outer walls—which the army had torn down to fill the ditches—were only the first defense. Between the outer walls and the inner walls were some of the town buildings, long since burned to the ground. The inner walls had not fallen yet and formed a large square. It was on one of these walls that Mok had first found himself in this land.
Inside the walls was the large courtyard where Mok had listened to the terms of surrender and had first seen Raha. Placed around the courtyard were different buildings—stables, a carpentry shop, a blacksmith shop, an oven room where bread was baked, a kitchen, and a place for the soldiers to sleep.
Finally, at the far end of the courtyard was a tall, round tower made of stone. Mok compared it to some of the buildings in Old Newyork and decided it was at least four stories tall. It was protected by sharpened poles sticking outward from its base. There was only one entrance into the tower—halfway up the solid face of stone. A set of narrow wood stairs led to that door.
It was not difficult for Mok to figure out the purpose of the building. It was the final defense. A place for all to retreat to when the inner walls fell.
It also became the place where Mok could finally speak to the servant girl. As the count’s wife and the girl neared the huge tower, Mok stayed well behind and out of sight. The count’s wife continued on toward the stables. The servant girl began to climb the narrow stairs leading to the tower’s entrance. As the count’s wife stepped into the stables, Mok ran across the open space to the stairs.
He dashed up them. The servant girl waited for him at the top. Her hand was on the key she had just inserted into the lock of the door.
Mok stopped two steps short of the top and looked up at her.
“Yes?” she said. Her frown showed that she found Mok’s activity unusual.
“I need to speak to you,” he said.
It was her. He knew it. The same slim height. The same shoulder-length black hair. Only now she wore not a luxurious linen wrap but a plain blue dress. Gone was the gold band that had circled her forehead. Gone also were the jewelry and perfume.
“If you want to speak with me, all you need do is command,” she said. “You are the count’s son.”
Mok’s chest heaved as he sucked in a breath and pondered what he might say next.
“Then go on inside,” he said when his breath returned. “For I have many questions.”
“Will you allow me to continue my task as ordered by my lady?”
Mok nodded agreement. The door creaked on leather hinges as she let them both inside.
Without speaking, she entered the shadowed coolness of the tower. Mok followed and said nothing at first. He was too busy looking around as they wound through corridors and climbed more steps. He
could see because shafts of sunlight came through square windows cut in the rock. Carpets hung from the walls, decorated with scenes of hunters chasing deer through forests. Open doors to some rooms showed bed chambers with lavish rugs on stone floors. They passed a small kitchen, an oven-room, and a weapons supply room.
Mok was glad that the hallways and rooms were empty of other people. He wanted as much time as possible alone with this servant girl.
She climbed a final set of stairs and stepped out through a small door.
He crouched to get through, then almost gasped when he straightened in the dazzling sunlight. They were on an open walk at the top of the tower, with waist-high walls around the edges.
“What business do you have here?” he asked.
She pointed at a small cage resting on a ledge. It was filled with pigeons.
“I have a message to send,” she said, holding out a small strip of white. “Would you like to read it before I tie it to the pigeon’s leg?”
Mok could not read. No one in Old Newyork ever learned. But he was not about to tell her that.
“Where will the pigeon go?” As much as Mok wanted to demand other answers, this interested him.
She gave him another frown, as if he had asked a stupid question. “To where it was born. A town along the sea, some forty miles to the north. Our message is sent to let them know we have not given up.”
“That is one of the matters I want to discuss,” Mok said, “why we do not surrender. But first, the other matter . . .”
He stepped forward and grabbed her wrists. “Tell me what is going on here. I know you are the pharaoh’s daughter!”
Without warning, she stamped her heel down on his toes, crushing the small bones in his foot. Mok hopped backward in pain. He lost his balance, spun around, and fell. The low wall caught him squarely in the stomach.
For a second, he teetered over the wall. Far, far down were the sharpened poles.
She grabbed his hair and yanked him back.
Knight's Honor Page 2
