by David Noel
He looked at the other man with the staff. He was old and tough and dressed in a brown cloak that looked a bit like a monk’s habit. The Iron Knight had called him “Father” so maybe he was some sort of a priest. He reminded Brendan of an old, tough oaken staff himself. He was older than the warrior but how much older was anyone’s guess. He had an ageless quality that made it difficult to tell if he was in his 50’s or his 70’s so it was entirely possible that he really was the younger man’s father. They were an interesting pair, and both seemed genuinely amused by the two youths who had barged into their camp.
“Is my Lord a knight of the Order of the Centurion?” The older boy asked with interest. The Iron Knight nodded. “It’s a rare thing to see a Centurion traveling through Papal lands.”
"True," answered the knight, "Our duties usually call us elsewhere, but we offer our protection to the Papacy and to Lombardy as well as Francia and Germania. The Pope doesn’t like us, but he tolerates us because we are useful to all of Christendom, even him."
Marcus nodded, "True enough. At least I’ll be able to tell my friends that I’ve met a Centurion."
“Father Cardic is also a Centurion and was a knight before he took his priestly vows,” the Centurion said with the slightest of smiles, “so now you have met two of us.”
Father as in Priest, good, that was settled. Brendan looked more closely at the priest who didn’t look like a priest. Something clicked in his memory, talk around a campfire in Bulgaria over a year ago. The Order of the Centurion was a military order of knights who were devoted to serving Christ and protecting Christians.
“We would hear your story,” said the centurion, with a hint of playfulness in his deep, baritone voice. ”Tell us what brings two young men such as yourselves to be fighting in the middle of a country road at night.”
"My name is Marcus, and this lowlife is a thief who stole from me and my friends," he said, gesturing toward the younger boy while shooting him an evil look. He paused as he saw something move in the darkness beyond the edge of the firelight and his whole attitude changed. "But I am afraid that you won't be hearing any more of my story tonight," said Marcus with a smirk. Shadowy figures started rushing out of the darkness toward the fire and Brendan knew that Marcus' gang had returned.
"The old man is mine!" The gang leader shouted as he lunged toward the priest. Father Cardic had somehow anticipated the attack and swung his staff with a flick of a wrist as if he were swatting a fly. The blow connected with the young man’s jaw and laid him out cold.
"Get them!" One of the toughs shouted from the darkness as the gang surged forward, each one wielding a dagger. Brendan knew that there were about a dozen gang members, but he also knew that his best chance of survival was to stand with the knight and the priest. He leapt to his feet but as quick as he was the knight and priest were quicker. Three charged the Centurion and three charged the Father while two circled around so they could come at Brendan.
The knight stepped forward as one of the gang members charged, slashing with his dagger. The warrior knocked the dagger aside with his left hand and then hit him in the face with his right fist so hard that Brendan heard bone crunch as the young man dropped like a rock. The knight immediately stepped over his prone body and took a swing at the next youth, but the young man ducked under the knight's outstretched arm and tried to attack from the side. He realized a moment too late that the knight’s attack had been a feint to draw him in. Immediately, the warrior changed the direction of his swing and backhanded the gang member on the side of the head with so much force that it sent him sprawling.
One of the two that had circled around to fight Brendan saw an opportunity to attack the knight from behind and altered his approach. Brendan had studied pankration during his time in Constantinople. Officially, it was an ancient, but very illegal fighting style that citizens were not allowed to study because it was so deadly. Unofficially, it was widely studied in the dark places of that great city precisely because it was so deadly. Without hesitating, Brendan’s foot lashed out in a heel kick into the side of the thug trying to rush past him. He felt ribs break as the tough went down screaming.
Brendan’s other attacker charged him with a nasty looking dagger and Brendan sidestepped, dropped, and did a ground sweep, his leg hooking his attacker’s ankles and taking him to the ground. Brendan jumped up and kicked the dagger out of his opponent’s hand. The young man rolled to his feet, saw that he was all alone, and took off at a dead run for the woods.
Brendan grabbed the dagger laying on the ground started to go after him when the knight’s voice cracked like a whip, “Let him go.”
Brendan pulled up and stopped. If you had your enemy on the run that was the time to finish him off! But there was no disobeying the command from the knight. He looked around, two of the gang members were fleeing to the woods while eight of their compatriots were lying on the ground either moaning or unconscious. Three unarmed men had just fought off more than a dozen armed youths in a battle that had only lasted about 10 seconds.
"My apologies," said Brendan, “I wish that I had been of more help.”
“You were helpful enough,” replied the Knight.
"There’s still plenty of opportunity to be of more help, lad" replied the priest, "You can assist us in tending to their wounds."
"Help them?" Recoiled Brendan in shock, "They were going to kill us, and you’re telling me that we should help them?"
"Yes," said the Iron Knight firmly. "We are told to love those who hate us and pray for our enemies. The least we can do for these misguided young men is to bandage their wounds and pray for their souls."
"Aye," the priest chuckled, "maybe one or two of these 'Christian' young men will actually meet Christ today and learn how they ought to act toward their brethren."
The whole scene suddenly struck the young thief like a lance to the middle of the chest. He flashed back to his older sister, so many years ago. One morning she had been up before sunrise feeding some of the chickens that wandered around their father’s smithy. A young hoodlum who had clearly had too much to drink was walking home, saw her, and thought he would have a little fun. He started grabbing at her and laughing while she yelled for help. Brendan, who was barely nine, had come running to her rescue. He arrived just in time to see her grab a hammer off their father’s workbench and lay the thug out with a single blow to the side of his head.
Seeing her torn clothes and disheveled hair, Brendan had been so angry that he had rushed over to the workbench to grab another hammer and finish the job. Electra had stopped him with a commanding, “None of that! We’ll tend to his wounds and bandage him up and then turn him over to the sheriff so he can’t hurt anyone else. We need to pray that God will change his heart and cleanse his soul. Maybe this will be the day that he meets Christ and puts his feet on a new path.”
Brendan had not understood her compassion then just as he didn’t understand it now from these two Centurions, but their faith reminded him of her so much that he couldn’t stand it. His experience in life was very different, for him, life was brutal and short and being merciful to your enemies meant that you killed them quickly instead of torturing them death. He stood and watched them for a moment as his heart felt like it was being crushed under its own weight. He saw how earnestly and gently the two men were tending to their attackers, they had whatever his sister had, and it made him homesick for a family that didn’t exist anymore. He had helped his sister bandage and tend to her attacker back then, so he finally relented and helped clean up and bandage the thugs now.
He saw that they had real expertise in treating the injured, expertise on par with a doctor. What was it about these two? Top notch warriors and doctors who were behaving like fools. The worst part was that, as ridiculous as their actions were, he was HELPING them. All he could do was shake his head at the mystery, he had to find out more.
“I am Sir Gerard and that is Father Cardic,” the knight said by way of introduction as he applied
a last bandage.
“I’m Brendan,” the young man replied with a small bow. "Are the two of you in danger by traveling through these lands?" He asked with interest.
"No, there is no love lost between our Order and the Italian Kingdoms but in times of war we support each other against the Moors to the west and the Hungarians and Bulgars to the east so we tolerate each other."
"Hungarians?" Brendan asked unsure of who Sir Gerard was talking about.
"You may know them as the Magyars," The knight explained. "Some say that they and the Bulgars are the descendants of the Huns. Maybe they are or maybe not, I don't know, but they are persistent raiders of the Frankish kingdoms and we have to deal with them far more often than I would like."
Brendan saw an opening for a more personal question. "Have the Centurions ever fought the Vikings?" He asked trying his best to make it sound as if it was a matter of simple curiosity.
"’Vikings’ is not the name of a specific people,” Sir Gerard explained, “the word 'Viking' means 'raider' in Norse and they use it for anyone who goes out over the sea to raid others. Being a Viking is more of a profession like being a man-at-arms. To answer your question, yes, we have fought Vikings a few times when Norse raiders showed up in long boats coming down the Rhine River. They are a far-ranging people and if you’ve never faced them you probably will at some point. It’s my understanding that one of the branches of the Norse, the Verangians, have even moved east toward the Ural Mountains and the Volga River. There’s no telling how far they might go in their longboats if they can get to the Volga."
"Truer words than you know," Brendan muttered bitterly, then instantly regretted it as he saw both men's ears perk up at his comment.
"It seems that you have a personal knowledge about this," the knight commented quietly. "Please share with us."
“What? No, I don’t know anything personally, I’ve just heard…”
The penetrating looks on both men’s faces made it clear to him that they weren’t buying what he was trying to sell. He took a moment to try and think of a plausible lie but couldn’t come up with anything that they would believe. Then he stopped, why should he lie? Telling lies had become such a reflex that he was prepared to tell a lie even when telling the truth was probably the smartest thing to do. He hated giving out information to other people. As he weighed his options, he finally decided that, in this case, the potential payoff was worth the risk.
"The Vikings..., I mean the Norse came down the Don River to the Black Sea, though it is said that they reached the Don by way of the Volga. Once in the Black Sea they began attacking the villages along the coast all the way down to the Hellespont near Constantinople where my village was. They called themselves the Rus, but they were Norsemen. They destroyed my village, killed my father, and carried off my sister. I tried to stop them, but I was only ten. One of them just laughed and then kicked me into the corner of my father’s smithy before he set it on fire with a torch. I was such a joke to them that they didn’t even think that I was worth killing.
“When the barbarian kicked me into the corner, he broke a couple of my ribs. I could barely walk, and I didn't even know if my sister was alive or dead, but I knew I had to try and rescue her. My mother died of the plague when I was five and my sister was the one who raised me. She was my sister, my mother, and my best friend all rolled into one.
“I prayed harder than I have ever prayed that God would help me save her. I followed them and got as far as the mouth of the Don when some different Rus coming down the river found me and captured me. They were taking slaves in one of their longboats to be sold in the markets of Baghdad. So, I became just another slave to be sold. So much for God and so much for prayer.”
Brendan's voice trailed off. He was not an emotional person. He prided himself on being clearheaded and logical and he hated it when his feelings began to force their way out. But thinking of his sister, feeling her loss all over again, and remembering his own enslavement he couldn’t help himself; tears came to his eyes and his heart was in his throat. He didn't trust himself to speak so he stopped and just stood there.
Sir Gerard waited patiently for several moments before asking, “So what happened next?”
“I was sold at the market in Baghdad but when they got ready to transfer me to my new owner I broke my chains, grabbed a merchant’s coin purse and threw coins everywhere, hit a couple of people with a branding iron, started a riot, grabbed a lantern full of oil and threw it at some tapestries, and started the whole market on fire. With all that going on I escaped in the confusion.”
Both men looked at him in disbelief, “How did you break your chains?” Father Cardic finally asked.
“My father was a blacksmith, I grabbed everything that I could from his shop thinking I could trade it for something as I was traveling cross country. The Vikings who caught me took everything except for a small file that I kept hidden in my shoe. It took me over a week, working at night while everyone was sleeping but I was finally able to file through enough of one of the links that I could break it when I needed to.”
“And how’d you escape from Baghdad? They must have had soldiers looking everywhere for a foreign child wearing a slave collar,” the priest pressed.
“They did, but they cover up their women pretty well, veils included, so I stole some women’s clothes that were hanging on a line to dry and disappeared. They restrict the travel of women so it took me several days to slowly work my way to the gate and then to sneak out by pretending to be part of a caravan, but you’d be surprised at how little attention men will pay to a plain peasant woman who shuffles along looking at the ground, carrying a basket on her head.”
“Clever AND resourceful,” nodded Gerard appreciatively, "So why did you come to the west?"
Brendan drew a long deep breath and forced his emotions back down before he continued.
"With no mother, my father dead, my sister missing, and my entire village destroyed there wasn’t any reason to return there. After I escaped from Baghdad, I made my way back to Constantinople…”
“A ten-year-old boy traveled from Baghdad to Constantinople all by himself? That’s over a thousand miles on foot,” Father Cardic interrupted suspiciously.
“I shadowed caravans, learned to thieve and gamble, pretended that I was touched by a spirit and told the fortunes of the gullible. I picked up a fair amount of Arabic in the six months it took me to journey back.
“Greetings, I hope you are healthy,” the priest said in broken Arabic.
“I am doing much better now, thank you. Your Arabic is terrible, by the way,” Brendan responded in the same language.
“He speaks it far better than I do but that is really Arabic,” Father Cardic confirmed.
“To continue, I went to Constantinople and lived in the city for a couple of years but… that’s not a good place for a boy with no family.” Brendan hesitated, “It’s a city where someone who is willing to earn a dishonest living can learn a lot of skills that honest men don’t learn. So, I learned a lot and I survived. But that was never what I wanted to do. My father was an honest blacksmith and my sister was very devout in her faith so I knew that they wouldn’t approve of the things that I was doing. What I really wanted to do was to rescue my sister and kill as many Vikings as possible and that wasn’t going to happen while I was running around in the back alleys of Constantinople.”
Brendan stopped his story as if he had reached the end. Everything that he had said was true, but he chose not to tell them about the final events that forced him to leave the Queen of Cities a couple of years earlier than he had originally planned. He had said enough to play upon their sympathies, too much more might cause them to sour on him.
“So why head west?” Sir Gerard asked, clearly sensing that there was more, “Why not join the Emperor’s army?”
“The Emperor was busy fighting the Bulgars to the north and the Persians to the south, he didn’t have the troops or the time to chase Vikings up the Don.
Besides,” Brendan continued, bitterness creeping into his voice, “Constantinople’s walls would keep the city safe and he didn’t really care about the destruction of some meaningless villages along the coast of the Black Sea. Since there would be no Roman armies marching out to face the Vikings, I went west in hopes of finding a Frankish army that might be fighting them along the coasts.” Again, all completely true but not the complete truth.
"The Order of the Centurion is not interested in revenge," the knight said quietly.
“What are you interested in?” Brendan countered. He needed as much information as he could get.
"We are very interested in making sure that justice is done, and that the innocent are protected."
"So even if the Norsemen or the Hungarians killed your family you wouldn't be motivated even a little bit by revenge?" Asked Brendan cynically.
"I am sure that I would, but I would do my best to surrender all such desires to the Lord before I made any decision or took any action. Pride and revenge are the worst guides for choosing your path, especially in war. They lead you into rash decisions even while they lead you away from God. The Centurions focus on being humble servants of the Lord, protectors of the weak, and defenders of the innocent, not destroyers of our enemies."
“How can you possibly protect innocent peasants from Hungarian raiders if you aren’t willing to destroy them?” The skepticism dripped from Brendan’s voice. They were hypocrites or they were idiots.
“Watch your tone boy!” Father Cardic barked. Sir Gerard held up his hand to the priest.
“He doesn’t believe because he doesn’t understand. Yes, we fight and kill the predators who would attack the innocent and the helpless. But we do not set out to destroy our enemies, only to stop them from destroying others. Sometimes, killing them is the only way to do that. We were able to stop these young men and protect you without killing anyone, which is good, so now we will tend to their wounds in hopes that the Holy Spirit will open their eyes and help them see the error of their ways.”
