Prologue
August 1179
Syria
The wall came down no more than fifty feet behind Roman, the already hot air contracting around him like a shroud, then exploding with a roar of flames. The blast lifted him from his feet and sent him flying over the bodies of the slain workers who were, only a moment ago, being prepared for burial. He slammed into the hard packed dirt and then skidded and tumbled for several yards, his rough brown tunic seeming to melt into his skin.
He realized the instant he came to a stop that it wasn’t a friction wound he felt—the back of his tunic was afire.
He slapped at the flames and flung himself onto his back as a pair of screaming pillars of fire ran past him, but Roman could barely hear them above the loud squeal the explosion had stuffed into his pounding, spinning head. They weren’t flaming pillars; they were men. Men on fire.
Roman pushed himself up on his elbows and looked at the south-east corner of Chastellet’s bailey. Where carefully crafted rectangular stones—many which Roman Berg himself had set—once comprised the fortress’s key defense, the wall sagged, framing an inverted wedge of white-hot Syrian sky beyond. Roman’s eyes burned and his nose ran as the air was filled with the stink of naphtha and burning sand, burning flesh.
His head jerked as a hand gripped his right bicep. He hadn’t heard his apprentice approach, hadn’t been able to hear the slim man’s shouts over the twisting whine still swelling in his ears. But Osbert’s mouth was moving widely, his teeth flashing behind cracked lips as he pulled futilely at Roman with one hand while gesturing with the pick in his other to the barracks left standing against the eastern wall. Roman glanced in that direction, but the shelter held little interest for him as his gaze fell upon a hunting falcon tethered to a post just outside one of the doorways. The bird of prey’s hood swivled and twitched, as if listening to the commotion that Roman could not hear. Roman found himself fascinated by the creature’s movements . . .
A hand struck Roman’s cheek, and he reluctantly turned his attention back to Osbert.
Come on! his apprentice mouthed, spittle flying, his eyes bulging.
Roman frowned, hesitated. He was confused. What was happening? Why had the wall fallen? Why were there little shadows, like insects, crawling across Osbert’s face, across the dirt of the bailey . . . ?
The arrow shaft appeared in Osbert’s neck so suddenly, it was as if by magic. Blood spurted out of the hole on the side opposite of the fletching. Although Osbert’s mouth opened once again in what Roman surmised was a terrible scream of agony, he doubted any sound emerged. The apprentice pitched forward onto Roman, the man’s pick arcing smoothly down into the dirt, and he felt Osbert’s hot blood soak through his tunic and run down his chest as arrows fell like rain on the bailey.
Roman pushed the apprentice’s body from him as he skittered backward. A zinging pain shot up his left arm from his smallest finger and he jerked his hand from the yard, looking at the arrow that had shot a wedge of flesh from his hand before it had buried itself in the dirt. Another landed precisely between his bent knees. Roman’s head swam, throbbed; his tongue seemed to swell in his mouth. Stay still? Move? What sort of nightmare was this?
Roman looked up and saw Chastellet’s remaining workers, Templars, servants—all that were left on this sixth day of siege—crisscrossing the bailey frantically, many of them pausing midstride to demonstrate the bow-backed pose of defeat before crumpling to the ground, their bodies stubbled with arrows. Roman staggered to his feet at last, shook his head violently despite the pain it caused.
His hearing came back with a slow whoosh, letting in the roar of screams, pounding feet, clanging metal. Reality crashed upon him as surely as the wall which had crushed the men standing just behind him: Chastellet had been breached. The wall had been the first wave of attack.
The arrows falling around him with whistles and pings: second wave. Which meant . . .
Roman again raised his eyes to the collapsed section of wall just as the undulating crowd of Saracens crested the rise and charged toward the opening. Some were on horseback, some afoot. All with weapons raised, and yelling their terrible, unintelligible screams.
Third wave.
Roman reached down and retrieved Osbert’s pick from the dirt, all the while keeping his eyes on the force advancing toward him. The warrior monks were already engaging the invaders, their long, double edged swords swinging without hesitation. But even Roman Berg—never a warrior until six days ago—knew the sheer numbers of Saracens pouring into Chastellet’s walls meant that defeat was likely.
He thought briefly of Lord Adrian Hailsworth, Chastellet’s architect and Roman’s principal at the site, and he wondered if the brilliant man would live to see the total destruction of his latest design.
He thought of Lord Constantine Gerard, a layman general of noble rank who was to have left Chastellet a week ago. Was he already dead?
They were both good men, noble men, casually treating Roman as their equal. Even Hailsworth—arrogant as he was—made it a point to defer to Roman’s skill and experience. Now whatever differences in their backgrounds and pedigrees were truly washed away, as Roman would battle as they battled, fight as they would fight, to defend the place that Roman considered to be the pinnacle of his life’s work. He could die, this he knew.
He began to stride toward the line of Templars who were miraculously holding back the onslaught against them. Perhaps God would protect them, after all. Without pause, he reached down and pulled a broadsword from the limp grasp of a fallen soldier. But he kept the pick in his right hand—it was familiar there, and he knew just how to utilize it.
As if his earlier thoughts had conjured the man, Roman saw Constantine Gerard leaping and sidling through the fight toward him. His helm was missing, but he held forth his long shield as he dispatched a rogue attacker. Somehow, Roman must have caught Gerard’s eye, for the general paused and banged his sword against his shield before raising it in Roman’s direction.
“God be with you, brother,” he shouted at Roman.
Roman lifted his weapons and crossed them with a clang over his head. “For Chastellet!” Roman returned against the cracking of his voice.
And then General Constantine Gerard was gone, the last of him Roman saw was his tawny mane flowing behind him as he threw himself into the thick of the battle. Roman turned once more toward the breach, walking deliberately, his weapons flanking him like the squires he could never claim.
Yes, he knew he could fall this day. But for as long as he was able to swing his tools, he would swing.
He stopped then and braced his feet as a Saracen soldier broke away from his comrades and galloped toward him on horseback. The man’s robes rose and fell in rhythm to his mount’s charge, and he held a long scimitar in his right hand, a small hatchet in his left, guiding his fine horse with nothing more than his knees.
Roman crouched lower, holding forth the broad sword and drawing the pick behind his head. He opened his mouth to let out a cry of attack . . .
He came awake with a gasp, inadvertently sucking in some of the silty dirt from the floor of the cave. Roman fell into a coughing fit as he sat up fully, noticing that he clutched at his shoulder out of habit. He released his arm and reached for the now nearly empty skin of wine the Spaniard had left behind for him.
“To pass the time, yes?” Valentine Alesander had said with a wry grin as he’d tossed it down from atop his horse. Then he’d disappeared down the trail in the spreading dusk.
A bird’s short, creaking chirp echoed in the cave, interrupting the memory.
Roman gained his feet and walked to the opening of the cave where the hunting falcon was tethered. He stroked Lou’s back with one gentle finger as he looked down on the walled city of Damascus that would soon lie in shadow once more. Three days. Valentine Alesander had left Roman in the cave three days ago.
“They will be praying soon,” Valentine had said. “It is my best opportunity.”
Roman scrubbed a hand over his bristly face as if he would wipe the thick air and his troubled thoughts away. Then he sighed and placed his hands on his hips. It was of no use; the cave seemed to be full of ghosts now: days past living on in his dreams, voices in his head.
Something had gone wrong. Either the Spaniard had been caught, or he had not even attempted to gain entry into Saladin’s prison to free Adrian Hailsworth and Constantine Gerard. Perhaps he had instead maneuvered his horse around the wall and gone on past the city, taking the sack of Chastellet coin with him. He’d already proven he could disappear into the native population—Roman had nearly killed Alesander himself upon their first meeting, thinking him Saracen.
Roman stalked to the back of the cave, squatted down and checked his bag again—it was still cinched tightly, the other sack of gold secure inside. Then Roman rose and paced the width of the crude shelter.
Whether Alesander had absconded with the coin or been captured himself, there was clearly no one to rescue Roman’s friends. And if the Spaniard was caught, his blood was on Roman’s hands. Roman’s shoulder ached where the man had reseated the joint for him, dislocated for weeks, and he kneaded the bicep which seemed so much smaller than it had been only weeks ago.
Valentine Alesander had rescued him from the midden heap of Chastellet—its cisterns stuffed with corpses and its walls adorned with carrion birds; rescued him from the cesspool of his own mind which echoed with screams of the dying; the sounds of arrows finding deep flesh; the shame of being the one left behind, the one left alive. The Spaniard had made Roman’s body whole again, despite the healing gashes and still-dark contusions beneath his tunic and chausses. And he had led Roman to Damascus, where the only two men on earth Roman could claim as friends were being held by the conquerors of Chastellet.
If they weren’t already dead.
Roman, like Chastellet, had fallen. Had he not been struck so many times to the temple, perhaps he would have realized the true folly of dragging himself into the exposed bailey once more to save the life of the hunting bird left abandoned and tethered to its perch—the same one that now stood guard at the cave’s entrance. But in Roman’s swollen, fevered reasoning, there had been naught else for it. His weakness and injuries had rendered him incapable of saving Chastellet, but there had been a creature before him—one totally innocent of man’s folly and politics—that he could save. He had decided to let the attempt be on his soul then, and damn him if it would.
Lou chirped again—a questioning sound—and Roman went once more to the falcon, who had come to mean so much to him since that bloody day.
“Naught else for it again, is there, Lou?” he said quietly, stroking the bird’s feathers. The falcon tolerated Roman’s touch, but Roman knew he was impatient. Lou needed to fly. And so did Roman.
He looked back to the opening of the cave. If he did nothing to save the three men hidden somewhere in the city below, he might as well return to the ruin that was Chastellet and drop from a rope hung from its highest crumbled wall. It would be better than rotting here in this cave, waiting for the Spaniard who was clearly not coming back.
Roman returned to his satchel again, picking it up and looping the strap over his back before donning the leather hood that fit tightly over his skull and draped onto his shoulders like a short cape. He had no robe, no cloak, nothing else to disguise his large body and Anglo coloring. The hood would have to do. The guards would likely kill him as soon as he passed through the gates any matter, if even he made it that far.
He had no gauntlet for Lou, but the falcon had been content to ride upon Roman’s shoulder from Chastellet. He picked loose the leather tie keeping the bird captive, and then leaned down, easing the falcon onto the edge of the leather hood.
“Going on an adventure, Lou.”
The bird didn’t respond, but sidled a bit higher on Roman’s shoulder, closer to his ear. Roman found the weight of the creature, the grip of its talons, comforting, as if he truly had a comrade in the falcon.
“I’ll not keep hold of your tether though,” he said, turning and walking out of the cave without hesitation and setting his boots upon the narrow, twisting animal path that led down the hillside. “I’m likely walking into my own death, and I’d not have yours on my conscience, as well. I’ll remove your hood before I enter the city. You’ll be free.”
Roman considered as he tromped down the mountain in the lengthening shadows that, if he were being truly magnanimous, he would remove the bird’s blind now. But he could not yet bear it—the thought of being totally alone at what could again be the last hour of his life. It had been that way since he was a boy, had it not—the alone? He thought with some shame that he should be used to it by now.
He walked quickly among the dunes dotted with scrubby brush at the base of the mountain, seeking the shortest path to gain the packed road leading into the city. Roman guessed that a lone man afoot with nothing more than a single bag was unlikely to draw immediate scrutiny from the guards atop the wall. The sun was swiftly sliding down the sky behind him, throwing a long, deep shadow on the road before him, and Roman hunched into it, made it his companion along with the falcon on his shoulder.
When he was within a stone’s throw of the wall, Roman stopped abruptly and, before he could think himself out of it, he reached up and gently slipped the leather string from Lou’s leg, and then the hood from the falcon’s head. The bird blinked and tilted its head wildly, seeming to drink in the sight of the wide open sky.
Roman gave a shrug of his shoulder. “Go on, then.” The falcon flapped its wings for balance and then settled back against Roman’s ear. “Go on.” He shrugged again.
This time Lou crouched low and leapt from his shoulder, the quiet whoosh of its wings sending a crisp flip of air across Roman’s face. He watched the falcon fly low over the ground for several yards before flapping in earnest and pulling himself up, up, up into the darkening east over the walls of Damascus. The falcon cried out once, and it caused Roman’s heart to flinch.
But then he tucked the falcon’s hood and tether beneath the flap of his bag and headed into the night himself, his head down, his eyes only on the road. Roman had lost any traces of hesitation he’d felt in the cave. He had set his aim now, freed his obligation, and there was no fear in him of what might happen once he reached the gates, the streets of the city, the prison. His feet fell like hammers beneath his gaze, working to chip away at any obstacles he had once imagined.
So intent was he upon his purpose that it was quite a surprise to realize he had passed through the walls and was in the city. The spicy, fecund smells pressing around him and the sounds of his footfalls muffling gave him a physical start, as did the blaring of a horn that shot the thick, still air, and then another, and the warbling sound of a song in the familiar yet still foreign tongue. Roman glanced sideways and behind him to see the guards closing the gates to the city, not twenty feet beyond his heels, shutting out the last rays of the sun disappearing over the rolling land.
The horns continued to sound, and Roman realized he was caught up in a current of citizens all heading in the same direction. His heart pounded despite himself, and he hunched his shoulders farther, crouched lower on bent knees as the slimness of the general population became glaringly apparent. The narrow black space of an alley between sandstone buildings came upon his left side suddenly, and Roman stepped into it as swiftly as a gust of air, slinking back into the deep shadow and straightening his aching back against the wall of the building.
He watched from the shadows as the stragglers, mostly boys and young men running in the center of the street, hands clapped down on their caps, hurried to answer the call to prayer. Another moment and the ruddy street would be deserted.
Then what? He had no idea in which direction to go. Wandering aimlessly through the maze of pathways connecting the straight and orderly streets might only be enough to render him completely lost, and then when the faithful flooded the city again on their way to their homes . . .
He dared lean toward the opening to glance in either direction. There were no clues whatsoever as to where the city housed its prisoners. He pressed his back against the building once more with a sigh. And then his heart stopped as he caught sight of the woman standing against the wall directly opposite him, so close that he could have touched her without fully extending his arm. The last slash of sunlight slunk away from her face, hidden in veils, as the alley was dipped in indigo. He didn’t know how she had come upon him so suddenly, so silently.
“Pardon me, mistress,” Roman said brusquely and looked away, turning toward the street once more. There was nothing for it now but to go. He could not inhabit such a close space with a woman of this culture—it would certainly mean his death, and likely hers, if he were caught.
Not that he thought to be spared if found alone, either.
But before he could step from between the buildings, he felt a hand upon his arm, staying him. Roman paused, but dare not turn to look at her.
“What is it you require of me? I do not speak your language.”
“Not to worry—I speak yours,” she replied. “I will not raise an alarm to betray you, you must believe me.” She tugged on his arm so that he turned to face her once more. “We have not much time before it is discovered I am gone.”
“I fear I am unable to give you whatever it is you seek,” he said, feeling her touch conspicuously upon his arm. He could smell the soft, heady, feminine scent of her in the close alley and it made his skin flush beneath his coarse tunic.
“It is I who shall give to you,” she said, and then slid her palm down his forearm to grasp his fingers, stepping backward as she did so, pulling Roman’s arm away as if she would lead him.
He understood then. She was a whore.
Roman pulled free from her grip. “I cannot tarry with you, woman. I am looking for someone in the city.”
She dropped her arm to her side and stared at him for a moment. “I know why it is you’ve come. I will take you to your friends, but you must come with me now.”
Roman hesitated. If she was a whore, the only place she would likely take him was to her keeper, where Roman would be certainly robbed and probably killed. She couldn’t possibly know who he was looking for. But she’d mentioned friends, plural, when Roman had only mentioned he was looking for someone . . .
“Where is this friend of mine?” he challenged.
“They are still imprisoned, if that is what you are asking.”
A chill shook his spine. This smelled of a trick to Roman. Likely the guards atop the wall had caught sight of him entering the city but lost him in the crush, and had sent this woman to seek him out during the prayer. He couldn’t risk it.
“You’re wrong,” he said, and began backing away from her, toward the edge of the buildings where ambient light in the sky from over the mountains urged him to quit wasting time and search now.
“They die at dawn,” she called after him. “The two soldiers. A Spaniard as well, if you know of him. One may not live to see morning, he has been tortured so.”
Roman paused. “Who?”
“I have heard him called Hails-worth.”
Lord Adrian Hailsworth, Chastellet’s architect.
The woman continued, as if she sensed his hesitation. “I can convince you not standing here. You must trust me, and you must follow me now. If you do not, I shall have no choice but to leave you. You will soon be discovered on your own, and they will have no mercy on you.”
“How can I know you will not betray me?”
She shook her head, a rounded shadow in the already dark alley. “We must go now now.” She held out her hand.
Roman understood that he had two choices: deny the woman, and strike out on his own, or follow her. If he followed her, she could lead him directly to his own death. If he denied her and she was in league with the guards, she would raise the alarm immediately.
But perhaps the worst outcome of all was if he denied her and she was telling the truth . . .
He stepped toward her suddenly and took her hand. “If you lie, or if we are caught, you will regret it, mistress.”
“That I well know.” She didn’t waste time with mincing steps, and soon they were running between the close-set buildings which leaned together like crowded molars in a dark, humid mouth of a beast. She led him around sudden corners, pulled him across wide, deserted thoroughfares until they came to an enormous long building on the north side of the city, its pitched roofs black and sharp looking in the gloom.
Over the growing sounds of night, Roman could hear the droning prayers emanating from inside the building. The entire male population of Damascus was contained within its walls.
“Are you mad?” he demanded, pulling free from her in the street.
“Do not slow—no! Hurry!” She grasped his hand again and yanked, but she could not move him.
“Why would you take me here? Why should I believe that you are helping me rather than leading me to my death?”
“You will be the cause of your own death and your friends’ if you do not come out of the street!” she hissed angrily and then marched toward him to look up into his eyes. In the next moment, she ripped the veil from her face, and Roman could see the cuts and deep bruises on her delicate cheeks, the swollenness of one eye. “They beat me, tortured me, too! They have killed those whom I love! I will have my revenge!” She was nearly gasping in her anger.
“Who?” Roman queried, shocked at the woman’s delicate beauty crushed beneath the heavy weight of the violence visited upon her.
“The prison is below,” she said, ignoring his question and pulling on his arm again as she refastened her veil with her other hand. Roman fell into a trot once more—he had no better option at the moment.
“Follow the corridor at the bottom of the stairs,” she continued as the very building they ran past seemed to watch their flight. “Then turn right at your first opportunity. The cell you seek is at the very end—the only one. There should only be a lone guard in this moment. You must dispatch him quickly though, and do not exit the corridor you enter—it is the way the others shall return.”
“Then how are we to escape?”
She pulled him behind a short wall that seemed to enclose a small garden beyond, and also served as the lintel for a black rectangle of doorway that led down into further darkness. The woman was gasping, and Roman could feel her trembling in his grasp. For all her demands and vows of revenge, she was terrified.
“You must pass this entrance, and continue on through the entirety of the prison. There is another exit.”
“Only one corridor?”
She shook her head. “No.”
“Which one do I take?”
“I know not. I have never been below.”
Roman dropped her hand with a breath of agitation and turned in a short circle until he was once more facing the black doorway. The chanting from the domed building had stopped.
“I thank you for your help, mistress,” he said gruffly. “If indeed, you are helping me. I will be in your debt.” He stepped toward the descending stairs.
“Wait,” she called, once more laying her hand on his arm. “I have a message for the general.”
Roman felt his eyebrows raise. This woman had a message for Constantine Gerard?
“He must not return to his home. England is against him now, as they are the other one—Hails-worth. The general has been marked a traitor and is wanted by his own crown. His family is being watched.”
Roman nodded. “Very well. Again, I shall be in your debt.”
She let her hand slide from his skin slowly. “Do not forget me then.”
A screeching cry split the night and then a dark shadow shot from the sky and lighted upon the wall above the doorway. It sidled awkwardly along the rough surface, bobbing and ducking, until it was near enough that Roman could determine its character.
“Lou?” he asked softly.
The falcon flapped-hopped the short distance separating it and Roman, settling on the leather of his hood once more, fidgeting, adjusting, its weight obviously increased.
The woman stepped close to Roman and hesitantly reached up toward Lou with one hand, her wide sleeve sliding up to reveal a slender arm adorned with metal bangles that tinkled in the thick air. The falcon ducked away at first, and then shot its beak forward, nibbling curiously at her fingers.
“Lou,” she whispered. Then she stroked his wing with one finger while speaking a stream of foreign words to the falcon, who seemed to listen intently, swiveling his head to look at her and then the sky with alternating eyes.
The woman abruptly stepped away and began walking backward, looking at Roman as she went, as if she was loath to lose sight of him. “Go now. You have only moments.”
Indeed, Roman heard the distant sounds of a crowd, and although he could see nothing over the wall when he turned his head, he knew that the time of prayers was over.
He looked back for one final glance at the beautiful, mysterious woman who had brought him thus far, but the street before him was empty. She had already disappeared into the city.
Roman ducked through the doorway, pushing all thoughts of her away as he descended the stairs as quickly as he could. A moment later, he had found the right hand turn, and now he ran through the corridor, his wide shoulders nearly brushing the walls, his hood only inches away from the undulating ceiling. A haze of torchlight shone around the corner ahead, but Roman did not slow.
And so he took the guards by surprise—two instead of one. They rose from their crouched positions before a wrought door, one still rolling the woven mat he had knelt upon. Roman came to an abrupt halt, and was unable to stop himself from glancing through the bars to his left.
There, chained by his neck to the back wall, was General Gerard, his tawny mane now long and stringy around his face as he lifted his head to investigate the crashing footfalls. A shadow against the far left wall of the cell grew taller, and then Valentine Alesander stepped into view, his Saracen robes swinging.
Near the Spaniard’s feet lay a long, crumpled pile of rags.
Adrian Hailsworth.
One of the guards shouted at Roman, his foreign words challenging, yet hesitant, as if he was unsure what to make of the giant man who had appeared in his prison with a falcon upon his shoulder.
Roman glanced down at the man’s waist and saw the ring of keys dangling there. Then he looked both guards in the eyes in turn.
“I’ve come for my friends.”