FIFTY-SEVEN

For some time now, the Amir had been watching the soldiers around him. Judging their lack of sobriety. Noting their absence of arms.

Before he had begun his disastrous attack on von Drachenhertz’s camp, the Amir had sent messengers back to the Chouf by every route he could think of, each bearing the same message. ‘Your Amir needs you. At Uluzia Pass. Come swiftly. The tyrant von Drachenhertz has broken the truce. Your Amir will try to break through. But if he fails, you must become the backbone of your people. You must clear the Franj from our lands. You must take revenge for the dishonour done to your brothers.’

It should have been enough. But nothing had happened. And now the Amir was about to see his friend tortured and shamed in front of a gang of drunken ruffians.

He looked to one side and noted that none of the Templars had been drinking. Was this part of their culture? Or were they preparing to rescue their commander? But no. When he looked closer he saw that they, too, had been disarmed.

So where were his people? What better moment to attack a camp? When its entire host were at your mercy. Surely his scouts would have seen what was happening?

The Amir struck the guard to his right full in the throat with his stiletto. In the confusion caused by the sudden spray of blood, he ran forward and vaulted onto the podium. The torturer turned to face him.

The Amir feinted to the right, and as the torturer shadowed his movement, the Amir sliced through the man’s doublet and emptied his stomach contents onto the stage.

It was only when he withdrew the stiletto that he realized the point had shattered. He searched for the torturer’s dirk with which to kill Hartelius but it was too late. The guards were upon him.

The Amir cursed the futility of his action as the guards bore him down. He should have made straight for his friend, and not dallied with the torturer. But the man had been in front of him. Standing like a dam between him and Hartelius.

There was uproar in the camp. Men were running in every direction. Shouting. Screaming.

The Amir fought his way to the surface of the men weighing him down as if he were fighting his way back from beneath the waves.

He felt his arms being pinioned. Saw von Drachenhertz approaching him with sword unsheathed.

And then the arrows started to flow. Like water they fell on the unarmed host. Like a great curtain, blotting out the light of the sun.

The Amir lay and watched the slaughter, his eyes alight with joy.

Drunken men ran for their weapons and tripped over each other, offering even larger targets for the descending quarrels. Men started fighting each other for possession of a weapon. Any weapon.

Von Drachenhertz stood at the very edge of the podium, his sword tip lowered, his mouth open as if frozen in the very act of speaking.

As the Amir watched, von Drachenhertz abruptly returned to his senses. He pointed to the Amir and signalled to his men to bring him. They grasped the Amir by the shoulders and upper arms and dragged him to where von Drachenhertz was standing. Von Drachenhertz put his sword to the Amir’s throat, but there was no one to see him do it.

All was flux around him, his men decimated three times over by the arrows falling upon them. Those not killed were being herded together like tuna fish by black-clothed Saracens on horseback wielding mighty pikes.

Von Drachenhertz waited. On the podium everyone waited. The guards surrounding him and the Amir. Hartelius, hunched forwards under his chains. The still-twitching torturer, with his entrails hanging out like the tentacles of a squid.

An unarmed and drunken army cannot stand firm against sober, well-armed men. Von Drachenhertz had been the author of his own misfortune. But still he stood, his sword against the Amir’s throat, his few men backing him as if, via this thin lifeline, they might seek to turn the tide of the fiasco facing them below.

Saracen crossbowmen ran forwards. First they picked off all the soldiers surrounding the margrave and his prisoner. To men used to firing at moving targets from horseback, this was child’s play.

Still the margrave stood stock still, his sword never wavering from the Amir’s throat.

The Amir called instructions to his captains. Men darted to and fro, clearing the podium of bodies, releasing Hartelius from his bonds. Still the margrave did not move. Still he stood over his prisoner.

Hartelius staggered to his feet. He walked towards where the margrave and the Amir were perched.

‘Stop. Stop there,’ said the margrave.

‘My life for his.’ Hartelius held out his hands. ‘I am unarmed.’

‘The king will ransom me,’ said the margrave. ‘I have no need to barter.’

‘We want no ransom,’ said the Amir. ‘We will call for no ransom. Your name is lost for ever, Margrave. No one will know of your end. Only of the ignominy of your actions.’

‘And if I kill you, Muslim?’

‘Another will take my place. Nothing will change for you.’

‘And if I fight you in single combat and win? As you suggested?’ The margrave was looking directly at Hartelius. At the state of him. At his lack of chainmail. At his obvious exhaustion.

‘If you win, you may go,’ said the Amir, noting his friend’s brief nod. ‘Freely and without hindrance.’

‘And my men?’

‘They too. What is left of them. Without arms. But freely.’

Von Drachenhertz stood up and lowered his sword. The Amir moved away from him. The Amir signalled to one of his men to throw up a sword to Hartelius. At first the man raised his scimitar to throw, but the Amir shook his head and pointed to a Templar sword, abandoned near the stage.

Von Drachenhertz was already circling Hartelius, his own weapon at port arms, his gaze unwavering. Hartelius stooped to pick up a spent arrow with which to defend himself, but von Drachenhertz darted to the right and cut him off.

The Amir slid the Templar sword across the floor of the podium to Hartelius’s feet. Then he jumped down and ordered his men to fall back, so that all could view the combat.

Hartelius could feel the strength slowly returning to his limbs. Could feel the blood infusing him, as if it had been lying in wait, or skulking somewhere deep in his recesses, as far from the torturer’s knife as it could get.

He felt the sun on his head as a blessing now, and not as the penance he had before. He breathed the air in through lungs unpunctured and unburned. His limbs responded in their entirety, without let or hindrance. Without intercession from alien interests.

Von Drachenhertz had little to lose. His nature was one which did not indulge in retrogressive thought. He ran directly at Hartelius and the two men set forth at each other. Hartelius was shocked at the sheer brute strength that von Drachenhertz showed. The absurd power he wielded at each blow.

Hartelius found himself being forced back to the edge of the podium. There, he knew, lay disaster. Once he lost his footing, he was easy meat.

He tried, by sudden movement, to speed up the return of blood to his body. To restore his lost energies. But fear had sapped him. The deep fear that a man cannot show, but that is still there nonetheless. The fear of losing one’s dignity. Of finding oneself bereft of courage after a lifetime in which the manifestation of courage is the one defining marker by which a man is judged.

Hartelius had not lost his courage, of course. But he would have. He knew that only too well. Ten minutes into the torment he would have been screaming and begging the torturer to stop. He had seen other men, braver than he, succumb to the knife.

Von Drachenhertz sensed that his opponent’s mind was wandering and made his move. He feinted to the left and then, when Hartelius responded clumsily to the feint, he struck right. Hartelius had been expecting this. He dropped to the ground and rolled, just as he had done with the final Italian bandito who had attacked him all those many months ago in the Alps. Von Drachenhertz, his weight dispersed far beyond his right leg’s capacity to carry it, pitched to the ground on top of Hartelius’s upturned sword.

This time Hartelius was wearing no mail. As von Drachenhertz fell, Hartelius dragged wildly at his sword to clear it from landing back onto his own chest. Von Drachenhertz cried out and fell upon him, his sword arm clear.

Hartelius thrust back in, catching von Drachenhertz beneath the ear, a little above his chainmail’s upper curtal.

Von Drachenhertz’s eyes widened, just as his bodyweight fell dead. Finally, after a series of convulsive movements, he lay at full stretch on top of Hartelius’s prone form, his eyes turned inwards, his mouth drooping open like that of a sleeping cat.

Hartelius could feel the Amir’s Saracens lifting the margrave off him. He stood up, the blood streaming from him like liquid mercury.

‘Your blood or the margrave’s?’ said the Amir.

‘In truth I am not sure,’ said Hartelius. He stared at the carnage around him. ‘It is one of many things I am no longer sure of.’ He limped to the edge of the platform and looked out over the camp. ‘My Templars?’

‘Yours to command. They held back from the slaughter of my men when ordered to participate by von Drachenhertz. I have given orders that they are to be spared. I shall have their arms returned to them.’

‘And my stallion? Gadwa?’

‘Look,’ said the Amir. Gadwa was being led through the wounded and the dead towards them.

‘He is yours, Amir. I return him to his rightful master. Please honour me by accepting my gift.’

The Amir saluted Hartelius from high above his brow. Then he clapped his hands together like a child who has just been given a much wanted toy. ‘Be assured, my friend. Your gift is my joy. This one thing I swear to you. That the very first of my maidens who has a colt by Gadwa, it shall be yours.’ He canted his head to one side and contemplated the stallion. ‘The pleasure, of course, will be Gadwa’s.’