Blades of Valor Page 5

  “Those weapons shall be used against them?” Thomas asked. “Many in camp are innocent slaves.”

  “Only the men shall die. This is a harsh land.”

  Thomas said nothing. He pondered the merits of attempting to warn Muzzamar. Yes, he had seen men die, but always in battle, not as helpless sheep.

  “Your silence says much,” the slave said. “Yet there is nothing you can do to prevent this. The men are heavily drugged, and your return will only ensure your death, and mine for assisting you now.”

  Thomas realized this was so. For a moment, wildness tempted him. To die, useless as his death might be, in attempting to warn others might prove to be a lesser evil than a haunting guilt later. But ahead was his future: Katherine, Sir William, his father, and the fight of the Immortals.

  “My own life has been spared,” Thomas said, his tone flat and emotionless.

  “You gave us water,” the slave answered Thomas. “And I have decided to repay you in kind. I wish I could give you a camel, but while your absence will be undiscovered in the confusion to come, the loss of a camel is too easily noticed. Our own leader is without mercy and cannot know you have been spared.”

  Thomas absorbed this information.

  Others would die, and he was helpless against it. The stranger in front of him had risked his own life to save Thomas. The gift could not be discarded. Thomas must leave.

  “Truly,” Thomas said, “there is no way I can repay you.”

  “I have heard of the man who walked this land, the man you blue eyes claim was the Son of God. Did He not say we are all brothers? And did you not prove it with your kindness?”

  It was as if the stranger had listened to the thoughts that had been echoing through Thomas’s mind during the travels. This was the Holy Land. The Christ was not merely someone from the stories of the Gospels, but a living and breathing man who had walked these same roads, and had died a horrible and tortured death before appearing to His friends again.

  The stranger extended his hand in a clasp of friendship. “Brother, may your God protect you. Shalom. Go in peace.”

  The stranger untied a full waterskin from his belt, handed it to Thomas, and took a step away. “You must reach the hills by daybreak. It will cost us both our lives for you to be found.”

  Thomas reached for the stranger’s arm at a sudden memory of a brave and noble face.

  “The slave from my own land, Lord Baldwin?” Thomas asked. “Will he, too, be slain?”

  The stranger snorted in irony. “During this journey, we have discovered the hell of slavery ourselves. All slaves in both caravans shall be spared and released.”

  Then a pause before the stranger spoke more soberly. “Whether they survive this land is an entirely different matter.”

  Twelve

  Thomas entered Nazareth at dawn. Behind him, three days of cautious travel—slow movement along the roads at night, sleep in shadows of safety during the day. Behind him, the long and rolling hills of Galilee.

  Among these hills, forests of cedar and pine, olive orchards and vineyards, fields with wheat and oats and barley. It had almost been a joy to contemplate the land as he rested, hidden, during the day.

  Nazareth! Again, he could not help but marvel at the thought that, centuries earlier, a man had traveled this land and that the stories of His miracles and His love were passed from generation to generation.

  Those thoughts of wonder were almost enough to stop the rumblings of his belly. Almost.

  He was not thirsty. His waterskin was still half full from a well fifteen miles earlier; and travel during the night had spared him the searing daytime heat that sucked so much moisture.

  But Thomas was hungry, for he had not dared stop at any inns or allow himself to be seen during the day. Time and again, Thomas had shifted his focus from his tightened belly to think of Nazareth. There he would reach Sir William and Katherine. There he would be in relative safety.

  What if Sir William and Katherine had not survived their journey? How would he find his father?

  No, he must trust the knight would arrive with Katherine. But he would not be foolish as he waited. They might arrive in a day or a week—time enough for Thomas to be noticed by Mameluke soldiers or other assassins. Because of that, Thomas had long ago decided he would satisfy his hunger, then find a place in Nazareth to wait, quiet and hidden as he surveyed arriving travelers.

  A rooster’s triumphant crow broke the silence of his thoughts. The town ahead grew more distinct in dawn’s soft light.

  Thomas chose a large boulder to use as support and leaned back to survey the buildings ahead. Nazareth seemed small and quiet and ordinary, hardly a place to be remembered by generations, and yet there was a timelessness about its small, flat buildings, as ancient as the hills. Thomas let himself contemplate again the burden of history that had given Nazareth and the rest of the Holy Land such significance.

  In this land, Moses had climbed hills much the same to look across the Jordan River and fill his eyes with the awesome beauty of the Promised Land. In this land, a great king named David had defeated invincible armies and composed psalms of praise and love. And here, in the very town Thomas now surveyed, a Child had played in the dust of the streets and grown to be the Man called Christ, who had allowed Himself to die so cruelly on a cross.

  Thomas shivered, even as the sun warmed his back.

  This contemplation led him to another memory, one of a scene far away in a land he hoped to see again. There, a woman had started every morning in a cold, bare room, silhouetted against the light of the rising sun with her head bowed in prayer and a young boy at her side.

  Thomas blinked back a tear. As that young boy, he had barely understood her daily silence. In this moment, as he remembered, his hunger faded and he knew that now, before Katherine and Sir William arrived in Nazareth, he could afford the luxury and demand of grief. Some instinct—the instinct that compels all men and women to formalize and honor the departure of life—told him he must perform his own ceremony for the woman who had given him so much in that faraway monastery so many years ago.

  Thomas tightened his jaw to keep his face firm and stepped away from the boulder to seek a path into the hills above Nazareth.

  Thomas sat on the edge of a rock near the top of the highest hill overlooking Nazareth. Here, enough of a breeze flowed to cool him. It brought the bleating of a flock of sheep grazing on a neighboring hill. But for that, the hills were silent.

  Thomas closed his eyes and remembered again Sarah.

  Sarah had patiently taught him in the ways of Merlin, unable then to reveal to him his duty.

  Thomas bowed his head and sat for two hours, holding the sadness without trying to deny it. His tears and his gratitude were all that he could give to the memory of Sarah.

  He stood. Ahead, he could give more to the same duty that had called her.

  For that, he would have to hide openly in Nazareth. He had already chosen the method.

  He would bribe an innkeeper to give him a room and keep it secret. During the day, he would pose as a beggar at the town gates.

  After two days of begging, Thomas saw Katherine and Sir William arrive at the gates at midmorning. With them traveled the two Mameluke assassins who had vowed to kill Thomas in St. Jean d’Acre.

  Thirteen

  Isabelle enjoyed the relative comfort of her room at an inn in the center of the town of Nazareth. To be sure, it had its share of fleas and lice, but a person couldn’t expect anything else. While she could have found something to complain about, there was something undignified about using Rowan as a translator to discuss whether fat floating in a soup was actually fat, so she’d held her silence over the few days that she’d been there.

  Isabelle wore a long sleeping gown, and she lifted the hem as she slid off the lumpy straw mattress so that she wouldn’t trip on it. She’d fallen asleep to a candle at full length, and it had burned down to just a stub, but it still flickered and gave the soft light that
she needed.

  As quietly as possible, with the candle behind her throwing a long shadow, she maintained silence as she tiptoed to the door. There was a creaky board that had given her away the night before.

  A small crossbeam meant for the purpose of barricading the door rested in the corner. Instead of sliding it on top of heavy iron brackets on each side of the door frame, she’d left it off so that she’d be able to open the door as soundlessly as possible.

  At the door, she held her breath and listened for any movement on the other side.

  This time her plan would succeed.

  She grasped the large iron ring that served as a handle and swung the door inward.

  “Hello, m’lady,” Rowan said, no surprise or concern on his face. “Happy to report that all is well.”

  Isabelle shook her head in exasperation. “Surely you sleep at some time during the night.”

  “I’ve learned to do so on my feet,” Rowan said. “What’s important is your safety.”

  She had plenty of coin to pay for a second room, but Rowan wouldn’t use it. Instead, he kept guard in front of her door as she slept. Not once had she been able to catch him unawares.

  “Any decent bandit would dispatch you in a matter of seconds,” she said. “Go to your room.”

  “But I’d be able to cry warning, wouldn’t I? That’s what matters.”

  Isabelle sighed. “Come into my room.”

  “M’lady!”

  “We are not in England,” she said. “And if we were, I doubt anyone would think anything untoward about a boy in a lady’s room. I have a blanket for you, and I want you to sleep on the floor in front of the barricaded door. You can give me plenty of warning if someone tries to break in.”

  “You’ve told me that Thomas is a man of great treachery,” Rowan said. “I think it would be better out here to watch for anything he might attempt.”

  “He’s a thief,” Isabelle said. “Nothing more than that. You’ve watched him for two days in this town, posing as a beggar. He’s wily and deceitful, but of no danger to me.”

  “As your sworn protector—”

  “Yes, I’m clear on the concept. You’re the one who decides whether something means me harm. As my sworn protector, perhaps a full night’s sleep would be of use to you, should Thomas ever attack me. In the meantime, I need you alert during the day so that you can follow his every move.”

  “If you insist,” Rowan said.

  “I insist.”

  Rowan gingerly stepped into the room. “For a villain such as Thomas, there is no torture too painful.”

  “As you’ve said before.” Isabelle smiled. “We will follow him until he leads us to what he has stolen from my father. Then we will let the courts decide his punishment.”

  “You are so noble and fair,” Rowan said. “It is my honor to serve you.”

  Thomas’s first reaction was stillness. Stillness of shock. Stillness of disbelief. Stillness like that of a rabbit, frozen by the sudden appearance of a fox.

  Do not betray your presence, Thomas told himself. Behave as would all the beggars at the town gates.

  The beggars on each side of him tapped the sides of their clay bowls, so Thomas did the same. Yet even though his body reacted with movement, his mind was numb.

  This cannot be. Heat has caused my eyes to deceive me.

  He stole another glance.

  On foot, Sir William led a mule, upon which sat Katherine, veiled from Mameluke eyes.

  Beside Sir William walked two men whose faces were engraved in Thomas’s mind. Only days earlier, these large men had pursued Thomas and Katherine through the street markets of St. Jean d’Acre. Only days earlier, they had forced Sir William to barricade the house and set it ablaze.

  And now?

  Now, they walked at ease with Sir William and Katherine. There was nothing to indicate strain or tension, nothing to indicate that Sir William and Katherine were captives.

  Thomas raised his head again and noticed that Sir William’s sword was still against his side. If they were captives, Sir William would not be armed.

  The beggars around him moaned for pity in discreet and respectful low voices. Thomas did the same.

  It warmed him little that Katherine insisted upon throwing tiny copper coins into each bowl. This was the woman who now betrayed him.

  Thomas ducked his head as they passed by and silently nodded thanks for the coin thrown in his bowl. Did he imagine the scent of her perfume, as dust stirred by the mule’s feet settled again?

  He wanted to rise, to roar in anger at their deceit. He wanted to rush Sir William, to seize his sword and attack the knight and his assassin friends.

  He did not.

  There was trembling in his legs and dizziness in his head at such unexpected and colossal betrayal.

  Lies. So much of what they told me must be lies.

  How could he have been fool enough to believe his father still alive? And how could he have been fool enough to believe her eyes, her promises of love and the temptation of the soft touch of her lips against his?

  Despair overwhelmed him. As the murmurs of their conversation faded, he still could not raise his head to watch.

  He did not bother to wipe the tears that fell onto the tiny copper coin in the bowl at his feet.

  It was another hour before he found the energy to grasp the cane at his side.

  What to do next? Where to go?

  A castle he had once conquered in the land of his birth no longer belonged to him. He was friendless in a strange land, involved in a battle he did not understand—a battle he had not chosen or sought.

  Yesterday, there had been hope. Hope of finding his father. Hope of returning triumphant to Magnus. Hope of a trust in Katherine that might lead to—he barely dared think it in his bitterness—a love to fill him with joy.

  Today?

  Today he must continue his disguise and now walk away from these town gates leaning on his cane as if crippled, lest the ones he once thought friends discover him in Nazareth.

  Today, he had nothing. No hope, no dreams.

  Thomas hobbled several more steps. He did not know, or care, what he should do next.

  For a moment, anger flared and he almost hurled the clay bowl from his other hand. Only instinct kept him from drawing attention, so he stopped in front of another beggar, lone from the others nearer the town gate.

  “Take this,” Thomas mumbled. He leaned on his cane and offered the bowl to the seated beggar.

  The beggar looked up with disbelief. “It contains copper!”

  “Indeed,” Thomas said. Copper from the hands of a woman with beauty he knew would haunt him each time he closed his eyes. Would that it be so easy to give away the memories as the coin and bowl!

  The beggar’s hands shook as he accepted the gift. “This means another cake of pressed barley for my daughter,” the beggar said with gratitude. “There are days when that seems a feast.”

  Thomas looked more closely at the beggar. He had a slight face and seemed in good health.

  “Why are you not nearer the gate?” Thomas asked. “Where more travelers pass by?”

  “It takes much of the morning for me to make my way here,” the beggar replied. “Others, who arrive early, take the prominent positions.”

  The beggar noticed the puzzled look that crossed Thomas’s face and pointed downward to the shawl over his lap.

  “I drag myself here on a blanket. My feet are useless,” the beggar explained. “Caught once in a grinding millstone several years after my wife died in childbirth. I cannot work, and I must feed”—a smile of delight crossed the beggar’s face—“my daughter. She will grow soon to be as beautiful as my wife, and then a marriage will secure her future.”

  The beggar continued to smile. “You see? In our lives we all have precious gifts. Perhaps, my friend, you do not have a child to love, but you are able to walk with the help of a cane, while I cannot. And when you are not rich, even a small copper coin can d
eliver joy, can it not? My joy in receiving, and your joy in giving.”

  “Yes,” Thomas said. Despite the blackness upon him, he managed a snort of self-mocking laughter. “And to imagine. There are those in this world with strong bodies, full bellies, and pouches of gold who let themselves despair.”

  Fourteen

  Thomas arrived safely at the inn and retreated to the silence of his small room. He placed his few belongings on a stool, then sat cross-legged on the floor with his back against the wall.

  First, he tore open the package. A parchment, mention of a reward for its return. On the other pages, scrawls of unrelated Latin phrases. A priceless package? What jest was this?

  Thoughts tugged at him.

  Why had Katherine brought the light near while he fought a supposedly unknown assailant? She should have stayed beside him, ready to help in the fight. Now it made sense. She knew it was Sir William and wanted the fight to end before either was badly hurt.

  But why practice such deception?

  Thomas answered his own question immediately. What better way for a Druid to convince him of friendship than find a common enemy to fight—the supposed assassins. Then, give him the mysterious package with cryptic words that may or may not have significance to further assist the illusion of trust.

  In sudden rage and pain at the renewed thought of betrayal, Thomas slammed the floor with his open palm. The shock of impact sobered him quickly, and he turned his back on the luxury of anger and hatred.

  He closed his eyes in thought.

  Regard this as warfare. There are two choices: attack or retreat. Either action, to be most effective, requires surprise. Yet it cannot be certain that the bribe to the innkeeper will ensure my presence here remains secret. Therefore, action must be taken soon or surprise will be lost.

  Attack? Decide what is risked. Decide what is gained if attack is successful.