Knights of the Black and White

THREE

St. Clair heard the crackling of fierce-burning flames and felt their searing heat on his face, and then the bright agony of having a burning ember land on the web of his hand brought him fully awake, shouting wordlessly in pain, cursing and writhing with tightly bound limbs as he tried to escape the torture. Above him, leering down with mindless malice, the halfwit he called the Torturer was still holding the smoking twist of burning reeds that he had used to burn St. Clair’s hand. The knight quickly looked around for any of the others, hoping for rescue, but the two of them were alone and St. Clair’s heart sank, knowing that his tormentor must have dragged him bodily to the edge of the fire, although neither reason nor logic could inform him why the sullen brute had stopped short of throwing him onto the fire itself. He might easily have done so, for there was no capacity to reason in whatever passed for the creature’s mind.

The others in the small band who were the knight’s captors, knowing their dim-witted companion’s love of inflicting pain on others, had thus far discouraged him from going too far, clearly hoping to win a ransom for their prisoner, and aware that he would be useless to them if they allowed the simpleton to kill him. None of them spoke any form of intelligible language that St. Clair understood. Their conversation was gibberish to him, lightning-fast and sibilant, rather than throaty and guttural like most of the Arab tongues with which he was familiar. And so he had been unable to disabuse them of the notion that he was a Frankish knight and therefore must be wealthy and worthy of ransom, valuable to someone.

He had lost awareness of how long they had been holding him, but he knew he must have been close to death when they found him, raving with thirst and unable to defend himself. The fact that he was here at all attested to the utter helplessness that must have bound him at the time of his capture, but he had no knowledge of how much time had elapsed since then. He knew only that he had returned to consciousness one day, weak but clear headed, to discover that he was a captive, wearing only the soiled remnants of the tunic he had been wearing the night he left the stables in Jerusalem. He had no way of knowing whether days, weeks, or months had passed in the interim, although his reason, and his observations of his captors, told him that it was probably a matter of days. They would have made no effort to prolong his life, other than giving him water, and had he not improved noticeably in a short time, they would have killed him or left him to die.

He had no recollection of what had happened to his horse, or to his mail armor and weapons, but he had seen no signs of them since regaining his awareness, and so he assumed that he had rid himself of them before being found by these people. He remembered that he had ridden for days in the desert, looking for death, but had seen no single person with whom he might fight, and eventually he had arrived at a water hole that no longer contained water. Only slightly dismayed, he remembered, he had set out for the next water hole along the desert route. He had traveled it many times before and knew all the watering places, but on this occasion, long before he drew near the deep, ancient sump that sustained all the life for an enormous distance around it, he had seen vultures circling above the site and had arrived to find the place defiled, its water fouled and rendered undrinkable by bloated, stinking corpses so long dead that they were indistinguishable by sex and barely recognizable as human.

Appalled, he had fallen to his knees and cursed the abject folly and criminal irresponsibility of his fellow Franks, for he knew beyond question that no Muslim would have committed such a crime. It required all the posturing self-righteousness and unbridled stupidity of an arrogant, hatred-flushed Christian to murder defenseless nomads such as these—for the emaciated and pathetic condition of their slaughtered livestock left St. Clair in no doubt as to the status of the people who had died—and then to throw their bodies into the only sweet water source for hundreds of miles around, condemning to death not only the people of the surrounding land but all the desert creatures who depended on the water hole for life. Unable to pray to a God who would condone such iniquity, he had saddled up and ridden onward, dangerously low on water now and fully aware that he would be hard-driven to reach the next hole he knew of before thirst drove him mad.

He had obviously failed to make the trek. He remembered riding through a series of wind storms that first confused and then confounded him, and the next time he became aware of himself or his surroundings, he was a prisoner.

Soon after regaining consciousness that first time, he had his first encounter with the mindless Torturer, who simply loved to cause pain, not merely to St. Clair but to any living creature that fell into his power and could not retaliate. He would push a sharpened sliver of bone into St. Clair’s flesh—he carried the thing tucked into his belt and St. Clair knew he was far from being the first person on whom it had been used—for the sheer pleasure of watching the way St. Clair reacted, and all the while he would grin that empty, evil grin, the stumps of his rotted teeth glistening wetly in the cavern of his drooling mouth.

Now the Torturer squatted, still grinning, and thrust his twist of reeds at St. Clair’s face, but the flames had already died out and what was left of the reeds was no more than warm. The charred ends broke off against St. Clair’s skin, and he felt dribbles of powdery soot roll down towards his chin. As the Torturer sat back and began to fumble for the bone sliver at his belt, there came the sound of raised voices as the others in the band returned, and the halfwit lurched to his feet and shambled off to greet them.

Moments later, one of the others appeared, bent forward under the weight of a large goat that was slung across his shoulders. He dumped the eviscerated carcass on the ground by the fire, then looked at St. Clair, his eyes moving to the fire and seeing that the prisoner lay far too close to it. He muttered a curse and shuffled forward, calling for help as he began to pull the knight away from the heat. A second man joined him, and between them, none too gently, they picked the Frank up and carried him back to where he had previously been sitting. St. Clair clacked his mouth open and shut noisily, making the sound they recognized as a request for water, and one of them returned with a small clay cup, which he held to the bound knight’s mouth.

St. Clair drank thirstily, rinsing his mouth thoroughly with the last drops before swallowing them, and as he did so he heard a curious but familiar sound that ended with a solid, jarring thump. It was the hissing strike of a hard-shot arrow. The missile struck the man kneeling over him, taking him somewhere high in the back and hurling him violently sideways, leaving St. Clair stiffening in shock. The sound was repeated four times after that, clearly audible each time above the rising clamor of frightened voices, and each time, the babble of voices lessened, punctuated by the noise of a body falling. And then the arrows stopped.

St. Clair knew there had been eight men in the band that had captured him. Five of them, he now suspected, were dead. It occurred to him, inanely, that they might simply have been severely wounded, but he doubted that even as the thought came to him. But where, then, were the other three?

He heard a sharp, sibilant whisper, answered promptly by two others. All three men were there, close by, crouching unseen for the time being, presumably safe from the arrows of the lurking enemy beyond the firelight. He turned his head as far as he could to his left, hoping to see where his remaining captors were, but all he could see was a single corpse, his erstwhile nemesis the Torturer, belly down in a lifeless sprawl, his eyes staring emptily at St. Clair, his ever-open mouth finally closed by the ground beneath his chin. A single arrow protruded from his back, its feathers daintily fletched and cunningly fashioned. St. Clair had seen many such missiles, all of them made in Syria by the Seljuk Turks. He was, he decided ruefully, about to exchange one batch of captors for another. The burn in the web of his hand began to throb again.

He sensed movement behind his right shoulder and turned back quickly to look beyond the fire, where he saw an apparition walk into the light. The newcomer was tall and slim, hawk faced and bearded, wearing a tall, conical helmet of shining steel from which hung a net, almost an open veil, of delicate, finely made chain mail. The fellow shimmered as he moved, covered from neck to ankles in a long coat of the same supple mail. His right hand held a long, glittering scimitar and his left a curved dagger, while a small round Saracen shield was mounted on his left forearm, covering it from biceps to wrist when the elbow was bent. There came a cry and a scuffle from the three remaining men behind St. Clair’s shoulder, and then he heard running feet approaching him and a smashing blow hammered him into oblivion.

“SANGLAHR.”

St. Clair had been awake for some time, but he had not yet opened his eyes, for he had known from the moment of his awakening that he was still a captive, feeling the bonds that yet confined his arms and legs. His head ached from the blow he had taken, but not as badly as he might have expected, and that surprised him. He was in no rush, however, to open his eyes to the light, and for two good reasons, both of them involving risk: the light might inflame whatever it was that caused his head pains, and someone might see that he was awake. And so he lay still and listened, trying to form a picture of what was happening around him.

He knew he had been brought back to awareness by the delicious smell of roasting meat, and one of the last things he remembered, just before the arrival of the enemy from beyond the firelight, was the sight and sound of the goat’s gutted carcass being dropped by the fire. Since then, evidently, sufficient time had passed for someone to win the ensuing fight—it had been three against one, he remembered, and hand to hand, since the attacker had obviously set aside his bow and come forward with bared blades. Unless, of course, there had been more than one of them out there in the darkness. He abandoned that train of thought and returned to where he had been going originally: someone had won the fight, and had then had time to spit and cook the goat over the fire of dried camel dung, which meant that St. Clair must have been unconscious for considerably more than an hour.

“Sanglahr.”

The voice spoke again, more clearly and emphatically this time, and St. Clair knew the outsider had won the fight, for none of his former captives, with their sibilant jabbering, had possessed that sonorous depth of voice.

“Sanglahr!” This time the voice was very close, and a hand grasped him by the shoulder and shook him hard. He opened his eyes and found dark, flashing eyes with startling whites peering down into his own. He thought it must be the outsider in the high, conical helmet, but the play of light and shadows was too intense for him to be sure, and by the time he had gathered himself, the other man had moved away to sit across the fire from him, his back resting against a camel saddle. He sat with one knee raised, supporting his elbow, and he held a short, curved, sharp-looking dagger, dangling it by the hilt, between thumb and forefinger. In his other hand, lying on the ground by his left side, he held a set of light, rust-brown manacles.

“I do not own your ferenghi tongue, Sanglahr. Do you have me?”

The language was recognizably French, and ferenghi—an Arabic corruption of Frankish—was the term used by the local people to describe anything having to do with the Christian warriors who occupied their lands. St. Clair sat blinking for long moments, trying to decipher what he had heard. And then it came to him and he shrugged his shoulders, answering in Arabic. “Very little. I am newly come here, a few years only. I do not speak with your people very much … to learn the language.”

The hawk-faced man nodded, and his fine chain mail rattled gently as his helmet moved. “You speak my tongue better than I speak yours, so we will use mine. How long have your legs been bound like that?”

St. Clair looked down at his legs and then shook his head. “I don’t know. Several days.”

“I will have to cut the ties. You will not enjoy the aftermath. But if Allah wills it, you may recover the full use of your legs. Your arms will be the same, but less severe, I think. Brace yourself.” He stood up and stepped back to where St. Clair lay looking up at him, and then he bent and quickly slashed the leather straps binding the knight’s legs together before returning to his seat by the fire, where he sat waiting, narrow eyed.

St. Clair took a deep breath and braced himself as instructed, waiting for the pain to come, but for a long time nothing happened and he saw, without understanding, a deepening frown beginning to form on the stranger’s face. But then the first stab of feeling pierced him as the returning blood forced its way back into veins that had been tied off for days on end. The pain was overwhelming, dementing, and finally unendurable, so that he lost consciousness again, albeit only briefly this time. When he reopened his eyes, the helmed man had not moved and the pain in St. Clair’s legs was slightly, and slowly, abating. He gritted his teeth and fought against the urge to moan aloud.

“Try moving them. Bend your knees.”

It seemed at first that his legs might never function again, for no matter how hard he tried to make them respond, nothing happened, and a great, surging fear began to rise in him. He had wanted to die when he left Jerusalem and rode out into the desert, but it was a quick death he had sought, an honorable death in battle against infidels like the man across from him now. This—this lingering death in life, unable to move and in constant pain—was not at all what he had had in mind.

“Stop, then. Stop. Think about your feet, your toes. Try to flex your toes, even a little.”

St. Clair squeezed his eyes shut against the pain and the fear and concentrated all his mental powers on his right foot, willing the toes to stir, but he felt nothing and his stomach churned in despair.

“There, you see? Now do it again.”

“Do what?”

The stranger looked at him in surprise. “Move them. Move your toes again.”

“My toes moved? Are you sure?”

“Of course I am sure. Did you not see them?”

“My eyes were shut.”

“Then keep them open and watch this time. Now do it again.”

The toes moved, and moments later, the toes of his left foot did, too.

“Good. If the toes work now, the legs will work later. Time is all they will require. Now, your arms. This will hurt, too, but perhaps not so badly. Here, drink first. Did these animals feed you?”

St. Clair drank from the cup the man held, then nodded. “Yes, they did. Not much, and not often, but they fed me as often as they fed themselves. Who were they?”

“Animals. Eaters of offal, unclean and unworthy of notice. Better off dead. Now, be still.” He cut again, his blade slicing easily through the leather bindings, and this time the pain came more quickly but with less intensity. It wore off more quickly too, and by the time St. Clair was able to stretch and flex his fingers, gritting his teeth against the pain of it, the man across the fire had removed the goat flesh from the spit and spread it, succulent and steaming, on an oval dish of metal that he had dug from one of his bags, along with a long, narrow oval of unleavened bread and a small container of olive oil. He set all these aside for a moment, then knelt quickly in front of St. Clair and snapped the manacles about the knight’s wrists and ankles. St. Clair tried to resist, but he was far too weak to do more than sputter in protest, and the Muslim ignored him until he was back in his own place, where he leaned forward and pushed the metal plate towards his prisoner.

“Here, eat. The meat is flavored with garlic—a Frankish taste I picked up while living among you ferenghi, years ago. The bread and salt are our own people’s, and the pressed oil of olives is Allah’s gift to a grateful world. Eat. You will need your strength.”

St. Clair ate, and discovered that he was ravenous, and when he was full, his captor gave him more water to drink, and then told him to sleep, as they would probably be traveling in the morning. St. Clair listened to his footsteps moving completely around the perimeter of the little camp. It was only as he was drifting off to sleep, strangely grateful for the loose metal bands about his wrists and ankles after the cruel leather bindings, that he realized that the stranger knew who he was; had known him all along. The first word he had spoken, and repeated, “Sanglahr,” had been as close as his tongue could come to pronouncing St. Clair. All thoughts of sleep suddenly banished, St. Clair sat up and shouted, looking about him and trying to see where the stranger had gone, but there was nothing to see. The fire had died down, its fuel exhausted, and there was no response to his shouts.

“SANGLAHR.”

The infidel was bending over him again, but this time when St. Clair opened his eyes he felt better, physically, than he had since the morning he left Jerusalem. His hands and feet felt better, almost completely free, the restriction of the loose shackles as nothing to the discomfort he had recently been undergoing. It was still almost dark, the sky above the other man’s head paling but not yet discernibly blue.

“How do you know my name? Sanglahr—that is my name, is it not?”

The man facing him blinked, puzzled. “Is it not? You are Sanglahr.”

“I am. But how did you know that?”

“I have been looking for you. Was asked to find you.”

“By whom? Who sent you?”

The infidel shrugged noncommittally. “A friend.”

“Whose friend, yours or mine?”

A hint of a smile flickered at the edge of the other’s lips. “Ask that question of yourself, Sanglahr. Would any friend of yours send you out into the desert alone to look for a lost infidel?”

“How did you find me? How did you even know where to look?”

The stranger smiled. “It was not so difficult, Sanglahr. This is my country.”

“It may be, but that is not a good enough answer. How did you know where to begin your search? No one, not even I myself, knew where I was going when I left Jerusalem. And I rode for many days without meeting a soul.”

“Aye, but because you did not meet a soul does not mean that not a soul saw you. I sent out the word among my people that I was seeking you, a single, crazed ferenghi, and that you were not to be approached. It was Allah’s will that you were seen soon after that, and the word came swiftly back to me. By the time I drew close to you, you had been captured by the unclean ones. I found you, and they refused to give you to me. Now enough talking, for you know the rest and we have much to do. I have some clothing for you, to cover the whiteness of your ferenghi skin from Allah’s sun, but the garments are my own and I have no wish to see you wear them over the disease-ridden filth that encrusts you, so before we do anything, or go anywhere, you will bathe and cleanse yourself.”

St. Clair blinked in shock. “In the water hole?”

“No, Allah forbid! There are creatures nobler than you who must drink there. You will bathe by the side of the hole, on the bank, and I will keep watch to protect you from any jackal that comes to drink while you are there. Thus, the water that cleanses you will be cleansed again as it drains through the sand before re-entering the hole. I have a bucket. Come now.”

He reached out a hand and pulled St. Clair to his feet, and half an hour later, with the sun now high enough in the sky to dry him, the Frankish knight was clean again, scrubbed until his skin was pink, and he felt utterly reinvigorated. He suspected that it might be sinful to enjoy the sensation as much as he did, but he had come to enjoy a guilty pleasure in bathing occasionally.

Above him on the sloping bank, the tall infidel stood watching in silence as St. Clair eventually realized that it was impossible to dress himself while his hands and feet were shackled, and when the knight turned mutely to him with his arms extended and his wrists held apart, he made a show of pondering the request before moving slowly down towards St. Clair, pulling a key from the sash at his waist.

“Where would you run to?” he mused as he unlocked the irons. “But you will put them on again as soon as you are clothed, no?”

St. Clair made no attempt to answer but busied himself instead with donning the long, flowing robes the other had lent him. He had no difficulty with any of them, having discovered, as most of his fellows had soon after arriving in the Holy Land, that the local native dress was far more comfortable than the heavy, scratchy garments worn by the Franks. Only when he had finished winding the burnoose about his head did he pause and look up appraisingly towards the tall figure who stood watching him, seeing the way the fellow’s own natural height and slimness were emphasized and enhanced by the smooth, vertical lines of his armor and mail coat, topped off by the tall, slender, conical helmet. The breastplate and the mailed coat were all of burnished metal, glinting silver in the morning sun, but the rest of the man’s clothing, the tunic beneath the mail and the trousers tucked into the high boots, was all black, as were the boots themselves, fashioned of supple leather and thickly soled against the desert terrain. A long, black cape hung from the man’s shoulders to the ground. He looked not merely fierce but wealthy.

“Are you a Janissary?” St. Clair asked him. “You look as though you might be. I have never seen a Janissary, so I have no way of knowing. Are you?”

The man almost smiled, one cheek twitching wryly. “What do you know of Janissaries, Sanglahr?” When he saw that St. Clair was not going to respond, he continued. “No, Sanglahr, answer the question. I ask without anger. What do you know of Janissaries? Tell me, if you will.”

“They are the finest warriors in Syria, from what I have heard. Specially selected and hand picked as the personal fighting troops of the caliph.”

The tall man inclined his head. “They are, as you have been told, everything as you say, save that they are not the finest warriors in Syria. They cannot be, in the eyes of Allah. They are Sunni.”

“And you are not? Is that what you are telling me?”

“I am Shi’a. Do you know the difference, Sanglahr?”

St. Clair permitted his expression to show nothing of what was in his mind, and then he nodded slowly. “I know a little. I know, mainly, that there are very few Shi’a in this part of the world. Almost every Muslim I know is Sunni. I know, too, that you of the Shi’a Ali—or many of you—are not great lovers of the caliphs. Which would explain your poor opinion of the Janissaries.”

“You surprise me, Sanglahr. I thought you would know nothing. And do you know, then, why we of the Shi’a despise the caliphate?”

“Aye, I do. Because you believe they usurped your faith and used their earthly rank and power to take over the work of the Prophet Mohammed, work you believe had been entrusted by the Prophet himself to his cousin and son-in-law, Ali ibn Abu Talib. But what I am wondering is why you can dare to ride around so openly, professing yourself a Shi’a, in such a Sunni stronghold.”

The infidel’s eyebrows had risen high as St. Clair spoke, and now he shook his head, as though in admiration, but his words were dismissive. “We are in Syria, Sanglahr. You wandered a long way from Jerusalem before your strength gave out. This is Shi’a country more than it is Sunni, and you have reminded me that we have a long way to go. Now I must place you in restraint again, so will you permit me to do so, or should I simply hit you on the head and chain you while you are asleep?”

St. Clair looked at him through narrowed eyes and cocked his head. “Have you a name, then, or must I call you Infidel? My name is St. Clair, as you know.”

“Call me Hassan.”

“Well, Hassan, hear this. I am afoot, and I have no weapons and no armor, and I would guess that my stamina, what remains of it, is close to its lowest ebb, so I doubt that I could escape from you even if I wanted to.”

“I have a horse for you.”

“Excellent. I am grateful for that, but I will not be able to mount it if my legs are shackled.”

“You will mount first, and I will shackle you beneath the belly of the beast.”

“Uncomfortable, and not convenient for me, for you, or for the beast. Would you consent to leave me unshackled if I gave you my solemn word not to try to flee?”

“Your solemn word? The word of a ferenghi Christian?”

St. Clair pursed his lips and sniffed. “You have a point there, and I will not try to argue against it. But no, not the word of a Frankish Christian. The word of a warrior who values his honor.” He did not allow himself to remember how he had come to be here in the first place, but to his surprise the black-clad Shi’a nodded without hesitation.

“Yes, I will accept that. Is it given?”

“Aye, freely.”

“Good, then we may put these back whence they came.” Hassan stuffed the shackles into a bag beside him and then hesitated before turning back and tossing something to St. Clair. “Is this yours, by chance?”

St. Clair caught the flying object and stood gaping at the small blue jewel. “Where did you find this?”

“On one of the animals I killed last night. It was tied around his wrist, but I knew it could not be his.”

Only then did St. Clair realize, to his own disbelief, that he had not once thought about the fate of his former captors since awakening. Now he looked around, wide eyed, but he could see no sign of them anywhere.

“Where are they? What happened to them?”

Hassan’s lips twisted into a sardonic little smile. “I did, Sanglahr. I happened to them. But I think you meant, where are they now. I used the horses to drag the bodies away from the well this morning. They are lying in a wadi, far enough removed for their stink to remain well clear of the water once they begin to rot.”

“Who were they, do you know?”

“I have no idea. They were merely nomads, far traveled, from nowhere near here. I tried to speak to them yesterday but could not understand a single word of what they said. Strange language, strange men. But they were Sunni, so the world is better off without them. Now we should go. Are you ready?”

“Aye, but I would like to find my sword. This bauble was tied around the hilt of it.”

Hassan shook his head. “I saw no sign of a ferenghi sword. The weapons that those fools possessed were poor things, worthless. They would not have left a fine sword behind had they found one. You must have removed the bauble before you abandoned the weapon. Now pick up, and let’s away.”

St. Clair could only shake his head in bafflement as he hoisted up the heavy bag containing the chains he was to have worn and followed Hassan to where two magnificent white horses and a pack camel stood tethered beneath a stand of palm trees. Hassan secured the bag and two full skins of water to the camel’s back, and then led the way southward into the desert.