Templar's Acre

CHAPTER ONE

It was his first experience of battle, and for Baldwin de Furnshill it was made all the more hideous by his sea-sickness.

The screamed alarm came while he was asleep, dozing in the sunshine with the other pilgrims on the deck, and from that first wakening, he had stood gripping the shrouds against the rolling and plunging of the ship as the two enemy vessels came on relentlessly towards them. It was like watching the hounds chasing a deer, seeing these two closing up ever nearer. As the seas rose before them, and the pilgrim ship hurtled down one wave’s flank, only to bob up once more, he saw that their pursuers were now only a stone’s throw away.

A whistling thrum — and he flinched. A quarrel flew past, missing his face by mere inches, only to thud into the mast. He turned and stared at it. The vicious barbs had sunk so deep, they were almost hidden in the wood. He imagined it would have passed clean through his skull, had it flown true. The thought made the hot bile rise to sear his throat, and he crouched, anxious that another might hit him.

He was not yet seventeen years old; if those galleys caught his ship, he was sure to die before his birthday. Sixteen was too young to die, he thought wildly. He didn’t want to die like a coward, but he had never fought in a battle, and he stared about him in a panic, thinking there was no escape from a ship. Then another quarrel hissed past — a second narrow escape.

‘Get down, you lurdan!’ a man rasped behind him, and suddenly he was flat on the deck. ‘Want to get yourself killed?’

Wiping at his eyes as they filled, Baldwin shook his head speechlessly. What was he doing here, in the middle of the sea, with pilgrims and crusaders? He must have been a fool to put himself in this position. But he had to pay for his crime. He prayed that God would pardon him for the murder after his pilgrimage.

If He let Baldwin live.

He shivered uncontrollably as he waited, lying under the protection of the wale.

There must have been three hundred men on board — Christians all, of course, many of them crusaders who had taken up the cross from Antwerp, from Paris or Hainault, a few like himself from England, some mere pilgrims — but they all waited with the same dread, listening to the whack of slingshots and arrows plunging into the wood. Occasionally there was a soggy sound as a missile hit a man, followed by a groan, shriek or curse. The Venetian shipmaster shouted commands as he tried to evade their pursuers, and hoarse bellows from the ships overhauling them were audible over the whine of the wind in the sheets.

All the young man knew was a paralysing terror: not of death or dying, but of failure. His failure.

He shouldn’t be here, curled up like a child on this wildly rocking ship. He was the son of a knight, not some low-born bastard-whelp from the coast. His place was on a horse, winning renown and glory at the point of his lance. He ought to be riding behind his knight, a squire or sergeant, bringing a horse to aid his lord, fighting with the other men-at-arms. Instead, look at him! There was no honour in dying here. He had sworn his oath to help defend the Holy Land in hope of his own salvation, and he hadn’t even reached the coast yet. These pirates were attacking while they were still on their way.

The reflection was enough to make him grab for the sheer and pull himself upright. A hand reached to drag him back down, but he shrugged it away. It was old Isaac, the pilgrim who had shared his meals from the day they first took ship. Well, Isaac could crawl and hide, but Baldwin would prefer a quick death from an arrow than a coward’s end.

The other ships were close now. Even as he rose, he saw a grapnel fly through the air, and threw himself to the side to avoid its hideous barbs. It caught at the ship’s wale, and he saw the sailor who had thrown it pulling hard, two of his companions grabbing the rope and helping draw the ships together. The first saw Baldwin, and he smiled — a fierce curl of his lips that sent ice into Baldwin’s spine.

He tugged at the metal hooks to release the grapnel and throw it into the sea, but the weight of the men hauling at the rope meant he could make no impression on it. He stared at it, despair flooding him. And then he cursed. He wouldn’t submit without a fight! Drawing his sword, he hacked at the rope. One, two, then a third blow — and there was a crack like snapping timber, and the rope parted, the loosed end lashing back. Baldwin saw it whip at the pirate’s arm, and lay the man’s flesh open to the bone. He screamed and fell, and Baldwin felt a savage joy. He bared his teeth and waved his sword over his head, taunting them, until a pair of arrows passed close by.

But now the pilgrims and crusaders were with him, and they were loosing their own arrows even as the two ships came closer, and Baldwin roared defiance as he saw a sailor topple, struck by a lucky shot. It was only then, as he stared at the sailors on board that ship, that he realised that they did not look like the Muslims he had expected.

These pirates weren’t their enemy. With a sickening lurch, he realised that they were fellow Christians.

The flag of Genoa flew at their masts.

The man beside Baldwin fired a crossbow, swore to see it miss his target, and bent to span it again. He shoved his foot into the stirrup, catching the string on his belt’s hooks, and straightened his legs until the bowstring was held on the nut. He hastily dropped a quarrel into the groove, aimed, and fired, muttering to himself as he missed again, and lowered it once more to go through the reloading sequence.

The pirates were very close to the larboard side of their ship, and he could see their grim faces: dark, bristle-bearded, savage men, with blades glittering in their fists. The men on his ship began to yell insults, screaming their contempt for the sea-raiders. Baldwin joined in, bellowing abuse with words he barely understood.

The man beside him had reloaded. At this range he couldn’t help but hit a pirate, Baldwin thought — when the bowman coughed and lurched, his head striking the wale with a sickening thud. Baldwin instinctively assumed that it must have been a roll in the ship’s gait that had made him lose his footing, but then he saw the fletchings of the quarrel protruding from the man’s neck, and turned with shock to see that the second ship was even closer, on the starboard side. Her crew were already leaping up onto the wale-piece, and some few had landed on the deck and were hacking about them at the terrified pilgrims.

That was when saw the man with the crossbow, his eyes fixed upon Baldwin as he lifted his weapon to aim.

His bowels seemed to melt within him. All was slow as though, coming close to death, the very fabric of nature and movement of time had been slowed by God. It was punishment for his crime. God was giving him time to appreciate his destruction, as if He had chosen to demonstrate just how feeble were his own puny efforts. God was watching as this ship, full of His servants, was overrun, and Baldwin could do nothing to save himself, nor would God save him. His body was grown listless, his limbs leaden. There was no escape from a crossbow’s bolt.

All was futile.

He had travelled all this way in order to reach Acre, to participate in the defence of the last enclave of Christianity in the Holy Land. It was Baldwin’s task to help destroy the ungodly hordes of pagans and help drive them back whence they came. And in return, he hoped to win peace from memories of Sibilla, and the body of her lover. In those seconds, staring at the crossbow’s quarrel, he remembered this. He remembered the oath taken at Exeter Cathedral, the journey to the coast at Exmouth, then the voyage to English Bordeaux, followed by an overland trip to the Mediterranean coast, where he had caught this ship. All those miles, all those leagues, only to see it end here.

The crossbow was aiming at his heart. He knew it, and in those last moments, Baldwin offered a prayer for his soul. ‘Dear Father, accept this soul, undeserving as it may be, and allow me to join You in Heaven. I beg. .’

He saw the point of the quarrel gleaming with a cold, blue wickedness, and then a man shoved him, bending to grab the crossbow from his fallen companion’s hands, and in that moment a roaring sound came to Baldwin’s ears. And just for a moment, he thought he was dead. For a moment.

Then the crossbow moved imperceptibly, and the man at his side gave a yelp of agony as the bolt plunged into his back, through his belly, and slammed into the timbers before him. He snarled, turning past Baldwin, and loosed his own crossbow at the ship behind him. The face of the bowman at the ship’s rail suddenly gushed blood and fell back, and the man beside Baldwin sank to the deck, coughing and swearing.

And still Baldwin stood, incapable of moving, his sword useless in his hand as he stared at where the bowman had been.

He did feel, truly, as if he had already died.

Or that his soul had — and had been renewed. He felt as though all that had gone before had been taken away by that bowshot, as if it had taken his sins and foolishness with it.