Dagger of the Martyrs Read online

  THE DAGGER OF THE MARTYRS

  Steven Savile

  &

  William Meikle

  A BadPress Publication

  Copyright © 2019 Steven Savile & William Meikle

  All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and should not be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  THE DAGGER OF THE MARTYRS

  1291

  SYRIAN TERRITORIES

  The pregnant woman screamed out her pain as the cartwheel hit a rut in the makeshift track and threatened to spill her out into the dirt. Lilane felt a cold hand cover her mouth to silence her. She smelled the old witch woman’s potions where she’d worked the herbs and spices with her fingers. The old woman leaned forward, so close there was no escaping her rancid aniseed breath. Her lips brushed up against Lilane’s ear as the woman whispered, “Quiet. No sound. Khalil’s men are too close. We have not come all this way to be caught now; not when safety is so near at hand. Bite your lip. Chew through your tongue. Do whatever you have to—but stay quiet.”

  The next contraction hit hard. She gritted her teeth, clawing at the wooden flatbed of the cart, and willed the cry to stay inside her. But it wanted to come out. Breathing in ragged gasps, she tried desperately to calm herself. She tried to focus on anything but the searing pain threatening to rip her asunder.

  Behind her head, the two Templars driving her cart conversed in hushed tones. She caught snatches of their conversation before the desert winds whispered it away.

  “Forty-two days of bloody siege, ten more in this cursed desert. We should have stayed and fought. Not run like cowards.”

  The older of the two shook his head. “Al-Ashraf Khalil controls Acre now. We couldn’t have held our position. It was time to leave. Khalil would have been feasting on our balls by now, lad,” he said. “The Master knows what he’s about. We need to trust him. And we are hardly walking away paupers. With the treasures we are carrying we can go anywhere in Christendom as wealthy men. Two days, that’s all. Two more days and we’ll be at the dock, on a boat for Constantinople then away and clear for Bologna and a life of whores and furs and good wines.”

  “We had all that in Acre,” the younger Templar said.

  “Aye, lad, we did. But let’s not pretend you didn’t piss in your armour during that last attack. At least you won’t do that back home in France.”

  The two men chuckled, softly so as not to pierce the quiet.

  There were other voices too, only audible when the wind dropped. They carried from a distance. Lilane strained, hoping to hear the one she wanted to hear more than any other, her man, her strong man who had taken her from her people, and promised her so much. He hadn’t come to see her since the protracted birth pangs began.

  “Oh, Lucian, where are you?” she whispered to the night.

  No one came.

  ◆◆◆

  They stopped in the morning, taking refuge in the shade of a small grove of trees, resting the horses before the full heat of the day beat down on them. There was to be no rest for Lilane. The contractions grew in strength and frequency, and despite the old witch woman’s frequent entreaties, she couldn’t stifle the cries of pain.

  “Lucian,” she shouted, before the cold hand was once again pressed at her mouth.

  “He will not come, girl,” the old woman told her. “Not until it is over. This is woman’s work. We are the strong ones here. Now, push.”

  Lilane pushed.

  At intervals the old witch woman gave her a pungent ball of camphor and herbs to chew on. It tasted vile, but it gave a small distance from the pain. That morning felt like a week.

  Then, finally, blessed relief as something left her in a hot rush of pressure and pain.

  “You have a son,” the old witch woman said. Lilane was so tired, so awash with the effort, that she didn’t realize the woman wasn’t talking to her. A man’s voice answered.

  “God be praised. Let it be known that I take this boy as my heir. His name is Eden Moro De Bologna, and he will be raised a Templar.”

  “Lucian?”

  Lilane forced herself almost upright, struggling against the makeshift bedding they had laid down for her. She saw her love cradle the newly born babe in his arms and walk away without looking at her.

  “Lucian?”

  The old witch woman turned back to Lilane concern in her eyes. “You are not done here yet. There is another coming.”

  The Templar stopped, his back still resolutely turned to the covered cart, head bowed over the first child. The second child came with almost no pain at all, just a gentle push, a feeling of relief and then a sudden empty, hollowness in her lower belly.

  “Another boy?” Lucian said from under the shade of the tree. The child in his arms wailed and the new child joined in accompaniment, their twin squeals echoing around the encampment.

  “No. It is a girl. A beautiful girl.”

  “What need have I of a girl?” The knight said. “Keep her quiet, or I will have to do it for you.” He walked away, cradling his son in his arms.

  “Lucian!”

  Lilane tried to rise but the old witch woman pushed her down.

  “There was too much blood. You must rest. If you move from here, you will die before nightfall. And there is a babe to tend.”

  And another already lost to me.

  That was Lilane’s last thought for a while.

  The old witch woman gave her another mouthful of camphor and herbs, more this time, and within a few minutes Lilane fell into a deep blackness where there was no pain.

  There was no rest, either.

  When she came slowly awake it was dark and they were alone in the encampment. Horses, carts, the knights and her boy child were all gone like shadows in the night. She only had his name to remember him by. That, and one word, a promise of a future she vowed her daughter would live to see.

  Bologna.

  1301

  THE YAZIDI SANCTUARY

  Samira climbed the steep mountain path, shooing the goats ahead of her. They scattered and cavorted all over the hillside, but as long as they were up here, they were safe; she was safe.

  The rocky valley and the high mountains that bounded it were all that Samira knew. They were her entire world. And that was how she liked it. Tara, the old witch woman who had eased Samira’s birth, brought her and her mother here almost ten years ago, and took them in as her own, giving them sanctuary where others would have denied it because of her mixed blood.

  It was a simple life, but there was food, there was joy in it, and most importantly, there was freedom. Samira’s mother spoke often of a man, and a far-off place where she swore life was better, but she couldn’t imagine it.

  From Tara she learned the ways of the herbalist, the plants, fruits, nuts and seeds that might, in the right proportions be used for healing… or for death. From the goats she learned the simple pleasures of running free on the hill, an escape for when her mother’s sadness threatened to spill over and overwhelm everything in her reach.

  Today was one such day. The sun shone, the sky was clear, the air not too warm, and a light breeze rustled the grasses. But all Lilane saw was shadows and dust, and all she spoke of was a lost boy, and Bologna, a mythical place of wonders that might as well be in the sky itself for all the solidity it had in Samira’s young mind.<
br />
  Samira doubted that mother even noticed her slipping away, so lost was she in her past. She had taken her worries to Tara, but the old witch woman merely shook her head sadly.

  “Something broke inside your mother that day, girl,” the old woman said, “something that no amount of my medicine is going to heal, for it a sickness of the mind, and those run as deep as the Styx.”

  “Perhaps if I took her to this place, this Bologna?”

  Tara laughed.

  “That is no small journey,” she said, “and full of dangers for such as us. The men of the Christ and Yazidi women do not mix well, girl, and they are as like to burn us for witches as they are to love us. No, believe me, it is best to leave such fantasies to your mother,” and then, kindly. “We wouldn’t want her sickness to spread to you.”

  It was hard to argue. But then it was always hard to argue with the old woman. She had lived considerably more life than Samira, and her mind was every bit as agile as a steel trap, even now.

  Out on the hillside under the sky the sad shadows were driven away for a while.

  Samira ran with the goats, higher and higher until they reached the glistening tarn. The old man, Javed, was already there, as always. He looked up from his quiet contemplation of the water and grinned as Samira approached.

  “Thirty breaths today, little fish,” he said. “Thirty of my breaths for one of yours. What say you?”

  They had been playing this game for almost a year. At first it had only been five, then the stakes increased and he’d offered ten. Thirty was more than she’d ever attempted. Not that she was worried. She took a deep breath and dived deep into the cold clear waters of the tarn disappearing beneath the surface.

  She hung, floating mere inches below the surface, watching the rippling silhouette of the old man where he sat on his rock, shimmering and wavering like a desert mirage as she counted. Ten was easy, fifteen too, but by twenty she had to let a few air bubbles escape from her nose to relieve the pressure; if Javed saw the bubbles break the surface, it counted as a win in his favour. Twenty and five and her lungs burned, but she refused to rise.

  Not yet.

  At twenty-eight she could take no more and kicked for the surface, breaking through with a splash and a huge sucking breath that filled her up with cold and light.

  Javed laughed.

  “Twenty and nine,” he said. “But I am an old man and do not breathe as well as I used to, so today, I think it is fair to say you win.”

  Samira let out a huge whoop of joy that echoed across the mountain slope. Two of the goats raised their heads from grazing, curious at the sound, but instead of turning in her direction as she would have expected they bounded away, heading higher still up the hill.

  “Someone is coming,” Samira said as she pulled herself out of the water. She was soaked to the skin, but the mountain sun and wind would have her dry before she started shivering.

  Javed did not answer her.

  He stood up on his rock to get a clear view over the valley.

  She heard the rumble in the distance before he identified the source.

  “Horsemen,” Javed said, staring down at the plain. “A warhost.”

  ◆◆◆

  By the time Samira had scrambled up to the top of the path, giving her a better view of the land below, the horsemen, thirty or more, were already at the edge of the village.

  “Men of the Christ,” Javed said at her side, nothing but bitterness in his voice as he pointed out the red crosses at their breasts and on their banners. Their armour gleamed in the sun. The thud of the horses’ shod hooves on rock echoed long and loud along the valley.

  She saw movement outside one of the village huts. It took her a moment to recognize the distant figure as her mother, given away by the cascade of black curls that flowed almost to her waist as she ran to meet the newcomers. A single shouted name rose to join the sound of the echoing hooves, so filled with hope it carried all the way to where she looked on, stretched thin by the mountainside until it made no sense.

  If this was the man from the fabled city, he hadn’t come to rescue Lilane.

  The lead horse did not so much as break stride as it drove her to the ground, and the others charging in behind didn’t slow as they trampled her already broken body against the sharp rocks.

  Samira scrambled forward, starting to shout, but the old man gripped her tight, one arm around her waist, the other hand clamped over her mouth as he pulled her low to the ground.

  “Hush, girl. Don’t fight me.” She struggled against his arms. “There’s nothing to be done but die if you go down, little fish, and I will not let that happen. I like you too much for that.”

  Samira squirmed, slippery as the little fish he nicknamed her, but the old man was too strong for her.

  “Watch and fill your heart with it,” he said. “Trust me girl, the day will come where you need this memory to give you strength for what you must do. No matter how hard it is, do not turn away. Watch the slaughter. Remember.”

  The Crusaders spared no one. They torched the village as they pillaged, and put every soul to the sword, men, women and children, all treated the same under the steel. Piteous wails ran up the valley side to join the rising smoke. Not one Crusader fell. It was over in minutes, life wiped out.

  They rode back the way they had come, their banners snapping so proudly in the wind. Once the thunder of hooves had faded, the valley lay quiet and dead below.

  It was only then that the old man released his grip on her. She scrambled to her feet and ran like the wind, heedless of any danger on the slope, slipping and sliding and skidding down the scree as she struggled to stay on her feet.

  ◆◆◆

  There was no one alive in the village.

  Lilane lay on the rocky track, staring at the sky, Tara was face down in the doorway of her hut, her legs blackened to a weeping crust where she had tried to crawl out of the flames before dying. A mother had tried to hide her baby beneath her furs, both were skewered clear through. Everywhere Samira looked she saw a kindly word, a friendly face, a teacher, a singer, a storyteller, all gone, taken into the wind by the bastards with their holy cross.

  Javed followed her down the slope. He didn’t run. There was no need. It didn’t make a difference to the dead if he reached them in ten minutes or ten hours.

  He lifted the bodies from where they lay, carrying them to the centre of the small village where he began building a pyre.

  Samira visited every hut to be sure no one had survived.

  It was only when she was convinced that she was the last of her people that she began helping the old man with the grisly task.

  They left her mother and Tara to the last.

  “I will carry this burden,” Javed said softly, “You do not need to do this.”

  Samira shook her head. “They are my dead,” she replied. “But I will need help to bear them.”

  He nodded without a word, helping her with her burden. They worked side-by-side in silence, gathering more wood and kindling to fuel the blaze, the last of the bodies added to the pyre, before Javed handed Samira a brand to set it alight.

  “It is your charge,” he said. “As it is your charge to avenge them, should you take up the mantle.”

  “Avenge? I am a child.”

  Javed nodded. “That you are, and so was I when the Men of Christ took my family. But I learned to fight. I even won, on occasion. I can teach you all I know of the ways of the Fidai of the Nasari, as they were taught to me, if that is your desire.”

  “Will it make me strong enough to kill them?”

  “There are many ways to kill a man without the need for strength. Is that your desire?”

  By the inflection in his voice she knew this was some form of ritual, that she was making a promise. In her mind’s eye she saw that man of Christ trample her mother down against the unforgiving rocks. She nodded in reply to Javed’s question and felt the cold fury take hold of her heart in that instant. “It is m
y desire.”

  “Then it is my pleasure to teach you, little fish,” Javed said. “It will not be easy. You will not be the same.”

  “I will never be the same again,” she swore, and in that she was right.

  Samira lit the pyre and stepped back, watching her life burn away in every mad cackle and snap of the dry kindling until there was little left of Lilane and Tara but ash that would blow away on the mountain air.

  All she had left to her name was hate, and anger, and a place she vowed she would visit to vent both, a place that was now carved deep into her so it would not be forgotten.

  Bologna.

  1301

  THE KNIGHTS TEMPLAR CHAPTERHOUSE, PARIS

  “Move your feet, boy. You’re not chopping wood. It’s a dance. Move.” Although the sword was only three-quarter size, it was heavy in his hands, and Aymeric struggled to wield it with any kind of grace. He was more inclined to brute force, swinging hard to hew great chunks out of the tree trunk that stood in for an opponent rather than waste time killing it with a thousand little cuts.

  He’d been relatively happy with the morning’s exercises, but the Master at Arms had other ideas. The barrel-chested man slapped Aymeric hard across the backside with the flat of his own long blade. “Cut and move, boy, cut and move. Have you learned nothing?”

  Aymeric resisted the temptation to say something dumb, and instead hacked another wedge out of the wood, and moved to side-step quickly, but the sword had other ideas. Off balance, he staggered away to his right, pulled by the weight of the weapon. He stumbled and fell to his knees. The sword clanged loudly as it hit stone.

  Shaking his head sadly, the Master at Arms cuffed Aymeric across the back of the head with a leather-gloved fist. “Balance, boy. Do these words mean nothing to you? Movement. Balance. These twins make a swordsman. Now get up and do it again. And keep on doing it until you get it right.”