Devil's Bargain by Judith Tarr Read Free Book Online Page A

various trumpet calls. “We’ll make Arsuf by terce, at this pace. Then the real fighting will begin.”
    “This isn’t real fighting?” one of the clerks muttered. Fortunately for him, Richard did not hear: he was absorbed in colloquy with a courier from the young lord Henry, who commanded the Syrian knights in the rear. From that vantage, though sorely beset by the enemy, he could see the line of the army, both cavalry and infantry.
    “Tell him to keep on holding,” Richard said to the courier.“We’ll need to draw up even closer just ahead—the sand’s slowing down the Turks’ horses now, but when we get in below the hills, they’ll have the high ground and the faster footing. Saladin will wait to catch us there.”
    The man ducked his head in respect and wheeled his little Arab horse about. As he spurred her back down the line, his glance crossed Sioned’s. She started a little. It was Mustafa, in the dress and armor of a Turcopole, but with no cross of Crusade on his shoulder. She would have expected him to keep close to Richard, but it seemed he had decided to follow Richard’s nephew Henry instead.
    It had a logic of sorts—Mustafa-logic. He was protecting Richard, and fighting the war in his own way.
    So was she, if she stopped to think. She made sure her sword was loose in its sheath, and her bow and its string were close to hand. The sun was climbing, and the heat with it. The hills rose on the left hand, swarming with Saracens. Somewhere up there, Saladin was standing—and, she was sure, that other. The heat that surged in her had nothing to do with the sun.
    Grimly she thrust it aside and made herself think clearly. More and more of the enemy were pouring out of the wood and swooping down from the hills. The fortress of Arsuf was close—the van had nearly reached the gardens and orchards that surrounded it. They were pitching camp: she knew that bright shrilling of trumpets. It was a physical pain to think of cool airs and greenery, water that did not taste of leather, and peace—no swarms of arrows, no hordes of Saracens.
    The urge to break free of the crush, to gallop into the open, was almost overwhelming. Couriers came again and again from the rear—Mustafa only the once; she prayed that he was still alive. They brought steadily more desperate word: “The enemy is relentless. Let us charge! If we can but break him—”
    “Stand fast,” Richard said, implacable. “Hold for my signal.”
    When even Sioned, a small woman on a small horse, could see the trees of the orchards ahead, a massive figure rode up from the rear with a lone squire for escort: the Grand Master ofthe Hospitallers himself. He barely bowed to the king, and never paused to take off the great casque of his helm. His voice boomed out of it. “Lord king, we must charge! They’re killing the horses. If we don’t break the line soon, there won’t be any of us left to do it.”
    “Patience, my lord,” Richard said. “I need you where you are, and I need your strength. Hold on just a little longer.”
    The Grand Master snarled in his helm, wheeled his destrier and lumbered back down the line in a hail of Turkish arrows. One or two caught in his mantle and tore it, but he took no notice.
    The advance had slowed. The enemy smote the rear again and again, striving to separate it from the rest, and so annihilate it. The arrows that had flown against the Hospitaller were forerunners; a horde of archers descended from the hills. The air was black with arrows; they buzzed and swarmed.
    The whole of the army was beset, but the rear most of all. The last courier who came to Richard gasped out, “The infantry are marching backward—the Turks are everywhere. Lord king, we can’t hold much longer!”
    Master Judah was there to catch him as he collapsed, and Sioned with her kit for field surgery. Richard’s guard closed in, raising shields above them. Arrows rattled like sleet.
    The shields blocked the light, but Sioned was not