Standard of Honour

“Something’s broken. My arm, I think, although it feels like my shoulder. Can you see blood anywhere?”

“No. I looked when I first found you in here, thinking you might have been wounded. You were like a dead man when I found you, and your arm was out of its socket, so I took the opportunity to snap it back, knowing you might not feel the pain.” He hesitated, and then grinned. “I didn’t really know what I was doing, but I’ve seen that kind of thing done twice before. I couldn’t find any other breaks in your arm…but evidently you’ve found one.”

“Aye, evidently.” Sinclair drew a deep breath. “Here, help me to sit up against the rock there. That should make it easier to find where the pain is coming from. But be careful. Don’t kill me simply because you can’t feel the pain.”

Moray, not deigning to recognize his friend’s black humor, concentrated on raising Sinclair to where he could sit up in some kind of comfort and look about him, but that was more easily said than done, for in the course of his manipulations he discovered that his friend’s left arm hung uselessly and hurt Sinclair unbearably whenever it swung loose. The upper arm bone—he knew it must have a name, but could not begin to guess what it might be—was broken a short distance above the elbow. He lodged his friend upright and leaned into him, holding him in place while he used both hands to undo and remove the belt around the injured man’s waist, and when he was done, he worked to immobilize the broken limb, strapping it as tightly as he could against Sinclair’s ribs.

It was only when he had finished that task and moved back to seat himself that he realized he could no longer hear any sounds coming from the hillside above, and that he had no recollection of the noises fading away. He looked over to find Sinclair watching him.

“Tell me then, what happened?”

As he listened to his friend relating what he had seen and heard, Sinclair’s face grew increasingly strained, but he made no attempt to interrupt until Moray eventually fell silent. Then he sat chewing on his lip, his features pinched.

“Damn them all,” he said eventually. “They brought it on themselves, with their jealousies and squabbling. I knew it in my gut, from the moment they decided to stop the advance on Tiberias yesterday. There was no sound reason for doing that. No reason a good commander could justify. We had already marched twelve miles through hellish heat, with less than six remaining. We could have won to safety before nightfall had we but stuck together and continued our advance. To stop was utter folly.”

“Folly and spite. And arrogance. Your Master of the Temple, de Ridefort, wanted to spite the Count of Tripoli. And Reynald de Chatillon backed him, using his influence on the King and bullying Guy into changing his mind.”

Sinclair grunted from pain and gripped his broken arm with his other hand. “I cannot speak for de Chatillon,” he said between gritted teeth. “I have no truck with him nor ever have. The man is a savage and a disgrace to the Temple and all it stands for. But de Ridefort is a man of principles and he truly believes Raymond of Tripoli to be a traitor to our cause. He had sound reasons for his distrust of him.”

“Mayhap, but the Count of Tripoli’s was the only voice of sanity among our leaders. He said it would be madness to leave our solid base in La Safouri with Saladin’s masses on the move, and he was right.”

“Aye, he was, but he had made alliance with Saladin prior to that, and then reneged on it, or so he would have us believe. And that alliance cost us a hundred and thirty Templars and Hospitallers at Cresson last month. De Ridefort was right to distrust him.”

“It was de Ridefort who lost those men, Alec. He led them, all of them, in a downhill charge against fourteen thousand mounted men. It was his arrogance and his hotheadedness that are to blame for that. Raymond of Tripoli was nowhere near the place.”

“No, but had Raymond of Tripoli not granted Saladin’s army the right to cross his territory that day, those fourteen thousand men would not have been there to provoke de Ridefort. The Master of the Temple might have been blameworthy, but the Count of Tripoli was at fault.”

Moray shrugged. “Aye, you might be right, but when we were talking about leaving the safety of La Safouri, Raymond’s own wife was under siege in Tiberias, and even so he said he would rather lose her than endanger our whole army. That has no smell to me of treachery.”

Sinclair said nothing for a while after that, then grimaced again, his teeth clenched in pain. “So be it. There is no point in arguing over it now, when the damage is irretrievable. Right now, we have to find out what’s going on up on the crest. Can you do that without being seen?”

“Aye. There’s a spot among the rocks. I’ll go and look.”

Moray was back within minutes, scuttling sideways like a crab in an effort to keep his head down and out of sight from anyone on the hillside above.

“They’re on the move,” he hissed, pushing Sinclair gently down to lie on his back. “They’re coming down. The hillside’s alive with them, and they all seem to be heading this way. In five minutes’ time they’ll be all around us, and if we aren’t seen and dragged out of here it will be a miracle. So say your prayers, Alec. Pray as you’ve never prayed before—but silently.”

Somewhere close by a horse nickered and was answered by another. Hooves clattered on stone, as though right above the two motionless men, and then moved away. For the next hour or so they lay still, scarcely breathing and expecting discovery and capture with every heartbeat. But the time came when they could hear nothing, no movement, no voices, no matter how hard they strained to hear, and eventually Moray crawled out of the concealment and looked about him.

“They’re gone,” he announced from the mouth of the shelter. “They don’t appear to have left anyone up above, on the heights, and the mass of them seems to be headed now for Tiberias.”

“Aye, that’s where they’ll go first. The Citadel will surrender, now that the army’s destroyed. What else did you see?”

“Columns of dust going down from the ridge up there, towards Saladin’s encampment, east of Tiberias. It’s bigger than the city. Couldn’t see who was going down, because of the slope of the hill, but they’re raising a lot of dust. Whoever it is, they’re moving in strength.”

“Probably prisoners for ransom, and their escorts.”

Sir Lachlan Moray sat silent after that, frowning and chewing gently on the inside of his lip for a while, until he said, “Prisoners? Will there be Templars among them, think you?”

“Probably. Why would you think otherwise?”

Moray shook his head slightly. “I thought Templars were forbidden to surrender, but must fight to the death. It has never happened before, because it has always been death or glory. They’ve never been defeated and left alive, but—”

“Aye, but. You are correct. And yet you’re wrong, too. The Rule says no surrender in the face of odds less than five to one. Greater than that, there is room for discretion, and the odds today were overwhelming. Better to live and be ransomed to fight again than to be slaughtered to no good purpose. But we have duties to fulfill. We need to find a way back to La Safouri with word of this, and from there to Jerusalem, so we had better start planning our route. If Saladin’s force is split in two, to the south and to the east of us, then we will have to make our way back the way we came and hope to avoid their patrols. They will be everywhere, mopping up survivors like us. Here, help me to sit up.”

As soon as Moray slipped his arm about the other man’s waist and began to raise him up gently, he heard a loud click as Sinclair’s teeth snapped together, and he saw the color drain from the man’s cheeks again, his lips and forehead beaded with sweat and his teeth gritted together against the pain that had swept up in him. Appalled, and not knowing what to do, Moray was barely able to recognize the urgency with which Sinclair was straining to turn to his right, away from the pain of his broken arm. Only at the last possible moment did he have an inkling of what was happening, and he twisted sideways just in time to let Sinclair vomit on the floor beside him.

Afterwards, Sinclair lay shuddering and fighting for breath, his head lolling weakly from side to side as Lachlan Moray sat beside him, wringing his hands and fretting over what he should do next, for there was nothing he could think of that might help his friend.

Gradually the injured man’s laborious breathing eased, and suddenly his eyes were open, staring up into Moray’s.

“Splints,” he said, his voice weak. “We need to set the arm and splint it so that it can’t be moved or jarred again. Is there anything nearby we could use?”

“I don’t know. Let me go and look.”

Once again Moray crawled out of their hiding place and disappeared, leaving Sinclair alone, but this time Sinclair lost all awareness of how long he had been gone, and when he next opened his eyes, Moray was crouched above him, his face drawn in a mask of concern.

“Did you find splints?”

Moray shook his head. “No, nothing good enough. A few arrow shafts, but they’re too light, not enough rigidity.”

“Spears. We need a spear shaft.”

“I know, but the Saracens appear to have taken all the weapons they could find on their way past. They took the horses, too, which is no surprise. I’ll have to look farther uphill to find a spear shaft.”

“Then I’ll come with you, but after dark. We can’t stay here, and it’s too dangerous for us to separate. We’ll use strips cut from my surcoat to bind my arm immovably against my chest, and then I’ll lean on you and use you as a crutch. Fortunately, my sword arm is sound, should we have need of it.”

By the time they eventually secured the limb so that it hung comfortably and largely without pain, Moray had been outside several times to gather spent arrows with which to frame and brace the arm before they bound it tightly into place. By then it was growing dark, and as soon as they judged it dark enough to emerge, yet still sufficiently light to see without being seen, they began to make their way up towards the ridge on the skyline behind them. It was slow going, and arduous, and it did not take long for Sinclair’s arm, even constrained as it was, to react unfavorably to the constant jarring of walking uphill across uneven terrain. Within the first few hours of setting out on their odyssey, he lost all will to talk and walked grimly on, his eyes unfocused and his mouth twisted in a rictus of pain, his good hand clutching firmly at Lachlan Moray’s elbow.

During those first few hours Lachlan discovered that his belief that the Saracens had all gone down the mountain was inaccurate. It was a burst of unrestrained laughter that warned him that he and Sinclair were not alone. He left Sinclair propped up among a clump of boulders and made his way alone to where he could see what was going on at the top of the ridge of Hattin, and what he saw—a collection of several large tents surrounded by a large number of Saracen guards, everyone in high spirits—was sufficient to send him back and lead his friend thereafter in a completely different direction, heading northwest, away from the Saracen presence and directly towards La Safouri and its oasis.

THEY WALKED FROM DUSK until dawn that first night, although they did not make anything like the kind of progress they were used to. With no horses beneath them, they were reduced to the pace of ordinary men. Although the going improved once they had cleared the breast of the hill and started back downward in the direction of La Safouri, some twelve miles distant, Moray estimated that they had not covered half of that distance after more than seven hours of walking. But the stink of the charred, sour underbrush had diminished as soon as they had drawn away from the battlefield, and the battlefield itself had been mercifully veiled by the darkness of the clouded night. They had stumbled only twice over bodies lying directly in their path, and one of those had been a horse, with a full skin of water lying between its stiffened legs. This had slaked their thirst and given them energy to keep moving.

Dawn came too soon, and Moray was faced with making a decision concerning how to proceed, since his glassy-eyed companion was clearly not capable. They were in a stretch of giant dunes, and he knew the sun would broil them there no matter what they did. Was it better to keep moving in search of shelter and a place to rest, secure in the advantage offered them by the skin of water? Or would they be safer simply digging themselves a pit of some kind in the side of a dune and waiting in there for darkness to come around again? Moray decided on the former, purely because they had nothing with which to dig a hole of any kind, and so he kept walking, leading Sinclair, who was now reeling with every step, his glazed eyes staring off towards some distant place that he alone could see.

Several hours later they emerged from the dunes into an entirely different landscape, littered with sparse scrub and sharply broken stones. They soon found a dry streambed, the kind the local residents called a wadi, and Moray made his ailing companion as comfortable as he could in the shade of a slight overhang on one of the banks. He gave Sinclair more to drink and then left him heavily asleep in the meager shelter while he took the single crossbow and the few bolts he had salvaged from the battlefield of Hattin and went hunting for anything he might find that moved and could be eaten. The desert was a deadly place, but he knew, too, that it sustained an astonishing variety of creatures. Alec Sinclair’s life depended on him and upon his hunting skills, and so he gave no thought to his own tiredness, which was quickly approaching exhaustion. Moving slowly and with great caution, so as not to alarm the shy desert creatures that might be watching him, Moray armed his crossbow, his eyes and ears on full alert, poised for the sound or sight of movement.

He found more of both than he had bargained for.

It was a dust cloud that first attracted his attention and made his spirits soar, for it was the sign of mounted men, and it came boiling towards him from the direction of La Safouri, the oasis to which he and Sinclair were heading. For a while he stood there in plain sight, watching the dust plume grow as the riders drew closer, but then, just before they would have been close enough to see him, a distant, circular shield flickered in the sun’s glare, its shape unmistakable. The sight of it was enough to drive Moray to his knees, and from there to his rump, with his back pressed against the stone closest to him. Circular shields were unknown among the Franks; only Muslims used them, light, flimsy-looking things that nonetheless worked beautifully and efficiently. As he sat there, absorbing that, he saw another plume of dust, this one approaching from the south to meet with the one from La Safouri, and he cursed, estimating that the two paths would converge right where he sat. The riders were coming quickly, and he knew that if he was to hide, he had bare moments in which to do so.

Moray examined the terrain around him, looking for concealment, but saw only one grouping of boulders, and that did not look as though it offered any sanctuary. He had no choice, however, and he saw at a glance that the crossbow he carried would be a liability, impossible to disguise or conceal. Moving quickly, he scooped a shallow hole in the sand beside him and buried the weapon, covering it sufficiently, he hoped, to conceal its shape without hiding it so well that he would not be able to find it again. Then, aware of just how little time he had left before the distant riders arrived, he dropped flat and snaked towards the boulders, using his elbows to propel himself and offering a quick, agonized plea to God to keep his friend Sinclair unconscious and unaware.

There were five large stones in the cluster, and nothing approaching a sheltering roof among them, but he wormed himself among them until he could fold his body into the space on the ground created by their shapes. It was less than perfect, but he told himself that only a direct examination would betray him, and besides, there was nothing else he could do as everything around him, sight and sound, was swept away in the thunder of hooves. He had guessed, from what he had been able to observe, that there must be approximately two score, or perhaps even three, in each of the two groups, and the babble of voices that replaced the drumming of hooves seemed to support his conjecture. He was confident that he was listening to a hundred men in high spirits, exchanging good tidings and information.

Moray did not speak Arabic, but he had been in Outremer long enough to have grown familiar with the sounds and cadences of the language, and it no longer intimidated him as it once had. He could pick out certain spoken combinations, too, common words and phrases such as Allahu Akbar, God is great, which seemed to be the single most-used expression among the Muslims. Now he heard a single word, Suffiriyya, being spoken over and over again on all sides. Suffiriyya, he knew, was the Arabic name for La Safouri, and he interpreted the excitement surrounding him as a probable indication that Saladin’s army had captured the oasis after the departure of the Christian army for Tiberias. He wished Sinclair were with him, for his friend’s knowledge of Arabic was wondrous and he would have understood every word of the gibberish that flooded over Moray’s head.

Frustrated by his inability to see what was happening, he had no option but to lie still and hope that no part of him was sticking out where it would be visible. As one noisy group approached his hiding place he grew tense, expecting at any moment to hear a howl announcing his discovery. He heard them halt very close to him and knew they must be standing directly above him, almost within arm’s length of where he lay. Then there came a series of grunts and indecipherable sounds of movement, followed by a rapid, unintelligible gush of conversation involving three or perhaps four voices. Listening to them, holding his breath and willing himself to shrink into invisibility, Moray felt a surge of despair as his leg muscles began to tighten into what he knew immediately would be savage cramps.

Sure enough, the ensuing five minutes seemed to him to be the longest in his entire life as he lay in agony, unable to move or to make a sound while his tortured limbs objected to the unnatural way they were disposed. He did remain silent, nonetheless, concentrating on willing his leg muscles to relax, and eventually, gradually, the dementing pain began to recede. Shortly after that, just as he was beginning to adjust to the idea that the cramps had gone, the Saracens left, too, in response to a series of commands from a loud but distant voice that rang with authority. At one moment there were men above him speaking in loud voices, and then, without warning, they fell silent and moved away, only the sound of their receding footsteps announcing their departure.

It seemed to him that the individual groups were separating again, returning to the paths they had been following when they first saw each other. The dwindling sounds of their shouted farewells made it simple for him to deduce that the first group was heading southeast again, towards Tiberias, while the other continued north, into the desert wastes. Moray gave the last of them ample time to ride away before he emerged from his cache—and his heart sprang into his mouth when he saw that he was not alone. A single Saracen lay, apparently asleep, on the sand beside the boulders. Moray stood frozen, one hand on the boulder that separated them, before he saw the blood that stained the sand beneath the man’s body.

Cautiously, not daring to make a sound, he inched forward until he heard, and then saw, the clouds of flies that swarmed over the recumbent form. The man was dead, his torso pierced by a crossbow bolt, his chain-mail shirt clotted with gore and his face pallid beneath his sun-bronzed skin. He lay between two long spears and had obviously been laid carefully to rest, his arms crossed on his chest, his bow and a quiver of arrows laid beside him, and it became clear, as Moray studied him, that the fellow had been a man of some influence among his people. His clothing and the quality of the inlaid bow and quiver by his side proclaimed both wealth and rank, but his rich green cloak was blackened with blood, and the shimmering tunic of fine chain mail he wore had been insufficient to protect him from the lethal force of the steel bolt that had driven the metal mesh into his wound.

The spears on each side of the body puzzled Moray initially, until he gave them a closer look, and realized instantly that they had formed a kind of bier, their tapered ends separated by a short crossbar made from a broken length from another spear shaft bound firmly in place by tight lashings of rawhide that had been soaked in place and then allowed to dry in the sun. From that junction several long ropes of tightly plaited leather lay piled on the ground. The man, whoever he was, had been strapped onto the bier and obviously pulled behind a horse, for the marks where the ends had been dragged were deep and clearly defined. It was no great feat for Moray to divine that the man on the litter must have been supported on a network of more leather straps, lashed around the two spear shafts. He must have died a short time before his escorts reached this spot, Moray concluded, and his comrades, having left him so decorously laid out, would no doubt return to collect him.

Moray stepped out from behind his rocks and looked all around him now, seeing no signs of movement in any direction. The sun had started its fall towards the west, but it still had a long way to go, and its strength was ferocious, baking the landscape so that the rocks and even the sand itself shimmered and wavered, their surfaces warped by the heat that rose up in palpable waves. He searched the dead man quickly, hoping against hope to find a water bottle, but he found nothing of value, other than the bow and its quiver of arrows. The dead man’s sword and dagger were missing, probably taken by his comrades for safekeeping.

He picked up the inlaid bow before slinging the quiver over his shoulder and setting off to find his friend Alec.

Sinclair was still unconscious when Moray returned. Deep lines and creases had settled into his sleeping face, and his forehead was fiery hot to the touch. Moray grew increasingly apprehensive, for he knew that in order to provide the kind of help his friend needed, he would have to either lead Sinclair home safely to their own kind, and quickly, or surrender them both to the mercies of the Saracens. The latter was unthinkable, and so he decided that they would rest for the remainder of the day, then walk again throughout the night. But where could they go, now that La Safouri was closed to them? Back towards Nazareth was the only solution that presented itself to Moray, and it was the last image in his mind as he fell asleep that afternoon, huddled beside Alexander Sinclair.

THREE

When he awoke some time later, Moray was enormously relieved to find that Sinclair was conscious and appeared to be on the mend, but his optimism did not survive the first words Sinclair spoke to him, for the whispery weakness of his friend’s voice shocked him profoundly. Sinclair’s face was haggard, the blazing eyes dulled and unfocused and the eyeballs sunk deep in their sockets. The Alexander Sinclair in front of him now barely resembled the vital man Moray had spoken with the day before.

Nonetheless, although he could not judge how much of the information was penetrating Sinclair’s lethargy, Moray patiently told him about everything that had happened that day, and explained that they would now have to try to make their way southwestward, towards Nazareth, walking through the night again to avoid the roving Saracen patrols. His sole concern, he ended, was that Sinclair might not feel equal to the task of walking all night. At that point, however, Sinclair set his mind greatly at rest by closing his eyes and summoning the ghost of a smile. He could walk all night, he said in that reedy, lusterless voice, providing Moray held him upright and pointed him in the right direction.