Knights of the Blood (4 page)

Father Georgilas took another long, thirsty pull from his mug, surrendering a clarion belch before continuing.

“Let me see, what else? Yes. Those who led an immoral or evil life, as well as those over whose dead body a cat or other animal has passed, will also become
vrykolatios,
as will those who have eaten the flesh of a sheep that was killed by a wolf.”

Father Georgilas leaned back in his chair, his eyes suddenly looking startlingly glazed as his head lolled slowly from side to side. De Beq had been trying to keep count of the eight ways as the priest rehearsed them, ticking them off on his fingers, but he was afraid he had lost track at seven–and that Georgilas had, too.

“Father Georgilas,” said de Beq, “you said there were eight ways in which a man could become–“ here de Beq tried his hardest to pronounce the Greek word
“–vrykolatios,
but I think you’ve mentioned only seven. What is the eighth way?”

The priest drew himself upright in his chair and with great effort forced his eyes to focus on the knight.

“Those who practice ... the Black Arts ... also ... become ...
vryko
...
vryko
...
vry ...
“

The priest’s head slammed forward onto the table, and de Beq gave a heavy sigh. He should have curtailed the priest’s consumption before he passed out. Now it would be morning before they could speak on the subject again. Resigned, he had three of the serving brothers carry their unconscious guest to a pallet in a corner of the hall to sleep it off.

The next day around noon, de Beq was in the stables checking on the condition of the horses when one of the men—at—arms brought him word that the Greek priest finally had recovered from the previous night’s drinking. Giving a few instructions to the native groom who looked after his men’s horses, de Beq went back across the courtyard and up the stairs to the great hall. The priest was sitting at the long trestle table opposite de Beg’s chair, holding his head in his hands and nursing an untouched cup of thin local beer. No one else was in the hall besides a few servants at the kitchen end, cutting bread trenchers for the main meal later on. As de Beq sat down, the priest looked up through bloodshot eyes and moaned.

“Sire de Beq,” the priest croaked, “I feel all of God’s punishment for my sins in my head. Not for all the money in the world would I wish to be archbishop of Cyprus. The wine would kill me.”

De Beq didn’t care if the Cypriot wine killed the priest or not, but he did want to know one thing further from their conversation of the night before.

“Tell me, blessed Father, how do you kill a
broucolaques
in the Greek lands?”

“Vrykolatios,
“ the priest corrected automatically.

He drew a deep breath and held it for several seconds before expelling it, looking very pale behind his beard. For a moment, de Beq thought the sodden cleric was about to be sick and instinctively moved back, just in case.

“To kill a
vrykolatios,
you must drive a spear or sword through its heart,” the priest informed him gravely. “Cutting off its head is even better.” The priest closed his eyes as a mighty belch rumbled up from his guts. “Finally, they may be killed by burning them to ashes–oh, Mother of God!”

The priest belched again. The red veins on his nose stood out from the purpled flesh, and his eyes began to water. Expecting this, de Beq jumped back, just as the priest turned his head and was violently sick on the stone floor of the great hall.

De Beq surveyed the scene with disgust and got to his feet. The Greek priest turned back to de Beq with a weak smile and a look of apology, but appeared as if he was about to be sick again.

“Thank you, Father,” was all de Beq said, and then he left the hall.

For the next three weeks, de Beq had concentrated all of his efforts in preparing his men for the inevitable confrontation with Hassad and his men, going on the assumption that all of them might well be
vrykolatios,
as the priest had suggested. Contrary to the rule of his Order, de Beq fed his men three full meals a day, with meat served both morning and evening. Regular devotions in the chapel were increased as well, with daily attendance at Mass and reception of communion–for if the
vrykolatios
were also
afreat
or demons, as Sharif Salim maintained, and accursed by Allah, de Beq had to suppose that any fortification from the Christian God could only assist Christian knights in carrying out His will.

Meanwhile, de Beq did not neglect the practical side of his preparations. Prayers were well and good, but prowess with cold steel held its own grim reassurance. De Beq worked his garrison hard, requiring the men to spend extra hours swinging at the pells with their heavy swords and throwing heavy spears at stuffed “Turks” hanging from the quintain in the training yard. Nor were tactics overlooked. Shoulder to shoulder, the men grunted under the morning and afternoon sun as they formed
schiltrons
bristling with spears and trudged back and forth between the tower and stable, practicing a maneuver used to dear the streets of lightly armed combatants.

Some of the men grumbled about the training, especially the older knights and serjeants, who were annoyed at having to mount their regular patrols on mules, their horses having been relieved of all duty in order to keep them in good condition for the confrontation. In the stable yard, de Beq saw to it that the horses were carefully brought up into condition. Extra rations of grain were fed from the carefully harbored supply in the tower, and the native exercise boys were required to walk the horses for two hours before sun up, and again for two hours after sun down.

De Beq kept careful note of the progress of all of the men and horses under his command, and at the end of the first two weeks’ training had already decided which of the one hundred and ten men would go and which would stay, when they galloped off in pursuit of Ibn—al—Hassad.

The serving brothers would be left behind, of course, as would the chaplain and three of the knights. Fifteen serjeants and forty—two men—at—arms would also remain at the castle, along with the mules, lame horses, dogs and native servants. This would leave de Beq with forty men to lead across the desert—surely a more than adequate force to seek out and destroy the
vrykolatios ... .

* * *

Now, standing on the outcropping of rock above the small village of Chalice Well and preparing to do just that, de Beq again surveyed his troops. The reliable and competent William of Etton was at his side, awaiting his orders. They had two dozen men—at—arms and a complement of four archers. The six serjeants were well—armed and mounted. Like the men—at—arms, they carried heavy, eight—foot—long boar spears in addition to the broadswords slung at their waists and the iron maces that hung from each pommel. Crouched apart from the serjeants and men—at—arms in the shade of their mounts were the rest of the knights that de Beq had selected to ride with him–five of them.

The knights were the elite, of course. They were taller than the other men–the benefit of having been born into noble families, where greater abundance of food and a more balanced diet combined to give the knightly class a physical stature denied to the lesser orders.

The physical superiority of a knight was reflected in everything he did. In a secular setting, his deference to his superiors was pragmatic; a knight held his estates only so long as he provided military service to his overlord. His concern for the well—being of the men under his command centered not on altruism but on their ability to follow his orders on the field of battle. A knight was a law unto himself, beyond the civil jurisdiction of the courts, and answerable only to his feudal lord.

Knights professed to a religious order, like the Order of the Sword, surrendered some of that autonomy, but their noble status still set them apart from those of lesser birth. If they survived for long in the desert, they soon learned that cooperation was essential. When the invading European host had first arrived in the Holy Land, many of the knights had objected to serjeants and men—at—arms riding horses, feeling that being mounted was solely the prerogative of their class. This was especially true in the early years of the kingdom of Jerusalem, when many of the European war—horses had perished from the change in climate and diet. Knights, keen to defend their social position, had mutinied on several occasions when horses were assigned to lesser fighting men.

Twenty—five years of desert warfare, however, had had a leveling effect on the society of warriors. Neither knights nor men could survive for long without the cooperation and assistance of the other. As a result, it no longer seemed to bother the knights to see a short Burgundian peasant armed and mounted as a serjeant or even a man—at—arms. De Beq’s men had long since cast aside any such prejudices, though each man knew his place within the structure.

It was time. Feeling the rising tension that always preceded going into battle, de Beq turned and went with William of Etton down to where the rest waited, mentally checking each man’s equipment: as he moved among them and assessing the condition of their mounts. The horses looked fit enough for the gallop down to the village, after their long march to get here; the men looked no worse than their horses.

He had done almost all he could do to prepare them. Drawing his sword, he sank to one knee to do the rest, grasping the blade of the sword with both mail—mitted hands and holding the cross—hilt before him, as the others did the same all around him. The archers lowered the top ends of their bows to the ground in salute, heads bowed, and the knight who held the standard, Sir Myles Brabazon, dipped the colors to trail in the dust.

“Not to us, Lord, not unto us, but unto Thee be the glory!” de Beq prayed, as generations of crusader knights had prayed, bowing his head at the men’s answering, “Amen,” as it whispered around him.

Then he was kissing the relic in the pommel of his sword, rising to slip the weapon into its sheath, setting his boot in the stirrup of the horse that one of the serjeants brought up, while his men mounted all around him. Beside him, the brilliant banner of the Order unfurled above Myles Brabazon’s fists–a blue cross
patonce
outlined in gold, floating on a crimson field. Between the arms of the cross were four golden cramponned crosses, turned forty—five degrees, so that a distance, they looked like X’s within a golden circle.

Beneath their flowing mantles of white linen, the knights bore this device on their red surcoats, with their personal arms displayed on short, open sleeves at either shoulder. The serjeants bore the same device, but without the demi—sleeves .. The men—at—arms displayed the device as well, but in a roundel on the left breast. It was a noble and inspiring device, and had never been dishonored.

Picking up his horse’s reins, de Beq turned in the saddle and surveyed his command, waiting until everyone was mounted and settled, awaiting his orders.

“Quietly, now,
mes confrères,”
he said with a wolfish grin inside his helmet, holding up a mitted hand for silence. “We have an appointment with Ibn—al—Hassad, and we would not want to alarm him prematurely.”

THE WIND
coming up off the Syrian plain brought with it a fine grit that worked its way between skin and padded gambeson as the Knights of the Order of the Sword rode across the desert floor towards Chalice Well. The gates to the settlement were open, and de Beq led his men quietly through, drawing them up to dismount inside the village.

Leaving four of his men—at—arms to guard the horses, de Beq quickly formed his serjeants and remaining men—at—arms into skirmishing parties of three to four, each led by a knight. Should they need to beat a hasty retreat, he sent his four archers up onto the walls to provide covering fire. Spread out at ten—yard intervals, the archers could prevent even the most determined enemy from making any headway between the tightly packed houses and the perimeter wall. Each man had thirty arrows, and at the distance they had to cover, there was no doubt that each shaft would find its mark. With his protective cover in place, de Beq raised his sword and gave the signal for his men to advance down the narrow paths between the houses.

The skirmish parties started to move out, boar spears at the ready, each followed by the knight who had command. In the event that anyone was foolish enough to offer resistance, the men—at—arms and serjeants would stab and slash with their broadbladed spears. If attacked from the rear, the knight would turn and hold the enemy while the men behind him raised their spears, turned around, and pressed forward to assist the knight. It was a technique that had been developed over the years to deal with the occasional uprising, and given the discipline of the Europeans, one that usually worked well.

As each skirmishing party passed a building, it halted while one of its number checked to see if it was empty. The party remained at the halt until it caught sight of the skirmishers on either side of it before moving forward again. At each stop, de Beq would jog from one group of men to another, providing them all with unified command and the assurance that he was leading them. Finally, after passing by a dozen empty huts and sheds, de Beq and his men came to the clearing in the center of the village.

The wind continued to blow grit, turning the sky a copper—bronze and muffling any sound. Through the slit in his helmet, de Beq could see shadowy lumps lying on the ground around the well. At first he thought they were goats, but then the wind abated and the dust died down, and he realized what they really were: the bodies of children. In the sudden stillness, he could also hear the agonized cries of villagers coming from behind the buildings opposite the well and the sadistic laughter of the Turks.

Swinging his sword—arm in a slow arc high over his head, de Beq grimly led his men across the clearing toward the sound of the screams. They had nearly reached the first few buildings when two Turks suddenly came around a corner, dragging a body behind them.

Sir Myles Brabazon was less than twenty feet from them and reacted without hesitation. Despite the more than seventy pounds of chain mail weighing him down, Brabazon sprinted directly at the two momentarily bewildered Turks, smashing his shoulder into the chest of the smaller of the two men and sending him sprawling while, at the same moment, he swung full hard ‘with his sword and caught the other Turk just above the right ear. He managed to cleave right through the head and neck, but his sword stuck in the Turk’s body as it dug into his breast bone.

The Turk sagged to the ground, blood spraying up from the severed arteries, and Brabazon placed a foot against his chest and pushed the dying Turk off his blade. The other Turk, recovered from the shock of Brabazon’s impact, scrambled to his feet and took a vicious swipe at the knight’s leg with his scimitar.

The thin, curved blade of the Turkish sword bit cleanly through the knight’s sheepskin legging and sank into the muscles of his calf. Brabazon’s leg buckled under the blow and he crashed to the ground, instinctively rolling away from his adversary and bringing his sword up in a defensive parry, deflecting a cut that had been intended to slide beneath his helmet and connect with his throat. Before he could recover, the Turk was at him again, this time with a bruising blow to his forearm, mercifully detlected by Brabazon’s mail sleeves. As the knight tried to stand, the Turk swung his scimitar with both hands, axelike.

Brabazon ducked down and caught the blow full on his helmet, the force of the impact once again sending him crashing to the hard—packed earth. Fortunately, before the Turk could close in for the kill, one of the serjeants dashed forward, driving his boar spear into the enemy’s gut.

The Turk staggered back, screaming as he pulled himself free from the broad—bladed spearhead. Blood gushed from his abdomen in such a torrent that the serjeant drew back in disbelief, spear still at the ready—for the Turk still had a sword locked in his fist. But though the Turk should have collapsed, he suddenly straightened and, with speed uncanny even for an unwounded man, lunged forward and knocked the spear aside, thrusting his sword into the serjeant’s eye and driving it through the socket, deep into the brain.

Reflexively, the dying man dropped his spear and grabbed the sword with both hands. Screaming, he spun around in a circle before staggering into the side of a building and collapsing onto his knees, his body going into death spasms. Two men—at—arms raced forward with spears ready to avenge him, but at their approach the Turk turned and ran between the buildings, headed back from where he had come just a few minutes before.

Without waiting for the command to follow, the skirmish party took off at a dead run after the wounded Turk, one of the serjeants stopping to help Brabazon to his feet, propping him up with the aid of a spear before hurrying on. As the serjeant came even with the Turk that Brabazon had dispatched with one blow of his sword, the mutilated corpse pushed itself up into a sitting position, its nearly severed head flopping grotesquely to one side.

The serjeant froze momentarily in his tracks as the corpse struggled to regain its feet; then, with the utmost deliberation, he swung his sword in a downward plunging arc, completing what Brabazon had started. The severed head bounced several times and then rolled to a stop near the horrified Brabazon, and the body collapsed to move no more. Without further regard for the
vrykolakas,
the serjeant threw the knight a grin and a triumphant salute, and took off after his companion and the wounded Turk.

The wounded Turk was almost twenty yards ahead of the crusaders when his body, now drained of blood, toppled forward, pitching his conical spiked helmet into the open space in front of the Chapel of the Chalice. The helmet rolled across the barren earth and came to a halt against the naked and battered body of an old woman, savagely raped before her throat was slashed. Other corpses littered the courtyard, some horribly mutilated, others hardly touched. All, however, had had their throats cut.

The crusaders passed into the courtyard with only a passing glance at the bodies. They were looking for the Turks, not the sign of their passing. Death was their stock in trade, and the death of the villagers elicited only casual professional interest.

The chapel of the shrine of Chalice Well lay across the square, and de Beq and two of the men from his skirmishing party trotted out in front of the rest of the crusaders and made their way across to it. The door was closed and barred from within, but inside they could hear the wailing moans of someone pleading for mercy, punctuated by screams, and the laughter and coarse chatter of the Turks.

Quietly, de Beq beckoned for one of the burlier serjeants to come and boost him up so he could look through a tiny window above the door. With a leg up from a man—at—arms, he climbed shakily onto the serjeant’s shoulders and stood up, hooking his fingertips over the windowsill. By stretching, he was just able to peer through the lower part of the little window.

Inside, to blasphemies and hoots of derision, seven or eight Turks had singled out the guardian of the shrine for their special attention. The old priest had been stripped naked and nailed to the top of his altar, a spike driven through each of his outstretched hands and another pounded through his feet in sacrilegious parody of the crucifix looking down from the wall above him–no work of any Christian or even of Moslems, who at least honored Jesus of Nazareth as God’s prophet, even if they did not accept him .as God’s son.

Not satisfied with this profanation, the Turks were flaying the priest alive, one of them peeling long, bloody strips from his tightly—stretched chest with a wicked, curved dagger while his fellows crowded round and took delight in each new contortion. Blood streamed from the priest’s wounds, befouling the altar with gore and the sweat of his terror and anguish, but the raw agony of his screams was weakening with every breath he managed to draw.

The man with the dagger–somehow de Beq knew it could only be Ibn—al—Hassad himself–gave a maniacal laugh and flayed another strip of flesh, then bent langorously to lick the raw wound with an obscene, blood—stained tongue. The old man’s scream shifted into a long, despairing wail of anguish at this new outrage, caught just at the edge of madness, but the sound, coupled with his writhing, only served to goad his torturers on.

De Beq had seen enough. He knew their number, their unredeemable depravity, and he also knew that there was no other way out of the place besides the door below him. Letting himself down from the sill, still balanced on the sergeant’s shoulders, he turned and took the up—stretched hands of two of his knights and vaulted lightly to the ground, beckoning them silently aside.

“He’s in there with about half a dozen of his men,” de Beq said. “They’re torturing the priest. There’s nothing we can do for him, but I don’t intend that Hassad should leave this place alive. If they don’t simply tire of their sport and kill him, the priest should last long enough for us to make our preparations. Michel,” he called to one of the serjeants, “take two of the men, go back to the horses, and bring up the archers.”

Without waiting, the serjeant tapped two men on the chest, and the three of them trotted off in the direction of the horses. Satisfied, de Beq turned back to his knights.

“Now, we’re going to need something to use as a battering ram. Armand, take three men and see what you can find, and be quick about it. You others, keep looking for more of the Turks. They
all
may be
broucolaques.
Father Georgilas said they fall into a kind of stupor when they’re sated with blood, and they’re hard to rouse. But don’t waste time stabbing and cutting–just cut off their heads–or burn them in the huts where you find them, if you have to. This whole place goes, when we’re done.

“And William–as soon as the archers get here, I want you to position them opposite the chapel door. Put a double row of men with spears at either side of the door. If any of those bastards come out, I want them facing a gauntlet of steel and a shower of arrows. The minute they’re down, behead them.”

He kept two knights and half a dozen men—at—arms with him, in case he had overestimated the priest’s endurance, and set them in readiness outside the chapel door. Because the fighting would be close when they eventually went in, he took off his helmet and spurs and directed his men to do the same. Some of them put aside their swords in favor of maces or axes. De Beq decided to keep his sword, but did take off his scabbard.

The rest of his men finished their sweep of the village in the quarter hour it took the archers to return, and came back blood—stained and satisfied looking. François Mansard reported that they had accounted for a good score of the Turks, all drowsing in a blood—induced stupor in one of the sheds, surrounded by the bodies of slain villagers.

Listening grimly, de Beq watched William deploy the returning archers, integrating them with the returned serjeants and men—at—arms exactly as he had ordered. On either side of the chapel door, eleven men were drawn up in a double line of six men backed up by five more. They were crouching on the ground, facing diagonally towards the door with their spears at the ready. Beyond them by some fifty feet were the archers, protected by a German knight named Hano von Linka and the limping Myles Brabazon, easing his wounded leg with a boar spear for a crutch. If the Turks broke out of the chapel, they immediately would face a hail of arrows that either would drive them onto the broad points of the boar spears or force them back inside. The death trap was well set.

All that was lacking now was the battering ram. The hoarse screaming from inside the chapel had diminished but little while they made their preparations, and de Beq found himself wondering how the old priest could take so much pain. As the screaming shifted abruptly to anguished pleading again, de Beq handed off his sword and vaulted up on his serjeant—observation post again to see what the sudden quiet betokened. Before he could look, the men sent for a battering ram finally returned with a hacked—off trunk of a date palm, and de Beq signaled them into position as he stretched up to peer inside one more time.

Hassad was standing nearer the old priest’s head now, one hand stroking the gasping throat while the other slowly turned the blood—stained dagger before the doomed man’s suffering gaze. One of his men had already seized the cup–a simple thing of horn, bound with brass–from its little shrine behind the altar and in it Hassad caught the first spurting gush of blood as he suddenly plunged the dagger into the side of the old man’s neck.