Knights of the Cross (13 page)

‘It’s as well the bishop can’t see us now,’ Sigurd whispered. His voice was faltering, and it was only with the reluctance of a chained prisoner that he moved forward.

‘What is this place?’ The black veneer cracked and crumbled underfoot, and I could see pale imprints where boots other than mine had trod before it dried. I had a sickening feeling that I could guess its substance; its origin I did not care to guess. I touched my chest, where the silver cross hung under my armour, and prayed for a shield against the evils of this cave.

‘This is a place where we should not be.’ Sigurd held his torch before the altar, illuminating the frieze in its face. A man in a conical cap was wrestling with a bull, one arm grasping its neck while the other plunged a sword into its side. Blood gushed from the wound, while carrion-hungry animals looked on.

‘It must be some temple of the ancients.’ I did not recognise the gods from the poems and stories of the past, but I knew how profligate and varied their pagan deities had been. ‘But what did four knights from the Army of God purpose here?’

Sigurd gave no answer. Resting his axe against the altar, he stepped away into the corner of the cave where he crouched down, reaching for something. As he turned back I almost shrieked, for in his hand he now brandished a cloven hoof.

‘If the devil’s about, he’ll be limping,’ he said, with more cheer than I could summon. ‘Although I never heard that he had the feet of an ox.’

Trembling, I took the hoof from him. It gleamed in the torchlight, shadow deepening the furrow between the two toes. As he had said, it looked as though it had come from a cow or an ox, though in that heathen place I trusted nothing. I passed it back to Sigurd, remembered the harlot’s words by the riverside:
They had a bullock with them. It screamed horribly
.

‘What do you think . . . ?’

I could not bring myself to finish the question, but Sigurd was less oppressed by our surroundings. He tossed the hoof in his hand and looked again at the images on the walls. ‘What do I think they did here? I think they did what we all would do with a bullock and a hidden cave. I think they ate.’

We left the valley, so full of fruit and sin, and hurried back towards the city. For a time, the mysteries of the cave had numbed me to the danger of the Turks, but now I was forever glancing behind me, starting at every brushed leaf or snapping twig in the undergrowth by the roadside. I could not shake the fear that I had entered where I should not have gone, and that I might yet pay a divine price.

‘You saw the image on the altar,’ I pressed Sigurd. ‘A man killing a bull, doubtless in some pagan rite. If Drogo and his companions went down there with a bullock, it can only have been to one purpose.’

Sigurd shook his head, though his eyes never left the road ahead. ‘At least two of them loved Christ so much that they had themselves carved head to toe with crosses. Do you think they would be the kind of men to make sacrifices to gods who have been forgotten for a thousand years?’

‘Do you rather think that they travelled miles into a dangerous land, happened upon a secret temple that had been buried for centuries, and used it to cook lunch?’

‘I can think of other pursuits they might have enjoyed down there – and better reasons for going to a valley full of eager women.’

‘Even for men who had carved themselves with pious crosses?’

Sigurd snorted. ‘Perhaps . . .’ He paused. ‘What’s that?’

I stopped, my hand dropping to my sword. ‘What?’

Even as I asked the question, I heard it myself: a rumble in the air, as of distant thunder or tumbling rocks. But it did not cease or fade; instead, it grew ever louder, more ominous, the rushing approach of pounding hooves. I looked at the shallow valley around me, but the scrubby vegetation was too sparse to hide us and we would never reach the ridge in safety.

‘Form line!’ Sigurd wheeled about so that we faced back towards Daphne and dropped to one knee, setting his huge shield before him. His men fanned out beside him, locking their own shields into a wall, though it was barely enough to span the road. I squeezed in beside Sigurd, drawing my sword and thinking feverishly of Anna, of my daughters Zoe and Helena, and of the malignant curse which had attached to me in the cave.

‘We should have spears,’ the Varangian on my left muttered. ‘With spears, we might have a chance against them.’

‘Not against their arrows.’ Sigurd dug the butt of his axe into the ground and seemed ready to say something more. But at that moment the debate was cut short as horsemen cantered into view. Peering over the rim of Sigurd’s shield, I could see their horses’ gaunt necks thrusting forward, the spray of mud they kicked behind them, and the long spears their riders held erect. My low vantage kept me from seeing any but the leading riders and the churning mêlée of legs beneath, but the raised spears seemed to stretch too far back for hope.

‘Tancred!’

Sigurd spoke as the cavalry slowed their advance, and the momentum which had pulled their standard out behind them gave way to a breeze which whipped it into our sight. All of us recognised it, the blue and crimson stripes surmounted with a rearing bear. It was the banner of Tancred, Bohemond’s nephew and lieutenant. Not one of the Varangians relaxed his guard.

The Normans stopped a few paces away, grim figures in their coned helmets and mail. After a discomforting pause, their leader trotted forward.

I had heard it rumoured, once, that he was the half-bred son of a Saracen, and there was certainly nothing in his features to deny it. Unlike most of his kinsmen, his hair and eyes were dark, the former spilling out in curls over his coif, the latter still immature, lacking confidence. Even after all the privations of the siege he still filled his armour, though he was smaller than Bohemond or Sigurd. At the age of twenty, his face had taken on the set of command but had not yet left behind the scars and pimples of youth. On the battlefield, I knew, his recklessness made men fear to serve him.

‘Greeks,’ he said, staring down on us. Despite the bear on his banner, his voice was more a chirrup than a growl. ‘You are far from home.’

‘Nearer than you,’ I answered.

‘What brought you here? I did not expect to find a Greek risking his skin where the Turks prowl.’

‘Foraging.’

Tancred’s horse, a dappled stallion, skittered uneasily. ‘Did you find food?’

‘Only this.’ Sigurd picked up the bullock’s hoof from where he had dropped it and tossed it up to Tancred. With a spear in one hand and a heavy shield on the other, Tancred could do nothing but watch it fall to the ground. He laughed.

‘Is that all? We have been foraging too – but to greater avail.’ He gestured forward with his spear arm. One of the men behind him loosed something from his saddle pommel and threw it forward, sniggering as it landed in front of us. I closed my eyes, trying to stop up my throat as the lifeless eyes of a Turk’s head gazed at me from the mud.

‘We have a score more, if you wish to see them,’ Tancred bragged. ‘Tribute to my uncle.’

‘Doubtless he is worthy of the gift.’

‘Worthier than a eunuch and his army of catamites and traitors.’ Tancred kicked his horse forward and reined it in just above us. ‘What are so few Greeks doing so far from the city, so feebly armed?’

‘Get off your horse and I will show you how feeble we are,’ Sigurd challenged him.

‘Perhaps you have an understanding with the Turks? Perhaps you have the safe passage of ambassadors?’ The bite in Tancred’s taunts seemed yet more dangerous because of the childish voice in which he spoke them. ‘What business does the King of the Greeks have with the Sultan? Would you make an alliance with him against us, divide up our lands as the wages of treachery?’

‘We came only to forage,’ I repeated. I could see the Normans growing restless, the spears inclining towards us.

‘I will leave my uncle to judge the truth of that. Unless I choose to bring him a dozen more trophies.’

‘He would prefer me alive.’ I needed all the strength of Sigurd’s shield to keep from shaking as I tried to deflect the murderous Norman. ‘Indeed, I am in your uncle Bohemond’s employ.’

‘Why would my uncle waste one bezant on a Greek?’ The disbelief was plain on Tancred’s young face. ‘What is your name?’

‘Demetrios Askiates.’

‘I have never heard him speak of you.’

‘He asked me to find the killer of Drogo of Melfi.’

‘Drogo?’ The name was clearly known to Tancred, but I never discovered whether it would have provoked aid or anger, for at that moment – for the second time in the afternoon – we were interrupted by the noise of galloping hoofbeats. They came from the direction of the city, and in an instant Tancred’s lieutenants were shouting at their men to form a rough line across the valley. Sigurd and I and the rest of the Varangians loosed our ranks, so as not to block the way, and turned to face the new danger.

‘There should be no other Christians in these hills.’ Tancred stared down the road. ‘It must be Turks.’

‘If we’re lucky, it may be a grain caravan,’ said one of the Normans nearby.

Tancred looked at him in scorn. ‘Do you think that is the sound of laden mules?’

It was not. Hardly had the words been spoken when the horsemen came around the bend at the bottom of the valley, a squadron of twenty or so Turkish cavalry. The brass inlay on their helmets, poking out from the turbans wound about them, gleamed in the sun; some carried spears, while others had bows slung across their shoulders. They could not have expected to meet us, for they rode unprotected in a loose column.

‘Charge!’ shouted Tancred, tucking his spear under his arm. He spurred his horse, and the Norman line swept into motion, gathering pace as it advanced down the slope. There must have been fifty of them, and if they could close swiftly enough they might yet trap the Turks in their column. Sigurd and our company stayed where we were.

The Turkish horses were smaller than the Normans’, but they had an agility and an affinity with the uneven land which their adversaries could not match. The moment they had come within sight of the Normans, the Turks had wheeled about and begun their retreat. Already they were almost at the steep bluffs around which the road disappeared, though the curve seemed to slow them, allowing the Normans to close.

‘If Tancred gets any nearer, he’ll have to duck,’ Sigurd observed.

Sure enough, a second later three of the Turks swivelled in their saddles and loosed a volley of arrows at the leading Normans. The horses swerved and shied, almost throwing their riders, and the distance between the two forces widened. Once they were past the cliff the Turks would have an almost straight road back to the city, and the Normans would be hard pressed to catch them.

Looking down the valley after the fleeing horsemen, I let my gaze wander. In the gap where the road rounded the cliff I could see the green valley descending towards the river beyond; up on my right, the ridge of the valley followed the line of the road until it ended in the bluffs.

I paused, keeping my gaze fixed on the cliff. The main body of the Normans were under it now yet it seemed I could see something glinting above. It could not be the Turkish riders, for they would have needed winged steeds to climb it. Perhaps it was a spring, or a puddle.

‘Christ’s shit.’ Sigurd spoke it so mildly that at first I thought he must have dropped his shield on his toe, or pricked himself on a briar. Then I saw where he looked, and the obscenity was on my lips also. As if smitten by an unseen hand, two of the Normans had fallen from their horses at the foot of the cliff. Even as I watched, one of the other animals collapsed onto its knees. The heights above, where I had imagined I saw a puddle, now bristled with archers who were pouring arrows over the precipice.

‘Come on.’ Shouldering his shield, Sigurd grabbed my arm and dragged me after him, running across the slope of the valley towards the cliff. His men followed as we stumbled through the gorse and rocks, the sound of our bouncing armour jangling in my ears. My thighs burned with the effort; with every step my legs had to be kept from sliding away down the hillside. With the footing so treacherous I could risk only the briefest glances forward, and I prayed that the Turks on the cliff ahead were too preoccupied with their attack to look back.

Following Sigurd, we came around the crook of the valley and crested the ridge on its northern arm. From where we stood, it ran down gently to the head of the cliffs where the Turkish archers still loosed their arrows on the unseen Normans below. We crouched in the shadow of a boulder as Sigurd swiftly counted them.

‘Twenty-three,’ he announced.

‘Two to one,’ I said.

‘Not if you count a Varangian worth three of them. We’ll advance in line, quietly. If they see us, close ranks and make the shield wall. They’re isolated on that promontory, and without their horses. Get close enough, and we’ll deny them their favourite tactic.’