The Codex Lacrimae (35 page)

Then the other missing intruders jumped from the roof of the colonnade onto the grasses behind Ríg and Marcus, cutting off their retreat.

Well
,
Ríg thought as he kept close to Marcus and began fighting back to back with his friend,
at least now we know that they're all here and not yet at the front gate!

“Tag, Ori,” Marcus giggled, as he shoved Ríg aside, “you're it!”

The motion saved Ríg from an arrow he hadn't even seen coming. He continued his roll forward over one a dead man, coming to rise before the blond-haired Hospitaller with sword and
trident main gauche
at the ready. He saw the traitor glaring at Marcus and raising a Saracen bow to take aim at the still singing, sword-wielding boy whose fast movements against the two remaining assassins were as balletic as they were deadly.

“
Ori
? Oh, I don't think so! That won't do at all —,” the blond-haired man shouted as he loosed the arrow at the same time as Ríg threw his dagger. The blade tinged against the fletches of the projectile, diverting it enough so that it glanced off Marcus's shoulder instead of burying itself into the boy's heart.

“
Owwww
! Marcus hurt!” The youth grunted as he spun and ducked, slicing into the midsection of one of the Assassins, killing him in such a painful way that the man lost his intimidating composure and started shouting Arabic curses as he collapsed to his knees clutching his abdomen. Marcus yanked on the shaft in panic, ripping wide the wound as he brought the barbed arrowhead out of his madly bleeding shoulder. “Ori, Ori, Ori...Marcus is hurt!”

“Marcus, get out of here! Run to get help!” Ríg shouted after him, but the remaining assassin was already grappling at close quarters with his friend, and they tumbled down the hill and out of sight.

Oh, Dio, fa Marcus ricordare le sue lezioni,
Ríg thought grimly.
Oh, God, let Marcus remember his lessons now
.
He heard the sounds of shouts by the front gate, recognizing the imperious boom of Brother Perdieu and others making sure that no one got through the entrance.

Ríg kept his sword defensively raised, blocking another incoming strike from the remaining swordsman. Even if he defeated this one, though, he knew that the distance from the Hospitaller traitor with the arrows was too great. The man had the advantage and intended to use it, raising his bow to aim firmly on Ríg's chest.

Now would be a great time for the reinforcements to appear.

Trying not to think about Marcus's fate, and keeping the last Assassin between himself and the bowman, Ríg battled on.

Chapter 18

The Poisoning of Hamzah al-Adil

“It seems that my listeners have left me,” Ibn-Khaldun noted as Perdieu, Pellion, and the rest of the Hospitallers disappeared from view in pursuit of Ríg, albeit by the more mundane (and safer) routes of the Krak's halls and stairwells instead of the limbs of a cypress tree.

He smiled ruefully at Mercedier and came forward to put a restraining hand on the shoulder of Jacob. The former was struggling to rise from his sick bed, while the latter obviously was intent upon following his new Hospitaller friend.

“Hold, Boy!” Ibn-Khaldun commanded in Aramaic. Jacob stopped, looked curiously at Ibn-Khaldun and then in the direction that the Hospitallers had run.

“I'm good in a battle, Master,” Jacob offered.

“This is a matter best left to the castle's warriors,” Ibn-Khaldun explained. “Let's remain here for the moment while they sort out matters, eh?”

“Oh, my God,” Jacob said, his face paling. “Marcus.”

“What about Marcus?” Ibn-Khaldun asked sharply.

“He's gone from his room and he took my sword.”

“Damn it, Arcadian!” Mercedier groaned. “He's gone to help Ríg. Or, rather, he probably went to stop the intruders himself.”

Then he spoke quickly as he cast off the blankets and swung his legs painfully over the side of the bed, his words rapidly spoken in disgust. “I'm not staying here while those lads fight as the castle's being invaded. Boy, give me my weapons over there, will you?” He glared angrily at his older brother as he gained his feet, throwing off the grand-master's restraining hand.

Ibn-Khaldun frowned, but moved aside as his patient leaned against a chair, panting.

“Mercedier, think reasonably. You're still suffering from your injuries and, by the time you hobbled down there, the battle's going
to be long over. It's Marcus and Ríg for Allah's Sake! For all we know, the fighting might be already done.”

“I should be down there,” Mercedier protested, glaring at his friend as he attempted to buckle a sword belt around his waist.

“In other times, yes. Now, no.” Ibn-Khaldun paused. “Know this — Marcus wasn't very badly injured. I ordered him to stay in bed more for my peace of mind then for his well being.”

“
Ahhh
,
” Mercedier grunted. “I don't feel too good.”

“You look terrible.”

“Mercedier, get back in that bed immediately!” Arcadian said peremptorily, irritation in his shaking voice. As with Ibn-Khaldun, now that he was in his sixties, Arcadian tired more easily than he used to, while his threshold for patience lowered.

“You might be right this time,” Mercedier agreed, as he put a weary hand to his forehead and swayed. Ibn-Khaldun was at his side before he could fall to the floor. The older man eased the unconscious second-in-command carefully back to the bed.

“Old fool,” he murmured to himself with a shake of his head as he felt the fever burning in Mercedier, “you at least, among these, should have seen this.” He beckoned at Jacob.

“I need your help, Boy.”

“What are you going to do?” Jacob replied. “What about Marcus and Ríg?”

“They're beyond my help now — Mercedier isn't!” Ibn-Khaldun snapped. Then he inhaled a couple of deep, calming breaths. “I think Mercedier's hurt in places that weren't obvious before…ah. Here.”

The scholar pulled away most of Mercedier's garment, exposing the knight's torso. He pointed to a mass of discolored skin that stretched across the man's abdomen.

“That's a long bruise,” Jacob whispered.

“Yes, it is.” Ibn-Khaldun agreed. He touched the damaged area with gentle, probing fingers and looked up at the boy.

“There's a welt and scab in the middle of the bruise.” Ibn-Khaldun explained. “There might be poison here, or an object I somehow missed. I need your help.”

“What can I do?”

“Go down the hallway to the medical ward and tell the doctors there that I need assistance. Look first for a knight named Brother Belvedere, but any surgeon will do if you can't find him. Tell the doctor you find that Ibn-Khaldun needs his help with Brother Mercedier…”

Jacob listened carefully to the rest of Ibn-Khaldun's instructions, but part of his mind still tried to work through what he'd just witnessed in the chamber.

He wondered again at the strangeness of Ríg.

The change in the young knight's posture upon hearing Jacob's report had been so dramatic that the boy almost thought he'd become a different person. Ríg's features hardened into a mask that closed off everyone in the room. He'd paused only long enough to learn from Jacob how many intruders there were, and then leapt from the window at an unbelievable speed, scaling down the tree with the ease of an experienced sailor slipping down a main mast to warn his crew of pirates!

Jacob still also couldn't believe that Marcus had taken his sword — Ríg was right, he should have never left the weapon in sight! What, though, did Marcus think that he could do against nine intruders, given his strange and obviously disabling condition?

In the distance, he heard the soft clinking sound of swords, and the clangs made him shift from a jog to a sprint, coming quickly to the stairs that led to the hospital.

Ibn-Khaldun patted his shoulder reassuringly, and Jacob dashed from the room, pushing aside all other thoughts except those that would help the injured Hospitaller. He'd try to figure out the mysteries of Marcus and Ríg later. He had his own job to do now.

******

Returning from a final check with Al-Tarusi on the next day's deployments, Saladin's brother, Hamzah al-Adil, reached the area where the Westerners were quartered. He noticed a bright yellow glow emanating from Lord Farbauti's tent.

Al-Adil slipped furtively off the path and stealthily made his way toward the tent. There was no help for it — instincts were part of his duty to his brother, and if he felt a great…wrongness about these western lords, then it was his duty to follow where those instincts led.

The grand vizier heard voices as he drew near the flap. He fingered a bit of the cloth door and peered inside, putting a careful eye to the seam of yellow light that lanced into the darkness outside.

The Nordic lord, Farbauti, sat placidly on a stool before a sizable fire that blazed strongly in the center of the tent. The flames licked high toward the hole in the canvassed ceiling with so great a heat that it would contend with the hottest of desert days. Al-Adil began to sweat even from this brief exposure. Amazed that the cloth of the tent didn't burst into flame, he squinted against the waves of distorting heat and saw that — except for the stool — there were no pieces of furniture, rugs, nor any adornment in the interior space save for two rolls of unused bedding near his position.

“Santini's come into possession of the Codex Lacrimae,” Farbauti said.

“He's not used it, though,” Kenezki observed. “Morpeth better not fail, because I tire of this game.”

Farbauti nodded but said nothing. He sat entranced across from the fire pit, his eyes glazed in a fixed stare at the flickering flames and his immobility interrupted only by the occasional tossing of various powders into the fire. The hue of the blaze changed with each dusting, from burgundy to emerald to sapphire, with the most recent toss yielding an ebony flame.

“I can't find the Norns,” Farbauti stated with tension in his voice. “We held them off until Caesarea, but, as you can see,” he said with a nod at the black flames, “your departure from that city opened Urd's Sight.”

“You've only used the Sight on four worlds,” Kenezki countered. “You'll find them. The girl training to be Urd is a novice, as Santini will be if he somehow escapes Morpeth's arrows.” The pirate's words were emphatic. “He doesn't know how to use the Codex.”

“Fortunate for you, isn't it, Kenezki?” Farbauti didn't look at the other man, but his voice was colder than the ice that began to crystallize the sand at the base of the fire.

Ice at the base of black-flames?
Wondered Hamzah al-Adil.
How is this possible?

Farbauti continued: “I can't believe you interfered and hired a band of Assassins to poison Santini just after Ibn-Khaldun brought him the Codex Lacrimae.” The enormous warrior rose to his feet, towering over the squatting pirate. “I covered for you in front of Saladin, but I should slay you right now.”

“I'd like to see you try, Muspel-Spawn,” Kenezki sneered. “It matters not if I'm on land nor sea. You'd not last a moment against me.”

“You've introduced too many elements for us to keep clean tracking in this hunt,” Farbauti continued, ignoring the gibe. “The original plan had Fafnir leading the eastern army, and us using Saladin's forces to crush the Krak in a pincer movement. We could then take the Codex at our leisure after storming the citadel.”

“I thought it worthwhile to pursue another line of attack,” Kenezki replied firmly, “in case Santini awakened the Codex Lacrimae earlier than expected.”

“The Assassins were a ‘line of attack'?” Anger smoldered in Farbauti's voice. “The Codex doesn't do us any good if it's not fully engaged. That means more than just ‘awakened.' If you recall, it
awakened
when taken by Raj' al-Jared — that's what kept us in the East for the past few years, when all the while Santini sat safely here. If that boy dies before the Codex Lacrimae truly returns to the Nine Worlds, all our work is for naught.”

“It
is
engaged, Farbauti — more than it ever was under Raj' al-Jared,” Kenezki countered. “The magic flared to life the moment Santini touched it, and, if Morpeth does his job, the boy's about to be cast somewhere into the other eight worlds with neither the Codex nor any other source of guidance to help him. While he's gone, we'll grab the tome and kill Santini when he returns. Simple.” The sly man smiled and rose to his feet, looking up at Farbauti. “It's in the hands of Morpeth now. Events at Caesarea delayed me too long to make the follow-up contacts with the Assassins. Morpeth better not fail.”

“The delay didn't do much good,” Farbauti commented sourly. “You still arrived without the caskets.”

“Yes, well, one cut of the Assassins' blades or Morpeth's arrows is all it will take — if Santini bleeds, he's ours.”