The Priest of Blood (20 page)

I squatted among a clutch of rocks and waited for the spy who followed, and when I saw a movement, I drew my short sword and leapt down to attack my pursuer.

The one who followed me emerged into the moonlight, and I nearly fell backward rather than cut him down. It was Thibaud, my little friend, a child of the war itself. “You?” I shouted, perhaps too harshly.

He sprang forward, drawing his dagger. He had a fury in his face, the like of which I had never seen except in battle.

“Did you follow me to kill me?” I asked, laughing.

“I mean to serve you,” he said, sheathing his dagger.

“Why do you follow me?” I scowled at him.

“Is there not treasure where you go?” he asked, a gleam to his eye.

“Why, you greedy little thief,” I said. “The only treasure ahead of me is death.”

“Is it made of gold?” he asked.

“Yes,” I laughed. “Golden death.” I raised my sword again to try and scare him into returning whence he had come.

In the moonlight, this scrawny scrap of a boy seemed even more wan and hungry—and I was taken aback by the sorrow in his eyes. What had this world done to one so young? What world was this? He said nothing, but brought out a bit of dried meat and offered water from the skin that was slung over his narrow shoulders.

Once we had made camp for the night we sat before the fire, and I told him he must return the next morning.

“No,” he said. He and I stared at each other a bit, I trying to understand what had driven him to desert, and he, no doubt, becoming more resolved to accompany me to my death.

“What of you?” I asked. “You cannot give up on your life so young. I will not allow it. You have a master among the knights.”

“A terrible man,” he said, then looked deeply into the fire. “Kill me if you must. But I will not return.”

“You must,” I insisted. “You have more life ahead of you.”

“You are my only master,” he said. “You saved me.” He spoke no more that night. We slept, he covered by my cloak, while I sat up on watch, truly unable to do more than drift off a bit just before dawn arrived.

Well before the sun rose, we continued on toward the cliffs overlooking the sea. As the afternoon wore on, and a terrible thirst overcame us both—though I allowed him a ration of water and felt best doing without—he stopped in his tracks and turned back, as if listening. “I am afraid others follow us.”

“If they do, we will cut them down,” I said. “And roast them for our dinner.”

He laughed at this, and ran ahead of me along the narrow rocky path we’d chosen. Twilight came, then night, and by the fire that evening, we spoke of our homeland, and despite my hatred of some there, this recalled my love of the Forest, my thoughts of my brothers and sisters, unknown to me, and of Alienora. It gave me an unfortunate hope that night as I slept. It clouded my resolve, my march toward a lonely death.

By dawn, I felt even greater sorrow, for, several days from camp, deserting our knights meant death, whether we returned to the army’s camp or continued on to the poisoned city. I did not feel a choice once I had begun that journey to Hedammu.

The boy accompanied me as a pallbearer might a funerary procession, following close behind me, and mute, as if he were afraid to speak of our destination. I was too selfish to concern myself with his fate. I had seen children die in battle. I had seen them die of fevers in my home. I suppose, in the back of my mind, I had a hope that his innocence would provide us with a miracle, although I was not so hopeful as to let this thought cloud my resolve.

I felt as if I already knew the end of this journey. I welcomed it. I welcomed the gaping mouth of Hell, for it could not be a worse place than this Earth.

Thibaud Dustifot carried the skin of water, and had stowed a bit of salted goat meat in his pack and among his various pouches. We stopped to sleep, and I daresay that we had rough nights, for storms swept off the sea within a few nights’ travel. During daylight hours, we had to be sure and avoid the Hospitallers, for many scouts and guards were about along the jagged hillocks and desert valleys. Then the infidel had to be avoided, although why I cared if I were captured, I did not know. Death was what I sought, but I suppose I wanted it in my own way and on my own watch. I did not wish to be at the mercy of the enemy, whose many tortures were nearly as well-known as those of my own countrymen.

We rationed the dried meat and water as best we could. The bread, which grew harder and tougher to chew with each day, might last perhaps a few more days if we were careful. I began to imagine that someone did, in fact, follow us, although I never saw anyone. The heat of the sun was intense during the day, while the night was often cold and stormy. It was strange weather, and my superstitious nature began to get the better of me. In weak moments of my resolve, I began to imagine that the Devil truly was along this road, and that his eminence’s castle truly was ahead of us.

I found Thibaud’s attention to my welfare touching, and I begged him nightly to return to the camp.

“You are young enough that you may be forgiven this desertion,” I said. “Do you wish to die?”

“I wish to serve my master,” the boy said, and drew out a bit of bread for our supper.

9

In a few more heartbeats, the light of day would be swallowed, and the breath of the living would cloud the air. It was said, according to my fellow soldiers, that the infidels believed a great dragon lived in the caves of the hills. It left its lair by way of the sapphire sea, drank the sun down into its gullet each night, and defecated the new sun through the bowels of the earth before dawn. But there was no dragon, nor was the sea full of jewels.

Hedammu, Mighty Fortress! Fallen from its height as a center of trade and learning and of the ancient secrets of the people of this region. A poisonous, pestilent whore of a city, long abandoned. The Devil’s Horns. I saw its towers from a distance, and as had been reported, there was no watch and no guard.

It was a golden city.

It was a city of the dead.

The view from the crest showed the dying copper sky as the sun moved languidly toward the metallic blue of the sea. The wind, when it swept across the towers and hills to the east of the sea, seemed like a blasting furnace.

The boy and I approached the open gates.

At the north gate, drawn with blood, the symbol of the Cross. Beneath this, a word that meant nothing to me. Yet, I remember it:

“anguis”

Beneath this word, a drawing of a spiraling circle.

Atop the gates, opened to welcome all those who wished to perish, the pagan scrawls of the infidel, and something older, gargoyles of women who had the wings of eagles and the legs of lions.

“You must return now,” I said, turning to the boy. “It has been wrong of me to allow you to follow me here. You will be taken captive by the enemy, or torn at by wolves. I am not your master, nor am I one who can care for you.”

Even as I said those words, I felt torn, with the heavy heart of one who has made the decision to die in some terrible way and now had turned back from it. The boy himself had saved me as I had once saved him from a brute of a master. On our journey, he had taught me—by his silence alone—that there were reasons to live. Reasons to return to the good fight, to the duty, to the call of mankind itself. A child like this was reason enough, and I saw in him all the things that had been neglected in my own childhood. He recalled for me, just in his manner and devotion, the preciousness of life itself, despite the hail and lightning of the road upon which all life must travel.

He took my hand, just two fingers, and said, “I am your servant, sir.”

“You are not,” I said. “I free you here and now.”

“You are my father, then, for I have none,” he said.

“I am no one’s father. No one’s son. No one’s brother,” I said.

He raised his small fists in the air as if to beat me, though he made no move toward me. “You are my father!” He bleated like a lamb.

The welling of his emotion moved me, and when he rushed toward me, I expected him to hit me in anger. Instead, he wrapped his arms about my waist and pressed his face against me. “Be my father. Please. Be my father.”

In his voice, I was reminded of my own as a child, remembering my grandfather, and how I had wished he would never leave me and my family. Wished that if I held him tight or stayed with him, that he would not fall to the earth in the last quiver of life.

“I do not want you to die.” His eyes shone with tears as he spoke, looking up at me.

“I suppose,” I said, finally, letting out into the evening air what I had held for days, “neither do I.”

*
   
*
   
*

I had come to die. I had not anticipated a boy of my own country teaching me about the last drop of goodness in the cup of life. That all that was terrible in the world could be made sweet again simply by one good soul. Yet I was at war within my private thoughts, for another part of me felt as if Thibaud Dustifot was a phantom sent by the Devil to tease me into remaining alive to watch other terrors unfold in the world of men.

10

Thibaud and I made camp just within the gates. I decided that my duty to the boy was stronger than my duty to my own destruction, which would come, regardless. I determined that I would turn around on the road and find our camp again on an arduous journey back. I would give myself up as a deserter, throwing myself on whatever mercy the commanders might have—which was death, also, but of a slower variety—and I would claim that I kidnapped the boy at knifepoint, forcing him to accompany me in my desertion.

Whether that plan would work or not, I was never to know, for the next morning, I awoke, and Thibaud was gone. In the dirt, his small footprints ended not far from the cloak of mine that he’d used as a blanket.

It was as if some bird of prey had lifted him into the sky.

Chapter 10

________________

T
HE
T
OWER

1

At first, I had no fear for him. I believed he played a prank on me, or had awoken early and wandered about. But soon enough, I became certain that he had been taken by something dreadful. The legends of Ghul and of demon played havoc with my emotions, and the intense heat of the oncoming day added to my feverish thoughts. I began to go out of my mind imagining all that might have happened to the boy.

I searched the dead city, calling for him, crouching at each corner to look up the wall, or down into a crevice where a boy might hide, or glancing into the distance, hoping that he stood near a doorway, only to find a tall, broken urn rather than a boy when I approached.

I passed through what had once been the chambers of the living, but found not a trace of him.

I discovered a storehouse for great treasure—armor as well as weapons—swords made of silver and some cast from gold itself. I became full of an unimagined fear at seeing this treasury, for I wondered what leprous king might live there, murdering soldiers and knights and bringing the spoils of such conquest into this great chamber. I was too fearful even to touch it. Truly this was a place of poison, for otherwise, why had not someone stolen these riches? What man could resist, let alone an army? I had heard rumors that the Templars were wealthier than all the other orders of knights, and this fortress that had once been taken by them seemed to be an example of it.

Other wonders met me, including a great long courtyard with a reflecting pool. Thirsty, I knelt to drink from it. As I did, I remembered the stories of the poisoned wells, and wondered if I would die of this drinking. Had Thibaud not vanished, I would have no fear of death, but as the day continued, I became afraid, for his sake, that I might not live to find him. But the water seemed fine, and I felt refreshed from it.

Gently scalloped entryways led to rooms full of mosaics that played out both the religious dramas of the infidel as well as those of the Templars and the Teutonic Knights. Along soft walls of yellow stone madmen had scratched, in various languages, words and phrases that were indecipherable by me, yet I saw the Cross, again and again, as well as scratchings of swords and of a demon with wings, reminding me of that foul creature that I helped raise as a boy from the well in the Great Forest.

As I went through the halls and temples and houses within, I found a curious area that was nearly unreachable. It was a catacombs beneath what was, by all accounts, the keep of this fortress. As I wandered its byways, I found an entrance to a series of chambers. These seemed to be graves or mounds of some kind, too deep to peer into from where I stood. I could not venture into this snakelike chamber without risk of never leaving again, for it was hundreds of feet down, and I looked upon it from the edge of a corridor that simply ended as if it were a cliff.

I did not see any sign of the boy there. The smell of death was unmistakable, and I was glad to leave the area.

2

Half-starved, I all but crumpled to the ground, longing for death or sleep. My conscience pounded at me, for I had, in my selfish loneliness, allowed a boy to come with me to that deadly place. Who could say what vultures or jackals lurked along the parapets or within the unseen chambers? What Ghul lived there? What enemy? What demons flew across the skies looking for the lost and unguarded?

I called for him, my voice echoing along the walls and the distant chambers, but did not hear his voice in return. As twilight drew close, with a dusty wind howling through the empty doorways and along the abandoned chambers, I became more desperate, afraid that I had brought the only goodness left in the world to a horrible fate.

With the seeping darkness of night, I heard him calling from one of the many towers. As I glanced tower to tower, I saw a slight flicker of light at some distance. Calling to him, I followed the faint cry of his voice to one of the great towers at the south end of the city, overlooking the sea beyond the cliff.