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, flimsylooking 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 cacheâand 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
W
hen 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.
That simple assurance, so bravely and so innocently given, was Lachlan Moray's introduction to Hell, for within an hour of giving it, Alexander Sinclair had begun to lose all sense of himself. He remained awake throughout that time and seemed to be lucid, but when Moray carefully raised him to his feet, taking his weight with an arm across his shoulders, all the strength drained from Sinclair in a rush and he slumped in a swoon. From a manageable burden he became a deadweight within a heartbeat, and almost pulled Moray down with him. Gasping and grunting words of useless encouragement, Moray managed to lower him to the ground again without dropping him on his broken arm, and then he knelt over him, peering in consternation at his friend's pain-ravaged face and feeling despair well up inside him as he recognized the finality of their situation.
It was as he was kneeling there, peering at Sinclair's unresponsive face, that a sudden connection occurred in Moray's mind, between the unconscious Sinclair and another old friend, Lachlan's kinsman and former captain, Lord George Moray, who had been generally expected to die two years earlier after being gravely wounded.
That the Scots nobleman had not died, and had recovered fully, had been due to the efforts of a single man, a Syrian physician called Imad Al-Ashraf, and Lachlan Moray remembered Imad Al-Ashraf very clearly, because the man had saved Lord George's life by means of a magical white powder that relieved his lordship's pain and kept him comatose until his broken body had had time and opportunity to heal itself.
Moray dropped his hand to the scrip that hung from his belt, reaching inside the overhanging flap with finger and thumb and pinching the soft kid leather of the tiny pouch that was sewn onto the back of the flap. Called away by some emergency before Lord George had made a full recovery, Al-Ashraf had declared that the worst was over and that his lordship would recover without a physician's help from that time on, providing he did nothing stupid to endanger himself again. Lachlan, who had barely left his lord's side since the incident in which he had been wounded, assured the Syrian physician that he himself would take responsibility for seeing to that. Al-Ashraf bowed his head in respect and acknowledgment of the pledge and then, before he left, provided Moray with a small packet containing eight carefully measured doses of the magical white powder that he called an opiate, warning him seriously of the dangers of using the nostrum carelessly and too often, then going on to instruct the knight concerning the signs and conditions he should look for before feeding any of the drug to the injured man. When Moray had shown a sufficiently wide-eyed respect for what he was being told, Al-Ashraf went on to teach him how to mix and administer the drug, which both erased pain, or at least the awareness of pain, and enforced sleep upon the recipient.
Moray had no notion how the potions that he mixed went about their work, or how sick a man would have to be to require the use of them, but he used four of the eight doses on Lord George in the latter stages of the
nobleman's recovery. And he had marveled each time at the swiftness with which the potions completely overwhelmed his stubborn and intransigent superior, rendering him unconscious, and apparently depriving him even of the power to toss and turn in his sleep.
Moray had carried the four unused doses with him ever since, in a blind but profound belief that he might have need of their magical powers on his own behalf someday. Although he knew that, should the need arise for him to use them himself, he might be physically incapable of doing so, too ill or too badly wounded, still he had told no one about them, suspecting that their value might make possession of them dangerous.
His grasp on the small pouch tightened, but he hesitated to pull it free of the stitching that held it in place. Lachlan was afraid, deep inside himself, that he might endanger his friend Sinclair by forcing him to drink something that might, against all reason and logic, be poisonous, despite the good he had seen it do formerly. And even if it helped Sinclair, the white powder would kill any possibility of their leaving this place that day, since it would plunge Sinclair into a deep sleep for hours on end. But Sinclair was most evidently in agony.