my eyes.”
“And so when you came back you defended them when you heard them maligned.”
“Whenever I heard them unjustly maligned I did, yes.”
“Hmm. No wonder, then, that people look askance at you. And you say you have had no dealings with the Assassins or their leader since you were captured four years ago?”
“None at all, no.”
“Do they even know you are yet alive?”
“They do now, for I have made it known to them, this past week. That’s why you have not heard from me. The dispatches you delivered made it clear that I need to renew my relationship with them, and so I set about that right away. But my prime contact had moved on two years earlier, and once I found out where he had gone— no easy task in itself—it took me three whole days of cajoling and explaining before he would even see me. He simply did not believe I was me. He was quite sure that I had died at Hattin, for they had acquired the names of all the Frankish knights who survived the fight and the ransoms that followed, and of course mine was not among them. I had to convince him that I had changed my name from Sir Alexander Sinclair of the Temple to plain Sir Lachlan Moray, knight of Scotland, when al-Farouch captured me, because Saladin was executing Templars and I saw little future in being known as one.”
“Is the Old Man still alive?”
“Oh yes. Alive and well, and as malignant as he ever was. I am to meet with him the day after tomorrow. He has been at al Kahf, the Eagle’s Nest, his favorite, unreachable stronghold in the northern mountains, but he is already on his way back and will be here, within riding distance of us, by tomorrow night.”
“What will you say to him? And is he still paying tribute to the Temple?”
Alec sat up straighter and stretched mightily. “I have no notion of what to say to him. He will tell me what he expects to hear. Rashid al-Din Sinan is not an easy man with whom to make idle conversation. Yes, he is still paying tribute to the Temple. But before I can tell you any more and still make sense—”
He half raised one hand, finger pointed, in a tacit order to be quiet and listen, and far off in the distance, rising clearly in the desert air, they heard what sounded like the noise of battle. Both men surged to their feet and set about shaking the sand from their clothing, looking around to where their horses waited quietly.
“Take the dispatches with you,” Sinclair said. “They are in my saddlebags. Read them tonight, then meet me here tomorrow at the same time. I’ll bring food again. But you will know what’s involved by then and you will be able to understand what I intend to do when I explain it to you. Now let’s see what all the shouting is about.”
The din grew noticeably louder as they approached the rear lines, and eventually they came to a place where they could see that the entire army was up and shouting, facing towards the northeast while armed riders ran up and down in every direction, cheering and screaming, all semblance of discipline abandoned.
“What is happening out there?” Andre shouted. “Can you see anything?”
Alec Sinclair was standing high in his stirrups, shielding his eyes with one hand as he peered towards the distant horizon, and he stood motionless for a long time before he settled back into his saddle. “Richard of England,” he said, turning to his cousin. “Finally he comes. I can see his great standard out in front of everything else.” The English host is out there, filling the horizon with an admirable blur for as far as the eye can see. A very large, broad blur. They’ve been a long time a-coming and there were more than a few here who said they never would arrive, but they are here now. They must have landed up the coast, at Tyre, and marched from there, then made camp early yesterday and set out on the last leg to here long before dawn, for the sun’s been up less than two hours. You told me they were more than a hundred thousand strong. Were you exaggerating?”
Andre bridled a little. “No, I was not. Why should I need to exaggerate? When you combine Philip’s French and allied levies—Burgundy, Flanders, and Brittany—with Richard’s English and Angevins, they total nigh on seven score thousand, according to my father. One hundred and forty thousand men, with weapons and munitions, horses and livestock, servants and camp followers in addition. The fleet required to carry them numbered more than two hundred and twenty large vessels and there was not an inch of space left available in any one of them.”
“Excellent. Then we should soon see things start to happen more quickly around here, once they are settled in and have had time to flex their muscles. The raptors will be lusting for blood. Acre will not stand long against them now, and once it falls, the legend of Saladin’s invincibility will be forever tarnished.”
Alec looked away again, back towards the fevered activity in the Trench, then stooped and pulled the dispatch wallets from his saddlebags. “Here, make sure you take time to read these tonight, no matter what madness happens here to celebrate this arrival. This reading is more important than anything else you could conceivably be called upon to do. Chew on it and digest it. We will talk about it in greater depth tomorrow, before I have to leave to meet Rashid al-Din. For now, I am instructed to talk with your friend Sir Robert de Sable, if he is with the main host there, and it were best I did that alone. If I find him, I will deliver greetings to him from you, but we do not wish to attract unwelcome attention by seeking him out together. So fare ye well, for now, and meet me here in this same place tomorrow, even if it is allocated to some incoming group in the meantime. It should not be. Everything has been laid out already in the flat area southwest of the Trench, but you know how it is with armies. Some bright lad might decide to erect a general’s tent right on this spot between now and tomorrow at this time. We’ll meet here anyway, because no one will know us or care who we are, and we will move on elsewhere if we must.”
Andre waved and watched his cousin spur away towards the approaching blur, as he thought of it, then tucked his wallets into his saddlebags and turned his horse back towards the stables. He knew that planning had been under way for weeks and probably for months to accommodate the enormous influx of personnel and materiel that Richard’s arrival would precipitate, and that a veritable city of street grids had been prepared in the area to the southwest of where he now sat his horse, with encampments for the various contingents of infantry, cavalry, sappers, engineers, and assorted others that made up the vast army. This afternoon, he decided, he would watch the great arrival unfold, keeping well out of everyone’s way. In the evening he would read Alec’s dispatches, and the morrow would look after itself.
As he kicked his horse into motion he was wondering what was going through the minds of the garrison commanders in Acre as they watched the approaching dust clouds of Richard’s army blot out the sky.
NINE
The night had passed relatively peacefully, once the first chaotic arrivals and dispersals had been over- come, an event that lasted throughout the entire day and well into the hours of darkness. But the furor died down eventually, and the strident, heckling voices of the marshaling sergeants had dwindled and faded slowly as the last remaining units of the incoming forces were received and led away to where they would set up their encampments for the next few weeks at least.
Andre St. Clair had plugged his ears with fine white candle wax and spent more than four hours, two of them by candlelight, reading and then rereading the contents of the two wallets he had transported across the seas for his cousin. He now felt he understood most of what was required of Alec, and of himself, but what he had yet to learn could now come only from Alec, and he was impatient to return to their interrupted discussion. He contrived to miss matins that day, surmising accurately that the activities of the previous day and night might have resulted in a general lapse of enthusiasm for midnight prayers, and he made his way to the horse lines to select a mount more than an hour before the sky began to show the first hint of the coming day.
He then made his way out into the desert, riding by the pale light of the last, lingering stars until he reached the rendezvous, where he dismounted and off-saddled his horse, then tethered the beast to a dragging iron tent peg so that it would not wander far, and slipped a nose bag containing a handful of oats over its head. That done, he left the animal to munch contentedly and fashioned himself another seat in the sand.
An hour later, the sun long since risen, it was evident that something had happened to detain Alec, and Andre resolved to wait another half hour before returning to his own tent. It was pointless even to think of going in search of his cousin, for he had no vaguest idea of where to begin looking, and he could not even guess at what kind of changes would have been wrought in the general camp layout by the overnight addition of a hundred thousand men. But he had no desire to remain here alone for much longer, for the sun was growing measurably stronger and he had not thought to bring any kind of shelter against it, reasoning that their business there would be concluded in short order and that the two of them would then return to do whatever needed to be done.
