The Templar Salvation (2010)

questions.

“My father has something he thinks you might be interested in,” Qassem told him.

“I’ll fetch my horse,” Conrad replied, not knowing that the young Turk’s mundane announcement was about to upend his life.

HE RECOGNIZED THE BROADSWORDS IMMEDIATELY.

There were six of them, sheathed in their leather scabbards, laid out on a wooden table in Mehmet’s small shop. Alongside them were other weapons that only confirmed Conrad’s startling realization: four crossbows, a couple of dozen composite horn bows, and an assortment of daggers and bread knives.

Weapons with which he was very familiar.

The broadswords were what interested him most. Though modest in appearance, they were formidable tools of warfare. Brutally efficient, expertly fabricated, perfectly balanced, but with none of the gaudy ornamentation commonly found on the grips and pommels of the swords of the nobility. A Templar’s sword was not an ostentatious display of wealth, nor could it be—the warrior-knights lived under vows of strict poverty. It was a weapon of war, pure and simple. A comfortable cruciform hilt crowning a pattern-welded blade, designed to carve through the flesh and bone of any enemy as well as through any chain mail that aspired to protect it.

The swords did, however, have one small distinguishing feature, barely noticeable, but definitely there: the initials of the sword’s owner, on either side of a small splayed cross—the croix pattee used by the Order—the lot engraved on the upper section of the blade, just below the cross guard.

Initials that Conrad also instantly recognized.

An avalanche of images and feelings rolled over him.

“Where did you get these?”

Mehmet studied him with undisguised curiosity, then his doughy face relaxed into a satisfied grin. “So you like my little collection?”

Conrad tried to keep a lid on the disturbance bubbling inside him, but he knew that the Turkish trader wasn’t easily fooled. “I’ll take the whole lot off you at the price you ask, but I need to know where you found them.”

The Turk eyed him with added curiosity, then asked, “Why?”

“That’s my business. Do you want to sell them or not?”

The trader pursed his lips and rubbed his chin with his puffy fingers, then relented. “I bought them from some monks. We came across them at a caravanserai three weeks ago.”

“Where?”

“East of here, about a week’s ride away.”

“Where?” Conrad pressed.

“In Cappadocia. Near the city of Venessa,” the trader added, somewhat grudgingly.

Conrad nodded, deep in thought, his mind already racing ahead. He and his two fellow knights had slipped through the surreal landscape of that region on their way to Constantinople. They’d skirted around several caravanserais, huge trading posts that were dotted along the silk road, built by Seljuk sultans and grandees to encourage and protect the traders who worked the camel trails between Europe and Persia and farther on to China.

“Is that where their monastery is?”

“No. All they said was that it was up in the mountains somewhere,” the trader said. “They were scrounging around for food supplies, selling whatever they could. They’ve got a drought out there that’s killed off anything the frost didn’t.” He chuckled. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter where it is. You can’t possibly be thinking of going there.”

“Why not?”

“It’s dangerous territory, especially for a Frank like you. You’d be crossing half a dozen different beyliks to get there and risk coming across ten times as many bands of Ghazis along the way.”

Conrad knew he was right. Since the fall of the Seljuk Sultanate of Rum, the entire region east of Constantinople had broken up into a tapestry of independent beyliks, emirates ruled by beys. The beys’ armies were heaving with mercenary Ghazis, warriors of the faith who were hungry for either victory or for what they referred to as “the honey of martyrdom,” with no particular preference either way. They were fierce fighters and kept a tight grip on the lands they controlled. It had been hard enough for him and his brethren to sneak through it unnoticed. It would be an entirely different proposition this time around: out in the open, asking around, trying to locate a monastery that probably didn’t want to be found.

“We, on the other hand, would have much less trouble getting through,” the trader suggested, settling back, his smug smile multiplying the folds that buttressed his chin. “And it wouldn’t be too difficult to disguise you and bring you along as one of us.”

Conrad eyed the wily trader. The man had sniffed something of value, that much was obvious.

He’d deal with that when the time came. First things first.

“How much?”

“It all depends on what you’re after,” the trader said.

“A chat.”

It was evidently not what the trader was hoping to hear. Then again, Conrad didn’t imagine he really expected him to tell him the whole truth.

The trader shrugged. “In that case, double the price of these fine items,” he said as he waved his meaty arm across the array of swords and knives. “Each way.”

It was, in the words of the old priest, an outrageous price. But the fake bones would more than cover it.

Besides, it was for a worthy cause.

The worthiest of them all.

“I’ll let you know,” Conrad said.

Mehmet gave him a contented smile and a small, theatrical bow. “I’m at your service, my friend.”

They stuffed the swords and knives into a sack of coarse cloth, which Conrad tied to the pommel of his saddle. He was just trotting away from the store when he came across her.

Qassem’s sister, Maysoon. Heading back to her father’s shop.

Seeing her threw him into instant disarray.

After all the years of strict celibacy in the fortresses of the Holy Land, he’d become reasonably comfortable around women now that he was living among them. But something about her made his heart gallop. By any standard, she was staggeringly alluring. A tall, graceful young woman with blistering turquoise eyes, flawless honey-colored skin, and a cascade of luscious curves that hinted teasingly from under her dark, flowing robe, she was impossible to ignore.

As she sauntered toward him, he pulled on the reins, slowing his stallion right down to just shy of stopping in its tracks, trying to extend the moment as long as possible. Their eyes met. It wasn’t the first time they had, and, as before, she didn’t turn away. She just kept an enigmatic gaze locked on him, igniting a bonfire of turmoil within him. In the half dozen times he’d seen her, they hadn’t exchanged more than a few polite pleasantries. Her father or her brother was inevitably there, his presence hastening her retreat. Qassem’s body language, in particular, projected a fiercely possessive attitude toward her, one that she heeded in silence. Conrad had noticed some bruising around one of her eyes and by the edge of her mouth on one occasion, but he hadn’t had the opportunity to find out what had caused them. He was never alone with her, never able to really engage her the way he wanted. He knew this encounter wouldn’t be any different, given that they were still within sight of the shop. All he could do was give her a slight nod of acknowledgment and watch helplessly as she glided by, her eyes challenging his as long as they could before tearing away and breezing past.

He resisted turning to watch her drift away, and nudged his horse into a canter. As he rode on, he couldn’t think about anything else. He’d faced this inner conflict before and still hadn’t figured out how to handle it. Up until recently, his entire adult life had been about sacrifice. He had gifted himself to a strict monastic Order and vowed to obey its Rule without hesitation. Like any monk, he’d committed himself to a rigidly regulated life stripped of any kind of possessions, wife, or family. As a warrior-monk, he had to contend with the added burden of quite possibly having his life cut short by a scimitar or an arrow. That sacrifice had already cost him dearly, as he’d left a part of himself on the blood-soaked soil of Acre, a part he would never get back.