It rammed into him from behind with a violent, silent impact.
Conrad staggered forward a couple of steps under the momentum of the hit, then turned around, heavy- footed. Qassem had dismounted. He was standing by his horse, staring at Conrad, the spent crossbow in his hand. He threw it to the ground, drew his scimitar, and strode toward Conrad, his brow gnarled in an infernal scowl.
Conrad knew it was bad. It had hit him in the right shoulder. His good arm. His only good one. The one he needed to work the sword. The arrow was lodged firmly in his shoulder blade, unleashing a cascade of pain with the slightest movement of his right arm.
A cascade he would have to ignore if he was going to defend himself.
Qassem didn’t break step, his eyes locked on Conrad, his sword held low to his side. Then his stride turned to a trot, then a sprint, and with a loud howl, he raised his sword and, with a running leap, brought it crashing down onto Conrad.
Conrad lunged sideways, putting his body out of reach and blocking the blow with his own sword. The blades clanged heavily into each other, the strike reverberating through Conrad and shooting a spasm of white-hot pain across his shoulder. He felt his knees buckle, but he couldn’t let them fail him now, couldn’t let the pain cripple him. Qassem spun around and swung again, his blade flying through a full loop before crashing back down against Conrad’s sword.
The third strike flung the scimitar out of Conrad’s hand, his fingers unable to ignore the agony in his shoulder.
Qassem stood still, breathing in deep snorts, and smiled. His eyes dropped to the dagger strapped to Conrad’s forearm and his smile turned into a mocking grin.
“I don’t know whether to kill you, or just take your other hand off—maybe your feet too—and let you live on like a pathetic, crippled maggot,” he chortled. “Maybe I should do that to you both.”
Conrad’s feet faltered. He was having trouble breathing, and he felt a taste of blood in his mouth. His heart spasmed at the realization. The arrow hadn’t just lodged in his shoulder. It had punctured his lung.
He knew how that would end.
He’d seen it enough times.
He looked up at Qassem, and saw a reflection of his realization in the Turk’s face. The man held his gaze for a moment, then raised his scimitar like an executioner and held it there.
“What the hell. Maybe I’d better do it now before you rob me of the pleasure—”
And his face froze in a tight clench just as something thumped into him from behind and crunched its way out of his chest.
A bolt.
He stared down at the arrowhead that was sticking out of his rib cage and dripping with blood, and surprise flooded his face. He turned around, slowly, Conrad following his gaze.
Maysoon was standing in the clearing, by his horse.
A crossbow in her hands.
Pain visibly etched into her face.
The woman from the fields, the one the Turk had taken hostage, was there, beside her. A clutch of bolts in her hand.
Qassem moved to head toward them, but Conrad wasn’t about to give him that chance. He pushed hard on his legs and rose up, using his body’s momentum to tackle the Turk and plunge his dagger deep into his back, twisting and turning and grinding it in, making sure he cut through as many organs and ducts and arteries as possible.
The two men tumbled to the ground in a bloody, dusty heap.
The Turk spasmed and gurgled for a few seconds, his eyes wide and locked on to Conrad with silent rage, before he gave out a final shudder and his body went limp.
Conrad let his head drop back onto the hard, dry soil. He stared at the sky, then Maysoon was right with him, cradling his head, running her fingers through his hair, tears streaking down her face.
“Don’t leave me,” she sobbed.
“Never,” he replied, but he knew he was lying. Blood was bubbling out of the edge of his mouth and his breathing was getting more ragged. The air he was fighting to take in was escaping before getting a chance to do its job.
“Keep it safe,” he mumbled. “Find a way. Keep it safe. And maybe, one day, someone will be able to do what we couldn’t.”
“I will. I promise … I will.”
With startling speed, his lips began to turn blue and his skin took on a dusky pallor. His mouth felt heavier, and as his brain grew starved of oxygen, his words became more slurred.
And then he was gone.
Chapter 57
They buried him there, in the church. Then she came to Konya and settled here,” the old woman continued. “She joined a
“A draper,” Tess guessed. She was utterly spellbound, hanging on the woman’s every word.
“Yes. He was also part of the same lodge. She confided in him. Told him her secret. Eventually, they got married. Started a new life together, here, in Konya.” Her face softened into a bittersweet smile. “They were my ancestors.”
“So the mural, the lines from the poem … that came after?” Tess asked.
The woman nodded. “Yes. She went back and had it added much later. In the church where Conrad was buried, as you saw.”
Reilly asked, “How do you know all this?”
The woman pushed herself to her feet and crossed to an old desk. She rummaged through it and recovered a small key, which she used to open one of its drawers. She pulled out a folded document and brought it over to show Tess.
It was composed of several handwritten pages, old and yellowed. Tess couldn’t read them, as they were covered in a tight Arabic script, the alphabet used in Turkey before 1928.
“This tells the whole story,” the old woman said. “It’s everything Conrad told Maysoon. It’s been handed down from generation to generation. Has been for close to seven hundred years.”
“And all this time, the texts stayed hidden,” Tess said.
“Maysoon had promised Conrad to keep them safe and to try and share them with the world. But there was no way for her to do that. Not back then. East and West were fiercely divided. In this land, the Seljuks were on the way out and the Ottomans and their hordes of ‘warriors of the faith’ were taking over. They were out to create an Islamic empire, and the last thing Maysoon wanted was for these writings to be used as a weapon to discredit an enemy faith.”
Tess glanced at Reilly. He’d also caught the echo in the woman’s words and gave Tess a discreet, cognizant nod that caused a small flutter in her belly.
The old woman caught their drift and half-smiled wistfully, then her mouth folded with despair. “She didn’t know who to turn to in the West either. The Templars were gone, of course. And the Church was hugely powerful back then. No one, not even a king, would have dared to champion something that threatened its dominance.”
“So they kept them tucked away … here?”
“Yes,” the woman said. “Safely stored, waiting for the right day.”
Tess’s throat tightened up like a pinched straw. She had to ask again. “
The old woman nodded.
Tess swallowed an invisible golf ball. “Can we see it?”
