Standard of Honour

“Spears. We need a spear shaft.”

“I know, but the Saracens appear to have taken all the weapons they could find on their way past. They took the horses, too, which is no surprise. I’ll have to look farther uphill to find a spear shaft.”

“Then I’ll come with you, but after dark. We can’t stay here, and it’s too dangerous for us to separate. We’ll use strips cut from my surcoat to bind my arm immovably against my chest, and then I’ll lean on you and use you as a crutch. Fortunately, my sword arm is sound, should we have need of it.”

By the time they eventually secured the limb so that it hung comfortably and largely without pain, Moray had been outside several times to gather spent arrows with which to frame and brace the arm before they bound it tightly into place. By then it was growing dark, and as soon as they judged it dark enough to emerge, yet still sufficiently light to see without being seen, they began to make their way up towards the ridge on the skyline behind them. It was slow going, and arduous, and it did not take long for Sinclair’s arm, even constrained as it was, to react unfavorably to the constant jarring of walking uphill across uneven terrain. Within the first few hours of setting out on their odyssey, he lost all will to talk and walked grimly on, his eyes unfocused and his mouth twisted in a rictus of pain, his good hand clutching firmly at Lachlan Moray’s elbow.

During those first few hours Lachlan discovered that his belief that the Saracens had all gone down the mountain was inaccurate. It was a burst of unrestrained laughter that warned him that he and Sinclair were not alone. He left Sinclair propped up among a clump of boulders and made his way alone to where he could see what was going on at the top of the ridge of Hattin, and what he saw—a collection of several large tents surrounded by a large number of Saracen guards, everyone in high spirits—was sufficient to send him back and lead his friend thereafter in a completely different direction, heading northwest, away from the Saracen presence and directly towards La Safouri and its oasis.

THEY WALKED FROM DUSK until dawn that first night, although they did not make anything like the kind of progress they were used to. With no horses beneath them, they were reduced to the pace of ordinary men. Although the going improved once they had cleared the breast of the hill and started back downward in the direction of La Safouri, some twelve miles distant, Moray estimated that they had not covered half of that distance after more than seven hours of walking. But the stink of the charred, sour underbrush had diminished as soon as they had drawn away from the battlefield, and the battlefield itself had been mercifully veiled by the darkness of the clouded night. They had stumbled only twice over bodies lying directly in their path, and one of those had been a horse, with a full skin of water lying between its stiffened legs. This had slaked their thirst and given them energy to keep moving.

Dawn came too soon, and Moray was faced with making a decision concerning how to proceed, since his glassy-eyed companion was clearly not capable. They were in a stretch of giant dunes, and he knew the sun would broil them there no matter what they did. Was it better to keep moving in search of shelter and a place to rest, secure in the advantage offered them by the skin of water? Or would they be safer simply digging themselves a pit of some kind in the side of a dune and waiting in there for darkness to come around again? Moray decided on the former, purely because they had nothing with which to dig a hole of any kind, and so he kept walking, leading Sinclair, who was now reeling with every step, his glazed eyes staring off towards some distant place that he alone could see.

Several hours later they emerged from the dunes into an entirely different landscape, littered with sparse scrub and sharply broken stones. They soon found a dry streambed, the kind the local residents called a wadi, and Moray made his ailing companion as comfortable as he could in the shade of a slight overhang on one of the banks. He gave Sinclair more to drink and then left him heavily asleep in the meager shelter while he took the single crossbow and the few bolts he had salvaged from the battlefield of Hattin and went hunting for anything he might find that moved and could be eaten. The desert was a deadly place, but he knew, too, that it sustained an astonishing variety of creatures. Alec Sinclair’s life depended on him and upon his hunting skills, and so he gave no thought to his own tiredness, which was quickly approaching exhaustion. Moving slowly and with great caution, so as not to alarm the shy desert creatures that might be watching him, Moray armed his crossbow, his eyes and ears on full alert, poised for the sound or sight of movement.

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, flimsy-looking 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 cache—and 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 (#u183db421-6a00-549a-ad14-91c1c5436974)

When 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.

Slowly, reluctant still, he pulled the small package free of its stitching and opened it, gazing down at the four separate doses, individually wrapped in fine white muslin, that lay inside. Now, feeling an excitement welling up in his chest, he opened one of the small, carefully wrapped measures and emptied it into his drinking cup, then mixed it with some of the water. A moment later, he had raised Sinclair’s head and helped him to swallow the contents of the cup without spilling a drop.

That done, he laid his friend down again, made him as comfortable as he could, and then sat back on his heels. Within minutes, Sinclair was deeply asleep, his breathing, it seemed to Moray, already steadied and strengthened. Recognizing the change, he felt grateful, but he also grinned wryly, wondering aloud to himself what was to become of them now, helpless as they were, unable to move and dangerously low on water, for he knew that one, at least, of the Muslim patrols would visit this place again, to pick up their dead comrade.

It was then that Moray remembered the device in which the dead man in the desert had been dragged behind a horse for so many miles. The idea was enough to give him strength, and he went scuttling out into the late-afternoon light, crouching low and raising his head with great caution above the rim of the wadi that had sheltered them. He made no move that might betray his presence until he was certain that he was alone and that there was no one out there looking either for him or at him.

It was a quarter of a mile from the wadi that concealed them to the clump of boulders where he had hidden from the Saracens that afternoon, and he crossed it quickly, conscious that he was a very conspicuous target. He went directly to where the dead man lay beside the clump of stones and tried to roll the body off the improvised bier, only to discover that it had stiffened since he last touched it and was now rigid and difficult to handle. But it was soon done and he gathered up the apparatus. The framework of lashed spears felt strong and sturdy, but he was surprised by the unexpected weight of the coiled ropes of braided leather that he slung crosswise over his shoulders, and he had a ludicrously difficult time after that in simply bending down to pick up his crossbow and bolts. He had to make several attempts, fighting to keep his balance beneath the burden he was carrying as he stooped and bent, weaving and groping blindly towards the weapons on the ground.

Within the half hour, he was back at the wadi dragging the apparatus behind him and unsurprised to discover that Sinclair did not appear to have moved a muscle since he had left. He bent over to feel the sleeping man’s forehead, noting that his breathing was deep and regular and that the strange rasping rattle in his throat had disappeared. What concerned him most at that moment, however, was the need to make sure that Sinclair was still deeply asleep, for Moray had been thinking furiously, and for the first time since dawn on the slopes of Hattin the previous day, he had a detailed plan in mind, one that he thought he would be able to execute, providing that he could first set and somehow splint Sinclair’s broken arm.

Moray had two weapons at his disposal: the crossbow and six foot-long steel bolts, and the inlaid, double-curved bow with its quiver of more than a score of finely fletched arrows. Six crossbow bolts, when compared with twenty-two arrows, made his deliberations simple. He stood up and wearily removed his linen surcoat, armored hauberk and leggings, dropping them carelessly on the sand before leaning over to cut the straps that fastened his friend’s heavy mail hauberk. He stripped Sinclair, too, of his hauberk and leggings, removing close to fifty pounds of steel links, knowing that the armor would be useless to them were they captured by Saracens. He piled the discarded chain mail to one side, then patiently worked his own sleeveless leather jerkin over Sinclair’s broken arm until, by dint of much pulling, he was able to wrap the garment completely around him and feed the other arm, much more easily, through the arm hole. That done, he cinched Sinclair’s belt about the unconscious man’s waist and sank wearily to his knees beside his friend, contemplating the task that faced him next: the setting of Sinclair’s broken arm.

It was not a task with which Lachlan Moray felt comfortable. Kneeling on the sandy floor, he stared down into the sleeping face, reviewing what he must do within the next short time and cursing himself for not having paid more attention to the procedure when he had seen it done before, by other people. But on those few occasions, he had turned his face away, as squeamish as everyone else about the noises of bone grating upon splintered bone, and hoping blindly that he himself would never have to undergo the pain such manipulations must involve. It had never occurred to him that he might someday have to perform the operation himself. Sweet Jesus, Alec, he thought. Don’t wake up while I’m doing this.

He inhaled deeply, bent forward, and carefully cut away the insubstantial arrow splints he had applied the day before. Then, clenching his teeth and shutting his mind to what he was about, he braced himself and pulled on the broken arm, feeling the loose bones grate as they shifted in response to his manipulations. When he felt sure the arm was as close to naturally straight as he could make it, he cut several lengths from the yards of leather rope that had bound the dead Muslim’s conveyance to the horse that pulled it. He tore the remnants of Sinclair’s white surcoat into strips and looped four short pieces around the broken limb, above and below the elbow, knotting them with care so that they were loose yet snug enough to remain in place. Then he carefully inserted the six steel bolts, weaving them over and under the loops so that they were all held in place by at least two of the straps, and when he was confident that they were all properly positioned he bound them again, firmly this time, so that they formed a steel cage around the broken limb from wrist to biceps. As soon as he had finished that, he used two longer lengths of the rope to bind the arm itself tightly against Sinclair’s body.

He dragged the still unconscious man to the conveyance he had rescued, then pushed and hauled and shifted Sinclair’s deadweight bulk until he thought it was evenly distributed across the straps between the two supporting poles, and when he was satisfied that it was, he worked for a time on shortening and adjusting the harness that had originally joined the poles to the horse that pulled them, painstakingly knotting the ropes into a crude harness of netting that bore a very faint resemblance to the salmon nets he had used as a boy in Scotland but would serve, he knew, to distribute the weight of his burden across his chest and shoulders. Only then, when there was nothing more he could do, did he drink sparingly and lie down to sleep for the last remaining hour of the day, knowing he would awaken when the evening chill settled across the cooling sands.

MORAY AWOKE SOON AFTER NIGHTFALL, and still it appeared that Sinclair, deeply in the grip of the Syrian’s wondrous powder, had not moved. He bent to listen to the sound of his friend’s deep, regular breathing before he rose to his feet and drank again from the water skin. He then placed it securely beside Sinclair on the bier and bound it to the straps there, alongside the Saracen’s bow and quiver. Finally he inserted his arms without much difficulty into the harness he had made, tightening the bindings across his chest until they were as comfortable as possible, and set out on his journey. The weight at his back was solid and ponderous, but the harness served its purpose well, and he leaned into it like a draft horse taking the traces, his enormous muscles making relatively light work of pulling the weight at his back. He felt much freer without the burden of his chain mail, and grateful for the bright light of the moon. The only sounds he could hear were his own footfalls on the hard-packed, windblown sand and the steady hiss of the pole ends gouging parallel tracks behind him.

He had lost track of time and distance by the time he heard Sinclair grunt deeply and move suddenly, disturbing the plodding rhythm of his walk and almost throwing him off balance. He was glad to stop and shrug out of the harness, twisting around as he tried to lower his end gently without jarring the injured man.

“Where in God’s name are we?”

Moray noted that Sinclair’s voice, while still weak, was noticeably stronger. He stood up on his toes and stretched hugely, swinging his arms for a time to loosen his shoulder joints before he made any attempt to answer.

“And why can’t I move? What am I tied to?”

Moray ruffled his friend’s hair. “Well, God bless you, too, Alec. I’m well, thank you, merely having hauled the solid weight of your large and miserable arse halfway across this desert. But it is a relief to listen to your complaining and know therefore that you are well, too.” His voice altered from one word to the next, dropping its tone of raillery and becoming serious. “You can’t move because you’re trussed up like a pig’s carcass, and you’re trussed up because it was the only way I could stop you from flailing your arm about. It’s badly broken and you were growing sick because of the pain, tossing about and raving. I used crossbow bolts for splints. And you are lashed to the only means I have of moving you in the hope of reaching safety. Saracens are swarming all about us. As for where we are, I have no idea. We’re in the desert somewhere, heading southwest towards Nazareth because I can’t think of anywhere else to go. I overheard two Saracen patrols exchanging information—Saladin has taken La Safouri, so there’s no refuge there. I borrowed this thing that you are lying on from a corpse that was left behind. I’ve been dragging you across Outremer ever since.”

He fell silent and watched his friend absorb everything he had said, noticing as he did so that Sinclair’s face appeared to be less haggard than it had been earlier that day, although that might have been the effect of the moonlight, for the moon was now riding high overhead.

Sinclair frowned. “You are dragging me? How?”

“With ropes. A leather harness.”

“You mean, like a horse?”