Part 18 (1/2)
”With all due respect for your rank and office-” Arnault began.
”No!” de Sautre barked, gesturing with his sword. ”I will have no more of your arrogance. You knights of Outremer are all alike-infected with the sins of pride and heresy. It's time you were curbed. If you are not brought to book for your actions, soon the whole Order will be called into disrepute.”
Arnault could feel Torquil's eyes upon him in mute outrage, but he could see no option other than to surrender, and on de Sautre's terms. The men surrounding them were too many, and too well mounted to outrun-and in any event, he was reluctant to provoke bloodshed among these, his sworn brothers. With a sinking heart, he gave a nod to the Master of Scotland.
”If you send to Paris, the Visitor will confirm our special status,” he said evenly. ”But in the meantime, we will come with you.”
Partially drawing his sword with his left hand, hilt first, he kneed his horse toward the nearest of de Sautre's men and prepared to surrender his weapon. Torquil sourly headed toward another man. The unexpected capitulation brought a pleased smirk to de Sautre's lips; but before his men could secure the surrender, a flurry of black-fletched arrows suddenly whisked from the gloom of the surrounding trees, unheard above the background roar of the nearby cataract, striking three men and wounding several horses.
As men and horses screamed and the Templars wheeled in alarm, knights and serjeants, looking around wildly for the source of the attack, at least a score of motley figures moved amid the cover of the forest beyond, nocking arrows to bows for a second a.s.sault-though they were not English longbows, and few of the arrows had the power to penetrate fatally, save where they struck unprotected flesh.
De Sautre's men were already scattering, even as he shouted orders, hunched low over saddles to afford smaller targets, casting aside their lances and drawing swords-for the quarters were too close for any conventional cavalry response. Some of them quickly dismounted, taking cover among the great boulders closer to the river, a few of them attempting to engage some of the closer bowmen hand-to-hand-though not always with happy result, for there were spearmen with the bowmen, and the spears had a longer reach than a broadsword-and an element of surprise as well, at least until the first Templar went down.
Meanwhile, it was the horses who were taking the brunt of the attack-and adding to the confusion-more and more of them loose, becoming a hazard of their own as their steel-shod hooves churned up the pine needles in ever greater alarm, frantic for an escape as the rain of arrows continued, eliciting the odd outcry or equine squeal. One big bay, stung by an arrow and still with a rider astride, nearly bowled over Arnault's smaller horse as it exploded into a bucking fit and ignominiously dumped its white-mantled rider at the feet of a dark little man who suddenly appeared from behind a tree-and was gone again, his dagger reddened with Templar blood, before anyone could even get a good look at him.
Steadying his mount, Arnault pulled back with Torquil and the rest in good order, all of them with swords now in hands, all of them now Templars against a common enemy. But as more arrows whizzed among them, Torquil was obliged to make a precipitous dismount as his valiant little rouncy went down with a piteous squeal, a feathered shaft deep in its chest and blood spraying from its nostrils.
As yet another flurry of arrows came raining down, Arnault ducked down and kneed his own mount closer so Torquil could s.h.i.+eld behind it and catch on to his stirrup, to cling for dear life as Arnault whirled the little horse clumsily on its haunches to drag him out of the line of fire-but only at cost, for as Torquil scurried for cover behind a boulder, Arnault's mount met the fate of its stablemate, cut down by a hail of arrows that, individually, merely would have wounded, but in aggregate spelled its doom. Arnault rolled clear with a m.u.f.fled oof! and scrambled to join Torquil, only just managing to keep his sword, as more arrows blacked the air, splintering and pinging among the rocks.
”I gather,” said Torquil, ”that we don't make a run for it just yet.”
”I would if I could, believe me,” Arnault muttered. ”But we can't abandon our brethren to be slaughtered.
Who are these men?”
”Not just common outlaws-that's for sure,” Torquil said, both of them scrambling for safety as several loose horses came bolting past them to head upstream along the river. ”And not a hunting party, either.”
He peered cautiously around the rock behind which they were sheltering, then leaned out farther for a closer look. ”Good Lord, that one's got some kind of symbol painted on his fore-”
He ducked back with a muttered oath as an arrow whizzed past him, close enough to ruffle his hair.
Arnault waited a beat, in hope that the shooter would turn to other targets, then risked a look in his turn.
The attackers were emerging again from among the trees, now arrayed in two ranks, with archers to the fore and spearmen gathering behind. All of them seemed to have foreheads painted with the symbol Torquil had seen on the first: a blue, roughly triangular shape with curved protrusions extending outward from the two upper angles, perhaps meant to be the horns of a bull or ram. Seeing it, Arnault was seized with an unaccountable sense of foreboding.
”Jesu Christi!” he murmured under his breath, ducking down.
Striding long-limbed behind the others came a powerful, bearded figure in a leather hauberk and helmet who appeared to be the leader of the band. His bare, muscular arms were covered with spirals and runic symbols traced out in blue, in addition to the symbol on his forehead, giving him the aspect of a pagan war chief of ancient times. Brandis.h.i.+ng a spear high in his right hand, he flung back his head and gave a bull-throated bellow. The archers ceased firing and dropped back, allowing the spearmen to rush forward between their ranks.
Whooping and yelping, they charged down from amid the trees, bounding over rocks and other obstacles as they came. De Sautre's voice penetrated the din, ordering his men to stand fast. Gripping their swords more tightly-for without body armor of any kind, they were far more vulnerable than their fellow Templars-Arnault and Torquil braced themselves shoulder to shoulder as they watched the first wave of attackers engage with the Templars ranged at the forward edge of the clearing.
Oddly, the attack seemed largely a hit-and-run engagement. Yelling like demons, the Highlanders hurled themselves at the barricade of rocks and began jabbing viciously between the boulders with their long spears. Arnault and Torquil saw a serjeant fall in the first seconds of fighting- though apparently only wounded-and two or three attackers also fell back groaning and clutching wounds. Glancing down the line, Arnault saw several spearmen lying either dead or wounded on the ground.
Even as this fact registered, a roared command from the Highland leader brought a rush of reinforcements. These were armed not with spears, but with swords and battleaxes, and with targes of hardened leather on their s.h.i.+eld arms, studded with bra.s.s. From their numbers, Arnault guessed that the archers had abandoned their bows, and were now joining in the fray.
Another serjeant and a knight fell wounded, but the rest held fast, refusing to be pushed back. As the clash of steel against steel continued, never quite reaching Arnault and Torquil, they became conscious of a more insidious sound permeating the din of battle, throbbing like the rumble of distant thunder. There was a cadence to it, dull and heavy like the pulse beat of some monstrous leviathan.
Craning his neck to find where it was coming from, Torquil nudged Arnault in the ribs and directed his attention upriver, where a solitary figure in dirty white robes was watching from a stony point. What at first appeared to be a man's head trapped under the figure's right arm was, in fact, a painted drum-and the source of the throbbing sound, Arnault realized, as his eyes caught the movement of sinuous fingers flying above the painted drumhead.
And even as he listened-now picking out the rhythm more clearly, for knowing its source-the sound of the drumming began to pulse with a depth and volume not commensurate with the distance and far beyond the mere physical size of the drum, somehow rising above the roar of the river and the din of the fighting. The rough voices of the Highlanders joined in raggedly with a guttural chant that matched the cadence of the drumbeat, in no language Arnault knew but which made his blood run cold; for the chant somehow conjured up the memory of a farmhouse in Orkney, where a freezing shadow had come l.u.s.ting after the warmth of innocent human life.
Even as he made the connection, silently seizing Torquil's biceps in an urgent grip conveying danger and alarm, the drumming abruptly ceased. At once the attackers broke off combat, quickly fading back into the forest. Their Templar opponents checked, declining to pursue, seeming suddenly to sense a change in the air, looking around nervously for something they could not see.
The descending silence was as ominous as the calm at the eye of a storm. As they watched, hardly daring to breathe, thin tendrils of cold white mist began to rise up from the ground beside the river, near the feet of the now-motionless drummer-who, almost certainly, was some species of pagan shaman.
”Something's coming,” Torquil murmured in a cracked whisper. His bearded face was pale under its healthy patina of weathering and freckles.
”I know,” Arnault responded grimly, ”and I think I'd better try to stop it. Guard my back. This is going to be quick and dirty-if it even works.”
s.h.i.+fting to both knees, he planted his sword in the ground in front of him like an upright cross as the drumming began again-softer, this time, and slower, and somehow even more sinister. He breathed a wordless plea for grace as he reached into the bosom of his borrowed black robe and brought out the packet containing the Breastplate. Unwrapping it with trembling fingers, he dared take no time to don it properly, or to prepare as he should; only cupped it reverently over his heart under his bare hands, swallowing hard as he called his inner faculties to order-for something definitely was coming.
”Non n.o.bis, Domine,” he prayed aloud, softly. ”Eripe me de inimicis meis, Deus meus.” Rescue me from mine enemies, O my G.o.d. Defend me from the workers of iniquity, and deliver me from these men of blood.
The drumbeat and chanting throbbed on, dragging at the senses. Out in the clearing, by ones and by twos, the other Templars were slowly lowering their swords, standing stupefied, eyes wide and staring.
And all the while, the white ground mist rising before the pagan shaman was growing ever thicker and whiter, beginning to drift down the riverside toward the clearing in thick, ropy tendrils, driving a wall of cold before it. Grinning with malignant antic.i.p.ation, the Highlander warriors began emerging from behind trees, softly chanting again, watching.
Tightening his concentration, Arnault repeated his prayer, unaware that the words that rolled from his tongue were now in Hebrew.
”Ha tzilayni mayoyvay elohai.” Rescue me from mine enemies.
But at these words, an answering warmth sprang up beneath his palms. The warmth grew warmer, joined by a glow, pus.h.i.+ng against his palms like a living thing.
He opened his fingers outward and let it go-felt a surge of motion, like the flight wind of an invisible bird.
The drumbeat faltered. The break in its rhythm disrupted the cadence of the chant. As the drummer and his followers struggled to reestablish the pattern, there appeared a sudden rift in the clouds overhead.
A long, slanting beam of sunlight spilled through the gap. Like a sword blade of transparent gold, it struck the ground in front of the advancing fog. The drumming faltered to a halt. The mist recoiled like a blind white worm, rolling backward and beginning to sink into the ground, subdued.
Continuing on, the beam of sunlight then spilled upriver toward the drummer, overtaking him in a zone of brightness. The shaman started up from his trance with a cry and staggered backward out of the light, s.h.i.+elding his eyes with the crook of his arm. An answering howl of dismay went up from the attackers, turning to shouts of alarm as the Templars shook free of the spell that had turned their limbs to lead, jerkily looking around them, swords rising in their hands.
The ray of sunlight disappeared, but the pagan shaman continued stumbling his way blindly toward the shelter of the trees, away from the river. Seeing him in retreat, most of his followers abruptly turned tail and ran, deaf to the exhortations of their rune-painted chief, who also began to make for the forest.
”After that man!” de Sautre shouted, punching his sword in the direction of the leader. ”I want him alive!”
The Templars were quick to seize the offensive, making the most of their armored advantage as they drove after the fleeing Highlanders. Three more spearmen and a pair of swordsmen fell as the Templars overtook them. As several serjeants and a knight pressed on to harry the last of the fleeing Highlanders, de Sautre and three of his knights surged around the leader and a last pair of swordsmen, cutting down the two swordsmen without ceremony and then closing in on the leader in a concerted rush to surround and bring him down. A sharp scuffle ensued as they attempted to subdue him without using mortal force; and while their attention was momentarily diverted, Torquil turned anxiously to Arnault.
”Now would be a good time, I think, for us to be going,” he said.
Arnault roused with an effort. Dazedly returning the Breastplate to its usual hiding place, he accepted the hand that Torquil held out to him and heaved himself upright, automatically retrieving his sword. Only then did he summon a wan grin for Torquil's benefit.
”That way, I think,” he said, pointing the way upstream. ”Let's go catch some horses and be on our way.”
Chapter Twenty-one.
I'D GIVE A LOT TO KNOW WHOSE THOSE MEN WERE,” TORQUIL remarked later that night, as he and Arnault sat huddled over a tiny campfire in a secluded fir-wood. ”They were certainly a wild and hairy lot-probably from far to the north-but nothing I've ever seen. And what about those symbols painted on their foreheads?”