Harry Turtledove (Editor) - Alternate Generals II

He looked down, found the flask in his hand, and had another gulp of the wine before, a little belatedly, handing it back to its owner.

"For that matter, what was his errand?" Bohemond asked. "Or would it be safer to ask who ?"

"He was to seek the life of a man named Firouz, that filthy traitor with horns on his head."

Bohemond barked laughter. "The man you seek's died to that name. Washed in the blood of the Lamb or whatever. He's my godson Bohemond now. You'll just have to give up your grudge," he added and held out his hand for the flask.

The man shook his head. "You are too trusting!" he chided. "How do you know I haven't poisoned the wine?"

"You drank," Bohemond pointed out.

"And that is incontrovertible proof that I did not poison the wine? I think not. I might be willing to assure your death with my own. Or, like the ancient King Mithridates, I might have accustomed myself to poisons, a little at a time, until what would kill you and your knights would affect me no more than a surfeit of sherbet."

Bohemond shrugged, trying to shift his position so he could get a glimpse of the face beneath the silks and ease the ache in his leg. "Poison's for Greeks. If you'd wanted me dead, your assassin there would have taken me out. Or tried. You pagans fight like men. Look at you now, come down from up there-" he gestured at the citadel, "-rather than hide like a woman…"

"Or like one of your-you call them ropewalkers, who run away?"

Bohemond bit his lip. Even in the East, they knew that red hair meant a temper of fire, and it would help him not at all if this shadowy emir provoked him into losing his judgment.

He heard a ghost of a chuckle, which improved his temper not at all.

"And what makes you so sure," said the stranger, "that I am from… up there, as you say?"

The night wind erupted, whistling through the charred remnants of the trees on the ground here between city and citadel. Bohemond felt his cloak billow around him, but the other man's garments scarcely stirred. Good metal hidden within them: best not fight him. And a fine mail scarf probably lay beneath the silk that now concealed all of the man's face except his eyes, exceptionally piercing, and so pale for a pagan that Bohemond thought he could practically peer within the fellow's skull.

The wind roared again. Bohemond shifted position, but his enemy moved not at all.

His mouth suddenly dry, Bohemond lifted the flask he still held to drain it.

That was when he saw the interlocked triangles, above and below, forming the six-pointed stars he'd seen in Jewish quarters before his men ran wild with fire and sword. Solomon's Seal, it was called hereabouts, and attributed to mages and to the demons called djinn.

Bohemond let the flask drop from his hand, then crossed himself. It was a costly toy; a human man would bend to retrieve it, and then Bohemond would have the advantage. A djinni… possibly a djinni could beckon, and the flask would fly through the air to his hand and be miraculously filled.

"Such a conclusion you jump to," said the stranger. "I offer you peace and wine. You take the wine, then let my flask fall on the ground, and make holy signs as if I were some creature sent by Shaitan to confound you, not an honest warrior."

The moonlight struck him, turning his burnished splendor all pale. His long eyes gleamed, and he lowered the scarf over his mouth, revealing a jaw fully as stubborn as Bohemond's. He drew his sword, a beautiful movement accompanied by the sweet sound of steel, water patterns glistening down its deadly length. Slowly extending it, he caught up the flask's strap, and held it, dangling from the point, out to Bohemond again.

"Look within, I tell you. There are no djinn in my flask. And no wine."

Bohemond barked laughter. "Of course not. You already left your bottle." His heart sank about the level of the repairs to his boots. If this emir or whatever he was were sorcerer as well as warrior…

Then Adhemar would have been Bohemond's best defense this night, assuming the Legate were in shape for so long a walk. Or Tancred, whose Arabic might have been good enough for a feeble curse or two.

Bohemond leapt forward, though his leg felt as though it had been wounded all over again, and grabbed the stranger. What felt like honest steel and flesh lay beneath his gripping fingers. The man held firm. Either he had a dagger-a deadly little final weapon, poisoned or not-tucked in among those folds of costly robes, too clean for a proper man, or he really was one of the unclean creatures known as djinn.

"Have you come to offer me all the kingdoms of the earth?" Bohemond demanded.

The djinni, if such he was, twisted free.

"Well asked, my lord Bohemond," he said. "So you read the Book of which you are a child, in which the saint we call Issa fasts in the wilderness and is visited by Shaitan. Walk with me now, and let me show you all these kingdoms of the earth."

I am a fool and the son of a fool, Bohemond told himself, knowing both to be a lie. Nevertheless, as if he had been bespelled by the moon or-the wine! This son of Satan may not have poisoned it, but put some drug in it to render me witless!

Christ, it would be hard to be Prince of Antioch and then cut down with no more of a fight than Yaghi Siyan put up, fleeing after he'd lost the city.

Or maybe it was just the fever, playing tricks with the light and his judgment. He heard himself murmuring, "Again, the devil taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain, and showeth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them, and saith unto him, all these things will I give thee, if you will fall down and worship me. Then saith Jesus unto him, Get thee hence, Satan, for it is written, Thou shall worship the Lord thy God and him only shalt thou serve. Then the devil leaveth him and behold, angels came and ministered unto him."

But he found that he'd taken a few steps to an outcropping of rock, built up with a wall on which it was possible to lean out and overlook the entire valley. Unsteady as he was, the djinni probably could pick his moment to push him over. Well, he could try.

The djinni nodded.

"But you haven't left."

He gestured at the city lying at their feet. "What will you ask?" he demanded. "A princedom? The Emperor's crown?" He took a deep breath. "The Holy City of Jerusalem itself? Will you beg for it?"

"Antioch is mine by right of conquest," said Bohemond. "And I beg for nothing."

He was Antioch already, if he could hold fast, despite Godfrey and Adhemar's holiness and Raymond's mewlings that Antioch belonged to the Emperor. And Jerusalem? A dream men had died for. Bohemond preferred gold and honest stone to dreams.

"You wouldn't care to step off this height and let me help you fly?" There was laughter in the stranger's voice.

"You offer me cities, honor, gold," said Bohemond. "Emperors have done that, and I've taken what I chose and only what I thought I could hold. You offer me more than any man could guard, and for what price? My soul? Poor scarred thing that it is, assuming I have one at all. I would not bargain with you for so little."

"Then if your soul means nothing to you," said the djinni, if such he was, "why not clasp hands and say 'done' on our bargain?"

He held out his hand, scarred with battle, but long and fine. Would those fingers be ice-cold or warm as honest human flesh?

Knocking his hand away might make the djinni bring down the lightnings, or whatever weapons besides steel that djinn used. Instead, Bohemond put his own hands behind his back. A boy's gesture, and it would leave him vulnerable for a perilous second or two, but it went with what he was about to say.

"If Jesus Christ appeared on that rock over there right now and offered me Antioch, all unearned, I'd say 'thank you very much, my Lord, but I cannot accept honor I have not earned for myself. Do you understand that?" Bohemond demanded. "I won this city with fire and sword and sweat and blood, and no one, human, djinni, or God Himself, is going to take it from me!"