Джеймс Миченер - The Source

“Where is my brother?” the now-slim warrior asked, and Luke led the way to a large house which served as the rude palace from which Volkmar ruled the surrounding territory.

Gunter rushed through the door to greet his brother-in-law, who stood an old, white-haired man of fifty-six, one-legged and frail. “The fighting is ended,” Gunter announced, “and I did what I said. The fief famine.”

“What fief?” Volkmar asked.

“This one. The land between Acre and Galilee.”

Carefully choosing his words Volkmar said, “But here I rule.”

“And so you shall!” Gunter cried expansively, shocked by his brother-in-law’s general feebleness. “And you shall continue to rule on my behalf until you die—I’ll be out extending our borders.”

“But when I die this land passes on to my son Volkmar.” The old count signaled to Luke, who fetched an attractive dark-haired boy of three. The child ran to his father, who balanced himself on his one leg so as to catch the boy, swinging him in the air.

“They told me you were married,” Gunter said, evading for the moment the question of inheritance. “Where’d you find a Christian girl?”

“Here,” Volkmar replied. “One that you missed killing.” Again the count motioned to Luke, and the bailiff disappeared to return shortly with his daughter Taleb, now an attractive woman of twenty-one. Bowing to Gunter she said in lilting German, “Welcome to Makor, brother.”

The battle-worn knight bowed and replied, “It is I who welcome you to my fief, sister.”

This time it was Volkmar who chose to evade the question. He directed Luke to prepare a welcoming feast, and Luke, clever as always, managed to find a sheep, some good wine from the local grapes and lesser items from as far away as Damascus. “The caravans have resumed,” Volkmar explained, passing his brother-in-law fresh dates and honey from the Muslim capital. “It’s true that Damascus remains in Arab hands,” he continued ruefully, “but we both need the trade.”

“That’s sensible,” Gunter growled, licking his fingers. “Where’d you find Luke and his daughter?”

“Here in Makor. They hid … in a cave, till you were gone.”

Gunter bowed to the countess. “I’m glad you survived. To tell the truth,” he confessed, “if I were starting afresh I’d kill far fewer.” Uneasily he shifted his weight and leaned forward to face the father and daughter he might have slain that first day. “I learned my lesson in Jerusalem. We killed everyone in sight … Arabs … Jews … but the next day we found that half the dead were Christians just like ourselves. No one had told us. Have you heard about the way we took Jerusalem?”

“Many times,” Volkmar said with disgust.

“I explained that if we were doing it again … You know, brother …”

“I am no longer your brother,” Volkmar answered quietly.

“You are more,” Gunter replied, taking no offense. “You are my essential friend. I was about to say that after Jerusalem we discovered how rich we would have been had we kept the local people alive.” Here again he bowed to the countess and her father. “In Jerusalem, after the slaughter, we discovered vats of purple dye worth a hundred thousand bezants with no one left alive who knew how to use it. All the Jews were dead.”

“Here we behaved differently,” Volkmar replied. “In the villages we killed no one, and now the farms are prosperous.”

“I’m glad you kept them that way. I’ll need them in my fief.”

“It will never be yours,” the older man said firmly.

“It will,” Gunter responded without anger. “With my sword I have won it, and it is mine. You’re welcome here as long as you live, because I need your help. But when I have sons of my own they shall rule, and your boy Volkmar will have to find his life elsewhere.”

The two German knights looked hard at each other, and thus began the test of wills, with Gunter asking bluntly, “Volkmar, why don’t you take your son and go back to Germany?”

The question startled the old man, for in the years since his wife and daughter were taken from him at the battle of the wagons he had thought little of Germany. More than eight years had passed since he last saw the Rhine. His son Otto now ruled the city of Gretz, and Volkmar no longer considered himself a German. Pointing to the modest, yet convenient room in which the feast was being held he asked, “Who would leave this warm place for a cold castle in Gretz?” He indicated the good food that Luke had procured, the wine, the merchandise already pouring in from Damascus, and these things he compared with the manner in which German knights lived in their frugal, drafty castles along the Rhine. His wife Taleb wore silk and embroidered stuffs, whereas his first wife Matwilda had been happy to find coarse goods. In Makor he had gold and silver to replace the lead and brass of Germany. Through the ingenuity of Luke he had access to medicines unknown in Germany; in fact, he declared, “If I had lost my leg in Gretz, to be cared for by German doctors, I would now be dead. I have no desire to go back to that barbarous land.”

“Then stay here and help me rule,” the younger knight urged.

Thus Gunter moved permanently to Makor, and during his first week initiated changes of a spectacular nature, the most lasting of which was his decision to build on the crest of the mound a huge fortified castle: “Every man from Acre to Galilee will work sixteen days a month on this fortress till it’s finished. At the quarries we’ll need a thousand men. Permanently. To haul the rocks, five hundred horses.” While Volkmar tried to follow on a crutch that Luke had carved for him, Gunter strode forth to mark the limits of his castle, and the older man was astonished at the magnitude Gunter proposed.

“It will be immense, because from it we shall rule an immense principality.” He began that day to use the word principality , for this was what he intended to carve for himself. Finally he returned to where Volkmar stood on his crutch and asked, “You’ve lived here for five years. Which part of town will be best for our castle?”

Volkmar explained that the northwest segment, abutting the basilica, would be best, for from that spot one could both catch the cool evening breezes that came down the wadis and enjoy the sea beyond Acre, and for these reasons Gunter was tempted to build there, but in the end considerations of defense led him to select the rugged eastern end, for there the wadi to the north showed a more precipitous face. “Some day there’ll be a siege,” Gunter predicted, “and that gully could be what saves us.”

So northeast of the basilica he staked out an enormous castle, and when Luke saw that one third of the town’s houses stood in the marked-off area he protested, but Gunter said simply, “Tear them down,” and it was done.

From having besieged nearly thirty fortifications—Nicaea, Antioch, Jerusalem, Ascalon, the names were like dreams, with Greek fire pouring down upon his shoulders and he loading the mangonels with the chopped-off heads of Turkish prisoners to be lobbed inside to taunt the defenders—from such experiences Gunter knew how a castle should be built. No square corners would be allowed, no neatly squared-off towers, for those he had found susceptible to assault. “With a battering ram you can always knock out the corner stones,” he explained to Luke, “but with a rounded tower where do you start your attack?” He also insisted that throughout the castle each rock be fitted snugly to the next, so that grapples could find no purchase to support scaling ladders. Each wall was sloped and situated so that all parts could be protected by interlocking arrow fire from two towers. “And the bottom of each wall,” he explained, “must slope sharply outward … at this angle … so that when a rock is dropped from the battlements it will ricochet sharply forward, crushing any men trying to hide under protecting cover.”