Jack Whyte - Standard of Honour

A grin quirked at the corner of Sinclair’s mouth. “It’s a long way to Inverness, Lachlan, and you might not reach there today. Best you stay here and stick close by me.”

“If these heathens kill me today, I’ll be there before the sun sets over Ben Wyvis.” Moray hesitated, then looked sideways at his friend. “Stick close by you, you say? I’m not of your company, and you are the rearguard.”

“No, you are not.” Sinclair was gazing eastward, to where the sky was lightening rapidly. “But I have the feeling that before the sun climbs halfway up the sky this day it will be of no concern to any of us who rides with whom, Templars or otherwise. Stick you by me, my friend, and if we are to die and go home to Scotland, then let us go back together, as we left it to come here.” His gaze shifted slightly towards the light that had begun to glow within the massive black shadow that was the royal tent. “The King is astir.”

“That is a shame,” Moray muttered. “On this, of all days, he should remain abed. That way, we might have hope of doing something right and coming out of this alive.”

Sinclair shot him a quick grin. “Build not your hopes on that, Lachlan. If we come through this day alive, we will be ta’en and sold as slaves. Better to die a clean, quick death—” He was interrupted by the braying of a trumpet, and his hands dropped automatically to the weapons at his belt. “There, time to assemble. Now remember, stay close by me. The first chance you have—and I swear it will no’ be long—head back for our ranks. We won’t be hard to find.”

Moray punched his friend on the shoulder. “I’ll try, so be it I don’t have to leave my friends in danger. Be well.”

“I will, but we are all in danger this day, more than ever before. All we may do now is sell our lives dearly, and in the doing of that, simply because my brethren are all Templars, you will have more chance to fight on with me than I would have with your companions, brave though they be. Fare ye well.”

Both men swung about and headed towards their allocated positions, Sinclair among the Temple Knights at the rear of the knoll behind the King’s tents and Moray among the hastily assembled crew of Christian knights and adventurers who had answered the call to arms sent out by Guy de Lusignan after his coronation. It was these men who now surrounded the King’s person, and the precious reliquary of the True Cross that loomed above them all.

Glancing up, Sinclair saw that it was already close to daybreak, the sky to the east flushed with pink. And then he shivered, in spite of himself, as he saw the bright, blazing new star in the lightening sky. He was not superstitious, unlike most of his fellows, but he could barely suppress the feelings of unease that sometimes welled up in him nowadays. This star had appeared a mere ten days before, exactly three weeks after the slaughter of the Templar knights at Cresson, and the sight of it stirred dread among the Franks, for it was another in a long string of strange occurrences that they had seen in the skies in recent times. Since the year before this one, there had been six eclipses of the sun and two eclipses of the moon. Eight clear signs, to most people, that God was unhappy with what was happening in His Holy Land. And then had come this blaze in the sky, a star so bright that it could be seen by day. Some said, and the priests said little to discourage them, that this was a reappearance of the Star of Bethlehem, burning again in the sky to remind the Frankish warriors of their duty to their God and His beloved Son.

Sinclair was more inclined to believe what was being said among the French-speaking Arabs of his acquaintance. They believed that the stars moved independently of each other, and that a number of the brightest stars in the firmament had now somehow moved into alignment with each other and combined their light to generate this blazing beacon, so bright it could often be seen even at noon.

When he reached his own squadron, Sinclair settled his flat steel helm more firmly on his brows and scanned his men. All awake and solemn; no badinage or laughter this morning…not, he reflected, that there ever was much laughter among the knights of the Temple. It was officially discouraged as being frivolous and not conducive to pious behavior. He sought out Louis Chisholm, the sergeant-at-arms, Alexander Sinclair’s personal servant since boyhood. Faced with the prospect of life as a free man when his employer joined the brotherhood of the Temple Knights, Chisholm had opted to remain close to the man he knew best in all the world, and had volunteered as a sergeant brother in the Order. Now as Sinclair approached him, he twisted around in his saddle and peered up through the drifting smoke towards the peaks of the Horns of Hattin.

“They say that’s where Jesus preached the Sermon on the Mount,” he said. “Right up there on the slopes of that mountain. I wonder if anything he could say to that crowd out there today would make any difference to what’s going to happen.” He turned back and looked Sinclair in the eye, then lapsed into a heavy Scots accent. “We’ve come a long way from Edinburgh, Sir Alec, and we’ve changed a bit, the two o’ us, since we first set out…but this is an awfu’ grim place to die.”

“We had nae choice, Louis,” Sinclair replied quietly, pronouncing the other’s name in the Scots fashion, as Lewis. “It wasna our doin’.”

Chisholm grimaced. “Aye, well, you know what I think about that.” He looked about him again. “We’re about ready. The Hospitallers are starting to form up, over there on the right. They’ll move out soon, so we’d best be ready here. Ye’ll have seen how many we’re up against out there?” He spat, then ran the tip of his tongue over his teeth, sucking at the grains of sand there before spitting again. “It’ll be a short fight, I’m thinking, but we’ll try to make it a good one. Good luck to ye, Sir Alec. I’ll be right at your back, minding your arse.”

Sinclair smiled as he reached out and took the other man’s hand. “God bless you, Louis. I’ll have an eye for you, too. Now, what’s causing the delay?”

As he said the words, the first trumpet call rang out and was answered immediately by others as the army began to move into its battle formations, beginning with the Knights of the Hospital, who formed the army’s vanguard. The King’s division in the center, his royal standard swaying high above him, moved forward behind the veteran Hospitallers, although, encircled as they were, there was no clearly defined front for the Hospital Knights to face. Nevertheless, the knights of the royal bodyguard formed up at the King’s back, as did the Christian prelates and priests, bearing the giant, elaborate reliquary. It was fashioned in the shape of a mother-of-pearl cross and encrusted with jewels and precious stones, and it provided a highly visible rallying point, not only for its protectors but also for their attackers.

Beyond the block formations of the Christian army, surrounding them on all sides, Saladin’s great force eddied and moved, visible now although obscured at times by drifting smoke and the dust stirred up by their own movement. They waited patiently, and largely in silence, to see what the Christian army would attempt to do.

The crowd around Sinclair was abnormally quiet. Each man rose in his stirrups and craned to see over the heads of the men directly in front of him in the dawning light. The sounds of the horses were all that was utterly familiar—the stamping hooves and snorting breaths and the creaks and jingle of saddle leathers and harness. Already even the little movement they made was stirring up clouds of choking dust to add to the swirling smoke.

Sinclair loosened his sword in its sheath and bent forward in the saddle slightly to glance across at Louis Chisholm again.