Jack Whyte - Standard of Honor

When it was over and the last man was dead, Richard signaled again, and his crossbowmen regrouped and trotted at the double step back to their original stations. After that the entire army wheeled about and returned to Acre, leaving the landscape strewn with enough murdered men to sate every vulture for miles around. André St. Clair rode among them, looking neither left nor right and making no attempt to speak to anyone, appalled to the very depth of his soul not merely with the magnitude of the sin he had witnessed but with the fact that its perpetrator was the same man who, a few years earlier, had reacted memorably with horror and outrage to the tidings that Saladin had executed a hundred prisoners after the Saracen victory at Hattin. But as the unmistakable sounds of jubilation and celebration began to burgeon around him on all sides, André could not continue to ignore what was happening around him, and he turned to stare, dead-eyed, at the spectacle of sober, solemn knights reeling like drunken men in the euphoria of having killed so many infidels for the greater glory of God.

“TWO THOUSAND AND SEVEN HUNDRED MEN, Alec. That’s how many there were … Two thousand and seven hundred … More than that, truth be told … more than the seven hundred, but less than eight … Slaughtered like animals and left to bloat and rot in the desert sun.”

“Hmm.” Alec Sinclair kept his face free of expression and his voice toneless. “Well, once they’re slaughtered, there’s no place else out here to leave them, Cousin, during daylight hours at least. There’s naught but the desert sunlight in which to bloat and rot. Not that I am trying to make light of any part of what you say. It is simply that the sane mind refuses to accept atrocities like that … What did you do while it was happening?”

“Nothing. I did nothing. I was … I can’t say what I was , or what I was even thinking. I was numb, terrified, incredulous. But I am shamed to say I made no move to stop it.”

Sinclair twisted his face into the semblance of a wry grin. “D’ye say so, Cousin? You were afraid to step forward and denounce the King of England as a murdering butcher, simply because he was surrounded by a few thousand of his rabid army, who were murdering thousands of other men with great enthusiasm? Tut, man, that’s terrible.”

His unformed smile vanished and he turned his head to look all around the place where they were sitting, an empty fire pit within fifteen paces of André’s tent. The spot offered nothing of privacy, and a steady stream of knights and sergeants moved incessantly about it, coming and going on errands of all imaginable kinds. One man nodded to Alec in passing, recognizing him without evincing any untoward interest, and Alec returned the nod, muttering something unintelligible. He looked all around again, making sure they were not being particularly heeded, before he looked back at André, his face sober.

“It was the first thing I heard about when I stepped off the boat from Cyprus last night, and because the ship turned right around to return, the word will be in Cyprus the day after tomorrow. I heard the Bishop of Bayonne instruct the captain of the ship how to spread the glorious word on his return to Cyprus.”

“What did you hear, what did he say?”

“That Richard had achieved a great moral victory over Saladin by executing the hostages being held against the Sultan’s performance. That he had taught the infidel his proper place and chastised him sternly— and appropriately—for attempting to break his sworn agreement to return the True Cross. And I know that everyone else who heard the bishop speak of it believed it was a great victory and a much-needed moral lesson.”

“It was murder, Alec—murder on a scale I could not have imagined. Pure, premeditated murder, merciless and mortally sinful. If there is indeed a Hell of fire and brimstone as the Christians believe, then Richard Plantagenet purchased himself a special place in the depths of it yesterday, for nothing in the tenets of Christian belief, no matter how distorted by priestly logic, could ever justify what that man did. That same man who swore piously and publicly, in the name of their living, merciful Christ, to return God’s Holy Land to the people of the gentle Savior.”

Alec Sinclair nodded. “Your liege lord is not as noble a figure as he would have the world believe, is he?”

“No, he is not …”

“And now we have other important matters to discuss, but it must be elsewhere. There are far too many flapping ears hereabouts. Bring your arbalest and something to shoot at and we will find a place to practice our skills where no one can overhear us.”

A short time later and a half mile removed from the crowded confines of the encampment, St. Clair stuck a long spear into the ground, point first, at the foot of a dune. He had tied his sheathed dagger a head’s length from the top of the shaft to form a crossbar, and suspended an old horse blanket over that, to suggest the size and shape of a tall, thin man, an impression heightened by the addition of a rusted, cloven old helmet to the butt of the spear. When he was satisfied with its appearance and sure that it would be recognized as a simple target from a distance, he remounted and rode back with Alec until a good hundred and twenty paces lay between them and it, and there they dismounted and unsaddled their horses before slipping their nose bags, each with a handful of oats, over the animals’ heads. Only then, when the horses were looked after, did they unlimber their crossbows and walk towards the firing line Alec had dug into the sand with one heel.

Neither man had actually brought an arbalest with him, for the simple reason that the weapon was too powerful for such a casual exercise, since every bolt they fired from this close would vanish into the sand of the dune behind the target and be lost. Instead, they had brought smaller crossbows, less demanding in strength and power and more demanding in the skills they called for. Using these weapons, and from this distance, there was at least a possibility that the bolts they threw at the target would be recoverable. André fired the first shot, watching the flight of the missile critically, and when it fell short of the target he made a minor adjustment to his stance and tried again, grunting in satisfaction as he saw the quarrel hit this time and glance off the spear shaft.

His cousin acknowledged the shot, then took his own stance and did exactly the same thing, save that his second shaft glanced left off the target, rather than to the right as André’s had.

“Very well, then,” André said, holding his weapon tucked beneath one arm, “we’re established. We have each hit the target and there appears to be no one watching us. And even if there were, no one could come close enough to us to overhear us, so may we talk now?”

“We may.”

Sinclair turned, head down, and walked away to where his saddle lay on the side of a tiny hill of sand. He rested one booted foot on the cantle and propped the stirrup of the crossbow against his raised toes, crossing both his hands on the butt. André followed him quietly, merely watching and waiting, knowing that whatever his cousin might say next, it would not be inconsequential, nor would it be spontaneous.

“I sensed …” Alec stopped, obviously considering his words. “I sensed a reversal in you today, Cousin, something that was not there today as it had been before, or perhaps more accurately, something that was there as it had never been before.” André stood silent, waiting for the other to continue. He could tell that Alec was having difficulty with whatever he was trying to say, because his diction was far more precise, more painstaking than usual. His French was fluent and effortless, but the alienness of his Scots birth and background came through in the way he articulated his words and vowels, speaking them crisply and clearly, yet in a way that no native of Gaul ever would.