Jack Whyte - Standard of Honor

Several of André’s senior sergeants had gathered around the two cousins, listening avidly, their eyes glistening. André looked over at the largest of them and grinned. “Did you hear that, Boar? Marshlands, and plentiful water. Hard to believe of this place, is it not?”

Alec spoke up again. “Hard to believe or not, it’s true. But don’t go thinking you might like to bathe in the waters there. Do you know what a crocodile is?”

André shook his head, but the man called Boar half raised a hand. “I do, I think? Isn’t it a giant lizard of some kind?”

“Aye, that’s exactly what it is. A giant serpent lizard that can grow to be the length of two tall men, with teeth the length of your fingers and jaws the length of your arm—jaws that will cut a man in half. I know not if it is true, but I have heard tell that the creatures cannot void their bodies’ wastes as other creatures do, and so when they have eaten, be it a man or an animal, they lie paralyzed on the water’s edge until the meal is digested, and other serpents crawl into their mouths and eat what remains in their stomachs. Thus, a man devoured by such a beast is eaten twice by serpents. Stay you clear of the water, friends.”

“Enough, Cousin, you will have my officers unable to sleep tonight with such tales. Come, I will walk you back towards your tent. The rest of you, prepare for sleep, for by the time I return it will be curfew.”

FIVE MORE DAYS passed by in slow and steady progress, and by the end of them the raids against the horses had all but stopped and the men had grown largely inured to seeing stretches of open water and strange, exotic creatures everywhere they looked. Morale and discipline among and within the various elements of the army was high, and a formless sense of anticipation was growing daily, nurtured by a constantly bubbling wellspring of rumor and hearsay: Saladin was massing his forces to attack them on the march; Saladin was concentrating his forces in the forest surrounding the town of Arsuf, where they were headed, and would set the woods afire as they approached; Saladin had gathered bowmen and countless wagonloads of arrows from all over his empire, sufficient to beggar the storms of arrows expended at Hattin, and intended to obliterate the Frankish advance beneath an unending rain of missiles. Whether or not any of the rumors were true, there could be no doubting the evidence of the marchers’ own eyes, for Saladin’s horsemen were visible everywhere, beyond bowshot and beyond easy reach, but there, and undaunted by the size of the Frankish army.

The army made camp that night on the coast, six miles north of Arsuf, near the mouth of a river and with a vast and impassable swamp at their back on the landward side, so that they settled down with more security and less fear of attack than usual, and André decided to go in search of his cousin, risking the possibility of coming face to face with Richard.

He saw no sign of the King, but found Alec sitting at a folding table, reading a document by the light of a four-branch candelabrum. Alec looked up, and his face split into a grin of welcome as he rose quickly to his feet and signed to a clerk at the table opposite him to gather up the parchment he had been reading. They were out in the open air after that within a matter of minutes, and as they walked swiftly away from the two great pavilions that dominated the center of the main encampment, André chuckled.

“You had my sergeants hanging on your words, Cousin, with your stories of the fabled crocodile, and I intended to ask you where you had heard such creature tales when next we met. But since then I have seen the things with my own eyes. I doubt that I have ever seen anything so evil looking as the sight of them sliding down the muddy riverbanks and gliding into the water. They are completely repulsive!”

“Aye, they are ugly, and they are frightening.” Alec hesitated, teetering as he glanced about him, then pointed to their left. “Head over there, that way. I almost missed the way, but there is a quartermaster here who is hugely in my debt, for three enormous antelope shot by the roadside this morning and delivered to him fresh, from me, and it comes to me that he might have a spare bag of wine in his stores.”

They found the quartermaster without difficulty, merely by following the smell of bread being baked by the ton in a massive array of portable clay ovens that were loaded and unloaded every day on the march, and he was profusely grateful for the services Alec had rendered to him. It turned out that not only did he have a spare bag of wine, he even had cups, a table, and two chairs in a small tent reserved for his own use, and no sooner had the two cousins sat down than he reappeared with a platter of fresh-baked bread and thick slices of cold meat.

When they had finished eating, Sinclair burped quietly and wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. “That was just what I needed,” he murmured. “Now, what about you? Why did you come looking for me this afternoon?”

“Because I had nothing else to do and I felt like it. Why do you ask?”

“Curiosity.” Sinclair wiped his mouth again, more carefully this time, and pinching the corners with finger and thumb to dislodge any errant particles of food. “Because when you arrived, I was just on the point of leaving to look for you. The document I was reading contained my own recollections of what had been said earlier at an officers’ gathering. I have a task for you, should you be willing to accept it. I cannot order you to do it.” He hesitated then, thinking about that, and shrugged. “Well, I suppose I could, but it would make no sense, for you would be under no obligation to proceed with it, once you were out of my sight.”

“What is it? And before you tell me, tell me this. Is it achievable?”

“You mean, will it get you killed? Cousin, you are my entire family now that your father is dead. I have no wish to lose you. The task requires an Arabic speaker— someone who can move among the enemy without being detected and identified as one of us. We have many of them, most of them Arabs, but there is none of them whom I would care to trust with a task this … sensitive. I intended to do it myself, but de Sablé found out and forbade me. He has other plans for me tomorrow, it seems.”

“Such as?”

“Commanding the Templar right.”

“Good. Excellent. The man shows even more sound common sense than I would have expected. Tell me what you wish me to do.”

“We are six miles from Arsuf. I need you to go and scout it out, to be absolutely sure that Saladin’s people have not occupied it against us.” St. Clair frowned. “Why should that matter now? We have come all this way to attack the place. Are you telling me now that no one anticipated that it might be occupied? That defies belief.”

“It does, and that is not what I am saying. What I am saying is that it now appears that things may change radically from what we had expected. For three days now, the enemy has been making broad and massive changes to his troop dispositions, and it all appeared to come together today in a series of open maneuvers that they did not even try to hide. Richard is now convinced that they intend to confront us tomorrow, nose to nose, and to try to provoke us into fighting on their terms. Saladin stands in sore need of a victory, for his credibility, and some say his discipline and control of his troops have all suffered badly since Acre fell … and because Acre fell. So Richard believes we have come as far as Saladin can permit us to come without doing battle. That is why we are camped here tonight, with our backs to the swamp and safe against attack from there. It is also why the presence of the Saracen horsemen has become so visible all around us. Richard believes they will now press us increasingly and relentlessly until we give battle, no matter how unwilling we may be to play the Sultan’s game. There is no doubt he is hoping to provoke us into committing the same folly that de Ridefort fell into so often, charging vainly against the drifting smoke of his mobile brigades. But Richard will have none of that, you wait and see. He will not be provoked. He intends to proceed with great caution from now on.”