Jack Whyte: Standard of Honor

The knight had sunk to his knees and died there, his lifeblood drenching the front of his surcoat, and the men who lay beneath him, and the upthrust angle of the sword that killed him, had prevented him from falling forward. His heart beating fast now, André dismounted and stepped quickly to the kneeling knight. He pulled the head back and looked into the dead face. The man was an unknown. André pushed him firmly, so that he fell sideways and rolled off the bodies beneath him.

The next man lay face down on top of the man below him, covering his head and shoulders, but the man beneath had been the one who thrust the killing sword, for it had been torn from his hand by the weight of the falling corpse when André pushed it. He stooped and seized the second knight by the armholes of his cuirass and heaved him up, rolling him to see that, again, the fellow was unknown to him. He had been killed by crossbow bolts, three of which projected several inches from his breast. As he turned now to the third knight, André gave a whimpering, childlike cry and fell to his knees, his face crumpling as he stared between his outstretched hands into the dead face of his cousin Alec.

How long he knelt there, struck dumb, he would never be able to recollect afterwards, but he remained there, rocking slowly back and forth in agonized disbelief as he watched the slowly welling blood ooze from the grim rent in the armor over his cousin’s left breast.

And only very, very slowly did it penetrate his awareness that dead men do not bleed.

When the realization did hit him, he whimpered again, and reached out with both hands to cup Alec’s face, and as he did so, Alec’s eyes opened.

“Cousin,” Alec Sinclair whispered. “Where did you come from?”

André merely sat, hunched forward, gazing at his cousin’s face, which was pallid and deeply graven with stark, blue-tinged lines. He knew he should say something, respond in some manner to his cousin’s greeting, but his tongue felt frozen in his mouth.

“Where is al-Farouch?”

The strangeness of the question snapped St. Clair back to full cognizance, and his fingers tightened on his cousin’s chin. “What did you say? Where is who ?”

“Ibn al-Farouch. He was here but a short time ago. Where did he go?”

André sat back on his haunches but remained leaning forward, face to face with his cousin, his hand still grasping Sinclair’s chin. “Alec, what are you talking about? Al-Farouch is not here.”

“Of course he is. What is that, if not his?” André looked up, following the direction of Sinclair’s gaze, and saw the yellow swallow-tailed pennant with its five black crescent moons.

“Quick, André, lift me up, quickly. Lift me up.”

The urgency in Alec’s voice provoked an instant response in St. Clair, and he rose immediately to kneel behind his cousin and grasp him carefully beneath the arms, cradling him as gently as he could. “How is that?” he asked. “Am I hurting you?”

“Aye, but not badly. I think I may be lying on top of al-Farouch, and if I am, he may not be able to breathe, so lift me up and move me to one side. Then I will need you to see to him—” Alec stopped, gasping for breath, but then continued. “Gently now, Cuz. Lift me straight up and step to your left. Can you do that?”

“Aye, I can manage that,” St. Clair replied, but as he moved to straighten up, thrusting powerfully but steadily with his thighs against the deadweight of Alec’s armored body, the agony of being moved, even thus slightly, ripped a tortured scream of protest from the wounded knight’s throat. André froze before he could straighten completely, so that he was left crouching. Alec’s weight seemed to increase in his arms and was growing insupportably heavier by the moment.

“Alec,” he hissed, straining the words through his teeth. “Alec, can you hear me?”

There was no answer, and he knew his cousin had fainted from the pain. He tensed again, drew a deep breath and expelled it noisily, then inhaled again, sucking the air into his lungs as hard as he could, and straightened up quickly, lifting Alec as far as he could and then walking backward very carefully for two paces.

André lowered the unconscious knight to a flat piece of ground as gently as he could and then used his dagger to cut savagely through the straps and laces that held the riven armor in place. Grateful that his kinsman could feel nothing, he manhandled him remorselessly, turning him back and forth as he tore at the chain mail, clothing, lining, and bindings until he could see bare skin and the sluggish welling of blood from the wound in Alec’s chest. Whatever had pierced the armor had been massive and sharp, and André guessed it had been a hard-swung battle-axe, for it had driven clean through both cuirass and chain-mail shirt, hammering individual links and pieces of metal into the gash it had made in Sinclair’s chest. André prayed that the wound was not lethal, but he suspected that several of his cousin’s ribs had been smashed, and he had no means of guessing at the extent of the damage Alec had sustained beneath that.

When he felt that he could do no more, he rose to his feet and peered back to the northward, looking for the distinctive black-and-white uniform of the Hospitallers, but none of them had yet come into sight, and so he knelt back down beside his cousin to find him conscious again. As soon as he came close enough, Alec grasped him by the forearm. His fingertips dug deep.

“Sweet Jesus, that hurt, Cousin. Did I pass out? I must have … Was I right? Was Ibn beneath me?”

André St. Clair shook his head. “I don’t know, Alec. I haven’t had time to look. You were lying atop someone, a Saracen, but how would I know who he is?”

“An amulet, hanging from his neck on a silver chain. Heavy silver … Amulet is green … the Prophet’s favorite color … Is there an amulet? Look and see.”

André moved away and looked at the man who had been lying beneath Sinclair, but he had to reach out and search before he could find anything about the man’s neck. A few moments was all it took, however, and he was kneeling by Sinclair again.

“Aye,” he muttered. “A carved amulet of pale green stone, with a chain of heavy silver links.”

“Jade, Cousin, it’s called jade … Is he alive?”

“No, Cousin, he is not. I checked most carefully and I could find no pulse. Your friend is dead. What happened here?”

For a moment Alec Sinclair looked as though he might actually laugh, but then his breath caught in his throat and he grunted, clearly incapable of breathing as he struggled against the pain of his wounds. André felt the strength in his grip tighten then relax, still firm, but no longer panicked. “I saw him here, when we burst out. Could scarcely believe it.” He paused, breathing hard, and André waited, making no attempt to rush him. “There he was, on foot and right in front of me, bleeding from the forehead so that he had to wipe the blood from his eyes with the back of his wrist. His horse, Wind Spirit, was dead beside him …” Another pause, filled with laborious breathing, and then, “He had a bare half dozen of his bodyguard still left around him, and as I saw him, one of our knights charged in to kill him, but he was careless and one of the bodyguards got him with a flung scimitar that took his head right off … And then I saw two or three more of our knights close in to finish Ibn. He wore nothing to mark him as an emir, but there was something about his bearing, as there always was, that set him ap—” The coughing spell broke unexpectedly, and for the next brief while André held Sinclair as his entire body convulsed in pain, racked with the ravages of coughing through a mouth suddenly filled with thick blood. Finally, when the fit subsided, André pressed him back onto the ground.