Jack Whyte: Standard of Honor

Moray, not deigning to recognize his friend’s black humor, concentrated on raising Sinclair to where he could sit up in some kind of comfort and look about him, but that was more easily said than done, for in the course of his manipulations he discovered that his friend’s left arm hung uselessly and hurt Sinclair unbearably whenever it swung loose. The upper arm bone—he knew it must have a name, but could not begin to guess what it might be— was broken a short distance above the elbow. He lodged his friend upright and leaned into him, holding him in place while he used both hands to undo and remove the belt around the injured man’s waist, and when he was done, he worked to immobilize the broken limb, strapping it as tightly as he could against Sinclair’s ribs.

It was only when he had finished that task and moved back to seat himself that he realized he could no longer hear any sounds coming from the hillside above, and that he had no recollection of the noises fading away. He looked over to find Sinclair watching him.

“Tell me then, what happened?”

As he listened to his friend relating what he had seen and heard, Sinclair’s face grew increasingly strained, but he made no attempt to interrupt until Moray eventually fell silent. Then he sat chewing on his lip, his features pinched.

“Damn them all,” he said eventually. “They brought it on themselves, with their jealousies and squabbling. I knew it in my gut, from the moment they decided to stop the advance on Tiberias yesterday. There was no sound reason for doing that. No reason a good commander could justify. We had already marched twelve miles through hellish heat, with less than six remaining. We could have won to safety before nightfall had we but stuck together and continued our advance. To stop was utter folly.”

“Folly and spite. And arrogance. Your Master of the Temple, de Ridefort, wanted to spite the Count of Tripoli. And Reynald de Chatillon backed him, using his influence on the King and bullying Guy into changing his mind.”

Sinclair grunted from pain and gripped his broken arm with his other hand. “I cannot speak for de Chatillon,” he said between gritted teeth. “I have no truck with him nor ever have. The man is a savage and a disgrace to the Temple and all it stands for. But de Ridefort is a man of principles and he truly believes Raymond of Tripoli to be a traitor to our cause. He had sound reasons for his distrust of him.”

“Mayhap, but the Count of Tripoli’s was the only voice of sanity among our leaders. He said it would be madness to leave our solid base in La Safouri with Saladin’s masses on the move, and he was right.”

“Aye, he was, but he had made alliance with Saladin prior to that, and then reneged on it, or so he would have us believe. And that alliance cost us a hundred and thirty Templars and Hospitallers at Cresson last month. De Ridefort was right to distrust him.”

“It was de Ridefort who lost those men, Alec. He led them, all of them, in a downhill charge against fourteen thousand mounted men. It was his arrogance and his hotheadedness that are to blame for that. Raymond of Tripoli was nowhere near the place.”

“No, but had Raymond of Tripoli not granted Saladin’s army the right to cross his territory that day, those fourteen thousand men would not have been there to provoke de Ridefort. The Master of the Temple might have been blameworthy, but the Count of Tripoli was at fault.”

Moray shrugged. “Aye, you might be right, but when we were talking about leaving the safety of La Safouri, Raymond’s own wife was under siege in Tiberias, and even so he said he would rather lose her than endanger our whole army. That has no smell to me of treachery.”

Sinclair said nothing for a while after that, then grimaced again, his teeth clenched in pain. “So be it. There is no point in arguing over it now, when the damage is irretrievable. Right now, we have to find out what’s going on up on the crest. Can you do that without being seen?”

“Aye. There’s a spot among the rocks. I’ll go and look.”

Moray was back within minutes, scuttling sideways like a crab in an effort to keep his head down and out of sight from anyone on the hillside above.

“They’re on the move,” he hissed, pushing Sinclair gently down to lie on his back. “They’re coming down. The hillside’s alive with them, and they all seem to be heading this way. In five minutes’ time they’ll be all around us, and if we aren’t seen and dragged out of here it will be a miracle. So say your prayers, Alec. Pray as you’ve never prayed before—but silently.”

Somewhere close by a horse nickered and was answered by another. Hooves clattered on stone, as though right above the two motionless men, and then moved away. For the next hour or so they lay still, scarcely breathing and expecting discovery and capture with every heartbeat. But the time came when they could hear nothing, no movement, no voices, no matter how hard they strained to hear, and eventually Moray crawled out of the concealment and looked about him.

“They’re gone,” he announced from the mouth of the shelter. “They don’t appear to have left anyone up above, on the heights, and the mass of them seems to be headed now for Tiberias.”

“Aye, that’s where they’ll go first. The Citadel will surrender, now that the army’s destroyed. What else did you see?”

“Columns of dust going down from the ridge up there, towards Saladin’s encampment, east of Tiberias. It’s bigger than the city. Couldn’t see who was going down, because of the slope of the hill, but they’re raising a lot of dust. Whoever it is, they’re moving in strength.”

“Probably prisoners for ransom, and their escorts.”

Sir Lachlan Moray sat silent after that, frowning and chewing gently on the inside of his lip for a while, until he said, “Prisoners? Will there be Templars among them, think you?”

“Probably. Why would you think otherwise?”

Moray shook his head slightly. “I thought Templars were forbidden to surrender, but must fight to the death. It has never happened before, because it has always been death or glory. They’ve never been defeated and left alive, but—”

“Aye, but . You are correct. And yet you’re wrong, too. The Rule says no surrender in the face of odds less than five to one. Greater than that, there is room for discretion, and the odds today were overwhelming. Better to live and be ransomed to fight again than to be slaughtered to no good purpose. But we have duties to fulfill. We need to find a way back to La Safouri with word of this, and from there to Jerusalem, so we had better start planning our route. If Saladin’s force is split in two, to the south and to the east of us, then we will have to make our way back the way we came and hope to avoid their patrols. They will be everywhere, mopping up survivors like us. Here, help me to sit up.” As soon as Moray slipped his arm about the other man’s waist and began to raise him up gently, he heard a loud click as Sinclair’s teeth snapped together, and he saw the color drain from the man’s cheeks again, his lips and forehead beaded with sweat and his teeth gritted together against the pain that had swept up in him. Appalled, and not knowing what to do, Moray was barely able to recognize the urgency with which Sinclair was straining to turn to his right, away from the pain of his broken arm. Only at the last possible moment did he have an inkling of what was happening, and he twisted sideways just in time to let Sinclair vomit on the floor beside him.

Afterwards, Sinclair lay shuddering and fighting for breath, his head lolling weakly from side to side as Lachlan Moray sat beside him, wringing his hands and fretting over what he should do next, for there was nothing he could think of that might help his friend.