Crusader Captive. Merline Lovelace
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of spine, he ignored the heckling noises from the crowd as coins changed hands, ignored the pain of his lacerated back, ignored all until his new master beckoned imperiously for him to follow. Chains clanking, he hobbled back to the pens crammed with despairing captives.
Once there, the slave master struck off his leg irons. He refused to wince as the man knocked the pins from the cuffs with callous indifference, but fiery pain seared his bruised and bloodied ankles. Teeth gritted, Simon locked his hands together and contemplated a last, desperate act. He was too weak from lack of sustenance to acquit himself in a full-pitched battle, but he could still swing his wrist chain in a deadly arc.
He would not get far. Not in this crowded marketplace. Simon accepted that. But he would die fighting, as he’d sworn to do when he’d accepted the burden of his sire’s pledge. He had intertwined his fingers and was poised for attack when his new master issued a terse command.
“Follow me.”
Simon blinked. Had he heard aright? Had the man addressed him in his own tongue? In a pure accent that marked him unmistakably as a Frank?
“Who are you?”
“You will learn in good time,” the man growled. “Come, we must make haste.”
Simon’s thoughts chased around and around, like a dog after its own tail. He could still swing the length of wrist chain. Still crush a skull or two or three before he was taken down. Or he could follow this man and see where he led…
He led to a small but well-armed cavalcade waiting in the shadow of the city’s walls. Simon’s pulse leaped at his first glimpse of a midnight-black Arabian steed that looked as though he would run with the wind. It leaped again when he saw who straddled the courser’s back.
The woman from the marketplace. Despite her hooded cloak and the veil that obscured everything but her eyes, he’d recognized her immediately. She’d stood taller than the others of her sex, and straighter. As if used to holding her head up among men instead of bending it in proper subservience.
He’d seen how she’d appraised him, like a fishwife looking over the day’s catch. Was she wife to the man who’d bought him? Daughter? Would she expect Simon to bow and scrape? Not while he had a breath left in him, he vowed with a touch of the same scorn that had curled his lip when he’d caught her gaze in the marketplace.
The woman’s eyes narrowed but she said not a word as his new master gestured to a dun-colored barb shifting restlessly at the end of its reins.
“Mount,” the man ordered tersely, “and get you a good seat in the saddle. We’ve a hard ride ahead.”
“Where do we ride?”
“That’s not your concern. Mount.”
Despite his manacled wrists, Simon swung into the saddle with the ease of one more used to being ahorse than afoot. It galled him no little that he wasn’t allowed to take the reins. Those were held fast by a heathen in a white turban.
He’d barely found the stirrups before his new master set off. The female rode at his side. Simon and the guard holding his reins followed, with two more turbaned outriders bringing up the rear.
They halted at the city gates, where the one who’d bought him slipped a handful of coins to the pikemen guarding the entrance. Once clear of the mud huts surrounding the city they gained a well-traveled highway. Steep hills blanketed with olive trees bordered the road on the left. The sea stretched endlessly on the right.
The sun hanging low over the azure waters told Simon they were headed north. But north to where? Frowning, he struggled to draw on his hazy grasp of the geography of the East.
The Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem was little more than a narrow strip of land squeezed between desert, mountain and sea. A much-beleaguered strip, to be sure, wrested from its original inhabitants during the First Crusade a mere fifty years ago. From the bits and pieces he’d been able to gather from his captors, Simon knew that the city they’d just left lay somewhere close to the kingdom’s border. If this troop continued to ride north, they would come even closer.
Close enough that he might find sanctuary if he escaped. When he escaped, he amended fiercely. He hadn’t come all this way to spend the rest of his life in chains. He might be the fifth son of a minor and most disreputable baron, but he’d won more battles than he’d lost. This one, he vowed grimly, was not yet over.
His hope of escape rose with each thud of his mount’s hooves, only to be dashed some moments later like the waves crashing against the rocks below. News traveled so slowly between East and West. The infidels could well have taken the southern reaches of the Latin Kingdom, just as they’d taken the great principality of Edessa to the north, the loss of which had precipitated the Second Crusade. For all Simon knew, even that most sacred of all Christian sites, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, could have fallen.
The mere thought made his insides churn. He’d come so far. To fulfill his father’s vow and salvage his own soul, he must find some means to complete the last leg of his journey and join the ranks of Templars. He was sorting through various strategies when his new master stiffened in the saddle.
“Fatamids,” he grunted in a voice just loud enough to carry over the restless murmur of the sea.
Simon narrowed his eyes against the sun’s glare and studied the mounted patrol some distance ahead. Their conical helmets identified them as readily as the Arabic symbols on their blood-red pennant. He expected his new master to approach them, mayhap hand over more coins as tariff for using the road. To his amazement, the woman took charge.
“They fly the pennant of the sultan’s personal regiment,” he heard her mutter. “If they stop us, we won’t be able to bribe them as we did the guards at the city gates.”
“Especially if they recognize you, milady,” the man beside her agreed grimly.
So this veiled female was a Frank, and one of high rank. Simon barely had time to absorb those astounding facts before she cast a look over her shoulder. He caught a glimpse of brown eyes blazing with determination as she measured the mettle of her escort.
“I know these hills and orchards well,” she told them in an urgent tone. “Guy of Bures held them in fief before he lost them to the Fatamids. I spent nigh on one summer here with Guy’s wife and daughters. Follow where I lead.”
Before any could protest, she tugged on the reins and dug her heels into her mount’s sides. The sleek Arabian leaped off the road. Its rider canted well forward in her saddle and sent it racing toward the olive trees that climbed the steep hillside.
Cursing, the man Simon now recognized as the woman’s lieutenant dragged his mount’s head around and charged after her. Simon was forced to cling to the saddle like a hapless monkey as he and the rest of the troop followed. Gnarled, twisted tree trunks blackened by age flashed by. Ancient boughs feathered with silver leaves whipped past. He ducked two branches, was lashed by a third.
Over the hammer of iron-shod hooves on the rocky soil, he heard a distant shout. A glance over his shoulder confirmed that the sultan’s troop was giving chase. His trained eye saw at once it was well armed and well horsed.
The fire of battle rose in him. His manacled hands curled tight, as if to grip a lance or sword. He told himself he should care not whose hands he passed into. A slave was a slave was a slave. Yet everything in him rebelled at the idea of being caught weaponless if there was to be a battle. Cursing, he swung forward in his saddle—and felt his heart near jump out of his throat.
They’d reached the crest of the hill. In an instant of sheer disbelief, Simon saw it was slashed by what looked like a bottomless crevasse. The gaping fissure stretched in either direction as far as he could see. And the only means to cross it was a wood-and-hemp bridge that looked as though it would not support a shoat, let alone a horse and rider.
The female in the lead dragged on the reins and brought her mount to a snorting, skittering stop. When she threw her leg over the pommel and slid from the saddle,