Knights of the Cross Read Free Page A

nervous, for the ground rose higher than my head and any enemy from the west could approach entirely unseen; at the howl that now rose above the earthen parapet I froze, cursing myself for abandoning my armour. The slap of stumbling footsteps came nearer. Sigurd crouched well back from the embankment, his axe held ready. The rest of the company were likewise poised, their eyes searching the edge of the little cliff for danger.
    With a stuttering shout, a boy reached the slope and plunged over it, flailing his arms like wings as his feet fell away beneath him. He was lucky we were not archers or he would have died in mid-air; instead, he collapsed onto the road and lay there sobbing, a heap of cloth and flesh and dirt. Sigurd’s axe-head darted forward, but he checked it mid-swing as he saw there was no threat in our new arrival. His clothes were torn and his limbs daubed with mud; his beardless face seemed pale, though we could see little enough of it under the arms which cradled it.
    He pressed himself up on his hands and knelt there, his head darting around to look at the fearsome Varangians surrounding him.
    ‘My master,’ he gulped, pulling a scrawny lock of hair from over his face. Recognising perhaps that I alone held no ferocious axe, he fixed his eyes on mine. ‘My master has been killed.’

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    I pulled the boy up by the neck of his tunic, though he still had to tilt his head back to look me in the eye. ‘Where? Killed by the Turks? Who is your master?’
    He wiped a sleeve across his face, smearing it with more grime than he removed. I kept my grip on his shoulder, for there was no strength in his shivering legs. ‘Drogo of Melfi,’ he stammered. ‘In the lord Bohemond’s army. I found him . . .’ His words gave out and he pulled from my grasp, sinking to his knees. ‘I found him over there.’ He pointed back to the top of the embankment whence he had come. ‘Dead.’
    I glanced at Sigurd, then at the darkening sky. Part of my mind scolded that too many men had died already that day without taxing my conscience; that a sobbing servant and a dead Norman knight were no concern of mine, especially when Turkish patrols might yet skulk in the countryside. Perhaps, though, it was the accumulation of so many deaths which weighed most on me: confronted by a snivelling boy grieving for his master, I was defenceless.
    ‘It would be best if your men accompanied us,’ I told Sigurd.
    ‘Best for whom?’ he retorted. ‘The best course for my men is to return to our camp, before night brings out the Turks and Tafurs and wolves.’
    ‘Any wolves near here will have been eaten long since. As for the others—’ I turned to the boy. ‘Is it far?’
    He shook his head. ‘Not far, Lord.’
    ‘Then take us quickly.’
    We found a path up around the embankment and followed the boy over the broken ground that rose towards the hills on the far side of the plain of Antioch. The red earth was sticky underfoot, and all the grasses sprouted spikes and prickles which tore my legs. We came over a low ridge and looked down into a small hollow in the hillside. It was perhaps fifty feet across and formed like a natural amphitheatre in the rising ground. Perhaps it had once been a quarry, for the surrounding walls were pitted and bitten, but the ground underfoot was soft. In its centre, unmoving in the grey dusk, lay the body of a man.
    I crossed quickly and crouched beside him while the Varangians fanned out, sniffing for danger. Behind me I heard Sigurd hiss with disapproval.
    ‘You found him here?’ I asked the boy, who had knelt opposite me. Tears were running down his face, bright in the gloom, but he seemed to me more frightened than sorrowful.
    ‘Here,’ he mumbled. ‘I found him here.’
    ‘How did you know he would be here?’
    He looked up, the terror now plain on his face. ‘He was gone from the camp for many hours. The lord William, lord Bohemond’s brother, he told me to find him. I looked everywhere