00 - Templar's Acre Read Online Free PDF Page A

and Ivo was cautious as he made his way onward.
    A cry, and suddenly missiles were flying all about him. A shot from a sling rattled against metal, then two men nearby fell, but he managed to make his way to the far side of the ship where a
lanky, black-haired youth was sprawled against the timbers, eyes almost as dull as a dead man’s. Ivo threw himself down and glanced back over the deck. There were three men from the
Falcon
lying and moaning, each with an arrow pinning him, but there were more men near him, and all had weapons. The clamour of war still came to him from the other pirate ship, but now as
he looked about, more men were coming to this deck. There was a bellowed order that made him give a grunt of satisfaction. The ropes binding the ships together were cut, and with a shiver, he felt
the vessel shake off her attacker. With a roar of defiance and glee, the sailors of the
Falcon
lifted their arms and shook weapons still smeared with the blood of their enemies.
    Ivo glanced to his side, at the young man beside him. ‘You’ll have a story to tell your children, anyway,’ he told him.
    Baldwin looked at him, and vomited weakly.

BOOK TWO
CRUSADER, JUNE–JULY 1290

CHAPTER FOUR
    The view was one to fill a man’s heart with wonder. Baldwin gaped: truly, this must be the Holy Land. God had preserved him to see this, to fight and protect it. He would
be saved, he thought. His murder would be forgiven here.
    Behind him he had left his guilt in a green, but drab England. There was little colour but grey stone, mud-daubed and whitewashed houses, and grass under a gloomy grey sky.
    As they approached, the vast sweep of a natural bay opened before him, and it was on the northernmost edge that the city of Acre stood. Vast, more glorious than Exeter or Limassol or any of the
great French cities he had passed by and through, it took his breath away. This city gleamed as though it was clothed in perpetual sunlight: a city of gold. Terracotta made a splash of colour, and
there were patches of red, blue and green that rippled in the heat: awnings to provide shade.
    Stone towers ringed a fortress at the tip, overshadowing the rest of the city, and from beneath it, the wall of the harbour stretched out into the bay, where there stood another tower upon a
rocky prominence. There were houses everywhere, and what looked like a monastery, with a castle behind. A double line of walls ringed it, reaching all the way to the sea, the inner wall higher than
the outer so that archers could fire over the heads of men at the outer wall into enemies on the plain. More massive towers rose up along its length, while outside the walls there was a number of
tents and small houses, with farmland beyond.
    A city of gold, with verdant land to feed it, Baldwin thought. Yes, this was how Heaven must look. It was no wonder that men wanted to take it from Christians. Nor that Christians would fight to
the last to protect it.
    ‘That’s the Temple up there at the tip,’ Ivo said with a smile, seeing the direction of his eyes. ‘Templars always pick the best locations. This is their headquarters,
now Jerusalem is lost.’
    ‘That’s why I’m here, to help win it back,’ Baldwin said with a hint of pride.
    ‘Yes?’ Ivo said, and his smile was not unkind as he looked down at Baldwin. He sounded condescending, however, and Baldwin tried not to scowl as he replied.
    ‘I will fight for the Church to win back Jerusalem,’ he said. ‘My father was a knight.’
    ‘You’ve much to learn, Master.’
    Baldwin gave him a sharp look. He did not like to be patronised, but before he could speak, Ivo continued.
    ‘This is the last bastion of Outremer, the “Land Over the Sea”. Twenty years ago we could have taken Jerusalem, but now? We’ve lost the castles, we have lost Lattakieh,
Tripoli, everything.’
    ‘Those who come with pure hearts will win for God,’ Baldwin asserted. ‘He will not allow His land to be taken by the