Behold the Dawn Read Online Free PDF Page B

their own language.
    Marek began extricating himself from his seat of hawser. “Soon as I kill me one of these Mohammedans and get meself absolved, I’m going back to Glasgow and my Maid Dolly. If , of course, she isn’t Goodwife Dolly by now.” He pushed to his feet. “She, for one, would’ve been right pitying to me during the afflictions of the journey.”
    “You wish too much, boyo. Your Dolly’ll have to wait another four years before your indentureship is over.”
    Marek grunted and stumbled over to stand at Annan’s side. “Aye, and why couldn’t you have just let that shopkeeper throw me into some dungeon three years ago for stealing his blinking bread? I’d have gotten out of there a lot sooner than it’ll be before you’re done with me.” He squinted at the oncoming ship, now only a few lengths away. “We got to fight all those sailors?”
    “Nay, we get to run from all those.” Annan rubbed the tightness in his shoulder. Inaction agreed with neither his mental state nor his stiffening bones. A man’s body at two score years was not the same as it was at half that.
    “Probably our cursed luck to have gotten the slowest boat in Venetian waters,” Marek said. “Blessed Saint— Ah, who’s the saint of sailors anyway? I can’t ever remember half of ‘em.”
    “Best keep St. Jude then.” The patron of the hopeless was Marek’s oft-invoked guardian.
    A moan grumbled in the lad’s throat. “I hate water. And I hate ships. And I hate those Mohammedans or whatever they’re called we’re supposed to be fighting. T’awful hard way to get out of Hell, if you’re asking me.”
    “Should have thought of that back in Bari.”
    The Moslem Saracens ’ battle cry floated up from behind:
    Le ilah ile alah!
    A volley of arrows spat overhead, overshooting most of the Bonfilia and smacking into the stern behind Annan and Marek.
    Save for an occasional oath in their own language, the Venetians kept silent. The score of Crusading knights, along with their squires and serving men, stood with their swords bared, their bodies tight and expectant. To either side of the ship, the rhythmic creak and splash of the galley oars were the only signs of the straining muscles and pounding hearts striving from below decks to outrun the infidels.
    Annan clenched his sword, his arm bulging. He had not come here to slay the followers of the Evil Prophet, but if they insisted on bringing the fight to him, he would cut them down with right good will.
    The foremost Moslem ship drew almost prow to prow with the Bonfilia . Infidel sailors massed in the forecastle, swords in hand, grinning. Under the reign of the charismatic warlord Salah ed-in Yusef—dubbed Saladin by the Westerners—the followers of Mohammed had gathered from every region of the East. Moors, their skin the color of night, their faces painted white and red, howled their oaths alongside the Turks and Syrians in their billowy desert garments and their light chain-mail shirts.
    These were the warriors who had wrested the nation of Jerusalem from Christendom and trampled the holy places underfoot. These were the men who believed the key to Paradise was Christian blood upon their swords. Did they know Christians pursued the same Paradise by means of Moslem blood?
    Annan freed the tension in his sword arm and drew his blade. “Be ready. They’ll board us.”
    Marek’s eyes didn’t leave the enemy.
    The two hulls collided with a groan a hundred times as loud as a loose joint grating in its socket, and the whole deck lurched, nearly yanking itself from beneath Annan’s feet. On the Bonfilia ’s larboard side, oars clattered against oars, rowers groaned as they attempted to maintain the ship’s pace, and the Moslems leapt across the open water to the Venetian deck.
    Annan exhaled. This, at last, was a face of the enemy he could fight.
    The deck hands at the rail took the brunt of the attack, two of them shrieking as they plunged into the sea. Annan lowered