Devil's Bargain Read Online Free PDF Page B

infidels would set the wood afire. But Richard’s will had held them to their ranks. Now they had come to the mouth of a river not far from the sea. The forest loomed behind them and spread in a dark shadow along the hills to the east. There was open land ahead, a waste of sand and scrub, blessedly naked to the sky.
    They slept under stars in tents huddled close together under heavy guard. Tomorrow’s march would be hard, but there were walls ahead, and the protection of the stronghold, with its gardens and orchards to feed them and give them rest. The cantor’s call soared up: Holy Sepulcher, defend us! Then silence fell, and the swift dark.
     
    Mustafa was having an interesting night. Richard’s scouts were idiots, in his estimation; either they trampled so loudly that half of Islam could hear them, or they lost their way and stumbled headlong into the sultan’s own scouting parties. Mustafa, on the other hand, could move as soft as a shadow when it pleased him, and he could track a man by the memory of his passing in the air. There had been many such passings not long ago—an army’s worth, and not a small army, either.
    When the king’s army camped by the River of Salt just beyond the forest’s edge, he went back into the wood, hunting the sultan’s men. He had a feeling in his bones; that uneasiness drew him out and sent him spying when, like the rest of Richard’s servants, he should have been asleep.
    The army of Islam was somewhat closer than he had expected. The sultan’s sentries were alert: he nearly fell afoul of a party of scouts. The snort of a horse warned him; he scrambled into the feeble cover of a downed tree.
    In daylight that would have been useless, but in the darkthey rode past him. He caught a snatch of conversation, a mutter of Turkish dialect. It was only a few words, but it guided him along the way they had come.
    The camp began just over the hill, spreading far out under the trees. Mustafa made no effort to count the fires. There were too many. The whole army of Islam was here, the massed strength of the jihad.
    He should have left as soon as he knew that, gone back to the Frankish camp and told Richard what he knew and taken his well-earned rest. But it was barely midnight, and Mustafa had a desire to see how far the camp extended. He did not doubt at all that by morning it would have melted away, and the sultan’s army would be up and in arms, awaiting the signal to destroy the Franks.
    He crept toward the camp, moving as soft as a breath of air through the trees. At a sudden clatter, he froze.
    His senses were at fever pitch. A stone had rattled on another. A twig snapped, as loud as a shout. Two burly figures paused at the summit of the hill, silhouetted against the starlit sky, before continuing with their efforts at stealth.
    Franks, of course. They advanced at a crouch, catching every twig and stone, and when that failed, rustling in the undergrowth. Mustafa could have stood upright and walked in his normal fashion behind them, and been both quieter and more difficult to detect.
    The sultan’s sentries caught them beyond the first ring of campfires. Once more Mustafa melted into the darkness. The prisoners would be taken into the camp, he supposed, and held until there could be an exchange, perhaps after the battle. He would wait a little while, then conceal himself in plain sight, walking in his turban and his coat of scale armor among an army of men who looked and dressed much the same as he.
    The sentries bound their captives and flung them down roughly, and without a word exchanged among them, hacked the heads from the men’s shoulders. They left the bodies to bleed out in the forest mould, and took the heads with them into the camp.
    Mustafa lay for a long while with the stink of blood and death in his nostrils and a coldness in his heart. Why he should be so startled, he did not know. War was brutal, and the sultan’s men had not forgiven Richard the massacre of