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stood at his table of maps with the great Colonel Pierre Le Mas. Tall and austere, in a long black habit emblazoned with the Cross of Saint John, La Valette was seventy-one. Fifty years of killing on the high seas had forged his sinew and so, perhaps, he knew whereof he spoke. At twenty-eight he'd survived the blood-soaked tragedy of Rhodes, when the tattered remnant of the Order had been exiled to the waves in the last of their ships. At forty-seven he'd survived a year as a slave in the galley of Abd-ur Rahman. When others would have taken high office within the Order-and on the safety of land-La Valette had chosen decades of ceaseless piracy, his nostrils stuffed with tobacco against the stench. His brow was high and his hair and beard were now silver. His eyes had been bleached by the sun to the color of stone. His face seemed cast from bronze. To him news of the invasion was like some rejuvenating elixir in an Attic myth. He'd embraced the prospect of doom with the ardor of a lover. He was tireless. He was exuberant. He was inspired. Inspired as one whose hatred may at last be unleashed without pity or restraint. What La Valette hated was Islam and all its evil works. What he loved was God and the Religion. And in these the last of his days, God had sent the Religion the blessing of War. War at its apotheosis. War as manifestation of Divine Will. War unfettered and pure, to be fought to its smoking conclusion through every conceivable extreme of cruelty and horror.
    He who has not known War has not known God?
Christ had never blessed the pursuit of arms in any fashion. But, then, there were times when Starkey was certain that La Valette was mad. Mad with the premonition of outrageous violence. Mad with the knowledge that the power of God flowed through him. Mad because who else but a madman could hold the destiny of a people in the palm of his hand and foresee the slaughter of thousands with such equanimity. Starkey crossed the room to join the two old comrades talking over the map table.
    "How much longer must we wait?" said Colonel Le Mas.
    "Ten days? A week? Perhaps less," replied La Valette.
    "I thought we had another month."
    "We were wrong."
    La Valette's office reflected his austere temperament. The tapestries, portraits, and fine furnishings of his predecessors were gone. In their place, stone, wood, paper, ink, candles. A simple wooden crucifix was nailed to the wall. Colonel Pierre Le Mas had arrived that morning from Messina with the unexpected reinforcement of four hundred Spanish soldiers and thirty-two knights of the Order. He was a burly, battle-scarred salt in his late fifties. He nodded to Starkey and indicated the chart on the table.
    "Only a philosopher could decipher these hieroglyphics."
    The map-somewhat to Starkey's chagrin, for he'd overseen the delicate cartography himself-was densely annotated with cryptic notes and symbols of La Valette's devising. The Order of Saint John was divided into eight langues-or tongues-each according to the nationality of its members: those of France, Provence, Auvergne, Italy, Castile, Aragon, Germany, and England. La Valette traced the defensive enceinte that sealed the Borgo in a great stone curve from west to east, pointing out the bastion he'd assigned each langue.
    "France," he said, and marked the far right, hard against Galley Creek. Like Le Mas, La Valette was of that most belligerent of breeds, a Gascon. "Our noble Langue of Provence is next, here on the foremost bastion."
    Le Mas said, "How many are we of Provence?"
    "Seventy-six knights and serjeants at arms." La Valette's finger moved westward along the chart. "On our left is the Langue of Auvergne. Then the Italians-a hundred and sixty-nine lances-then Aragon. Castile. Germany. In total five hundred and twenty-two brethren have answered the call to arms."
    Le Mas furrowed his brow. The number was pitifully small.
    La Valette added, "With the men you brought we have eight hundred Spanish
tercios
and