He sat on his throne there in the bottomless darkness and as the waves of pain washed over him, he endured them. Welcomed them. Let them feed the awful fires that burned in his heart. And there, deep down in his personal darkness, those flames grew hotter and more terrible still.

Interlude Four

Interlude Four

On the Pilgrims’ Road

The Holy Land

November 1191 C.E.

The three monks pushed the pilgrims toward the rock wall as the riders swept down the hill toward them. The ancient fort was little more than fragments of walls and an overgrown courtyard filled with palm trees whose trunks had burst upward through cracked flagstones. It was poor cover, but it was better than standing out here on the sand, waiting for the Saracens to sweep down and slaughter them.

Most of the pilgrims ran, their prayers strangled from their throats by fear. A few of the more devout wavered, caught between their belief that God would protect them and the fear that He might not chose to do so today. One old man stood his ground and held a cross up and out toward the approaching riders as if that was a shield that could turn any sword. His white beard fluttered in the hot wind.

“Go, go!” yelled Brother Julius, pushing his shoulder. The old man twisted away from the monk.

“No! I shall not move one inch from the path to Holy Jerusalem, and neither devils nor demons nor the swords of the infidels will—”

His words were struck to silence as a crossbow bolt buried itself to the fletching in his throat. The old pilgrim staggered backward a step, touching his fingers to the line of hot blood that ran down his chest. The sheer impossibility of his own death, of his mortality in the presence of God’s grace here on the pilgrims’ road, tethered him for a moment to life. His mouth formed the word “No.” But the only sound that issued from his throat was the wet gurgle.

The old man sagged to his knees and his head slumped forward but he did not fall over, and Brother Julius marveled at the horror and beauty of it all: the devout traveler ending his pilgrimage in a posture of supplication.

More quarrels hissed through the air and Brother Julius wheeled as the caravan horses began to scream when the steel-headed missiles tore into their flesh. One reared high and lashed out, striking a nun on the cheek and snapping her neck with a dry-stick crack.