EIGHT

WILLIAM DE WENDENAL

ACRE
THURSDAY, 11TH DAY OF JULY 1191

“FUCK AUSTRIA!” KING RICHARD coughed, and William hoped very much it was not a command.

Richard had been sick for over a week, and his face had aged a century. Though he had barely left the tower since the city’s capture, he still refused to let either William or Robin double for him even to make the simplest of public appearances. It was possible the king resented William’s decision to wear the warcrown on the day the walls broke, but it seemed unlikely. That had been a simple act of necessity, the very type of strategic thinking Richard demanded of them. In hindsight, it was barely even worth mentioning. No, William thought it more likely that the messenger from Saladin had affected Richard more than he would admit, feeding into his inherent paranoia. Others more prone toward conspiracies and ignorance thought the messenger was even responsible for Richard’s illness itself.

William and Robin accompanied him by his circular bed, adorned in silks, where the king was in as much of a tirade as one could successfully throw while lying down.

“Fuck Austria!” he repeated, then rolled into a wheeze and a fit.

The entire world’s population had tried unsuccessfully to siege Acre’s walls before England’s arrival, but the Austrians had at least waited until England and France arrived. They thought this earned them the right to be treated as equal liberators and wanted their flag raised as well, which Richard had refused. Richard’s fever dreams led him to scream some additional choice obscenities about his feelings for Austrians, and the unfortunate size of their collective genitals.

Leaving him to his misery, William drew Robin a comfortable distance aside to talk about supplies. The fighting had stopped, but the city was anything but safe. Surrender, after all, was a fine word for kings to throw around, but in William’s experience it never seemed to matter much to a city’s people. “It was their nature,” Richard had explained, to fight back against whatever occupation they thought was upon them, even their own. The Saracen population at large was peaceful, but factions were prone to gathering in small groups that attacked wherever they saw opportunity.

And now William had heard disturbing stories of soldiers stealing from each other, for want of weaponry. Their replacement shipment had yet to arrive, and many suspected it never would. “We’re losing more each day. Deserters take swords with them, or sell them. If our men aren’t armed, they get scared, they make poor choices.”

Robin dismissed it. “We got through the siege without them.”

“Because we put the swords in the front. The skirmishes that break out now … they could happen anywhere.”

“The men can make do.” Robin shook his head. “It’s war, not a county faire. If they can’t adjust to shifting circumstances, they shouldn’t be here in the first place.”