“I would like you to carry this letter to your Pope. Your journey was arduous, and I regret having to ask that you repeat it so soon,” the king said. “You will have two days to rest and another three to prepare.”
Philip’s eyes went to the steel-bound ebony chest around three feet long that sat on a side table. The minister lifted the black box in two hands, set it in front of the king and removed the lid.
Thomas muttered a prayer, and Philip didn’t blame the astonished knight. They were gazing at a golden scepter, made in the shape of a long cross and encrusted with emeralds.
“It’s beautiful,” Philip whispered.
A quick smile came to the king’s lips. “Yes, it is beautiful, but it is more than that. It is the symbol of my power. I entrust you to carry this gift to your Pope along with other tokens of my esteem to reassure him that I will soon lead my armies to be by his side in the fight against the infidels. I wish you a safe journey and Godspeed.”
He rose from the table and disappeared through a curtained door. The minister gently lowered the lid. The audience was over.
Five days later Philip and his men left the kingdom of Prester John and headed west. They were accompanied by fifty fierce-eyed horse archers clad in black-robes over light breast armor made of segmented steel plates. Steel skull caps protected their heads. They carried curved swords, but their main weapon was a short bow made of wood and horn, fashioned with the tips curved forward to exact the maximum power from the bronze-tipped arrows launched from the animal sinew strings.
The archers guarded a column of twenty mules harnessed together in pairs and several mule-drawn wooden supply carts. Each pair of mules carried an ebony chest in a hammock slung between their broad backs. The chest holding the scepter rode by itself in a mule cart positioned in the middle of the column. The horse archers called themselves the Guardians. Their sworn duty was to defend the contents of the boxes with their lives.
The iron-handed captain of the Guardians made sure the tightly-spaced column moved at double the average caravan travel speed of eight miles a day regardless of weather or physical barriers.
Philip and Thomas rode side-by-side at the head of the procession. The Italian’s olive complexion had been darkened to near mahogany by years of exposure to harsh sunlight. He rode a fine-limbed chestnut Arabian horse. Like the archers, he wore a breast plate and skull cap. Thomas towered above him, sitting astride a giant Percheron of dappled gray.
As the horses jogged along, Philip looked off at the scorched hills and jagged, snow-peaked mountains. He swept his arm in the air.
“You know me to be a man of great piety, Thomas. But If God is all-powerful, why did He not bring beauty to every part of the world?”
The doctor’s philosophical meanderings had become a familiar refrain against the clop of hooves over thousands of miles traveled together.
“Perhaps He is testing us,” Thomas said.
“Well put, Thomas. Worthy of the most learned theologian. And what a test is in store for us! Just look at this awful place. It is difficult to imagine that God is behind every stone.”
The Crusader was looking at the wrinkled landscape, but with the steely gaze of a military man who saw potential danger rather than the Almighty lurking behind the massive boulders and in the deep ravines. They were traveling along a path that led down into a narrowing valley hemmed in by hills that grew steeper and closer together. A ragged carpet of waist-high bushes and trees with twisted trunks covered the boulder-strewn slopes. Their guide had insisted that the canyon was the quickest way through the mountains.
Thomas saw that it was also a perfect place for an ambush. The caravan could turn back, but the search for another way through the mountains would delay their journey to Rome, and their pack animals needed the water that the guide promised they would have further into the valley.
Thomas had begrudgingly hired the guide at the last caravan stop because he spoke English he had learned from passing travelers. He said he had led many caravans. Thomas didn’t trust him. He had kept a close eye on the man who was riding ahead of the caravan with a knight at his side. He watched as the guide dropped back a few paces from the knight, removed his turban and used it to wipe the sweat off his face.
As if released from a magician’s hat, a flock of silver-feathered birds erupted near a clump of trees about half-way up the slope to the right. Philip watched the birds whirl into the sky, then glanced back and saw a quick on-off firefly glint in the trees.
A cut-off force was in hiding. Another force was likely hidden on the opposite side of the canyon; both were positioned to stop a retreat once the column was ambushed.
The release of the caged birds would signal the main force that the caravan was entering the trap. Thomas smiled. If he had been leading the ambush he would have made sure every shiny metal weapon that could catch sunlight had been sheathed away from the sun’s rays. The lack of discipline was a good sign. The caravan would likely be facing wild bandits rather than a trained army.
Thomas raised his mail-covered fist above his head and the caravan came to a crawling halt at the signal. He leaned over in his saddle and said:
“Master Philip, if you would be so kind as to convey a message to the captain?”
The doctor was the official leader of the caravan, but he deferred to the battle-scarred ex-Crusader in all matters of security. He asked no questions and quickly relayed the message to the captain who rode back along the column to convey the orders to the Guardians.
Two archers slid from their saddles. One went over to a mule-drawn cart that carried a clay pot in a bed of sand and removed the pot cover. Heat blasted from the glowing red embers that allowed fire to be moved from camp to camp. From another cart, the second man removed a wooden bucket that held pieces of smoked meat preserved in melted fat. He carried the bucket along the lines and the archers each plunged arrows into the thick goo.
His comrade fashioned a torch from pieces of kindling and held it close to the embers until it caught fire. He followed the bucket and touched the torch to the fat-soaked arrows. As each arrow flared into flames, the Guardian holding it peeled away from the main column.
The guide galloped back to Thomas.
“Why have we stopped?” the man demanded.
Ignoring the question, Thomas said, “How much did they pay you to betray us?”
Fear flickered in the guide’s dark eyes. He snapped the reins and jerked the animal’s head aside, digging his heels into the mule’s flanks. The move ignited the animal’s reflexes. It lurched forward and broke into a fast trot.
Thomas’ horse reared up on its powerful hind legs and sprang forward with an unexpected agility, covering the ground with long thundering strides. As Thomas caught up with the mule and its rider, he drew his broadsword from its chest scabbard in an exquisitely timed motion and brought it around in a sweeping arc.
The razor edge of the German-forged blade caught the guide’s neck at the base of the skull. The head separated from the shoulders and hit the ground like a ripe melon.
As Thomas galloped back to the caravan, the two lines of Guardians positioned at the base of the hills on both sides of the canyon began to shoot flaming arrows into the air. Each arrow that disappeared into the tree-tops planted a fiery seed. Smoke blossomed where fire had taken hold. Tendrils of flame merged and spread, quickly turning the hillsides into infernos.