Hegel awoke with a start, the fever finally broken upon his fire-bald pate. Looking around the dark room, he felt for his pick on the bed beside him and grew anxious at its absence. His armor lay draped over a nearby chair but when he attempted to stand his legs shuddered and he fell to the floor. Lying still for several moments, he listened to the drone of voices outside the door. Closing his eyes, he tried to remember what had happened before his illness but all he remembered was the vicious drubbing they had administered to the Arab at finding Barousse dead under his watch.
The door flew open and Hegel’s eyes glazed at the brightness flowing in, the unmistakable silhouette of Manfried framed in sunlight. Then the door closed and Manfried helped him onto the bed, placing a bottle in his hands. Hegel drank and coughed, his brother grinning at him until he returned the wine.
“What happened?” asked Hegel.
“Her Will fuckin served.” Manfried had a sip. “Not up on the specifics, as I’s just risen myself. Seems maybe we shouldn’t a et that witch after all, tried to poison us even in death.”
“Told you’s much. Probably why my recollections ain’t comin.”
“Told me’s much? You certainly ain’t recollectin proper.”
“What you got? I got that Arab beggin when we put Her Will into him and little more.”
“A day or two after that him and that mutinous Lucian was on the beams and I fired a bolt at’em.”
“Sport or necessity?”
“Suppose it must a been one a the two. Pinned Lucy to the mast with it, clean through the brainpan. Even Rigo laughed at that one, bastard’s body flappin and danglin til the bolt snapped and he fell.”
“Anythin else?”
“The Arab wouldn’t come down so I was gonna fell his roost. Didn’t get round to it, apparently.”
“Got airs on, thinkin we’s gonna stand for him wearin the captain’s flag like a cassock.” Later things were coming to Hegel now, things involving the Arab. “Didn’t he make at you with a knife?”
“Don’t think so.” Manfried knit his brows. “If he did, must a put’em proper, as I got no such wound.”
“But after you kilt that Lucian?”
“Hazy at best. We’s sailin, and they’s fishin but ain’t catch a tadpole. Ended up cuttin the Judas knight off the mast cause his rot was workin on the sail. Then we pitched’em overboard, along with the rest a them dogwhores.”
“Captain Bar Goose included?” asked Hegel.
“You takin me for a heathen? Barousse we left below.”
“And the witch?”
“Someone put her over when we was asleep. Martyn won’t own up, but we’ll beat it out a him when you’s feelin revived.”
“So we in the sandlands yet?” Hegel asked after a period of silent reflection.
“Nah, but gettin closer.”
Hegel blinked and rubbed the down mattress with his surprisingly clean palm. Looking back to Manfried, he scowled and said, “So when was you thinkin bout stoppin with the tooth display and tellin me just what in Her Name is happinin? What it is, cause I know you didn’t stitch me this softness out a old turnip sacks.”
“Come and look, brother.” Manfried finished the wine and helped Hegel rise. “Come and take a gander at Her Benevolence.”
Arm in arm they went to the door and Manfried led him outside. Light blinded Hegel but his brother moved him forward, the sounds of the ocean nearly suffocated by the clamor of men and the nickering of horses. Even the presence of equines could not diminish Hegel’s awe when his eyes finally took in their surroundings.
They stood on the deck of a massive ship, fully three times as large as their original vessel. The dozens of men did not rob him of breath, nor did the cheer that went up from them at his appearance. What shocked even a living saint was the fleet of ships cutting the sea around them, a prodigious, floating forest of masts, many of them flying huge white sails emblazoned with blood-red crosses.
“We was delivered to an island.” Manfried’s swept his arm in front of them. “An island full a honest men just itchin to head south and get a piece a what the Infidel’s holdin.”
“Mary bless us!”
“Yes She has! Martyn!” Manfried shouted, and the cardinal appeared across the deck. “Come and hear it from his mouth, brother! That fool’s made amends in full to Her Eminence.”
“Brother Hegel!” Martyn panted, scurrying up the stairs to the raised deck. “The Virgin’s caress has balmed you once more from the grave, delivered into such hands as are scarce fit to stroke you!”
“You didn’t leave him alone with me whiles I was under, did you?” Hegel muttered to his brother.
The first thing that set Hegel on edge was Martyn’s reluctance to drink with them. Under threat of harm he relented and sipped at his wine, his thirsty eyes drinking more of it than his lips. As he talked he forgot himself and drank more of the wine, but before they could open a second bottle his story had concluded.
Martyn’s rendition shared a number of similarities with the actual event, but this could be attributed to coincidence. Their ship had indeed floated unmanned for several days while they all raved and weakened from dehydration, and they had floated into the current surrounding Rhodes. Here their ship was sighted and brought in, and within two days of arriving they had set out again, this time in the company of hundreds of men intent as they on reaching the domain of the Infidel. Martyn’s implication that they had left entirely under his command as Mary’s chosen representative on Earth is where the tale began to stray from the truth.
After years of unsuccessfully petitioning king and pope, duke and emperor, King Peter of Cyprus had completed by his own hand preparations for a crusade. Admittedly, the Hospitallers of Rhodes had not intended to invest themselves fully before the arrival of Cardinal Martyn and his followers. The news that Pope Urban V had died, and the subsequent mutilation of his corpse at the hands of heretics, caused more distress among the holy men than can be adequately conveyed in simple words. The similarity between this atrocity and that which had befallen Formosus so long past did not escape their notice.
That Cardinal Martyn seemed out of sorts was to be expected, they reasoned, and his overindulgence in beer was attributed to the lack of any other drink upon their wrecked vessel. Ten of the Hospitallers’ most zealous Imperial brothers were granted permission to serve as Cardinal Martyn’s guard despite the balking of the grand bailiff. The earnest knights persuaded the grand master that because the cardinal was of the rare number from their homeland they had as large an obligation to his safety as to Rhodes’ defense. All assumed bed rest and water would restore the cardinal to a more reserved demeanor.
The shifting of targets from Palestine to Alexandria actually had been influenced by the Grossbarts. Among the proposed plans drawn up on Rhodes, landing in Egypt to take the Infidel unawares Peter had previously thought to be the most foolish of all, despite the economic advantages that the destruction of Cyprus’s chief competitor would yield. After hearing Cardinal Martyn’s tales of the Brothers’ near-saintly closeness to the Virgin, the confused heir to the throne of Jerusalem went to the hospital beds of the Grossbarts. The grand marshal of the Hospitallers could not speak German either but as he hefted the military weight of the order he accompanied Peter, praying the Cypriot ruler would defer to the wisdom of a direct assault on his rightful kingdom.
Bidding his host to wait outside the arched door, King Peter entered the private room intended to quarantine those damned with the pest. The sight of those pilgrims basted with fever, rolling on their cots and groaning Her Name, broke his proud heart. Shame scalded the righteous king’s cheeks, the misery of these two men moving him in ways unfamiliar. Even when demons rose to thwart them they had persevered, and now the cost of their devotion was made physical upon their flesh. Kneeling between their beds, he closed his eyes and prayed.
“If only you would give me a sign as sure as that which moved these Imperials to find me,” Peter whispered.
“Gyptland!” the silver-bearded man moaned.
“Gyptland!” the copper-bearded man repeated.
Leaping up, Peter stared intently at the men, the word precise despite the language. When he later discovered they only spoke German his belief in a higher answer seemed affirmed. If Venezia and other papal kingdoms had come around and were sending men as Martyn implied, the force leaving Rhodes could secure the port city on the bank of the Nile, assuring a safe landing for the others before pressing inward. The murder of the Pope might bespeak an infiltration of the Arab subtler than that of the Turk, and an army could be lurking in ambush for them at Palestine. A man rarely has his prayer answered so quickly and assuredly, even a king. Alexandria, then.
“And you talked’em into sailin right away?” Hegel asked the cardinal.
“We arrived on the very day they were to leave harbor, but they delayed long enough to hear and heed my council.” Martyn smiled and reached for his glass.
“Our council through your lips,” Manfried corrected. “Credit yourself by creditin us.”
“Ah.” Martyn nodded. “My tongue tripped over my pride.”
“And the Arab?” Hegel asked.
“No doubt dozing in the desert.” Martyn smirked. “Unsuspecting their days of idolatrous sloth are waning.”
“No, you twit, the Arab what was on our boat. The mecky little cunt with the mustache,” Hegel clarified.
“With the horses.” Martyn tapped his foot. “Below, where he belongs.”
“Keep him outta trouble.” Manfried nodded. “And the captain?”
“Who?” Martyn blinked. “Barousse?”
“Who else?” Hegel opened the other bottle of wine.
“He’s, well, he’s dead.” Martyn glanced nervously from brother to brother.
“We know that,” said Manfried. “What they did with his flesh and bones?”
“Buried him in the churchyard of the Knights of the Hospital of Saint John,” Martyn answered. “He received final absolution and reward for his devotion to the cause.”
“Knights a what?” Hegel asked, remembering Sir Jean’s treachery.
“The Hospitallers.” Martyn’s pupils crested the tops of his eyes. “They who saved us, and now journey with us on their ships?”
Manfried scowled at this but Hegel seemed satisfied. “If they’s takin us to Gyptland I reckon they’s likely not heretics, brother.”
Martyn spluttered on his second glass of wine and set it on the table. “I would not talk so of these men, Grossbarts. The wild hair of youth must be tamed, and you must master that tongue of yours, especially in the company of cardinals and monastic knights, to say naught of the king.”
Manfried hooked his foot under Martyn’s chair and pulled, sending the man toppling to the floor. “I’d mind that tongue a yours, lest it get slit like a serpent’s!”
“See now.” Hegel leaned in. “You sayin there’s a king round here? He a relation to old Charles back home?”
Martyn picked himself up from the floor, eyes narrowed at Manfried. “You bed in the cabin reserved for he, who, in his benevolence, granted it for your convalescence. As you both seem recovered, I’ll send for him, as he has anxiously awaited your council.”
“Send up Rigo and that other, we got words for them, too.” Hegel reclined in his chair, enjoying his drink.
Rodrigo had been taken onto the ship by force after insisting they not inter his beloved captain in the Hospitallers’ cemetery and that he instead travel with them. Only Martyn’s insistence on the young Italian’s faith spared him the noose when he kicked and fought rather than leave the side of the festering remains.
Despite his wish to put his brigand days behind him Raphael had little choice but to follow after hearing every last gold bar on board their boat had gone with the cardinal. Being better sorted after a day’s rest and drink than any other save Martyn, the mercenary conned his way into a suit of armor and new weaponry before joining the grief-addled Rodrigo in the new ship’s berth.
Raphael and Rodrigo dutifully came to the cabin and drank with the Grossbarts. Raphael had also noticed a distinct shift in Martyn’s character, suspiciously observing the man rarely drank more than a sip or two of wine, and never stonger stuff. Any hopes the mercenary held of thanks from Grossbart lips now that they were in good health dwindled as they badgered the two about slacking at the sails and letting Martyn call the shots. Furthermore, there was the question of where exactly all their gold had gotten to.
“The prie-Er, the cardinal say he takes care of that.” Raphael looked around but Martyn had vanished.
“Mecky fuckin hole!” Manfried yelled. “Martyn! Where’s that trickster?”
“What was you doin while our gold was gettin cardinal-touched?” Hegel asked Rodrigo.
“Nothing,” Rodrigo replied, his once-bold face wearing a wan grimace.
“Gotta been doin somethin.” Manfried considered slapping the man to get him to pay attention when the door opened and the King of Cyprus entered.
The Grossbarts blinked at the friendly, immaculately dressed man approaching their table, accompanied by several no less suave advisors. He congratulated them on their recovery and praised the Trinity, offering his condolences for their illness and loss of crew. Then he exuberantly launched into the specifics of their plan, righting Martyn’s spilled chair and joining their table. They did not understand a word he said, and Manfried rose to strike the dandy for his ill manners. Rodrigo finally smiled, expectantly watching Manfried, but Raphael intervened as translator.
“This own person be the king,” Raphael explained, slipping from his chair and kneeling.
“Oh,” said Manfried, and extended his hand. “Manfried Grossbart, servant a Mary.”
“Hegel Grossbart, living saint.” Hegel held a bottle in one hand and offered the other.
Peter coddled Manfried’s hand in both of his and pumped it excitedly as Raphael translated. The murmurs of his advisors that these men had not showed proper supplication was quieted with a word from Peter, and with their flawed but earnest translator resuming his seat the men talked of Gyptland, Jerusalem, and Mary. Rodrigo occasionally interrupted with harsh statements on the nature of devotion and eternal rewards, and if either brother had understood Italian they would have struck him for his foolishness. Luckily they did not, and in light of the man’s loss Peter took no offense, so only the advisors and Raphael were concerned by the fellow’s vindictive pronouncements.
Had Rodrigo accurately interpreted the dialogue between Peter and the Grossbarts the Brothers’ gross blasphemies would surely have caused trouble, but he did not and the tongue-tied and awestruck Raphael could not have conveyed the extent of their heretical ramblings had he even been inclined. Instead, all save Rodrigo and the worried advisors enjoyed the wine and conversation, supplemented by a feast brought to them by servants toiling somewhere below. Although a touch put out that they had not offered him back his cabin, Peter left satisfied they were indeed divinely inspired, and the Grossbarts agreed the king was not such the cunt for being a noble.
Time passed, the Grossbarts spending their days in the ordinary fashion of fighting, eating, and drinking, and their nights in the extraordinary company of a king. The cardinal often joined them but abstained from helping translate as much to save his own skin as to save theirs; instead Martyn glumly watched the imported tiger lilies he had plucked from the gardens of Rhodes lose their ginger luster and become ashen. Rodrigo was excluded from these repasts as his offensiveness was easily understood by Peter; the despondent man would gaze north from the stern, his tears joining those of Mary, which fill the oceans of the world.
As the ruby clouds swirled atop the horizon like steam atop a stew, Manfried strode up beside Rodrigo. The Grossbart had noted the change in the man’s demeanor, and such melancholy sat poorly with Manfried. The boy would either straighten out or go over the side, because with Gyptland at hand he would not tolerate such folly.
“Still worryin on the captain’s account?” Manfried shook his head in disbelief.
“He was all I had,” Rodrigo sniveled. “First my mother, then father, then my brother, and now him. All dead.”
The tears returned but before Rodrigo could turn back to the sunset Manfried had snatched him by his hair, tugging on his healing, scabby scalp and turning his head to face him.
“Tell me he ain’t better served where he’s at,” Manfried snapped, and when the lad dumbly stared at him he went on. “Still the doubter, eh? You say he ain’t better served with the Virgin than on this lousy boat with a company a blood-handed men?”
“I want him-”
“You want him what? Alive and pained stead a at his reward? Want him to suffer long with us? Selfish, that,” said Manfried, still gripping Rodrigo’s hair.
Rodrigo’s scalp peeled back a little as he went for Manfried’s throat, stopping when his perforated hand tried to close around the Grossbart’s neck. Then the young man slumped and Manfried released him.
“Think on it. He’s gone where we all will, Mary be praised. You think to imply other than he’s better now than fore and I’ll prove you wrong. Course, heretics don’t never reach where he’s at, meanin if you do wanna see him and the rest a your morally skint kinfolk again you’d best straighten your mecky ass out.”
“You know nothing!” Rodrigo screamed, his face shining. “Nothing! He was sick of mind when you came, and you made him worse! I knew you’d bring his end!”
“Men bring their ends on themselves,” said Manfried.
“He listened to you!” said Rodrigo. “Years I obeyed him as a son obeys a father, and for what? You come into our house and suddenly it’s you and not me he trusts!”
“Way the wheel spins,” said Manfried, with what he assumed was a sagacious air. “Maybe if you’d been a better son to ’em he’d never a set foot on that boat. Maybe he’d a listened to you.” The Grossbart did not look at Rodrigo as he left, his satisfied smile unseen by all but Her.
In the sea-bound stable, Al-Gassur showed the bundled relic he had begun to think of as his brother’s heart to the horses, which stomped and whinnied whenever the item left his cloak. He regaled the steeds with the legend of Barousse and whispered in their long ears how he would sell the Grossbarts to the first Bedouin slavers they encountered. Then eastward for him, to find a sea containing a bride of his own, and perhaps to meet his brother again under the waves.
When they sighted the coast Hegel and Manfried slapped each other and King Peter on the back until welts rose. At dawn they coasted into the harbor of Alexandria and the Grossbarts led the charge down the docks, armor and weapons glowing in the autumn sun.
The massacre that ensued is well documented elsewhere, neither women nor children spared from butchery. The unsuspecting citizens fled as best they could but not before the waves splashing the quays were crimson and the gutters filled with blood. Unlike many of the Hospitallers and Cypriots, the Grossbarts and Raphael took no pleasure from the slaughter, going to task as men have always toiled-with bored disdain. Al-Gassur followed the Grossbarts from a safe distance, liberating bottles and coins from the dead and the dying left in their wake. Rodrigo refused to partake or even watch, creeping back onto the ship and drinking himself into a miserable stupor.
Breaking into a multi-domed manse, the Grossbarts found their way to the larder and wiled away the twilight hours drinking syrupy wines and gorging on strange meats and fruits. There they spent the night, Raphael forced to take first watch and Al-Gassur shoved outside until daylight. At dawn they wandered the vacant streets, idly making toward two monoliths rising in the distance. Standing before Cleopatra’s Needles, the Brothers yawned.
“What you make a all them shapes etched on there?” Hegel peered at the black obelisks. “Reckon there might be someone under them?”
“Might be.” Manfried pressed his cropped ear to the side of the less worn monument and banged with his mace. “First let’s see if there’s some kind a door up here.”
There was not. Disgruntled and sweating, unable to find portal or crease, they sat between the two, chewing their beards. Before they could resume their efforts one of the Hospitallers in Martyn’s service spotted them and brought them to the cardinal and the king, who had established themselves in a palace.
The Grossbarts would look back on the time they spent with King Peter as if recalling a fairy tale, with embellishments added only through a failure to recollect the specifics. They characteristically avoided the bridge over the canal leading to the battle lines, where the city’s inhabitants successfully held off the crusaders, instead surreptitiouly crossing in quieter quarters to vainly prowl for tomb-cities. They were undeniably sloshed for the bulk of their stay in Alexandria, which ended up being only a few days. After their unsuccessful attempt to pry open the solid stone of the Needles, they shunned the column of Diocletian towering nearby and so never discovered the Catacombs of Kom el Shoqafa or the Christian and Jewish cemeteries thereabouts.
Their innate gold-hunger led them at last to the alabaster tomb of that mighty city’s mighty founder, but his gold casket and bejeweled scepter had been pinched long before. They were impressed by the quality of workmanship but annoyed their predecessors had not marked the grave in some way to denote its hollowness, which would have saved them time and toil.
Finally, at long last, the red glimmer of evening revealed to them the grand graveyard of Chatby, and both were struck mute by the sheer volume of stone markers and crypts. A number of other crusaders were already at work, and rather than risk drawing Mary’s disfavor by associating themselves with amateurs they returned to the palace to coerce the king into putting a stop to the looting so that they might do it properly.
The next morning, however, word arrived that the Mamluks, those slaves-become-masters who ruled all of Gyptland, had a massive army approaching the city by sea, land, and river, and despite Peter’s protests the fleet prepared to abandon its conquest. Standing on the dock that final morning with the hordes of the Infidel entering the rear of the city, the Grossbarts dismissed Peter’s pleas to accompany him back to Cyprus.
“Shit, sure we got plenty a gold, notwithstanding that what the cardinal donated.” Manfried shot a glare at Martyn. “But that’s missin the point.”
“Yeah,” Hegel explained, “you gotta have faith there’s still more gold locked up in them heathen tombs.”
Peter nodded at Raphael’s translation that faith was indeed more valuable than physical wealth, and through the interpreter Peter gave his assurance that he would return with a larger army. This the Grossbarts agreed to be the sensible option, there being no way they could transport all their loot in a canoe as Hegel had originally theorized. So king and Grossbarts parted as allies and almost equals, neither party knowing what Mary held for them. Before he could rally another crusade King Peter would be assassinated by papal schemers eager to suppress what would become known as the Grossbart Heresy, and as for what befell the Brothers themselves, one must press a little further into Gyptland.
Rodrigo’s attempt to stow away back to his captain’s bones was thwarted by snooping knights, and he was escorted back into the Grossbarts’ company. Al-Gassur beamed at the ships, waving his brother’s swaddled prize as they slipped out of harbor. The ten Imperial Hospitallers resolved to stay with the cardinal after the Grossbarts convinced Martyn his aim of returning to Rhodes might be unsound. The winking reminder that perhaps word had come from Venezia regarding the future of the papacy convinced Raphael to stay as it did the cardinal.
Having little interest in meeting the Mamluk host, the sixteen men boosted a small galley and set off down the canal leading to the Nile and the tombs of legend; the defenders on the bridge retreated to join their reinforcements and thus allowed the Grossbarts to slip away. Only as they whisked down the canal and passed the enormous eastern necropolis did they realize how ripe with graves was Alexandria. The remorse such an epiphany brings might cripple a lesser graverobber, but these were Grossbarts, and after the initial cursing the disappointment instead honed their gluttonous appetites.
To think the Grossbarts were happy now that their lifetime goal was fulfilled is to misjudge them completely. They found no wonder in a river flowing north and were intensely put out to have ten heavily armored men crowding their vessel who answered to Martyn instead of them, even if the crusaders were the ones doing the rowing. Only with kicks and punches were they able to convince Rodrigo of the necessity of his helping pilot the boat, fiddle with the oarlocks, and do everything else required to keep them moving. From their vantage they made out only sandy banks and silt-muddied water, small and dank islands rearing up where tributaries joined and broke from their liquid road.
After they had dropped anchor the first night in the boat, the Brothers stared upriver long past moonrise. Raphael, Rodrigo, and Al-Gassur joined them, and for the first time since meeting all five shared a drink in silence, putting aside the crisscrossing paths of mutual aversion to stare at the moon-glowing river and listen to the bizarre conglomeration of sounds. The quiet of the scorching day had worried the seasoned Grossbarts, who knew full well silent places in nature often bespeak demons, but the cacophony of nearby splashes, chirps, and whistles could hardly be viewed as preferable.
They started again when light crept over the bank, and at a fork Rodrigo directed them up the left channel. The Grossbarts grew increasingly frustrated as the day waned and no steepled churches emerged to herald plunderable cemeteries. Only the sun shone gold, turning the river all manner of strange colors that evening, the bank to their left replaced by an endless bog.
No sooner had they dropped anchor than the darkness fully settled. Then they all saw the lights ahead, as if a small city slowly drifted toward them on the current. The Grossbarts hissed orders and gathered their arms, but when the lights grew closer and larger they realized flight could be their only salvation as the massive ships approached.
Raising anchor they awkwardly maneuvered about and rowed downstream, picking up the current and flying over the black water. The ships disappeared around the curve and the nose of their boat slammed into something. The sound of splintering wood is not something to take lightly on a river, and water had flooded the galley up to their ankles by the time they had freed themselves from the submerged log. They managed to reach the nearby bank but the hole punched in the side made further use of the boat impossible until they could fix it-assuming, of course, that they could.
The ships reappeared around the bend and the Grossbarts hopped overboard, Rodrigo and Martyn joining the Brothers on the swampy shore. As they unloaded the boat, Martyn struck the cackling Arab in the mouth, sending Al-Gassur tumbling into the mire. The Hospitallers trudged dutifully after as the group splashed through sludge and waded through pools, collectively collapsing behind a mucky island no bigger than a half-sunk wagon when the ships came within earshot, men rushing about on deck and yelling to the vessels behind them.
A collective groan washed over the party as lights fell on their nearby boat, everyone digging further into the filth. Rather than stopping, however, the first ship glided past and the men began to hope. Two more ships, and then the last, a great whale of a galley, rows of oars raised as the current swept them along. From this final boat several smoldering bundles fell into the Grossbarts’ beached ship and the waterlogged vessel unexpectedly exploded in flames. Then the ships were gone around another bend, leaving only the moon to display the smoke rising from where their boat had sat.
While neither would admit it, that night, soaked to the bone and coated in mud, was the most miserable the Grossbarts had yet experienced. The twitterings and slurpings rose to a raucous cheer, mocking their dejection. Not one voice broke the silence to lament their lot, the slime around Al-Gassur vibrating from his repressed laughter. The summit of the gelatinous island proved no more dry or pleasant than its base, and before the sun even rose they tramped back to the ruins of their boat.
Rodrigo and Al-Gassur walked downstream a bit to laugh without fear of reprisal until they both collapsed. Their shared mirth quickly degenerated into a fight when Al-Gassur again imitated the deceased Ennio, lying in the mud and whispering to the livid Rodrigo how the Grossbarts had murdered his brother. The incensed man reopened his punctured palm during the fracas, the sight of which cheered the gloomy Grossbarts.
“Back to Alexandria, then?” Martyn said hopefully, nudging the burnt out shell of their galley. “We’ve only gone a few days upriver, so surely-”
“Surely that city’s thick with Arabs by now,” Manfried said.
“Them boats wasn’t carryin pilgrims such’s us, mark me,” Hegel agreed.
“But without a boat, how will we travel?” Martyn asked what he thought to be a rhetorical question, being as they were surrounded by swampland.
“Unlike yourself, we didn’t sail out the womb with boats stead a feet.” Manfried shouldered his pack. “Given as I am to thinkin fordin yon river might prove a task what with our armor and such, I move we hike upstream as we’s been.”
“Damietta is east of Alexandria.” One of the Hospitallers broke with the clump of men and motioned away from the river, over the bog. “That is the closest other city.”
“Seein as you’s speakin proper, I find it disconcertin you think so simple,” Manfried replied. “If we’s trekkin through marsh, might’s well do it next to clean water stead a that meck.”
“Farewell, then,” the man said, filling a waterskin from the river. “Cardinal, I assume you will travel with us?”
Martyn looked to the Grossbarts, who were both smiling at him and shaking their heads, hands on pick and mace. “No,” he sighed, “I have faith Mary will guide us.”
“Fine.” The warrior-monk stood, the previous days in close company with both cardinal and Grossbarts having convinced him of their madness. “When we reach Rhodes I’ll inform the king and the new Pope of your decision.”
“New Pope?” Martyn had nearly forgotten his own previous delusions that these men had based all of their decisions upon. The Hospitallers convened, and several of them exchanged soft words before three split from the pack and marched to Martyn. These men knelt in the muck and pledged their continued dedication to his safety while their brothers turned their backs on the Grossbarts. Of the three Moritz spoke both Italian and German while Bruno and Werner knew only German, their voices unwavering as they dirtied their lips on the silt of the Nile.
The other seven Hospitallers marched toward the rising sun. Just out of sight of their former company, they were cheered to discover the bog yielded to lush farmland and bountiful orchards. They rested in the shade of an enormous tree and gorged themselves on dates, unaware that a salamander had nested in the roots and infected every fruit with its dread toxins. They all began convulsing and sweating blood, and only after their organs burst from the heat did their suffering end.
“Settled then.” Hegel nodded south up the river. “Get Rigo off our Arab and we can move on.”
The bloodied Al-Gassur assured the Grossbarts they had made the correct choice, for just up the river lay churchyards grander than Alexandria and Venezia combined. A week passed and no cemeteries appeared, only the swamp they plodded through and the river bordering it. A viper bit Werner in the hand when he filled his waterskin and within an hour the knight expired, bloated and rotting as if he had spent weeks submerged in the Nile.
Even the mighty rations of the Grossbarts dwindled, and one evening when they scrambled up a rare dry prominence a crocodile attacked Bruno. The beast exploded out of the muck bordering the rise, its huge jaws latching onto his leg. The knight, confronted with the ancestral nemesis of his kind, let out a scream as the dragon yanked him into the water. The Brothers Grossbart came to his rescue, but while Hegel’s pick skewered its brain, in the chaos Manfried snapped Bruno’s neck with his mace. Only after did Hegel realize the rolling monster had slashed open his boot and shin with its claws. They smoked the salty, wet crocodile meat with the dead shrubbery shrouding the top of the mound, even the wounded Hegel happier for the encounter. Moritz and Martyn interred Bruno in the mud, and the Hospitaller cross they marked his grave with found its way into Al-Gassur’s bag.
In the days that followed the pain in Hegel’s leg worsened, as did his attitude. Manfried’s attempts to figure where this new monstrosity fit into their growing catalogue went unanswered by his limping brother. Hegel stole the Arab’s crutch but even with a peg leg and no assistance Al-Gassur moved quicker than he. Huts could sometimes be dimly seen on the opposite bank but no men called to them and they knew better than to attempt a crossing. When Hegel felt the old itching at his neck he turned and saw a large ship creeping up the river behind them. They all stopped, agreeing they had no choice but to hail the galley.
“Now remember, Arab,” Hegel cautioned, “you’s the only one can speak like them, so be sure the meanin’s clear. They take us to the tombs and they get some gold but not a coin fore then.”
“Of course, my kin in lame.” Al-Gassur bowed.
“And recollect right what happened to every cunt what tried doin us wrong or sellin us out,” Manfried added.
“What if they attack us?” Martyn worried his lip.
“Then we strike them down with the power of the Lord.” Moritz drew his massive sword, raising himself in the Grossbarts’ estimation.
“And if they don’t stop, but row past us?” Martyn insisted something must go wrong.
“That is reason Her Goodness Mary grant our ownselves crossbows,” Raphael said, lying in the mud to notch a bolt.
“Finally in decent company,” Hegel told his brother in their twinspeak.
“Close’s we’s liable to get, any rate.” Manfried also cocked his arbalest, switching back to German. “Here they come, so do your stuff, Arab!”
They began jumping in the muck, yelling and waving their hands, even Rodrigo excited by the prospect of escaping the swamp. The boat slowed, the bearded men at the oars staring at them in shock, those striding on the deck excitedly yelling. Al-Gassur invented word after nonsensical word, tears of pleasure at the Grossbarts’ imminent undoing cleaning his mustache.
The rowers at the front locked their oars and stood as the boat glided toward the shore. The standing men withdrew bottles, knocked them back themselves, and tossed them to the rejoicing men on the bank. Nothing is less cautious than a fiending alcoholic, only Moritz abstaining from the drink. Yet when Hegel tilted a gifted bottle that old witch-chill rushed up and down his bones, his belly twisting around his spine. He slapped a bottle out of Manfried’s hand and drew his pick.
“I don’t believe them boys was actually drinkin, brother. Drink’s probably got some Arab barber berries in it or such, so lest you’s eager to wake up in some new place with all sorts a nasty to deal with I’d abstain.”
“I’s had enough a that shit to last a lifetime,” said Manfried, firing his crossbow into the first Mamluk to hit the bank, and together they joined the fiercest, greatest battle of their lives.