The Templar Knight. Jan Guillou

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СКАЧАТЬ back at the two horses and the two bodies he had in tow, and urged his Arabian horse on, as he raised his right hand with clenched fist toward the men in the salute of the Templar knights. He looked as if he found the situation quite amusing.

      ‘Wait!’ said Yussuf, so quickly that his words came faster than his thoughts. ‘Then I invite you and your sergeant instead to share our evening meal!’

      The Templar knight reined in his horse and looked at Yussuf with a thoughtful expression.

      ‘I accept your invitation, my unknown foe and friend,’ the Templar knight replied, ‘but only on the condition that I have your word none of you intends to draw a weapon against me or my sergeant as long as we are in one another’s company.’

      ‘You have my word on the name of the true God and His Prophet,’ replied Yussuf quickly. ‘Do I have yours?’

      ‘Yes, you have my word on the name of the true God, His Son, and the Holy Virgin,’ replied the Templar knight just as quickly. ‘If you ride two fingers south of the spot where the sun went down behind the mountains, you will reach a stream. Follow it to the northwest and you will find several low trees near some water. Stay there for the night. We will be farther west, up on the slope near the same water that flows toward you. But we will not sully the water. It will soon be night and you have your hour for prayers, as do we. But afterwards, when we come in the darkness to you, we will make enough noise so you hear us, and not come quietly, like someone with evil intentions.’

      The Templar knight spurred his horse, again saluted in farewell, got his little caravan moving, and rode off into the twilight without looking back.

      The three faithful watched him for a long time without moving or saying a word. Their horses snorted impatiently, but Yussuf was lost in thought.

      ‘You are my brother, and nothing you do or say should surprise me anymore after all these years,’ said Fahkr. ‘But what you just did really surprised me. A Templar knight! And the one they call Al Ghouti at that!’

      ‘Fahkr, my beloved brother,’ replied Yussuf as he turned his horse with an easy movement to head in the direction described by his foe. ‘You must know your enemy; we have talked a great deal about that, haven’t we? And among your enemies, isn’t it best to learn from the one who is most monstrous of all? God has given us this golden opportunity; let us not refuse His gift.’

      ‘But can we trust the word of such a man?’ objected Fahkr after they had been riding for a time in silence.

      ‘Yes, we can, as a matter of fact,’ muttered Emir Moussa. ‘The enemy has many faces, known and unknown. But that man’s word we can trust, just as he can trust your brother’s.’

      They followed their foe’s instructions and soon found the little stream with fresh cold water, where they stopped to let their horses drink. Then they continued along the stream and, exactly as the Templar knight had said, came to a level area. There the stream spread out to a small pond where low trees and bushes grew, with a sparse pasture area for the horses. They unsaddled the animals and took off the packs, hobbling the horses’ forelegs so that they would stay close to the water and not go in search of grazing land farther away, where none existed. Then the men washed themselves, as prescribed by law, before prayers.

      At the first appearance of the bright crescent moon in the blue summer night sky, they said their prayers of mourning for the dead and of gratitude to God for sending them, in His unfathomable mercy, the worst of their foes to rescue them.

      They talked a bit about this very subject after prayers. Yussuf then said that he thought God, in an almost humourous way, had shown His omnipotence: revealing that nothing was impossible for Him, not even sending Templar knights to rescue the very ones who in the end would conquer all Templar knights.

      Yussuf tried to convince himself and everyone else of this. Year after year new warlords arrived from the Frankish lands; if they won, they soon returned home with their heavy loads.

      But some Franks never went back home, and they were both the best and the worst of the lot. Best because they did not pillage for pleasure and because it was possible to reason with them, making trade contracts and peace agreements. But they were also the worst because some of them were fierce adversaries in war. The worst of them all were the two cursed devout orders of competing monks, the Templars and the Hospitallers of St John. Whoever wanted to cleanse the land of the enemy, whoever wanted to take back Al Aksa and the Temple of the Rock in God’s Holy City, would have to conquer both the Knights Templar and the Hospitallers. Nothing else was possible.

      Yet they seemed impossible to conquer. They fought without fear, convinced that they would enter paradise if they died in battle. They never surrendered since their laws forbade the rescue of captured brothers from imprisonment. A captured Hospitaller knight or Templar knight was a worthless prisoner that they might just as soon release or kill. Thus they always died.

      It was a rule of thumb that if fifteen of the faithful met five Templar knights out on a plain, it meant that either all or none of them would live. If the fifteen faithful attacked the five infidels, none of the faithful would escape with his life. To ensure victory of such an attack, they had to be four times as many and still be prepared to pay a very high price in casualties. With ordinary Franks this was not the case; ordinary Franks could be defeated even if there were fewer men on the side of the faithful.

      While Fahkr and Emir Moussa gathered wood to make a fire, Yussuf lay on his back with his hands behind his head, staring up at the sky where more and more stars were appearing. He was pondering these men who were his worst enemies. He thought about what he had seen right before sundown. The man called Al Ghouti had a horse worthy of a king, a horse that seemed to think the same thoughts as his master, that obeyed instinctively.

      It was not sorcery; Yussuf was a man who ultimately rejected such explanations. The simple truth was that the man and the horse had fought and trained together for many years, in the most serious fashion, not just as a pastime to be taken up when there was nothing else to do. Among the Egyptian Mamelukes there were similar men and horses, and the Mamelukes, of course, did nothing but train until they were successful enough to obtain commissions and land, their freedom and gold granted in gratitude for many good years of service in war. This was no miracle or magic; it was man alone and not God who created these kinds of men. The only question was: What was the most crucial characteristic for attaining that goal?

      Yussuf’s answer to this question was always that it was pure faith, that the one who wholeheartedly and absolutely followed the words of the Prophet, may peace be with Him, regarding the Jihad, the holy war, would become an unconquerable warrior. But the problem was that among the Mamelukes in Egypt it was impossible to find the most faithful of Muslims; usually they were Turks and more or less superstitious, believing in spirits and holy stones and giving only lip service to the pure and true faith.

      In this case it was worse that even the infidels could create men like Al Ghouti. Could it be that God was demonstrating that man uses his own free will to determine his purpose in life, in this life on earth, and that only when the holy fire separates the wheat from the chaff will it be apparent who are the faithful and who are the infidels?

      It was a disheartening thought. For if it was God’s intention that the faithful, if they could unite in a Jihad against the infidels, should be rewarded with victory, why then had He created enemies who were impossible to defeat, man to man? Perhaps to show that the faithful truly had to unite against the enemy? The faithful had to stop fighting among themselves because those who joined forces would be ten to a hundred times more numerous than the Franks, who would then be doomed, even if they were all Templar knights.

      Yussuf СКАЧАТЬ