Worlds That Weren't

He saw Tessier glance back at the captain, face red. Anger and shame. Messy. Not a clean kill. The knight sheathed his sword and folded his arms, glaring at the remaining monks.

Guillaume understood the silence that filled the refectory. He had been on the other side of it. Men holding their breaths, thinking, Not me, oh Lord God! Don’t let me be next! One of the slaves back at the kitchen door sniveled, crying wetly. His own chest felt tight. The captain of the Griffin-in-Gold has long held to the principle that it’s easier to kill one or two men at the beginning to save hassle later on.

Guillaume wiped his mouth, not daring to spit in front of the captain. He’s right. Of course. Usually.

“Now.” Spessart turned back briskly toward Abbot Muthari, signing to Tessier with his hand.

“Wait!” The Lord-Father sprawled back untidily on the floor, his bare legs spread and visible under his robe. “Yes! I sent a novice!”

“Only one?”

The man’s eyes were dazed. Muthari looked as though he could not understand how he came to be on the floor in front of his juniors, undignified, hurt, bleeding.

If he had any sense, he’d be grateful. Could be him dead or maimed. The captain is only keeping him alive because his men are used to him as their leader.

“No! Two! I sent Gauda, but Hierbas insisted he would go after.”

“That’s better. Which way did you send them?”

“Due west,” the abbot choked out. Not with pain or fear, Guillaume saw, but shame. He’s betraying them in front of his congregation. “I told them to stay off the main road from here, from Zarsis-”

Ah, is that where we are? And is it anywhere near where we should have dropped the supply cache?

Close enough to Tar bulus for the Turks to get here in time?

Guillaume kept his face impassive.

“They will be aiming for the garrison at Gabes. But traveling slowly. Because it is so far.” The Lord-Father Muthari sat motionless, terror on his face, watching Spessart.

“There. I knew we could come to a mutual agreement.”

The German soldier bent down, which did not necessitate him bending far, and held out his hand.

Too afraid not to, the fatter and taller man reached up and gripped it. Guillaume saw Spessart’s face tense. He hauled the monk up onto his feet with one pull and a suppressed grunt of effort.

“This place will do as well as any for us to wait for our employers. Tessier, take your men out and find and capture the novices.”

“Sir.”

Tessier beckoned Marches. Guillaume glanced back and got his team together and ready with only eye contact.

“You cannot behave like this!” he heard Athanagild protesting; and Muthari’s voice drowning the bearded man out: “Captain, you will not harm any more of us; we are men of God-”

Three or four hours’ searching in the later part of the afternoon had brought them up with the fleeing novices. To Guillaume’s surprise, Tessier kept them alive. Guillaume, mouth filled with dirt by far too much scrambling up rocky slopes and striding down dusty gullies, was only too happy to prod them home with blows from the iron-ferruled butt end of his billhook.

He had seen the fugitives as he marched back into the refectory today. One, his gaze full of hatred, had whispered loudly enough to be heard. “I’ll see you in Hell!”

Guillaume had grinned. “Save me a seat by the fire…”

Whether or not it was deliberate, today the German captain halted on the spot where the skinny, tall novice had been killed eighteen hours earlier.

The flagstones were clean now, but the whitewashed wall held a stain. The scrubbed, pale outlines of elongated splashes.

“I have no more patience!” Spessart snapped.

“Captain… qa’id… ” Muthari blinked soft brown eyes as if in more than just physical pain. “Syros is dead. Huneric has now died. There must be no more killing-over a woman.”

At the mention of the ex- nazir monk Huneric, Guillaume saw Tessier assume an air of quiet satisfaction. Vindication, perhaps.

“I don’t want to kill a monastery full of priests,” the captain remarked, his brilliant gaze turned up to Muthari. “It’s bad luck, for one thing. We’re stuck here until the Turkish navy turns up with expert carpenters, or the Turkish army turns up as reinforcements. Meantime, I’d rather keep you priests under lockdown than kill you. I will kill you, if you put me in a situation where I have to.”

The abbot frowned. “Who knows who will come first? Your Turkish masters-or a legion from Carthage?”

“Oh, there is that. It’s true we won’t be popular if some Legio turns up on the doorstep here and finds an atrocity committed.”

Johann Spessart smiled for the first time. Guillaume, as ever, could see why he didn’t do it that often. His teeth were yellow and black, where they were not broken.

“Then again, if Huseyin Bey and his division come up that road…they’ll want to know why we didn’t crucify every last one of you on the olive trees.”

Prior Athanagild looked appalled. “You would kill true Christians for a Turkish bey?”