Knights of the Cross - By Harper, Tom Page 0,4

sleeve across his face, smearing it with more grime than he removed. I kept my grip on his shoulder, for there was no strength in his shivering legs. ‘Drogo of Melfi,’ he stammered. ‘In the lord Bohemond’s army. I found him . . .’ His words gave out and he pulled from my grasp, sinking to his knees. ‘I found him over there.’ He pointed back to the top of the embankment whence he had come. ‘Dead.’

I glanced at Sigurd, then at the darkening sky. Part of my mind scolded that too many men had died already that day without taxing my conscience; that a sobbing servant and a dead Norman knight were no concern of mine, especially when Turkish patrols might yet skulk in the countryside. Perhaps, though, it was the accumulation of so many deaths which weighed most on me: confronted by a snivelling boy grieving for his master, I was defenceless.

‘It would be best if your men accompanied us,’ I told Sigurd.

‘Best for whom?’ he retorted. ‘The best course for my men is to return to our camp, before night brings out the Turks and Tafurs and wolves.’

‘Any wolves near here will have been eaten long since. As for the others—’ I turned to the boy. ‘Is it far?’

He shook his head. ‘Not far, Lord.’

‘Then take us quickly.’

We found a path up around the embankment and followed the boy over the broken ground that rose towards the hills on the far side of the plain of Antioch. The red earth was sticky underfoot, and all the grasses sprouted spikes and prickles which tore my legs. We came over a low ridge and looked down into a small hollow in the hillside. It was perhaps fifty feet across and formed like a natural amphitheatre in the rising ground. Perhaps it had once been a quarry, for the surrounding walls were pitted and bitten, but the ground underfoot was soft. In its centre, unmoving in the grey dusk, lay the body of a man.

I crossed quickly and crouched beside him while the Varangians fanned out, sniffing for danger. Behind me I heard Sigurd hiss with disapproval.

‘You found him here?’ I asked the boy, who had knelt opposite me. Tears were running down his face, bright in the gloom, but he seemed to me more frightened than sorrowful.

‘Here,’ he mumbled. ‘I found him here.’

‘How did you know he would be here?’

He looked up, the terror now plain on his face. ‘He was gone from the camp for many hours. The lord William, lord Bohemond’s brother, he told me to find him. I looked everywhere in the camp, and then here. And I found him.’

‘And what made you think he would be here?’ I repeated. We must have come half a mile from the road at least, and none of our army would have been so foolish as to wander here alone.

The boy closed his eyes and squirmed his fingers together. ‘He came here often. Many times I had seen him.’

‘Why? What brought him here?’

My questions were reflexive, the natural consequence of seeing too many men unnaturally dead, but their brusqueness must have alarmed the boy. He trembled in silence, unable to answer.

‘Was this how you found him?’

He nodded.

I stared down at the body before me. Drogo, the boy had called him – and a Norman of Sicily, I guessed, if he had served the lord Bohemond. He lay on his belly in the grass, still and silent as the twilight around us, and for a moment I wondered if he had not been stricken by some ailment, for there were no marks of violence evident. He had not even worn his armour, only a quilted undercoat stained with many weeks’ wear.

But the sour smell of blood in the evening air belied innocent hopes. I put my hand to his shoulder and lifted, pushing him over onto his back. The heavy body fell flat against the ground, and an involuntary whimper breathed through my lips. The Norman Drogo had not died a natural death: he had died because a heavy blade had cut open his throat, pouring out his blood into a puddle on the grass below. It must have been a savage blow, for it had sliced more than halfway through his neck, so that as I moved him his head lolled back to let fresh rivulets of blood trickle down to his collar. It had stained everything: matted the dark hair of his beard, dyed the wool of his