Two Horses for a King
by
Steven Hunley
Squire Bertram felt tired but safe. He’d hiked over two miles from Jaffa’s protective walls. The young man was north of the enemy’s encampment, and could see Saladin’s apricot banners flying between the green and grey olive trees in the distance. Scintillating heat waves rose in twisting bars across the landscape in every direction, and the sun was at its zenith.
“There’s not one heathen who feels like fighting within half a mile,” he calculated. “After yesterday, they’re afraid to come out of their tents, too busy licking their wounds.”
A ravine looked sheltered, inviting, and green, as if it might have water.
“I have time to hike back in two hours, and enough left to see the armorer about the King’s chain mail, and find red paint for his shield. For each dent the Saracen unbelievers smashed, for every link split by the point of their lances, may those pagan dogs rot in the eternal fires of Hell.”
He strode down the defile stridently, perhaps too stridently for a boy of seventeen. When he rounded a clump of Algum trees and scrub-brush, he changed his step. On the ground, kneeling on a carpet facing east, was a grey-bearded man, wearing patches on his clothes, and a turban. Bertram’s footsteps made the poor old fellow start. Swinging around, his ancient eyes grew immense and his mouth opened as wide as Aladdin’s cave.
“Wonder of Allah, what are you doing here?
He squinted at Bertram’s tunic. Three lions standing erect with forepaws raised.
“You are a Frank!”
Did this ancient fellow have second sight? More than ever, Bertram felt very far from greenery and safety, and the fertile fields of Aquitaine.
©Steven Hunley 2013
To be continued…