“Go ahead, laddie. Drink.” He nodded, and the Saracen nodded in return, his face unreadable again, then began to remove the bag’s stopper. Sinclair watched him wryly. “It’s a grand thing to have two hands when you need to drink from a bag, is it not?”
The Saracen had stopped before the bag reached his mouth, his eyes on Sinclair and his incomprehension plainly visible. On the point of repeating what he had said in Arabic, Sinclair caught himself and continued in his native tongue. “Go on, drink, but pour some for me.” He drew the metal cup from inside his jerkin and tapped it against the splints on his useless arm, then moved forward, his hand outstretched. The Saracen glanced at the arm, then nodded his understanding and filled the cup. Sinclair sipped delicately and rinsed his mouth, spitting before he took a second, proper sip and returned to lean against the wall. The Saracen did the same, rinsing his mouth carefully and deliberately before spitting the resultant mud out with some delicacy. He looked again at Sinclair, clearly asking permission, and when Sinclair nodded, he repeated the sequence, then took a third sip with evident relish, washing it around his mouth but swallowing it this time.
“Go ahead. Take more. And wash your eyes, for I know just how you feel.” Sinclair picked up the cloth that had wrapped the fellow’s head. He took one end of it and flapped it until it was relatively free of sand, then mimed wetting it and bathing his eyes before handing it to the other man, who watched him cautiously and then did as Sinclair suggested. When he had finished, he hefted the bag, clearly asking Sinclair if he wished to drink again, and when Sinclair shook his head he corked the bag deftly and set it down beside him. Sinclair stepped forward and retrieved the dirk that was still stuck in the sand, then stood looking down at the other man.
“I have a question here, Master Blackbeard: are you my prisoner, or am I yours? I have the dirk and your sword, but I’m no’ certain they’ll do me much good, gin it comes to a fight. It will depend, I’m thinking, on that leg o’ yours, for if it’s in better shape than my arm is, then I might have to pay the piper.” He paused, debating with himself on the best course of action, but well aware that he would have to finish the task he had begun. “Come on, then,” he said, shrugging, “let’s find out.”
Several minutes later, he unearthed the Saracen’s buried left foot and brushed off the last of the sand from the leg, but the Saracen himself was still proceeding very cautiously with his right, brushing delicately at the sand and clearly concerned about what yet lay beneath it. Soon enough, Sinclair could see for himself what was wrong. The leg was heavily bandaged and splinted, and it had clearly been done by someone who knew how. Sinclair laughed aloud, although there was no humor in the sound.
“Well, we’re the fine pair, are we not? Six good limbs between the two o’ us and both o’ us so useless, we canna even talk to each other, let alone fight.” He hoisted his arm and tapped the steel bolts of his splints with the blade of his dirk, and for the first time a hint of what might have been a smile flickered at one corner of the other man’s mouth.
“Well, we might as well have another drink, because I canna think what to do next. I doubt I’ll be able to climb back onto my horse wi’ this damn arm, lacking a mounting block, and even if I could, you couldna get up behind me.” He picked up the water bag again and handed it to the Saracen. “Here, you pour better than me, so pour away.” Moments later, his cup brimming, he moved away and sat carefully on a heap of sand. As he reached down to balance the cup carefully at his feet, the hilt of the jeweled dagger slipped out from the folds of his jerkin. Before he could push it back in, he heard the Saracen’s gasp, and he looked up to see a strange, wideeyed expression on the man’s face.
“What’s wrong? Is it this?” He pulled the dagger free and held it up, and as the man looked at it, Sinclair saw something enter his eyes, and then his face went as still as it had been before.
“Where did you obtain that knife?” The question was in Arabic, but Sinclair had anticipated it, and he kept his own face blank as he shook his head and shrugged, as though not understanding a word. He could not have explained to anyone why he was pretending ignorance, but he knew instinctively that it was the right thing to do. The Saracen frowned, then made another attempt.
“How did you come by that?”
The question was in French this time, and Sinclair’s eyes widened with shock, but he answered immediately in the same tongue, genuinely pleased to have a means of communicating with this man without revealing his understanding of Arabic.
“I found it, this morning. On a dead man. Several miles from here.”
There was a long pause before the Saracen said, “You killed him?”
Sinclair heard pain in the question and he shook his head, then lifted his rigid arm so that it rested on his upraised knee. “No,” he said, adjusting the arm to make it as comfortable as possible. “I told you, I found him dead, buried like you. Who was he? It’s plain that you knew him.”
The Saracen paused, but then he dipped his head in acceptance. “His name was Arouf. He was youngest brother to my wife. He was sorely wounded when he left here. The bleeding had been stopped for hours by then, and the wound was packed and tightly bound, but it must have opened again while he was riding.”
“He took your horse and left you here?”
“There was no other choice. We were three men, with two horses. Arouf rode north in search of help, and Sayeed rode east. They left me here safely in the shade. None of us knew the storm would come.”
“So the other man, this Sayeed, may still be alive?”
“Aye, if Allah so wills. If it is written in the Angel’s book. If it is not, then it may be written therein that you and I will die here, together.” He looked about him. “But we will not die yet. I, too, have water, and a bag of food, buried somewhere here by the wind.”
Sinclair ignored that. “What happened to your leg, and who did this?” He waved towards the splinted limb.
“Sayeed saved both of us. He is learned in the healing arts.”
“A physician?”
“No, a warrior, but he was trained in youth by his father, who was a famed physician. Sayeed never followed his father’s craft, but he remembered his teachings on the care of wounds.”
“And he rode east?”
A dip of the head. “I have said.”
“In search of whom? How came you here? Were you at Hattin?”
“Hattin? Ah, you mean Hittin…” The Saracen’s brow wrinkled then, but he plainly resisted the impulse to ask what was in his mind and simply answered the question. “No, I was not. We were on our way to Tiberias, in obedience to the Sultan’s summons, when ill fortune befell us.”
Sinclair reached down and handed the water bag to the Saracen again. “Tell me about it, since we have nothing better to do, and then we will find your food and water. What happened to you?”
The dark-faced man sat thinking for a few moments, then began to speak.
HIS NAME WAS IBN AL-FAROUCH, he said, and he had been in the southwest, riding with a reconnaissance force near the town of Ibelin on the coast when a courier arrived to summon them to Tiberias, eighty miles away. They had set out immediately on receiving the command, and along the way had met a wounded man who had, mere hours before, escaped from a nearby village that was being attacked by bandits. The bandits, the fugitive told them, had numbered fewer than twenty, but the villagers, lacking their men of fighting age, had been unable to resist them. The name of the village, which meant nothing to Sinclair, had caught the attention of al-Farouch immediately, because he had an aged uncle, fond brother to his mother, who lived there. Angered at the thought of his uncle, who had always been kind to him and to his family, being molested and perhaps even killed by godless brigands, he had sent his men on their way, but had ridden with an escort of ten hand-picked