Beasts of the Seventh Crusade (The Crusades Book 4) (6 page)

MY YEARS OF PREPARATION ARE NEARLY OVER,
King Louis thought. The entire world knew he was going on a crusade. Every king, noble, and peasant in Europe knew that King Louis IX was going to invade Egypt and break the Muslims before reclaiming the Holy Land. The die had been cast, and Louis had done everything he possibly could to ensure victory.

Aigues-Mortes, the town on the southern coast of France, was ready. It was a town constructed entirely for one purpose: a starting point for the Seventh Crusade. There was a great road that led from France to Aigues-Mortes, and it passed through the Duchy of Toulouse. All the previous crusades had relied on the Venetians to provide transport, but King Louis had circumvented dealing with those marauding sailors. He had built his own town and a road that led to it. He enlisted the help of every able-bodied man in France. Lords and nobles even came from England, eager to accompany the great king on his crusade.

"Raise your shield; take the blow, and then strike! Again!" one of Louis' captains was yelling at a batch of farm hands who had just arrived from Chaumont, and they were as unskilled as they were ugly.

King Louis was watching, bored, from the back of one of his white horses. His officers were the best in the world, capable of whipping raw recruits into skilled killers in only a few weeks. Louis stretched his arms overhead and yawned. He was followed by a retinue of servants, advisors, and friends, but they had nothing new to report to him. His preparations for the Seventh Crusade had been so complete, so thorough, that his work was truly done.

I could brush up on my swordsmanship,
Louis thought,
but no officer of mine will ever speak to me harshly.
It was a sobering thought, that Louis had such utter control over his nation that he couldn't expect to hear the truth from his own men. There was no one he trusted anymore, not while the burden of the crown lay on his balding pate.

"Ooohh!" one of the recruits collapsed to the ground. The captain was standing over him, shaking with anger.

"Get up! Get up! I told you to take the blow, and then deliver your own strike! This is why you don't strike at the same time, because you're going to get yourself killed, and then I'll have to kill
your
Muslim, plus my own!" The other recruits returned to attention, watching the captain berate the young man. "Now, get up," the captain said.

The young man rose slowly, his knees wobbling. The captain had swung his training sword and struck the boy across the face. The sword was wrapped in sheets and thus could not cut, but it still had weight and could knock a man off his feet. The young man, shoulders hunched, looked to the captain and lifted his shield. The captain smiled.

The captain struck again, attacking the body with a cross-cut. The boy took the blow neatly, and started his own backswing. The boy was an amateur and the captain read the attack like a book, yet he permitted the blow to land. The captain took it in the midsection and grinned. The boy was learning.

"Excellent," King Louis said, watching the exchange.

"The Muslims dogs have no chance of winning, my king," Clairmont, his senior-most general, said.

"Incorrect, Clairmont, incorrect. They always have a chance to win; we have simply reduced that chance to a very, very small possibility. Now is not the time, when we are so close to actually going, to relax."

"Of course not, my king."

"I need to see my daughter," King Louis said unexpectedly. His entourage came alive like a living thing, exchanging their knowledge of Isabelle's whereabouts. A message was soon passed to the king that she was in the royal gardens for her lessons that day.

"Clairmont, I want the men to train until their bones ache and their hands bleed. When you feel they have drilled sufficiently, dismiss them for the day. I'm going to see Isabelle."

King Louis looked to his entourage, and they stared back at him, eager to please. "Leave me for today, I think. I have personal matters to attend to," he said.

He rode his horse out of the training grounds and through the royal yards, where exotic plants and sculpted fountains were everywhere. He kept going and soon reached the royal gardens, a marvel of nature that had been carefully cultivated and tended to for hundreds of years. The garden was designed like a maze, but the rows of flowers were only three feet high and Louis could see Isabelle near the center of the arrangement, sitting with a woman. Purple irises, white and gold lilies and rosemary bushes were all starting to bloom in the early spring weather. Louis filled his nostrils with their scent.

Isabelle was eight years old and precocious. She exasperated her tutors, who could never answer all her question or satisfy her endless curiosity. When she saw her father approach, Isabelle squealed and ran to him, throwing her body weight into his chest. Louis caught her and hugged her. They had barely seen each other in the previous days, while Louis prepared for war. He was like any other father, though, and only wanted his daughter safe and happy. She was part of the reason he was going to annihilate the Muslims.

"Daddy, what are you doing here?"

"I came to see you," Louis said, setting her down on the ground. Her auburn hair and blue eyes melted his heart, and he regretted the time that he would be away from her.

"Mademoiselle Glochure," Isabelle gestured at her tutor with her eyes, "was just teaching me about the weather. She says it rains a lot here, but in the desert—"

"Excellent, sweetheart. Excellent," Louis interrupted her. "But why are you sitting around learning about rain and deserts when you could be riding your new pony?"

"A pony?" Isabelle asked, her voice rising three octaves.

"Yes, my dear."

"My king, a pleasure to see you on this fine day," Mademoiselle Glochure approached him and knelt, kissing his hand. "I was nearly finished with today's lessons, and if you will permit me, I think Isabelle was rather enjoying the topic. Yes, Isabelle?"

"I was," she admitted, although she could hardly stand still on learning her dad had bought her a pony.

"If the king would be so generous, perhaps he will join us for this lesson?" Mademoiselle Glochure ventured.

"I can take a few moments, and then I must see my wife. Isabelle, you can ride your pony after your lessons. Mademoiselle, please, continue with your teachings," King Louis said.

The teacher led them back to the center of the garden, and Louis sat down on the stone bench next to his daughter. Bees were buzzing on the nearby flowers and the sky was cloudless and bright. Louis smiled.

"Now, Isabelle, here in Paris we have a continental climate. That means cold winters, hot summers, and rainfall all year around. But this is only one location in the world. In northern France, there are cool winters and mild summers, with heavy rainfall half the year. Many men who have grown up in the heart of France cannot tolerate the weather in the north, and they frequently become ill."

Mademoiselle Glochure brushed a strand of hair from her face and continued.

"Traveling is very difficult in Europe, but not because of foreign people. The weather, the diseases, and the air are the most formidable enemies of men and women. Surprisingly, children are better suited to traveling, because their systems can adapt quickly. Why, Isabelle, you would fare better than the men who are accompanying your father to Egypt. The climate there is harsh, with brutal heat and very little rain."

"Enough!" Louis said, "My daughter is not going to war, she is just a girl!"

"Of course not, my king, I was just saying that—"

"I don't want to hear what you were saying. I heard you say 'Isabelle' and 'Egypt' in the same sentence, and that is enough. Isabelle, when you have finished with your lessons, join your mother and me for dinner," Louis said, rising and storming off.

"What about his men who are going to Egypt?" Isabelle asked, "Won't they get sick?"

"Yes," Mademoiselle Glochure said, sighing at the fading figure of King Louis.

Chapter Six

FRANCOIS HAD NEVER IMAGINED a source of terror like the dragon. Its massive wings sent gales of wind across the mountainside, rendering the men immobile. The dragon's shrieks were the very definition of horror.
Pain
, Francois thought,
Those are cries of pain.
He dared to look skyward once, and the dragon's maw seemed to be inviting him in, calling him to enter that gaping chasm of death.

"We must take cover," Artois yelled over the cacophony. He alone was not hypnotized by the dragon's majesty and power. With a grunt of effort, Artois ran to his father and brother and pulled them to the pack of bloodhounds, which were barking and snarling at the flying beast. They were not barks of aggression, though, but feral pleadings for the dragon to leave them alone.

"He was wrong!" Raul yelled to his sons.

"What?"

"Your mother's great-grandfather! He said the dragon was yellow and blue, but that thing is dark green!"

"It's coming!" Francois yelled. The dragon, terrorizing the skies, had spun to face the group of cowering men and dogs, and it came toward them at lightning speed. They threw themselves to the ground, and the beast passed over them. Its body was hot, and Francois felt like a slab of meat that had been passed over a campfire.

The dragon got three dogs on that swoop—two in its arms, one in its mouth. Raul cried out, reaching his hands toward the receding figure of the dragon, clutching the bloodhounds. The Coquets watched as the beast perched itself on the mountaintop and finished off the dogs with two bites. The other dogs panicked and tried to run between Raul's legs, and he cursed as one of them tripped him.

"It's coming back!" Francois shouted. He backed away from the others, and they all spread out, with the bloodhounds staying close to Raul. The dragon leaped off the mountain and seemed to be falling, ready to strike the ground at any moment. Its head was outstretched and wings tucked in tight, and then it spread them out, gracefully gliding ten feet above the ground. Francois could finally get a closer look at the beast's size, and he estimated the thing to be forty feet long, with a wingspan twice as long.

It went straight at Raul, or more accurately, the bloodhounds. They panicked and ran every direction, but the trees were sparse and offered weak cover. The dragon swooped low and ate one, two, three dogs while they were running. It simply opened its mouth and collected the dogs inside, like a fishing net gathering sea breams in the Mediterranean.

Raul cried out again, his eyes watering and knees weakening at the sight of his precious hounds being taken away. He collapsed to his knees and the dragon passed a few feet over his head, and its tail smacked him in the face. Raul fell over sideways, from concussion or pain, Francois couldn't be sure. With control that belied its great size, the dragon turned in the air and located the final two dogs, running toward the mountain and the dragon's cave.

Artois had seen enough. When his father fell, he steadied his heart and ran into the open, holding his battle axe high. He yelled, "Come at me, you ugly lizard! I will cut you into little pieces and feed you to my dogs!"

Francois absurdly thought,
We only have two dogs left; they couldn't possibly eat that whole dragon.

The dragon ignored Artois, not even looking in his direction. Artois threw his battle axe at the beast, and it struck the dragon's scaly side. The blade didn't penetrate and the axe fell harmlessly to the ground. The dragon still didn't react to Artois, and it raced after the two dogs that were running up the mountain. It easily snatched them up, and they disappeared into the dragon's cave a moment later. Everything calmed. No more wind, no sounds, nothing.

"Father! Father!" Francois ran to Raul, but his dad was not hurt from the dragon's tail. He was just curled up and crying; losing those dogs was forfeiting the profession of his entire adult life, almost as bad as losing one of his sons.

Night came quickly to the mountainside. The woods spooked Francois, and his father saw the wisdom in staying put until the sun reappeared. Every inch of the mountainside, every crevice, reeked of the dragon in the cave. It was a sulphuric smell, and old, as if the rocks had been baking for hundreds of years, but the vegetation and animals still lived and died all around. The men found a quarry of stones on the far side of the mountain, and the stones were strewn down like a rocky river, probably from an avalanche years prior. None of the men were hurt, save Raul's mild head injury and broken heart. He lay close to the ground, with rocks looming on all sides, and his sons gave him privacy to grieve his lost pets. They had been a constant in his life, more reliable than any person and braver than any soldier, and now they were gone.

The dragon was sleeping in its cave. Its breaths were deep and even, though still menacing, like the thunder of storm clouds in the distance. Artois and Francois had brought a few potatoes from the hill village, and they sat in the quarry, eating and listening to their father mourn.

"We knew we could track the dragon, we just didn't know what to do once we found the damn thing!" Artois said, paring the potato with a small knife.

"Why did it only target the dogs?" Francois wondered, staring into the dark sky. "Perhaps it doesn't eat humans?"

"That sorcier, or whatever he was called, said the dragon took a horse and a man recently. I'd say that it just wanted something new to whet its appetite."

"The dragon came out of its cave as soon as we were near and it sensed our presence. Its weakness may lie in the cave, somehow," Francois said.

"What are you thinking, little brother? When the sun rises tomorrow, we are leaving, going back to the main road to Toulouse. We are going to find father's brother and we are going on the Seventh Crusade. We are done with this dragon." Artois crossed his arms and glared at nothing.

"I want my divination from that sorcier. I knew the cost would be high," Raul said, emerging from the shadows and approaching his two sons. His face was black with dirt, except for two tear-streams that started at his eyes and traveled off his face. "Fran, what were you saying about the cave?"