The Red Cross of Gold I:. The Knight of Death (47 page)

He heard himself screaming at his attacker in
pain and terror. At first, he did not recognize his attacker as
human and he thought some animal or demon was about to devour him
alive, but the dragging ceased and his leg fell to the ground with
a bone-jarring thud. He drew his knees up and fought to stay
conscious long enough to see what was about to eat him. When his
vision cleared, he looked up into the enraged face of the Knight of
the Sword only a few inches above him. All he could do was utter a
pitiful moan and squeeze his eyes closed against at the sight of
the man who would now kill him. He had suffered so much and all for
nothing, just to be killed for a long-imagined wrong on the part of
this Brother.

“Stand and fight, Sir!” The man invited him
to do the impossible. He could neither stand, nor fight.

The request was accompanied by a vicious kick
to his shoulder. He didn’t feel any additional pain, just a jolt.
Everything, including the added insult of falling onto the rocks,
was overruled and engulfed by the pain in his stomach. He had no
weapon and no strength to move.

“Get up!” the Knight shouted at him
again.

He rolled slowly on his side and tore one
hand away from his midsection. His elbow shook violently as he
pushed himself up onto his knees with one hand. It was as far as he
could go. Bloody foam dripped from his mouth onto the sandy
ground.

“Thou art naught but a rabid dog!” the man
shouted in his face and kicked him again in his exposed ribs. He
fell on his side again, rolled onto his back and lay still, unable
even to clasp his stomach now. His arms lay limply at his sides and
his eyes stared up at the great expanse of the Milky Way above his
head. It was a miraculous and glorious sight even to his
pain-crazed mind, and he had the unshakable idea that he could
simply drift away into the night with little or no effort. Felt as
if he had done so many times in the past. The Universe was a
wonderful, awe-inspiring creation offering endless vistas, infinite
possibilities. Other worlds. Other times. The great yellow and
orange striped orb of Saturn encircled by its glorious rings loomed
in front of him and he was home!

The magnificent view was suddenly blocked by
the face of the Frenchman leaning over him again and reality closed
in.

“You will not fight?” the man asked him.

“I cannot fight you, Brother,” he heard
himself say the words rather calmly under the circumstances. “I can
only offer the Way of Truth to those who would follow. Repent and
receive salvation, Brother, for life is all that we are given to
perceive the Glory of God.” He knew that he was saying the words,
but he had no idea why or how.

Beaujold made a noise generated by pure
animalistic rage and kicked him again before disappearing from
sight. Ramsay gazed up at the stars, enjoying the fragile moments
of respite. Drinking in the peace and the power exuded by the stars
and planets arched over his head, he thought perhaps he would be
able to travel there shortly after all.

The Knight of the Sword, aptly titled, soon
reappeared with Ramsay’s golden sword. He grasped the hilt in both
hands and raised it straight up as high as he could reach with the
point down. Mark Andrew looked up at the sword frowning, trying to
comprehend what he was looking at. The sword, sparkling in the moon
and starlight, floated as if suspended against the jewel-studded
background of the desert night sky without visible support. At the
last moment, and far too late, Mark Andrew realized what was about
to happen. The French Knight brought the sword down with all his
strength. The tip of the blade entered his tormented stomach just
below his right ribcage only scant millimeters from his spine. The
double-edged blade pierced him easily through and through,
embedding itself in the gravelly ground beneath him to a depth of
several inches accompanied by a horrid grating noise. Mark suddenly
saw himself from above. After a split second in this peculiar
position, he plummeted down into the body that lay below him and
entered the second reality screaming in renewed anguish. He closed
his eyes against this new nightmare and tried to force himself to
stay awake. It simply could not be happening.

When he opened his eyes again, he saw the
same face leaning over him. He could say nothing, nor could he
move. His brain registered warm blood and cold metal in his hands
as he clutched the blade protruding from his body. Beaujold made
the sign of the cross on his forehead and kissed him on the lips,
before backing away.

“I’m sorry, my Brother,” the Knight whispered
to him. “But you were very close to blasphemy. Do not trifle with
me again.”

Surprisingly, after his initial shock and
screaming reaction faded, the sword hurt no worse than the poison,
but the idea of what had happened to him now was much more gruesome
and much harder to bear. Being pinned to the ground with his own
sword was not how he had planned to spend eternity and it seemed
that the sword had somehow betrayed him. He soon felt himself
drifting in the same hazy dimension from which he had only recently
returned, somewhere between life and death, as if he had somehow
separated from his physical body altogether. It just could not have
happened. It had to be a dream or perhaps hell.

He turned his head to watch as the Knight of
the Sword swung himself onto the back of the palomino. A lifetime
had passed since he had first seen this horse in the stable. His
back grew warm as his blood poured down his sides and ran under
him. The man looked back at him once, declaring his intent to
return and Mark thought inanely that his murderer looked like an
angel in the silvery moonlight. Mark tried to convince himself that
this was, indeed, another of his strange nightmares and that he
would wake up any moment. Beaujold kicked the horse’s flank once
and was gone. Ramsay listened to the sounds of the hoof beats
fading into the distance.

When he did not wake up, a new sense of panic
entered his mind. What if the man did not return? How long could he
lay here and what would happen next? He felt blood well up in his
throat and fought the urge to cough. The blood bubbled up, choking
him and then flowed out of his mouth when he turned his head to the
right. The stuff ran down his face into his hair and onto the
ground. What if no one came for him? How many of his Brothers had
he, the Knight of Death, come for with this same sword? And now
there was no one to come for him. If he did not get up now, he
would never get up again.

The hilt of the sword was too close to his
body to get the proper leverage necessary to push it up, and his
hands, covered with blood, were too slippery to pull it out. It was
driven too far into the ground beneath him for that. The sound of
coyotes barking somewhere in the night broke the silence. What
beast would now come out of the brush to devour him alive? Or would
insects come and take him away bit by bit? It was too much! He
tried again and again to pull the blade free, but only succeeded in
causing himself more and more pain with every move he made.

He lay still, looking up at the stars again
before his eyes closed. Many, many memories flooded his mind in the
space of a few short seconds while his life unfolded in a reversal
of events from latest to earliest times and he recognized this as
part of the death experience as well. If he didn’t really die this
time, at least his memory was being restored bit by bit. He saw
everything with crystal clarity starting with his run from Merry’s
house and going back years and years until he had passed his
turbulent childhood, passed into his mother’s womb and out again
into the body of another man.

He stood momentarily in a dimly lit cave and
raised a bronze mirror in front of his face, but before he could
focus on the face, a loud noise jerked him back from the brink and
he understood that his body was trying to sink into a healing coma.
Whenever he received a wound or injury of such horrendous
proportions, his body would shut down for three days to heal. But
this time was different. This time, the object of his distress
still in place. Waking up in three days with his arms and legs
chewed off and his body still skewered by the golden sword was a
very distasteful image that reminded him that he had to get the
sword out now. He had to move. It was not the first such wound he
had experienced since falling in with the Poor Knights of Solomon’s
Temple, but this was the first time he had suffered such a thing
all alone. He had been shot, stabbed, choked, poisoned, bashed,
battered and drowned, along with his horse, twice, but this was a
different matter all together. He had fallen from a cliff, been
buried in a sandstorm, he had been run down by an automobile and
thrown from a train on the side of a mountain. The bizarre notion
that he could lie there and heal around the sword and by so doing,
in essence, become a permanent fixture in this barren wasteland,
almost caused him to scream again.

He closed his eyes briefly, trying to force
the morbid thoughts from his mind. It didn't work. He imagined
himself covered over with dust and dirt and then rocks and
eventually becoming encased in minerals. Someday in the far distant
future, erosion would unearth his form again he would become a
human geode, filled with muscle and bone and blood and… memories.
These bizarre thoughts kept him awake and desperately trying to
dislodge the sword in spite of the tremendous pain his efforts
caused. He drifted toward unconsciousness against all his better
judgment.

A snuffling noise from nearby renewed his
alarm a few minutes later. Turning his head slowly, expecting
jackals or worse, he saw the black stallion standing less than a
dozen feet away, nibbling at a clump of grass.

An idea, albeit a bad one, suddenly occurred
to him. He clucked and called to the horse, causing more blood to
pour from his mouth. How much blood did he have? The stallion
tossed its head and plodded closer, snorting nervously.

“Come on, boy,” Ramsay whispered and held up
his closed fist and then turned it over as if to offer the horse an
apple or some other treat. The horse nodded its head up and down
and stepped closer, pawing the ground, nudging his hand for the
invisible fruit. Mark caught hold of the reins dangling from the
horse’s bridle and quickly looped them several times around the
hilt of the sword before the stallion realized he had been tricked.
The big horse snuffled the blood on the ground and rolled its
eyes.

Before he could think better of the insane
idea, Mark gathered a handful of rock and loose dirt, took a deep
breath, that caused him to scream again and threw the dirt into the
frightened beast’s face. His screaming continued in earnest when
the horse jerked his head up, rearing on his hind legs, hopping
backwards, yanking the sword from the ground and subsequently
pulling it from his body in one swift, but violent motion.

Several protracted minutes later, when he had
recovered his senses somewhat and the screaming had subsided into
gasping sobs, he gathered the last bit of strength he didn’t know
he possessed and got up on his knees, half-crawling after the
horse. He had to get back on the horse and get away before the one
he had, at first, feared would not come back, did indeed come back
with his iron-bound chest. He caught the stallion, retrieved his
blood-stained sword from the tangled reins and climbed awkwardly
into the saddle, cursing under his breath as the bloody reins
slipped from his hand. He slapped the horse’s rump feebly with the
sword and dragged the sword across his thighs as before. Leaning
into the horse’s neck, he wrapped the long mane around his fingers
as the horse started forward again, walking slowly through the
night to parts unknown.

He had to stay awake or else tumble from the
horse. To occupy his mind, he tried to fathom how Beaujold's hatred
could have eluded him all those years and why he had not realized
the depths of the man’s feelings sooner. He had thought the matter
settled and had assumed that time had glossed over the pain for
Beaujold as it had for him. Before he lapsed into
semi-unconsciousness, another uninvited, unpleasant memory
assaulted: the image of Beaujold on his knees, pleading with him to
spare his friend and Brother’s life. He had always thought Beaujold
would get over it, but he had been wrong. He remembered with
electric lucidity the look on the Knight of Sword’s face after he
had administered the Final Rites to their fallen Brother and
beheaded him with the Flaming Sword. There had been no hope for
their Brother. A land mine had obliterated most of his lower body
and they could not carry him over the mountain trails without
endangering every soldier’s life on the mission. The late Knight of
the Holy City had been the last of them to fall and that had been
almost sixty years ago. For one fleeting moment, he almost
remembered the words of the final rites, the Key of Death, but then
everything was gone along with his consciousness.

((((((((((((()))))))))))))

Maxie carried Merry into the library and
deposited her on the sofa at Valentino’s instruction. She stood
with her arms folded across her chest patting one foot rapidly,
angrily on the carpet.

“Merry!” Valentino leaned over her as Maxie
retreated.

He had to take care of their prisoners while
he still had help.

“Wake up!” She shook the young woman’s
shoulder.

Merry raised her head and then let it fall
back, groaning and pressing one hand to her brow.

“What the hell were you doing down there?”
the angry woman demanded immediately.

“Nothing but trying to put right what you
left undone,” Merry told her and frowned as her head spun. She
swung her feet to the floor and the woman shimmered in and out of
darkness in front of her eyes. “Isn’t that just like you, Cecile?
Don’t ask how I’m doing. Don’t ask if I’m hurt. Just yell at me for
nothing. I was trying to stop them from taking him. I discovered
him missing and then found them all in the basement.” It was the
truth… in a roundabout way.