The woman on the floor screamed and tried to squirm free, but to no avail. The man atop cuffed her backhanded. Blood ran from her nose. She looked about in panic, and her dark eyes settled on John.
The Hospitaller who had just removed his mail looked up. ‘Leave us, priest. This is not your affair.’
John did not move.
The Hospitaller raised a fist and took a step towards him. ‘Are you deaf, priest?’ John still did not move, and the Hospitaller’s expression changed suddenly. He dropped his fists. ‘You want a piece of her too, don’t you, priest? A little taste of Egypt, eh?’
John removed the cross from about his neck, and the Hospitaller leered. John grasped the gold crucifix in his fist so that the top protruded between his fingers. He slammed it into the Hospitaller’s grinning face. The man crumpled to the floor.
‘What in God’s name-!’ the other man cried as he rose to his knees. Before he could stand, John grabbed him by his long hair and pulled him off the woman. She scrambled into a corner, where she drew her knees to her chest and sobbed. The man had pulled free from John’s grip and now turned to face him. ‘Whoreson!’ he growled and stepped forward with fists raised. He swung. John caught his arm and slammed the cross into the side of his head. The man’s knees buckled and he slumped to the ground. John dropped the cross and knelt on the man’s chest. ‘Wait-’ the man murmured as he came to and saw John’s fist raised above him. John punched him and felt a crunch as the man’s nose broke. The man’s eyes glazed over, and he fell back unconscious. John raised his fist again.
‘John! What have you done?’ It was Amalric.
John picked up his cross and wiped the bloody top on his tunic before hanging it about his neck. ‘They were raping her.’
Amalric looked from John to the two unconscious Hospitallers. The king nodded towards the woman huddled in the corner. ‘What will become of her now? Will she stay here, alone in this ruined city? How long do you think she will last before she starves to death, or someone else takes her for his own?’
‘I could not stand by and do nothing.’
‘It is the way of war, John.’ Amalric’s expression softened as he looked back to the girl. ‘Ask her what her name is.’
‘Halima,’ the woman replied when John asked.
‘Halima,’ Amalric mused. ‘She is pretty enough. Have her brought to my tent.’ John opened his mouth to protest, but the king cut him off. ‘I will treat her well, John, better than those knights would have.’
‘Yes, sire.’
‘Now, come. Cairo awaits.’
DECEMBER 1168: THE SINAI
Yusuf gazed into the cloudless sky as he tilted his head back to drink from his waterskin. He allowed himself only a single mouthful. He lowered the skin and replaced the stopper. He stood atop an enormous sand dune that it had taken precisely three hundred and seventeen steps to climb. Behind him, men were zigzagging up hill, the sand spilling away from their feet. The slope was too steep to ride up, so they led their horses behind them. Far away, at the bottom of the dune, those just starting to climb looked like toy figures. The column stretched along the valley between two dunes and then over another dune and another after that. There were nearly six thousand men in all. Two thousand were Nur ad-Din’s own mamluks from Aleppo, Damascus and Mosul. Another thousand mamluks, including Yusuf’s own contingent of two hundred men, had come with the dozen emirs who had joined the campaign. The remaining three thousand were Bedouin and Turcoman warriors — Arab and Turkish nomads who had joined the army in hope of collecting spoils. They had gathered the men in Damascus and left two weeks ago.
‘A storm is coming,’ their guide said from where he sat with his legs folded. Mutazz was a badawi, a traveller of the desert. He had a thin, weathered face, like the craggy stone floor of Al-Niqab, the rocky expanse they had crossed to reach the dune sea. While Yusuf and Shirkuh had struggled up the dunes, Mutazz strode ahead of them, never showing any sign of fatigue. Yusuf had wondered at how the badawi found his way among the towering dunes. When he asked, Mutazz had told him that the dunes spoke to him. Yusuf had smiled, thinking that Mutazz was joking, but the Bedouin was serious. ‘The hiss of the sand sliding across the slopes,’ he said, ‘the slant of the shadows across their face, these things tell me where I am.’
Mutazz stood and pointed in the direction they were headed. Huge waves of sand stretched to the horizon. ‘There. A sandstorm.’
Yusuf could just make out a brown smudge in the distance.
‘When will it hit us?’ Shirkuh asked.
The Bedouin shrugged. ‘Hard to say. Storms are like wild horses; they move at their own pace, sometimes a walk, sometimes a gallop.’
‘Before nightfall?’
Mutazz shrugged again.
‘We will press on,’ Shirkuh decided. ‘I’d rather face a sandstorm than spend another day among these cursed dunes without fresh water.’
‘Yes, ya sidi.’ The guide took the reins of his horse and led it down the far side of the dune. Yusuf wetted his keffiyeh — that would help to keep out the fine dust during a sandstorm — and checked his saddlebags to make certain that the tent cloth he would use as a shelter was to hand. Finally, he tugged at his horse’s reins and led it down the dune, following in Mutazz’s footsteps.
They continued west as noon came and went. Yusuf was walking in the shadows of a dune when he heard shouting from the men high on the hill behind them. They were pointing ahead. Yusuf noticed that the light was starting to dim, as if the sun had set.
Mutazz had stopped. ‘Listen!’ he said. There was a hissing sound, like steel being drawn across leather. It was growing louder. The badawi took a white tent cloth from his saddlebag. ‘La-taht,’ he called to his mount, which immediately lay down. He looked to Shirkuh. ‘The storm is almost upon us. It is moving fast.’
The words were no sooner out of his mouth than a cloud of swirling brown sand appeared at the top of the dune before them. Yusuf pulled his keffiyeh down over his mouth and nose just before the storm hit with a shock of cold wind followed by stinging sand. Ahead, Yusuf saw that Mutazz had disappeared, drawing his tent sheet over him and his horse. A short piece of wood poked up in the middle to form a makeshift tent. Yusuf went to his saddlebag and took out his own tent cloth. Behind him, Shirkuh was shouting to the men. ‘Take shelter! Take shelter!’ Suddenly the full force of the storm hit them and Shirkuh disappeared, obscured by the thick cloud of swirling sand.
Yusuf knew his uncle could take care of himself, so he busied himself with his own shelter. If he did not get it up soon, his horse would choke in the sand-thick air. Already the animal was huffing and snorting. ‘La-taht,’ Yusuf ordered as he pulled on the reins to make it lie down. The horse lay on the edge of the tent cloth; he would weigh it down against the wind. Yusuf drove a long pointed stick into the sand beside the horse and then crouched and pulled the sheet over them. Outside, the sand hissed and the wind howled. There was the sudden crash of thunder, and his horse’s eyes rolled. ‘Hudu, hudu,’ Yusuf murmured and stroked the beast’s neck. As the thunder faded, he thought he heard someone shouting over the fury of the storm. His horse’s ears twitched. It had heard it, too.
Yusuf crawled to the edge of his shelter and looked out. He could see nothing but dust and grit, thick in the air. Then a gust of wind ripped the curtain of sand aside. He saw that his uncle had disappeared into his own tent, only a dozen feet away. Sand was already piling up on the windward side. Beyond, dozens of other shelters dotted the valley between the tall dunes. Yusuf saw two men making their way between the shelters. At first he thought that they were two of Shirkuh’s men, coming to make certain that their lord had found shelter. Then he saw the mamluks lying crumpled on the ground behind them, swords in their hands. The wind shifted, and the two men disappeared in a cloud of swirling sand. Yusuf’s eyes were watering, irritated by the fine dust thrown up by the wind. He blinked away the grit and peered again into the storm. He caught glimpses of the men. One wore a brown robe, the other white with dark mail showing beneath it. In their hands they held curving swords, the metal dull in the dim light. They were headed for Shirkuh’s tent.