October 21, 2003

• Today, I feel like showing y’all a sample from some historical fiction/fantasy I’ve been working on.   No plagarisms, please–I don’t want to go through all the trouble of a lawsuit, although I will enjoy your money once I get it…

  Bit of a background…  Einar is a young Saxon, come out of England in 1090-something as part of the First Crusade.  He arrived late, just as Antioch fell to the Crusaders.  He took part in the seige of Jerusalem, and the massacre of civilians that followed it.

  In the heat of battle and the bloodlust of pent-up agression, Einar was responsible for the death of at least a dozen Muslims and Jews: civilians, who held neither sword nor spear.

  His own actions have haunted him ever since.  Einar deserted from the Crusader ranks.  The war that he once though was a ‘holy’ war, the will of God, has become hateful to him.  All he wants to do now is to return home to England; but first he must find his younger brother, Ragnar (also a Crusader), and persuade him to return with him.

  Since then he has traveled all across the war-torn Holy Land, from Damascus to Jaffa to what will someday be called Jordan.  Our segment of story opens in the deserted city of Sela–an ancient city carved in stone, also called Petra.  Einar was told that he might find Ragnar here, but all he has found is empty temples of stone.

  ***

  As the sun vanished behind the mountains, the world became a realm of purple twilight. Einar made a hasty camp with the little light he had left.For a moment he considered taking shelter for the night within one of the stone buildings, but the gnawing fear in his stomach dissuaded him.There was something familiar here, something that bespoke of the old stories that Einar’s grandmother had frightened him with, long ago when he was a boy.And so he unrolled his bedroll in the center of the colonnaded road, near a crossroads.

  There was nothing around to make a fire with–he ate his stale bread cold. Then, before he went to sleep, he tried one of the superstitions of his grandmother’s that he had for so long despised.

  He took the silver cross from around his neck.Stooping, he used it to draw a line in the sand and across the crumbling stone. He described a large circle, arcing it around himself and his bedroll. As he connected the line, completing the ring, he said a prayer.

  “Media vita in morte sumus.Quem quaerimus adjutorem nisite Domine?”In the midst of life we are in death.Whom do we seek for aid except for You, Lord?

   

  Standing again, he replaced the cross and tucked it beneath his Bedouin robes.Then, satisfied that he had done all that he could do, and wishing for wood to build a fire with, Einar curled up in his bedroll and went to sleep.

  He awoke to the sound of pattering feet.

  The first thing he saw when he opened his eyes was the moon. It was three-quarters full, and shrouded with a ghastly ring; it cast all of Joktheel into shades of silver and black. Both tombs and temples seemed to glow with a pale luminescence, lent by the cold sphere above. The desert had grown cold–it was surely near dawn, for much of the day’s heat had already bled off into the black vacuum.

  Einar turned, and was shocked to see that his camel was gone. He had tied the beast securely to an outcropping of rock at the edge of the crossroads, but now it was gone.How it had gotten free and where it had gone were a mystery. And it was a mystery that was soon far from Einar’s mind, for at that moment he saw the eyes.

  Nearly two hundred paces away, the temple with the winged lions of stone castlong, dark shadow. And in this shadow, two faint green points regarded Einar. He could just make out a crouched feline shape; a shadow within the greater shadow. A jackal, he thought. Then, he considered the size of the silhouette.No, a lion. Slowly, he reached for his sword, lying beside him in the sand.

  “Thou needst not fear—put by thy steel,” said a whispering voice–a human voice, harsh yet unmistakably female. The words were Latin, albeit an archaic dialect, as though it was the Latin spoken in the days of the Caesars.

  The crouched figure came forward into the moonlight. It was a human figure after all, and not feline, though it moved with an almost feline grace. It wore a dark shapeless garb, black in the moonlight, as Einar had seen some of the Muslim women wearing in Jerusalem: a black gossamer veil concealed its face.

  “Who are you?” Einar asked. His sword was in his hand now, though still sheathed, and he was sitting up.

  The woman came a few steps forward, moving fluidly. “Thou must come hither,” the figure said in her dead dialect. “There is better hospitality to be had then thy road in this ruin, with naught but thy camel for company.” She extended her hand in invitation.

  Cold flowed down Einar’s spine: a cold that had nothing to do with the chill night air. For where she had stopped, he could see a thin mark on the ground. The line he had drawn, using the crucifix. For some reason she had not crossed the line. “I’ll stay where I am, thank you,” he said aloud.

  The figure hissed angrily. “Come hither,” she said again, “Foolish boy, the night is full of many dangers.If thou stay tis to your peril, for who can say what stalks the darkness?Jackals and lions, snakes and scorpions.”

  “Strange.I have been warned many times of the dangers of the night.But while you speak of beasts, the Bedouin told me of shayateen.”

  Muffled laughter came from the depths of her veil.“Believe thou these tales of night spirits?They are but voices on the wind.Come hither with me.”Again she extended her arm, black in the moonlight.But she was careful not to extend it over the circle in the sand…

   

  When he made no answer, the shadow-woman pushed back the veil that covered her face and head. The elfin moon fell silver across her smooth cheek. Her face was that of a young Damascene girl, having seen no more than fifteen summers: dark of hair and skin. She was exquisitely formed, beautiful to behold, from her delicate chin to her pale, piercing eyes. Between parted lips, her cruel smile glistened white in the moonlight.Einar’s stomach clenched—commingled desire and fear. This girl was so beautiful that he wanted to run toward her. At the same time he looked into her eyes and saw his own death: himself lying bloodless on the cold rock, the scorpions fighting for his flesh.

  She looked at him, bemused, over the fragile line that separated them. “For all thy protest, Crusader, art thou truly ready to renounce thy service to Death?”

  Einar tried to speak and found that he could not.

  ***

  Want to know what happens?  Sorry, you can’t find out.  Not until I finish the story, anyway.

  Copyright © Chris Russo 2003

  • 6:19 pm
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