Read 00 - Templar's Acre for Free Online Page A

recent months. He had been in Tripoli during the siege, and Ivo knew he felt guilt for surviving when so many
innocents had died. People like his wife Rachel and their young son Peter.
    ‘Pirates?’ the Marshal asked.
    ‘Genoese.’
    ‘They’re a menace to all shipping,’ the Marshal said, scowling. ‘They plunder without thinking they harm all Christians.’
    Ivo shrugged. ‘It’s always been the way between Venetians and Genoese.’
    ‘It has grown worse in the last year.’
    Ivo nodded at that. The Genoese blamed the Venetians for losing Tripoli, and their rivalry had once more exploded into open war at sea.
    Their business concluded, Ivo was gathering his pack before leaving, when the Marshal asked quietly, ‘Is there any news?’
    Ivo shook his head. ‘There can be none,’ he said with fierce certainty. He thrust the last items into his bag and pulled the strap over his head. ‘They are dead, Marshal. You
know that as well as I do.’
    It was more than a year ago that the Marshal himself had brought the news that Tripoli was overrun.
    Ivo had not expected it. No one had. At the time, the Egyptians had seemed content. They had taken castles, towns and villages – the whole of Outremer was open to their attacks – and
then they took Tripoli too.
    Ivo had heard much about the attacks. How massive catapults were erected and were firing their missiles within hours. A corner tower crumbled, then a second between that and the sea, and
suddenly the whole city was open to assault.
    The Venetians were blamed because it was they who pulled out first. They grabbed their money, crammed their goods on board their ships, and sailed away with their men-at-arms. The Genoese,
fearing the Venetians had learned of some imminent disaster, took to their own vessels. Seeing the galleys of both leave the harbour, it was plain that the city must fall. Women wailed in despair,
men stood shocked, watching their allies flee.
    But not for long.
    Muslim soldiers scaled the rubble where the wall had collapsed, and were over it and into the city in no time, slaughtering the men, capturing women and children for slaves. Some inhabitants
managed to make it to the little island where St Thomas’s Church stood, praying for sanctuary, but the Muslim cavalry saw them and waded out to the island.
    Not a single Christian escaped that carnage.
    Tripoli had been a beautiful city. Wide roads, large houses, great churches and markets, and now, all was destroyed. The Sultan had declared that Christians would never again live there, and had
ordered that every stone should be removed. And as he had commanded, so had it come to pass. The city in which beauty had reigned was a place of rubble with, here and there, the bones of the
inhabitants showing bleached white.
    Ivo knew. He had seen it.
    ‘I am sorry, Ivo,’ the Marshal said. His eye held a tear. He blinked it away.
    Ivo replied stoically, ‘It’s nothing.’
    ‘You have my prayers.’
    ‘I’m grateful, but save them for the people here. Acre is his next and last target.’
    ‘Prayers will aid those who seek to help themselves,’ the Marshal said. He crossed the floor to a sideboard, filled two mazers with wine and passed one to Ivo. ‘We must do all
we can.’
    The door opened, and Ivo turned to see Guillaume de Beaujeu, the Grand Master of the Order. He bowed deeply.
    De Vendac passed his own mazer to his master, and poured a third.
    ‘The horses are here?’ asked the Grand Master.
    He was a tall man, immensely powerful, with broad shoulders, the thick neck of a knight used to wearing a heavy steel helm, and a sun-bleached beard. His head was bald above his handsome, Viking
face. Ivo knew him to be courageous, but also sly and shrewd when it came to politics. It was said he had spies even in the court of the Sultan at Egypt.
    ‘We lost only a few, Grand Master,’ Ivo said.
    ‘Good. We have need of as many as we can find.’
    ‘It is not only mounts. We need men,’ the