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they did before.”
    Jacob drew his sword and peered around at the darkness, vowing not to be blind-sided again as Sir Richard drew out his tinderbox and struck flint against steel. There was a wooden outhouse with some damaged old furniture in it attached to the main building and with the suffocating climate on the island it was simple enough to set it alight.
    “Come on!”
    Jacob followed his master's lead back to the tunnel entrance just as the guards caught the smell of burning in the air.
    “What's that?” one of them asked, sniffing loudly. “You smell that?”
    The Hospitaller's couldn't fully understand what was being said as the Greeks spoke excitably but the gist of the conversation was obvious and the alarm apparent as the slowly building fire became large enough to cast an orange glow in the sky.
    The men began to hurry over to extinguish the blaze before it got out of hand and Sir Richard grinned in satisfaction.
    Then there was a shout and the guards halted in their tracks. The foreman berated them, pointing down at the stairs leading to the tunnel. There was some heated argument then, particularly by one guard but the foreman ran over and punched the dissenter hard in the face, knocking him back against the low wall.
    The rest of the guardsmen lowered their heads, muttering under their breaths in anger, but they followed their leader's directions and walked back to their positions in front of the tunnel entrance.
    Clearly it was more important to make sure no uninvited guests went into the tunnel than it was to extinguish a fire that could, potentially, destroy the whole village.
    “They're leaving it to burn!” Jacob muttered in disbelief. “By all that's holy, whatever they're protecting down there must be important...”
    Sir Richard nodded in exasperation. Clearly their ruse wasn't going to work. “Draw your weapon,” he ordered, pulling his own fine longsword from its leather sheath. “Looks like we'll have to try your direct route after all.”
    Whereas the Hospitallers had travelled with only light clothing earlier in the day, they now wore full chain-mail, covered by the red surcoats with white eight pointed star of their Order proudly emblazoned on the front. They wore no helmets, knowing the darkened conditions and possible close-combat they'd be faced with would only be made more difficult by a heavy lump of steel the wearer could barely see out of.
    “Who's that?” The voice was that of the foreman. He didn't sound worried, or frightened by the sight of two shadowy figures approaching, just surprised. “Who's that?” he repeated, louder, when he didn't get a reply.
    Sir Richard and Jacob held their swords behind their backs so the torches that guttered by the tunnel entrance, and the fire they'd set – which was already beginning to burn itself out – wouldn't reflect off their blades and warn the workmen of their impending doom.
    They approached the guards who stood up, knowing something was obviously wrong, and the Hospitallers roared their battle-cries into the charred air of the ghost town.
    Sir Richard thrust the point of his longsword down and into the thigh of the first worker to engage him. The man collapsed, screaming in shock as thick blood spurted from the fatal wound which he tried to close, uselessly, with a shaking hand.
    Without slowing, the knight brought his blade round and up by his right shoulder, ready to swing it down into the head of his next target. The guard instinctively dodged to the left, thinking he was a step ahead of the big Hospitaller but before he could aim a blow of his own he felt the boot of Sir Richard battering into the side of his knee and he collapsed instantly.
    The knight's blade was thrust into the guard's heart and, as the man died, Sir Richard looked up to see his sergeant-at-arms fighting off the remaining three men.
    One of them was crouching, bleeding profusely from a terrible wound across the midriff, so the knight jumped forward and