Crusade of Fire by Katherine Kurtz

Author:Katherine Kurtz [Kurtz, Katherine]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Crusades, Historical fiction, Anthologies (multiple authors), Science Fiction, Fantasy fiction, Templars, Short Stories (single author), General, Fantasy, Historical fiction; American, Historical, Fiction, Short stories, Knights Templar (Masonic order)
ISBN: 9780446610902
Publisher: Warner Books
Published: 2002-12-01T00:00:00+00:00

The white light of Andalusia struck like a drawn sword through his closed eyelids. Never had James dreamed there could be such heat and dryness and brightness. Skin used to Scottish mists and cloud-veiled sun was drawn tight as a drumhead for the sun to pound upon, and his own head was the drum.

And it is but March! What must it be like in high summer? Palestinia itself can be no hotter or drier than this—how the Templars fought there all those years I cannot imagine.

“This” was the field of Tebas de Ardales, hard by Tebas castle. Sir James Douglas and Sir William Sinclair and the rest of their party found themselves on a battlefield that day, fighting against the Moors of Granada for the Christian king Alfonso of Castile, even as the Cid himself once had fought for another royal Castilian Alfonso, not so very long ago….

Battle had not been part of their plan when they left Scotland. Reaching Spain, they had left their ship in Galicia, near the great pilgrim city of Santiago de Compostella, and come riding down through Castile. Receiving them at his court in Burgos, King Alfonso had indicated he would be glad of their help against the emirs; bound by chivalry, they could do naught but oblige.

“It is in no way inconsonant with our errand,” Sinclair had argued—he of the Roslin Sinclairs, an old Templar family that had its seat in that tiny Pentland town. “Our king commanded us to bear his heart into battle against the infidel, and here we have a chance to do so; he will approve and understand.”

Indeed Rob would, and likely did, reflected James. Though how my true errand is to be accomplished, and without the others twigging, I am sure I do not know. To get my king's heart to Keltia, as he did charge me….

All the long and weary way from Scotland—even as he had knelt in farewell beside Bruce's coffin, in the dimness of Dunfermline abbey church—James had cherished the hope that somehow the Kelts would know his need: that their science, or their magic, could find him wherever he might be; that the Cabarfeidh would once more shadow the skies, that he and Connla mac Nessa vhic Dhau might sail together to wars among the stars, his tall, bright-flashing lady greet him again under another sun, and so he had never wed another.

But hope had dimmed the souther they had gone. A lad's hope at best… still, I did believe they would. And perhaps even yet they will….

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