Chapter LXXIII: Surprise Attack
11 May 1609
Jafar held onto the reins of his tired horse with a rhythmic callousness that surrounded him like an aura. Around him, the soldiers’ tired march began to finally pick up; the prospect of Al-Quds merely a few miles away excited their feet and spurs with renewed energy.
A horseman weaved through the lines and Jafar easily recognized the figure of the man with the scarred face as that horse arrived parallel to his own. “The Christians have deployed all their men out of Jerusalem,” he reported while leaning towards the taller one.
Jafar was quiet and only allowed his eyes to peer at his lieutenant for a hard second before facing the front once more. Hot breath exited his nose like the exhale of a brooding dragon. Although he looked forward, the dark whirl of his irises revealed a mind in thought. “I see,” was the only response.
“It looks like they will be surrendering the city!” the man with the marred face praised with a grin. He similarly gazed to the front although his gaze was like one who saw a magnificent mountain of treasure ahead of him.
“Do you have any other news?” Jafar’s asked coldly. He was too busy calculating to pay attention to the excitement of his aide.
“None. The report was that the last cavalry division of the city was filing out southward and away from us. The infantry is moving to one of the port cities. Even though we gambled on a forced march from Damascus, it seems as if Al-Quds will surrender without a proper garrison.
Again, Jafar replied to him with silence. In the sultry heat of the desert’s day, the army of Persia marched with confident speed. The weapons of the warriors glimmered in the luminescence while their armour seared against their clothing. Eventually, Jafar’s thoughts gave way to the pounding of hoof and foot against road and the steady rhythm of an army going to war. For now, there was no option but to move forward and see what the Christians were up to.
---
Madeleine could not help but walk around with a terrible scowl. Jerusalem, she was told, was one of the best markets for silk and other fine treasures from the east. Unfortunately—and she scolded herself for not having realized it sooner—the recent hostilities not only cut off most trade coming from Persia’s direction, but the rampant fear in the streets at the news of the impending invasion had made most of the shopkeepers flee or hide in their homes.
Her parasol glided aimlessly across the horizon of her vision with obvious boredom as she passed through the streets. Her uncle had warned her not to go out by herself but she justified her little jaunt by the mere fact that some of the rooms she was holing up in were too dull, drab, and uninspiring. She had the utmost respect for the architecture, but she wanted to see the sights of the city from without not within.
The dust frustrated her as they bit at her skin and face, but she spat out and shooed against the few drafts with a hiss. In between her annoyance, she noticed specters moving along one of the alleyways. A silly grin erupted on her face—aside from soldiers she hadn’t seen another soul on the streets. Her curiosity got the better of her.
The alley that she followed them into was particularly narrow and when she peeked her head to view down its length, she could only see the tail ends of a desert cloak wafting past one of the corners. “Hmm…” she said to herself as she held the parasol on her shoulder and dared to tread down the alley.
After a few steps, she turned to the left up ahead where she saw the cloak vanish into. Again, her vision only spied the trailing edge of a cloak cutting another corner. Pursing her lips and furrowing her brow, she persisted and followed forward. As she was about to face the next bend, a hand reached out nearly catching her by her neck.
Madeleine’s head snapped backward avoiding the grip and her hands released the parasol into the air. Grabbing the wrist with her gloved hands, she heaved the attacker across the intersection and let him tumble across the dusty alley from whence she had just come. She did it with such speed that she managed to grab her parasol before its lazy flight downward ended at the ground. With furious eyes at her attacker who was now recovering himself, she realized it was a young man.
“Who are you?” a voice called out from behind her. Madeleine quickly rotated her body and jumped to the other side of the intersection so that her attacker was to her right and the voice was now directly in front of her. She recognized the speech as an accented Spanish, however.
As she discerned the images from the shadow, Madeleine saw a soldier’s uniform below a young man’s face along with three others behind him—two of them looked like Arabs but she could not see them well enough until they moved forward a bit more. “It’s hard for me to make acquaintances with anyone whose friends grab young girls from around corners,” she condemned haughtily.
“Young girls should not be following people around in alleys,” was the retort. “Who are you?” was the question again.
Madeleine could see the young boy she threw walking towards the intersection again and she gripped her parasol tighter. She curled her lips into a playful crescent. “Like I said,” she teased them, “I don’t think improper young men deserve to know who
I am.” She cocked her head to the side as if to toss her blonde curves in one direction.
“If you are a Spaniard,” one of them said with a strange accent; Madeleine was unfamiliar with it, “then it is best if you do not harass us. We have official business to do here.”
Madeleine ruffled her brow and watched as the attacker that now regrouped with his fellows brusquely wiped some blood off his lower lip with the back of his hand. His face relayed his furious indignation. “And how do I know you three are on ‘official business?’ Especially with two Turks with you,” she deduced correctly spying the different costumes that were now coming into view.
For a second, the three closest to her exchanged glances, but the tallest one stepped forward. “I’m Lieutenant Willem Van Axel,” he said, “and these are Raul Roxas—”
“Raul Espinoza Roxas?” Madeleine interrupted quickly shutting her parasol with the ferocity of a blade striking a cutting board. Her eyes belied her astonishment as she attached them to the injured young man she had thrown. “Why, you’re the one my uncle put through the Scarlet Academy, aren’t you?”
“Your uncle?” Raul said straightening from his sulking glare. “That must mean—”
Madeleine raised herself for an instant with her ankles with a gleeful smile, “Yes, I’m Madeleine de Fronsac!”
---
“Calm the men down!” General Schenkhuizen yelled to his lieutenants as a mass of hodgepodge militia milled into a blubbering mass. His horse heaved in the tumult of the unruly men. “What’s going on, Renault? I thought you said they wouldn’t be here for another three days.”
Renault de Fronsac wheeled his horse around to face the bewildered general. “There must have been some miscommunication along the way. The network right now is in a panic. Five of our operatives did not return alive from the advance scouting party.”
General Schenkhuizen visually grumbled as he spurred his horse down the main road of Jerusalem towards the north barbican. “We’ll have to improvise,” he said to Renault who was following him along with the train of aides. “What do we know about the incoming force?”
“Full thirty thousand from Baghdad,” one of the aides reported, “probably force marched from Damascus hemming us in from three corps. One is keeping parallel with the east side of the Jordan, the other is coming in from the north and the other is moving to block our retreat routes to Jaffa and Acre.”
“They want to surround us,” the General sighed. “Deployment status?”
“All six divisions have moved towards Jaffa and have the distance between us and the city that you requested,” one of the lieutenants informed the general. “The Cavalry division is moving around the Dead Sea as we speak. They’ll be in position when ready.”
“We don’t have enough time for the initial plan… how much do we know about the enemy leadership?” General Schenkhuizen asked while looking to one of his aides on his right as they briskly filed down the road. The gloom of the northern barbican loomed larger and larger.
“They are being led by a Vizier from Baghdad,” Renault spoke up, “A man named Jafar. As much as I’ve gathered from The Room, he’s an able general having fought in the skirmishes with the Russians on the northern border. It’s how he got his hands on one of the Golden pieces.”
“He’s the one they say is a sorcerer?” General Schenkhuizen asked lowly.
“Yes,” Renault began to answer, “abusing the Key fragment he’s probably impressed some of the locals that he has some kind of Divine power. We can only guess what kind of damage he’s done to rise to the rank of Vizier. We also know that he was chosen to lead the push against Jerusalem because he knows the most about Spanish battle tactics—including about your campaign in the Empire of the Ming.”
The aides around the general looked at each other with concerned glances. An enemy that has studied their general’s tactics—it was looking bleaker than ever. General Schenkhuizen, however, slowed his horse as they approached the north gate. His brow was heavy in thought but a man of his caliber could only come to conclusions quickly—almost instinctually.
“Renault, I leave the task of securing our second objective to you. If I should fail on the field today, you must get that done.”
Renault raised a palm against the beaming afternoon sunlight and allowed his pupils to properly look at the upright man next to him. Taking those orders with some consternation, he nonetheless delivered a secure, “I understand,” before quickly diverting the axis of his horse and charging in the opposite direction.
“If there was one thing I learned in our expedition to China,” the General said to his aides, “It’s that you must turn your enemy’s advantage into a disadvantage. If a force is used against you, use that force to put him off balance.”
The lieutenants who eagerly held their ears to the man’s words squinted against the sun to listen carefully and closely. The General, on the other hand, seemed to defy the incoming light with a wide eyed view of the gateway ahead of them that separated the enemy from the fearful and cowering citizens of Jerusalem.
“José, begin to file the militia,” General Schenkhuizen barked, “Carrington, I need you to gather some tapestry merchants for me immediately. There is one idea I have yet to try… It is something our enemies will recognize readily, but that is exactly what I’m counting on.” The General looked towards the rest of his aides. “Today, my friends, we will attempt to gamble this holy city with the only thing we have left—guile. Prepare yourselves for battle!”
---
“Trying to get to Acre?” Madeleine asked as she crossed her legs casually. Her curiosity being satisfied by the generous questions of the one she got to know as Riku made her giddy. “And this handsome, young Turk and his faithful soldier companion are trying to get back home after the ambush? How exciting!”
The one named Zeren noticed that she was grinning at him but did not seem to acknowledge the strange girl’s compliment—knowing very little of Spanish apparently. “Yes, we were attempting to get Zeren and Abdullah onto a boat and get out ourselves, but both ideas seem to be out of the question now that the Persians have blocked us from heading north.”
“Well why don’t you just try the port at Jaffa?” Madeleine asked with a twist of her French upbringing that made it seem like she was talking to small children.
“Apparently, Raul’s boat that he had in mind was only in Acre. The port at Jaffa is more heavily guarded since it’s a new construction,” Riku explained to her. The mention of Raul’s name prompted her to find that young Spaniard in the room from her perch at one of the comfortable seats in the main room. Looking over Riku who was sitting across the table from her, she passed her glance over the two Turks quietly occupying one corner of the room and then over to Willem and then Raul who were checking maps on a table.
Raul’s messy blonde hair and sky blue eyes only hit her now as being somewhat exotic. Although his mannerisms and costume made her assume he was from the Peninsula, such features on the young man struck her as almost foreign. “There is another way,” she finally said after staring in Raul’s direction for a while. Her short and amused proposition turned Raul and Willem’s heads toward where she was sitting.
The young lady held her closed up parasol and plopped it against her shoulder with a mischievous smile. “What do you mean?” Riku asked her.
“The Crusaders built a network of water tunnels underneath that connects us to the Jordan. Most of them still remain unexplored except for a few years ago when the Lions did a search through them—they seemed to have been doing some kind of project down there. The Persians and the Turks discovered some of them but they wouldn’t know all the different routes.”
Fascinated, Riku leaned forward at the description. “So you’re saying that once the Persian army advances far enough, we can descend into the labyrinth and then exit at one of the terminals on the Jordan and come up behind them?” Already, Raul and Willem approached the chairs.
Madeleine smiled sweetly at them and nodded.
The sweetness made Pablo smile as he swallowed. “You make amazing madeleines, Lara!” he exclaimed simply. He took up another one of the shell shaped cakes and bit into it with exaggerated ecstasy. Lara de Fronsac giggled as she sat on the opposite end of the table sipping her afternoon tea. She watched Pablo devour one cake after the other and his simplicity and endearment made her feel like she was cooking for her younger brother.
“Shall I make you some more?” she teased.
“I would love it!” Pablo replied with an unabashed grin. The scar along his face, whenever he smiled, seemed to curl up as well—as if his face had two grins criss crossing each other.
Lara gave out a little laugh. Pablo was very appreciative of the reward the young lady was giving him for being so heroic in the whole ordeal with Professor Poltok. Furthermore, even though his car took a major blow in ramming the van, the young lady helped to get a replacement for him for his trouble.
“You must be rich,” Pablo recalled telling her when they were at the dealership the day after the incident happened. He couldn’t help but entertain a small hint of admiration for the young lady from America as she merely laughed at him when he pointed it out.
“
Tadaima” was Taguchi’s voice from the stairwell interrupting his thoughts.
“
Okaeri!” Pablo called back welcoming home his friend in the traditional Japanese way.
When Taguchi reached the top of the stairs he gave a gracious bow to Lara as he put down his backpack. “Umm…” Taguchi began, “My cousin Hayato-kun said he wanted to show me something today?” he asked the young lady casually as his head moved back and forth along the living room to see where his cousin may have gone.
“Ahh, he’s down in the basement with my friend Carlos,” she replied, “he’s been waiting for you.”
Taguchi thanked her with a short bow before edging down the stairs again. He hesitated when he pulled the basement door open and began his descent—what was his cousin doing down there?
“Taguchi-kun, over here,” was his cousin’s voice—it was oddly sedated. Taguchi turned his head and saw that his cousin was standing in front of the basement partition door. The door had always been locked—the landlord told them it was a coal storage room before the Great War. Taguchi always found the room particularly strange since most Japanese homes had no basements due to the earthquakes, but never thought about it much until now.
“What’s going on, Hayato?” Taguchi asked as he stepped onto the cold floor with his shoes and stepped towards his dimly lit cousin.
“Follow me,” Hayato said plainly before turning and stepping into the even darker side of the basement.
Taguchi held back for a second before forcing himself to cross the previously locked threshold. On the other side, he turned to his left and found his cousin standing in the dank darkness of a single light hanging from above. In front of him was a strange sight—a circular set of stone. His eyes, spying the stoic moves of his cousin around the cold and mildewed walls gave him a palette of gray.
It only took a second for him to realize what it was that was hidden underneath their home—the cobblestone that made it up in a circuit constituted the top of a well. It was at this same time that he could hear a strange noise permeating the small chamber. A kind of squeaking noise that sounded like the way rubber rubs against glass. It seemed to get louder and louder. His vision of his cousin shaded into more sets of gray until his very vision seemed to blur. Colour seemed to sap out of the room in his unsteady nausea and that’s when he saw it. A head began to ascend from the middle of the well—jet black hair made its dawn. Taguchi’s heart beat faster and faster as the apparition revealed itself and his mind descended into a terrible darkness.
Chapter LXXIV: Descent (coming soon)
