They stood facing each other for a while without anything happening. Since his opponent seemed to have turned his gaze toward King Richard’s pavilion, Arn also glanced in that direction. When silence had fallen over the crowd, King Richard stood up and stepped forward with a big red scarf that he held in his outstretched hand. Suddenly he dropped the scarf and at once the young knight set off to attack from across the field.

Arn was riding Ibn Anaza, which gave him an advantage so great that his opponent, who came thundering on a heavy Frankish stallion, would never be able to imagine it. That alone would make the battle turn in his favor, but the hard thing for Arn would be not to inflict more than bruises on his opponent.

On his way across the field, Arn at first rode at the same moderate pace as his approaching opponent, and he saw what was clearly the intention: to strike the other man’s head or shield, either to kill him or knock him from his saddle. It appeared to be a very dangerous game, and Arn did not want to strike with the tip of his lance at full speed.

Shortly before they met, Arn increased his speed so that Ibn Anaza was galloping hard, and then he leaned as he swung to the left just before impact. This brought him up on the wrong side of his opponent and enabled him to sweep the knight from his saddle with the broadside of his lance.

With some uneasiness he turned around and trotted over to the young man, who lay swearing and kicking in the sand.

“I hope I didn’t injure you too badly, because I didn’t mean to,” said Arn kindly. “Are we done now?”

“No, I do not yield,” said the tenderfoot, grabbing angrily for the reins of his horse and getting up. “I have the right to three attacks!”

Somewhat disappointed, Arn then rode back to the place where he had started before, thinking that the same simple trick would probably not work a second time.

He switched hands so that he was now holding the lance in his left hand with the shield slipped over his upper arm so that it would not be seen before they were very close to each other. By then it would be too late.

Again the king dropped his red scarf, and once more the young Englishman attacked as fast as he could make his heavy stallion run. There was obviously nothing wrong with his courage.

This time Arn did not switch sides in the attack. But just before impact he raised his left arm so that the shield came down at an angle across his opponent’s lance, as he gripped the blunt end of his lance hard with his right hand. The tip of Sir Wilfred’s lance glanced off Arn’s oblique shield. In the next instant the Englishman was struck in the middle of his chest as if by an oar, and this time it connected with twice the force as before. The result was the same, except that Sir Wilfred now flew farther through the air before he slammed into the ground.

Yet he again refused to yield.

The third time Arn flung away his shield and held his lance backward like a club and rode at his opponent with the club lowered until the very last moment. Then with both hands he raised it so that the Englishman’s lance flew up and past him while his own gigantic cudgel slid as if on a track along the other’s lance and hit him solidly in the face. The helmet saved him from being killed, but naturally he flew off his horse just as he had done twice before.

When Arn assured himself that his opponent was not badly hurt, he took off his round, open helmet, rode up toward King Richard, and gave an exaggerated bow.

“Sire, your young Wilfred deserves great respect for his courage. Never before has such a young man ridden without fear against a Templar knight.”

“Your tricks are amusing, but incorrect according to our rules,” the king replied crossly.

“My rules are from the battlefield and not from the jousting field, Sire. Besides, I told you that I didn’t want to injure your knight. His bravery and nerve will surely be of great joy to you, Sire.”

This childish game had two consequences for Arn. The first and for the moment most important was that King Richard adjusted the conditions a bit for Saladin’s payment.

The other result was that a young knight by the name of Sir Wilfred of Ivanhoe, who now took part in his first large-scale war, for the rest of his life would have an easy time with all opponents on both the jousting field and battlefield, except for Templar knights. He would often have nightmares about them.

When Arn went back to the Templar quarters to return the weapons he had borrowed, he was invited to dine with the new Master of Saint-Jean d’Acre, whom he had known for years, ever since they had been at the fortress of La Fève together. His brother had a good deal to complain about when it came to the English king, especially the fact that this man could not get along with his peers. He had thrown the Frankish king Philippe Auguste out of the Templar quarters. After the royal palace—which was where King Richard had moved in, of course—the Templar residence was the next most elegant in Saint-Jean d’Acre. The two sovereigns had begun to squabble so badly about this trifle that the Frankish king had now decided to take all his men and head home. King Richard had also insulted the Austrian grand duke, by taking down the Austrian standard, which hung between the English and Frankish ones up on the walls. He then broke it in pieces and cast it into the moat. Violent brawls had erupted between the English and the Austrians, and now the Austrians were going to leave too. Through these childish actions the Christians had lost half the strength of their forces, but King Richard seemed to be convinced that only he and his own men were needed to retake Jerusalem, together with the Knights Templar. It was an attitude that was as dangerous as it was rash, but this was understood better by those, like Arn and his old friend, who had been at war with Saladin much longer. The mere prospect of having to move all these archers on foot in the burning sun on the road to Jerusalem would cause great suffering when the attacks from Saladin’s Syrian mounted archers commenced.

But one thing was even worse. King Richard was not only a moody man who kept inciting trouble for no reason. He was a man whose word could not be trusted.

Saladin honored the agreement as negotiated. After ten days he would deliver fifty thousand besants in gold and a thousand freed Christian prisoners. However, it would take longer to locate the one hundred named knights who were imprisoned, since they could be almost anywhere in the dungeons of Syrian or Egyptian fortresses.

Because none of the hundred knights had been delivered, it was King Richard’s view that Saladin had broken the agreement.

So he ordered crossbowmen and longbowmen to surround a hill outside Acre named Ayyadieh. Then he drove the two thousand seven hundred captives out from the city—the men in chains, the women and children beside their husbands and fathers.

The Muslims found it hard to believe their eyes when they saw what happened next, and once they did believe it they could hardly see through their tears. All two thousand seven hundred captives that were to be released that day according to the agreement were beheaded, impaled on spears, or clubbed to death with axes.

Soon Saracen horsemen began attacking from every direction, moving in wild disarray, howling and out of their wits. They were met by a hail of arrows, and none of them survived the advance. The slaughter went on for many hours before the last small children were discovered, and they too were killed.

Finally only English corpse-robbers were left up by the dead on the hill called Ayyadieh. They went from body to body cutting open the stomachs to search for any gold coins that had been swallowed.

By that time Saladin had long since left the site, where he had witnessed the start of the massacre.