“Why was that so wise? How long do we have to put up with this blasphemous display?”

“Until after we have sung none, I said. Then the sun will be low in the west; the men down there will have the sun in their eyes and won’t see our arrows until it’s too late. The Hospitallers’ weapons master was wise because those of us up here must not show our despair or shoot wasted arrows that will provoke only laughter. We certainly don’t want to goad on their merriment. That’s why he gave the order.”

Arn took his sergeant over to the weapons master, who was still up on the walls. He greeted the man very courteously and requested permission to kill some of the Mamelukes that afternoon, although no one would loose an arrow before then.

Only reluctantly did the weapons master give his permission, since he thought that the enemy would stay at a safe distance for at least that long.

Arn bowed humbly and requested furthermore that he and his sergeant might borrow bows from the armory, since they had lost their own when they crossed the River Litani. He also asked that they be allowed to practice with the bows down in the courtyard before it was time.

Perhaps there was something in the earnestness of Arn’s manner, or perhaps it was the black edge of his mantle that showed his high rank, but the Hospitallers’ weapons master suddenly changed both his tone of voice and bearing as he granted Arn everything that he had asked.

A while later Arn and Harald tried out various bows in the armory and took two each along with a large quiver of arrows out to the courtyard; there they set up two hay bales as targets. They practiced resolutely until they found the bows that suited them best and learned how high above the target they had to aim. The knights among the Hospitallers came to watch their desperate guests attempt a feat that was far too difficult, at first acting somewhat superior in both speech and manner. But they soon fell silent when they saw what the tall brother and his sergeant could do.

When the sun was the correct height that afternoon and they had sung the hymns they had to sing with the Hospitaller brothers in the big fortress church, Arn took some of his Templar knight-brothers and Harald up on the walls. He asked them to walk back and forth a few times to show themselves. As he had hoped, the white mantles up on the walls incited the enemy down below, and the soldiers again raised their lances with the severed heads of the knights’ brothers. Hooting and taunting, they took up where they had left off earlier before they tired of all the commotion, since it had not prompted even one vain shot from above.

The Templar knights stood silent and grave, in full view up on the walls, as the scornful enemy dared come ever closer. Soon the Templars could recognize some of their brothers who were now in Paradise. Siegfried de Turenne was one of them. Ernesto de Navarra, the great swordsman, was among them too.

Once more the emir who yelled loudest about God’s protection and the great victory at Marj Ayyoun rode up in front of the others with his bloody trophy raised before him.

“He’s the one we’ll take first,” said Arn. “We’ll both shoot at him, you high and I low. When he’s dead we’ll see how many of the others we can hit.”

Harald nodded somberly as he drew his bow, raised it, and glanced at Arn, who was also now raising his drawn bow. They stood like silhouettes against the sun, and the shadows of their bodies concealed the shiny tips of their arrows.

“You go first,” Arn commanded.

The emir down below was just moving on from a long tirade of boasting to invoking God anew. He had leaned his head back and was singing a prayer as loudly as he could.

Then an arrow slammed into his open mouth and out through the back of his neck, and another arrow struck him low in the chest where the ribs divide. He fell soundlessly from his horse.

Before the men around him understood what had happened, another four of them fell, skewered by arrows, and a tumult arose as they all tried to withdraw at the same time. A shower of arrows then landed in their midst, for now all the archers up on the breastwork had orders to take their best shot. More than ten Mamelukes fell due to their boastful pride and their willingness to mock the defeated.

Afterward Harald reaped much praise from both the Templars and the Hospitallers for taking the first shot and shutting the mouth of the worst of the blusterers in the best imaginable way. That arrow-shot would live long in the memory of all.

Harald admitted to Arn that he had struck too high, that his intention had been to put the arrow somewhere below the man’s chin. Arn said that there was no reason to admit that miss to anyone else. In any case it looked as though God had steered the arrow straight into the blasphemer’s mouth. The pranks of the Mamelukes were now over, and that was the important thing. When their own dead lay before the walls they would surely lose their desire for further taunting.

And so it was. The Mamelukes withdrew and waited for the dark of night so they could fetch their dead. The next morning they were gone.

At the request of Count Raymond III of Tripoli, who was also among the defeated behind the walls, the master of the Hospitallers’ fortress at Beaufort had refrained from inviting Arn to the evening wine and bread after completorium. It was well known that Count Raymond detested the Templars.

But when the master of the fortress heard how his brother in rank from the Templars had shut up the boisterous foes outside the walls, he found it unreasonable not to invite Arn for wine and bread that same evening.

Arn arrived unsuspecting, although he knew that Count Raymond was the foremost among the secular knights in Outremer; but he knew nothing about the count’s hatred of the Templars.

What he noticed first that evening when he entered the master’s own rooms in the northeastern part of the fortress was that the count was the only one among both the secular and ecclesiastical knights who refused to greet him.

When all had sat down and blessed the bread and wine, the mood was tense. They ate and drank for a while in silence, until Count Raymond in derisive terms asked what the madmen had intended at Marj Ayyoun.

Arn was the only one in the room who did not understand what the count meant by “the madmen,” so he didn’t think that the question was directed at him. But he soon noticed that everyone was staring at him and waiting for an answer. Then he spoke the truth, that he hadn’t understood the question, if it indeed was directed at him.

Count Raymond then asked Arn, in a sarcastically polite tone of voice, if he would relate what had happened to the Templar knights who had been expected to rescue a royal army in great difficulty.

Arn told him briefly and bluntly about the mistakes that had led the Templar knights into death. He added that he had seen it all, because at the crucial moment he was high up on one flank and perhaps had been able to see what his Grand Master unfortunately could not when he gave the last command of his life.

The Hospitallers in the room bowed their heads in prayer, for they could imagine better than anyone what had happened. They too were known for their sometimes foolhardy attacks.

But Count Raymond was not for an instant moved by the tragic tale. In a loud voice and without the slightest courtesy he began describing the Templars as madmen who would lead an army to its doom on one occasion only to be victorious the next; they would really be better off without them. The knights were reckless fools, friends of the condemned Assassins, uneducated louts who knew nothing about Saracens and who through their ignorance might lead the entire Christian population of Outremer to their deaths.

He was a tall and very powerful man with long blond hair that had begun to turn gray. His language was coarse and harsh, and he spoke Frankish with the accent of a native Frank, those that were called subars. It was said that a subarresembled the cactus fruit the word described, prickly on the outside but deliciously sweet inside. Yet their speech could be hard to understand for newly arrived Franks because they used many of their own words and many words that were Saracen.