The Hostility of Hanno: An Outlaw Chronicles short story Read online

  Angus Donald was born in 1965 and educated at Marlborough College and Edinburgh University. He has worked as a fruit-picker in Greece, a waiter in New York and as an anthropologist studying magic and witchcraft in Indonesia. For twenty years, he was a journalist in Hong Kong, India, Afghanistan and London. He is married to Mary, with whom he has two children, and he now writes full time from home in Tonbridge, Kent.

  Also by Angus Donald

  Outlaw

  Holy Warrior

  King’s Man

  Warlord

  Short Stories

  The Rise of Robin Hood

  The Betrayal of Father Tuck

  COPYRIGHT

  Published by Hachette Digital

  ISBN: 978-1-40552-887-0

  All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © Angus Donald 2013

  Excerpt from Warlord © Angus Donald 2012

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.

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  Contents

  About the Author

  Also by Angus Donald

  Copyright

  Begin Reading

  Excerpt from Warlord

  July 1191, Acre

  A fat fly looped through the baked afternoon air of the small infirmary, buzzing contentedly and crossing and recrossing the sun-filled space with an aimlessness that seemed almost insolent. The low room, although spotlessly clean, smelled faintly of wine and blood, with a background hum of bodily corruption that had drawn the fly in through the high stone window despite the swelter of noon and the iron bars that guarded that small square opening. Catching the delightful stench of overripe green grapes, the fly hung almost motionless in the air for a moment and then swooped, dropping to a wooden table that had been placed between two cots, each of which contained a slumbering man, and which were part of a row of eight simple wooden-framed beds that stood against the outside wall.

  On that late July day these two were the only injured men occupying the ward belonging to the Knight Hospitallers of St John, one of several in their recently reclaimed commanderie in Acre. The city had been captured from the Saracens a couple of weeks before by a huge Christian army – mostly under the command of Richard the Lionheart, King of England. It had been lightly looted and was now packed to its high white walls with victorious, wine-filled Christian soldiery of many regions, most of whom had never before set foot in a city of its quality; and its narrow, shady, tight-twisting alleyways, gold-clad mosques, magnificent palaces and cool courtyards with tinkling fountains seemed somehow somnolent, bruised and resentful in the summer heat, like a drunk after a three-day debauch.

  The fellow in the left-hand cot was long-limbed and yellow-haired, slim and very young, perhaps no older than sixteen years. His face was browned by the Mediterranean sun, regular in shape and roughly handsome with prominent cheekbones and a square, determined chin. He was deeply asleep, his unlined forehead filmed with sweat, his closed eyelids twitching minutely as he dreamed. Contrasting with his tanned face, his upper body, which was bared to the hips, was pale as buttermilk below the collar bone, and despite his youth the slabs of musculature indicating a highly trained swordsman created sculpted planes and shadows on his smooth chest and arms. His right wrist, which lay on the sweat-damp sheet that covered his modesty, was strapped tightly with crisp white bandages. And his lower belly, too, just above the hip bone, was swathed in a thick snowy linen band.

  The man in the second cot also appeared to be asleep. Almost in opposition to the young warrior, he was squat and thick-bodied; an ill-made creature with heavy pads of hair on his chest, back and the curve of his shoulders, and yet with all the hair on his head shaven away to expose a large knuckle-like skull. His hairy sweat-gleaming upper body was a mass of lumped muscle and a truly spectacular collection of scars. His lower left leg had clearly been broken; it had been set, bound and secured between two pieces of split pine, and tightly bandaged from knee to ankle.

  The fly alighted on the wrinkled green skin of a lone grape, unhooked its mouth parts and began to feed on the sweet juice of the fruit …

  CRACK!

  A hairy hand smashed flat on to the surface of the table, crushing grape and fly into a green mush, and creating a sharp noise like a breaking tree limb. The blond warrior sat up with a jerk, and immediately wheezed with pain and clutched at his belly bandages. He looked angrily over at the man in the other bed who was wiping the mess from his hand on to his linen sheet. The shaven-headed man looked back at him with dark, iron-hard eyes. The two men stared at each other for some moments, neither speaking, neither willing to break their gaze, the heat in the already baking infirmary seeming to intensify around them, as if their locked eyes were generating a blaze all of their own. Finally, the younger man looked away, and flopped back down on to his cot. The shaven-headed man spoke then, a harsh unintelligible cackle, neither French nor English, nor any kind of local Latin – languages the young man might have comprehended. But it sounded very much like a deadly insult, or some vile curse.

  ‘What did you just say?’ the young man said, sitting up once again though this time with a little more care for his wounded middle. He had received a crossbow bolt to the lower side of his belly at a fierce battle in Cyprus more than two months before, and while the wound was healing under the skilled care of the Order of Hospitallers, it was still tender when forced into sudden movement.

  He was answered by a tall old man in a grey robe, one of the brother infirmarians of the Order, not a knight, but a learned physician and a skilled healer of men, who had appeared unobserved at the end of the shaven-headed man’s bed carrying a bowl filled with bloody water. ‘Hanno asks if you maybe have some problem with him,’ the tall man said. ‘If I were you, young Alan Dale, I would say no. And smile politely at the fellow as you do so.’

  ‘Why does he not speak a proper language?’ asked Alan, frowning at the hairy oaf, who was looking at him once again with a hostile challenge in his eyes. ‘What is that foul barbarian tongue that he yaps away in, anyway?’

  ‘I doubt he thinks his native tongue is improper. He is from the German-speaking lands, as indeed am I, and while he does not speak a pure form of the language – he is only a simple man from the deep forests of Bavaria, after all – I do not think you should call him a barbarian to his face. He is a dangerous fellow, or so I’ve gathered from the accounts of his compatriots, and not someone you should insult lightly.’

  ‘Well, tell him to stop glaring at me like a demon with a grudge, then.’

  The physician sighed, said something long and authoritative to Hanno, and the Bavarian backwoodsman gave a short bark of laughter and lay back in his cot.

  ‘You must make some allowances for him,’ said the physician. ‘Hanno is not a happy fellow; he is all alone in the world.’

  ‘With his demeanour, I can understand why his fellows shun him,’ said Alan.

  ‘No, you do not understand. His countrymen have left the Holy Land, they departed when Duke Leopold of Austria took ship for his homeland, but Hanno was abandoned
in our care for he was too sick with fever. There were half a dozen others of his kind left in Acre, but they have been gathered unto the arms of our merciful Lord. Only he remains.’

  ***

  Hanno felt the thrum of pain in his leg and tried to ignore it. But the sensation had swelled like some cruel music since the early morning, rising into his body, up through his spine, and was now pulsing in the back of his head and across his shoulders. The break was mending cleanly, the physicians had told him the day before, and he had been offered milk of the poppy. But Hanno refused: he did not want his wits fuddled while the Chiavari brothers were on the loose in Acre. He would rather be in pain than be in his grave. He reached a hand up above his head, sliding it under the limp canvas pillow, and felt the wooden handle of the dagger that lay there. Given a heartbeat’s warning, he believed that he could make the Chiavaris, or any of their hirelings, regret it if they came for him in the infirmary. And after what had passed, they’d come for him one day, that was certain.

  He had always slept lightly, even during the worst of the fever, and yet still he did his best to resist the pull of oblivion as long as he could. But no man can go without sleep for ever, not even oak-tough Bavarians, and he had plunged into a vulnerable dreamless state the day before for more than an hour – only to be harshly awakened by a huge blond fellow quacking away far too loudly in the English tongue to the beardless stripling in the bed next to him. The man, a giant red-faced warrior in a long green woollen cloak, bawled and guffawed, and banged on a large shield that he had brought for the wounded boy. He seemed to be explaining what it was for: God in Heaven, were the soldiers of the Lionheart all imbeciles? Did they willingly go into battle without knowing how to hold a shield?

  The English boy had several visitors in green cloaks: a tall good-looking fellow with an easy air and strange silver-grey eyes who seemed to be his lord, an excitable red-head not much older than the patient accompanied by an odd-looking woman who seemed to be his mother, and a child-servant who brought food and drink and hovered around twisting his fingers in anxiety for his master’s health. There was no peace to be had in the infirmary, Hanno grumbled to himself, no peace at all. He cursed the bone of his leg that had been shattered by that woman’s blow, long before the fever took him. A shameful wound: laid low by an ale slut. He had not expected that – he had thought he was fighting two men in that noisome drinking den in Tyre, and he had dispatched them smartly enough, but the woman over whom he had taken up arms in the first place sided with the Chiavaris and snapped his tibia with an iron cooking pot when his back was to her. Which only proved what he had always said: a man could always improve; a man should strive for perfection in his art, but he must also be as ready to learn as he was to teach. She was a fine woman, after all, well worth fighting for – fat as butter and with breasts like the full udders of a prize milch cow, and she brewed a decent ale as well. Shame she was dead now, really. Shame he had to kill her. But what could you do … Just bad luck. Bad luck, too, to be pinned here helplessly by that God-damned leg with the remaining Chiavari brothers calling for bloody vengeance. And all alone, without a single comrade to stand beside him, to watch over him … For a moment, he felt a childish self-pity ballooning in his chest, but he squelched it ruthlessly, laughing at his own weakness, and focused his thoughts on his future – and the loom of the Chiavaris. When would they come? At night? Maybe. During the day in the guise of concerned friends? Perhaps. Or would they wait until his guard was down, perhaps for weeks or even months. Whichever, it would be foolish to remain lying here in this bed for too long …

  ***

  Alan was awoken by a clattering of wood on stone and a harsh cry of pain. It was dim in the infirmary, deep night-time, but a lone candle on a table at the far end gave some relief from the darkness. He sat up and looked left. The cot that had contained his surly companion was empty but he could see a humped shape moving feebly at the foot of the bed, trying to drag itself forward. He slowly levered himself out of bed and stepped over to the fallen man. Two fierce eyes gleamed up at him from the tangle of limbs and bedding. Alan reached down and hauled the man upright. Hanno let out a bitten-down yelp as his broken limb banged against the bed, and followed it with a foul-sounding stream of unintelligible yet clearly furious words. It was no easy task, for his wounds had seriously weakened him, but Alan had soon wrestled the shaven-headed man back on his cot. They glared at each other, both panting with the exertion of the manoeuvre. And then Hanno said loudly, ‘Wasser!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Wasser! Wasser!’ Hanno mimed drinking with a curled hand.

  Alan nodded and walked over to the table at the end of the room. His wounded belly had been strained in the act of lifting the heavy-set Bavarian on to the bed, and he checked it and was pleased to find no fresh blood; for all his discomfort, he was nearly mended. From a tall earthenware jug, he poured out a pint beaker of cool water and brought it over to his neighbour. The man took it and sank the contents in a single draft. He put the beaker on the round table between them and gave Alan the smallest of grunts by way of thanks.

  August 1191, Acre

  The sun reflected off the Mediterranean as if it were a mirror, almost blinding in its intensity. Alan Dale sat under a huge red-and-white-striped awning, at a table on the western promenade just outside the walls of the citadel of Acre, drinking twice-watered wine and eating slices of cool melon. His eyes ached from the glare but he had chosen this spot because he relished the cooling breeze that came straight in from the sea. Behind his back the city was quiet; most of the local folk, Christian, Jew and Muslim alike, had taken to their beds to escape the battering heat of mid-afternoon, and the holy soldiers of the Great Pilgrimage – now only Englishmen, Normans, men of Maine, Anjou and Aquitaine, and a few Italians, as King Philip of France and Duke Leopold of Austria had returned home – usually followed their example. It was almost too hot to think. But Alan had spent too long abed over the past few weeks to desire his cot, so he sat in the shade, with his back to the high white ramparts, looking out over the low wall that separated the promenade from the shining blue sea and enjoying the breeze. Indeed, he was not the only mad soul in Acre who had refused to retire for the afternoon. A few of the hardier Arab stallholders on the other side of the promenade were still at their posts, determined to be on hand to sell their trinkets, fruit, cool drinks and gaudy clothing to any passer-by. Alan’s eye was drawn to a short sturdy figure in a black leather jerkin who walked the promenade with the trace of a limp in his left leg. He was bathed in sweat, half-blinded by the glare and his shaven head was the colour of a well-cooked lobster. Alan recognized him as the man who had occupied the cot beside him some weeks before in the infirmary. He had disappeared – one day Alan had woken and found the man gone, with no warning, no goodbye – but here he was walking stiffly along the promenade past the line of stalls, his head lowered, his shoulders hunched against the heat, his gait determined. For a moment, Alan thought about hailing him, but it was too hot for even the slightest exertion, and he remembered the man had been unfriendly to the point of rudeness, and so he held his tongue and watched him slowly approach, draw level and move onwards without apparently noticing his former neighbour.

  ***

  Hanno paused at a stall selling headscarfs in a rainbow of bright hues. He saw the English boy across the promenade slumped on a stool with his back to the battlements and his long legs extended but had no particular desire to speak to him. He knew that his head was being burnt raw by this God-damned merciless heathen sun, and that he ought to purchase some form of covering, but he could not let himself be got up like some foreign nancy-boy just to avoid a touch of sunburn. Why were there no decent woollen hoods for sale in this damned country? Even a floppy leather countryman’s hat would have done the trick – but there seemed to be nothing for sale but these absurd-looking turbans. He fingered the silky material of a turquoise scarf – he would look like some painted harlot if he were to wrap this frippery
around his head. But, on the other hand, it might make it harder for the Chiavari men to spot him …

  Alan watched idly as the surly Bavarian pawed a trailing strand of fine silk. That man badly needs a hat, he thought. Or some hair. He smiled at his own thoughts, and then straightened in his seat, jolted out of his torpor by the sight of a young Arab, not much older than him, watching the German out of the corner of his eye from the next stall along. The Arab was examining a brass cooking pot, tapping the bottom and holding it up to the sunlight. But Alan could see by his covert glances that the true object of his interest was the shaven-headed thug three yards away. Alan was entranced. He knew exactly what was happening – his former ward-fellow was being stalked. Not so long ago, Alan himself had been a predator of the same ilk as the Arab boy, and he had stalked his prey in a very similar manner. His only dilemma was whether or not he should warn the ill-mannered brute. It was none of his business, and he was professionally interested in seeing how the Arab would accomplish his task, yet the Hospitaller physician had said that the man Hanno was alone in Acre, that he had no comrades, no friends at all; perhaps he owed it to him as a fellow Christian, as a fellow pilgrim in the struggle to recapture Jerusalem, to warn him.

  The Arab casually strolled to the stall selling brightly coloured scarves and positioned himself beside and a little behind Hanno who was by now leaning forward speaking loudly and angrily to the stall keeper, doubtless trying to make himself understood. As Alan watched, he saw a stealthy brown hand reach out, low down, level with Hanno’s hip, and a knife flashed in the sunlight.

  ‘Hey, Hanno! Behind you!’ shouted Alan.

  And the Bavarian moved, faster than a striking viper. He turned in a tight circle, right elbow leading, a blade already in his hand, his arm uncoiling – and he slammed a dagger with astounding accuracy into the throat of the Arab standing behind him, then ripped it sideways and free of the flesh in a shower of red droplets. The young man screamed, a horrible wet, choking noise, and dropped to his knees, both hands flew automatically to his half-severed neck, one dropping a short knife, the other a brown leather purse containing no more than a few pennies that just moments before he had freed from Hanno’s belt.