Dante's Cross

When I was a child, I spake as a child...

Dante de Montcada pondered the words, their truth absolute. There was little else to occupy him for the moment, while he awaited a return to battle.

...I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things....

And so he had done on the bloody fields of Palestine. He had taken up the sword, a weapon of war that fit his hand and suited his disposition. He reckoned himself good for little else.

He sat his fine Spanish charger in expert fashion, honored every knightly vow he had taken, but in his dark eyes lay a shadow of discontent. Hidden deep in his heart was a temperament that ran to recklessness, a trait that would cost him mightily.

He turned in his saddle and scanned the plain, then let his gaze fall heavy upon the fortress.

Around him thousands more fought to retake the mighty St. Jean d' Acre, a Crusader fortress on the coastal plain of Outremer, lost to the infidel three years past. The bastion now suffered continuous assault by Crusading men-at-arms, as well she should for her deception and disloyalty, blood being the cost of their ambition and the fee for their claim. A great prize demanded great payment.

Less arrogant in her position now after two long years under siege, she sat in stone-faced silence, her fortifications marred by the constant pounding of siege engines. St. Jean d' Acre's bulwarks challenged the sea on three sides, and on this side her magnificent stone curtain drew a straight line across the arm of land upon which she rested. Her battlemented wall reached skyward, fingers outstretched toward Heaven as though pleading with God for mercy. Her vast walls and spires and loopholes, her breastwork and towers and grand galleries, gates strengthened with iron, were at once a gem and a scar on the coast of Outremer.

The sun shot glints from sword and shield and polished link, from bowmen and foot, from siege engine and mantlet. During the brief lull in the fighting, Dante removed his fine Spanish gauntlets, then raised one hand to shield his eyes from the glare.

To the inland east and on the outlying edge of the fighting, tendrils of smoke curled from a charred wooden barricade near him. With his back to the fortress curtain, he along with hundreds more guarded their flank against attack.

Beside him sat Iago Calderon, a young lion among many occupying the plain, a man trained to war. Dark hair, a piercing glance and a nervousness that spoke of both an extraordinary courage and a depthless fear marked him among men. Possessed of a sober spirit, he laid claim to a powerful gift of which he rarely spoke and a hidden past about which he refused to speak at all.

Iago crossed both hands on his saddlebow, his reins loose on his horse's neck. He nodded toward the plain. "It seems they are not of a mind to withdraw and shall come at us again."

Dante nodded, certain the enemy would once more sling forth their minions to unleash havoc upon the faithful of Christendom. After being thrown back yet again, the Saracens were regrouping. "There's time enough left in the day." He pushed against his own chest to reposition a spaulder, then shrugged his linked mesh up higher onto his shoulders, hot in the sun's relentless burn.