Prologue #3
Two very small boys found themselves alone in a strange land, their mother and sister vanished.
There were no more servants out of the several who came with them, except for the dying old man.
Therefore, Addax and Essien took up vigil next to the old servant, through heat and cold, night and day, learning to beg for food and receiving a pittance from the mosque in town.
But it was enough to sustain them until the old servant finally passed away six days after they had found him.
After that, they were on their own.
But not for long.
Abu Samra was a crossroads for trade caravans throughout the region, and one day, when Addax and Essien went to the mosque to beg for more food, the holy man introduced them to a merchant who was bringing an enormous caravan from Abu Dhabi and heading for Damascus.
The merchant needed small boys to run errands or complete little tasks, and the holy man made it seem as if it would be a great, fruitful adventure for Addax and Essien.
It was better than begging in the streets, he said, and God would smile upon those who helped themselves.
So, they went.
Unfortunately, the merchant was not their savior.
He enslaved them both, starving them and beating them, forcing them to tend camels and horses and load and unload merchandise.
Addax was a little older and a little stronger than Essien, who was hardly more than a toddler.
But he was a three-year-old who was forced to grow up very quickly as the hardships of life settled around them.
It was either that or he would die, and neither of them wanted that.
They had a strong will to survive, even in the worst of circumstances.
This went on for two very long years.
Two years of being beaten and abused, of hoping the next day would bring relief or even someone with some kindness for them.
At one point, the merchant, a man by the name of Abiram, was given a slave girl in Basrah in exchange for goods.
She was young, but pretty and strong, and Abiram used her for labor.
She worked alongside Addax and Essien, her nature kind and joyful in spite of her circumstances.
Finally, the two young boys had someone to show them a measure of kindness and compassion, things they craved at their young age.
Amala was her name.
But Amala’s presence wasn’t to last forever.
Abiram had reached the Levant with his caravan of goods, and he found ready customers in the men protecting Acre, and other cities, from the onslaught of Christian armies.
One night, Abiram sold Amala to a lord for his harem, and Addax would never forget her soft weeping as she was taken away.
Somehow, Addax knew that he and Essien would not survive much longer.
Abiram was growing crueler, and they were growing weaker.
Once they hit the outskirts of Jerusalem, a vast and populous city, it was Addax who made the decision to run.
It was either run or die.
When Abiram brought the caravan to a halt and ordered the boys to go into town with a message for a friend of his, they willingly went into the citadel of Jerusalem and lost themselves on the dusty, ancient streets.
Instead of searching for Abiram’s friend on the Street of the Merchants, they escaped the city walls to the north, running through scrub and rocks, avoiding scorpions and snakes, rushing toward another village.
It took all night.
Once they arrived, there were very few people on the streets.
Everyone seemed to be inside, even on what should have been a busy morning.
Addax and Essien did what they’d learned to do best—hide in the shadows, trying to remain unseen, being as unobtrusive as possible.
They’d learned that from Abiram, but more so now that they had fled the man.
They didn’t want to be brought back to him.
But they were only small boys, after all, and by midmorning, they collapsed in a grove of olive trees from sheer exhaustion, and Essien fell asleep on his older brother.
But Addax couldn’t sleep.
He had to remain vigilant.
Hollow-eyed, malnourished, and quite possibly as close to death as he’d ever been, Addax wondered if he would die in this place.
He wondered what would become of his brother.
Before Abiram’s caravan, they’d begged for food because they didn’t know what else to do.
Now, it seemed they were to live on the street again, and Addax didn’t relish the thought.
He’d once had plans to find his mother and sister and return to Kitara to fight alongside his father, but all of those events had happened over two years ago.
It seemed like a thousand years had passed.
His father was dead, and so were his mother and sister, more than likely.
Although he didn’t want to believe that, deep down, he knew it was true.
He and Essien were the only ones left.
As Addax pondered what the future would bring, he heard horses in the distance.
He was near the road, but still somewhat protected by the grove of olive trees.
Turning his head, he could see enormous warhorses ridden by men covered with steel coats and great tunics and big, square buckets of metal on their heads.
The tunics they wore were red, with yellow cats on them.
There were so many that he couldn’t see where the line of them ended, all of them heading down the road and into the village.
Somewhat fearful, Addax tried to move without waking up Essien.
His brother would likely cry at the sight of so many armed, unfamiliar warriors, and that would bring attention to them.
If there was one thing Addax had learned as a young lad, it was how to be quiet.
Noise was never a good thing. But he couldn’t move enough, knowing he could be seen from the road.
And he was.
By dogs.
Two big gray dogs found him, licking his face furiously, wagging their tails, and evidently quite happy to see him.
Even the dogs had steel on them, around their necks, and Addax was absolutely terrified.
The dogs were very big, but thankfully friendly, and they licked Essien, too, who awoke to a giant dog head in his field of vision that was larger than his own head.
He opened his mouth to scream, but Addax slapped a hand over his lips so the sound would go no further.
Then someone was yelling for the dogs. The dogs heard their names, but they were so happy that they’d found new people that they refused to leave the boys.
In fact, one dog lay across Essien, and the other sat down next to Addax.
It didn’t seem to matter that someone was calling for them.
They’d found something and they were proud of it.
As Addax watched in terror, one of the heavily armed men on the road moved into the olive grove and dismounted.
He was heading straight for them.
“Argos!” the man boomed. “Artemis! Did you not hear me, you foolish animals?”
Addax had no idea what the man was saying.
He didn’t understand the language. But he was absolutely petrified as he clutched Essien, watching the big warrior approach.
The man saw them fairly quickly, realizing his dogs had found the pair.
He slowed down, pausing a moment before removing his helm.
He had hair the color of gold and a beard of nearly the same color around his jaw.
Addax had never seen hair that color in his life.
“Aap kaun hain?” the man asked, not unkindly.
Who are you? Addax recognized the language because he’d spent enough time in these lands to understand, and speak, a little of it. But he was so frightened, and so hungry and exhausted, that he started to weep.
“Addax,” he said. “Ana Addax.”
I am Addax.
The warrior looked him over. He pointed to Essien questioningly, and Addax told the man his name.
But that didn’t seem to satisfy him. He didn’t go away.
He tried to get the dogs to come away, but they wouldn’t.
He finally gave up and crouched down a few feet away from them, even as other warriors saw what he was doing and reined their horses to a halt.
But the man’s focus was on Addax.
“Do you understand me?” he asked in the language of the land.
Addax nodded. “Aye.”
“Are you injured?”
Addax shook his head. “Nay.”
“But you have bruises and blood on you.”
Addax didn’t know how to answer that. He was terrified to tell him the truth, so he made up something. Anything. “We… we are traveling.”
“Where are you going?”
“I do not know.”
The crouching warrior was joined by two more of the biggest men Addax had ever seen. One had the same gold hair, but the other man had black hair and blue eyes. They all had blue eyes. Addax had never seen that shade before, nor skin tone that color. It was quite pale.
“Where are your parents?” the crouching man asked. “Where do you belong?”
Addax shook his head. “We belong to no one,” he said. “Please… will you let us go?”
The other blond warrior walked around the tree trunk, coming up on their other side. He, too, crouched down, closer to Essien. He spoke to the other man in a language Addax didn’t understand.
“They’ve been beaten, Chris,” he said quietly. “Starved, too, from the looks of it.”
The man called Chris, the one with the blond beard, nodded. “I can see that,” he said. “And they’re clearly terrified. They are probably running from whoever did this. Why else would they be sleeping in an olive grove?”
The second blond man merely nodded and stood up. “We have some provisions we can give them,” he said. “But we need to be on our way. Richard is expecting us.”
The man called Chris stood up, too, but he was gazing down at the frightened boys. After a moment, he looked at the black-haired man standing next to him.
“Something tells me not to leave them here,” he said.
The man with the dark hair frowned. “Why?”
“I do not know. It is a feeling I have.” The man called Chris paused, looking indecisively at the boys huddling fearfully against the tree. “Those are very little boys who probably will not see another sunrise if they are not given food and help.”
The man with the dark hair rolled his eyes. “So you come all this way to kill Muslims, yet you want to save these two?” he asked incredulously. “We do not have time for this. Give them some bread and let us be on our way.”
With that, he turned and walked away, but the man called Chris didn’t leave with him. In fact, he called after him.
“Mayhap God will be more willing to forgive me for the Muslims I’ve killed if I help two small children,” he said loudly.
But his focus returned to Addax and Essien.
He’d made up his mind. He was going to help.
“I cannot leave them here to die. David, pick up the one closest to you. I’ll take the bigger one. ”
The other blond man looked confused. “And do what with them?” he said. “We bring them along like baggage?”
The man named Chris pointed to the dogs, still lying with the boys. “We bring them along like the dogs,” he said. “Mayhap I will put them to work for us. In any case, I will not leave them. Pick up the smaller boy.”
With a shrug, the other blond man dutifully reached down and picked up Essien, who screamed at being separated from his brother, but the man called Chris held up a hand to him.
“Hadi, hadi,” he said quickly. Quiet, quiet. “Sawf ’usaeiduk.”
I will help you.
That shut Essien up somewhat, but he was still crying.
Addax found himself heaved up by the big blond man with the beard, being carried toward the warhorses that were tethered at the side of the road.
No sooner were they put upon them than the warriors, men from a faraway land who spoke a strange language, were giving them water and stale bread.
But neither boy cared.
They wolfed it down.
Little did either one of them know that the food represented hope, and the Christian knights represented destiny. Hope and destiny came to Addax and Essien that day.
And they embraced it.