Adam of Albion by Kim McMahon, Neil McMahon

it?”
    “Orph
says so—let’s look.” By now, Adam had recovered enough so that excitement was
rushing through him. He felt like hugging everybody, but Artemis still looked
dazed and Orpheus wasn’t really huggable. Instead, he scooped up Orpheus with
one hand and pulled Artemis to her feet with the other, and they climbed up on
a grain bin to peer out through the loosely thatched roof.
    What
they saw seemed like a spectacular movie set. They were up on a hilltop, with a
clear view in all directions. The first sight that caught their gaze was a city
a few miles away, with an almost magical sense about it, like the Emerald City of
Oz. It was surrounded by high stone walls with great gates, towers, and
fortifications—and inside them, dominating everything else, rose a huge dome
that shone brilliantly in the sunlight.
    “It’s
Jerusalem,” Artemis breathed. “That’s the Dome of the Rock.”
    “It’s
lovely, but we’re not here as tourists,” Orpheus pointed out. “Sorry to be a
wet blanket, but you’d better get yourselves oriented so you’ll know your way
around.”
    They
were in a sort of compound of buildings, at the top of a village that spread
down the hillside below them. Narrow winding streets lined with low mud-brick
houses led to a marketplace of shops and stalls and crowded with people, not to
mention goats, sheep, and donkeys pulling carts—and camels. In fact, there were
several of them right next door, in a crude corral—huge, gawky, weird-looking
beasts placidly chewing cuds or wandering around. Those were the animals he’d
heard, Adam realized, not horses or cattle.
    Most
of the surrounding countryside was desert-like, with rocky hills and gullies
sparsely covered with scrubby vegetation. They could glimpse other villages and
a couple of big stone structures that looked like fortresses. Far away to the
west, the horizon blended into a deeper azure color that must be the
Mediterranean Sea.
    It
all seemed peaceful and picturesque—except for one other sight that dominated
the panorama, a grim reminder that a bloody war was going on.
    “The
Crusader camp,” Orpheus said, as they stared at it silently. “Richard the
Lionheart and his army.”
    The camp,
situated on another range of hills about a mile away, had the look of a huge
slum. There were no actual buildings or streets, but acre after acre of tents
and crude shelters thrown up in a haphazard sprawl, which wouldn’t be much
protection from the intense heat, or from the hot steady wind that blew swirls
of dust around
    This
was the opposite end of the spectrum from the civilized promise of
Jerusalem—just a place for war-hardened soldiers to throw their bedrolls on the
ground and rest in between one battle and the next.
    There
were plenty of those men moving around, carrying weapons and many riding big
warhorses. With a frightened thrill, Adam recognized the legendary red cross on
the white tunics that some of them wore—the emblem of the Knights Templar.
    It
was a serious wake-up call, and Artemis didn’t waste any more time getting down
to business.
    “Fill
us in, Orpheus—what’s important for us to know?” she asked.
    “It’s
a very complex situation—here’s just a bare bones version,” he said, and even
he, for once, didn’t seem inclined to wander off into storyland. “Saladin holds
Jerusalem and Richard came here to attack it. But both armies are weakened by
years of fighting, disease, and internal strife. It’s a stalemate—the Crusaders
can’t take the city but Saladin can’t drive them away.
    “They
just went through a siege at Acre that lasted a year and a half—nobody wants to
do that again. Richard himself is also badly sick with fever. And on top of it
all, his brother John, back in England, is plotting to oust him and take over
the throne. He’s weary of this, he’s not going to gain anything more, and he
has to get back home and take care of business. So he and Saladin have started
truce talks.