The Leopard Sword by Michael Cadnum

entire laboring life was owned by a lord. Many knights held such folk to be little better than livestock, but it was not the first time that I had wondered at Rannulf’s dry nature. Edmund and I had speculated on his dislike for women, and his leathery manner toward people in general.
    Edmund had wondered if the cruel scar across Rannulf’s mouth—giving him a permanent, silent snarl—had made Rannulf bitter toward humanity, to protect himself from having his overtures of friendliness rebuffed. I disagreed with my friend. I believed simply that some folk are bitter and dangerous, and that—despite his occasional kindness—Rannulf was one of them.
    The taunts of the field men followed us, and became a sort of rude companionship, until we left them far behind. The farmland was bare and flat under the clear sky. Tall straight trees aimed in green rows toward Heaven. Short stone towers overlooked harvest stubble. Green pines, with rounded tops like oaks, shaded the road. There were kind souls along the road—a woman who gave us cups of warm, foaming cow’s milk, a plowman who broke off handfuls of golden bread. Children skipped to the edge of the way and offered us curious smiles.
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    When we reached a paved high road, Sir Nigel noted that the wide paving stones were scored by the passage of carts. “Many heavy wagons, is my guess,” he said, “over many years.”
    Father Giles had visited Rome, and said it was scarred with evidence of the empire-building pagans who had lived there. “Iron-wheeled chariots,” I suggested.
    The domes of time-pocked buildings approached us along the road.“These are the burial sites,” I hazarded, recalling what I could of Father Giles’s accounts, “of famous Roman knights.”
    â€œThey buried their men-at-arms in temples?” queried Edmund.
    â€œLike any people of good sense,” said Nigel,“the Caesars, no doubt, were a ghost-respecting lot.”
    Before Edmund and I could absorb this, Rannulf’s voice reached us, calling with an uncharacteristic emotion.
    â€œLook!”
    It was the first time I had heard the knight sound so excited.
    The shoulders of monuments, the belfries of sacred places clustered in the distance behind city walls. Bells sounded, the music softened by the miles we had yet to travel, and the tumult of a great city pattered and rang through the sunlight.

TWENTY-FOUR
    â€œIt would take ten thousand men to storm these walls,” said Rannulf, wonder in his voice.
    The red clay-stone walls rose above us, and a city gate studded with iron. The gate had closed before us at our approach.
    â€œAnd then you would have a street battle,” Rannulf continued to muse.“Nearly always a pikeman’s fight, not a knight’s.”
    â€œWe will enter like lambs,” said Sir Nigel.
    I made the sign of the cross, in part to show my earnestness as a Christian knight, and partly to steady my will. Guards armed with halberds and broad-brimmed helmets looked down at us from the top of the wall. Knights rarely engaged personally in an initial parley—announcements of name and rank were generally made through a chief squire. This saved a knight any hint of disrespect or insult while his identity and intentions were established.
    â€œWe are Crusaders,” I called upward, “just returned, with news of King Richard of the English and King Philip of the Franks.”
    Two armored heads looked down at me, with no sign of understanding.
    I spoke in English, in Latin, and in Norman-Frankish. I was about to invent a language on the spot, half gesture and half shipboard Genoan, when I heard one of the guards say, among other words, Crociato, conferring with his fellows.
    â€œSi!” I exclaimed. “And these others—they are Crusaders, too.” One of the helmeted heads climbed up onto a battlement, to afford himself a better view of us. At the same