Chapter 5

First, I was properly shriven by the good and godly man of the church that had accompanied us on this trek into the Holy Land with sincere desire to right the wrongs of the followers of Islam. Then, I was blooded by the rigors of battle against the unholy heathen in the gory rock gardens of their sullied landscape.

Finally, I came to rest with sword still in hand lamenting the necessity of snuffing out so many souls without hope of redemption in the next kingdom because they had not accepted the word of Christ like a true believer and follower of the one true God.

The camp followers from both sides were silent witnesses to the bloody scene and they stayed neutral as proscribed by the rules of conduct in this seldom neutral land. I watched the shapeless black birds of the Islamic women folk wailing out their disbelief at the carnage. I knew that if the battle had gone the other way, they would have been yelling and singing the praises of their glorious God to anyone who would listen. Our own women folk were less interested in the results and more interested in the distribution of the items of value in fair and equitable manner. Some of these females were more astute in financial matters than the Jewish bankers that preyed on the survivors for ransom or favor.

I had been wounded in several places which were not at all unusual in a protracted battle that lasted almost the entire day. The most serious injury was the slash on top of my left shoulder that was fated to glance off instead of removing my head. It was deeper than any of the others and had already begun to fester in the heat of the sun. I knew it needed to be seen by a physic sooner rather than later and I bore it in mind as I cleaned my other minor wounds with clean water from the oasis well. My left index finger was truly broken from a fall to the rocky ground after a volley of quarrels filled the air around me.

My most stunning discovery was that both of my squires had been torn to pieces by a sudden and unexpected reversal of direction by the Infidels use of mounted fighters. These horsemen broke out of our trap of some degree of ingenuity squeezing the foot fighters between our forces and the cliffs of the shoreline with an empty sea as the only witness.

I set off in immediate pursuit of the escapees with a force some three dozen mounted knights and paid mercenaries from other places. It seemed insane for a group of some thirty plus souls to be chasing an armed force of well over a hundred but the fire was in the blood and we were all lusting to place the heads of the enemy on our pikes and lances for all to see the folly of challenging the religiously inspired Crusaders to the Holy Land.

It was probably our good fortune that the evaders proved too swift for our weighted-down stallions carrying heavier loads of armored men of sizable height and girth. After a period of tiring chase, we slowed our pursuit and headed to the nearest source of water to freshen our mounts. The civilian onlookers watched us with a degree of caution but we would never involve civilians in our conflict unless it was a matter of self-defense.

A young girl brought me a pot of water from her families well and I drank it after looking in her eyes and seeing no sign of deceit or ill will. The horses had their bellies filled with water from the long trench that moved water from the river to the crop growing fields on each side of the road. The girl was winsome in a wild sort of way with hair that flowed down to her shapely backside inside her long dress that reached almost to the ground. I could see her tempting cheeks working as she moved among the men giving them water to drink. It was obvious that was her only item of clothing because the outline of her shape was well detailed when she bent over and tended to the wounded resting on the ground. I was ashamed that my battle excited shaft was rising with and arousal that was difficult to deny.

One of the men cupped the young girl's buttocks with shameful disregard for her privacy and I was instead filled with a sense of protecting her from the lustful desires of men with needs of the flesh. I shielded her from further insult and walked with her back to her parent's modest abode unable to converse because of a lack of language skills.

She pointed to her chest and told me,

"Sheila, me!"

I got the message and hit my chest with my mailed hand and replied,

"Robert!"

The girl repeated with a slow and faltering imitation,

"Row-bert!"

I was amused at her immature attitude but found her actions attractive and appealing. Her mother was at the door of the small hut and shouted at her. I assumed the girl was being berated for being too friendly with the invaders of their homeland. I didn't want to cause her any grief and turned to return to my men and get them ready for the move back to our camp.