Crock-Pot 7 Quart Oval Manual Slow Cooker
The music swirled, a bright and frantic thing, against the great stone hall. Lord Reynald’s wedding feast was a spectacle of firelight and hubris. Wine stained the beards of Frankish nobles, their laughter booming as they toasted the union that would further cement his power. The bride, a cousin of the young King Baldwin, was a gilded statue, her smile tight.
From the high table, Reynald surveyed his domain, his new wife, his opulent fortress of Kerak. It was, he thought, untouchable.
Isabella, his step-daughter, stood by a slit window, the desert wind cooling her cheeks. The feast was too loud, the air thick with the smell of roasted meat and ambition. She pressed her face against the cold stone, looking down at the flickering torches of the town huddled below the castle walls.
That’s when she saw them. Not the town lights, but a new constellation, blooming in the darkness beyond. A sea of pinpricks, countless as the stars, moving, coalescing, surrounding them.
“Father,” she said, her voice a reed in the storm of laughter. No one heard. She tried again, louder. “The lights… there are so many lights.”
A hush, irritable and incomplete, fell over a corner of the hall. Reynald scowled, striding to the window. He leaned out, the flush draining from his face, leaving the hard, pale stone of fear. The music faltered, one instrument at a time, as others followed his gaze.
The sea of lights was not a constellation. It was an army. Thousands of campfires, kindling in a perfect, silent ring of fire, sealing them in.
A sentry, his breath ragged, burst into the hall, his armour smeared with soot. He did not shout. The silence he entered was so profound his whisper was a crack of thunder.
“My lord… it is Saladin.”
The name sucked the air from the room. Saladin. The man whose caravan Reynald had plundered, whose sister he had insulted. The man whose peace he had shattered.
The wedding cake, a monstrous confection of honey and nuts, sat untouched on the central table. A great platter of lamb, glistening with fat, began to cool. The bride’s fixed smile finally broke, not into a sob, but into a silent, trembling horror.
High above the silenced hall, from the highest tower, a single, desperate bell began to clang, not for celebration, but for siege. The wedding was over. The stones of Kerak, which had echoed with music, now braced for the thunder of the first stone.
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