The dust was the first to die, settling thick on the tongues of the men. Then the grass, as the Saracens lit the scrub before them, until the very air was a furnace breath. For two days, Saladin’s horse-archers had harried them, a swarm of wasps under the pitiless sun.
Now, on the Horns of Hattin, the True Cross was just a gilded stick in the hands of a trembling priest. The last of the water was gone. The last of the shade was a memory.
Sir Guy de Ridefort stared through the shimmering heat, his throat a leather strap. He saw the green banners of Islam rippling around the Sea of Galilee, a taunting vision of the water they would never reach. His knights, the pride of Christendom, knelt on the cracked earth, their mail shirts become ovens.
Among them, however, one man did not kneel. Reynald of Châtillon, Lord of Kerak, stood like a figure of rusted iron, his eyes two chips of flint. It was his wanton raid on a Muslim caravan, his breaking of the truce, that had brought this holy army to this desolate end. He was the author of their thirst.
“This is your victory, Reynald!” a hoarse voice cried from the ranks. “You have led us to the devil’s anvil!”
Reynald turned, his face a mask of contempt. “I led you to glory,” he rasped. “You simply lack the stomach to claim it.”
A final, desperate charge was ordered. A ghost of their former glory. They crashed into the Saracen lines, but the fight was boiled out of them. They were pulled from their saddles, not with fury, but with a weary efficiency.
They brought Guy and Reynald before the Sultan’s tent. Saladin sat in the shade, cool and composed. He offered a goblet of iced rosewater to the parched King Guy. The man drank greedily, the cold a shocking pain in his gut.
“A king,” Saladin said, his voice soft, “should not have such a thirst.” The gesture of mercy was given; Guy’s life was spared.
Then the Sultan’s gaze fell upon Reynald of Châtillon.
Reynald met his eyes, unrepentant. “Your truces mean nothing to me,” he spat. “I would do it again.”
A sad, knowing smile touched Saladin’s lips. He had offered this man peace countless times. He had sworn an oath to God.
“And I,” said the Sultan, his voice dropping to a whisper that carried in the sudden stillness, “swore that I would kill you with my own hand.”
He did not call for an executioner. He stood, drawing his curved scimitar. The polished steel caught the sun, a final, cruel flash of Hattin’s fire.
Reynald, for the first time, showed fear. It was not in a cry, but in a slight tremor of his hands. He, the villain of the desert, the breaker of faith, was to be vanquished not in epic combat, but in a swift, personal act of justice.
Saladin did not behead him. He stepped forward, and with a single, powerful thrust, the blade found its mark. Reynald of Châtillon fell, not as a martyr, but as a problem finally solved. The vengeance was not raging, but cold and precise, a stark contrast to the goblet of mercy offered to the king.
As the scholars stepped forward to dispatch the other Templars and Hospitallers, the only sound was the dry, rasping wind, sweeping across the Horns, scouring the stone clean of kings, of God, and of the man whose villainy had built this pyre.
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