Traditions of Dead Generations

Round Two - The Bones, Pt. 2

The German camp was small enough these days to house within the walls of Antioch, which said something about how fucked they all were. Frederick VI and his closest knights had taken up residence in the all-but-abandoned castle of the Knights Templar, but the bulk of the common soldiers were stuffed into makeshift barracks in the yards of churches and temples all over the city.

It wasn't a decision popular with the local people, who felt in varying flavours of religious indignance that stinking Teutons should not be lying in their prayer spaces. If they'd known Frederick had assigned Petrus to carry out mos Teutonicus in a chapel, they'd have been all the more horrified. But Swabia kept that sort of thing under wraps, knowing well that Petrus was the sort of servant an important person dealt with only indirectly, under cover of darkness.

Barbarossa had known that too, but could afford to flaunt convention more freely than his son: Petrus had lived in the Emperor's household since he had been captured - or recruited - at Monte Porzio more than thirty years ago. He'd been a stupid boy about Maik's age then, bound and determined to win glory in battle. It was blind, stupid luck that the Emperor had been amused by his foolish panache, and even better luck that he'd been able to treat the bout of malaria Barbarossa had come down with shortly after the battle. It was only out of respect for the old man that Petrus stayed with the remains of the German army - and the body - now, rather than buggering off back to Frankfurt with everyone else.

Petrus put on his very best "concerned chaplain" face before entering the Abbey of St. Ignatius. The Benedictines had been cautiously open-handed with the Germans so far, providing supplies and services for the temporary visit, including the use of their Abbey as hospital and pharmacy. Petrus had been coming and going all night with requests for this herb and that potion needed to offset the unfortunate smell the corpse of the former Holy Roman Emperor had taken on, and he knew they were starting to suspect he was up to something off-site. The cellarer, one Brother Andranick, had already all but accused him of body-snatching, and it was this same Brother who met Petrus at the door now.

"We have no more myrtle, Italian" the swarthy Brother growled at him, practically blocking his entrance. "Have you no shame?"

"You wound me, Brother." Petrus put his hand over his heart where the imagined wound might have been, and pushed his way past Andranick's pudgy self, "I have come to help this morning. I have been summoned to treat a new patient just come in - a shoulder wound..." The Benedictine's eyes narrowed in suspicion as he shuffled down the hall after Petrus.

"News travels fast." he complained, "This one only showed up this morning. New wound. Wasn't the Ayyubid ambush that caught the rest of you lot. Some unlawful scrabbling in the streets!" Petrus ignored the Brother and walked faster. Certainly sounded like his "Turk". And who'd have sent him? Otto of Nordheim? Godfrey of Perche? Well, he'd know soon enough.

 The "hospital" was once a cellar, but being emptied of provisions they'd filled it with wounded instead. The ambush they'd suffered at the Orontes River had taken a toll on the remaining soldiers. Already demoralized by the death of their Emperor and their abandonment by the greater part of the army, they'd hardly fought the Ayyubids at all. They'd barely escaped with 5,000 men. Petrus had heard some of the soldiers had turned Turk, thinking God had abandoned them. Some had taken their own lives. And others suffered now in a cellar in Antioch.

"Ah," Petrus smiled, seeing his man. He still wore a ridiculous mockery of Turkish garb, now bloody, and a strip of clean flesh drawn like a band across his forehead betrayed the recent removal of a turban. Petrus tip-toed between the palettes of sleeping soldiers and knelt at the man's side. 

He was not badly wounded, that was clear enough. The wound Maik had inflicted was shallow, but probably prevented the man from raising his left arm. He looked at Petrus in terror.