Unwilling Surrender

“Tomorrow we leave.”

I sighed. Acre was falling. The last great Crusader city could not hold against the Muslims. “I know,” I replied to my partner knight. “They won.”

He sighed in return, turning his gaze from the open sea to look at the burning inner walls of the city. The outer walls had been breached at dawn.

We were standing on top of one of the buildings in the Genoese quarter, serving sentry duty for the final time. Not that there was much point to it now, but we did it in honor of the last wishes of the Masters of the Orders, who had fallen shortly after the outer walls. The two Orders, the Teutonic Knights and the Hospitalliers, had hated each other for over a hundred years, but now, they were dying together to save their city. And they had failed.

I gazed down at the harbor, examining our escape boat, one with a Teutonic cross on it. “Strange, isn’t it?” I nodded as an answer, this time looking across the city to the Hospital that had been both his and my home for so long.

A deafening crash brought us back to the battle at hand. It came from the northeast. “That’s the Gate,” I managed. The Muslims had gotten to the Gate of St. Nicholas! We called down for a messenger to take the news to the appropriate person.

We spent a few more hours there, gazing at the falling orb of the sun. I could see in it the falling Crusader kingdoms. And across the sky from it lay a crescent moon, waxing slowly but surely.

As I took this in, another herald ran by, spreading the news that the Gate had fallen.

Perhaps tomorrow’s journey would be cancelled. Perhaps, we would leave today.