The Templar Lance: The Enclave Series, #1

This book is a work of fiction. Historical figures are represented as accurately as possible, though their thoughts, speech, and writings are the creation of the author. Any resemblance of fictional characters to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Copyright © 2015, 2016, 2023. All rights reserved. Any reproduction of the contents of this book in any form or on any media without the permission of the copyright holder is forbidden.

Cover images were AI-generated and modified by the author.

Fifth Edition

September 2023

eBook ISBN 978-1-959480-07-5

Amazon Paperback ISBN 978-1-959480-10-5

General Paperback ISBN 97801-959480-08-2

Hardcover ISBN 978-1-959480-09-9

CROW Books and its crow-and-book logo are imprints of CROW-IP, LLC, all rights reserved.

To Ona, Carly, and Wes—the other parts of CROW.

You are the reason I do all that I do.

PREFACE

This edition of The Templar Lance has been a long time coming, and the story it tells has followed a long and twisting path. I turned fifty-five years old in 2014 and had a bit of a midlife moment. I knew my career as a software engineer had about another ten years to run. Deciding what to do after that gave me pause.

I’ve always written. As a kid, it was bad science fiction, which became pretty good non-fiction: design documents, trade magazine and academic journal articles, marketing copy, project proposals, and patent applications. But always, in the back of my mind, stories scratched and clawed to get out.

So, I decided I would spend my retirement years writing what I wanted to write, but I knew I had a lot to learn. I wrote the first version of the book you’re holding in about a year and self-published it in 2015 to resounding silence. I still had a lot to learn.

Several revisions and a sequel, Lady 355: Mother of Freedom, later, I lost momentum and moved on to other projects. But leaving The Enclave Series incomplete has always gnawed at me. Every time I looked at the previous editions of this book, however, I found the task of updating it to my standards, such as they are, of almost ten years later very daunting. Still, there was the rest of the series arc to explore.

Then a wonderful thing happened. One of my favorite writers, Joanna Penn, announced on her podcast, The Creative Penn, that she was rewriting her first novel. I figured if such a successful author, speaker, and writing coach was willing to take the time to bring a first-in-series novel up to snuff, why shouldn’t I?

This, the final edition of The Templar Lance, is the result of a year’s effort of redoing some pretty cringe-worthy prose and restructuring what was essentially a travelogue into what I sincerely hope is a compelling kickoff to an epic series—and a kickass story in its own right.

I present to you, Faithful Reader, this new and improved edition of The Templar Lance, the first book in The Enclave Series.

Enjoy!

Faithfully,

R.A. (Rob) Johnson

Pennsylvania, U.S.A.

August 2023

TIMELINE

PART I

Codex Incognito

1350 A.D

How do I begin a tale such as the one I wish to tell? There is the beginning, my youth before I came to know, though not necessarily understand, a few of the many mysteries this world holds. But I will get to that part of the tale soon enough. There is the middle, when I was pursued across the face of Europe, charged with protecting a most precious artifact with the power to change the course of human history. Then, there is the end which, until this last year, I thought might never arrive. We will get to the beginning and middle, but let us start here at the end, what may well be the end of all things.

But first, let me set expectations. If you, whomever future you may be, are reading this, I congratulate you. I have written this chronicle in the most devious cypher I could devise, hoping that one day someone with your skills would see through my subterfuge and decode this most unusual manuscript. So, I say, Well done.

Now that we have finished congratulating ourselves for being so clever, let me teach you lessons that are so strange as to be at first unbelievable, but which will seep into your mind and erode whatever faith in the Almighty you may hold dear. Let me assure you that no harbor is safe from the momentous revelations contained in this missive.

I have decided to document the events of my life thus far, as recent events have shaken my comfortable faith in the continuation of my long life. Indeed, I fear the world, or at least a large portion of it, is dying and the End of Days may be upon us. In the past year, the population of my fair England has diminished by nearly two in three. A pestilence lays over the land that strikes men, women, and children, regardless of the height nor depth of their station nor of their piety. Whole villages stand empty. Fields of wheat, barley, and beans all lay fallow and untended. Cattle wander feral through the land, and the lords of those lands, those few who remain alive, have no bound serfs to collect and husband them.

Even I, who has survived most of two centuries, was taken to Death’s door, once again, by this plague, this Great Mortality. Either my blessing, which is also my curse, kept me from knocking or, more likely, Death himself was busy elsewhere. In either case, I awoke in my sickbed, which I had fouled, a stinking, sweating near-corpse. The buboes that are the hallmark of this disease subsided, leaving behind black scars that mark me as a survivor. Reports that have come through my network of spies tell me these scars, which do fade slowly, are treated as either the blessed fingerprints of God Almighty or as the mark of Cain, depending on local superstition. I can tell you, rather, that they are simply the flesh proudly proclaiming victory over this most vile pestilence.

Thus, you know the circumstances in which this codex has been so hastily written. You know the When, Where, and How of it, but you have yet to learn the Why, the reason I have put quill and ink to the finest vellum and written this history in the most obscure way I can imagine.

Bending over the vellum, trying to decide in what language I should commit these words, I was taken again by the Fever and fell senseless into another delirious dream.

In this fever dream, I met again companions of mine with whom I have not conversed for many years. Each spoke in turn in his own tongue, but the words that came from their mouths were gibberish spoken in a halting stutter. As I strained to make out what each was saying, their faces blurred and merged together into a single countenance. Their mouths, still speaking nonsense in their own tongues, now complemented each other, filling the gaps and combining into a single voice, as their faces had. It was the face and voice of a man I had once thought of as my brother, though we were born worlds apart and had, at different times, each called the other Master.

His voice spoke to me clearly in his native Arabic, Your story is too precious for any but the most enlightened, and too dangerous to far too many. Use my voice to tell it, and I will keep its secrets until the one with the proper talents is ready to hear it.

My purpose is simple, yet contradictory. I write to preserve and protect, yet also to reveal to the worthy, a secret. A secret that could, and perhaps should someday, if revealed, change forever the course of humanity on this Earth. Whether that change is for good or ill will depend entirely on the enlightened one who decodes and reads this missive. Will they use the secret to gain power over the rest of humanity, as this secret could certainly facilitate? Or will they use it to benefit all the people across this wide world? This knowledge and the physical manifestation of it can accomplish either of those goals. Or, as I so fervently hope, will the reader pledge to keep the secret hidden and safe, as I have these many decades?

This illness has shaken my complacent belief in my immortality. I no longer believe in that false and unearned blessed curse. I return to the understanding, as all others of the human race come to realize, that my time on the Earth is finite, and that someday I may well have to answer for my earthbound failings.

Until then, I present my story, written, not as a memoir, but as a history, a travelogue of sorts. It is, fundamentally, a test. A test of erudition, a test of intuition, a test of forgotten knowledge. But most of all, a test of faith. You will be forever changed when you read it. That I promise.

Our story, or at least this part of it, begins in the twenty-eighth year of the reign of King Henry II of England. The year was 1178 Anno Domini.

Chapter 1

England, 1178 A.D.

The wind blew back my hair as I followed my father on horseback.

Try to keep up, Little Brother, my brother Stewart said. As soon as the hounds catch the scent, he’ll be off like a crossbow bolt.

We two brothers were as different as our mounts. Stewart, at fourteen years old, was already filling out his tall frame. He got his reddish-blond hair and freckled complexion directly from our father, while I owed my black hair and dusky skin to Mother’s roots in southern France. Our contrasts were not limited to our hair color, though. While Stewart could easily pass for a young man several years older, I was small for my ten years, short of stature, with a correspondingly slight build.

Our horses were similarly mismatched. Stewart rode a high-spirited gray stallion who would let no one but Stewart sit astride him. His stallion stood sixteen hands at the shoulder, while my mare was barely more than a pony.

But though we differed greatly physically, no two brothers loved each other more. I idolized Stewart as the model of a noble knight-to-be, and, for his part, Stewart considered it his sacred duty to protect and aid his Little Brother in any way he could. Our temperaments were similarly matched, having learned from observing Father’s quiet competence and strong hand.

The first baying of the hounds came from ahead, and Stewart, his voice tinged with excitement, yelled, Here we go.

Our father, Sir Edwin of Rollingford, the liege lord of Rollingford Castle, spurred his horse into full gallop as the hunting party crossed the field at the edge of the forest.

The hunt had stretched into the afternoon without a good chase, and Father was impatient. When the hounds’ baying rose in pitch and intensity, the knight knew they at last had a worthy quarry, hopefully one of the wild boars known to inhabit his lands.

I kicked my mount’s flanks, trying to keep up with Father, but to no avail. His charger had born the knight, both in full armor, during many battles. Thunder’s feathered hooves pounded the hard ground as he broke into a full gallop. With no steel plates to encumber him, Thunder raced headlong across the field. In fact, no one in the hunting party except Stewart could keep pace with Father.

It was only Stewart, then, who witnessed our father’s steed stumble as it gathered itself to leap the stone wall at the edge of the open field. Perhaps it was a hare’s hole, or a misplaced field stone that caught Thunder’s hoof. Whatever the cause, the result changed our lives forever.

Having lost its footing at a critical point, the charger tried to regain his balance by turning abruptly aside and refusing to clear the wall. Father, having stood in the stirrups to absorb the shock of landing, had no chance to keep contact with the stumbling horse. As Thunder veered to the right, Sir Edwin’s right foot pulled free, while his left one twisted more deeply into its stirrup. The result was that he pitched headfirst off the left side of the saddle.

The impact of his head with the stone wall stove in Father’s skull, and the sound further startled Thunder into a gallop which dragged the dying knight across the field. As my slower mare was only halfway across the open field, I angled to my right to intercept the runaway, but Stewart reached Thunder first. I reined in and jumped to the ground as Stewart grabbed Thunder’s bridle. Only then did the charger stop our father’s inadvertent torture. Untangling his broken body from the saddle, together we cradled Father in our arms until we felt him take his last breath.

Sir Edwin was a warrior, one of the King’s best. When campaign season came around each year, he was first to be called upon by his brother and liege lord Geoffrey, Baron of Sowich. But Father was also an intelligent, thoughtful man who managed the Rollingford estates well and treated his bound serfs with a firm but fair hand. So it was that as word of his demise spread, the others of Geoffrey’s knights and minor lords scrambled for control of the lands our family had held in the King’s name for generations.

Being but fourteen years old, Stewart was too young to run the estate, so Uncle Geoffrey chose another of his knights, Sir Robert Enderhite, to manage the estate until Stewart came of age. It was a particularly bad choice.

Upon hearing of Sir Robert’s assignment, and knowing his reputation for cruelty, especially to women, my mother immediately sent word to the Baroness, her sister-in-law Margaret, asking her to take us into Geoffrey’s household. The reason, she said, was so my brother and I could be trained to serve my uncle as knights. This appealed to Geoffrey’s ego, so he readily agreed. The real reason was Robert Enderhite’s penchant for treating women as his playthings, and my mother’s recent widowhood made her fair game for his unwanted attentions.

Why are you packing? he asked upon his arrival at Rollingford. A young widow, such as yourself, needs a protector.

I knelt outside my parents’ bedchamber, ear pressed to the door.

The Baron has taken my sons and I into his care, she replied. Her tone was firm, but not defiant, which would have ignited his volatile temper.

Nonsense. This is your home. I insist you stay and run the manor house, as you always have. In fact, you can keep these rooms. I can make do with another—for now. His leering tone left no doubt that he considered that a temporary arrangement, and that soon they would be sharing a bed.

No. I insist. My boys need training, and Geoffrey’s court is the best place for that. She had crossed the line into defiance, and I feared Robert’s reaction. To my surprise, though, he laughed.

"I agree, totally. They do need to be sent away…to be trained as knights, as is their birthright. You, on the other hand, are not required at Geoffrey’s court, and frankly, being French, you will not be much welcomed. On the other hand, I, personally, do not care about your foreign heritage, as I find your exotic looks quite…appealing."

Even at ten years old, I knew the course this conversation was taking. I rose to my feet and felt for the small dagger I carried at my belt. Before I could yank open the door, however, Mother’s voice rang out in a tone I had never heard her use before.

"I am Lady Rollingford, widow of Sir Edwin Rollingford, Baron Geoffrey’s brother. I am not some serving wench or one of the whores you are accustomed to. You will treat me and my sons with the respect we deserve." Her voice shook with fury.

Robert matched her tone with scorn. "Or what, woman? Geoffrey is miles away, and I command Rollingford now. I will do with you and everyone else here as I please."

My hand was on the latch, but I froze when I heard Mother say, "Then you best stay awake, because as soon as you sleep, my French poniard will find your heart."

I stepped back from the doorway as her running footsteps approached and she threw open the door. She rushed past me, but stopped and grabbed my arm.

Where is your brother? I shrugged in response, keeping my diminutive self between Mother and Sir Robert. Find him. We are leaving. Now.

I slowly backed away as she hurried down the hallway. Sir Robert, clearly astounded by my mother’s resistance, stood red-faced.

As I turned to go find Stewart, I heard him mumble, Be gone with you, then. You and your French spawn.

Chapter 2

England, 1179 A.D.

I do not remember the day we arrived at Castle Sowich. Or the day after, or several months after that. The days passed in a blurred whirlwind of activity. My mother Sadie, my brother Stewart, and myself—call me Liam, by the way—moved in with my uncle and his family. Uncle Geoffrey and his wife Margaret had two children. My cousin Gerald was the same age as Stewart, and his sister Cecelia matched my years. Aunt Margaret welcomed us with open arms, happy to have another noble lady, in spite of Mother’s foreign blood, as a companion. Gerald and Stewart became fast friends, while Cece and I shyly flirted under our mothers’ watchful eyes.

Stewart had already begun his training under my father’s tutelage, as Gerald had under Uncle Geoffrey’s sword master. I, being but ten years old, first needed to learn the duties of a knight’s squire. A less glamorous vocation I cannot imagine, as I spent my days shoveling manure, grooming the horses in my uncle’s stable, polishing my brother’s and cousin’s armaments, and generally doing the work of a stable hand bound to my uncle as if I was a serf. Of course, unlike the poor serfs who would toil through their short lives of unrelenting hard labors, I knew that if I learned what I needed to, and did all that was asked of me, I too would someday be a knight, and ride the horses I was grooming.

Gerald and Stewart were of an age, and were equally matched in strength and cleverness, though not so much in personality. Gerald was gregarious, laughing loudly at everyone and everything that struck him as funny. Even at such a young age, he had a silver tongue which the ladies of the court—and the kitchen—drew great enjoyment from. By contrast, Stewart had a more solemn view of the world, having been with the hunting party and witnessing the death of our father. Being displaced from the estate that he expected would someday be his legacy made him even more circumspect. His reticence hid a fierce determination to excel at his training, though, so he might return us to our home as soon as possible.

The sun was hot, even for England, as it beat down on the dusty training grounds. A wiry old man parried Gerald’s thrust with ease, then delivered a backhand blow with the flat of his sword to the shoulder of his overextended arm. Gerald, already leaning too far forward, stumbled to one knee.

Yer dead. Why?

Gerald climbed to his feet, sword arm hanging at his side. I lost my balance, Master Grimm.

Aye, but why?

Gerald looked confused and his eyes flicked to where Stewart stood, poised in a defensive posture a few feet away. Stewart flexed his legs, the muscles of his calves and thighs standing out in sharp relief.

Oh, my base. I got outside my base.

Master Grimm nodded his bald head, then flicked his blunted sword upwards and in one motion whacked Gerald on the other shoulder, then whirled about and swung full-speed at Stewart. Steel clanged on steel as Stewart easily parried the attack, using his momentum to spin and launch his own counter. Moving more swiftly than his age and bowlegged frame should have allowed, Master Grimm blocked Stewart’s slash, but as the blades clanged again, Grimm felt Stewart’s blade slide off his own and barely leaped out of the way of Stewart’s upward swipe aimed at his groin.

Regaining his composure, Grimm returned his attention to Gerald. This time, however, Gerald managed to clumsily, but effectively, block the sword master’s attack. The three faced each other in a triangle, each in their defensive stance.

Hold! Grimm called out and relaxed into an upright stance. What’d ya learn, eh?

Gerald, looking abashed, said, Maintain good balance at all times.

Aye, and…?

Keep your guard up, Gerald mumbled as he rubbed his shoulder where the edges of the blade’s fuller had left a double welt.

Grimm turned to Stewart, who, despite the command to relax, still stood at the ready. The old man squinted at the young man until Stewart straightened, though he still gripped his sword warily.

Good stance ’n parry. The sword master nodded appreciatively. A feint to contact can be ‘fective, but only if ya’ stay clear o’ his guard. Grimm tapped the cross-guard of his sword with its curved quillons.

Stewart spoke up for the first time. You like to block with the flat of your blade. Keeps the edge sharp.

Grimm eyed Stewart for a moment, then raised an eyebrow. Aye, ya’ maybe right. Habits are bad in combat. Gives yer ‘ponent a way to pr’dict yer movements. He nodded appreciatively, then sobered. But ‘tonly works if’n ya know the bloke yer fightin’.

Stewart nodded his understanding, then Grimm continued, his tone chiding but also respectful. An’ ya coulda cut me balls off with tha’ slash.

The corner of Stewart’s mouth curled into a half-smile. Those bow’d legs are still limber. I knew you’d jump clear.

Grimm chuckled as Stewart’s meaning became clear. If the slash was a second feint, he would have been caught mid-leap.

’At’s enough o’ this fer today, Grim said, and Gerald, who had looked confused during Stewart and Grimm’s banter, brightened. Grimm saw his smile and shook his head. Yer na done yet.

He walked out to where a banner pole on top of the training grounds wall cast its shadow. He then paced off ten long steps and drew a line in the dirt.

Work wi’ the French Gadget ‘til the shadow reaches here. Switch on ten scores. He sheathed his sword, walked to a shaded corner, and dipped a ladle into the bucket of water resting on a bench. Gulped the water, he watched as Gerald and Stewart prepared the French Gadget.

The training device we called the French Gadget was built by Uncle Geoffrey’s Master of Horse, a Frenchman my father’s men captured during a campaign many years before. When the French captives were ransomed back to their king, Francois begged my father not to return him, but rather to keep him on as a servant. Having seen Francois’s prowess on horseback, he recommended him to his brother Geoffrey as a groom. Within a few years, having demonstrated his ability to tame and train the wildest of Geoffrey’s stable of warhorses, he was elevated to Master of Horse. It was under his tutelage that I began my own training, not with a sword, but with shovel, brush, and comb as a lowly groom.

The French Gadget was constructed of a tree trunk, representing an opponent, about four feet high and two across, hung from a scaffold by five ropes tied to iron rings driven into the wood. One rope at the top raised and lowered the body, while two attached to each side moved the faux opponent to either side and twisted it left and right.

Attached to each side of the body was an articulated arm holding an interchangeable sword, one of wood, blunted steel, or razor sharp. The arms were each rigged with ropes to stab or slash up, down, or sideways.

All the rigging ran through a series of cleverly shaped block and tackle pulleys that moved the various components in coordinated, yet random, ways. The number and asymmetric nature of the pulleys resulted in unpredictable movements of the body and swords, presenting wildly variable attacks that the trainee had to defend against and penetrate to land a scoring blow to the tree trunk body.

The whole gadget was driven by a heavy loop of chain through another block that allowed a second trainee to vary the speed and direction of the gadget’s movements. Stewart and Gerald alternated positions, switching when the fighter scored a number of blows against the gadget—ten for this session.

Of course, Gerald made a game of it, counting how many times the gadget landed a strike before they switched positions. It was Gerald’s nature to make a game of everything, even though Stewart handily beat him every time. Stewart, for his part, took the training much more seriously, knowing that once he achieved his goal of knighthood, he would be serving in Uncle Geoffrey’s vanguard as our father had, while Gerald, being the heir-apparent would almost certainly be in a rear echelon.

Whereas Gerald was rebuked by Master Grimm for not practicing enough to hone his skills, Stewart was often reprimanded for being overzealous and risking serious injury to himself and our cousin, when they sparred each other. Despite these nearly opposite natures, or perhaps because of them, Gerald and Stewart became two halves of a whole. Their friendship became kinship and ultimately attained a brotherhood that I, being so much younger, could not yet share.

Chapter 3

England, 1179 A.D.

My days working in the stables were not all drudgery, however. My teacher there—yes, cleaning stalls, brushing horses, and oiling tack do take some training—was a Frenchman called Francois, with his own tale to tell. He had been a sergeant in the retinue of a French nobleman when he was captured by my uncle’s army during one of the many wars fought between England and France for control of the Low Countries. When the French were ransomed, Francois, having been ill-treated by his nobleman and wishing to see a bit of the world, petitioned my father to remain with Uncle Geoffrey’s troops and return to England with them. His mastery of the art of cavalry, and his knowledge of French strategy and tactics were seen as valuable, so when those with whom he had been taken captive were sent back to France, my uncle spirited him away to England.

After many years of loyal service, during which he demonstrated his ability to calm and train the great chargers Geoffrey’s knights rode in combat, he became Uncle’s stable master, which is why I fell under his tutelage. He treated me, not as a distaff noble, but as he would any other stable hand, until one day when we were struggling to repair a saddle and he swore to himself in French. When I responded in kind, he stopped and stared at me. He continued staring at me