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A Mighty Fortress is Our God; A Surviving Kingdom of Jerusalem

Let goods and kindred go, this mortal life also;
The body they may kill: Gods truth abideth still,
His Kingdom is forever.


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The sun was beating down on the Crusaders; surely this was how He suffered on the cross. Arthur had never felt the sun like this before, not in three years of Pilgrimage. It was as if Satan himself was trying to thwart their holy army, boiling their flesh and addling their brains. For more than a month they had waited, bar one failed assault, waited for God to give them a sign. A week ago they had circled the walls just as Joshua had done, barefoot and penitential, until they had reached the Mount of Olives. He had repeated endlessly, the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak, until dawn rose over the City of David.

And now he stood in a siege tower before the Damascus Gate, pressing against dozens of men, arrows flying about him and the pilgrims with whom he had walked dying, but with a cross on his breast and the fire of Christ in his heart. As the tower positioned itself beside the Gate, he made the Sign of the Cross, held his sword aloft and charged. He did not see the faces of men, only hundreds of blood maddened infidels, who had already raped the Holy City and desecrated the spiritual treasures within her. He swung about madly, sword meeting flesh and smashing bone. An infidel took him by the neck, and Arthur could feel the cold steel of a dagger, but just as it pressed into him, a great knight in gilded armour hurled the beast from the walls. Arthur gave a relieved nod to Godfrey, and joined in the fray with renewed ardour.

He and his comrades were pushed up and down the walls, and he thought of the battle as only a blur. He was soaked with blood, and his arm grew slower, his senses duller, until time seemed to freeze. There was the Virgin, standing before him with her face covered, and only her sad blue eyes showing. Those eyes twinkled, and vigour flowed through Arthur’s body, and his heart burst with a fire, and light that he was sure showed through his chest. He gave a yell, and in spite of himself became mad with bloodlust. He was sobbing, and his chest was beating, and tears blinded him as he ripped pagan boys apart. The infidels started to quaver as they were pushed back, before they broke and wholesale slaughter began.

Arthur took the sword to every man, woman and child he met. From the Gate of Damascus, he cut down all in his way, trampling their corpses beneath his feet, dashing the heads of their infants against walls. He began to chant Psalm 118. All the nations surrounded me, but in the name of the LORD I destroyed them. By the time he reached Golgotha, the burning fire had left his eyes. He bowed down before the Place of the Skull, ignoring the thousands of men who milled around him, ignoring the screams, ignoring the smoke already rising up from the city. He prayed that Jerusalem would always remain in the hands of God. And he prayed that the men and women of House Sinclair would always serve Christ. Amen.
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