“Here the bastards come,” Sir Galvin growled, his Scottish accent mangling the French and eliciting a laugh from Sir Walter. Balian was glad the younger knight could still laugh, and glanced again at Sir Bartholomew, amazed that a man nearing sixty could withstand the exertions in this heat.
Someone jostled his elbow, and startled Ibelin looked down to find Gabriel at his knee, offering him a water skin. He shook his head furiously and waved his squire back. “Get out of here! To the rear!” he shouted.
Almost before the words were out of his mouth, a barrage of arrows from the advancing enemy fell among them. The arrows worried Ibelin little, but Gabriel had only a hauberk and his helmet was open-faced, exposing his eyes. Balian had seen too many men take arrows in their eyes. Even if the wound itself was not fatal, the pain was excruciating and the loss of an eye horrible.
Centurion squealed and leapt sideways as an arrow thudded into his thigh, and Ibelin reached down and broke off the shaft, then leaned forward and patted the stallion’s throat reassuringly. The loose canvas trapper had sapped the strength of the arrow and the wound was not deep.
Meanwhile the front line of Christian infantry was going down again under the onslaught, and the knights were growing uneasy. All up and down the line horses were shifting, turning, stepping forward and back; they shook their heads or lashed out with their heels in agitation that reflected their riders’ mood.
Ibelin looked over his shoulder toward the litter covered by a baldachin with the arms of Jerusalem on it. He could see Daniel standing tall and proud at the King’s shoulder, awaiting orders. Just beyond the King’s litter stood three canons of the Holy Sepulcher, surrounded by a troop of ten mounted Templars in close formation. One of the canons held aloft a tall gold cross encrusted with gold and jewels. At the heart of the large reliquary was a fragment of the True Cross. This relic was always carried with the army of Jerusalem when it marched out to face the Saracens. Usually the Patriarch or one of the bishops carried it, but the Patriarch was too ill to travel and Bethlehem preferred to fight with his mace rather than hold the cross, so today the canons were alone. Balian hoped that would not mitigate the efficacy of the Cross. They needed Divine help if they were to withstand this much longer.
A slight wind had sprung up from the northwest and was blowing the dust away from the Christian lines, revealing the carnage already wrought and still ongoing. The carpet of bloody, still-writhing bodies was five to six yards wide already, and the Saracens walked on corpses and dying men, screaming their curses and insults as they flung themselves at the notably thinned line of Christian infantry. The Genoese were either all dead, out of quarrels, or afraid to shoot now that the enemy was so close. Immediately ahead of him, Ibelin saw a man in the back row of the infantry fall over backwards without any wound on him; with apprehension Balian realized he’d collapsed from heat stroke alone. Looking along the infantry line, he realized there were several men stretched out behind the line in a similar state of heatinduced unconsciousness.
Ibelin glanced again at the litter. The Constable was leaning down from his horse to hear what the King was saying. He nodded just as one of the canons beside the True Cross collapsed from the heat. The Constable spurred over to Ibelin and shouted the order to form up into a conroi. They were going to charge at last.
The charge was the most effective weapon the Christians had, but it could rarely be used more than once in a single engagement. If used too soon, it would bring utter and total defeat. Jerusalem had only managed to muster seven hundred knights, because neither Tripoli nor Antioch had responded to the King’s call: Antioch because of the threat from the north now that the Greek Empire had turned hostile, and Tripoli because the County had not yet recovered from the devastation of the last Saracen raid. The Templars, however, had brought about one hundred sergeants in addition to seventy knights, and the Hospitallers one hundred ten knights and sergeants combined. That put the effective fighting strength of the Christian cavalry at roughly one thousand heavy horse.
They were facing close to thirty thousand Saracens, Ibelin estimated, but the odds did not particularly bother him. His ancestors had reclaimed this land against these odds. They had won at Montgisard against these odds. They could win here today—if God willed it. He glanced once more at the True Cross and crossed himself. “In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.”
Aimery de Lusignan had corralled the knights and sergeants into a compact body. The Templars and Hospitallers appeared to be fighting over the honor of leading. The Templars had the larger body of heavy horse, including sergeants, but were led by their Marshal rather than their aging Master; the Hospitaller Master, in contrast, was personally present. The Constable rode over and settled the dispute by sending the Templars to form a separate conroi on the right wing of the Christian army and sending the Hospitallers to the left to form a third conroi. This left the largest body of knights, the secular knights, in the center. Ibelin nodded to himself, pleased with the deployment, regardless of who had devised it.
The Constable rode to the front of the conroi of secular knights, with the royal banner held upright by a knight on his flank. His brother, the Count of Jaffa, took up a position directly beside him with his knights (including Ramla although he still hadn’t paid homage to Jaffa) stretched out to the right. Oultrejourdain meanwhile swung his ninety knights into position at the left of the Constable. Altogether they made a front roughly one hundred forty horses wide. Caesarea and Sidon, each with nearly eighty knights, made up the second rank. Ibelin, with his twenty-two knights from Ibelin and eighty-odd knights from Nablus, was joined by Nazareth and some of the other smaller barons to form the third rank, the remnants making up the rear.
Ibelin looked forward past the two rows of riders ahead of him to the battlefield they were about to charge, and realized he couldn’t see it: it was completely blotted out by the dust. While it was intimidating to charge into a dust cloud, he supposed that the enemy could not see them, either, which meant they probably did not know the Christians were about to charge—much less in three conrois.
Aimery de Lusignan stood in his stirrups and twisted around to shout at them: “For the greater glory of Christ—and the safety of our wives and children! Jerusalem!”
The knights behind him roared “Jerusalem!” and set their horses in motion. The charge was slow at first because some of their infantry were so dazed, exhausted, or injured that they were sluggish getting out of the way of the horses. Ibelin found himself trotting almost ten yards before the way was clear to break into a canter.
The sound of battle grew louder with each stride. The banner of Jerusalem was just barely visible above the cloud of dust, and Ibelin and his men could no longer see the first rank, only the tails of the horses in front. For another five strides they swept forward, then they crashed into a wall of resistance. Horses piled up into one another, whinnying and rearing up. Centurion lost his footing, tripping over a body.
Ibelin guessed that the enemy had realized a charge was coming when they heard the shout of “Jerusalem” from a thousand throats and had pulled back fifty yards or so, but now they had collided. The knights of the first and second rank had already expended their lances and were laying about with their swords. Ibelin managed to kill one man with his lance, but it drove so deep that when the corpse fell sideways off his horse, the lance snapped in two. He threw the useless stub aside and drew his sword.
In the dust his attackers were indistinct and almost surreal—until their swords and axes crashed down on him. With his shield, helmet, and sword he deflected some of the blows, but Balian felt something drop on his shoulder so hard he cried out involuntarily, and a stinging pain in his thigh warned him he’d been stabbed there, too. He fought back, his sword bloody to the hilt. But while the Saracen cavalry tried to kill the knights, the Saracen infantry were trying to kill the horses. Balian dropped the leather-encased chain reins on Centurion’s neck so the stallion could defend himself, biting a
nd kicking, while Balian focused on his own assailants.
Ibelin felt as if he were completely enveloped and utterly overwhelmed by the enemy. He was suffocating in the dust, and his sweat-soaked undergarments were so heavy that it took extra effort to raise his arms. It was like swimming in honey. Within a short space of time he felt as if he could not possibly respond to the blows coming at him from all directions for more than a few minutes more. The odds did make a difference, after all.
Suddenly screams of terror could be heard on both flanks, and the resistance of the enemy broke like a dam. The fighting monks had taken the enemy on both wings completely by surprise. Saracen morale shattered and turned to panic in a heartbeat. One moment Ibelin was being attacked from all sides, and the next moment he was not being attacked at all. The enemy was dissolving into the filthy clouds ahead of him.
“À Ibelin!” he called, raising his sword, as he pushed Centurion after the retreating enemy. Amazingly, he felt knights cluster around him, and the little conroi bounded forward together. They caught up first with the fleeing infantry, but did not slow down. Some fleeing Saracens looked over their shoulders at the sound of hooves; Ibelin saw their terrified faces, mouths wide with screams, and he hacked them down or rode over them as they stumbled and fell.
Centurion was galloping with his ears laid flat on the back of his head, his neck stretched out, racing with the other horses. Beside Ibelin his knights were trying to keep up with him. Ibelin saw lance tips and realized some of the Nablus knights still had lances. He reached down, picked up the reins, and checked Centurion’s stride, signaling the men with lances forward. Centurion did not like this in the least and fought for a free rein again, dragging his head down and bucking once, but the check had been enough. The three knights with lances had overtaken the lead and smashed into the fleeing Saracen cavalry, slicing through it easily since they were stabbing men in the back.
The remaining knights of the conroi followed in the space the lances cleared, expanding the wedge on both sides as they killed men, until their horses began to stagger from sheer exhaustion and they could no longer lift their arms. Around them the dust was slowly settling.
Centurion came to a halt, swaying back and forth in rhythm with his breathing, his head hanging. Balian could hear only the sound of his own panting and the pounding of his pulse inside his helmet. He flung the visor open to gulp in air. His tongue and throat were so dry it hurt to swallow. The dust in the air he was breathing in only made it worse, however, and he started coughing. He would have given anything for a single sip of water.
Gradually his breathing became more regular, and Ibelin looked at the men immediately around him to make a head count. Sir Galvin grinned at him. The man seemed happiest in a fight; he had a violent demon bottled up inside him that he could only release (without endangering his soul) in battle against the enemies of Christ, Balian reflected. Sir Walter, in contrast, looked faint, as if he could not hold up much longer. Sir Arnulf was screwing up his face in obvious pain and resentment at being here at all; he counted the days until Ernoul would take his place. Sir Bartholomew, in contrast, looked exhausted but satisfied—whether with himself for holding up where younger men were clearly fading, or with Ibelin as a troop. In short, Ibelin had lost not one of his knights, although the horses looked the worse for wear. Their coats were completely matted with dust turned to mud by their own sweat. Streams of moisture were dripping off their bellies, and like Centurion, the other horses were utterly winded.
Extending his gaze, Ibelin saw scattered bands of Christian knights all over the field; some were still actively killing, but most, like his own troop, had come to a halt. With a start Balian realized that the River Jordan was no more than a hundred yards ahead of him, and this was where the Constable was rallying a growing number of knights under the King’s banner, his brother among them.
At least Ramla had the sense to stay west of the river this time, Ibelin noted, although by the look of things, that fool Jaffa was urging them to pursue. He was making wide, sweeping gestures that everyone else, including Jaffa’s brother the Constable, ignored. A large band of Templars, still collected around the Beauséant, rode up while Ibelin watched, and the Templar Marshal and the Constable of Jerusalem consulted one another in apparent harmony, for they were nodding their heads.
Casting his gaze beyond them, Ibelin registered that the Saracen army was re-forming on the far side of the river, and despite the dead littered over the field, they seemed as numerous as ever. Worse, the signs of panic were dying out. On the fringes some men still fled, but at the center, around the Sultan’s banner, the Kurdish Mamlukes were drawn up in ranks and files as immobile as a rock. Even as Ibelin watched, other units fell into place beside them. Salah ad-Din still had the bulk of his army intact, and the Christian charge was exhausted. They had not yet won.
Turning to look behind him, Ibelin was astonished to see that the Christian infantry, or what was left of it, had moved down from their position on the low slope of the hill and were systematically executing or taking the Saracens captive, depending on the extent of their injuries and prospects for ransom. Behind the ragged line of foot soldiers staggered the canon with the True Cross still held high, and beside him, lurching unsteadily as the bearers stepped over or around the dead and dying, came the litter with the King, Daniel striding proudly beside it.
Slowly now, conscious of the aches and pains of his many bruises and the gash in his thigh, Ibelin coaxed a walk out of Centurion and led his men to meet up with the King and escort him to the Constable. The King was dressed in armor, a helmet with the crown upon his brow. The aventail fastened across his chin hid the deformed skin on the lower half of his face. He almost looked whole—except that he could neither walk nor ride—and his eyes were filled with distress when they met Balian’s.
They reached the other leaders, and the Constable rode straight to the King. “They’re re-forming, your grace.”
“Then so must we. We’ll put the infantry ahead of us again. Pull back to just in front of our original positions.”
Aimery nodded, and trotted back to start chivvying the infantry into position, while the rest of the cavalry drew back warily, with one eye on the enemy beyond the river. By the time they reached their starting position, their squires were waiting with water and, for those lords with more than one destrier, fresh horses. Despite the wound in his leg, Balian managed dismount and turn the exhausted Centurion over to Gabriel. Pointing to the arrow in the horse’s thigh he ordered the youth to have the horse doctor see to the wound and reminded him not to let the stallion drink too much at once. He then wet his own mouth with water, and savored it before swallowing. He took another sip, resisting the temptation to gulp down the entire water-skin. But when he turned to mount his replacement stallion, he couldn’t lift his wounded leg high enough to reach the stirrup — and it wouldn’t have been strong enough to lift the rest of his weight either. Only with the help of Sir Galvin, who dismounted to lift him up and hold him while he flung his sound leg over the cantle, was he able to remount and take up his shield and lance again.
Looking again across the field at the enemy, Ibelin tried to estimate the casualties on both sides. The Christian infantry had suffered sorely. At a rough estimate, there were a thousand or more corpses marking the front of their previous position, now behind them. Despite these losses, there were still more than enough Christian foot soldiers to protect the cavalry, however.
Across the field itself, most of the dead were Saracen. There were maybe five times as many Saracen dead as Christians and not, as far as Ibelin could see, more than a dozen knights lying beside their crumpled, motionless horses. But, of course, that hardly diminished the odds against the Christians. There were still some twenty-five thousand Saracens drawn up on the far bank of the Jordan. In short, both sides still had the wherewithal to renew the battle.
Ibelin glanced back over his shoulder at the sun, trying to judge the time of day and how long befo
re darkness would deliver them from the heat and the threat of a renewed attack. The sun was more than halfway down the sky, but that meant they were still four to five hours from darkness—and the heat was, if anything, worse than ever.
Suddenly cries went up all along Christian battle line. Ibelin swung his attention back toward the enemy, but they seemed as immobile as before.
“There!” Sir Galvin pointed. “The True Cross!”
Ibelin followed the Scotsman’s pointed finger, and to his horror saw that the canon who had been holding the precious relic had fallen face-first to the ground. Daniel and one of the Templar escort had apparently just managed to catch the cross itself before it hit the earth. They were holding it together off the ground while another canon bent over his fallen brother. The whole army watched, mesmerized. Even across the distance and in miniature, Ibelin could feel the intensity of emotion played out before them as the canon realized his brother was dead. He saw the priest fall on his knees with outstretched arms. Fortunately the Templar had the wit to hold up the Cross in both hands above his head to show the army it was still with them, while the King ordered Daniel to pick up the dead monk and lay him on the litter.
The army was abruptly alive with chatter. Men were arguing about what this meant. Had God abandoned them? For surely, to strike down the very man carrying the True Cross could not be a good omen. But others were quick to argue that the Cross itself had not touched the ground, and some even made much of the fact that a Templar had rescued it at the very last moment. Was it a warning perhaps? Or had the bearer of the Cross been unworthy in some way? It was not the Patriarch, after all, nor even a bishop—although now, when it was too late, the Bishop of Bethlehem rode up and took the Cross from the Templar. Now that the men had had some water, the arguments were endless. Ibelin, however, kept his eye on the enemy, while the vultures and other carrion-eaters descended on the battlefield and began to feast, and the flies gathered in sickening swarms.
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