Defender of Jerusalem

by Helena P. Schrader

  Gabriel nodded, satisfied. “And did the others listen?”

  “Most of them did, even the Constable—but Ridefort and Oultrejourdain were still arguing in favor of going to the relief of Tiberias when one of the King’s knights chased me away.”

  Centurion had had enough to drink, and he lifted his head to nuzzle Ernoul for the carrots that he knew the squire kept tucked inside his gambeson. Gabriel had not yet succeeded in watering Thor, however. With an exasperated sigh, he decided he should give up for the moment and return later when there were fewer other horses around. Leading the stallions, the squires returned side by side to their lord’s tent.

  Guy was finding it hard to sleep. An army of this size was never entirely quiet. Sentries paced, horses nickered, men moved back and forth to the latrines on the edge of the camp. . . . Guy was annoyed and wanted to shout at everyone to be quiet. He needed his sleep.

  But even if they had all been silent, the camp bed was uncomfortable. The air was still and oppressively hot. It stank, too—of smoke from the campfires, horse manure, the pork fat his squires had used to oil his chain mail, garlic from someone’s dinner, and urine from some sentry too lazy to go the latrines. Guy kicked off his sheet and tried to make himself comfortable on his belly, but a mosquito was soon tormenting him. Exasperated, Guy sat up, swatting furiously at it.

  “Annoying, aren’t they?” said a voice out of the darkness.

  “Who’s there?” Guy challenged in alarm, his heart pounding. He was the King! People were not supposed to enter his tent unannounced. He had two knights posted outside to prevent this.

  “It’s just me. Ridefort,” came the answer.

  Guy did not see why the Templar Grand Master should have been allowed into his tent any more than anyone else. He frowned, determined to reprimand his knights at the first opportunity. Right now he had to deal with the Templar Master, who had moved closer to stand directly over his bed. “We need to talk,” Ridefort announced.

  “Now? In the middle of the night?” Guy challenged him petulantly.

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you cannot let the decision made in council stand. It is dishonorable, dangerous, and discrediting.”

  Guy was in no mood for this lecture. They’d argued for hours, and no matter how vigorously Oultrejourdain and Ridefort had presented their case, the overwhelming majority of the barons had sided with Ibelin.

  Ridefort sank down on his heels to be at Guy’s eye level. He kept his voice very low. “Tripoli is a traitor. Everything he says is to Salah ad-Din’s advantage.”

  Guy rolled his eyes and groaned slightly. “Stop it, Ridefort. I know you hate him, but he has paid homage to me, and he has brought his troops here. I’m tired of you nagging at me all the time just because you want your revenge on Tripoli for some girl! It discredits you, not me.”

  “All right; don’t believe me. But how can he be so certain no harm will come to his lady if he didn’t arrange all this with Salah ad-Din in advance?”

  Guy shook his head to indicate this argument convinced him no more than the rest. “No one thinks the lady herself is in great danger. Even her sons conceded that.”

  Ridefort shrugged. “Perhaps, but that’s not really what’s at stake here, is it?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, the Lady of Tiberias is one of your vassals, and you are honor bound to assist her if she is in need. It really doesn’t matter what will happen to her personally if you don’t—your inaction reflects poorly on you. It was your inaction four years ago, remember, that made King Baldwin take the Regency away.” Ridefort had hit a nerve, and he saw Guy stiffen in the darkness. He pressed his advantage. “You’re the King, aren’t you? Why do you let your barons tell you what to do?”

  “Every king has a council,” Guy retorted irritably.

  “Yes, and they listen to the council—but then they make their own decisions. They don’t let their barons dictate what is to be done.”

  “I’m not letting anyone dictate to me!” Guy retorted defensively, and Ridefort smiled in the darkness.

  “No?” the Templar Master asked.

  “No!” Guy insisted.

  “But what did you want to do when you received the plea for help from the Countess?” Guy had jumped up, full of chivalrous energy. He’d been on the brink of ordering the army to march at once, through the night, to reach Tiberias. Now he frowned, remembering that, although he said nothing. “Your instinct was to relieve Tiberias, wasn’t it?” Ridefort pressed him.

  Guy still didn’t answer, but his scowl was deeper.

  “You are the King,” Ridefort repeated. “Don’t make the same mistake twice. Don’t lose everyone’s respect by inaction. Do what your instincts tell you to do. Take this army to Tiberias and crush Salah ad-Din!”

  “His army is bigger than ours,” Guy complained, still uncertain.

  “But we have God on our side. We have the True Cross with us. How can you doubt our victory? Do you not think Christ is intimidated by the hordes of Mohammedans?”

  Guy caught his breath.

  “Lead this army to Tiberias, your grace, and with the grace of God you will win a great victory! You will forever be remembered as the savior of Jerusalem! Your name will eclipse that of Godfrey de Bouillon and Henry Plantagenet. Why, if you shatter Salah ad-Din’s army, what is to stop you from taking Damascus? Or Cairo? Or both?”

  “We march at dawn!”

  The confusion in the predawn darkness was considerable. Men had slept poorly, and many had only just entered deep sleep when the horns roused them. The orders to strike camp and form up took everyone by surprise, and men kept asking one another what had happened. Why had the King changed his mind? But their lords and sergeants didn’t give them much time to speculate. Men hastened to get something into their stomachs and wash it down with water. If they were going to Tiberias, it was going to be a long, hot, thirsty day, and the prospect of imminent battle hung in the air. Throughout the camp, men knelt in the dirt and hastily confessed their sins to the priests who swarmed out to provide absolution.

  “I want extra water for the horses!” Ibelin ordered his squires, and the bleak expression on his face made them run to obey as much out of fear as obedience.

  “How are we supposed to carry extra water?” Ernoul asked Gabriel once they were out of hearing of their lord.

  “The goatskins on the wagon. Fill them up.”

  “But how can we carry them?”

  “We’ll saddle the destriers and attach two goatskins apiece,” Gabriel answered.

  By the time they had filled and hung the goatskins on the saddles, the Ibelin tent had been struck, and Lord Balian was giving orders to his bannerets and sergeants. “With the Templars, we form the rear guard,” Ibelin announced. That made sense, Gabriel thought, nodding in approval. Because Ibelin commanded the men from his brother’s, his wife’s, and his own territories, he contributed the third largest contingent to the army after the King and Tripoli. His more than two hundred knights made up fully one-sixth of the total cavalry, although the eight hundred Turcopoles and roughly twentyfive hundred infantry of the Ibelin/Ramla/Nablus contingent formed a smaller share of the whole, because the coastal cities contributed higher numbers of foot soldiers and light horse than the rural baronies Balian held.

  Ibelin continued with his orders. “The wagons and destriers stay with the main body under King Guy; only fighting men remain with me.”

  Ernoul and Gabriel looked at one another uneasily: Ernoul because that sounded like Lord Balian expected heavy fighting in the rear, which he didn’t understand, and Gabriel because he felt he was being treated like a noncombatant, which he resented.

  There was obviously no arguing with Ibelin in his present mood, however, so Ernoul and Gabriel joined the squires of the other knights of Ibelin, Nablus, Ramla, and Mirabel as they formed up around the wagons, including one carrying the Bishops of Acre and Lydda and some ten canons from
the Holy Sepulcher with a huge gold-plated cross containing a fragment of the True Cross. The squires were leading the precious chargers, surrounded by the infantrymen of the royal domains and the other barons. The Count of Tripoli had been given command of the vanguard, and he had already set off with his two hundred plus knights and thrice as many Turcopoles, protected by some four thousand infantry.

  The sky was cloudless, and the gentle coolness of dawn rapidly gave way to intense and burning heat. Not that the men of Outremer weren’t used to it, but the road ahead was utterly without shade, and the passage of so many men and horses churned up the dry surface soil so that it floated in the air up to ten feet or more overhead. It wasn’t long before men started coughing. Sweat dried almost instantly if exposed to the sun, but under armor—whether made of metal, leather, or just quilted linen—it collected, saturating undergarments, and made them heavier and ranker than ever.

  At about ten in the morning, four hours into the march, the first wave of Saracen cavalry struck the rear guard. Ibelin had been expecting and watching for them. His Turcopole scouts had indicated that Salah ad-Din had moved the bulk of his army away from Tiberias to the west in anticipation of a Frankish relief effort. The center of the Saracen army was concentrated at Cafarsset, blocking the southern route to Tiberias, which was why Guy had ordered his army to follow the northern road by way of the small springs at Tourran. It was only to be expected that the Saracens would attack the Christian right (southern) flank as a result, and Ibelin had kept his eyes peeled toward the wooded slopes that rose to the south. When he saw movement and color among the trees, he shouted a warning to Gerard de Ridefort, who commanded some two hundred Templar knights and five hundred sergeants on his right, closer to the enemy. Inwardly he cursed the Templar Master for his evident inattentiveness.

  The Templars looked over as a man, and then in answer to shouted orders, turned to face the horsemen who poured out of the woods and thundered across the shallow valley between them with wild cries and fluttering banners.

  “Shields up!” Ibelin ordered his own troops as he recognized the Turkish horse archers of the enemy. These were galloping forward with their reins loose on their horses’ withers, preparing to fire their arrows at a gallop. A moment later a shower of arrows followed. Those who had followed their lord’s orders and raised their shields over their heads were unharmed. Only here and there, where a man had been slow to react, did the arrows find flesh.

  The problem was that no sooner had one squadron of Turks expended their arrows and turned to gallop away, than a second and a third squadron rushed at the Christian rear guard. These were wellorganized and well-planned attacks, with little time between charges. Within minutes the Christians found their arms and shoulders aching from holding their heavy shields overhead. After an hour of these assaults, the men began to lose strength altogether. More and more men were letting their guard down at the wrong moment. As they advanced, they were trailing dead and dying men—like a snail leaving a wet trace behind, Balian thought.

  Around noon the Saracens changed tactics and started to press home their attacks, coming within a hundred yards to fire directly at the Christians, rather than into the air. They took the Templars by surprise the first time they charged in close, and between a dozen and a score of horses went down to the piercing screams of horse and man. The Templars had no infantry, so Ibelin ordered infantry from Ramla around to cover the Templars’ southern flank.

  Immediately the Saracens swept behind their lines and fell on their northern flank. Ibelin, fortunately, still had the infantry of Nablus and Ibelin, and so was able to protect both flanks and his rear as well, keeping his knights in the center. The problem now, however, was that they had to stop each time a Turkish charge was launched to let the infantry plant their shields and drop down behind them, while keeping the horses inside the shield wall. Progress slowed to an unbearable crawl. With the sun now directly overhead, they started losing men to sunstroke as well as to the enemy.

  Ibelin ordered his infantry to walk backward and sideways to keep moving forward without losing the formation, but this proved virtually impossible. The infantry needed to prop their shields on the ground to have any stability, and after only a half-hour or so Ibelin gave up. They reverted to moving forward in fits and starts, just a few dozen yards at a time, between the unrelenting attacks. Ibelin felt helpless as he watched his infantry shrink man by man.

  By early afternoon they had covered less than eight miles, or barely half the distance to Tiberias. Worse, word was passed back to them that the springs at Tourran, where the army had hoped to water their horses and refresh themselves, had been poisoned with slaughtered animals and murdered prisoners. Furthermore, Salah ad-Din had moved the bulk of his army north to block the road east.

  They were either going to have to fight their way through or else turn even more to the north, heading not for the already visible—but still distant—waters of the Sea of Galilee, but instead for the village of Hattin. Ibelin was too far back to be involved in the short war council, but he was sent word that Tripoli had urged making for Hattin, which was just three miles away and had ample water supplies. That was assuming, of course, that the Saracens had not poisoned them. King Guy, according to the messenger, already appeared to regret his decision to leave Sephorie and so agreed.

  The shift in direction, however, meant that the Christian army left the road and started cutting across country. That made walking much more difficult for the infantry, as there were frequent gullies, rocks, and thorns. That was bad enough for men just walking forward; it was much harder for men trying to stay in formation under unrelenting attacks. As a result, the rear guard was slowed down even more, and a gap threatened to open up between the main body of Christian troops and the rear guard. It was a gap the Saracens were bound to exploit—and if they did, the rear guard would be surrounded and cut to pieces.

  As that threat loomed larger with each excruciating step forward, Ibelin rode over to consult with Gerard de Ridefort. The latter proposed charging the enemy to drive them back, but Ibelin angrily rejected the plan. It was too obvious that the enemy would simply fall back before the heavy cavalry, and then attack again as soon as the charge was spent. “That’s a waste of energy,” Ibelin told the Templar Master bluntly.

  “You’re just afraid to charge!” Ridefort retorted hotly.

  “Don’t try that crap on me, Ridefort. I’m not a frightened dandy like the King you made! Charging light Turkish cavalry is idiocy—and if you do it, you do it alone.” Ibelin let his eyes sweep the Templars around the Master, hoping to find a man like Jacques de Mailly, willing to challenge their Grand Master and support him. But the men with Ridefort today only dropped their eyes and would not look at him.

  “God is on our side!” Ridefort barked belligerently, making his own men sit up straighter in their saddles.

  “Really? As he was with you at Cresson?” Ibelin shot back.

  “Do you doubt Christ is with us?”

  “It is blasphemy to confuse your own will with the will of God.”

  “We charge!” Ridefort spun his horse on its haunches and spurred it forward, ordering the Templar standard-bearer to fall in beside him.

  Ibelin rode back to his own knights and announced grimly, “The Templars insist on charging.”

  “That’s madness!” Sir Bartholomew protested, and Balian noted how haggard the old man looked. His eyes were sunken in his skull, all but lost in shadow in the depths of his helmet. He shouldn’t be here, Balian registered. He should be enjoying his old age in peace on his manor, not facing certain death. Then again, he had only daughters, and the feudal duty fell next to his eldest grandson, a boy just eleven years old. So on second thought, the old man was probably prepared to die to save that boy and his younger brothers.

  Out loud, Ibelin retorted curtly, “This whole march is madness!” and added before anyone else could protest: “We hold formation, and take advantage of the relief the Templars will tem
porarily give us to jog forward as far and as fast as we can.”

  Then he reached down, unfastened his goatskin, and took several gulps of water before demonstratively pulling Rufus’ head around to offer the water to the chestnut palfrey. Rufus gratefully closed his lips around the spout of the goatskin, and Balian upended it so that the water flowed into his horse’s mouth until the skin was about half empty. Then he took it away, closed it, and tied it again to his saddle. Around him, his knights followed his example of sharing their water with their horses, while the infantry drank deeply. While they drank, the Templars burst through their infantry protection screaming “Vive Dieu St. Amour!”—head-on into the next Saracen attack.

  The Saracens just wheeled their horses around and galloped away like the wind. Their fleeter horses, with lighter gear and riders, easily outdistanced the Templars. The latter, armed only with lances and swords, could not hope to inflict the slightest damage and soon drew up, turned, and began to trot back to Ibelin’s division, which was jogging as fast as the tired limbs and dehydrated bodies of the infantry would let them. Only Ibelin remained immobile, his horse facing backwards, his eyes squinting against the sun as he awaited the next attack. It came even before the Templars had rejoined the rest of the rear guard. Ibelin shouted a warning, and Ridefort wheeled his knights around and charged again.

  This repeated itself four or five times, until the Templar horses were swaying from exhaustion, the sweat dripping from their bellies, their heads hanging in utter dejection. Only then did Ridefort recognize—but not acknowledge—that Ibelin had been right. Furiously, he ordered Ibelin to send one of his knights to the King to demand that the main army wait for the rear guard.

  “No,” Ibelin answered.

  “They must wait for us! If they don’t, we’ll be cut off and slaughtered. If we’re slaughtered, the army doesn’t stand a chance. A third of our forces are right here!”