Defender of Jerusalem

by Helena P. Schrader

  “I agree, but you’re the one who brought us here, so you’re going to be the one to tell your puppet King that you were wrong. You tell him to stop before he reaches water. You tell him we can’t make Tiberias tonight. You tell him the entire Christian army is trapped in the middle of a wasteland with no water and completely surrounded by the enemy. You tell him!”

  They stared at one another, and for the first time something like doubt crossed Ridefort’s eyes, but he blinked it back. “I don’t have a horse that can trot, let alone canter. You must send one of your knights.”

  “Oh, I’ll lend you a horse,” Ibelin answered, “but only you! Not one of your sacrificial lambs,” he gestured toward the silent Templars around them. Balian had never been so acutely aware of how young many of these bearded men were. Behind their beards and their tonsures, behind the façade of their white robes, half of them were little more than boys. He noted with poignancy that many of them had faces the color of cooked crabs and peeling skin—clear indications that they were newly come from countries with cool, rainy summers. Why, many of them might have arrived only weeks or days ago, replacements for the men lost at Cresson. They were, he knew, suffering more in this heat than any of the men from Ibelin, Ramla, or Nablus. He could sense that they were frightened, too. They had believed in their cause, their virtue, and their invincibility. And they were starting to ask themselves what had gone wrong.

  “Damn you, Ibelin!”

  “What for, Ridefort? For pushing your nose in your own shit? You made this King, and you made this catastrophe. Tripoli warned you. I warned you. By God, half the barons of Jerusalem warned you! But you thought yourself cleverer than all of us together. This is your dung heap, and you are going to lie in it. I only pray to God that He will not punish the rest of us for your stupidity, arrogance, and hubris!”

  “I’ll kill you, Ibelin!”

  “You already have, Ridefort. You’ve killed all of us. Now, do you want my stallion or not?”

  Ridefort’s eyes flashed with hatred so intense that he refused.

  Dragging his own poor, tired mount around, he dug his spurs into its flanks, forcing it to lumber forward in an exhausted, miserable lope.

  Ibelin let his eyes sweep across the faces of the remaining, stillstunned Templars and shook his head. Then he rode back to his own men to face the next Saracen onslaught.

  As dusk fell, they rejoined the main army. Taking stock as best he could in the growing gloom, Ibelin estimated that although casualties among his mounted troops had been negligible, he had lost nearly one-third of his infantry, or close to six hundred men. In contrast, the Templars’ rash attacks had killed so many of their horses that many knights and sergeants had no choice but to walk. Men raised to fight on horseback could rarely keep pace with the infantry, however, particularly when weighed down by chain mail. Many Templars had fallen behind and been butchered by the pursuing Saracens as a result. The Saracens made a point of consistently straddled them, then hauled them halfway off the ground by their hair to slit their throats as if they were slaughtering sheep.

  The main army was camped on a sweeping plain behind two hills that separated them from the Sea of Galilee, known colloquially as the “Horns of Hattin.” From the west they were simply two hills joined by an oval valley, but seen from the Sea of Galilee they reared up much more sharply and dramatically and did, somewhat, remind the viewer of ox horns.

  There was no water here whatsoever. Anyone who had already depleted the water he carried with him had nowhere to replenish his supplies. As Ibelin made his way through the camp to take part in a council in the King’s tent, he saw men lying about with their tongues literally hanging out. Other men were sucking on objects to try to force saliva into their mouths. Still others were gagging on bread, unable to get it down their parched throats.

  Ibelin paused beside his squires and admonished them not to give more than half the water to his destriers tonight. “We’re still three miles from Lake Tiberias.”

  “I thought we were going to Hattin,” Ernoul replied, surprised.

  “Through that?” Ibelin gestured to the hills around them that were literally crawling with Saracen men and horses. Even as he spoke, the muezzins began wailing out the call to prayer and the sound surrounded them, drowning out the chanting of the canons kneeling before the great gold cross containing Christianity’s most holy relic.

  The canons were not alone; thousands of troops had gravitated toward the wagon with the golden cross and were now on their knees behind the priests. Ibelin had to pick his way through their ranks, conscious of the unnatural intensity of the prayers murmured all around him. Men were crossing themselves, muttering Pater Nosters, or saying the Ave Maria, a new prayer that was rapidly gaining popularity. Balian could smell the sweat and other fluids on their dustcaked bodies. These men were praying for their souls more than for their bodies. They understood their situation.

  When the Muslims’ prayers ended, their drumming started. Deep, muffled drums beat a slow dirge that continued through the night. As silence settled over the Christian camp, however, laughter and music wafted from the campfires surrounding them.

  The enemy thought they had already won, Ibelin reflected, returning from a council that could not reverse the fatal decision of the night before. They were trapped. Surrounded by a more numerous enemy. Exhausted and parched, while their enemy was fresh and caravans of camels brought cool water from the Sea of Galilee.

  “Do you believe in miracles?” the Archbishop of Lydda asked Ibelin, as the latter paused beside the wagon with the True Cross to say his own prayers and confess his sins before facing the morrow.

  Balian thought about that. “I don’t believe in counting on them,” he answered after a moment, and moved on.

  Horns of Hattin, July 4, 1187

  The smoke was getting worse, and throughout the Christian camp men were coughing. Lack of water made their coughs harsher, drier, and more persistent. The horses were unsettled, too, nickering and moving uneasily. Balian dragged himself to his feet and squinted. The sky was graying to the east, but clouds of smoke darkened everything west and south of them. At first he thought the enemy campfires had simply gotten out of control—but the longer he looked, the more convinced he became that these fires were far too neat and too equidistant to be out of control. Salah ad-Din had built a ring of fire around their rear and flanks and had drawn up his army ahead of them. The fires had a following southwest wind to drive them toward the Christians and herd the latter onto the spears of the waiting Saracens.

  “Tack up Thor and Centurion,” he ordered his squires, “and give them what is left of the water. I’ll ride Thor. Keep Centurion near at hand in reserve.”

  “We’ll be with you today, then?” Gabriel asked anxiously.

  “We are fish in a barrel, boys. Commend your souls to God, if you have not already done so.” Balian gestured toward the priests again moving through the host.

  Salah ad-Din waited until the sun was high enough in the eastern sky to be blinding—and to cast a brilliant, taunting sheen on the ruffled surface of the Sea of Galilee. While the Saracen troops on the flanks emptied skins full of water onto the earth to demoralize the thirsting Christians, the center launched an attack. Within minutes their arrows were falling with devastating effect among the dense ranks of the Christians. Many men were by now either too tired or too dispirited to raise their shields, and the casualties began to mount correspondingly. Ibelin, his knights and squires on horseback around him, started cursing in a steady stream, and no one dared interrupt him.

  It was idiocy to just sit here and let themselves be slaughtered!

  Fortunately the Constable agreed, and with a trumpet blast he ordered the attack. Ibelin thanked God and led his men into position, his shield still over his head to catch the falling arrows. The problem they had now was that they would be charging uphill, but anything was better than just sitting under the pouring arrows.

  At the Constable’s signa
l the Christian cavalry started to extricate itself from the protection of the infantry and lumber forward, slowly gaining momentum. A cavalry charge is exhilarating, and it has a contagious euphoria about it that now swept through the men of Outremer. Despite their parched throats, they found the strength to shout “Jerusalem!” as they crashed into the enemy with lances leveled, cutting deep into the enemy lines.

  Ibelin saw Aimery decapitate a high-ranking emir with the first stroke of his sword after his lance broke. Then he had no time to pay attention to anything but the men trying to kill him as he continued forward, slashing left and right. Thor was his best weapon, lashing out with his teeth and feet, kicking anything that came near him from behind. Although the horse’s kicking often upset Ibelin’s own aim, it assured him he would not be attacked from behind, either. Together they were making progress.

  Gradually, however, Ibelin realized that the momentum had gone out of the charge and they were stalled. They were only halfway up the slope and surrounded by the enemy. Around him horses were going down with appalling regularity. The Saracen infantry was among them, stabbing the horses in their chests, bellies, and necks. The horses screamed and crumpled. As soon as one went down, the rider was pulled clear and hacked to pieces. He saw that happen first to Sir Walter and then Sir Arnulf.

  Over the noise, the Constable was screaming at them to withdraw. Ibelin swung Thor about and leaned forward, shouting into his ears for speed. The stallion responded as much to his own terror as his master’s, and they galloped back toward the Christian army, leaping over dead and dying men and horses.

  As they crashed through the line of Christian infantry around the supply wagons and the True Cross, Ibelin made a quick head count. He had lost a quarter of his knights in this futile charge—but far more terrifying, the Christian infantry was cracking. He saw men flinging themselves face down on the ground, their arms outstretched in a gesture of surrender, and many more were starting to stream due east in the direction of the Sea of Galilee, visible between the “horns” on either side. It was as if the lure of water had become so compelling that the infantry ignored the enemy still massed at the foot of the hills on either side.

  With a start, Ibelin realized that the enemy must have opened a gap between two of their divisions intentionally to lure the Christians into a trap. The enemy would fall on the Christians from both sides as soon as they were between the open pincers. Ibelin shouted and waved at the infantry, trying to warn them and call them back—but orders had little effect on men who felt they had been so poorly led up to this point. He shouted himself hoarse, but it was mostly the men of Ibelin, Ramla, and Nablus who took heed.

  Farther east, Reynald de Châtillon recognized the same danger Ibelin had. He, too, shouted for the infantry to stand. When they ignored him, he rode in among them and began flailing at them with the flat of his sword, trying to force them back. Most of the men dodged his sword, protected their head with their arms, or took the blows on their backs, but continued eastward. Abruptly Châtillon’s horse collapsed and the Baron of Oultrejourdain sank down among the infantry, completely lost to view. The infantry continued to stream eastward, apparently stepping right over Oultrejourdain. Ibelin shuddered as he registered that their own men that killed his horse — and possibly Oultrejourdain himself.

  Moments latter, the enemy launched their crushing pincer movement against the Christian infantry. Thousands were slaughtered in a matter of minutes, while those who could, avoided the slaughter by scrambling and clambering, too exhausted and dehydrated to run, up onto the higher ground of the southern horn.

  Tripoli shouted furiously at the King: “We have to break out to the north! To Hattin! The slope is too steep on the east flank!”

  King Guy didn’t answer. His eyes were blank, his jaw slack. The magnitude of the disaster appeared to overwhelm him. Before his eyes his Kingdom was dying, sinking man by man and horse by horse into hell.

  As Ibelin watched the stunned King, Thor abruptly crashed down onto his knees and began to slowly fall onto his right side. Balian barely managed to jump free before his right leg was crushed. The great black stallion’s eyes rolled back into his head and his tongue hung out. Balian could see no evidence of a wound; the stallion had died of heart failure and thirst in the heat. The charge had taken the last ounce of strength out of him.

  Meanwhile, however, Tripoli’s knights were already in motion. Ibelin had not heard the King give the order, but then he’d been preoccupied by the collapse of his destrier. He didn’t have a chance of joining the charge, unhorsed as he was, and his knights remained with him out of ingrained loyalty—a lifetime of feudal values that had been drummed into them since childhood until it sat in the very marrow of their bones. He glanced up, and his eyes met those of the aging Sir Bartholomew. The man was sixty if he was a day. He had fought for more than forty years to keep the Holy Land Christian, only to come to this. He nodded to Balian, and seemed to say, “Onto death, my lord, we’re with you.”

  Suddenly Ernoul was beside him, smelling of sweat and urine. He was trembling violently, but he held Centurion’s reins, and dutifully jumped down from his own horse to hold the off stirrup for his lord. As he tried to mount, Balian realized his own strength was waning. It took him two attempts to drag himself into the saddle, but around him men were shouting in excitement. The mood had shifted abruptly from despair to exhilaration. Following their excited gestures, Balian saw that Tripoli was through the enemy lines and Reginald of Sidon was reinforcing. They had broken out of the encirclement!

  He collected his reins and glanced at the King. The entire army had to reinforce immediately! They had to pour every man and horse left alive through the gap Tripoli had torn open and hope the infantry would follow.

  But King Guy only gaped, his jaw still slack, his eyes glazed. It was as if he could no longer grasp what was happening around him, even when it was to his benefit. Aimery was beside him, gesturing toward the gap opened by Tripoli and toward the True Cross, the infantry. He was clearly urging a breakout. Oultrejourdain staggered forward on foot to likewise point at the gap, giving the same advice with a vehemence Ibelin could sense although he couldn’t hear. Still the King was too stunned to respond.

  And the opportunity was past. The enemy had closed ranks again, flooding like water into the opening Tripoli had cut. Not only that: they now surged toward the Christian ranks around King Guy. They were firing their arrows at close range again, and horses were going down with sickening screams.

  “Pull back behind the infantry!” Aimery de Lusignan ordered, while his brother stared at the carnage, apparently too paralyzed with shock to think or give orders. “Retreat up the southern slope!” He pointed to the southern “horn,” where the infantry, or what was left of it, crouched around the wagon carrying the True Cross. It was hard to tell who was protecting whom. While the soldiers had planted their shields in front of the wagon, the Bishops of Acre and Lydda could be seen standing on the wagon with their arms upraised, evidently imploring God for succor.

  “No!” Ibelin contradicted, pushing Centurion forward until he was directly beside the constable. “There is Salah ad-Din!” Balian had spotted the glitter of gold and jewels as a knot of men in yellow turbans moved steadily forward through the host opposite. “If we kill him, the battle’s over!”

  The Constable followed Ibelin’s finger and then glanced at his mentally lamed brother, the infantry huddling around the True Cross on the hill to their right, and said simply, “go with God, Ibelin. If I survive, I swear I will care for your widow and orphans as the kin they are!”

  Ibelin ignored the remark. He did not see this as a suicide charge. Rather, this was a God-given last chance to salvage what was left of the army—maybe ten thousand of the eighteen thousand infantry and one thousand of the five thousand cavalry they had set out with yesterday. He looked around for the Templars and Hospitallers, who would normally have been tasked with a mission of this sort. There were only a handful of Templars
still mounted, in a pitiful cluster around the Beauséant and Master de Ridefort; most of the remaining knights and sergeants were horseless and so acting as infantry protection for King Guy. The Hospitallers might have mustered a hundred mounted men—but they were too far away, guarding the slope up to the hill on which the gold reliquary containing the True Cross glinted in the afternoon sun.

  Balian raised his voice to the men still around him. “That is Salah ad-Din!” he shouted, pointing again. “If we kill him, the field is ours!”

  Sir Galvin took a firm grip on his bloody ax, while the other knights called for lances from their squires and formed up around their lord. Sir Bartholomew held the banner of Ibelin. Many squires also pressed their horses between and behind the knights, evidently sharing Balian’s assessment of the situation rather than Aimery’s—or preferring martyrdom to slavery.

  Ibelin couched his lance and shouted “Jerusalem!” Centurion sprang forward, astonishing his rider, who did not know Thor had refused to drink at Sephorie while the older horse had drunk his fill. Around and behind him his knights picked up his call and pressed together, stirrup to stirrup, seized this time less with euphoria than desperation. Or was it a sense of destiny?

  Ibelin broke his lance on first impact and it splintered in his hand, but the Saracen who had taken it toppled backwards off his horse into a second rider, knocking the latter down as well. By then, Ibelin had his sword out and was killing with the kind of efficiency that struck terror into the hearts of his opponents. He had no sense of his own vulnerability, nor did he feel the blows that rained down on him. His chain mail blunted most of the hits, and while several slashes severed the metal links and drew blood, none bit deep enough to reach his obsessed brain with a cry of pain.

  Ibelin had his eye fixed on Salah ad-Din, and his entire being was focused on closing the distance between them for the sole purpose of executing the great Sultan. He was close enough to see his target’s face. The Kurdish leader turned toward him with a look of alarm followed by recognition. Just another seven yards and Ibelin would have him.