Some Byzantine senior officer, marked out by his archaic uniform with knotted ribbons and red leather strops hanging from shoulders and skirt, was busy giving out commands, and Ramon paused nearby until the man turned his attention to the blood-soaked Templar.
‘Yes?’
‘The sea walls are secured and the Venetians are sailing west. What happens up ahead?’
The officer frowned, clearly unaware that Templars even existed in his city and likely wondering what part they played and whether he could trust them. In the end, noting the signs of battle upon them and their claim to be fighting for the city, he gestured south, along the main land walls.
‘The emperor has led out the army.’
Ramon and Arnau exchanged a look, then thanked the man and ran on along the walls with Sebastian immediately behind, picking up their pace. At the southern edge of the Blachernae palace grounds the land rose to one of the city’s great hills and, wheezing and sweating, the three Templars pounded on up the sloping wall, passing towers and artillery. Here the defenders were thinner on the ground, the bulk of the forces in the area having moved towards the gate to help defend it from the main Frankish assault.
As they neared the top of the slope, Arnau noted a familiar figure ahead atop the tower. Bochard’s white surcoat with the brilliant red cross and his steel helm marked him out among the uniforms of the Byzantine infantry. The preceptor stood at the parapet of the highest point on the walls, looking out across the land away from the city. It was only then that it struck Arnau that this was the first time the preceptor had emerged from his private business and paid attention to the war. Had he finally realised the danger?
In a matter of moments, the other three entered the tower and pounded up the stairs.
Emerging onto the tower’s flat top near a loaded catapult and a small force of imperial soldiers, they crossed to the preceptor, who turned at the sound of approaching boots. His face shifted quickly through a number of expressions, none of which were remotely welcoming, settling upon puce with anger.
‘What have you done?’ he roared, gesturing at the three blood-soaked figures.
‘No more than we had to,’ Ramon replied quietly. ‘What is happening out there?’
‘I ordered you not to fight them.’
‘We engaged no Crusaders,’ snapped Ramon. ‘We found ourselves under attack by Venetian dogs and we fought them off.’
Arnau nodded emphatically. It was the truth, strictly speaking.
Bochard’s arm was shaking angrily, and his mouth opened and closed a few times, trying to find fault with them. Unable to do so, he shut it angrily for a moment, then wagged a finger at Ramon, his gaze dark and threatening. ‘You may have initiated nothing, de Juelle, but you invite chaos by placing yourself among the enemy. I know your game, Brother. Do not think to fool me. I shall be more explicit with my commands in future.’ He relented, still angry, but calmer. ‘How stand the sea walls?’
‘They are secure.’
‘Mmm,’ the preceptor murmured. Arnau frowned. The inflection of the noncommittal noise suggested that Bochard was in some way disappointed. What was he waiting for, standing here and watching the Franks carefully, seemingly disappointed in their ability to hold out?
‘The emperor and his general may turn the war their way today,’ the preceptor said, and Arnau again caught a note of regret in the words. Surely Bochard couldn’t support the Crusader cause in this? But thoughts hit him thick and fast now. The preceptor had suppressed the Greek Church on Cyprus. He’d driven the island to revolt and had no qualms about butchering countless citizens. Why would he care about those same imperial citizens just because they were in the capital? Bochard favoured the Franks. Of course he did. And realistically, many others in the Order would likely do the same. Bochard would not be able to understand why Ramon and Arnau favoured heretics over soldiers of the Church of Rome. A thorny problem. Not one to confront now, though.
Instead, he turned his attention to what was happening outside the city. If the preceptor was right, and the emperor could fight off the invasion today, this could be it. The saving of the city and the withdrawal of the Crusaders. Certainly Bochard’s disappointment suggested it was more than a possibility.
Arnau’s breath caught for a moment at what he saw.
The forces of Byzantium had issued forth. What seemed countless regiments of infantry and cavalry had emerged from the city to wage war. The Crusaders had committed a large force to the walls of the Blachernae, where they fought for control of the gate. Behind them, some distance from the defences, the bulk of the Frankish cavalry sat. During the assault they had been largely impotent, since noble knights preferred to stay in the saddle and not get their hands dirty, yet even the strongest cavalry were no use against a city wall. Thus, they had waited in support, perhaps halfway between the fight at the walls and their own camp.
The Byzantine army had split into two distinct units. One, bearing all the banners and colours of the emperor himself, was lined up facing the Frankish horse at perhaps a third of a mile distance. Arnau could see the second force further away, threatening the Crusaders’ largely empty camp. There, the Byzantines were clearly enjoying great success ravaging behind the enemy’s lines. He could see no banners, but it seemed certain that Theodoros Laskaris would be commanding there.
Arnau could imagine the havoc. Men would be scrambling to defend their tent city with whatever stores they could find – even frying pans. And the Crusaders could not rush to their aid. The men-at-arms were busy being committed at the Blachernae walls, and the cavalry were facing off against the emperor’s force. If they raced off to save the camp, the emperor could fall upon the rear of the wall assault and annihilate the infantry. Thus all was in a dreadful stalemate close to the city, while Theodoros and his highly mobile force ruined their camp.
This was it. They could win. This was why the Venetians had withdrawn from their own assault: to come to the aid of the Franks, who were in dire straits, yet they would not arrive in time to do anything. All it would take was a little courage and not falling apart under pressure, and the emperor and his general could break the back of the Crusader siege.
Arnau found himself shivering, almost breathless, leaning on the parapet and willing the Byzantines to break the Franks. Almost as if the stalemate had gone on too long for all concerned, calls went up almost simultaneously from both the emperor’s force and the Frankish cavalry.
Slowly, inexorably, the two forces began to move forward. Arnau tensed. The bulk of the Byzantine cavalry were with Laskaris at the Crusader camp, and if the Franks managed a full cavalry charge, it would all be down to how the Byzantine infantry dealt with it. They could hold and stand it, and if they did, the day should be theirs, but twice now the imperial forces had broken when confronted with the charge of the Frankish knights.
Arnau’s gaze slid to that silvery tide of steel-clad Crusaders. They were fearsome. As fearsome even as the Warings in their way. They were Titans. They were…
‘A strong man in the midst, that goeth before the host and is ready to fight against one of the enemies in singular battle, went out of the Philistines’ tents, Goliath of Gath by name, of six cubits high and a span, and a brazen basinet on his head; and he was clothed with a mailed habergeon, and the weight of his habergeon was five thousand shekels of brass. And he had on his thighs brazen boots, and a brazen shield covered his shoulders. Forsooth the shaft of his spear was as the beam of webs and the iron of his spear weighed six hundred shekels of iron.’
Ramon turned to him.
‘A Frankish Goliath? Then the emperor is your David?’
Arnau trembled a little. ‘I hope so. I hope Doukas is wrong about him.’
They watched the two armies converging, knowing that this confrontation could end the siege entirely. Ramon suddenly let out an explosive breath and pointed furiously into the distance. ‘There. See? Laskaris comes to his aid.’
The second force, speedy and strong and
formed largely of cavalry, had broken off from ravaging the enemy camp and was now racing back towards the two armies closing on one another. Arnau glanced to his right, down the slope to the Blachernae. The fighting there had slowed, the bulk of both forces paying more attention to what was happening on the field outside the city, knowing full well how important that clash was.
‘Come on, Laskaris,’ urged Ramon, hammering his fist on the battlements. Arnau saw that Bochard was watching them both with hawk-like eyes. The preceptor did not want the emperor to succeed, clearly, though he could hardly shout as much here, amid the Byzantine defenders on the tower top.
They continued to watch. Laskaris and his men came ever closer. The two armies were almost within bowshot of one another now and still the Crusaders had not yet broken into a charge. Arnau shook his head in wonder. The Franks should have charged by now. They would be too late. He felt a small ripple of elation flow through him. The two forces were too close now for the Frankish cavalry to charge properly. They couldn’t do it. And the Byzantines were about to have their numbers bolstered.
They were going to win.
Arnau watched the Frankish horse moving with uncertainty. Several different divisions, flying the flags of various lords, were only moving forward because their fellows were doing so. They were doing it all wrong, playing into the emperor’s hands.
Then, to make matters worse for the Crusaders, one of their lords suddenly broke from the force and turned his division, hurrying back to guard their flanks from the coming cavalry of Laskaris. The Frankish advance faltered. They still came on but slower. Less certain.
‘They have them,’ Ramon said quietly. ‘Laskaris will break their flank, and they cannot charge now. Their commanders are at odds and the argument has ruined the day for them.’
Arnau nodded, watching with barely contained delight as Laskaris urged his second force to new speed, racing for the Crusaders’ flank and the single division of horse settling in to face them.
Calls went up.
The Crusader force came to a shuddering halt.
Arnau found himself hammering the battlements with his fist. It was coming. The Crusaders had stopped. They were afraid. Unsure. Ready to break.
Then the imperial force halted too, amid new calls.
Arnau stared in astonishment.
‘What is he doing?’ he breathed.
Bochard gestured down to the Golden Horn beyond them. The Venetian fleet were visible now, offloading their personnel, who were forming up to come to the Franks’ aid.
‘The emperor is afraid of facing them with Venetian strength in support,’ the preceptor declared.
Ramon shook his head. ‘No. He thinks his job is done. He rode out to threaten the enemy and pull the Venetians away from the walls, and it’s worked. He’s saved the sea walls. But he can win this. If he fights, he can break the Franks before the Venetians reach them.’
Arnau was shaking his head. ‘No, no, no, no. He can’t stop now.’
But the emperor had done just that. New calls went up and the imperial force began to withdraw, still facing the Frankish horse. Arnau watched in utter dismay as the emperor pulled his army further and further back towards the gates close to where the Templars stood.
With his withdrawal, the atmosphere across the peninsula changed in a heartbeat. The Crusaders, close to panic only moments earlier, suddenly let out a victorious roar, jeering at the retreating Byzantines. Arnau’s gaze flicked up to Laskaris’s secondary force. Unprepared for the emperor’s withdrawal, he had engaged the Frankish horse. Even now, the Byzantine cavalry were butchering Crusaders, but while the fight was hard pressed, Theodoros’s signaller was already blaring the call to retreat.
The cavalry broke off their attack at the last possible moment and raced away, those few light skirmishing troops with them running to keep up. Even as they fled, Franks were chasing them down, killing the slowest. The tables had turned and Laskaris, about to utterly rout the Franks, had instead been forced to flee lest he find his smaller force facing immeasurable odds without the emperor’s army.
Arnau watched, lost and downhearted as both Byzantine forces raced for the walls and the safety of the city. The Venetians were cheering now, loud enough to hear even from such a distance, and the Frankish assault on the Blachernae Gate had redoubled in its ferocity.
An opportunity missed.
‘The Lord, it seems, is with the Franks,’ Bochard said in French with some satisfaction. ‘Now perhaps you will cast aside your ridiculous notions and remember that you are brothers of the Temple and servants of the Church of Rome, just like those Franks on the hill. Clean yourselves up and go pray for your salvation, you fools.’
With a heavy heart, the other three Templars turned their backs on the retreating Byzantines and made their way back along the wall to the Blachernae. With a sense of defying the preceptor in the smallest of ways, both knights and the squire made extensive use of the bathhouse close to their accommodation, enjoying the hedonistic luxury of the Byzantine institution that Bochard considered heretical and decadent.
It was over an hour before the three returned to their apartments, their newly scrubbed clothing dripping wet and displaying the stains of battle despite their best efforts. They entered the common room, dressed in simple white habits, to find Doukas and the Waring called Redwald waiting for them. Swiftly hanging their drenched clothes over a balcony, they crossed to greet the ‘prisoner’.
‘You’ll know what happened, of course,’ Ramon said quietly, taking a seat.
Doukas nodded. ‘It is inevitable with the Angelid dynasty in command. I warned you that they would be the downfall of the empire. The fight goes on at the gate, though there is little chance of the Franks taking control there. The city remains safe for now, but for how long?’
‘I’m not sure safe is the correct word,’ Arnau argued. ‘Much of it seems to be burning.’
Doukas nodded. ‘It is a dangerous fire, but this city has survived many fires. It will be stopped eventually. The real trouble is that Alexios has lost his one chance of victory. Now the city once more languishes under the threat of violence, waiting for the next push from the Franks and their Venetian allies.’
‘What will the emperor do next?’
Doukas laughed mirthlessly. ‘If he has any sense at all, he will put a blade through his chest like a failed general of old. His future is bleak.’
Arnau frowned. ‘He is still the emperor.’
‘Not for long,’ Doukas said quietly. ‘Already every noble tongue in the court wags against him. He had a chance to prove himself to them and instead he failed utterly. The imperial court is unforgiving. I believe I have mentioned this before. Men have met their ends in the most dreadful ways for failures such as this. Even emperors. Strangled with a bowstring, blinded and castrated, hands and arms hacked off, beheading, burning, stoning and dismembering, even beaten to death with a bucket. My own distant cousin the emperor Andronikos Komnenos met a particularly repulsive fate when I was fifteen summers old.’
Arnau shuddered as Doukas elaborated with grisly glee.
‘Had his teeth, eyes and hair pulled out. He was submerged in boiling water, hung by the feet and then torn apart. I remember watching it all in the hippodrome. No, my friends, it doesn’t do for an emperor to fail. Already men will be plotting his end.’
Ramon’s lip curled in distaste, and Arnau felt faintly queasy at the notion. He’d seen plenty of death and wounding in his time, and the punishment of criminals and sinners in brutal manners. He’d even seen a man burned once. But nothing like the inventiveness of the Byzantines.
Doukas left shortly after delivering his gruesome history lesson, throughout which Redwald the Angle had sat stony-faced. Then Ramon and Arnau drank more than their expected single cup of wine, and their prayers during the liturgical services throughout that day, even when news came that the attack on the gate had ended and the Franks withdrawn, were more fervent than usual. Notably, Sebastian no long
er joined them, having sought the company of his fellow Byzantines in the Blachernae’s church. Another step away from the Order, Arnau suspected.
The following morning, as they returned from prime, the light of the morning sun beginning to illuminate the higher roofs and towers of the city, Doukas made his next visit, filled with urgent news.
‘The emperor is gone.’
‘What?’ Ramon frowned as he picked a grape from a plate and popped it hungrily in his mouth.
‘The coward Alexios fled during the night, knowing, I imagine, what was coming. He took his wife and his mistress, his favourite daughter and half a dozen pretty concubines, along with enough gold to bury an elephant, and boarded a ship in secret. He has been gone from the city for hours. All is chaos.’
‘What next, then?’ Arnau said quietly, trying to imagine what must have gone through the desperate emperor’s head.
‘A council of nobles met first thing to decide what to do.’
‘And?’
‘And the fools turned to his predecessor,’ spat Redwald, breaking his usual silence with unrestrained anger. ‘Alexios had a readymade heir in Theodoros Laskaris. The man is married to the emperor’s daughter, after all. But no, they turn to the old blind fool.’
Doukas gave his guard a sympathetic smile. ‘Redwald here, being bound in service to the emperor, likes his commander to be worthy.’ He sighed. ‘Laskaris would have been a good choice, I will admit. He might well be able to turn this around yet and drive off the Franks. But Isaac…’
He made uncertain motions with his hand.
‘Isaac is another Angelos,’ growled Redwald. ‘So inept that he was blinded specifically to prevent him ever regaining his throne. How can I serve a blind madman?’
Ramon sighed. ‘I can only apologise for this, Doukas, but I fear our time here must end. We must find the preceptor and arrange to leave.’
The political prisoner gave a short bark of a laugh. ‘I can hardly condemn you, sir knight. Indeed, I am inclined to ask that you take me with you.’ He smiled sadly. ‘But no. This is my city, and no matter what happens, I will stay with her to the end.’
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