Suddenly King Richard poked his head through the tent flap and roared, “Out! Now! As you are, but with shield and lance! They’re almost upon us!”
Richard’s knights did not argue and poured out of the tent as they were, although two had nothing on over—or under—their shirts. Aimery was less obedient. He first pulled on his braies and tied the cord tight, then he grabbed his shirt, gambeson, and hauberk and pulled them over his head. There was no time for hose, let alone chausses, however, so he belted his sword and grabbed his shield and helmet as the shouts and screams outside reached a fever pitch.
Following the sound of battle, he found that the knights and men-at-arms had formed an improvised wall around the camp by going down on one knee with their shields held upright before them. They had planted their lances in the earth, the tips jabbing outwards at 45 degrees.
“Position yourselves in pairs so you can fire between the shoulders of the men holding the shields!” King Richard was roaring at the archers. “I want one man firing and one man loading!”
As Aimery fell into place at the end of the still-forming shield wall, the first wave of Saracen horse came thundering toward the other end of the line with hooted challenges and cries of “Allahu Akbar!”
Someone handed him a lance, and he worked feverishly to bury the butt deep enough in the soil for it to be fixed firmly. On his right, horses were squealing and whinnying in panic and pain. Their eyes rolled back in their heads as they refused to impale themselves on the protruding lances, while the crossbows took a terrible toll. As the lead horses crumpled up, spilling their riders in the dust, the horses in the ranks behind spun about on their haunches and bolted for safety, oblivious and indifferent to the efforts of their riders to make them turn back.
Although that first charge broke within minutes, there were thousands of other horsemen milling out of range and preparing to charge. Aimery had no time to return for his hose. The next wave was already rushing forward to test the strength and resolve of his end of the line.
Aimery started saying the Pater Noster by rote. He gritted his teeth together and braced for the onslaught. On either side of him Pisan archers, likewise kneeling on one knee, held their crossbows to their shoulders. No one was giving orders. They fired independently when they thought the Saracens swarming toward them were within range, but as soon as one had fired, he moved behind the nearest knight or man-at-arms to reload, while his companion took aim and fired.
“Steady! Steady!” Aimery recognized King Richard’s voice and realized he had come to stand behind their section of the wall, just as he had been at the eastern section when it was attacked. “Make each shot count!” he admonished the archers. “Wait till they’re too close to miss.”
Aimery took hold of his lance with his right hand to make sure it held firm and steady. Sweat was pouring down his face, although it was still very early morning and not yet hot. His throat was parched and his breathing short. He had never before knelt before a cavalry onslaught. His place had been mounted on a tall horse, lance couched under his arm, whether on the tourney fields of Flanders, the soggy green pastures of Aquitaine, or the hard-baked and dusty plains of Outremer. When he had, rarely, fought on foot, it had been upright with a sword in his hand. He had never before knelt bare-legged in the dirt, crouching behind his shield while hundreds of mounted men charged at him. He had never been so terrified in all his life.
But soon the horses were squealing and whinnying again. This time they were so near he could hear the crossbow bolts thudding into them, and their blood splattered down on him. Horses were falling over sideways, their legs flailing the air until the bolts and arrows embedded in their bellies made them go still. Behind them more horses reared and spun about, dumping their riders onto the heaps of cadavers. Any man who tried to rise was cut down by the arrows that came steadily from behind the shoulders of the Franks holding the shields.
Aimery had no sense of time, but eventually the pressure eased up on his part of the line while a new assault was trying to turn their flank, attacking at the extreme right. Aimery tried to relax his grip on his lance long enough to wipe the sweat from his brow, but his fingers were cramped and he had to pry them open. Nor did he have a surcoat to wipe the sweat on, and the metal links of his hauberk were blisteringly hot.
Aimery glanced over his shoulder, wondering if there was anyone not on the defensive perimeter. To his amazement, he saw that the squires had organized themselves and had drawn water from the springs around which they were camped. They were bringing this forward to the men holding the line. When they reached Aimery, he gulped down the still-cool water and then ordered his squire to bring him his hose and boots.
By midmorning the heaps of corpses before their perimeter were so high they could hardly see over them, and the flies were so thick Aimery was sure he was going to swallow one every time he opened his mouth. The Saracen attacks had slackened, but they had not withdrawn. The Saracen cavalry kept milling about just out of range, apparently trying to decide what to do next. At this juncture someone brought up a string of fifteen horses that had been rounded up in Jaffa.
Not one of these horses looked particularly fit, and none were stallions. They were mares and geldings, long in the tooth, with bog and bone spavins, bowed tendons, and any number of other faults. Aimery suspected half of them were packhorses, and the others merchantmen’s docile palfreys. Not one was destrier material. They were terrified by the sight of the dead horses, but not spirited enough to resist the harsh handling of the men bringing them. King Richard walked over and chose the one that looked best. Then he chose fourteen other knights, including Aimery, to join him.
As they filed out from behind the shield wall, the men remaining behind gave them looks of wonder mixed with pity. Aimery simply reckoned there was no better way to die than in the defense of the Kingdom he had come to love, at the side of a king who was already legendary. It was a little like being in Roland’s company at Roncevaux, he told himself. It was certainly better than defending his idiot brother Guy!
They had to skirt the corpses of the dead, but once the way was clear, King Richard dug his spurs into the sides of his hack and with sheer force made it take up a gallop. The others did the same, lowering lances as they closed with the Saracens.
Although the Saracens had seen them coming, they were so astonished by the ridiculous charge of fifteen against thousands that they weren’t ready. The charge penetrated deep into the enemy, and King Richard so effectively slaughtered everything that got in his way that he rode straight through the massed Saracen cavalry and out the other side. His knights were not so lucky.
The Earl of Leicester’s horse broke down on impact and dumped him to the ground. Aimery saw it happen, but he was too busy fighting for his own life to help. A moment later, however, he was amazed to see King Richard come roaring back, leading an Arab horse. He flung the reins at Leicester while he fought back the enemy around them so efficiently that the Earl had time to remount. Aimery had never seen anything like it. A pity he wouldn’t live to tell about it, he thought, as he raised his shield to deflect another onslaught.
By now the Saracens had recovered from their astonishment, and they completely surrounded Aimery. All the men who had charged with the King were cut off from one another and hopelessly outnumbered. Aimery fought not for his life—that was lost the moment they charged—but for his honor. When the day was over, the men behind the shield wall and on the ramparts of Jaffa would, he promised himself, report back to Eschiva and Hugh that he had fought ferociously, taking dozens of enemy to the grave with him.
A bad horse, however, was a terrible handicap. The beast simply didn’t answer his legs. It didn’t swing its haunches away at the touch of a spur to enable Aimery to face incoming enemies, nor did it spring sideways to enable him to evade blows. It certainly wasn’t fighting back as his best destrier did. Hamstrung by the unresponsiveness of the beast, he found himself taking blows that he would normally have evaded, an
d unable to fight back as he needed. Aimery still fought, but he could feel he was losing long before the moment when his horse dropped dead onto its knees, throwing Aimery head over heels to land flat on his back with a horrible thump and the chime of chain mail. His head cracked down on the hard-baked ground, and only his helmet saved him from immediate death.
Even so, the fall was so hard that it winded him and he temporarily blacked out. As he came to, he was surrounded by men pointing their swords at him and shouting. Aimery didn’t entirely understand why they hadn’t just killed him, but he raised his hands in mute surrender. He’d lost his shield and sword already—either in the fall or wrenched away from him while he was unconscious. They kicked and goaded him, forcing him back on to his feet, and he reeled with dizziness as he tried to stand. ‘Christ,’ he prayed, ‘don’t let them torture me.’
One of the Saracens, a particularly burly man with a bushy golden beard (clearly a captured Norseman who was now one of the Sultan’s Mamlukes), tied a rope around Aimery’s waist that bound his arms to his sides. Tying the other end of the rope to his saddle, he started to lead Aimery off the field. With obvious intent he asked his horse to trot, and after only a few strides Aimery was unable to keep up. He stumbled, fell on his face, and was dragged across the field. His shoulders were held just off the ground by the shortness of the rope, but his hips crashed against each stone and gully. The pain was excruciating and he screamed at each new blow. Why hadn’t they just killed him? Why had he let them take him alive? The dust was in his eyes and grinding between his teeth even as he clamped both closed.
Abruptly his upper body flopped onto the ground, and horses’ hooves were all around, throwing up more dust. Blood splattered down on him; a fair-skinned hand with blond hairs on the back plopped in front of his face. He tried to squirm around and blink away the tears to find out what was going on, and a knife sliced through the rope holding him. Aimery at once thrust his arms outward to free himself and looked up to see who had rescued him.
King Richard didn’t give him a second to say thanks. He shoved him unceremoniously toward the horse he held, and Aimery jumped forward to haul himself up into the bloody Saracen saddle. The King tossed him his own ax, and then they turned together to face the Saracens closing in on them.
Moments later the other knights closed around them—with a frantic desperation that suggested they had feared King Richard lost. Forming up around their King, they were nothing but a tiny island of Franks in a sea of Saracens, but none of the enemy around them was making any attempt to close. King Richard took stock of the situation, looked at the battered knights around him, and pointed back toward their own lines. “Back to regroup.”
They dutifully pointed their horses in the direction of the Frankish shield wall—and rode right through the enemy toward their own lines without once having to fight. As they rode out of the Saracen army, a cheer went up from the Frankish lines, loud enough to penetrate Aimery’s arming hood and helmet. The Franks behind the shield wall jumped up and down in their enthusiasm, shaking their weapons in the air—at least those that were still there.
When they rode back through the shield wall, they found that roughly half the archers had given up hope when the King of England appeared to have been overwhelmed in his suicidal charge. They had flooded toward the beached ships.
As soon as King Richard realized what had happened, he cursed and flogged his miserable horse into a gallop to chase after them. When he caught up with the hindmost, he knocked the man down with the flat of his sword and kept on riding. At the edge of the water, the King reeled his horse around to face the astonished men who were clustered about or still streaming towards the ships.
The mere sight of the Lionheart alive was enough to persuade most of them to go back—though the King’s threats to their heads, throats, and genitals added a touch of urgency to their redeployment. No sooner had they rounded up all the would-be deserters and chased them back to the shield wall than a red-bearded Saracen, leading a horse and carrying a white flag, approached.
“Has Salah ad-Din agreed to surrender to me and give back Jerusalem and the True Cross?” Richard roared at the Saracen emissary.
The man looked amazed, shook his head, and indicated the stallion he was holding. “My lord al-Adil,” he announced in French, “says it is undignified for such a great king to fight on a gelded nag. He sends you one of his own warhorses as a gift.”
The words al-Adil and gift jogged King Richard’s memory and he now recognized this was the same Mamluke who had brought him al-Adil’s gift of camels during the negotiations the previous fall. Impressed and touched that al-Adil would send him a gift in the middle of battle, he jumped down from his nag to take a closer look at the horse offered. As he put his hand up to stroke the stallion’s neck, the horse shied away from him, his eyes rolling back in his head in terror. King Richard clucked at him to steady him, and taking the lead, held it so he could stroke the stallion. The stallion reared up the moment King Richard tightened his hold on the lead, and he released it at once with a laugh. “I’ve forgotten you name, but you brought me my friend al-Adil’s gifts once before.”
Khalid al-Hamar bowed his head to King Richard, his hand on his chest. “I am most flattered you remember me, you magnificence,” the Mamluke answered astonished.
“Khalid the Red, wasn’t it?” King Richard had pulled the name out of his memory because he’d been astonished to see a red-bearded Mamluke, and when told that “al-Hamar” meant “the red” he had noted it. While Khalid looked astonished at his memory, King Richard continued, “Well, Khalid, thank your kind lord, and tell him I deeply appreciate his concern for my dignity, but I fear my appreciation of horseflesh does not allow me to ride a horse such as this.”
The Mamluke looked puzzled.
Richard took a step closer and looked him in the eye. “That stallion has a sore mouth, and your lord is trying to kill me with my own vanity. It won’t wash. I’d rather ride a mule than a horse in pain. You can leave him here or take him back.”
Khalid had orders to deliver the horse, so he opted to leave it, and scuttled back for the Saracen lines.
Richard at last had time to take stock. The Saracens continued to mill about in a large if diminished mass, just out of range. They were, he supposed, waiting for the Franks to get tired and either abandon their defensive posture or thin the lines enough to make the next assault successful. He could not, therefore, let everyone stand down at once, but he ordered every fifth man in the line to fall out and take a short break. When they returned, the man on his right got a break, until all had been given a chance to dress, drink, and relieve themselves.
Meanwhile, realizing that many of the Saracen horses who had lost their riders had been drawn by sheer thirst toward the springs, the squires went to see what horses they could catch there. Confused and unsettled as they were, the horses were skittish and quick to run, but they were also very thirsty. The squires collected some sugar-cane stalks and with great care approached the horses, offering these as a lure. Again and again the horses squealed and spun away before any of the squires could get hold of them, but with patience and persistence they eventually succeeded in capturing eight of them. With these horses and the two captured earlier, they now had ten good horses and five bad ones between them.
Meanwhile, the knights who had charged with Richard had also had a chance to rest and drink. When he called for a new charge, they all stood, but he waved them down and chose from among the knights who had remained behind before. Aimery was not entirely disappointed. Every muscle in his body ached from the horrible dragging he had endured. He had bruises everywhere, and one of his eyes was swollen almost shut and several of his teeth were loose. He presumed these injuries, too, had happened while he was being dragged, since many stones had been flung back at him by his captor’s horse.
Much as his body ached, however, he took up a position on the shield wall again and prepared to be a spectator. He no longer believed
King Richard and his companions were riding to certain death, but he knew there was no certainty of survival, either.
This time when King Richard charged, however, the Saracens just fell back and parted their ranks for him. The whole troop rode through the Saracen army, and for a heart-stopping moment, Aimery (and the entire Frankish force) thought he had just ridden into a trap and was about to be annihilated. Aimery and half a hundred other men jumped to their feet in alarm, but then the whole troop rode back out of the Saracens the same way they’d ridden in. King Richard turned his horse around again and, evidently ordering his knights to remain where they were, he rode alone toward the Saracen line.
“Holy Virgin Mary!” Aimery gasped. It would take only a single arrow to cut him down now!
But the Saracen line remained immobile, apparently mesmerized.
King Richard was mounted on one of the captured Saracen horses. He looked magnificent as he rode along the length of the Saracen line. He cantered slowly with upraised lance from one end to the other. “Come on!” he shouted, loud enough to be heard even in his own ranks. “Come out and fight!”
While there were few Saracens who understood French, his intentions needed no translation. The Saracen line merely inched away from him whenever he approached. Just by the King’s riding back and forth along it, it was being forced backwards. His own troops were as mesmerized by what was happening as the enemy was.
Finally there was a stirring among the enemy. Starting at the back, men started to move. Excited voices wafted through the air, and abruptly the back ranks started to turn and ride away, melting into the distance one after another, until the men in the very front also turned their horses around and picked up an easy canter to try to catch up with the rest.
Richard drew up and sat watching them go, his expression hidden from his own men because he was facing the enemy.
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