by Robyn Young
When Guillaume’s envoy had failed to return, Will immediately commanded the rest of the Brethren to summon the aid of all their contacts in the city. Through Muslims in Acre, who believed in the cause and who stood to lose as much as the Christians should the city fall, they sent messages to Khalil and his generals. In these messages, which he wrote personally, Will begged the sultan to reconsider, citing his friendship with Kalawun and the peace their people had enjoyed for years. He offered money, new trade agreements, the release of Muslim prisoners. But he knew, even before they were sent, that there would be no response to his pleas, seeing in his words the desperation, painfully aware of his own impotence in the face of the coming storm. He had been trying to hold back the sea for years, but it had been slipping past him. He had blocked up the holes in the dam he had created as they appeared, but now the holes were too wide and the flood too big for him to halt. He had two choices left. He could let himself be washed away, or he could turn and face it with force. The Anima Templi had done all they could. Whatever the future might hold, for the moment he couldn’t be the head of the Brethren. He had a duty to the people of this city, the Temple, to his friends, his wife and his child; a duty to protect them. And he would, with his last breath if necessary. The defiance inside him hardened, became steel.
Now he had to fight. He had to be the man the Temple had trained him to be.
THE GATE OF ST. LAZARUS, 15 APRIL A.D. 1291
The moonlight shone on the men’s faces as they waited in the outer enceinte, the breaths of their horses fogging the air. The blue light bathed the channel that ran between the inner and outer walls in an eerie glow. The whole area was littered with debris: huge boulders, heaps of rubble, arrows.
Will looked over the heads of the assembled knights to where Guillaume de Beaujeu was talking with two men by the Gate of St. Lazarus that led back into the city. All three were dressed for battle, but the grand master cut the most imposing figure. His surcoat and mantle drew in tight over his knee-length hauberk, then flowed out around the chausses that covered his legs. Chain-mail gauntlets shielded his hands and a hood of mail protected his head and neck. Under one arm, he carried a helmet crowned with a snowy plume of eagles’ feathers, the tips of which had been stained red with henna, so they looked as though they had been dipped in blood. A broad-bladed sword hung from his belt. With him were a Swiss nobleman called Othon de Grandson in command of the English Order of St. Thomas and the master of the leper Order of St. Lazarus. Will glanced around, hearing Robert sigh impatiently. He could feel the strain in the other men around him, as they waited for battle, but for the most part they sat still and silent by the gate in the outer walls, holding in that tension as they were trained to do. When they were ready, they would unleash it on their enemies.
Shortly, Guillaume broke away from his discussion and returned to the Templars. Othon moved over to the soldiers of St. Thomas, and after sending two of his men back through the Gate of St. Lazarus, the master of the lepers took up position at the head of his foot soldiers, who waited some distance from the other troops. In total, this force, made up of cavalry and infantry, numbered almost three hundred.
Guillaume was helped into his saddle by two of his pages, both of them straining with the weight of him and all his bulky battle-gear. The whole of the northwest side of the suburb of Montmusart had been entrusted to the defense of the Temple, and the men now worked in shifts from makeshift barracks in stables and houses, running supplies and messages between Montmusart and the preceptory. As the pages moved off, the knights crossed themselves and pushed down visors. Moving into formation, they faced the outer gate. The grand master was in front with Theobald Gaudin and Will. Zaccaria was behind with Robert and the gonfanier: the banner-bearer, who held aloft the Temple’s piebald flag.
The seconds went by and Will felt his heart begin to speed with anticipation. Inside his helmet, his breaths echoed, while the world outside remained strangely muffled. He gripped his shield, which was bright white in the moon’s bleaching luminescence, and the strap tightened around his taut muscles. A signal was given and five men of the Order of St. Lazarus moved to the gates and, together, heaved up the great wooden bar and dragged them open. There was a ponderous clanking sound as the iron portcullis was winched up and the drawbridge beyond was let down. Will flexed his jaw, which was locked and tight, and fixed his gaze on the strip of sky growing wider ahead. The bridge descended slowly, the freshly oiled winches and pulleys working almost soundlessly. Outside, the rushing of the sea grew louder and the wind stronger, streaming in through the gates. It smelled of salt and mud, and it smelled of men; the thick, permeating reek made by many men in a confined area, composed of layer upon layer of odors: animal and human dung, sweat and metal, lamp oil and burning wood, spices, cooked meat and incense. The bridge thudded into place across the narrow trench of the fosse that circled the outer walls. What lay beyond filled Will’s view.
Stretched some distance behind the siege lines, formed of wooden barriers and wicker screens, was the Mamluk encampment. Will knew that it was several camps, each governed by different leaders, but the sea of tents was so enormous, covering an area much farther than his eyes could see, that it was almost impossible to tell where one camp started and another ended. The tents, vivid colors by day, were all the same gauzy gray in the moonlight, the grander ones housing amirs. Between them and the siege lines stood the engines. Some were small, only ten to twenty feet in height, fitted with javelins that were aimed at the ramparts and the tower platforms. Others were larger, for stones and naphtha pots, and four of them were gigantic. These monsters, placed at intervals around Acre’s walls, rose into the nighttime sky, their frames white and skeletal, the beams, for now, motionless. One, a short distance to the right, was the Furious, transported from Damascus. It was manned by men under the command of the amir of Hamah, whose camp covered a wide area adjacent to the shore, directly in front of the knights. For the past ten days, the Furious had lived up to its name.
On the fifth of April, the Mamluk Army had come, like a vast black sea, swelling to fill the horizon. The last refugees, many of them native Christians from the outlying settlements, fled in through Acre’s gates, bringing stories of burning villages and slaughter. On arriving, Sultan Khalil made his camp on a small hill, northeast of the city, where the Templars owned a vineyard. His royal pavilion, bloody scarlet in color, was set up facing Acre, and the army was moved swiftly into position, until it stretched around the outer walls from the shore on the northwest edge of the peninsula to the shore on the southeast. Tents were erected, latrines and ditches dug, engines constructed, stones emptied from carts beside the mandjaniks. At points during the day, the army stopped its work for prayers, and the Crusaders, watching their progress from Acre’s ramparts, listened in silence to the Muslims’ ululating calls. The next day, the siege against Acre had begun.
Each dawn since, a deep-voiced drum would announce a fresh assault and a day of bombardment would begin. Mamluk archers loosed swarms of arrows against the Franks on the ramparts, whilst boulders were hurled continuously against the towers. Out in the harbor, ships carried women and children, the elderly and the sick across the sea to Cyprus, and safety. But many more stayed, those who were hopeful and those who couldn’t afford passage. Will had been back to Elwen to beg her to leave, but still she refused, and day by day, the Mamluks drew closer to the walls, soldiers picking up the wooden screens and inching them forward, dragging the enormous engines. The Christians attempted to repel these advances, their own engines catapulting stones down from the tower platforms. But the screens were protected by buches, the bundles of wood lashed together and stacked up to form a protective layer, and most stones simply bounced off this thick wall and dropped harmlessly into the fosse. The Franks launched several valiant attacks from the sea, one mangonel on board a Venetian ship afflicting severe damage to the right flank of the Mamluk Army. The day after, three Pisan ships attacked the camp of Hamah with stones flun
g from their trebuchets, but a storm blew up, forcing the Pisans to turn back and causing some soldiers to mutter that the Saracens were using sorcery against them. Now, after ten days of relentless assault, the Christians were starting to flag. They needed a victory.
Will loosened his sword in its scabbard as six men from the Order of St. Thomas hastened through the gate. Working quickly, they unrolled a large rectangle of cloth, several layers thick, across the drawbridge. When they were finished, Guillaume raised his mail-clad fist. Will pressed his knees into the flanks of his destrier and rode out beside the grand master and Theobald Gaudin. The hooves of their horses were muffled on the bridge, and the surging sea covered what little other noise they made. Straight ahead lay the barricades of the siege lines, with the monstrous shape of the Furious rising above. The grand master led the Templars off the bridge and onto the sandy ground, heading toward the engine. Behind him, Othon de Grandson led the Order of St. Thomas, and the leper foot soldiers left toward the siege lines that fronted the camp of Hamah, which was mostly populated by Syrian soldiers, augmented by Bedouin and a few hundred Mamluks.
Once off the bridge, the ground dipped down, obscuring most of the camp from view, until only the Furious was visible. The men moved quickly and quietly, footfalls and hooves smothered by the sand. To anyone looking down from the siege lines, the knights would have been instantly visible, but there were no sentries here. The Mamluks had come so close to the walls that they were well in range of the Crusaders’ arrows, and any man showing himself over the barriers became a target. Besides, most of the camp was asleep. There was no action on their part at night, and they wouldn’t expect such a bold move from the besieged and outnumbered Crusaders. The Mamluks had no idea that from out of gates all around the city, companies like this one, formed of Hospitallers, Teutonics, Pisans and Genoese, were making silent, creeping sorties on their sleeping camp.
Within moments, the Templars had reached the siege lines. Six sergeants ran up alongside the wooden barriers in front of the Furious, holding grapples, whilst the knights moved into position, nudging their well-trained horses with tiny movements of their knees and flicks of the reins. The moon gave off a deceptive light; there were no colors; shapes seemed to bleed into one another and shadows were razor sharp. But this blue half-light was about to change. Now they would turn night to day.
For a few seconds, nothing happened. Guillaume looked toward the ramparts high above them, the feathers of his helmet quivering in the breeze. Will, following his gaze, heard the distant click and thud of machinery and saw a tiny light appear in the sky. It curled up and seemed to hang suspended for a brief moment, then rushed to earth like a shooting star, growing larger as it came. Will suddenly realized that it was going to miss its target. Guillaume seemed to see this also, for he hissed a curse. Sure enough, the large pot, filled with flaming Greek fire, slammed down just feet from the buches surrounding the Furious, which it was supposed to have struck, setting them alight; a fire that would have quickly spread, destroying the protective wall and allowing the men to attack in the ensuing confusion. The pot shattered loudly, sending several Templar sergeants staggering back from the brief burst of fire, but on the sandy earth it had nothing to consume and although some of the sergeants ran forward, trying to kick the flaming substance toward the buches, it quickly guttered and went out. Guillaume rose in his saddle and went to lift his hand to signal to the men on the ramparts to fire again, but before his arm was even raised there was a shout from the other side of the barrier. Someone had heard the commotion.
“Now!” shouted Guillaume to the sergeants, who rushed back into position and launched their grapples into the air.
As the metal hooks fixed on the top of the wooden barriers, more shouts went up from the camp beyond. Together, the sergeants heaved on the grapple ropes and pulled down the barriers surrounding the Furious. The wooden walls thumped to the sand, crushing the buches. Into the breach rode the knights. Will was one of the first through, alongside Guillaume. The Syrian soldiers who manned the Furious were billeted close by and came racing toward the knights, weapons drawn. Other troops in the main camp, some distance beyond, were dashing from tents, half-dressed and half-asleep. Torches, thrust into low-burning fires, flared to life.
“Demolish the engine!” Guillaume roared at the sergeants, some of whom were wielding axes in preparation. “On!” he shouted to the knights. “Attack! Attack!”
As a small company of knights forked off to tackle the approaching Syrians, Guillaume led the rest on at a fierce charge across the open ground toward the Hamah camp. They stormed into the fringes of the camp, cutting a bloody swath through the first lines of soldiers, most of whom were still dazed from sleep. To their left, the soldiers of the Order of St. Thomas had pulled down more of the barriers and were converging on the Templars’ position, led by Othon de Grandson. They shouted battle cries as they came.
As the bolt from a crossbow was launched at him, Will ducked and spurred his horse on. A man darted out of a tent in front of him, bare-chested, brandishing a sword. He slashed out, aiming for the destrier’s neck. Will wrenched on the reins, turning the horse away at the last second, and hacked at the man with his falchion. The momentum carried the stout blade right through the Syrian’s arm, taking it off at the wrist and sending the sword, with the man’s hand still clamped around it, flying into the shadows. The Syrian screamed and dropped to his knees, clutching the gushing stump. Two more soldiers came at Will from the right, and using the horse like a weapon, Will wheeled the beast around so that it crashed into them, sending them sprawling. The horse reared up and stamped down with its iron-shod hooves, crushing and breaking limbs, as it was trained to do.
As more soldiers rushed out of tents to aid their comrades, Will found himself pinned in a circle with three other knights, lashing out with his sword, his shield arm throbbing with every bone-crushing thump as a blade struck the wood each time he deflected a blow. A sword scraped across his thigh, but skittered harmlessly off his chain mail; another tore through his mantle. He kept the horse moving, its armor deflecting the sword strokes. Sweat coursed down his cheeks inside his helmet, through the slit of which he could only see the faces of the Syrians in front of him. Guillaume and Robert were gone with the rest of the knights, farther into the camp, trying to buy the sergeants enough time to destroy the Furious. There were screams all around, the clash of iron on steel.
Will fought ruthlessly, methodically, pounding away at the men around him, his only aim to fell them before they killed the knights. These were not men anymore. In his sights, they were targets that had to be destroyed. Instinct had taken over from intellect, and remorse had vanished out of necessity. Now Will was a machine, fueled by a need to survive, by fear and adrenaline. He roared as he slammed down at them, the edge of his blade slicing through any area of exposed flesh it struck. The last man in front of him dropped, his unprotected skull cleaved down the middle, all the way to the nostrils. The way ahead was clear. Will pressed his horse forward. Up ahead there were fresh cries. Knights were shouting, calling out in panic. Something was wrong.
Guillaume and the others had driven deep into the camp, where the tents were crowded close together. But in the moon’s deceptive light, they couldn’t properly see the guy ropes. The legs of the charging horses caught in the taut hemp lines, sending beasts and knights sprawling. One horse crashed into a tent, pulling it down around it. The horse’s rider fell sideways onto a sharpened tent spike that pierced through his neck. He lay there choking and convulsing, his leg crushed by his horse, as two Syrians fell on him and hacked him and the beast to death. Another knight, thrown from his horse, was staggering back from three advancing Mamluks, his ankle sprained from the fall, when he fell over one of the guy ropes and lurched backward into a cloth screen that had been erected around a latrine. The screen collapsed under his weight, and he smashed onto the boards covering the deep ditch that was filled with ten days’ worth of excrement. The boards shatt
ered beneath him, sending him plunging into the stinking filth. He struggled there for a moment, grasping desperately at the slimy sides of the pit, until three arrows thumped into him, one after the other, and he collapsed back into the ditch, the weight of his armor taking him under the sludge with a cry that cut off instantly.
More knights were going down, falling foul of the hidden ropes. The Syrians were massing, many having had time to put on helmets and grab shields and weapons. Guillaume, fighting his way savagely through a group of Mamluks who were threatening to surround him, roared the retreat. The Orders of St. Thomas and St. Lazarus rallying around them, the Templars, following their banner, swept out of the camp of Hamah as quickly as they had entered.
Will had turned his horse, preparing to join the retreat, when he saw another knight flung from his saddle and catapulted over the head of his horse as the beast tangled in the ropes. The helmet was dislodged from the knight’s head in the fall. It was Robert. The other Templars were racing ahead, blind to his plight. A crowd of soldiers was charging up in their wake, baying for blood, enraged by the assault, seeking retribution for dead comrades.
Will kicked his horse toward Robert, ignoring a shout from Guillaume as he passed him. “Get up!” he yelled to the knight. “Get up!”
Robert, scrabbling for his fallen sword, raised his head at the call. Snatching a look behind him at the charging mass of soldiers, he pushed himself to his feet and, forgetting his sword, ran toward Will. Will steered the armored horse past him, straight at the Syrians, who scattered. Then he pulled the beast round in a tight arc and raced back to Robert. With a huge force of effort, the knight just managed to haul himself up behind Will. Grasping the saddle grimly with both hands and fighting for purchase, Robert lay across it, bouncing awkwardly about as Will carried them off, back to the siege lines, where the ground was littered with corpses. The Furious stood, undefeated. Without the fire to aid them and with too little time allowed, the sergeants had been able to do no more than scar its wooden sides.