Siege of Heaven da-3

by Tom Harper

  All I could do was keep my head down and pray for mercy. Even if I could have picked out the boulders flying towards me, I could not have done anything to avoid them. The taut rope that tied me to the tower also tied me to whatever fate God granted me. Perhaps I grew numb to the fear, or perhaps the mere fact of survival when so many around me were dying gave me courage, but gradually — against all reason — it seemed that the bombardment was lessening. I could still hear boulders hurtling through the air — could even hear the snap of the mangonels behind the walls now — but they did not seem to be striking us with such frequency or ferocity.

  I risked a glance up. The bombardment still went on, but now the missiles sailed over our heads — almost over the tower itself. We had come through the onslaught, and were now so close to the walls that the missiles could not strike us. The Fatimids had not moved their catapaults to adjust for the change: perhaps they could not.

  A ragged cheer went up from our ranks — and died as swiftly. Our progress had not made us safe, merely exposed us to new danger. Now we were in range of the walls, and the defenders unleashed a storm of small stones and arrows against us. They filled the air like locusts, preying on the men who strained to pull the tower forward. Our auxiliaries ran forward with the hurdles again and tried to shield us, though they could not guard every man. More useful to us was the tower. It stood a good six feet higher than the walls, offering the men on its top storey a commanding platform from which they could rake the ramparts with their arrows.

  A horn sounded from its height. ‘Into the breach!’ bellowed Grimbauld. An arrow stuck from his shoulder, another from his leg, but they had not felled him. While those of us on the ropes strained to pull the tower closer, a tide of pilgrims swept around us and poured through the gap in the outer wall that the ram had made the day before. I could see its charred remains, still breathing wisps of smoke, beneath the inner walls. The pilgrims swarmed over it with hatchets and axes, pulling apart the burned wood and scattering the ashes. I heard several screams of pain as men grabbed pieces where the fire had not yet cooled — and more screams as the Fatimids on the wall tipped down stones and boiling water. At least the water must have doused what remained of the fire. The wreckage of the ram was pulled free, and the way lay open for the tower.

  ‘This is it,’ said Sigurd next to me. He had not bound himself to the tower as I had; he carried his rope over his shoulder, his vast arms bulging with the strain. His shield and his axe were slung over his back, ready for the moment when we could put down this terrible burden. ‘Stay beside me.’

  I nodded, unable to speak. We had reached the place where the incline steepened, where the ram had run away from us the day before, and I wondered how we would ever get the tower down it. If we let it go here, it would surely either topple over or career into the walls and shatter. But once again, the land had changed. A company of masons had come out in the night with picks and hammers to level the path, which now led gently down to the breach in the outer wall. We rolled the tower down the incline. A firestorm of arrows, balls of blazing pitch, hammers wrapped in burning rags and jars of flaming oil engulfed it, but the great beast Magog rolled on impervious as they slid or bounced off the skins that covered it. It passed through the breach, and came to rest at last in the space between the walls, a few yards from the inner rampart. For an instant, an awestruck silence gripped the battlefield as the men on the tower and the men on the walls stared at each other, almost face to face.

  ‘Deus vult!’

  The silence broke; the battle resumed. With the tower so close to the walls we could no longer pull it from the front, only get behind it and heave. But having been near the vanguard, I could not now get around the scrum of men who surrounded the tower. For a terrible moment, I found myself exposed in that lethal enclosure. A firm hand grabbed me and tried to pull me away — but I stayed rooted to the spot.

  ‘For Christ’ sake, let go of that rope.’

  I still had the hawser tied around my waist. Fumbling, I drew my sword and managed to slice through the strands. Before I had finished, two hands had reached in and ripped the remainder apart.

  ‘Get down.’

  The same hands pushed me to the ground, knocking the breath out of me. Aelfric crouched beside me, covering me while I twisted my shield around and pulled it off my back. Only when I had it in place did I have a chance to look around.

  ‘Where’s Sigurd?’

  He jerked his head to his right. Peering out from behind my shield, I saw Sigurd on one knee with his shield raised, while Thomas squatted behind him and hurled stones at the battlements with a sling he had torn from a dead man’s tunic. To my left, the tower still crawled forward. Now that I saw it from a distance I could see it had suffered terrible punishment in the approach. Several of the wicker panels had been torn off, and one of its corner-posts actually seemed to have splintered in two, so that the upper levels sagged alarmingly. Miraculously — there was no other word — the golden cross at its peak remained unharmed, gleaming in the sun that now shone almost directly above.

  Inch by inch, hair’s breadth by hair’s breadth, it ground forward. Up on the walls, the defence seemed to waver. Fewer arrows filled the air: I thought perhaps the Fatimids had lost heart at the sight of our progress. But they had prepared for this moment. They seemed to be lifting some massive object up over the battlements, hauling it out on pulleys that hung from the adjacent towers. At first I could not see what it was; then, as it swung free of the ramparts, it became clear. It was a long tree-trunk, suspended by chains and bristling with iron. Swords and knives, sickles and spikes, nails and hooks all sprouted from its sides like branches, while the wood itself was covered in a black coat of oily slime. It fell to the ground as the men above let go the chains, bounced once, then slid down the slope until its iron claws dug into the front of the siege tower. In an instant, a volley of burning arrows flew into it. A wall of flame rose up in front of the tower, engulfing it, and I groaned. No one could survive that inferno. Nor could they extinguish it with water, for when a nearby knight tried to throw some on the fire it merely exploded back at him in a massive gout of flame. This was a diabolic fire that could turn even opposing elements to its purpose. At the top of the tower I could see Duke Godfrey and his knights frantically pulling open the walls and looking down in terror, while at the bottom the men inside found they could not get out through the crowd of men who were still trying in vain to push the tower forward.

  But Godfrey was not trying to escape. Instead, so far as I could see through the smoke, his men were manhandling some heavy object to the opening they had made in the side of the tower. Had they not noticed that this was a fire that could not be drowned?

  A torrent of water cascaded down the front of the tower and the barrel tumbled after it, one more morsel for the fire. I closed my eyes. There was a hiss, as if all the waters of the earth boiled, and a wall of heat blasted over me. It seared my mouth, my hands, even my closed eyes. And yet — I lived. My hair had not caught fire, nor was my skin peeled away. I opened my eyes and peered out through my fingers. Incredibly, though the spiked tree-trunk still burned, it had not erupted into the pillar of flame I had expected. Nor had the fire taken hold of the siege tower. And the hot, moist air was saturated with the tart smell of vinegar.

  The men on the tower pushed another barrel to the edge of the platform and tipped it over. Now that the flames were lower it did not evaporate in an instant but splashed around the wood. Some of it settled in a small pool in a hollow in the gound. Without thinking, I ran there and knelt beside it, scooping up the vinegar into my mouth before it could melt into the earth. It burned my tongue like acid, but it was the first moisture I had tasted in hours. Meanwhile, a team of Franks picked up the chain that had held the tree-trunk and dragged it away. The spikes and blades ploughed sharp furrows in the ground.

  Now the battle took on a new, more dreadful intensity. The Fatimids had tried to break the tower with rocks and burn it wi
th fire, and none of it had worked. Now they had nothing to rely on but their desperation. It might still be enough: they knew what vengeance the Franks would take on them in defeat, and they fought as only condemned men can. I thought of Bilal, and — even in the fury of battle — hoped he was not on those walls.

  The siege tower was so close that the men at the top could almost stab their enemies with their spears, but they were still too far out to bridge the gap. The Fatimids redoubled their efforts, hurling fire against the tower even as they bombarded those of us on the ground with arrows, while we tried to shield ourselves from the onslaught and retaliate in kind to force them back off the rampart. With no more firepots to hurl, they fashioned crude balls of hair and wax, doused them in oil and set them alight. Most of them slid off the slick hides that dressed the tower and bounced down into the crowd at its base. One fell on the back of my hand, scorching a livid blister into the skin; I screamed, but did not drop my sword. I was lucky: some men found that the fire fell into the folds of their tabards or lodged in the gap between helmet and hauberk, setting them ablaze.

  There were fewer arrows falling on us now, but more stones. One struck my shield and deflected harmlessly away; when I glanced at it, I saw in surprise that it had the crisp edges and smooth face of a brick. In their desperation, the Fatimids seemed to be tearing down the very walls that defended them in order to hurl them at us. But we were hardly better off: we could do little more than pick up the pieces and hurl them back. Glancing over my shoulder, I saw Thomas whirling his sling at the battlements. I wished he would take cover, for he made a tempting target.

  Another rock struck me, this time on my shoulder, and my arm went numb. I could not stay out there. To my left, a hole gaped in the side of the tower where one of the panels had been torn off. Shouting over my shoulder to Aelfric, I ran to it, ducked underneath the splintered lintel and stepped inside. Instantly I was in darkness — a sweaty, heaving crush of men all pushing blindly forward, trying to drive the tower those precious final feet to the wall. Unthinkingly, I threw myself into the effort. Other men piled in behind me, but through the open hole in the side I could see the battle still raging. For all the Fatimids’ frantic defence, the tide seemed to be turning against them. The ditch between the walls was filling with men, and though the Fatimids killed many, they could not turn back the inexorable swell. Ladders came forward and were lifted to the battlements; the defenders were quick to shatter their rungs with rocks before any man could climb them, but the Franks had learned their lesson from the first assault and had more in reserve. In perhaps the most unnatural sight of all that day, I saw a column of priests, all dressed in white, marching forward with a ladder held above their heads as they sang the words of the psalm:

  You will not fear the terror of the night,

  or the arrow that flies by day,

  or the pestilence that stalks in darkness,

  or the destruction that wastes it at noon.

  Not one of them lived to see the ladder touch the wall.

  Inside the siege tower, the crush was greater than ever. It was impossible to reach the front of the tower; instead, we pushed each other forward and hoped that would be enough. In the darkness, it was impossible to tell how much progress we made, though it felt as if we heaved hard enough to push down the wall and roll the tower over it.

  And then, suddenly the press around me melted away. I looked up. From the corner of my eye I could see half a dozen ladders leaning against the wall, bowing in under the weight of the Franks racing up them like flames. The walls themselves now seemed to have caught light: as each man reached the top of his ladder, he passed into a shroud of black smoke and vanished.

  I shook my head and looked around. The noise of battle seemed to be fading, and the press of men who had driven the tower forward had vanished. Only half a dozen remained, most of them rubbing their eyes like me. Two others who had been at the front, who must have absorbed the full weight of the crush behind, had slumped to the ground unconscious, their ribs broken and their chests staved in.

  After so many years of suffering, so many months of longing, the last seconds were the most forgettable of all. I was climbing the ladder inside the tower. I had reached the first floor, past the gaping holes torn in its sides, past the corpses piled in the corners, onto another ladder. The rungs were slick with blood; I slipped, and might have broken my neck if my hauberk had not caught on the rung below and given me just enough time to steady myself.

  I clambered onto the second level. After the gloom below it seemed almost impossibly bright, for the front wall had been lowered to form a crude bridge to the ramparts beyond. The noon sun shone in my eyes, making the pools of blood that soaked the bridge shine like glass. It loomed before me like a bridge to another world.

  I stepped out. For a brief, dizzying moment, I looked down and saw the deep space yawning beneath. Then I passed between the battlements and was on solid stone once again.

  I stood there on the rampart, inside the wall, and looked down into Jerusalem.

  47

  For a moment, I saw the city spread out before me — a tapestry of narrow streets, flat roofs, awnings, courtyards and turrets. Straight ahead of me, the great dome of the temple rose on the table-top of Mount Moriah; from there the city dipped into a steep valley, then rose again on my right to the heights of Mount Zion. A stone bridge spanned the valley about half a mile distant and I committed its position to heart, for that was where I would find my family. Far in the distance, I could see smoke rising from the southern walls where Count Raymond had attacked.

  Then the view was gone. A hot wind fanned my face and a curtain of black smoke drew over the city. My eyes watered as I coughed to clear the fumes from my lungs. To my right, one of the guard towers was burning. The Fatimids had tied bales of cotton and straw around it to protect it from the blows of our catapaults, but these had caught fire and the whole tower blazed like a candle. The heat and smoke must have driven the defenders back long enough for us to gain a foothold — and once the flow had started, there was no staunching it. The garrison who had defended these walls so doggedly for a day and a half had been swept away by the Franks, who still poured over the battlements and rushed down into the city below.

  A hand grabbed my shoulder and spun me about. Sigurd was standing there, his shield discarded but his axe in his hands. It was already smeared with blood. Thomas and Aelfric stood behind him, a poor remnant of the dozen Varangians who had gathered that morning.

  ‘Where are the others?’

  ‘Gone,’ said Sigurd. ‘And we’ll wish we were with them if we don’t move quickly. Come on.’

  We followed the crowds along the rampart to the nearest tower, where a stair led down to the street. The press of men was almost inexorable, but by the door to the tower, the flow halted for a moment. One man was trying to push his way back. Knights shouted angrily and told him he was going the wrong way, but he persisted, forging through against the tide. The throng on the rampart was so thick that I could barely see him until he was in front of me; then he brushed past and was gone before I had even registered that it was Duke Godfrey. His white tabard was soaked with sweat, his golden hair matted with blood, and he stank of the vinegar he had poured over the Fatimids’ fire. Craning back, I saw him run across the gangway and disappear down into the siege tower.

  ‘Maybe he needs to take a shit,’ said Sigurd. ‘Come on.’

  All resistance had vanished. The Fatimids fled, and the space they left only sucked the Franks in faster. By the time we had barged down the stairs and gained the street we had slipped well behind the vanguard. Five mangonels lay abandoned behind the walls, one already burning.

  I looked around, dizzied by the speed with which the battle had turned. In the back of my mind I tried to comprehend where I was, that I actually stood on the holy soil of Jerusalem. But it was too much to understand — and I had more pressing concerns.

  ‘Which way now?’ At ground level, with the na
rrow streets tight around us, I could not even see the dome of the Temple Mount any more. I had a general idea of its direction, but there were half a dozen streets and alleys leading into the city and it could have been any one.

  ‘That way.’ Before I could stop him, Thomas had decided. He pushed through the crowd and struck out down an alley.

  ‘Wait,’ I called, but I doubt he heard me in the uproar. Even if he had, he could hardly have stopped, for the flow of the crowd was relentless. Fearful of losing him entirely, we plunged after him, as the first screams began to rise from the buildings around us.

  Whether chance or God or simply the instincts of the crowd guided us, we had chosen well. The road carried us quickly down the slope, and ended in a massive wall at the edge of the Temple Mount. Here euphoria ended and danger returned, for the remnant of the Fatimid garrison had chosen the vast bastions of the temple to make their last stand. They hurled down rocks and arrows — and also pots and pans, chairs and candlesticks, anything they could grab. But it was a desperate hope. They had trusted all their lives to defending the outer walls, and now that those were gone there was no time to erect new defences. Bodies began to fall among the makeshift missiles as the first of the Franks scaled the heights of the temple.

  But that was not our battle. We turned right, and skirted the wall to its corner. The city that had hemmed us in suddenly opened out into the valley and there, barely two hundred yards distant, stood the bridge. Terrible shouts and the clash of arms echoed down from the courtyard above us, but I barely heard them. I ran along the base of the great rampart, trying to keep sight of Thomas ahead. The sun glared in my eyes and beat down on me; sweat poured down my face from under my helmet. I wiped it with my hand and tried to lick it off, desperate for water, but it only made me thirstier. All I could taste in my mouth was vinegar.