And still the horsemen galloped closer, only slowing as their charge carried them up the rolling hills where the Franks made their stand.
It wasn’t until Harry could first distinguish the great round eyes of the Arabian steeds that the assault seemed to falter, seemed to pause, as though the attackers had just noticed something amiss, something out of the ordinary, in Karl’s deployments.
But it was too late to pause. They were committed to the attack. With a deafening crash the two lines collided.
From atop a commanding hill, surrounded by reserve forces, al-Ghafiqi sat on his warhorse to watch the battle unfold. After a while, he scratched his head in puzzlement.
Why had the Firanji not yet countercharged? He had expected them to attack downward from the hills where they had waited. By timing their charge to meet his men near the foot of the hills, the Firanji would have a maximum speed just as the rising slope slowed his own men.
The charge swept uphill, unchallenged, toward the barbarians. How could horsemen tarry before such an avalanche of death?
Soon. They must emerge soon, or they would be fighting among their own infantry. The Firanji always had infantry. Where were the damned Firanji cavalry?
And then his cavalry crashed into the infantry.
The Frankish infantry shuddered under the impact.
Human flesh is not meant to stand up to charging horses, even slowed by the steep slope of the hills. Still, while many were trampled, most of the Franks stood their ground. Behind a wall of stout shields and iron-tipped spears, men enraged by the rape of Tours—in some cases, before their very eyes—brought the charge to a standstill. They hacked apart any enemy unfortunate enough to fall within their reach.
Some of the camp followers took up the weapons of the fallen and waded in.
Here and there a Frank or Aquitainian would break ranks and run amok, swinging his long-handled scramasax in great, two-handed, whistling arcs. Almost invariably, these were cavalrymen whom Karl had commanded to dismount. On or off their horses, they did not disappoint Karl’s belief that they lacked the discipline to stand firm. Had they remained mobile, they might well have been slain in the hundreds by al-Ghafiqi’s more maneuverable forces.
What the Franks lacked in discipline, they made up for in vigor.
The Saracens, their momentum lost, looked about in horror and growing worry. Wherever they looked, screaming men were pulling their brethren from their horses and hewing them to pieces. The fierce battle cries subsided to a warble, then died. The attack faltered.
Without being ordered, the Saracens turned and fled.
al-Ghafiqi galloped out to meet the troops. “Halt!” he roared, at first to no effect. The ease with which this first attack had been repelled shamed them all. “Halt, cowards!”
Whether his shouts broke through their panic, or they saw they were not being pursued, he did not know, but the men gradually came to a stop. Guiltily, they waited on the plain for him to meet them. The officer who had led the failed assault hesitantly came forward. “The men of the north stand like a wall.”
“And do the men of Islam run from walls?”
The words struck like a slap in the face. “No, they do not, emir.” Without another word, he turned to rally his scattered forces.
As soon as they were gathered, they charged anew into the lines of the Firanji.
All day long, the armies clashed.
The hills that the Franks defended were now littered with corpses. Terrence looked about the field of carnage, the legions of the dead seeming to differ only in their clothing. Was a preference for sandals over shoes, or flowing robes rather than tunic and trousers, an adequate reason for such slaughter?
The rude bandage on his left arm was bright red, his wound endlessly reopened by the shock of sword on shield. Bertha fussed about him and his injury whenever the bloodshed paused; when the attacks were under way, she wielded a long spear and killed with as grim satisfaction as any man. Fair enough: She had better cause to hate than most of the men.
He caressed her hair, now matted with dirt and sweat. Instinctively, she cringed; he heard teeth grind as she forced herself still for the gesture. He voicelessly cursed himself. Any man’s touch made Bertha wince: a “gift” from the bastards who had imprisoned and repeatedly raped her. Two years later—and, he sincerely believed, as in love with him as he with her—she could not bear the touch of any male hand.
Oh yes, she had better cause than most to kill.
Terrence tightened his grip on his scramasax to await the next charge. But no better cause than I.
Odo worked his way to the right of the Frankish battle line throughout the long course of the battle. That fool Karl would get them all killed. Who ever heard of fighting with your cavalry dismounted? As he moved to the flank, he spoke hurriedly to his vassals.
Finally, near nightfall, everything was in place. His best men, just as he, had worked their way down the front, toward the tethered horses. At his command, they slung themselves into their saddles.
Karl be damned. The cavalry of Aquitania would save their Frankish hides.
Terrence wondered if, when the time came, he could kill Bertha.
She had begged him, with tears in her eyes, to kill her cleanly rather than allow her to be retaken. It might be the only act of love he could ever perform for her.
Rage pierced his heart like a blade.
He would know soon enough. They had barely enough men left to hold the line against another charge. Or had had—before that traitor Odo had mysteriously disappeared with his men.
If the Saracens held to anything even approximating their previous routine, another attack would come at any time.
“So what do you think?” Salah-ad-Din asked casually. He had been nibbling on a date; he paused to spit out a seed. “Could Allah use a few more martyrs?”
al-Ghafiqi turned in horror. “Do you know how many thousands died today? Muslims and Christians alike?” He was caked in sweat and the dust of the battlefield; the filth clung like a burial shroud. “Enough brave men have died today. We will withdraw under cover of darkness tonight, just as you planned. I’ll take no pleasure from what happens then.”
Salah-ad-Din bowed his head briefly at the reference to his strategy. “It matters not whether any of us find pleasure in the deed, so long as we perform it.”
A patter of footsteps preempted al-Ghafiqi’s answer. These were not matters to discuss in front of anyone else. He waited impatiently, until the stranger answered the guards’ shouted challenge and was admitted into the clearing.
It was his most trusted scout. “Youssef! What news do you bring?”
Youssef gasped for breath, as though he had ridden his horse into the ground and run the rest of the way. Finally, he regained his voice. “A gap has opened in the enemy line. Their right wing has come down from the hills. I think they hope to sweep behind us, but they are too few.
“We can cut them off easily, then surround and finish the rest.” Then, despite his indomitable will, Youssef slumped wearily against a tree.
Allah be praised! al-Ghafiqi’s pulse quickened with hope for a victory without witchery. “Go! Gather the officers. I will join you soon.” With growing excitement, he watched the scout slip back into the trees.
Salah-ad-Din had finished his dates. He slid his hands into the pockets he had had sewn into the sides of his flowing djellabah. What he found in his sagging right pocket reassured him greatly. He spoke softly to al-Ghafiqi, whose eyes gleamed with inappropriate thoughts. “Remember the plan.”
“Damn the plan. We can win! We can do honor to the many brave men who fell today.”
“I warn you, my friend. We must follow the plan.”
“Warn? You warn me? You forget yourself.” The emir’s voice held a sharp edge—as sharp as the scimitar whose hilt he now fondled.
Salah-ad-Din curled his fingers. The handgrip was warm. He pointed the object carefully, never removing it from his pocket. As his finger tightened, he spoke his last words to the emir. “No, my friend, I forget neither my plan nor myself.”
With a gram more pressure on its trigger, the handgun fired.
The bullet drilled a hole through his pocket, his robe, and a momentarily astonished Abd-ar-Rahman al-Ghafiqi.
“Help!” Salah-ad-Din called. “Firanji are attacking! The emir has been slain!”
Dawn broke with preternatural quiet over the battlefield. Even the carrion-eaters picking at the flesh of the fallen seemed subdued. Karl was about to send out a scouting party when first the thunder of hooves, then a bold shout shattered the calm.
“They have run!” bellowed Odo, at the front of a column of picked troops. “The whoresons are gone, disappeared during the night. The men of Aquitania guard the booty!”
“Then it’s as good as lost,” Bertchramm snarled. Harry and Terrence were inclined to agree with him.
Karl and his guards mounted quickly and raced down to meet the count. Odo was as indiscreet as ever. “Come ride with me to slaughter the Saracens as they flee.” His presumption echoed across the field.
The major domus shook his head. Eying the devastation, he seemed weary almost to death. Still, he made his own voice boom. “Look around you, Odo. Enough have fallen. If we let the Saracens return now in peace to Iberia, perhaps they will learn to return the favor.”
Here, Terrence knew, was a truly great man. Karl was as brutal as the times demanded—and no more. Terrence’s heart went out to the major domus; he wished that there were something he could do.
And then he had it. He took a deep breath. At the top of his lungs Terrence cried out, “All hail, Karl Martel.” Karl the Hammer.
There was a moment’s silence, then Bertchramm took up the call. Soon the Franks in their tens of thousands were all shouting in praise. “All hail, Karl Martel. All hail, Karl Martel.”
Terrence laid an arm across the shoulders of a dumbstruck Harry Bowen, and squeezed. “Someone was going to do it. Why not me?”
WEST-CENTRAL FRANCIA, 732
The fallen covered hills and plain for as far as the eye could see. The moans of the wounded and dying echoed everywhere. The best that a wounded Saracen could hope for was a speedy dispatch.
Jackals and vultures and human scavengers swarmed over the corpses, each seeking his own form of booty. There were far too many dead to bury; black smoke and the sickeningly sweet smell of burning human flesh rose from the funeral pyres to profane the sky. The stench, the cries, the sights . . . this was surely as close to Purgatory as it was possible to come.
And so, this being the Dark Ages, the Frankish priests prepared to celebrate a mass of thanksgiving.
The one impediment to the solemn service had been deciding where to hold it. The nearest church of any size was at the monastery of St. Martin in Tours, but that had been thoroughly desecrated and sacked just days earlier. Its sacred relics and beautiful golden decorations, and those of countless hundreds of other churches, lay jumbled somewhere in the enormous wagon train just captured from the invaders.
With uncharacteristic rapidity, the priests and nobles agreed: The ceremony would be held near the enemy’s abandoned camp, amid the recaptured holy pieces themselves. There were no alternatives. A feast of celebration would be prepared from the enemy’s supplies.
The observance would be held that evening as an extension of vespers. Word filtered out. Slowly, the victorious army began to assemble. As afternoon shadows lengthened, cavalry companies galloped toward the site of the service. They crowded around the improvised altar; as full-blooded Franks, they gave no thought to the peasant infantry plodding along behind them. The nobles had places reserved for themselves at the very front of the gathering crowd.
Harry and Terrence had examined thousands of bodies: stabbed, hacked, burned, trampled, gnawed by scavengers. It was like hell on Earth.
They did not find Faisel.
At a loss how to proceed, they watched in awe as the victorious army gathered in its tens of thousands.
The Saracens had encamped in a beautiful grassy valley: a natural amphitheater. Karl’s men now covered its slopes. In the center of the valley, priests scurried about, tending to last-minute details.
Harry and Terrence observed from the crest of one of the hills that delimited the vale. All the nobility of Western Europe was gathered in this one spot. Terrence thought: Oh, for a camera with a telephoto lens.
Terrence froze. Could it be? He sifted through the facts and circumstances of the recent campaign, rummaged through what little he knew about their nemesis, desperately seeking a flaw in his reasoning.
He found none.
“Harry?”
“Hmm.” It was an answering grunt, not yet attention. His friend was rapt in the incredible scene.
“Harry! What’s always been the big question about Faisel’s plans?”
“For me, it’s always been how he planned to deliver the nuke. Horses make lousy strategic delivery systems.” Bowen gestured at the victorious forces below. “Be glad the bastard never found an answer either.”
In the heart of the valley, the wagon train was surrounded by warriors. Terrence shivered. “What if he has?
“What if it’s hidden down there?”
Schooled by years of banditry, Salah-ad-Din and his most trusted men slipped through the enemy countryside unseen by Firanji patrols. Like the Green Berets, he thought ironically. They sneaked through the forest, ever closer to the abandoned camp of their own defeated army, the army now running for Iberia and the shelter of the tall Pyrenees. But this was all according to plan.
It was best that Allah’s army be far away when he actuated the small radio transmitter in his pocket.
Terrence plowed downhill through the crowd, Bowen in pursuit, talking as they ran. They couldn’t cause a panic by speaking in English. Warriors, jostled and shoved, cursed angrily, but they knew better than to misuse Karl’s strangely favored outland friends.
“This year is the centennial of Muhammad’s death. Think of it! How will the Islamic world respond to the apocalyptic destruction of Christendom’s greatest army? To that army and the nobility of half a continent vanishing in a blinding flash and a mushroom cloud that towers to the heavens? To the incomprehensible plague of fallout? To the lingering death, for countless years after, of anyone who dares to visit here?”
“But where do we begin to look?”
Terrence wasn’t done explaining. “I know now why Faisel has been terrorizing Europe for the last few years, making himself, and all Saracens, hated.”
Harry had figured it out, too. “To draw that many more Christian forces into the battle. That’s also why at the last he attacked Aquitania and drove Odo over to Karl. Faisel wanted all of the area’s leaders killed at once.”
“Right.”
They fell silent for a while, saving their breath for the downhill dash. Harry, in a sudden premonition, saw the multitudes all around as the legions of the damned, dead without yet knowing it. It made his skin crawl. Could they possibly locate the bomb in time within the hundreds of wagons?
Because if they didn’t find it, surely they, and Karl’s army, and everything that any of them had ever held dear, were doomed.
Salah-ad-Din settled back against the trunk of the sturdy pine that he had just climbed. The tree grew from a tall hill no more than eighty meters back from the rim of the natural valley into which the condemned army now streamed.
They were antlike at his feet; none more so than the nobles gathered at the center of the clearing. The foolish priests of a false god scurried all about, performing their misguided tasks. Well, they also had their part to play today.
The murmur of the army, now rising, now falling, mesmerized him. Nothing cou
ld be heard over the noise of the many thousands, nothing short of the voice of God.
Which, the terrorist smiled, would soon speak.
Bertchramm cursed as someone tried to shove past him. The leaders had gathered hours ago; whoever this was had not the rank for a position on the valley floor. He turned to see who had such nerve and lack of sense.
“Boy, am I glad to see you!”
The strange wording didn’t discomfit Bertchramm, but Harry’s sudden appearance did. “You should not be here. You know that this area is—”
Harry cut him off. “Do you remember the campfire demonstration we gave Karl after saving Bertha?” The mention of Bertchramm’s indebtedness was intentional. There was no time for lengthy explanations.
Nor did Bertchramm demand any. “What can I do?”
“Salah-ad-Din’s magical weapon is here. Gather a few trusted men and have each of them gather a few more. All the captured wagons, even the food wagons, must be searched quickly but thoroughly for any large object out of the ordinary.” Harry held out his hands to show how bulky the homemade bomb must certainly be. “At least this big. But anything suspicious that is found must not be touched. We do not know what will set off the bomb.”
Harry looked worriedly over his shoulder at he knew not what. Here in the clearing at the bottom of the valley, he felt as exposed as a goldfish in a bowl. Shooting fish in a barrel—the phrase, unbidden and unwelcome, came to him.
“And for God’s sake, don’t let anyone see what they’re doing.”
Hours sitting immobile in the tall tree were beginning to paralyze Salah-ad-Din’s legs. His hand in his pocket idly fingered the control as he waited. Still, although the Firanji army had been fully assembled for a while, although he could have destroyed these infidels at any time, he waited. A moment of high drama would come, and he would know it when he saw it. Soon . . . .
In the anthill of the damned, the mass, at long last, had begun.
Bertchramm organized the search with all his characteristic Frankish efficiency, then returned to wait with Harry and Terrence. The warrior seemed, if it were possible, more nervous than his companions. He answered slowly, reluctantly, when Harry finally asked why. “It’s not only Saracens who will place a meaning on this great magic.”
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