And all the while the siege machines continued to batter the city’s double-walled defences. Assault towers, taller than the ramparts themselves, were dragged close to the battlements, planks thrown across, the Crusaders then lumbering forward in an effort to seize a section of the wall. But the towers were vulnerable, the wooden framework swaying unsteadily, easy prey to the all-consuming Greek Fire.
Position, vantage point, cover; these all favoured the defenders. So long as they had food and fresh water, arrows for their bowmen, flasks of fire for their catapults; with these and the blessings of Allah, they could resist the Infidel for ever.
* * *
In November, Sultan Saladin achieved a master stroke.
With a massive concentration of force, his troops poured down from the foothills south of the city, veering to within a few hundred yards of King Guy’s scarlet pavilion. The Christian army swung around in fury, a dog teased from its bone.
The Saracens then appeared to falter, as if surprised by the extent of the enemy. The lightly armed Seljuks and Syrians guided their horses southward again, back toward their lines.
Intent on overtaking them on the plain, the Frankish cavalry sent their destriers thundering in pursuit.
Lured from the city, the bulk of the Crusading army was unaware that a second Moslem force was riding directly at Acre – and that the city gates were wide open.
Saladin had been awaiting this moment for weeks. Messages had been sent by carrier pigeon between Acre and his outposts, the date and hour of the stratagem pre-arranged.
Now, with the Infidel drawn away, upward of four thousand Saracens rode or ran through the gates, bringing with them a convoy of vehicles, each cart laden with food, with bone-tipped arrows, with straw-protected flasks of their precious, immolating fire.
By the time the Frankish leaders learned of the deception, the garrison at Acre had been exchanged, its stocks of food and weapons replenished, imagined laughter echoing in the hills.
The insolence of Saladin’s achievement turned depression to despair. Accusation was met by countercharge, fault and blame the currency of the day. The king was held responsible. As was Jobert de Blanchefort. And the French. And the English. And the lookouts; the scouts; the sentinels.
It was as if the burned-down candle of the campaign had been replaced by another, its wick as yet unlighted. As if all the Christian efforts had gone for nothing, the men of the West now wallowing in mud, the garrison of the East safe and well fed in the city.
It was, in short, as if Allah had slapped the face of God.
* * *
Yet there were some in the Christian army who ignored the internal squabblings, preferring instead to redress the balance by attacking those who haunted the heights.
Among them were Baynard Falkan and Enrique de Vaca, the two young knights riding with their own separate groups. Baynard under the banner of Marshal Jobert; Enrique supporting the pennant of Iberia.
They probed the rain-sluiced gullies, patrolled the treeless ridges, sheltered in the devastated villages of Galilee. It was hard to keep count of the hamlets and homesteads ruined by a war that had dragged on now for all but one hundred years.
Hard too, to keep track of history, though most literate men knew that the First Crusade had been proclaimed by Pope Urban II, and that this was now the third attempt to wrest the Holy Land from the cunning Devils of Islam.
But third, or thirty-third, the rain still swept across them, the Saracens as wily as before.
From time to time they’d skirmish, the wildcat and the boar. Throughout these engagements, the Moslems relied on their greater mobility, jabbing at the flanks of a Frankish patrol, then darting away to be lost in the drizzle – or in summertime cloaked by the dust.
Uncannily accurate, their bowmen could pick a rider from his horse at forty yards. They also knew the country, dashing from cover to hurl their reed lances, slash with their scimitars, brain a man with their terrible, lead-tipped flails.
If a Crusader group was caught unawares, it would likely be cut to pieces, the Saracen mounts not even breaking stride.
But the Christian boar was equally effective, given the terrain.
Deny the Moslem cavalry the room in which to manoeuvre, and they’d be hacked apart by the whirling swords and maces of their link-mailed foe. Or, if need be, crushed by the sheer weight of the attack.
A number of knights wore a necklace for good luck – no more than a cork on a leather thong. Bouncing against their hauberks it reminded them that the way to deal with the Saracen was to bottle him up; cork him tight; seal him in a corner.
* * *
Enrique de Vaca found his weary way to Baynard’s tent. With the impertinence of friendship he said, ‘You keep yourself busy, eh, Halcón, securing the pegs and brushing out the fleas?’
Wet and exhausted from a fruitless patrol, Falkan gestured the Spaniard to a section of log that served as his only chair.
‘I’d have you know, amigo mio… I’ve been on some forty outings to the hills. We lost nobody today, thank God, though neither did we ever espy the foe.’ Then he waved at a jar of wine in the corner, at the mugs beside it, and slowly lifted the link-mail tunic, bowing to let it slither to the ground.
‘No more than forty?’ de Vaca managed. ‘Then you have been brushing at fleas. Me, now, I’ve come to tell you I’ve just topped fifty. I know for certain I’ve killed six of those skittering demons, and with not a mark upon me. Fifty sorties from the camp! A half dozen devils laid low! We should drink to this, my friend. To Santiago! To the honour of St James of the Sword!’
Stripping to dry himself with a linen cloth, Falkan donned a simple woollen shift. Then he buckled his sword belt, propped himself on the hard-edged rail of his bed, and raised the mug he was offered by the Spaniard. ‘You know what I think, Enrique? I think you should climb down from the saddle for a while. Put your experience to use. Instruct the newcomers – and they’re coming all the while – teach them how to deal with those frisky demons of Islam.’
‘When I’ve killed ten of them,’ Enrique told him. ‘Ten would be a nice round figure. Send ten of them back to the hell they came from, and yes, I grant you, I might let my bruised buttocks heal.’
It relaxed them both to drink and talk, easing the shutters open on their friendship. They did it with good-natured gibes, with exaggerated stories, with occasional moments of truth such as they’d never have declared to someone else.
It didn’t seem to matter, that night, that the rain spilled on the camp or dripped into the tent. Nor that the wine – if they’d cared to admit it – was sour to the taste. Nor that the walls of Acre loomed above the plain, its garrison refreshed, the Frankish army mired in the mud, and with Saracen laughter still echoing in the hills.
All that mattered was that Enrique de Vaca, Knight of Santiago, could trade stories with Baynard Falkan, Knight of Tremellion, each of them pleased the other was around.
* * *
Yet Baynard’s thoughts and hopes, dreams and expectations – all of them kept returning to the magnetic name of Magnat-Vaulmier – to the remembered Christiane.
He stayed in contact with his safeguard, insisting that Quillon share the ever-diminishing ration of fresh food issued to the knights.
Guthric reported that Sultan Saladin had been sighted not far from the camp. ‘Though our crossbow bolts bounced off him! An’ one of the knights – his sword just melted as it struck! They say axes shatter when they touch ’im. Wherever we go, he’s out there ahead of us. An’ laughin’. I heard it—’
‘Nonsense,’ Falkan told him. ‘All he is – he’s a clever commander. But don’t ever suppose, my old Guthric, he’s immortal. His time will come, as for all of us. And anyway, who hears laughter in the rain?’
Chapter Twenty Eight
In late November Baynard Falkan sought an audience with Jobert de Blanchefort.
Baynard had now matched Enrique’s earlier achievement; fifty sorties against the enemy;
and believed he had the right to ask if the marshal would give him command of a force of his own. An expedition that would not only scout and patrol, but would seek out Satan’s representative on earth, the Sultan Saladin himself.
Permission granted by the Marshal of the Kingdom, Baynard went hunting for the Master of Islam, Salah ed-Din Yusuf, al-Malik un- Nasir.
* * *
He was absent for a month, his force of thirty riders reduced by events to twenty-three. They had five times skirmished with the Saracens. Twice been sliced by the fast-running enemy. Twice been forced to barge their way from a trap. But the last engagement had gone in their favour, the lightly armed Moslems crushed by the disciplined weight of the Frankish knights.
Several times the Christian horsemen had shouted, ‘There! You see him? Up there on the heights? It’s him! It has to be! It’s him!’
But it wasn’t, and Baynard Falkan returned to the lines to tell Jobert de Blanchefort he was sorry; he’d failed to find the Sultan.
‘Never mind,’ the marshal said gently. ‘We are after all playing in that man’s own garden. The best thing you could do, my Lord Falkan, is retire to your tent. And await your loyal constable. He has, I believe, something of gravity to impart.’
* * *
He didn’t come alone, the Saxon. He came with the safeguard, the two men standing shoulder-to-shoulder in the entranceway, as close in spirit as they’d ever been before.
An ill-matched couple, Falkan reminded himself, the lumpish Saxon and the taller, long-limbed poacher. Yet now drawn together like brothers – to tell him what?
To tell him that Enrique de Vaca, the Spaniard, the one in his black-and-white uniform, was dead.
Dead and already buried, since Lord Falkan had been out there in the hills.
Dead, but with four Saracens dead or dying around him, the Spaniard serving Christ and Santiago, even at the end.
Guthric growled, ‘It must come harsh to you, Falkan,’ and Quillon said, ‘To us all. Comes harsh to us all.’ Then they moved away from the flap of the tent, leaving Baynard to the privacy of his sorrow.
* * *
Ten days later and the balding King Guy was edged toward panic by the news that reached him from abroad. A short enough message, though sufficient to send the Commander of the Christian Army hurrying from his weather-worn pavilion.
‘King Richard of England is involved in a personal feud with Sicily. He intends to conquer the island. Do not count on his leaving it before spring. He is far too busy with his enemies here to spare time for the enemies of Christ.’
The message was signed by one of King Guy’s trusted observers; thus a report he could believe.
Yet worse was to follow, for rumours reached him that King Philip of France was pressing ahead, and would arrive in the Holy Land well in advance of his side-tracked fellow Crusader.
Evil tidings indeed, for where would the fumbling Guy of Lusignan be without the support of his English overlord?
But welcome news for Guy’s lank-haired rival, Conrad of Montferrat, safe in the city of Tyre. After all, Philip and Conrad were cousins, and the moment the King of France set foot on the soil of Palestine, Guy of Jerusalem would be outranked, out-manoeuvred, easily outwitted by the combined cunning of the senior monarch and Montferrat. The Frankish army would acclaim Philip Augustus as their leader – and with him Conrad – pointing at Guy as a weakling and a failure.
Unless – and it was this that sent him striding from his tent – unless the city of Acre was recaptured. And soon.
Take back Acre, and Guy’s reputation would be burnished by the victory. But fail to do so and Conrad would pounce.
Silently cursing the dilatory King Richard, his vassal monarch all but ran to command a fresh assault on the walls.
* * *
Meanwhile, away to the south-east, and far behind the Saracen front lines, the young Tremellion was facing problems of his own.
Leading a patrol of sixteen riders, he was unaware of King Guy’s attempts to rouse the besiegers, having left the camp before the ominous news arrived.
This latest and deepest penetration of the hinterland was the result of a further request to Marshal Jobert. Though this time not so much a request as an urgent, angry plea. ‘They have killed my friend! Had I been slain in de Vaca’s place, he would already have ridden to avenge me. So I beg of you, sire; allow me every rider you can spare, then send me to settle accounts with the devils of Islam! Give me fifty horsemen and I swear to you I’ll track that crowing Sultan—’
Jobert de Blanchefort had listened with sympathy, aware that Falkan’s demand was excessive, yet touched by the young knight’s willingness to risk his own life again, this time in the name of Santiago. With measured concern, the marshal said, ‘If you were to take my advice, Tremellion – which we both know you will not – you’d allow your anger to abate. You’re half dead on your feet as it is, so God knows how long you’d last, jounced in the saddle.’
‘Long enough to—’
‘Yes, you’ve told me. To square accounts with the Sultan. But I’m not just thinking of you, my friend. Everyone else is half dead on their feet. Even the horses have lost their wind. And where on earth do you imagine I could find fifty mounts, fifty riders—’
‘Thirty then! Twenty! For the sake of Christ, my lord Marshal, spare me ten and I’ll harrow the hills!’
No doubt you would, Jobert thought. Or do it alone.
Knowing Baynard Falkan would not be deterred, the rough-hewn de Blanchefort had granted him command of fifteen knights, the patrol to be guided by an Arab converted to Christianity, a Maronite named Zengi.
Reluctant to let the hollow-eyed Tremellion draw on the bitter nourishment of vengeance, Jobert sighed as he watched the men spur away. Then he once again turned his attention to the ever-mounting responsibilities of his office, overlooking the fact that among the riders was a certain Gaumar de Garin.
* * *
With Enrique dead, Guthric helping to work one of the siege machines, and Quillon teamed with the archers, the young Tremellion was friendless beyond the confines of the camp.
His problems began within hours of leaving Acre. The underlying reasons would not emerge till later, though it was clear from the start that the heavy set Gaumar de Garin did not take kindly to being commanded by the younger Baynard Falkan.
‘You’re a dark-skinned fellow for an Englishman, Tremellion. That mean your father—? Got took prisoner here, did he? Then decided to settle? And fell for the charms of one of those Allah- worshipping—’
‘Your position’s with the rearguard, de Garin. Get back there, if you will. Family chatter can hold till we’re camped for the night.’ Gaumar lifted a link-mailed hand in sarcastic salute, then disturbed the line of riders as he trampled back to his station.
During that first day of their patrol they met no one, save for shepherds. An occasional farm cart was seen in the distance, though the Maronite guided them cleverly between the Saracen outposts.
* * *
At dusk, with the Crusaders sheltered amid the ruins of a burned-out farmhouse, Gaumar de Garin revealed more of his character. He chose as his target the youngest of the knights, taunting the man within earshot of their commander.
‘Seems a shame you were summoned out here, petit, when you ain’t got the need to shave. Be a waste if you were killed so soon, when you’ve not yet come close to a razor. Or a woman.’
The youngster blushed in the limited firelight, knew his companions could hear what Gaumar had said, and sought to save his pride. He started by laughing to show it was all a joke, then deepened his voice and said, ‘Closer than you think, de Garin. Christ strike me dead, a whole damned sight closer than you’d bloody well believe!’
It was a nice attempt at unpractised invective, the older knights grinning in the shadows. But the youngster then spoiled it by doing what he’d seen men do before – and reached across to slap Gaumar on the thigh. ‘A whole bloody an’ damned sight closer—�
�
He was hauled to his feet, de Garin’s hand at his throat.
‘You’re quick with your fists, ain’t you, petit! Can’t take a fellow’s humour? So you strike out to quell him, is that it?’ Squeezing his victim tight, he looked around at his audience, waiting to see if they’d like the young man bobbed like a marionette.
Then movement from somewhere to his left. There was no formidable weight to it, but the speed outstripping his own reflexive defence – a wiry hand wrenching at his wrist – the bony slam of a fist below his heart.
The bulky Gaumar de Garin went down, bruised by the blow, stunned as he fell against a long ago burned-through beam.
Standing over him, Falkan said, ‘Repeat your performance, de Garin, and I’ll do my best to see you promoted by Marshal Jobert. But the next time you try it, let’s be sure it’s against the foe.’
* * *
They passed the second day as the first, the bearded Maronite guiding them deeper into the hinterland of Palestine. His sense of sight and hearing far exceeded those of the clumsy, armoured Crusaders, and Baynard came to rely on him, obedient to his courteous directions. Adhere to Zengi, he decided, and the Sultan Saladin might yet be in for a shock.
* * *
But the third day brought further trouble from Gaumar de Garin.
Dwelling on the fact that he’d been floored by Tremellion, he wanted it known that he – de Garin – had been here before any of them. ‘And long before you, I dare say, Lord Falkan, foreign-faced though you are!’
Baynard looked away, clenching his teeth. He heard Gaumar exhaling with triumph at his shoulder, and could visualize how the destructive knight would be, nodding and grinning at his imagined half-caste leader.
The Edge of the Blade Page 26