The Templar Knight

by Jan Guillou

  Harald Øysteinsson was a warrior as wild as he was wretched. At first he had picked out a sword that was much too heavy, and with it he stormed toward Arn like a Viking berserker with no wit or sense. Arn struck him to the ground, kicked him to the ground, and knocked him to the ground with his shield. He also hacked at his upper arms and thighs with his blunted sword, which didn’t go through his chain mail but left bruises nevertheless.

  And yet Harald had a hard time restraining himself. There was nothing wrong with his courage and bravery. The problem was that he fought like a Viking, and if he continued to do that he wouldn’t live long in the Holy Land. He was stubborn too, but the more Arn punished his body with blows from the flat or the edge of his sword, the more furious he became when he attacked again. All the others who acted that way usually softened quickly both in mind and body, stopping to think and ask what they were doing wrong. But not young Harald.

  Arn let the abuse continue for a week in the hope that Harald would grow wiser. But when that didn’t help, he was forced to try and make his kinsman listen to reason.

  “Don’t you understand?” he appealed as they came out of vespers and had a free hour before the evening meal. As they walked together along one of Gaza’s piers, Arn explained. “It will mean the death of you if you don’t banish all the old techniques you’ve learned and start over from the beginning.”

  “It’s probably not my ability with a sword that’s the problem,” Harald muttered morosely.

  “No?” Arn said, truly astonished. “Then why is it that your body is aching from your neck to your shins, and yet you never hit me even once with your wild slashing?”

  “Because I’ve met a swordsman that even the gods themselves could not defeat; against every other man it’s different. I have killed many men. That’s one thing I know for sure.”

  “As long as you realize that you will be killed quicker than you can imagine,” said Arn dryly. “You’re too slow. The Saracens’ swords are lighter than ours, just as sharp as ours, and very quick. And by the way, you’re wrong when it comes to my skill. There are five of us here in Gaza who are exceptionally skilled, but three of the knights are better than I am.”

  “I don’t believe it. That can’t be so!” Harald objected hotly.

  “Good!” said Arn. “Then tomorrow you’ll have a chance to fight with Guy de Carcassonne, the day after with Sergio de Livorne, and then with Ernesto de Navarra, who is the best of all of us here in Gaza. And if you can still move your arms and legs after that, you can come back to me, because by then the medicine will have convinced you.”

  That medicine bit hard. After three days of fighting against the best swordsmen in Gaza, Harald couldn’t raise an arm without pain or take a step without staggering. Not a single time during these three days with the best of the best had he landed a blow or even come close to doing so. He said that it was like trying to fight in a nightmare in which he was stuck in boat tar.

  Arn found to his satisfaction that he had finally broken the stubborn Norwegian’s inflexible resolve.

  Now they could start afresh. First he took Harald to the armory and selected a lighter sword that would be more suitable. He tried as kindly as possible to explain that it was never the weight of a sword that was decisive, but rather how well it sat in the hand of the man who wielded the weapon.

  Then Arn let Harald lick his wounds for two days as a spectator, while he himself practiced with Ernesto de Navarra, the best of them all.

  The two knight-brothers alternated between fighting in earnest and then repeating the same moves slowly so that the young tenderfoot could observe and learn. It was very strong medicine for Harald, for when the knights Arn and Ernesto went at each other with full force and at full speed, it was often hard for the eye to follow along in the whirling and flashing stream of blows and parries. It seemed as though the combatants were equal, yet Brother Ernesto seemed to be the one who connected more often.

  What most astonished Harald was that when the two knights were fighting at full force, their blows were so hard that any man would have fallen to the ground in pain. But they both seemed able to withstand anything at all.

  When one of them was struck he did not change expression, but took a step backward and bowed as a compliment, only to go on the attack himself in the next instant.

  So young Harald’s journey to the world of a different kind of war had finally begun. When he once again faced Arn, they were able to practice move for move, drilling each little step and gesture until Harald could do them automatically. And soon Harald felt that he was changing, as if he saw the first small glint of light from the other world where such men as Arn and Ernesto lived. He became determined to reach that other world himself.

  The next test for Harald was that his lord opined that he could not ride. Naturally he had been riding horses for his whole life like all the other people in the North. But there was a big difference between riding and merely sitting on a horse, as Arn Magnusson explained. Like all dwellers in the North, Harald was also convinced that horses were of no use in war, that one should ride to the battlefield and there dismount and tie up the horse before rallying and rushing at the enemy on the nearest field.

  At first he was offended that Arn objected that as a warrior Harald was no good on a horse, but he went on to say that foot soldiers were important too. It took some time before Harald realized that this was actually true, that the foot soldiers were as important for success as the cavalry was.

  When they proceeded to archery practice Harald was filled with renewed hope, because he had never met his match as an archer. Every Birch-Leg back home knew this, and their enemies even more so.

  But when he shot against Arn Magnusson he soon felt annihilated, as if the breath went out of him and all hope was quenched.

  Arn thought afterward that he may have waited too long to tell young Harald the truth, and that he had let his sergeant come close to despair before deigning to encourage him.

  Young Harald had not even noticed how his archery contest with Arn had attracted both knights and sergeants as a furtive audience. They all pretended to have something to do in the vicinity, even though they really wanted to study the new sergeant who could shoot almost as well as the man whom even the Turks referred to as unsurpassed.

  “Now I will tell you something that might cheer you up,” said Arn at last as they went to put away their bows and arrows in the armory on their fifth day of practice. “You are truly the best archer I have ever seen here in the Holy Land. Where did you learn your skill?”

  “I hunted squirrels a lot as a child,” replied Harald before his thoughts caught up with his words and his face suddenly brightened. “Did you say that I was good? But you shoot better than I do every time, and so do all the others.”

  “No,” said Arn, his expression both amused and a bit mysterious. He turned suddenly to two knight-brothers passing by and explained that his young squire had little faith in himself when it came to archery because he had lost to his lord. The two broke out laughing and slapped young Harald encouragingly on the back before they walked away, still laughing.

  “Now I shall tell you the truth,” said Arn with a smile. “I am not as bad with a bow as I am on horseback or with a lance and sword. The truth is that I shoot better than any Templar knight in the Holy Land. I say this only because it is true; a Templar knight may not boast. Your ability will be a great joy to us, and perhaps more than once it will save your own life and those of others too.”

  Harald Øysteinsson’s first opportunity to save his life with his bow came soon. The summer had not progressed very far before the Templar knights in Gaza were summoned to the north with full forces, which meant both heavy and light cavalry and archers afoot.

  Saladin had perhaps learned something from the great defeat at Mont Gisard. This was how he viewed defeats, merely as something from which to learn for next time, and not at all as a sign that God had abandoned either him or jihad.

  Tha
t spring he had gone into the northern part of the Holy Land with a small army of mixed Syrian and Egyptian soldiers. He had defeated King Baldwin IV far up near Banyas and then plundered Galilee and southern Lebanon and burned all the crops he could. Now in the summer he had returned with what was thought to be the same army. But that was an erroneous assumption on the part of the Christians and it would cost them dearly.

  The king had mobilized a new secular army, but it was too weak to meet Saladin on its own. So he had turned to the Grand Master of the Knights Templar and obtained a promise of full support.

  For Harald Øysteinsson this meant a hard march lasting ten days, alternately walking and riding on any available spare horse through a land that was completely unfamiliar and in heat that seemed to him inhuman.

  When the battle finally began, it was like Ragnarök, the Twilight of the Gods. He found himself in a sea of fast Saracen riders galloping forward, each one of whom was harder to hit than a squirrel. And yet it soon felt as though there was no sense in shooting, for no matter how many men Harald hit, new ones kept coming in wave upon wave. He soon realized that he was in the midst of a defeat, but he didn’t know that it was one of the greatest catastrophes that had ever befallen both the Knights Templar and the Christian secular army in the Holy Land.

  For Arn the defeat was clearer and easier to understand, and therefore even more bitter.

  In upper Galilee between the River Jordan and the River Litani, the Templars had their first skirmish with Saladin’s forces. They were on their way to join up with the royal army, which under Baldwin IV’s leadership was busy neutralizing a small band of plunderers on their way back from the coast of Lebanon.

  The Grand Master Odo de Saint Armand may have misunderstood the situation. Perhaps he thought that the royal army was already engaged with Saladin’s main force and that the riders now appearing before the Templar knights were merely plunderers separated from the main force, or a small group intended only to disrupt or delay the Templars.

  However, the truth was precisely the opposite. While the royal Christian army was occupied with a small company, Saladin led his main force around and past them to cut off the Templar knights, who were on the way to provide relief.

  Afterward it was as clear as water what Odo de Saint Armand should have done. He should have refrained from attacking; at all costs he should have tried to unite his knights, his infantry, and his Turcopoles with Baldwin IV’s army. And if that had not succeeded, he should have taken a stand. There was one thing he absolutely should not have done, and that was to send out the whole heavy cavalry of knights for a single decisive attack.

  But that was what he did, and neither Arn nor any other Templar knight ever had a chance to ask him why.

  Afterward Arn thought that he may have had a better view from his high position up on the right flank than Odo de Saint Armand had. Arn and his light, fast mounted archers stayed up high and beside the advancing main force so that they could cut off attack by enemies who rode with the same equipment as they did. From up there Arn had clearly seen that what they were about to meet was an infinitely superior army bearing Saladin’s own flags.

  When Odo de Saint Armand far below formed the heavy cavalry to a frontal assault, Arn at first thought that it was a stratagem of war, a way to create doubt in the enemy and gain time to save the foot soldiers. His despair was all the greater when he saw that the black-and-white flag of the Grand Master’s confanonier was raised and lowered three times as a sign for an all-out attack. He sat as if paralyzed up on his hill, surrounded by his Turkish riders, who also could not believe their eyes. The main force of the Templar knights was riding straight to their deaths.

  When the heavy Templar knights came closer to the light Syrian cavalry, the enemy simply retreated and pretended to flee to the rear in the typical Saracen manner. Soon the assault by the knights was stopped even though they had not made contact with anything, and then they were caught unprotected and surrounded.

  The Turkish riders near Arn shook their heads and threw out their arms to show that the battle was now over as far as they were concerned. If the army of which they were a part lost its entire heavy cavalry, the Turcopoles had nothing to protect but their own lives. And so they fled, leaving Arn alone with a few Christian riders.

  He waited briefly to see whether any Templar knights had survived and were trying to fight their way out of the trap. When he noticed a group of ten men attempting to head back in the direction of their own foot soldiers, reserve horses, and supplies, he attacked at once along with the few men who were still with him. The only thing he could hope for was to create a distraction so that the fleeing knights could take shelter behind the infantry and archers.

  His hopeless attack with a handful of terrified men against a force a thousand times greater at least had the effect of creating a momentary confusion among the pursuers, who were soon pointing and calling his name from every direction. With that he and his little group became the target of the pursuers, and it was not hard to understand why. After Mont Gisard anyone who could bring Al Ghouti’s head on his lance to Saladin would surely be richly rewarded.

  Soon he was riding all alone, because the men who at first had followed him turned off and fled toward the remnants of their own army and foot soldiers. Arn swung abruptly in the other direction in a wide arc away from his own forces and toward a hillside where he would be stuck in an obvious trap. When he saw that all his own men had taken cover, he gave up and stopped. He couldn’t go any farther anyway; the slopes before him were too steep.

  When the attackers saw his predicament they reined in their horses and walked them slowly toward him with their bows half raised. They surrounded him, laughing, almost as if wanting to draw out the pleasure of the moment.

  Then a high emir came galloping up, pushed through his own ranks, pointed at Arn and began shouting various orders. All the Syrian and Egyptian riders greeted him with their bows raised over their heads before they wheeled their horses around and vanished in a cloud of dust.

  At first Arn sat there thinking that he had witnessed a miracle of God, but his reason told him quite clearly that there was no question of anything like that. They had spared his life, it was that simple. Whether it had to do with Saladin or something else it was impossible to know. Right now there were more important questions to worry about.

  He shook off the sense of calm, which he had mustered while waiting for death, and rode fast down toward the remaining portion of their own forces. Of the knights that had survived, almost all of them were wounded in one way or another. There were now about twenty reserve horses, the same number of pack horses, and a hundred archers on foot. Arn’s Turcopoles had all fled. They fought for money, not to die unnecessarily for Christians. They intended either to win or to flee.

  The defeat was great. More than three hundred knights were lost, more than Arn had ever heard of in any other battle. But right now the important thing was to think clearly and save whatever could be saved. He was the highest-ranking of all the surviving knight-brothers, and he took command at once.

  Before they all rushed off they had to hold a brief council, so he gathered three of the least wounded brothers around him. The first question was why Saladin’s army hadn’t finished off the attack now that they had succeeded in what they had always wanted; to separate the Christians’ infantry from their cavalry. The answer must be that they were on their way to engage in battle with King Baldwin’s army and planned to wipe it out first, before they returned to finish here. So there was no time to waste; if possible, they had to reunite with the king’s army before all was lost.

  They hastened to remove all the equipment and supplies from the reserve horses so as to load their wounded instead. All the spare horses were to be ridden by the oldest sergeants and archers, while the younger ones had to run along beside the pitiful remnants of the army of knights that now set its course toward the River Litani. Arn’s thought was that Baldwin’s army surely was hard
pressed, and their only salvation was to make it across the river.

  But King Baldwin’s army was already beaten and had dispersed into small fleeing groups that were being caught up by superior pursuers, one group after another. The king himself and his bodyguards, however, had managed to make it across the river. That made the situation even worse for all the stragglers, including the depleted and suffering force that Arn was leading.

  As his men and horses were attempting to cross the river, Arn gathered the best archers around him on the riverbank—Harald Øysteinsson among them—to try to hold the enemy’s mounted archers and lancers at a distance while foot soldiers, horses, and wounded knight-brothers waded across the river in a bloodied and desperate contingent.

  They shot arrows until they were all gone, then flung off their weapons and shields and cast themselves into the river, Arn and Harald bringing up the rear. But they were the only two to survive among those who came last. They both were able to dive down and let the current in the middle of the river take them a good way downstream before they staggered ashore, panting.

  There was only time for a brief respite on the other side while they attempted to establish order once again. Feeling an unexpected sense of joy in this desperate situation, Arn saw his stallion Khamsiin come galloping up to him in the midst of the confusion.

  Riders and foot soldiers from the Hospitallers had come to their rescue on the other side of the Litani, and they led the defeated group of Templar knights to the fortress of Beaufort, which was only about an hour away. Many men from the royal army had also taken refuge there.

  Soon the fortress was surrounded by Saladin’s forces, but that was no cause for alarm because Beaufort was one of the impregnable fortresses.