by Jack Whyte
In the waist of the ship, he knew, the crew were working like madmen, trying to throw the trapped seawater out of the cargo hold faster than it came in, but conditions now were nowhere near as dangerous as they had been even an hour earlier. Then, with a gale howling over and around them, whipping spray and spume from the surface into an impenetrable fog, it would not have been possible for him to stand where he stood now. The waves, while still enormous, were smooth, their sides marked with patches of foam that rose and fell placidly as the swelling waters passed beneath them.
“It’s dying down. For a time back there, I thought we would be lost.”
Montdidier came to stand beside him, balanced against the motion of the ship as he stretched out one hand to grasp a taut rope. Behind him, Henry noted, visibility had improved considerably, but the low, leaden skies out there still masked the horizon, the line of sea and sky lost in dismal, hazy distance.
“Aye, it appears to be over, and it was bad while it lasted. I confess that for a while there I thought we were all going to die, too.” He looked around the deck area and smiled a tight little smile. “But I had to come up to the platform here to safeguard my stomach. The noise and the stench of vomit down below were overwhelming. Now it appears that you and I are the only two of our party who are not retching and groaning, hoping to die.” He released his hold on the rope and sat down with his back resting against the ship’s side. “Come and sit here beside me. It’s wet and unpleasant, but so is all the world at this point. Our last conversation was interrupted by the storm, and just as it was growing interesting.” Montdidier released his handhold and lowered himself carefully to sit shoulder to shoulder with St. Clair as the older man placed his hands flat on the deck and, with a deep grunt, hitched himself into a more comfortable position.
“Ahh,” he muttered, “that is … much better. These old bones of mine lack padding nowadays. The discomfort, however, is a small price to pay for being able to sit in the open air without being sick like everyone else. Are we still on course, think you? I saw no sign of land.”
“No, nor did I, so I spoke to the captain. He told me we have been blown westward, into the Atlantic, but that we will head straight north under oars, now that the wind has died, and will soon find land again. After that, we will sail northwest again until we round the cape of Brittany, and then it will be north by east until we reach Cherbourg. From there we may see the coast of England, north of us. I asked how long that would take, but all I got in response was a shrug. It depends on winds and weather, he said, so it could take anywhere from seven days to thrice that long. In the meantime, we will stop in at Brest for fresh provisions, then make our way to Cherbourg, and from there it is a single day’s sail to England.”
“In other words, we must resign ourselves to whatever happens and be patient.” St. Clair shivered, and pulled his wet cloak around him. “Well, we may be fortunate, I think, that we have so much to talk about, you and I.” Another shiver shook his frame, and suddenly he was shaking as though palsied, aware that if he did not rid himself of his soaked clothing he would run the risk of falling sick. The younger men around him might be able to make light of chilled physical hardships, but he himself was much too old to tolerate such abuse. He pulled himself to his feet with some difficulty, feeling the stiffness that was already invading his bones, and bracing himself with one hand on Montdidier’s shoulder.
“This is madness,” he said. “I have clean, dry clothing in my sleeping space below and I intend to strip off these sodden rags and dress myself in something fresh and warm. You should do the same. Here, take my hand.”
The Hospitaller took Henry’s hand and rose easily to his feet. “I agree. I feel as though I have been wet and cold all my life, even though I know it has only been since last night.” He paused. “But if you and I should come to know each other better in the time ahead, remind me regularly, if you will, that I have no desire ever to spend another night in the hold of a pitch-dark ship in the middle of a howling storm at sea. So let us go and dry ourselves as well as we may, and I will meet you here again within the half hour.”
It was closer to an hour later when St. Clair finally emerged onto the deck to find the Hospitaller waiting for him. But he was dry and warm for the first time in many hours, and the sights that greeted him made him feel better than he had in days. The heavy cloud cover had broken up while he was below and the sun was shining now through a widening gap, and he noticed that the crew had manned the oars and were making headway against the visibly smaller waves. He also noted gratefully that the deck beneath his feet was beginning to dry.
No one paid the two knights any attention as they crossed in front of the burly crewman who manned the tiller and stood staring straight ahead towards the prow. They seated themselves near him, side by side on two large bundles of what looked like netting, and far enough removed from the helmsman that they could speak without being overheard. For a short time after that, they talked of generalities, but Henry was anxious to talk more of specifics and soon went to the heart of things.
“The last thing you said to me yesterday, just before the storm broke and we had to scramble for shelter, was that the kings who will lead us to the Holy Land need to absorb some facts that will stick in their craws. I have been wondering ever since. What did you mean?”
Montdidier’s face grew somber. “I meant exactly what I said. The army being assembled now, both in Britain and in France, is no army at all. It is a collection of fragments—splintered factions and coteries—each of them with leaders and commanders who have agendas and ambitions of their own and an eye to their own advantage ahead of everyone else’s. But all of them, kings, princes, dukes, counts, and anything else that’s there, all of them need to be convinced somehow, and forced if necessary, into accepting the realities of where they will be going and what awaits them there. I have spoken with most of them and told them what I believe, what I know and have witnessed with my own eyes, but among all of them, only Richard Plantagenet deigned to heed what I said. The others had no wish to hear. They have their own beliefs, their own deluded convictions.”
When the Hospitaller said no more, St. Clair prompted, “And those convictions are … what? I think I could guess, but tell me anyway. What do they believe?”
“Stupidities.” Montdidier dropped his hand to his belt and drew out a dagger with a long, narrow blade. He shifted his grip from hilt to blade and began to scrape the underside of his fingernails with the point.
“And? What are these stupidities?”
Montdidier was glowering, but then he straightened his back abruptly, sucked in a great breath and expelled it loudly, ridding himself of his frowning anger as quickly and as easily as another man might shed a cloak. “Why am I being angry at you, can you explain that to me? You are not involved in this at all … Not yet, at least. But you will be, believe me.” He slipped the knife back into its sheath and crossed his arms on his chest. “They all believe that this new war, like all the other conflicts they have known, will be won by mounted knights.”
“And you would have them believe otherwise.”
“Of course I would, because I want them to destroy the Muslim armies and survive. They must be made to see how wrong they are—to change not only their minds but their methods and their fighting tactics. If they do not, they will all die quickly and uselessly, because everything has changed now. All the so-called wars they talk about, wars won by mounted knights, have been waged here in Christendom, and they have all been piddling little affairs, petty, parochial squabbles between greedy barons and whatever enemies they chose to confront at any time.”
He turned to look St. Clair directly in the eye. “There has never been a war like the war going on today in Palestine, against the Muslim, against Saladin. Believe me in that, Sir Henry. That war is being fought in a different world, far from everything we know in Christendom, and the rules of warfare that we learned and know have all been changed. You have never been in Outremer, ha
ve you?”
“No, I have not. My duty to Duchess Eleanor kept me here at home when I might have gone, and I never had another opportunity to go, until now.”
“Aye, that is what I thought … Well, believe me when I tell you that Outremer is completely unlike the world you know. You called it the Holy Land a while ago, but God Himself knows there’s nothing holy about the place. It is a world the like of which these people who see themselves today as leaders will never understand and cannot begin to imagine. They are all too young to remember the lessons of the first and second expeditions we sent out, and too ignorant to concern themselves with the realities of the land and the climate in which they are destined to fight. Most of it is desert, as hostile and brutal as the people who live in it, and unimaginably dangerous to newcomers. It is a damnable place, filled with terrors and cataclysms, where sandstorms can spring up without warning and bury entire villages—entire armies, at times—storms so violent that the blowing sand will strip exposed flesh from a living man’s bones.
“But even worse than any of those things, it is a place filled with zealots—fierce, unforgiving warriors who live and breathe the creed of their own god and his Prophet, Muhammad, and who are glad and willing to die in his service. These Muslim warriors—Saracens, Mussulmen, Arabs, Bedouin, call them what you will—can outfight our best, Henry, much as we might wish to deny it. And they are sufficient in numbers to outface a Frankish army three thousand strong, fielding ten men for every one of ours, and to destroy it, leaving but one man in every score alive.”
There was a long silence as St. Clair thought about what the Hospitaller had said, and after a time, he held up one hand in supplication. “I do not disbelieve you, for I have heard similar reports from others. But despite all of that, and all the logic and scrutiny brought to it, these numbers that you cite defy belief. Nineteen men killed out of every twenty? How could any army, no matter how well trained or zealous, achieve such slaughter?”
“Missiles.” The word was so gruffly uttered that St. Clair was not sure what the other man had said.
“I think I misheard you. Did you say missiles?”
Montdidier looked at him again, clear eyed and cogent. “Aye, that’s what I said. Missiles … arrows, if you’re looking for precision.”
“Ah, arrows. Arrows shot from bows.”
Montdidier’s face tightened with anger. “Aye, that’s right. Arrows—projectiles shot from bows. They slaughtered us with arrows. They rained arrows upon us, like hailstones, constantly and from all sides at once. And then, at night, they shot our horses, knowing an armored knight is helpless when forced to fight on foot, in sand. Arrows, Master St. Clair. They used them to demoralize us, to unnerve and frighten us and ultimately to destroy us, forcing us to make desperate moves that we would not otherwise have undertaken. And we were helpless against them.”
“I know, and I am not mocking you. I have heard something of this before. I was merely thinking yet again on the folly of the papal ban on bows in Christendom. It cost us dearly at Hattin. But yet … surely, once an arrow has been loosed, it is lost? It cannot be used again. And yet you are describing a prodigious number of arrows. There must be some exaggeration there.”
“Aye, so it must seem to anyone who was not there. You are not the first to think that and question me. But I saw it with my own eyes.” He rose to his feet in one fluid motion and moved to the side of the ship, where he laid both hands on the rail and stood gazing out at the water until St. Clair thought he must have said all he wished to and would say no more. The waves had continued to dwindle in size since the wind had died so that the ship was now moving far more smoothly, almost gently, and the sky overhead had become almost cloudless, the late-afternoon sun well down the slope towards the western horizon that was now clearly visible beyond Montdidier. But Montdidier turned again to face St. Clair, leaning back against the ship’s side, his elbows resting on the rail behind him.
“Have you ever seen a camel, Sir Henry?”
Henry nodded. “Aye, both kinds—one hump and two—and several times. There is a fellow who brings a collection of strange and wild animals to Poitiers each year, to the Midsummer festival. People come in throngs and pay well to marvel at his beasts.”
“So you understand that the camel is a beast of burden, very large, immensely strong and capable of carrying great weights for extended lengths of time, while an arrow is practically weightless. Even a quiver filled with arrows—a score or more—weighs next to nothing compared to a sword or an axe. So let me ask you this: how many arrows, carefully packed and bound in bundles, do you think a fully laden camel might be able to carry?”
St. Clair puffed out a breath. “I have no idea, but from the way you ask I can surmise that the number would probably be greater than any I might suggest.”
“Much greater. The sole limitation that would apply to such a load is the physical bulk of the bundles of arrows. Now imagine a number of those, all neatly tied up, with five and twenty arrows in each bundle. Each bundle would be approximately the thickness of a double fist.” He illustrated what he meant by placing his clenched fists together, thumb to thumb. “Now imagine crates made out of lath and wire—cages, each as wide as an arrow’s length, and sufficiently long and deep to hold ten bundles side by side, stacked four layers deep. Each crate, a light but strong cage, would hold one thousand arrows, and it would be no great feat of engineering to bind six such crates together on each side of a camel. That represents twelve thousand arrows, carried by just one beast.”
St. Clair shrugged, smiling and spreading his palms. “An interesting premise, I will grant you that,” he said quietly. “Given, of course, that one could even find twelve thousand arrows.”
“Find them? Sir Henry, the army that defeated us at Hattin was made up almost entirely of bowmen— mounted bowmen, on horses much smaller than ours, wiry and spare, faster and much more agile. Each bowman carried his own arrows into the campaign, three or four quivers full at least. But Saladin had already thought beyond such things and seen what he must do. Months before he assembled his army, summoning them from Egypt and from Syria, from Asia Minor and all the other fiefs that he commands, he sent out the word for arrows to be made in numbers that had never been seen before, and for all of them to be shipped to the places where the different contingents of his armies would assemble.”
“And he loaded them all onto a camel, is that what you were going to say?”
“No, Sir Henry, it is not. That would amount to only twelve thousand arrows. By the time he moved against us, coming to lay siege to Tiberias, Saladin had seventy—seventy—camels laden with extra arrows in his baggage train. I know not how many arrows they had in total, but when the slaughter at Hattin was over, the Muslims were boasting among themselves that they had transformed the infidel pigs from knights and soldiers into hedgehogs. I have never seen anything to equal the storm of arrows that were shot at us that day.”
“Seventy camel loads … How do you know that?” “I was their prisoner, and I speak their language.
I heard them talking about it afterwards, and about the difficulties they had had in collecting the spent arrows after the battle.”
St. Clair now felt distinctly ill at ease. “Wait now, because I am not sure I understand what you have said here. Are you telling me that the Christian army at Hattin was destroyed from a distance, without ever engaging the enemy? If so, it goes against everything else I have heard about the battle. What about the feats of the individual knights, and the charge of the Templars?”
“What charge?” Montdidier scoffed. “The Templars made no heroic charge at Hattin. Trying to close with the enemy was like trying to capture smoke. They outnumbered us hugely, and rode in circles around us, and every time we tried to charge them and engage them, their formations would disintegrate and scatter as we drew near. They would move away to a safe distance, permitting us to ride through and then closing in behind us, cutting us off from our own forces and exposin
g our flanks to their bowmen. The Temple Knights held the rearguard. They recognized what was happening, after several attempts to engage, and to their credit, they fell back to reinforce the King’s encampment on the knoll above the battle. But the King’s people had pitched their tents between the King’s main force and the Templars, so that the knights were forced to ride around and between them, being shot from behind as they jostled one another, trying to find a way through the lines of tents and the thousands of guy ropes that confounded their horses.
“No solid portion of our army even came close to a hand-to-hand encounter with the enemy that day. Some individuals did, but they were few against hordes and they were swiftly slaughtered. Our infantry, almost twelve thousand strong, were allowed to march right through the Muslim ranks. It was the same technique— they simply moved aside and let our men pass through without a fight, and then they were followed and picked off piecemeal from both sides as they made their way down towards the lake. None of them survived.
“And that, for all intents and purposes, is the story of Hattin: we sat helpless on our horses and were shot down. We were outmaneuvered, outmanned, and outplanned, and our leadership was impotent in the face of the enemy’s superior ability. It was not a glorious occasion for Christendom.” He turned his face away, then hawked and spat, disgust and outrage radiating from him almost visibly. “Leadership, I called it. Hah! May God forgive me, but I have seen more leadership among a pack of rats than I saw that day at Hattin.