by Jack Whyte
“Since when has charging and engaging the enemy been something to deplore?”
Alec Sinclair looked straight at his cousin without the slightest hint of raillery in his voice or his look. “Since Gerard de Ridefort led a Templar charge into total extinction at Hattin, four years ago. Since he lost his full force of a hundred and sixty Temple knights, plus a knot of Hospitallers, a mere month prior to that, charging downhill against four thousand Saracen horsemen at the Springs of Cresson. And since two thousand Frankish infantry went charging into death on the same day as de Ridefort’s cavalry at Hattin. Every time we mount a charge against this enemy, we are overwhelmed and defeated, because Saladin’s people know exactly how to counteract the superior advantages of our Christian horse. De Ridefort is dead now, and so are his tactics. You will see no more foolish charges mounted nowadays against a mobile, agile force of mounted bowmen.” He stopped suddenly, cocking his head. “Listen. What was that?” The sound came again, a ripple of brazen trumpet notes. “Damnation, I thought that’s what it was. Officers’ call. I have to go.”
He clambered to his feet and tossed the wineskin back to André. “Keep this. You’ll need it. Tomorrow should be much like today, but we’ll start climbing into the foothills the morning after that, and that’s when the gnats will start to buzz down from the hills, so have your people ready. One of our staff members made the recommendation that crossbow units should march with their crossbows armed, ready for instant use, but his advice was disregarded. Personally, I think he was right, and if I were you, I’d have my people ride prepared for anything as soon as we enter the hill region. But as I said, that won’t be until the day after tomorrow. I’ll try to see you again before then.” The trumpet call sounded again in the distance as he said that, and he brought his clenched fist to his breast in a salute. “That said, keep your head down in the interim. There’s a sickness of Saracens out there.”
ALEC SINCLAIR’S PREDICTION proved accurate. The next day, having covered another four miles without seeing a Saracen or being molested in any way, the army made camp just short of the foothills of Mount Carmel, and the morning after that, as they began to climb the slopes of the first hills, the attacks began and then continued throughout the day and into the night, creating a tension that kept everyone awake and fidgety, since there was never any warning of where the next attack would materialize. The enemy came down surprisingly quietly from the heights—and particularly so at night—in small, lightly armored, and maneuverable groups of thirty to forty bowmen mounted on wiry, sure-footed Yemeni horses. There was seldom any time to prepare for their assault, because they made so little noise before they swooped in to the attack, emerging from nowhere to create chaos and strike terror into the units they hit, charging and churning and killing and then withdrawing before the defenders had any real opportunity to rally and counterattack.
But it soon became apparent that the attacks were far from being as random and haphazard as they first seemed. Soon after the initial attacks on the first day of the campaign—for a coordinated campaign is exactly what these attacks turned out to be—a pattern began to emerge. As it solidified in the days that followed, it caused great consternation among the Franks, and most particularly so at Command level, where Richard and his increasingly frustrated allied commanders began to appreciate fully that, as things currently stood, they were effectively unable to counteract, or even to evade, the Saracens’ design.
That design was simple, and its execution brilliantly effective. Any killing of Frankish knights or other personnel during the attacks was an incidental bonus. The primary target of every raid was each unit’s stock of giant English, Flemish, and German warhorses, the massive destriers that bore the Frankish knights into battle. The Franks were outraged by the targeting of their defenseless animals, and their bishops and archbishops whipped themselves into a frenzy, brandishing bell, book, and candle as they called down death, eternal damnation, and appalling curses on the heads of the scurrilous infidels who would stoop to such deplorable depths of iniquity. But as Alec Sinclair pointed out to André the next time they were able to sit and talk, the Saracens were merely being practical, and admirable. Had he been in their place, he said, he hoped he would have been clever enough to identify the need that gave rise to their strategy and to have done the same thing. St. Clair had been hit by an arrow not half an hour earlier—it had glanced off the cuff of his mailed glove with no ill effect other than a momentary numbness in his hand—and had not expected to hear anyone on his side say anything like that, and he spoke right out.
“I know you admire our enemy, Cousin, but must you cheer for them? What, in God’s name, is admirable about killing horses by the hundreds?”
“Everything, if it suits your needs. Show me your wrist. Can you grip your sword?”
“I can grip anything I need to grip. There’s nothing wrong with my wrist, or my hand. It’s my sense of outrage that’s involved here.”
“Pah! You’re thinking about it as a horseman, André, and you have a weakness for fine horse flesh anyway. The Saracens would feel exactly the same way were we targeting their mounts. But look at it practically. The Saracens are confounded by our knights, even more today than they were four years ago at the time of Hattin, because our armor, both mail and plate, is stronger and heavier than ever before and improving all the time. Their arrows can no longer penetrate our mail most of the time—witness the strength of your own glove there—and our horses, our magnificent destriers and sumpters, make theirs look puny and ridiculous. Our individual beasts may be four and five times as large as theirs, and are themselves weapons, trained all their lives to kick out with steel-shod hooves on anything that comes close enough to kill or maim. Thus when we form ourselves in line, knee to knee, nothing can stand against us. That is the strength in us that, properly employed, they cannot defeat, or could not until now …
“But now, I fear, they have finally seen that our greatest strength is our greatest weakness. Our horses, brought all the way across the sea from home, are irreplaceable. Each one, out here, is worth ten times its weight in gold because it would take that much and more to bring a new, fresh horse this far to replace one that dies. And each one that dies leaves a knight unhorsed and unable to function properly, for no man can fight adequately afoot, dressed as a Frankish knight in plate and mail. And in truth, no man can walk as a knight, in plate and mail, in the heat of the desert sun. It is not possible. Thus the logic in what the Saracens are doing now is faultless. By killing our horses, they can defeat us in the field, rendering us powerless to fight.”
St. Clair had been sitting rigidly since Alec’s diatribe began and now he was mute, his mouth slightly agape, his haunted eyes betraying that he understood the implications of everything Sinclair had said.
“Let your face sag a little, Cousin,” Alec said. “The outlook is not as bleak as you seem to think … I left you with more than half a wineskin when I last saw you. Did you drink it all?”
André shook his head, as though awakening from a light sleep. “The wine? No, I still have it. I do not often drink alone. Would you like some?”
“Oh no, not I. I merely wondered whether you might keep it until it dried up in the desert heat … Of course I would like some. Where is it?”
“Wait.” St. Clair went into his tent and emerged moments later, carrying the wineskin, and he tossed it to Alec, who held it up and hefted it before looking back at him in disbelief.
“You didn’t drink a drop of it.”
“No, and be thankful, for if I had, we would not be able to enjoy it now.” He sat back down where he had been before and watched as Alec held the skin aloft and directed a jet of wine into his mouth without spilling a drop. “You said the outlook is not as bleak as it appears. What did you mean?”
Sinclair wiped his mouth with the back of one hand and tossed the skin back. “We know what they’re up to now. That’s what I meant. And that knowledge itself is part of our defense. So, beginning
tomorrow they will find no more easy targets scattered in and around our camps. Instead, if they want to risk reaching our horses, they will have to infiltrate heavily guarded positions selected for their natural safety and difficulty of illegal access. And of those few who might get in to where the horses are on any given day or night, very few will escape alive. By the time we make camp tomorrow, everyone will know the new arrangements and adequate guard rosters will be put into effect. We have already chosen scouts who know what we need, and they will go out tomorrow morning, in teams of three and ahead of the various units, to find suitable holding stations.”
“How many horses have we lost since this campaign began?”
“That depends on who you talk to. De Troyes believes the number to be around the one thousand mark. But de Troyes always sees the bleakest outlook on any prospect. I think he exaggerates. I would guess the number to be half of that, give or take a few score.”
“Five to six hundred, then. That represents a vast herd of horses … and a vast supply of meat, considering our shortage of fresh food, although in this heat meat spoils too quickly. ”
“Oh, it’s being eaten quickly enough. Some of the knights started selling the meat, and local warfare threatened to erupt, almost overnight, but Richard issued a proclamation saying that any knight who donated his horse meat to his own men would receive a replacement, free of charge.”
“Sweet Jesu! That must have cost him prettily.”
“Aye, no doubt, but it stopped the haggling, which could have grown ugly. Anyway, providing we can keep our remaining stock alive, we have no current shortage of horse flesh.”
“Well, fodder and water are improving, I’ve noticed the land around us is changing, the vegetation growing lusher and greener.”
“Aye, and as we round the flank of Carmel and come to the Plain of Sharon it will grow ever greener, with a profusion of water. It is marshland over there, and it is alive with wildlife, game of all kinds and giant beasts of prey. There are lions there as big as horses, and leopards the size of a man. It is beautiful. I was here once before, when first I came out here, long before Hattin, when the kingdom was flourishing, and it was a paradise. That’s when I saw Arsuf.”
“And you saw lions?”
Alec heard the awe in his cousin’s voice and laughed. “Aye, I did, and one I will remember to my grave, a monstrous male, in full prime, with a huge black mane that rippled in the air as he walked. I heard him roar before I saw him, and the sound of it loosened my bowels. I’ve seen some wondrous beasts out there, beasts most men never see at all. Great birds that cannot fly but can outrun horses, and beautiful catlike creatures than can outrun those birds and are said to be the fastest animals on earth, and curious, repulsive creatures called hyenas that eat carrion and slink and shuffle in the night like skulking demons, yet have such mighty jaws that they can bite a grown man’s face and crush his skull like any egg. I guarantee you will see some of those, for they swarm everywhere, even in daylight, and as long as this war endures and spawns dead men and horses, those things will thrive and prosper.”
Several of André’s senior sergeants had gathered around the two cousins, listening avidly, their eyes glistening. André looked over at the largest of them and grinned. “Did you hear that, Boar? Marshlands, and plentiful water. Hard to believe of this place, is it not?”
Alec spoke up again. “Hard to believe or not, it’s true. But don’t go thinking you might like to bathe in the waters there. Do you know what a crocodile is?”
André shook his head, but the man called Boar half raised a hand. “I do, I think? Isn’t it a giant lizard of some kind?”
“Aye, that’s exactly what it is. A giant serpent lizard that can grow to be the length of two tall men, with teeth the length of your fingers and jaws the length of your arm—jaws that will cut a man in half. I know not if it is true, but I have heard tell that the creatures cannot void their bodies’ wastes as other creatures do, and so when they have eaten, be it a man or an animal, they lie paralyzed on the water’s edge until the meal is digested, and other serpents crawl into their mouths and eat what remains in their stomachs. Thus, a man devoured by such a beast is eaten twice by serpents. Stay you clear of the water, friends.”
“Enough, Cousin, you will have my officers unable to sleep tonight with such tales. Come, I will walk you back towards your tent. The rest of you, prepare for sleep, for by the time I return it will be curfew.”
FIVE MORE DAYS passed by in slow and steady progress, and by the end of them the raids against the horses had all but stopped and the men had grown largely inured to seeing stretches of open water and strange, exotic creatures everywhere they looked. Morale and discipline among and within the various elements of the army was high, and a formless sense of anticipation was growing daily, nurtured by a constantly bubbling wellspring of rumor and hearsay: Saladin was massing his forces to attack them on the march; Saladin was concentrating his forces in the forest surrounding the town of Arsuf, where they were headed, and would set the woods afire as they approached; Saladin had gathered bowmen and countless wagonloads of arrows from all over his empire, sufficient to beggar the storms of arrows expended at Hattin, and intended to obliterate the Frankish advance beneath an unending rain of missiles. Whether or not any of the rumors were true, there could be no doubting the evidence of the marchers’ own eyes, for Saladin’s horsemen were visible everywhere, beyond bowshot and beyond easy reach, but there, and undaunted by the size of the Frankish army.
The army made camp that night on the coast, six miles north of Arsuf, near the mouth of a river and with a vast and impassable swamp at their back on the landward side, so that they settled down with more security and less fear of attack than usual, and André decided to go in search of his cousin, risking the possibility of coming face to face with Richard.
He saw no sign of the King, but found Alec sitting at a folding table, reading a document by the light of a four-branch candelabrum. Alec looked up, and his face split into a grin of welcome as he rose quickly to his feet and signed to a clerk at the table opposite him to gather up the parchment he had been reading. They were out in the open air after that within a matter of minutes, and as they walked swiftly away from the two great pavilions that dominated the center of the main encampment, André chuckled.
“You had my sergeants hanging on your words, Cousin, with your stories of the fabled crocodile, and I intended to ask you where you had heard such creature tales when next we met. But since then I have seen the things with my own eyes. I doubt that I have ever seen anything so evil looking as the sight of them sliding down the muddy riverbanks and gliding into the water. They are completely repulsive!”
“Aye, they are ugly, and they are frightening.” Alec hesitated, teetering as he glanced about him, then pointed to their left. “Head over there, that way. I almost missed the way, but there is a quartermaster here who is hugely in my debt, for three enormous antelope shot by the roadside this morning and delivered to him fresh, from me, and it comes to me that he might have a spare bag of wine in his stores.”
They found the quartermaster without difficulty, merely by following the smell of bread being baked by the ton in a massive array of portable clay ovens that were loaded and unloaded every day on the march, and he was profusely grateful for the services Alec had rendered to him. It turned out that not only did he have a spare bag of wine, he even had cups, a table, and two chairs in a small tent reserved for his own use, and no sooner had the two cousins sat down than he reappeared with a platter of fresh-baked bread and thick slices of cold meat.
When they had finished eating, Sinclair burped quietly and wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. “That was just what I needed,” he murmured. “Now, what about you? Why did you come looking for me this afternoon?”
“Because I had nothing else to do and I felt like it. Why do you ask?”
“Curiosity.” Sinclair wiped his mouth again, more carefully this time, and pinching the c
orners with finger and thumb to dislodge any errant particles of food. “Because when you arrived, I was just on the point of leaving to look for you. The document I was reading contained my own recollections of what had been said earlier at an officers’ gathering. I have a task for you, should you be willing to accept it. I cannot order you to do it.” He hesitated then, thinking about that, and shrugged. “Well, I suppose I could, but it would make no sense, for you would be under no obligation to proceed with it, once you were out of my sight.”
“What is it? And before you tell me, tell me this. Is it achievable?”
“You mean, will it get you killed? Cousin, you are my entire family now that your father is dead. I have no wish to lose you. The task requires an Arabic speaker— someone who can move among the enemy without being detected and identified as one of us. We have many of them, most of them Arabs, but there is none of them whom I would care to trust with a task this … sensitive. I intended to do it myself, but de Sablé found out and forbade me. He has other plans for me tomorrow, it seems.”
“Such as?”
“Commanding the Templar right.”
“Good. Excellent. The man shows even more sound common sense than I would have expected. Tell me what you wish me to do.”
“We are six miles from Arsuf. I need you to go and scout it out, to be absolutely sure that Saladin’s people have not occupied it against us.” St. Clair frowned. “Why should that matter now? We have come all this way to attack the place. Are you telling me now that no one anticipated that it might be occupied? That defies belief.”