Alternate Generals (14 page)

"Then we are agreed?" said Emperor Conrad of Hohenstaufen. "We shall move to reconquer Damascus at once, in the name of God and this most holy crusade."

"Agreed," said King Louis. The other princes and kings around the table nodded. "This shall prove our devotion to the cause. If we recover Damascus, it shuts off an open door through which the Turks and Egyptians pass freely, to the detriment of the Latin kingdom."

"It also benefits us all equally, with none the loser," said Queen Melisende. Eleanor, present but silent at the conference, understood that fact had much to do with Louis's agreement. After treating her uncle so shamefully, Louis had no intention to support any one who was enriching himself.

"We shall muster our knights at once," said the Grand Master of the Temple of Jerusalem.

And I shall remain here, Eleanor thought, making my own plans for escape. She smiled at Melisende, queen to queen.

But she had reckoned without the machinations of Thierry and Odo. On the morning that the Frankish army left Jerusalem, Eleanor and the Amazons were in its van. Louis's observers had seen how well his wife had gotten on with the Queen of Jerusalem, and voiced their suspicions to the king. Louis did not dare to leave her behind, for fear that she would make good her threat to leave him and return to the Aquitaine with her liegemen. As a result, he had ordered her to accompany them to Damascus.

Eleanor was angry to have her plans thwarted, but she retaliated by mustering her own troops. No matter. She would make the procession a pageant. The Amazons put on their finest feathers and gold-embroidered tunics, and polished their bronze shields to mirror brightness. On her braided golden hair was a gilded helm adorned with swan's wings and down, and on her feet were gilded buskins laced up to her knee. She and her women wore at their sides lightweight swords with golden hilts, meant more to inspire than to wage battle. When they joined the van, she heard more than one admiring whisper from the assembled knights. Her cousins of Poitou were openly complimentary. Eleanor sat at the head of her army with her head high.

The weather was absolutely beautiful. Not a drop of rain fell in all the long march across the Outremer from Galilee to Damascus. The dust didn't trouble the Amazons greatly because they rode at the front of the vast army, with only guardian knights and scouts ahead. The sky was almost the color of lapis lazuli, with the most occasional white curd of cloud drifting by. The May sun turned the ochre land to gold. Splashes of color on the dry landscape were mud-brick houses, gardens of bright flowers, and pagan temples of stone as beautiful as a poem. How evil could the infidel be, Eleanor wondered, if they raised such lovely and graceful houses to their god Allah?

As they drew closer to Damascus, Eleanor could not believe her eyes. Cultivated crops and gardens had been despoiled. Mature fruit trees, half-grown fruit still upon them, had been cut down.

"So as not to feed us," snapped a knight.

"Did they do this themselves?" asked Sybille.

"Yes," Eleanor said. "They want to leave nothing of benefit for any of us. They've done more damage to their future than to ours."

"They've cut us off from water, too," said one of Eleanor's cousins, pointing to a damp, muddy ditch that ran along the side of the road into the ravaged orchard. "This was done almost before we arrived here."

"They fear us so greatly," Eleanor said, thoughtfully.

They arrived nearly within sight of Damascus without seeing a single soldier. As they passed through the orchards that surrounded the city, they were set upon by the defenders who lay in wait for them.

"To me, defenders of the faith!" Louis cried, and spurred his horse forward. Fifty thousand men followed in his wake.

The Franks fought through the forests and fields surrounding the city until they came within bowshot of the walls. Eleanor's bodyguard herded the Amazons away from the fighting, and brought them carefully to a place of safety near the ruins of a warehouse that lay at a distance from the city. From there, she could see Damascus well. Where was everyone? Eleanor scanned the walls of the city, empty of even a single soul. Damascus was by no means as large as Jerusalem, or even Antioch, but handsome and prosperous. Her gaze lit upon an overturned bucket beside a stone wellhead. The ground was still wet beside it. The gates, at the end of a well-worn road, were sealed shut. Between her and those gates bloody war raged.

Conrad and Louis fought like tigers, so said the pages and messengers who reported back to the queen and her bodyguard. They had won their way to the very gates, and were employing the ram. Eleanor knew the truth of it, for she could hear the repeated thud of the heavy metal face on wood and stone.

"The infidel fears us greatly," one young man reported, with a smug face. "Rumor has it that the city will surrender to us."

Towards nightfall, the enemy withdrew, and the Frankish army paused to regroup. Tents were raised at a short distance from the city, well outside the gates and away from any cover that would shelter raiders, and they spent the night in conference. The field in which they camped was dry, with crumbly clay soil. The watercourses that irrigated it had been dammed from inside the city. The parched troops muttered about the lack of resources, but Louis had insisted on this campsite.

"Better a thirsty night than a midnight rout," he said.

"You ought to know the efficacy of that," Eleanor said. Louis looked surprised, then abashed and angry at having their private quarrel brought up. "We should be better defended out here. There will be water enough when you have broken through the walls."

"True enough," Louis said. "Tomorrow, with God's help, we shall win this fight, in His name."

"The Damascenes are ready to surrender," said Conrad. His tunic was well stained with blood, none of it his own, and he looked weary. Rumor said that he had killed a dozen men, including one he had split in two with a single blow of his sword. "We should press our advantage, and win through."

False dawn broke behind them, and the army was on the move before the sun peeped over the horizon. Eleanor rose with the army. She and her women had arrayed themselves in their gorgeous Amazon dress, and ranged themselves in marching lines. Louis, in full battle dress, rode up on his war-horse, and spoke directly to his queen.

"You will stay here," he said, leaning out of his saddle to put his face close to hers. "You will not endanger yourself, nor anyone else."

"Yes, my lord," Eleanor said, with a steady voice, but inside she was furious. How dare he treat her like an idiot! Louis turned to his guard.

"Stay with the queen at all times. Protect her life with your own."

"Yes, your majesty," the knights chorused.

"The sun is rising!" cried Thierry of Flanders.

And with it came the defenders of Damascus. The Franks rode forth to meet them.

Eleanor and the Amazons were kept well back from the fighting. She had heard many more tales during the night. The Emir of Damascus, who had expected that the boy king Baldwin would continue to be tolerant of his holdings after the fashion of his father, King Folques, was reported to be in terror that the Franks were advancing. The city was weak. It would fall.

The battle, fought upon the blood of yesterday's fallen, was fierce. The guardians of the city fought with a terror that made them dangerous but erratic. Eleanor sat proudly upon her horse to watch the whole thing, eschewing the shelter of the wains into which her ladies had retreated in the heat of the day.

Louis was right in the thick of things, laying about him with his great sword. He looked alive and vital, almost a man, Eleanor thought.

The Franks brought forth the battering ram. They hammered at the high stone wall, knocking away pieces of stucco and exposing the cemented blocks beneath. Men fell as the defenders rained arrows upon them, but more took their place. Some of the stones began to crumble and shift.

"They are almost through," Eleanor cried.

More Damascene horsemen came charging in, and the Franks turned to defend their flank. The ram battered on. Suddenly, the army shifted, withdrawing the ram, moving company by company off toward the north. Louis and his men followed.

"Where are they going?" Eleanor demanded, disbelievingly. "Stop them! They are almost through the wall!"

But the fighting was moving, moved. Eleanor watched them go. When the troops were out of the way, she got a look at the wall they had been attacking. It was ready to fall! Louis as usual had gone to the core of things, and missed the bigger picture. There were hardly any defenders at the top. The Damascenes were as tired as the Franks. If they broke through here, Damascus would surrender.

"By heaven, look at that!" Eleanor exclaimed. "We must finish the job."

"Who must?" asked Sybille, suspiciously.

"We will!"

"Don't be foolish, sister!"

"No!" Eleanor insisted. "Damascus is ready to topple. If we go in, they will surrender. A woman could do it." She sat up high in her saddle and drew the sword at her side.

"To me, Poitevins! To me, Aquitaine! Amazons, follow me!"

She spurred her horse forward toward the fallen ram. Her cousins and bodyguards were so surprised it took a moment before they followed her. She galloped a dozen yards before they caught up with her. Behind, the other Amazons charged, shrilling a high-pitched war cry that split the air. Soldiers from a dozen princes' armies turned to run to their aid.

Louis's force of knights had withdrawn almost out of sight until they heard the Amazons scream. The men wheeled to intercept and defend them, but Eleanor's troops reached the walls first.

"Pick up the ram!" she cried. "We will win through here. Now!"

Her horse danced nervously out of the way as the willing hands of a hundred Poitevin and Frankish soldiers seized the heavy wood, and pounded it into the gate.

As she had thought, wood and stone fell apart after only a few blows. A cry of triumph rose from every throat as a hole appeared. More men sprang forward to pull at the stones and enlarge the hole. The Franks poured into the city of Damascus.

Eleanor could see no more for a time, as Louis's knights arrived and surrounded her with a protective ring of steel. The Damascenes surrounded them, but the faces she could see in flashes through the threshing blades and shields were frightened. They knew the Amazons had come again.

When the battle died away, the defenders of the city were surrendering in droves. Eleanor sat in the circle of her bodyguard with her women, and felt pleased with herself. The other Amazons were thrilled to have actually aided in the holy Crusade.

"I'd thought it a game until now," Faydide confided, fanning herself with her handkerchief. Her cheeks were pink and glossy with sweat. "But no longer! If you had told me we would charge the paynim, I would have died of fright!"

"We have earned the cross given us by the Holy Father," the sturdier Sybille said, kissing Eleanor. "Now my nephew's patrimony is secure." The king returned, wheeling his horse into the midst of them, scattering horsemen like chaff.

"What could you have been thinking of, madam?" Louis asked, as angry as she had ever seen him. "I warned you. Do you think you are a general, to order my men to their doom?"

"I won!" Eleanor said, opening wide and unbelieving eyes at him. "Where you withdrew, I pressed. I am a descendant of Charlemagne, Louis. Just because I am a woman does not mean I lack strategy or intelligence. Louis, we have won this day! Damascus is ours!"

Louis was not appeased. "Eleanor, you are my vassal and my wife. You will no longer behave in this fashion. What if you had failed?" Eleanor remembered Paphlagonia, and subdued her triumphant feelings. But surely that was paid for, now. The soldiers acclaimed her in the streets of the conquered city. She had hoped that with victory would come Louis's respect. No. He only loved her. His eyes were still turned only toward God. She was angry with him, and very tired of being Queen of France. Louis did not deserve her or her men or her lands. The thought of going home to the Ile depressed her mightily. She would make Louis pay for his treatment of her, but not now.

The Emir appeared in his silk robes, and formally offered the city to the Frankish princes.

"No man," he said, "no man could have conquered us so." He bowed deeply to them, and then to Eleanor. He straightened up and his dark eyes, like the sharp eyes of an eagle, looked straight into Eleanor's.

"You have broken our homes, Frankish queen, and cast us like Ismael into the desert. For that, I lay a curse upon you. You will have no peace for the rest of your days."

Eleanor smiled at him from her horse, resplendent in plumes and gold. "Anything would be better than wasting away, my lord."

And she never did have a peaceful life. But she much preferred it that way.

General Fedor Tolbukhin turned to his political commissar. "Is everything in your area of responsibility in readiness for the assault, Nikita Sergeyevich?"

"Fedor Ivanovich, it is," Nikita Khrushchev replied. "There can be no doubt that the Fourth Ukrainian Front will win another smashing victory against the fascist lice who suck the blood from the motherland."

Tolbukhin's mouth tightened. Khrushchev should have addressed him as
Comrade General
, not by his first name and patronymic. Political commissars had a way of thinking they were as important as real soldiers. But Khrushchev, unlike some—unlike most—political commissars Tolbukhin knew, was not afraid to get gun oil on his hands, or even to take a PPSh41 submachine gun up to the front line and personally pot a few fascists.

"Will you inspect the troops before ordering them to the assault against Zaporozhye?" Khrushchev asked.

"I will, and gladly," Tolbukhin replied.

Not all of Tolbukhin's forces were drawn up for inspection, of course: too great a danger of marauding
Luftwaffe
fighters spotting such an assemblage and shooting it up. But representatives from each of the units the Soviet general had welded into a solid fighting force were there, lined up behind the red banners that symbolized their proud records. Yes, they were all there: the flags of the First Guards Army, the Second Guards, the Eighth Guards, the Fifth Shock Army, the Thirty-eighth Army, and the Fifty-first.