The Book of the Lion (20 page)

“Should we take the lives of those camel-warriors?” Rannulf was asking, lightly, in great humor. “Or spare them?”

“My lord,” I said, keeping my voice from trembling, “as you wish.”

 

 

 

 

But the camelmen did not attack. At a signal from one, they all turned, their mounts grunting. They trotted away from us, beyond a lingering veil of dust.

When we were back at the verge of our army again, we encountered the king.

King Richard was on horseback. His hair flowed golden around his head. His thick neck and handsome square face were sunburned. A brace of bloody coneys dangled from his saddle, and his horse was black with sweat.

The king gestured with one of the dead rabbits, a stiff, big-eyed puppet. When one of the guards did not answer quickly enough, the king flung the bloody doll in the man's face.

The king's eyes showed Rannulf a flicker of respect, but he did not glance my way. He leaned forward to wave a fly from his quarry. He watched the tiny insect circle upward.

He snatched it, missed, and cursed. He made another grab.

He raised his fist, squeezing it hard, radiant. The men around him smiled, and visibly relaxed.

“Have you seen any lions on your ride into the hills?” King Richard asked Sir Rannulf.

“None but you, my lord king,” said Rannulf.

Perhaps we had all assumed that the train of baggage and camp followers would protect our rear. But each morning a raid cleared away another few dozen washerwomen, who fled without resistance.

Soon we began to lose horses, too.

Hordes of dark-skinned men attacked our rear. These fighters were darker than black wine, and they swooped down on foot, arms and ankles decorated with gold. They were joined by horsemen wearing long, flowing headgear, who cut at our rearguard with lusty if inaccurate strokes.

The Templar knights had little trouble slicing these Bedouin attackers off their horses, but more raiders came down upon us to take the place of the slain. Soon many of our veteran divisions were repositioned in the rear to protect what was left of our provisions.

King Richard rode up and down the length of our entire straggling line, and Wenstan sang the song of the knight before the green river, pitying the enemy on the other side.

 

Each day was a flat, endless road of dust like powdered bone. My mouth filled with stone mortar. We came upon our pagan scouts, eyes and privy parts gouged, bellies swollen in the sun. The heat was heavier than ever before, horses collapsing with ribs heaving mightily, men fainting.

One advancing Burgundian knight pitched hard from his mount, and before his squire could reach him a Bedouin on a sleek, charcoal-dark horse, came from nowhere. He rode to where the knight sprawled, and thrust a spear into his groin.

We groaned at the sight. The Bedouin called out, throwing down his spear, making a show of spreading his arms: Come and
get
me.

Our army shivered, a thrill of anger traveling the length of our long column, but Sir Guy de Renne and Sir Nigel called for us to stay as we were.

Hubert's eyebrows and lashes were white with dust, and he looked like an elderly uncle. “Soon,” he said in a hoarse whisper, half encouragement, half prayer.

I nodded agreement, but I did not feel this confidence in my heart. We could plod along the coast forever, I believed. I conceived a grudging respect for Saladin, a commander with the sun and the hard blue sky fighting on his side.

 

Our progress halted near a place Nigel said was called Arsuf.

“The scouts have a name for every knoll,” Wenstan said.

His manner had changed here in the Holy Land. His stammer was rare now, and his tread steady and calm. He looked years younger, too, not at all like Nigel and Rannulf, who had new, hard creases in their cheeks. I had heard him singing one of Miles's old ballads recently, the one about the gander's head caught in milady's bower.

“I have been talking to our Infidel companions,” he said. “If your horse makes water, the scouts later say, ‘Ah, you remember when your horse wet upon the Rocky Place of the Stone Ginn.' A ginn, they tell me, is a spirit who lives inside a place.”

A thrill swept me, that we rode through a land rich with devils. “What does ‘Arsuf' mean, then?” I asked.

Wenstan squinted at the land around us. “Flat place, I would guess.”

Hubert kicked Shadow into a shuffling gallop. His red pennon fluttered all the way up the ranks, and hurried back again.

He was too excited to answer when I asked him, but by then commands were being bawled in a dozen languages, troops forming ranks, knights gathering, assembling in a ragged line, struggling into mail skirts and helmets.

I called for Rannulf, but in the cacophony of voices and trumpets, I heard no answer. King Richard rode ahead, along what had been the rear of our army but was now the rapidly forming front. Sir Guy de Renne called orders in the rising dust.

 

At last Rannulf flung himself from his warhorse. Dust brought tears to my eyes.

“Edmund,” he said, “dress me for battle.”

 

 

 

 

And still the fighting did not begin.

All morning horsemen drew our bow shots, arcing arrows that glinted in the sky. They rattled to the ground as the enemy cantered out of range. A playful, market-day quality about this made it look like sport. The camel-riders were few, and they stayed well back.

The air was aromatic with the scent of mint, herbs trodden flat under our feet. Gradually, our bowmen began to conserve their arrows, and waterboys circulated with kidskins of water and wine. Some of the pikemen made a show of how much they could drink down without taking a breath. An emir, a pagan battle chief, paced his horse calmly, well within bow range, accompanied by his men.

“They're counting us,” Hubert suggested.

“No, I don't think so,” I said. The Saracens knew our number, I was sure, every ostler, every cook. The emir was taking his pleasure so close to danger, and letting us watch this demonstration of how brave he was.

The bulk of Saladin's manpower was screened by a stunted ridge of evergreens in the distance, the trees swaying and shrugging with the passage of warriors. It was hardly a surprise when King Richard had us reform, marching us ahead to take a new position. We gazed across ground unmarred by a single hoof, pebbles glinting like coins.

The Templars, with their black-and-white shields, took the southern end of the line, nearest the sea. Frankish knights, Bretons and the men of Guienne, planted their feet beside them, blaspheming and outdoing themselves in taunts.

In the center of the line was the king, with his English pikemen, and his Norman foot soldiers. On the extreme left was a rank of Hospitallers, many of them kneeling in prayer. The king rode up and down the front, his horse's eyelashes heavy with dust.

We were beautiful—I had not expected this. All along the line, interspersed with the pike-bearers, were archers. Each archer hammered a
cheveux-de-frix
into the ground, a picket of sharpened staves, behind which he took his position. Bowmen, I knew from my boyhood, generally spend a good deal of time fussing with their arrow feathers, rubbing beeswax on their bowstrings. These archers were no different, flexing their shoulders, sharing pinches of resin and plucking tufts of weeds from underfoot. Crossbowmen assembled with them, counting out their quarrels.

 

And still-no bloodshed.

Wearing chain mail and wool is like being a much stouter, slower moving man, each crook of the arm causing the mail to pinch, or to ripple with a subtle, metallic slither. With this addition of weight came an emotional stolidity, too, a sense of being committed to the strength of one's horse, and the skill of the mailsmith.

Even so, I would have paid any amount in silver to have this over and done. Rannulf wrested the helmet from his head. He ran his tongue over his scarred lips. I could see the fear in his eyes—not a fear of blood, but anxiety that nothing would happen.

“Surely we can't all wait forever,” I offered. The truth was that now, with battle so close, much of my old fear of fighting was continuing to stir.

“I pray not, Edmund,” he said.

I longed to see nightfall.

 

One moment we were a force of sweating men, joking that Saladin had an army of whoremongers. We itched and sneezed with the rising dust, and adjusted each other's belts, easing the weight of hot mail on shoulders.

And then the day changed.

 

Thousands of dark-skinned men streamed at us from the woods. These warriors wore no armor. They came fast, carrying spears and small targets. The attackers screamed with a noise so shrill that our horses stirred at the sound. I could not quite believe that this was battle at last. The dark, sweaty men seemed like celebrants of a festival.

Our archers were quick to bend their bows, and the crossbowmen joined them, but the shower of arrows did nothing to slow the assault. The exuberance of the attack made this all seem like a frenzied May Day romp, no one likely to be hurt. The pointed staves were wrenched aside, and the bowmen forced to rush back behind the lines.

And yet it was like a midsummer tussle among apprentices, no blood. Our foot soldiers were rocked, startled by the quickness of these dark men, and by the Bedouin runners who joined them, cutting and stabbing. Men began to fall.

Our knights stayed on horseback, refusing to join the foot soldiers, and Hubert and I hunched forward on our mounts, too, enduring the storm, letting our pikemen counterstroke these assailants. Pikestaffs made a loud clatter, and when a footman near me was struck hard he gasped, like a wrestler whose wind has been slammed from his body.

The pikemen retreated slowly, and there was no festive air in the way they lunged and wrestled, giving way step by step, until the line was maintained only by the hedge of horsemen, Hubert and I among them.

Winter Star trembled under the onslaught of howling warriors. I clubbed awkwardly with my hammer, sometimes smashing a leather-and-star target with one blow, but often missing. Hubert laid about him with his sword.

Several times Winter Star lurched and groaned, and I nearly reeled from my mount. But a war saddle is fitted with a pommel that juts up before the rider, a bright, brass knob. I put this pommel to good use, hooking it with my thigh when I felt myself about to tumble.

I paid little attention to the blows, although they hurt, until I saw the blond shafts of spears on the ground. I realized without an instant of anxiety that I was being struck with these missiles, the points blocked by my wool tunic, with its Crusader star, my mail, and my thick wool undercoat. A spear glanced off Winter Star's right flank, but the warhorse remained steady.

My duty was to see that Rannulf's lance neither fell nor shattered, to make sure he kept to his saddle. The line of armored horsemen took never so much as a step backward, holding from north to south. The knights were full helmeted, and bent forward into the hail of spears, while the squires were less well protected. A few of these youths lost their mounts, and were lost in the stew of fighting men.

In an instant, the dark-skinned men broke, running away. But as they retreated, the pagan horsemen attacked, thundering through the fleeing footmen.

 

 

 

 

I was wedged in by a crush of horses and knights, and could not lift my hammer. I felt panic of frustration, and warded off blows with my shield. This sick fear ripened into anger. These strangers were trying to gash and lance my body.

I wrenched my hammer free, ready to help my friend. Hubert engaged a pagan knight, a warrior with thick jowls. This Infidel wore no helmet, his face exposed. He grinned painfully under the rain of Hubert's blows. The man parried with an ax polished to a gleam, but Hubert was intent, thrashing with his sword as slices of white appeared on the man's head and face. The white cuts welled immediately with red, and blood traveled down his shoulder. The man's head half parted from his body, and the warrior dropped.

Hubert's face was pale, his mouth set, as we turned our attention to the other riders, coming on hard. And then, at some signal only they could see, the horsemen wheeled and departed, racing away behind the chalky haze.

 

The wind rippled the manes of our horses and fluttered the battle standards. Dust cleared. A horse far down the line was screaming.

“Let us go after them!” cried Sir Nigel through the slits of his helmet. He sounded like a man yelling from inside a tub. King Richard rode hard up and down the wall of men, commanding us to stay as we were.

The bulk of the Saracen army had not yet encountered us, a menace marching slowly in our direction. The pagan horsemen regrouped, assembled in a line-a pretty sight, with yellow armor and bright red and blue headcloths, their ranks only slightly reduced. In the near silence we could hear them as they urged their horses forward with gentle kicks, making a clicking sound with their tongues.

 

This time the Christian archers sent a thick, bright shock of arrows that stunned the attackers, and when they reached us they were already unsteady. I caught a bearded man in the head with twin strokes of my hammer. He went down, hooves gouging his body.

Again, the horsemen fell away.

Our knights called, “Let us at them!” in several languages.

“Wait!” cried King Richard, his fine, black horse snorting, silvery with sweat, his own sword stained with red. “Patience!” he cried, a word nearly the same in Frankish and English.