The Dagger and the Cross (28 page)

Gwydion clenched his fists on the high pommel of his saddle,
head bent, shoulders hunched. It was no great cost to his strength, but he had
lost his temper. Again. That was why he avoided battles. He was wilder in them
than his brother, a white, singing madness that was to Aidan’s fierce joy as
the hawk’s stoop to the lark’s descent. That was why Aidan was his commander of
armies; why he never went to war alone, and seldom to a tournament. The king’s
dignity was his refuge. He could not, for his life’s sake, keep his head in a
fight.

“Nonsense,” Aidan said, rough with more than the dryness in
his mouth. “You just won us a respite. That lot won’t be troubling us again, I
don’t think.”

There were more where they came from, though few of them, to
be sure, went near Gwydion’s portion of the column. They harried the very front
of the van, and the center somewhat, but they were fiercest against the
rearguard: a flurry of men and horses, dust and arrows and outcry.

They’re driving us,
Aidan said in his mind. He had hoped
that he was wrong. He turned his sweating horse, rode back along the line. Here
and there a grin flashed white in a dust-smeared face. No one wasted breath in
cheering him.

They were ascending now, and he could see the army advancing
behind, straggling over the rough ground. The center was reasonably well in
order, but the rear was sore beset. It had had to halt and fight or be overrun.
Templars in dust-stained white surcoats, the red cross bloody on their breasts,
spread ever wider, some darting in reckless charges, called back by their
commanders’ bellows or by the braying of trumpets. A space opened between rear
and center. If it grew too wide, the rearguard would be cut off.

Guy, or Amalric his Constable, seemed to be aware of the
threat: a rider went back at a scrambling run, dodging arrows, and plunged
toward the Templars’ command. The horncall sharpened; men went out to herd the
stragglers in. With maddening slowness the line straightened; the knights came
to order. They began to move. But the gap did not narrow. The enemy, having
found an advantage, was not about to let it go.

Aidan could not, though it tore at him, ride down the length
of the army and abandon his own people to tell Gerard de Ridefort how to
command a company. He rode back to his place, pausing to say a word here and
there, to lighten spirits where he could, to allow another sip of water.

The slope steepened. The horses strained. One went down. Its
rider struggled to pull it up again. He was Rhiyanan, the horse likewise, a
great slow mountain of a beast, never bred for such a country as this. Before
Aidan could move, Gwydion was there, off his own eastern-bred mount, cutting
the beast’s throat. Its rider wept and cursed. Gwydion shook him into silence. “I’ll
buy you a new horse,” he said. “Hush now, and march. We have a war to fight.”
He called to his horsemaster, who came promptly, leading a smaller, lighter,
tougher mount. The young knight regarded it in distaste, the more for that it
was a gelding; but he let his gear be shifted to it, and heaved himself onto
its back.

He would keep the beast, Gwydion said when he came back to
Aidan’s side, and he would ride it on the march, when it was never good for
anything but a charge, and a short one at that.

He’s young, Aidan said. Give him time. He’ll learn.

Not that lad,
said Gwydion sourly.

A cry went up ahead. The first riders had reached the top of
their ascent. It was in truth a pass between two hills, paved with stones and
scree, rough with sun-seared grass.

“The Horns of Hattin,” Aidan named the hills, as he himself
came to the height between them. The ridge broke like a wave, and the Sea of
Galilee shining blue below, and Tiberias on the shores of it, and the Saracens
as thick as flies about it.

Raymond’s column descended slowly. There was a village on
the valley’s floor, the village of Hattin, where were wells enough to sate the
army’s thirst.

And there were Saracens. They held the way to the wells;
they were ready, it was clear, to fight.

The vanguard halted. A messenger rode back toward the king
in the center. He spared a word for the king in the van: “There’s water at
Marescallia, under Turan. My lord Raymond says go there.”

And when, after an endless while, he came back: “The
Templars can’t advance. The king says head for Marescallia.”

Aidan shook his head at that. They were only halfway to
Tiberias. It was hardly yet noon, but the enemy knew where they were, and they
had to have water to go on. There was water at Marescallia, but never enough
for thirty thousand men: one small spring and a bit of a pool. They would drink
it dry and still be thirsty.

What choice did they have? He dismounted to spare his horse,
passing the order down the line, not to descend in a straight line but to make
their way along the ridge to the mountain’s knees. The ground was even more
treacherous here than on the other side of the ridge: a field of dry grass, it
seemed to be, but under the grass were sharp-edged stones, the black eggs of
mountains, where the earth had spewed forth fire long ago. Every step
threatened misstep; and worse for horses with their rigid hoofs than for men
with armored or booted feet. A charge here would be madness, a battle suicidal.

Marescallia was smaller than he remembered, the trickle of
water thinner. Raymond’s men had already muddied it, for all their efforts not
to. The horses strained desperately to drink; it was white pain to pull them
back after a swallow or two and make way for the rest.

At least there was fodder for them, though they were not
delighted to find it so dry. Aidan found a place to rest his men and his
horses, near the spring but out of the way of the army. Some, his mamluks among
them, made tents of their cloaks and settled down in the small shade.

The rearguard was still fighting. The king came up under his
banner, took his share of water—and no more, Aidan noted—and made way for the
men behind him.

Gwydion, who had been walking among his men, giving what
comfort he could, slanted off toward the king. Aidan called Arslan to look
after the two companies, and set out in his brother’s wake.

Others had the same impulse. Raymond was there already, and
Humphrey for once looking less than impeccable, and Reynaud with much of his
arrogance muted. Guy looked haggard but not yet disheartened. “We’ve got to
move on,” he said. “We’ll take Hattin if we have to, but Tiberias is burning.”

“Tiberias is surrounded by a hundred thousand Saracens,”
Raymond snapped. “For God’s sake, my lord, look about you. This is a pitiful
place to make a stand, but it’s better than anything near it. We’ve got the
mountain behind us, we’ve got what water there is, we can lure Saladin to a
fight here and maybe win it.”

“Just like Goliath’s Well,” Reynaud said, not quite
sneering. “We sat there, and what did it get us? Nothing but defeat and the king’s
disgrace, Count of Jaffa that he was then. The Saracen is too canny a fox. He
won’t come to us when he knows we have an advantage. We have to go to him.”

“What, take the fight to his own ground, and let him trample
us?” Raymond was incredulous. “Where did you study warfare? In a pig-farmer’s
hut?”

Reynaud growled and would have sprung, but Amalric pulled
him back. “Stop it, both of you. I say we move on. They’ve got the high ground
as it is. If we can lure them down, we can charge, and pin them against the
ridge, and hack them down at our leisure. If they don’t move, we can come back
here and go out again later, till they give in to the temptation.”

Raymond nodded unwillingly. “That might work. Give ourselves
a base here, with water in it; keep challenging them to come out and fight us.”

Guy nodded, chewing his lip. “We’ll march, but slowly, till
the Templars catch up.”

o0o

They marched, slowly. The brief respite, the bit of water,
soon wore off. The enemy kept harrying them. It was worse now that they could
see what was before them: how very many of the enemy there were, and how
utterly they had sacked Tiberias.

As the army struggled down from Marescallia, a horde of
shrilling Saracens poured out of the hills, streamed around them, overran the
spring. Saladin had foreseen even that bit of cleverness.

The rear of Guy’s column wavered and almost broke, straining
toward the enemy and the water that should have been their lifeblood. Their
commanders beat them back. There were too many of the enemy, and more coming
from all sides, endless ranks of them, closing in as inexorably as wolves about
a flock.

There was no way now but forward. No hope but in Hattin, or
in Tiberias. Saladin did not take their challenge. Nor would he. He nipped at
their flanks. He brought down their stragglers. When they would have resisted,
his men melted away, only to come back fourfold in another place, laughing and
jeering. They were all that there was of the army of Outremer. Their attackers
were an endless river, never weary, always fresh, on fresh horses, fat and
sleek with good food and clean water.

The advance slowed to a standstill. They could not keep
their ranks against the pressing of the enemy. The bleak dun plain spread about
them. The Templars were over the ridge, past Marescallia, fighting as only
Templars could fight. But it was like fighting sand. The more they battled
against it, the more it eluded them.

The infantry had had enough. They stopped and would not go
on, even for their commanders’ curses, even under the flats of blades. “No
water,” they said, “no march.”

“You won’t
get
any water if you stay here!” Amalric
raged at them. But they were adamant.

His brother had reached his own limit of endurance. “We
camp,” Guy said, “and hold on till the Templars can win through to us.”

“Mad.” Even Amalric said it, but Guy was as obdurate as his
footsoldiers.

Although it was barely midday, they pitched camp amid the
stones near the upland of Hattin. The Saracens were all about them now, making
small sallies, shooting flights of arrows, simply sitting their horses and
grinning at the tired, dusty, bone-dry Franks.

Saladin himself was on the ridge. They saw him up there
under his banners, the caliph’s black standard and his own golden eagle: the
golden gleam of his corselet and the whiteness of the shawl that he wore to
shield his head from the sun, and the yellow coats of the mamluks who were his
personal guard.

It was a hot, dry, hungry camp. The blue water of Galilee
sparkled in the sun, taunting them more bitterly than any of their enemies.
Tiberias, burning, offered neither hope nor help. Reinforcements could not
come, even if a messenger could pass the infidels’ lines. Worse than that,
neither food nor water could be had. They had no wagons, only what each man and
horse could carry. They had been depending on the stores at Cresson, or failing
that, at Tiberias.

“I may have been in more desperate straits,” Raymond said. “If
so, I don’t recall it.”

His tent was pitched in sight of the Sea of Galilee, as if
he wanted to remind himself of his lost demesne. The air was still, and
breathing it was cruel, parching the nose as well as the mouth. His page
offered wine. It was thick sweet wine of Bethlehem, meant to be well weakened
with water; it fed the thirst almost more than it quenched it. But it was wet,
and it filled the stomach. The page stood near with the bottle, in part to be
of service but in part to seek comfort in the others’ presence.

Aidan caught the boy’s eye and smiled. Aimery looked down,
pricking Aidan’s senses with embarrassment. His mother had not wanted him to
go, but Count Raymond had settled it by asking for him. It was time, the count
said, that the boy acquired some seasoning in war.

Even Raymond could not have expected such seasoning as this.
The count had wiped off some of the dirt and sweat, but had kept on full mail
except for the coif, as had they all. He gestured toward the ridge and the
figures on it. They were out of bowshot: that had already been tested. “Rats in
a trap,” he said. “We should have known what would happen with so many of them
to hem us in. They can fall on us in waves, each fresher than the last.”

“We might break through,” Aidan said. “A miracle might save
us. Who knows, until we’ve seen the end of this?”

“A miracle?” Raymond’s brows went up. “Have you one to
offer?”

“Not we,” said Gwydion.

Raymond might have said more, but chose instead to beckon to
Aimery. The boy came willingly enough, and lively enough still, though he was
filthy and his leather coat must have itched abominably. He bowed politely and
waited for his lord to speak.

Raymond smiled. “I’ve trained you well, I think, messire.
Will you do something for me?”

Aimery’s eyes were full of worship for his lord and teacher.
Anything!
they cried. Aloud he said, “Surely, my lord.”

“I am not sending you away,” Raymond said, “even if that
were possible now. But I would like you to go where you may be safer than with
me. If your kinsmen will agree to it, will you enter their service until this
battle is over?”

Aimery’s face was a study in ambivalence. He looked from his
kinsmen to his lord and back again. “There will be a battle, my lord?”

“You can be sure of it.” Raymond tilted his shaggy grey-gold
head. “Well?”

“My lord—” Aimery looked again at Gwydion, and at Aidan. “My
lord, what would they do with me?”

Aidan bit back a smile. Raymond made no such effort. “Guard
you,” he answered, “as they always guard their own. I may not be able to do it;
and I should hate to have to tell your mother that I lost you.”

“I’m not a child, my lord,” Aimery said, stung.

“Surely not,” said Aidan. “I could do with a squire, at
that. I’ve been sharing Gwydion’s Urien, and it’s hard on the poor lad, looking
after two of us.”