Guy groped quietly along the rampart, immersed in the whispered, unshaven, rank-breathed, green-sweat smell that had become them in only a day. “Every second man, rest in place.”
A shadowy figure approached, “D’Agiles?”
“Count Bryennius?”
“Yes. You and your men did well. They hit you hardest.”
Jacques, coming from the other direction and unaware of the count’s presence, interrupted. “Guy, you’d better get some rest. This night’s barely started.”
Guy clapped Jacques on the shoulder in acknowledgement. “I have to sit down,” he said to Bryennius. With his back to a merlon, he felt for the ballista frame in the gallery-space to his left, drew forth his water skin and took a long draught. In a soft ripple of mail coat, Bryennius sat beside him. Guy could tell he had been in the fighting: there was that unspoken knowing.
“I think I saw Derar out there,” Guy said, offering Bryennius the goatskin.
“I saw him.” Bryennius passed back the skin without taking a drink. “I have some, thank you. That tower on your right flank is the one he should shoot his messages against. I have men posted there to retrieve them, but keep an eye out anyway.”
Guy was utterly spent from two desperate fights in a day. Mind, body and emotions had all raced: now he was drained. “Is that the best they can do?”
Bryennius thought before answering. “That was a heavy rush, but it was only like a fit of rage. In a deliberate attack, they will use fire and stone-throwing engines to soften us up. First they will use waves of second grade troops, tribesmen most likely, to tire us out and exhaust our supply of arrows and other weapons. Finally they will assault with professional heavy infantry, into a breach if they can make one.”
Guy pictured the depressing images and sighed. “Will they come again tonight?”
“Probably. Just before dawn most likely, out of the dark while you are silhouetted against the first light.”
Guy accepted the warning. “Are you posted on the wall?”
“No. With Basil, mostly. At any one time I have fifty men under orders to reinforce any threatened part of the wall. And I have to keep a reserve of another hundred with saddled horses, ready to defeat any penetration. So, with some resting, others under arms and the remainder doing whatever needs doing, it is quite busy. I’m still supervising the scouting, but Isaac has taken over much of the day-to-day running of it. You’re here for a while?”
“I suppose so,” Guy replied. “I don’t know when we’ll be relieved or by whom. It isn’t as though Basil has endless numbers of troops.”
Guy fought off sleep. It was quite dark and he remembered the moon rising that morning. He now missed it and would have been comforted by it. How far he had come, and with such hopes, for this—trapped in a besieged fortress with a fine horse and love unspoken. In a day the wall had become his world and he could imagine no end to it, as though he were in the grip of some vast design from which there was no escape. The whispered conversations along the wall seemed small in the immensity of the world. His thoughts strayed to the night sky and the diminutive nature of his reality under it. That reminded him he had never seen Bryennius at prayer. Overturning the desire to look sideways at the Roman, Guy asked, “Do you believe in God?”
There was a long pause before Bryennius answered. “The proof is all around,” he gestured with a sweep of his arm. Then, to the softest scrape of a nailed boot on the stones, the count rose, saying, “I have duties to attend to. Keep well, Guy.” In a moment, he was gone.
They slept in snatches, the men rousing those to take watch with tired taps on the shoulders, or a shake of the leg. During the third watch, word was passed from the right that large numbers of enemy had entered the town with the probable intent of looting it.
Guy was summoned to orders, on the wall overlooking the village. Taking Aram Gasparian with him, Guy followed the short, helmeted, lamellar-armoured guide along the starlit rampart, through the heavy walkway doors of the dark, candlelit cavern of the tower and onto the next section. There, half a dozen armoured figures were grouped around the stocky frame of Count Doukas. He, coif loose around his neck and conical helmet pushed back from his brown bearded face, acknowledged Guy’s arrival with a nod. Antony Lascaris and Oleg were part of the whispered discussion on the walls. Guy assumed they would be part of whatever was to occur.
Doukas outlined the plan. “The enemy are in the village,” he started in low, deliberate tones, “and somewhat distracted, it seems, by the ample stocks of wine we so negligently left there.” There were grim smirks in the night.
“Our object is to teach the Sultan’s hordes that Manzikert will be no easy prey for the Seljuk hawk. We will do this by causing mass casualties and burning the town so it provides them no cover, no shelter and no firewood. The assault group is assembling on the concourse between the walls now. As soon as we’re ready, archers will send flaming arrows into the far side of the town so the timber structures catch fire.” Doukas paused, looking around to make sure all knew their parts. Sensing no hesitation or uncertainty, he continued. “When the flames are sufficiently advanced, the assault group, a hundred each of Varangians, Normans, Romans and townsmen led by me, will leave by two sally-ports, form up in the ditch, then attack in two waves close together. The third wave will remain behind the scarp merlons to cover our withdrawal.”
Guy glanced behind them and sensed the heavily armoured troops forming up in the space between the walls. Priests moved amongst them, crosses high, softly chanting prayers accompanied by the kneeling soldiers. “Lord Jesus Christ, our God, have mercy on us, Amen.”
Before the walls were the close-packed, sun-bleached little wooden houses of the poor. Beyond them in a huge, irregular crescent in the plain of the river valley, the campfires of the Seljuks winked in the night. From the village came the noise of shouting and breakage.
The details were covered in Doukas’ orders: how archers and ballistae on the walls would support the attack; when musicians on the walls would sound horns to warn of Seljuk reinforcements; how engineers would carry clay pots of naphtha into the burning village to ensure the destruction by fire; and the sequence of withdrawal.
Doukas laced up his coif and strapped his helmet down over it, signalling an end to discussion. As flaming arrows streaked away by the dozen, the men commanding the assault party descended by the stairs to the concourse between the walls. Led by Doukas and at an unspoken sign from their commanders, the ranks turned and groped their way to the respective sally-ports, the starlight glinting softly on helmets and shields, spears and battle axes. Two at a time, they left the small, strongly guarded doors that were kept open to enable their return.
Asking Aram to inform their men of what was happening and have them stand-to, Guy turned to watch the unfolding drama below him.
A line of fires had started in the far side of the town, a full bowshot from the walls. The flames took hold quickly in the dry wood and spread rapidly, the smoke rising straight up in a blue plume. Against yellow-red flames, he could discern milling nomads, intent on looting. Dark shapes deployed in the ditch, here and there stumbling over the slain. Ladders, each the height of a mounted man, were thrown against the side of the ditch, then the assault troops paused, awaiting the signal.
At a wave of Doukas’ spear arm, the first wave rose from the ditch and quickly formed a double line, axemen and spearmen to the fore, bowmen and torchbearers at their elbows. Guy watched the refused-centre form as the flanks of the line went forward more quickly in order to draw the enemy into the centre. “So that’s what Doukas was training them for that day,” he mused with grim admiration.
The phalanx of the second wave waited, then they too went over, a spear cast behind the first. The third remained impatiently behind the scarp breastworks, to cover the withdrawal of those who had gone into the town.
Guy saw the bobbing torches start
forward amongst the houses and clearly heard the shouts and clash of weapons. There were screams of anguish from the dying—those who did not fall silently from the spear points, or topple cloven and soundless to the paths where a day earlier children had played and washing waved in the breeze. On the walls, the watchers saw the iron tide, raw with rage and determination, surge into the surprised, wine-wasted tribesmen and haşer65. Firelight showed through a window as the doors were burst open and mailed figures entered with flailing steel.
The Seljuks in the village stood little chance. Constant raids had conditioned the invaders to despise their Roman and Armenian enemies, who would shut themselves up behind walls like pigs in sties, only the easier to be terrified, herded and slaughtered like swine. The nomads caught in the village, drunk and distracted by looting any small treasure that might add to the few comforts of their rough camp, had not expected such a violent sortie from the fortress. Trapped against the flames through which they could only escape by dashing in twos and threes, most turned to the fight. Wherever knots of them tried to form a defensive front, clay pots of naphtha were hurled against them from behind the assaulting Christians, spattering them with the terrifying mixture that would ignite at the slightest spark.
The tide of Christians seemed to rise from the shadows and engulf them, the reflection of the flames making it appear as if their very helmets and shields were afire. Bearded Vikings, with great shouts calling on pagan and Christian gods alike to protect them, swung their long-handled, double-handed axes, smashing through the flimsy cane shields and brushing aside the light Iranian swords. Heavily armoured Normans, clean-shaven and screaming the strange tongue of the Latins, drove in with undergrasp spears, the arrows of the tribesmen useless against the iron bosses of their long shields. With these mercenaries were the townsmen and peasants of the area, fighting with fear, desperation and pride.
All were urged on by the indomitable Theophanes Doukas, ploughing into the nomads like a one-man torrent, screaming all the while, “Give it to them, Manzikert. Give it to the sons of bitches. You there, archers, don’t just gape at the heathen, pour in’t them. We’re on show here. Don’t just poke at ‘em like kids looking for tadpoles. Stick the bastards.” Interpreters struggled to bawl over the tumult, Doukas’ orders in the different languages of the soldiers.
Many nomads died there, until the survivors fled and the hot flames rose higher in the night. As the fight petered out, Guy could hear Doukas’ roar, “Good! Very good, men! Make about. Reform. No running there. Make about. You there, there, with the fire, make sure everything is well alight after us. Close up. Close up! Retire. Retire. Spears to the enemy, men. No running!”
A horn sounding from the wall warned that the main enemy encampment was responding to the sudden eruption in the night. Guy heard approaching hoof beats and could sense small knots of horsemen drawing closer, but all the Seljuks could do was maintain a desultory harassment of Doukas’s sally, the engines on the wall keeping them at bay. Guy hurried to his own men, in case the skirmish in the village drew on another general assault by the Turks.
He could hear the din as the defenders on the fore-wall started shooting, covering Doukas’s assault force as the men dropped down into the ditch with their relatively few dead and wounded and filed back through the protecting third wave. Inside the fore-wall, the sergeants and decarchs pushed the assault party back into rough ranks, where nerve-strained men overjoyed with their own survival in the inferno they had created, sank to the ground. Youths carried water buckets along the ranks, ladling out the cool liquid. Medical orderlies of the garrison and nuns from the monastery that had been converted into a makeshift hospital, bent over the wounded. Mounted medical orderlies, their quiet, patient horses saddled with extra stirrups, gently lifted the maimed and bore them inside the main wall to the hospitals. Priests in their sombre mantles moved amongst the men and murmured prayers and forgiveness for the souls of those who had sinned in the death of their fellow man, infidels that they were. “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on us.”
“Lord Jesus Christ,” Guy repeated, “have mercy on us.”
Three nuns and some women of the city appeared as black forms in the dim blue light. Mounting the ramparts, they brought food and drink to the famished, thirsty soldiers. More than one nun, Guy supposed, took the vows because war had widowed them or stolen their betrothed. Who could know what thoughts they kept to themselves as they offered succour to strangers. Gently they spoke, softly they moved, with the muffled sounds of urns and baskets and the scent of cold roast meat, cheese, fresh baked bread and watered wine.
A feminine form came close and held out a damp cloth with which Guy gratefully wiped his tired eyes and grubby, unshaven face. It was Joaninna Magistros, he could tell, her abundant dark hair tied in a light scarf. She had a shawl around her shoulders, for the air this night seemed suddenly cool. He finished by rubbing the rough cloth firmly over his filthy hands. Guy was amazed at how calm and commanding Joaninna appeared, the younger women moving quickly and efficiently by her suggestions to share out their meals. He could not see Irene amongst the shifting, murmuring crowd on the ramparts.
Joaninna noticed. “She’s on the southern wall where they fear the next attack.”
“How is she? Please tell her I’m well.”
“You had no need to ask,” she said, handing him another crust of bread. “Irene is well enough, given all.” Then she moved on.
Before dawn, they stood-to again as a heavy assault was mounted on the southern wall, the Seljuks searching for a weak spot as they endeavoured to wear down the physical and moral strength of the defenders.
With daylight the hot sun rose like a brazen shield over the walls of Manzikert to reveal the ditch and plain beyond littered with corpses, the air tinged with dust and smoke and thick with the stench of burnt flesh and naphtha. The stones of the walls grew hot while men wilted in the rays. Guy watched Jacques approach along the wall, and was surprised at how dirty, dishevelled and utterly weary his man looked.
Jacques similarly regarded Guy and said, “You look done in. You should try and get some rest.”
It struck Guy now, that they had endured only the first night and day of whatever might come. Everything before in his life now seemed remote. Even the ride from Archēsh had the distant air of long ago and insignificance in its consequences. “It is only the second day, Jacques,” he replied wearily. “You have worked wonders and you also must rest.”
Some hours later, Balazun, with Bryennius, Doukas and Selth, inspected the section of the defences under the Norman knight’s command. The soldiers were instructed to clear their personal belongings from the walls as the bundles impeded manoeuvre along the fighting platform. Workmen from the town arrived, hauling rolls of felt from warehouses and placed them along the inside of the wall as sheltering awnings. Made of heavy felt, these served a double purpose, for soaked with vinegar, they could be used to suppress fire and if suspended an arms’ length in front of the walls, they would soften the impact of rocks hurled by besieging mangonels.
More workmen and soldiers hauled rocks, bundles of arrows, ballista bolts, javelins, stones and urns of drinking water, waste-oil and Greek Fire to the walls. Parties of the boldest youths passed through the sally-ports to retrieve bundles of used arrows and darts from outside as well as any Christian dead. By mid-afternoon, all was still as those who had defended the walls that night, rested in preparation for what next befell them as sentries watched over the smoke-shrouded Seljuk camp.
The Seljuk Camp at Manzikert,
Sunset, 22nd August 1054
Tughrul Bey had brought his army to Manzikert: this vexatious fortress he would subdue before turning his attention to the stricken caliphate that awaited his clemency in Madinat al-Salam. Escorted by squadrons of palace guards on bay horses, the shepherd king arrived the morning after the night skirmish in the burning town. Dressed in plain white robes, he rode a sumpt
uously caparisoned Arabian, gifted several years before by Nasr ad-Daulah of Amida. Irritated by the repeated failures, he ordered another attack late that afternoon of the second day and watched impatiently as the tribes with their scaling ladders had again flung themselves at the battlements. Grimly, the Seljuk ruler watched his subjects fall back once more from the walls, where the Romans, in daylight, had re-occupied the scarp breastwork to increase the range of their missiles. Having seen enough, Tughrul Bey and his entourage rode a lap of the fortress, studying the ground and the walls before retiring to the comforts of his pavilion, from where he could hear the reports of the emirs.
Derar had ridden with them, noting that at one point the track bypassed a small rocky outcrop and veered sharply inside ballistae range. He noticed a scattering of arrow shafts sticking in the ground well short of the track. It occurred to him then that no arrows had struck near the bridle track, which he had thought was within range. It seemed odd to him and he made a mental note to avoid that place.
Late that night, Derar pulled off his armour and boots and laid his weapons by his side. He slid gratefully under the cover with Farisa. Laying there he listened to the sound of her breathing and the murmur of the camp.
She listened to him listening to her. “Are you all right?”
“Yes,” he replied before his thoughts turned inward. A deliberate attack against the eastern wall was planned for the following night, the tribesmen taking much of the day to get into position by a long and circuitous march out of sight of the defenders. He had to warn the Romans.
A Dowry for the Sultan Page 42
