‘Go right and be watchful,’ bellowed the older brother to Arnau even as he took the left flank.
The soldiers were prepared, though in truth they had probably expected the Templars to stop in the end. As the horses raced the last forty feet at them, they braced with their spears. Arnau tried to think how best to tackle the problem in the moments he had – those spears spelled death for his horse, he felt sure. At the last moment, as his sword came up overhead and he bellowed the words of a psalm in a confident voice, he yanked on the reins and his horse swerved out to the right. Even as he performed the last-second move, Arnau twisted in the saddle, facing the men he was about to pass. There was an uncomfortable moment as he left the road and almost fell, his horse treading with difficulty in a low drainage ditch, but it was not quite enough to unseat him.
By the time the Armenians had realised he was moving out to flank them and turned to deal with him, he was past the points of their spears, and they could no longer bring those weapons to bear. The man on the end roared some kind of imprecation as he turned, trying to bring his spear round in the impossibly tight space. Arnau’s arm fell across his front, between his and his horse’s neck, his sword coming down with sufficient force to slam into the man’s shoulder and through the padded gambeson and steel rectangles as though they were but cotton. He felt the sword meet the resistance of strong bone and smash through it with ease, and he yanked and twisted, pulling the blade free as he passed.
Arnau knew all too well how much a fight like this relied upon speed and instinct. A general might be able to spend time scanning the field and seeing where weaknesses and danger lay. In small-scale combat, however, pausing long enough to make such judgements might cause death or disaster. Paying no heed to what was happening with the others, Arnau slowed his horse, urging it through crumbling dry mud and another drainage ditch, wheeling it and coming to face the rear of the Armenian line.
His instinct to move without pause had been right. The next man in from the end had kicked his dying friend out of the way and swung his spear in an attempt to deal with Arnau. The spear point came wavering and flailing towards him, and Arnau danced his horse three steps to the right and forward, trying to fall within the spear’s reach and make it useless. As he did so, his sword slashing out in a warning arc, the man kept backing up, trying to make room for a deadly thrust with his spear.
Arnau blinked as the man suddenly straightened, his spear flying loose from his fingers and blood rising into the air in a cloud of crimson mizzle. As the spearman collapsed on the road, gurgling, Arnau stared at Sebastian, the young squire’s blade dripping blood as he goggled in horror at the carnage he had wrought. It would be his first kill. Such a thing could make or break a man. Still, Arnau couldn’t risk spending time consoling him now. His gaze strayed across the scene of combat.
It was all but over. At the far side, an Armenian lay curled up, screaming and clutching his gut. Ramon was busy striking swords and parrying with another. Bochard…
Arnau shook his head in a mix of dismay and awe. The preceptor had been in the centre. He’d had no chance to arc out to the side as the two Iberian knights had done. He’d been facing two men with spears levelled and with no clear way of getting round them… and so he hadn’t. He had simply ridden his horse into them, spears and men together. His horse was done for, lying on the ground, shrieking with two broken shafts jutting from its chest, but it lay writhing atop the crushed form of one of its torturers, while the other had been crudely knocked aside in the strike. Bochard had apparently leaped from his horse even as the spears struck, and the man he’d barged aside had lasted only one more heartbeat before the preceptor’s sword turned his face to ruined mush. The preceptor’s squire had remained uninvolved, staying back and holding the rope to the pack animals, keeping close to those bulging bags Bochard had brought.
The fight was over. Ramon managed to deliver a blow to the man he fought, dropping him to the parched earth with consummate skill. As the knight dismounted to finish his opponent cleanly, Bochard set about the grisly work of dispatching the wounded. Arnau turned away as they were executed cleanly by the preceptor’s long narrow misericorde dagger.
There was a sudden intake of breath and the young Templar glanced back sharply. Bochard was crouched over a fallen man whose helmet had come away, revealing the boyish features of a youth little more than fourteen or fifteen summers. Bochard had gone pale, his lips moving in silent prayer as the boy gave a last groan. The preceptor delivered the killing blow swiftly, his face awash with conflicting emotions. He stood there shaking for a moment, and then suddenly seemed to realise the others were watching. With a huff, he pulled himself together and went to retrieve his spare steed.
Arnau and Ramon shared a worried look.
‘What was all that about?’ Ramon asked flatly as he rose from his kill, wiping the narrow blade on a rag. ‘The argument, I mean, not the boy.’
Bochard flinched. ‘Gaston,’ he replied finally as though that answered all. His eyelid had acquired a rhythmic twitch that worried Arnau.
‘But who is Gaston?’
‘Not a who. A what. One of the Order’s most important fortresses in Outremer. It stands in those hills,’ he gestured off to the left of the road. ‘Saladin’s men took it a decade ago, and Leo of Armenia took it back off them.’
‘Is that not a good thing?’
‘He refuses to grant it back to us. It is our fortress. Our men shed more blood than his in the recovery of these lands. The grand master has demanded the return of the fortress numerous times, even backed with the threat of military action, and still the Armenian king refuses, clinging to our property just as he covets the mastery of Antioch. His greed will be his undoing.’
‘I fear our passage through his kingdom just took a turn for the dangerous,’ muttered Ramon.
‘All will be well. It is less than two hundred miles from here to the far edge of the kingdom of Armenian Cilicia. We shall move at all speed and keep ourselves to ourselves. Once we are away from the contentious area of Gaston, things will be different. In this border zone, soldiers are hot-blooded. In the heart of their lands we will be safe, and once we pass the border into the empire, we shall come to no harm.’
As the five men saddled up once more and began to move out, Arnau found himself pondering that last assertion and not entirely believing it. He glanced sidelong at the pale, wide-eyed face of Sebastian as they began to head north-west again.
‘It becomes easier.’
Sebastian turned a troubled look on him. ‘That is no comfort, Brother Vallbona.’
‘The danger was—’
‘There was no danger, Brother,’ the young Greek interrupted. ‘The Mother Theotokos was with me.’ He showed the icon he clutched, and Arnau nodded. ‘What worries me,’ Sebastian said quietly, ‘is how easy it was.’
His eyes flicked across for just a moment to the preceptor ahead, and Arnau sighed. ‘We each follow our own path as the Lord lays out.’
But Sebastian looked no less troubled at the thought as they rode on into the unknown.
Chapter 5: The Beleaguered Emperor
The Bosphorus
May 1203, five weeks out of Antioch
Arnau stood at the rail of the boat, Ramon beside him and Sebastian loitering miserably despite the shortness of the voyage upon which they had embarked. Bochard and his squire stood near the steering oar, subjecting the steersman to an endless series of questions.
The younger knight’s eyes slid back to the shore they had just left. The Byzantine town of Chalcedon sprawled across the shore, its solid watchtowers standing proud above the streets and churches. It was one of the largest settlements they had passed through on their three-week journey through imperial lands, but then they had avoided the great cities, keeping to rural roads and settlements. The small vessel’s wake churned out across the blue waters, scattering myriad small jellyfish to tumble through the clear deep.
The journey had been an easy one,
despite Arnau’s fears. A certain view of the empire had formed in the young knight’s mind as they travelled, though, and it was both positive and negative. There were signs of a level of control and organisation that Arnau had never seen before. Like the Rome of old, Byzantium seemed to be a land of perfect order, of connecting roads and couriers and way stations. From the minor encounters they had had it was clear that the empire was controlled by a bureaucracy that had been growing and honing itself over a millennium, and had its hooks into every aspect of daily life. Bandits seemed to be non-existent and peace reigned. The churches were clean and plentiful, and powerful fortresses that had stood since the days of yore still protected roads, bridges and passes. Aqueducts still worked, bringing fresh water to cities, unlike Tarragona’s, which had long since fallen into disuse. There were bathhouses, which Arnau hankered after, but which Bochard shunned as almost devilishly hedonistic.
And yet there were worrying signs. Byzantium might be likened to a marble palace: magnificent to look at, but on close examination, reveals dirt and cracks one couldn’t see from a distance. Prime among these was the military dearth. The empire’s fortresses might be the envy of the world, but many stood empty, and as often as not when Arnau did see a small garrison in a roadside bastion, they were clearly hired mercenaries from far outside the empire – hairy, narrow-eyed barbarians from the steppe, with their curved bows and curved swords, or great, golden-haired Titans from Rus-land far to the north. Even, according to the preceptor at least, Turks. It seemed madness to Arnau to protect the border against the Turk with Turkic mercenaries, but the empire seemed to consider it normal. Outside the military sphere, there were other signs too. Towns with low populations, roads in need of repair, churches closed, poverty among the rural folk. Cracks in the marble.
Arnau turned, looking ahead once more, wondering whether the same analogy might be applied to the great capital before them. Constantinople spread across the headland opposite and clearly went back some miles inland. Facing them, on the highest point – an ancient acropolis – stood grand palaces and churches and fortresses, columns and arches and gardens. Some of the churches, in fact, were larger than many castles Arnau had seen in his short life. And below, at the waterline, a set of strong white walls marched around the headland, punctuated every few hundred paces with heavy square towers surmounted by battlements that protected artillery, just visible as complex shapes.
Constantinople was all but impregnable, it was said. The young knight could believe it.
The boat slid across the water and angled upstream. Arnau gestured to a sailor close by, who was coiling a rope. ‘Where are we bound?’
‘Galata,’ the sailor replied in clear Greek. ‘All ships from this side of the channel put in at Galata, because of the chain.’
Arnau frowned in incomprehension, but peered with interest at the city. They were clearly not making for the heart of Constantinople, but for the less compact but occupied headland to the north. Galata, he presumed.
As they slid through the water past the headland, he kept watch. A great inlet separated the two settlements, and the sailor’s mysterious answer became clear as they passed the waterway’s mouth. A great chain stretched from a tower in the city walls to a similar heavy tower that formed part of a small fort on the north side – Galata. The chain was visible even at this distance and Arnau, impressed, estimated that each link in it must be the best part of two feet across. The entire length was kept close to the surface of the water by a series of small skiffs to which it was attached. Arnau could quite imagine the difficulties any ship might get into, entangled in that mess while within range of the artillery from at least half a dozen towers. Even the waterways in this place were fortified.
The boat slid into the dock at Galata, and Arnau was surprised once more by what this suburb held. He hadn’t realised how used to imperial architecture and vessels he had become over the past few weeks of travel until he was suddenly confronted by something so different. The sailor saw him frowning and paused in his work.
‘Genovese and Pisan enclaves. Traders and the like.’
It was like looking at a small town transplanted from the West and dropped in the heart of the empire. A strange sight. Indeed, the jetties were filled with more foreign traders than local vessels. Something suddenly struck Arnau. During all this time, he had never seen a Byzantine warship. It seemed odd given how much their trade and defence relied upon the water. Even here, at the heart of their domain, he could not see a single warship. Were the Byzantines not famed of old for their navy? He made to ask the sailor, but the man had gone to work elsewhere and a moment later Bochard called for them all to be ready.
The following hour passed by in something of a blur for Arnau. They alighted on the European shore and were met by some functionary of the imperial bureaucracy who offered to escort them to the palace, where someone would deal with them. As the five Templars mounted, the administrator climbed into an antiquated litter, which was lifted by two burly men in tunics and carried ahead of them through the streets. They headed south along the coast, past fishing quays and the European enclaves. Soon they reached the shore of the inlet, and were guided to a series of small ferries, one of which was allocated to take them on the bureaucrat’s orders. Throughout, Ramon shared Arnau’s clear interest in their surroundings. Bochard focused on his mission, largely ignoring the city through which they passed, and Sebastian had a warm smile that suggested he was feeling the relief of returning to his homeland.
The boat cut across the water towards the main city, which Arnau could now see marched for miles upstream, still surrounded by strong walls, even beyond the chain. As they approached, he could identify two great harbours of similar sizes in the urban mass. The upstream one seemed to be full of small craft and ferries, yet there was still no sign of warships. The downstream one seemed to have largely silted up, and was now home to a shipyard built into the mud.
They slid gracefully into the busy harbour and touched the jetty once more, Sebastian heaving a sigh of relief, not quite having been sick during their two short journeys. From there they were led through a gate in the city wall, checked only briefly by men in steel-plated coats carrying pole arms. Inside the walls the world was different, and Arnau boggled at the great marble buildings, arches and arcades, columns and towers. Churches seemed to stand at every corner, and each was a grand place of domes and golden crosses, high windows and intricate brickwork. They were led past monuments so ancient that they were likely contemporary with the ruins that poked up through the fabric of Tarragona, yet here were still in use. As they crested the heights, across a busy and perfect forum, he could see the arcades of a stadium, stretching down the hill away from him, an edifice of the most incredible size, grace and complexity.
There was no time to marvel at the place though, for they were led through more gates and arches, past more of the ever-present churches and palaces. The official conversed with Bochard and then delivered them into the hands of another functionary in rich silks. Their horses were taken by another servant, to who knew where, Bochard’s eyes lingering on his precious saddle bags for a long moment, and then this new man led them through the corridors and gardens and finally into a wide room. ‘Wait here,’ he said curtly. ‘I will send for you.’
As he disappeared through a door, Bochard eyed his companions. ‘Good. I had been concerned that our status would not be enough to secure an audience. Whether it be the eminence of our grand master or the emperor’s current need, we are clearly to be seen immediately. In the imperial presence, I will do all the talking. The emperor will only speak Greek. I gather, somewhat to my surprise, that you have some command of the language, but this is not the time for your bumpkin accents. Remain silent, stand proud and try to look holy.’
Arnau and Ramon exchanged another look. Neither of them was keen on the idea of speaking to a foreign emperor anyway. Arnau had had enough difficulty with the emir of Mayūrqa.
They sat in an uncomfortable
silence for a quarter of an hour until finally the door opened once more and a different functionary appeared.
‘Please follow me.’
Along several corridors they went, finally reaching a room where stood three of the most imposing figures Arnau had ever seen. All three wore armour of leather with steel plates stitched to it and leather strops hanging from waist and shoulders, dyed in bright colours. One wore a steel kettle helm and a full face veil of chain mail, his legs wrapped in baggy trousers tucked into steel leg casings. His shield showed a bright sunburst and he held an axe almost as tall as himself. Another wore a helm with a pronounced nose guard and chain coif, mail leggings beneath his coat and a heavy sword at his side. The third wore a skirt of chain to ankle length, with another huge axe over his shoulder. His face was open beneath a conical helmet, and his skin was ruddy and weathered, a great yellow beard covering the bottom half. All three men stood a head taller than any of the visitors. The imperial bodyguard, presumably. Arnau was impressed. Few men would get past these giants to the emperor.
‘Please leave your weapons here,’ the functionary said, his words relayed somewhat unnecessarily by the preceptor as he unbelted his sword and handed it to one of the titanic guards. The two knights and two squires followed suit and, once disarmed, the functionary led them on. They passed through doors and along another bright corridor painted with images of swans, and into a further antechamber where two more of the giant guards stood glowering at them. The functionary opened the next door and escorted them into the great chamber.
The emperor of Byzantium wore clothes of red and gold silk and a purple robe emblazoned with the imperial crest on one shoulder. An intricate jewelled golden crown nestled within his curly dark hair, and his red boots were clearly of the finest leather. He held a sceptre probably worth more than most noble estates.
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