Mamluk

by J. K. Swift

  Then the barrage stopped. The morale of the brethren peaked and waned in those minutes like a rowboat fighting the surf. Foulques silently praised God when the Saracen horns and drums finally sounded and the siege towers began their short, ponderous journey to the wall.

  A deep rumbling came from the south, followed by the shouts and screams of men. Foulques, Glynn, and several Schwyzers ran to where the wall curved south to get a better look. A cloud of dust hampered their view, but the cloud itself was enough to tell Foulques what had happened. The Tower of the English was gone, felled by the devilry of sappers. Foulques stepped from one side of the wall to the other, trying to catch a glimpse of Grandison and his men. But with the dust in the air he could see nothing.

  “Back to your posts!” the marshal called out. “Fire bearers, spread out!”

  Foulques gave up looking for Grandison. There was nothing he could do for him now.

  He ran back to his post amongst the Schwyzers. A few brown robes to his left was Glynn. Jimmy and Roderic were spaced between the young sergeants on his right. The beardless lad next to him, Lorenz, was fixated on the siege tower bearing down on their position at a pace much faster than its tall, unwieldy form should have been able to attain. Foulques gave him a firm grasp of the shoulder to shake him from his reverie, then reached into the wooden box at his feet and pulled out two earthenware jars stoppered with cork. A wax-dipped wick dangled off their necks.

  “Here, Brother Lorenz, take one of these. Throw it exactly where and when I throw mine. And be very careful not to drop it on our side of the wall. I would rather not have my boots melted onto my feet. I suspect I will want to take them off after this day.”

  “Yes, Commander.” Lorenz took the acorn-shaped jar carefully with both hands, like it was an egg containing a baby chick trying to peck its way to freedom. Foulques gave the boy another squeeze of the shoulder, hoping to instill a sense of confidence he was not sure he himself felt. The gesture did not have the desired effect. At his commander’s touch, Lorenz tensed up and stared holes in the jar for fear he might drop it.

  “Get ready,” Foulques said. The tower paused twenty feet from the wall. It shook as men began to climb up its back side to get to the platform. It had a drawbridge style door covered in a patch-work of wet bull hides and heavy canvas soaked in some kind of fire retardant mixture.

  “Remember,” Foulques said. “We want the fire inside the tower, not on it.”

  The tower stopped trembling. Its invisible pushers chanted out a work rhythm beneath their cover and the weighted down tower began moving forward once again. Lorenz swallowed hard and looked at Foulques.

  “How many men are in there?”

  “The more the better,” Foulques said, hefting the jar of Greek fire.

  Shouting and screams came from different sections along the wall, but Foulques kept his eyes on the tower before him. It stopped two strides from the wall. Before they had been re-purposed, the bull hides had been soaking in tanning vats and the smell of urine made his eyes water.

  “Hold steady,” Foulques said, more to himself than anyone.

  He lit his jar with a nearby lantern and Lorenz did the same. There was no more grunting from below and none of the defenders talked. The sound of far-off fighting was in the background, but in the immediate vicinity there was only complete silence. A warm breeze passed over the wall and the tower let out a slow, almost soothing, creak as it swayed hypnotically before them.

  With no warning, the drawbridge began to fall. Slowly at first, until its weight caught up with it, and then it came on fast, crashing down upon the wall like the breaching of a whale. It bounced once and came to a solid rest straddling the crenellations.

  There was a pause, and then the battle cries of the Saracens shook the tower, the wall, and every man on it. They streamed across the bridge with a mad determination, the whites of their eyes as large as the glaring sun overhead.

  “Not yet!” Foulques shouted. He moved back, away from the bridge, pulling Lorenz with him. “Wait for the tower to fill.”

  He was not sure the boy could hear him, so he kept a tight grip on his wrist.

  “Ready… now!”

  He lobbed his earthenware jar deep inside the tower where it shattered against the side wall with a satisfying, musical crash. Instantly, blue flames erupted and began to spread. When Lorenz’s jar hit the floor nearby, the two fires snaked toward each other and joined together as one. Men soon found parts of their armor or clothing aflame and the more they beat at it, the more it spread. Three other jars found their way inside, and within seconds the entire platform was engulfed in fire. Flaming figures began jumping off the backside of the tower trying to escape their plight, but once Greek fire had you in its grasp, it was nearly impossible to extinguish.

  Foulques sent Lorenz to help fight those who had gained the wall, while he used up the remainder of his jars on another siege tower. This one failed to burn so spectacularly, and a steady trickle of Saracens were still able to cross from it. Foulques drew his sword and met them at the end of their bridge.

  He sent man after man toppling off the unstable walkway before there were too many in front of him and he had to retreat further back onto the wall. Glynn joined him there and they fought shoulder to shoulder.

  Foulques was aware of more towers appearing up and down the wall. Several were in flames and one collapsed, falling against the wall and sliding down it onto the Saracen soldiers below. The scent of urine was no longer in the air. The winds had turned much more noxious.

  Glynn’s sword whistled above Foulques’s head and struck something behind him. “Look to your arse!”

  Foulques half turned his head just in time to see a Saracen thrust at him with a straight sword. He twisted his body but the blade still rammed into his chest. The combination of his movement and the protection of the metal ringlets of his mail stopped the blade. His life was still intact but he could feel the bruises already spreading over his chest. He would feel it tomorrow. If he felt anything at all.

  More and more enemies appeared on the wall and Foulques and Glynn were forced to fight back to back to protect themselves. Their goal was no longer to deny the Saracens the wall. They fought for their lives.

  The trumpets of the Order began sounding on all sides. They blared away for many seconds before Foulques and Glynn risked a glance at one another over their shoulders.

  “The marshal sounds the retreat,” Foulques said.

  But it was not only the Hospitaller trumpets that rang out. In the distance, other horns could be heard coming from the French, the Teutonics, the Cypriots, and even the Templars in the north. It was a general retreat. They were relinquishing the outer wall.

  “Aye!” Glynn caught a man’s blade with his and then ran him through. He lifted his bloody sword and pointed through the opening he had just created. Roderic and Lorenz were sprinting toward the nearest tower’s door. “This way. We must gain the inner wall before they close the gates!”

  And so, along with everyone else, they fled. Slowly, at first, for disbelief numbed the minds and muscles of many of the men. But as more and more Saracens appeared on the wall, the horns sounding the retreat grew frantic in their notes. The Christians sought out those towers still standing and fled down their staircases, or began the treacherous climb down the ruins of others. Once on the ground, it was a mad run for the nearest gate in the inner wall. For every man knew that at any moment the portcullis of that gate could be dropped, cutting them off from the city and leaving them to be cut up by the Saracens’ curved blades.

  Once on the ground, Foulques and Glynn joined a group of Hospitaller sergeants who had formed a protective guard around the grand master and marshal.

  “Form up!” the marshal called out. “Crossbowmen to the front!”

  They waited there for several minutes, and a few more Hospitallers and a couple of displaced Teutonic Knights joined their group. They became the targets of Saracen arrows and the marshal directed
the unit to retreat orderly to a small gate a short distance south of their position. As they took cover from the Saracen bowmen in the open gate, the grand master called Roderic and Jimmy to his side and instructed them to take a half dozen men and hold the opening for as long as they dared. A dozen of the city’s spear men were there as well, but Foulques could tell by the oblique looks of the grand master that he thought they would close the portcullis yesterday if they were given a choice. Looking at the trembling hands and wide eyes of the city guards, Foulques had to agree.

  “When you are done here, and the gate is closed, leave it to them and join us on the wall,” the grand master said.

  “Where will you be, sir?” Roderic asked.

  “We will ascend through the Accursed Tower. And God help us, pray it serves us better than it did Judas.”

  A short run later and the small group of Hospitallers stood at the entrance to the Accursed Tower. It was a pragmatic choice on the grand master’s behalf, to choose this tower to gain the inner wall, for directly across from it on the outer wall were the ruins of the Tower of Saint Nicholas. The enemy would be coming hard through that breach.

  Foulques paused and took one last look around the streets of Acre. He had been on the walls of Acre thousands of times in his life. But never had he gotten there by means of the Accursed Tower. He avoided it on purpose. For somewhere inside, coins were minted that had passed into the hands of Judas to buy the betrayal of his Lord Jesus.

  Foulques hung back and waited. It did not take long for the grand master, marshal, knights, and sergeants to all pass through the narrow opening and begin appearing on the wall above. Foulques closed his eyes and said a quiet prayer, keeping his breathing shallow to lessen the pain in his chest.

  Then he too entered the Accursed Tower, the birthplace of the ultimate treachery.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Two hours after the second wall was secured, the grand master called Foulques to attend him at the Hospitaller compound. As he had promised earlier, Grand Master Villiers had managed to gain passage for Foulques on a ship. Foulques had almost refused him outright, but when he heard who the ship’s owner was, a plan began to form in his mind. To the grand master’s surprise, Foulques accepted his orders without question.

  As expected, the docks were swarming with people when Foulques arrived. He could hardly stand being there, for equal measures of desperation and greed assailed his senses on every level. A woman in fine clothing stepped up onto a barrel and began shouting.

  “We have room for two! Arabic gold bezants only!”

  Less than a minute later she had a group clamoring around her legs shouting at her. Negotiations were swift and to the point, ending with her pointing at a single noble-man. She descended from the barrel, took the man by his sleeve, and pulled him through the crowd as people cursed them both from behind.

  Foulques wondered how he was going to find Grandison in this madhouse, but in the end, it was not difficult. There was a group of English soldiers restricting access to the walkway leading to the main wharf. When he questioned them, they told him at which berth Grandison could be found. Minutes later he saw Grandison helping load a group of women and children into a large rowboat. Grandison’s face was a mask of welts and cuts, but he was still moving better than most knights half his age. His eyes lit up when he saw Foulques, and he grabbed him in a rough embrace.

  “Glad to see you made it off the wall,” Foulques said. “I feared the worst when I saw your tower go down.”

  “God smiled upon me yet again, I suppose. Seems hardly fair I should get let off the hook when so many young lads under my care did not.”

  “That was the Saracens’ doing,” Foulques said. “Not yours.”

  Grandison looked at Foulques. He nodded slowly. “I know it. But it does not make their loss any easier. Edward entrusted me with three hundred men and I will be taking less than a third of them home to their families.”

  A silence followed on both their parts, until Foulques broke it. “My weapons master tells me the English have no families. He says whenever room is made in their crowded cities for one, someone waits for the tide to go out and then turns over a rock. Whatever is there crawls up on land and swears fealty to the king.”

  “And a longbow is thrust into his slime-encrusted hand, I suppose.” Grandison shook his head and laughed, but Foulques felt it was forced for his benefit.

  “Something like that,” Foulques said. “In all earnestness, I heard the fighting was fiercer at your location than anywhere else when we lost the wall. Some say it was a miracle any of you made it.”

  Grandison gave him a doubtful look. “You think my archers are here because God called down a miracle?”

  “I know better than to give God credit for the work of men.”

  Grandison nodded and put his hand on the younger man’s shoulder. “If you will excuse me, Brother Foulques, I have preparations to make. We are leaving our horses behind and taking on as many passengers as we can.”

  Foulques looked at the rowboat now fully loaded with former citizens of Acre. “You are a good man, Sir Grandison.”

  “The sultan will definitely think so when he gets my horses.” He raised his hands at his sides. “And unfortunately, even if I took my mounts, there would still be a lot of empty space.”

  “When is departure?”

  “Two ships will sail for Cyprus this evening. The other, tomorrow morning. I will see you here for that one, then?”

  “About that,” Foulques began. “I know Grand Master Villiers said I would be joining you, but I am hoping you would be open to accepting someone in my place.”

  His eyes narrowed. “What are you planning, lad?”

  “I need to remain here for a while longer.”

  Grandison shook his head. “It is time to leave, Foulques. I can feel it. And when I get a feeling like that I act upon it. Even King Henry is making plans to leave.”

  “I appreciate your concern.”

  Grandison looked down at the wooden planks of the wharf and thought for a moment. “You are asking me to anger the Grand Master of the Hospitallers. That is not something I favor.”

  “Tell him I did not show up, if he asks. But I would wager that scenario will never come about. There will be more pressing matters occupying his mind very soon.”

  “So, you are a betting man, Brother Foulques. I am shocked! Tell me, who is this man to take your place?”

  “Her name is Najya Malouf.” He could have said more, but he did not know what that would be exactly.

  “A woman?”

  “Yes. A friend I have known for my entire life.”

  Grandison laughed. “My, my. You are full of surprises.”

  “It would mean a lot to me if you would see her safely to Cyprus.”

  Something in Foulques’s tone, or expression, slowly robbed Grandison of the mirth in his face. Foulques endured an uncomfortable silence.

  “She means that much to you?” Grandison asked quietly.

  “More.”

  “I have room for you both. Why not escort her yourself?”

  Foulques shook his head. “I cannot. But I can entrust that to you.”

  “I had to ask,” Grandison said. “Very well. Tell her to come here tomorrow and to look for the English colors. She should seek me out or any one of my captains.”

  He pulled off his glove and worked at a ring on his finger until it slid off. He handed it to Foulques. “This was given to me by King Edward. All of his commanders have one and the men will recognize it instantly. Tell her to show it to any one of my captains. I will warn them to watch for her.”

  A breeze blew across the water at the exact moment Grandison finished speaking. It provided an instant relief from the sweltering heat and took with it the constant dread and fear that had been eating away at Foulques since he had first learned Acre was under siege. His city would most likely fall, but Foulques swore he would not live to see that. And that was fine with him. For God
had answered his prayers.

  “Thank you,” Foulques said. As much as he always protested whenever Vignolo called him a monk, Foulques found himself making the sign of the cross in front of Sir Otto de Grandison.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  As Foulques climbed the steps of the Accursed Tower, the sun gave one last burst of red brilliance, before it was quenched in its entirety by the Mid-Earth Sea.

  After seeing Grandison at the docks, Foulques had gone straight to Najya with the news he had found her a ship. She would go to Cyprus and seek out Brother Alain at the hospice. He would look after her until Foulques returned.

  In an unspoken conspiracy, they accepted that last part as their truth. Foulques lingered there at Najya’s small table, drinking tea and sharing memories, for the rest of the afternoon. Finally, it was time to go.

  The grayness of dusk lasted mere seconds and Foulques found himself on the wall once again. The evening too seemed to be in a hurry, but the night itself was another story. When all that separates one from a hostile army is fifty yards of open darkness, it makes for a fitful rest.

  As soon as the Saracens took the first wall they began to rain down arrows on the Christians as they scrambled to fortify the second wall. Because the outer wall was higher than the inner, they had a good angle of attack and could cover most of the walkway. The only place the defenders had protection was if they pressed themselves up tight to the wall and hid behind the crenellations. It was possible to move along the length of the wall without being too exposed, but it was awkward and nerve-wracking.

  Foulques did not know how many men had fallen in the five weeks they had been fighting, but if the other factions had suffered losses like the Hospitallers, than he estimated there could be no more than five or six thousand men still able to use a sword. It was just as well they had lost the outer wall. They no longer had enough men to man it properly. At least now they did not have so much wall to cover. And the catapults would no longer be much of a threat, for they would have to go through the outer wall, which was now manned by Saracens, before it could do any damage to the defenders’ last line of defense.