Mamluk

by J. K. Swift

  Foulques wondered if others were having similar thoughts to his. In the cold hours before dawn, did all tired, desperate men clutch at hope like it was the last rays of a warm sun on a winter day? Did their troubled minds create hope when surely none existed?

  He looked to his left, at the marshal sleeping on his back with his fingers interlaced upon his chest. When darkness had fallen, the defenders had been given a reprieve from the deadly enemy arrows and the marshal was keen on taking advantage of that to get some rest.

  “They will do one of two things, come dawn,” he had said. “Either launch an all out attack on the wall, or pretend they have brains, and whittle our numbers down with their bows from above.”

  The marshal did the prudent thing and called up extra crossbows and bolts. There seemed to be a surplus of crossbows this far along in the siege; it was the bolts that were lacking. Two or three men were squeezed behind every crenellation along the wall. Foulques was not quite sure how he ended up being paired with the marshal.

  After the crossbows were distributed, Marshal Clermont declared he would take first watch and Foulques should try to get some sleep. Lying there on the cold stones of the wall, Foulques did his best. He was exhausted and he kept his eyes closed, but when the marshal tapped him on the shoulder to take his turn at watch, Foulques doubted he had slept more than a few minutes, if at all.

  “If you get killed while I am sleeping, try to do it loudly so I wake up,” the marshal said as he lay down.

  His words did not have the usual sharp edge to them. Foulques could have been mistaken, for there was only the light of the stars to go by, but he thought he saw a half-smile on the marshal’s face. The darkness took twenty years off his face and Foulques was instantly reminded of the Mathieu de Clermont he had looked up to as a youth. Foulques had been the envy of all the other young knights when the marshal had invited him to come train with his select few.

  “Foulques,” the marshal said suddenly.

  “Yes?”

  “Quit staring at me. I am not the one that is going to kill you.”

  “No?”

  “I do not need to, since you are so intent on doing it yourself. Do not forget you could be on Cyprus, in a warm bed, at this very moment.”

  The marshal’s words had the tone of banter to them, but there was a deeper layer as well. The marshal had still not forgiven him for coming to Acre from Cyprus.

  “Can I ask you something, Marshal?”

  He grunted, which surely meant yes.

  “Was it my uncle who suggested creating the admiral position within our ranks?”

  “What are you talking about, Foulques?”

  “Did he suggest to you and the grand master that I should be admiral?”

  The marshal said nothing. Foulques nodded in the darkness. It was as he thought.

  “And why would he have done that?” Marshal Clermont asked.

  “To protect me. To make sure I was not in Acre when the Mamluks attacked.”

  The marshal laughed. “Well, if that was his intention, he does not know you very well.”

  Probably not, Foulques thought. How could he? They had not seen each other but once in eight years.

  “I am going to sleep,” the marshal said. “Remember. Gurgle and thrash around a lot if you get killed. Good night.”

  Dawn came and went but no Mamluk attack came. Even though their wall was lower than the one the Saracens now controlled, Foulques could still see the army encampment because of the slope of the land. Thousands of tiny spirals of smoke lifted into the morning sky. Cooking fires. Foulques heard, and felt, his stomach growl as he pictured some Mamluk warrior holding a spit of meat, its juices dripping into one of those fires, getting ready for just another day of work.

  “Foulques!” A voice turned gravelly by the night called out on his right. Jimmy the Neckless held up a leather wineskin. Jimmy sat with his broad back pushed up against the wall. He had his crenellation all to himself, for there was no room for another man.

  Foulques nodded and held up his hands. Jimmy lobbed the skin toward him. Three arrows slipped through the air on all sides of it as it began its downward fall. Foulques clapped the wineskin together in his hands and inspected it. He gave Jimmy the all right sign, removed its stopper, and took a long drink. He noticed the marshal leaning around the edge of the wall for a quick view of the enemy.

  “Looks like they have decided what option to pursue,” he mumbled.

  Foulques offered him the wineskin, which he gladly accepted. He took a long swig, nodded appreciatively, and then took one more for good measure. Then he called out to the two men next to him. He lobbed the skin to them and watched two arrows narrowly miss it.

  “You remember how to operate one of those monstrosities?” He pointed down at the crossbow beside Foulques.

  Foulques answered by using his goat’s foot lever to draw back the string and lock it in place. He loaded in a bolt and looked at the marshal.

  “Say the word, Marshal, and that wineskin is as good as dead.”

  One of Marshal Clermont’s eyes almost twitched out of his head before he realized Foulques was not serious. “The shots came from a position directly in front of Brother James.”

  Foulques nodded. He rolled onto his stomach and pushed his crossbow along the stone walkway until he could see around his crenellation and had a good view of the outer wall. Being higher, the enemy bowmen had a superior position, but Foulques had the better weapon for this particular contest. The Saracens usually used a composite bow made of horn and wood. It was short, with curved limbs that made it very powerful. But to loose an arrow, the archer must see his target, draw the bow, and release it, all within a few seconds. The draw weights of these bows were too heavy for a man to draw his arrow back and hold it until a target appeared. But with his crossbow already fully drawn and loaded, Foulques could do precisely that.

  He trained it on the wall and waited.

  “They will be passing it along in three, two, one,” Clermont said.

  A Mamluk came into view to the left of where Foulques was aiming. He made the necessary adjustment. Foulques flipped up the tickler on his weapon just as the archer was coming to full draw. The morning sun glinted off the wooden vanes of the crossbow bolt as it glided across the distance from one wall to the other. It took the man in the face before he released his arrow. The violent shock dislodged the arrow from his string. The force of the fully drawn bow being released with no arrow in it to absorb that force, caused the bow’s limbs to explode into several pieces. The Mamluk staggered and fell off the wall to the killing field below.

  Jimmy the Mouth’s voice cut through the morning’s silence. “Yes! Never shoot at another man’s wine you godless bastards!”

  Other taunts followed. Even the marshal had been taken in by the simple moment, for he clapped Foulques on the shoulder. “Nice shot, Foulques. We needed that one.”

  That one, and a hundred thousand more just like it, thought Foulques.

  The marshal had been right. There would be no attack on the wall that day, but many men on both sides would die all the same. Thousands of arrows filled the sky throughout the day. Not all at once, but in ones and twos, as each side tried to best the enemy from afar.

  For the first half of the day, it was a welcome change for Foulques and the other Hospitallers, for they enjoyed a definite advantage shooting their crossbows from behind cover. But stocks of bolts were running low, and by midday, the marshal gave the order that only one man of every two should employ his weapon. By nightfall, the game of inches had become old, and the morale of the men began to wane.

  Darkness came, and found Foulques and the marshal, once again, taking turns trying to sleep. But the sounds along the outer wall this night were far different, and much more disconcerting than the night before. Some time after dark, the enemy had brought in thousands of laborers with picks, axes, shovels, and beasts of burden. On the far side of the outer wall, lanterns were set and the work began.
Shielded from the Christians’ ranged weapons by the outer wall, the Saracens were able to go about their task with relative impunity. Occasionally, a man would scream as he earned himself a bolt or an arrow because he stepped into a gap he should not have, but for the most part, the Christians could only stare helplessly at the long, demonic shadows of the infidels as they proceeded to tear great gaps in the outer wall. Wherever there were wooden gates, they set them aflame in place or tore them from their hinges and burned them in bonfires. There was no attempt to preserve anything.

  The purpose of the Mamluk army was clear: they were preparing for an all out assault on the inner wall. They had no intention of claiming the city for their own. They would kill every Christian within, enslave who they wished, and burn Acre to the ground. And they would do it at dawn.

  “Foulques. I know you are not asleep,” Marshal Clermont said. He sat propped up against the wall in his usual spot. Foulques was lying on his back with his eyes closed, listening to oxen and men tearing the walls down around his home. Of course he was not asleep.

  “I need to tell you something.”

  “I am awake,” Foulques said.

  The marshal grunted. It was long moments before he spoke. “It was I who demanded we create an admiral position in the Order. And it was I who insisted you be chosen for the role.”

  “You?”

  “We have sent a messenger, but as of yet, Guillaume does not even know the admiral position exists.”

  This made no sense, Foulques thought. He was so sure it had been his uncle…

  “But why would we need an admiral? We do not even have a fleet.”

  “Not yet. But if the Order is to survive, we must. This war will not end when Acre has fallen. And when the infidels have taken all our land, there is only one place it can continue.”

  “I can understand that,” Foulques said, “but with our past, why would you choose me for the position?”

  He heard the marshal sigh. It was dark, but Foulques could tell Clermont was looking at him.

  “Do you think I hate you? Is that it?”

  Foulques did not answer.

  “I hated your uncle, for a time. I hated him because he took you away from me, Foulques. And I hated myself, for thinking I could have done a better job of raising you than Guillaume did. But I could never hate you.”

  After a long pause, Marshal Clermont spoke in a voice just above a whisper. “In the end, he did all right, your uncle. He did all right.”

  The marshal said no more, but Foulques heard him exhale, and strangely, with that sound, a peace washed over Foulques. Clermont was done talking, and Foulques did not know what to say. So the two of them sat there in silence, trying to enjoy the moment and ignore the sounds of the oxen, the picks and the shovels, and the occasional scream of a dying man who had stepped into the light.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  “Admiral? Admiral?”

  Foulques was aware of small hands tugging at his armor, attempting to rouse him from his sleep. Not that that was what he was actually doing, for these days his rest consisted of a trance-like state where he hovered somewhere between sleep and wakefulness. He was not sure he would ever sleep again.

  Foulques opened his eyes to see a young boy, his dirty face lit by nothing but moonlight, was inches from his own.

  “What is it?”

  “I am to give you this. He said you would know what it meant. He also said do not lose it. You might have need of it again some day.”

  The boy pushed something small and hard into his hand.

  “Who said that?”

  But the boy was already moving away through the darkness. He disappeared so quickly Foulques thought it may have been a dream. But he squeezed his hand and felt the hard lump in his palm. He took it between two fingers and held it up to the stars. It was a ring. A ring of the English king.

  Najya was safe. For the first time in many nights, Foulques slept.

  Foulques was woken by drums in the cold, pre-light hours, when the desert dwellers say only the dead walk the earth. The first thing he did was to check the pouch on his belt for Grandison’s ring. It was still there. He had not imagined the boy in the night. He could have lifted the world.

  He rose to face a dawn that was two hours late in coming. Wave after wave of Saracen troops gathered against the eastern horizon and the dust billowing up from the feet of man, horse, and camel rose into the air and choked out the sun.

  Foulques joined Marshal Clermont at the wall. Together, they cautiously peered out from either side of the crenellation that had been their salvation for the previous two nights. There were still Saracen archers on the outer wall, but they had not fired a single arrow since first light. Someone had ordered them not to, for that same someone wanted the Christians to witness the force that assembled against them.

  A new, deep boom began to sound and echo across the plain. It grew in volume and Foulques found his shoulders involuntarily rolling forward as the sound hit him in the chest and penetrated deep within. The hairs on the back of his neck and hands stood upright. Out of the great wall of dust came a line of camels, at least three hundred of them, with massive drums strapped to either side. Their riders were dressed entirely in black. Their flowing robes fluttered around them and masks covered the lower halves of their faces, leaving only the slits of their eyes exposed. Each man carried a long stick with a fattened head. With a wide circular movement of his arm, he would pound first one drum and then circle his arm high into the air, letting it bounce off the drum on the other side of the camel. The long-legged beasts lurched ahead in their seemingly clumsy manner, their necks reaching forward and back with every stride.

  And behind them marched the army of Islam. Banners and flags held high, trumpeters blaring their instruments, colorful silks floating on the wind. The line of men stretched the entire length of Acre’s remaining wall and extended deeper than the eye could see.

  Shouts rang up and down the defenders’ wall as knights relayed the orders of their commanders. The Templars defended the north wall, the Hospitallers a long section south of them up to the Accursed Tower. To the south of the Hospitallers were the Knights of Syria, and the Leper Knights from the Order of Saint Lazarus, and beside them was the Teutonic Order. Interspersed throughout were the city militia and a mix of Christian men-at-arms from all nations.

  But at this stage, day forty-three of the siege, most of the defenders were not knights or trained men-at-arms. They were merchants and shopkeepers, fathers and husbands who hoped to buy enough time for their families to escape.

  “Look,” Marshal Clermont said. Foulques could barely hear him, but he followed his finger to the center of the approaching army. The troops directly in front of the Hospitaller line. “Those are the Mamluk elite, their most hardened troops. All massed together in one spot.” He shook his head and his eyes narrowed. “They will attack all along the wall, to spread out our forces, but the middle section of the wall, right here, is their true target.”

  He stepped back and shouted to get his men’s attention. “Knights of Saint John!”

  “The heathens think this is the weak point in the city’s defenses!” He raised his voice even more. “You hear that, Hospitallers? The heathen think we, God’s Warriors, are the weak point of the Kingdom of Jerusalem! What say you to that? I, for one, have words for their unholy sultan: We are the Kingdom! And God knows it!”

  The nearby Hospitaller knights and sergeants raised their swords and screamed in defiance. Foulques was swept up in their exuberance and he began shouting his voice ragged. Further down the wall, though they could not have heard the marshal’s words, more men joined their own voices to that of their brethren. In times of war, it was not the words that held the most meaning.

  The trumpets and drums began to lose the battle against the voices of men. The camels stopped moving forward and the sea of men flowed around them and charged toward the city, screaming for all they were worth. Foulques let loose a battle cry of his
own just to see if he could hear his own voice. It was a futile effort.

  From his vantage point, Foulques could no longer see open ground between the outer wall and the enemy. Seconds later, Saracens began streaming through all the gates, holes, nooks, and crannies of the outer wall. Thousands of ladders, which must have been brought in under cover of darkness, suddenly appeared. The wall shook under Foulques’s feet. On the other side of the Accursed Tower, the Teutonic Knights were already locked in battle with hundreds of men on the wall. Looking north, the Templars too were engaged. Foulques hefted his crossbow and searched out a target. But no one was there.

  A few strides away, Marshal Clermont had a strange look on his face. Foulques could not hear him, but he knew what he was thinking, for Foulques had the same question in his mind.

  Where are the Mamluks?

  Foulques stepped forward and leaned around the crenellation cautiously, expecting to see a ladder full of Mamluks. But not a single man was there. Yet he could feel the wall sway with the weight of the attackers north and south. He looked up and saw the Accursed Tower also tremble. It was the slightest movement, but it was there, and in that moment, he knew why no Mamluk had set foot on the wall.

  Sappers.

  It was the last thought to go through his mind before the world spun a thousand times in a second, and hurled him tumbling, over and over, through darkness. Gone were the sounds of battle and men’s voices. All that remained was the darkness, punctuated again and again by pain, and the crashing roar of what sounded like the massive waterfall at the edge of the world.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  The last thing Foulques felt like doing was opening his eyes. His body felt like he had been run over by a team of horses pulling a cart completely loaded with casks of wine. But he could hear shouts and voices around him. Some he recognized, but they were oddly out of place. Like Kas the Baker. What was he doing on the wall?