Knight with Armour

by Alfred Duggan

  Arnulf was complaining of their hardships:

  “I do think the leaders might have seen to it that we had some grooms and cooks here with us. After all, what are they for? They are no use in battle, and their job is to make the knights as comfortable as possible before we meet the enemy.”

  “Perhaps they are not fit for a seven-mile march,” answered Roger. “And I don’t agree that they are no use in battle, at least in the sort of battles we have out here; their crossbows can shoot farther than the little horsemen’s bows the Turks use, and if we trained them to it, they could learn to stand firm against a charge from those little ponies. Probably the leaders don’t want to weaken the camp too much. If we are beaten, they might just manage to retreat to Saint Simeon over the open country, if there are enough dismounted knights with them to make them stand firm in their ranks.”

  “Nonsense, my boy,” said Arnulf. “I have seen footmen try to stand against a charge of horse; where I come from the Northumbrians and Scots are always trying to fight us on foot. It may just be possible if they take up a position and refuse to budge from it, but once they get moving the Turks will split them up and cut them down one by one.”

  “They say that the Turks are thirty thousand men,” Roger put in thoughtfully, “and we are seven hundred.”

  “Don’t let that worry you too much. Who says so? Only a few Syrian peasants, who would be quite glad to see the last of us, and who can’t count above ten, anyway. If this country can’t support us pilgrims any better than it has this winter, thirty thousand Turks can’t live on it either, and they are all supposed to have come from this side of the Tigris. Three thousand would be nearer the mark. No, I am a good deal less frightened than I was, now I see the position we have taken up. That Count of Taranto is a cunning warrior with a good eye for country.”

  “Then you think we have a chance of victory?” Roger asked hopefully.

  “Yes, we have a chance; I won’t say more than that. But I tell you that I feel much happier now, before this battle, than when I fought at York, with my eyes and my manhood at stake. If we lose it will be a good clean death; and I need something to wipe out all my sins, as the priests say it will.”

  Roger was not sure on this point; as far as he knew death in battle against the infidel remitted the pains of Purgatory, but did not avail against mortal sin. However, there were no priests in the little striking-force, and no chance of getting Absolution that night, so he did not depress his comrade by contradicting his hopes. They huddled close together, and tried to get warm enough for sleep.

  By the time the first streaks of dawn showed in the eastern sky he had given up the useless attempt, and was walking about to restore his circulation; the jackals stopped howling as the new day appeared, and the birds in the marsh set up a chatter. When full daylight came everybody was wide awake and felt fresh and rested, for the time being; a sleepless night does not tell on hardened warriors until the middle of the day.

  The army was divided into six small “battles”, the universal name for any division of troops, from fifty men to ten thousand. Five of these formed a single line of two ranks each, while the Count of Taranto held the sixth in reserve. Roger was in the second battle from the right, under the immediate command of the Duke of Normandy, and since he had neither lance nor mail breeches he was in the second rank, behind Arnulf de Hesdin; there was a gap of about two hundred yards between each battle, but they had to fill the ground between the river and the lake somehow, and it was the best they could do; everyone knew that two ranks was the absolute minimum depth for a charge. It might have been worse, he reflected; at least he was not in the right-hand battle, which always suffered heavily from being outflanked on its unshielded right side. He noticed what another lanceless knight had done, and busied himself tying the hilt of his sword to the baldric of the scabbard, with a length of cord that he used to picket Blackbird; if his weapon was knocked out of his hand he would have a chance to recover it.

  Each battle was concealed in a hollow of the ground, so that the line was not absolutely straight, and no one could see very far ahead. The skyline was not more than a hundred yards in front of the Duke, and a dismounted knight stood where his head just showed over the top, watching for the enemy. The wildfowl in the marsh were restless, and continuously circled over the strangers who had disturbed them; but it was still the time of the dawn flight, and the Turks might not notice the warning.

  Sunshine was staining the tops of the ridges, but the hidden battles were still in shadow, when they were aware of a steady drumming, pulsing through the puddled clay of the plain; at the same time the scout ran back crouching for a few yards and vaulted on to his horse. He trotted up to the Duke, and Roger, only a few feet away, could hear his report. “Here they come, my lord. The main army is half a mile away, but they have patrols out in front, and they may find us in a few minutes.”

  “Very well,” said Duke Robert, “but we will stay hidden as long as we can. Let us all say a Paternoster and two Ave Marias, then we will ride to the top of the ridge; and when the other battles have shown themselves we will all charge together.”

  Roger closed his eyes, and prayed aloud; it was the best he could do, since there had been no Mass that morning. Many knights did not join in the prayers, busied with getting their equipment in order and tightening their girths; but as a measure of time it was known to all of them, and as one man they advanced up the ridge, knee to knee, and in line. Roger felt the newly risen sun strike full in his face and was blinded for a moment, as Blackbird stopped at the top of the slope. Then he looked again, and saw the enemy; a broad column of horsemen rode through the middle of the defile, more or less on the line of the old Roman road, while nearer the whole space between marsh and river was filled with a loose cloud of horse-archers. There were a great many Turks in sight, but they didn’t look like thirty thousand. A cluster of sparkling lights on the right showed where the Count of Vermandois’ Frenchmen had swung into position, with the low sun reflected from lancepoints and polished helms. Roger crammed his own helm down on his head; in a short time he would have another headache, but that was better than exposing the soft leather top of the hauberk to a Turkish sword. What were they waiting for now? He drew his sword, and his toes curled with impatience; the Turks had seen them, and the column was already beginning to deploy into a wider front. Ah! there were the Flemings on the left; now they must all be in line; how much better I could fight if only I had some breakfast inside me, he thought, as his nervousness made him belch from an empty stomach. Then the Duke waved his lance, the man in front of him bent low in the saddle, and they were all pelting down the hillside, shouting and brandishing their weapons.

  Blackbird stiffened his neck, and plugged along with a wrenching twist of his quarters that Roger could feel up his spine all the way to his ears; there was no checking the horse now, but he was old and sensible, and knew enough to keep clear of the hind legs of the front rank. Roger wondered for a moment why he had no fear of a stumble and fall, which in their close-packed formation would certainly be fatal; he decided that it was because he could not see the ground, hidden by the riders before and on each side of him; there was no chance to swerve to avoid tripping, as they galloped knee to knee, but the dangers were hidden also; in any case, that particular terror came in unexpected gusts, and now it was absent. He kept his eyes on the back of the man in front of him, and gradually sank his head lower as he lifted his shield; his throat was already sore, though he did not know he had been shouting; in this particular “battle” the long-drawled cry of Deus Vult, common to all the pilgrims, had given place to a high-pitched staccato yapping of Dex Aie, the Norman warcry, sharp and keen as a fox’s bark. Then he saw the man in front straighten his legs level with his horse’s shoulder, while his body bent forward till he was in the shape of a horizontal V with his rump sticking out behind; the frenzied horses quickened into a final spurt, and the first Turkish arrows flickered across the sky. There was nothing he c
ould do, wedged into the second rank of a solid mass of galloping flesh, but sit tight and wait for the shock; his eyes, focussed close on his own front rank, did not even pick out the enemy in the middle distance, and he wondered dully why the collision was so long delayed; they seemed to have been charging a long time. Then Blackbird made a sudden leap, jerking him against the cantle of the saddle, and looking down, he saw an overturned pony flash past under his right stirrup; they had met the first fringe of the Turkish horse-archers, but the pace was not checked. The Turkish scouts had attempted to retire on their main body, but they were hampered by their own numbers, and many who had turned too late were caught and overthrown. As the charging knights ploughed on they were gradually slowed up by the frequent collisions, like huntsmen who ride into a bog; it was at a slow trot that they met the main body of the infidels. The enemy scouts had suffered heavy losses, but they had acted as a cushion to their own supports, and when the two armies finally collided the impetus of the Christian charge was lost. Not many warhorses had been brought down, for the Turks, seeing there was no room for their usual tactics, had thrust their little bows into their felt boots and drawn their curved swords; but the front rank had extended into many little packets, as knights sought out individual antagonists, and Blackbird, boring on the bit with the purposeful drive of a horse who runs away at the trot, carried Roger forward until he was on Arnulf’s left, and as far up as anyone in the Duke’s battle.

  The Turks were a solid but everchanging mass of excited ponies and yelling men, as far as his eyes could see, and he felt a sudden nausea from the wave of stink, mutton-fat and sweaty woollen clothes, that came from them; the horses of both sides, all stallions, were squealing and striking out with their forefeet, and uplifted swords and tall fur caps filled the horizon. Roger marked a man who seemed to be within reach on his right front, and cut down with all the strength of his arm, but the Turkish pony bounded sideways, and he nearly toppled from the saddle as he felt a heavy blow on his shield. He dropped the reins, and heaved the heavy five-foot shield outward with all his force; it hit something, but blocked his vision on that side; he swung his sword in a circle, to clear a space, but Blackbird at once pressed forward, and was up on his hind legs, boxing with his forefeet. The horse plunged down again, trampling a Turkish rider, and as he swiped blindly to the right he felt his sword caught on an unmistakable Western shield.

  “Whose side are you on, comrade?” panted Arnulf beside him. “You nearly had me over that time. Come on and kill some Turks. This is the fiercest fight I have ever seen, but it looks as though I shall die unblinded after all.”

  Roger pulled himself together, and kept his sword swinging on the horse’s near side, trusting Arnulf to guard his right; but no man born of woman could wave the knight’s heavy sword at arm’s length for long; when he hit someone the blow sent a shock up his arm to the shoulder, such as a woodman feels when he hits a stout tree trunk with a blunt axe, and when he missed his stroke the weight nearly pulled him from his seat. Then he held his sword obliquely over his head as a guard, and crouching behind his shield let Blackbird do the fighting. Since they had begun to charge, he had kept his spurs rammed into the horse’s side without noticing what he was doing, and he was gripping as tight as he could with his thighs; the maddened warhorse, blood streaming from his flanks, still pressed forward, biting everything he could reach; but he was beginning to tire, and the weight of the armoured rider kept him from rearing on his hind legs. In front, the heavy horses of the big Western knights still pushed back their opponents, but there had been wide gaps between the battles, and now each group was split into fragments; the Turks in the gaps thronged round the flanks and rear, and each body of knights slowly buried itself in a sea of enemies. All lances had been cast away, and swordarms were tired out; the fight was becoming a pushing-match, with few casualties to the enemy, and some Turks were already riding out behind the Christian line, pulling out their bows, and seeking a chance to shoot without hitting their own friends. Soon the pilgrims would come to a stand, and then they would be shot down one by one.

  Few warcries came from the panting and exhausted knights, and Roger was whispering a prayer; a memory of the great abbey-church at Battle flashed through his mind; that was building for the souls of men killed in a mere secular struggle to decide who should spend the taxes of England; what could man build worthy of these pilgrims who were about to die in Syria for the welfare of all the faithful in Christendom? This was the best possible death, and the one he had sworn to face, eighteen months ago in Normandy. With a feeble croak of Deus Vult he shortened his sword and jabbed the blunted end into the eye of a Turkish pony. The whole struggling mass of men and horses was still drifting eastwards, to the narrowest point of the defile between the river and the lake. Now a Turk rode up behind him and cut at his left leg; the skirt of his mail turned the blow, but he realized that it meant that the Duke’s battle was surrounded. He tried awkwardly to look over his left shoulder, always a difficult move for a horseman, but the shield blocked the more usual peep under the armpit; it was never easy for an armoured man to look behind him, since the hauberk fitted too tightly for him to turn his head far; meanwhile he lowered his shield, so that its tail covered his left ankle. By twisting as much as possible he could just make out the Turk, who had now lifted his sword for a cut at Blackbird’s quarters; driving in his left spur he swung the horse round and presented his shielded side to the new attack from the rear. Yet if the knights must now form a front in all directions they would be brought to a standstill, and that would be the end. He lifted the heavy sword in the air, with a twinge from his aching shoulder, and the Turk pulled back out of reach.

  But something was happening behind the Christian rear; the Turks there were massing together and crowding into the intervals between the battles as though they wished to rejoin their comrades in front, and as they drew together into separate clumps Roger saw a thin scattered line of armoured men galloping towards him; they carried lances, so they could not have been fighting hand to hand already, and he realized that this must be Taranto and the reserve.

  For a moment Roger could see the battle as a whole, since Amulf and his companions of the Duke’s battle had advanced a few yards, and there was no enemy within his immediate reach. He saw the Turks behind him riding hard to get out of the trap, he saw the Italians fall upon them as they piled up, a struggling crowd of kicking horses and frightened men, in the gaps of the battleline, and he heard the slow-drawled chant of Deus Vult. Then he picked up his reins, and flung his horse at a gallop into the flank of a party of infidels who were riding by on the left. In a few moments every horse on the field was galloping eastward in a blinding spray of mud and small stones, pilgrims and Turks mixed together without rank or order, striking with their swords as they raced for the open country beyond the lake. It was the pursuit after Dorylaeum over again, but this time the enemy had no start. The Turks knew the country, and their ponies were always easier to control than the warhorses of the West, so they kept on the main road to Harenc, and the pilgrims thundered among them; all the horses were excited or terrified, and ready to gallop till they dropped. Roger was surprised to see that there was little fighting, for swordarms were tired, and the riders needed to give all their attention to keeping their beasts on their feet; pilgrims and Turks galloped together like a herd of frightened cattle. He knew that at that speed he could never get his sword back into its scabbard, though he longed to have both hands free for the reins; so he rested the blade on his shoulder, and concentrated on guiding his horse. There were many collisions, and every horse that checked at a ditch or a body in the path was likely to be struck into by ironshod hoofs from behind; if they came down the Turks were trampled to death, but the knights in their armour could lie under their great shields, as every jouster was taught to do, with a good chance of safety.

  When at last they were past the lake the Turks might have scattered, and at least the well-mounted would have escaped; but they
were struck with panic, and had no thought but to reach the walls of Harenc, nine miles away. Both armies remained together in one stampeding herd of horses, leaving behind them a wake of flattened and disfigured bodies. Roger was in an agony of fear. This mad gallop across unknown country in a mob of enemies raised all his terror of a sudden fall; but it was hopeless to attempt to pull up, and his comrades would have seen his efforts if he had tried, so he continued, hunched in the saddle behind his shield, with a grin of despair frozen on his face. Blackbird was a very good warhorse indeed, worthy of the Duke of Normandy, and he kept his feet admirably in the throng; after four or five miles he and the other horses began to tire, and the pace slackened. Roger found himself riding with an Italian knight on his left, whose lance kept a space free on that side, and a Turk on his right; the infidel had thrown away bow and sword in his flight, but he had a short knife in his right hand, and glared fiercely from side to side; he was visibly getting his courage back, and might decide to stab Blackbird at any moment. Roger lifted his sword, and leant over with his weight in the right stirrup; the Turk’s nerve broke, and with a squeal of terror he slipped off his horse on the offside, to vanish under the hoofs behind. Roger had an inspiration; letting go his sword, which then dangled from his waist, he reached out and caught the pony’s bridle; soon he transferred the reins to his left hand, and rode on leading the captured horse. The success of this move brought a glow to his heart, and the fear which had controlled him vanished. Other knights saw what he had done, and soon were catching ponies for themselves; after the next three miles nearly every Christian had a led horse beside him.