by Judith Tarr
Guy looked away from him, biting his lip, worrying at his beard. But not, dear God, in indecision. He was more set than ever upon his course. It was fear that swayed him; and temptation.
“Hear the voice of God’s Adversary,” said the Templar, buzzing in his ear as the strangeness, rising anew, buzzed in Gwydion’s mind. Yet it was not from the Templar that it came. It was all about them, throbbing in them, robbing him of wits and will.
“No!” said Guy. “No. I will take nothing from you except your oath. There will be no magic in this fight.”
Gwydion’s hands ached. They were knotted, clenched tight. “My lord. Will you not reconsider?”
“You won’t witch me into it,” said Guy. “I won’t let you. I need you and your men, but not as much as that.”
“Are you asking me to leave you?”
Guy blinked rapidly. “You said you’d fight for me. But not with sorcery. I won’t endanger our immortal souls.”
“Even to save your lives?”
“Damnation is eternal,” said the Templar.
“Fight for me,” said Guy. “But not as—your kind—fight.”
“Our kind.” Gwydion’s mouth was bitter. “I gave you my word that I would not enchant you. I swore before your court that this is your war; that I will aid but never seek to command. Both oath and promise have force to bind me. And yet, my lord—”
Guy had heard all that he wished to hear. “Good, then. We need you, you know that. As long as our souls are safe...” He stopped, shook his head. “Of course they are. You aren’t a devil. Will you excuse us now? There’s more to do if we’re to march by morning.”
Gwydion stood still. There was no yielding in the man; no hope of it. Gwydion’s own word had bound him, his honor and his temper between them, colluding in this folly.
Aidan was a banked fire behind him. What Aidan would do, he knew too well. Loose the name of his anger. Blaze up in white light. Show them truly what it was that they feared, and what they had renounced, and what they would gain from it.
That was Aidan’s way. Gwydion could not follow it. If that made him a weakling, then so be it.
He turned on his heel. In one long stride he was out of the tent.
Aidan was face to face with him. His expression must have been appalling: even Aidan checked a little at the sight of it.
“The king has spoken,” Aidan said with bitter irony. “Our task is simply to obey.”
“And to do what we may to head disaster aside.”
Gwydion had his temper in hand at last. The barons were waiting, knowing from his face that he had failed, but in their human fashion insisting that he set it in words. “I can do nothing,” he said. “The king refuses to hear me. Even I can do no other than he commands.”
“Then God help us all,” said Humphrey of Toron.
o0o
God seemed far away from that bitter march. The heat of the night gave way to the furnace heat of the day. They had taken all the water that they might, but thirty thousand of them, in high summer, under the hammer that was the sun, needed an ocean to keep themselves and their horses from thirst. They had nothing approaching an ocean; no wagons, no barrels to carry water in. Only flasks for the men and skins for the horses, barely enough for a day’s march.
It was bad, Aidan thought, but not quite intolerable. Not yet. He had his men on strict orders to waste no water; to drink only when he commanded. They marched in silence, with none of the joyful clamor that usually hung about an army on its way to a battle. No one sang to set the pace; the trumpets were silent, the drums mute. When a stallion screamed, down the line, some of the men started, and one fell out of formation.
He scrambled back in again before Aidan could do more than glance at him. At least they did not have to breathe the army’s dust: they were in the van, just behind Count Raymond. The king was farther back, in the center; the rearguard was the Templar’s.
They crossed the plain of Sepphoris with its dry scrub and its sere grasses, no tree, no water, not even a stone to cast a patch of shade. The ground was rough, treacherous with stones and hollows. They scrambled and stumbled more than they marched; the horses were hard put to keep their footing. It was like a passage in hell: for every step forward, two steps round or about an obstacle, and the devil’s own task to keep the line steady.
The infantry were wretched enough without horses to carry them, in their iron helmets and their heavy coats, some of mail, some of leather, most of felt so thick that arrows could not pierce it. But the knights were in torment. Shirt under padded gambeson under ringmail; breeches of leather, chausses of mail from loin to toe, padded caps and coifs of mail on their heads, and helmets over that. Surcoats kept off the worst of the sun, but there was no escaping the heat; and with the heat, the burning, maddening thirst.
Aidan was stronger than most. That was part of what he was; and he could do somewhat to cool himself, even to spare his men the torment at least of flies, and to make a breeze for them. But he had no power to veil the sun, or to conjure water where there was none.
He kept a careful eye on Gwydion. His brother was doing the same for his own men, young knights of Rhiyana where the sun was never so strong, the land never so appallingly dry, who had never imagined such a horror of heat. Within an hour of sunrise, some of them were near to fainting. One had to be held back by main force from draining his flask dry and falling on the skin of water that was meant for the horses. Gwydion dealt him summary justice: put him down off his horse and set him to walking with the footsoldiers. It was not as cruel as it seemed. He was rid of his chausses, and he could hold to a comrade’s stirrup, and the horse did most of the walking; and it kept his mind off his torment in raging at the king.
The enemy came out soon after Gofannwy became an infantryman: small bands of skirmishers on light swift horses, armed with bows, shooting from just within the limit of their range, and galloping away when their arrows were exhausted. They did no great damage, but they were a hindrance, like stinging flies. And they were aiming at the horses.
A knight without a horse, as Gofannwy well knew, was like a turtle without its shell: soft, slow, and helpless. To protect their mounts, they had to move more slowly, watch more warily, hold the line more firmly.
Aidan’s Turks would happily have done something about the skirmishers. But the order had gone out. No return of fire. No pauses to fight. The army must move, must escape this waterless wasteland, must cross the five leagues to Tiberias.
“Five leagues as the eagle flies,” Aidan said between harryings, when he had allowed himself a sip of water. “We’ll be lucky if we make two in the straight line, at this pace, and by the road we’re taking.”
Gwydion had his helmet off but his coif up. His face was a mask of dust and sweat, but his eyes were clear in it, the color of flint. He nodded at Aidan’s words, looked ahead through the column. They were not aiming straight for Tiberias: there was an army in the way, on the other side of the ridge. The northern road was open, scouts said, and there was water to be had at the end of it, in the village of Hattin.
Aidan did not want to think about water. There was a whole sea of it over the hill, with the whole army of Islam between.
He could have been on their side. He had been asked, and more than once. Saladin, when he was not being sultan, was a friend. Aidan had more friends than that in the sultan’s army, men with whom he had ridden and hunted, even shared bread and salt, and been a guest in their houses.
Now he was here, under the hammer of the sun, bound to follow an idiot king. His men were hardly pleased to obey Guy’s commands, but their loyalty to Aidan was unshaken. His Saracens looked to him for their protection. He would keep them safe, their eyes said. He would give them a good fight, and if any was hurt, he would protect that one from the Angel of Death. It was an article of their doctrine. Had they not fought on a hundred battlefields in the years since he came to Outremer? Had he not brought them all out alive, and most of them unscathed?
He ran his tongue over dry and cracking lips. It was well that they could have such faith in him, when he did not. He could raise fire, bring down the lightnings, shake the earth under their feet. And what, after that? There would still be the war, still the enmity of Christian and Muslim, Frank and Saracen, as old as Muhammad and as implacable as the sun that beat down upon them. Saladin would have Jerusalem, or die in the trying. Guy would keep it or perish. There was no middle ground.
Magic is a little thing beside human will, Gwydion said in Aidan’s mind, sparing their parched throats and swollen tongues.
Aidan smiled thinly. We could do it, you know. If you would break your word. Drive the army back with a storm of fire, hold it at Cresson, herd the enemy back into his own country.
From which he would promptly return, thrice as furious as before. Gwydion shook his head. No. Even were I not a man of my word, I would not do it. If we were to rule this country with power, we would have to rule it absolutely, and never leave it. Then all of Christendom would rise up against us, as well as all of Islam. There are too few of us; our strength is too little. We can’t hold humanity’s most holy places, not against the full tide of them.
We’re too long-sighted, Aidan said.
So we are. Gwydion threw up a hand. An arrow shot by a shrilling Turk rebounded as from a wall. A thin hail of them fell about the column. One of the horses squealed and bucked, stung in the flank.
With sudden fury Gwydion lashed out. The second flight of arrows arced high over them and shattered, falling in a rain of dust and splinters.
A cheer went up. Count Raymond’s rearguard, looking back, gaped at the spectacle. The Turks shrieked and bolted.
Gwydion clenched his fists on the high pommel of his saddle, head bent, shoulders hunched. It was no great cost to his strength, but he had lost his temper. Again. That was why he avoided battles. He was wilder in them than his brother, a white, singing madness that was to Aidan’s fierce joy as the hawk’s stoop to the lark’s descent. That was why Aidan was his commander of armies; why he never went to war alone, and seldom to a tournament. The king’s dignity was his refuge. He could not, for his life’s sake, keep his head in a fight.
“Nonsense,” Aidan said, rough with more than the dryness in his mouth. “You just won us a respite. That lot won’t be troubling us again, I don’t think.”
There were more where they came from, though few of them, to be sure, went near Gwydion’s portion of the column. They harried the very front of the van, and the center somewhat, but they were fiercest against the rearguard: a flurry of men and horses, dust and arrows and outcry.
They’re driving us, Aidan said in his mind. He had hoped that he was wrong. He turned his sweating horse, rode back along the line. Here and there a grin flashed white in a dust-smeared face. No one wasted breath in cheering him.
They were ascending now, and he could see the army advancing behind, straggling over the rough ground. The center was reasonably well in order, but the rear was sore beset. It had had to halt and fight or be overrun. Templars in dust-stained white surcoats, the red cross bloody on their breasts, spread ever wider, some darting in reckless charges, called back by their commanders’ bellows or by the braying of trumpets. A space opened between rear and center. If it grew too wide, the rearguard would be cut off.
Guy, or Amalric his Constable, seemed to be aware of the threat: a rider went back at a scrambling run, dodging arrows, and plunged toward the Templars’ command. The horncall sharpened; men went out to herd the stragglers in. With maddening slowness the line straightened; the knights came to order. They began to move. But the gap did not narrow. The enemy, having found an advantage, was not about to let it go.
Aidan could not, though it tore at him, ride down the length of the army and abandon his own people to tell Gerard de Ridefort how to command a company. He rode back to his place, pausing to say a word here and there, to lighten spirits where he could, to allow another sip of water.
The slope steepened. The horses strained. One went down. Its rider struggled to pull it up again. He was Rhiyanan, the horse likewise, a great slow mountain of a beast, never bred for such a country as this. Before Aidan could move, Gwydion was there, off his own eastern-bred mount, cutting the beast’s throat. Its rider wept and cursed. Gwydion shook him into silence. “I’ll buy you a new horse,” he said. “Hush now, and march. We have a war to fight.” He called to his horsemaster, who came promptly, leading a smaller, lighter, tougher mount. The young knight regarded it in distaste, the more for that it was a gelding; but he let his gear be shifted to it, and heaved himself onto its back.
He would keep the beast, Gwydion said when he came back to Aidan’s side, and he would ride it on the march, when it was never good for anything but a charge, and a short one at that.
He’s young, Aidan said. Give him time. He’ll learn.
Not that lad, said Gwydion sourly.
A cry went up ahead. The first riders had reached the top of their ascent. It was in truth a pass between two hills, paved with stones and scree, rough with sun-seared grass.
“The Horns of Hattin,” Aidan named the hills, as he himself came to the height between them. The ridge broke like a wave, and the Sea of Galilee shining blue below, and Tiberias on the shores of it, and the Saracens as thick as flies about it.
Raymond’s column descended slowly. There was a village on the valley’s floor, the village of Hattin, where were wells enough to sate the army’s thirst.
And there were Saracens. They held the way to the wells; they were ready, it was clear, to fight.
The vanguard halted. A messenger rode back toward the king in the center. He spared a word for the king in the van: “There’s water at Marescallia, under Turan. My lord Raymond says go there.”
And when, after an endless while, he came back: “The Templars can’t advance. The king says head for Marescallia.”
Aidan shook his head at that. They were only halfway to Tiberias. It was hardly yet noon, but the enemy knew where they were, and they had to have water to go on. There was water at Marescallia, but never enough for thirty thousand men: one small spring and a bit of a pool. They would drink it dry and still be thirsty.
What choice did they have? He dismounted to spare his horse, passing the order down the line, not to descend in a straight line but to make their way along the ridge to the mountain’s knees. The ground was even more treacherous here than on the other side of the ridge: a field of dry grass, it seemed to be, but under the grass were sharp-edged stones, the black eggs of mountains, where the earth had spewed forth fire long ago. Every step threatened misstep; and worse for horses with their rigid hoofs than for men with armored or booted feet. A charge here would be madness, a battle suicidal.
Marescallia was smaller than he remembered, the trickle of water thinner. Raymond’s men had already muddied it, for all their efforts not to. The horses strained desperately to drink; it was white pain to pull them back after a swallow or two and make way for the rest.
At least there was fodder for them, though they were not delighted to find it so dry. Aidan found a place to rest his men and his horses, near the spring but out of the way of the army. Some, his mamluks among them, made tents of their cloaks and settled down in the small shade.
The rearguard was still fighting. The king came up under his banner, took his share of water—and no more, Aidan noted—and made way for the men behind him.
Gwydion, who had been walking among his men, giving what comfort he could, slanted off toward the king. Aidan called Arslan to look after the two companies, and set out in his brother’s wake.
Others had the same impulse. Raymond was there already, and Humphrey for once looking less than impeccable, and Reynaud with much of his arrogance muted. Guy looked haggard but not yet disheartened. “We’ve got to move on,” he said. “We’ll take Hattin if we have to, but Tiberias is burning.”
“Tiberias is surrounded by a hundred thousand Saracens,” Raymond
snapped. “For God’s sake, my lord, look about you. This is a pitiful place to make a stand, but it’s better than anything near it. We’ve got the mountain behind us, we’ve got what water there is, we can lure Saladin to a fight here and maybe win it.”
“Just like Goliath’s Well,” Reynaud said, not quite sneering. “We sat there, and what did it get us? Nothing but defeat and the king’s disgrace, Count of Jaffa that he was then. The Saracen is too canny a fox. He won’t come to us when he knows we have an advantage. We have to go to him.”
“What, take the fight to his own ground, and let him trample us?” Raymond was incredulous. “Where did you study warfare? In a pig-farmer’s hut?”
Reynaud growled and would have sprung, but Amalric pulled him back. “Stop it, both of you. I say we move on. They’ve got the high ground as it is. If we can lure them down, we can charge, and pin them against the ridge, and hack them down at our leisure. If they don’t move, we can come back here and go out again later, till they give in to the temptation.”
Raymond nodded unwillingly. “That might work. Give ourselves a base here, with water in it; keep challenging them to come out and fight us.”
Guy nodded, chewing his lip. “We’ll march, but slowly, till the Templars catch up.”
o0o
They marched, slowly. The brief respite, the bit of water, soon wore off. The enemy kept harrying them. It was worse now that they could see what was before them: how very many of the enemy there were, and how utterly they had sacked Tiberias.
As the army struggled down from Marescallia, a horde of shrilling Saracens poured out of the hills, streamed around them, overran the spring. Saladin had foreseen even that bit of cleverness.
The rear of Guy’s column wavered and almost broke, straining toward the enemy and the water that should have been their lifeblood. Their commanders beat them back. There were too many of the enemy, and more coming from all sides, endless ranks of them, closing in as inexorably as wolves about a flock.
