00 - Templar's Acre

by Michael Jecks

  ‘Why?’

  ‘They’re going to burn it. The barbican’s too weakened, and the Muslims are tunnelling underneath it,’ Hob said.

  Baldwin clambered to his feet and stared at the tower projecting from the middle of the outer wall. ‘Are you sure?’ He could see the men running along the walls even now, carrying bundles of faggots, and already there were wisps and streamers of smoke escaping from the top of the tower. ‘Christ’s bones, they have lit it already,’ he breathed.

  ‘Aye.’ Hob stirred himself. ‘It’s a good strategic decision. If the enemy’s already tunnelled beneath, better to evacuate before it collapses. Now all those men can be withdrawn safely, and used in the city itself.’

  Baldwin looked at the tower, and then at Hob. The barbican had been built to protect the walls here at this point. If deserted, the defences of the city were all the weaker. But the other men of the vintaine were standing about and listening. Baldwin held Hob’s serious gaze.

  ‘Yes,’ he lied. ‘We’ll be safer now.’

  But their illusory safety was short-lived.

  Baldwin and his men were called to move nearer to the Tower of King Henry II on the same afternoon, and stood to with their weapons ready on the outer enceinte as the last men left the Tower of King Hugh. Smoke was billowing, with yellow-orange flames spurting from the roof, and Baldwin felt a mood of resignation amongst the men of his vintaine. There was no glory in this, any more than there had been in the wild charge of the Hospitallers that night. Baldwin himself still felt that their efforts were not in vain. With such a committed defence, and with their control of the sea, the Muslims must realise they must fail. God wouldn’t allow them to win.

  But his exhaustion was eroding even his optimism.

  Only a short time after they had reached the tower, the enemy catapults began a heavy assault. From the tower, Baldwin could see the men scurrying at the feet of their huge machines like flies crawling over carrion. It was a picture that sickened him, but then he had to duck as the fresh bombardment began to strike.

  The Muslims were aiming directly at the walls now. The number of arrows being fired was reduced, probably because they were saving them for the actual onslaught, when it finally came.

  ‘Shit my breeches!’ Hob swore as a missile crashed into the wall just below the battlements, and Baldwin and he were thrown to their knees.

  The entire wall was rocking and bucking beneath them. They could feel it, all the men in the vintaine, a rippling that shivered along the stones with each new impact. Baldwin could imagine the immense slabs of masonry being pushed inwards with the force of these blows, the rocks crumbling as they were slammed together, until the whole wall was a fluid rampart of broken rocks, gravel and sand. After a month of this bombardment, it was a miracle that any of the stones remained whole.

  Another tremendous hammer-blow struck the wall, and suddenly a gush of flame roared up. As Baldwin climbed back to his feet, a foul black slime flew into the air, and then fell onto three men from his vintaine near to his side. It ignited instantly with a loud whoosh, and the three began to scream in agony as they were burned alive. Baldwin could do nothing for them. He only prayed that they would die quickly.

  Arrows flew past, but he paid them little heed. The terror of the attacks was diminished with every fresh horror. He sat on the wall beside Hob, and rested. Too many nights with little sleep, too much living with constant fear, had eroded his capacity for feeling. He looked up when Hob rose to peer over the walls, and wondered why he bothered. Standing was not worth the effort. All a man could see was the teeming thousands of their enemies.

  Baldwin closed his eyes, lay his head against the wall, and dreamed of England. England, with the cool mists rising from her rivers. The warming sun gradually burning through, throwing long shadows, setting the tree-trunks a-shimmer in her golden light. And the leaves would all be that delicious pale green, almost translucent. England in the spring was a wonderful place.

  There was a man up near the tower, and as Baldwin glanced over, a mangonel bolt caught him directly in the breast, and he was thrown back with such force that the bolt penetrated the wall behind him, pinning him there like a doll, his arms and legs moving feebly, his head set at a foolish angle. Baldwin watched as he died, his mouth opening and shutting for some minutes without making a sound.

  All around him, men were dying. The walls were assaulted with rocks and fire pots, each hurled with all the ferocity the besiegers could manage, and inside the city of Acre men were crushed, burned, pierced and broken. Their bodies formed mounds down by the gates already, and yet more were being carried away every hour to sit and recover at the Temple or at some other makeshift place of healing. It was all pointless, he thought. Soon they must be eradicated. It was impossible to survive this.

  There was a roar, and Baldwin looked quickly up and down the lines of the walls, wondering whether this was a cheer of delight from defenders or enemy.

  ‘It’s going,’ Hob said quietly.

  Baldwin stared at him uncomprehendingly for a moment, then rose and peered over the wall. In front of him, the enclosed wall that led to the Tower of King Hugh was still standing, but the tower itself was gradually collapsing. Baldwin thought at first that it looked as though a missile had struck off the top, along with a section of masonry, but now he saw that the catapults had ceased their endless battery, and the gynours were themselves staring at the damage they had inflicted.

  The tower shuddered like a dandelion in the breeze, and then a greyish mist rose. It was paler than the smoke from the fires within, and as it climbed, it seemed to accelerate upwards. Baldwin felt almost dizzy to see it, and then he realised that as the pale smoke left the tower, it hung there, in mid-air. In reality, the tower was shrinking away from the mist, collapsing in upon itself.

  In another moment, there was no tower, only the harsh rumble of all the rocks rolling and bouncing away from their foundations, and the mist became a thick cloud of acrid stone-dust that clogged Baldwin’s lungs and made his eyes water. It was like breathing in lime dust. It coated his throat and nostrils until he felt he must choke.

  Looking over the wall again, he was astonished to see that there really was nothing left of the tower. The connecting walkway and wall was thrust out like a finger towards the ruins.

  And now that finger of rock itself became the target of the catapults. They slammed into the wall, two, three, four at a time – some from the north, some from the south. Those that missed, hummed over Baldwin’s head, to crash into the high walls behind him. Many thudded into the wall below. One jarred his head, throwing him bodily forward from the wall against which he leaned.

  All he wanted was to sleep. He closed his eyes, and for a time he knew no more.

  CHAPTER EIGHTY-TWO

  In only a week the outer walls were lost.

  It began with the Tower of King Hugh. With ever more firepower concentrated on the narrow point of the walls, the stonework could not survive. Daily, as Baldwin peered over the walls at the enemy, he saw more cats and siege shields erected, protecting the miners who were even now trying to undermine all the city’s defences. No matter how many were crushed by the Christian catapults’ rocks or arrows, always more appeared to take their places. The Sultan had an uncountable number of men from which to draw upon, and he spent them recklessly, apparently caring nothing for those who were left broken and wailing on the bloody sands.

  Not that the Christians were capable of hurling too many stones. All the hoardings were broken or burned away, and with them much of the protection for the catapults had also gone. Only three catapults remained which could continue any form of barrage: one on a castle tower behind St Anthony’s Gate, one behind the German Tower, and a last one in the Templar’s sector, behind the St Lazarus Tower. These three kept up a sporadic bombardment, but their impact was negligible in the face of so many enemies.

  After the collapse of King Hugh’s Tower, the next to fall was the Tower of the English, t
wo days later. It succumbed slowly and majestically, as if reluctantly giving up the battle. Only one day later, the Tower of the Countess de Blois slumped, the outer walls crumpling, and tearing down a mass of stonework from the walls at either side as it went. With these gone, the defence of the outer walls became ever more precarious.

  On 15 May, Baldwin was back at his post on the outer wall with his men near the Tower of St Nicholas. Here, too, the walls were beginning to crumble. As had happened with the first sections to fall, as soon as their objective was realised, the Muslims moved their artillery and began to hurl missiles at the nearer targets. As one tower disappeared in a grey haze, the gynours would already be at their crow-bars and ropes, pulling the devices around to point at the next. There was no need to devastate the city with more fire-pots or stones, since the people of Acre were already demoralised enough.

  That was the last day before the real storm struck them. Because late on that morning, suddenly the outer wall of the King’s Tower gave a tremendous shudder – and disappeared. With that lost, there was little to hold the enemy at bay.

  Baldwin and his men raced to the tower. They ran and ducked over the rubble on the walkways, along the drawbridge towards the tower, and when they reached it, Baldwin and Hob stood with shock, staring out where the front wall should have been. There was nothing, not even a firm floor on which to stand. No defence could hold this, not while the Muslims kept throwing rocks and pouring in arrows.

  Pulling his men out to the protection of the remaining wall, Baldwin went with Anselm from one body to another in the devastated chamber, seeing if any were alive. One lad was still breathing, and they dragged the masonry from his crushed legs to haul him to the Temple, but as the last rock was lifted, he gave a long, shuddering sigh, and was dead.

  Baldwin stared down at him. The victim was younger than Baldwin himself, and handsome, with fair hair and blue eyes. He could have been a northern man, or German. Just another wasted life. For a moment, Baldwin was overwhelmed by a sense of the futility of this defence, and felt a tear start.

  ‘What shall we do?’ Hob called from the doorway.

  Wiping at his face, Baldwin glanced through the gap in the tower’s wall. He could see more stones being hurled at the tower. One crashed into the upper levels, and he sprang back before a pair of beams holding up the roof fell into the room. ‘Get out!’ he screamed, but it was too late.

  Anselm was beneath one, and even though he tried to dart away, the beam threw him to the floor, and Baldwin saw him look up as a massive weight of timber fell upon him, crushing him entirely.

  Baldwin gave a cry, and would have run to him, but Hob caught him and pulled him to the doorway. ‘No! We can’t lose you as well, sir. He’s dead – there’s no good will come of pulling a corpse from there. Leave him!’

  Baldwin found himself on the walkway again, his arms gripped by Hob and Thomas. The latter was weeping without cease. ‘Thomas, I’m sorry!’

  ‘He was a good man,’ Thomas sobbed, ‘but he wouldn’t want you to die to pull him out. Leave him, Vinten’ry. There’s nothing we can do for him now.’

  ‘He’s right,’ Hob said.

  Baldwin felt his arms released, and fell to his knees. He could see in through the door from here, and one boot of Anselm’s was still visible. Just discernible behind it was a dark pool of liquid, and Baldwin bent his head in despair, his hands on his face.

  He was a failure. He had wanted to come here to protect the city, yet it was being torn down around him. His woman would be left to the savages as they poured into the city, and all his men would die. What was the point of his being here?

  ‘Sir?’ Thomas said.

  Thomas, the son of a peasant from somewhere in England, had lost his brother, and yet was more controlled than him.

  Baldwin stood, and gazed about him. None of them would escape the city, but they could help others to do so. The women, the children – perhaps the more elderly men too. That was his duty now, to hold the walls until all those who could, had escaped.

  And then sell his own life as dearly as possible.

  ‘We can’t do anything while they keep this up’, he said decisively. ‘When it gets dark, they may leave it alone. But we’ll have to come back then to defend it in case of night attack.’

  Hob nodded, but without enthusiasm. The thought of a night assault was not appealing to any of them. Baldwin didn’t care. He knew his death was approaching. It was merely a case of how long he could survive beforehand.

  CHAPTER EIGHTY-THREE

  It was soon after dawn that the shouts came from the men on the tower-tops. Baldwin and Hob had rested outside the tower, below the battlements, while one man stood guard at all times through the night. Hearing the bellows from above, Baldwin stood and peered up, covering his eyes, and saw the men on the Tower of King Henry shouting and waving their arms. Someone began to ring a bell in alarm, and Baldwin stared at the enemy only to see the lines of infantry moving.

  ‘They’re coming!’

  Hob was at his side, and staring out from narrowed eyes at the Sultan’s ranks walking forwards at a shuffling pace. ‘This is it, then,’ he said.

  In answer, Baldwin took his hand, and the two stared into each other’s eyes for a moment. Hob had a bloodshot eye where a stone splinter had hit his brow, and Baldwin knew that his own face was streaked with soot and blood, but both managed a faint grin before drawing apart and unsheathing their swords.

  The night had not been restful. Throughout, a steady scattering of missiles had kept on slamming into the walls, making them feel as solid as a ship on a stormy sea. Baldwin’s legs had a constant trembling, as though he was nervous or panicked, but it was the ripples of concussion against the wall. In his exhausted state the occasional gouts of flame from Greek firepots were strangely beautiful and relaxing in comparison. He rather liked the way that the flames occasionally burst skywards, throwing the whole wall into stark relief.

  ‘Here they come!’ Hob called.

  Baldwin watched them with resolution. The enemy had built many towers high enough to reach over the city’s walls, but they remained in the background. This was no all-out assault, then. It was to be a concentrated effort on one or two sections of the walls of Acre.

  As he watched, Baldwin saw Mameluk warriors running forward, in pairs, gripping heavy scaling ladders between them. ‘Archers! Archers!’ he shouted, and himself made his way into the tower. He stepped around the masonry where Anselm’s body lay, praying to his dead companion.

  The first of the Muslims was almost at the tower when a pair of clothyard arrows slammed into his upper body, and Baldwin saw him thrown back, kicking like a struck rabbit. It gave Baldwin a savage delight. The man behind him tried to pick up the ladder on his own, but a bolt from a crossbow appeared in his forehead, and he was jolted back, unmoving. In almost no time, there were forty fresh bodies lying dead a short way from the tower, their ladders scattered all about them. It was now that the Muslims chose to exercise more restraint.

  Only a few feet from the tower was the cat which had protected the miners while working at the foundations of the tower. Now this was laboriously turned and brought to bear on the tower again. While men erected fascines behind to protect the men running to the cat, others could stand inside it, and use it as a protective corridor. Soon a ladder appeared at the wall, and Baldwin and Hob ran at it, shoving it away from the wall, but it did not overbalance; instead, it swung back to clatter against the stonework. Already, two men were starting up it at a rush. Baldwin yanked at the ladder, until it fell away to the side, and the men fell onto the ground beneath. One began to scream and wail, but Baldwin was on to the next already.

  ‘Hob, Hob, throw rubble!’ he bellowed, and heaved a large rock at the first ladder. He saw it strike a man on the head, and he fell, taking two more with him. Others rushed to the ladder, but Baldwin rolled a large rock to it, and it was massive enough to break several rungs, rendering that ladder useless. Another appeared,
and Hob and Thomas were at it already, letting loose another stone. That killed a man at the ladder’s base, but two more were on it already, and now there were two more ladders. Another ladder, another bearded face, and Baldwin drew his sword, stabbing.

  There was no means to fight off so many. All they could hope for was to delay them. As soon as one ladder was knocked away, two more sprang up. And all the while arrows clattered tinnily about the rocks. A member of Baldwin’s vintaine gave a cry, and Baldwin grabbed for him just too late. The fellow toppled and plummeted head-first. Two more were hit in the leg or arm, and had to be helped away. Hob had an arrow pass so close to his face, it sliced through the fleshy part of his ear. This lent fury to his defence, and as a Muslim reached the floor, Hob swung his sword at the man’s head so hard that it clove his skull in two.

  Baldwin fought unthinkingly. His arm moved with a mechanical determination – swing, stab, parry – and each time a man appeared at the top of a ladder, he did his best to kill him before he could get off and climb into the room, cutting a man’s arm off, or his hand, or stabbing quickly in between the rungs, into a face or breast, anywhere to bring him down . . . but although reinforcements were soon with them, the battle was unequal. A pair of men somehow climbed to the top of the tower, and stood above, dropping stones onto their heads. Arrows did not cease, and before noon it was plain that they could do no more.

  ‘Back! Back to the walls!’ Baldwin roared, shoving the nearest and cutting at another. ‘Fly from here, quickly!’

  Hob was at his side as the rest of the men withdrew, and Baldwin and he fought side-by-side, hacking and slashing, until they could leap through the door and lock it, using baulks of timber from the smashed hoardings to block the doorway.

  ‘And so it begins,’ Baldwin gasped.

  All about the walls, where the Muslims had constructed their huge towers, men stared out anxiously.

  Ungainly, lumbering things, the towers were now drawn forward. Each rested upon a row of logs, which must be collected from the rear as the tower passed over them, and set down before it, while the men behind and inside the towers could shove it onwards. They would not move on the sandy plain else. Screams and bellows could be heard from within as the men were urged on, and the damp skins from freshly killed oxen deterred fire-arrows from setting them ablaze.