Knights of the Cross da-2

by Tom Harper

  Once more Sarah laughed, though now the sound held only sadness. ‘Keep seeking, and perhaps you will find what Drogo sought and found.’

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘Truth.’

  ‘What truth?’

  ‘I cannot tell you that. Not until you tire of the self-serving lies that the priests tell. When you are willing to discard their deceptions and unveil their secrets, then I will show you truth.’

  ‘Tell me!’ I ran towards her voice. Whatever her secrets, I was desperate to know them.

  But she was gone, moving soundlessly across the meadow, and my only answer was the gurgling of the river.

  ι ζ

  I awoke next morning with a searing headache. It was the first day of June, and already the heat seemed harsher, parching all life from the air. The shallow streams that fed the Orontes had dried to dust, and I crouched in the river to splash the sweat of a sleepless night off my face. It did nothing to soothe the pain within, nor wipe away the confusion which governed my mind.

  In the middle of the morning, Count Raymond summoned Sigurd to his farmhouse and asked for a company of Varangians to relieve his garrison at the tower by the bridge. Every hour, more scouts rode in from the east bringing fresh news of Kerbogha’s advance. The breadth of his army covered the plain from mountain to mountain, they said, a hundred thousand strong. Even slowed by their numbers they would be at the Iron Bridge, where the road from the north crossed the Orontes, by the end of the week.

  ‘The Varangians should be standing in the vanguard against Kerbogha, not guarding this place,’ Sigurd complained. We were standing on the top of the tower, the city spread out before us little more than a bowshot away. A bowshot, a river, and walls four times the height of a man, I reminded myself, and still impregnable as ever.

  ‘Your battle will come, and when it does a hundred Varangians will be little more than pebbles beneath the feet of a thousand Turks.’

  ‘Pebbles sharp enough to make them bleed.’

  ‘Is that enough?’ There was more sharpness in my voice than I had intended, but I did not try to master it. ‘Will you be satisfied to die in this desolate place, far from home and family, with none but pagans and barbarians to see you fall?’

  ‘I have been far from home and family for thirty years. If I die here, or in Thrace, or drowned in the ocean it will be the same.’

  ‘You have a wife in Constantinople.’ He seldom spoke of her, but I knew she had borne him two sons and a gaggle of daughters.

  ‘A warrior’s wife knows that she will one day be a widow.’

  Sigurd looked away, perhaps finding my argument tedious, and I leaned out on the rough-hewn wooden parapet. The tombs we had despoiled made a poor foundation, and I was forever fearful lest the entire edifice should collapse in a hail of splinters. Every time Sigurd moved, the rampart swayed, while the open shaft at the tower’s centre yawned open behind us.

  With a nervous sigh, I turned my attention outwards. The sun was high, heating my armour so that it became a forge around me, and although it was not yet midday an afternoon stillness seemed to grip the landscape. I lifted a nearby bucket with both hands and tipped water into my mouth, letting some splash through my beard and down my neck. At the foot of the tower a band of Normans was nailing animal hides to a crude frame, fashioning a shield under which they could approach the walls unscathed. It seemed a forlorn hope to indulge so late; perhaps they planned to use its shelter to destroy the bridge, and so deny the Turks in the city a route to our flank.

  ‘Do you want an arrow in the eye? Join that seam tighter, or every Turk in Antioch will make it his target.’

  There was something in that stinging voice I recognised. Craning my head out through the embrasure I looked closer at the construction. A dozen Normans were busy around the frame while a sergeant paced about, overseeing their labour. He had removed his helmet in the heat, though his hair was still lank with sweat, and he moved gracelessly, spasmodically, jabbing here and there where the work prompted his anger. From my high angle I could not see his face, but I was certain that I knew his name.

  I slid down the ladder in the well of the tower and ducked out through its door. Just beyond the stockade, at the bottom of the mound, I found him.

  ‘Quino,’ I said to his back.

  He spun around. In a second, his sword was in his hand. Though we were in open daylight, and surrounded by his allies, he was tensed like a cornered beast. ‘You would have done better to avoid me.’

  ‘I have nothing to hide from. Do you?’

  ‘Only catamite Greeks who speak poison and lies.’

  ‘Poison and lies?’ Perhaps it was something in his temper which prodded me to retaliate; perhaps it was the shroud of mystery and ignorance which had stifled me so long; or perhaps it was my fear of the coming Turks: whatever the reason, I abandoned all caution and advanced towards him. ‘Is it a lie that you and Drogo and the others were adepts of a mystic named Sarah, a false prophet who preaches treason and impiety to your rightful church? Is it a lie that you journeyed to a pagan temple in Daphne and slaughtered a bullock on the altar of a Persian demon? Is it a lie that two of your friends, your so-called brothers, are dead – and you live to see them silent in the grave?’

  Though I should have expected it, I was unprepared for his answer. He hurled himself at me like a boar, lifted me by the collar of my mail shirt and threw me down on my back. The hard earth thumped all breath from my lungs, and I lay stunned as he advanced to stand over me. His sword shook in his hand.

  ‘Worm! Snake! I will cut those lies from your tongue and feed them to you until you choke. Who told you those things? Who?’

  ‘All who saw you,’ I hissed, squirming backwards along the ground.

  ‘I will kill him. Kill him! And I will kill you too, Greek. You will not live for the Turks to slaughter. Your prying and your lying—’

  He was standing in front of me, little more than a yard away, when without warning the ground at his feet exploded in a puff of dust and stone. He leaped back, and I pushed myself up on my elbows to see what had happened. A small axe, no larger than a hammer, lay where it had gouged a rent in the earth.

  We stared up. On the rampart of the tower Sigurd’s broad shoulders squeezed out between the battlements.

  ‘Forgive my carelessness,’ he bellowed. ‘But be warned – my next throw may be more careless still.’

  During Quino’s brief distraction I had the wit to scramble to my feet and retrieve my sword.

  ‘I do not know if you killed Drogo,’ I told him. ‘But I know that he died with the mark of Mithra on his forehead, and that you were in that cave with him. If we live through Kerbogha’s coming I will see that you are driven from this army as a traitor and a heretic.’

  His head jerking like that of a man possessed, Quino rammed his blade back into his scabbard. ‘Then I fear nothing, for you will not survive the battle. But I will grant you this one favour: when you run away from the Turks, shrieking like a woman, the blows that kill you will still strike you on your front.’

  ‘As Rainauld’s did?’

  ‘Do not speak of what you do not know.’ He kicked a stone towards me; I watched it bounce wide. ‘For now, it will suffice me to snare the crows who feed you lies.’

  Quino stormed away towards the camp, leaving me to wonder what his final threat had meant. And what evil I had stirred.

  That night the princes met again in Adhemar’s tent. It was a terse affair, every face grim, and the business was brief. Too brief, perhaps, for what later came of it.

  ‘Kerbogha’s army will reach the Iron Bridge in two days. I have reinforced the bridge with a company from the tower, and they will defend it, but against such numbers they cannot hold it.’ Raymond’s voice was hard and grey. ‘After that, we must choose where to fight.’

  ‘If Kerbogha reaches the city, our quest will be over.’ Duke Godfrey tapped the brown cross sewn on his tabard, for like almost all the princes he had come in a
rmour. ‘We shall have shamed our God and our honour as men.’

  ‘What numbers do we have?’ asked Adhemar. ‘Count Raymond?’

  ‘Six hundred and forty knights, though fewer than five hundred horses. Some three thousand men-at-arms.’

  ‘Duke Godfrey?’

  ‘Two hundred and twelve who can ride. Of the rest, no more than a thousand. Every day they are less.’

  ‘Lord Bohemond?’

  Bohemond, who alone in the company had come unarmoured, looked up as if surprised. ‘Three hundred horse. Nine hundred who will fight beside them.’

  So Adhemar went on, until every lord had declared his strength. The dark-haired priest, Stephen, had hovered silent in the background and now whispered something in the bishop’s ear.

  ‘A little over three thousand knights, in total, and five times their number on foot. How many does Kerbogha have?’

  ‘Has anyone ridden close enough to count?’ Sigurd muttered.

  Raymond glared at him. ‘My marshal has seen the army. He guesses it to be three times our size. Perhaps more.’

  ‘Christ preserve us,’ whispered Hugh. Had his skin been any paler I might have seen the bone beneath.

  ‘We will commit ourselves to the Lord’s mercy.’ Adhemar looked around the square, his face severe. ‘As for where we commit ourselves to battle, I propose we tempt them over the Iron Bridge and meet them on the near bank. With the river on our left and the arm of the mountain to our right, we will keep them from using their numbers to encircle us. What do you say, Count Raymond?’

  Raymond nodded. ‘It will serve. What does the lord Bohemond think?’

  He looked across the tent to Bohemond, who in his silken robe seemed dressed more for a banquet than a battle. Perhaps that was why he had spoken barely a word all evening.

  ‘It is a wise plan. I can think of nothing to improve it.’

  ‘Truly?’ Raymond’s face hardened with suspicion, while every other man in the room watched Bohemond intently.

  ‘Truly. It is, after all, the same tactic by which I defeated the army of Aleppo.’

  ‘The army of Aleppo was a quarter of the size of Kerbogha’s. And you would have been crushed had I not remained at the city to guard your back. We will not be able to divide ourselves this time.’

  ‘Are you trying to persuade me against your own plan?’ Bohemond furrowed his brow in mock surprise.

  ‘I am wondering that you do not try and unpick its defects.’

  ‘You have just done so yourself. It is the same problem which stifles all our plans. The city.’ Bohemond stood, a strangely confident smirk on his face. ‘I look at the city and all I see is a millstone. A millstone about our necks, one that we cannot shake off. A millstone that will grind us to powder against Kerbogha’s army if we do not break it.’

  ‘You have said this before,’ said Raymond, his contempt evident. ‘It is not relevant.’

  Bohemond laughed. ‘Not relevant? My lord Count, it is more relevant than anything that you have said this evening. To my mind, indeed, it is all that is relevant. Take the city, and every question is answered, every strategy decided.’

  ‘It is too late to consider such paths,’ said Adhemar. ‘In three days Kerbogha will be here.’

  ‘Is your faith so weak? Three days is more than enough time for a miracle. As for my tardiness, I have urged this course on the council for months. In this wilderness I have been a lone voice crying out for reason. You have denied me, and the siege has faltered. Will you deny me now, when the only alternative is defeat?’

  ‘What do you ask?’ Adhemar’s face made it plain that he knew.

  ‘I ask the council to relinquish its claim to Antioch. To grant its possession to whoever takes it first, that by the triumph of one man we may be spared the destruction of all.’

  Before Adhemar could answer, Sigurd was on his feet. ‘It is not the council’s to give. You – we – are all sworn to yield it to the Emperor Alexios. No man can dispose of it save he.’

  It was a true claim, and one that might once have weighed with the princes, but it was a poor moment for Sigurd to raise it. Even as he seated himself, I saw the wolfish smile spreading across Bohemond’s face.

  ‘If your king comes to claim it, I will be the first to kneel before him and surrender it. Until then, I say it is the one prize that may spur us to salvation before Kerbogha comes. I ask the council to give its judgement.’

  He took his seat, serene amid the consternation and doubt that he had stirred. All around me I could see counts and dukes testing his words in their minds, probing his devices. All looked troubled.

  ‘If the city is to be surrendered to the Emperor, I will not object to one of our number holding it in stewardship for his coming,’ said Godfrey. Murmurs of approval sounded around the room. ‘And if one man distinguishes himself in its capture, he will be the rightful steward.’

  ‘And what if he does not surrender it when the Emperor comes?’ growled Raymond.

  ‘Then he will be judged a liar and a thief by the council, and punished accordingly.’ Bohemond’s voice rang with honest confidence, though I saw his fingers tapping feverishly on the bench beside him. ‘Besides, who would content himself with Antioch while the holy city itself remained to be conquered? Will the council allow this, or are we to face Kerbogha without hope of victory?’

  No one spoke. At last, Adhemar tapped his staff on the floor. There was little strength in the sound. ‘What does the council say? Shall we grant Antioch to the wardship of its conqueror, until such time as the Emperor comes?’

  ‘I say yes,’ said the Duke of Normandy. ‘If we gain the city, it is a small price to pay.’

  ‘As long as it is understood that we still honour our oath to the Emperor,’ said Godfrey.

  Raymond blew air between his lips, making a noise like wind. ‘I say Bohemond has wasted too much of our time on this matter. If he can conquer the city, by all means let him enjoy it for a short while. For my part, I will concentrate on defeating Kerbogha.’

  Adhemar let his stare drift deliberately over the gathering. ‘Does anyone oppose this?’

  None did.

  ‘Then it is decided.’

  ι η

  I struggled under a heavy burden of dreams that night. In one, I was back on the high tower of the palace in Constantinople, looking out over a blood-drenched field as flocks of eagles wheeled overhead. In another, I was in the culvert by the orchard, looking at Rainauld’s body, except that when I touched him he was not dead. He spoke to me in words that I could not afterwards remember, warning me of some tremendous evil, and when I turned away it was only to see a black bull charging towards me. It chased me through fields and hills, over streams and across rivers, and every time I looked behind me it seemed that one more stride would bring its horns goring into my back. I ran on; suddenly I saw that I had climbed to a great height, and that the ridge ahead was in fact the brink of an enormous cliff. I slowed, but immediately the thunder of hooves overwhelmed me. Helpless, I ran faster, my whole being throbbing with my heart, until with a soundless scream I hurtled over the cliff, felt my body drop away beneath me, and awoke with a cry in my tent. It was still dark, and I recoiled as I realised that there were yet more hours of the night to endure. I reached out for Anna to comfort me, but propriety had led her to her own tent and I felt only earth.

  Next morning, Sigurd and our company were ordered to begin dismantling the boat bridge. It was claimed that Kerbogha might use it to attack our flank, though I guessed the princes feared equally that it might become the path of a rout if the army panicked. With the bridge removed, the east bank of the Orontes where we were camped became a closed sack, squeezed between the river and the walls. Whether that would firm our hearts or condemn us to slaughter, none could tell.

  ‘Do they suppose that because Varangians wield axes, we must be foresters or woodcutters?’

  Sigurd, who would have frozen to death before ever using his battleaxe on firewood, swun
g a carpenter’s axe into a mouldering length of rope. The fibres sprang apart, unravelling where they had broken, and I gripped the side of the boat we stood in as its prow swung downstream. Its dank timber was spongy under my hand.

  ‘We should leave this in place,’ I grumbled, scrambling back onto the portion of the bridge which remained intact. It swayed under my weight, and from beneath the planks I heard a rumbling as the hulls shifted and knocked together. ‘It’s so rotten that Kerbogha’s army would sink through before they were halfway across.’

  Sigurd swung his axe again, and the rope that had held the stern of the boat in place parted. For a moment it stayed nestled against the bridge; then the current took it, and it began to drift away towards the sea. Long strands of weed trailed behind it.

  A gap-toothed peasant, one of the labourers who had been assigned to carry away the planks we tore up, wandered over. With the morning sun already heavy on our backs, he was in little hurry. ‘It will be well to break this,’ he said, his words thick with foreign sounds. ‘Already the Turks lurk on the far bank.’

  ‘How can they?’ I paid him little attention, for I was trying to prise up the next section of the decking. ‘All their gates are guarded by our towers. They are stopped up like wine in a bottle.’

  ‘They are enemies of God,’ said the peasant seriously. ‘Satan favours the Ishmaelites, and leads them on secret paths. Perhaps he sends demons to carry them over water.’

  I glanced at Sigurd, but he was working loose a mooring post that we had driven into the river bed and offered no help. ‘If they have demons to carry them across the river, why bother demolishing the bridge?’

  Either he did not understand me or he did not care. ‘Last night they killed a boy who went too close to the river. He was found this morning, stuck with their hateful arrows.’ A rivulet of spit oozed down to his chin as he thought of it.

  ‘Truly it is said, “Be watchful, for you know not at what hour they will come.”’

  My bored platitudes did nothing to deter him. To my irritation, he eased himself down onto the edge of the bridge and sat there, trailing his bare feet in the green water. I wondered if I could cut loose the section that held him.