The Long Sword

by Christian Cameron

  Arrows were loosed.

  I found that there was a crawl space behind the palings. And I moved along it.

  I suppose I charged the archers. My next memory is fighting. I do not know if I fought well or badly; somehow, the archers had lost track of me, or never knew I came down the wall. Or, like soldiers the world over, they engaged the enemy they could see, the men coming up the ladders.

  But the grace of Our Lady was with us, and none of my friends took a hit, and then the archers were dead and Fiore was by me, and Nerio and Sabraham and Juan and Miles and Marc-Antonio and John the Turk and we were clearing the galleries at either end. Men came out of doorways and died, or leaned out of towers and loosed one arrow before the men on other catwalks ran them down.

  The only moment in the fight that I remember is when Fiore killed an archer by throwing his sword. It was incredible.

  Then it was over.

  We moved through the castle like an ill wind. The last watch in their barracks were waking, and we slaughtered them at the doors and by their pallets. We gave no quarter. There is no other way, in a storming action.

  It was a military castle and had, thank God, neither women nor children. Fiore had the admiral’s great banner, and he carried it to the top of the central donjon.

  From there, we could see the morning.

  I would have said that it had taken us an hour to land and storm the Casteleto, but when we looked, the sun was still low in the pink and gold sky. Over to the west of us, we could clearly see the white and red sails of the crusader fleet, many marked with crosses as big as whole ships, as they entered the Old Harbour in two lines. Closer, almost at our feet, lay the magnificent tower of Pharos just across the mouth of the New Harbour, perhaps a long bowshot away.

  To our right, out to sea, lay the Order’s fleet – four galleys and ten transports as well as a few of the smaller galliots and round ships.

  More than a hundred crusader ships were trying to make enter the Old Harbour. The great lines stretched like frayed rope out to sea, and there were gaps – the galleys needed no wind, and made better time, and many ships had left their place in the line and proceeded, so that there were collisions. But that was not the worst of it: even as we watched, ships attempting to go into the beach struck the shallows. A Venetian galley rolled her mainmast overboard.

  Still the king’s great red galley crept closer and closer to the land. Aboard the king’s ship, someone was conning them through the deepest channel.

  But ahead of them waited the army of Alexandria.

  Perhaps if we had landed as soon as we arrived, we might have surprised them, but by the morning after our sails were sighted, every soldier that the governor’s lieutenant could spare was standing in close array on that beach.

  Why didn’t they man their walls?

  Perhaps it was a day in which Christian and Moslem sought to rival each the other in bravery – or in foolishness. Or perhaps the governor’s lieutenant felt, as our king did, that they could not garrison the whole of a ten mile circuit.

  Perhaps they were as eager to slay us as we were to slay them.

  They were too far from me to see their quality, but they filled the beach from east to west, and even as we watched, a troop of horse that glittered in the rosy light emerged from the great towered gate at the Egyptian army’s back. They looked like ants, but they sparkled with steel.

  The crusader fleet was running aground more than a bowshot from the shore.

  Nicolas Sabraham made it to the top of the tower, his sword red-brown and his hands sticky on the hilt. He looked out over the battle of Alexandria.

  ‘Oh, sweet Christ,’ he said.

  A little less than a mile away, tiny figures were leaping off the king’s galley – into the sea.

  Nerio emerged on to the roof of the Casteleto just as we saw the Hagarenes on the other tower begin to wind their engine.

  ‘Get the sailors,’ I shouted. ‘Find men who know how to make these machines shoot!’

  Nerio nodded. ‘I think we have them all. The castle is ours.’

  I ran across the tower to look at the city at its nearest point. The gate was shut. So there was no counter-attack coming. Nor would it be difficult to resist any attack; it could only come along a single stone road two horsemen wide.

  ‘They’re not loosing at us at all,’ Fiore said.

  The engines on the Pharos castle had begun to hurl their rocks the other way, at the immobile crusader fleet.

  Even as we watched, a Venetian cog took a direct hit. Timber flew into the air, and in a moment, the little ship sank. She went down in less water than there was to cover her hull, but her armoured men drowned in water not much over their heads.

  ‘Sweet Christ,’ moaned Sabraham.

  Let me explain again. The harbours of Alexandria are like a gothic letter E. Two harbours, separated by the long spit with the Pharos fortification between them. That fortress could batter the crusader fleet, and looked to me to be impregnable. We’d just taken the Casteleto, at the bottom of the E, if you like, and the crusader fleet was trying to get into the old harbour, between the Pharos spit and the top of the E.

  Huffing, Brother Robert and a dozen sailors came up the ladder to the top of the Casteleto’s donjon. Brother Robert had to stop at the top and breathe, despite my urgency. His face was so red I feared he would explode.

  Miles stood by him. ‘Can I tell you something that will make you laugh?’ he asked.

  I was watching the destruction of the crusade. ‘I doubt it,’ I said.

  ‘The sally port door was unlocked,’ Miles said. ‘I just pushed it open and walked in.’

  I didn’t laugh, but I do now. That’s war, friends. All the terror on the ladder – and I might have tried the door!

  The engines on the far tower were coming back again.

  I pointed to them. ‘Brother Robert? Can you do anything?’

  His head bobbed. ‘I’ll do what I can,’ he said, and began to issue crisp orders. The Casteleto had a pair of machines, both mangonels, mounted high.

  ‘They’re higher than we,’ Brother Robert said. ‘I don’t think I could strike them save by the will of God.’

  Sabraham shook his head. ‘You don’t need to strike home,’ he said. ‘Those aren’t hardened men. They rush their shots and they miss. If you come close, they will turn their fire on us.’

  Fiore had by this time found a half-pike. He fixed the admiral’s flag to it and looked at me.

  I nodded. ‘As secure as we’ll ever be!’ I said.

  Fiore dei Liberi planted the order’s flag on the walls of the Casteleto, the first lodgement the crusader army made in Alexandria.

  Out on the water, there was no immediate change in the Order’s ships.

  The great bows of our two mangonels began to bend back. I went to the winches with the sailors and my friends and two Gascons who’d ended in the tower.

  We got the bows back, and the great cogs of the mechanisms clicked into place. With heavy pry bars, Brother Robert and two sailors began to move the engines, levering them a few inches at a time.

  The far tower loosed its deadly hail at the crusader fleet.

  I was panting from winding the great bows. But out to sea, the oars were out on the whole of the Order’s squadron, and they gave way all together, a magnificent sight. Caught by my attention, other men came to look.

  The Order’s ships formed a line behind the galia grossa.

  ‘Here they come,’ whispered Juan. He fell to his knees and began to pray. Most of us who were not actively aiming the engines knelt and prayed.

  ‘Let’s try that,’ Brother Robert said. ‘With God’s grace,’ he muttered, and pulled the lever.

  The bows stunned the air, and the great engine slammed back in recoil, jumping a hand’s breath and slamming back down to the stone roo
f so that dust rose up.

  Brother Robert’s first missile was visible at the top of its arc. And then it fell too far and slammed into the Pharos castle, about halfway up its tower. Dust and stone fragments flew.

  We all cheered.

  Every man in the enemy tower ran to the wall facing us to look. Until then, despite the alarm sounded by one of theirs, I suppose they had assumed themselves safe. Truly, I have no notion what they thought.

  We started winding the engine and Brother Robert moved the second one into firing position.

  Nerio was grunting along with me on the torsion. ‘Think – that – whoever – designed – this tower—’ he grunted.

  Brother Robert loosed his second dart. It went higher, and struck the enemy tower just a hand’s breadth below the top of the crenellation. There was a little dust, but there were screams. They carried, because it was a silent dawn, and we could not hear what was happening on the other side of the Pharos spit, where the crusaders and the king were landing. And dying.

  It was just luck. In four more shots we didn’t come close to hitting the top: one went over, and two slammed into the flank of the tower and one vanished into the sea because we hadn’t tightened the torsion all the way.

  Then the first rock came back at us. It was well-aimed and struck our tower close to the top, and men were cut with stone chips. The whole tower moved the way your breastplate moves when a heavy arrows strikes it true. I wished for my armour.

  Brother Robert loosed another engine. His dart struck well up, and knocked in a merlon. I knew from what I’d just experienced that a hail of stone chips had just flayed an engine’s crew – nothing mortal, probably, but a healthy dose of fear.

  ‘Don’t touch this one!’ Brother Robert shouted. ‘Wind her gently, I pray you!’

  A stone the size of a helmet struck him, and tore him to gobbets like a doll worried by a dog. He seemed to explode.

  I shook myself – I still see him. Bah! We wound that engine like demons. And perhaps his dead hands held the engine steady. Fiore pulled the handle and the beast leaped. For the first time, our dart just cleared the far wall and vanished into their tower.

  Marc-Antonio handed me a scrap of cotton. I used it to wipe my face and it came away bloodied.

  Now, I could hear the sound of combat. On the far beach, men were fighting. And dying.

  At my feet, the fleet of the Order stood in, due south, under oars. It was too late for them to turn, and now they were going to run the gauntlet of the Pharos fortress’s plummeting stone and make for the beach of the Pharos Harbour.

  Our tower took two more hits and some of our sailors began to flinch. And some of us began to take cover under the stone of the curtain wall. Men are only men and flesh and blood cannot stand against stone.

  ‘Again!’ I shouted. ‘Wind it again!’ I was on one drum, with Nerio, and Fiore and Miles were on the other. Juan had two Gascons and a Catalan winding the second machine.

  I can’t tell you where the next stone hit us – only that we were all lacerated, one of the Gascons was messily dead and Juan had a gash from eyeball to ear and was stretched full length on the roof.

  My handle came up to the stop.

  So did Miles’.

  Fiore moved the engine. No hesitation – he’d watched the Englishman serve the machine and he knew his mathematics. He stepped back – no expression on his face, and pulled the handle.

  The iron dart leaped away, and the machine slammed back to the roof.

  Miles ran to the other machine. He and one of the Gascons and another sailor worked to clear the corpses away from the base.

  Fiore stepped across our dead and used his crowbar again, and pulled the lever, uncaring that the leaping monster crushed a dead man’s skull.

  Men were cheering in the courtyard.

  We were struck twice – slam, slam!

  The Casteleto tower rocked.

  Now there was a crack all the way along the middle of the roof.

  I leaned out and saw the Order’s fleet standing in for the New Harbour beach. They were not going for the Porto Vecchio, where the king and the crusaders were mired in shallow water. They were running the gauntlet of the Pharos tower, using the gap we’d made by taking the Casteleto. Going to the New Beach.

  Which was empty of enemy.

  The galliot was nosing into the Casteleto dock. I didn’t need new orders to know what that meant.

  The cheering in the courtyard went on. Fiore, with Miles and Nerio and the sailors, had the leftmost engine loaded just as a big rock – I swear, as God is my saviour that I saw it in the air a moment before it struck – crushed the engine that they had just abandoned. Pieces of wood as big as my arm flew, jagged splinters that were as sharp as swords, yet not a man was killed.

  The crack in the tower’s roof widened and the whole building shook like a beaten drum.

  Before I could shout a warning, Fiore pulled the handle on his machine and the dart soared away. I never saw what any of our last shots accomplished.

  ‘Down!’ I roared – or perhaps I squeaked it. Standing on a damaged stone tower while a heavy machine pounds your friends to pudding is not at all like fighting in harness, friends. I was so afraid I wanted to shit myself.

  But we got Juan through the trap door. Miles got him to me and I threw caution to the winds because the steps were cracking and jumped to the second storey floor, cradling his head. I dropped him, but we were down.

  A piece of the roof fell, a corbel.

  ‘Down!’ I yelled. ‘All the way out of the tower!’

  In fact, we might have taken our time. The roof didn’t fall in for three days. But the next rock split the tower the way an axe splits a big billet of wood.

  Juan recovered his wits in the galliot. He threw up twice, drank some water, and shook himself. For as long as it took us to reach the beach, he could only speak his native Catalan. The ways of the mind are strange.

  Behind us, the Admiral’s banner continued to fly from the Casteleto, and the machine on the tower of the Pharos threw great stones at it. But most of them fell short, and they loosed very slowly.

  We left the oarsmen and sailors as a garrison, with Fra Ricardo as castellan. My part in that battle was done.

  I landed almost dry shod, and I had had the whole run down the harbour to don my harness with Marc-Antonio working like an automaton at my side. As soon as my breast and back were closed, he went to the others. Juan armed last, when the stern of the galliot was drawn well up the beach and the horses were going over the sides on the transports.

  Oh, yes. The horses.

  There was my Gawain, shining in the sun of Outremer.

  There seemed no hurry at all. Men came and shook my hand, and the legate embraced me and Saracens came to the walls of their town, just half a bowshot away. Guillaume Machaut says we were showered with arrows, and Nerio was hit, so I suppose that this must be true, but I have no memory of darts or arrows. I only remember the feeling of calm, of confidence, that Father Pierre inspired in that hour. He wore no harness, only a fine gold and silk stole over one of his Carmelite robes. He had no weapon in his hand, but held a simple wooden cross. The only order he gave was to demand that the Knights of the Order would maintain the sanctuary of churches in the event we broke into the city, that we kill no women or children, that we behave as soldiers of God.

  And then the Knights of the Order were mounted – a hundred of them, a block of scarlet. I’m not sure when the world had seen a hundred Knights of the Order all together on their chargers – perhaps not since the fall of Acre. The sight was so noble as to steal my breath.

  I got up on Gawain. Marc-Antonio got me a lance, and I began to form the donats and the volunteers. We had lost a good number of men at the Casteleto. Their ranks were filled by d’Albret and his Gascons and Savoyards, who were, strictly speaking, crusad
ers and not volunteers or Donats, but they were there and had their mounts. I still did not question what they were doing with us.

  I had formed my volunteers in a wedge at Fra Peter’s command and D’Albret came up behind me. He pushed right in, his visor open. ‘I like this better,’ he said. ‘Ah, monsieur, now perhaps we will see some fighting.’

  He was grinning ear to ear.

  It was not at all like being pounded by stone balls.

  Ser Nerio brought his destrier up so that his right knee tucked behind my left. Ser Fiore brought his charger to where his left knee was behind my right. In the next rank, d’Albret was pinned between Miles and Juan. And do on, until our last rank was ten wide.

  Off to my right, by the water’s edge, the men-at-arms and turcopoles, the Order’s light horsemen, were arming as fast as they could. John and Marc-Antonio, having got us into our armour, were now pulling maille shirts over their own heads and trying to find their own mounts in the herd of horses now swimming or walking on to the beach. There seemed to be horses everywhere.

  Miles’ uncle advanced the papal standard.

  Fra William got his turcopoles formed. He had about a hundred squires and ‘light’ cavalrymen and they did not form a wedge, but instead cantered out to form an open line to our front.

  Fra Peter rode out of the central wedge and rode along our front.

  ‘Christians!’ he called. ‘For this you have trained. For this you have endured the penance of your harness and the taste of your own blood. Now is your hour!’

  Four hundred voices roared. And were silent.

  Four hundred men.

  The legate was in the centre of Fra Peter’s wedge. As safe as the knights could make him, and our three squadrons began to ride along the foreshore, toward the keening sounds of combat.

  The sun was high.

  It was just noon.

  Fra William took the turcopoles up the beach, formed at an order so open that there was twenty yards between horsemen, but that meant that his hundred covered almost the whole width of the beach and the sandy plain below the city walls. I had seen them practice this ‘screen’ on Rhodes, and I had assumed it was a matter of deception because even a very thin line of horses raises enough dust to cover most movements.