Elias and Gauner flowed into the melee like a leaf in a millrace into a pond. He found himself reeling in different directions as Gauner did his job and attacked the smaller horses of the archers. His massive hooves and his awesome strength were enough to knock the smaller horses clean over, sending their less well-armored riders off and onto the ground, where he stomped them to death. Some of the horses now without riders were too sorely injured to rise, but others struggled to their feet, stumbling as others bumped into them, and finally made for the relative peace of the perimeter.
Elias, his ears ringing, continued to plow through the swirling horsemen. From his left, a screaming man on horseback rushed at him, circling his sword over his head to give it momentum. At the last moment, he slashed down toward Elias’s neck. Elias raised his shield in time to take the blow on its metal-reinforced rim, but at a bad angle that wrenched his shoulder back. He held tight. The twisting of his body whipped his sword arm around, and he smacked the horseman with the flat of his sword as he and his mount slid past him. Someone else caught the attention of the man who had attacked him, and, unable to stop and rub his own painful sword arm, Elias was off on defense before the man could make another move against him.
There was one more horseman between him and the friendly forces on the hill. The momentum of his charge was gone with the trampling of a half-dozen enemy and the skewering of several spearmen. He kicked Gauner forward to the left of the final foe and swung his sword up between the horses toward the enemy’s chin. The Turk met Elias’s sword with his own, easily knocking it aside. They circled, hammering each other’s swords, oblivious of the battle swirling around them. Elias feared for his life, as the archer had developed shoulders and arms from using the small, curved bow of the Turks. The man slashed downward, just missing Elias’s nose, and buried his blade in the pommel of his saddle. As he yanked to get it free, he gritted and bared his teeth, hair and face streaming with sweat and blood. Elias delivered a thrust to his armpit that produced a bloodcurdling shriek from the man that he could hear even over the clamor of battle.
Elias looked about for the next challenge and turned back to the fight instead of riding toward the safety of the friendly lines on the hill. He could feel he was trembling all over, as much from the effort as from fear. He wished he had a hand free to grab his waterskin and wet his dry mouth, but a man on foot was coming at him with a spear. He leaned to one side of his thrust and grabbed the shaft just behind the point, jerking the weapon out of the man’s hands. He enjoyed the startled look just before he whacked the Turk on the side of the head with the haft. He staggered back while Elias reversed the spear and thrust it into his chest. He left the spear protruding from the man where he fell amid the horses’ hooves.
Suddenly, the press of the melee eased. Many of the Danishmend archers had wheeled and were riding away. Elias found himself watching the mercenary Leif rush after one turning archer. He caught the man from behind but struck only armor on his back with his sword. The man turned in his saddle, a scream of rage on his lips, and turned his mount so he could meet Leif’s next blow. Elias realized he had recognized the Dane because he had lost his helm. With horror, he saw the archer bring down his blade, deflect Leif’s own, then sweep the blade around to embed it in the Dane’s neck, cutting deep. Elias knew he must be mistaken, for he thought he saw a look of sheer joy on the Dane’s face just as the sword took him.
He had no time to look about for Ranulf to see if he had seen Leif’s death, for now he was set upon by two men who drove their mounts on either side of Gauner. Again, Elias knew he must be losing his mind, because he could have sworn he heard Gauner chuckle. He kicked out first with the legs on one side and then the other. The first horse screamed as his leg broke. The archer riding him flew off and away. The second horse was struck in the head and fell forward, pitching the rider with the velocity of a slung stone.
Elias had heard of battle joy and wondered if it was a peculiarly male thing, but now he learned the savagery knew no barriers. After his initial panic, which he mastered, came the rote response of his training, and finally, as the chaos built, the joy. He screamed himself hoarse, dealt and received blows, not tiring, not feeling pain, melding with Gauner as a single entity, a killing entity. The madness must have truncated time for him, for all at once he realized the light was failing and the Turks were riding away. He heard his own breath, raspy and gasping. His arm ached from wielding his sword. Nevertheless, it twitched to find another Turk to slice into.
The Turkish archers were melting away fast. Finally, with combat more suited to the European knights’ training, their superior armor, weapons, and mounts could prevail. Elias found himself and Gauner standing amid corpses of men and horses, stunned and unable to comprehend the horror. A stray thread of thought, wishing Albrecht had fought beside him, wound through his sluggish mind.
The rest of the pilgrims had not seen hand-to-hand combat, but only faced more of the relentless onslaught of arrows.
Somehow Conrad and his men made their way to where the remaining three commanders faced the onslaught of arrows. Elias had no memory of how they had gotten through the rush of Danishmend and Turks, but could only register that he sat on his horse several feet away as Raymond greeted Conrad with evident joy.
Elias became aware of the sound of cheering. He sat astride his battle horse, fairly quivering with adrenaline, wondering what the sound was and who was making it. His vision seemed to have acquired a bluish filter and his focus had narrowed. He did not hear or see the mercenary captain Ranulf come alongside him until he spoke his name over and over.
“Elias!” Ranulf said again, reaching to tug his arm, but also ready to draw back if Elias’s sword came around at him. Elias slowly turned and looked at him.
“Ranulf?” he said weakly. His voice, to himself, sounded like it came from a mile away. He could feel that he was breathing unevenly and that his face was flushed. His mail felt glued to his clothes, and he glanced down to see blood congealed into the metal links. He saw it, but it did not seem to belong to reality. It was instead more like a phenomenally faithful illustration.
“Come with me. Let’s get you looked at.”
“No!” he said automatically. “Don’t look!”
Ranulf dismounted and came to Gauner’s head. Taking both sets of reins from his hands, he said in a calm voice, “It is all right, Elias. Let’s just go over here and see if there is any water.”
“Water.” Elias let him take the reins and lead him and his own horse to the spring at the base of the hill. Ranulf reached up to help him dismount. Elias flinched automatically. “I can do it.”
He dismounted. Ranulf led the horses to the water while Elias went to a garden wall of natural stones and, putting his back to it, slid down until his arse was on the ground. He took off his helm. To his utter dismay, he burst out weeping. It came in great, gulping sobs. He was close to hysteria.
Ranulf let him cry for a few minutes; then, kneeling before him, he took Elias’s shoulders and shook him violently.
“What the hell do you think you are doing?” Elias shot at him, coming back to himself.
“Just bringing you back to the miserable present.” Ranulf let himself fall beside Elias to sit almost shoulder to shoulder.
“Oh my God, I was weeping like a woman,” Elias howled after a brief pause.
Ranulf said sharply, “Shut up, Elias. It’s what happens. This is your first all-out battle. Everyone weeps after their first. The noise, the fear, the smells, the chaos… then the fever. You can’t stop it.”
Elias stared at him, uncomprehending, then looked back out onto the body-littered plain and asked, “The fever? I had the fever.”
Ranulf put his face in his hands. “That you did. I had my own hands full, but when I happened to look over where you were, you were slashing all around you, taking down Turks.”
He looked hard at Ranulf. “I was? I did?” He wondered why he felt so hollow.
“The look
on your face! Like some sort of demon. If I ever thought you looked girlish, I don’t now.”
Elias could not register the meaning.
A young boy from the encampment brought water around in a bucket. He had a big spoon, like a ladle, and gave each man one drink, then went onto the next man. He could not let them have any more. Besides being in short supply, the water would do no man any good if he overindulged. Most were in some stage of shock.
The small drink certainly did Elias good. He was able to form coherent thoughts and turned to Ranulf, who still sat with his face in his hands. “Who won?”
Ranulf looked at him, incredulous. “Won?” he asked. “Nobody won. We just held out longer than they did. For now.”
“What happened?” Elias pursued.
“They just up and rode away. Like all the other times.” His face was so haggard he almost did not look like himself. “Leif is dead.”
“I know. I saw him die. He had a smile on his lips.”
Ranulf made a derisive snort. “He would, God love him.” He reached into his leather brigandine and drew out Sebastiano’s ring. “I guess I will have to take this now.”
“Any news of Thomas… and Albrecht?”
“Yes and no,” he said. “I don’t know about Albrecht. I saw Thomas among the crossbowmen on the hill but never spoke to him. Never even got a chance to wish him Godspeed.”
Elias’s eyes rested rather vacantly on the captain. “Never… spoke to him. Never.”
“Yes, Thomas is dead now too. It’s just me now.”
“Oh, Ranulf,” Elias moaned.
“They came here to support me, to help me expiate my guilt. Now they are dead, but I am still alive. Tell me,” Ranulf said, looking into Elias’s face in anguish, “what sense does that make?”
Elias had no answer. He looked away, put his head back against the wall, and closed his eyes.
Elias’s mind started to sort the numerous sensations and thoughts. His ears rang, and he felt waves of shuddering rack his body. Two demons faced off somewhere inside him. One listlessly traded blow for blow with the shock and exhaustion he felt. The other danced back and forth, taking jabs at the listless demon, feeling the battle joy again as well as the realization that he must truly be a man if he had had the battle fever. The two demons grappled but slowly melded into one quite mortal being, which poignantly saw that the violence and rapine that were seen as the purview of men were not worth pursuing in one’s life. Elias came to understand that while, yes, he was a man, he had the choice of how to be a man. He knew he had made his proverbial bed but that wholesale slaughter was not a noble end.
The world became nothing more than the constant heat, body aches, thirst, and noise. The sounds were no longer of clashing metal and battle cries. Now all he could hear was weeping, moans, cries, and the prayers of the wounded and dying.
Elias drifted out of consciousness and into a dream. He was walking with his brother and Albrecht through a meadow filled with tiny white-and-yellow flowers. He ran toward the top of the hill and spun to call to the boys. They were not there. He was alone. A snort drew his attention to where Gauner stood, lathered with the yellow-white foam of sweat, breathing heavily, and splashed with blood.
“Oh, Gauner,” he sighed. Somewhere, cattle were lowing and a bird sang.
Chapter Sixteen
Dishonor
AS THE sun was setting and the sudden chill invaded clothing soaked with sweat and blood, Elias toured the camp. He was numb from the horrors and exhilarations of the day, his sorrow over Albrecht’s likely death undifferentiated. It was just part of the dull ache in his chest. He cast his eyes about as he passed clumps of men. He heard his name and turned to find Black Beast dragging himself up off his haunches to approach him.
“Elias, my God, you are still alive!” the big man cried. He slapped his hands down hard on Elias’s shoulders. He had a manic grin on his face. “I can’t believe it! Have you seen Gerhardt?”
He stared at him. “No, I haven’t. The only one I could find was the mercenary captain, Ranulf. The Dane is dead. So is Thomas the crossbowman. You?”
Black Beast’s grin disappeared. “I hoped you had seen Gerhardt. Alain and I have been looking all over for him.” He paused. “My squire is over there, but Alain’s is gone, and we haven’t seen Gerhardt’s. At least yours is alive, after a fashion.”
Elias grasped his arm with a sudden death grip. “Albrecht? Is alive?”
“Your squire is in Conrad’s encampment. He made it back here but is pretty badly wounded.”
Elias hurried away and tore through the tangle of men and animals to where he knew the constable would be. There was a tent set up quite near the command tent of the Holy Roman emperor’s faction. He slipped in through the open flap and stood waiting for his eyes to adjust. He called, “Albrecht?” softly.
“I am here,” the familiar voice called back from his left. He made his way there, stepping over prone men who moaned or prayed or both. He found himself at his squire’s side. He was so relieved, he threw his arms around him. He remembered himself just before he leaned to kiss Albrecht’s cheek. Glancing around, he saw puzzled looks and a leering man with a broken arm.
“What happened?” he asked rather inanely.
Albrecht motioned to his water bottle. As Elias pulled out the bung, he began, “It was just as we were making our escape from the Danishmend camp. Thomas found and stole a horse. I got up behind him, and as we headed toward this place, I felt something whack my thigh hard. I knew it was an arrow. I just did not know if it was poisoned.” Elias’s look made him rush to add, “It doesn’t seem like it was. Funny, I did not feel any pain. Just all of a sudden I could not sit upright. I held onto Thomas as we rode away.” He tried to grasp Elias’s arm. “I can’t believe you are still alive, Elias.” He took a long draught of the water and replaced the bung.
“Is… is your wound mortal?” Elias gestured to the blood-soaked bandage on his leg.
“No, I think I just lost a lot of blood. I am starting to feel like I will make it. I hope so, anyway. I have something to live for now.”
Elias formed the word “Andronikos” without voicing the name.
Albrecht nodded. “What about you? Are you wounded?” he prodded.
“Uh, yes, some bad cuts and lots of bruises.” Elias shrugged. “Albrecht, I had it. The battle fever. I just went mad and killed everything I could reach. I hope I did not kill any of our own men.”
Albrecht squeezed his arm. “What about the others?”
“Leif is dead. Ranulf is alive. Thomas is dead.”
Albrecht’s face screwed up in a spasm of pain. When he got his voice back, he groaned, “Oh no, God bless him. He saved my life. He must have joined the fight after he got us back here.” He looked at Elias. “That just leaves Ranulf. Is he all right?”
Elias shrugged. “In body, I think so. In spirit, not at all. I just met Black Beast in the camp. He and Alain made it. And the Beast’s squire, but Alain’s is missing, and so are Gerhardt and his squire.”
The man beside Albrecht finally got Elias’s notice. After giving the man, who was clearly dying, a drink from his water bottle, he turned back.
“What now?” Albrecht asked.
“More fighting tomorrow, I suppose. Until we are all dead.” He sighed.
The long, hot, exhausting day left the bulk of the pilgrim army unable to do much more than collapse where they stood, to sleep deeply with troubled dreams as the night folded over them. Somewhere in the dark, a child fussed. Men who were bruised or wounded by the Turkish arrows moaned. The sound of weeping came from a few women in the camp, women whose men lay out on the plain, unclaimed and unburied.
Neither Elias nor Ranulf could sleep. As they sat together on the ground, Elias spoke his thoughts to him. He saw over and over in his mind Leif’s death, saw the grin on the Dane’s face as the Turk’s weapon came down and destroyed him.
“I told you Thomas is dead. I could not see how it co
uld be otherwise. I went to find him among the wounded being treated by what healers they had, but had no luck. He was also not among the known dead. He was nowhere to be found, probably out there on the strip of battlefield the Turks hold now, lying in his own blood.”
Ranulf went on almost absently to describe how Sebastiano’s body lay leagues and leagues away, picked clean to the bones by carrion birds and animals.
Elias could guess what went through his head once he fell silent. Ranulf was alone. Well and truly alone. The reason to go on seemed like a gossamer thread now. What matter that he had broken his promise to the woman in Mainz? His guilt, his desire for redemption, meant three good men, his friends, were dead. Elias could see that he fingered the ring, Sebastiano’s ring, in his pouch. He hoped Ranulf would try to stay alive at least long enough to get it to the Italian’s widow.
He became aware that, off to one side of the camp, men were stirring. Ranulf looked distractedly in that direction, but it was dark and what fires there were lay between them and the sounds. Most likely, some knights, and perhaps even one of the leaders, were deserting, Elias thought. After the desertions of the day before, the fact that other knights and soldiers might find the cover of dark convenient to slip away did not surprise him. Aloud, he idly wondered who it was. They could hear horses being saddled. Sometime after, men mounted the horses and rode off to the north. It was not a large force, perhaps two or three dozen men, all mounted, and the two lost interest. Elias’s own complete lack of desire to desert and leave his comrades’ bodies behind preoccupied him.
Dozing, propped up on their saddles, they woke at the sounds of angry voices. It was just before dawn, Elias gauged by the light to the east. They listened to the growing tumult of shouts. There was disbelief in them, outrage. Elias watched Ranulf as he stretched, dragged himself to his feet, relieved himself where he stood, and, picking up his helm, walked toward the gathering crowd with it under his arm. He tried to keep his gaze on him, but his head was full of mush. He pieced together what he could observe with difficulty.
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