by Tom Harper
Aelfric hoisted the bucket onto the stone rampart. Water spilled over its edge, but he steadied it with his hand and gestured the woman to take it. With a wary glance, she tipped the contents into a clay jar by her feet. Beside it, I saw two deflated goatskins lying on the sand.
The gushing sound of pouring water stirred my thirst. I took the empty bucket, threw it down into the well and drew myself a fresh draught. In my haste, the bucket came up half full, but I hardly cared. I tipped it to my lips and drank greedily, so fast that water splashed over my face and chin, dribbling down over my filthy tunic. I emptied it far too soon, and would have refilled it for myself had I not felt the envious eyes of my companions. Reluctantly, I let them take it in turn, while the woman crouched by her jar and watched cautiously.
I prodded one of the goatskins with my toe. ‘Will you sell us this?’
Blank eyes stared out at me from beneath her shawl. Beside me, Nikephoros shook the water from his beard and sniffed. ‘Do you think she will understand you? Why should she? What can she do against us if we take her goatskins?’
Ignoring him, I threw down one of the spears we had stripped from the caliph’s guards. She stared at it in terror, and I realised too late I had forgotten to wipe the blood from its tip. Trying to smile, I reached down for the two goatskins and pulled them towards me. I pointed to them, then to myself, then to the spear and then to the woman.
She stretched a bare foot from under her dress and pushed the spear back towards me. The goatskins she left untouched.
‘What use is a spear to her?’ Nikephoros jeered. ‘Do you think she will march to the palace and ask to join the caliph’s guard?’
‘He has some spaces in his ranks to fill after last night,’ said Jorol, the Patzinak.
‘The steel in the blade is worth something.’
‘Only trouble.’ Aelfric took the spear off the ground and earned a grateful glance from the woman. ‘If the caliph’s guards come chasing us and find that spear in her house, what do you think they’ll do to her?’
‘No worse than they’ll do to us if we wait any longer,’ said Jorol, looking pointedly over his shoulder. Long shadows stretched out behind us, but they were shortening every minute.
With an apologetic bow to the woman, Aelfric tossed the leather bucket into the well and drew three quick measures. When the goatskins were filled, he and Jorol heaved them onto their shoulders while I gazed uncertainly at the woman.
‘What if she tells someone she saw us?’ Nikephoros’ voice was harsh.
Aelfric shrugged. ‘They’ll see us for themselves if we don’t go soon.’
Just before we left, I reached into my boot and pulled out the knife Bilal had given me, which I had retrieved from the bilge of the boat after the fight. I was loathe to part with it now: it had brought me luck in battle, and might be needed again in the desert. But the woman had given us water, and bad bargains bring bad luck. Bilal had bought the knife from a market stall, he had said, and there was nothing to mark it as ours — or his. I threw it to her; she caught it in her bony hand, examined it, then tucked it into the folds of her dress. Nikephoros stared at me with bare contempt.
‘If you have finished giving alms. .’
We walked into the desert.
Fifteen months earlier, I had marched with the Army of God across the barren plains of Anatolia in August, when we chewed thorns for moisture and slaughtered dogs for food because the horses were already dead. Turkish cavalry had harried our column every day, ants trying to strip the army’s body one crumb of flesh at a time, and we had left a trail of corpses on the road behind us, mile after mile, because we had neither the time nor the strength to bury our dead. After surviving that, I had thought nothing could ever be so terrible again.
But that misunderstood the desert. Heat, thirst and hunger can kill a man, but it is the everlasting emptiness that flays his soul. The desert draws up life like a sponge, sucking until the heart dries up and turns inside out. Then it confronts you with the skeleton that remains. Some men find their revelation there and become prophets; some are driven mad. Most do not survive the ordeal.
How did the Army of God survive the march across Anatolia? Not through strength or courage or faith, but merely because it was too big to kill. However much we suffered individually, the sheer mass of humanity around us, in all its lumbering, screaming, stinking pain, proved we were still alive. We drove a column of life through the desert, and the desert could not overcome it. Four men, battered and hungry, with barely a day’s water between them, were a different matter. Almost immediately, the desert began to reduce us. My limbs shrivelled and burned like sticks in a fire as the sweat was wrung out of them; my tongue felt as though it was baking in my mouth. I tore a strip from the bottom of my tunic and wound it around my head to shield the sun, though it did little good. Jorol went further still: he pulled off his tunic completely and ripped it in two, draping one half over his head and shoulders like a woman’s shawl and tying the other around his waist for modesty. It made him look blasphemously like Christ.
By midday, we could go no further. We staggered into the shade of a rock in a shallow depression and lay there, too tired to stay awake and too hot to sleep. Flies crawled out of the sand to bite us, and rivulets of sweat slithered over my skin like snakes. And always I was listening out for the drumming hooves or jangling armour that would spell the end of our mad flight.
We pretended to sleep until dusk. Then we rose, brushed the dust from our clothes, and continued on.
At first we navigated by our shadows, following where they pointed as the sun sank behind us. They became so long it seemed they must reach all the way home; then, abruptly, they vanished. Stars came out, impossibly familiar in that lonely place, and we struggled on, keeping the pole star forward and to our left as much as the fractured terrain allowed. We walked in a single column for the most part, but every so often a steep slope or high obstacle would knot us together again. At one of those places, I asked Nikephoros about our course.
‘We have to reach the coast,’ he said. None of us had spoken a word all day, and his voice cracked with exhaustion.
‘What will we find there?’
‘Water.’ He tried to smile, but his dry lips would not oblige. ‘And perhaps a boat.’
‘Then what? None of us is a sailor. Even if we were, you said the sea is closed.’
‘We can make our way up the coast. The Fatimids control it, but their ships will be in harbour.’
With good reason, I suspected. I did not ask any more questions.
The desert had been a hostile place by day; in the dark, it became a nightmare. A land that had seemed unable to nourish a single stalk of grass now brought forth a host of living beasts: strange, unseen creatures, which scuttled, squealed and grunted all around us. Soon I became convinced that if only we had had a lamp to kindle we would have seen ourselves surrounded by a writhing mass of all the carrion birds, flesh eaters, beetles, snakes and worms of Hell. As it was, we saw none of them, though once I felt my boot step on something furry, which screamed and squirmed under my foot before scurrying away. Somewhere, perhaps half a mile away, something like a wolf howled to the stars.
The air itself seemed to mock us. We had waited for dusk to avoid the heat of the day; what we had not expected was that the night could be so cold. The empty dark seemed to suck all warmth from the air, so that the clothes that had felt like plates of burning iron now seemed flimsy and inadequate. Jorol untied the torn half-tunic from his head and draped it over his shoulders; it did not reach as far as the loincloth at his waist, and in the dark the gap between the two pieces of white cloth made it look as though his torso had been sawn in half.
We marched through the night. When the blood-red fingers of dawn began to reach over the horizon, we found another shelter and curled up for the day.
Many men enter the wilderness seeking answers. Some, I suppose, find them. For myself, I found that the emptiness of the desert left only q
uestions. Words and images tumbled unbidden into my mind, as if every thought and memory I had ever had was being flushed through me. I saw Anna and Sigurd, sometimes alive and sometimes as ghosts; I saw my daughters, as they were and as they had been, cradled in their mother’s arms. I even saw my parents, though I thought I had forgotten what they looked like. In one memory, or dream, I had thrust my hand into a bees’ nest; I ran down the hill between spring wildflowers, crying with pain even as I licked the honey from my stinging fingers. A woman hugged me, so close that I could not see her, and I dried my tears on the folds of her skirt.
I opened my eyes and was back in the desert.
The second night’s march was worse than the first. A chasm of hunger had been opening inside me since the previous morning; now it engulfed me. Cramps of pain shot through my stomach and I was forced to bend almost double, leaning on my spear for support like an old man. Halfway through the night we ran out of water. We had hoarded it as long as we could, taking sips so small they barely wet our lips, but even so we could not eke it out for ever. Unfortunately for Aelfric, he was holding the goatskin when it happened — and he did not help matters by upending the empty sack and shaking the last few drops out into his mouth. Jorol stared at him with covetous anger.
‘Who said you should have more than your share?’
Aelfric met his stare with haggard eyes, but did not answer. That in itself was a goad to Jorol. The Patzinak stepped towards Aelfric, snatched the empty skin from his hands and dashed it to the ground.
‘What will we drink now? Dust?’
‘You can drink my piss if you like.’
Even through the haze of despair and exhaustion, Aelfric must have known what he said; indeed, his fists were already rising as he spoke. But Jorol was too demented by thirst to be satisfied with that. He swung his spear around and lunged towards Aelfric.
The sneer died on Aelfric’s face and he flung himself away. He tripped on a stone, lost his balance and sprawled backwards. Jorol sprang after him, and the wild look on his face left no doubt what he intended.
A heavy staff swept through the moonlight, humming with its speed. It struck Jorol in mid-air, square on the chest, and he dropped like a bird felled by a sling. As he bent over in pain, Nikephoros slapped the spear-haft across his shoulder blades; then he turned to Aelfric, still lying on the ground, and kicked him hard in the ribs.
‘If you lose your discipline again, it will be the sharp end of this spear you feel. Get up.’
The two men staggered to their feet, breathing hard. For a moment, I feared they might both attack Nikephoros, but the desert had not yet stripped all habits of obedience from them.
‘If we quarrel among ourselves, we will never escape this desert,’ said Nikephoros.
‘We will never escape anyway. Not without water to drink.’ Beneath the despair, I sensed a sly mischief in Jorol’s words, like a child who cannot help provoking his father to beat him.
Nikephoros’ shoulders stiffened, and the spear twitched in his hand.
‘Say that again, and I will see your body rot in the desert.’ Before Jorol could decide whether to test the threat, Nikephoros spun around to face me. ‘We will take the waterskins with us in case we find another well. You will carry them.’
I started. ‘Why me?’
‘Because the others carried them when they were full.’
Behind him, I saw Aelfric and Jorol smirking with satisfaction. I did not think we would find another well, but I shouldered the two empty waterskins without a word.
The next day, we did not stop at dawn. Without water, every hour brought death closer. Nikephoros led the way, his hand perpetually raised to shield his eyes as he scanned the horizon. Aelfric followed, then Jorol, then me. Even empty, the waterskins I carried weighed as much as a coat of armour.
The desert had already broken my defences; now it began to devour me. My sight closed in, so that despite the glaring sun the world seemed indistinct around me. I could barely see beyond Jorol in front of me; he had lost the half of his tunic that covered his head and looked more like Christ than ever with only a single white cloth wrapped about his waist.
I began to hate Him. How could He have brought me to die in this wilderness? Surely even a grave in Babylon would have been better than this torment? After all my prayers, my faithful service, was this all I had earned at the close of my life? Did He delight in inflicting this pain on me — and on my family, my daughters, and the grandchild I would never see? Would He watch over Anna’s shoulder as she stood at the harbour at Saint Simeon, day after day, searching in vain for the ship that would never bring me home? Would He laugh at her? How did I deserve this?
But you are a sinner, an unbidden voice hissed in my mind. You have killed and lain with whores. What else do you deserve? Christ has turned his back on you and left you desolate. See?
I lifted my eyes. The world was dark around me, as though a black cloth had been tied over my eyes, but through the haze I could see a hunched figure dressed only in a loincloth, walking away alone across the sands. He looked back at me for a moment, and behind his ragged beard I thought I saw him smile. Then he turned away.
I would not let him abandon me. Anger seized my limbs and drove me forward; the soft sand swallowed the noise of my footsteps, and he did not hear me until I was almost upon him. He twisted around, just as my shoulder thumped into his side, and we went down together. He screamed in surprise, and screamed some more as I began beating him with my fists. Famished by the desert, I had little strength to punish him, but he had little more strength to resist. He wrapped his arms around his face and drew his knees in like a child, while I rained down feeble blows.
Strong arms pulled me back and wrestled me to the ground. I could not resist them.
‘What are you doing?’ Nikephoros was bellowing with anger, his face almost touching mine, but his words were faint and vague. I had lifted myself on one arm and was staring over his shoulder, to where a column of dust rose across the horizon behind us. I pointed.
‘A pillar of cloud,’ I murmured, dazed. ‘A pillar of cloud to guide us.’
Nikephoros glanced back, then gave a savage laugh and kicked my hand out from beneath me, so that I collapsed back to the ground. ‘Fool. That is not your salvation. That is the dust rising from beneath the wheels of Pharaoh’s chariots. Our pursuers have come.’
Nikephoros was right: it was not a pillar of cloud, but billowing dust kicked up by a squadron of horsemen. As yet they were little more than specks against the storm, but that would not last long. I turned around and looked east, as if some vestigial piece of faith still expected God to provide a refuge, a sea to cross or a flight of angels to carry us up. Instead, all I saw was a solitary rock, rising like a boil out of the desert a mile or so distant. I had not seen it before, though it was the only feature on an otherwise flat plain, and I realised that the impending danger — or perhaps the prospect of release from my suffering — had at last swept back the darkness that shrouded my eyes.
‘That’s as good a place as any to die,’ said Aelfric.
At last I knew how I had survived Antioch. Not because I was stronger, or because my faith was more steadfast, but because I had no choice. How else to explain the new strength that seized me? After the shadows that had engulfed it, the world seemed bright again — brighter even than it had before. I dropped the waterskins in the dust, for we would have no need of them now or ever again, and felt that I grew instantly a foot taller. Even my stride seemed longer.
But wherever you look in the desert, the sights deceive you. The land between us and the outcropping rock was furrowed with row upon row of dunes and ridges: from a distance they looked like little more than ripples blown by the wind, but once among them we found ourselves toiling up and down long, grinding inclines. Even at their summits there was no respite, for there we saw how far we still had to go. And all the while, the pursuing dustcloud menaced us ever closer.
Even fear can only drive
a man so far. I found I could no longer breathe except in the shallowest gasps, as if my lungs had filled so full of sand that there was no room for air. My legs buckled and swayed; I fell, dragged myself to my feet, fell once more and might never have risen again if a firm hand had not pinched around my neck and hauled me up. Still holding me, Nikephoros spun my face so that it was barely an inch from his own. His eyes blazed with demented purpose; he did not speak, but pursed his lips and spat a thin gob of saliva straight at me. It landed on my lips, and before I knew what I was doing I had licked it off, sucking the moisture greedily in.
‘Come on.’
We staggered forward to the top of the next rise and halted, leaning on each other for support. Even the desert could not disguise our situation now. From the ridge where we stood, a gentle slope descended away, until it ended abruptly in the sheer wall of rock, barely three hundred yards away.
I cannot tell where we found the strength to run, but run we did. Arms flapping, legs splaying, shoulders hunched and faces contorted in gruesome snarls, we ran like men possessed by demons. All I could hear was the thump of my footsteps and the roaring blood in my ears. Halfway to the rock I looked back and saw the dust cloud billowing up; when I looked again, the horsemen had crested the ridge. Lances glittered in the sun, while the archers among them loosed a volley of arrows. They dropped harmlessly into the sand behind me — but near enough that I could see where the next flight would fall.
A square black banner waved them forward. The horsemen charged down the slope, and I ran.
More arrows flew; I could hear them striking the ground, stalking up behind me, drawing level and overtaking me. I thought to try and weave between them, to make a harder target for the archers, but that would have cost me precious speed. I had to hope my lurching progress was enough to confuse them. Now the sound changed: ahead of me, I heard the crack of an arrow striking stone. I looked up. A wall of rock rose before me — and splitting open its face, a ravine. I hurled myself in as a hail of arrows clattered on the walls beside me.
