by Tom Harper
The Egyptian ship blundered head first into the snare Saewulf had prepared. The hawser caught in the elbow where the copper ram joined the prow: the ship shook and cracked. Caught off balance and unable to move forward, its momentum instead carried it along the length of the rope, spinning it around. The mouth of the harbour was not wide: before the crew could react, the sliding bow had careered into the end of the pier. Splinters exploded as the bow shattered; the copper ram must have snapped off, or else been driven back into its own ship. With a great tearing of canvas and cordage, the mast broke free of its holding, tottered for a moment like a drunkard, then crashed to the deck. I saw several of the crew crushed beneath it, or floundering in the tangle of rigging it had brought down.
This was what Saewulf had planned, and he was ready for it. Without need for a signal, his men rushed along the docks to the points nearest the stricken ship. The archers in the watch towers — suddenly far more numerous — rose up and began a new, furious assault. This time they had dipped their arrows in burning pitch, bringing a squall of fire rushing down on the stricken ship. The water around it blistered and spat as wayward arrows dropped wide of the mark, but many more struck home. With her loose sail sprawled across the deck where the mast had fallen, it was a matter of moments before she caught light, and her battered crew had neither time nor discipline to quench the flames. Some flung themselves in the water, where Saewulf’s waiting crew speared them like fish; others tried to scramble onto the pier where the ship had run aground, but men were waiting for them there with axes. None escaped.
A column of black smoke rose into the air as fire took hold of the ship, and the water around it began to boil. Beside me, watching up on the hillside by the fallen gate, I heard Sigurd sigh. He had once told me that, in the legends of his people, the bodies of fallen heroes and kings had been sent to their pagan afterlife in burning ships. I wondered if the sight now stirred some deep ancestral memory in him.
But it was too soon to celebrate a victory. Flames and smoke streamed from the dying ship’s hull, her crew were all slaughtered or burned, but still — against all reason — she did not give up. Incredibly, she seemed to be moving again. At first I could not see how; then I realised that the fire at her bow must also have burned through the hawser that held her. Freed of that restraint, she was drifting ever closer into the harbour. A few of the English sailors on the pier thrust out their spears in a vain attempt to catch her, but if they touched her at all they only succeeded in prodding her further away.
Whatever his cunning, this was not something Saewulf had expected. His ship sat in the water barely a boat length away, beam on, and his men had deserted their oars to take up their spears and bows. The wind that pressed the ship towards them also blew its smoke into their faces; by the time they realised the fire was moving towards them, it was too late.
The triumphant cheers that had sounded around the harbour fell silent. I saw Saewulf and his crew stare in confusion at the looming fireship for a moment, then turn and run for the side. The two boats came together, wrapped in smoke; I heard the hollow knock of two hulls embracing, and saw the shower of sparks erupt where they had struck. Flames licked up through the smoke, hungry for the fresh tinder of Saewulf’s ship. The last thing I saw was the green banner at the masthead, billowing out in the hot wind that gusted from the fire below. Tongues of flame reached up to tear it down, shrivelling it black.
‘We won’t escape that easily.’ Sigurd pointed to the harbour mouth. Another Fatimid ship was already nosing through the entrance, no longer barred by the hawser. Another followed close behind it. From the watchtowers and wharves, Saewulf’s men tried desperately to stop them with stones and arrows, but the Fatimid ships rowed stubbornly on. Some of their oarsmen fell, but most did not, while from the wooden turrets amidships their archers were able to direct their fire down onto the men on the docks.
Sigurd threw aside the sack he had been carrying and picked up his axe from where it leaned against the remains of the gatehouse. ‘We’d better get down there.’
It was not a moment too soon. In the few minutes it took us to get down the hill to the harbour, the battle had changed again. Saewulf’s ship had burned almost to the water, but its smoke still clung to the air. Another one of the Fatimid ships had caught fire too, adding to the fog, but that was no victory for it had already managed to dock; its men had spilled out and were fighting their way forward. The English sailors tried to beat them back, but they were heavily outnumbered.
We ran along the dock, making short, darting runs and then ducking behind the crates and sacks that still littered the ground. In places, the stones were slick with blood; in others, pools of oil burned where the naphtha canisters had exploded. I saw Thomas hike up his tunic to try to piss the fire out and dragged him back behind the barrels.
‘That’s sea-fire,’ I warned him, shouting to make myself heard over the roar of battle. ‘Water makes it burn more. You need vinegar’ Sword drawn, I swung out from behind the sheltering barrels and charged forward again. Sigurd was on my left, the harbour’s edge to my right. Glancing down, I saw splintered wood and bodies floating in the water — some were splashing for the harbour stairs, but most lay still. I wondered what had happened to Saewulf — had he escaped his burning ship? I had no time to think about it. An arrow hissed past my head, and I slithered to the ground behind a pile of stones. But my run had taken me too far forward, to the blind chaos where the armies contended. Even as I rolled over on my side, a curved blade swung out of the smoke before me, striking sparks on the quay-stones. I leaped to my feet, staggering back to avoid the swinging cut that followed. I had no shield; all I could do was parry the blow with my own sword and feel the shudder as the heavy blade took the impact. Then it was forward into the smoke, hewing and slicing. At least I did not have to worry about arrows, for we were too close to our enemies for the Fatimid archers to risk shooting into the fray. Everything was confusion: there were too many obstacles scattered across the dock for either side to form a line, and so we battled in our ones and twos between the naphtha pools, shattered crates and corpses. More by necessity than any plan, we found ourselves fighting in pairs, shoulder to shoulder, one man acting as the other’s shield. I fought with Sigurd. At first we tried to shout instructions to each other, or warnings, but the sounds of the battle — the burning ships, the spitting oil, the warcries of both armies and the clash of arms — engulfed us. All we could do was keep our eyes open against the stinging smoke and trust each other.
Perhaps we should have been grateful to the smoke: at least it served to hide our meagre numbers from the Egyptians. Even so, there was little disguising it. Soon our enemies were coming at us from the sides rather than the front; sometimes a few of Saewulf’s men pushed forward to help, but they could not hold their ground. Our only advantage was that with the wall on one side and the water on the other, the dock was narrow enough that even our small force was enough to keep the Egyptians from tearing through us. But still we were ground remorselessly back.
Walking backwards, I did not see the tall pile of sacks until I almost stepped into it. I twisted around to get past it, trying to keep my gaze ahead; unfortunately, Sigurd went the other way and in an instant, we were separated. I looked frantically about to find him again, but at that moment a new wave of Fatimid soldiers charged out from the smoke. Howling like a ghost, one of them lunged his sword at me. I parried it and stepped back, but as I did so I tripped on an iron ring set in the quay. With my hand already numb from the ringing clash of our blades, I let go my sword completely as I lost my balance and sprawled backwards. I rolled over and sprang to my feet as the Fatimid advanced towards me. I could not see the sword, but a broken barrel lay on the ground nearby, its staves spread open like the petals of a flower. A few of them had fallen into a pool of naphtha and started to burn; unthinking, I picked one up and thrust it in my enemy’s face. His eyes widened in horror as his thick beard caught fire; for a moment I saw his face and hel
met wreathed in flames — bathed in light, as the apostles must have appeared at Pentecost. He dropped his sword and clutched at his face, then swung away and threw himself over the edge of the quay into the water. I saw him floundering there, clinging to his shield like a raft while the weight of his armour tried to suck him down.
There was no time to savour my victory. By the time I had found my fallen sword and retrieved it I was being forced back again. Even to be armed was a rare advantage now: the sailors around me were having to fight with whatever they could lay their hands on. I saw one pulling iron shackles from a sack and flinging them at the Fatimids using a sling made from his shirt; others wielded shipbuilding tools as weapons. One had even made a rudimentary flail from a plank with three nails hammered through the end. He had stripped to the waist, his tunic folded back over his belt, and his fair skin glistened with beads of water. Despite his crude weapon, he moved with a breathtaking grace, whirling about like cinders floating on currents of air. His wet hair swung behind him, as if to counterbalance the flail in his hands, which clawed and gouged any who came near. Even in battle I had rarely seen such pure, animal ferocity.
As he turned to counter some new attack, I glimpsed Saewulf’s face beneath the whirling hair. The careless detachment had vanished; the cautious man who acclaimed profit and disdained all else had become a warrior in the mould of his ancestors. And beside him, even more remarkable, stood Sigurd, rolling his axe and bellowing defiance at the Egyptians. Watching them, knowing Sigurd’s loathing of Saewulf, you might almost have thought they did not realise the other was there. They stood, half-turned away from each other, ignoring each other completely: it was only after I had watched for a few moments that I realised the unspoken intricacy of their movement. If Sigurd knocked an adversary off balance, he pushed him left so that Saewulf could club him; if Saewulf forced a man backwards, Sigurd’s axe was waiting to sever his neck. It was an awesome pairing.
With Sigurd and Saewulf to anchor us, we had at last managed to regroup behind a makeshift barricade of planks and barrels. The Egyptian attack seemed to be weakening. A few of their soldiers still struggled against the English sailors, but most seemed to have retreated back along the dock, into the swirling smoke. I did not doubt they would return in greater numbers — even Sigurd and Saewulf at the peak of their rage could not defy them all.
Sigurd sent a Fatimid swordsman sprawling backwards with a well-aimed kick, then turned. His face and arms were drenched in blood, but he seemed unharmed. He screamed something unintelligible in his native tongue and swept his arm forward. I did not need to know the words to understand the meaning: desperate though it was, we had to close with the Fatimids before they started to bombard us with their missiles again.
A dangerous lightness overtook me — not light-headedness, but a lightness of spirit, which, at the last, accepted the inevitability of defeat and embraced it. I vaulted over the box that had protected me and charged forward. The weariness of battle seemed to fall away; I was sprinting along the dock, among the rubble and jetsam that the shifting tides of battle had left behind. Sigurd was in front of me and Saewulf beside him, with English sailors and Varangians all around. I saw Thomas to my left and breathed a prayer of thanks that he had survived this long. Still no one opposed us. In the distance, I heard a trumpet sound.
The euphoria that had carried me forward drained as quickly as it had come. I had a cramp in my side, my knuckles were bleeding where I had grazed them on the quay, and my arms were suddenly barely able to hold the sword upright. Seeing no danger, I stopped short, bending double to gather my breath. Only then did I look around.
We had almost reached the end of the harbour where the Fatimid ship had docked, yet we stood there unopposed. Inside the harbour, I could see the dying embers of a ship disappearing beneath the water, hissing and fizzling. Another ship remained afloat and undamaged, but it was not coming towards us: with every stroke of its oars it pulled further away. Fatimid soldiers crowded its deck, while in the water I could see others who had discarded their weapons and armour swimming desperately after the retreating ship.
‘Did we win?’ I wondered aloud.
No one answered. Sigurd, still in the grip of battle, stood on the harbour’s edge and shouted abuse after the fleeing Egyptians. When that did nothing, he picked up a smouldering piece of wood from the dock beside him and hurled it towards the ship. It fell well short, though it did provoke one of the archers on the ship’s stern to retaliate with an arrow. That flew wide, but it was enough to drain the battle lust from Sigurd. He fell silent and stepped into the shelter of the wall, while the Fatimid ship disappeared out of the harbour.
The trumpet I had heard during our charge sounded again. At the time I had thought it must be my imagination, or perhaps a flight of angels come to take me to heaven, but this was different — too clear to be my imagination, too strident for the hosts of heaven. I turned around.
We were not the only men on the docks. At the far end of the harbour, where three of Saewulf’s ships still lay moored, a troop of horsemen had ridden out onto the quay and dismounted. More men were spilling down from the town after them. All were armed and mailed, though even from that distance I could see many were limping or leaning on their comrades for support, as if they too had been in a battle. Their banners were frayed and stained, but there was no mistaking the design on them: a blood-red cross.
‘Thank God.’
The leader of the new arrivals handed his bridle to a companion and came towards us, striding between the host of small fires that still burned around him. The Varangians and sailors around me turned to face him, arms crossed, watching impassively.
He halted in front of Saewulf and removed his helmet, shaking free a mane of tawny hair. I recognised him: he was Geldemar Carpinel, one of the lesser captains in Duke Godfrey’s army.
‘If you came for the battle, you’re too late.’ Saewulf gestured to the debris all about, as if the Frank might not have noticed it. ‘We won.’
Geldemar stiffened. ‘We fought our own battle. Four hundred Arab troops and two hundred Turks. We found them on the plain near Aramathea — coming this way.’
‘I hope you saw them off.’ Geldemar gave a smug nod. ‘You don’t want to run into them again when you leave.’
‘Leave?’ Geldemar sounded peeved. ‘We’ve only just come here.’
As if by way of answer, another naphtha canister sailed over the wall and exploded against the watchtower in a cloud of fire. A fig tree that had grown out of a crack in the wall burst into flame.
‘I thought you said you won your battle,’ said Geldemar suspiciously.
‘There are always more enemies. Unless you want to meet them, we had best get on. Have you brought pack animals?’
They had, though it was the devil’s own job to load them while the Egyptian ships beyond the harbour bombarded us with fire. We scavenged what we could from the cargo on the dock, while Saewulf’s men methodically dismantled the ships that survived. When they had broken them down to the waterline, they towed them to the harbour mouth and scuttled them. Soon all that remained were bundles of planks and timbers tied to the mules.
By the time we had loaded up the last of the animals, the harbour swirled and glowed with the reflected flames. The wind had carried the fire into the town on the hillside, and that too had begun to burn. In the places where the sea-fire had spread over it, even the water burned.
In my determination to see that we saved every scrap that might help make our siege engines, I was one of the last to leave. Sigurd and I hoisted the last batch of planks onto the mule’s back and tied it tight, then turned to go. I cast a last look at the harbour. Ash and oily scum covered its surface, but the water still drew my drawn and bleary eyes. Soot and dust had mingled with sweat and blood to coat my skin, my hair, my clothes: I could almost feel it cracking when I moved. I longed to be clean — but there was no time for that.
Saewulf slapped the laden mule on the rump, and i
t trotted obediently away towards the gate. Now there were only three of us left on the dock.
‘There goes your last ship,’ I said to Saewulf. ‘What will you do now?’
He shrugged. ‘A captain should stay with his ship — even if it’s in pieces. Besides, you’ll need someone who knows how to use those tools, if you ever want to build your siege engines.’
42
Our return to Jerusalem found the army in grim spirits, which even the arrival of our cargo did little to improve. The streams of living water promised in scripture no longer flowed: the land was parched, and the few wells that lay around the city had been poisoned or stopped up by the garrison. Worse, while we had been away the Franks had intercepted messengers from the Fatimid vizier, al-Afdal. He was coming from Egypt with a great army, he said: he would be there in a month. If the garrison could only hold out until then, the Army of God would be ground into dust. The Franks gritted their teeth and swore it would make no difference: this was exactly what had happened at Antioch, they said, and they had prevailed then. By God’s grace, they would take Jerusalem and then march out to destroy al-Afdal as well. But they spoke too loudly when they said it, and the hands that clutched their crosses trembled.
All our hopes now rested on God — and on the materials we had brought from Jaffa. The masts from Saewulf’s ships were raised again, far from the sea, the cornerposts of the two vast siege engines the Franks had designed. The towers reached higher than the walls themselves, and every day they grew. The wheelwrights gave them feet; the carpenters built platforms and ladders within while the women wove wattle screens to cover them. Finally, the tanners nailed on skins of mottled hides so that fire could not burn them. It gave the machines a monstrous appearance. On each, the drawbridge at the summit gaped like an open jaw, while the arrow slits above seemed like blundering, half-blind eyes. The Franks named them Gog and Magog, the beasts who would come at the end of time to besiege Jerusalem.
