by Jan Guillou
“It looks good so far, Armand, don’t you think?” said Arn, clearly exhilarated.
“That is the largest enemy army I’ve ever seen,” replied Armand cautiously, since he certainly did not think it looked good.
“Yes, that’s true,” said Arn. “But we’re not going out there to race with them across the plain as they apparently think we will. We’re going to stay here inside the walls, and they’ll never be able to climb over them with their horses. But Saladin hasn’t shown his real force yet; this procession was mostly to keep up the morale of his own men. He will show his strength after what is coming now.”
Arn again turned to look out over the breastwork and Armand did the same. He didn’t want to admit that he had no idea what was coming next, or how Saladin’s force would look once he decided to show it.
What followed, however, was an entirely different sort of display of riders. The huge army had ridden off and was now busy unsaddling their mounts and pitching camp. But about fifty riders had gathered as if to launch a direct attack on the city gate. They raised their weapons, shouted their quavering battle cries, and then came riding at full gallop toward the open city gate with their bows in their hands.
There was only one spot where they could cross the moat, and that was at the city gate. The moat on the east side of the city was filled with sharpened poles pointing outward, and anyone who rode down into it at full speed would impale both himself and his horse.
But the entire group of Saracens had halted before they reached the crossing and entered into a loud discussion. Then one of them suddenly spurred his horse, riding at full speed toward the city gate, releasing the reins as he raised his bow and drew it without pausing, as almost none but Saracen riders could do. Arn stood utterly still. Armand glanced at his lord and saw him almost smiling sadly as he sighed and shook his head.
The rider down below loosed his arrow at Arn, the intended target, the only man in a white mantle who was now visible on the walls of Gaza. The arrow whizzed past Arn’s head but he didn’t move a muscle.
The rider had turned just as he loosed his shot and was now on his way back at a furious speed. When he reached his comrades he was greeted with loud cries and lances that slapped him lightly on the back. Then the next rider made ready and soon came galloping up the same way as his comrade had done. He missed his shot by much more than the first archer, but he had dared to come even closer.
As the Saracen rode for his life back to the other young emirs, Arn gave Armand the order to go and fetch his bow and a few arrows from inside the tower. Armand obeyed at once and came back out of breath, carrying the bow, just as the third rider was rushing forward.
“Cover me on the left with your shield,” Arn ordered as he grabbed his bow and nocked an arrow. Armand held the shield ready; he knew that he had to wait until the rider down there came closer and prepared to shoot.
When the young Mameluke emir thundered over the covered part of the moat, dropped his reins, and drew his bow, Armand raised the shield to cover most of his master as Arn drew his longbow, aimed, and let the arrow fly.
Arn’s arrow struck the foe at the base of his throat, flinging him back and down to the ground with gouts of blood spurting from his mouth. From the twitching of his body in the dust they surmised that he must have died even before he hit the ground. His horse continued without a rider straight in through the open city gate and vanished down the main street toward the fortress.
“He was the one I meant,” said Arn in a low voice to Armand, as if he felt more sorrow than triumph at having killed an enemy. “It was written that he was the one who would die, and that he would be the only one today.”
“I don’t understand, lord,” said Armand. “You told me that I should always ask when I don’t understand, and this is one of those times.”
“Yes, it’s right for you to ask,” said Arn, leaning his bow against the stone wall. “You have to ask about anything unfamiliar so that you can learn. It’s really much better than pretending you know more than you do just because your pride forbids you from showing your ignorance. You will soon be a brother, and a brother always receives an answer from another brother, always. So this is how it is. Those young emirs know very well who I am, and that I’m a fairly good shot with a bow. So one who rides against Al Ghouti is courageous, and one who survives it has been spared by God because of his courage. Yes, that is how they think. It is most courageous to ride the third time; that’s when it is decided, according to their belief. Now no one will ride a fourth time, since it’s not possible to ride any closer than the first three. Anyone who does so will only die for the sake of a game. Courage, and everything that both unbelievers and believers imagine about courage, is harder to comprehend than honor. Indecision is the same as cowardice, many believe. And look how indecisive they are out there now! They wanted to taunt us, and now they’re the ones who have put themselves in a most difficult position.”
“What will they do now that their comrade is dead; how will they be able to avenge him?” asked Armand.
“If they’re smart they won’t do anything. If they’re cowardly and choose to take cover by attacking in a group all at once to bring back his body for a proper burial, then we’ll kill almost all of them when our crossbowmen step forward. Order the archers to make ready!”
Armand obeyed at once, and all the sergeants who sat concealed behind the wall with their crossbows now cocked their weapons and prepared to pop up over the breastwork at the next command and send a deadly rain of bolts down on the group of cavalry if they attacked.
But the young riders seemed too indecisive to go on the attack, or perhaps they sensed that it was a trap. As the walls of Gaza looked from their vantage point, with a sparse defense of Turkish archers, it might look suspiciously simple and innocuous—just like a trap.
When the group no longer seemed eager to attack, Arn ordered the captured Mameluke horse brought out. Then he walked down the stone steps, took the horse by its reins, and led it out through the city gate. He did not stop until he reached the man he had killed. The Mamelukes sat silently watching him, tense and ready to attack, just as Armand up on the city wall was tense and ready to order forward all the crossbowmen if the cavalry decided to attack.
Arn hoisted the body of his dead foe over the saddle and tied him on carefully with the stirrup straps around one arm and one leg so that he wouldn’t slip off. Then he turned the horse toward the now utterly silent group of opponents and gave the steed a quick rap on the haunches so that it set off at a trot. Arn turned on his heel and walked slowly back to the city gate, without looking back.
Nobody attacked him and nobody shot at him.
He seemed quite pleased and in a good mood when he reached Armand up on the breastwork. His weapons master had now returned from down in the fortress; he shook Arn’s hand heartily and embraced him.
The Mamelukes had taken charge of their dead comrade and were now riding slowly away to bury him as their customs prescribed. Arn and the weapons master watched the departure of the gloomy company with pleased expressions on their faces.
But Armand felt like a goose; he didn’t understand what his lord had done, nor did he understand the satisfaction of the two high brothers over what he regarded as a gesture of foolish bravery. It seemed to him an irresponsible way for Arn to risk his life, especially since he was responsible for all their lives.
“Forgive me, master, but I have another question,” Armand finally said after long hesitation.
“Yes?” said Arn cheerfully. “Is there something in my behavior that you don’t understand?”
“Yes, master.”
“You think that I risked my life in a foolish way?”
“It might appear so, my lord.”
“But I did not. If they had come riding toward me to get within range, most of them would have died before they managed to nock their arrows, for they would have ridden straight into the range of the crossbows. I’m wearing a double coat of
mail on my back, so their arrows would have stuck in the felt layer but not penetrated, and I would have walked through our gate looking like a hedgehog. That would have been the best turn of events, of course. But we had to be content with second best.”
“I’m still not sure I understand all this,” Armand appealed to him, while the two knight-brothers gave him a paternal smile.
“Our enemies this time are the Mamelukes,” explained the weapons master. “You, who will soon be a brother among us, Armand, must learn to know them especially well, both their strength and their weakness. Their strength is their riding skill and bravery, and their weakness is in their mind. They believe in spirits and the wandering of the soul from one body to the next and even to stones in the desert; they believe that a man’s courage is his true soul, and many other things. They believe that he who displays the most courage will be the one who is victorious in war.”
“I see,” said Armand, abashed. But they could see that he was still brooding.
“For them the number three is sacred in war,” Arn went on to explain. “In a way that makes sense: it’s the third blow in a swordfight that is the most dangerous. But now their third rider has died. Now the enemy they call Al Ghouti showed greater courage than they did, so I will win the war and not Saladin, and that rumor will spread throughout their encampment tonight.”
“But what if they had come riding toward you when you were standing out there, master?”
“Then most of them would have been killed. And the few who escaped would have seen that I was struck time after time without dying, so they would have spread the legend of my invulnerability tonight. I’m not sure which would have been better. But now it’s time for Saladin’s next move, which we will witness before nightfall.”
Arn, who no longer thought there was any danger of an enemy attack, sent off more than half the defenders from up on the walls to rest and eat. He himself went back through the streets of Gaza and into the fortress to sing vespers and pray with the knights before it was time for the evening meal. Then half of the force would rest while the other half remained on guard. Gaza’s gates still stood provocatively open, but there was no indication that Saladin was preparing to storm them.
Instead, in the late evening the enemy came forward with engineers and laborers and carts loaded with wheels, rough beams, and rope. They began to assemble their catapults that would soon begin launching huge blocks of stone at Gaza’s walls.
Arn stood pondering the scene from up on the breastwork; he had come as soon as he got word of the siege machines. It looked as though things were calm over in the enemy’s camp, where thousands of fires burned around the tents and the men were obviously eating and drinking. It looked as though Saladin had left his precious siege machines and engineers with much too small a guard, almost no cavalry and only about a hundred infantry.
If that was really true, it was a golden opportunity. If Saladin had known that there were eighty Templar knights inside the fortress, he never would have dared leave his workers so unprotected. If Arn ordered his men out in a massed attack now, they could burn down and destroy the siege machines and kill the engineers. But in the dark it would also be possible to hold a large force of Mameluke cavalry in readiness without being seen from the city walls. And much could be said about the enemy’s most dangerous commander, but certainly not that he was stupid.
Arn ordered the drawbridge raised and the gates to the city closed. The first day of war, which had been more a war of minds than out on the battlefield, was over. Neither had fooled the other, and only one man had fallen. Nothing was decided. Arn went inside, prepared to sleep for many hours, since he suspected that this would probably be his last chance to get a good night’s sleep for a long time to come.
He went back up on the walls after matins. When the light of dawn slowly changed from an impenetrable black to a gray haze, he discovered the huge army waiting down in a low-lying area to the right of the siege machines, where hammers still pounded indefatigably. It was just as he had thought: there was a cavalry force of at least a thousand men. If he had sent out his knights to destroy the siege machines, succumbing to the temptation that Saladin had presented to him, they would have all died. He smiled at the thought that it must have been a hard night for the enemy riders, having to keep their horses quiet as they waited for the drawbridge to be lowered at any moment so that two columns of white-clad enemy could ride out to their deaths. He thought that whatever he did in the future, as much future as he now had left in life, he would never underestimate Saladin.
The guard was changing. Stiff and weary archers began descending from the breastwork as the new, fresh forces climbed up, greeting their brothers and taking over their weapons.
Arn’s only clear intention was to delay Saladin as long as possible in Gaza. Then Jerusalem and God’s Holy Grave might be saved from the unbelievers. It was a very simple plan—very simple to describe in words, at least.
But if it succeeded then he and all the knight-brothers in Gaza would be dead within a month. He had never viewed death this way before, so close and so clear. He had been wounded in battle many times but so far had been lucky. He had ridden with lance lowered into an enemy force that was superior in numbers more times than he could remember. But he had never been in a situation where he could foresee his own death. In some way he couldn’t explain, he had always known that he would survive every battle. He hadn’t taken any special consolation from the promise that he would go to Paradise after death, because he never believed that he would die. He wasn’t going to die, that was never the intention. He would live twenty years as a Templar knight and he would return home to the woman to whom he had promised his heart, making the vow on his honor and on his blessed sword. He couldn’t break his word, after all; surely it could not be God’s intention for him to break his word.
Now, as he stood up on the breastwork in the rising light of dawn, Arn saw that the trap that Saladin had laid was taking shape. What had at first seemed an illusion was slowly being transmuted to reality—from the sound of snorting horses in the darkness and an occasional clinking stirrup to gold uniforms that began to glimmer in the first rays of the sun. And he saw for the first time his own death. Gaza could not withstand such a large siege army for more than about a month. That was utterly certain, based on the deeds of men and discounting any miracle from God. But they could not expect a miracle; God was unyielding with his believers.
He could see Cecilia before him. He saw her walking toward the gate of Gudhem; he had turned around in tears before she vanished through the gate. That life was so different from his life now, after he’d spent such a long time in the Holy Land; those days seemed as if they’d never really existed. “God, why did You send me here, what did You want with a lone knight, and why don’t You ever answer me?” he thought.
He was embarrassed at once to be thinking this way about God, who heard all thoughts. He should not be so vain as to put his own interests before the great cause—he was a Templar knight after all. It was a long time since he had been affected by such weakness, and he sincerely prayed for forgiveness, on his knees by the breastwork as the sun rose over the enemy army, spreading its radiance upon weapons and pennants.
After his prayer at dawn Arn consulted with the weapons master and the six squadron leaders among the knights.
It was clear that Saladin had tried to lure them into a trap during the night. But it was also clear that it would be a very good thing if they could launch a successful sortie and demolish or burn the siege engines. Gaza’s walls would not withstand an onslaught of stone blocks and Greek fire for very long. Then all the men, women, children, and livestock would have to retreat, crowding into the fortress itself.
Saladin didn’t know how many knights there were behind the walls. His riders had never seen more than a squadron of sixteen men. And since no sortie had ventured out on the first night when it would have seemed most tempting, Saladin might still believe that the force of knig
hts was far too weak for such an attack. So they ought to strike in the middle of the day, during work or midday prayers, just when the enemy decided that such an attack would not be forthcoming. The question was only how much such an action would cost in fallen brothers, and whether it was worth the price.
The weapons master thought they had a good chance. The siege engines were close to the city walls and downhill. If the attack came unexpectedly, the damage could be done before the enemy gathered themselves for a counterattack. Yes, they did have a good chance of setting fire to the siege engines. It would probably cost the lives of twenty brothers. According to the weapons master, that price was worth paying, since those twenty lives would extend the siege by at least a month, and thus Jerusalem would be saved.
Arn agreed, and all the others nodded their approval. Arn then decided that he would lead the attack himself, the weapons master would take over command inside Gaza, and all the brothers would participate, even those who normally would have been spared because of minor injuries. If they began preparing leather sacks filled with tar and Greek fire this morning, the attack could be carried out at the very hottest hour of midday, when the unbelievers were praying. As the others made ready, Arn returned to the walls to show himself to both the defenders and the enemy. As soon as he got there he ordered the city gate to be opened and the drawbridge lowered. When this was done, it caused a great stir in the enemy camp, but when nothing further happened they all returned to their work.
