by Tom Harper
‘Are you sure you want to go on?’ asked Sigurd.
I could not speak, for searing nausea had joined the thirst in my throat. All I could manage was a limp wave forward.
At the next corner the road began to level. It was little consolation, for by now we were high up, only slightly below the height of the middle summit. The sounds of the armies drifted down to us – though not, as yet, the sounds of war. At the roadside two stakes had been driven into the ground like gateposts. One had a crossbar nailed to it, so that it took the form of a crucifix; the other tapered to a spike on which a Turk’s head was impaled. I shivered as we passed them.
Ahead of us, the path continued across the neck of the mountain into a small dip between the middle and northern summits. Atop the latter, on a high rocky promontory thrusting out to the west, I could see the unbroken walls of the citadel. The purple banner of Kerbogha hung from its tower.
‘This is as far as we go on this road.’ Sigurd pointed to our right, over the hump of the middle summit. ‘Bohemond’s camp is over there.’
We picked our way up the hill, through the outlying positions of the Frankish army. It was like no battlefield I had ever seen – a victory, a rout, a battle and a siege all heaped over each other. Groups of men squatted in the scrub, sharpening blades and saying nothing. Archers crouched behind boulders and watched for a Turkish sortie. There were no cavalry. Scattered among the living lay the dead, dozens of them – though nothing compared with the number in the killing ground of the valley between the two summits. Within bowshot of both camps, those corpses could not safely be retrieved by either side, and so they rotted. The stink was merciless. Only the crows moved with impunity, for none could waste the arrows to fell them.
‘Some of them have been there for a week,’ said Sigurd.
I stared at him, amazed, as I counted back on my fingers. A week and a day – that was all the time we had been in the city. As many days as we had spent months outside the walls, yet it felt a hundred years longer.
And on every one of those days Bohemond had fought to win the one fragment of the city that he did not hold, while the Turks sought to overthrow him. I could see why neither had prevailed, for it was obvious even to me that this battlefield was no place for tactics or ingenuity. It was a shallow valley between the two opposing summits, bounded on one side by the wall along the ridge, and on the other by a cliff edge. Between those limits, all the armies could do was push against each other, face to face in an endless trial of strength. It was almost as if the Lord had made it to this purpose, for the bare earth was red as blood and the broken rocks as sharp as spears. At the very centre, in the belly of the valley, a jagged hole yawned open like the gates of Hell. All was black within.
‘The cistern,’ said Sigurd. ‘Bohemond smashed it open to parch the garrison in the citadel. Now it is fouled with the bodies of the fallen.’
We carried on up the hill. The high battlements of a square tower rose in front of us, and as we crested the summit we could see the full expanse of the walls spreading out from it. The main force of Bohemond’s army was concentrated here, and I saw immediately why he had risked firing the city in his hunt for more men. They were in a perilous condition. They sat on the ground in the noon heat, swatting flies and praying, waiting for the next onslaught. Few were not wounded.
I looked to the foot of the tower. Clearly, we were not the only men to have climbed the mountain that morning. Gathered in a circle, apparently heedless of the dying army about them, the princes held council. I could recognise Adhemar’s domed cap, Count Raymond’s stiff bearing, the various figures of Count Hugh, Duke Robert and Tancred. Of the first rank, only Duke Godfrey was missing. Towering over them all, his chin raised in pride or defiance, was Bohemond. We made towards them. I longed to confront Bohemond in front of the others, to make them know that he had cut us off from all hope of rescue, but I did not dare. He would deny it outright – the word of a prince against the word of a Greek spy – and afterwards he would ensure that I never spoke again.
Before we even reached the princes, one of the Norman captains stepped into our path. I did not recognise him, though with a week’s blood and dust and beard on his face he might have been my own brother and I would not have known it. He looked at us and at the file of Varangians behind us.
‘Are these all your men?’
‘All that can fight for you,’ said Sigurd. ‘Where shall we go?’
The Norman pointed down the slope, along the wall which stretched like a ribbon to the citadel. ‘The last tower.’ He drew his sword and swung it through the air to loosen his arm. From the far side of the wall, and within the citadel, I could hear the battle-cry rising. ‘You must hold it – and attack the Turks from their flank when they come.’
I looked to the nearest stairs, thinking that we would approach the tower along the top of the wall. But the Norman shook his head.
‘The tower doors are barricaded, so that the Turks cannot advance along the walls. The tower is cut off.’
‘How . . . ?’
‘There is a ladder. Go to the foot of the tower and call up to them. Tell Quino that I have sent you.’
The thought of the coming battle had already begun to numb me, but the name he spoke cut through all my defences. ‘Quino?’
‘Quino of Melfi. He commands the tower.’ The Norman must have seen the turmoil on my face. ‘Why? Do you know him?’
λ
Perhaps the ancients were right, and we mortals are merely playthings of a capricious fate. Certainly the gods of old would have laughed at this latest turn, that Sigurd and I should be thrown together with our enemy to fight for our lives. Even I had to acknowledge the grim irony of it. And, after a flash of confusion, I accepted it. This was destiny; I could not fight it.
I looked along the wall. Our tower must have been about a hundred and fifty paces away, close enough to be within bowshot of the citadel.
‘Pray the Turks don’t choose this moment for their attack,’ said Sigurd.
With our backs to the wall, our shields on our right arms, we edged down the slope. Sigurd led the way. Even pressed against the stones there was no shade, no shadow, for the sun was at its zenith and spared nothing. Sweat poured down my face, so much of it that I thought my armour might rust from my body. A sudden terror assailed me: that I would tug my sword from its sheath and find my palm too slippery to grasp it. I wiped my hand on the hem of my tunic, then touched it to where the silver cross hung under my armour.
Stepping sideways like crabs, crouching beneath the rims of our shields, our progress was faltering. On these heights the wall was the only path, and the broken ground reached right to its foot. Spiked plants scratched welts of blood across my bare hands, and several times I was tipped back against the wall when the ground at my feet gave way. I gripped my shield tighter and tried to ignore the thoughts of Quino that raged in my head.
We skirted the first tower and continued down. Here the wall followed the line of the ridge exactly, so that the slope fell away steeply beside us. At the bottom, the black mouth of the broken cistern yawned open, ready to swallow us if we lost our footing.
Sigurd pointed to the line in the valley where the corpses began. We were now almost level with it.
‘From here, the Turks can kill us with their arrows. Be careful.’
But the Turks – assuming that they were watching us from the round towers of the citadel – chose not to spend arrows on a forlorn column skirting the fringe of the wasteland. Perhaps we were not worth the effort. Perhaps they reasoned that we were bent on our own doom, approaching it with every step, and needed no dispatch.
The last twenty paces were the hardest, in full view of two armies and the heavens, too far from one and too near the others. The cloying smell of the yellow flowers on the hillside swam in my senses; now the bushes that brushed me seemed like soft grass. If I lifted my gaze to the mountains far across the Orontes I could almost imagine I was back at the monastery of
my youth in Isauria, seeking beeswax and honeycomb with the other novices on a June day.
The rap on my helmet was so unexpected that I almost fell down the slope in fright. Had the Turks chanced a shot while I dreamed? Ahead of me Sigurd was crouched behind his shield and staring angrily back.
‘Keep down,’ he hissed. ‘I know that you could not kill so much as a beetle with your sword; they do not.’
Chastened, I squatted low, and though my thighs begged me to relent I managed to keep my eye below the rim of my shield until we had crossed the last stretch and had come to the foot of the tower. The shade was as elusive as ever, but at least in the corner where the tower met the wall we were hidden from the Turks. I rested my shield gratefully on the ground, straightened, and looked up.
Quino’s men must have watched us coming, doubtless wondering whether our few men were all the relief they would get. A mailed head peered over the edge of the wall, so low that he must have lain on his belly, and stared down. Against the searing sky, I could not make out his features.
‘We were promised more,’ he complained. ‘Are there others?’
‘Only us.’
A rope ladder, crudely made, rattled down the wall. Slinging my shield over my back, I held the ladder taut for Sigurd, then climbed after him. It swayed under me, and with so much weight to carry I had to be dragged over the lip of the rampart onto the broad walkway at the top. The rest of the Varangians were coming up behind me. On a sign from the guard, I lay flat behind the parapet. I had forgotten that Kerbogha’s army waited on the far side.
‘How do we get inside?’ I asked, looking at the barred door.
As if in answer, I heard a clattering from above and saw another ladder dropping down from a window in the tower. The window must have been several yards higher up the wall, far above the protection of the battlements. I wondered how I could reach it without becoming a target for the archers beyond.
‘Climb swiftly,’ the Norman said, tugging on the ladder to make sure that it was fast.
I moved my shield back to my right arm. It would make for a harder climb, but at least it would be some protection against arrows in my side. Though what hid me from the Turks equally hid them from me: I had made a corner for myself, and had to mount the twisting ladder blind to everything beyond the walls. There might have been a company of archers nocking their arrows, or a ballista being pulled taut, or a spear-thrower, and I would know nothing until the missile slammed into my shield.
Nothing was fired, and nothing struck me. I could see the windowsill approaching, a black arch in the stone. Then I was level with it, struggling to keep hold of the ladder while I slipped my shield from my arm and pushed it through ahead of me. A new horizon opened in the corner of my vision, a dappled landscape of green and brown, but I did not examine it. I reached through the window. There were no hands to help me, but I fastened my fingers onto the ledge and heaved. Then, with a clatter of weapons and armour and stone, I was inside.
Brushing dust from my face, I moved clear of the window. Outside, I could hear Sigurd starting to climb the ladder; inside, nothing moved. There was another arched window facing the one I had entered by, boarded over with planks, and rows of narrow slits along the other walls. Somehow they did not seem to admit as much light as they should have.
‘Who are you?’ asked a voice from the gloom.
I stepped back, surprised. As my gaze took in the darkness, I saw where the voice had come from. A pale face, its owner squatting below the line of the windows. There were others beside him, I saw – half a dozen or more, all hunched over, forlorn and abandoned.
‘I have come for Quino. Quino of Melfi.’ Doom surrounded us, and the deaths of Drogo and Rainauld, even Simon, were drops in the ocean of blood which had been spilled. But if God had ordered it that Quino and I should be thrown together at the last, perhaps it was to a purpose.
‘Quino keeps the watch upstairs.’
‘Then he will know that I have come.’
I doubted he would welcome me; indeed, I half expected a shower of stones tipped down as I climbed the final ladder. This one was solid at least, though withered and aged so that the knots bulged out like bones. Above me a square of light showed the way. I could feel its warmth on my face, a single beam plucking me out in the darkness.
Then I had emerged into the open air, and was face to face with Quino.
It took a moment to see Quino clearly as my sight struggled with the renewed brightness. Even then, it was hard to lock my gaze on him, for there was so little to see. He had always been wiry; now he was emaciated. I could see where the hunger had devoured him, eating out his cheeks and pulling away his hair until he looked to be nothing more than a skeleton in armour, like a relic of some long-forgotten battle found in the desert. He sat alone against the battlements, his sword propped between his legs, and stared with blank eyes. All around him were scattered the tools of archery: bows and bowstrings, arrows in quivers and in criss-crossed heaps, as if a storm had swept through a bowyer’s workshop. There were even a few of the barbarian tzangras, crossbows that could fire short bolts clear through steel. I had witnessed their effects in Constantinople. I picked one up, remembering an afternoon once spent learning its ways, and heaved on it until the bowstring was latched into its hook. The bone arms which sprouted from the stock tensed into a perfect arc. Rummaging through the arrows on the floor, I at last found one of the right length, and slotted it into the wooden groove. When it was done, I pointed the bow at Quino, who had watched me all the while, neither speaking nor moving.
‘Have you come to kill me, Greek?’ What strength remained in him must have retreated inwards, for his voice still held its familiar bite.
‘The Turks will do that soon enough.’ To my left, Sigurd hauled himself through the hole and sat against the wall. Below, I could hear the Varangians investigating the tower’s defences. ‘I have come to hear your confession.’
Quino scowled, though it seemed a great effort for him. ‘You are no priest. You are not even a true Christian.’
‘Truer than you.’
Quino suddenly seemed to forget our conversation. He twisted around and stared through the embrasure. ‘They are massing again. Soon, when the day is hottest, they will come. We will not withstand them here.’
‘All the better, then, to ease your soul. Before you go to join Drogo and Rainauld – and Odard.’
His eyes flickered up. ‘Odard? Odard is dead?’
‘Three days ago. He died fighting.’
‘Then I am the last to live. It will not be long. Soon the curse we drew down on ourselves will run its course. And you, Greek, the scorpion who comes to prick my conscience, you will be ruined with us.’
‘The curse you drew down?’ I repeated. ‘The curse you drew down when you allied yourselves with a sect of heretics?’
Quino coughed – or perhaps he laughed, a dry sound, as though the skin had been stripped from his throat and only the bones rattled. ‘You have been busy. Are the Pure Ones dead also? I saw a column of smoke rising from the city yesterday.’
‘Some of them have died. But enough live to betray you.’
Again that terrible laugh. ‘And what of it? Will the bishop come here, scuttling along that wall to put me on my pyre? He will have to hurry.’ A bent arm clawed at me to come nearer. ‘Come. Come and see.’
All this while, Sigurd had sat in silence, ordering the scattered arrows into piles by the embrasures. Reluctantly, I passed him the crossbow and crawled across the floor to the far wall.
‘Look out there.’
Keeping an arm’s distance from Quino, I lifted my head to the battlements and looked out. The tower faced east, away from Antioch and into the mountains behind. A high, broad valley stretched out before us, a cradle between Mount Silpius and the peaks beyond. I had seen it before, on a foraging expedition the previous autumn, when small fields still sprouted the stalks of the harvest and the land was green. The farms, the fields, the crops and
the trees were long gone, wasted by the siege: now, in their place, an army had grown. They spread out over the rolling plateau in their thousands, some in makeshift camps, others marching in columns of ominous purpose.
‘You see the pavilion with the purple banner? That is Kerbogha.’
I looked where Quino pointed, filled with a thrilling dread to see our terrible enemy, but amid so many men and arms I could not make out the tent.
Despite that, it seemed clear that the army was moving, that its shimmering legions were swarming towards the citadel. I turned back to Quino with new urgency.
‘Did you kill Simon?’
‘Ask him yourself. You will see him soon enough.’
‘And you will not, if you take your sins to the grave.’
Quino bared his teeth. Possibly it was a smile. ‘We have been living in the tomb for months – I do not fear death. And I have followed enough gods in this life that surely one will take pity on me in the next.’
‘I can see movement in the citadel,’ Sigurd interrupted. ‘There are banners waving behind the walls.’
‘I was at Amalfi with Bohemond when the news came.’ From the distance in his voice, I thought Quino might be there in Amalfi again, though I did not know where it was. ‘The city was in rebellion, and we besieged it. High summer. A Frankish army passed nearby – bound for Jerusalem, they said. They sent envoys to us, proclaiming their pilgrimage. That very afternoon Bohemond declared he would follow them. He unclasped his cloak and tore it into pieces; the women sewed them into crosses. Red, like his banner. He gave them to his captains and swore that all who followed him to the Holy Land would win honour, riches, blessings. Had there been a ship in the harbour, I think we would have sailed it to Tyre that very day. Imagine it, Greek. The promise of salvation, of casting off our sins and starting anew on holy ground. A second baptism.’ He broke off, choking as if his lungs were seized with dust. ‘It has not happened as I thought.’
