Soldier of Crusade

by Jack Ludlow

  Even standing still in the heat of what was now full day, clad in mail and wearing a metal helmet, could render a fighter near to useless and permission was passed along to remove the latter when not actually under attack. Someone had the sense to get the womenfolk coming round with water to assuage their thirst, the priests likewise, and they added their blessings to the skins they carried, while reminding the fighters of what awaited them should the Lord see fit to take them into his bosom.

  ‘Where is Tacitus?’ Bohemund demanded, searching the nearby marsh for any sign of him.

  Robert nearly sighed. ‘He has formed up his Byzantines right in the deepest part of the marsh in a ring defence.’

  ‘We need him here.’

  ‘You can try, Bohemund, but I think he is determined that we should take any wounds coming our way.’

  ‘While he will offer to surrender if we fail and promise gold, and perhaps even the return of Nicaea, for his release.’

  ‘You cannot think him that low?’

  ‘When we have fought off these Turks, Robert, I will tell you of Byzantium and why it is never safe to repose trust in any of them.’

  That got a shake of the head; what was being said clearly posited a notion too difficult for Robert to comprehend, even if he was no stranger to treachery.

  The men who would control the sections of the now formed line were called together and quickly, given what was happening out on the plain did not appear to provide much time. The instructions, imparted by both leaders in combination, were plain. Hold your ground; do not advance whatever the prospects appear to promise. Let the Turks attack over the soggy ground before you that will dent the force of their assault. All, milities and knights, use your shields to provide protection from arrows. Knots of reserves were created; if a man fell they were to fill the gap.

  ‘They are coming!’ Tancred cried.

  There was no need to say ‘to your places’; each man crossed himself as, before them, with screams audible even at such a distance, the Turks were moving.

  Robert of Salerno had halted briefly as soon as he was sure he and his conroy were clear of danger and were not being pursued, but the thinking of what to do next had been undertaken mounted. At a best guess the host under Adémar, Raymond and de Bouillon was a day’s march to the north, but that was a distance for the mass, including pilgrims – they were moving as slowly as had Robert and Bohemund.

  The distance for mounted and hard-riding knights was hours not a day, and it was a requirement that horses be pushed to the limit if need be and that had to begin now. Hard by a narrow defile he ordered half his men to seek shelter in there and stay out of sight if they valued their lives. For the rest they would ride and lead a spare horse till the point where the loaded mount became winded. That would then be switched for the fresher horse so that speed could be maintained.

  Riding flat out, Robert and his half conroy had the advantage of the vast open spaces and cultivated ground, which they stuck to, that being flat, easy on the horses’ hooves and free from impediments like rocks and sudden dips, or worse, holes in the ground made by burrowing vermin. As they passed those working in their fields they were cursed for the damage they caused but paid them no heed, not least because these were the same peasants who the previous day had charged them outrageously for what they sold to those who had no choice but to buy.

  It took less time to make contact than even Robert anticipated, for they encountered the forward screen Raymond and his confrères had set out as protection, and he demanded their mounts to continue, while warning them to stay on the alert. Like Bohemund and Robert, the other leaders were out front, and seeing the riders coming on furiously they deduced the same message.

  If Robert’s new horse was breathing heavily so was he, and it took time for him to summon up the breath to explain what had happened, yet he was unable to answer the one question paramount in the council’s mind: how were the Normans dealing with the Turkish attack and could they hold?

  Alexius had given the Crusaders several old Roman maps of their route and no empire had ever been better served by its surveyors, so Robert was able to point out the field of battle in detail and every one of the Crusade leaders could see the salient features of the surrounding country and the possible avenues from which to attack. While orders rang out to get the majority of the mounted fighting men ready for an immediate move, the commanders of the foot-bound levies were instructed to set up a defensible camp into which they could herd the human and animal flotsam that was their tail, while more knights were instructed to throw out a screen to protect it.

  Keen as they were to move, these were no tyro generals and that demanded a certain amount of deliberation. To just dash off and seek to engage the Turks might relieve the Normans, but the sight of such a mighty mounted force approaching would drive Kilij Arslan off, and if that would solve a problem it would not provide an ultimate solution, for it was the view of Raymond of Toulouse and Godfrey de Bouillon that the Turk had given them a chance to destroy him.

  ‘I say we move out as a body but that a strong party of scouts be sent ahead to tell how our brothers are faring. If they are so pressed we must attack at once, so be it, but if they are holding them we can manoeuvre to get round Kilij’s forces and annihilate them.’

  ‘Which means we will no more be troubled by them,’ Godfrey added unnecessarily.

  ‘Robert of Salerno, you must lead that scouting force.’ That got for Raymond a weary response from a tired man, but there was no doubt it was a mission he was keen to accept – he had blood relatives and friends in that field near Dorylaeum. ‘We will be close on your heels, my title upon it.’

  Hours had passed with repeated assaults on the Norman line, the Turks hurling themselves forward on horseback, releasing huge salvoes of arrows – and they did maim and kill – but too few to rupture the defence. Denied fortune by such tactics they tried a naked cavalry charge that got so bogged down they were hardly moving when they reached the Norman line. If they then expected a move out to cut them down they were frustrated; not a single defender took a step. An assault on foot followed and now it was men struggling in muddy and churned-up ground in what came down to single combat in which Norman discipline and steadfastness was set against Seljuk fury.

  Constantly, eyes looked to the banners of Bohemund and Robert of Normandy, both red and both proudly flying in defiance of anything the infidel could throw at them, occasionally left behind by the men they identified as they rushed to a part of the line that seemed threatened to shore it up by personal endeavour. There they took place alongside their men to keep their line intact, doing the kind of slaughter that raised the spirits of everyone engaged. At other points of crisis the milities were led forward by their captains to impose a check on a dent in the line, but as soon as that was restored they were halted and ordered to withdraw, knights reforming to present to their enemies the extent of their failure.

  Appraised that their confrères were holding, Raymond and Godfrey planned their attack – Vermandois was barely consulted, which irritated Walo of Chaumont. Adémar, surprisingly, put himself forward to lead a strong band of knights around the Turkish flank, ready to come on when the main attack was launched, for it was becoming plain that that would need to be a charge across the open country. No time was wasted in creating tight formations for as soon as they came into view the horns blew for the gallop.

  The mere sight of these new foes checked the Turks and panic rippled down their ranks; the potency of the attack on the marsh line began to diminish and soon the defenders had sight of why, a horde of Frankish horsemen riding at speed in their own cloud of dust. Sensing that their enemies were seeking to go onto the defensive both Robert and Bohemund ordered the horses brought forward, their knights to mount, and, as Raymond and Godfrey at the head of thousands of lances crossed the river to their right, they broke out from the marsh to join in the attack.

  Kilij Arslan could not stand against the combined might of the Crusa
der armies and he knew it, but he was determined to mount a defence that would allow him to withdraw in good order. At that point Bishop Adémar, in a breastplate and helmet he had surreptitiously purchased in Constantinople, appeared on his flanking hill leading five hundred more knights who, if they got across the Turkish rear, would spell doom.

  The whole mass of Turks broke and ran, but not before the Crusaders got in amongst them and now it was their turn to engage in slaughter. No quarter was given, this was the People’s Crusade in reverse, and nor was the pursuit ended when the Turks had quit the field. They were chased down the valleys and over the crest of the surrounding hills and far beyond that, the lead elements eventually seeing ahead of them the tented encampment from which they had sprung.

  That put a check on the pursuit in the main, but not the flight. The Turks kept moving east and the leaders who had come to the aid of Kilij Arslan – Hasan of Cappadocia and Gabid ibn Danishmend it later transpired – abandoned their gold and silver, as well as some of their wives and all of their servants, horses, oxen, asses, camels and sheep. This provided, so rich were they, a proper set of feasts as well as sufficient treasure to make every fighting man feel as if, even without salvation, coming east had been worthwhile. Added to that, the Crusaders gathered back in what had been stolen from them.

  Yet there was a bitter aftermath as they returned to the field of conflict, carpeted with the dead, too many of them Christians and too high a proportion of those fighting men. If panic had cost many of the pilgrims their lives, seeking to get them to safety had exposed knights to the need to fight alone against insuperable odds and it was a testimony to their prowess that not one lay alone; every Norman was surrounded by the corpses of those he had slain before succumbing himself.

  Then there were the forces of Byzantium, who had taken no part. They had emerged from the swamp, and faced with men they had failed to aid they demonstrated no shame whatsoever, which had the Franks and Normans treating them as pariahs. Tacitus, insufferably, behaved as if nothing untoward had occurred and still expected to be consulted before any course of action was agreed.

  It took three days to clear the battlefield and when they departed it was dotted with close to four thousand crosses, many without names for the Turks had so mutilated them as to render them unrecognisable even to their friends. A special Mass was said for their souls and a plea made to the Almighty to cosset the knights who had fallen, for they were truly soldiers of Christ.

  The bodies of the slain Turks, which ran from the field of battle to and well beyond their one-time encampment, were left to the carrion, but even as they left them to rot, it was held that they had been a more than worthy foe.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  After regrouping at Dorylaeum they had to continue their march, only this time it was agreed as much of a composite body as the terrain imposed on them, without knowing what that meant in practice. Kilij Arslan was not done with the men who had invaded his lands; defeated he might be but the wily Sultan of Rüm adopted a policy of scorching the earth, denying them food and water in what was going to be, at the height of summer, an arid landscape in any case. Crops were destroyed by burning or being dug up and left to rot in the sun; peasants who might have food hidden were driven away or slaughtered to ensure their cache would not be tortured out of them by Westerners who would soon be reduced to starving.

  In the heat of high summer the rivers were turning to trickles and eventually that would cease all together as they got further from the mountains which had already, in any case, given up what they had. For centuries the populace had lived with this and if they had not prospered they had learnt to survive. Cisterns had been dug below ground to store the precious liquid when it was plentiful so their fields could be watered and kept fertile and they could keep themselves alive. These the Turks destroyed, and if there was a proper artesian well an oxen killed and its carcass tipped down into the base was enough to poison that.

  The temperature rose to a point that even those accustomed to the heat of Southern Italy could not bear. Metal was impossible to touch for humans, and the animals, who required huge quantities of water even in normal climes, had to have twice as much and even that was not enough in a country where there was little or no shade. This meant marching at night if no clouds obscured the moon and the stars, and continuing only in the short relatively cool period of the morning, which severely cut into the time it took to cover ground. In the midst of the day every piece of cloth was pressed into service as part awning, part windbreak, for that seemed to burn more than the air.

  The army marched ahead and thus got what little sustenance could be found, though that was close to nothing; the pilgrims brought up the rear, eating the dust of those who had preceded them, suffering a degree of thirst that within days saw the weakest collapse. Since no one else had the strength to aid them – they had their own concerns about survival – that was a death sentence. Pope Urban’s Crusade left in its wake a terrain dotted with desiccated corpses that a blazing sun would turn to bones within days and not all were human; many an animal lay down to die as well, while in amongst them were items looted from Turkish tents that, however valuable, had no more purpose.

  The fighting men suffered too, if not to the same extent and Adémar sought to institute a system by which each contingent took the lead from one day to the next so that if anything edible or thirst-quenching was found it was equally shared, yet it could not and did not suffice and those whose spirit was weak, and most certainly those bearing wounds from the recent battle, began to die.

  More worrying was the effect on the animals, most especially their horses for a force that fought mounted. With a landscape bereft of pasture it was a lack of food as well as water that began to decimate them; the host could not carry enough oats to feed them, and in any case dry oats were as useless as none. The flesh began to fall off them, their rib bones becoming so prominent that to image them as actual skeletons was easy. They were certainly in no condition to carry a knight on their back; they moved heads drooped, leg movements strained and their hides, which could not be shaved for fear of the sun, moulting in patches. The only saving grace was they would not be required to carry their burdens; if the Crusaders could not fight across a land like this neither could the Turks.

  Occasionally the sky would darken on the horizon and hearts would lift; they soon learnt these did not bear rain but swirling clouds of stinging sand that choked even noses and mouths, well covered as everyone was, Tacitus especially, given his golden nose would get so hot in the sunshine as to burn his skin; not that he elicited much sympathy after his behaviour at what was now being called the Battle of Dorylaeum; he and his Byzantine levies were close to being despised, yet they had to be tolerated if the princes wanted any future aid from Constantinople.

  After only days in what was a desert, how distant the glory of that victory seemed, and in the week that followed it became a hollow mockery, for if good Christians could beat the infidel in battle they could not conquer nature. Hundreds of pilgrims and soldiers died every day so it was a much diminished force upon which the relenting sun rose each morning, to be cursed as the immediate heat it produced hit red-raw flesh.

  Now the horses were literally falling over where they stood and that included many who had struggled to their feet to move on in the first place. No packhorse could now bear a load, and the oxen, with a greater store of fat about their bodies, were pressed into service. The Normans took to excessive care of their destriers, for if other mounts might be replaced they could not, but the losses there too were enormous. Men, who had only prickly plants to sustain them – and they had to be beaten to a pulp to even consider consuming them – had little to spare, even sympathy, for the animals that had carried them into and kept them alive in battle.

  ‘This is a battle no general can win.’

  These words Bohemund croaked as the first grey daylight showed another flat and endless plain; they had marched half the night before exhaustion ma
de a rest inevitable. That vista would soon lose all shape as the heat of the sun created what looked like a rippling pool of water between land and sky, a sight to drive some men so mad they rushed towards it, sapping what little energy and spirit they possessed.

  ‘This is God’s fight, not ours.’

  ‘If we do not find water soon …’ Tancred started to say, only to stop, not wishing to state the obvious conclusion.

  ‘Then travellers will come this way and mark their route by our bones and they will say that in this desert our sins caught up with us. We were not men seeking purity but the bearers of our own curse.’

  ‘We may be in hell already,’ came the reply, as the orange rim of that massive blazing orb hit the horizon to rise in what seemed a blink to its full size.

  ‘Rouse up our men, Tancred, we must make what progress we can before it gets too hot.’

  That would amount to no more than an hour and before movement all the threads and strings which had been strung out to catch the dew had to be sucked dry, that being the only liquid these men would have until the next darkness. On this day the Apulian Normans had the lead, and as they moved, anything that looked as if it might be edible was scrabbled from the rock-hard earth, the spines of the only plants that could survive the daytime heat pulled off and the body broken up to be stuck on parched tongues in the hope of a modicum of fluid from that or the saliva it produced.

  Leading his destrier, its head in constant need of being hauled up lest it expire from loss of spirit, Bohemund knew that his riding mount was not going to get through the day nor, perhaps, his fighting horse too. Then slowly the destrier’s head came up and instead of dead eyes there was something in them, a sort of dull gleam. From plodding at his heels it sought to first come abreast of him and then get ahead in a sort of staggering gait. Looking round he saw the other equines to be less weary and that seemed to apply to all the lead mounts.