The Crescent and the Cross

by S. J. A. Turney

  The mass of horses and men in the push was furious. Arnau felt things battering into him, slamming into his shield, his limbs, knocking his sword arm, and it was impossible to tell whether it was a stray enemy blow or an allied horseman pressing forwards causing each knock. Something stabbed into his shoulder, but by the time he’d turned his head the source was gone.

  Men of the Temple rode in front and behind and to his right, to his left a Navarrese knight fighting to get past the Almohad infantry who were trying to hold them and close the gap. A spear suddenly took the knight in the neck, slamming up inside his iron helm and skewering him, broken links of chain mail falling away in a glittering cloud amid the wash of his lifeblood.

  As the man died, an Almohad pushed past him and attempted to swing a sword at Arnau, though there was simply insufficient room. The sword caught up in the dying Frank’s saddle, stirrup and leg, and Arnau slammed his shield into the man’s head, watching him fall away to be crushed by the pounding hooves. The poor knight’s horse was incapable of extricating itself from danger, and the howling, rabid Almohad warriors butchered it where it stood, trying to get past it to the knights behind.

  Arnau pressed on, and in the space of ten heartbeats he felt the change as they managed to escape from the gap and surge out into the open hillside behind the Almohad army. The knights of Navarre and the Templars riding with them formed up as best they could while lending all their effort to speed. They had to catch up with the king now, for a strung out and scattered force would remain in danger.

  The caliph had miscalculated massively. The entire Almohad army had been committed down the slope with the simple remit of forcing the Christian army back until it broke and then crushing it entirely, repeating the strength of their victory at Alarcos.

  Nothing had been held back. No reserves.

  Only a strange, squat palisade around the caliph’s pavilion on the hilltop and likely a small bodyguard unit therein. Not enough to hold a force of knights, surely? He glanced back over his shoulder. Some of the officers of the Almohad force had obviously realised what had happened and had identified the danger, bellowing orders, gesturing manically back up the hill.

  There was nothing they could do. Now that Alphonso of Castile had sent his main cavalry into the fray, the Almohads at the centre were having to fight hard to keep up their advance. If they sent men back to stop King Sancho’s reckless attack it might weaken the centre enough for the military orders and the army of Castile to break them and push them back up the slope. They were in an impossible position and would have to trust that the caliph’s guard would be enough to fight off the assault.

  Arnau almost laughed. The crusaders had all but lost just minutes ago. They had been only moments away from ignominious disaster, kings fleeing the field, an army in rout and everything collapsing around them. One sly tactic on a flank, one lucky gap and a king with an eye for strategy, and it was all changing. There was a chance now. A chance for a tired force who had crossed a mountain range at night only to fight a battle uphill against a larger, well-rested enemy to achieve their unlikely goal. A chance to win.

  At a call from one of the Navarrese nobles, the king and his vanguard had slowed their charge slightly, just enough to allow the rest to catch up, and the mounted force formed up into a solid block once more as they ran.

  Arnau, out on the left-hand edge of the mass of horsemen, peered ahead. Here and there on the hillside were figures. Mostly they were the Almohad wounded who had dropped out of the advance, but there were a few hale and hearty enemy figures. Most of them took to flight at the sight of the advancing cavalry. Occasionally one would brace himself, produce a spear and attempt to hold off the tide of men and beasts. Not one lasted more than a heartbeat, and only one knight fell foul of a spear point on that ride, tumbling from his horse with a cry.

  As they neared the crest of the hill, Arnau could see the camp of the caliph’s army, stretching out behind the commander’s pavilion across the slope. The part of it that had occupied the upper slope on this side of the hill had been removed hurriedly, tents, campfires and all, to allow the Moorish army to muster for the fight this morning. Arnau could see the scorched patches of the former cookfires and the flattened grass where the tents had stood, all of it scarred over with the activity of hooves and boots.

  And now he could see the caliph’s pavilion. The white tent, gigantic and elaborate, stood at the highest point. Outside it had formed a rigid block of steel-clad Almohad veterans. The best the caliph had, protecting his tent. But it was not this force that consumed all Arnau’s attention, nor the slaves rushing around outside, gathering anything of value to remove from danger.

  It was the palisade.

  What they had taken to be a protective circle of stakes or some such from across the battlefield was, up close, something much more disturbing. The barricade was formed of men, each and every one buried almost to the knees in the hard ground. Each man was naked but for a loincloth, and each man was armed with sword and shield. And as if the insanity of the half-buried wall of men wasn’t enough, each naked figure was covered in writing in the Arabic script, delicate and elegant painted strokes of black ink covering every inch of skin.

  Moreover, to add to the disturbing sight, the half-buried men were not Moors. Not a single one. Each transfixed figure had the colouring of the Christian north, some even with blond or ruddy hair. Converts, Arnau realised with a sick taste in his mouth. Each and every one of these men was a zealot, willing to die for his caliph, but each one had been a man plucked from his former life and conditioned by the Almohad priests.

  Arnau wondered whether, had he and his friends not made that dreadful and dangerous journey to Cordoba, they would now be finding Martin Calderon standing there, naked and painted, brandishing a spear to protect his master. He shivered at the thought. They had saved Calderon. If only they could have done as much for all these men.

  The converts began to chant as the Navarrese knights approached, and the sound, especially accompanied by the image, chilled the blood. As they chanted, from somewhere behind, the drumming began once more, the rhythms of the two sounds falling into sync.

  ‘Allāhu akbar…’

  God is the greatest.

  ‘Al-naṣr aw al-shahāda…’

  Victory or martyrdom.

  ‘Subhan allāh…’

  Glory be to God.

  And the refrain repeated to the rhythm of the drum, again and again and again.

  There was no battle cry from the Navarrese, nor from the Templars. Each man was focused purely on the task ahead. For precious moments, Arnau wondered whether the king or the preceptor would shout out some command, whether there was to be a strategy to this, whether they were to kill as few of these poor deluded fools as possible, or some such. No commands came. Everyone knew what needed to be done.

  Arnau hit the wall of half-buried converts with the rest of the force, intent on breaking through them and reaching the master of this Moorish army beyond. Half a dozen of the attackers came to grief immediately, for these men were fearless, standing their ground as though they had any choice in that matter, and facing down horses and riders. Some knights fell with an enemy spear through them or their horse. One in the wall of converts managed with a huge blow of his sword to smash the legs of a knight’s horse even as it rode him down, snapping his legs like twigs at the same time and ploughing him into the dirt beneath the screaming mess of fatally-wounded animal.

  They did not take time to deal with the wall of men, just that section they needed to remove in order to get into the heart of the camp. Eerily, the half-buried zealots continued to chant to the drumbeat even as they tried to turn their bodies to swing back at the horsemen who were now in the great circle of the caliph’s accommodation behind them.

  Arnau felt a spear waft through the air so close he almost ended his days there on the wall of flesh, but then he was past and inside the ring.

  ‘The tent,’ called one of the Navarrese knigh
ts. ‘The caliph!’

  The Almohad bodyguards were ready for them, faces set in a scowl of defiance within their egg-shaped steel helmets, red padded cotes atop their chain mail shirts, shields of red and green decorated with tassels, each man armed with either a western Moorish straight sword or a vicious-looking mace. Behind them stood the caliph Al-Nasir’s tent. Inside was the man who had led this new fanatical Moorish regime to capture some of the most important Christian strongholds in the peninsula, who had brought a new level of zealotry to the ruling of Al-Andalus, who had conquered the Balearic Islands and fought off half a continent to consolidate his domain in Africa, and who had brought to Iberia the largest force of Moors ever assembled in preparation for the final conquest of the peninsula.

  For a while, on the field below this hill, it had looked as though that was becoming inevitable. That the disaster of Alarcos was destined to be repeated, the crusade crushed in its infancy and a new wave of victorious Almohads conquering their way north. That seemed to be changing, the world in the balance of a single action. Now all that stood between the knights of the crusading army and the man who led that zealous empire were his bodyguards. Carve a path through that square of steel, bristling with points and anger, and there was a chance to end Moorish dominion in Iberia, or at least its expansion.

  Arnau could feel the determination flowing outwards from all those around him, and there was no sign of the column of knights stopping to take on the bodyguards in an organised fashion. This was every man pushing forwards for victory. The battle was still in flux down below, the Christians still outnumbered and merely holding back the tide rather than forcing a victory. Even with Alphonso now committed, the whole thing could collapse at any moment. One panicked voice in the wrong place, and it would spread like plague through the army and turn the holding action into a rout. The Christians would be trapped between the victorious Moors and the pass defended by their manned outposts. There would be few survivors limping back over the mountains to tell the world what had happened here.

  There was no time.

  Before that great force below broke and fled, this one hopeful assault had to succeed, and Arnau felt a thrill at the knowledge that there could clearly never be more of a fitting man to lead the attack than King Sancho the Strong of Navarre, who still led from the fore, his own sword swinging in hunger, ready to bite more enemy flesh. The blade was already stained pink, mute testimony of his part in the action. This was no courtly strategist, but a warrior like those of old. A Pelayo or El Cid.

  King Sancho rode into that ordered square of brightly-coloured bodyguards as though nothing in the world could bring him harm on this day. Oddly, Arnau was content that that may very well be the case. Something about what was happening suggested that the hand of the Lord himself guided the Navarrese king. His voice rose in prayer even as he guided his own mount into that block of steel.

  ‘Lord, judge thou them that harm me; overcome thou them that fight against me. Take thou up armours and shield; and rise up to help me. Hold out the sword, and close together the way against them that pursue me; say thou to my soul, I am thine health.’

  The thirty-fifth Psalm, another song of God that might have been made for soldiers. He’d not even managed those few short lines before he crashed into the ranks of the caliph’s guard, and these men were no ordinary soldiers. With the fanatical loyalty of the slave converts and the martial training of the Almohad veterans, they were above and beyond all other Moorish troops on the field. Each man had been hand-chosen by the caliph’s generals and their equipment was of the very best quality. The horsemen of Navarre had pushed through the crush of the enemy wing and had ridden down the half-buried lunatics of the human stockade, and neither had sufficiently reduced their momentum, the force ploughing on up the slope relentlessly, making for that great, white pavilion.

  Now, the unstoppable charge of the knights of Navarre met its match.

  Arnau could not see what happened to the rest of the riders immediately, for all his attention was locked on his own concerns. Two of the nearest soldiers lunged for him as he rode them down. He’d expected to simply plough through them as he had across the field, yet he had underestimated them. The caliph’s guards to both left and right in front of him neatly sidestepped the charge, placing the men behind them in peril instead. As they did so, one swung a heavy, deadly mace, the other stabbing upwards with a straight-bladed sword. The sword was caught and knocked aside by Arnau’s own blade, but the mace had not been meant for him. It smashed into the side of the horse’s head, pulverising it, smashing the skull and killing it in an instant.

  Arnau bellowed in alarm as his horse collapsed, still carrying that momentum, sliding forwards. The beast mangled the two men in the second line, and Arnau knew that before the animal slumped to its side he had to get free, lest he likely be crushed beneath it. He pulled his left leg from the stirrup with ease, though his right was caught. Howling and panicking, he fought to extricate his right foot, even as the animal slid to a halt, quivering, and began to slowly, ponderously, tip over onto its side.

  A blow struck his left shoulder and only failed to smash the shoulder blade because he was moving so wildly, panicked, trying to get free. He yelped at the pain and managed to throw his shield up to ward off a mace blow that was coming for him, feeling it dent the board and scrape along it to the open air. He had no choice. Dropping his sword, he reached down to his stirrup, using his numb, twitching hand to slip free his foot, and leaping away just as the horse crashed to the dusty ground on its right-hand side, quivering its last breaths.

  Arnau felt the panic in his heart continuing to rise, despite having escaped the horse. His ankle felt sore and weak, his shoulder numb and bruised. He was unarmed and right in the midst of the press of the caliph’s guards. He looked around desperately for his sword and could see the hilt sticking out from beneath the bulk of his dead horse. No chance of retrieving that. There was a mace attached to his saddle, but that would now be beneath the horse too and out of reach.

  Blows rained down on him in a flurry and he did the only thing he could at that moment. He bent double, crouching and using the shield like a roof as swords and maces hammered against it, seeking the man beneath. He was lucky in a way that there were so many enemies tightly pressed around him, for it meant that no Moor had sufficient space to get down and stab beneath the shield.

  He was acquiring bruises and pains with every crash and thud upon the shield and for a moment felt a wave of astonishment at how quickly he had gone from the elation of believing the battle all but won to being trapped in an enemy formation, unhorsed and disarmed and fighting for his life.

  Staggering this way and that, he could only vaguely tell in this sea of legs and dust in which direction he was bound, largely because he could still see horses’ legs off to his right. Feeling something thump into his helmet and daze him slightly, he staggered that way, seeking safety. The thuds against his shield petered out a little as he neared that horse, and suddenly a brightly-clad Moor fell to the ground right in front of him, his face a mass of grisly chopped meat. The Moor was still alive and howling through what was left of his visage, but Arnau had no time for compassion. Reaching out, he kicked the man in his broken face and pulled the sword from his hand. It was of an unusual weight, lighter than the blade to which he was used, and he had a moment’s recollection in the blink of an eye to a time now so distant, him standing in the dust outside Rourell and spitting out dust as his German sword teacher explained patiently that the ability to handle an unfamiliar weapon could be paramount in this life.

  Gritting his teeth, Arnau wrapped his fingers around the stolen hilt and rose with a roar. As he came up like a man bursting free from the sea, the surrounding Almohads fell back, thrown off balance. Bellowing the Psalms, he swept this way and that with his new sword, heedless of tactics, simply swinging it around again and again to open up a space and keep the enemy back.

  Breathing heavily, he slowed and was forced
to dance aside once more as the man on the horse, the Navarrese knight who had saved him by felling that Moor, was thrown from his own injured horse, rolling in the dust and then coming up beside Arnau. The man gave him a moment’s nod and then rolled round behind him so that they were back to back, weapons brandished at the sea of vicious Moors around the pair.

  They fought that way now, Templar and secular knight, their backs protected by one another, shields taking blow after blow as they hacked and cut and stabbed. Moors fell before them in swathes, but each one sold his life dearly, and Arnau knew how sore he would be after this, if he survived, that was. There was every possibility he would have to be taken to the butcher’s tent, for he could no longer feel his left arm, his neck would not turn far to the right without agonising pain, his ankle was repeatedly buckling under him, and he could feel the white-hot agony of cuts in a dozen places, and the warm wetness of his own blood all over. How bad his wounds were he had no idea, had not the time to check. Fight to win. Fight simply to live.

  It felt like hours that he fought them, the Navarrese knight at his back, and when relief came, he could hardly lift his sword, so strained were his muscles from the constant effort and the repeated blows of his enemies. Suddenly, though, they were pulled back. Arnau hardly noticed that he was fighting no one for a time, his sword swinging out in empty air as if still expecting to bite flesh. He blinked blood and sweat from his eyes and tried to stand straighter, an action that caused him to stagger into the knight who’d fought beside him. The two men almost went down in an exhausted flurry of arms and legs, and only by gripping one another like lovers could they remain on their feet. Slowly, they straightened and looked around.

  The last of the caliph’s guard were being dispatched. The force that had attacked the caliph’s compound had lost two-thirds of its number, and Arnau could see the preceptor lying beside another brother, still and silent in the midst of the carnage. One figure came through the stinking ruination larger than life, though. King Sancho of Navarre, drenched in blood and having lost both shield and helm, was striding across the bodies, his own horse gone. Behind him, one of his knights was carrying a dented crown. The king was making for the white pavilion even as the last few Moors were butchered and pushed to the ground, not a single one of the guards opting to surrender.