Holy War (40 page)

There were scowls and black looks. For a moment, Yusuf thought they might disobey his order. At last, Muhammad spoke.

‘If you will not let us charge, then there are other Franks to be killed.’

Nu’man nodded. ‘The prisoners.’

Yusuf grimaced. ‘No. The Franks are savages, but we—’

‘The prisoners!’ Nu’man shouted. ‘I will have blood!’

‘No, wait!’ Yusuf cried, but his words were lost among the shouts of his men.

‘The prisoners! Kill the prisoners!’

Nu’man wheeled his horse about and galloped back towards camp, followed by the mamluks. Only Qaraqush, Al-Afdal and his khaskiya remained with Yusuf. He shook his head. ‘More blood will not bring back our dead. It will only make the Franks less likely to surrender when we face them in battle.’

‘A price worth paying, Malik,’ Qaraqush said. ‘Those were my men who were slaughtered. They deserve revenge.’ He, too, rode for camp.

Yusuf looked to Al-Afdal. ‘They are only Franks, Father,’ his son said. ‘Whether we kill them now or later in war, dead is dead. You have told me so yourself.’

‘I was wrong.’

Yusuf turned his horse to face Acre. When he had taken Jerusalem, he had thought it would be the beginning of an era of peace. Instead, it had only brought more bloodshed. It had brought Richard. Yusuf located Richard’s flag, flying over a cluster of knights who had come out to watch the slaughter. He thought he spotted the king amongst them. Lionheart, they called him, but no lion was ever so savage. If this war were to end, then Richard must die.

C
hapter 22

September 1191: Near Arsuf

John’s aching back woke him before sunrise. He sat up and felt another stab of pain. He had spent the last sixteen days in the saddle as the army crept south from Acre. The Saracens had harassed them constantly, shooting arrows into the column before peeling away. Their attacks forced the foot-soldiers to shuffle along in close formation. Richard was content to cover only a few miles a day. The army marched only in the morning before the day grew hot, and they stopped whenever they reached fresh water. Each afternoon, they set up a stockade before bedding down for the night.

John had not spent so much time in the saddle since he was a much younger man, and he was suffering for it. Sleeping on the hard ground had done nothing to help. He reached back to massage the tense muscles for a moment. Then he rose and went outside. The air was cool, which was a refreshing change from the past weeks. The autumn rains would come soon. The camp was silent and the tents around him barely visible in the dim light. As he made his way towards the river, the cicadas started up, filling the air with their song. The guard at the gate yawned as he waved John through.

John stripped off his caftan and waded into the stream just outside the stockade. He scooped up a double handful of the cold water. It was brackish this close to the sea, but still drinkable. On the far side of the stream, trees were appearing out of the darkness as the sky brightened. They were massive oaks, some of their canopies spreading so wide that two hundred men could have gathered beneath them. Yesterday, the army had marched through those woods, accompanied by the pungent odour of the acorns they ground to dust beneath their feet.

John dunked his head and came up shivering. He bathed every morning, even on cold days. It was a habit he had learned years ago in the household of Yusuf’s father. John found his thoughts returning to that time more and more often. He had been a slave, yet those had been some of the sweetest years of his life. He had spent his days studying and teaching Yusuf to fight, and his nights with Zimat. Closing his eyes now, he could still see her long black hair, her dark eyes, her skin the golden colour of desert sands. She had asked him to take her away with him, and he had refused. He had spoken to her of duty and honour. He had been a fool.

He left the river and made his way back to camp. Yawning men were stumbling from the large barracks tents. They moved stiffly, sore after days of marching. John fetched his helmet and followed them to where the cooks stood over their huge cauldrons. He joined the line of men waiting to have tasteless boiled wheat ladled into their upturned helmets. John ate as he returned to his tent.

As secretary to the king, he had his own small tent and a servant to tend to his needs. The servant – a serious boy with a milky-white, pudgy face that had earned him the unflattering nickname Suet – had scrubbed John’s mail and laid it out. John dressed in leather breeches, a padded jerkin, a long mail hauberk that fell to his knees and a mail coif to protect his head and neck. Suet helped him pull on a surcoat bearing Richard’s three lions, and then handed him the round, open-faced helm, which was now cleaned. John buckled his mace at his side and stepped outside. Men were everywhere – pulling on armour, packing up the barracks tents, sharpening blades, taking down the barricade and loading the logs and other supplies aboard longboats to be rowed through the surf to the ships that mirrored the army’s progress each day. John wove through the chaos to Richard’s tent.

Each morning, the king met with the native lords to ask about the terrain ahead. John would have preferred to absent himself, but Richard had made it clear that if he did not attend, his loyalty would be called into question. So each day John went and stood tight-lipped. He would be damned if he was going to do anything more to help Richard.

Today, John was the first to arrive. Robert de Sablé came next. The Frenchman was a fleshy man with red cheeks and close-set eyes. He had served Richard for years, and as a reward, the king had installed him as Grand Master of the Temple. As such, de Sablé felt he had a place at the council of native lords. The Hospitaller Grand Master, Garnier of Nablus, scowled at Robert as he entered. There was no love lost between those two. Nablus had been raised in the Holy Land and thought Robert a fool. Balian and Guy came next. King Guy, John corrected himself. Before leaving Acre, Richard had declared him to be the king of Jerusalem, with Conrad as his heir. Conrad had taken his men back to Tyre in protest. That was another eight hundred men lost, including Reginald of Sidon, who had taken Conrad’s side. The army, which had numbered nearly twenty-four thousand on the day that Acre fell, had been reduced to half that number. The Saracen army was still twenty thousand men strong.

Richard arrived last, as always. He spent the mornings with his men, breakfasting each day with a different set of common troops. The king’s sunburnt face was finally starting to heal, and he was in good spirits, despite the hardships of the march. He grinned. ‘What lies before us today, men?’

‘We should reach Arsuf,’ Nablus said in his high, reedy voice.

‘What is the road like?’

‘Open, Your Grace,’ Balian said. ‘No river crossings, no obstacles. The coastal plain is more than a mile wide.’

‘A good place for Saladin to attack,’ Nablus noted.

Richard nodded. ‘We will march in close formation. De Sablé, you will ride in the vanguard with Hugh of Burgundy. I will march in the centre with King Guy. Nablus, you will command the rear. Our strength is in our discipline. If any man leaves the column without my order, I’ll have his tongue. Is that understood?’ The lords nodded. Richard ended each morning council with those words.

Balian caught up to John outside the tent. ‘There will be a battle today, John. I can feel it.’ He arched his back and it cracked. ‘War is a young man’s pursuit. I feel as if I’ve been on the rack.’

‘I
have
been on the rack,’ John replied. ‘It is much worse.’

‘
Hah
. I suppose it is.’ Balian became suddenly serious and lowered his voice. ‘Keep yourself alive, John, but do not strive too mightily to keep the Saracens from bashing in Richard’s brains. He would have died at Acre were it not for you. We might all be better off if he had.’

John looked about and was relieved to see that none of Richard’s knights were near by. He was glad to know he was not the only one who did not care for Richard, but he did not want to end his days swinging from a noose. ‘Careful, Balian. Such words could get you killed. We will talk more of this later. God save you.’

John strode to where Suet held his horse, an even-tempered chestnut. He hauled himself into the saddle. The column was forming up along the coast, the foot-soldiers making a box around the cavalry. The ranks of sergeants were five rows deep on the landside. They were the men Richard liked to call pincushions, who were there to protect the knights’ horses from the arrows of the Saracen skirmishers. At the fore and rear of the army, the ranks of foot-soldiers were fifty across and twenty men deep. Three divisions of cavalry, each four hundred strong, would ride at the centre of the box. Altogether, the column covered nearly half a mile.

John took his position with Richard and the English lords. As they set out, the sun was smouldering just above the hills to the east, transforming the sea into a swirling cauldron of gold and pink and red. The longboats were cutting through the waves, headed towards the twenty ships that carried the army’s baggage. A cool sea breeze brought the tang of salty air and the cry of gulls. Wet sand crunched beneath the hooves of John’s horse. As they rode, the coastal plain widened, the hills retreating inland until they were barely visible on the horizon. There was no sign of the Saracens. Then John heard it: the beat of distant drums, low and steady, like a pulse.

‘They are late this morning,’ Richard noted. ‘Perhaps they grow tired of this game.’

The drums grew louder and were joined by the piercing wail of war horns.
Haa-room
!
Haa-room
! The foot-soldiers in the column nervously eyed the hills to the east. John saw a few of them take their shields from their backs, but there was still no sign of the enemy. The tide was coming in, the crashing surf competing with the beat of the drums. Above all the noise, the war horns continued to wail.
Haa-room
!
Haa-room
!

‘There they are!’ de Preaux called.

Young eyes
. John squinted to the east but saw nothing. Richard had seen them though. ‘Tighten ranks!’ the king roared. ‘Shields up!’ The command was relayed forward and back down the line. The foot-soldiers unslung their shields from their backs and held them so that they overlapped, forming a wall around the outside of the formation. The pace slowed to a crawl and the column shrank to no more than a quarter-mile as the men tightened ranks.

They shuffled along in this formation for what seemed to be ages before John finally caught sight of the Saracen standards rising above the horizon. A black line of men appeared, rushing forward like flood water to fill the sandy coastal plain. There were thousands upon thousands of men formed in a crescent that stretched for more than a mile from tip to tip. Those were no mere skirmishers. Saladin was committing his infantry. Balian was right; the Saracens meant to do battle.

Richard was grinning. ‘At last. I was beginning to fear Saladin had no taste for blood.’ The king turned to his young cousin. ‘Henry, ride forward and remind Hugh’s Frenchmen to hold their place until my order. John, go and tell Nablus the same.’

John was happy to be away from Richard. He wheeled his mount and cantered down the line, his horse kicking up wet sand as he rode in the gap between the cavalry and infantry on the ocean side. The men of the rearguard had already turned around to march backwards so that their shields formed a wall protecting the army’s back. Behind the shield wall came ranks of spearmen and then crossbowmen. John found Nablus riding just behind the crossbowmen.

‘Grand Master,’ he greeted him.

‘John. Saladin means to test us today.’ Nablus nodded towards the advancing Saracens. They were armoured in a mix of pale padded cotton and dark boiled leather. Spears rose above the enemy ranks.

‘Richard bids you keep tight formation. Do not charge until his signal.’

‘I know my duty.’

‘I did not doubt it. God keep you, Nablus.’

‘And you, John.’

By the time he returned to Richard’s side, the Saracen infantry were only a hundred yards off. John spied mostly black Nubians and tanned Egyptians amongst their ranks. A horn sounded and was joined by the beat of drums, the wail of bagpipes and the war cries of thousands of men. The enemy charged as one, and the ground rumbled under the pounding of their feet.

John took his long, kite-shaped shield from his saddle and thrust his left arm through the leather straps. The enemy was only fifty yards away. Now forty . . . The archers on the seaward side of the Frankish line let fly, and their shafts arced over the column to fall amongst the Saracens. The effect was no more than swatting at a cloud of gnats. A few Saracens fell, but the rest charged on. When the front ranks of the enemy were only twenty yards away, they stopped and hurled their spears. Most clattered off the wall of shields, but there were scattered cries of pain as a few struck home. The Frankish foot-soldiers wore mostly leather or padded cotton armour, which provided poor protection if anything got past their shields. Holes appeared in the ranks as men collapsed. They were carried to the coast, where longboats waited to take them out to the ships. Fresh men stepped out to take their places.

‘They are sticking it to the pincushions!’ Richard roared merrily.

The front ranks of the Saracens peeled back, and more men stepped forward to hurl their spears. They aimed higher this time, sending the javelins over the ranks of the infantry. One of the spears hurtled straight towards John. He blocked it, and the force of the impact set his shield quivering and left his arm numb. The onslaught continued as the column crept up the coast. Rank after rank of Saracens ran forward to hurl their spears before peeling back. The Christian arrows took their toll, leaving dozens of the enemy dead or injured on the field, but the Christian losses were worse. Finally, the last of the Saracen infantry cast their spears. As they peeled back, light cavalry galloped forward, shooting arrows as they rode. The air filled with the hiss of deadly shafts. Most were absorbed by the wall of foot-soldiers, but a few fell amongst the cavalry. One hit John in the chest. He snapped the shaft off. At this distance, the blow had been too weak to penetrate the padded vest beneath his mail, but it would leave a bruise all the same. Another arrow lodged in the leather of his saddle. The Saracens were trying to take out the knight’s horses. De Preaux’s mount was struck in the neck, and the beast stumbled and fell, taking the young knight with it. De Preaux’s leg was pinned beneath the dying beast, but he finally managed to pull free. He cut the horse’s throat and limped after Richard. He would have to go on foot until a fresh mount was brought for him.