Templar's Acre

CHAPTER EIGHTY-THREE

It was soon after dawn that the shouts came from the men on the tower-tops. Baldwin and Hob had rested outside the tower, below the battlements, while one man stood guard at all times through the night. Hearing the bellows from above, Baldwin stood and peered up, covering his eyes, and saw the men on the Tower of King Henry shouting and waving their arms. Someone began to ring a bell in alarm, and Baldwin stared at the enemy only to see the lines of infantry moving.

‘They’re coming!’

Hob was at his side, and staring out from narrowed eyes at the Sultan’s ranks walking forwards at a shuffling pace. ‘This is it, then,’ he said.

In answer, Baldwin took his hand, and the two stared into each other’s eyes for a moment. Hob had a bloodshot eye where a stone splinter had hit his brow, and Baldwin knew that his own face was streaked with soot and blood, but both managed a faint grin before drawing apart and unsheathing their swords.

The night had not been restful. Throughout, a steady scattering of missiles had kept on slamming into the walls, making them feel as solid as a ship on a stormy sea. Baldwin’s legs had a constant trembling, as though he was nervous or panicked, but it was the ripples of concussion against the wall. In his exhausted state the occasional gouts of flame from Greek firepots were strangely beautiful and relaxing in comparison. He rather liked the way that the flames occasionally burst skywards, throwing the whole wall into stark relief.

‘Here they come!’ Hob called.

Baldwin watched them with resolution. The enemy had built many towers high enough to reach over the city’s walls, but they remained in the background. This was no all-out assault, then. It was to be a concentrated effort on one or two sections of the walls of Acre.

As he watched, Baldwin saw Mameluk warriors running forward, in pairs, gripping heavy scaling ladders between them. ‘Archers! Archers!’ he shouted, and himself made his way into the tower. He stepped around the masonry where Anselm’s body lay, praying to his dead companion.

The first of the Muslims was almost at the tower when a pair of clothyard arrows slammed into his upper body, and Baldwin saw him thrown back, kicking like a struck rabbit. It gave Baldwin a savage delight. The man behind him tried to pick up the ladder on his own, but a bolt from a crossbow appeared in his forehead, and he was jolted back, unmoving. In almost no time, there were forty fresh bodies lying dead a short way from the tower, their ladders scattered all about them. It was now that the Muslims chose to exercise more restraint.

Only a few feet from the tower was the cat which had protected the miners while working at the foundations of the tower. Now this was laboriously turned and brought to bear on the tower again. While men erected fascines behind to protect the men running to the cat, others could stand inside it, and use it as a protective corridor. Soon a ladder appeared at the wall, and Baldwin and Hob ran at it, shoving it away from the wall, but it did not overbalance; instead, it swung back to clatter against the stonework. Already, two men were starting up it at a rush. Baldwin yanked at the ladder, until it fell away to the side, and the men fell onto the ground beneath. One began to scream and wail, but Baldwin was on to the next already.

‘Hob, Hob, throw rubble!’ he bellowed, and heaved a large rock at the first ladder. He saw it strike a man on the head, and he fell, taking two more with him. Others rushed to the ladder, but Baldwin rolled a large rock to it, and it was massive enough to break several rungs, rendering that ladder useless. Another appeared, and Hob and Thomas were at it already, letting loose another stone. That killed a man at the ladder’s base, but two more were on it already, and now there were two more ladders. Another ladder, another bearded face, and Baldwin drew his sword, stabbing.

There was no means to fight off so many. All they could hope for was to delay them. As soon as one ladder was knocked away, two more sprang up. And all the while arrows clattered tinnily about the rocks. A member of Baldwin’s vintaine gave a cry, and Baldwin grabbed for him just too late. The fellow toppled and plummeted head-first. Two more were hit in the leg or arm, and had to be helped away. Hob had an arrow pass so close to his face, it sliced through the fleshy part of his ear. This lent fury to his defence, and as a Muslim reached the floor, Hob swung his sword at the man’s head so hard that it clove his skull in two.

Baldwin fought unthinkingly. His arm moved with a mechanical determination — swing, stab, parry — and each time a man appeared at the top of a ladder, he did his best to kill him before he could get off and climb into the room, cutting a man’s arm off, or his hand, or stabbing quickly in between the rungs, into a face or breast, anywhere to bring him down. . but although reinforcements were soon with them, the battle was unequal. A pair of men somehow climbed to the top of the tower, and stood above, dropping stones onto their heads. Arrows did not cease, and before noon it was plain that they could do no more.

‘Back! Back to the walls!’ Baldwin roared, shoving the nearest and cutting at another. ‘Fly from here, quickly!’

Hob was at his side as the rest of the men withdrew, and Baldwin and he fought side-by-side, hacking and slashing, until they could leap through the door and lock it, using baulks of timber from the smashed hoardings to block the doorway.

‘And so it begins,’ Baldwin gasped.

All about the walls, where the Muslims had constructed their huge towers, men stared out anxiously.

Ungainly, lumbering things, the towers were now drawn forward. Each rested upon a row of logs, which must be collected from the rear as the tower passed over them, and set down before it, while the men behind and inside the towers could shove it onwards. They would not move on the sandy plain else. Screams and bellows could be heard from within as the men were urged on, and the damp skins from freshly killed oxen deterred fire-arrows from setting them ablaze.

There was a catapult still on the castle’s tower behind St Anthony’s Gate, and this kept up a regular barrage against the foe. One lucky shot slammed into an approaching tower, and shattered it to tinder, the men inside hurled outside, shreds of skin thrown in all directions, but one good hit could not detract from the overwhelming force to which the city was now exposed.

Baldwin watched as they reached nearer and nearer. ‘They’ll not get here tonight,’ he said.

‘No. It’ll be an attack in the morning, I reckon,’ Hob answered. ‘They will want their towers in position, ready.’

Baldwin nodded. ‘See to it that the men get their food ration tonight. They’ll need it. And plenty of wine, too. To fight like lions, they’ll need to have fed and drunk and slept.’

‘Yes.’

‘Hob?’

‘Sir?’

‘You get some sleep too.’

‘What of you?’

Baldwin looked out. ‘I’ll keep the first watch.’

This was the day that would decide the fate of the city, Baldwin thought. The drums started as dawn threw a salmon-pink glow over the plain. Shouts could be heard, and then, while Baldwin blearily stared out over the flat lands before the city, he saw the Muslim army standing to. A massive, long line of men separated into cohorts, the sun sparkling on each wicked spear-point. As he watched, he heard the muezzins calling them to prayer, and the whole line sank to the ground, performing their obeisance, the ritual given a solemn significance on this day of all days.

Glancing at the men standing along the walls, Baldwin saw they were all, like him, tired out. But their eyes gleamed with an unnatural fire at the sight of their enemy. And then there was a shout from one side of the wall, over towards the Temple’s ward, and the blast of a horn. Looking up at the wall behind him, Baldwin saw that Sir Otto was on the Accursed Tower, that which stood in the very point of the inner wall. The knight drew his sword and lifted it high, so that it caught the light from the sun, and Baldwin clearly heard his voice cry out: ‘Courage, my friends! You are Christian! We fight for God, for Jesus, and His saints! Be brave!’

Baldwin’s heart was comforted by Sir Otto’s words. He turned to face the hordes with a renewed determination.

‘He doesn’t have to face ’em from this close,’ a man grumbled from along the line.

Hob shouted, ‘Shut up there! By Christ’s bones, I’ll have your arse in gaol if I hear another word.

Baldwin grinned to himself. There was no silencing an English peasant, crusader or not. The English fought because they believed in something, not because of foolish heroics.

‘I’ll be dead before you can get me there, Hob. You too, most like,’ the man retaliated.

Today, they would fight for what? he wondered. For Outremer? For their lords here in the city? For business and trade? No, for none of those.

‘You can say what you want about Sir Otto,’ he told his men, ‘but he’s right. We’re here to protect our souls, not the city. We’re here because this is God’s last city in His Holy Land. Don’t forget that. If we fail, God fails. We fight for your souls, and those of your families.’

The hecklers were silenced, but whether it was Baldwin’s brief speech or the sight of the enemy facing them, Baldwin didn’t know or care. He too was staring back at the Muslims, and now he heard a scream bellowed from their ranks. There was a deafening roar from all the men, and the Muslims began to march.

Behind them, Baldwin saw the long arms of the catapults rise lazily, and their missiles rose yet again as the enemy broke into a run.

‘Archers! Loose!’

From behind Baldwin, the ranks of archers on the walls let fly their arrows. Over the cacophony of stamping feet, shouting, rocks crashing into the walls, Baldwin could hear them hissing through the sky, two thousand at a time. As soon as the first flight was gone, the second was off, and he could see the Muslims falling before their terrible impact, but there were not enough arrows in the city to stop this army.

A crunch.

Baldwin felt his teeth slam together. There was an emptiness in his belly, and he looked about him, dazed. He was on his back, and Hob was beside him, shaking his head, a great rivulet of blood running from a gash in his brow, while Nicholas Hunfrey sat back at the wall, staring at his stomach. His trunk had been opened from his groin to his breast, and he had his hands clamped there, trying to hold himself together.

There was a vast gap in the battlements a yard away. A rock had exploded into it, tearing it apart and flinging slabs and splinters of masonry into the men behind. Baldwin could see broken and bloody bodies lying scattered. His eye took in their faces, and he recognised many as the men from his vintaine. Only he, Hob, and Thomas remained whole. The rest were dying — or dead. The remains of another vintaine was nearby, their sergeant dead.

Baldwin gradually became aware of sounds once more, but his legs were like jelly.

Men came to help them, but Nicholas refused to be moved. He whimpered and moaned, but wouldn’t rise. There were drums, booming away in the distance, screams and roars, and then Baldwin saw a ladder at the wall where the hole had formed. Enemy soldiers began to appear. An arrow took the first, and then Hob was up, his sword snapped a foot from the hilt, and hacking at the men trying to force their way up. Another man joined him, and then Baldwin saw Nicholas, with an axe, hack at the foot of another Muslim. More men, and Baldwin climbed to his feet, and picked up his sword. It was bent, and he stared at it uncomprehendingly for a moment, before joining Hob.

Below the wall, the ground was black with Muslims. It was almost impossible to see the sand between them, there were so many. Ladders kept being slammed against the wall, and now and again a grapnel hook was thrown. One caught a defender, and as the rope was pulled, the barb pinned him against the wall, his flesh ripped apart by that cruel hook while he shrieked.

The Muslims were on the wall further to the right, near the German Order, but even as Baldwin glanced that way, they were hurled back by a rush from the knights. To the left of the ruined tower, he saw more running up ladders, and there was the sound of axes on the door holding them in. He wanted to reinforce it, but even as he had the idea, the first blows to penetrate the timbers began to show. They couldn’t hold this section any more. He bellowed at Hob and the others, and even as he rammed his sword into the face of a man appearing up the ladder again, he saw an axe flash at Thomas, and Thomas’s eyes widened as he slumped back, his breast gaping.

‘Back!’ Baldwin bellowed at the other troops, pulling Hob towards the Tower of St Nicholas. ‘Back, all of you!’

It was stamp and slash the whole way. As they relinquished their section of wall, more and more Muslims appeared on the walkway, screaming in delight at their success, while Baldwin and Hob hacked and dodged, parried and stabbed, all the way to the Tower. There, at last, they managed to dart in and slam the door shut, a pair of bars dropped into place to hold it.

Hob was panting, his face a reddened mask. The gash had opened his brow to the bone. Inside the tower, there were few who were unharmed. A sudden crash announced the arrival of Muslims with a ram.

‘Supports!’ Baldwin yelled, and baulks of timber were brought up and jammed against the door.

The men leaned against them, and with each splintering thrust of the ram, felt themselves jerked in sympathy with the door, but somehow it was holding.

Baldwin prayed it would continue to do so.