Knights of the Black and White

SEVEN

St. Clair had assured Hassan that his men would be safely in position before moonrise, but it was a promise made without any more forethought than a feeling in his gut. In spite of that, however, he made sure to keep his word. Rossal had returned from his reconnaissance soon after St. Clair took his leave of Hassan, and he had brought exactly the tidings that the Shi’a had said he would. He had then led the patrol slightly north and east towards the oasis where the trap was to be set for them.

It was only long after they had set out on the route they were supposed to follow that St. Clair, by now having developed a plan that he believed would have a chance of success, pulled Rossal aside to ride with him in private and told him of Hassan’s warning. Rossal listened without interrupting, then called their troop leaders to gather around. When they were all there, riding in a tight cluster, St. Clair quickly explained the situation and what he proposed to do about it. St. Clair had expected some skepticism, if not outright resistance, and had been marshaling an argument strong enough to convince them, he hoped, to trust him, but they had accepted what he told them without demur, and he realized, humbly, that they trusted him completely, in spite of all his recent scandals, accepting his own trust of Hassan and according him a degree of confidence that went beyond mere loyalty to a patrol commander, although bolstered, perhaps, by a desire not to put their own lives at risk unnecessarily.

Of the forty sergeants in their company, eighteen carried crossbows, and in one of the wagons they had an ample supply of the steel bolts they used as ammunition. Rossal assumed command of the eighteen as a separate contingent, and throughout the afternoon, each time they paused to rest themselves and their mounts, he had two, and sometimes three, of his eighteen chosen sergeants pass by the wagon and help themselves unceremoniously to an extra bundle of ammunition, while the rest of the patrol moved around busily enough to disguise what was going on from the people they now knew were watching them from the surrounding dunes.

The transition from daylight to darkness is very brief in the desert, so St. Clair, riding knee to knee with Rossal, found himself governing the approach to the oasis with care, relying heavily on the reports and observations of his scouts, for he had no wish to arrive at the designated camping spot too soon, and he wanted to do nothing that might arouse suspicion in the minds of those undoubtedly watching. And yet he knew they could not afford to be one moment later arriving there than they must be, since the interval between the set of the sun and the rise of the moon that night would be a short one. He had planned well, however, and everything went smoothly, aided by an unusual accumulation of heavy cloud banks that added to the gathering darkness.

The men made camp among the dunes, within striking distance of the oasis to the north, and although they all knew that the attack would come from behind them, they gave no indication to any watching eyes that they were even mildly suspicious or apprehensive. As darkness finally fell, while the horses were being roped in their lines on the outer edge of the encampment, Rossal and his half of the group calmly positioned their bedrolls to make it appear they were asleep, and then they moved swiftly and stealthily away from the campsite and buried themselves under their spread brown cloaks in the sand on the sides of the dunes overlooking the tiny cooking fires. They were within easy bowshot of the camp, and thereafter they lay in utter stillness and silence, waiting for the enemy to come to them.

For a long time that night, the skies remained obscured with clouds, and the moonlight broke through only intermittently and unpredictably, keeping the watching enemy pinned down and hampered, unwilling to risk being exposed by a sudden gap in the clouds before they were ready to attack. And so they stayed concealed for so long that St. Clair began to fret that the attack was taking too long to develop, for absolutely nothing marred the stillness of the desert. He sat for so long, his eyes and ears straining against the utter stillness, that he had to stand up, eventually, and move around quietly, even while he knew the movement might bring arrows from the blackness beyond the fires. Even as he did so, however, the clouds parted and the moonlight broke through, shining even more brilliantly than it might have otherwise, thanks to the darkness of the night to that point.

He was aware, of course, that no one else in the entire camp had been able to sleep either, and that they had all been lying as tense and as wide awake as he was, and so he forced himself to walk around the fires for a while after the moonlight sprang up, affecting unconcern and talking quietly with the guards, while encouraging everyone else, in a lower voice, to remain as they were and pretend to be asleep. Then, when he judged the time to be about right, he sat down by the fire and allowed himself, to all outward appearances, to slump towards sleep, although his every nerve was strained to catch the first sounds of anyone approaching.

He found it amazingly difficult to sit still, and quite impossible to empty his mind of worries, and as time passed and nothing happened, he began to experience difficulty in breathing normally. No matter how much air he inhaled, he felt that he could not fill up his lungs, and so he began to breathe more and more rapidly until finally, afraid that he was about to swoon, he had to stand up, cautiously and with tooth-grinding difficulty, and move about. That helped, and as his breathing slowly returned to normal he realized that the attack he had just undergone, whatever it had been, had been caused by fear. He stood erect, holding his head high, and turned slowly in a complete circle, gazing out into the darkness of the desert night, and he saw and heard nothing. Then, in an effort to distract himself, he sat down again and made himself think back to Jerusalem, and to the night in the tunnels when he had almost suffocated on the foul air, and he began to feel calmer. He remembered sprawling at the foot of the dirt pile after thrusting himself back out from the tiny entrance and into the clean air. His entire body had been thickly coated with clinging dust and his mouth had felt full of it, devoid of moisture, and he remembered the pleasure with which he had spat his mouth clear and then rolled onto his back against the wall, feeling the cool breeze blowing from the side against his face …

He heard a gasp and a curse, followed immediately by a loud challenge that was drowned in a warlike, ululating wail, and then the night was full of sounds, the clashing of steel blades and the hissing of crossbow bolts that terminated in solid, meaty thumps, and a rising chorus of battle cries that quickly gave way to screams of panic and alarm as the attackers realized that the enemy was at their backs and that they had been tricked. They had penetrated the camp as they had planned to do, and in so doing they had passed through and among Rossal’s buried crossbowmen without discovering a single one of them. Rossal’s people had watched them pass by and had then waited, high on the sides of the dunes, choosing their time deliberately and then opening fire in volleys, with murderous effect.

“Hold still!” he shouted to the men around him. “Count the volleys! Then on three, rise up with me!”

The second volley struck home, causing carnage among the attacking Muslims while the sergeants around the fires remained on the ground, leaving the killing to the crossbowmen for the third and final volley, and then, as the enemy began to rally slightly in the pause that followed the second flight of bolts, he shouted again, warning his men to stay where they were and wait for the third volley. It came, and those of the enemy who were left on their feet in the aftermath were turning about, first one way and then another, not knowing what to do or where to run.

“Now, lads! Take them!” As he scrambled to his feet, the loose sand making him feel unusually slow and cumbersome, a man came charging at him, waving a long-bladed scimitar, but before he could come within striking distance, he jerked forward headlong, grunting as if in surprise, and fell to his knees. His open mouth filled up with blood, black in the moonlight, that spewed down the front of his clothing, and he came to rest face down between St. Clair’s feet. Stephen leapt forward over the man’s body, his sword swinging as he sought an opponent close enough to fight. It was all over quickly, however, and he failed to cross swords with a single attacker.

His remaining sergeants were swarming everywhere, relieved now of the strain of having to lie helpless in the face of an advancing enemy while their companions above on the dunes did all the killing, and the attackers who had planned on slaughtering them as they slept had lost all appetite for the contest now that they had chain-mailed and angry opponents in front of them and at their backs with long-bladed swords and maces and axes. Those among them who were fleet enough of foot vanished into the desert in any direction they could reach, and within minutes of the first blow being struck, the fighting was over.

Rossal was already restoring calm, enquiring after casualties, and he glanced at Stephen and winked. “One man dead, two wounded, neither one seriously. And as far as I can tell, perhaps a score and a half on the other side of the tally. Are we taking prisoners?”

St. Clair had been looking about him, half expecting to see Hassan somewhere close by, but there was no sign of the Shi’a warrior, and now he shook his head in response to Rossal’s question. “No time for that, not if we’re to hit the oasis as we planned. Put the dead man and the two wounded on one of the wagons. I’ll rally the others and get us underway.” He raised his voice. “Sergeant Bernard, to me, if you will. All men to be mounted and ready to move out within the quarter hour. See to it.”

They hit the encampment shortly more than an hour later, and found the place empty of life, although there was much evidence around to show that the camp had been hurriedly abandoned mere minutes before they arrived. They set up a perimeter then and settled down to make use of the water hole, and within the day, they established that they had slain approximately one in four or five of the men they had been seeking. They found no wounded Muslims, although there were bloodstains aplenty, and their scouts estimated that the remnants of the enemy band had scattered to the four winds. St. Clair did not disagree, but he wondered what had happened to Hassan.

That night, before he fell asleep, he lay in his bedroll by the fire, talking to Rossal, and the last question he asked him before falling silent left Rossal frowning and wondering what his friend was thinking of.

“Imagine yourself lying on the floor in one of the tunnels under the Mount,” St. Clair had said. “The wall is against you, on your left, and you are flat on your back, and there’s a breeze blowing over you … You’ve been digging and sweating and the breeze is cool and fresh. Delightful. But it’s blowing sideways, cooling your neck and the side of your face … The left side of your face. What can you learn from that?”