Soldier of Crusade

CHAPTER TEN

It required a line of flaring twin torches to get Raymond of Toulouse and his men into place, a movement accomplished with much cursing, jostling and the odd exchanged blow. Not that he was with them; the Provencal leader was in the council tent discussing how the forthcoming battle might be fought, it being likely that the Turks would use the lake to protect one flank of their advance and seek to drive the Normans who were now in that position away from the city walls, so that they could get through to the gates and release the garrison, who would be waiting to sally out to join them.

Leaning over the map on the centre table, Bohemund made a sweeping gesture with his arm, outlining his view of how to counter that threat and not only beat off Kilij Arslan but inflict on him a crushing defeat, which put the majority of foot soldiers on the expected line of attack, with the majority of the lances out to the south in a position to engage once both forces were locked in combat.

‘If you, Raymond and Duke Robert, backed by a good proportion of our milities, hold him on foot, then My Lord of Bouillon and I can use your mounted knights to wheel round and take him in flank.’

Vermandois, after Walo had whispered in his ear, made the point that such forces would be the most exposed.

‘He may attack the position you take up and if you have your lances in the front line they will be at the mercy of the Turkish archers, which the Emperor told Walo and I we must at all costs avoid.’

Robert of Normandy spoke up next. ‘Is it possible he would try to deny us a line of retreat by getting to our rear and cutting us off from the road to Constantinople.’

‘Annihilation would follow,’ Vermandois responded, clearly terrified at the notion. ‘Like the People’s Crusade.’

It was a potent and frightening allusion; every section of the host had marched through a landscape strewn with the bones of those slain under Walter Sansavoir, too many to even contemplate burying them. Even more, those visiting a market set up by Alexius at Civetot had walked on a carpet of the same that littered the landscape all along the shoreline. If there had been any doubt as to their fate should they fail, the proof scrunched under their feet; when facing the Turks it came down to victory or death.

‘That carries too much risk,’ insisted de Bouillon, speaking just before Bohemund had a chance to say the same. ‘He cannot split from the garrison or he will be weak in both quarters. He must clear a gate to increase his numbers.’

‘And his aim is to drive us from the walls,’ Bohemund added, ‘in short, to break the siege. The sight of our host retiring, as have the Byzantines before us, would be enough for him to claim victory.’

‘Will he know that I have arrived?’ asked Raymond.

‘With the sun at his back he will see your banners and if he does not know your device he will be aware that our force has seen an increase.’

‘He may know before that,’ said Robert. ‘Which could cause him to alter his plan of attack.’

‘Impossible to tell if he has,’ Bohemund replied. ‘We have seen no sign of any signalling to warn him, but that does not mean there has not been any.’

‘If I may,’ Tancred cut in, carrying on when his uncle nodded. ‘Any signal would have to be prominent enough to carry and be seen three mille passum or more away, so it would be seen and act as an alert to the presence of a receiver. It would tell us someone is out to the east and you, My Lords, would not miss such a sign as there is only one person that can be. He has come in secret and that he sees as his most potent weapon, so we should assume that the arrival of the Provencal host is unknown to Kilij Arslan.’

Raymond responded to Tancred with a nod, only for Baldwin of Boulogne to speak up, he doing so once more without seeking permission from his brother.

‘It would be foolish to base what we do on a guess. I say we stand together on the defensive and let him batter himself on our shields.’

‘That,’ Bohemund growled, for once showing a degree of impatience, ‘will leave him to fight another day. Which means, even if we drive him back, throughout the siege of the city we will be obliged to keep one eye over our shoulder and men deployed to prevent another assault.’

Baldwin and Bohemund exchanged a look that had within it none of the required delicacy for which this council had been formed, in fact it was openly defiant on the part of Baldwin. That was made worse when his elder brother agreed with the Norman and then sought to sweeten that rebuff with the instruction to command the foot soldiers alongside the Provencals. The Duke of Normandy and his lances would stay to the rear as a reserve, able to join the battle at any point where weakness showed and also to act against the possibility the Robert had outlined, an attempt by the Turks to cut the route of retreat.

Put to the vote, it was tied until Raymond agreed to the task he had been offered, not from amity but necessity. Last to arrive he was being given a pivotal role in the battle to come and that clearly tickled his pride, but he was scarce equipped for mounted warfare — having been marching for days his mounts were bound to require rest, which obligated him to a battle on foot. Finally Tacitus was invited, through his Frankish interpreter, to approve, which he did with a silent and enigmatic nod as if he thought it was all nonsense.

‘Then all that remains,’ intoned Bishop Ademar, ‘is for each of you to be shriven and Mass arranged for the entire host.’

‘That must wait,’ Baldwin of Boulogne exclaimed, glaring at his brother, then Bohemund. ‘First I want that ditch before the line My Lord of Toulouse and I are going to defend made deeper.’

Godfrey de Bouillon addressed Bohemund. ‘And our men must take the spoil to fill and make smooth that part across which we are intending to advance.’

Bohemund nodded once he had considered the potential pitfall, namely that such a thing would be obvious. Yet with no high ground to observe the freshly dug earth, the only way Kilij Arslan would know of the changes would be by signal from the city, and he, like Tancred, had serious doubts that such a system existed. Even if it did, to send such a message was bound to be complicated.

Men toiled late into the night under the moon and starlight with spade and pail, digging and moving earth, spreading straw across the top of the filled-in part of the ditch to hide the obvious dampness of freshly dug spoil. Then they saw to their weapons, the grinding wheels spinning continuously to make deadly the heads of swords, axes and knives, as well as the points of the milities’ pikes.

Sunrise found an army on its knees, facing the rising sun as the priests made their way through the ranks dispensing wine as the blood of Christ and a wafer of bread representing his body. Tacitus had brought his own Orthodox divines and they administered to his troops, even though they had been allotted a post of minimum danger, to the very rear of the crusading army. When suggested that he stay out of danger it was done with some trepidation — no one wanted to wound Byzantine pride yet it was accepted with good grace, bordering on alacrity.

Unknown to the Westerners, the Prostrator had instructions to keep his force intact, even to the point of abandoning the field if it looked as if these Crusaders would lose a battle. The empire could not bear any losses in men and arms; let these Franks and Normans bleed if that was required, then peace could be made with the victors.

All eyes were looking east to the hills that lined the far end of the Askanian Lake, the peaks plainly visible, before that a plain devoid of even a hint of an enemy, much of it hazily obscured by a wind that allowed the mist from the warming air playing on the cold lake water to drift across the landscape. By the side of each leader sat a glass of sand that had run twice and was now being anxiously watched as the grains slipped through the narrow bottleneck for the third time. To their rear were the sounds of snorting and farting horses, the clinking of metal weapons and a low murmur as the more pious continued to pray.

‘Dust,’ Bohemund said, which had Tancred peering forward at that hazy landscape.

Sure enough the colour of that mist had changed, the lower reaches dun-coloured, and in a few blinks of an eye the first shapes began to form in the cloud of their own making, eventually merging into a mass of horsemen coming on at a slow trot, the dust thickening to their rear as the men on foot jogged along to keep up. The sound of thousands of hooves took an age to materialise but by the time the sandglasses had run their course, the whole Turkish army was in sight, the sun high enough to show the glinting points of their weaponry.

Bohemund was thinking how much he had been required to restrain himself at the previous night’s council. He knew absolutely in his own mind how the battle should be fought and he was now re-examining the points he had declined to add. First, these Turks were facing an army of a kind they had never met, most obviously his Normans; if they had heard of the tactics they might face that was no substitute for the actual experience of shock that was about to come their way.

Then there were the numbers; Kilij Arslan knew just as well as any Byzantine commander the level of force that could be maintained in the field so far from Constantinople, especially in the case of a siege, and he would have assumed his opponents to be of a strength encountered on previous attempts to invest Nicaea. But with a repaired Roman road added to comprehensive supply by sea, the Crusaders were much stronger. Added to that, all parts of the host were accustomed to winning battles — even the dolt Vermandois had enjoyed success alongside his brother the King of France. The Byzantines were more used to losing and that meant the mass of their men, in any battle with the Turks, would have been looking for a route to personal survival as much as they had looked for a way to achieve victory.

Looking to his left he picked up the glint of the Tacitus nose under his cone-shaped Byzantine helmet; if he was not about to be engaged with his men — they were well back — he nevertheless wanted his yellow and black banner to be seen at the centre of the defence, in the position which implied leadership. To the Norman right stood the line of lances under Godfrey of Bouillon, horses pawing the ground, and he reasoned that within a very short time he would know their worth, and that had nothing to do with courage, which he took as a given.

But did they have discipline, which was much more vital in battle, and could Godfrey and his captains control their men once combat was joined? That was the Norman secret — not just the shock of a disciplined charge but close battlefield control, and in years of fighting it had always amazed Bohemund how little his enemies had learnt about a way of making war that went back to the many decades before he was born.

‘Time to take your place, Tancred, and remember, do not act on any other command than mine. Arslan will launch his mounted archers and once he has done so they will be committed and vulnerable, which de Bouillon will see.’

‘He may be tempted to act prematurely?’

‘Yes,’ came the reply, with a wave towards Tacitus, who would do nothing in terms of control, and even if he did, no one would obey him, ‘and with no man in command, who can stop him?’

‘He will surely wait until the Turkish foot are also engaged.’

‘Let us hope he does.’

They could hear the drumbeats now, a constant thud that grew until it was a near constant blow to the ears, intermingled with high-pitched cries and yells, no doubt exhortations to request Allah to smite the Christians who dared invade the lands of the Prophet. Most obvious was the fact that Kilij Arslan was doing exactly what had been predicted, attacking the host at a point where he could rive them from the Nicene walls. These were now lined with the defenders yelling to urge on their fellows, archers probably; those mounted would be waiting behind the south gate under their leader Acip Bey.

A horn blew and the mounted archers immediately broke from a trot into a canter, unhooking their bows of bone and horn to slot in an arrow, coming on in their thousands until the man leading them, distinctive in his decorated helmet, raised himself in his saddle and with a huge wave ordered the gallop, though he was soon obliged to order a wheel by the same method. Baldwin’s deeper ditch was an obstacle that came as a surprise and impeded their progress, which drew from Bohemund a degree of admiration; if he did not much like the man who had proposed that it be done he had to acknowledge his wisdom and credit him with the ability to see ahead.

The inability to cross the ditch at the gallop took the vigour out of the charge and obliged the archers to loose their arrows at too long a range. That gave time to the Provencal and Lotharingian captains to order their men to their knees, shields up and joined to practically nullify the effect. Some bolts got through and the cries of those they struck could be heard, but most either embedded themselves in shields or ricocheted off harmlessly. For all they were quick to reload their weapons, the Turks had to negotiate the ditch before they could deliver a repeat, which broke up any cohesion.

All the Crusaders, Bohemund included, had been subjected to lectures by Alexius on how to fight the Turks, too polite to point out that every time he fought them the Emperor had never achieved more than a stalemate and had too often been driven to surrender the field. Here, thanks to Baldwin and his spades, was a simple device that rendered those feared archers only half as effective as they were reputed to be, that made obvious by the fact that once they had got past the ditch, the salvoes of arrows ceased to as coordinated and instead became ragged.

Faced with an impenetrable wall it was impressive that they had the discipline to withdraw to the left on the sound of a horn command and allow the now yelling and charging foot soldiers to take up the assault. The shuffling of the shield wall looked ragged from a distance as adjustments were made but it was solid by the time the two forces came into contact, the noise deafening as their weapons and shields clashed.

Bohemund was aware of the way the lines of Godfrey of Bouillon were also becoming ragged as horsemen either failed to control their excited mounts or were in fact edging them forward to seek to persuade their leader to order the charge, which doubled the pleasure when he looked at his own lances, who showed no sign of becoming disordered.

Tancred was watching his uncle and he could guess for what he was waiting: those archers had not withdrawn and with Arslan’s foot soldiers pressing their attack as near as they could to the city that left an area into which their commander could lead them to seek to take the foot defence in flank. They could not be unaware of the mounted lances to their left, but if the Turks could get in amongst the men under Toulouse and Baldwin that would render any disciplined attack impossible; to get to the archers the Crusader lances would have to plough through their own men.

The mounted archers had reformed and were returning to the battle. On they came and now they knew the ditch was there and its depth, so they crossed it before forming up to attack, and it was soon obvious as they rode forward, fired and wheeled away that they were doing more execution than in their previous attempt. Not that the defence faltered; if a man fell another moved quickly into his place. Looking at the mounted Lotharingians it was clear that Godfrey was losing cohesion and he being no fool ordered his men to move forward before that became too hard to control.

Tancred’s eyes were on Bohemund, who studiously looked straight ahead as de Bouillon moved into a canter, riding across the Norman front kicking up great clods of earth and clouds of dust. Then with a yell and a drop of his yellow banner, crossed with a red bar, Godfrey ordered his men to charge, lance points dropping as they careered into the Turkish archers, who were busy loosing off arrows to impede their effort.

Yet they were adaptable in their fighting ability, these mounted Turks, for as soon as it became obvious that archery would not serve them they shouldered their bows and unsheathed their hooked swords, to ride forward and slash at the Lotharingian lance points. In no time the two forces were so intermingled that it was impossible to tell one from the other.

‘Sound the horn to advance,’ Bohemund shouted, signalling Tancred with a wave.

If it was an order to stir it was not an instruction to act alone. As Bohemund moved, his familia knights at his side, he and they set the pace of the horses that followed and with his sword held out at right angles, an act copied by Tancred, it was obvious that he had no intention of joining the embattled Godfrey of Bouillon. Egging his mount into a trot the Norman line rode right across the rear of the battle going on and only when past it did the order come to wheel north.

It was difficult to see what they were about to attack, so dense was the dust, but it soon became clear to those caught in the cloud what was coming their way, a line of dipped lances at a trot and in near perfect order. Another dig of the spurs had Bohemund’s horse accelerate, a hard tug on the reins keeping that to a canter and it was only in the few paces before contact that he and his knights dropped back and the men behind him opened to admit them to form a single line.

Even if the enemy had been formed up to defend themselves they would have struggled to contain what hit them. In unison, they felt the effect of sharp metal points backed by the weight of men and beasts, the humans trained to a superior standard, the latter schooled to ignore the cries and waving weapons they faced. The enemy were not in good order, most of their fellow Turks were still fighting with Baldwin and Toulouse, so the Normans had taken them in flank, driving them back towards Lake Askanian so they would have no way to retreat.

Now in amongst the enemy, and with lances already embedded in the primary victims, it was time for swords and axes to be employed and in this Bohemund excelled. With his height and reach he did more execution than anyone, his great sword swinging to lop off heads or to strike an enemy body so hard as to progress right through to the vital organs, great founts of blood emerging from stricken bodies to fill the air with a red-mist spray.

With the pressure on their front diminishing, either Baldwin or Raymond ordered the horns blown to move from defence to attack, at which point Bohemund put up his sword and shouted to the knight who acted as the horn blower, a man who always rode close to his banner. The notes rose into the air, a signal for Tancred to pay heed to his uncle, followed by a blown order to disengage. With a discipline no other mounted force in Christendom could even begin to emulate the Normans fell back in good order to reform, once more able to assemble in an unbroken line.

‘Tancred, take your conroys, wheel right and lead your men back into contact with Turkish foot. Be aware that our confreres are attacking and pushing them back.’

Given that was an instruction that needed to be passed on verbally it seemed an eternity before Tancred had detached the hundreds of lances under his command and led them further out onto the plain and mounted a second attack. Bohemund meanwhile had wheeled his conroys back to face west and the point from which they had set out, before them the still struggling mass of Turkish archers and Godfrey de Bouillon’s knights.

The fellow who commanded the archers must have seen what was coming at his rear, for as soon as the Normans moved there was a ripple through the Turkish ranks that told Bohemund they were preparing to flee, which made him come to a canter quicker than he had intended. He wanted to catch them before they could break up and get round him and he had the horn blown to order that his lances open out to present a lengthier barrier. That was when he saw the man in command waving as he wheeled expertly on his mount, obvious by his decorated helmet, yelling for his archers to abandon the fight and flee.

There was no need for close discipline now and that he communicated to his men by the way he spurred his own destrier forward. The mount, if nowhere near blown, was not as fresh as at the first assault and anyway had never been bred for speed. Had it not been that the man Bohemund had set his mind on to engage spent too long about his business, they would never have met, but they did and close to. The Norman could see the pockmarked skin on a dark face, covered in dust, and the cold black eyes as he swung his sword.

The Turk’s weapon came up to parry and as the blades connected he used the weight of Bohemund’s blow to help him to wheel his lightweight mount in a way that no destrier could match. As he did so his blade swung low, seeking to cut into Bohemund’s side, an act only stopped by the swift drop of the Norman pommel. The Turk felt that and the pressure on his blade took him down, he a fighter good enough to guess what was coming. He kept going forward so that the Norman weapon swished within a hair’s breadth of his ducking head.

Again with outstanding horsemanship he spun his mount within less than its own length and if Bohemund had not spurred forward he would have been pierced instead of the flank of his horse, which, even well trained as it was, bucked as it felt the sword slice its flesh. The Turk had drawn back his sword to sweep it into the back of his giant adversary, but if he was a good horseman so was his opponent. With nothing but the pressure of his knees Bohemund forced his destrier round at the same time as the huge blade sliced down and across, taking the Turk at the joint of neck and shoulder and completely removing his head with such force that it flew several cubits away.

All around the mounted Turks were either fighting to get clear or in flight. Many of their foot-bound companions were being pushed back towards the lake by Tancred, while still having to seek to contain the advancing levies of Baldwin and Toulouse, this while the freed lances of Godfrey of Bouillon were streaming in to join the fight, and that combination broke all resistance, with many throwing away their weapons and pleading for succour.

What followed was great slaughter; soldiers who had walked on the bones of the People’s Crusade were in no mood for mercy. Those who were not fleet of foot enough to get clear or who could not jump in the lake and swim were cut to pieces, while many drowned rather than face the blade. As for leadership, a glance to the east showed that Kilij Arslan and his personal body of defenders were fleeing under his streaming banner, with, it appeared, a very large portion of his army on his heels.

Bohemund rode back and leaning down used his sword point to lift the head he had severed, still with its decorated helmet strapped on, holding it up so all could see, at which point Tacitus rode forward, having taken no part in the battle judging by the lack of a mark on his armour. Looking up at the head, dripping blood down an already stained blade, the Prostrator smiled.

‘That is the head of Elchanes, Count Bohemund, Arslan’s best general and the man who led the massacre at Civetot.’

Looking up at the pockmarked skin, with the lips pulled back in a rictus of death, Bohemund replied, ‘Then it will be fitting meat for the dogs.’