Soldier of Crusade

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

After regrouping at Dorylaeum they had to continue their march, only this time it was agreed as much of a composite body as the terrain imposed on them, without knowing what that meant in practice. Kilij Arslan was not done with the men who had invaded his lands; defeated he might be but the wily Sultan of Rum adopted a policy of scorching the earth, denying them food and water in what was going to be, at the height of summer, an arid landscape in any case. Crops were destroyed by burning or being dug up and left to rot in the sun; peasants who might have food hidden were driven away or slaughtered to ensure their cache would not be tortured out of them by Westerners who would soon be reduced to starving.

In the heat of high summer the rivers were turning to trickles and eventually that would cease all together as they got further from the mountains which had already, in any case, given up what they had. For centuries the populace had lived with this and if they had not prospered they had learnt to survive. Cisterns had been dug below ground to store the precious liquid when it was plentiful so their fields could be watered and kept fertile and they could keep themselves alive. These the Turks destroyed, and if there was a proper artesian well an oxen killed and its carcass tipped down into the base was enough to poison that.

The temperature rose to a point that even those accustomed to the heat of Southern Italy could not bear. Metal was impossible to touch for humans, and the animals, who required huge quantities of water even in normal climes, had to have twice as much and even that was not enough in a country where there was little or no shade. This meant marching at night if no clouds obscured the moon and the stars, and continuing only in the short relatively cool period of the morning, which severely cut into the time it took to cover ground. In the midst of the day every piece of cloth was pressed into service as part awning, part windbreak, for that seemed to burn more than the air.

The army marched ahead and thus got what little sustenance could be found, though that was close to nothing; the pilgrims brought up the rear, eating the dust of those who had preceded them, suffering a degree of thirst that within days saw the weakest collapse. Since no one else had the strength to aid them — they had their own concerns about survival — that was a death sentence. Pope Urban’s Crusade left in its wake a terrain dotted with desiccated corpses that a blazing sun would turn to bones within days and not all were human; many an animal lay down to die as well, while in amongst them were items looted from Turkish tents that, however valuable, had no more purpose.

The fighting men suffered too, if not to the same extent and Ademar sought to institute a system by which each contingent took the lead from one day to the next so that if anything edible or thirst-quenching was found it was equally shared, yet it could not and did not suffice and those whose spirit was weak, and most certainly those bearing wounds from the recent battle, began to die.

More worrying was the effect on the animals, most especially their horses for a force that fought mounted. With a landscape bereft of pasture it was a lack of food as well as water that began to decimate them; the host could not carry enough oats to feed them, and in any case dry oats were as useless as none. The flesh began to fall off them, their rib bones becoming so prominent that to image them as actual skeletons was easy. They were certainly in no condition to carry a knight on their back; they moved heads drooped, leg movements strained and their hides, which could not be shaved for fear of the sun, moulting in patches. The only saving grace was they would not be required to carry their burdens; if the Crusaders could not fight across a land like this neither could the Turks.

Occasionally the sky would darken on the horizon and hearts would lift; they soon learnt these did not bear rain but swirling clouds of stinging sand that choked even noses and mouths, well covered as everyone was, Tacitus especially, given his golden nose would get so hot in the sunshine as to burn his skin; not that he elicited much sympathy after his behaviour at what was now being called the Battle of Dorylaeum; he and his Byzantine levies were close to being despised, yet they had to be tolerated if the princes wanted any future aid from Constantinople.

After only days in what was a desert, how distant the glory of that victory seemed, and in the week that followed it became a hollow mockery, for if good Christians could beat the infidel in battle they could not conquer nature. Hundreds of pilgrims and soldiers died every day so it was a much diminished force upon which the relenting sun rose each morning, to be cursed as the immediate heat it produced hit red-raw flesh.

Now the horses were literally falling over where they stood and that included many who had struggled to their feet to move on in the first place. No packhorse could now bear a load, and the oxen, with a greater store of fat about their bodies, were pressed into service. The Normans took to excessive care of their destriers, for if other mounts might be replaced they could not, but the losses there too were enormous. Men, who had only prickly plants to sustain them — and they had to be beaten to a pulp to even consider consuming them — had little to spare, even sympathy, for the animals that had carried them into and kept them alive in battle.

‘This is a battle no general can win.’

These words Bohemund croaked as the first grey daylight showed another flat and endless plain; they had marched half the night before exhaustion made a rest inevitable. That vista would soon lose all shape as the heat of the sun created what looked like a rippling pool of water between land and sky, a sight to drive some men so mad they rushed towards it, sapping what little energy and spirit they possessed.

‘This is God’s fight, not ours.’

‘If we do not find water soon …’ Tancred started to say, only to stop, not wishing to state the obvious conclusion.

‘Then travellers will come this way and mark their route by our bones and they will say that in this desert our sins caught up with us. We were not men seeking purity but the bearers of our own curse.’

‘We may be in hell already,’ came the reply, as the orange rim of that massive blazing orb hit the horizon to rise in what seemed a blink to its full size.

‘Rouse up our men, Tancred, we must make what progress we can before it gets too hot.’

That would amount to no more than an hour and before movement all the threads and strings which had been strung out to catch the dew had to be sucked dry, that being the only liquid these men would have until the next darkness. On this day the Apulian Normans had the lead, and as they moved, anything that looked as if it might be edible was scrabbled from the rock-hard earth, the spines of the only plants that could survive the daytime heat pulled off and the body broken up to be stuck on parched tongues in the hope of a modicum of fluid from that or the saliva it produced.

Leading his destrier, its head in constant need of being hauled up lest it expire from loss of spirit, Bohemund knew that his riding mount was not going to get through the day nor, perhaps, his fighting horse too. Then slowly the destrier’s head came up and instead of dead eyes there was something in them, a sort of dull gleam. From plodding at his heels it sought to first come abreast of him and then get ahead in a sort of staggering gait. Looking round he saw the other equines to be less weary and that seemed to apply to all the lead mounts.

‘Take firm grip on the horses,’ he yelled and painfully, ‘they sense water.’

If the command was the correct one — horses would drink themselves to death in their present state and men too if left alone — it hardly merited such precautions; neither man nor beast had a run or a gallop in them, whatever was over the horizon. All that could be managed was an increased stumble that did not even amount to a trot. It was testimony to the acute survival sense of the horses and how parched they were that it took what seemed an age before the ground began to green and the wide depression of a proper river became visible, although even in that the actual flow was right at the bottom and slow.

But it was water and the Apulians had got there first, both knights and milities; men and horses soon had their heads sunk below the level to drink deep after what seemed an eternity of want. How many did Bohemund and his fellow captains kick? He did not know. How many mounts did he drag back from the riverbank? That too was a mystery, but fight to maintain order they did. At least his men were sated enough to listen when he ordered them to move upstream and make way for those who would follow, in order that the sunken stone-filled bed of the river did not become a scene of men killing each other to get the vital sustenance.

From the position where he stopped his Apulians and looked back, Bohemund saw a scene biblical in its proportions, thousands of figures streaming across the desert towards that life-saving fluid and what he feared came to pass, the only one not moving, the easily recognisable figure of Peter the Hermit, arms open wide, crook in one hand, clearly thanking God for deliverance.

He would have been better to come on and impose some order. So crowded was the riverbank with both animals and men, and so far did those drinking from it extend, that those at the rear could not get to it. They began to fight out of desperation and if it started with fists it was not long before he espied the first flashing swords reflecting the harsh sun, while still yet to arrive were the poor, benighted and much-diminished pilgrims.

If there was a death toll for the crossing of that destroyed land there was another for the leaving of it. Desperate oxen had trodden many in their stampede to drink but the highest toll came from those who could not stop, people who drank so much and so quickly it killed them. They lay among the horses and beasts of burden that no one had bothered to seek to save from themselves. It took all day to restore some form of order, but at least there was water to drink and pasture for those animals that survived. Not that there were many, and all the leaders knew that if battle were joined now it would have to be fought on foot.

If that river did not bring an end to a land scarcely habitable it at least marked a boundary to what was, in summer, an Anatolian desert, part induced by Turkish malice, but one that would have tried the host even if Kilij Arslan had not made it worse. He and his allies had retired east and the Crusade was now moving south; there was pasture, sparse but able to keep the mounts from expiring, watercourses, which if they ran as a trickle in the high summer heat, at least provided vital fluid enough for the army and the pilgrims to make progress at a more normal speed.

That improved when they came across a series of fertile valleys surrounded by high and heavily wooded hills in the country called Pisidia, a point at which they could stop and seek to recover their strength, given what Turks had governed it fled at their approach. That required food, which existed in abundance, as did pasture and oats for their remaining mounts, half of which had expired. Better still, there were horses to buy and the treasure taken from the Sultans after Dorylaeum was put to good use.

‘A hunt,’ Godfrey de Bouillon insisted, ‘is just what we need to finally restore ourselves.’

‘I do not recall you needing much restoration, brother,’ Baldwin retorted, to the amusement of all gathered, which included Bohemund and Tancred. ‘You had more fat than most to live off.’

‘I lived off my faith in Christ, Baldwin, which you so lack.’

‘That I will find when I get to Jerusalem.’

‘You should pray more often, as I do.’

‘True, you have more leather on your knees than I wear on my back.’

‘So what do you say, Bohemund? We have good horses now, so let us test them and us. It is near a month we have spent here and I long for activity.’

‘We must look to move on soon.’

‘Let the weather cool further,’ de Bouillon pleaded. ‘I have had enough of being baked.’

‘You’d make a fine pie, though we’d be stretched to find a big enough pot.’

Godfrey frowned at the general laughter, but even he had to be amused by Baldwin’s jest and soon his barrel chest was shaking with good humour. He got that which he desired and if it seemed frivolous to some it was the stuff of a nobleman’s life to hunt game in the forest, and here in Pisidia they were surrounded by dense greenery in which there were deer, wolves, wild boar and brown bear. Word spread and it seemed a good notion, a way to finally restore morale, if the whole Prince’s Council took part; even the Bishop was keen.

‘You have never hunted,’ Vermandois called, ‘till you have sought prey in the forest around Paris.’

‘My Lord speaks nothing but the truth,’ added Walo.

‘I have heard of French hunting,’ Robert of Normandy said quietly to Bohemund, sat astride his horse beside him. ‘Beaters chase the prey towards the King, who has beside him the best archer, and when some creature comes into view both he and his monarch fire together, the King’s arrow barely aimed. The beast is brought down and all praise their liege lord as a true champion of the chase.’

‘I sense you have no love for your neighbours, My Lord.’ Tancred opined, for he was close enough to overhear.

‘East and west, my friend, east and west.’

The appellation cheered Tancred up immensely; to be called ‘friend’ by the Duke of Normandy was an honour he deeply appreciated and it had been one bestowed on him since Dorylaeum. Added to that, the Duke and Bohemund had become close, his nephew seeing that in many ways the titular suzerain was being seduced into an alliance and he knew why. If Bohemund ever claimed the right to lead the Crusade he could only do so with allies already in place, and it was generally held that Robert did not want it for himself.

When the horns blew everyone began to move out, heading for the edge of the deep forest. A hunt on this scale was massive, hundreds of beaters being sent out with the riders to start running what prey lay in the woods towards the hunt, which would otherwise just move out of the way. This particular quest had its own added difficulties for there were no verderers in this part of the world, as existed in the forests of Northern Europe, men who were tasked to keep the area in good order, to clear the dead wood — some of that was taken by the locals but not in a planned way — to keep clear paths through which hunting parties could move without becoming separated, to get to the depths where the game would run for security, and to advise hunters of both hazards and places of opportunity. Indeed, so ill maintained were these forests that swords were often needed just to cut a path.

As the man who had initiated the whole affair Godfrey was well to the fore, and to those observing him he looked a bit like an animal himself, nose twitching as though he had senses as acute as the prey he sought to smell out. To left and right the beaters were thudding everything in their path and soon their efforts bore fruit as a herd of deer broke cover and, with blaring horns, the mounted nobles set off in pursuit only to find that manoeuvring though uncut undergrowth seriously hampered their efforts.

De Bouillon cast the first javelin and so powerful was his throw, even from what was too great a distance, he managed to graze the buttock of the stag at which he aimed. Baldwin, right with him, had more success, aiming for a plump doe as it sought to jump a bush but which fell sideways as his spear struck home. His brother, in frustration, had grabbed another javelin off one of his accompanying knights and sped after his stag, soon to be lost to sight by greenery. Baldwin dismounted, putting his doe out of her misery and about to tell those knights he had brought with him to load it onto a spare horse when a series of roars and screams rent the air.

Still mounted, Bohemund and Tancred crashed into the undergrowth, following the path taken by Godfrey though that was far from clear, heading towards the noise, which now seemed to be more roars than cries of human pain. As in all forests there were clearings and the one they burst into presented the sight they feared: Godfrey, covered in blood, trying to fend off with a sword held by an arm that appeared to be broken, a huge brown bear, and with his mount nowhere to be seen.

Their arrival distracted the bear who turned, blood dripping from its teeth, to face them and that, if it did not give either man pause, made their hearts beat at a different rate. If such a creature was fighting there must be cubs somewhere close, for they were generally given to avoiding humans. That meant this she-bear would fight to the death and they were formidable creatures when roused to protect their young.

Godfrey, now collapsed, lay as a heap on the ground near its spread legs, and Bohemund for one certainly hoped that if he was alive he would stay that way; if he raised his head one swipe of a massive paw would break his neck. Without a word Tancred had edged right while Bohemund trended left, but for all they were in a clearing the low undergrowth was still heavy, too much so for a horse to charge through at any pace, which would be needed to avoid being unhorsed. Added to that, the mounts that he and Tancred were on were not fighting horses and they would likely baulk at getting too close to a bear anyway.

As Godfrey stirred — he was badly mauled but not dead — that obliged Tancred to cast his lightweight spear, which hit the bear on one shoulder and caused it to stagger back. The sound it emitted was a mixture of pain and fury, and even if it was stunned and did not comprehend what had happened, the creature had enough sense to pull the javelin out of its body before starting to lope towards the man who had thrown it, and that was when Bohemund came on, out of the animal’s eyeline.

Yet he could not be silent with all the breaking branches he smashed through and he saw the bear stiffen to stop and turn. He dropped his own javelin — it might wound but such a weapon would have to strike something vital to kill — whipped out his sword and forced his mount to keep going as it bucked to refuse. Rising in his stirrups, he was tall enough to utterly overawe an animal that may well never have seen a human before, especially one that stood taller than itself, which forced it to seek to claw his terrified horse.

The blade of the sword swung down, to only catch the creature’s eyes a second before it cut in and down to the massive furred neck. It was testimony to the depth of that and the muscles and tendons it contained that even Bohemund could not cut through, but he did enough to stop it cold, a great fount of blood spurting out of the sliced open main artery. There was a feeble attempt then to claw at his legs, but not for long; after several ineffectual waves of its paws, the bear toppled over in its death throes.

‘Stay mounted, Tancred, there may be another close by.’

Bohemund clambered off his horse, his sword held out at the ready, his eyes sweeping the edges of the clearing, those kept moving as he knelt close to Godfrey who was so obviously badly hurt. De Bouillon tried to move, as if seeking to get to his feet, and it took a carefully placed hand to restrain him, for it was impossible to tell the location of all his wounds.

‘Still, friend, help is coming.’

A horde of men broke through to the clearing, Baldwin with them, and if they looked down on the Duke of Lower Lorraine with pity, his brother did not; if anything he had the gleam of avarice in his eyes.

‘Fashion a stretcher,’ Bohemund ordered, ‘and get him back to the monks, but gently. Tancred, down you come and aid me in looking for the cubs. I fancy they will make gifts for members of the council.’

‘There must be more bears, Uncle.’ His nephew replied with obvious trepidation, still in his saddle.

‘Yes, males, who will eat the cubs if we don’t find them.’

Godfrey was in a bad way, with many broken bones and open wounds from sharp claws and it was obvious his recovery would take time. When it came to the next council and to the planning of the move south, Baldwin of Boulogne took his elder brother’s place and immediately ruined what had been, if not always outright harmony, any sense of shared purpose. He demanded primacy in all things for the Lotharingians, openly stating that the Normans had been too often indulged and that Raymond of Toulouse had assumed airs to which he was not entitled.

He gave offence to all present, and watching him make these claims Bohemund exchanged a look with Robert of Normandy, and if it was a questioning one the Count of Taranto was not entirely displeased, for a little grit in the machinery of governance might in the end lead to a resolution of the entire question of command.

‘It is to be hoped,’ Bishop Ademar said, wearily, as he summed up the meeting in a rare display of feeling, ‘that your good brother comes back to full health soon.’

Baldwin was content; for the sake of concord, he had been assured he would enjoy the lead position when the host moved out and that he would be consulted as an equal in all future operations.