Templar's Acre

CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE

Baldwin walked the walls that morning with a feeling of elation. His arm was still sore, but he could not lose the grin from his face. He wanted to tell Ivo and the others how happy he was. Lucia had been so gentle, sweet and loving, and he felt sure that he would be able to persuade her to marry him. That was what he wanted with all his heart: to make her his wife.

He stood at the hoarding where he had stood the day before. Already carpenters had been all over this section, replacing the broken roof where a rock had smashed it to tinder, repairing the supports from bits and pieces of timber lying all about. There was nothing the Muslims could do that would break the resolve of the inhabitants of Acre, he thought. They might throw all their missiles, but men would take heart no matter what.

At the first hissing passage of a fire-pot, he felt his heart quail, but then he stiffened his resolve with a memory of Lucia’s naked body on the bed when he left the chamber. Her smile, her beautiful face as he kissed her, all woke in his breast a fierce determination to be as brave as she would expect him to be. He still felt the fear, but somehow Lucia’s love lighted in him a shield against any returning terrors. He managed to put to one side the memory of the man’s face from last night, just before Buscarel’s sword took his head off.

Baldwin was still on the walls when the first assault began with the simultaneous flight of a whole mass of rocks from the catapults. He was stationed once more on the outer wall, ready to repel a repeat of the pioneers’ attack, when the rocks crashed into the hoarding.

There was no warning. The men were peering through any arrow slits available, when Baldwin saw the catapult arms all rising with that lazy motion, like a small forest of pines in a gale, he thought. He saw their missiles discharge, but as they reached their zenith, he lost sight of them under the overhang of the roof. There were tense moments as all the sentries waited, braced for the shock, and then there was a rippling thunder as the massive stones pounded the walls. Some, striking further away, made the feet of the men in the hoarding tremble, and then there was a scream, suddenly cut short, and a shudder that made the hoarding creak alarmingly. Daylight entered, blinding them.

Baldwin felt it like a leaping horse. That was how he would later describe it: like being on a charger as it leaped over a hedge — the sudden, belly-swooping moment of flight, followed by the shock of the landing and the rippling of the hoofbeats. Except he was not on a horse.

The missile struck the hoarding at the point of the roof, and crunched through it to the parapet hidden behind. Three men had been there, and Baldwin saw their bodies left as a jelly of blood and bones at the wall. The roof collapsed, and then the floor too disappeared, torn away by the weight of that immense rock. A man at Baldwin’s side moaned and wept, a two-foot splinter of wood embedded in his chest. Another was staring open-mouthed at the stump of his left arm, his face white, while Hob was standing precariously at the edge of the hole, shrieking in incoherent rage his defiance at the army on the plain — miraculously, like Baldwin, completely uninjured.

Baldwin bellowed for his men, and soon the bodies and wounded were removed, while planks were brought to replace those lost. Soon he had a rough deck nailed in place, and a low wall to protect them from arrows. At least the rock’s progress had improved their view of the battlefield, he told himself.

It was a mass attack from the right that he noticed first of all. Glancing there, he saw an entire line of Muslims rushing forward. Many bore long ladders, and there were three of the tall, protected scaling towers too, pushed by scores more.

Blaring trumpets from the city countered the booming thunder of the Muslim drums, and then there was a loud pealing of bells. Soon a rush of men answered the summons along the streets, and there was a constant bellow of orders. Archers stood preparing, while Baldwin was pushed to the back of the wide walls.

‘Hob! We need archers over here!’ he bawled, gesticulating with his arms. Hob saw the danger, and brought a number of Sir Otto’s men with him. They stood stringing their bows, staring intently down at the battle scene. Then, with wicker quivers filled with arrows set before them, they took one each and nocked it.

‘What do you reckon?’ one said.

‘Out of bowshot for us.’

‘Yeah.’

Baldwin leaned forward. ‘You must be able to hit them! They’re only a few yards away!’

‘Still too far for accuracy, vintenary. We’re better off not loosing our arrows. If we wait here, we’ll soon have targets enough.’

‘What?’

The archer glanced at him with exasperation, then jerked his chin towards the men before them. ‘Look!’

Baldwin saw that the middle of the army was moving, too. They rolled forward, and as they came, the front ranks paused, and he realised that they were all archers. In the sky, their arrows rose like a cloud of filthy carrion crows, darkening the ground beneath; they hung there a moment, and then began to fly down towards the men on the walls.

‘’Ware! Arrows!’ Baldwin said entirely unnecessarily, and ducked.

There was a clattering, a rattle of arrows hitting steel or rock, and shrieks as men were hit. Baldwin looked about him in astonishment to see that he and all those nearest were uninjured, and he bellowed defiance at the enemy just as the second wave of arrows arrived. The archer to his right coughed almost apologetically, as an arrow plunged into his shoulder beside his neck. He stiffened, and tumbled from the wall.

Baldwin stared at the man’s dead body some thirty feet below. His eyes were empty, as though his soul had flown in that instant.

More arrows were falling now, and Baldwin regretted the lack of a roof over his head. It left him feeling as exposed as a tethered chicken before a fox.

There was a shout, and more men ran to the walls bearing shields to protect the archers. One of them was a youth of perhaps fourteen, Baldwin saw. He ran up, carrying a large kite-shaped shield, and as soon as he reached the top of the wall where the roof had been burst away, he was struck in the leg by an arrow and fell, screaming shrilly, on the dead archer inside. His neck was broken when he landed.

But the other men were there with their shields held aloft now, and the archers could maintain their fire from beneath that protection. Not that it was enough. There were so many Muslims that the arrows made no discernible difference.

Baldwin moved aside to leave more space to the archers, and as he did so, he saw parties of men running at the walls, protected by a wagon-frame covered with wet hides. They stopped some distance from the walls, and more men hurried up with mantelets. These were thrust forward, and soon the men behind were neatly concealed.

‘What are they doing?’ Baldwin demanded.

The older English warrior was with him again. ‘Miners,’ he said. ‘That’s a chat — a cat. They’ll drive a shaft forwards from there to tunnel under our wall and the towers. Just like yesterday, but this time, more effective. It’s how they took Krak des Chevaliers.’

‘They are experienced at sieges,’ Baldwin noted.

‘Oh, yes. You could say that.’