Holy Warrior (43 page)
I saw a knight in the black habit of a Hospitaller, racing his horse up the rear, seaward side of the line towards the King’s division. ‘That’ll be them asking for permission to charge,’ said Sir James de Brus.
‘They won’t get it,’ was Robin’s laconic reply.
And then the second wave of Turkish cavalry began their charge. While the first wave had been attacking the Hospitallers, a second formation as large as the first had moved forward and, as the first unit sped away from the baggage train, firing backwards from their retreating saddles, another thousand screaming light cavalrymen thundered in their comrades’ hoofprints to bring a storm of death to the battered black knights and their beleaguered foot soldiers. Some Hospitallers led their horses to safety behind the lines and took their place, afoot, long lance in hand, in the thinning line of spearmen.
And still the drums boomed, pipes squealed, cymbals clashed, and the Turkish arrows thrummed through the air; I could hear the screams of the wounded and the war cries of the knights and footmen above the hellish din - and then I had to tear my eyes away from the valiant defense on the left for, suddenly, we had our own problems. A large force of Saracen light cavalry - some hundreds of them - had peeled away from the main body of the enemy and was trotting directly toward Robin’s men. The battle was now coming to us.
‘Shield wall,’ bellowed Little John. And eighty burly spearmen moved with smooth precision into a formation they had practised a hundred times. They formed a line, standing shoulder to shoulder, fifty paces long, their big round shields overlapping and held tightly together, long spear shafts resting in the dip between adjoining shields, and creating a barricade of wood, muscle and steel; a wall with an impenetrable hedge of spearheads protruding frontwards. If it held firm, no horse would willingly charge that barrier - for the animal to launch itself on those spears would be suicide.
Behind our wall of spearmen stood a double line of archers in dark green tunics, bows strung, short swords in their belts, their arrows stuck point first into the turf front of them. And behind the archers, twenty yards behind, was the mass of our cavalry, with myself next to Robin and Sir James de Brus in the front line, ready to deliver my master’s orders or relay his messages anywhere on the field.
Screaming like the demons of Hell, the wiry horsemen raced towards us. At a hundred and fifty paces they pulled back their bow cords, nocked their arrows and prepared to darken the sky with their shafts - but we were much quicker off the mark. Owain the master bowman shouted a command and with a noise like an old oak tree creaking in a gale, a hundred and sixty archers pulled back their bowstrings to their ears and loosed a wave of grey death over our shield wall directly into the surging tide of charging Turks. The arrows smashed into the front rank of the enemy horsemen like a gigantic swinging sword, cutting down the entire forward line, hurling men from their saddles and plunging steel arrowheads six-inches deep into the chests and throats of the charging ponies. The animals tumbled forwards, veered to the side or tried to rear away from the pain, throwing the whole mass of horsemen behind them into confusion. Our bows creaked and the arrows whirred again, and another swarm of needle-pointed death thrummed into the enemy formation. The horses behind the first rank crashed into their dead or dying leaders; delicate equine legs snapped like twigs under the impetus as half-ton charging animals, maddened with pain, barged into one another; men cartwheeled out of their saddles, limbs spread, weapons flying, and landed with a sickening thump on the dry ground; and another volley of arrows scythed into the press of the enemy punching into the third and four ranks and creating yet more carnage. A few hardy souls, still a-horse, nimbly picked their way through the dead and dying men and animals, and tried to continue the charge, but they were soon cut down by the archers, firing at will and picking their targets. The whole charge had come to nothing, destroyed by a few hundred yard-lengths of ash, hurled by a long stick and a piece of hempen string. I could see that the rearmost ranks of the enemy were pulling their mounts around and heading back to their lines. Riderless horses trotted aimlessly across the field: an unhorsed man, his black turban unwound in a long black trail of cloth to reveal a shiny spiked helmet, was cursing and rubbing his bruised body. He shook his sword at us in rage and then, as an arrow thumped into a horse carcass beside him, he backed away, and, looking fearfully over his shoulder, he started to run back up the hill to safety. The archers let him live, and they cheered themselves lustily for having broken the charge - but halfway through the celebrations, the cries died in their throats, for only seventy yards away, coming round the side of the wreckage of the Turkish squadrons, which had screened their advance, and coming on at a canter in perfect order, was the brigade of Berber lancers. Five hundred men advanced, wrapped in fine-mesh steel mail and loose white robes, each armed with two short light throwing javelins and one long stabbing spear, on big fresh horses. And they were coming for our blood. We just had time for one ragged volley of arrows from the archers and these elite and savage horsemen were upon us.
The Berber charge came at us obliquely, from the right, avoiding the tangle of broken men and maimed, kicking horses that strewed the ground directly in front of our lines; they came from the right, and their charge was preceded by a lethal shower of javelins, which fell like a dark killing sleet on our thin line of footmen. The yard-and-a-half-long weapons rose in an elegant arc and sank into the bodies of the archers and spearmen, dropping them in a shambles of flailing arms and spurting gore; I saw one bowman taken straight through the neck by the slim throwing spears, another man sitting on the earth looking bemused and holding tight with both hands to the javelin that grew from the centre of his blood-darkened belly. Little John was bellowing for the shield wall to close up, close up, when a second flight of javelins crashed into the shields of our men. On the back of Ghost, I raised my own shield, and tucked my left shoulder behind it.
The throwing spears were much heavier than the few arrows that the Turkish horsemen had managed to loose at us. As they crashed into the heavy round shields, the spearmen were often sent reeling back, the line breached until the man could regain his footing and press back into his appointed slot. Stuck with a javelin, a shield became unwieldy, unbalanced, difficult to use with any skill. I saw one spearman killed instantly by a javelin to the face, and at the same time his shield-mate on the right stopped two missiles with his wooden round and, unsupported on the left, the double blow threw him off balance. He staggered back leaving a two-man hole in the shield wall - through which a brave Berber lancer immediately spurred his horse. He stabbed at an archer who scrambled away just in time, and screaming a high ululating challenge - it sounded like a child shrieking ‘la-la-la-la-la’ - to the line of our cavalry now facing him, he spurred forward.
Sir James de Brus was the first to react; he kicked his horse and it eagerly leapt a few yards towards the Berber. Using his shield to bat aside the savage lance thrust from his opponent, Sir James deftly jabbed forward and jammed the point of his spear up under Berber knight’s chin and hard into his brain. The man fell back, pouring blood from the wide gash in his neck, and Sir James calmly pulled his bloody point free of the man’s lolling head, tipping the body from the saddle, and walked his horse forward to fill the gap in the shield wall with its bulk. Elsewhere in the line, under the deadly shower of javelins, holes had appeared but Little John seemed to be everywhere, his height and long reach allowing him to wield his great double-headed war axe with devastating efficiency against the mounted foe. He pushed and pulled spearmen back into the line, bawled at them to close up, and when a Berber threatened to breach the wall, he snapped lances with an axe blow, and cut down any horses and riders within reach like some insane forester, swinging the great weapon as if it were no heavier than a hatchet. And our archers had not been idle: they knew that their lives depended on keeping the Berbers beyond the shield wall, where the white-robed horsemen now milled about looking for a gap in the line and hurling their slim missiles with terrible accuracy. Between dodging javelins, and avoiding lance thrusts, the bowmen kept up a steady stream of arrows hissing at the enemy horsemen. Sometimes shooting at a range of as little as a dozen feet, the archers’ shafts frequently passed straight through the bodies of the Berbers, sometimes even striking men or animals on the other side. Arrows and javelins flickered through the bright air, and the horseman directly behind me suddenly gave a great cry and fell back in the saddle with a javelin in his shoulder. I turned and saw that it was Will Scarlet. His face was white, his eyes staring, blood streaming down his hauberk, and he slipped from the saddle without a word. I gritted my teeth and turned back to face the front. We had strict orders not to break rank, even to help our wounded. Another javelin whistled over my head; I snuggled deeper into the lee of the shield, hardly daring to look beyond it ...
And suddenly it was over. The surviving Berbers rode away leaving the dead and wounded piled in a low, stinking writhing mound in front of our line. We had held on by the skin of our teeth; and Ghost and I had not moved a hoof in the whole course of that desperate fight.
As the surviving archers drew their short swords, and ran out beyond the shield wall to cut the throats of the wounded Berbers and Turks, and loot the clothing of the dead, I looked back to where Will Scarlet had been. His place was now filled by another cavalryman and I could see behind the lines that Father Simon was tending to my red-headed friend by the mound of personal baggage. Will was not the only casualty by any means; in fact I could see scores of our men, mainly archers and spearmen, lying or sitting behind the lines, and waiting to receive the attention of Reuben, who was hobbling about from man to man, trying to save those he could. William and the other servants were scurrying about taking water to the worst hurt, and bringing bandages to Reuben. I looked away from that scene of blood and pain and glanced right at Robin. His face was devoid of expression, save for a grim tensing of the muscles around his mouth.
I looked past my master and could see that we were not the only ones who had faced the fury of the Saracen cavalry. At least two other parts of the line were under attack by units of the Turkish horsemen. Even though we had just faced an attack such as these, and many of our friends had suffered and died in it, I still found it an impressive sight to watch. The horsemen were superb, galloping in with enormous skill, loosing their arrows in great clouds on the part of the line they were challenging, and then, right in the face of the enemy, turning their horses about with their knees and galloping away, still keeping their enemies under attack as they retreated. They were inviting our men to charge, to break their ranks, and come out into the field to be slaughtered. By and large, their casualties were very low: we had few archers in the army, the majority being with Robin, and so the only damage they suffered was from a few well-aimed crossbow bolts as they thundered into range and swiftly out of it.
‘They are merely probing for weakness all the way up and down the line,’ said Robin to me. I was shocked: probing? I felt we had survived a major attack. I was also slightly surprised that Robin should address me, as our relations were still frosty, but then I realised that with Sir James de Brus out of position, he was just making a remark to the next man in the line. ‘And I think they may have found a weak spot,’ Robin continued. And he pointed past me to the left where the gentle Hospitallers were once again being menaced by another horde of enemy horsemen, which was trotting purposefully towards the extreme left of our line.
‘Ride to the King, will you, Alan, and tell him that we in the centre are firm, but the left is about to take another battering. Ask if he has any orders for us.’
I turned my horse around and threaded my way through the wounded to the seaward side of the army. As I came clear of our pain-racked men, I twisted my head to look north behind me and saw that Robin was right: the Hospitallers were once again being mauled by massed formations of mounted bowmen. Ignoring the deep humming of the Turkish bows and the screams of wounded knights and horses behind me, I galloped south towards the King’s division to relay Robin’s warning. It was glorious to be moving in that terrible heat, to feel the wind on my face, and smell the tang of salt in the air from the sea which was no more than a couple of hundred yards to my right. As I reached the group of knights that surrounded the King, ignoring a menacing glare from Sir Richard Malbête, I saw that a great argument was already in progress. My friend Sir Nicholas de Scras was gesturing passionately with his hands. ‘My lord,’ he said, ‘I implore you, the Hospitallers must charge - and soon. We cannot take much more of this; the Turks’ arrows have nearly wiped out our footmen, and the horses,’ he swallowed painfully, ‘the horses are being slaughtered from under us, and we do nothing. We must charge - else there will be no mounted force left to charge with.’
‘Tell the Grand Master that you must stand, like the rest of us; we must all endure until the time is right.’
‘But, Sire, men will say that we are cowards, that we fear to attack the enemy because — ’
Richard turned on him savagely. ‘Hold your tongue, sir. I am in command. And we will attack on my orders. Not before. By God’s legs, be damned to your Grand Master and his talk of cowardice...’
A household knight was plucking at King Richard’s sleeve. ‘Sire, look!’ he said pointing down the line to the far end. We all turned our heads to look.
Nearly a mile away, a perfect line of black-clad horsemen stepped delicately out of the shambles of the shattered third division. They held their lances vertically, a pale fence of spears, sunlight winking from the points, and they walked their horses slowly forward. You could clearly see the white crosses of the Hospitaller Order of Saint John of Jerusalem on the black trappers of their horses. We were all stunned into silence; I hardly dared to breathe. Then a second line of black knights emerged behind the first.