The Spymaster's Protection (44 page)

The infantry in the lead battalion had stopped to surround
her. One of the foot soldiers pulled her from the rock and threw her into a
fire pit where wood and camel dung were still burning brightly. Her robes
caught fire immediately, and her shrieks could now be heard by all in the
encampment.

Within moments, flames had eaten away her garments, yet by
some unholy design, her hair and skin remained untouched. Lucien had rushed to
the scene and was as shocked as the men around him at the sight.

The woman whirled and whirled in a circle, shouting her curses
without pause to the stunned men before her. Finally a lone soldier charged
toward her, lifted the axe he was carrying, and silenced her with a blow to the
head, splitting her skull.

“Good God!” Lucien looked down at her nude body which was
untouched by the conflagration that had consumed her clothes. His curse was
echoed by Lord Balian’s oath as he came up to stand beside him.

Count Raymond rode up at that moment to restore order. The
woman’s body was ordered drug away, and a semblance of calm returned. Still.
Lucien could see that macabre scene had unsettled many of the men.

The march proceeded as men were ordered back into their
positions. King Guy had decided to swing south, then northeast to gain the main
road to Tiberius. This direction would take the army by the small spring and
watering hole at Tur’an. He had divided the Christians into the typical three
divisions. Count Raymond, despite all of de Ridefort’s accusations of treason,
had been given command of the vanguard, the front line. King Guy commanded the
center, where the kingdom’s most scared relic, the cross of the crucified
Christ, was carried and guarded by the clerical envoy, which included the
bishops of Acre and Lydda. Lord Ibelin brought up the rearguard, which he
commanded. The Templars and Hospitallers were stationed here as well, led by
their respective grand masters. Each division consisted of a full battalion of
cavalry and infantry. The mercenaries King Henry’s penance money had bought
rode with the king under the banner of England.

Lucien spurred his piebald Arabian forward to ride with Count
Raymond. He turned to look behind him. God’s Christian warriors stretched as
far back as the eye could see and cut a wide swath of nearly a league across
the flatland. Banners waved and dust rose up to envelope all. Overhead, the sun
was climbing to its zenith, promising a grueling ordeal ahead. Turning back
around, the ex-Templar pulled the crescent pendant from its nest next to his
skin and offered a silent prayer that God would show him mercy this day and
keep death at bay. Then he added one for Gabrielle’s safety.

They were not more than an hour on the road when small mobile
detachments from Saladin’s light cavalry began to harass their flanks with
deadly volleys of arrows. Swift and agile, the infidel’s desert ponies carried
them in for their lethal assaults, then carried them away again, unharmed.

Like never-ending swarms they came, relentless in their
attacks, hitting the Templar contingent in the rear especially hard, shooting
their arrows into the foot soldiers and the mounted knights. Bodies of men and
horses began to fall, impeding progress, just as Saladin had no doubt intended.
But the army, the military orders included, did not pursue the villains. The
king had given the order not to break ranks.

So they endured, frustrated, hot, and growing increasingly
thirsty.

By mid-morning, they reached Tur’an. Saladin was waiting for
them with a large portion of his main force. Lucien quickly estimated that he
must have left a smaller number of men at Tiberius, then rushed to Tur’an to
prevent the Christian army from reaching the spring. From the start, he
suspected the sultan of having three primary strategies; draw the Christian
army out of defensive positions, make them fight out in the open in the heat
without water, and choose the location where they would fight that would ensure
victory for Mohammed’s faithful.

The man was brilliant, and the Christians had come like lambs
to the slaughter. God’s bones! The terrain they were heading into, the Horns of
Hattin, was a rugged, uphill march, surrounded on either side by roughly wooded
terrain, steep ravines, and blind cornered hilltops. The enemy had all the
advantages, particularly control of the springs, and most likely, the route to
Lake Tiberius.

Lucien’s feeling of ominous inevitability plagued him like an
unshakeable ague.

At Tur’an some of the troops on the left flank, in Count
Raymond’s division, were able to refill water gourds and skins at the spring,
but most were too busy fending off Saladin’s assaults. Lucien was lucky enough
to be one of the men who had the opportunity to re-supply his water. But as
soon as Raymond’s troops left the spring, Saladin’s came rushing in to close
off the source of water to the remainder of the Christian army. Moral began to
decline once men knew they had been denied what could have been their last
opportunity for water.

With the count on the left side of King Guy’s forces, Lucien
made several attempts to scout around the Muslim formations, but each time, he
and his small band of men were driven back. To their right, the Christian army
was being enclosed in an ever tightening net as the infidel began to surround
them.

They made an attempt to move across Saladin’s front at the
king’s order, but the ruthless battering by the enemy’s mounted archers,
combined with the heat and the dust and the lack of water prevented the
Christians from pushing back the infidel in order to gain access to the
springs. The throbbing Muslim drums began to play on everyone’s nerves, and a
growing loss of horses, struck down by arrows, hampered any attempt to take the
offensive.

By noon, the rearguard had halted. King Guy was advised that
the harassed Templars and Hospitallers could go no further. De Ridefort
demanded that they all halt where they were and make camp for the night. Count
Raymond and Lucien rode to the king and advised him to press on; to fight their
way to the next spring, four miles away. It was a change in direction, but it
would allow them to reach water by the day’s end and possibly push on tomorrow
to the life-giving waters of Lake Tiberius.

The Christians were now spread out over a fairly level plain,
and yet condensed into an area about a third of a league across. Wooded slopes
and two small villages flanked the wide dirt road in the distance. The Horns of
Hattin, with its twin rounded peaks, were clearly visible to the mounted
soldiers, and if one rose up in his stirrups, the waters of Lake Tiberius were
a tiny blue reflection to the right of them.

Agreeing with the count and Lucien, King Guy decided in favor
of changing direction and heading for Hattin. The turning of thousands of men
and horses resulted in mass confusion. Lucien looked toward one of the hills to
the south where Saladin sat atop his horse. From his position, he had a clear
view of the disorder that began to occur within the Christian ranks. To him, it
must have appeared as if the three divisions of King Guy’s troops each had
their own agenda. As soon as it became clear that at least one, if not two,
divisions were going to try to head upward toward the Horns, Saladin sent his nephew,
Taqi al Din, with a large contingent of Arab troops, into the path of the
Christians.

Being in the forefront, Count Raymond’s division was closest
to the road that led up the hill. The king ordered the baron to race to the top
and prevent al Din from reaching it. Lucien rode at Raymond’s side, pushing his
horse as fast as the animal would go. At last, they were going to fully engage
the enemy and possibly take the offensive! The anticipation of finally doing
something positive spurred him and his horse up the rise.

Speed was urged. The infantry could not keep pace with the
cavalry as the horses charged up the hill to reach its crest first, but they
were running behind them nevertheless. To Lucien’s dismay, Taqi al Din and his
troops reached the plateau just ahead of the count’s cavalry. A skirmish
ensued. The clash of swords raged on for a long while, and Lucien took many
infidel lives, but they never managed to punch a hole through the Arab
division.

Below them, the main force of the Christian army and the
Templar rearguard were battling Saladin’s two other divisions. Repeated charges
by the military orders failed to drive their tormentors away.

Beside Lucien, Count Raymond swung around and looked below
also. The sight that met his eyes was grim. The Christian army numbered ten
thousand foot soldiers, near two thousand light cavalry, and near as many
mounted knights, and yet it was as if an infant were trying to push back
against a giant. “Dear God! The war is over here and now. Look at that! We are
betrayed unto death. The land is lost!”

All of the men around Raymond heard their commander’s hopeless
assessment. His despair was followed by an order to retreat back down the hill
to give aid to the king. By the time they reached him, Saladin had withdrawn his
divisions, but only as far as the surrounding hills. Since the daylight was
waning, it was generally agreed by everyone at that point to make camp for the
night.

Tents were assembled for the barons and the commanders, but
the majority of the troops chose to sleep in the open, hoping that the cool
breezes of evening would relieve some of their suffering. Until darkness fell
completely, small groups of Saracens harassed the outer perimeters of the camp.
Christian soldiers began to break away in sporadic attempts to search for
water. They were killed immediately, effectively stopping the defections for
the time being.

Once night fell completely, Lucien used its black mantle to
take a few men out to scout along the forward lines.

He discovered the enemy was close enough for their sentries to
talk to one another, if they so chose. It was crazy, this proximity; this halt
that left them surrounded on nearly three sides by the enemy.

The morrow did not bode well. They had been unable to punch
through enemy lines today. What made the commanders think they could tomorrow?
The sultan’s three divisions numbered over thirty thousand men. The Saracens
had an advantage of more than ten thousand men, some even whispered a ten to
one advantage, though Lucien did not estimate it to be that large. And they had
water.

The Christian army was nearly gasping for lack of it as they
lay under the stars, listening to the throbbing of the Muslin drums and the
singing of their troops. Lucien, himself, had only a precious half of a canteen
left after sharing what he dared with his brave and loyal group of Frank and
native scouts hidden in the bushes. He had more back at camp due to the fact
that he had been one of the fortunate men to refill his canteen and gourd at
the last waterhole before it had been shut down by Saladin’s troops. But he
needed to use it as sparingly as he could because he did not think there would
be any more access to water unless some by some miracle they managed to prevail
against the massive forces of the infidel.

Around midnight, he encountered his friend, Conrad, belly
down, dangerously near the very edges of Saladin’s encampment. The sultan’s
yellow silk pavilion was only a stone’s throw away from their position in a
thicket of dry brush. Through silent hand signals, they agreed to draw back to
an outcropping of rock that would conceal their bodies and their voices so they
could exchange information.

With his mail clad back pressed to a large boulder, Brother
Conrad pointed to the far side of the sultan’s camp. “Saladin has moved the
rest of his troops from Cafarsset. He brought camels loaded with arrows for the
morrow.”

“Aye, my men and I have counted nearly three score of the
beasts so far. His infantry is in full force now,” Lucien replied, his voice
pitched to a whisper.

“Your estimate of his troop size?” his Templar friend asked.

“Thirty to thirty-five thousand.”

“That is close to mine, as well, although I would not be
surprised to discover there were twice that many.” Conrad pulled out a flask of
water and offered his old friend a drink.

“Keep it. I have some.”

“The poor bastards down the hill, our brethren included, will
die of thirst tomorrow if we do not reach the springs at Hattin or the lake.”

Lucien agreed with a grim nod. “We could end up losing as many
men to dehydration as to Saracen arrows.”

“The sultan also has a steady stream of camels carrying water
up from the lake,” Conrad told him, tightly capping his water skin.

Lucien had seen the same thing. “It is being emptied into
large reservoirs dug in the center of each division.” With his back against the
rock wall, he raked his fingers through his hair, molding it to his head with
the sweat at his hairline. “God’s blood, Conrad, this is madness! It will take
a miracle to see us through this.”

“The Temple has taken a bloody beating at the rear. The
Hospitallers as well. I do believe Saladin intends to wipe us, in particular,
from the face of this land.”

“He believes that the Franks would not have lasted half as
long in Outremer if it were not for the military orders. It is a compliment and
a curse, is it not, brother, to be both hated and admired?”

“We are not so easy to defeat,” Conrad added.

“Thank you for your support at the council at Sephorie,”
Lucien finally had a chance to say.

“No one should call you traitor. You have fought bravely and
loyally for the kingdom for over a decade.” Conrad was quiet for several
moments, then asked, “How is Lady de Châtillon?”

“Someone has convinced the Assassins to leave her alone. She
is in Jerusalem with the queen.” Lucien stared at his friend and smiled, his
teeth a white slash against his dark skin; skin made even darker by the night.
“I intend to marry her as soon as her annulment is granted.”