Plague of Angels (30 page)

Damn fool will kill himself like that,
thought Simon.

“Get him out of here!” shouted Albert.

A pair of soldiers rushed the man, grabbing his hands away and dragging him back to the monk’s tent where they could try to save his life. The man screamed with every jolt, and soon fell behind them.

“‘Ware,” said Albert. “The towers are nearly at the wall.”

“Deus Vult!”
screamed Robert Curthose. “Charge!”

Twenty thousand men roared. The footmen charged for the wall, scaling ladders above their heads. Simon and Albert and the other knight, following the signal flag from the commanders, wheeled their horses to the east and west, each group forming a line a fifty wide and five deep. Simon and Albert went to the west. From the side gates of Jerusalem, hundreds of Saracen horsemen were streaming out, preparing a flanking attack to open them up. Simon grinned and couched his lance. He had managed to get in the front line.

Simon’s own battle cry was drowned out in the clash of men and horses. Steel bit into flesh on all sides, horses broke legs and went down screaming, the bones jutting from their flesh becoming dangerous obstacles on the battlefield. Simon’s lance drove into the Saracen in front of him, impaling the man and ripping through his guts before tearing out his back. The man fell backwards off his horse, taking the lance with him. Simon raised his morning star. Others preferred a sword, but for Simon, the spiked ball on the end of the chain, attached to the handle in his hand, was a far more satisfying weapon. A helmet would barely stop it. Armor might prevent the spikes from getting through, but would do nothing to stop the bones beneath from breaking.

“Deus Vult!”
Simon screamed, the morning star smashing into the side of the head of the man beside him. To his credit, the man didn’t lose his saddle, but he swayed as blood spattered from his torn-open face and the deep gouge where the rim of his helmet had driven into his skull. Simon swung again before the man could right himself, smashing his spine. Simon couldn’t hear the man’s back break over the sound of the battle, but knew from the way the man arched backwards, screaming, that he was no longer a threat.

Simon drove forward again. Beside him, Albert hewed with his sword, hacking off men’s hands where they gripped the reins, leaving only bloody, spurting stumps. Two men he cut open that way, then the third managed to get his shield in the way. He and Albert clashed hard, vying for room to cut each other in the hard press of the battle. Simon tried to drive his own horse forward, but a Saracen cut him off, his long, curved, blood-soaked blade swinging for Simon’s head. Simon put his shield between them and swung the morning star down hard, aiming for the other’s skull. The man had his own shield up, and managed to block the vicious blow. They traded back and forth, neither able to get the upper hand.

Then the Saracen twisted and, instead of cutting, thrust hard with his blade, driving it past Simon’s shield and into his shoulder. Simon bellowed in pain and swung the morning star as hard as he could. It didn’t unhorse the man, but send his helmet flying. Simon flipped his wrist and sent the morning star down hard on top of the other man’s head.

The Saracen’s face registered the pain for the briefest of moments as the spiked ball crushed through his hair and skull. Then the man’s head exploded, spattering blood and brains on all around them. Simon grinned, despite the injury to his shoulder. He wheeled his horse free of the press and rode out, his bloody shoulder screaming with pain.

From the west he heard soldiers crying, and a horn sounding.

The towers had reached the wall.

On the wall, Jibril watched as the towers grew closer. The defenders’ arrows had taken their toll on the men hauling the towers, but it seemed no matter how many they cut down, there were always more to take their place.

At this rate they’ll be able to walk up the walls on the bodies of the dead,
he thought, as the tower grew closer. He could see his men, nervously waiting, watching as the tower grew near, knowing that in moments they would be fighting for their lives.

“Steady!” he shouted. “Grapples!”

A dozen men tossed hooks out at the towers, hoping to pull them over to the side and take them from their deadly course. The defenders were prepared, and tore off the hooks before the ropes on them could be pulled tight.

The towers trundled ever closer.

Beside Jibril a man screamed, victim of a chance arrow that made it past the battlements. The long shaft had sunk into his neck and blood spurted from him like water from a pump. Jibril shook his head in disgust and turned away. The man was dead and didn’t know it yet. Another victim of the infidels.

We will crush them all,
he thought.
We just need to hold out two more weeks.

“It opens!” screamed one of the defenders, and the weighted drawbridge on the front of the tower plunged down onto the wall and the infidels, led by a dozen knights, charged forward.

Instantly the wall was a slaughterhouse. The knights who charged out had been picked for their size and strength, and they fell on the smaller defenders like the wrath of God, smiting with steel that hacked through armor and flesh. Brains and blood and intestines made the wall into a slippery mess, and the screams of the dying were nearly louder than the cries of battle.

Jibril charged forward, leading his own handpicked men, equal in size and ferocity to the invaders. Ahead of him he watched first one, then two, then half-a-dozen men dying, from ripped-open stomachs or crushed skulls or from swords cuts that sent heads flying. Jibril screamed his own war cry,
“Allahu Akbar!”
and charged forward.

He met the first knight shield to shield, and the force of Jibril’s charge was enough to send the man staggering back in the bloody mess on the top of the wall. Jibril ducked beneath the blade the man swung at his head and thrust his own curved sword up under the man’s hauberk, ripping into the man’s leg and tearing open the artery. Jibril twisted the blade and pulled it out at the same time he drove his shield into the other man’s once more, sending him skidding back to fall over the bodies of those he had killed.

Jibril didn’t bother cutting the knight again. The blood spurting from the man’s leg meant that he would be dead fast enough, and Jibril had others he needed to kill. One giant of a knight was holding off three of Jibril’s men by himself, using a mace to deal devastating blows.

“Spears!” screamed Jibril, and a two more squads of his men charged forward, wielding their wicked d
ariyah –
twelve-foot long spears, whose last three feet were all blade. They stabbed out at the infidels’ vulnerable legs and faces, driving them back. The big one with the mace swung hard, smashing two of the blades with one blow. Jibril leapt into the space left from the suddenly disarmed spearmen and hacked down and across with his sword. It hit the big man’s wrist, biting through the chainmail and into flesh and bone. Blood spurted, but the arm was not severed. Jibril shoved hard on his blade, cutting further through the screaming man’s wrist even as it freed Jabril’s weapon. The man tried to stumble back, but Jibril followed, hacking sideways across the man’s face. The knight’s eye exploded as Jibril’s blade ripped through it. He fell to the ground, screaming and clutching at himself.

“Drive forward!” screamed Jibril. “Drive forward and kill them all!” He stepped back as his men streamed around him. “Where are my flames? Where is my fire?”

He had his answer a moment later when six men, each carrying flaming pots of oil, charged forward. The infidel knights saw them too and redoubled their attack, but it did them no good. One by one they fell, and the long spears kept others from leaving the siege towers to attack the battlements.

The first oil pot flew and smashed against the side of the tower. Flames leapt up, but did little damage.

“Get them inside!” Jibril screamed. “Follow me!”

He charged again, breaking the line of the struggling knights. Soon each infidel was surrounded and being hacked to pieces by a half-dozen of Jibril’s defenders. Jibril kept driving forward, jumping onto the tongue of the siege tower and cutting at the men there. The ones that rose to meet him were sliced open or thrown from the tower to fall into the seething sea of humanity below.

“Now!” screamed Jibril. “Now!”

He jumped back and five more flaming vessels flew past him into the maw of the siege tower. Two broke on the top level. The other three tumbled down into the depths of the tower and erupted into flames there. Smoke began billowing from the tower and the men inside began screaming and fighting one another, desperate to escape the agonizing death they faced.

“To the other tower!” Jibril yelled. “We will steal the victory from the infidel dogs and drive them back to the sea!
Allahu Akbar!”

From the back of his horse, Simon watched the first tower burning.

“Swiving dogs,” he cursed. “Bastards. Shit-eating scum.”

Tentatively he tried moving his shield arm. The sword that had pierced him had not ruined the joint. He was still fit for fighting and the sight of the burning tower infuriated him. He looked to the other tower and saw that it was stuck in place, twenty feet from the wall. Simon cursed and kicked his heels into his horse’s sides. The beast charged forward.

Through the ranks he rode, passing by soldiers stepping grim-faced towards the front line, going around blood-soaked stretchers bearing crying, mutilated men back to the tents. Together Simon and his horse pushed forward until they were behind the tower.

“You there!” he shouted at the nearest knight. “What the hell is going on? Why isn’t that damn thing at the wall?”

“Ditch!” shouted the man back. “The front wheels are mired!”

“Well, get it out of there!” shouted Simon back. They’ve already fired the other one and this one…”

His words were cut off as a flaming pottery vessel plunged from the wall above and shattered between the two of them. Flaming shards sprayed everywhere, making men cry out and bat frantically at themselves as their tabards caught fire.

“Hooks!” someone screamed from above. “Ware the hooks!”

On the wall, Jibril grinned with violent joy, even as he gasped for breath. He had run from one end of the walls to the other, preparing to lead the defenders in repelling the second tower. Now he saw that it was unnecessary. The ditch they had dug weeks before and filled with sand was doing its job admirably. The front wheels of the huge siege tower were hopelessly mired, and even now the defenders were raining arrows and flaming vessels filled with oil down upon the attackers. Better still, the hooks were getting closer, nearly snagging the vulnerable sides of the tower, despite the best efforts of the defenders. All it would take was one to catch and….

“Arrows!”

Even as the scream came, the air below turned black with flying shafts. Hundreds of arrows raked the battlements as the attackers sought to keep the defenders under cover while they rescued their precious tower. Most men ducked out of the way. A few unlucky ones were pierced through, arrows cutting through the chain mail or driving into unprotected faces.