Shadows on a Sword (10 page)

It seemed to take forever to negotiate the last pass through the hills above Dorylaeum, but finally they burst out onto the plain above the city. Below them, they could see the embattled crusaders. They had formed a circle, with the non-combatant pilgrims in the center. Women were carrying water from springs to where the wounded were lying. The camp was surrounded by the Turks. As Godfrey drew his army up into position, Theo could see Turkish archers run in a line to the front of their soldiers, discharge their arrows into the ring of defending crusaders and then quickly retreat behind their own men to reload. Another line rushed to take their place. A ceaseless rain of arrows shot into the crusaders, making it impossible for them to advance and fight the Turks hand to hand.

“A cowardly way to wage war,” Aimery raged, beside Theo.

“Cowardly perhaps, but very effective,” Theo replied grimly.

Even as they watched, knights fell and horses crashed to the ground. Earsplitting battlecries from the triumphant Turks reached Theo’s ears. Then Godfrey’s own trumpets sounded out.

“Charge!” The cry rang out all along the lines. Bohemond, Robert of Normandy and Stephen of Blois led their men on the left flank. Raymond of Toulouse and Robert of Flanders took the center. Count Garnier, with Theo close beside him, followed Godfrey and Hugh on the right. There was no time for fear; Theo drew his sword, and they were upon the enemy.

In an instant, Theo’s world became a howling hell of clashing weapons. A blow landed on his shield, almost knocking him from his saddle. Before he could recover, a scimitar from the side caught his helmet with a crack that sent a ringing right through his brain. Everything went red before him. He reeled in the saddle.

So soon? he thought, desperate. Am I to die so soon? Before I have even struck a blow? Anger swept his mind and his vision cleared. The noise around him disappeared. He was alone in his own silence. A figure loomed up before him, turban flaming in the sun, scimitar raised. Theo slashed with his sword and felt the sudden shock as the blade sank deep into flesh. He yanked it out, even as he was wheeling Centurion to meet another figure on his right. He thrust backhanded at the man, and caught him in the side. The man fell, but Theo was already past him and joined with another. Thrust, cut, parry. Thrust again. Theo fought in a frenzy. When trumpets sounded again, they seemed to belong to another world. It wasn’t until he found himself charging after a horseman and realized the Turks were retreating, that he came back to the reality of where he was.

“It was Adhemar, Bishop of Le Puy, who saved us,” Amalric gasped, grunting with pain as a servant doused his leg with water. A scimitar had ripped open his old boar wound. “He’s a clever tactician for a churchman. Bribed guides to take him over the hills behind the Turks and fell on them from the rear. They broke as soon as he attacked.”

The crusaders had regrouped to tend to their injuries. Theo had found Amalric, although he couldn’t, at the moment, remember how. Amalric’s words came to him as though from a vast distance. He stared at blood flowing down his own right arm, and wondered stupidly where it was coming from.

T
he army rested at Dorylaeum for two days to recover from the battle. It had been an enormous victory, and the sultan was in full retreat, but there had been many losses and the crusaders felt a new respect for the Turks as soldiers. Tancred and Bohemond’s own brother William had been slain. Fortunately, Theo’s wound was slight.

The general mood within the camp, however, was one of elation. In their flight, the Turks had left behind their tents to be overrun by the crusaders. At last, the booty they had wished for so eagerly was theirs. The sultan had carried a good part of his treasure with him, and the crusaders were quick to plunder it. They captured many fine horses, too, and some other animals that Theo had never seen before. Tall, gangling, sandy-colored beasts, they had long, ugly faces with a decidedly insolent look to them. What amazed Theo most of all, however, were the humps on their rough-coated backs that swayed when they moved. They walked with a lolling, lumbering gait, on splayed hooves at the end of thin, ungainly legs. Theo could never have imagined more unlikely animals.

When Godfrey called a general conference of his leaders and their knights to plan the next stages of the march, Theo accompanied Count Garnier. The count had praised him for his conduct during the battle, and Theo’s heart was light as he strode beside his foster father to the duke’s tent. He had fought, finally, and he had fought well. He had a right to feel proud. But, deep inside, something lurked. He could not forget the feeling of his sword sinking into flesh for the first time, and the flash of the eyes beneath the crimson turban as the man attacking him realized he had been mortally wounded. The memory made Theo uneasy, and he did not want to examine it. Each time it recurred, he thrust it back down and thought of other things.

“We keep together from now on. There will be no repeat of the ambush at Dorylaeum.” Duke Godfrey’s voice rang out as they entered.

“We will march along the edge of the mountains. The going will be hard, but Taticius has assured me that there are Christian villages along the way, fertile fields and many good wells. Provisions should not be a problem.”

A murmur arose, an undercurrent of suspicion, at the name of the emperor’s engineer.

“Taticius knows the route. He will guide us.” Godfrey’s tone of voice quelled any argument; the murmuring ceased.

The sun was high and the early July heat already almost unbearable when the crusading army set out yet again. The mountains to the south of them looked coolly inviting and green, but the winds that blew off the wide, seemingly endless salt marshes to the north were arid and dry. Never had Theo seen such a bleak land. They were well provisioned, however, and carried a more than ample supply of water that easily lasted until they reached Pisidian Antioch. The town was peaceful, its leaders eager to provide the crusaders with supplies. Spirits rose in spite of the heat, which was increasing daily.

Once they had left the town’s shelter, however, conditions deteriorated quickly. The heavily armed knights and foot soldiers began to suffer in the heat, and they drank recklessly, heedless of the need to ration. Water quickly became scarce. At Philomelium, they were able to take on a little more, but not nearly enough, and the country beyond this city became more and more desolate.

On the third day out of Philomelium, the vanguard of the army spotted a village. Word spread back quickly. They would be able to reprovision here, and supply themselves with badly needed water. The knights spurred their horses forward eagerly. Theo rode with Amalric at the very front. His mouth was dry and parched; the horse he rode wheezed and heaved with thirst beneath him. He saw the trees waving above the low village walls and licked his cracked lips in anticipation. He could almost taste the cool velvet of the water.

“It is very quiet,” Amalric said.

The knights around them, who had been calling out in their excitement, fell silent, one by one.

None of the noise and bustle of a normal village welcomed them. No dog barked at their approach, no chickens scrabbled in the dust, no goats nibbled at the stunted bushes by the roadside. The surrounding fields, which should have been heavy with grain, were overgrown and wild. And nowhere was there any sign of human life. Not an adult, not a child.

The gates of the village hung wide open, askew. As they filed through, a sight of complete destruction met their eyes. Houses were burned, walls tumbled down. The streets were strewn with refuse. In the center of the village, a bridge over a dried-up stream had fallen, or been destroyed. The wind soughed between the abandoned buildings. It looked as if all life here had ceased years ago.

Godfrey drew up beside the large cistern at the town center. He stared down into it, then raised his eyes to the men watching him. “Sand. It is filled with sand.”

So it was with every village they came to and every well they found. The men suspected treason and were quick to blame Taticius and the Greek guides, but Alexius’s men were suffering equally. They had had no way of knowing that drought, years of warfare and Turkish invasions had reduced the countryside to a wasteland since they had last traveled this way. The army trudged on. The horses’ hooves turned up stones from the rocky beds of parched streams. There was no water anywhere. Every cistern they found along the way was dry. Theo saw men, in their desperation, ripping off branches of thorn bushes and chewing them in a vain attempt to find moisture. Theo rationed the pitiful amount of water he had left carefully, using it only to wet his lips and tongue whenever the thirst became unbearable. Then, even that was gone. He tore off a thorn branch himself to chew, but threw it away in disgust when the dryness of it made his torment worse. His tongue swelled within his mouth until he could hardly speak. And always, the sun beat down upon them mercilessly, causing them to sweat and lose even more precious moisture from their bodies.

Horses were the first to perish. Theo worried about Centurion, who was in great distress. He set William to gathering the prickly plants that grew along the way, and rubbed them between his hands to provide fodder for the horse. By the time they made camp at night, Centurion was covered in sweat and would hardly eat. He grew weak, and faltered during the long daily marches. Knights whose horses died were forced to go on foot. Poorly shod for walking on such stony roads, their feet soon became sore and inflamed. Sheep, goats and dogs were used to pull the baggage trains. The camels, the strange beasts captured from the Turks, fared the best. They seemed to be able to trudge on, unmindful of the heat, and not bothered in the least by the lack of water. They were useful as beasts of burden, but cursed with ugly tempers and liable to bite. They could also spit a slimy, noxious stream a surprising distance, as more than one groom found out.

“How are you?” Theo asked Emma as she appeared on her mare beside him early one morning. Her face was gaunt, her eyes enormous in her face.

“I am well enough,” she said. She, too, seemed to have trouble speaking. “But the children are suffering.” She brushed a tangled strand of greasy hair out of her eyes. “How much longer will this go on, do you think?”

“Iconium is two days’ march from here,” Theo answered. His brow furrowed. In spite of what she said, she did not look well. “It is a large town,” he went on, trying to sound reassuring, but a note of bitterness crept into his voice. “Well provisioned, Taticius says. There are streams in the valley of Meran behind the city that cannot run dry, he tells us. But he has been wrong every step of the way up until now. And we do not know whether the Turks have taken the city. I do not think we have the strength to fight for it if they have.” He turned to look at the column strung out behind them. He could not see the pilgrims that followed at the very end, but he knew they straggled farther and farther behind every day; every night fewer of them made it into camp.

“What is to become of us, then?”

There was a quaver in Emma’s voice that Theo had not heard before. It shocked him into looking at her more carefully. He saw then how thin her wrists were, and how bony the slender fingers had become. He looked at his own hands and realized for the first time that they, too, were lean and sinewy, roped with veins like an old man’s. Without thinking, he reached out to her.

Her fingers tightened around his as he grasped her hand. She met his eyes and drew a deep breath. She straightened in her saddle. Then she gave a small nod, as if to reassure him, or herself. Or perhaps both of them.

Two days later, toward the middle of August, almost a year to the day since Godfrey’s crusade had left the Ardennes, they reached Iconium. The city lay in a now familiar, deserted silence as they rode toward it. The heat rose in shimmering waves. There were signs that the Turks had, indeed, occupied it, but they must have fled at the coming of the crusaders.

Theo’s heart sank. Then a joyous shout from the knights in the lead sent a thrill of hope through him, and he spurred his horse forward eagerly. A well lay just within the gates. Knights were kneeling beside it, scooping clear, sparkling water out in great handfuls. Theo raised his eyes to the hills beyond. Streams glinted and tumbled down the slopes between rows and rows of carefully tended orchards. Taticius had finally been right.

Count Garnier set up his camp across a swiftly flowing stream from Duke Godfrey’s. Theo’s tent lay under a grove of trees whose leaves filtered out the harsh sun. Within a day, he had forgotten what thirst was like. Centurion spent the first twenty-four hours planted in the river, then began to graze without stopping. The news that they would rest there for several more days restored the spirits of all the crusaders. When Amalric burst in upon Theo to invite him on a bear hunt in the foothills, Theo accepted with alacrity.

The duke himself led the party, but Theo’s enthusiasm was checked when he saw Guy. During the past few months, while they had been on the road, it had been easy to avoid him. Now, however, there was no escaping the confrontation. Guy drew his horse up sharply when he saw Theo.

“So.” The word was a sneer. “You will have better luck keeping to your own game today, I hope.”

A sharp answer rose to Theo’s lips, but he bit it back. The day was too fine and the relief from the harshness of the road too great to spoil with arguments. He forced a nod and determined to keep out of Guy’s way.

Beyond the shelter of the valley, the land became more densely wooded and rose gently toward the mountains. A pack of dogs had been let loose and were loping ahead of the knights, casting about for the scent of game. All of a sudden, one caught it. A nose was thrust skyward and the hound howled to the heavens above. Another animal took up the scent, and then another. Howls turned into frenzied barking, and the pack headed into the forest. Theo spurred his horse on. The animal, startled, gave a great leap forward and they were off at a gallop.