Standard of Honor (27 page)

“The last thing you said to me yesterday, just before the storm broke and we had to scramble for shelter, was that the kings who will lead us to the Holy Land need to absorb some facts that will stick in their craws. I have been wondering ever since. What did you mean?”

Montdidier's face grew somber. “I meant exactly what I said. The army being assembled now, both in Britain and in France, is no army at all. It is a collection of fragments—splintered factions and coteries—each of them with leaders and commanders who have agendas and ambitions of their own and an eye to their own advantage ahead of everyone else's. But all of them, kings, princes, dukes, counts, and anything else that's there,
all
of them need to be convinced somehow, and forced if necessary, into accepting the realities of where they will be going and what awaits them there. I have spoken with most of them and told them what I believe, what I know and have witnessed with my own eyes, but
among all of them, only Richard Plantagenet deigned to heed what I said. The others had no wish to hear. They have their own beliefs, their own deluded convictions.”

When the Hospitaller said no more, St. Clair prompted, “And those convictions are … what? I think I could guess, but tell me anyway. What do they believe?”

“Stupidities.” Montdidier dropped his hand to his belt and drew out a dagger with a long, narrow blade. He shifted his grip from hilt to blade and began to scrape the underside of his fingernails with the point.

“And? What are these stupidities?”

Montdidier was glowering, but then he straightened his back abruptly, sucked in a great breath and expelled it loudly, ridding himself of his frowning anger as quickly and as easily as another man might shed a cloak. “Why am I being angry at you, can you explain that to me? You are not involved in this at all … Not yet, at least. But you will be, believe me.” He slipped the knife back into its sheath and crossed his arms on his chest. “They all believe that this new war, like all the other conflicts they have known, will be won by mounted knights.”

“And you would have them believe otherwise.”

“Of course I would, because I want them to destroy the Muslim armies and survive. They
must
be made to see how wrong they are—to change not only their minds but their methods and their fighting tactics. If they do not, they will all die quickly and uselessly, because everything has changed now. All the so-called
wars they talk about, wars won by mounted knights, have been waged here in Christendom, and they have all been piddling little affairs, petty, parochial squabbles between greedy barons and whatever enemies they chose to confront at any time.”

He turned to look St. Clair directly in the eye. “There has never
been
a war like the war going on today in Palestine, against the Muslim, against Saladin. Believe me in that, Sir Henry. That war is being fought in a different world, far from everything we know in Christendom, and the rules of warfare that we learned and know have all been changed. You have never been in Outremer, have you?”

“No, I have not. My duty to Duchess Eleanor kept me here at home when I might have gone, and I never had another opportunity to go, until now.”

“Aye, that is what I thought … Well, believe me when I tell you that Outremer is completely unlike the world you know. You called it the Holy Land a while ago, but God Himself knows there's nothing holy about the place. It is a world the like of which these people who see themselves today as leaders will never understand and cannot begin to imagine. They are all too young to remember the lessons of the first and second expeditions we sent out, and too ignorant to concern themselves with the realities of the land and the climate in which they are destined to fight. Most of it is desert, as hostile and brutal as the people who live in it, and unimaginably dangerous to newcomers. It is a damnable place, filled with terrors and cataclysms,
where sandstorms can spring up without warning and bury entire villages—entire
armies
, at times—storms so violent that the blowing sand will strip exposed flesh from a living man's bones.

“But even worse than any of those things, it is a place filled with zealots—fierce, unforgiving warriors who live and breathe the creed of their own god and his Prophet, Muhammad, and who are glad and willing to die in his service. These Muslim warriors—Saracens, Mussulmen, Arabs, Bedouin, call them what you will—can outfight our best, Henry, much as we might wish to deny it. And they are sufficient in numbers to outface a Frankish army three thousand strong, fielding ten men for every one of ours, and to destroy it, leaving but one man in every score alive.”

There was a long silence as St. Clair thought about what the Hospitaller had said, and after a time, he held up one hand in supplication. “I do not disbelieve you, for I have heard similar reports from others. But despite all of that, and all the logic and scrutiny brought to it, these numbers that you cite defy belief. Nineteen men killed out of every twenty? How could
any
army, no matter how well trained or zealous, achieve such slaughter?”

“Missiles.” The word was so gruffly uttered that St. Clair was not sure what the other man had said.

“I think I misheard you. Did you say
missiles
?”

Montdidier looked at him again, clear eyed and cogent. “Aye, that's what I said. Missiles … arrows, if you're looking for precision.”

“Ah, arrows. Arrows shot from bows.”

Montdidier's face tightened with anger. “Aye, that's right.
Arrows
—projectiles shot from bows. They slaughtered us with arrows. They rained arrows upon us, like hailstones, constantly and from all sides at once. And then, at night, they shot our horses, knowing an armored knight is helpless when forced to fight on foot, in sand. Arrows, Master St. Clair. They used them to demoralize us, to unnerve and frighten us and ultimately to destroy us, forcing us to make desperate moves that we would not otherwise have undertaken. And we were helpless against them.”

“I know, and I am not mocking you. I have heard something of this before. I was merely thinking yet again on the folly of the papal ban on bows in Christendom. It cost us dearly at Hattin. But yet … surely, once an arrow has been loosed, it is lost? It cannot be used again. And yet you are describing a
prodigious
number of arrows. There must be
some
exaggeration there.”

“Aye, so it must seem to anyone who was not there. You are not the first to think that and question me. But I saw it with my own eyes.” He rose to his feet in one fluid motion and moved to the side of the ship, where he laid both hands on the rail and stood gazing out at the water until St. Clair thought he must have said all he wished to and would say no more. The waves had continued to dwindle in size since the wind had died so that the ship was now moving far more smoothly, almost gently, and the sky overhead had become almost cloudless, the late-afternoon sun well down the slope
towards the western horizon that was now clearly visible beyond Montdidier. But Montdidier turned again to face St. Clair, leaning back against the ship's side, his elbows resting on the rail behind him.

“Have you ever seen a camel, Sir Henry?”

Henry nodded. “Aye, both kinds—one hump and two—and several times. There is a fellow who brings a collection of strange and wild animals to Poitiers each year, to the Midsummer festival. People come in throngs and pay well to marvel at his beasts.”

“So you understand that the camel is a beast of burden, very large, immensely strong and capable of carrying great weights for extended lengths of time, while an arrow is practically weightless. Even a quiver filled with arrows—a score or more—weighs next to nothing compared to a sword or an axe. So let me ask you this: how many arrows, carefully packed and bound in bundles, do you think a fully laden camel might be able to carry?”

St. Clair puffed out a breath. “I have no idea, but from the way you ask I can surmise that the number would probably be greater than any I might suggest.”

“Much greater. The sole limitation that would apply to such a load is the physical bulk of the bundles of arrows. Now imagine a number of those, all neatly tied up, with five and twenty arrows in each bundle. Each bundle would be approximately the thickness of a double fist.” He illustrated what he meant by placing his clenched fists together, thumb to thumb. “Now imagine crates made out of lath and wire—cages, each
as wide as an arrow's length, and sufficiently long and deep to hold ten bundles side by side, stacked four layers deep. Each crate, a light but strong cage, would hold one thousand arrows, and it would be no great feat of engineering to bind six such crates together on each side of a camel. That represents twelve
thousand
arrows, carried by just one beast.”

St. Clair shrugged, smiling and spreading his palms. “An interesting premise, I will grant you that,” he said quietly. “Given, of course, that one could even
find
twelve thousand arrows.”

“Find them? Sir Henry, the army that defeated us at Hattin was made up almost entirely of bowmen—
mounted
bowmen, on horses much smaller than ours, wiry and spare, faster and much more agile. Each bowman carried his own arrows into the campaign, three or four quivers full at least. But Saladin had already thought beyond such things and seen what he must do. Months before he assembled his army, summoning them from Egypt and from Syria, from Asia Minor and all the other fiefs that he commands, he sent out the word for arrows to be made in numbers that had never been seen before, and for all of them to be shipped to the places where the different contingents of his armies would assemble.”

“And he loaded them all onto a camel, is that what you were going to say?”

“No, Sir Henry, it is not. That would amount to only twelve thousand arrows. By the time he moved against us, coming to lay siege to Tiberias, Saladin had
seventy—
seventy
—camels laden with extra arrows in his baggage train. I know not how many arrows they had in total, but when the slaughter at Hattin was over, the Muslims were boasting among themselves that they had transformed the infidel pigs from knights and soldiers into hedgehogs. I have never seen anything to equal the storm of arrows that were shot at us that day.”

“Seventy camel loads … How do you know that?” “I was their prisoner, and I speak their language.

I heard them talking about it afterwards, and about the difficulties they had had in collecting the spent arrows after the battle.”

St. Clair now felt distinctly ill at ease. “Wait now, because I am not sure I understand what you have said here. Are you telling me that the Christian army at Hattin was destroyed from a distance, without ever engaging the enemy? If so, it goes against everything else I have heard about the battle. What about the feats of the individual knights, and the charge of the Templars?”

“What charge?” Montdidier scoffed. “The Templars made no heroic charge at Hattin. Trying to close with the enemy was like trying to capture smoke. They outnumbered us hugely, and rode in circles around us, and every time we tried to charge them and engage them, their formations would disintegrate and scatter as we drew near. They would move away to a safe distance, permitting us to ride through and then closing in behind us, cutting us off from our own forces and exposing our flanks to their bowmen. The Temple
Knights held the rearguard. They recognized what was happening, after several attempts to engage, and to their credit, they fell back to reinforce the King's encampment on the knoll above the battle. But the King's people had pitched their tents between the King's main force and the Templars, so that the knights were forced to ride around and between them, being shot from behind as they jostled one another, trying to find a way through the lines of tents and the thousands of guy ropes that confounded their horses.

“No solid portion of our army even came close to a hand-to-hand encounter with the enemy that day. Some individuals did, but they were few against hordes and they were swiftly slaughtered. Our infantry, almost twelve thousand strong, were allowed to march right through the Muslim ranks. It was the same technique— they simply moved aside and let our men pass through without a fight, and then they were followed and picked off piecemeal from both sides as they made their way down towards the lake. None of them survived.

“And that, for all intents and purposes, is the story of Hattin: we sat helpless on our horses and were shot down. We were outmaneuvered, outmanned, and outplanned, and our leadership was impotent in the face of the enemy's superior ability. It was not a glorious occasion for Christendom.” He turned his face away, then hawked and spat, disgust and outrage radiating from him almost visibly. “
Leadership
, I called it. Hah! May God forgive me, but I have seen more leadership among a pack of rats than I saw that day at Hattin.

Arrogance, stupidity, ignorance, and vaunting pride I saw aplenty, but leadership, ability, or inspiring behavior? God help us all next time, if we are foolish enough to go at all.”

“Are you implying that we might see the same thing happen again, next time?”

Montdidier looked at him with raised eyebrows. “Do you doubt it? What has changed, between then and now? The arrogant old warhorses like de Ridefort are gone, but we've replaced them with even lesser fools. I swear to you, Master St. Clair, if we ride into battle in the same fashion in this coming war, arrogant in our notions of superiority, Saladin will meet us with exactly the same tactics and achieve precisely the same effect. That is why the kings must be made to see that change is needed.”

St. Clair opened his mouth to speak, but closed it again, and the Hospital Knight waited.