The Dagger and the Cross (31 page)

He sat for a long moment while the enemy gathered to strike.
He spurred forward. But they were too many. They drove him back with the sheer
weight of their numbers.

His horse stumbled and nearly fell. He hauled it up. That,
it seemed, was omen enough, and warning. With the last remnant of his knights, he
spurred north and west, away to water and safety, out of the battle and the
defeat.

For it was that. The infantry was gone beyond retrieving:
the enemy had mounted their hill and slain or taken them as effortlessly as a
child herds geese in a meadow. Tenscore knights were lost or fled; and more
from the rear, Templars who, under cover of Raymond’s diversion, broke for
freedom. Of an army of thirty thousand, a bare two thousand were left: knights
and light horses and a dozen mamluks against a hundred thousand infidels.

That was no wind to yield to any enchanter’s asking. Aidan
tried with all the power that was left in him. The wind only laughed. It was at
the enemy’s backs, blowing out of the west, a hot blast in the Christians’
faces. Now the Saracens made it hot indeed: they kindled torches, and as the
Franks looked on appalled, set fire to the grass.

The wind seized the flames and drove them toward the ranks.
But worse than the flames were the clouds of bitter smoke. Sun, fire, smoke,
battle, wrung every drop of water from them. Their eyes could not even weep.
They coughed, convulsing in pain, trying still to fight, to keep their horses
from running mad with terror of the fire, to hold the line their king had set
for them. He was in the heart of it, fighting as valiantly as they: never for
him the lordly isolation of the sultan, to stand above the battle and rule it
as one who did not himself take part in it, save when his position itself was
attacked.

The fire broke the strength of all too many men. A handful
of them abandoned the ranks and rode toward the Saracens, gasping out the words
of faith: “There is no god but God, and Muhammad is the Prophet of God!’”

Even Aidan was appalled. It was one thing to accept Muslims
in one’s army. It was another altogether to desert in the middle of a battle
and turn apostate.

“Cowards,” said Conrad, his sweet singer’s voice thinned to
a dry rasp. His quiver was empty, his spears all cast and lost. He was down to
his sword, and giving a good account of himself. They all were, all Aidan’s
faithful infidels.

The Saracens did not take so dim a view of converts. They
took in the deserters, clear for the Christians to see, and gave them water,
poured it over them if they wanted it, and led them away to shade and food and
blessed rest.

No one weakened so far as to follow them. Guy had them
moving at last, step by bitterly contested step, up the double-horned hill of
Hattin. There, with the fire still burning its way toward them and the wind
blowing the smoke in their faces, but the enemy stymied for the nonce by the
steepness of the hill, they made their stand. Guy was in their center among the
Templars and the Hospitallers. The knights spread out on either side. The order
was out:
Charge at will. Fight as you may.

They charged. Out, down the hill with its slope lending them
weight and speed, into the horde of the enemy, hewing, straining, pelted with
arrows. Driving them back clear to the sultan under his canopy, close enough to
see him standing under it with a youth beside him, his son in a golden coat,
and to see how he was ashen pale with fear for his victory, his hand a fist in
his beard; but never quite breaking through the guard about him. Losing the
horse more often than the man, as often to the treacherous, knife-edged, hoof-rending
stones beneath the grass as to the Saracens; but once the man was down, he was
lost, inundated with infidels, however hard he fought, however bitterly he
cursed his enemies. But
if
he could escape, if his horse took a small
wound or none, or if he could seize another before the enemy pulled him down,
he spurred away, hacking through an ever-growing thicket of swords, spears,
yelling faces, back to the hill and almost-quiet and vanishingly brief safety.

Aidan’s bay went down in the second charge, but Aimery was
there—God love the boy, was he mad?—and he was on a leggy roan and leading a
bow-nosed chestnut that Aidan had never seen before. God still had a soft heart
for fools: the child had a sword but no hand free to wield it, yet no one had
touched him or so much as threatened him.

Aidan blew the hunting horn that he resorted to in battles,
the quick scatter of notes that cried,
To me! To me!

They came as they could, the Kipchaks both on one staggering
pony, Conrad clinging to Raihan’s stirrup, Arslan bloody to the elbows but
never a scratch on him, and after him the others.

Three only. Dildirim, Andronikos, Janek the Circassian with
his ruddy beard. Four were dead. Shadhi, Tuman, Zangi, Bahram. Janek was badly
hurt: he swayed in the saddle and would have fallen, had not Conrad come round
to hold him.

They struggled back up the hill. The king, between his own
charges, had ordered tents pitched: his great scarlet pavilion and two others
close by it. One was full of wounded, and Gwydion was in it, spending his
strength in a battle no less potent than that with swords and bows, though far
more to his liking.

In the third charge Aidan kept his horse and drove clear up
to the guard about the sultan. For a moment, as he locked in fierce combat with
a pair of mamluks, his eyes met the sultan’s. Saladin’s widened more in
surprise than in fear; then, with a start, in recognition. Then the tide of the
army rolled in, roaring, and flung Aidan back. Dildirim was fallen and
trampled, and Andronikos hewn by a mamluk’s axe, and Janek who had broken Aidan’s
command to ride again after Gwydion nigh spent himself to heal the spear-thrust
in his side, this time took a lance in the heart, and there was no healing
that.

They brought the bodies back, high though it cost them, and
counted who was left. Five mamluks, none with a whole skin. Aidan, looking as
if he had washed in blood, but only a little of it was his own. Of thirty
Rhiyanan knights, a mere dozen lived to half-fall from their spent and
staggering horses.

This, Aidan knew, was how the damned dwelt in hell. The sun
a hammer on the anvil of their heads. Thirst a fire in their throats. Smoke a
dagger in their lungs. A sea of screaming infidels, inexhaustible, and they
dwindling one by one. He could not even weep for his dead. All the tears were
burned out of him.

The Bishop of Acre was dead. With him had fallen the soul of
the kingdom: the True Cross in its casing of gold and pearls and jewels, bound
about with silver. The infidels took it and hacked at it, until the sultan sent
his guards to rescue it. They nailed it to a lance and set it up by the sultan’s
post. There it glittered, broken and dishonored, while the Saracens hounded the
knights to their deaths.

A scarce tithe of them were left, of all who had ridden to the
battle: sevenscore and ten about the king’s tent on the height, fighting like
men in a trance. The enemy pressed them harder, harder, harder.

The smaller tents fell. Gwydion escaped the one which held
the wounded, afoot and raging, shieldless, helmetless, whirling his sword about
his head. His fury drove the enemy back, but they were too many. They simply
evaded him and turned on the knights about the king. Gwydion hacked his way
through them to Aidan’s side, wound his hand in his brother’s stirrup, and
there took his stand. His mind was pure white, like the sun on snow. Whatever
he struck, he killed.

But he was fresh only to this battle, and he was living
flesh, though never human. His fury alone could not make his arm wield the
sword again and again against an enemy who never tired, never paused, never
granted him respite. They wanted the king’s tent. They wanted the King of
Jerusalem. They were victorious, and they wanted to end it, but these madmen of
Franks would not, could not know when they were beaten.

There was no room for a last charge. They tried. They
bunched together with their backs to the tent. Aidan was knee to knee with the
king himself. Their eyes met, blind alike, stunned alike; then parted. They set
spurs to their horses’ sides.

But the enemy was too thick, the press too heavy. They were
hemmed in.

A shrilling horde broke past them and toppled the tent. Now
even their backs were beset.

They stopped in the circle of infidels. Their horses’ heads
hung low; the beasts’ knees trembled with exhaustion. Their own heads were no
higher, their knees no stronger. Without word or signal, but raggedly together,
they slid to the ground. Most of them could not even stand. They sank down,
swords still in hands, and lay there, not caring if they lived or died.

The battle was ended. The Kingdom of Jerusalem was lost.
Salah al-Din Yusuf, al-Malik al-Nasir, the king and the defender, the rectifier
of the Faith in the House of Islam, was victorious.

The sultan pitched his tent on the hill which he had taken,
and ordered his army to make camp, as any good general should do after a
battle. Then he had Guy de Lusignan and Reynaud de Châtillon brought to him in
his pavilion. He spoke first to Reynaud, through his interpreter for Reynaud
knew no Arabic. “So, sir. Do you repent now of your treachery against us?”

Reynaud was exhausted almost beyond endurance, filthy,
blood-stained, and bone-dry, but he had lost none of his bandit arrogance. “If
what I have done is treachery, then what is that but the practice of kings?”

Saladin’s eyes glittered, but he made no response. He called
instead for his servant, who brought a cup of water cooled with snow and
offered it to Guy. The king stared at it blankly for a stretching moment, as if
at a dream of paradise. Then, trembling, he took it. He tried to drink slowly,
but he was human and no saint, and he had had no water since the morning
before. When half the cup’s contents had flowed deliriously down his throat, he
caught himself with a start. His eyes met Reynaud’s. The lord of Kerak watched
him as a starving man watches a king at the feast. Guy passed him the cup.

The sultan smiled. It was not an expression to set any man’s
mind at rest, still less a king whom he had vanquished. He spoke in Arabic. The
interpreter said, “My sultan says, ‘Say to the king: You, not I, have given him
to drink.’”

That was to say, once a captor had fed his captive and given
him to drink, that captive would be allowed to live. But Saladin would grant
Reynaud no such grace.

There was a silence. Neither Frank moved to break it. The
sultan gestured. His mamluks beckoned to the king. He hesitated, eyes on
Reynaud, but the soldier-slaves were firm, if not disrespectful. Guy had no
choice but to let them lead him to the outer chamber.

When he was gone, the sultan faced Reynaud. “You may still
live,” said Saladin, “treacherous dog though you be. You have but to accept
Islam.”

Reynaud laughed, and spat in the sultan’s face.

Saladin’s smile was even more terrible than before. He drew
his sword. Reynaud did not, even yet, believe that he was in danger. It had
always been his failing, to know that he was invincible. The fine Indian steel
pierced him where he stood.

Saladin stood over the body. His face was calm, at rest. “Kings
are not wont to murder one another,” he said to the dead man. The eyes stared
up at him, wide and astonished. “But you,” said Saladin, “went beyond any king’s
endurance. I swore a sacred oath that I would slay you. I, at least, am a man
of my word.”

o0o

Aidan knew nothing of any of that. He had never lost a
battle in his life, never been taken captive by any mortal man, never known
what it was to be stripped of his weapons and driven stumbling through the camp
of the enemy. He fought to stay near to his own people: his brother, his mamluks,
the pitiful handful of Rhiyanans who yet lived. He could not see Aimery
anywhere, nor Ranulf, who should have been in the center with the king. But Guy
was gone, and Reynaud, taken away God and the sultan knew where; and in this
camp under the bright shield of the wards his power was the faintest of
flickers.

They were herded to an open space where the grass was burned
but had stopped smoldering. Saracens ringed it, making a great deal of noise.
All of them jeered. Some kicked or spat as the Franks were driven past.

There in the open they were made to stand. They were not
allowed to lie down. Any who tried was kicked and bullied up again. Their
guards did not keep the weaker from leaning on the stronger.

Aidan held to his brother, who seemed like one in a trance.
He looked quite sane if utterly worn, but his mind was still a white absence.
He had gone very far to heal those who could be healed, then fought with all
that was in him. There was too little of him left to do more than go where he
was made to go, and stand where he was told to stand.

Aidan’s mamluks had had the sense to rid themselves of their
turbans. With all the stains and ravages of battle and thirst that were on
them, and in the company of battle-wearied knights, even Arslan’s indubitably
Seljuk face was hard to distinguish; and that might well have saved him. He,
like Raihan, could have been a Turcopole, and Conrad looked pure Norman, and
the Kipchaks had little enough beard and little enough stature to be taken for
boys, if no one looked too closely at their faces.

No one came close at all. They were to be forgotten, it
seemed, left in the sun until it killed them. It would not take much longer.
Aidan was dimly surprised to see how much daylight was still left. Two hours,
or three. This day had already been years long.

At the end of the line one of the knights went down and lay
unmoving. Another dropped beside him. The guards closed in, spearbutts raised
to goad or strike.