00 - Templar's Acre (47 page)

‘What shall we do?’ Hob called from the doorway.

Wiping at his face, Baldwin glanced through the gap in the tower’s wall. He could see more stones being hurled at the tower. One crashed into the upper levels, and he sprang back before a
pair of beams holding up the roof fell into the room. ‘Get out!’ he screamed, but it was too late.

Anselm was beneath one, and even though he tried to dart away, the beam threw him to the floor, and Baldwin saw him look up as a massive weight of timber fell upon him, crushing him
entirely.

Baldwin gave a cry, and would have run to him, but Hob caught him and pulled him to the doorway. ‘No! We can’t lose you as well, sir. He’s dead – there’s no good
will come of pulling a corpse from there. Leave him!’

Baldwin found himself on the walkway again, his arms gripped by Hob and Thomas. The latter was weeping without cease. ‘Thomas, I’m sorry!’

‘He was a good man,’ Thomas sobbed, ‘but he wouldn’t want you to die to pull him out. Leave him, Vinten’ry. There’s nothing we can do for him now.’

‘He’s right,’ Hob said.

Baldwin felt his arms released, and fell to his knees. He could see in through the door from here, and one boot of Anselm’s was still visible. Just discernible behind it was a dark pool of
liquid, and Baldwin bent his head in despair, his hands on his face.

He was a failure. He had wanted to come here to protect the city, yet it was being torn down around him. His woman would be left to the savages as they poured into the city, and all his men
would die. What was the point of his being here?

‘Sir?’ Thomas said.

Thomas, the son of a peasant from somewhere in England, had lost his brother, and yet was more controlled than him.

Baldwin stood, and gazed about him. None of them would escape the city, but they could help others to do so. The women, the children – perhaps the more elderly men too. That was his duty
now, to hold the walls until all those who could, had escaped.

And then sell his own life as dearly as possible.

‘We can’t do anything while they keep this up’, he said decisively. ‘When it gets dark, they may leave it alone. But we’ll have to come back then to defend it in
case of night attack.’

Hob nodded, but without enthusiasm. The thought of a night assault was not appealing to any of them. Baldwin didn’t care. He knew his death was approaching. It was merely a case of how
long he could survive beforehand.

It was soon after dawn that the shouts came from the men on the tower-tops. Baldwin and Hob had rested outside the tower, below the battlements, while one man stood guard at
all times through the night. Hearing the bellows from above, Baldwin stood and peered up, covering his eyes, and saw the men on the Tower of King Henry shouting and waving their arms. Someone began
to ring a bell in alarm, and Baldwin stared at the enemy only to see the lines of infantry moving.

‘They’re coming!’

Hob was at his side, and staring out from narrowed eyes at the Sultan’s ranks walking forwards at a shuffling pace. ‘This is it, then,’ he said.

In answer, Baldwin took his hand, and the two stared into each other’s eyes for a moment. Hob had a bloodshot eye where a stone splinter had hit his brow, and Baldwin knew that his own
face was streaked with soot and blood, but both managed a faint grin before drawing apart and unsheathing their swords.

The night had not been restful. Throughout, a steady scattering of missiles had kept on slamming into the walls, making them feel as solid as a ship on a stormy sea. Baldwin’s legs had a
constant trembling, as though he was nervous or panicked, but it was the ripples of concussion against the wall. In his exhausted state the occasional gouts of flame from Greek firepots were
strangely beautiful and relaxing in comparison. He rather liked the way that the flames occasionally burst skywards, throwing the whole wall into stark relief.

‘Here they come!’ Hob called.

Baldwin watched them with resolution. The enemy had built many towers high enough to reach over the city’s walls, but they remained in the background. This was no all-out assault, then. It
was to be a concentrated effort on one or two sections of the walls of Acre.

As he watched, Baldwin saw Mameluk warriors running forward, in pairs, gripping heavy scaling ladders between them. ‘Archers! Archers!’ he shouted, and himself made his way into the
tower. He stepped around the masonry where Anselm’s body lay, praying to his dead companion.

The first of the Muslims was almost at the tower when a pair of clothyard arrows slammed into his upper body, and Baldwin saw him thrown back, kicking like a struck rabbit. It gave Baldwin a
savage delight. The man behind him tried to pick up the ladder on his own, but a bolt from a crossbow appeared in his forehead, and he was jolted back, unmoving. In almost no time, there were forty
fresh bodies lying dead a short way from the tower, their ladders scattered all about them. It was now that the Muslims chose to exercise more restraint.

Only a few feet from the tower was the cat which had protected the miners while working at the foundations of the tower. Now this was laboriously turned and brought to bear on the tower again.
While men erected fascines behind to protect the men running to the cat, others could stand inside it, and use it as a protective corridor. Soon a ladder appeared at the wall, and Baldwin and Hob
ran at it, shoving it away from the wall, but it did not overbalance; instead, it swung back to clatter against the stonework. Already, two men were starting up it at a rush. Baldwin yanked at the
ladder, until it fell away to the side, and the men fell onto the ground beneath. One began to scream and wail, but Baldwin was on to the next already.

‘Hob, Hob, throw rubble!’ he bellowed, and heaved a large rock at the first ladder. He saw it strike a man on the head, and he fell, taking two more with him. Others rushed to the
ladder, but Baldwin rolled a large rock to it, and it was massive enough to break several rungs, rendering that ladder useless. Another appeared, and Hob and Thomas were at it already, letting
loose another stone. That killed a man at the ladder’s base, but two more were on it already, and now there were two more ladders. Another ladder, another bearded face, and Baldwin drew his
sword, stabbing.

There was no means to fight off so many. All they could hope for was to delay them. As soon as one ladder was knocked away, two more sprang up. And all the while arrows clattered tinnily about
the rocks. A member of Baldwin’s vintaine gave a cry, and Baldwin grabbed for him just too late. The fellow toppled and plummeted head-first. Two more were hit in the leg or arm, and had to
be helped away. Hob had an arrow pass so close to his face, it sliced through the fleshy part of his ear. This lent fury to his defence, and as a Muslim reached the floor, Hob swung his sword at
the man’s head so hard that it clove his skull in two.

Baldwin fought unthinkingly. His arm moved with a mechanical determination – swing, stab, parry – and each time a man appeared at the top of a ladder, he did his best to kill him
before he could get off and climb into the room, cutting a man’s arm off, or his hand, or stabbing quickly in between the rungs, into a face or breast, anywhere to bring him down . . . but
although reinforcements were soon with them, the battle was unequal. A pair of men somehow climbed to the top of the tower, and stood above, dropping stones onto their heads. Arrows did not cease,
and before noon it was plain that they could do no more.

‘Back! Back to the walls!’ Baldwin roared, shoving the nearest and cutting at another. ‘Fly from here, quickly!’

Hob was at his side as the rest of the men withdrew, and Baldwin and he fought side-by-side, hacking and slashing, until they could leap through the door and lock it, using baulks of timber from
the smashed hoardings to block the doorway.

‘And so it begins,’ Baldwin gasped.

All about the walls, where the Muslims had constructed their huge towers, men stared out anxiously.

Ungainly, lumbering things, the towers were now drawn forward. Each rested upon a row of logs, which must be collected from the rear as the tower passed over them, and set down before it, while
the men behind and inside the towers could shove it onwards. They would not move on the sandy plain else. Screams and bellows could be heard from within as the men were urged on, and the damp skins
from freshly killed oxen deterred fire-arrows from setting them ablaze.

There was a catapult still on the castle’s tower behind St Anthony’s Gate, and this kept up a regular barrage against the foe. One lucky shot slammed into an approaching tower, and
shattered it to tinder, the men inside hurled outside, shreds of skin thrown in all directions, but one good hit could not detract from the overwhelming force to which the city was now exposed.

Baldwin watched as they reached nearer and nearer. ‘They’ll not get here tonight,’ he said.

‘No. It’ll be an attack in the morning, I reckon,’ Hob answered. ‘They will want their towers in position, ready.’

Baldwin nodded. ‘See to it that the men get their food ration tonight. They’ll need it. And plenty of wine, too. To fight like lions, they’ll need to have fed and drunk and
slept.’

‘Yes.’

‘Hob?’

‘Sir?’

‘You get some sleep too.’

‘What of you?’

Baldwin looked out. ‘I’ll keep the first watch.’

This was the day that would decide the fate of the city, Baldwin thought. The drums started as dawn threw a salmon-pink glow over the plain. Shouts could be heard, and then,
while Baldwin blearily stared out over the flat lands before the city, he saw the Muslim army standing to. A massive, long line of men separated into cohorts, the sun sparkling on each wicked
spear-point. As he watched, he heard the muezzins calling them to prayer, and the whole line sank to the ground, performing their obeisance, the ritual given a solemn significance on this day of
all days.

Glancing at the men standing along the walls, Baldwin saw they were all, like him, tired out. But their eyes gleamed with an unnatural fire at the sight of their enemy. And then there was a
shout from one side of the wall, over towards the Temple’s ward, and the blast of a horn. Looking up at the wall behind him, Baldwin saw that Sir Otto was on the Accursed Tower, that which
stood in the very point of the inner wall. The knight drew his sword and lifted it high, so that it caught the light from the sun, and Baldwin clearly heard his voice cry out:
‘Courage,
my friends! You are Christian! We fight for God, for Jesus, and His saints! Be brave!’

Baldwin’s heart was comforted by Sir Otto’s words. He turned to face the hordes with a renewed determination.

‘He doesn’t have to face ’em from this close,’ a man grumbled from along the line.

Hob shouted, ‘Shut up there! By Christ’s bones, I’ll have your arse in gaol if I hear another word.

Baldwin grinned to himself. There was no silencing an English peasant, crusader or not. The English fought because they believed in something, not because of foolish heroics.

‘I’ll be dead before you can get me there, Hob. You too, most like,’ the man retaliated.

Today, they would fight for what? he wondered. For Outremer? For their lords here in the city? For business and trade? No, for none of those.

‘You can say what you want about Sir Otto,’ he told his men, ‘but he’s right. We’re here to protect our souls, not the city. We’re here because this is
God’s last city in His Holy Land. Don’t forget that. If we fail, God fails. We fight for your souls, and those of your families.’

The hecklers were silenced, but whether it was Baldwin’s brief speech or the sight of the enemy facing them, Baldwin didn’t know or care. He too was staring back at the Muslims, and
now he heard a scream bellowed from their ranks. There was a deafening roar from all the men, and the Muslims began to march.

Behind them, Baldwin saw the long arms of the catapults rise lazily, and their missiles rose yet again as the enemy broke into a run.

‘Archers! Loose!’

From behind Baldwin, the ranks of archers on the walls let fly their arrows. Over the cacophony of stamping feet, shouting, rocks crashing into the walls, Baldwin could hear them hissing through
the sky, two thousand at a time. As soon as the first flight was gone, the second was off, and he could see the Muslims falling before their terrible impact, but there were not enough arrows in the
city to stop this army.

A crunch.

Baldwin felt his teeth slam together. There was an emptiness in his belly, and he looked about him, dazed. He was on his back, and Hob was beside him, shaking his head, a great rivulet of blood
running from a gash in his brow, while Nicholas Hunfrey sat back at the wall, staring at his stomach. His trunk had been opened from his groin to his breast, and he had his hands clamped there,
trying to hold himself together.

There was a vast gap in the battlements a yard away. A rock had exploded into it, tearing it apart and flinging slabs and splinters of masonry into the men behind. Baldwin could see broken and
bloody bodies lying scattered. His eye took in their faces, and he recognised many as the men from his vintaine. Only he, Hob, and Thomas remained whole. The rest were dying – or dead. The
remains of another vintaine was nearby, their sergeant dead.

Baldwin gradually became aware of sounds once more, but his legs were like jelly.

Men came to help them, but Nicholas refused to be moved. He whimpered and moaned, but wouldn’t rise. There were drums, booming away in the distance, screams and roars, and then Baldwin saw
a ladder at the wall where the hole had formed. Enemy soldiers began to appear. An arrow took the first, and then Hob was up, his sword snapped a foot from the hilt, and hacking at the men trying
to force their way up. Another man joined him, and then Baldwin saw Nicholas, with an axe, hack at the foot of another Muslim. More men, and Baldwin climbed to his feet, and picked up his sword. It
was bent, and he stared at it uncomprehendingly for a moment, before joining Hob.