Beloved Pilgrim (36 page)

Ranulf asked, "Then they got away?"

"I am not sure," the man answered. "I got
down out of sight just as a pack of archers rode by, firing in the
direction our two men had ridden. They could be away or they could
be lying in the dirt like my mate was." He looked miserably down at
the cup of water he held.

The mercenary captain said as he and
Elisabeth left the hut, "I guess we just wait and see."

She nodded numbly.

The remainder of the night seemed to last
several days. Of the majority who stayed awake was the Constable
himself. At first light he sent scouts out to assess the situation
and, if possible, to bring water from the river. These men came
back without the water but talking excitedly all at once.

The Turks were gone from around the village.
The scouts had surprised some villagers who were searching their
hastily abandoned campsites. They scampered away when they were
discovered, leaving the bodies of three men lying where it was
obvious many men had camped. The fires were covered with sand and
dirt, but the signs of men and horses milling about showed in
trampled grass and churned-up earth. The three bodies were lying
twisted and had been mutilated. One of the men may have lived long
enough to be tortured, though no one had heard the sounds that the
treatment should have made. The corpses were fetched into the
village.

Ragnar came back from forcing his way in to
the crowd about the bodies. "It's not them. I know Thomas's
clothing and no one is Albrecht's coloring."

"Could you not tell from their faces who they
were?" Elisabeth demanded.

Ragnar fixed her with an angry stare. "What
faces?" was his reply.

Conrad allowed his men to hoist the three
bodies onto a horse, but then commanded the party of remaining
knights, shield men and infantry to head out of the village to
return to the main camp. While the men got ready to leave, a couple
dozen were sent to the river to fill the water skins brought back
empty by the first party.

As they rode and walked down the hill
Elisabeth looked for any sign of Albrecht. She was shocked to see a
pile of bodies some way downwind of where the Turks' main camp had
been. They were burning, a collective funeral pyre, and she could
tell that the pile had been burning for some time. The occasional
breeze sent the choking smell in the direction of the crusaders,
and Elisabeth could not bring herself to ride closer to see if
Albrecht or Thomas could be found. She pulled her gaze away and
caught Ranulf's eye. "Our dead from last night? When we first got
here?"

He shrugged.

The quick pace Conrad set kept the mass of
men awake and alert where their exhaustion and foreboding might
have dulled them into torpor. The sound of battle began to waft to
them in bits and pieces, and soon they could see the mass of
Turkish horsemen this side of the pilgrim camp.

"Danishmend archers," someone shouted. The
horsemen were riding away from Conrad's company and veering away
from the walls of the town after loosing the customary hundreds of
arrows and riding away. It felt strange to watch it all from a
distance, behind the attackers.

Elisabeth looked to where Conrad had paused
and was watching the onslaught. From beside her she heard Black
Beast's voice moan, "The fools. They came out of the walls!"

Indeed, Elisabeth could just see that the
crusaders were no longer inside the town. They were lined up in
formation around a little stony hill about a mile around meeting
the waves of archers as they rode up, loosed arrows, and rode away.
They were in the familiar shield walls, but stationary, in a far
more familiar formation to Europeans. She peered through the
eyeholes of her helm for the banners she would recognize among the
pilgrims. There was Toulouse's red banner with its stylized gold
cross, Stephen of Burgundy's bars on red, Odo's eagle, Blois's
silver and gold bars on blue, and the others.

"It's just the soldiers and knights," she
called to those around her. "I see Count Albert's banners there."
At this point she could not see the pilgrim camp around a pool
formed by a spring behind the stone hill. The whole of the pilgrim
camp had moved to the ever-refilling spring-fed pool when the wells
in the town had gone dry the evening before.

Conrad's company trotted west about five
miles along a nearly-level but winding road above the plains and
along the base of the mountains. About a mile from the European
lines they veered south down a wide but shallow ridge that flared
from the side of the mountains to come behind the sweep of the
Danishmend archers. Conrad's progress brought them to a point that
allowed some elevated observation of the battle, taking place
before them. What they saw spread before them all around the
half-mile-round stony hill were tight formations of the different
armies. As she had seen, those who faced in their direction were
the fighters of the Count of Bandage. The sun was halfway between
dawn and midday. The heat was increasing, but none of the fighters
felt it. They were too completely caught by the death struggle
before them.

Elisabeth found that when the waves of
mounted Turkish archers cleared she could see the banners of her
own people above their heads. To the north at the base of the
mountains a half mile from the stone hill she saw Stephen of
Burgundy's banner and assumed it obscured Odo's. To the south was
Toulouse's, with at least one of the Byzantine leaders' not far
from it. She thought she could make out Blois's on the far side of
the press of crusaders and just by them the outlandish armor of
Pecheneg, but the latest wave of attack from the Turks prevented
her from confirming what she saw.

The ranks of knights and infantry of the
pilgrims seemed immobile. They stood or sat on their mounts,
shields raised, letting the thousands of archers swoop, shoot, and
ride away. It was clear that they had come out of the village
expecting to engage the Turks in battle, but there was no foe to
engage. It was more like trying to swat deadly insects. So they
stood circling the hill and its ridges surrounding its little
spring-fed pond where the holy men and women cared for the
ever-growing number of wounded as the Turks rode up to them and
shot only to ride down and away again and again.

Conrad seemed to be waiting for something.
Heads turned to watch him, the men expecting to be thrown into the
melee. Elisabeth wondered if he had a reason to hold back, and if
it was an honorable one.

She saw him speak to several of his
commanders, then face the battle again and start to raise his arm
to order the charge. Several men, some on horseback and several on
foot, anticipated the gesture and went forward on impulse. She saw
that one of those on foot had the helm of the Danes and realized it
was Ragnar. She imagined she could hear his battle cry and the core
of murderous anger in it.

Already turning and riding toward them, one
company of Turkish archers on horseback screamed. Arrows caught
many of the men from Conrad's force as they hurried to meet them.
Some of the men and the knights made their way to the mounted
archers and started to slash and spear their way through them. It
was hard to see from this distance but Elisabeth fancied she saw
the Dane's helm pierce and become enveloped in the ranks of the
horsemen. It was then that Conrad shouted them forward. "Deus lo
volt!" he screamed. Elisabeth was startled. She had almost
forgotten the crusader's war cry.

The scene Elisabeth and her companions raced
toward was for the first time actual battle. The mounted archers
were not allowed to sweep by and then away. The group that had
rushed forward engaged them, knights on horseback and others, like
Ragnar, on foot. While mounted archers continued to swoop in and
let loose arrows in the distance, these archers found themselves
facing spears, axes and swords with nowhere to run.

Many dropped their bows and drew swords with
curved blades. The casualties on both sides started to accumulate
under the horses' hooves almost instantly. Elisabeth saw horses
lacking riders, both the small fleet Turkish animals and the big
heavy destriers, suddenly come out of the raging battle and run
away. The rest roiled about, making it impossible to see how the
melee was going.

Before her attention snapped to the battle
she was about to enter, she sensed the sudden change of the scene
nearer the hill. The Lombard knights, including Albert and
Montebello, were breaking and running. The rain of arrows by their
thousands had become too much. Seeing the Lombards desert, the
Pecheneg looked to General Tzitas. He made some sort of signal and
the entire Pecheneg force followed the Lombard knights who had
turned into the mountains after skirting Raymond's position.

The combined mass of deserting knights broke
easily through the bands of swooping archers and headed northwest
along the lower ridges of the mountains, away from Conrad's little
force. A few Turks started to chase after them but were called back
to finish the battle before the hill.

Saint Gilles, the Hero of Antioch, who had
been positioned on the peak of the stony hill between the Lombards
and the Pecheneg, suddenly found himself and his own household
knights alone with no defense to their flanks.

One of the Turkish commanders saw the knights
looking about in panic and whooped. He led his men directly uphill
toward them.

One of Raymond's knights shouted, "Over
here!" Without stopping to see where he directed, Raymond and his
knights wheeled and rode to a small spur, really just a rocky
outcrop on which they could form a smaller circle. They reached it
and spurred their destriers onto it just in time to avoid being
overrun by the Turks. They instead started to circle the outcrop to
shoot up at the knights on their stony platform. Raymond and his
men huddled behind shields on their perch, praying one of the other
commanders had seen what had happened and would come to rescue
them.

Stephen of Burgundy, though beleaguered on
his side, had seen the whole fiasco. He shouted to Stephen of
Blois, and the two brought their knights and many infantry from the
northwestern flank of the original circle around the pond to rescue
Raymond and his men. The Turkish horsemen, unprepared to face enemy
on two sides, veered away and rode off onto the plain southward.
Raymond and his knights were able to ride off the outcrop and
rejoin the European forces.

They were now the whole of the Christian
force, or so they thought until one of Raymond's knights shouted
and waved his arms. Toulouse looked over to where he could see some
melee breaking up to the east. Danishmend archers were riding away,
but it appeared that their numbers were severely reduced. Raymond
cheered, "Good old Conrad! And he wanted us to come rescue him!" He
let out a whoop of triumph.

Conrad's muttered "Those bastards!" was
inaudible in the fray. He watched first the Lombard knights and
then the entire band of Pecheneg turn and ride away. He scowled,
wondering if Count Raymond was with them, but had to pull his
attention away to meet a slashing blow from a Danishmend sword.

The riders guided Elisabeth and Gauner into
the melee on either side of her. As they charged forward her lance
buried itself in a surprised-looking archer who was lifted from his
saddle and then lost from sight as Gauner kicked, crippled, and ran
over his horse, leaping over it to land on the fallen rider and
splatter him into the dust. A spear point came at her out of the
swirling dust and she knocked it aside with her shield as she
dropped the reins over the pommel and let Gauner's training carry
him forward. The lance was ripped from her hands by the falling
Turkish horse. She drew her sword and swung it up into the face of
the Turk on her right, knocking him off his horse. She swung it
back over Gauner's outstretched neck to slice halfway through the
spearman's head as they passed.

The line of knights continued their charge
through the horde of light Turkish horse archers like a hot knife
through butter, closely followed by the second line of knights who
filled the gaps in front of them as those in the first row fell or
separated. The German horses all fought like Gauner as they had
been taught to crush through opposing horses and men. A thousand
Turkish archers were in the mob trapped between the crusaders on
the hill and Conrad's charging well -ordered knights. Footmen who
ran behind to finish off the fallen enemy and rescue fallen
comrades followed these knights.

Elisabeth and Gauner flowed into the melee
like a leaf in a millrace into a pond. She found herself reeling in
different directions as Gauner did his job and attacked the smaller
horses of the archers. His massive hooves and his awesome strength
were enough to knock the smaller horses clean over, sending their
less well-armored riders off and onto the ground where he stomped
them to death. Some of the horses now without riders were too
sorely injured to rise, but others struggled to their feet,
stumbling as others bumped into them, and finally made for the
relative peace of the perimeter.

Elisabeth, her ears ringing, continued to
plow through the swirling horsemen. From her left a screaming man
on horseback rushed at her circling his sword over his head to give
it momentum. At the last moment his slashed it down toward her
neck. She raised her shield in time to take the blow on its
metal-reinforced rim but at a bad angle that wrenched her shoulder
back. She held tight. The twisting of her body whipped her sword
arm around, and she smacked the horseman with the flat of her sword
as he and his mount slid past her. Someone else caught the
attention of the man who had attacked her, and unable to stop and
rub his own painful sword arm, he was off on defense before she
could make another move against him.