The Saracen: The Holy War, Robert Shea [best beach reads TXT] 📗

to Sicily to serve the Hohenstaufens, and they still spoke German among themselves. Like their king, they wore no helmets, but most of them had fur-trimmed hoods drawn tight around their heads to protect them from the February wind. Above them fluttered the yellow Hohenstaufen banner with its double-headed black eagle.

The column of knights, four abreast, stretched westward down this main road. The lines of helmets and pennoned lances disappeared over the crest of a pass cutting through the bleak mountain range that formed the rocky spine of Italy. Snow outlined the crevices in the rocks that towered above the army of Sicily.

Manfred's host moved at a leisurely rate Daoud found typically European. The march west, after they had assembled at Lucera, had taken two weeks. The mounted warriors were held to the pace of the foot soldiers. Twice the army had been struck by sleet storms that changed the road into a river of mud. Rather than press on, as Baibars would have, Manfred had ordered his army to halt and seek shelter in hillside forests.

In some of the valleys the army had been able to spread out and march briskly over frozen fields and pastures. But then, along a mountainside or through a pass, the road would close down again, and the flow of troops would slow to a trickle.

Daoud turned back to Nuwaihi. "Were you close enough to the road to see the Tartars I told you of? Two small brown men with slanted eyes?"

"Yes, effendi, they were riding near the head of the Franks. Just as you told me, they had eight mounted men wearing red cloaks guarding them. And before and after them marched many men carrying crossbows."

Their people are such masters of war. How they will laugh at the idiotic way Christians fight each other.

Daoud wondered whether the enemy army were mostly Frenchmen,[265] or as mixed a host as Manfred's troops were. Manfred's thousand knights and four thousand men-at-arms included Swabians, south Italians, Sicilians, and Muslims.

If only, instead of three scouts, we had three hundred men lying in ambush along that road, we could have broken Charles's attack and perhaps killed him and the Tartars then and there.

Daoud thanked Nuwaihi, Abdul, and Said and sent them to join the Sons of the Falcon, riding today as the rear guard. He rode back to Manfred, hoping he could persuade the king and his commanders to use wisely the great army they had assembled.

Soon Manfred, Erhard Barth, several of Manfred's German and Italian commanders, Lorenzo, and Daoud were dismounted and gathered in a field beside the line of march. Manfred's orderly had brought a map of the region and spread it out on the ground, weighting the edges with rocks.

As Manfred crouched over the map, his five-pointed silver star with its ruby center hung over a town, represented on the map by an archway and a church surrounded by a wall. The drawing was marked with the Latin name "Beneventum."

"We can be in Benevento by nightfall," said Barth. "And Anjou's army will probably arrive at the same time. There is but one road they can follow." He pointed to a brown line that ran down from a large oval, at the top of the map, drawn around a collection of buildings and marked "Roma." Between Rome and Benevento was a series of towns, each indicated by a drawing of one or two buildings surrounded by walls. Mountains were shown as rows of sharp little points.

"Benevento is a Guelfo town," said Manfred, "and deserves to have us move in on it and quarter our troops there. The town is at the end of a long valley that runs north to south. The opening at the north end of the valley is a narrow pass. Anjou's army must come through that pass. They will find it easier to get into the valley than to get out, because we will be waiting for them."

Daoud felt a surge of exasperation, and quickly pushed it back down. Anger would not help him.

"Waiting for them?" he said. "If we are making war, we do not want to meet them."

Manfred frowned. "If we drive them up against the north end of the valley, we will have them trapped." Manfred smashed his fist into his palm. "There will be nowhere for them to escape to."

He is getting tired of my giving advice that contradicts the way he thinks things should be done. After all, he did win battles before I came here.[266]

But to simply meet Charles's army face-to-face, like two bulls butting heads, seemed lunacy to Daoud.

"Such a battle will be bad for both sides," he said. "We will butcher each other."

Perhaps I should have spent less time training my men and more trying to teach Manfred.

"We do outnumber them," said Manfred testily.

"And if every one of their men kills one of ours and every one of our men kills one of theirs, there should be a few of our men left at the end of the battle. Do you call that a victory?"

"Show some respect for your king!" a Neapolitan officer snapped.

"No, be still, Signore Pasca," Manfred said to the Neapolitan. "I want to hear Emir Daoud out. What can we do, except meet them and fight them?"

Daoud remembered how he had wished that instead of scouts he had set men to ambush the Franks. He studied the map.

"Let us send men into the mountains around here and here." He ran his finger over the angular shapes the mapmaker had drawn around Benevento. "Then, when Charles's army is in the valley, we will fall upon it from both sides and destroy it."

No one spoke for a moment. The younger Swabian officers were looking at him with mingled horror and disgust. Manfred stared at the map with embarrassed intensity.

Erhard Barth broke the silence. "Such an ambush would not be according to the customs of chivalry, Herr Daoud. Even if we were to win the battle in such a fashion, the victory would bring us so much infamy that it would be better had we lost."

"We are not in Outremer, thank God," said a Swabian with a long scar on his cheek.

"And we are not Saracens," said the one called Pasca. "Most of us."

"In other words, our noble commanders would refuse to fight?" said Lorenzo, glaring angrily at the other officers.

How would Baibars deal with these men, Daoud wondered. He might cut off a head or two and lavish gold and jewels and robes of honor on the rest. But Daoud had placed himself under Manfred's orders. And Manfred's army was not disciplined as Islamic armies were. European armies were made up of bands of warriors led by men who might or might not choose to take orders from their overlord.

"You cannot turn my men into Saracens," said Manfred firmly. "Even my Saracens fight like Europeans, because they have lived[267] in Sicily for generations. You have trained two hundred men in your Mameluke methods of fighting, and I have seen that they are a brilliant unit, but you would need many years to teach your ways to thousands of knights and men. And I must give my Germans and Italians a plan that will be acceptable to them."

Erhard Barth's mouth drew down in an apologetic grimace. "It is the way we are used to fighting, Herr Daoud."

It was infuriating. Daoud felt rage burst in him like Greek Fire. With a silent inward struggle, he brought it under control. For good or ill, his destiny was bound to Manfred's.

When the conference ended, Daoud's horse picked its way among the shrubs and rocks beside the road, retracing the line of march back to the supply caravan. Daoud felt a powerful need to spend a few moments with Sophia. She had insisted on coming with him. He had wanted her to stay out of danger. Now, tormented by misgivings about the coming battle, he feared for her even more. But nothing now could spare them from tomorrow's peril and it lifted his heart to know that she was here.

LXVII

Daoud woke to a discreet scratching on the curtains of his bed. Somewhere in the street a drum was beating, sounding farther, then nearer again, as the drummer marched up and down the streets of Benevento, waking the fighting men quartered there.

"I am awake," he rasped.

"May God look with favor on your deeds this day, my lord," came the voice of his orderly, Husain, through the heavy curtains.

Sophia's back was warm against his chest. His left arm, on which she had been sleeping, was numb. She wriggled her shoulders and then turned over to face him. He freed his arm and rubbed his face against hers, his beard brushing her cheek.

She wrapped one arm around him and twined her legs around one of his. Her free hand moved down, fondling him. His hands glided over her body, trying to memorize the feel of her. She murmured with pleasure into his ear.[268]

She opened her eyes suddenly. "Will it be bad for you to do this with me?"

"What to do you mean, bad?"

"Deprive you of strength for the battle?"

He chuckled softly. "If you made me stop now, I would be filled with such a rage that I would slay all of Charles's army single-handed."

Her hand stopped pleasuring him. "That would be good. Then we must stop."

"No," he said. "I would rather go into battle with a beautiful memory and a clear head. As for my strength, God will restore it moments after I spend it. He always has, I assure you."

"Then let us not wait." She pulled him over on top of her and accepted him into herself, tightening around him. A flood of breathless Greek endearments filled his ear.

He had never been with a woman who cried out as Sophia did during the act of love. Try as she might to muffle her sounds, she was certain in the final surge to lose control. He was sure Manfred's other officers quartered in this house must hear her.

Well, let them hear her, and envy him.

She let him rest upon her, happily released, until his body withdrew itself from her.

A shadow crossed his mind.

That may have been the last time for us.

They lay side by side. A faint light penetrated the bed curtains from somewhere in their room, and by that light he could see her smiling. He smiled back, but his body was growing tense. Fear of what he would face in the hours to come was building inside him.

The face he loved, the warmth of her body so close to his, made him wish he need never leave this bed. His arms and legs felt heavy, rebellious. If he commanded them to move away from her, they would not.

In truth, I would have to be mad to want to go out and butcher infidels rather than stay here with Sophia.

But he could not stay with her. Today would decide everything. He forced his reluctant limbs to push him away from her. She did not try to hold him.

Outside the heavy bed curtains, the air in the room felt cold as death.

Standing alone in the middle of the floor, he felt a sickening void of apprehension in his belly. As Sheikh Saadi had taught him, he faced his fear. He was terrified of death and defeat. Probably there had never been a warrior anywhere in the world who had not felt[269] this way on the morning of a battle. Probably the Prophet himself, before battle, had feared for himself and for those he loved.

I cannot control today's outcome, for myself or for the men I fight beside. But I can dedicate my mind and heart and will and limbs to God. I can fight for Him to the uttermost of my strength. Passive toward God, active toward the world.

Naked, he walked to the door leading to the balcony and pushed it partway open. A draft of even chillier air made his skin prickle and fluttered the flame of the candle Husain had lit when he woke them. The sky was still black and full of stars. Dawn was a long way off.

He was on the third story of this house in Benevento and could see over the roofs of most of the surrounding houses. Men hurried through the streets swinging lanterns. The drum was still beating a rapid tattoo in the near distance, joined now by horses' hooves clattering on the cobblestones. Here and there a candle glowed behind shutters. Far away, probably in the main camp of Manfred's army, north of town, a trumpet called.

He shivered, and closed the shutter against the winter wind.

Sophia had pushed the bed curtains aside and was sitting on the edge of the bed with a blanket wrapped around her, watching him.

On the bedroom table, Husain