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

wide. His lance dropped as he leaned sideways from his saddle. He crashed to the ground and disappeared under the hooves of the horses behind his. His lance fell across the paths of the oncoming crusaders and another of the big war horses tripped over it, dumping its rider.

All along the crusaders' front, knights were spilling from their saddles, horses were falling, lances were flying.

Over a hundred years they have fought us, and they have never learned to use the bow from the saddle.

Many riders in the crusaders' front rank were still galloping toward them. And more in the rear ranks were dodging or leaping[280] the fallen knights and horses. Daoud whipped a second arrow from the quiver hanging at his side, nocked it, and took quick aim.

His arrow went true again. He saw the targeted man fall. And the Sons of the Falcon were pouring volleys of arrows into the Franks. Every third crusader, in the front ranks at least, must be a dead man.

Daoud heard himself yelling in triumph. If they broke this first French charge, the rest of Manfred's army could sweep the field clear of the enemy.

The charge was slowing down, but it was still coming on.

"Split ranks! Pass them on either side!" Daoud called to Omar, who relayed the order to the flag men.

Daoud heard a sound like an earthquake behind him and looked around. The elite of the German knights, Manfred's Swabians, were galloping on in an arrowhead formation. If the French knights and their horses were big, the Swabians looked even bigger. He saw the nodding green plumes of Manfred's helmet at the very point of the wedge. The surcoats of knights and horses were ablaze with red and blue, orange and yellow.

Beyond Manfred's knights Daoud saw lines of crossbowmen formed up before the walls of Benevento. Sophia was there in that little town. He wanted to keep himself between Sophia and the French.

But Omar had relayed his order to the flag men and the yellow and green flags had gone up, and, disciplined as any of his men, he rode off to the left, turning the side of his Arabian toward the onrushing crusaders.

When he reached the right flank of Charles's knights, he turned again so that he was riding past them. He fired arrow after arrow as he went, as fast as he could and still hit his mark.

He saw a tall figure in a red surcoat with a red helmet shaped like a bishop's miter. Almost certainly de Verceuil. The cardinal brandished a club with an iron ball at the end of it. Daoud loosed an arrow at him, but de Verceuil lifted a red shield bearing a painted gold cross that caught the arrow and sent it spinning away.

I wonder if he recognizes me.

Looking north, Daoud saw Anjou's foot soldiers with spears and crossbows advancing at a run, but they were far behind the last of the Frankish riders. Charles must have thrown all his knights—eight hundred of them, Manfred had said—into this first charge. He, like Manfred, must have hoped to end the battle—even the war—with a single charge.

Farther to the north, beyond the foot soldiers, a dozen or so[281] horsemen in yellow and purple cloaks gathered under a red banner bearing a black figure. It was too far away for Daoud to see clearly, but he knew that a black lion on a red background was the standard of Charles d'Anjou.

Now Daoud and his left half of the Sons of the Falcon were beyond the French knights. He ordered the flag signals that would turn his wing to ride back the way they had come.

Dozens of Franks had died under their arrows. The charge had slowed, with confusion on the front and confusion on the sides. Daoud felt ripples of triumph course through his body. They had done the very thing Manfred said no Saracen cavalry could do.

We stopped the charge of the Frankish knights.

But looking toward Benevento, Daoud felt triumph turn to dismay. The flying wedge of Manfred's knights had pushed itself deep into the French line, but then had come to a stop. Even though the Sons of the Falcon had hurt them and halted them, the French had held their formation. They had not broken under the Swabian attack.

Daoud groaned in anguish. Both sides had stopped in their tracks, and where they faced each other their formations had crumbled into a hundred individual combats.

This was just what Daoud had feared and warned against. Endless butchery, futile bloodletting, a battle that would go as badly for the winner as for the loser.

There must be another way, Daoud thought desperately. There must be a Mameluke way to win this.

LXVIII

Thierry reined his horse to a stop and doffed his helmet in salute to Simon. From the wild look in the young knight's eye Simon sensed at once that he had seen something extraordinary.

"What is it, Messire?" he demanded. "Did you see Manfred's army?" Papillon, the brown and white mare Simon used as a palfrey, stood still while Simon patted her neck.[282]

"Manfred's and Count Charles's," Thierry panted. "Both armies. They're already fighting, Monseigneur!"

"Merciful God!" A battle meant the battle. One battle must surely decide this war. Manfred would have brought together all the fighting men of southern Italy and Sicily. And Simon knew, from the series of urgent messages he had received from Charles on the road, that the count had left Rome with every man he could muster, and that there was no more help on its way to him.

Except for this army.

Simon glanced up at the sun. Halfway up the eastern sky. Some big clouds, but it was going to remain a clear, cold day. If the battle had started at dawn, it could be over by midday.

"Pass the word to advance at a trot," he told de Puys. "Foot soldiers to proceed by forced march."

Antoine de la Durie spoke up. "Monseigneur, should we not call a halt and rest and plan? We cannot plunge blindly into the midst of a battle."

"We will have to plan as we ride, Messire," Simon said brusquely. "King Charles is outnumbered, and needs us now."

He felt a small inner glow. He was getting to be quite practiced at putting older men of lower rank in their place—the sort who formerly intimidated him.

He turned to Valery de Pirenne. "Tell Friar Volpe to join me here. And you, Thierry, come with me. You can tell the friar what you saw."

Simon pulled Papillon's head over, jumped the narrow ditch along the side of the road, and took up a position on a rocky hummock, Thierry beside him. Looking over the long column of his army never failed to make his heart beat faster. A dozen banners in front, led by the red and white crusader flag and the purple and gold of Gobignon. Mounted knights two or three abreast followed by files of foot soldiers and baggage trains and strings of chargers and spare horses. The mounted rear guard so far back it was usually out of sight.

He could see the rear guard because the army was traveling along winding mountain roads, as it had been the day before and the day before that. They were crossing the center of the Italian peninsula. They had been through the highest of the Apennines yesterday and were now descending the western slopes.

A chill anxiety enveloped his body. To have come all this way only to be too late—what a calamity that would be! He could not allow it.

Friar Volpe came galloping up on the back of his big mule. How[283] wise of Charles to have sent this friar to meet Simon at Ravenna. The Dominican had spent most of his adult life wandering all over Italy preaching, and he made an excellent guide. It was he who brought the news that Charles was no longer in Rome and there was no need for Simon's army to go there. A more direct route to Anjou's army would follow the Adriatic coast, then turn southward into the Apennines on entering the Abruzzi, the northernmost reach of Manfred's kingdom.

Friar Volpe was a fair-skinned man with a sharp nose, large lips, and round brown eyes. His thick reddish-brown hair fell over his forehead and ears, growing luxuriantly everywhere except for the tonsure on top, where it was just a red stubble.

"Benevento," he said when Simon told him about the battle, and glanced up at the sun. "We could arrive in the valley of Benevento well before noon. There is a high ridge along the east side of the valley. Benevento is a crossroads town. The roads meet at the south end of the valley."

"That was where I saw Manfred's camp," said Thierry.

"I have to see this valley myself," Simon said. "Could we climb this ridge you spoke of?"

"Shepherds and their flocks go up and down the hills all year round," said Friar Volpe. "There are many paths."

"Many paths," Simon echoed. "Excellent. Be good enough to lead us there."

Simon ordered the army to continue along the main road to Benevento until they reached a roadside shrine to San Rocco. Farther than that, Friar Volpe said, and they might be seen from Benevento.

Friar Volpe led Simon at a fast trot till they were out of sight of the army. Thierry and Henri de Puys had insisted on coming along, arguing that Simon might meet some of Manfred's outriders. They turned onto a zigzag track that sometimes disappeared altogether over bare rocks as it climbed to the top of a long ridge.

They came out of a stand of wind-twisted pine trees to the bald top of the ridge. The ringing of steel on steel, the pounding of horses' hooves, and the cries of men drifted to them from below.

"Hold the horses, Thierry," Simon ordered. He and de Puys and Friar Volpe moved forward at a crouch. When he could see the battlefield, Simon lay down and crawled, his mail scraping over the rocks, the tip of his sheathed sword bumping along.

Is this what a battle looks like, then?

He was reminded of times when he had stepped on anthills in the woods and thousands of the little creatures milled about in confusion under his feet. Masses of men below heaved and struggled.[284] Dead horses lay by the score, large dark lumps. Smaller objects lying about the field like rocks might be dead men; it was hard to tell from this distance. Much of what he saw was partly veiled by clouds of gray dust.

He felt a breath of fear on his neck at the thought that he must take his army into that cauldron. He tried to make sense of what he was seeing. Where were the leaders?

The half of the field nearer him was hidden by the trees growing lower down on this ridge. Ignoring de Puys's whispered warnings, he crawled farther forward for a better view.

Now he saw the town of Benevento at the south end of the valley, a city of moderate size whose walls were fortified by a dozen square towers. And before it a smaller city of many-colored tents. Above the tents, a yellow banner with a black splotch in its center. That would be the Hohenstaufen eagle.

Then those tents at the other end of the valley, where the road entered from the north, must be the French camp. Simon saw many more banners, too far away to recognize, on poles in the center of that camp.

He saw no fighting at the north end of the valley. Closer to the battle, a small group of horsemen sat on a low hill, apparently observing. Above them a red and black banner hung from a long pole. That could only be Charles himself, and his chief commanders, under the banner of the black lion. Lines of foot soldiers screened them from the main fighting.

I should go down there, or send someone, to find out what Count Charles wants me to do. But there is no time.

Again Simon's gaze swept the battlefield. The innumerable small struggles, mostly in the center of the valley, told him that neither side was winning. Again the Saracen warriors with the turbans caught his eye. They were the only group of mounted men acting together. Moving in a V-shaped formation with the center back and the tips of the two wings well forward, they advanced slowly across the field. But with such confusion around them, where could they effectively attack?

Never mind that. Where can I effectively attack?

He lay on his belly, his chin resting on his intertwined fingers, his breath steaming in the air in front of him. Thierry, de Puys, and Friar Volpe were waiting behind him. And behind them, the army he had brought here. A sudden terror froze his limbs. The day was cold, but he felt colder