Beloved Pilgrim (30 page)

"Could we not travel at night?" she asked
Ranulf when he brought his own mount alongside hers.

"Harder to be vigilant," he answered
succinctly.

"Do you think we are free of any further
attacks?"

The mercenary captain gave her a sardonic
look. "No, I do not," he said emphatically.

She looked after him dismayed as he spurred
ahead.

One thing about riding in this searing heat,
she soon discovered, was that her need to relieve herself
privately, much more difficult in this press of human and animal
bodies, was less of a problem. She sweated off what she might
otherwise have had to find a discreet place to relieve herself of
privately.

From time to time the procession passed tiny
villages. Before the middle contingents reached them the word had
come back that the village was stripped of all provisions and
livestock. They were able to get some water from the small
dwindling wells. One of the Byzantine horsemen who rode up from the
rear came over when Elisabeth beckoned to him.

"If they cleared out when they knew we were
coming, why did they leave the wells for our use?" she asked
him.

"They are long gone into the hills, my lord.
They clear out during this time of the year, and they take their
livestock and foodstuffs with them into the hills. They will need
the wells when they return in the fall. They are all but dried up
now anyway." At her thanks, he saluted and continued his progress
forward.

The pilgrims trudging along desultorily in
front of Elisabeth and her companions grumbled when the edict came
down from the commanders that now that the river had angled sharply
east from where they rode the water was to be reserved for the
animals and only when they were refreshed could any remaining
supply be distributed to the people. Elisabeth tried to explain
that the animals were working, that the pilgrims needed what they
carried to survive, and therefore the animals must be watered
first.

One man with a running sore on his cheek
shouted over the protests, "I don't see your animal carrying
anything we need, my lord!" The last was said with a sneer and
rewarded with laughter from those about him.

As soon as she opened her mouth to respond
she was drowned out with jeers. She looked up to see Albrecht on
Carlchen some way ahead. He had a disgusted look on his face when
he looked back at her and shook his head wearily. She noticed he
had a child on his saddle in front of him.

As evening approached and the heat barely
eased, Conrad rode up alongside Elisabeth. "Elias, I need your
young eyes. Look out over there." He raised his arm and pointed to
one side of the procession, many yards distant. "What do you
see?"

She pushed her mail coif back from her
sweat-sodden quilted hood and stood in her stirrups. Putting her
hand over her eyes to shade them, she peered off into the distance
at the rolling hills. "I don't see . . . No, wait."

Conrad waited for her to go on.

"I see them," she said. "Riders. Just along
the crest of the hills and some closer." She looked at the
Constable. "Are they just following to see that we go where they
want, to the sea, or are they . . . ?" she trailed off.

He shrugged his heavily padded shoulders. "I
do not know." He nodded to her. "Thank you, young lord."

At long last the procession made camp for the
night. It formed as a huge oblong with men-at-arms standing sentry
in a ring around it. When the word came down that the journey would
begin again before dawn, Elisabeth stifled the groan she heard
coming from all sides. After she saw to Gauner, she found herself a
spot where she could rest her back against a dry tree trunk. She
dared not take off her mail, so she could not take advantage of the
slight breeze that would have dried her sweat-soaked clothing and
cooled her. She took sips of the water in her water skin,
conserving what she knew was a precious commodity.

She looked up when Albrecht joined her by the
tree, carrying a wooden bowl of some sort of meat and grain for
each of them.

"What is it? The meat, I mean."

He grinned at her. "I have no idea, my lord.
I didn't really want to know, so I did not ask."

In the low light she peered into the bowl.
"Well, whatever it is, it's not the only meat in here." She reached
in with her ungloved fingers and brought out a cooked grub. She
grinned and popped it into her mouth. Pretending to chew with
gusto, she said, "Delicious!"

He laughed, and they finished their stew in
silence, save for the slight crunching of the undercooked
grain.

"We are being followed. I saw Turks on the
hills," Elisabeth said as she used her forefinger to wipe what was
left of the liquid in her bowl to get every last drop.

"I know. I saw them too." He looked pensive.
"I wonder what the morrow will bring."

Elisabeth made the sign of the cross over her
dusty, stained cloak with its red cross. "God knows."

The teeming mass of pilgrims was up and
moving north before the sun appeared in the eastern sky. Elisabeth
marveled, not for the first time, how a mass as huge as the
thousands of pilgrims could be mobilized at all, no less as swiftly
as they were this morning. She guessed that it must be the prospect
they were promised of marching in the relative cool of the day, and
being allowed to camp during the hottest periods.

She took her place as usual with the German
and Austrian contingent led by Constable Conrad. The smell from the
unwashed bodies of the Lombard peasants was worse than yesterday,
but she realized she was not any sweeter smelling after all the
days of the march since Nicomedia. Worse than the smell was the
noise. Two or more thousand men, women, and children created a
cacophony that quickly caused Elisabeth's head to ache and her ears
to ring.

The sun was hardly up when the Turkish riders
appeared again on the hilltops on both the east and west. Stephen
of Burgundy in the van saw them first. He peered out from under his
helmet at them, wondering if they meant to keep at a distance,
unnerving but not molesting the pilgrims. He had his answer in
little time, as he swung his head to the west to see the source of
a sudden, terrifying commotion. With alarm he screamed, "Battle
formation!"

He made fast the strap under the chin of his
helm, drew his sword and turned to await the arrival of what he had
seen coming toward the van. His knights quickly formed a defensive
line with the men-at-arms.

What he saw were hundreds of mounted Turks
streaking toward the pilgrim column. He heard their shouts, the
same eerie ululation as the day before, and stared to see what sort
of attack they meant to make.

Incredulously he saw that every one of the
perhaps hundreds of Turks, like the men who had chased them after
Gangra, carried a bow, not spears, not swords, save for the swords
they wore at their belts. The column he led had formed its all but
impermeable wall all the way back as far as he could see when the
first wave of Turks let fly their arrows no more than thirty feet
away. As one hundred arrows thudded into shields, those one hundred
mounted archers swerved away and another hundred replaced them.
Another flight of one hundred arrows hit the air and then the
column. Two more waves of horsemen swooped in in turn.

When no further wave followed the last
immediately, a roar of outrage erupted from the assembled knights
in the van. The Stephen watched with both dismay and understanding
as many knights broke through the shield wall and tore after the
jeering horsemen. Stephen wanted to go out there and return blow
for blow, but he knew in his heart it would be useless. With their
smaller horses, the Turks could easily outrun the knights on their
huge destriers. He shook his head. All he could do was watch and
chide the knights if and when they came back to the safety of the
shield wall.

His aide de camp rode up on his right side.
"Your Grace, I count at least five hundred Turkish horsemen
total!"

Stephen gaped at the man. "That means . . .
five hundred arrows in a matter of minutes!" He looked back at his
charging knights. The five hundred Turkish horsemen not only did
not stand to meet them, they fled in all directions in parties of
at least one hundred each. "Don't chase them!" he muttered through
his teeth. "Get back here!"

The huge mounts of the knights were not bred
to run, and within a quarter mile they were winded, forced to slow.
Nevertheless their riders did not return, but walked them more
slowly forward. Stephen glanced in all the directions the fleeing
Turks had taken. "Dear God," he whispered, then rode his own
destrier to the edge of the column. "Retreat! Retreat!" he
screamed.

He had seen another five hundred Turkish
bowmen streaming toward the knights. They came at an oblique angle,
and with their obscuring helms, the knights did not see them at
first. When a few who did catch sight of the attackers wheeled
their horses as quickly as they could, the rest realized what was
happening. They too turned their horses and started back to the
column. The animals were spent and could not race back as they had
raced forward. The first flight of arrows took to the sky and fell
among them. Stephen's bowels clenched at the first cries of wounded
battle horses.

He did not see Conrad as he rode up beside
him accompanied by a score of his knights. As they had ridden
forward, they had watched with horror the drama unfolding near the
van. The Constable waved his arms and screamed, "Retreat!" He shook
his head. If the men-at-arms had followed the knights, then at
least the ground they covered chasing the Turks might have been
held. He knew that an entire new way of fighting was upon them.

Many of the knights who came threading back
through the shield wall had arrows sticking out from their shields
and even their armor. Some were bloody, and these men slumped
against their horses' necks. One man, unhorsed when numerous arrows
felled his mount, tore forward only to be flung full length toward
the outermost wall with an arrow in his back.

Finally noticing Conrad beside him, Stephen
looked over, his face pale behind the cheek pieces of his helm. He
looked back to where a few horses and men lay on the ground between
them and the Turkish riders. One horse stood as a Turk rode
forward, grabbed its reins and drew it away with him.

"I could not stop them," Burgundy said
defensively to the German commander. "They just reacted."

Conrad eyed him steadily. "Why did you not
send the foot soldiers after them for support?"

The Burgundian opened his mouth as if to
reply, but could not think of an answer. His shocked face shifted
to resentful hostility. He wheeled his mount and went to confer
with his commanders.

Conrad stared after him. "Elias, Gerhardt, go
out and collect all the arrows you can. Take some of the foot
soldiers. When you cannot carry any more, stamp on the rest to
break them."

"Where should we take them, my lord?"
Elisabeth asked.

Conrad sighed. "I don't know. Just take them
to the ox carts." He muttered to himself, "Do I have to think of
everything?"

There were fourteen dead knights and
thirty-seven wounded among the Burgundians. Five horses were lost
or taken. The fact that no Turks had sustained any wounds at all
made the otherwise low numbers seem to swell in importance.

The arrows gathered or broken and the
formation starting to move forward again, the unthinkable happened.
The hundreds of Turks rode up again, this time from the east, and,
in their sweeps at the column, loosed arrows just as they had
before, first one hundred, then another, and then another, followed
by two hundred more.

Stephen of Burgundy's knights remained in
position this time. Conrad had turned back to his own contingent,
and when Stephen looked over his scowl was aimed at Conrad's two
knights.

"Where are they getting all those arrows
from?" Elisabeth asked no one in particular.

Gerhardt responded, "Well those that miss
will be added to our arsenal."

Few men or horses were hit. The tight column
with its multiple rows of shields prevented the sort of casualties
sustained in the first round of attacks. "If this happens again and
again," Elisabeth thought to herself, "we wouldn't lose many men
but it would slow us down to a crawl." She wondered how far they
had to go and whether they had or could find provisions to last.
Her old notions of what battle was like had altered extravagantly.
It wasn't valor you thought about, and not even fear of wounding or
death. All you thought of was where the next water and food would
come from.

The sun was still a distance from its zenith
when the Turks suddenly appeared once more, this time on the rear
where Saint Gilles rode. Another five hundred were in that attack,
and to everyone's astonishment, as many again struck along both
flanks. Now not only the Pecheneg and the Byzantines in the rear
were struck, but one thousand Turks harried the Germans and
Austrians all the way up to the Lombard noncombatants. The heathen
archers streamed along the sides and shot their arrows high into
the air so that they fell down into the middle. Only those who wore
stout helms and shoulder armor could hope to avoid the arrows, and
even they were vulnerable if arrows struck their mounts. Though the
attack lasted no more than the time the first two had taken,
perhaps several minutes, there were many more casualties.

Raymond waited until the Turks were gone out
of sight over the hills to the east for a midday rest. He had no
real choice. The injured and the dead must be seen to.

"Find us someplace to rest," he barked at an
aide.

Only a half mile ahead they found a deserted
village. No people, no animals, and little water in the wells.
Nevertheless there was some shade in the lee of the buildings and
rough outer walls. The Lombards streamed in following the
Burgundians' men-at-arms and took every space they could bully
their way into. Elisabeth and her companions could not find shade
for the horses, but a breeze wafting over a hill to the west that
was slightly cooler than the heat of the day dried both human and
equine sweat, providing some relief.