Knights of the Cross (35 page)

‘For me, it is all that I can bear.’

Dawn came quickly. In the south-east, smoke still rose from the ashes of the city, and the morning air was bitter. Soon it would boil, for midsummer was ten days hence, and there was no canopy of cloud that day to shield us. It was not a happy thought as I pulled on my heavy quilted tunic, and my chain mail over it. I soaked a rag in water and tied it around my neck so that I would not burn my skin on the iron. I tied my helmet by its chin-strap onto my belt. Whatever enemies the day might bring, I would be ready for them.

I did not have to wait long. As I stepped out of the tower, I saw a Norman standing facing Sigurd in the street below the wall. They seemed to be arguing furiously, but by the time I had descended from the rampart the knight was gone.

‘Who was that?’

Sigurd spat on the ground. ‘One of Bohemond’s lieutenants.’

‘What did he want?’

‘He wanted nothing. He
demanded
that my company go to reinforce the Normans on the mountain and help them defend the city against the Turks in the citadel.’

My pulse quickened. ‘You can’t go.’

‘So I told him. But you know that the Normans are not easily denied. He swore that if we did not come Bohemond would burn us out of our towers and slaughter us for cowards.’

‘Either way we die.’ I felt sick. Bohemond had sent his brother-in-law to cut us loose from the Emperor’s aid; now he would rid himself of the last Byzantine checks on his ambition. Either he would murder us as deserters, or put us in the forefront of the battle, like David with Uriah, and let the Turks achieve his purpose.

Nor could I doubt that Bohemond would make good his threat if we did not go. He had burned down half the city, Franks and his own kinsmen alike, to bolster his army; he would happily add a handful of Varangians to the pyre.

‘At least on the mountain we can die well.’ Sigurd folded his arms. His shield and axe leaned against the wall behind him, and he had a pair of small throwing axes tucked in his belt. ‘I will take a dozen men and do as Bohemond demands. The rest will stay here and defend our camp, and you and Anna.’

‘Not me.’ My stomach churned as I spoke, but I hurried on. ‘I will come with you.’

Sigurd snorted. ‘How long since you left the legions, Demetrios Askiates?’

‘Nineteen years.’

‘And you will march up that mountain, to a battle you have no part in, because a bastard Norman orders it? You will be dead in the first minute.’

‘I will go,’ I insisted.

‘This is my calling, not yours. What would Anna think of you for doing this?’

I scowled. ‘If Anna asked
you
not to go, would you obey?’

‘This is different.’ A troubled look passed over Sigurd’s face. Both of us, I think, felt things we wished to say but could not.

He kicked his foot in the dust, and turned to pick up his axe. ‘We should go, before Bohemond murders us from impatience. If you want to march into death, that is your concern.’

It made no difference. Wherever we went in the city, we walked in death, and if it came I felt a strange certainty that Sigurd would guide me to it bravely. Anna would have condemned such a thought, but to me it was reassuring.

The path up the mountain began in the south-eastern quarter. The main avenue, with its long colonnades and broad paving, had served as a noose on the fire: when we crossed it, we stepped into a burnt realm of ash and charcoal. Twisted buildings hung bent and shrivelled like balled-up paper, and smoke belched up as from naphtha pits.

‘This is the kingdom that Bohemond makes for himself,’ Sigurd muttered, awestruck. ‘The cost of his ambition.’

How much else would be felled by his pride, I wondered? I did not speak it aloud, for I had not mentioned Bohemond’s latest treachery to Sigurd. There seemed scant purpose in destroying the last vestiges of his hope. Instead, I grunted my agreement and tried not to breathe the morbid fumes.

It took little time to cross the city. The labyrinth of alleys, which two days earlier had snared me in its endless tangle, had been razed to the ground. As long as we took care to avoid the places where embers burned, or where pieces of iron still nursed the fire’s heat, we could walk the roads we chose.

Too quickly, we arrived at the foot of the path, where the gentle rise of the river valley met the steep slope of Mount Silpius. At first the way was easy, a broad scar rising across the face of the mountain past terraced olive groves and high villas perched on the rock. The pine trees which crowded between them still shaded us from the climbing sun, and it was as well they did, for my armour weighed on me terribly and the shield on my back constantly tugged me backwards. Sigurd had been right: nineteen years out of the legions was too long.

Even at that hour we were not the only ones climbing the road. Ahead of us I could see cohorts of knights marching in loose order, shouting and laughing, perhaps to disguise their fear. I had expected to see them, and was content to keep a safe distance lest they chose to whet their scorn on us. What I had not expected were the women: scores of them, from barefoot girls in torn smocks to wizened grandmothers wrapped in black shawls. Every one of them carried a vessel filled with water – buckets, jars, urns, barrels. The smallest children carried cups, holding them out in rapt concentration like chalices, while some of the stronger adult women had casks yoked over their shoulders in pairs. They stretched as far ahead as I could see, and as far back, a river flowing miraculously up the mountain.

Sigurd pointed to the summit, his arm raised almost vertical. ‘A bad place for hot work.’

‘No easier for Kerbogha, at least.’

Whether it was the rising heat of the day, or the sight of so much water around me, I was suddenly consumed by thirst. A scrawny girl, no more than seven or eight years old, was passing; I knelt, stretched out cupped hands, and as clearly as I could said: ‘Water?’

She did not stop.

‘Water,’ I repeated. ‘Please.’

She shook her head. It was stained black with soot, everywhere save on her forehead, where a finger had marked a crude cross in the grime.

‘For the fighters,’ she said, staring at her cup. ‘Not Greeks.’

After that, the way only seemed hotter. After a time, the path switched back sharply, and took us south-east, straight into the sun. My armour began to burn where it rubbed against me, and whether I screwed my eyes shut or kept them open I was blinded. The path narrowed; it was too high for villas here, and too steep for trees. Our pace slowed as our fellow travellers were squeezed closer together onto the constricted road. It reminded me of crossing the Black Mountains into the plain of Antioch, when treacherous paths through steep gorges had proved almost impassable. Men had pulled off their armour and flung it into the ravines; they had sold their horses rather than have the effort of leading them. Even the sure-footed could not hold the path: whole trains of mules had been lost over the precipices.
A hard journey and a sweet arrival
, we had consoled ourselves at the time.

Now the corpses began to appear. Casualties of the fighting on the mountain, men had tried to return to the succour of the city and had failed. At first scattered, then ever more numerous, they lay sprawled where they had fallen. Some bore few wounds, so peaceful-looking that you might have thought they were merely dozing to break the long climb. Others were so badly injured that it seemed a miracle they had managed to stagger so far to die. All were naked, stripped bare by looting and now become the habitation of flies.

‘Are you sure you want to go on?’ asked Sigurd.

I could not speak, for searing nausea had joined the thirst in my throat. All I could manage was a limp wave forward.

At the next corner the road began to level. It was little consolation, for by now we were high up, only slightly below the height of the middle summit. The sounds of the armies drifted down to us – though not, as yet, the sounds of war. At the roadside two stakes had been driven into the ground like gateposts. One had a crossbar nailed to it, so that it took the form of a crucifix; the other tapered to a spike on which a Turk’s head was impaled. I shivered as we passed them.

Ahead of us, the path continued across the neck of the mountain into a small dip between the middle and northern summits. Atop the latter, on a high rocky promontory thrusting out to the west, I could see the unbroken walls of the citadel. The purple banner of Kerbogha hung from its tower.

‘This is as far as we go on this road.’ Sigurd pointed to our right, over the hump of the middle summit. ‘Bohemond’s camp is over there.’

We picked our way up the hill, through the outlying positions of the Frankish army. It was like no battlefield I had ever seen – a victory, a rout, a battle and a siege all heaped over each other. Groups of men squatted in the scrub, sharpening blades and saying nothing. Archers crouched behind boulders and watched for a Turkish sortie. There were no cavalry. Scattered among the living lay the dead, dozens of them – though nothing compared with the number in the killing ground of the valley between the two summits. Within bowshot of both camps, those corpses could not safely be retrieved by either side, and so they rotted. The stink was merciless. Only the crows moved with impunity, for none could waste the arrows to fell them.

‘Some of them have been there for a week,’ said Sigurd.

I stared at him, amazed, as I counted back on my fingers. A week and a day – that was all the time we had been in the city. As many days as we had spent months outside the walls, yet it felt a hundred years longer.

And on every one of those days Bohemond had fought to win the one fragment of the city that he did not hold, while the Turks sought to overthrow him. I could see why neither had prevailed, for it was obvious even to me that this battlefield was no place for tactics or ingenuity. It was a shallow valley between the two opposing summits, bounded on one side by the wall along the ridge, and on the other by a cliff edge. Between those limits, all the armies could do was push against each other, face to face in an endless trial of strength. It was almost as if the Lord had made it to this purpose, for the bare earth was red as blood and the broken rocks as sharp as spears. At the very centre, in the belly of the valley, a jagged hole yawned open like the gates of Hell. All was black within.

‘The cistern,’ said Sigurd. ‘Bohemond smashed it open to parch the garrison in the citadel. Now it is fouled with the bodies of the fallen.’

We carried on up the hill. The high battlements of a square tower rose in front of us, and as we crested the summit we could see the full expanse of the walls spreading out from it. The main force of Bohemond’s army was concentrated here, and I saw immediately why he had risked firing the city in his hunt for more men. They were in a perilous condition. They sat on the ground in the noon heat, swatting flies and praying, waiting for the next onslaught. Few were not wounded.

I looked to the foot of the tower. Clearly, we were not the only men to have climbed the mountain that morning. Gathered in a circle, apparently heedless of the dying army about them, the princes held council. I could recognise Adhemar’s domed cap, Count Raymond’s stiff bearing, the various figures of Count Hugh, Duke Robert and Tancred. Of the first rank, only Duke Godfrey was missing. Towering over them all, his chin raised in pride or defiance, was Bohemond. We made towards them. I longed to confront Bohemond in front of the others, to make them know that he had cut us off from all hope of rescue, but I did not dare. He would deny it outright – the word of a prince against the word of a Greek spy – and afterwards he would ensure that I never spoke again.

Before we even reached the princes, one of the Norman captains stepped into our path. I did not recognise him, though with a week’s blood and dust and beard on his face he might have been my own brother and I would not have known it. He looked at us and at the file of Varangians behind us.

‘Are these all your men?’

‘All that can fight for you,’ said Sigurd. ‘Where shall we go?’

The Norman pointed down the slope, along the wall which stretched like a ribbon to the citadel. ‘The last tower.’ He drew his sword and swung it through the air to loosen his arm. From the far side of the wall, and within the citadel, I could hear the battle-cry rising. ‘You must hold it – and attack the Turks from their flank when they come.’

I looked to the nearest stairs, thinking that we would approach the tower along the top of the wall. But the Norman shook his head.

‘The tower doors are barricaded, so that the Turks cannot advance along the walls. The tower is cut off.’

‘How . . . ?’

‘There is a ladder. Go to the foot of the tower and call up to them. Tell Quino that I have sent you.’

The thought of the coming battle had already begun to numb me, but the name he spoke cut through all my defences. ‘Quino?’