When I looked up, the camel train was now a mere fifty paces away. Should I warn them? The Templar knights were riding into a trap. But what of my loyalty to Robin and my friends? Before I could come to a decision, the choice was taken from me. To my far left, I heard Robin shout: ‘Up!’ and twenty bowmen sprang out of the earth on the ridge; pulled arrows from their arrow bags on their hips and nocked them to their bows. ‘Stand fast…’ shouted Robin. ‘Aim at the horsemen, we only want the horsemen… And loose!’
There was a noise like a passing flight of birds and the first wave of arrows smashed into the column of Templar knights like a mighty wind rattling a stand of dry reeds: the yard-long ash shafts clattering shields and armour, some of the steel bodkin heads lancing deep into mail-clad torso and thigh, puncturing bellies and lungs. There were yells of pain and gouts of blood; horses hit by accident screamed and cavorted on their hind legs. The camel train, panicking, began to run madly, blindly ahead; coming closer to our position. ‘Fast… and loose,’ shouted Robin and once again the grey shafts sliced into the white surcoats of the horsemen below us, punching into flesh. Half a dozen saddles were now empty, but these knights were some of the best-trained fighting men in Christendom. There were shouts of command and some sort of order was quickly forged from the chaos of bucking horses and cursing, blood-splattered men. The knights massed in a single line facing the bowmen silhouetted on the ridge and, shields high, lances levelled, they began to gallop towards us — only to be met by another devastating flight of arrows, which emptied another handful of saddles.
By now there were barely ten Templars still in command of their mounts as they came charging towards our ridge in a ragged line, the hooves of the destriers shaking the earth; but the bowmen stood their ground, shooting independently now, but fast and deadly accurate. I saw the leading knight knocked back by an arrow that sunk up to the flight into the centre of his chest, and another man go down in a slithering rush of half a ton of dead meat as his horse was hit in the throat by three arrows one after the other. A third man was pinned through the thigh to his saddle, and then as his horse turned I saw him pinned again through the other thigh in exactly the same place. And then our own cavalry attacked.
Coming from around the side of the ridge, twenty hard horsemen, twelve-foot lances couched, smashed in to the side of the ragged, arrow-thinned ranks of the Templar knights. It was the classic cavalry manoeuvre, known as a la traverse. And it ripped the knights apart. The long spears punched through hauberks, the needle points slicing into the flesh beneath; and the Templars died, skewered like spitted hares or cut down by the swinging swords of our cavalrymen, as they came round again for a second charge, hacking and snarling at the arrow-stuck knights. One Templar, gore-splashed, his lance gone, sword in his hand, had avoided death on the spearheads of our cavalry and was still charging the line of bowmen on the ridge. He got within twenty feet before a handful of arrows smashed into his chest and stomach simultaneously and tore him, still screaming defiance, from this sinful world.
With tears in my eyes, and a lump of shame in my throat, I saw those brave men die. I managed to get to my feet, I don’t know why, there was nothing I could do, but I began to move towards my master. As I approached, I heard Robin issuing orders for our horsemen to get after the camel train and stop it before it galloped into the sea, and then I was raving at Robin shouting ‘Murderer, murderer,’ the tears spilling down my cheeks. ‘You killed them, you fucking killed them all!’
‘Not now, Alan,’ said Robin coolly. ‘Not now. You are sick, mad with fever, and this is not the time for your childish ranting.’ And he walked down the other side of the slope with a score of jubilant bowmen following in his wake. I sank to my knees; weighed down with shame and anger — and guilt. How had it come to this? I had wanted to come the Holy Land to do good, to do God’s work; and now I knew I was part of something monstrous and venal, something truly wicked.
I don’t know how long I knelt on that ridge, thinking of those noble knights, murdered in a few short moments for one ruthless man’s profit — and I believe I may have passed into unconsciousness for a while — but by the time I had roused myself and managed to totter down the ridge to join our men, the camel train had been stopped and brought back under our control, and Reuben was explaining in Arabic to the drivers that if they agreed to behave themselves and drive the camel train and its precious cargo to a new destination, a small village by the sea called Haifa, where the precious cargo would be loaded on to a ship, they would be rewarded and set free with their camels to return southward. If not… he made a short gesture, the flat of his hand moving across his throat in a cutting motion. It did not take them long to decide to agree.
I was wrong when I accused Robin of killing all the knights. Not all were dead. Three Templars had survived the battle: wounded, bloody, they were now on their knees with their hands tied behind their backs, helmets off, an armed man standing tall behind each of them. But they showed no fear — their eyes seemed to be lit with an inner fire, a certainty about this life and the next; staring proudly, defiantly at their masked captors. One of the knights, I noticed with an awful lurch in my chest, was my old friend Sir Richard at Lea.
‘Our ransoms, sir, will be promptly paid by the Grand Master, who is now at Acre…’ Sir Richard was saying to Robin, as I wobbled unsteadily towards them. The sun was sinking into the blue-grey waters of the Mediterranean, casting long, grotesque shadows in front of the kneeling knights. ‘There will be no ransom,’ said Robin heavily, his voice was muffled by the silk kerchief and yet I saw, at once, that Sir Richard recognised it.
‘Is that you, Robin of Sherwood, masked like a coward? If it is so, let me see your face,’ said Sir Richard, trying to struggle to his feet. He was pushed back down by a heavy hand; Little John was standing directly behind him. He turned his head and looked up at the huge, blond masked man looming behind him; but there was no mistaking him from his size, ‘and I know you are John Nailor, and there,’ he jerked a chin at me, and I stopped in my tracks, ‘that is young Alan Dale!’ Sir Richard’s handsome face contorted with fury. ‘Why do you attack us? Why have you killed my men? We are not your enemies, do we not all share in the same mission here in this Holy Land?’ He suddenly stopped speaking as Robin pulled down the silk mask; and my master’s drawn, tired-looking face was clearly visible in the dying light of the day. He spoke coldly to Sir Richard. ‘There; now you see me; may it give you a final satisfaction,’ he said. ‘We will talk like men, face to face. And I will tell you the truth. I never shared your passion for recovering Jerusalem, I have no quarrel with Saladin nor any Saracen; I would not be here at all were it not for you.’ He pointed an accusing finger directly at Sir Richard. ‘I am here not from my own free will but because you forced me to swear an oath to accompany the King to this God-ridden land.’
Robin’s men, seeing that their master had bared his face, also pulled down their masks. ‘I care not a jot who holds Jerusalem — Saracen, Jew or Christian,’ Robin continued, ‘but because of you and your meddling with my life — and the King’s failure to keep his promises of payment — I am now in debt to half the moneylenders of Europe and the Levant. I must have money, and you,’ Robin paused, shrugged and then said quietly, ‘you stand in my way. That’s all.’