‘Here they come!’ Hob called.
Baldwin watched them with resolution. The enemy had built many towers high enough to reach over the city’s walls, but they remained in the background. This was no all-out assault, then. It was to be a concentrated effort on one or two sections of the walls of Acre.
As he watched, Baldwin saw Mameluk warriors running forward, in pairs, gripping heavy scaling ladders between them. ‘Archers! Archers!’ he shouted, and himself made his way into the tower. He stepped around the masonry where Anselm’s body lay, praying to his dead companion.
The first of the Muslims was almost at the tower when a pair of clothyard arrows slammed into his upper body, and Baldwin saw him thrown back, kicking like a struck rabbit. It gave Baldwin a savage delight. The man behind him tried to pick up the ladder on his own, but a bolt from a crossbow appeared in his forehead, and he was jolted back, unmoving. In almost no time, there were forty fresh bodies lying dead a short way from the tower, their ladders scattered all about them. It was now that the Muslims chose to exercise more restraint.
Only a few feet from the tower was the cat which had protected the miners while working at the foundations of the tower. Now this was laboriously turned and brought to bear on the tower again. While men erected fascines behind to protect the men running to the cat, others could stand inside it, and use it as a protective corridor. Soon a ladder appeared at the wall, and Baldwin and Hob ran at it, shoving it away from the wall, but it did not overbalance; instead, it swung back to clatter against the stonework. Already, two men were starting up it at a rush. Baldwin yanked at the ladder, until it fell away to the side, and the men fell onto the ground beneath. One began to scream and wail, but Baldwin was on to the next already.
‘Hob, Hob, throw rubble!’ he bellowed, and heaved a large rock at the first ladder. He saw it strike a man on the head, and he fell, taking two more with him. Others rushed to the ladder, but Baldwin rolled a large rock to it, and it was massive enough to break several rungs, rendering that ladder useless. Another appeared, and Hob and Thomas were at it already, letting loose another stone. That killed a man at the ladder’s base, but two more were on it already, and now there were two more ladders. Another ladder, another bearded face, and Baldwin drew his sword, stabbing.
There was no means to fight off so many. All they could hope for was to delay them. As soon as one ladder was knocked away, two more sprang up. And all the while arrows clattered tinnily about the rocks. A member of Baldwin’s vintaine gave a cry, and Baldwin grabbed for him just too late. The fellow toppled and plummeted head-first. Two more were hit in the leg or arm, and had to be helped away. Hob had an arrow pass so close to his face, it sliced through the fleshy part of his ear. This lent fury to his defence, and as a Muslim reached the floor, Hob swung his sword at the man’s head so hard that it clove his skull in two.
Baldwin fought unthinkingly. His arm moved with a mechanical determination — swing, stab, parry — and each time a man appeared at the top of a ladder, he did his best to kill him before he could get off and climb into the room, cutting a man’s arm off, or his hand, or stabbing quickly in between the rungs, into a face or breast, anywhere to bring him down. . but although reinforcements were soon with them, the battle was unequal. A pair of men somehow climbed to the top of the tower, and stood above, dropping stones onto their heads. Arrows did not cease, and before noon it was plain that they could do no more.
‘Back! Back to the walls!’ Baldwin roared, shoving the nearest and cutting at another. ‘Fly from here, quickly!’
Hob was at his side as the rest of the men withdrew, and Baldwin and he fought side-by-side, hacking and slashing, until they could leap through the door and lock it, using baulks of timber from the smashed hoardings to block the doorway.
‘And so it begins,’ Baldwin gasped.
All about the walls, where the Muslims had constructed their huge towers, men stared out anxiously.
Ungainly, lumbering things, the towers were now drawn forward. Each rested upon a row of logs, which must be collected from the rear as the tower passed over them, and set down before it, while the men behind and inside the towers could shove it onwards. They would not move on the sandy plain else. Screams and bellows could be heard from within as the men were urged on, and the damp skins from freshly killed oxen deterred fire-arrows from setting them ablaze.
There was a catapult still on the castle’s tower behind St Anthony’s Gate, and this kept up a regular barrage against the foe. One lucky shot slammed into an approaching tower, and shattered it to tinder, the men inside hurled outside, shreds of skin thrown in all directions, but one good hit could not detract from the overwhelming force to which the city was now exposed.
Baldwin watched as they reached nearer and nearer. ‘They’ll not get here tonight,’ he said.
‘No. It’ll be an attack in the morning, I reckon,’ Hob answered. ‘They will want their towers in position, ready.’
Baldwin nodded. ‘See to it that the men get their food ration tonight. They’ll need it. And plenty of wine, too. To fight like lions, they’ll need to have fed and drunk and slept.’
‘Yes.’
‘Hob?’
‘Sir?’
‘You get some sleep too.’
‘What of you?’
Baldwin looked out. ‘I’ll keep the first watch.’
This was the day that would decide the fate of the city, Baldwin thought. The drums started as dawn threw a salmon-pink glow over the plain. Shouts could be heard, and then, while Baldwin blearily stared out over the flat lands before the city, he saw the Muslim army standing to. A massive, long line of men separated into cohorts, the sun sparkling on each wicked spear-point. As he watched, he heard the muezzins calling them to prayer, and the whole line sank to the ground, performing their obeisance, the ritual given a solemn significance on this day of all days.
Glancing at the men standing along the walls, Baldwin saw they were all, like him, tired out. But their eyes gleamed with an unnatural fire at the sight of their enemy. And then there was a shout from one side of the wall, over towards the Temple’s ward, and the blast of a horn. Looking up at the wall behind him, Baldwin saw that Sir Otto was on the Accursed Tower, that which stood in the very point of the inner wall. The knight drew his sword and lifted it high, so that it caught the light from the sun, and Baldwin clearly heard his voice cry out: ‘Courage, my friends! You are Christian! We fight for God, for Jesus, and His saints! Be brave!’
Baldwin’s heart was comforted by Sir Otto’s words. He turned to face the hordes with a renewed determination.
‘He doesn’t have to face ’em from this close,’ a man grumbled from along the line.
Hob shouted, ‘Shut up there! By Christ’s bones, I’ll have your arse in gaol if I hear another word.
Baldwin grinned to himself. There was no silencing an English peasant, crusader or not. The English fought because they believed in something, not because of foolish heroics.
‘I’ll be dead before you can get me there, Hob. You too, most like,’ the man retaliated.
Today, they would fight for what? he wondered. For Outremer? For their lords here in the city? For business and trade? No, for none of those.
‘You can say what you want about Sir Otto,’ he told his men, ‘but he’s right. We’re here to protect our souls, not the city. We’re here because this is God’s last city in His Holy Land. Don’t forget that. If we fail, God fails. We fight for your souls, and those of your families.’
The hecklers were silenced, but whether it was Baldwin’s brief speech or the sight of the enemy facing them, Baldwin didn’t know or care. He too was staring back at the Muslims, and now he heard a scream bellowed from their ranks. There was a deafening roar from all the men, and the Muslims began to march.