Baldwin, Ivo and the others were at the gates again the next morning an hour before dawn. Edgar and Pietro stood near, while Baldwin and Ivo arranged the last of their vintaines into a group. Hob was still alive, but had a gash under his right eye from a spear. It was still bleeding, but he grinned with the other side of his face. ‘Looks good, eh, Master? The girls in London will all want a piece of me when they see this!’
‘I am sure that will make a pleasant change for you. It improves your looks greatly,’ Baldwin joked weakly.
Lucia had also come to the front.
‘I can help,’ she said. ‘We women will bring stones to fill in holes in the ramparts. We can throw stones, too.’
‘It’s dangerous.’
‘More dangerous than sitting at home and waiting for them to come? I’d prefer to die at the gate, near you, than alone.’
They were arrayed in the third row, Baldwin on the far left next to Ivo, and Edgar and Pietro on the right. Before them were some few Knights Hospitaller and two Templars, for it was clear that this was one of the weakest parts of the wall. During the night, women and others had slaved over the barricades, and now at the top of the rampart was a thick line of baskets, palliasses, a trolley and a cart, with stones and rubble filling in all the gaps.
‘They are coming!’
Baldwin glanced up at the man high on the Accursed Tower as he set his helmet on his head. The sentries atop had the best view of the enemy. Baldwin gripped his spear more tightly, and shifted his feet.
And then he heard it: the steady tramp of thousands upon thousands of feet, the brazen blaring of trumpets and the nightmare din of hundreds of kettledrums all being pounded at once.
‘’Ware the missiles!’ came a bellow, and suddenly the air was full of the hammer-blows of rocks as they slammed into the walls, splinters cracking off and hissing through the air. Baldwin saw one run along a man’s neck, cutting bone and sinew at the same time, and the man collapsed like a pole-axed ox. A rock touched the top of the inner parapet, bursting pieces of mortar and stone in all directions, then ploughed into a line of men hurrying to the front. All were crushed. A leg remained where a man had stood only a moment before.
Another struck the tower at full tilt, and Baldwin saw it wobble, a vast crack opening in the side, and as he stared, the tower seemed to rotate. Another hit would bring it down, he thought, but then there was a crash, and he found himself staring through his eye-slots, up at the blue sky overhead.
He was hot, and wanted to pull off his helmet and breathe clean air, but he couldn’t. There was a weight on him, and when he managed to lift his head and look, he saw a man lying over him. All around were more men, most crushed. Slivers of stone lay all about, and as Ivo came and hauled the body from him, Baldwin saw another projectile slam into the Accursed Tower.
It tilted, and as he was helped to his feet, the outer wall seemed to fold in upon itself, and the top of the tower began to move. A crease appeared, as if the tower was made of a mere fabric — and then it tumbled. He could see the sentries at the top, clinging to the parapets, as though that would save them, another man leaping, falling perhaps eighty feet onto the loose rubble.
More rocks: thundering into the walls near the tower, and then the arrows began to fall. Lancing down in great swathes, rattling like a child’s toy on the stones all about. But their impact, when they hit men, was deadly.
‘Get up!’ Ivo was bellowing at him. Baldwin stood, still dazed, and as he did so, an arrow struck the side of his helmet, and bounced away. ‘Shit!’
‘Aye, well, get used to it!’ Ivo snapped.
The line had been demolished by the impact of the rock. The remains of Ivo’s men were huddled in a group, Hob among them. A splinter had opened his groin, and his blood had washed the stones around him.
‘Look after these arses, Master,’ he managed, but then his eyes fixed on something far, far away that Baldwin could not see.
There were shrieks and sobbings all along the line of men, but then came a warning shout, and men were pointing out over the walls.
‘Form again!’ Baldwin yelled. ‘Here they come!’
They had waited since before dawn, and as he heard the first cries of the muezzin calling them to prayer, Abu al-Fida dropped to his knees and bent his head to the ground.
The process of the ritual was enough to calm his nerves. Any alarm at the thought of the battle was washed away, and he found himself viewing a scene in his mind’s eye of how Paradise must look. It would be blue and clean, always. There would never be any yellow colours, he decided. Yellow and ochre were the colours of sand, of heat, of thirst. Paradise would have no reminders of such things. He would be thirty-three once more, and he would recline on a couch inlaid with precious stones, while his house would be built of bricks of gold and silver. Servants would place foods before him that were so delicious, he would eat and never wish to stop.
But he would stop, when his darling Aisha came to him. His lovely wife would kiss him and respect him. And they would again know that perfect happiness from their love-making. And he would see his son once more.
It was a beautiful scene in his mind. A picture that a man might hold on to for the rest of his days.
A trumpet sounded, and then he was marching with his men. There was no time now for foolish reflections. This was a time for stern duty.
There were three hundred camels arrayed behind the army, and as he turned to his men and ordered them forward, the kettledrums began to pound. There were two per camel, and their rhythm was a solemn call to arms, to death. But today Abu al-Fida felt more alive than he had in the whole of the last year. Today would bring about the end of the Franks in his land. Once they were gone, he could die happily.
The trumpets and drums continued, and as he marched the hundreds of yards to the walls, he heard the first of the rocks humming and whooshing through the air. So many, they seemed to hit with one enormous concussion that threatened to shake the earth itself.
And then he recalled the scenes from that other siege so many years ago, and his heart quailed within him.
A man on his left disappeared, and glancing down his line, he saw others toppling, or screaming and shouting as arrows found them. So many arrows were falling, it was like walking in the rains and trying to avoid each drop. He set his face, breathing in deeply, thinking that if he was to be hit and killed, better to get the business done.
‘Run!’ he shouted.
They were at the first, outer walls now, and there, before them, was the ruin of the city gate, a rampart of rubble paved with Muslim bodies.
CHAPTER EIGHTY-NINE
Stumbling, Baldwin allowed Edgar and Ivo to pull him away from the bodies and to the barricades behind. This second line of defence would have to withstand the onslaught, if the Mameluks managed to breach the first line on top of the rampart, and just now, with so many dead and dying, Baldwin found it hard to see how they could survive.
He was ready before the first white-turbaned Emir appeared at the rampart, urging on his regiment with an eager, high-pitched command. An English arrow ended his cry. Others with their black turbans were already at the barricades, and spears and swords flashed. Baldwin lurched to his feet, and as he did so, felt much better. Snatching up a spear, he ran at the lines, shoving his weapon in between other men. . and thus began the heaving, sweating, jabbing and killing once more.
Encased in his helment, he could see little, only the backs of the men in front, and occasionally some of the enemy, teeth bared in their bearded faces, as they hurled abuse and tried to push into the city.
A man leaped onto the spears hafts, balancing like a tightrope walker, and there began to lay about him with his sword at the heads and hands of the Christians, but a Templar cut off his feet at the ankles. Another copied him, and managed to stab a Hospitaller in the vulnerable spot where his mail shirt met his helmet before he too was dispatched.