harbour walls. He pointed out to sea.
‘That is what I mean.’
It was a scene the ancient poets could well have recognised. The rose-fingered dawn reached down to the water, her caresses stirring rippling waves. The sea shone with a blinding light, and a fresh wind blew in from the west. Birds soared in the cloudless sky, then swooped down in search of fish, barely disturbing the waves as they dived beneath them. And there, black as flies against the shimmering water, a fleet of ships sailed towards the harbour.
‘Are they. . ours?’
Saewulf shook his head soberly. ‘Egyptian.’
I counted them — eight, against six of Saewulf’s ships in the harbour behind me. Glancing back, I could see his crew still sprawled around the docks, slowly beginning to stir as word of their danger spread.
‘Can we fight them?’
‘Not at sea — not with an onshore wind.’ He turned to me. ‘So, how badly do you want that cargo?’
If it would help me get inside Jerusalem and reach my family, more than life. But I could not carry it back singlehanded — nor stand alone against the Fatimids.
‘How badly do you want your gold?’
Saewulf grinned, though there was no humour behind it. ‘That cargo cost me nothing. I could as easily have thrown it overboard as bring it here.’
‘But you did bring it here.’
‘And now I’m trapped.’ Saewulf looked around, his eyes ever calculating. ‘Each one of those Egyptian ships carries more men than my entire crew. They’re armed with catapults and naphtha throwers. If they get into the harbour’ — he gestured to the hawser, which sagged across the harbour mouth — ‘they’ll burn us down like haystacks.’ He brushed his hand over the rampart. A trickle of mortar and rubble crumbled away at his touch. ‘We won’t get much defence out of these walls. If you value your life, you’ll run inland as fast as you can. They won’t risk straying too far from their ships — unless they’ve got allies on shore on the way.’
‘But we have allies coming too. If your men reached Jerusalem, then the Franks should have sent men to collect the cargo. They might even come this morning.’
‘And if they don’t?’
I shrugged, helplessly. Looking out to sea, I could see the Fatimid ships roving towards us, ever closer. ‘I would not count on them to save us.’
‘Then we’d better fight hard.’
I stared at him. ‘You’ll stay?’
Saewulf shrugged. ‘I’m a sailor — I’ll stay with my ships. And hope your reinforcements come quickly.’
As if to mock his words, a crack echoed from the deck of the foremost Egyptian ship. A clay canister, pink like the sun, sailed through the air over our heads. We spun about to follow its arc, watching it drop into the harbour just past the hull of Saewulf’s flagship. It seemed to bounce on the surface of the water, then slowly sank. Steam blew from its spout as the water met the burning oil inside.
‘Christ’s shit.’ Saewulf looked down at the docks, at the drowsy sailors stirring themselves from sleep. The cargo lay stacked all about them; suddenly all the timber, sacking and barrels looked like nothing so much as piles of kindling waiting for the match.
‘We’re sitting on top of our own pyre,’ Saewulf muttered. ‘We need to clear it off the docks.’
I hardly cared for myself, but the siege materials were our last, best chance of breaking into Jerusalem. If they turned to ash, so did all our hopes. Even as I watched, another oil canister shot out from the Fatimid fleet. This one carried all the way over the harbour and smashed against one of the warehouses that lined the shore. There was a flash as the pottery vessel exploded into shards, and then a burst of oily smoke. Liquid fire slithered down the stone wall. Over my shoulder, out to sea, three splashes rose as a ranging flight of arrows dipped into the water. With the white feathers on their tails, they almost looked like the diving gulls.
Saewulf turned and hurried down the steps two at a time. ‘Have your men move the cargo up the hill, near the gate. It’ll be easier to grab it there when we have to retreat.’
I followed him, trying not to lose my footing on the crumbling stairs. ‘What will you do?’
Saewulf gestured to the warehouse opposite. The naphtha had burned out, leaving scorched tentacles trailing down the wall. ‘I’ll start a fire.’
Down on the docks, Saewulf’s men had already shaken off their slumbers and were hurrying about. Despite the suddenness of our desperate plight, they seemed calm enough, moving to some purpose they evidently understood. I could not guess it — nor, apparently, could the Varangians. I found them clustered in a knot in the lee of the walls, watching unhappily. Facing an enemy on land they would be fiercer than any man; confront them with a battle at sea, even one contained in the confines of the harbour, and they did not know what to do.
Sigurd had woken and was standing among them, squinting against the light. A black bruise ringed his left eye and his matted hair sprawled untidily over his shoulders. At the sight of me approaching, his face screwed up in disgust. The last night’s quarrel had left us with too many things to say to each other.
I said none of them. As quickly as I could, I relayed Saewulf’s instructions. I thought Sigurd would object, but he simply sneered his approval, then picked up the nearest sack and threw it over his shoulder. It must have held almost twice his weight in iron, but he did not flinch.
‘Where do you want it?’
It was hard work that wanted many men; instead, the twelve of us laboured to carry the sacks and barrels through the deserted streets of Jaffa, up the slope to the fallen arch where the gate had once stood. Each time we reached the gate and deposited another load, we looked out to the east in search of an approaching army. Each time we turned back towards the harbour we looked west, over the harbour walls to the sea beyond. The Egyptian ships had dropped their sails for battle and had their oars out, prowling the water like wolves. For some reason, they did not seem to have fired any more naphtha canisters at us.
‘Why don’t they attack?’ I wondered.
‘Perhaps they’re waiting for reinforcements,’ said Aelfric.
I looked back to the east but there was nothing. Meanwhile, down in the harbour, Saewulf’s men seemed to have started doing the Fatimids’ work for them. On all but one of the ships they had stripped away the rigging and felled the masts; I could see the long trunks lying on the wharf, the sails still wrapped around the yards. Perhaps Saewulf meant to deny the Egyptians a target — though if so, he had forgotten his own flagship, whose green banner still flapped defiantly from its masthead. By the time I had brought my next load up to the gate, the ship had slipped its moorings and was creeping out towards the harbour’s mouth, its banks of oars rising and falling. I could see its crew manning the benches, and Saewulf standing by the tiller in the stern, a coat of chain mail pulled over his green tunic and a helmet gleaming in the sun.
‘But he said he wouldn’t attack.’ I did not understand. The Fatimids would surely burn Saewulf into the water, as he had predicted — or crush him head-on. Their lead ship had neared the harbour mouth and was closing rapidly. Two more followed close behind on its flanks.
‘Perhaps Saewulf found his balls after all.’ Sigurd dropped a sack of trenails with an angry thud. ‘Thirty years too late.’
‘Or perhaps he’s lost his mind.’ No other ships were moving to support Saewulf’s lone charge — in fact, so far as I could see, their crews seemed to be busy dismantling them. One was already at least a foot nearer the water, and I could hear the urgent sounds of saws and hammers reducing it ever further. What was Saewulf doing? I looked at Sigurd, wondering if he understood his countryman’s madness any better than I did. He gave no sign of it.
It looked as though Saewulf meant to ram the Fatimid ship bow to bow. Watching, I felt a memory stir in me, of an October afternoon without a trace of autumn, when Bilal had taken me to see the caliph’s shipyards. Was this one of the boats I had seen drawn up on that island in the middle of the Nile, then a skeleton, now clothed in its full war-like flesh? Had fate been drawing back the curtain that day, offering me an unwitting glimpse of my future?
The two ships were barely a spear’s throw apart now, their collision inevitable. The Egyptian ship was broader, heavier and stronger: with the carved lion’s head on her prow, and the banks of oars like wings, she looked like nothing so much as a griffin in flight. With her copper ram she would overwhelm her adversary in an instant,
