fire; for a moment I saw his face and helmet wreathed in flames — bathed in light, as the apostles must have appeared at Pentecost. He dropped his sword and clutched at his face, then swung away and threw himself over the edge of the quay into the water. I saw him floundering there, clinging to his shield like a raft while the weight of his armour tried to suck him down.
There was no time to savour my victory. By the time I had found my fallen sword and retrieved it I was being forced back again. Even to be armed was a rare advantage now: the sailors around me were having to fight with whatever they could lay their hands on. I saw one pulling iron shackles from a sack and flinging them at the Fatimids using a sling made from his shirt; others wielded shipbuilding tools as weapons. One had even made a rudimentary flail from a plank with three nails hammered through the end. He had stripped to the waist, his tunic folded back over his belt, and his fair skin glistened with beads of water. Despite his crude weapon, he moved with a breathtaking grace, whirling about like cinders floating on currents of air. His wet hair swung behind him, as if to counterbalance the flail in his hands, which clawed and gouged any who came near. Even in battle I had rarely seen such pure, animal ferocity.
As he turned to counter some new attack, I glimpsed Saewulf’s face beneath the whirling hair. The careless detachment had vanished; the cautious man who acclaimed profit and disdained all else had become a warrior in the mould of his ancestors. And beside him, even more remarkable, stood Sigurd, rolling his axe and bellowing defiance at the Egyptians. Watching them, knowing Sigurd’s loathing of Saewulf, you might almost have thought they did not realise the other was there. They stood, half-turned away from each other, ignoring each other completely: it was only after I had watched for a few moments that I realised the unspoken intricacy of their movement. If Sigurd knocked an adversary off balance, he pushed him left so that Saewulf could club him; if Saewulf forced a man backwards, Sigurd’s axe was waiting to sever his neck. It was an awesome pairing.
With Sigurd and Saewulf to anchor us, we had at last managed to regroup behind a makeshift barricade of planks and barrels. The Egyptian attack seemed to be weakening. A few of their soldiers still struggled against the English sailors, but most seemed to have retreated back along the dock, into the swirling smoke. I did not doubt they would return in greater numbers — even Sigurd and Saewulf at the peak of their rage could not defy them all.
Sigurd sent a Fatimid swordsman sprawling backwards with a well-aimed kick, then turned. His face and arms were drenched in blood, but he seemed unharmed. He screamed something unintelligible in his native tongue and swept his arm forward. I did not need to know the words to understand the meaning: desperate though it was, we had to close with the Fatimids before they started to bombard us with their missiles again.
A dangerous lightness overtook me — not light-headedness, but a lightness of spirit, which, at the last, accepted the inevitability of defeat and embraced it. I vaulted over the box that had protected me and charged forward. The weariness of battle seemed to fall away; I was sprinting along the dock, among the rubble and jetsam that the shifting tides of battle had left behind. Sigurd was in front of me and Saewulf beside him, with English sailors and Varangians all around. I saw Thomas to my left and breathed a prayer of thanks that he had survived this long. Still no one opposed us. In the distance, I heard a trumpet sound.
The euphoria that had carried me forward drained as quickly as it had come. I had a cramp in my side, my knuckles were bleeding where I had grazed them on the quay, and my arms were suddenly barely able to hold the sword upright. Seeing no danger, I stopped short, bending double to gather my breath. Only then did I look around.
We had almost reached the end of the harbour where the Fatimid ship had docked, yet we stood there unopposed. Inside the harbour, I could see the dying embers of a ship disappearing beneath the water, hissing and fizzling. Another ship remained afloat and undamaged, but it was not coming towards us: with every stroke of its oars it pulled further away. Fatimid soldiers crowded its deck, while in the water I could see others who had discarded their weapons and armour swimming desperately after the retreating ship.
‘Did we win?’ I wondered aloud.
No one answered. Sigurd, still in the grip of battle, stood on the harbour’s edge and shouted abuse after the fleeing Egyptians. When that did nothing, he picked up a smouldering piece of wood from the dock beside him and hurled it towards the ship. It fell well short, though it did provoke one of the archers on the ship’s stern to retaliate with an arrow. That flew wide, but it was enough to drain the battle lust from Sigurd. He fell silent and stepped into the shelter of the wall, while the Fatimid ship disappeared out of the harbour.
The trumpet I had heard during our charge sounded again. At the time I had thought it must be my imagination, or perhaps a flight of angels come to take me to heaven, but this was different — too clear to be my imagination, too strident for the hosts of heaven. I turned around.
We were not the only men on the docks. At the far end of the harbour, where three of Saewulf’s ships still lay moored, a troop of horsemen had ridden out onto the quay and dismounted. More men were spilling down from the town after them. All were armed and mailed, though even from that distance I could see many were limping or leaning on their comrades for support, as if they too had been in a battle. Their banners were frayed and stained, but there was no mistaking the design on them: a blood-red cross.
‘Thank God.’
The leader of the new arrivals handed his bridle to a companion and came towards us, striding between the host of small fires that still burned around him. The Varangians and sailors around me turned to face him, arms crossed, watching impassively.
He halted in front of Saewulf and removed his helmet, shaking free a mane of tawny hair. I recognised him: he was Geldemar Carpinel, one of the lesser captains in Duke Godfrey’s army.
‘If you came for the battle, you’re too late.’ Saewulf gestured to the debris all about, as if the Frank might not have noticed it. ‘We won.’
Geldemar stiffened. ‘We fought our own battle. Four hundred Arab troops and two hundred Turks. We found them on the plain near Aramathea — coming this way.’
‘I hope you saw them off.’ Geldemar gave a smug nod. ‘You don’t want to run into them again when you leave.’
‘Leave?’ Geldemar sounded peeved. ‘We’ve only just come here.’
As if by way of answer, another naphtha canister sailed over the wall and exploded against the watchtower in a cloud of fire. A fig tree that had grown out of a crack in the wall burst into flame.
‘I thought you said you won your battle,’ said Geldemar suspiciously.
‘There are always more enemies. Unless you want to meet them, we had best get on. Have you brought pack animals?’
They had, though it was the devil’s own job to load them while the Egyptian ships beyond the harbour bombarded us with fire. We scavenged what we could from the cargo on the dock, while Saewulf’s men methodically dismantled the ships that survived. When they had broken them down to the waterline, they towed them to the harbour mouth and scuttled them. Soon all that remained were bundles of planks and timbers tied to the mules.
By the time we had loaded up the last of the animals, the harbour swirled and glowed with the reflected flames. The wind had carried the fire into the town on the hillside, and that too had begun to burn. In the places where the sea-fire had spread over it, even the water burned.
In my determination to see that we saved every scrap that might help make our siege engines, I was one of the last to leave. Sigurd and I hoisted the last batch of planks onto the mule’s back and tied it tight, then turned to go. I cast a last look at the harbour. Ash and oily scum covered its surface, but the water still drew my drawn and bleary eyes. Soot and dust had mingled with sweat and blood to coat my skin, my hair, my clothes: I could almost feel it cracking when I moved. I longed to be clean — but there was no time for that.
Saewulf slapped the laden mule on the rump, and it trotted obediently away towards the gate. Now there were only three of us left on the dock.
‘There goes your last ship,’ I said to Saewulf. ‘What will you do now?’
He shrugged. ‘A captain should stay with his ship — even if it’s in pieces. Besides, you’ll need someone who knows how to use those tools, if you ever want to build your siege engines.’
