Knights of the Cross

Perhaps the ancients were right, and we mortals are merely playthings of a capricious fate. Certainly the gods of old would have laughed at this latest turn, that Sigurd and I should be thrown together with our enemy to fight for our lives. Even I had to acknowledge the grim irony of it. And, after a flash of confusion, I accepted it. This was destiny; I could not fight it.

I looked along the wall. Our tower must have been about a hundred and fifty paces away, close enough to be within bowshot of the citadel.

‘Pray the Turks don’t choose this moment for their attack,’ said Sigurd.

With our backs to the wall, our shields on our right arms, we edged down the slope. Sigurd led the way. Even pressed against the stones there was no shade, no shadow, for the sun was at its zenith and spared nothing. Sweat poured down my face, so much of it that I thought my armour might rust from my body. A sudden terror assailed me: that I would tug my sword from its sheath and find my palm too slippery to grasp it. I wiped my hand on the hem of my tunic, then touched it to where the silver cross hung under my armour.

Stepping sideways like crabs, crouching beneath the rims of our shields, our progress was faltering. On these heights the wall was the only path, and the broken ground reached right to its foot. Spiked plants scratched welts of blood across my bare hands, and several times I was tipped back against the wall when the ground at my feet gave way. I gripped my shield tighter and tried to ignore the thoughts of Quino that raged in my head.

We skirted the first tower and continued down. Here the wall followed the line of the ridge exactly, so that the slope fell away steeply beside us. At the bottom, the black mouth of the broken cistern yawned open, ready to swallow us if we lost our footing.

Sigurd pointed to the line in the valley where the corpses began. We were now almost level with it.

‘From here, the Turks can kill us with their arrows. Be careful.’

But the Turks – assuming that they were watching us from the round towers of the citadel – chose not to spend arrows on a forlorn column skirting the fringe of the wasteland. Perhaps we were not worth the effort. Perhaps they reasoned that we were bent on our own doom, approaching it with every step, and needed no dispatch.

The last twenty paces were the hardest, in full view of two armies and the heavens, too far from one and too near the others. The cloying smell of the yellow flowers on the hillside swam in my senses; now the bushes that brushed me seemed like soft grass. If I lifted my gaze to the mountains far across the Orontes I could almost imagine I was back at the monastery of my youth in Isauria, seeking beeswax and honeycomb with the other novices on a June day.

The rap on my helmet was so unexpected that I almost fell down the slope in fright. Had the Turks chanced a shot while I dreamed? Ahead of me Sigurd was crouched behind his shield and staring angrily back.

‘Keep down,’ he hissed. ‘I know that you could not kill so much as a beetle with your sword; they do not.’

Chastened, I squatted low, and though my thighs begged me to relent I managed to keep my eye below the rim of my shield until we had crossed the last stretch and had come to the foot of the tower. The shade was as elusive as ever, but at least in the corner where the tower met the wall we were hidden from the Turks. I rested my shield gratefully on the ground, straightened, and looked up.

Quino’s men must have watched us coming, doubtless wondering whether our few men were all the relief they would get. A mailed head peered over the edge of the wall, so low that he must have lain on his belly, and stared down. Against the searing sky, I could not make out his features.

‘We were promised more,’ he complained. ‘Are there others?’

‘Only us.’

A rope ladder, crudely made, rattled down the wall. Slinging my shield over my back, I held the ladder taut for Sigurd, then climbed after him. It swayed under me, and with so much weight to carry I had to be dragged over the lip of the rampart onto the broad walkway at the top. The rest of the Varangians were coming up behind me. On a sign from the guard, I lay flat behind the parapet. I had forgotten that Kerbogha’s army waited on the far side.

‘How do we get inside?’ I asked, looking at the barred door.

As if in answer, I heard a clattering from above and saw another ladder dropping down from a window in the tower. The window must have been several yards higher up the wall, far above the protection of the battlements. I wondered how I could reach it without becoming a target for the archers beyond.

‘Climb swiftly,’ the Norman said, tugging on the ladder to make sure that it was fast.

I moved my shield back to my right arm. It would make for a harder climb, but at least it would be some protection against arrows in my side. Though what hid me from the Turks equally hid them from me: I had made a corner for myself, and had to mount the twisting ladder blind to everything beyond the walls. There might have been a company of archers nocking their arrows, or a ballista being pulled taut, or a spear-thrower, and I would know nothing until the missile slammed into my shield.

Nothing was fired, and nothing struck me. I could see the windowsill approaching, a black arch in the stone. Then I was level with it, struggling to keep hold of the ladder while I slipped my shield from my arm and pushed it through ahead of me. A new horizon opened in the corner of my vision, a dappled landscape of green and brown, but I did not examine it. I reached through the window. There were no hands to help me, but I fastened my fingers onto the ledge and heaved. Then, with a clatter of weapons and armour and stone, I was inside.

Brushing dust from my face, I moved clear of the window. Outside, I could hear Sigurd starting to climb the ladder; inside, nothing moved. There was another arched window facing the one I had entered by, boarded over with planks, and rows of narrow slits along the other walls. Somehow they did not seem to admit as much light as they should have.

‘Who are you?’ asked a voice from the gloom.

I stepped back, surprised. As my gaze took in the darkness, I saw where the voice had come from. A pale face, its owner squatting below the line of the windows. There were others beside him, I saw – half a dozen or more, all hunched over, forlorn and abandoned.

‘I have come for Quino. Quino of Melfi.’ Doom surrounded us, and the deaths of Drogo and Rainauld, even Simon, were drops in the ocean of blood which had been spilled. But if God had ordered it that Quino and I should be thrown together at the last, perhaps it was to a purpose.

‘Quino keeps the watch upstairs.’

‘Then he will know that I have come.’

I doubted he would welcome me; indeed, I half expected a shower of stones tipped down as I climbed the final ladder. This one was solid at least, though withered and aged so that the knots bulged out like bones. Above me a square of light showed the way. I could feel its warmth on my face, a single beam plucking me out in the darkness.

Then I had emerged into the open air, and was face to face with Quino.

It took a moment to see Quino clearly as my sight struggled with the renewed brightness. Even then, it was hard to lock my gaze on him, for there was so little to see. He had always been wiry; now he was emaciated. I could see where the hunger had devoured him, eating out his cheeks and pulling away his hair until he looked to be nothing more than a skeleton in armour, like a relic of some long-forgotten battle found in the desert. He sat alone against the battlements, his sword propped between his legs, and stared with blank eyes. All around him were scattered the tools of archery: bows and bowstrings, arrows in quivers and in criss-crossed heaps, as if a storm had swept through a bowyer’s workshop. There were even a few of the barbarian tzangras, crossbows that could fire short bolts clear through steel. I had witnessed their effects in Constantinople. I picked one up, remembering an afternoon once spent learning its ways, and heaved on it until the bowstring was latched into its hook. The bone arms which sprouted from the stock tensed into a perfect arc. Rummaging through the arrows on the floor, I at last found one of the right length, and slotted it into the wooden groove. When it was done, I pointed the bow at Quino, who had watched me all the while, neither speaking nor moving.

‘Have you come to kill me, Greek?’ What strength remained in him must have retreated inwards, for his voice still held its familiar bite.

‘The Turks will do that soon enough.’ To my left, Sigurd hauled himself through the hole and sat against the wall. Below, I could hear the Varangians investigating the tower’s defences. ‘I have come to hear your confession.’