moment it did not matter. I wondered where they had found the grain to bake it.
‘Brothers in Christ.’ Adhemar reined in his horse in front of us and looked out over the ranks. A helmet had replaced his mitre, though he still wore his cope over his armour. Beside him, also mounted, the harelipped priest carried the holy lance in its reliquary.
Adhemar opened a book. ‘Remember the words of the angel to the meek, and do not be afraid. We do not struggle against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the powers and dominions of darkness in this world. If you would stand fast against them, take up the armour of God: gird on the belt of truth and the mail of righteousness. Lift the shield of faith, which quenches every burning arrow that Satan may throw at you. Put on the helmet of salvation and draw the sword of the spirit, for that is the word of God.’
From the road behind him, towards the gate, the sound of a great shout and a blast of trumpets echoed back to us. Murmurs of apprehension ran through the crowd, but Adhemar lifted a hand to stay them.
‘The gates have been opened, and the battle is nigh. Hold fast to all that is true, look to your swords, and by God’s grace, by God’s will, we will prevail. Every death that we die echoes into Heaven, the perfect sacrifice of the martyrs. Every drop of Turkish blood we spill makes atonement for our sins. For long months we have been chained in hunger, suffering and siege. Today we break free.’
An uneven cheer rose from the army, but it soon faded away. The most they could expect from the day was a swift death; words merited little now.
Sigurd pointed to the mountain behind us. ‘I hope Bohemond did not depend on surprise.’
Stretched out between two spears, a black banner had been mounted on the citadel. The garrison must have looked down on our preparations with all-seeing eyes, missing nothing; doubtless the flag now signalled our advance to Kerbogha in his camp on the plain.
As I remembered from my years in the legions, the longest minutes in any war are those before battle. I said so to Sigurd.
He answered curtly. ‘The longest minutes are those when you count the dead.’
After that, I did not speak. The few men who were mounted patted their horses and whispered in their ears; some of the rest sang psalms or prayers, but most stood in silence and waited, listening for the call.
A messenger came running back from the gate. ‘Count Hugh has driven back the Turkish bowmen, and Duke Godfrey is on the plain. It is time.’
Without prompting, the herald who rode beside Adhemar put his trumpet to his lips, then waved the blue banner of the Virgin forward. Line by line, rank by rank, we filed out of the square and down the road to the bridge. Women lined the route, and some threw olive branches or garlands at our feet. But there were no leaves on the boughs, and the garlands were only thistles and weeds. There were no cheers or singing.
We came to the gate. The great doors stood open, mighty columns of oak flanking our path, while on the ramparts above and to the side stood a line of priests, crucifixes held aloft. With their arms outstretched, silhouetted against the sky, they took on the form of crosses themselves, or scarecrows. I heard them casting prayers and blessings down on us as we passed, but I was not comforted. And then we were under the arch, past the threshold, and on the white stones of the fortified bridge. Locked in my phalanx and between the high balustrades, I could not see the river; even the sound of its flow was drowned out under the tramp of our boots.
We came between the two turrets that guarded the far bank, and for the first time in almost a month I trod the earth outside the city. I could not savour it, for now we were on the killing ground. The men who had gone before us had met the Turks here: the human evidence was all around our feet. Most seemed to be Franks.
‘Fan out, make the line.’
The deceits of a battlefield are infinite, and seldom kind. As our column began to unfold, the ranks of men ahead of me evaporated: suddenly I was no longer safe in their midst but thrust to the forefront of our advancing line. The landscape opened in front of me: now I could see the plain rising up from the river, the forking road to Saint Simeon, the charred mound where I had quarried gravestones for a watchtower all those months ago. Hard on my right, the battle had already been joined. Duke Godfrey’s men were locked in combat with a company of Turks barely a hundred paces away, shielding our advance.
‘Forward,’ came Adhemar’s order.
Though it was an early hour, I realised that my face was soaked with sweat. Was I so terrified? No – it was not sweat which glistened on my cheek but a fine mist falling from the grey sky. I had barely noticed it in my concentration.
Sigurd wiped the dew from the nose of his helmet. ‘Someone in the heavens watches over us. The Turkish arrows will not fly so far from wet bowstrings.’
‘Nor will swords and axes be so easy to hold.’
‘Look to your right!’
Our line shuddered as every man in it craned his head about. Adhemar had led us beyond Duke Godfrey’s company, hoping to cross the plain and position us on the flank. But our enemies had advanced too quickly, and now our own flank was exposed to the reinforcements who had splashed across the river from their siege encampments.
‘Wheel right, wheel right!’
Adhemar’s aides were galloping their mounts furiously along the line, repeating the order, though there was little need. Barbarians the Franks might be, but they had campaigned for a year in hostile lands, and those who survived had learned a discipline which the ancient Praetorians themselves would have envied. The men on the right, nearest the Turks, halted immediately and turned to face their foes, while those at the far end ran in a wide arc to re-form the line against the enemy. As I turned, I felt the clench of fear in my stomach, the terror that I would move and the man beside me would not, that I would be left exposed. Certainly it was a desperate effort to re-order ourselves so quickly, and I could still hear the thud of shields locking together as the first wave broke over us.
I looked ahead to the line of Turks who rushed towards us. For a moment I saw them clearly: the swords rising and falling like reaping hooks as they ran; the red skirts swirling around their legs; the dirt that their boots kicked up. Then the battle closed in around me, drawing me into its fold, and I knew nothing of its course save what happened in the few square feet in front of me. My sword was my light, and beyond its radius was only a throbbing, heaving darkness. Shields clashed; swords and spears stabbed between the openings, and men fell. Sigurd’s axe swung with a keen joy: I saw men reel away with their helmets split open, or their arms severed from their shoulders. Sometimes it seemed we moved forward, and sometimes back, the sinews of our army tugging and flexing. We never broke.
At length – no one measured the minutes and hours of battle – the space ahead of us widened. The Turks were falling back. I heard horses cantering behind me, and their riders shouting at us to hold fast. At our feet the ground was stained red, a ragged line painted across the earth.
‘Are they defeated?’ I asked, dazed.
Sigurd poked a toe out from beneath his shield, and kicked at one of the bodies lying in front of him. ‘This one is. For the rest, this was simply their vanguard.’
Even as he spoke, the truth of his words was made evident as a new host of spears appeared, marching towards us. Against every expectation, I was struck by how few they seemed. Why was an army of tens of thousands attacking us in hundreds? Where were their horsemen against our ragged infantry?
The distance between us closed, and thought gave way to instinct. I fought.
For a time, the fine rain kept the dust matted to the ground, so that the battle retained a strange, savage clarity such as I had not known before. Then shrouds of smoke began to billow across from behind us. Glancing back for the briefest second, I saw a line of Normans with their backs to us, hacking and lunging at a curtain of fire. The Turks who had besieged the southern gate must have come around to attack our rear. Naphtha throwers were in their ranks, and their fiery missiles kindled flames in the tangled grass and thorns that the feeble rain could not quench. The Army of God now held only a narrow finger of ground reaching out from the bridge, with enemies on both sides. I could not see to count our men, but surely the greater part of our force must have been committed. If Kerbogha launched his cavalry at us now, we would be swept away.
Yet still the Turkish horsemen did not come. The battle raged as fiercely as ever – and hot, too, with the fires behind. Now it really was sweat which coursed down my face, and the air was rank with smoke and boiling steam. The press of bodies and armies against each other was unrelenting, unyielding. Lift the shield to parry a sword
