Galloglass Book One the Templar Page 18

  I suppose I could say that Adolfo was an innovator. At a time when most knights used a sword meant to be swung with one hand, like myself, he was using one designed for two. He saw me coming off the wall at the end of the afternoon's watch and commented on my sword, which I had strapped to my back, and then asked to see it. In moments we were discussing its use compared to other weapons and before long agreed to train together. For the next two weeks, Adolfo and I sparred and compared our knowledge.

  Too often sword play is portrayed as an unsophisticated hammering at an opponent where brute force generally wins. Nothing could be further from the truth. I had learned the art of the sword first from my grandfather then from his curadh, or champion. Later, when I entered the Temple, Himbert worked with me to develop skills necessary to become a knight, particularly horse and lance. Himbert also insisted that I learn hand to hand techniques against armed and armored opponents. It was in the Temple that I honed my skill with sword and dagger. Daily practice at arms in the Temple against trained warriors made me competent and efficient, a killer in fact. I say this so that one understands I was no novice, yet when facing Adolfo, I felt outclassed. He moved effortlessly and struck with amazing power. His sword technique could be as subtle or as brutal as he deemed necessary.

  Adolfo was one of the first of a new brand of warriors appearing in Italy and Germany at this time. They were dedicated to the use of the longsword and all its various forms and techniques and were willing to spread their knowledge to others, usually for a price. Adolfo's father had been such a man. As the weapons master of the Duke of Milan, he had taught his style of swordsmanship to the duke and his personal retinue. He passed his knowledge and skill on to his sons as well. Adolfo came to the Temple like so many of the minor nobility across Europe. He had brothers who would inherit before him and little chance for advancement unless he attached his fortunes to a powerful nobleman or entered the Church. Being a warrior at heart and having no other prospects, he came to the Temple. Adolfo and I had much in common and we became friends almost at once.

  There was still no sign of the Mamluk army, and the strain of waiting was beginning to wear on the city. Most non-combatants had been sent to safety on Cyprus while both Genoa and Venice sent galleys and men to bolster their garrisons. Two weeks later Adolfo was waiting in the training yard for me when I finished my shift on the wall. We had agreed to fight in our mail and chausses that day. As he waited for me to suit up, he asked, "Is it true what they say about you, brother? That you are Master de Beaujeu's assassin?"

  I finished tying the straps of my arming cap and then pulled up my coif before answering. "I will not lie to you. I am close to Master de Beaujeu. He has used my skills at various times to advance our cause, and yes, I have killed on his orders. As Templars and knights, who of us have not? Why do you ask?"

  "What people do not understand, they fear. You are an enigma, my friend, always seen, rarely heard."

  "People should come and cross swords with you. Perhaps then they would know real fear."

  Adolfo smiled and brought up his sword and saluted, obviously not concerned with my reputation. "Today we work on the low guards. Begin with the denti di cinghiale , the boar's tooth. I want you to transition from that to the tutta porta di ferro, the open iron door, by stepping back with your lead leg. Because of the position of your blade, pointing down and to the side, it will often invite an attack. This is good. When I attack, respond with the sotani, the rising cut."

  He came at me then and for the next couple of hours, we worked through each guard, low, middle, and high, along with a series of parries, cuts, and bindings. I was exhausted, but in some way, I was also like a man too long in the desert who cannot take in enough water. Every time I worked with Adolfo, I learned something new, and I was confident my skills were improving rapidly. The adage "to be the best, you must train with the best" was certainly true.

  We had not been finished long and were resting on a bench by the gate to the yard when one of my Turcopoles appeared. "Lord, you are wanted on the wall."

  "Trouble?" I asked as I stood and sheathed my sword.

  "Mamluks, lord. Their scouts are on the hills near Castle St. Giles."

  "Brother, would you care to join me?"

  Adolfo nodded, pulling off his coif. He untied his arming cap and then rubbed the top of his head. "Never seen Mamluks before. I hear they are impressive."

  "Come then, let us go. Dominic, has Marshal de Vendac been notified?"

  "Yes, lord. I sent Thomas to find him before leaving to get you."

  I clapped him on the shoulder. "You did well. Lead us now."

  When we arrived atop the Templar section of the wall, the late afternoon sun was an orange globe hanging atop a purple sea. On the hills directly to our front, the leading elements of Sultan Qalawun's army were beginning to cover the forward slopes. Regiment after regiment of Mamluk cavalry topped the ridgeline before us and worked their way to their appointed place before the walls. They were eerily silent, no clashing of symbols or banging of drums. No dervishes chanting surahs. I watched as the various commanders and their retinues passed their way into view and moved into their positions. The sun went down and still they came, the rest of the cavalry, then the infantry, engineers, and slaves. Sometime just shy of midnight, the sultan arrived and took his place on a throne before his pavilion, which had been erected under the abandoned walls of Castle St.Giles overlooking Tripoli. When he had been seated and the army was in its assigned positions, complete silence fell across the land.

  Adolfo and I had stayed and watched them the entire time, each of us dozing briefly, trying to rest and conserve our strength. Both Rolf and Henri had joined us as well. When Qalawun arrived, I shook my companions awake and pointed to his pavilion. We all stood and watched as the last of the Mamluk army took its place before us. As I said, silence ensued for several minutes. Then I heard the cry of a muzzein. His words echoed down the slopes and across the small plain in front of the enceinte until finally it washed across our position. Three times he called, "La illaha illa Allah! Mohammed rasoolu Allah! There is no God but Allah! Mohammed is his prophet!" After the third cry, 80,000 throats responded, "Allah akkbar! God is great!"

  "It may be time to have our chaplain hear our confessions," said Adolfo.

  I looked out upon the thousands of torches spread across the hills before us and nodded in agreement. "I think you may be right."

  Thirteen

  Tripoli /Acre

  March/April 1288

  It took three days for the Mamluk engineers and their slaves to construct their trebuchets and sows. Behind them rose the frames of three great towers. The towers would be used if the sows and trebuchets failed in their job to open a breach in the wall. Marshals de Vendac and de Clermont called me to the Tower of the Hospitallers as the first stones burst upon our walls. From that moment, the Mamluks dropped a stone every fifteen minutes on the wall and towers of Tripoli from five separate machines, night and day without let up. The effect was devastating and almost immediate. As I made my way toward the tower, I witnessed a stone strike the top portion of a recently repaired section of the wall. Five hundred pounds of rock dropped from the sky and swept away part of the wall walk along with five men who were manning a ballista nearby. There was not enough left of them to tell they had once been men.

  This was only the beginning. Later the Mamluks fired pots of burning naphtha and, as the siege progressed, corpses of horses and slaves that had been ripened in the sun. That first day, I hurried into the tower and met with the marshals on the bottom floor. Their look told me our situation was desperate. "My lords, you called for me?"

  Marshal de Vendac clapped me on the shoulder and brought me over to a table where there was a map of the city showing our positions on the wall. "Come. You have been on the wall. Do those marks accurately portray the positions of the Mamluk trebuchets?"

  I looked at the map and the marks indicating the Saracen machines. After studying them fo
r some time and orienting them to what I had seen in my mind, I nodded. "Yes, lord. Close enough."

  De Claremont came right to the point. "If we launch a sortie, can we destroy them?"

  I was surprised by the question. There were other men, much more experienced in war than I. To ask me was to show me more honor and respect than I deserved. "Surely, lord, there are others more qualified than myself who can answer your question."

  "Probably," he grumped, "but they are not the ones I would have lead the attack. You are."

  I bowed my head in acknowledgement of the honor he paid me. Looking up I said, "Lord, there is but one entrance on the landward side of the city. To use that would be disastrous as they will surely be waiting for us to open those gates. There are no posterns either. The only way to launch such an attack would be from the sea. The problem there is distance. I see no way to launch simultaneous attacks on all five siege engines without being detected. That means that you will only be able to strike either the two northern most or the two southern most trebuchets," I pointed with my finger to the map, "and then only by sea."

  De Claremont looked across the table at Marshal de Vendac. "I was not wrong."

  The old Templar nodded. "No. You were not. It must be by sea." He looked down at the map and traced the outline of the coast north of the city. "In five days there will be a quarter moon. Just enough light for our purpose. We will land twenty men, here, north of this fishing village," he tapped his finger on the map. "They will have to skirt the village and come to the machines through the rear of the camp, ten men for each trebuchet. They must kill their guards and the trebuchet's crew and then stay long enough to set them alight before slipping away into the darkness and confusion that will follow. The problem is how to attack without being heard and without alarming the Mamluk camp."

  "We use my Turcopoles," I answered as both men turned their attention in my direction.

  "It only makes sense. My men speak Arabic and they are archers. We dress as Mamluks. We slip through their lines, murder their guards and crew from a distance, and then set the siege engines alight with oil that we carry with us. As the alarum spreads with the lighting of the machines, we escape into the darkness and move to a rally point down the coast where we are picked up at dawn."

  Marshal de Vendac shook his head. "You speak of this as though you have done it before, yet I know this is your first siege."

  "Lord, where I come from, an attack from the sea is a common thing. I killed my first man in just such a raid. You slip ashore in the dark and fall upon your enemies with fire and iron and then disappear into the night. Is this not the same?"

  Marshal de Claremont chuckled. "Aye, and now you are doing God's work, killing heathens instead of fellow Christians."

  "There are those who would debate with you if those I killed were true Christians, lord."

  De Claremont nodded. "I'm sure. God's Word is sparse at times in those northern isles. The old gods are not completely forgotten, are they?"

  Images of Samhain flitted through my head, islanders, old and young, men, women and children along with their cattle, walking between two great bonfires in the annual ritual of purification that marked the transition between the light and dark half of the Celtic year. A custom still practiced throughout Eire and Alba and all the outer isles. The thought of our village priest, with his habit pulled up with both hands so his bare feet would not sling cow dung on his clean robes made me grin. "No, lord, far from it."

  "Five days. The walls are strong. We will simply have to endure until then," responded de Vendac. Still looking at the map, he said, "Tell no one, but be thinking who you will take with you. The morning before the raid, we will notify the men and put them aboard ship at once. No time for rumors to spread. We will sail with the tide and tell those you have chosen what we are about to do as we leave the harbor. No chance of betrayal then."

  I nodded as the plan was sound but desperate, just like our situation. I left the tower and returned to my quarters in the Templar commandery near the harbor. On my way, I was stopped by a young squire who excused himself and surreptitiously handed me a small parchment. I noted the seal on the wax and quickly tucked it into my cloak, thanking him. Later, when I was sure no one was watching, I opened the seal. It was from Helvis, asking to meet me that night at an inn down by the water.

  After Compline I left the commandery to check my men on the wall. On the way I stopped at the Dolphin, the inn where Helvis wanted to meet, and climbed the stairs in the back to a series of rooms on the upper floor, meant for special guests. There, by the light of a single candle, she told me she was being sent the next day to the Embriaco holdings on Cyprus. She also told me she was pregnant.

  "Is it mine?"

  "Does it matter?" she asked as she unlaced her bodice.

  An interesting question, I watched as her breasts appeared white and round and perfectly formed for a woman who already had two children. "I don't know, perhaps."

  She stepped out of her clothes and extended her hand, beckoning me to come to her. She was still breathtaking with a body that Italian's would fight over to sculpt. There was no trace as yet of the seed that now grew inside her. I stepped beside her and took her hand. "If it were, this would be my first child. In two months I will turn twenty, and in all that time, I have yet to know anyone who carried a child of mine."

  She began to unlace my breeches. "As many women as I'm sure you've known, it was bound to happen."

  Truer words were never spoken yet that did not mean I was ready for it. I sucked in air through my teeth as she cupped my balls with her hand. She stepped closer and I could feel her breath along my neck. "Too much talk. This is our last night."

  She led me to the bed and for the rest of the night I made love to her as though I would never again lay with a woman. Dawn found me hollow eyed, sore, and exhausted. We kissed one last time as I donned my armor. "You will come to Cyprus when this is over?" she asked.

  "If I am alive, I will come." The unspoken truth was hard for us both. Helvis was not stupid. She was well aware of the situation. She squeezed my hand and pushed me out the door. I did not look back, and I pushed the thought of the child growing in her belly deep into a corner of my mind. I had no time for it. Should I survive, there would be plenty of time to sort through my feelings.

  I left and went to the wall. As I climbed the stairs near the Templar sector, I spotted one of my Turcopoles waiting for me at the top. When I reached him, he said, "Commander de Gaudin was looking for you, lord. I told him you were with Marshal de Vendac."

  I looked up and said, "Thomas, I was not with the marshal."

  "I know, lord. Commander de Gaudin, however, did not. Was that not an easy way to stop his questions?"

  I laughed at that and asked, "So is there anything I should know?"

  The Turcopole nodded, his face grim and pointed through one of the crenels. "The Mamluks are set to storm the wall after their morning prayer."

  We moved to the aperture, and I looked out into the mist being blown in from the sea. Row after row of Mamluks knelt in prayer and responded to call of their mullah. I quickly pulled my leather arming cap out of my belt and put it on and then pulled up my coif, pulling its leather thongs tight. "Has anyone been sent to warn the marshals yet?"

  "Yes, lord. Dominic went some time ago when we first noticed them lining up in the dark. We were waiting for your arrival before doing anything more."

  "Make sure everyone has enough arrows and that there are enough men to man the ballista. I am going to check the men-at-arms in the tower." Looking to the east, I saw the first glint of orange rimming the horizon and knew instinctively that they would come very soon. I hurried along the wall walk and entered the tower as Marshal de Vendac appeared with several Templar knights. They had climbed the inner stairs from the hall below and were dispersing the men-at-arms to their positions along the wall to reinforce the Turcopoles already there. Before I could announce myself, I heard the roar of twenty thousand M
amluks announce the end of their morning prayers and the beginning of the assault with a resounding, unified cry, "Allah Akkbar!"

  Marshal de Vendac grabbed my shoulder as I prepared to rush out onto the wall and shook his head. "Wait. Do not go out there yet." He pointed to the sky just outside of the tower portal. "Listen."

  The sound of ten thousand arrows when they have been launched and are in flight is hard to describe. The arrow storm hisses, much like hail, yet there is a sibilant quality to it. It is a sound once heard, never forgotten. I saw the sky darken and then the arrows swept the top of the wall. Any who were foolish enough to have been standing when the storm broke were swept away. Cloud after cloud of arrows crashed down along with pots of flaming naphtha that burst at various points, spreading their oily flames on everything they touched. And in all that time, the trebuchets continued their regular, continuous, pounding of every tower along the enceinte.

  Behind the Moslem lines, a drum, large and base, began a rhythmic pounding accompanied by the clashing of symbols. De Vendac pointed with his chin. "They will come now. When the arrows stop, they will throw themselves at the wall in their thousands. In a moment, as God is my witness, we will confront them and we will break them."

  He shook me and gave me reassurance and he was right. The arrow storm halted and the Mamluks came on. Two siege towers were trundled forward toward the enceinte, scaling ladders went up, and the world descended into chaos, blood, and utter ruin. I stood on the wall walk that morning with my brothers, and I killed without remorse, without pity. I killed until my body ached and my soul was seared from the horror of it. I butchered men until it was sheer torture to raise my arms and take another step, until I was completely drained of all feeling.