Tom Harper - Siege of Heaven

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.’

Our return to Jerusalem found the army in grim spirits, which even the arrival of our cargo did little to improve. The streams of living water promised in scripture no longer flowed: the land was parched, and the few wells that lay around the city had been poisoned or stopped up by the garrison. Worse, while we had been away the Franks had intercepted messengers from the Fatimid vizier, al-Afdal. He was coming from Egypt with a great army, he said: he would be there in a month. If the garrison could only hold out until then, the Army of God would be ground into dust. The Franks gritted their teeth and swore it would make no difference: this was exactly what had happened at Antioch, they said, and they had prevailed then. By God’s grace, they would take Jerusalem and then march out to destroy al-Afdal as well. But they spoke too loudly when they said it, and the hands that clutched their crosses trembled.

All our hopes now rested on God — and on the materials we had brought from Jaffa. The masts from Saewulf’s ships were raised again, far from the sea, the cornerposts of the two vast siege engines the Franks had designed. The towers reached higher than the walls themselves, and every day they grew. The wheelwrights gave them feet; the carpenters built platforms and ladders within while the women wove wattle screens to cover them. Finally, the tanners nailed on skins of mottled hides so that fire could not burn them. It gave the machines a monstrous appearance. On each, the drawbridge at the summit gaped like an open jaw, while the arrow slits above seemed like blundering, half-blind eyes. The Franks named them Gog and Magog, the beasts who would come at the end of time to besiege Jerusalem.