Tom Harper - Siege of Heaven

‘ Forward! ’ Another voice echoed it in my ear. Sigurd. He ran forward and I followed, craning around to see if Thomas was with us. In the dust, we must have been all but invisible to the defenders on the walls, but they poured their missiles down on us like rain. Several fell near me; one arrow planted itself right between my feet, but I ran on. The ruins of the wall loomed before me. I slid to a halt behind it and huddled close so that the missiles could not strike. Sigurd was with me; a second later, Thomas dived into the shelter as well. A scratch on his face was bleeding, but otherwise he seemed unharmed. Nearby, I heard Grimbauld still bellowing us to advance.

‘We won’t get through that gap,’ said Sigurd. He pointed to our left. A little way along the wall, I could make out the rear end of the ram protruding through the hole it had smashed. The inner and outer ramparts were so close here, and the ram so long, that it could not pass all the way through but plugged the very opening it had made.

Grimbauld had seen it too. ‘ Back to the ram! Bend yourselves onto those ropes and pull, curse you.’

It seemed almost impossible that anyone could have survived in that storm of arrows, but men came running through the fog and tried to pick up the traces that lay splayed out behind the ram. The dust was settling, but the air was not growing any clearer. If anything, it seemed thicker. And from somewhere beyond the wall, I smelled burning.

‘The ram,’ shouted a voice. ‘The ram is on fire.’

Holding up my arm as a makeshift shield — better to take an arrow in the hand than in the face — I risked a glance over my barricade. With the ram stuck beneath the walls, the Fatimids could drop burning straw and oil on it at will. Flames already licked up from the wattle roof, and a column of black smoke poured into the sky, though it would take an age for the great trees beneath to burn.

‘ Get it out of there! ’ Ten teams of oxen could hardly have hauled the ram up that slope, yet men still tried, running in to harness themselves to the beast Apollyon. If more did not die, it was only because the smoke from the fire blinded those who had set it. But the ram would be ashes before we dragged it free. Instead of trying to move it, men now clambered around it into the narrow space between the walls. There they tried to smother the fire with dust and earth — but the ground was stony, and there was little they could use. Beside me, Thomas made to follow them, and I had to grab the collar of his hauberk to haul him back.

‘No.’ With the roar of battle in my ears, I put my face an inch from his merely to be understood. ‘Think of Helena and Everard. You will not help them by dying now.’

He shrugged off my hand, but did not go further.

Now a new and terrible thing happened: women began to appear in the battle. They staggered out of the smoke, bent double under the weight of the burdens they carried — vessels of water to quench the burning ram. The sight of the water made my parched throat ache for a sip, even a single drop, but there was none for me. Each vessel was solemnly handed forward to the men at the front, then poured on the tongues of flame that licked the ram. Each time the water touched the fire it vapourised in an instant, hissing up in terrible gouts of steam. It was torment to witness.

At length, a knight came running back to Grimbauld, crouched near us in the lee of the wall, and shouted that the fire had been put out. All around, the bodies of women — girls, some of them — lay strewn with the men, promiscuous in death.

Grimbauld glanced over his shoulder. ‘Go back to Count Godfrey,’ he told the knight. ‘Tell him to bring up the siege tower. We’ll never get close without men on the tower to cover us.’

The knight saluted and ran off, weaving his way through the maze of corpses at his feet. After what seemed an age — though on a battlefield, time stretches as long as a man’s life — I saw him return. Instead of a sword he carried two shields; he scuttled forward like a crab, creating an impenetrable wall against the arrows that swarmed about him. He crawled down the embankment to where Grimbauld waited and raised the two shields as a roof over them.

‘Duke Godfrey says he cannot bring up the tower while the ram is blocking the breach,’ he stammered. ‘He orders you to drag it back — or, if that is impossible, to burn it out of there.’

Grimbauld stared at him with wild eyes. ‘Burn it out?’

The knight nodded glumly. Even as he did so, another column appeared at the top of the slope and began shuffling towards us. These men carried bales of hay and armfuls of firewood, piled so high they almost bent double with the weight. At the sight of them, a trumpet whooped from the walls, and a fresh burst of arrows showered down on them. Many fell clutching their burdens like children, but some managed to reach the ram and stack their kindling around it. When there was enough, Grimbauld lobbed a burning brand onto the makeshift pyre. Flames swept up around the great tree-trunks at the heart of the ram, and we cheered it, even as we stood on the corpses of those who had given their lives to prevent such a thing.

Cheers turned to disbelief as a torrent of water gushed from the sky, drowning out the fire in an instant. Gleeful shouts of triumph erupted from the wall; I looked up, and saw the Fatimids hauling back a great cauldron they had poured out. Some of them waved; I even saw one jump into an embrasure, pull up his tunic and — to the cheers of his companions — send a contemptuous stream of piss spattering down on the ram. An outraged volley of arrows pricked him back, but was immediately answered in kind as the Fatimids unleashed a new onslaught on the despairing Franks.

Grimbauld turned to the pilgrims. ‘What are you waiting for?’ he screamed. ‘Bring more wood!’

The battle raged all afternoon. Each time we piled on fresh kindling, the Fatimids retaliated with a new torrent of water. With each subsequent attempt, the pile of wood and straw around the ram grew higher, until its vast bulk was almost buried, but even then it could not overcome the Fatimids’ defence. There seemed no limit to the water they had in that city — and that, too, drove us to despair. The air was thick with smoke and hot steam that scalded my lungs; I felt that I must have fallen inside a vast black cauldron and be boiling inside it. Only when we managed to bring up jars of oil and soak the wood with that did we at last make a fire that the Fatimids could not quench. The flames licked up high over the wall: I doubt there was a man in the garrison who could have endured the heat and smoke, but though the wall sat undefended we could not go near it. The fire for which we had fought so hard, first to quench and then to light, had become our enemies’ best defence. As the shadows lengthened and darkness fell, we left the walls behind and limped back to our camp.

Another day dawned — Friday. This time there was no great rallying of the army, no processions or speeches. We crawled up from the places where we had fallen asleep and massed around the base of the tower. I did not even need to get dressed, for I had slept in my armour on the ground where I collapsed, dead to the world until the trumpets summoned me. Pain racked my body: my limbs felt as though they had been disjointed and then hammered together with iron nails, and my hands were still bloody and raw from pushing the ram. Worse than that was the thirst: my mouth felt as though it had been swabbed with quicklime, but there was no water to slake it. We had spent all our supplies putting out the fire on the ram.

‘Friday in Jerusalem. I suppose it’s a good day to die,’ muttered Aelfric as we mustered at the tower.