Stewart Binns - Crusade

Sweyn and Adela’s party worked by stealth; their mode was the way of the silent assassin. Sentries were attacked from behind, their throats cut by an English seax or the life strangled out of them by a Byzantine garrotte, picket lines were cut, corralled animals let loose, and our strings of horses loaded with as much food and water as they could carry.

Then, on Adela’s signal – a single fire-arrow shot horizontally into the air – Sweyn led his band away into the night, first at a trot, in the hope of not giving away their direction of escape, then at a canter, and finally at full gallop. I split my English group into three; we each let off several volleys of covering arrows before riding off as loudly as we could in different directions to confuse the Seljuks as much as possible.

Our agreed rendezvous point was the site of our last camp. We reached it as dawn was breaking and, with it, the warm light of day brought a wonderful sight. There were dozens of swift Steppes ponies laden with all sorts of provisions – not enough to feed an army for long, but sufficient to gladden the hearts of our demoralized companions for many days.

We knew Qilich Arslan’s cavalry would be fanning out all around us, so we did a head count and moved off at speed. We had lost more than a dozen noble Englishmen, who had sacrificed their lives for their fellow Crusaders. It was yet another paradox to ponder: the vast majority of the Crusaders were Normans or Franks – the very same people who had conquered their English homeland and ruled it so ruthlessly – but such was the Crusader ideal, they had given of themselves willingly.

One of them was Algar, a righteous 31-year-old son of a thegn who had fought and died at Senlac Ridge, who slumbered in his mother’s womb at the time. Another was Storolf of Nottingham, a daunting man in his fifties, who had been with the Mercians who ambushed the Normans at the Malfosse on the night of the Battle of Senlac Ridge. He then joined King Harold’s exiled sons in Ireland but was disillusioned by their capricious behaviour and became a soldier for hire, wherever he could get paid. When he heard of the English contingent to the Holy Land, he joined in the hope that it would cleanse him of the sins of a lifetime of killing by day and debauchery by night.

We estimated that we were about three hours away from the Crusader column when a large group of Seljuks, perhaps 200 of them, crested the hill behind us.

Sweyn immediately swung his mount round and bellowed an order to the captain of Tacitius’s Byzantines.

‘Captain, take half the men and take our bounty on to the column. Everyone else, dismount.’

I looked at Hereward, who was already dismounting; he nodded his approval, so I issued my own order.

‘Edwin, take the horses on. I’ll stay.’

Sweyn had assumed command.

‘We must make a stand here to save the supplies. Form up as a phalanx of archers; keep the reins of your horses secure. Adela, give us the range. We shoot on her signal.’

I looked at Hereward again; he nodded, this time with a smile.

‘Now!’ was Adela’s shrill signal as we launched our first volley at a range of 300 yards.

We got two more away before the Turks were on top of us. Now we had to suffer their incoming volleys as they surrounded us.

‘Mount! Fight your way out! Follow Hereward’s lead!’

Sweyn beckoned to Hereward to clear a path for us. For the first time in many years, we saw the Great Axe of Göteborg wielded to murderous effect, cutting a swathe through the Turkish cavalry and leading the English contingent away. Sweyn was almost the last to mount, courageously ensuring that everyone got to their horse. It was then that Estrith was struck, taking a Seljuk arrow to her upper back. She was wearing mail, but the arrow cut through it. She squealed in pain, lost control of her mount and fell to the ground.

Adela used her eastern close-quarters bow with venom, wounding two Seljuks with successive arrows and giving Sweyn time to leap from his horse, pull the stricken Estrith from the ground and lift her over his shoulder. She let out another shriek of pain. Adela then grabbed the reins of Sweyn’s horse and wheeled it round so that he could throw Estrith across its shoulders, remount and make his escape.

With his horse pirouetting in panic amidst the confusion of the moment and with the weight of two people on its back, Sweyn kicked his mount towards the north-east, the wrong direction, galloping back from whence we had come. Several Turks were between Adela and the route Sweyn had taken, leaving her isolated.

Thinking she was behind him, Sweyn continued his rapid exit.

Adela, realizing that several of the Seljuks were about to ride off in pursuit of Sweyn and Estrith, stood high in her stirrups, threw back her helmet to reveal feminine features and yelled at the Turks in Arabic, ‘It is I, Adela of Bourne, Knight of Islam!’, and charged at them, swinging her sword in wide arcs.

She was immediately surrounded by a circle of Seljuks. Some hesitated and blessed themselves, but the majority did not falter.

Hereward swung our horses round. We were over 500 yards away as a dozen or so Turks closed in on Adela, dragging her from her horse.

I looked to the horizon and could see Sweyn about to disappear into the safety of higher ground, oblivious to Adela’s predicament. More and more Seljuks were cresting the horizon all the time. Hereward looked at me and then turned to our comrades.

We all signalled our approval as Hereward hoisted the Great Axe above his head and issued the order.

‘Charge!’

The Turks saw us coming at about 100 yards and began to form a defensive wall of horsemen. They loosed a hail of arrows towards us but our momentum was prodigious, and Hereward’s awesome presence – his Great Axe glinting in the sun, his crimson cloak as a Captain of the Varangians flowing behind him – put them to flight.

Adela was safe, but had suffered a trauma all too reminiscent of the horror of her adolescence. Her armour had been pulled off her back, her shirt torn from her; she was rigid with terror, naked from the waist up. Hereward leant from his horse to offer her his arm. At that moment, he and Sweyn were the only men in the world for whom she would have moved. Without looking up, she stretched out her hand and Hereward swept her up behind him on to his horse’s flanks, covering her in his cloak.

Even then, she cared nothing for herself and kept repeating the same anguished questions: ‘Where’s Sweyn? Is Estrith safe?’

Our escape was a close call; only the speed of our horses saved us as we took flight through clusters of arrows launched high into the air, aimed to fall on to our path to safety.

As we neared the Crusader column, the Turks gave up the chase, but not before loosing one last cascade of arrows.

The projectile that killed Edwin was one of the last to land. It came out of the sky, almost at a right angle to the ground, and caught him close to his spine at the nape of the neck. He rode on for a while, not uttering a sound, with a fixed stare on his face, but pain and failing consciousness soon combined to loosen his grip on his reins. He fell to the ground with a sickening crash, tumbling randomly like someone already dead. After coming to a stop, he did not move again. I was certain his wound was fatal; regardless, we could not stop to help him, but I made a mental note of his position in the hope of being able to retrieve his body later.

It was then that I saw Adela had also taken an arrow. Hereward told me later that he felt the impact, but that Adela had not let out a sound; she just winced and gripped him even harder around his waist.

The Seljuk threat had receded, so we slowed our gallop and I rode over to ask Adela about her injury.