Jack Whyte - Standard of Honor

“No, but I lost patience with them. They’re out there somewhere, drilling. I told my first sergeant, Le Sanglier, to have them set up butts and practice with their crossbows until dinnertime. It’s been nigh on two weeks since last they practiced, and it seems like twice that long since I last had a moment to myself without their voices deafening me. Why is it, think you, that soldiers seem incapable of speaking quietly? Anyway, thank you for this. I won’t even ask where you stole it from, but will drink straight to your good health.” He unstoppered the wineskin and held it up to his mouth, then drank deeply before offering it back to Alec.

“Well,” he continued eventually, “we are alone, so tell me, for my ears only, since you are the man with the inside information. Where are we going and what is our intent?”

“Arsuf is where we’re headed. Have you ever heard of it?”

“No. Had you, before someone told you we were going there?”

“Yes, but solely because I went there once. It’s an ancient port, about sixty-five miles south of Acre. And I said ancient, not merely old. The Greeks who built the place called it Apollonia. It’s a walled town, too, not very large but easily defensible, with a sandstone fortress, now in ruins, on the landward side. It’s one of the places Saladin’s people captured after Hattin. Now Richard intends to take it back and use it as a base for his attack on Jaffa, another, larger port six miles to the south of Arsuf. Once he has those ports as safe harbors for his supply barges, he can then swing inland for the fifty-mile drive on Jerusalem.”

“Hmm. And where is Saladin’s army? Instinct tells me they may be protecting Jerusalem, but we are nowhere near there yet, so why would they bother, at this stage?”

“They are here. As you say, Jerusalem is in no danger at this point. Saladin is above us, up in those hills ahead and almost within view, watching our progress until he gauges that the time is right for an attack.”

“What hills are those? With one sole exception, they do not appear to be too high.”

“Nor are they. The high one is Mount Carmel.”

“Now that is a name I have heard. Mount Carmel … Is it close to where we are going?”

“Aye, it’s right beside our destination.”

“And you think Saladin will attack us from up there, from above?”

“Absolutely, but he won’t wait until we reach Carmel. As soon as we penetrate the foothills, where the road rises and falls from crest to crest, he’ll hit us with everything he has, but on a broad plane of attack— small groups of hardened attackers, plunging down out of the hills independently of each other, along the entire extended length of our line of march, hitting whatever they can hit, wherever they find it. They will swoop in, create as much damage and havoc as they can, then pull back out and flee before we can rally anything like a counterthrust.”

“And is there nothing we can do to stop them?”

“Aye, we can turn tail and march back to Acre, but even so there will be no guarantee that they will not chase us. So we may just as well press forward.”

“Faster, I hope, than we have been moving to this point?”

“No.” Alec shook his head and almost smiled. “I find myself admiring Richard at times like this … as a general, I mean, a strategist. I think he is inspired in this. He is restrained, cool headed, judicious, and clearly thinking far ahead. His policy of advancing slowly and in comfort is unimpeachable. March in the cool morning hours, rest in the long, hot afternoons, and thus remain unruffled and adaptable, untaxed by the heat and capable of responding quickly and strongly to anything the enemy might throw at us. If he continues to use tactics like these, he will have the edge on Saladin. Four miles a day, I know, seems deathly slow to men like us, accustomed as we are to riding everywhere, but you know as well as I do that an army’s progress is tied to the speed of its slowest units, and in our case, the slowest units are our siege engines. We will be fortunate, I think, if we can maintain four miles a day with those. Were it not for the fact that this road was Roman-built and has been more or less maintained, our speed might well be cut in half. And yet we can’t simply walk off and leave these devices behind us, lying at the side of the road, not without opening ourselves to the threat of having them used against us at some future date. So, we will keep forging forward and resisting the temptation to charge the enemy.”

“Since when has charging and engaging the enemy been something to deplore?”

Alec Sinclair looked straight at his cousin without the slightest hint of raillery in his voice or his look. “Since Gerard de Ridefort led a Templar charge into total extinction at Hattin, four years ago. Since he lost his full force of a hundred and sixty Temple knights, plus a knot of Hospitallers, a mere month prior to that, charging downhill against four thousand Saracen horsemen at the Springs of Cresson. And since two thousand Frankish infantry went charging into death on the same day as de Ridefort’s cavalry at Hattin. Every time we mount a charge against this enemy, we are overwhelmed and defeated, because Saladin’s people know exactly how to counteract the superior advantages of our Christian horse. De Ridefort is dead now, and so are his tactics. You will see no more foolish charges mounted nowadays against a mobile, agile force of mounted bowmen.” He stopped suddenly, cocking his head. “Listen. What was that?” The sound came again, a ripple of brazen trumpet notes. “Damnation, I thought that’s what it was. Officers’ call. I have to go.”

He clambered to his feet and tossed the wineskin back to André. “Keep this. You’ll need it. Tomorrow should be much like today, but we’ll start climbing into the foothills the morning after that, and that’s when the gnats will start to buzz down from the hills, so have your people ready. One of our staff members made the recommendation that crossbow units should march with their crossbows armed, ready for instant use, but his advice was disregarded. Personally, I think he was right, and if I were you, I’d have my people ride prepared for anything as soon as we enter the hill region. But as I said, that won’t be until the day after tomorrow. I’ll try to see you again before then.” The trumpet call sounded again in the distance as he said that, and he brought his clenched fist to his breast in a salute. “That said, keep your head down in the interim. There’s a sickness of Saracens out there.”

ALEC SINCLAIR’S PREDICTION proved accurate. The next day, having covered another four miles without seeing a Saracen or being molested in any way, the army made camp just short of the foothills of Mount Carmel, and the morning after that, as they began to climb the slopes of the first hills, the attacks began and then continued throughout the day and into the night, creating a tension that kept everyone awake and fidgety, since there was never any warning of where the next attack would materialize. The enemy came down surprisingly quietly from the heights—and particularly so at night—in small, lightly armored, and maneuverable groups of thirty to forty bowmen mounted on wiry, sure-footed Yemeni horses. There was seldom any time to prepare for their assault, because they made so little noise before they swooped in to the attack, emerging from nowhere to create chaos and strike terror into the units they hit, charging and churning and killing and then withdrawing before the defenders had any real opportunity to rally and counterattack.

But it soon became apparent that the attacks were far from being as random and haphazard as they first seemed. Soon after the initial attacks on the first day of the campaign—for a coordinated campaign is exactly what these attacks turned out to be—a pattern began to emerge. As it solidified in the days that followed, it caused great consternation among the Franks, and most particularly so at Command level, where Richard and his increasingly frustrated allied commanders began to appreciate fully that, as things currently stood, they were effectively unable to counteract, or even to evade, the Saracens’ design.