The Saracen: The Holy War Part 53

"Suivez-moi!" he shouted. The archers stared at him and drew themselves up straighter, but looked puzzled. Of course, Simon thought. The longbow was a weapon favored by the English. He beckoned with his hand, and the Englishmen ran to him. Good.

"My lord, I speak un peu Francais," said one of them, whose crested helmet marked him as a sergeant. "If you give your orders to me, very slowly--"

"Good," said Simon, pleased with the man's readiness to cooperate. He explained what he wanted.

"Suivez-moi," Simon called again to the longbowmen, and their sergeant repeated, "Follow me," in English. He trotted off, keeping the dark brown mare to a pace that would allow running men to follow him.

When they came to Charles and his three mutinous lieutenants, still arguing, the Roman mob had advanced close enough for Simon to be able to make out individuals. They were almost all men, as far as he could see, with a shouting, fist-shaking woman here and there, and mostly dressed in the plain browns and grays, whites and blacks, of common folk. Men with swords and spears made up the forefront. A few men on horseback with lances and banners rode on the flanks of the mob. Someone was carrying a red and white banner, a design of keys and towers.

For a moment Simon hesitated. He did not want to kill these people.

But there was no way of stopping the Romans, and no one else was able or willing to act. If he did nothing, Charles's army would be destroyed and Simon would probably be killed along with everyone else.

He remembered something Roland, his true father, had told him many years ago: _No one who wants to live through a battle can afford to feel sorry for the men he is trying to kill. Make sure you kill them first, and then you can mourn for them afterward._

Putting his sympathy for the Romans out of his mind, Simon began to give orders to his archers. He deployed them in a line stretching from the Tiber to a thick grove of trees to the east. Through their sergeant he told them to shoot at the front and center of the oncoming Romans. He noticed that the voices of Count Charles and his antagonists had fallen silent.

_They are watching me_, he thought, and hoped no one would try to stop him.

When the Englishmen had their arrows nocked and their bows drawn and aimed, Simon shouted, "Tirez!"

They understood that well enough.

The arrows flew in flat curves across the narrowing distance between Count Charles's army and the Roman citizens. Simon saw men falling and others tripping over them.

"Encore!" Simon cried, but then looking back at his little troop of archers saw to his surprise that the Englishmen had already loaded and fired a second time. He had not known that the longbow could be fired again and again so quickly, much more quickly than the crossbow. Screams of panic and pain arose from the mob before him.

_I am killing poor people who are trying to defend their city._

A pang of shame swept through him, and he hesitated before giving the next order. But he remembered Roland's advice. The longer it took to drive these Romans back inside their gates, the more blood would be shed, and the more likely that lives would be lost on his side.

"Fire into the midst of the crowd," he told the English sergeant.

The arrows arced high into the overcast sky and fell like dark streaks of rain. The Romans were milling about, some trying to help the wounded, some running away, some shouting orders or pleas, trying to control the confusion.

Simon rode out in front of the bowmen.

"Advance and keep firing," he called to the sergeant. "Keep it up, keep pus.h.i.+ng them back."

He heard an arrow whistle past him. So the Romans also had some archers among them. He was too excited to feel any fear.

The longbowmen marched out into the field, stopping at intervals to load and fire, then advancing again. They hardly had to aim. Anywhere the arrows fell in the mob, packed closer together in retreat, they would wound or kill. Simon heard shouts and screams of terror from across the field. The Romans were falling over one another, trying to get away.

None of the poor devils was wearing armor.

Where were the professional defenders of the city, Simon wondered.

The great crowd was falling back toward the city's gates. Like the debris left by a wave receding from sh.o.r.e, bodies, dark clumps, lay thick in the stubble of the harvested fields. Simon saw a man throw his arms around the trunk of an olive tree and slowly slide to the ground.

He saw the red and white banner fall, then someone pick it up and run with it. Three men lay draped over low stone walls, arms and legs twitching.

The farmers' fields between Count Charles's army and the walls of Rome were littered with the dead, the dying, and the struggling wounded.

Simon wanted to call back the archers. He felt as if he had loosed a great rock from the top of a hill and it was rolling downward, unstoppable, destroying everything in its path.

The Romans were running desperately, and the pity he had forced himself not to feel while he was fighting them rose up to overwhelm him. His heart lodged in his throat like a rock, and tears crept out of the corners of his eyes.

_In G.o.d's name, what have I done?_

"Magnificent, Simon! You did admirably."

Charles d'Anjou had ridden up beside him and was grinning out at the carnage in the fields of stubble. His dark eyes were alight with pleasure. He struck Simon on his mailed back, one of those hard blows he was fond of.

"What presence of mind! What initiative!" He lowered his voice. "You could not have done better if we had planned it ahead of time. You saved me a fortune in gold."

He spurred his black and white charger closer to Simon's mare and leaned over to kiss him emphatically on the cheek, his stubble scratching Simon's face.

"I don't understand," said Simon.

Charles drew back and looked at him with narrowed eyes. "You don't?

Well, you did the right thing. We'll talk about it later."

He turned and shouted at his three commanders. "You see, idiots! One French knight with his head on his shoulders can do what all of you and all your knights could not."

"We were not attempting to do anything," du Mont said sourly, pus.h.i.+ng his helmet back off his bowl-shaped hair.

"Those were the bowmen I brought from Lincoln you used, Monseigneur de Gobignon," said FitzTrinian. "You did not have my permission."

In his present mood, Simon wished the pock-marked knight would make an issue of it.

"Do not make yourself more ridiculous than you already are, Sire Alistair," said Charles.

"We still have not settled this question of pay," said Dietrich of Regensburg.

"Go pick the purses of those dead men out there," said Charles with a scornful laugh.

Again Simon was sickened by Charles's manner. He had expected that the count would punish his rebellious commanders. Hanging would be an excellent idea. Flog them out of the army, at least. Instead, he continued to argue with them, even banter with them, as if they were all a pack of merchants in a money changer's shop.

To get away from the wretched business, Simon kicked his dark brown mare into motion and, followed by Thierry, rode out toward the city. He wished desperately that he were back in Perugia with Sophia.

He had seen enough killing in Orvieto, especially the night of the attack on the Palazzo Monaldeschi, to harden him. Still, it made his heart feel heavy as stone in his chest to see so many lives cut short.

And by his command.

What pain it must be to die. To have your life stopped, forever.

He recalled the arrow that had whizzed past him. He could easily have been killed.

He rode toward the walls of Rome until they towered over him. The crowd of citizens who had come out to stop Count Charles was gone--those able to flee. There were only the dead and dying scattered in the stubble field around him. Simon tried to avoid looking at the wounded. If it had been one or two men, as it had been that day at Orvieto when de Verceuil ordered the crossbowmen to fire into the crowd, he would have tried to help them. But there were too many here.

His contingent of English archers marched past him on their way back to the main army, their work done. They gave him a cheer, and he, in spite of his heavy heart, did as a good leader should and smiled and waved.