The Saracen: The Holy War Part 80

The red-turbaned line was a little past the place where Simon had come out. They were riding those light, fast Saracen horses.

Where were the lines of crossbowmen? Gone--and now Simon saw bodies scattered on the ground where the foot archers had stood.

Charles's banner was still on the same hilltop. In moments the Saracens would be upon him.

"Faster! Faster!" Simon shouted, slapping Brillant's neck as the huge war-horse ran at top speed to overtake the Saracen line.

Daoud charged on, his eyes fixed on the crowned figure under the red and black banner.

The pounding of hoofbeats in the air all around him was suddenly louder than he thought possible. He had been hearing the ululating, high-pitched war cries of his men, but now heard screams of pain and shouts of battle and deeper war cries, voices shouting in French.

Coming from the right flank.

He turned. He glimpsed a purple banner rus.h.i.+ng toward him. A white and red banner along with it. The horse beside his was thrown against him by a blow that all but knocked him senseless. Caught between the two horses' flanks, his right leg felt as if it were being crushed. As pain shot up into his hip, he reeled dizzily in the saddle and clutched the reins till his left arm ached, his right holding his saif aloft so as not to stab one of his own men.

His horse fell against the one on his other side. All around him horses and riders were thrown to the ground. The Sons of the Falcon were flung about wildly, their forward momentum broken by some unimaginable force that had hurled itself upon them.

At the sight, he felt a giant hand reach into his chest and tear his heart out.

The Sons of the Falcon were buried under an avalanche of mail-clad Frankish warriors riding huge armored war-horses.

_My G.o.d, my G.o.d! Why are you doing this to us?_

He wanted to fling himself down from his horse and smash himself on the ground, screaming out his grief. In an instant he had been flung from joy to the very darkest pit of despair. In an instant he saw that everything was lost. His staring eyes were dry. This was all too sudden, too shocking, even for tears.

Where had these devils of Franks come from?

Down out of the hills to the east. They were still coming, hundreds of them, pouring down the forested slope and charging over the level ground of the valley. Broadswords, maces, battle axes, rose and fell. Their war shouts filled the air.

"Dieu et le Sepulcre!"

"L'Eglise et le Pape!"

"Le Roi Charles!"

He saw the green and white Falcon banner go down. He heard the band instruments give out their last ugly sounds as they and the men who played them perished under maces and axes. He saw with agony the deaths of men he had trained and ridden with--Husain, Said, Farraj, Omar--heads smashed, bodies cloven. He felt in his own body the blows that killed them.

Daoud recognized the purple banner now. Three gold crowns. He had seen it before in Orvieto. Simon de Gobignon had come at last to this battle.

He should feel hatred for de Gobignon, but all he felt was a numb despair.

His few remaining men crowded against him, forcing him to fall back. He rode back toward Benevento, away from the triumphant army of Gobignon, crushed with sorrow. The Sons of the Falcon, the force he had taken a year to build, had been destroyed in a flicker of time, as if the earth had opened and swallowed them.

Lorenzo wept and cursed himself for being too late to warn Daoud before the French attacked. He stood on the edge of the field, holding his horse's reins in one hand and his crossbow in the other, watching the French knights sweep across the valley from east to west, trampling everyone in their path. Through his tears he saw the purple and gold banner of Gobignon fluttering against the cold blue-and-white sky.

_Simon de Gobignon. If only we had killed him in Orvieto._

All about him, men rode and ran and fought. Singly and in twos and threes, horses without riders ran wildly this way and that. He wondered if Daoud was still alive. What had happened to King Manfred and the other Hohenstaufen leaders? Charles d'Anjou still occupied his hill at the north end of the valley. Almost overwhelmed at the moment help arrived, he had never moved.

There were fewer and fewer of Manfred's men in sight, and more of Charles's with their accursed red crosses.

A line of about a dozen hors.e.m.e.n was coming toward him at a walk. Most of them wore crosses, but they looked like neither French knights nor their Guelfo allies. Lorenzo rubbed his eyes to clear his vision of tears and took a harder look. Two men rode in the center wearing bowl-shaped steel helmets and gleaming gray mail s.h.i.+rts without surcoats. They held short, heavy bows in their hands. The brims of their helmets shaded their faces, but Lorenzo could tell that their skin was browner than any Frank's or Italian's.

The men flanking them on either side wore conical helmets and what seemed to be leather breastplates and carried long, curving sabers. Bows were slung over their shoulders. One man on the right end of the line was dressed in a steel cuira.s.s.

Lorenzo realized that he was seeing the Tartars and their Armenian bodyguards. And the man with the steel breastplate was Sordello. At the sight of the old bravo, Lorenzo felt fury boiling in him. Back in Orvieto, that man had deserted Daoud and him. Despite that, Daoud had sent him money through Ugolini in Perugia and Viterbo, and Sordello had sent them snippets of information. But Lorenzo had privately vowed that the next time he saw Sordello he would squash him like a bedbug. And now he appeared again, just after Simon de Gobignon smashed Daoud's final hope of victory.

The Tartars talked and gestured to each other, surveying the battlefield. Their attention and that of their guards was on a melee that was rolling rapidly toward them. A boiling ma.s.s of hors.e.m.e.n, the survivors of Daoud's Sons of the Falcon battling with the vanguard of the Frankish knights, was struggling its way to the western side of the valley.

Partly hidden from the approaching Tartars by his horse, Lorenzo readied his crossbow. He hooked the bowstring to his belt and put his right foot in the stirrup in front of the bow. He kicked out sharply, straightening his right leg, and the bowstring snapped into place behind the catch. It would be a pleasure to kill Sordello, but his first duty was to kill the Tartars. And thus he would pay the French back for Daoud's defeat. This would be much more satisfying than leaving poisoned wine in their tent.

He raised the bow, loaded a bolt, and stepped out into the Tartars'

path.

"You little monsters!" he shouted. The younger Tartar, Philip, brought his head up, giving Lorenzo an even better shot. Lorenzo depressed the catch, and the bolt smashed into the center of Philip's chest, right through the mail s.h.i.+rt. His eyes huge, Philip fell out of the saddle.

His frightened horse galloped away.

Lorenzo ducked back and bent to draw his bow. A moment later something hit the side of his horse and the animal gave an agonized whinny and fell to its knees. By that time Lorenzo had his bow c.o.c.ked and loaded again. He rose up from behind his dying horse.

John was just drawing his bow for a second shot.

"For Rachel!" Lorenzo called, and shot John in the same place he had hit Philip, the center of the chest. The force of the bolt knocked John backward.

John toppled from his horse and slid to the ground. He cried out some words in his Tartar language, s.h.i.+vered, and lay still.

Lorenzo stood a moment, breathing heavily. He felt the satisfaction of a man who has done a hard job that he had long wanted to complete. There was no satisfied blood-l.u.s.t, no gloating over vengeance achieved. It was just the good feeling of an archer whose arrows had gone true.

"Kill him!" Sordello shouted.

The Armenians and Sordello thundered down upon him. Lorenzo set the crossbow stirrup on the ground and put his foot into it, but he knew he would not have time for another shot. He tensed himself for the bite of those saber blades into his unarmored body.

Then, like a curtain, the fleeing remnant of the Sons of the Falcon and the French knights in pursuit on their gigantic horses swept between Lorenzo and the Tartars' guards. Still clutching the crossbow, he ran.

A bay Arabian horse, riderless, its eyes rolling in frenzy, galloped toward him. Lorenzo threw down the crossbow and sprang into the animal's path, spreading his arms wide. The horse tried to dodge around him, but Lorenzo grabbed the reins, dug his heels in and jerked the horse to a stop. He spoke soothingly and rubbed its head, and when it was calm enough, he scooped up his weapon and heaved himself into the saddle.

He felt a grim satisfaction at having killed the Tartars. But it was too late, and not enough. Daoud's brave attempt to finish Charles had been smashed, and the battle was all but lost.

He must get back to Rachel and Friar Mathieu. If, out of this tragedy, he could rescue Rachel, that at least would be something.

Striking right and left with his saif, Daoud hammered on lifted s.h.i.+elds, on mailed arms, on helmets, on longswords. Few of his blows did damage, but they forced a way for himself and his horse through the ring of Frenchmen surrounding Manfred's defenders. Mustached faces, blind with fury, thrust themselves at him, and he struck at them with fist and s.h.i.+eld and sword. He drove his horse into a narrow s.p.a.ce between the rumps of two huge destriers, pushed them apart like Samson bringing down the temple of the Philistines, and was facing one of his own Sons of the Falcon, a dark-skinned man with blood and dirt smeared over his black beard.

"Ahmad! Make way for me."

"My Lord. I thought you were dead." Ahmad nudged his horse to one side, enough to let Daoud through, and then with his lance drove back the French knight who tried to follow him.