The Scotsman scowled and cleared his throat. ‘According to the few reports we have, Saladin fields some twenty to thirty thousand men, mostly light cavalry, but he also has two thousand fine Nubian swordsmen from Egypt, and a few thousand superior Berber cavalry — lancers, for the most part. In numbers alone, his force over-matches ours but his main arm, the Turkish light cavalry, is weaker, man to man, than our own horsemen. They are fast, much faster than our destriers, but only lightly armoured, and they use a short bow that can be shot from the back of a horse; secondary weapons are the curved sword or scimitar, the light lance and the mace. One on one, our knights will always beat their horsemen, but that’s not how they fight. They don’t stand and slug it out against single enemies.’
Someone muttered: ‘Cowardly scoundrels,’ and Sir James stopped and glowered round the circle of hard men. ‘These men are no cowards,’ he said. ‘Their tactic,’ and he gave special weight to the word, ‘is to ride in close to the enemy, loose their arrows, kill as many as they can, and ride away again before they can be challenged. That way their enemy gets hurt but they don’t. It is not cowardice, just good, plain common sense. But they have another tactic too, when facing Christian knights, which is to harass the enemy with their arrows, and try to provoke a charge. When our knights attack, the Turks disperse in all directions, and the heavy charge suddenly finds itself with no target. It’s like a big man trying to punch a swarm of wasps. Our knights become separated from each other, the force of the charge has been dissipated and the individual knights, scattered all over the field, can then be surrounded and slain by a dozen lighter, faster cavalrymen.’
Robin took over the briefing once again: ‘So we do not charge them. Our cavalry does not charge until we can be sure of landing a heavy blow on their main force and smashing it. And when they attack us, the infantry must soak up the punishment. The archers, of course, will take our revenge at a distance; but the spearmen must stand firm and take what they have to give us.’ Here Robin gave a wintry smile. ‘It is not all bad news for the footmen,’ he went on, ‘they will be divided into two companies, each taking a turn to defend the cavalry for one day on the left flank, the flank nearest the enemy; on the second day they will march between the cavalry and the sea, on the right, and enjoy a delightful stroll with hardly any danger at all. Anyone lucky enough to be wounded gets to ride in one of our nice comfortable ships.’ The men laughed, more as a release of tension than because the jest was a particularly good one.
‘Is everybody clear?’ said Robin. ‘If so…’
‘What if we are directly attacked? Surely we can charge then,’ asked a dim-witted cavalry veteran named Mick.
Robin sighed: ‘They will feint at you often, but your job as a horseman is simply to march, march, march southward to Jaffa; try to understand this, Mick. The enemy wants you to charge him because he is faster than you and so you cannot catch him, and it will break up our formations. Once our cohesion is broken, and the men are scattered, the enemy has us at his mercy. So what will we do, Mick?’
‘Ah, oh, I suppose we should march, march, march all the way to Jaffa,’ said Mick, slightly embarrassed. There was more laughter, in which I was glad to see Mick joined.
‘Good man,’ said Robin.
It was truly a wondrous sight: like a gigantic glittering snake, nearly a mile long, the Christian army set out from Acre, pennants flying, clarions crying, the hot sun reflecting shards of light from thousands of mail coats, shields, buckles and spear points. We left behind a strong garrison; most of the young women we had accumulated in our travels, including Richard’s new bride Queen Berengaria and his sister Queen Joanna, and two or three thousand or so sick and wounded. I wondered what had become of Nur, whether I would ever see her again — whether I wanted to — and then pushed that thought away: this was not a time for self-pity.
King Richard, splendid in his finest gilt-chased armour, a golden crown on the brow of his steel conical helmet, rode up and down the line all that first day with a company of knights, exhorting the commanders to keep their companies close together and not allow any to lag behind. He seemed to be brimming with energy, now that we were finally setting off towards our destination, and his strong voice could be heard in snatches up and down the column, over the immense tumult of nearly eighteen thousand men on the move.
We marched in the rear part of the second division, myself riding Ghost at a walk in a double column with eighty-two surviving mounted men-at-arms, led by Robin and Sir James de Brus. Like all the other troopers, I carried shield and lance, and wore an open-face helmet, knee-length hauberk and felt under-tunic beneath the mail, despite the blistering heat. We were plagued by huge clouds of flies that buzzed and crawled over our faces, drinking the sweat and as we were for ever slapping and brushing at them, we must have looked like and army of lunatics, twitching and flapping and sweating as we ambled along in the harsh morning sunshine.
To my left walked Little John’s company, a mixture of archers and spearmen. To my right, past the other line of cavalry troopers, marched Owain’s men on the seaward side. We had one hundred and sixty one archers fit for duty and eighty-five spearmen — I knew this because Robin had asked me to make an accurate tally before we left. Some of our men had died en route to Outremer, some perished in the siege, and some were sick with fever and had to be left at Acre, but ours was still a formidable force. The archers and spearmen had been divided between two companies: one commanded by Owain, and the other by Little John. If attacked, the spearmen were to form a shield wall and stand firm, and behind them the archers were to shoot down the foe. We cavalrymen were not to take any offensive action, unless absolutely necessary: as Robin had hammered home to us, our job was to march, march, march — and stay together.
Behind us came a small force of belligerent Flemings, and then the French knights of the third division. They were the rearguard, and also had charge of protecting the baggage train: forty lumbering ox-carts, several strings of pack horses, and three dozen mules. Most of the baggage was on board the galleys of the fleet, which could just be seen, keeping pace with us out on the calm blue water to our left, wet oars dipping and flashing like freshly caught mackerel in the sunlight.
By mid-morning it was already evident that the column had problems. The gap between our second division and the Frenchmen of the third seemed to grow larger with every step. And we were reluctant to slow our march because it would mean losing touch with the Norman knights in front of us. So we stuck rigidly to our pace and the space between our company and the French grew wider. At one point, King Richard came thundering past with a tail of sweating household knights, and I could hear him shouting angrily at the French commander, Hugh, Duke of Burgundy, telling him in no uncertain terms to keep up. I could not hear the Duke’s reply, but the harangue seemed to have no effect at all, as the hole in the marching column continued to grow. At noon, having covered no more than five miles, we stopped for a meal and a much-needed drink of lukewarm water from our skins. It was then that I noticed, for the first time, the enemy scouts.
Three hundred yards to my left, riding along the top of a small sandy ridge, was a line of cavalry: small, lean men on small, wiry ponies, their heads wrapped in black turbans, from which the crown of a steel helmet with a cruel looking spike emerged. I could see the shape of their short bows, protruding from a leather carrier behind the saddle. They looked an evil crew, their dark bearded faces seemingly marked with malice and a lust to spill Christian blood. Despite the heat, I shivered.
As we resumed our march, the enemy cavalry kept pace with us, hour after hour, walking their beasts, and coming no closer. Occasionally one rider would peel off from the column and gallop away to the northeast to make a report to the main body of the Saracen host, which was out of sight somewhere in the hills. By mid-afternoon, I noticed that the line of Saracen scouts had thickened considerably — instead of a single row of walking ponies, there were now a fat column of men and horses, three or four deep. And behind the enemy column I could see more horsemen coming to join them. I looked behind me: the gap between our division and the ranks of the French cavalry had opened even wider. There was now a good quarter of a mile of empty space between us.