They would attend and say Mass in the knowledge, while indifferent to the fact, that death might await them. Each man would swallow the Eucharist and the wine, which represented the body and blood of Jesus Christ, and commend his soul to God before setting out to kill any fellow man with whom he fought, and once the battle was over, to then take, in the form of anything of value, what he could from those who survived.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Raymond was slow to start, letting dawn, the normal hour for an assault, pass by before he gave the order to form up, that extended by several more turns of sand passing through the narrow neck of glass. It was near to noontime before the first horn blew and the tower began to move, a red-backed flag with its golden Occitan cross fluttering in the stiff morning breeze. Not that it was very obvious the sun was at its zenith, hidden as it was in a grey and cloudy sky that looked to threaten rain.
Many of the stones that now filled that dry moat had come from the roadway that led to the western curtain wall — it would be madness to try to take one of the many towers, naturally higher in construction, so the siege tower was rolled slowly forward with a relative ease that decreased the closer it came to the masonry. There the pathway narrowed considerably: in the killing zone it had been harder to make it so wide and so smooth and the continued forward motion on less than perfect ground now made the structure rock to and fro and from side to side in what looked, from a distance, to be an alarming degree.
The men who suffered most from the movement were the archers on the very top level, there to engage in an exchange with their counterparts of the walls, who started firing flaming bolts as soon as it came in extreme range, aimed at setting the less solid parts of the tower alight, especially the brushwood screens that lined each level. With Raymond’s bowman was a gigantic huntsman blowing endless loud calls on his horn to encourage his confreres and, he hoped, frighten the defence.
Below the archers and behind a solid screen were gathered the small body of knights who would undertake the initial assault, the screen when dropped acting as a platform on which they could begin a fight designed to push the defenders back onto their own parapet. With the heavily armed knights stood a quartet of lightweight milities whose task was to cast grappling irons upon which they would then haul in an effort to ease the task of the whole mass pushing below.
Originally, at ground level and in front of the tower, the milities and camp followers had been pulling on ropes, but that was abandoned as soon as the arrows began to fly. Now they were behind and pushing hard, partly screened from harm by the structure, lined up on either side of the supporting knights, ready to aid their confreres by rushing up the internal ladders to join as soon as the fighting began. That had to wait till the tower was stationary: too many bodies on the floors made it impossible to move.
Given they were pushing and the ground was less even, progress slowed until even a snail would have outrun its progress, its four great wheels creaking as it edged forward, the weight of the tower enough on its own to send out wisps of smoke from the greased axels. Waiting along the wall was a frisson of pikes, as well as swordsmen ready to cut those grappling-iron ropes, while as soon as they came within range javelins were cast in a high arc in an attempt to draw first blood by looping over the screen.
There had been yelling from both sides, to go with that relentless horn blowing, since the tower first moved but the closer it got the louder such shouting became as men sought to bolster their courage by exhortation, until the air was filled with the combination, the cursing of both faiths now loud enough to fill the air. If Raymond could be blinded by his pride he was no tyro as a generaclass="underline" an attack with ladders was launched against the northern wall to split the defence. In plain sight the archers atop the tower saw some of the defenders rush off to contain that assault and they were not alone.
Bohemund was watching events with as keen an eye as his rival, just as earlier he had listened to his Armenian interpreter, Firuz, who had been sent to sniff out Raymond’s tactics and came to report the surreptitious preparations for the supplementary attack, making an assessment of when to launch his own attempt against the southern ramparts, which if they were not unguarded should have few men in place to repulse him.
‘It will not remain thus,’ were the words he had employed when he outlined his thinking to his senior captains, as dawn rose prior to the opening of the battle. ‘Raymond’s northern attack will draw off strength from his main effort but they will soon see that for what it is, a diversion.’
Canny as ever, Bohemund had held back this conference till it could be delayed no longer, for his men needed time to get into position. Where he would launch his attack — on the east wall or to the south — was a secret he had held close, for the very simple reason that if no one knew it could not be betrayed either by a loose tongue or a needy purse. Also his delay in deploying was designed to make Raymond think he might stand aside to await the outcome of the Provencal effort, only moving when he was sure of its success.
‘If our task is to get onto the southern curtain wall, there is to be no attempt to get into the city from there.’ That got many a raised eyebrow and quite a few low-voiced comments. ‘Once we have cleared the parapet, seek out a tower and take it. Once in our possession it is to be held regardless of who seeks to dislodge us.’
If the first remark had set minds working, those closing words had an even greater effect: that the Muslims of Ma’arrat would seek to dislodge them could be taken as a fact; ‘regardless of who’ could only mean Raymond’s men, which was quickly acknowledged by their commander, but with a sharp caveat.
‘Kill as many infidels as you like, but spill a drop of Christian blood and you will answer to me. The task is to take and hold the towers so that even if the Count of Toulouse takes the city he does not hold it without our cooperation.’
Tancred spoke up and it was clear by his tone of voice he was far from happy. ‘This is a repeat of Antioch.’
‘No, nephew, it is a reverse of Antioch.’ Aware of a shifting of feet among his other captains Bohemund was quick to add, ‘There are those of you who are bent on Jerusalem, and that is so of many of the men you lead. I say here and swear that nothing I will do will ever keep you from that goal.’
There was temptation to reprise all the things he had said to Tancred: Antioch must be held if the Crusade was to have any prospect of success and it had to be in the hands of a man who could repulse any attempt by the Turks to retake it, while no faith could be placed in Alexius Comnenus and Byzantium to do that for them.
That he, Bohemund, was set upon holding the city even against the Emperor, and if any man saw that as covetousness, it was not something for which he was prepared to seek approval, for if he could gain remission for past sins in the Holy City he would gain little else. Instead, the thought of Alexius — the reasons he had lost to him in Thessaly and Macedonia all those years past — gave him a better way to appeal to these men.
‘Antioch is the most vital trading city in Syria, if not the richest between Constantinople and Cairo, so no words of mine are needed to tell any one of you what opportunities exist for a man bent on gaining prosperity in my service. Those of faith who serve with me but wish to fulfil their vow must do so and go on to Jerusalem. But know this, once that task is completed, they will be welcomed back to my banner should they choose to return. Any man who wishes to stay with me in Antioch I will ask to aid me in holding the city and the province in my name.’