‘Tancred?’ asked Raymond.
‘The damage they can do is limited and will lessen as we march on.’ With Raymond quick to frown, he was equally quick to qualify and add what to him was the paramount consideration. ‘The trouble lies in the message it sends to those we must face up ahead.’
It was Normandy who responded, not Raymond. ‘You see it as encouraging them to resist?’
‘Look at Raphania. Fear has been our friend so far and it is an invaluable asset that has kept the likes of the Emir of Homs within his walls. To let pass what happened here will surely dent Muslim caution.’
‘It is your command to give,’ Duke Robert concluded, unwilling to make a stand on his own opinion.
Raymond, his fury unabated, did not hesitate. ‘Then we will attack on the morrow.’
It was not an assault carried out at the customary time of dawn; it took all of the morning just to climb high enough to even get onto the massif at the end of which the fortress sat. It was fortunate that Raymond now led a force well fed and fully restored to vigour, for to navigate the narrow paths through the lower woods, followed by the traverse of the screed and bush-covered slopes, was exhausting.
Their arrival before the walls was no surprise either, not least because it was necessary to recover breath and organisation on what was close to flat ground. Besides, progress had been easily marked at first light, from the moment the lances set out from their camp. Now when actually facing that one exposed wall the Crusaders were subjected to a massive outpouring of jeers and insults to both their manhood and the manner of their birth.
These were ignored and they immediately set about lashing together, to form rough ladders, the lengths of wood cut from the lower trees and brought up with them, this being carried out with such energy that it silenced any catcalls from defenders who now realised this was no mere demonstration. As was the custom, Raymond, through an interpreter, invited them to surrender and march out unmolested, an offer that was refused.
‘Convey to them how happy their refusal makes me,’ he said to his Arab-Latin speaker, ‘for I look forward to their pleas for mercy as they slow-roast over open fires.’
Raymond, determined to personally lead the assault, called his lances up to join him, the men of Tancred and Normandy held back in reserve. With a loud cry the Provencals rushed forward, ladders at hand, those swiftly laid upon the wall despite a hail of arrows and lances, with the knights climbing at pace, their own weapons out to engage.
Raymond was to the fore, his anger carrying him forward, so much so that he nearly became utterly isolated from his personal knights. Such was his prominence — he had made it plain he led the attackers — that the defenders rushed in numbers to the spot at which he was attacking in an effort to kill him and they nearly succeeded, only a furious assault by his own men driving them back.
None of these efforts broke the defence and nor was it expected that they would, the Provencals, Raymond included, soon being withdrawn so that the Apulians and Normans could take their turn to fight. If this occasioned losses to the Crusaders, it inflicted a greater number of casualties on the defenders. These men had never faced the like of these determined and mailed European warriors.
Fading light forced Raymond to call off the assault, but not before he had promised that he would return on the morrow and the day after that, with the added rider that these scabrous dogs had wounded his pride so grievously that nothing would assuage it but their heads on pikes. With torches lit to guide their way, his force of knights made their way back to the camp on the plain below, from where the defenders could watch them enjoy food and rest around their numerous fires.
The lances were marching again at dawn, following the same route and with no diminution in determination. Before they entered the trees they could just see the heads of the defenders as they marked their progress, the view soon cut off by the thick upper branches of the woods. Above the treeline, they scrabbled across that screed once more, then debouched onto the gentle slope before the fortress, with Raymond again lining up his Provencals for the initial assault. He was exhorting them to a supreme effort, until one of his knights pointed out that there seemed to be no one manning the walls and prepared to offer a defence; within a blink they found out the garrison had fled and the place was wide open.
The rest of the day was spent casting down as much of the walls as could be achieved while the light held, not enough to completely destroy Hisn al-Akrad as a position that could act as an outpost, but enough to render it vulnerable to anyone determined to press home an attack. Apart from that there was nothing to celebrate: when they left, the Emir’s men had taken with them everything, which the Crusaders surmised did not amount to much.
Two days later, with the host still moving slowly and eating heartily, the leaders were alerted to a body of mounted men approaching from the east in a cloud of dust. With evening approaching and close to water, Raymond called for the host to camp and for his pavilion to be hastily erected, orders also relayed that allowed those riders to approach, they being in numbers insufficient to present any threat.
What they did proffer, once they were allowed into the tent, were the gifts sent by a chastened Emir of Homs who had quickly been appraised of the defeat of his garrison: more fine horses and more gold, as well as a statement of his peaceful intentions.
‘How shocked he must be at the loss of Hisn al-Akrad,’ Raymond preened, speaking in French to Tancred and Normandy, ‘to be so alarmed that he sends all this while we are marching away from his lands.’
‘How good it would be,’ Duke Robert replied, ‘to retrace our steps and show him what Homs would look like after we have finished with him.’
‘Translate that,’ Raymond ordered his interpreter, ‘and make it sound like a threat.’
Spoken in Arabic, those words saw the blood drain from the face of the Emir’s messenger. It also produced an immediate flood of pleas to discover what it would take to satisfy the Lord of the Host for the insult made to him by those fools at Hisn al-Akrad, men who had acted against his master’s wishes and whose heads, he wished to assure him were, at this very moment, adorning the gates of Homs as a message to his subjects.
‘Probably a lie,’ Tancred opined, ‘and one we cannot verify.’
The interruption made Raymond tetchy, which lent verisimilitude to his next words, harshly delivered in both Latin and translation.
‘Then let the Emir stay within his city boundaries, for should I hear that he has left them I will turn back and set the walls of his city about his ears.’
The emissary looked at the other two Latin leaders, as if seeking a more pacific intercession, both with stone-like expressions on their faces, not easy to maintain given they were inwardly amused at Raymond’s bluff: Homs would be a hard nut to crack with the forces at their disposal and was now in the wrong direction. That they knew it to be so mattered not; it was only of concern that such a message as had been outlined went back to Homs and was believed.
‘And tell him,’ Raymond added, his voice loud and overdramatically terrifying now, ‘to send out riders to the other cities that they too will face the same fate if they insult us, for our God will smite you through our swords.’
Tancred moved closer and spoke softly, using French, in Raymond’s ear. ‘Can I suggest, My Lord, that they be camped well away from our lines, for in the morning, when they can see our true strength, they might assess that you have issued an idle threat.’
Silence was a clear indication that the Count did not want to accede to that, he was too full of his own joy at the success of his attack on that supposedly impregnable fortress. Yet the sense of what he was being advised was too great to counter: he had set out from Ma’arrat with barely five thousand lances, and even with a relatively easy passage men had fallen by the wayside, while that recent fight had cost him more.