Suddenly, he could not wait to be there, too. Within three heartbeats, Murdo, and all the rest of the Norsemen, were flying down the hill towards the plain. It was not long before their steps became more cautious, however. 'See here!' shouted Fafnir, a little way ahead of the group. Murdo saw him stoop and bring up a broken sword from the long, dry grass. Almost at once, Vestein, no more than a dozen paces away, produced half of a shield and the broken haft of a spear. 'There was a battle here, I think,' said Fafnir.
They proceeded on, but more slowly, and the further they went, the more they found: battered war helms of a strange, pointed kind; lightweight oval shields made of boiled leather; arrows by the score, most of them broken. And scattered in amongst the remnants of battle, they found the remains of the warriors. Murdo bent down to retrieve a finely curved piece of a bow, and discovered the weapon was still attached to the hand that had last employed it. Both hand and arm came away as Murdo lifted it. There arose a fearsome, stinging stench, and he caught a glimpse of white maggots wriggling from a brown mass by his feet as he dropped the bow and jumped back with a shout.
The corpse was so far decomposed that it no longer looked human; Murdo had simply not seen it when he bent down. He saw it now for what it was and, realizing what lay before him, he began to see others as well. They had come to the part of the battleground where the fighting had been the fiercest, and the dead were lying where they had fallen.
Once fine clothes and cloaks were filthy, rotting rags; flesh and muscle were blasted black by the sun, and withered hard like old leather. Many of the bodies had been attacked by birds and beasts, and, more and more, Murdo caught the glint of smooth white bone gleaming dully from the long grass round about. Once, he stepped over what appeared to be the lower torso of a man and his foot struck what he thought was a stone. The stone rolled, however, and Murdo found himself staring down into a withered brown, worm-ravaged face, whose empty eye sockets gazed darkly up past him and into the sun-bright heavens above.
Murdo clamped a hand over his nose and mouth, and moved on, no longer looking either right or left. It occurred to him as he trudged along that he saw no carcasses of horses, and he wondered about this. Unless the battle had been fought entirely on foot, which he very much doubted, there must certainly have been some horses killed, too. What could have happened to them?
Upon reaching the plain, they passed through several grain fields and proceeded towards the entrance to the city, meeting no challenge until, upon crossing the bridge, they came to the huge, open gate. Six guards in loose, light-coloured mantles-three at either of the enormous doors-noticed their weapons and stopped them. 'You there! Halt!'
Murdo was surprised to hear these dark-skinned men speaking Latin. 'What is your business here?' demanded the foremost guard; he held a long, flat-bladed lance, and carried a short sword in his belt. A large man, he nevertheless looked ill-fed and haggard; those with him appeared even less robust. Murdo decided they looked like men dragged from their sickbeds and forced to stand guard.
Ronan answered. 'Pax Vobiscum!' he declared benevolently, raising his hands in priestly blessing. 'Greetings in the name of Our Lord Christ. My friend, we are pilgrims on our way to Jerusalem. We were told that this city was yet under siege, but it appears we were ill-informed.'
'The siege is over long since,' replied the soldier, eyeing them with tired suspicion. 'The armies have moved on.'
'Ah, yes,' answered Ronan, nodding sympathetically. 'As it happens, my brothers and I are priests, as you can see, and we travel in the company of vassals belonging to Magnus, King of Norway, whom we were hoping to meet here. We were told he has come to Antioch, I hope we are not mistaken.'
'Oh, him,' said the soldier, relaxing at last. 'He is here. You may enter.' He motioned them through with the head of his spear.
'You know him! Good. Could you tell us where we might find the king?' asked Ronan hopefully.
'All the lords are received at the citadel,' the guardsman said. 'That is all I know.'
The elder priest thanked the man for his help, gave him a blessing, and they continued on their way, passing between the great, iron-bound timber doors, and into the cool, shadowed darkness of the gate-tower. The respite was all too brief, however; a moment later, they were stepping once more into the harsh sunlight striking off the stone pavements all around. Momentarily blinded, Murdo put up his hand to shade his eyes; when he looked again, he found he was standing in the middle of a street, the like of which he had never encountered.
Stretching as far as the eye could see was a wide, stone-paved avenue lined with tall, graceful columns either side; moreover, these columns supported a second row of columns bearing a vine-covered roof to shelter the walkway below. The civility of this feature amazed Murdo when he realized that the people of the city were not forced to walk in the street with the carts and animals, but beneath a leaf-shaded arbour which kept the hot sun off their heads.
Rising from the broad, flat river bluff on which the city was founded, this remarkable double colonnade swept gracefully towards the heights of the cliffs and mountains, whose peaks could be seen soaring above the rooftops and domes just beyond the city to the south. Straight as a rod along its entire length, the broad street passed the ruin of an old Roman amphitheatre, an enormous basilica, and an elegant palace faced with glowing yellow marble. There were so many churches that Murdo soon lost count and interest, delighting himself instead with the profusion of palm trees, and brightly-coloured flowers growing in massive earthenware tubs everywhere.
Up the street they went, passing along the stately row of columns, past gleaming white houses with pierced-screen windows and bronze-figured doors. In niches high up in the walls of some of the more elaborate houses, statues looked gravely down upon the passing troop. Perhaps due to the heat of the day, the newcomers had the street and shaded walkway mostly to themselves. Apart from a few ragged water vendors pushing carts laden with clay jars there were few citizens about. They passed likewise empty sidestreets, and a vacant marketplace sweltering in the sun.
Over all the city, a quiet lethargy hung like a pall draped upon a gilded tomb. Murdo had imagined that a city of such size and grandeur must be thronging with people day and night, and the scarcity of citizens surprised him so that he began to wonder at it. Where was everyone? And where were the crusaders? Even if the whole population had been driven off, there should have been pilgrims aplenty to crowd the streets and marketplaces.
But, save for the occasional creak of a wagon wheel, or the rushing flap of pigeon wings as they passed another empty square, the city was quiet. The Norsemen noticed this, too, and their jovial exuberance grew more and more muted and subdued the further up the street they walked, until no one spoke at all, and they passed by the dark and silent houses in a bristling hush.
The wide central street ended at the citadel in the upper part of the city; the final climb to the fortress was the steepest part of the walk, and it left the seafaring warriors winded by the time they reached the square fronting the stronghold. On the left-hand side of the square, beneath the stronghold, four pairs of low, wide doors marked out the stables. The foremost pair of doors gaped open, and from stone troughs on either side, twin vines grew and spread to form a bower before the entrance where five or six men sat lolling in the drowsy shade.
At the approach of the newcomers, one of the men stood and came forward a few steps. He turned and called behind him to someone inside, then came on to meet them. He raised his hand to halt them as five or six more men tumbled out of the stable doorway behind him. The company stopped uncertainly, and waited.