Perhaps they were as eager to slay us as we were to slay them.
They were too far from me to see their quality, but they filled the beach from east to west, and even as we watched, a troop of horse that glittered in the rosy light emerged from the great towered gate at the Egyptian army’s back. They looked like ants, but they sparkled with steel.
The crusader fleet was running aground more than a bowshot from the shore.
Nicolas Sabraham made it to the top of the tower, his sword red-brown and his hands sticky on the hilt. He looked out over the battle of Alexandria.
‘Oh, sweet Christ,’ he said.
A little less than a mile away, tiny figures were leaping off the king’s galley — into the sea.
Nerio emerged on to the roof of the Casteleto just as we saw the Hagarenes on the other tower begin to wind their engine.
‘Get the sailors,’ I shouted. ‘Find men who know how to make these machines shoot!’
Nerio nodded. ‘I think we have them all. The castle is ours.’
I ran across the tower to look at the city at its nearest point. The gate was shut. So there was no counter-attack coming. Nor would it be difficult to resist any attack; it could only come along a single stone road two horsemen wide.
‘They’re not loosing at us at all,’ Fiore said.
The engines on the Pharos castle had begun to hurl their rocks the other way, at the immobile crusader fleet.
Even as we watched, a Venetian cog took a direct hit. Timber flew into the air, and in a moment, the little ship sank. She went down in less water than there was to cover her hull, but her armoured men drowned in water not much over their heads.
‘Sweet Christ,’ moaned Sabraham.
Let me explain again. The harbours of Alexandria are like a gothic letter E. Two harbours, separated by the long spit with the Pharos fortification between them. That fortress could batter the crusader fleet, and looked to me to be impregnable. We’d just taken the Casteleto, at the bottom of the E, if you like, and the crusader fleet was trying to get into the old harbour, between the Pharos spit and the top of the E.
Huffing, Brother Robert and a dozen sailors came up the ladder to the top of the Casteleto’s donjon. Brother Robert had to stop at the top and breathe, despite my urgency. His face was so red I feared he would explode.
Miles stood by him. ‘Can I tell you something that will make you laugh?’ he asked.
I was watching the destruction of the crusade. ‘I doubt it,’ I said.
‘The sally port door was unlocked,’ Miles said. ‘I just pushed it open and walked in.’
I didn’t laugh, but I do now. That’s war, friends. All the terror on the ladder — and I might have tried the door!
The engines on the far tower were coming back again.
I pointed to them. ‘Brother Robert? Can you do anything?’
His head bobbed. ‘I’ll do what I can,’ he said, and began to issue crisp orders. The Casteleto had a pair of machines, both mangonels, mounted high.
‘They’re higher than we,’ Brother Robert said. ‘I don’t think I could strike them save by the will of God.’
Sabraham shook his head. ‘You don’t need to strike home,’ he said. ‘Those aren’t hardened men. They rush their shots and they miss. If you come close, they will turn their fire on us.’
Fiore had by this time found a half-pike. He fixed the admiral’s flag to it and looked at me.
I nodded. ‘As secure as we’ll ever be!’ I said.
Fiore dei Liberi planted the order’s flag on the walls of the Casteleto, the first lodgement the crusader army made in Alexandria.
Out on the water, there was no immediate change in the Order’s ships.
The great bows of our two mangonels began to bend back. I went to the winches with the sailors and my friends and two Gascons who’d ended in the tower.
We got the bows back, and the great cogs of the mechanisms clicked into place. With heavy pry bars, Brother Robert and two sailors began to move the engines, levering them a few inches at a time.
The far tower loosed its deadly hail at the crusader fleet.
I was panting from winding the great bows. But out to sea, the oars were out on the whole of the Order’s squadron, and they gave way all together, a magnificent sight. Caught by my attention, other men came to look.
The Order’s ships formed a line behind the galia grossa.
‘Here they come,’ whispered Juan. He fell to his knees and began to pray. Most of us who were not actively aiming the engines knelt and prayed.
‘Let’s try that,’ Brother Robert said. ‘With God’s grace,’ he muttered, and pulled the lever.
The bows stunned the air, and the great engine slammed back in recoil, jumping a hand’s breath and slamming back down to the stone roof so that dust rose up.
Brother Robert’s first missile was visible at the top of its arc. And then it fell too far and slammed into the Pharos castle, about halfway up its tower. Dust and stone fragments flew.
We all cheered.
Every man in the enemy tower ran to the wall facing us to look. Until then, despite the alarm sounded by one of theirs, I suppose they had assumed themselves safe. Truly, I have no notion what they thought.
We started winding the engine and Brother Robert moved the second one into firing position.
Nerio was grunting along with me on the torsion. ‘Think — that — whoever — designed — this tower-’ he grunted.
Brother Robert loosed his second dart. It went higher, and struck the enemy tower just a hand’s breadth below the top of the crenellation. There was a little dust, but there were screams. They carried, because it was a silent dawn, and we could not hear what was happening on the other side of the Pharos spit, where the crusaders and the king were landing. And dying.
It was just luck. In four more shots we didn’t come close to hitting the top: one went over, and two slammed into the flank of the tower and one vanished into the sea because we hadn’t tightened the torsion all the way.
Then the first rock came back at us. It was well-aimed and struck our tower close to the top, and men were cut with stone chips. The whole tower moved the way your breastplate moves when a heavy arrows strikes it true. I wished for my armour.
Brother Robert loosed another engine. His dart struck well up, and knocked in a merlon. I knew from what I’d just experienced that a hail of stone chips had just flayed an engine’s crew — nothing mortal, probably, but a healthy dose of fear.
‘Don’t touch this one!’ Brother Robert shouted. ‘Wind her gently, I pray you!’
A stone the size of a helmet struck him, and tore him to gobbets like a doll worried by a dog. He seemed to explode.
I shook myself — I still see him. Bah! We wound that engine like demons. And perhaps his dead hands held the engine steady. Fiore pulled the handle and the beast leaped. For the first time, our dart just cleared the far wall and vanished into their tower.
Marc-Antonio handed me a scrap of cotton. I used it to wipe my face and it came away bloodied.
Now, I could hear the sound of combat. On the far beach, men were fighting. And dying.
At my feet, the fleet of the Order stood in, due south, under oars. It was too late for them to turn, and now they were going to run the gauntlet of the Pharos fortress’s plummeting stone and make for the beach of the Pharos Harbour.
Our tower took two more hits and some of our sailors began to flinch. And some of us began to take cover under the stone of the curtain wall. Men are only men and flesh and blood cannot stand against stone.
‘Again!’ I shouted. ‘Wind it again!’ I was on one drum, with Nerio, and Fiore and Miles were on the other. Juan had two Gascons and a Catalan winding the second machine.
I can’t tell you where the next stone hit us — only that we were all lacerated, one of the Gascons was messily dead and Juan had a gash from eyeball to ear and was stretched full length on the roof.