The shift in direction, however, meant that the Christian army left the road and started cutting across country. That made walking much more difficult for the infantry, as there were frequent gullies, rocks, and thorns. That was bad enough for men just walking forward; it was much harder for men trying to stay in formation under unrelenting attacks. As a result, the rear guard was slowed down even more, and a gap threatened to open up between the main body of Christian troops and the rear guard. It was a gap the Saracens were bound to exploit—and if they did, the rear guard would be surrounded and cut to pieces.
As that threat loomed larger with each excruciating step
forward, Ibelin rode over to consult with Gerard de Ridefort. The latter
proposed charging the enemy to drive them back, but Ibelin angrily rejected the
plan. It was too obvious that the enemy would simply fall back before the heavy
cavalry, and then attack again as soon as the charge was spent.
“That’s a waste
of energy,” Ibelin told the Templar Master bluntly.
“You’re just afraid to charge!” Ridefort retorted hotly.
“Don’t try that crap on me, Ridefort. I’m not a frightened
dandy like the King you made! Charging light Turkish cavalry is idiocy—and if
you do it, you do it alone.” Ibelin let his eyes sweep the Templars around the
Master, hoping to find a man like Jacques de Mailly, willing to challenge their
Grand Master and support him. But the men with Ridefort today only dropped
their eyes and would not look at him.
“God is on our side!” Ridefort barked belligerently, making
his own men sit up straighter in their saddles.
“Really? As he was with you at Cresson?” Ibelin shot back.
“Do you doubt Christ is with us?”
“It is blasphemy to confuse your own will with the will of
God.”
“We charge!” Ridefort spun his horse on its haunches and
spurred it forward, ordering the Templar standard-bearer to fall in beside him.
Ibelin rode back to his own knights and announced grimly,
“The Templars insist on charging.”
“That’s madness!” Sir Bartholomew protested, and Balian
noted how haggard the old man looked. His eyes were sunken in his skull, all
but lost in shadow in the depths of his helmet. He shouldn’t be here, Balian
registered. He should be enjoying his old age in peace on his manor, not facing
certain death. Then again, he had only daughters, and the feudal duty fell next
to his eldest grandson, a boy just thirteen years old. So on second thought,
the old man was probably prepared to die to save that boy and his younger
brothers.
Out loud, Ibelin retorted curtly, “This whole march is
madness!” and added before anyone else could protest: “We hold formation, and
take advantage of the relief the Templars will temporarily give us to jog
forward as far and as fast as we can.”
Then he reached down, unfastened his goatskin, and took
several gulps of water before demonstratively pulling Rufus’ head around to
offer the water to the chestnut palfrey. Rufus gratefully closed his lips
around the spout of the goatskin, and Balian upended it so that the water
flowed into his horse’s mouth until the skin was about half empty. Then he took
it away, closed it, and tied it again to his saddle. Around him, his knights followed
his example of sharing their water with their horses, while the infantry drank
deeply. While they drank, the Templars burst through their infantry protection
screaming “Vive Dieu St. Amour!”—head-on into the next Saracen attack.
The Saracens just wheeled their horses around and galloped
away like the wind. Their fleeter horses, with lighter gear and riders, easily
outdistanced the Templars. The latter, armed only with lances and swords, could
not hope to inflict the slightest damage and soon drew up, turned, and began to
trot back to Ibelin’s division, which was jogging as fast as the tired limbs
and dehydrated bodies of the infantry would let them. Only Ibelin remained
immobile, his horse facing backwards, his eyes squinting against the sun as he
awaited the next attack. It came even before the Templars had rejoined the rest
of the rear guard. Ibelin shouted a warning, and Ridefort wheeled his knights
around and charged again.
This repeated itself four or five times, until the Templar
horses were swaying from exhaustion, the sweat dripping from their bellies,
their heads hanging in utter dejection. Only then did Ridefort recognize—but
not acknowledge—that Ibelin had been right. Furiously, he ordered Ibelin to
send one of his knights to the King to demand that the main army wait for the
rear guard.
“No,” Ibelin answered.
“They must wait for us! If they don’t, we’ll be cut off and
slaughtered! If we’re slaughtered, the army doesn’t stand a chance. A third of
our forces are right here!”
“I agree, but you’re
the one who brought us here, so you’re
going to be the one to tell your puppet King that you were wrong! You tell him to stop before he reaches
water! You tell him we can’t make Tiberias
tonight! You tell him the entire
Christian army is trapped in the middle of a wasteland with no water and
completely surrounded by the enemy. You
tell him!”
They stared at one another, and for the first time something
like doubt crossed Ridefort’s eyes, but he blinked it back. “I don’t have a
horse that can trot, let alone canter. You must send one of your knights.”
“Oh, I’ll lend you a horse,” Ibelin answered, “but only you!
Not one of your sacrificial lambs,” he gestured toward the silent Templars
around them. Balian had never been so acutely aware of how young many of these
bearded men were. Behind their beards and their tonsures, behind the façade of
their white robes, half of them were little more than boys! He noted with
poignancy that many of them had faces the color of cooked crabs and peeling
skin—clear indications that they were newly come from countries with cool,
rainy summers. Why, many of them might have arrived only weeks or days ago,
replacements for the men lost at Cresson. They were, he knew, suffering more in
this heat than any of the men from Ibelin, Ramla, or Nablus. He could sense
that they were frightened, too. They had believed in their cause, their virtue,
and their invincibility. And they were starting to ask themselves what had gone
wrong.
“Damn you, Ibelin!”
“What for, Ridefort? For pushing your nose in your own shit?
You made this King, and you made this catastrophe. Tripoli warned you. I warned
you. By God, half the barons of Jerusalem warned you. But you thought yourself
cleverer than all of us together. This is your dung heap, and you are going to lie
in it! I only pray to God that He will not punish the rest of us for your
stupidity, arrogance, and hubris!”
“I’ll kill you, Ibelin!”
“You already have, Ridefort. You’ve killed all of us. Now,
do you want my stallion or not?”
Ridefort’s eyes flashed with hatred so intense that he
refused. Dragging his own poor, tired mount around, he dug his spurs into its
flanks, forcing it to lumber forward in an exhausted, miserable lope.
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