Oh, armour!
There was a sharp ping.
Fra Peter’s gauntleted hand closed on air and pumped, once.
‘Walk!’ I called. I put my weight forward.
‘Now what? Gold, for the love of the Virgin! The king is down!’ D’Albret’s voice had an odd ring. He’d been an excitable boy and he’d spent too long with Camus, who imagined himself Hell’s emissary on earth.
As if Hell needs an emissary.
I looked, and the circle of the crusaders on the beach had been broken.
The three bodies of the Order were now in echelon, the southernmost slightly ahead, then the centre body with the legate, and then mine. Our angled line of three wedges was like a barbed scythe.
And Fra Peter’s fist pumped, once.
I heard the change in the hoofbeats as the arrows screamed in. I touched Gawain with my spurs – and he leapt forward.
The Knights of St John have been fighting in the Holy Land for two hundred years. One of their many tricks is this change of speed as the first serious arrow volley is launched. In three strides, Gawain and I were at a gallop, still with Nerio and Fiore leaning into me, their armoured knees behind mine. We were an arrowhead, a battering ram of horses and steel.
The Mamluks rode in close, trying to break our formation. By Christ, gentles, they were brave! They came right in, almost to our lance tips, to loose their arrows, and it seemed to me that in one beat of my heart they were impossibly far away and the next they were right atop us.
Deus Veult!
One shout, like a crack of thunder. This, too, we had practiced since Venice.
Our lances came down.
And they turned away. They had neither the formation nor the horseflesh for mêlée and they turned and shot over the backs of their saddles.
One man down – one at the front of the wedge – and the whole force would be dissipated into a wreck of falling horses and broken men.
God did not will that.
I do not remember closing my visor. But my whole world was limited to a single man, his beard dyed red, his armour gold and silver in the brilliant sun, his horse’s rump shining with sweat and the back of his saddle just two horse-lengths from me.
His arrows struck me. The first slammed into my breastplate like an axe blow, thrusting me back in my saddle like a good hit in a joust, and the second hit my visor – and penetrated it. I felt my death slide across my cheek.
But as I was not dead, I rode on.
Then everything changed.
The Saracen’s Mamluks charged us from under the walls, and moved diagonally to cross our front. But when they failed to break our formations, they evaded straight away instead of galloping lightly away from our impotent lances – and slammed into the rear of their own infantry.
In my memory, I pursued my hennaed Mamluk for hours across an infinite plain of sand. But then, in one beat of my heart, I caught him, and my lance struck him in the back. I imagine I killed him instantly – his coat of plates and mail failed against the force of my charge. My point went in, and the whole of my lance penetrated him: his horse had balked.
I lost my lance.
In two more heart beats I was deep in the Saracen army. Gawain was killing more effectively than I; he danced, his iron-shod feet like four iron maces. Weapons struck me – and it is in moments like this that you discover your training. I drew the Emperor’s sword without a conscious thought; it flowed into my hand, and I cut. I do not remember fighting men, only cutting at a mob. Gawain was still moving forward.