The Crescent and the Cross Page 22

  Arnau had felt some trepidation at being summoned into the presence of not only his own king, but that of the Castilian monarch also, though in the event he need not have worried. For the majority of the meeting, the heads of the three orders and the two kings discussed the matter without even looking at the three knights, and the only time Arnau and his companions were even addressed was when they were asked the very same questions once more. Again they had been made to wait outside the hall, but this time after twenty minutes of kicking their heels, they were called back in.

  King Alfonso the Eighth gestured at Arnau, Calderon and Tristán with a wagged finger.

  ‘Tell me, my shepherd knights, this path of yours… a shrewd man could make his way across the mountains without prior knowledge of the route, yes?’

  Arnau nodded. ‘We did so, your Majesty, on our journey to Cordoba.’

  ‘But,’ the king said, sitting forwards a little, ‘what about in the dark?’

  Arnau paused and looked at his companions. Calderon gave a shake of his head and then turned to the king. ‘No, sire. Even Brother Vallbona, who had traversed the route before and knew it as well as any, became turned around in the dark at night. A man who does not know the route would as likely end up in a ravine as on the plains beyond.’

  The two kings looked at one another, and then both glanced across at the three grand masters, none of whom reacted. Alfonso of Castile drummed his fingers on the arm of his throne, frowning. Finally, the king of Aragon nodded at him, and Alfonso threw out that finger again.

  ‘Then you shall be shepherds once more, sir knights, and this time the forces of Christendom shall be your flock. Keep us from the wolves and lead us to pastures new, and the rewards will be myriad. Can your cow heads convey us safely to the camp of the enemy?’

  Arnau bowed his head, trying to hide the nerves he felt rising. ‘I believe it can be done, Majesty.’

  ‘Then there is no time to waste. Given the timings you have revealed of your prior crossings, if the army departs immediately, we can be on the plains of Al-Andalus by dawn. It is our intention to form up while the sun is still new and launch an unexpected attack upon the caliph’s force.’

  Arnau tried to think back to the descriptions he had given. The first time they had crossed the range they had found the shepherds and begun the crossing by mid-morning and had only made it to safe flat land after dark. The last time, they had approached the hills by mid-afternoon, and had only reached the heights by midnight, finishing their crossing in the morning. It was now, by his estimation, perhaps two o’clock. His stomach was certainly telling him that he had missed a noon meal. By the time the army was even mobilised it would be late afternoon. Even if they moved at unprecedented speed, they would reach Castro Ferral by dusk, and it would be dark before they approached the peaks at the height of the crossing. And from nightfall onwards the journey would be perilous indeed, the risk of becoming lost increasing drastically. The chances of the army making it across intact, let alone in good time and ready to fight, were poor in the hours of darkness.

  He looked up, preparing to tell the kings that it would be foolish and that they would do well to wait for dawn and cross in the light when to his dismay Calderon spoke.

  ‘With God beside us and his light to lead the way in the dark, we cannot fail, sire.’

  Arnau winced. Faith was one thing, but there were moments when it edged towards blind stupidity in some people. Still, Calderon had done it now. The kings had been merely awaiting confirmation, and the knight had given it. They were committed.

  Sure enough, it had taken a worryingly long time for the army to start moving. It was like watching a giant monster disturbed from sleep. The movement began slowly, sluggishly, as commands from the kings, the bishops and the grand masters filtered down to the lower commanders, who then spoke to their own liege men, and finally the men-at-arms began to move. Arnau and his companions gently reminded their superiors that they had eaten only foraged food for days and had now missed a noon meal and were escorted to a mess tent where they were left to eat their fill as the giant mass began to move.

  Finally, in the late afternoon the army moved out. A small force had been left behind, continually cycling through the few fortifications they had secured in the pass, keeping the enemy busy and maintaining the fiction that the army remained in camp nearby.

  Finding the start point was easy enough. Arnau remembered their morning travels well enough to be certain of at least leading them as far as the previous night’s camp site. Thus they passed the heavy fortress of Castro Ferral in the late afternoon and made their way up over that lush pasture, where they had been captured by pickets, while the sun dropped towards the peaks in the west.

  Now, as they climbed the first great ridge, Arnau felt true trepidation creeping in. Thousands of men, the entire force of Christendom, including kings, grand masters and bishops, were relying upon the three of them. The order of march had been decided early. The three ‘shepherds’ would lead as guides. Behind them would come the Templars and the Franks, for the two groups had been working together at Ferral, and because, despite their adhering to the crusade and its codes, the Franks were still somewhat distrusted by the Iberian kings after their behaviour at Malagon, and keeping them close seemed prudent. Beyond them would come the royal parties, and then the orders of Calatrava and Santiago, followed by the bulk of the soldiery, the Navarrese contingent bringing up the rear.

  The white-and-black-clad figures of Templar knights and sergeants followed on behind Arnau and his friends, each man leading his one horse, the spare animals having been left in the camp for ease and speed of travel. The Frankish knights and men-at-arms of the Baron de Roquefeuil threaded alongside the Templars, offering no deference to the Order, which rankled oddly with Arnau.

  They had not reached even the end of the first ridge before trouble struck. A sergeant from the order had slipped on scree and slid towards a steep slope down into the valley. He had clutched his horse’s reins tight in an attempt to halt his fall, but all he had achieved was to upset the horse, who bucked, slipped similarly, and both beast and rider had vanished down the slope into the unseen vale below. Arnau had seen Calderon fighting to control his fear at the sight, the sweat beading his brow. There had been much crossing of chests and uttering of prayers, but the masters, hearts hardened by the pressure of timing, drove the column on without pause.

  Over the next hour word came forward of two more falls and two lame horses, though not within which contingent these accidents had occurred. To Arnau and his friends, all that mattered now was leading on and being sure of the way.

  They crossed valleys and peaks for the next two hours as the sun sank behind the hills and the sky turned from indigo to dark, rich purple and then finally to black. At the ravine-side path where Calderon had been unmanned earlier, he stumbled often, his eyes wide and fear sending him into fits of shaking, but he fought on, sticking as close to the inside as possible, Arnau between him and the drop at all times. The heat of the day remained and it would be some time before the night settled into a temperature comfortable enough to travel in armour. Nocturnal beasts scattered in the brush and undergrowth at the army’s approach, and a fascinated owl continually appeared and disappeared, circling above them. Arnau wondered whether such things were signs. He remembered an old woman in the village in his youth who had held great stock in signs and portents, but he couldn’t for the life of him remember whether an owl was good or bad. As long as it didn’t shit on him or drop half a rodent in his path, he decided it could be good.

  As the stars lit their way with an eerie silver light and the moon rose with its ethereal glow, the three guides paused at a cow skull jammed on a stake at a fork in the path they followed. There the first argument occurred. Calderon swore they had come from the left way, while Arnau was sure it had been the right. They turned to Tristán for a decision, horribly aware that they had paused the progress of the entire crusading army and that the kings an
d masters would know instantly that their guides had stopped for some reason. Tristán sighed and stepped up to the cow skull, smacking it with his hand. It spun around on the stake with dizzying speed, and the two knights realised that it could have been meant to point anywhere, since it would only take that owl landing on top of it to turn it.

  ‘How do we proceed, then?’ Arnau grumbled.

  The squire took a deep breath. ‘I cannot recall the route, Brothers, but I can say this. The left way heads closer to the pass, so the right does not. On that basis alone, I would say take the right, but also the patterns of the stars tell their own tale.’

  Arnau nodded, satisfied, and Calderon deferred, so the three men settled upon their course and led the army along the right-hand of the two paths. Perhaps half a mile further on, they crossed a bald hillside and Arnau glanced left, noting with a sickening feeling a familiar stand of trees way off to the east. Calderon had been right. That had been their route in the early morning. Still, he reasoned, they had come off track in the dark and had moved close to the pass, so this was probably a more sensible route anyway. Besides, there were things here that looked familiar, and it might be that they had passed this way on their first time through the mountains.

  As they moved on, they reached a ridge that Arnau definitely recalled from their initial journey, which set his mind at ease. They may have strayed west from their intended path but, it seemed, that had brought them to a more propitious and safer path in the end.

  The ridge crossed a long peak in the shape of an upturned boat hull, a scree-sloped precipice to the right, leading down to a deep valley full of trees and dry stream bed, worse still than the one that had so terrified Calderon. The path divided here, the easier route Arnau remembered being the lower, right-hand one. It crossed the hill close to the steep gorge, but at least the path was flat and impediment-free. To the left, a second track separated, climbing to the top of the ridge and following above the flat path. It had the benefit of not being so close to a hair-raising drop, but they had examined it on their first crossing and decided against it, given the rocks sticking up and occasional roots from the scraggy trees and bushes close by, which threatened to trip men and cripple horses.

  With some discussion, the forces following the three guides split at the junction, the contingent of the Baron de Roquefeuil taking the higher path, the Templars continuing on the lower. Calderon, sensibly, adopted the upper path, leading the Franks further from the ravine, while Arnau and Tristán led the lower path. The moon rose steadily as they travelled and the lack of cloud made it an eerie reflection of daytime. Arnau fixed his gaze on the far side of the valley where he knew there would be a cow skull. He couldn’t see it yet in this light, where everything was a shade of grey, but he felt sure he’d be able to spot it before they reached the end of the ridge, at least if he remembered correctly.

  A scattering noise distracted him and he looked to his left to see dust and gravel skittering down the slope from the higher path, disturbed by the men up there. He looked up irritably, but couldn’t quite see the figures disturbing the ground. Calderon looked down at him from above.

  ‘I do not know this path, Brother. I hope you are certain of your directions?’

  Arnau nodded. ‘This is the best route, taking us further from the pass than our little diversion in the dark.’

  ‘I pray you are not mistaken.’

  Tristán, last of the three and just a horse-length ahead of the Templar contingent led by some sour-faced Castilian brother, said nothing.

  Arnau peered ahead once more, past the Calatravan knight, willing that cow skull to come into view. He was so intent on it that he almost came to grief without realising that the danger was coming. It began with a strange creaking noise, and then a rumble. Arnau glanced back and forth, wondering from where it had come before realising with dread and looking up.

  A small piece of the rocky ridge had come away and was leaning out above him, shards of stone and scattered gravel raining down. Even as Arnau watched in horror, the rock swayed outwards, directly above him. Given time, they could have spread out and allowed room for the rock to fall, but there was no time, and he was neatly trapped.

  His reaction was regrettable, but driven by necessity and, in the blink of an eye as danger plunged towards him, he realistically could see no other way. As Tristán reared back and halted the column behind him, Arnau let go of the reins of the horse he was leading and threw himself forwards, grabbing the saddlebags of a horse.

  The noise as the rock hit the lower path, tearing a piece from it and smashing the horse to a pulp before carrying it out over the edge, was appalling. The crack and bang of the rocks and the cries of panic and dismay from the men behind could not blot out the horrible shriek of the horse as it was pulverised and then plunged to its blessed death.

  Arnau stood for a moment, breathing heavily and staring wide-eyed at where his horse, and indeed he himself, had been mere moments earlier. As the cloud of dust dissipated and the stones and scree settled into place once more, the entire column halted, and Arnau took in the resulting scene.

  The safer lower path had narrowed by roughly two feet where the rockfall had carried it away into the gorge. There was still sufficient width for man or horse to pass, but they would have to take care doing it. His gaze inevitably swept up to the source of the disaster. He could see the shapes of men and horses in gleaming moonlit armour and muted colourful surcoats and caparisons, and half expected to see the knight Henri d’Orbessan glaring down at him, irked that he had survived the disaster. No such sight greeted him, and after word had been passed back down the line and the three guides had recovered and pronounced the way clear once more, kicking a few pieces of stone from the path, the army pressed on.

  As the anticipated skull on a stake appeared at the far side of the valley, Arnau confirmed that they were on track, though his gaze now continually flicked to the Frankish knights up the slope. Realistically, there was no reason to blame d’Orbessan. He’d not been visible at the site of the disaster, and Arnau couldn’t see how a man could deliberately start a rockfall in passing, without halting and making a special effort. Still, the fact that it had seemed to specifically target Arnau left him with a disquieted feeling of intended malice.

  As they reached the end of the ridge, the two columns combined once more. Though it had almost ended in disaster, Calderon noted that doubling up the width of the column for more than half a mile had sped up their journey noticeably, and it would all make a difference to the time it took them to arrive at the far side of the range.

  Down into a valley they travelled and then up to another peak, each new vista becoming familiar to Arnau as he came across it, a silvery, monochrome copy of views they had seen with Yusuf a few weeks earlier. Such recollections naturally led Arnau’s mind to wander back to Yusuf, with profound regret. This army and the one that awaited it on the far side of the ridge both proclaimed with steel that their faith was the true one and would reign alone in Iberia. Each army would fight to the end to drive out the other.

  But the sad fact was that whether the Moors’ belief was legitimate or a mistaken, heretical twist of the true faith, many of their people were innocent, good individuals. Many would suffer as this great contest was fought, and Yusuf would not be the last good man to die for a fight in which he wanted no part.

  Briefly, he wondered whether Farraj’s sons had ridden north with hate in their hearts to join the cause of their lords, or whether the shock of what they had done in Cordoba might drive them to hide in their father’s house and await the world after war. In the battle to come, Arnau would do what the Order demanded of him, of course, but after their part in the death of Yusuf, he would watch for the sons of Farraj, and he would be true to his word. If they dared to bare a sword, he would make them pay for it.

  Tearing his mind from such angry thoughts, he paid close attention to the path ahead instead. More and more familiar landmarks passed him and finally, as the moon be
gan to fade, indicating a barely perceptible lightening of the sky, they reached the edge of a hill and Arnau saw a familiar green valley stretching out ahead of him, heading north-east.

  ‘That’s the last marker,’ he called back to Tristán, who passed word back along the column.

  An hour later they were descending the slope, and Arnau could see the rock ahead that the squire had suggested looked suspiciously like a boastful man’s maypole. As the army reached the valley and lower, easier terrain with grassland abounding, the force began to move with a little more speed, gathering, forming a wider column that could move faster. Arnau found himself no longer alone at the front with just his two companions, but at the head of the army alongside the Baron de Roquefeuil and half a dozen of his knights as well as two masters of Templar houses with whom he was not familiar, and their senior brothers.

  The army of Christendom had crossed the sierra and was now in Al-Andalus, the lands of the Almohad caliph. The Frankish nobleman moved closer to Arnau as they slowly descended the valley.

  ‘Well met, Brother Vallbona. It appears that, true to your word, you have seen us safely to the enemy. I can only congratulate and thank you for your efforts.’

  Arnau heaved a sigh of relief, partially at the realisation that the main worry was now behind him, but also at the knowledge that d’Orbessan was not one of those men close by and within earshot.

  ‘Will their majesties expect to form up directly into battle?’ he asked, wondering how the masters of the crusade intended to somehow bring the entire army out of the valley and spring upon the enemy in surprise. It did not sound entirely feasible now that Arnau had seen how long it took for the force to move and assemble.

  The Frank shook his head. ‘We shall arrive, form into battle lines and await their majesties’ decision. I anticipate at least an hour of the army falling into place and perhaps a further hour of planning once we have examined the enemy’s disposition.’