Takeda_Shingen
Sergeant Knight
The Devil's Harp
Cyprus, Spring 1191 AD
Part I: Storming the Beach
The sun was coming high into the scarlet sky, accompanied by a slight breeze which made the sails on the Crusader ship flutter in the breeze. Richard stared out at the vast array of sharpened stakes on the beach at Cyprus. It would be a dangerous approach, and it was vital that the Crusaders avoid archer fire from the castle on the ridge. However, that castle was the main problem. It had a complete zone of fire down onto the beach and it could cost the Crusaders very costly to get to it, let alone besiege it. The ships of the Crusaders were ready; the white cross on a blue background, the banner of Henri de Orleans in the centre, the royal lions of England, the banner of King Richard, on the right with the Hospitaller Cross on the left flank of the Crusader Ships. On his flagship, Henri greeted Sybilla on his ship with kind of romance, and a slight kiss but Henri was, like Richard, too distracted by the defences the Saracens had placed. Sybilla understood this, much like Berengaria understood Richard. The French commander checked his equipment one last time, the sword buckled onto his left hip, his shield placed on his back and his great helmet tightly secured on his head. Satisfied he was sorted, he ordered the entire Crusade fleet to advance, and watched from the prow of his ship the shore coming closer and closer. The wind guided these ships and the Crusaders landed and they quickly jumped off, using their kite shields to cover their approach as they quickly ran to reach cover, a downed ship, a shipwreck basically. But then, the Devil, in his own twisted fashion, began to play his harp for Saracen archers began to fire down onto the Crusaders, a couple hundred going down in the first volley of shots as the barbed points pierced deep into surcoat, mail and flesh in one. The Crusaders continued to push forward, but volley after volley of deadly barbed arrows came down onto the Crusaders, shields breaking after recieving too many arrows, screams of pain and agony as the tips of the arrows caused blood and death on the sandy beach, it was becoming a slaughter for the Crusaders. One of the Hospitaller banners had half of the cloth ripped as it had recieved so many arrows it was almost uncountable to man. But the Crusaders were numerous and they brought their axes to bare on the gate, with Crusader engineers building ladders and heaving them forward at the Saracen wall, trying to through and get in. The main gate was smashed, and the Crusaders charged into a well prepared Saracen shieldwall, Saracen axes slashing down at Crusader heads, forcing pieces of the skull to break. The rain of arrows was not stopping and they were causing massive losses on the Crusaders, yet the weight of numbers on the Crusaders were forcing the Saracens back, the organised fighting now had turned to a brutal melee. The Saracens had been pushed as far back as the castle itself and now the Crusaders began to attack the main gate with axes and started to build ladders in an attempt to break through. Richard's battle was focused at the gate and it aimed itself at breaking through the gate and charging through. The king could see the large banners of the Saracen leaders right in front of him, past the gate. He forced himself to look at the ladders and the King's Guard had built it and were charging upwards into a hail of Saracen swords and axes and them the wood collasped and the ladder broke, sending splinters the size of daggers hurtling down to the ground. It clearly meant that the ladder would have to be built again.
Back in the centre, the gate had collasped and the Crusaders were charging forward, but the fighting was hard and intense. That first rush was the most important, the first rush from the Crusaders. That was when shields broke and where enemies could be crushed and killed, when the axes and the swords and the maces would be given the extra impetus by the charge, and so the Crusaders screamed at the tops of their voices as they charged, as they swung, thrust and chopped with their weapons. The Saracen line went back. Back into the depths of their castle. They were forced back by the fierceness of the charge and by the weight of the men who crammed through the gap, but though they went back, they did not break. Blades crashed on shields. Axes and maces slashed down. Lead-weighted stell crumpled helmets, shattered skulls, forced blood and brains to spurt through split metal, and men fell and in falling made obstacles and other men tripped on them. The impact of the charge was slowed, men tried to stand and were stunned by blows, but the Crusaders had forced their way through the gap and now were widening the fight as it moved into the castle's courtyard. It was here that a great cheer went through the Crusader's ranks as the Hospitaller banner was hoisted above the castle. The Crusades had broken through a stern Saracen defence at the beach and had charged through and captured the castle.
But at what cost?
Part II: God's Great Fire
Richard allowed himself to walk through the dead. He didn't know how many men had died in that first great attack, only it was many. The red-feathered barbed arrows of the Saracens were scattered everywhere on the battlefield, where the Crusaders had desperately forced a gap to captured the castle on the ridge. A squire had brought the King his horse, to which he mounted it and ordered his Angevins to form up where the rest of the Crusaders were preparing to march on the bridge, where the Saracens had formed up waiting for a bloody, brutal, Crusader attack. Henri had decided to go on foot, a brave choice but one where he could not have a clear view of the battlefield, a disadvantage Richard would have known, looking back at Harold II, where, although he fought bravely on food, did not have the clear view of the battlefield of Hastings as Duke William did, which was why the Norman had won and the Saxon did not. This allowed him to see a small village just hidden below the hills over to the Crusader's right. When the order was given to advance, while the rest of the Crusaders went straight for the bridge and the Saracens who had formed up, Richard and his Angevins moved to the village, with torches blazing, they ransacked the village, throwing the torches high so they could land on the rooves of the houses and force the thatched wood to catch alight. Peasants screamed as Richard and his men burst through. It was a quick burning, but one that left the village in ruin. After the pillaging, they reformed before heading to the bridge, where once again, the Devil had begun to play his harp for the Saracens had begun to fire their volleys of arrows onto the Crusaders who were desperately piling wood blocks onto the bridge with their engineer building under a hail of arrows from the Saracens, the red-tipped feathered barbed arrows scattered across the battlefield.
Henri de Orleans woud kill no more Saracens in person this day. His leg was aching in pain after a barbed arrow had lodged itself deep into his thigh, his arm pierced to the bone by another arrow. He was in pain, not horrible pain, but still in pain and because of that, he was carried to where only the previous day, the Saracen sultan would have been resting, waiting for the Crusaders to come. It was here that a barber-surgeon stripped him of his armour, cut the arrow flush from his skin, leaving the head embedded in his thigh, and poured honey onto the wound. The surgeon reported back to Henri's guard that he could not join the bridge battle and would have to wait for a while. That while would end when the Crusaders, now commanded by Richard and the King's Guard leader, jointly, had caused a breakthrough on the bridge, with the wooden planks complete, they surged forward to the outnumbered Saracens who had formed up. They retreated back to a farm directly opposite from where the other farm was that Richard had pillaged just moments before. The Saracens formed up, bringing in more oxgyen into their bodies', just waiting for the Crusaders to come at them. It was here when the Crusaders were forming up that Henri returned from the castle and he took his position with his men, hobbling and limping with the pain still in his thigh. The Crusaders were told by their respective commanders to show no mercy and as long as their commanders shouted that command, no prisoners would be taken. Capturing rich men for ransom was the dream of every knight, but at a battle's beginning, when all that mattered was to break the enemy and shatter him and kill him and terrify him, there was no time for the niceties of surrender. The order was given to slowly advance, the Crusaders beating the side of their shields with the weapons, taunting the Saracens, urging them into single combat. Then the two sides clashed with each other, both sides looking to kill the other. The King of England appeared in the Angevin Front line, his bright flag, the largest on the Angevin flank of the Crusader amy, behind and above him, and the Saracens responded with a rorar as they renewed their attack but the Angevins matched the war shout and surged forward themselves. Shield met shield with a crash, the weapons fell and thrust, and it was the Angevins and the Crusaders who forged ahead. The men trusted to guard the King of England were among the most experienced and savage in all the Crusader army. They had fought a score of battles, from Hungary to Cyprus, and they fought with cold-blodded ruthlessness. The two Saracens closes to the King were felled instantly. Neither was killed. One was half stunned by an axe blow and he collasped to his knees and the other took another axe blow to his right elbow that shattered the bone and left him weaponless. He was dragged back by his copanions and that rearward movement spread to the neighbouring Saracens. The half-stunned man tried to stand, but Richard kicked him backwards onto the ground and trod on his armoured wrist. The soldier behind Richard used a maikl-shod foot to push up the fallen man's visor and rammed down with a sword point. Blood sprayed on the King. Yet he did not care. He was accomusted to it. This pressure and blood lust from the Crusaders slowly forced the Saracens to retreat but were cut down as they tried to stop the evil mission of the Crusaders: to burn and sack the village. This was unsuccessful and the village was sacked, smoke illumanting the sky around the village.
God's Great Fire had purged through Cyprus.
It was not finished yet.
Part III: When All Hell Breaks Loose
Many corpses were littered from the castle to the farms, both soldiers and civilians alike. It was not a majestic sight, no battlefield after a fercious fight was a majestic sight, all it was was bodies eroding to decay, crows gnawing at the flesh of brave men and innocent civilians. Despite this, Henri knew this was not over yet, much more bloody and grim work lied between the Crusaders and victory this day. Yet the men were given a few moments to rest, easing their parched throats before grabbing a crust of bread, stuffing it in their mouth, before being pushed and bullied into line, ready to march out towards a heavily fortifed camp where the Saracen Sultan and his men waitied for the Crusader attack. At the wave of the three main Crusader banners, the Crusader army marched forward, making a slight right turn once they had marched past the ruined tower. There, the Devil was ready, his hands in his cruel, delicate tone, as he started to play his harp, as the arrows began flying in. The Saracen archers were still streaming onto the palisade wall from their parade position and they chose the feared barbed arrows. These were special arrows of eastern nation, such as the Saracens themselves, and these arrows had a similiar purpose to that of the bodkin arrow back in Europe, to dent armour and get deep into the flesh of the man and cause terrible pain. This was how the Saladin had caused the devastating defeat at Hattin. The archers drew back the bows to their chest, picked their targets and loosed. The nomad bow was only about the size of a man's chest. It was cut from the trunk of a tree grown only in Eastern countries, where it was hot, humid and dry. The wood was stiff, it resisted bending, while the outer wood was springy so that it would snap back to its shape if it was bent, and the push of the compressed wood and the pull of the golden wood worked together to give the nomad bow a terrible strength, yet still small enough to fit in a specially designed sheath hold, that could be held at the waist. Yet to release the bow well took great practice and the greatest of archers had to learn to aim using instinct. But this what had made Saracen archers feared not just among their neighbours, but also amongst the Crusaders, and these were the enemies the bows would kill today. So the bows sounded. The strings slapped on the bracers that protected the archers; wrists; the arrows leaped away. Men fell, men cried in pain and agony as the arrows riped through their armour and got embedded into the flesh, and from there, it would be very difficult to remove it. The Crusaders get rushing forward, bashing down the gate with axe, before rushing a battering ram forward and they started smashing the gate down into the woods chared and broke and the Crusaders charged. Richard came forward and was greeted by Earl Robert of Leciester.
'Welcome to the devil's slaughteryard, sire,' he said and Earl Robert and the King locked shields together and advanced forward towards the fray and the vanguard of the fight. Richard could see that the fight was slackening. He had watched on horseback as the Crusader line crashed with the Saracen line together and seen how the savage Crusader charge had failed to break the Saracens, but now it was hard to tell one side from the other, they were so close. The rear ranks of both sides thrust forward, crushing the front-rank men against their opponents and giving them small room to swing a weapon. The enemy was still forcing their way through the gaps in the bashed gate, widening their attack, as they began to push the Saracens deeper into their camp, but they were not breaking through the stubborn Saracen line. They were either crushed against their enemy or else a group of men would assault, batter and cut, then step back to catch their breath and appraise their enemy. They were calling insults rather than fighting with fury, and Earl Robert understood that. Attackers and defenders were each recovering from the initial shock, but more Crusaders were still coming through the broken gate and the fight would get grimmer now, because the attacks would be more deliberate and the Saracens, thristy and hungry, would tire quickly. Then, suddenly, the Saracen line broke and the Crusaders streamed forward, torches blazing and they eyed the enemy treubechets, and they burnt quickly. The Saracens attempt to halt the Crusader advance and although they did for a while, it was not for long and they slowly died. It was here that Henri, properly recovered from his wound ordered the utter destruction of Saracen forces, holding his shield high as the Devil began to play again, as the Crusaders had formed up to fire the barbed arrows down onto the Crusader lines. White crossed surcoated men and Hospitaller surged forward, their lead-tipped swords gleaming in the high sun, signalling midday. Arrows though, cursed Henri. More of them in fact. But the Crusaders maneouvered around the spikes and with brave hearts and brave souls, charged forward, French and Hospitallers swinging widly, Angevins thrusting forward, causing the blood to pour onto the ground, the ground becoming washed in blood. The fire began to crackle and the wood burnt brightly. The Crusaders won and it was here, admist the burning of the Saracen siege engines that a relationship was formed between Henri and Queen Sybilla, which would blossom to love.
That is another story for another time.
