For his part, Arn did not need to worry over what to do. Among the men in the royal army behind the walls of Ashkelon was the Grand Master of the Knights Templar, Odo de Saint Amand, and from him now came a direct written order.
Arn was to set off toward Ashkelon with all haste, bringing his knights and at least a hundred sergeants. They would ride with heavy arms, and without infantry to protect the horses, and they would attack the siege force one hour before sundown on the following day. When Arn’s attack came, the army trapped in Ashkelon would simultaneously emerge from inside, and the siege army would be caught in a pincer movement between two shields. That was the whole plan. But it was an order from the Grand Master, so there was nothing to discuss.
Nevertheless Arn made one decision on his own; he would take with him his mounted Bedouins as spies. He would be venturing into territory that was controlled by the superior number of enemy cavalry, and the only protection he would have was reliable information about where it would be safe to ride and where it would be foolish to go. The Bedouins could acquire such information with both their camels and their fast horses; no one who saw Bedouins from a distance could say for sure which side they were fighting for, and it was seldom worthwhile trying to catch them to find out what they knew. Arn saw to it that Gaza’s Bedouins were well paid in silver before it was time to set off, but more important than silver was the knowledge he imparted to them that this time there would be much to plunder. This was true no matter how things went, because now the Templar knights were riding without caution, and without infantry that could protect their horses from sudden attack by Turkish archers. Now they were riding to victory or to death; there was no other choice. Time was too short, and they were too outnumbered to worry about caution.
The Bedouins fanned out before the advancing column of Templar knights from Gaza. The first of them came riding back in a cloud of dust at top speed even before they were halfway to Ashkelon. Out of breath, he related that in the next village he had seen four Mameluke horses tied outside some clay huts. The village looked deserted, and it was hard to say what the knights were doing inside such miserable dwellings, but the horses were there in any case. Around the village lay a number of goats and sheep that had been shot with arrows.
At first Arn didn’t want to waste his time on four enemy soldiers, but then Guido de Faramond his weapons master, rode up and pointed out that they could be scouts from the Egyptian siege force, and that these scouts might not be tending to their duties as well as they should. If they took the soldiers by surprise, they would be unable to sound the alarm about the approaching danger from the south.
Arn agreed with this argument at once and thanked his weapons master for not hesitating to give his opinion. Then he divided his force into four columns, which were soon heading for the village from four directions. By the time they got close enough to see the group of clay huts, they had already passed a number of dead goats and sheep, just as the Bedouin had said. Finally, the four columns of knights merged together just outside the apparently empty village and encircled it. In silence they approached. When they got nearer they could hear what was going on, because two or three women’s voices were emitting heartrending wails. Outside the hut where the atrocities were taking place, four Egyptian horses with expensive saddle tack stood shaking their heads at all the flies.
Arn pointed to a squadron of knights who dismounted, quietly drew their swords, and went inside. The noise of a brief fight was heard, and then the four Egyptians were cast out into the dust and tied up with their hands behind their backs. Their clothing was in disarray and they tried to shout something about how they were worth a ransom if they were allowed to live.
Arn got down from his horse and went over to the entrance of the hut, as his knights came out, their faces pale. He stepped inside and saw roughly what he had expected. There were three women. Their faces were bleeding, but none of them seemed to have suffered any mortal injury. They hid themselves with the clothes the Egyptians had ripped from their bodies.
“What is this village called and to whom do you belong, women?” asked Arn. At first he got no sensible answer because only one of the women seemed to speak understandable Arabic.
After a halting exchange of words he gathered that both the women and the livestock came from a village that actually belonged to Gaza, but the three women had moved their animals after they were refused entry into the fortress. They had taken their sheep and goats away from one plunderer only to run right into the arms of one that was even worse.
Since their honor and that of their families had now been offended, there was only one way to redress the wrong, reasoned Arn, once the women had calmed down a bit and understood that he had no intention of continuing what the Egyptians had started. So he would leave the four bound rapists where they were, and the violated women could do with them as they saw fit to avenge their honor. They could also keep the horses and saddles as a gift from Gaza. But he asked them not to release the Egyptians alive, because he would prefer to see them beheaded. The Palestinian women swore that none of the rapists would be allowed to live, and Arn was content with that. He went outside, mounted Khamsiin, and commanded a new tight formation to continue on toward Ashkelon. They would attack one hour before sundown, regardless of whether they had time to prepare or not, because that was the order from the Grand Master himself.
When they had ridden a way off, desperate screams were heard from the captive Egyptians. No one turned around in the saddle to look back; no one said a word.
As they neared Ashkelon their approach still seemed to have gone unnoticed. Either they’d had the improbable luck to pass through the enemy’s chain of scouts at the place where those four rapists, now dead, were supposed to stand guard. Or else the Mother of God had led them by the hand.
Now several other Bedouin spies came riding up and began talking all at once about how the enemy had taken up position outside Ashkelon. Arn got down from his horse and smoothed out some sand with the tip of his iron-clad boot, pulled out his dagger, and began to draw Ashkelon and its walls in the sand. Soon he had deciphered the Bedouins’ reports and knew how the Mameluke siege force was deployed.
There were two possible choices. Since the woods grew close to Ashkelon, they could get nearer to the enemy if they attacked from the east. With luck they could get within the distance of two long arrow shots before the attack would have to be launched with full force and speed. However then they would be attacking with the setting sun directly in their eyes.
The second possibility was to move in a wide arc toward the northeast and then west and south. Then they would be coming from the north and avoid having the sun in their eyes. But the risk of discovery would be greater. Arn decided that they should wait where they were and spend the remaining hour before the attack in prayer instead of moving on and risking discovery. They would just have to endure having the setting sun in their eyes during the attack. The enemy’s numbers were ten times their own, so everything depended on surprise, speed, and the force of the first assault.
After their prayers they rode as quietly and slowly as they could through the thinning woods that stuck out like a tongue toward Ashkelon. Arn signaled his men to halt when he could no longer ride any farther without being seen. The weapons master walked his horse cautiously up alongside him, and they sat in silence for a while, observing the enemy encampment stretching all the way along the eastern wall of Ashkelon. Most of the horses were in large pens out on the flanks, farther away from the city wall than the rest of the siege force. That told them much. It took no time or rumination to know how the attack would proceed. Arn called over his eight squadron leaders and gave them several curt orders. When they had all returned to their places and mounted up, the men prayed together one last time to the High Protectress of the Knights Templar and unfurled Her standard, which was brought to the vanguard next to Arn and raised along with the black-and-white flag of the Knights Templar.