That spring he had gone into the northern part of the Holy Land with a small army of mixed Syrian and Egyptian soldiers. He had defeated King Baldwin IV far up near Banyas and then plundered Galilee and southern Lebanon and burned all the crops he could. Now in the summer he had returned with what was thought to be the same army. But that was an erroneous assumption on the part of the Christians and it would cost them dearly.
The king had mobilized a new secular army, but it was too weak to meet Saladin on its own. So he had turned to the Grand Master of the Knights Templar and obtained a promise of full support.
For Harald Øysteinsson this meant a hard march lasting ten days, alternately walking and riding on any available spare horse through a land that was completely unfamiliar and in heat that seemed to him inhuman.
When the battle finally began, it was like Ragnarök, the Twilight of the Gods. He found himself in a sea of fast Saracen riders galloping forward, each one of whom was harder to hit than a squirrel. And yet it soon felt as though there was no sense in shooting, for no matter how many men Harald hit, new ones kept coming in wave upon wave. He soon realized that he was in the midst of a defeat, but he didn’t know that it was one of the greatest catastrophes that had ever befallen both the Knights Templar and the Christian secular army in the Holy Land.
For Arn the defeat was clearer and easier to understand, and therefore even more bitter.
In upper Galilee between the River Jordan and the River Litani, the Templars had their first skirmish with Saladin’s forces. They were on their way to join up with the royal army, which under Baldwin IV’s leadership was busy neutralizing a small band of plunderers on their way back from the coast of Lebanon.
The Grand Master Odo de Saint Armand may have misunderstood the situation. Perhaps he thought that the royal army was already engaged with Saladin’s main force and that the riders now appearing before the Templar knights were merely plunderers separated from the main force, or a small group intended only to disrupt or delay the Templars.
However, the truth was precisely the opposite. While the royal Christian army was occupied with a small company, Saladin led his main force around and past them to cut off the Templar knights, who were on the way to provide relief.
Afterward it was as clear as water what Odo de Saint Armand should have done. He should have refrained from attacking; at all costs he should have tried to unite his knights, his infantry, and his Turcopoles with Baldwin IV’s army. And if that had not succeeded, he should have taken a stand. There was one thing he absolutely should nothave done, and that was to send out the whole heavy cavalry of knights for a single decisive attack.
But that was what he did, and neither Arn nor any other Templar knight ever had a chance to ask him why.
Afterward Arn thought that he may have had a better view from his high position up on the right flank than Odo de Saint Armand had. Arn and his light, fast mounted archers stayed up high and beside the advancing main force so that they could cut off attack by enemies who rode with the same equipment as they did. From up there Arn had clearly seen that what they were about to meet was an infinitely superior army bearing Saladin’s own flags.
When Odo de Saint Armand far below formed the heavy cavalry to a frontal assault, Arn at first thought that it was a stratagem of war, a way to create doubt in the enemy and gain time to save the foot soldiers. His despair was all the greater when he saw that the black-and-white flag of the Grand Master’s confanonierwas raised and lowered three times as a sign for an all-out attack. He sat as if paralyzed up on his hill, surrounded by his Turkish riders, who also could not believe their eyes. The main force of the Templar knights was riding straight to their deaths.
When the heavy Templar knights came closer to the light Syrian cavalry, the enemy simply retreated and pretended to flee to the rear in the typical Saracen manner. Soon the assault by the knights was stopped even though they had not made contact with anything, and then they were caught unprotected and surrounded.
The Turkish riders near Arn shook their heads and threw out their arms to show that the battle was now over as far as they were concerned. If the army of which they were a part lost its entire heavy cavalry, the Turcopoles had nothing to protect but their own lives. And so they fled, leaving Arn alone with a few Christian riders.
He waited briefly to see whether any Templar knights had survived and were trying to fight their way out of the trap. When he noticed a group of ten men attempting to head back in the direction of their own foot soldiers, reserve horses, and supplies, he attacked at once along with the few men who were still with him. The only thing he could hope for was to create a distraction so that the fleeing knights could take shelter behind the infantry and archers.
His hopeless attack with a handful of terrified men against a force a thousand times greater at least had the effect of creating a momentary confusion among the pursuers, who were soon pointing and calling his name from every direction. With that he and his little group became the target of the pursuers, and it was not hard to understand why. After Mont Gisard anyone who could bring Al Ghouti’s head on his lance to Saladin would surely be richly rewarded.
Soon he was riding all alone, because the men who at first had followed him turned off and fled toward the remnants of their own army and foot soldiers. Arn swung abruptly in the other direction in a wide arc away from his own forces and toward a hillside where he would be stuck in an obvious trap. When he saw that all his own men had taken cover, he gave up and stopped. He couldn’t go any farther anyway; the slopes before him were too steep.
When the attackers saw his predicament they reined in their horses and walked them slowly toward him with their bows half raised. They surrounded him, laughing, almost as if wanting to draw out the pleasure of the moment.
Then a high emir came galloping up, pushed through his own ranks, pointed at Arn and began shouting various orders. All the Syrian and Egyptian riders greeted him with their bows raised over their heads before they wheeled their horses around and vanished in a cloud of dust.
At first Arn sat there thinking that he had witnessed a miracle of God, but his reason told him quite clearly that there was no question of anything like that. They had spared his life, it was that simple. Whether it had to do with Saladin or something else it was impossible to know. Right now there were more important questions to worry about.
He shook off the sense of calm, which he had mustered while waiting for death, and rode fast down toward the remaining portion of their own forces. Of the knights that had survived, almost all of them were wounded in one way or another. There were now about twenty reserve horses, the same number of pack horses, and a hundred archers on foot. Arn’s Turcopoles had all fled. They fought for money, not to die unnecessarily for Christians. They intended either to win or to flee.
The defeat was great. More than three hundred knights were lost, more than Arn had ever heard of in any other battle. But right now the important thing was to think clearly and save whatever could be saved. He was the highest-ranking of all the surviving knight-brothers, and he took command at once.
Before they all rushed off they had to hold a brief council, so he gathered three of the least wounded brothers around him. The first question was why Saladin’s army hadn’t finished off the attack now that they had succeeded in what they had always wanted; to separate the Christians’ infantry from their cavalry. The answer must be that they were on their way to engage in battle with King Baldwin’s army and planned to wipe it out first, before they returned to finish here. So there was no time to waste; if possible, they had to reunite with the king’s army before all was lost.