They hastened to remove all the equipment and supplies from the reserve horses so as to load their wounded instead. All the spare horses were to be ridden by the oldest sergeants and archers, while the younger ones had to run along beside the pitiful remnants of the army of knights that now set its course toward the River Litani. Arn’s thought was that Baldwin’s army surely was hard pressed, and their only salvation was to make it across the river.

But King Baldwin’s army was already beaten and had dispersed into small fleeing groups that were being caught up by superior pursuers, one group after another. The king himself and his bodyguards, however, had managed to make it across the river. That made the situation even worse for all the stragglers, including the depleted and suffering force that Arn was leading.

As his men and horses were attempting to cross the river, Arn gathered the best archers around him on the riverbank—Harald Øysteinsson among them—to try to hold the enemy’s mounted archers and lancers at a distance while foot soldiers, horses, and wounded knight-brothers waded across the river in a bloodied and desperate contingent.

They shot arrows until they were all gone, then flung off their weapons and shields and cast themselves into the river, Arn and Harald bringing up the rear. But they were the only two to survive among those who came last. They both were able to dive down and let the current in the middle of the river take them a good way downstream before they staggered ashore, panting.

There was only time for a brief respite on the other side while they attempted to establish order once again. Feeling an unexpected sense of joy in this desperate situation, Arn saw his stallion Khamsiin come galloping up to him in the midst of the confusion.

Riders and foot soldiers from the Hospitallers had come to their rescue on the other side of the Litani, and they led the defeated group of Templar knights to the fortress of Beaufort, which was only about an hour away. Many men from the royal army had also taken refuge there.

Soon the fortress was surrounded by Saladin’s forces, but that was no cause for alarm because Beaufort was one of the impregnable fortresses.

The Hospitallers of St. John were no friends of the Templars, though Arn did not know why, only that there was always tension between the two orders. It often happened that if the Hospitallers were in a battle, the Templars would stay out of it, and vice versa. This time the Hospitallers had not participated with more than a symbolic force, while their main force remained in safety behind the walls of Beaufort.

The nickname the Templars had for the Hospitaller Order was the black Samaritans, which referred both to their black mantles with the white cross and to the fact that they had originated as a hospital offering free medical care. But since there were now many wounded to take care of, not a word of affront was heard among the rescued and wounded Templar knights who had involuntarily become the guests of their rival order.

It was a hard first night with many wounded to look after at the fortress of Beaufort. Exhausted and red-eyed from lack of sleep and with a paralyzing sorrow within him, Arn forced himself to take a walk around the walls of the fortress to observe and learn. Beaufort was situated at a high elevation. He could see the glittering sea in the west, the Bekaa Valley in the north, and snow-clad mountains in the east. The high location of the fortress made it impossible even to imagine how an enemy could build siege towers outside on the slopes to get over those walls. The steep cliffs all around would make it equally impossible to drag catapults into position. Standing outside the walls and screaming insults, as the enemy soldiers were now doing, was meaningless. Not even a very long siege would have any effect, because the fortress was supplied by its own spring and had cisterns that were so overfilled that they had to release water into an artificial stream toward the west. The grain magazine was always full and held enough to support five hundred men for a year.

One drawback was possibly that the steep cliffs outside made it impossible to strike back at a besieger with surprise cavalry attacks. Right now there were more than three hundred knights inside the fortress and an equal number of sergeants. That was a force that on a flat battlefield would quickly have obliterated the vituperators that now camped outside the walls. Had they known what a large force was inside the fortress they would surely have been less audacious. But that was the thing about fortresses: they always contained a secret. Were there only twenty defenders inside? Or a thousand? More than once a superior enemy had passed by fortresses without attacking because they had miscalculated the size of the garrison. The opposite had also occurred. As in this case, the enemy thought they were besieging an almost empty fortress and let themselves be lulled into a false sense of security. Then they were crushed in the first assault.

Arn went to take care of Khamsiin again, brushing the horse and speaking to him about his great sorrow. For the third time he examined every inch of his steed’s body to assure himself that there was no hidden arrow-wound. But Khamsiin proved to be as uninjured as his master, with only a few scratches, the sort that they both had learned to live with.

After tending to Khamsiin he proceeded to the sergeants’ quarters, speaking with the wounded and praying. After prayers he took Harald Øysteinsson up on the walls to teach him how a fortress functioned.

As they walked along the breastwork on the eastern wall, they discovered a grisly procession on its way up to the fortress. There were several squadrons of Mameluke cavalry slowly working their way up the slopes. On their raised lances they each bore a bloody head, and almost all the heads had beards.

They stood as if petrified, without saying a word, without showing on their faces what they were feeling. This was hard for Harald Øysteinsson, but he made a great effort to behave in the same apparently unmoved manner as his lord.

The triumphant Mamelukes lined up in row after row below the eastern wall and shook their bloody lances so that the beards on the severed heads flapped up and down. One of them rode up in front of the others and raised his voice in something that sounded to Harald like a prayer, a lament, and a victory cry all at the same time.

“What is he saying?” Harald whispered, his mouth dry.

“He says that he thanks God the Almighty that the indignity of Mont Gisard is now eradicated, that what happened yesterday at Marj Ayyoun is more than sufficient redress, that we will all have our heads skewered in this way, and more such talk,” said Arn without expression.

Just then Beaufort’s weapons master came hurrying up onto the wall along with several Hospitallers. The weapons master shouted orders not to shoot at the enemy, and the sergeants who had already begun to fumble for their bows and crossbows laid down their arms.

“Why can’t we shoot?” asked Harald. “Shouldn’t some of them have to die so we can put an end to their bluster?”

“Yes,” said Arn in the same toneless way he had spoken before. “The one riding in front should die. You can see by the blue silk band around his right arm that he is their commander, and he’s the one who is proclaiming that he’s the great conqueror, God’s favorite, and other blasphemy. He should be the first to die, but not before we have sung none.”

“Shouldn’t we take revenge rather than sing hymns?” Harald muttered with ill-concealed impatience.

“Yes, it might seem so,” replied Arn. “But above all we must not act prematurely. You see that they have lined up at what they think is a safe distance from arrows and—”

“But I can—”

“Hush! Don’t interrupt me. Remember that you are a sergeant. Yes, I know that you could hit him from here. So could I. But the braggart down there doesn’t know that. We’re not in charge here at the Hospitallers’ fortress. Their weapons master gave orders for no one to shoot, and that was a wise thing to do.”