Soldier of Crusade Read Free Page B

a sigh. Tempted to tell Peter to go to the devil he knew that bribery was so much easier than condemnation.
    ‘More grain, a better supply of meats and also wine.’ Peter was about to go on, when the noisy arrival of a high Byzantine official obliged him stop; the fellow, a much trusted aide and close imperial advisor called Manuel Boutoumites was obviously intent on speaking to the Emperor without delay, which he did when signalled to speak.
    ‘Majesty, news has come from Xerigordos. A party of knights has attacked the town and taken the fortress there. It is reported they intend to use it as a base to raid deeper into the Sultanate of Rüm.’
    If Peter the Hermit was astonished at the language such news produced and from a man said to be as pious as Alexius, it was a measure of the shock and anger the Emperor felt, even if this had been something he feared. Xerigordos was well beyond the range of any previous raid, and worse, it was a Turkish fortress, if not a very important one. Such an act was both premature and dangerous: the last thing Alexius wanted was to stir up trouble on his borders whenhe was too weak to easily contain it and the military aid he expected from Europe was yet to arrive. He did not count the knights who had come with the People’s Crusade to be that, a fact Alexius made plain to the Hermit once he had established the size of the force engaged, a mere five hundred men in all, the majority foot soldiers.
    ‘The Turks will not let that stand.’
    Peter was taken aback and it was plain on his face. ‘Can you not support them, Eminence?’
    ‘No I cannot, so it falls to you, good man, or a messenger sent by you, to tell them to withdraw at once.’

C HAPTER T WO
    I t had all started so well for the men who took the Castle of Xerigordos, as it had for the whole People’s Crusade. The fertile northern plains of Bithynia seemed entirely clear of any defence and Kilij Arslan, the Turk who had taken to himself the title of the Sultan of Rüm, remained within the formidable walls of Nicaea and seemed passive regarding the arrival of these thousands of pilgrims as well as indifferent to their activities.
    Having settled around Civetot it was only days before marauding parties set out from the coastal town to bring mayhem and destruction to the surrounding countryside, in much the same manner as they had done on the way to Constantinople. Much of that pillaging, in terms of distance, was constrained by the lack of suitable transport for the mostly foot-bound and untrained host, but that did not apply to parties led by well-armed and mounted knights, most notably those raiding under the banner of Reinald the Alemanni.
    Ranging further afield they had enjoyed complete freedom to despoil any settlements they found while paying scant attention to the religious or vassalage ties of their victims; it mattered not whether they were Christian Greeks or Turks and infidels. They represented booty for men who had come to the East seeking to gain profit from the Crusade as well as forgiveness. Finally the old and badly repaired fortress of Xerigordos, as well as the town that had grown around it, fell to Reinald and so easily that he, as well as the force he led, saw it as divine approval. The desire to partake of the fruits of that capture led to their downfall.
    Three days of feasting, some pleasant slaughter of the menfolk and violation of the women, ended when a force of Kilij Arslan’s Turks appeared that outnumbered them three to one, the men Reinald led forced to take refuge in the run-down castle. There was no time to gather supplies of any kind, not that the town could provide much after it had been pillaged, but the real difficulty came when the Crusaders found that there was no water supply within the walls, a crippling handicap in a part of the world where, even in early October, the temperatures could be scorching.
    Such a debilitating predicament was not aided by the need to constantly man the walls