Faith Utmost Tested

By Michael Gryboski

The battle was drawing closer and the entire upright coming from Constantinople knew it. There was fear for all men who marched, six abreast, knew they would face the most shrewd and cunning army from Arabia: the Army of Medina. At the helm of this force of Bedouin and peasant, there was the fiercest swordsman to come to face the Byzantine Empire since Saladan: Shahid Mahound. No one knew his age, for his kaffiyeh covered all of his countenance save his eyes. And what eyes they were! They pierced any lion of bravery as cleanly and harshly as the sword he wielded. His army, the Army of Medina, was 70,000 strong. This included 20,000 Bedouin riders on the great Arab horses and 50,000 footmen, conscripted from the Arabian Peninsula and from the endangered kingdoms of Jordan and Syria.

So diverse was the Army of Medina that only the Shiites of Persia, who were reviled throughout the Middle East, gave no souls to the effort. Shahid Mahound inherited the position through the Family of Mahound, who claimed direct ancestry from the generals of the Prophet himself. No Christian warrior had ever been able to fell him in battle. And furthermore, least of the better knights of Constantinople was the valiant leader of the army that will meet the Army of Medina: Theodosius Hristosacoft, who was one of the Dukes of the Royal Family of Hristosacoft. His Holiness had decreed that Theodosius was to rule as king of the Throne of Jerusalem. He was to be king of most all of the Holy Land; but he would have to defeat Mahound to get the prize.

The army of Hristosacoft had gotten many conscripts from Asia Minor as it ventured deeper into the Holy Land, swelling its ranks to 150,000. This encompassed 10,000 knights and 140,000 foot soldiers, including bowmen and conscripted. The knights were the primary force, it was planned for the conscripts to merely exhaust the enemy and make it easier for the knights to survive. Though conscripted, the majority had a willingness to venture to defeat the Saracens. For too long, the Holy Land was infested with these heathens and therefore they must be driven from the Temple of Solomon and from Jerusalem.

“But how can I stop the greatest swordsman Beelzebub ever sent to earth? There must be a way O Lord,” prayed Theodosius, who knew that if he and Shahid were to face each other one-on-one, that he would surely die. “He was made to kill, fashioned in darkness to spread darkness. I am not so bred. I am barely a killer of harts and stags let alone a human figure as him.” Seeing that night was coming over the troops as they got to their tents and watched the stars, Theodosius decided to close his prayer and address his commanders as the night drew ever nearer as the Army of Medina did likewise. “Let Thy Holy Will be done, and let it be that I reign over Thy City. Amen.” Theodosius crossed himself and then got up from his genuflected position.

Like just about every Eastern Christian, Theodosius prayed before Holy Icons genuflected. His subjects did the same and he did the same. Indeed, knowing that a horde of evil was coming would have anyone of the army’s number on his or her knees for prayer. Theodosius would consult his generals that night. Recent scouting reports confirmed the inevitable: the Army of Medina was closing in. By the next day, perhaps early morning in fact, the Army of Medina, with its efficient warrior Mahound at the head, would attack the Christian army and more then likely slaughter most of the combatants. The Bedouins were lightning fast on their intense steeds and could easily rip apart any peasant unit on the battlefield.

The bowmen needed some sort of line in front of them to protect them as they shoot waves of arrows into the adversary. The knights needed enough swinging room to smash the bodies of lightly armored Saracens and gallop forth to slash any cowards who thought that they could survive. In no more then a half hour, there would be plans for the coming day of battle, and these plans would lead to many deaths. As that next day was approaching, Shahid was praying to his God. “I ask that You, O Allah, may protect me this coming day of battle. As Thou didst protect Thy servant, Saladan, nearly two centuries previous, may I slay the kafir, who knows not Thy Ways but instead the ways of Satan. So be it.” The Christians, as he saw it, had invaded the Family of Mahound’s most cherished holdings in the Middle East. The center of trade and history alike, Mahound would be more then willing to wipe out still another unit of Crusaders, who did not follow the True God. The sun was beginning to pierce the darkness of early morn. Shahid saw this as a sign from Allah. This day, he thought, I will pierce the kafir, regardless of his numbers or his size.

That day of bloodshed became more visible as the sun rose higher still. The long rectangles of peasants, most with light armor and bright blue and yellow tunics, held pikes or swords with the occasional shield. Behind them, regiments of knights and Sagittarians ready to darken the now lighted sky. Across the desert skyline of the new day came the charge of Bedouin and the steady advance of the footed Saracens. The Bedouin charged with the fuel of horse and fear from the enemy holding firm and ever growing. Many of the Bedouin came closer and closer and closer, riding fast enough to cause fear and sudden casualties and yet somehow slow enough to have the foot soldiers be not too far from their position.

“Bowmen…fire!” shouted Hristosacoft, who was on horseback. He had a small bodyguard of knights, who looked on in covered heads of helmets, ready to attack the tribes of the Army of Medina. Before they would get what some of their number considered a blessed pleasure, the wave of arrows crashed upon the bodies of the soldiers of Islam. Many fell as the lightning bolt stab of the three-cubit arrow went into the chest, and many others twisted and grimaced in pain as limbs were damaged severely by the ballistic device. Yet they surged onward, and at their lead was Mahound, with a Saracen Sword in one hand and a Banner of the Crescent Moon in the other.

As planned, Theodosius sacrificed his first rank of some 40,000 peasantry soldiers to the enemy by having them charge with mere axes and swords. The Bedouin, with a sort of sadistic pleasure, cut through the inexperienced foot soldiers easily, slashing at them with long cuts across the chest and even at times decapitating a foe. This dreadful loss was deemed justified as the other peasantry lifted their pikes and were able to keep the Bedouin at bay. As the battle drew into a stalemate, the knights of Theodosius, including Theodosius himself, charged into the fray as Saracen bowmen on horseback fired with impunity at the stationed hedgehog formations.

The knights charged from either side of the Bedouin and their footed allies. This caused immense confusion as the front line of the battle was turned into a chaos much like the opening round of the jousts of Europe. The knights were at a disadvantage. Though by now numbering superior to their foes, the skill and agility of the Bedouins, especially Mahound, gave it a hard task to win the day. Mahound himself was killing a knight for every minute. Though his blade was barely able to cut through the armor of the knights, it still gave a hard enough blow to the armor that the knight would be thrown from his horse and literally paralyzed.

In his blood lust, he encountered his rival, Theodosius. Theodosius had prayed for guidance, and with remembrance of what God told him, he fled from the battlefield. The confusion masked any knowledge that he did this. Full of rage, Mahound followed quickly after. Hristosacoft knew his horse could not outrun Mahound’s, so he stopped his steed some hundred meters from the battle. Knowing that his armor would have made him cumbersome, Theodosius wore only chain mail as protection. He dismounted from his steed and surprisingly Shahid did likewise. Shahid had his blade at the ready, already drenched in infidel blood. He knew the tongue of his foe, and spoke it to taunt his weaker opponent:

“Kafir! Why do you run? Do you fear death? I will send to the Fire you who adds gods to Allah and you will fear death much more!”

“Only fools and Christians are unafraid of death, fools have the excuse of being stupid… what do Christians have?” replied Hristosacoft. This gave a bit of a smile to the hidden face of Shahid, who in the Name of God removed the kaffiyeh to better see his kafir opponent. He replied in his challenging tone.

Which one are you, kafir? A Christian or a fool?”

“One of us is a fool and one of us is a Christian,” said Theodosius.

“I am neither, kafir, and I will make sure that you are both of those and dead as well. You who denies the True God Allah will now suffer for such perversion.”

As Mahound approached him, Theodosius asked him to stop and Mahound gladly honored the wish of a dying man. Theodosius made a unique challenge to Mahound:

“You believe that your God is True and mine is False. Well then, why do we not put this to the test?” With that, Theodosius drew his sword, which was not as bloody as Mahound’s, and to the shock of Mahound he wounded himself seven times. His wounds were on either cheek of his face, both upper legs, one slash on his forehead, and two more on either arm. “I demand that you do likewise. If your God is True and mine is False, he will surely keep you alive long enough to fell me in battle.”

Mahound nodded in agreement, and then delivered upon himself seven wounds as well. His were about the same save the fact that he was so confident in victory that he wounded his chest instead of his forehead. He then readied for the fight, having his sword in the position to his left side that he would have just before delivering the deathblow. He then charged at Theodosius, who was twenty meters away. Within a minute or less, the swords of the two faiths banged against each other’s steel-iron frame. The speed of Mahound was much better then Theodosius, who even without much armor could not respond fast enough to the sword’s attacks. As the blade of Mahound went up and came down to strike the head it was parried, but soon after that another blow was attempted by Mahound on the torso of Theodosius.

Mahound was too fast, and Theodosius was barely able to keep the Saracen from wounding him the eighth time. Finally, Theodosius was able to grab hold of the two swinging arms of a light Mahound and with the other tried to strike him dead. The blow was well aimed, but blocked by the still fast waving sword of the leader of the Army of Medina. For a seemingly eternal instant, the two men of different beliefs, who both assumed that God was with them, struggled with strength as the two blades slowly moved back and forth over the heads of the combatants.

But with one solid hard kick with his right leg, the pale Mahound was able to knock Hristosacoft to the ground. Flat on his back, and barely breathing due to the harsh kick, Theodosius could barely do more then try and inch away from the superior fighter. Mahound was walking very intensely towards his enemy, to give that horrid deathblow upon his chest. After that, he might behead him and have his head as a trophy. Immense fear gripped the fallen and wounded Hristosacoft, as the shadow of his foe crept still closer to him. Then suddenly, Mahound came to a slow gradual halt. His sword soon dropped from his grip and he then dropped to both knees, and in a few moments more dropped prone.

Knights soon arrived from the victorious battleground, and tended to the wounds of Hristosacoft on the very sands he lay in. “My God is the True God…infidel,” he said under his breath. After the battle, the rest of the resistance from Saracens in the Holy Land ceased and two weeks after the battle in the desert, Theodosius Hristosacoft was crowned King of Jerusalem. He would found a royal line that would last for over three hundred years. He would die at age 67 via heart complications. Going to the grave, he knew that his God was True.