They were yet half a day away when they saw the smoke rolling heavenward in a heavy black column. The Norsemen reached Jerusalem at midday to find that the northwestern wall had been breached and the rape of Jerusalem begun.

Jerusalem's high walls were breached on the fifteenth of July, 1099. The initial combat had been fierce. The crusaders suffered terribly under a constant rain of arrows and Greek fire as they laboured to fill the deep ditch at the foot of the wall so that the siege towers could be wheeled into position. Despite heavy losses, Godfrey, commanding from the top of one of the towers, had succeeded in lowering a bridge from his tower to the wall top. The first man across the bridge forced a way onto the battlement and somehow remained on his feet long enough to enable others to scramble in behind him.

Godfrey joined the fray, bearing the Holy Lance into battle once more. Emboldened by his example, other knights swarmed after him. Soon the courageous crusaders had secured a section of the wall, and Godfrey ordered scaling ladders to be brought up, enabling more attackers to join the fight. While his knights cut their way into the gate tower, Godfrey lofted the Holy Lance and urged more and more warriors up the ladders and onto the battlements. Meanwhile, his initial contingent of knights fought their way down to the gate itself, where the Arabs made a valiant stand. Crusaders were pouring into the city through the gate tower, however; the defenders were slaughtered and the Gate of the Column opened wide to allow the main attacking force to enter at a run.

Once through the gate, the crusaders made straight for the citadel, meeting little resistance on the way. Thus, they had the good fortune to surround David's Tower before Amir Iftikhar knew they were inside the city. The amir had no time to order a proper defence. Cut off from the main force of defenders on the northern wall, he had only his bodyguard at his command, and though they put up a desperate fight, Raymond's forces far outnumbered them and they had little choice but to withdraw to the protection of the citadel.

Once the northern wall and gates were lost, the Arab defenders regrouped and hastened to the Haram al-Sharif, the temple precinct, to mount their last defence. They retreated to the Al-Aqsa Mosq, which now occupied the site of Great Solomon's temple, hard by the Qubat Al-Shakhra, the Dome of the Rock.

Tancred, leading a large force of knights, pursued the fleeing Arabs to the Temple Mount and promptly surrounded the mosq. The defenders climbed onto the roof of the holy building and loosed arrows into the upturned faces of their attackers. This caused only momentary vexation, however, as the crusaders simply fell back and waited until the arrows were spent. Lacking the weapons and supplies to endure a lengthy siege, the Arab defenders threw themselves upon the mercy of their Christian conquerors. Tancred accepted the surrender of the infidel, and commanded his banner to be flown from the top of the temple as a protection to those sheltering within.

Elsewhere, the wily amir, high in David's Tower, sent word to Count Raymond that he was ready to deliver the city to the crusaders, but would do so only under Count Raymond's personal pledge of honour. In exchange for this pledge, Amir Iftikhar promised to pay a heavy ransom for himself and the men with him. Raymond accepted the conditions of surrender and, after receiving a considerable amount of treasure, escorted the amir and his bodyguard out of the city and saw them safely on the road to Ascalon.

With the departure of the amir, all resistance ceased, leaving Jerusalem and its citizens unprotected.

At first, few guessed the danger. While the Muhammedans cowered behind barred doors, the Armenian and Greek Christians were glad to welcome their western brothers, and threw open the windows and doors of their houses to shower flower petals and rose water upon the heads of the liberators. The Jews were less enthusiastic, to be sure, but not overly concerned. It was their city, after all-a claim which every occupying force from the Persians to the Muslims had recognized.

Then the slaughter commenced.

Unable to tell Armenian from Muhammedan, Greek from Jew or Byzantine, and unwilling to barter peace – after their long ordeal across the Syrian and Judean deserts, after their suffering at Dorylaeum and Antioch, after their grim endurance of countless privations, disease, and death since leaving their homes-the triumphant pilgrims would not be satisfied with anything less than blood.

Crusaders fresh to the fight poured into the city by way of the gates on the north and west. They ran through the streets, breaking into the houses and putting the inhabitants to the sword, before sacking the dwellings and carrying off any treasure they found. The terrified people fled before the onslaught, abandoning their homes for the safety of the southern half of the city where the attackers had not yet penetrated. There, they hoped to escape through one of the southern gates below Mount Zion.

King Magnus and his Norse battle host arrived at Jerusalem just as the pillage reached its climax in the northern part of the city, and was beginning to spread to the southern quarter.

Murdo squatted on the hillside in the shade of an olive tree, sweating from the long climb up through the hills. He gazed out upon the Holy City perched on a high rock escarpment, its massive walls rising sheer from the Hinnom Valley, soaring above the crusader camps spread like rumpled skins along the valley floor. From where he knelt, Murdo could see the vast stone curtain stretching away to the north, following the upward sweep to the heights of Mount Moriah to the east, and cresting Mount Ophel and Mount Zion to the south above the Vale of Kidron. Smoke, dirty and dark, filled the air from ground to sky, casting all below in a filthy brown, foul-smelling haze.

The Jaffa Gate gaped open, allowing a steady stream of crusaders into and out of the city. Shouts and cries, and the clashing sounds of battle, could be heard from various quarters, mingling with an eerie ululating wail that rose and fell with the wind, coursing hot and dry in fitful gusts through the valley. The sun shone as a dull blood-brown ember burning through the thick pall of smoke, bathing the city in a strange and lurid light. Murdo put his hand to his purse and shook out the small gattage coin onto his palm. Looking at the bit of silver glinting in the fevered light and, suddenly feeling foolish for having carried it so long, he tossed it away. He would not need it now.

All around him, Norse warriors chafed the dust-dry earth with the butts of their spears, and boasted to one another how much plunder they would get, and how many foemen they would kill. King Magnus, though eager as the next man for his share of the city's spoils, at least paused long enough to acquaint himself with the lay of the land. The monks, familiar with the Holy Land through long study, had prepared a simple drawing of the city for the king; Fionn held the crude map while Ronan pointed out the foremost features of the city and surrounding countryside.

Murdo, ignoring the vacuous banter around him, strained to hear what the elder cleric was saying. 'Before us is the main entrance-the Jaffa Gate,' Ronan explained, indicating the great timber doors on the western side. The priest's finger moved to the clustered domes directly over the entrance. 'There is David's Tower-which is what they call the citadel.' The finger moved to another cluster of domes rising high above the rest of the city. 'That is the temple precinct on Mount Moriah. That is where the Muhammedans have built their mosq.'

Brother Ronan went on to indicate other landmarks for King Magnus and his battlechiefs. Murdo crowded closer to hear. Little remained of the original temple, the priest told them; the ancient walls had been razed by the Romans, rebuilt by the Byzantines, and taken over by the Muhammedans. Murdo could see the golden dome gleaming through the smoke haze, and the mosq's towers, or minarets, still stately and grand above the city.