The Templar Thief: Peter Sparke book 4

by Scott Chapman

  For long seconds it seemed that the ship would escape. The wall of water towered over the ship, literally casting it into shadow as it blocked out the sun. Then the wave reached the stern.

  A Wonder

  The first light of dawn crept onto the rocky plateau where Salvatore and Dimitrios sat on the machine. It was a scene of desolation. No trees or shrubs could survive in this arid landscape. There were no streams, and rains, when they fell, ran straight off the hard surface and had scored deep channels into the rock.

  Salvatore stood and silently walked for a hundred paces to the north, carrying a bucket of pitch. He picked a large rock and daubed it with a large black mark, then walked another fifty paces, and then another, at each stop marking a rock.

  He returned to the machine and untethered the large swinging beam that balanced the long arm pointing behind it and the short arm, weighted with a basket of stones in front. At the tip of the long end, he attached a length of heavy chain with the basket shaped object which had been made by the iron worker. Into this basket he placed one of the ballast rocks from the wagon.

  "You can help," he said to Dimitrios as he wound a rope attached to the long end onto a spindle on the machine. With two men it was not a difficult job and took only a few minutes. At each turn, a sprocket clicked into a gear on the reel, stopping it slipping backwards.

  The pre-dawn silence was broken by the sound of rope straining and the regular, dull thump of the sprocket clicking as tension was created and the short, weighted end was pulled into the blue-black sky.

  He handed Dimitrios a mallet. "On my word, strike here," he said, tapping an iron lever attached to the sprocket.

  "Now!" he said. Dimitrios swung the mallet against the spike, forcing the sprocket out of the reel and releasing the tension which held the long end of the spar down. With a deep groan, it began to move, the chain rattling as its slack was taken up. The heavy basket was snatched from the ground, and then it too heaved upwards.

  At the highest point in its journey, the spar banged against the retaining bar on the machine and the chain began to describe its onward arc. When the chain reached its highest point, it swung back towards the earth, releasing the rock it held in the basket.

  The rock, larger than a man's head, flew into the sky in a long, whispering trajectory before smashing into the ground between the first and second marker.

  Salvatore walked back to the wagon, selected a ballast stone, placed it into the counterweight and loaded another rock into the iron basket. “Again.”

  Five times Salvatore and Dimitrios repeated the process with each of the last two stones falling within a dozen paces of the second marker. By now the sun was fully up and it was possible to see movement on the guard towers of the city walls.

  Salvatore had Dimitrios help draw the machine into readiness, and then he sat down, his back to the city.

  "What now?" said Dimitrios.

  "Did you bring anything to eat?" said Salvatore. "I'm hungry."

  The Night Watch Captain of the East Gate had a quiet life. The walls rose more than fifty feet high at their lowest point and the towers that stood every hundred paces were a dozen feet higher. Every night there were the lights of campfires from caravans waiting to enter the city at first light, but he had never seen any activity on the arid wasteland above the roadway.

  They heard the noise before they saw anything, the noise of rocks being smashed into the ground with enormous force, then they saw the machine, a dark skeleton outlined against the blank earth.

  As Salvatore and Dimitrios sat down to eat, the Captain called out the guard.

  It took twenty minutes to assemble a dozen horsemen and have the main gate swung open. They galloped out, past the waiting merchants who set up a chorus of complaints as the gates were swung shut again. Whatever was happening outside was staying outside. Along the walls, the rest of the guard took post, many with crossbows pointing uselessly towards the machine which sat in clear view, but beyond their range.

  Twelve mounted men make a lot of noise, especially when they are on official business. Salvatore and Dimitrios continued eating in silence until the troop arrived in a flurry of stamping horses and jingling armor.

  "What is your business?" said the Commander of the Night Watch.

  Salvatore said nothing, but stood and walked over to the wagon, heaving one of the heavy buckets onto his shoulder.

  "I command you to tell me your name," said the Commander.

  Salvatore placed the bucket with its hide cover into the missile holder. From his belt he took a knife and cut a small gash in the leather. He went back to the base of the machine and fetched a covered earthenware pot made up of two cups held face to face with a leather strap. He opened the cups and lifted out a smoldering piece of charcoal. From the machine, he took a stick with rags wrapped around the top, pushed it through the hole he had cut in the leather-topped bucket and held the charcoal to the oil-soaked rags and blew until it caught fire. Then he dipped the torch onto the surface of the bucket. Immediately, the oil within started to burn, a flame shooting through the leather.

  Without looking at the guard, he walked over to the machine and kicked the restraining spike free. The winding mechanism whirred, the beam swung upwards and the flaming bucket hurled through the pale morning sky.

  As it landed, the bucket shattered, creating a pool of flaming oil, which ignited the pitch tar. The whole flaming mass exploded, sending flames twenty feet into the sky and more than a dozen yards long. The stench of burning oil filled the air and a pillar of black smoke rose from the impact point.

  "Seize him," said the Commander.

  Salvatore reached over to the machine and took up his sword.

  "If you try to seize me," he said, "you will die and so will some of your men. Then if I am not dead, whoever of you is left alive will bring me to the presence of the Commune of the City. They will want to talk to the man who built this machine." He placed another of his fire buckets on the machine, cut through its skin and held the flaming torch near it. "They will want to know why you allowed it to be destroyed when the city has much need of weapons. Better to fetch the leader of the Commune here, perhaps?"

  The Commander stirred in his saddle. He turned to one of his men. "If he moves, kill him," he said before turning his horse and galloping back to Tripoli.

  Impact

  The SS Elkhorn could not outrun the wave. As the wall of water enveloped the stern, the ship's natural buoyancy responded by tilting upwards. For a brief second the ship held its position and was pushed from behind by the force of the wave. It began to surf.

  Had the leading edge of the wave been less steep, the Elkhorn could have maintained its forward motion, allowing the whole mass of seawater to pass underneath. A larger ship, or a more powerful one, might have been able to clear the crest, but the Elkhorn had neither power enough, nor the length to survive.

  As the stern was gripped by water, the field of vision of the four men on the bridge filled with the wall of sea rushing at them. It filled the horizon and then cast a shadow over them, blocking out the sun.

  The Captain ordered the bridge cleared and the three other crew members rushed for the watertight door that led back to the dubious safety of the superstructure. He knew that if, by some miracle, the ship made it past the wave, there would need to be someone at the helm. He also knew that a ship without a helmsman was no ship at all and he refused to give up control while there was even a ghost of a chance

  He slammed the door behind the last man out and heaved the toggle locks closed before returning to the ship's controls. The wave moved along the length of the ship and he felt an entirely new type of vibration running through the deck beneath his feet. Looking over his shoulder he saw the first of the waters flash towards the bridge. Three sides of the bridge were triple-layer Plexiglas, built to take the worst punishment any storm could throw at it. On all three sides the captain saw the water catch him, flashing from blue to green to black, and for a se
cond his ship, still under its own power, became a submarine. Then two things happened simultaneously; the windows imploded, engulfing the bridge in a fraction of a second, the pressure killing the captain instantly, and the air intakes that fed the engine flooded, killing the main power.

  Thousands of tons water now surrounded the ship and began to crush against the low pressure in the hull. The weakest part was the main hold, the two strongest were the bow and the after superstructure which housed the crew quarters, the control systems and engine room.

  As the hold began to buckle, the seams popped open like a zipper, allowing the sea to stream through. The inrush was so great that, had the Elkhorn been carrying a bulk cargo, she would have flooded within seconds. Her cargo of containers, however, acted differently. Each forty-foot container had its own buoyancy and the flood of water shot them up against the underside of the main deck, like bubbles trapped under ice. Some containers imploded but others held, crashing around inside the flooding main hold.

  The air trapped in the stern of the ship tried to pull its way towards the surface, as did the small fore section. The partly filled hold, however, fought against the motion and the skeleton of the ship was put under intolerable stress.

  The skeleton of the ship twisted and the bow sheared off. The rips in the hull raced along the outer shell of the crippled vessel and peeled away the skin of the remaining watertight compartments causing an immediate inrush of water, which pulled it, and the two crew members who had sought refuge there, down to the black depths.

  The watertight doors in the aft section, where eight crew members huddled, still held, but three portholes could no longer take the pressure and gave out, rupturing with a noise like cannon fire. The stern section, the last buoyant part of the ship, now began to fill.

  With the weight of water in the hold pulling against the buoyancy in the stern and the surviving containers, the ship had more inertia than the water around it and the wave rushed forward, rolling over the stricken vessel.

  She came out of the water stern first. The forward motion of the wave would have made it look as though the Elkhorn was reversing out of the sea, but it fact she was dead in the water; flattened, smashed and spat out by the sea. Sunlight burst through the control room portholes where the survivors huddled.

  The First Officer rushed to the door leading to the bridge. It took three men to force the mechanism and, when the metal hatch fell open, they walked out to a scene of absolute devastation. The bridge was gone. No trace existed of anything above deck height. The First Officer looked up at the communications mast, which had the appearance of a dead tree trunk, stripped of antennas and aerials. The mid-section of the ship was still several feet above sea level and fairly level, but the bow was gone. Every object that had been secured to the outside of the ship was gone, including lifeboats.

  The First Officer raced back into the control room and went through the motions of trying the ship's two main radio communication systems, but with the external antenna shorn off, there was never any chance. The automatic distress buoy, designed to begin communicating as soon as it was detached from the ship in case of sinking, was smashed to pieces against the bulwark.

  There were no satellite phones on board, leaving only the short-range ship-to-ship radio set. Used to communicate to nearby vessels or harbor pilots, it had a limited range. But it did have an internal aerial. Main power was gone, but the battery had reserve.

  The First Officer flicked on the ship-to-ship set, knowing that the range of the system was far too limited to reach anyone. All other ships had been cleared from the area and the chance of his message being picked up was so slight as to be almost zero.

  "Mayday, mayday. This is SS Elkhorn. We are without power, holed and sinking." He flicked the hand-piece to receive and the buzz of static filled the room.

  "Mayday, mayday. This is SS Elkhorn. No power, sinking. Mayday, mayday."

  He paused for a moment and then read out their last-known location, then turned the set off for ten minutes to save battery power.

  Through the hatch he could see the sky darkening as the storm approached. The waterlogged hull was staying afloat, but he knew that one decent wave would slap the ship underwater in seconds. The portholes below were slowly filling the crew quarters. The First Officer bent over the radio controls and pretended to make an adjustment, unable to bear looking at the faces of his crew.

  "Mayday, mayday. This is Elkhorn. We have no power and are sinking. Eight survivors. Any vessel, please respond. Mayday..."

  In the silence of the wrecked ship the incoming voice boomed around the steel bulkheads. "Elkhorn, this is Bravo Delta Four Four. Repeat your position. Over.” There was a heartbeat of a pause, then the voice was drowned by the sound of the cheering survivors.

  The First Officer shouted his men into silence then repeated his position to the voice coming through the radio. They were not alone and they had a chance.

  Fire

  The hammering on the main door woke him, but did not unnecessarily worry the Provost. Chaos and panic were his daily bread. At least if it was a disaster it would give him the excuse to ignore everyone for a few hours There was literally no end to the trials of the Provost of the Commune of the City of Tripoli. His first thought each morning was to wonder which of the nest of vipers he had to struggle with would dominate his life until he could reach the end of the day and the happy oblivion of a pot of wine and his bed.

  Lately, the absurd Countess Lucia of Tripoli had found a new lease of energy and had been racing around the city making regal declarations and scattering coins for the poor, as though acting like a queen actually made her one.

  The Genoese, who now controlled most of the city's trade, were quieter, but infinitely more dangerous. Fortunately, their obsession with bringing harm to their enemies from Pisa and Venice seemed to be keeping them occupied.

  The Bishop of Tripoli had, to everyone's surprise, become a warrior hero and was basking in the adulation of the city's merchants for his destruction of that vile brigand, Mosun.

  That left only the Saracens to worry about, and that was something the Provost of the Commune was very worried about.

  Not only did the Provost need to find ways to defend the city, he had to be seen by everyone to be doing it. What was the point of doing great things on behalf of the Commune if nobody learned about them? The problem was, he thought, as he heard the commotion downstairs, what it always was; money.

  In the hallway, he met his houseman who was starting his day, as he so often did, by trying to stop some agitated visitor from barging in to the Provost's bedchamber.

  "Let him pass, let him pass, you fool," said the Provost. “He is Captain of the Night Watch, he's meant to be in a foul mood, it's his job."

  The Night Watch Captain pushed past the houseman, pausing to give him his filthiest look.

  "My Lord Provost," he said, "there is a man who would talk with you."

  "Before dawn, you push into my house to tell me I have a visitor?"

  "We found him outside the city. Firing rocks and flames."

  "At what?" said the Provost.

  "At the desert."

  The Provost raised his head and rubbed the space between his eyebrows with his thumb. It eased the stress.

  "Where is he?"

  "Outside the walls,” said the Captain of the Night Watch. “In the desert."

  Of all the options open to the Provost, continuing this conversation seemed to be the least productive. "I will dress, I will eat a piece of bread, and then I will come and see this man who is destroying the desert with his rocks and fires." He turned and climbed back up the stairs. Not a promising start to the day, but at least it was a respite from the tedium.

  It took two hours for the Provost's party to mount up, assemble and make their way through the East Gate. There was no sign of chaos or fiery destruction, but there was a group of the Watch surrounding a scaffold of some type and a strong smell of burnt fat. The Provost slowly walke
d his horse to the knot of men.

  "You are?" he said to the man sitting on the scaffold.

  "I am your servant, Lord Provost," said Salvatore.

  "Good, well in that case you can act like a good servant and tell me why you have perturbed our Night Watch."

  Salvatore stood up, loaded the machine and hurled a rock high into the air. Before it landed, he recovered the swinging arm, loaded one of the buckets into the missile holder and lit the rawhide cover, then sent it hurtling afterwards. It hit the ground and blasted a flaming path across the hard desert rock.

  The Provost nodded in measured appreciation. He had seen catapults and war machines, though never one as small and fast as this, and one which could wreak such flamboyant violence.

  Salvatore went back to the wagon and brought out another bucket.

  "No need to burn more rocks," said the Provost.

  Salvatore ignored him and loaded the bucket into the machine, lighting it and setting it loose.

  This time, when the bucket smashed into the earth, rather than just a pool of burning fat and oil, a pair of chains with metal balls at each end crashed out and swept across the plane, spinning and spraying fire over a much greater distance.

  The Provost urged his horse forward to where the missile had landed. The spinning chains had left a trail of flaming tar over a length of more than thirty paces. Any group of men standing near the spot would have been annihilated. He returned to the machine.

  "Anything else?"

  Salvatore took the long metal spar and attached it by rope to the front bogie. He leaned back on the pole and the machine pivoted. He loaded and fired the machine again, this time even faster. In the space of less than two minutes he redirected the machine and fired it again, alone.

  "Nothing else," said Salvatore, securing the arm to the body of the machine with a heavy rope.

  Nothing else was needed. The Provost knew very well that wars were expensive and that the source of the expense was the ruinous cost of soldiers. A machine like this was not only marvelously destructive, it could be manned by only one or two men and being so mobile it could do the job of several ordinary machines.