Tom Swan and the Last Spartans - Part Three

by Christian Cameron

  ‘Perhaps,’ he said, ‘but it will be great fun, I promise you. Listen, all of you. When you want to sell a man something false, what do you do?’

  Orietto looked abashed. ‘Lie?’ he asked.

  Columbino frowned. ‘I do not sell men false things,’ he said.

  Bembo smiled. ‘You show him what he wants to see,’ he said.

  ‘Exactly,’ Swan said.

  Swan issued his orders, his voice light. He could not stop grinning, and his smiles were infectious.

  His shoulder didn’t even hurt.

  Of course, his hands were shaking.

  Di Silva was last to ride away; he had all the men-at-arms, and his duty was to be the reserve, hidden in the scrubby woods by the edge of their hilltop. ‘You are a little like a man who has drunk too much wine,’ he said. ‘I have followed you for a year, and you have the devil’s luck, but this is a throw for everything, and at a high score.’

  Swan shrugged. ‘Think of all the fun if we win,’ he said.

  Di Silva shook his head. ‘At least we have an escape route.’

  And Bembo too shook his head. ‘Even for me, this is insane,’ he said. ‘I understand the logic. I merely …’ He paused. ‘Bah. Where do you want me?’

  ‘By me,’ Swan said. ‘If any Turks make it this far, the best I can manage is subtle imprecations. You have to do the killing.’

  Bembo bowed. ‘At your service,’ he said.

  The dust cloud gradually became an army. The first sign was a sort of sparkle at the leading edge; the brilliant December sun on spear points and helmet tips. But soon the glitter resolved; colours and shapes became visible in the haze of dust, and there were horses and men.

  The scouts rode through the gap in the hedge at a gallop and kept riding straight west along the road.

  The Turkish outriders were close behind them; a long bowshot. They, too, rode through the gap in the hedge; about sixty of them, or almost a tenth of Swan’s whole force, riding into the rear of his ambush.

  There was nothing he could do about it. They didn’t notice his wagon, but kept straight on at a gallop.

  A mile behind them, a heavy force of armoured cavalry covered the front of the Turkish army. There were perhaps a thousand Turkish spahis in two big blocks, moving quickly, but on the road, in column, with a handful of men on the lower slopes of the ridge to the north, and a heavier post of vedettes moving on the plain, threading the olive groves.

  Behind them was only dust.

  Swan raised his sword and waved it.

  Three hundred paces below him, five sweating archers pushed the heavy wagon across the road. Then they hopped up into the bed and picked up their big English bows. A dozen pages emerged from the hedge where they had lain hidden and latched their crossbows.

  There were just twenty men on the hedge, and all of them were at the wagon.

  The spahi vanguard slowed a hundred paces out from the wagon, but they did not stop. And fifty paces out, the archers let fly; five expert archers with a wagon full of arrows.

  It was like watching a joust from high in the stands. Swan saw men die, and horses fall, but he couldn’t hear the screams, and the movement of the cavalry was only a vibration in the earth below his horse’s hooves.

  The third arrows were in the air before the first struck.

  Men were dying.

  The spahis, too late, realised through the dust that there was no way past the wagon.

  A trumpet sounded.

  The Turks halted.

  A dozen crossbow bolts emptied saddles. The range was very close; and the front of the Turks was in confusion.

  Swan watched, his stomach muscles clenched, his hands shaking furiously. He was hunched forward, trying to move the Turks with the force of his hips, and his horse took a step forward, so urgent was his weight change.

  The spahis flinched away from the archers and began to move along the hedged wall, headed south. Men were crouched low on the necks of their horses, and a cloud of arrows rose out of the spahi formation and struck into the hedgerow.

  The heavy war bow arrows continued to lash them. Every twelve seconds, another five arrows struck their formation; so few, apparently, but the attrition was continuous, and the men couldn’t strike back.

  The whole formation began to slip to its left, into the broken ground. The leaders and the original outriders were well to the south already, almost at the edge of the gully …

  Swan’s fists were clenched.

  ‘Oh, my God,’ Bembo said.

  A dozen Turks turned, having outflanked the hedge, and began to ride through an olive grove, easily leaping a low stone wall.

  A trumpet sounded, and the whole second division, behind them on the road, began to form to the flank. It was devastatingly professional; they formed from a column of fours to a line, four deep, and moved south.

  Swan couldn’t breathe.

  Out on the plain, at the very edge of the gully, a Venetian marine stood up. He blew a sea whistle. Two hundred and fifty Venetian arsenali rose to their feet, levelled their crossbows, and loosed.

  This time, Swan could hear the screams.

  His hands unclenched. He looked at Alessandro. ‘Win or lose,’ he said, ‘it’s done.’

  Bembo shook his head. ‘If I survive this,’ he said, ‘I’ll tell this story the rest of my life.’

  The first division was now in an ‘L’-shaped trap; the Venetian marines and oarsmen poured their bolts in volleys on the flank of the now utterly disorganised mob of spahis. The tail-end of their horde was still being pricked by the handful of archers and crossbowmen at the wagon.

  But the second division, uncontested, was moving to outflank the Venetians.

  A rider came from the column to the rear. He had a large turban, visible even five hundred paces away. He was quickly surrounded; riders came up to him from every direction.

  Swan pointed him out to the gun crew.

  Maestro Jiri winked. He played with the long gun’s trail and then whipped his portfire across the touch-hole.

  The gun barked. It only threw a four-pound ball, but it could throw that ball a long way.

  The Turkish command group exploded, leaving a dead man and a dead horse on the ground.

  The gunners laughed and two small wagoners began to swab the bore.

  Big Turban was unhurt; Swan could almost hear him curse, but he was giving orders and a kettle drum beat, the heavy, hollow sound carrying clearly over the gunner’s orders as a parchment cartridge was opened and rammed down the bore.

  The Turks began to retreat. It was so sudden that the movement caught Swan off guard, and it was a dozen beats of his heart before he understood. The second division, unhurt, halted. The first division turned their horses and ran for the rear.

  ‘Kill the man in the turban,’ Swan said.

  Bembo nodded his approval. Such direct attacks on other commanders were often considered unchivalrous by Italians. Not Bembo. Not Swan. He was reasonably certain that Big Turban was Omar Reis, and his death would make Swan’s world a brighter place.

  The falconet barked.

  Big Turban was gesturing furiously at the trumpeters near him when the big ball hit his horse. For a moment, Swan thought the man was dead, but Big Turban got his feet out of the stirrups and was off the dying animal before it fell to the ground.

  A trumpeter dismounted and handed over his mount.

  ‘Put a ball in over there,’ Swan said to Maestro Jiri, pointing at the second division of spahis halted out on the plain.

  ‘He’s going to order this hill attacked,’ Alessandro said, shielding his eyes with his hand. ‘The gun troubles him more than the crossbows.’

  Swan spared a glance for the road behind his wagon, but whatever magic Grazias was performing remained intact, and the hundred or so Turkish scouts were far to the north, or in combat; out of the battle.

  But battles are never static, and they take on lives of their own. Off to the south, the Venetian officer, one of the
Corner clan, ordered his men forward. They had excellent armour, and they were cocky. They advanced almost fifty paces, and all Swan could do was watch.

  The reason that men spoke so much about fortuna in war was that such little things could change the face of a battle. The Turks were rallying from the initial surprise; the commander had extricated his over-aggressive lead squadron, and his infantry was coming up in a new tide of dust behind him. The empty walled hedge wouldn’t hold or fool the infantry, and Swan’s battle was wrecked.

  Swan motioned to Clemente. The boy had set the trumpet behind him while he tried to kill a horsefly; it fell to the ground.

  Swan snapped his fingers. ‘It is time to blow…’ the word retreat was fully formed on his lips when the Venetian marines and sailors halted. They had advanced in a compact body to within shockingly close range of the second Turkish cavalry squadron; the range was perhaps fifty paces.

  The Turks were caught by nothing more than training and ill-luck in the helpless moment when every officer’s attention is fully taken up with getting the laggards and the worst soldiers into their places in the ranks; a brief moment of confusion that every commander dreads. The Venetians appeared out of the swirling dust and olive trees, raised their crossbows, and delivered a shattering volley.

  Swan was reminded of the moment when the Francs-archers had blown a hole in the front of the English formation at Châtillon. Perhaps a hundred men and horses fell; one man in five, and the crack spahis broke and ran. In fleeing, they crashed through a mob of ghazis and volunteer infantry pressing up behind them, and the whole body fled with the cavalry.

  ‘Let me charge!’ Di Silva begged Swan.

  Swan shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Stay.’

  The gun barked. The sulphur smell hung in the air, and the ball ploughed like a sword-slash through the packed ranks of the ghazis.

  Big Turban was unmoved by the flight of his spahis; he had more troops coming up behind.

  ‘If you set me in now, I’ll break them all!’ Di Silva said.

  Swan shook his head. He was still thinking of sounding the recall. The dust and the edge of the lower ridge hid the Turkish column from his gaze; he suspected that Omar Reis had more troops, good troops, immediately to hand. Indeed, if the dust meant what Swan thought, he was already extending his left all the way out to the gully; perhaps beyond.

  Swan had two more cards to play. It was a little like a game of piquet; everything might hinge on the order in which he played his cards.

  ‘He’s going to attack the hill,’ Bembo said.

  Swan nodded. ‘We need to get out of here. Messire Di Silva! When the Turk throws his assault up the hill … then you can charge. Into their flank, from behind your little grove.’

  Di Silva was watching as more spahis and the remnants of the now-rallied first squadron emerged from the dust and formed in neat lines at the base of the hill.

  ‘All that was waiting for you,’ Swan said. ‘Turks; they do these things well. Squadrons cover other squadrons, even on the march.’

  Di Silva’s armet was open. He raised both eyebrows. ‘Or perhaps I would have carried them all away,’ he said.

  Swan had already turned. He waved at Maestro Jiri. ‘Move the gun! Up the hill. There, by the cairn of stones and the Roman temple.’

  With almost twenty men to haul the gun, they were able to move it quickly enough; almost at the normal walking pace of a man, with eight on each drag rope and four more on the trail. Two boys young enough to be with their mothers carried arms full of tools, and a woman carried a yoke with four pails of water.

  ‘Who’s she?’ Swan asked.

  Bembo laughed. ‘Going to lecture us on morality, messire?’ he asked.

  Swan didn’t have time to lecture anyone. The Turkish cavalry was moving.

  ‘Ride clear, get along behind the hedge, find Corner and order him to retire,’ Swan said. ‘Go! The Turks are about to charge us!’

  Clemente got his reins in his hand, saluted, and rode off to the west.

  ‘Run,’ Swan suggested to Bembo, and he touched his horse with his spurs, and they were away over the broken ground. They passed along the edge of Di Silva’s wood and then into a very shallow ravine that, had Swan possessed any more soldiers, might ideally have been full of them, and then they were moving up the last of the hill.

  Swan almost reined in from the shock of what he saw. Even in the midst of battle, he was stunned by the richness of what confronted him; a wall of huge stones, almost too great to have been built by mere men, and a great stone gate. Inset over the gate was a pair of immense lions supporting a pillar or column.

  Behind him, the Turkish trumpets sounded. A lone arrow sailed over Swan and splintered on a stone. Swan’s horse dodged, more like a cat than a horse, and then Swan was over a low wall and in among the ruins.

  He could see the Turkish cavalry coming up the slope. It was steeper than it looked; they were making heavy going of it.

  The gun came in by the lion gate and Swan heard Jiri yelling in broken Italian, and the men on the ropes hauled like heroes as the men on the trail spun the weapon in place.

  The barrel came round in line with the Turkish attack. The Turks were just crossing the first crest in the lower hill; four or five hundred heavy cavalry, well formed.

  The trail was dropped to the ground. The men on the ropes ran in all directions, but Maestro Jiri touched his portfire to the touch-hole. Swan had never seen a gun moved while loaded before; he was as surprised as the Turks. The ball smashed into their front rank and grazed on down the hill.

  The woman came forward with her buckets and the gunners swabbed their monster.

  Swan reined in by the gun.

  Bembo was swearing. ‘You know?’ he said. ‘In time, armies will be nothing but these. Guns, and guns.’

  ‘And baggage trains to hold the powder,’ Swan said. The Turkish cavalry brushed off the four-pounder ball like a horse with a gnat, and came on; the laborious movement up the steep hill was ending, and the commander, his sword waving in the air, was pointing at the baggage wagons abandoned on the slope.

  He was clearly surprised to find that he had charged an empty slope and some baggage wagons.

  Swan would have smiled, if there had been something between him and four hundred Turks.

  Maestro Jiri was cackling like a warlock, shouting imprecations. The Turks, or at least most of them, were coming on up the hill to the fort.

  The portfire went down again.

  This time, the whole centre of the Turkish charge vanished in a red haze. Perhaps a dozen men and horses were suddenly gone, and for a moment the air was tinged red.

  The Bohemian gunners were laughing even as the sweating men swabbed their charge again.

  The Turks flinched, and Di Silva hit them.

  This time, the result was not due to fortuna but good planning and good officers; Di Silva had waited until the Turks were totally committed over the first crest before he emerged from hiding, and the gun had, as Swan hoped, fixed the attention of every spahi on its bronze lethality and left them no awareness of the nakedness of their flanks. A hundred men-at-arms went into their left at a canter; the dust rose with the screams.

  Bembo shook his head. ‘You are good at this, I find,’ he said.

  Swan shrugged, and his shoulder hurt; a shoulder that he hadn’t even thought of for an hour. ‘It’s not that hard,’ he said with something of his old complacency.

  The Bohemians reloaded the gun and then stood, drinking water. If they were aware that any failure on the part of the men-at-arms would result in all the gunners getting almost instantly butchered by the Turks, they didn’t display it; instead, the men postured for the bucket-woman, or made coarse jokes.

  ‘There are men behind us on the mountain,’ Bembo said, destroying Swan’s brief reverie. Swan felt the pit of his stomach fall away into the depths of hell, and he turned so fast that his shoulder and neck burned.

  He could see armour; spear po
ints, horses. They were close; far too close to escape.

  ‘Dannazione,’ he said. ‘Bast.’ He could envisage the deaths of all the men who had counted on him, and appreciate the bitter irony of Bembo’s comment that he was good at this. His fertile mind ran like a galloping horse over all the things he couldn’t do. The men-at-arms would be spent; indeed, their horses would be too tired even to run.

  Bembo shook his head. ‘I think that I cannot be captured,’ he said.

  ‘Ride,’ Swan said. ‘No dishonour. Go. I have fucked up.’

  Bembo was still watching the mountainside behind them. ‘How the fuck did they get behind us?’ he asked.

  Swan felt too defeated even to answer.

  Down on the plain, he could distinctly hear a Venetian cheer. ‘Saint Mark! Saint Mark!’

  That galvanised him. ‘No,’ he said to Bembo. ‘We’ll go the other way. I assume the Venetians and the English are winning.’ He trotted his horse over to Maestro Jiri.

  ‘Leave the gun,’ he said. ‘Follow me, for your lives.’

  His tone brooked no disagreement, and the Bohemians and the camp servants dropped everything but their own weapons. Swan led them through the gate. He had to guess correctly; he looked back, and saw the men on the hillside were still moving at a deliberate pace; ten minutes away.

  With a little luck, they’d never catch him or any of his men. He cursed his own ill-fortune; if he hadn’t sent Clemente away, he could have changed everything in two trumpet-orders, but Clemente was the only trumpeter he had.

  He turned to Bembo. ‘Alessandro, may I beg you to act the part of an officer?’

  ‘As long as it is only acting that is required,’ Bembo said. He smiled. ‘Of course. This is all my fault.’

  ‘Take the gunners down to the men at the wagon.’

  ‘Wagon?’ Bembo asked.

  ‘Blocking the road …’ Swan spat.

  ‘I understand!’ Bembo said.

  ‘Collect Kendal and those men and run for the first rally point. You remember? There are horses there …’ Swan pointed.

  Bembo nodded again. ‘I have it. Then?’