The Archer: Historical Fiction: exciting novel about Marines and Naval Warfare of medieval England set in feudal times with knights,Templars, and crusaders during Richard the lionhearted's reign

by Martin Archer

  There is a grinding crash and the splintering of oars and lots of screams and shouts, both theirs and ours, as we come alongside and our sailors throw their grappling irons and pull us tight against the Algerian. All the while we can look directly across at the nearby men in the Algerian galley just as they can look over and see us. Some of them are waving their swords at us. I don’t see any archers, thank God.

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  I lean over and duck my head down as low as I can get it. Standing on the rowing bench next to me is one of Lord William’s English archers with his long bow. It is point blank range and he is shooting arrows as fast as he can nock them, which seems very fast indeed. That lasts until we bang up against the Algerian galley and he goes flying off the rowing seat and stumbles into the men ahead of him, knocking several of them down like bowling pins on the village commons. But he and they quickly scramble back to their feet and continue launching their arrows and waving their swords and shouting as they do.

  Everywhere there are shouts and screams. The noise is tremendous. But we outnumber the pirates and are trained and fighting according to a plan. The result is a lot of close quarters fighting as our men and, to a much lesser extent the pirates, stand to arms all along the side where the two galleys are being held together by our grappling lines. I am not a fighting man but even I can see that our archers are devastating the pirates.

  Fighting seems to go on forever with more and more of our men at arms and archers climbing over the side to get into the Algerian galley.

  Suddenly it is all over as the men from our other galley succeed in lashing their galley to the other side of the captured cog. With Randolph leading the way they come running across the cog’s bobbing deck to get to the Algerian galley on our side. The archers and swordsmen from our sister galley immediately join ours in picking off the surviving Algerians.

  The Algerians go down fighting, I’ll say that much for them; all of them are killed or wounded including a few who try to surrender at the very end.

  Prize crews and captains are quickly told off for the captured cog and galley and the butcher’s bill tallied. Quite a few of our men have cuts and slices but we lose only two of our new men killed and three seriously wounded including two passengers.

  I know our casualties are called the “butcher’s bill” because that’s what I hear William shout over to Randolph a few minute later.

  The pirates, both dead and wounded, are stripped of their weapons and tossed into the sea at William’s orders along with the cog’s dead sailors and a half dozen or so of the Algerian’s galley slaves who, in all the confusion, are mistaken for pirates and killed by our archers and men at arms.

  Before we get underway our men search the captured cog and find three members of its crew still alive. They are hiding in its cargo of olive oil amphora and grain sacks. At first they refuse to come out because they think we are pirates. But they quickly do and appear to be greatly appreciative.

  I say the men we rescue ‘appear to be greatly appreciative’ because the survivor sailors look strange and no one can understand a word they say. They must have seen the pirate galley approaching and hid themselves below deck before the pirates began their attack. We obviously arrived before the pirates had a chance to find them and kill them.

  We also free about forty slaves chained to the Algerian’s oars including several who are sorely wounded. One of them has an arrow in his side and must surely die. And wonder of wonders, one of the slaves turns out to be a pock faced Englishman from one of the villages near the Oxen fording shallows on the Thames above London. His graying hair and beard hang almost to his waist so he must have been a captive for years.

  I wonder if he knows Ralph the archer; I heard Ralph tell one of our new men that he was an ox herder in those parts before he went crusading.

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  Our arrival in Limassol with the captured galley and rescued cog causes quite a stir. The men on our anchored cog wave their knitted caps and cheer as we pass by on our way to the dock. Then some of them begin piling into cog’s dinghy to come ashore and greet us. We can also see a fair number of people coming out of the city gate and walking and running to the dock as we row up to it with the rescued cog in tow. Yes, I had remembered and reminded William; both of our galleys sailed with a long tow rope.

  Among the crowd of people coming down to the dock to greet us, I’m sure, will be Aaron and the other Cyprus merchants coming to find out if we have anything to buy or sell - and most importantly, of course, Father Thomas and young George and the men we left to guard them and work on our fief.

  I am not disappointed. Merchants and curiosity seekers are still pouring out of the city when I see Father Thomas and some of our men come around the end of the city wall and hurry down the beach towards us.

  It’s an altogether happy time. William jumps on to the dock and grabs up his son in a big embrace and covers him with kisses as soon as he climbs over the galley’s deck railing and on to the dock. Then he hugs him tightly while he and Father Thomas have a brief conversation.

  I watch William and his son from the deck of the galley and it is very warming.

  A man is immediately sent running to get wagons to carry our wounded and dead and to tell Thomas the cook to prepare lots of flatbread and shelters for our wounded and for the new men and refugees.

  We had two wagons when we left and now, it seems, we have four or five - and will soon need even more because we are going to start mining an old ruined church on the other side of the city for stones for our walls and buildings.

  Some of our passengers are already walking into the city to seek food and accommodations. They begin leaving while we are still unloading our wounded on to the dock and waiting for the wagons that will carry them.

  Others of our passengers, on the other hand, and the galley slaves and survivors from the cog seem quite dazed and obviously have no idea where to go or what to do next. They just stand about aimlessly as we help our wounded off the ships. The young girl with the baby is keeping close to me like a starving dog might follow a man with cooked meat in his hands.

  When everyone is off the ships William, still holding little George, raises his free arm in the air and shouts for everyone to gather around him.

  “Everyone who took passage with us and so wishes, including the galley slaves who are all now free, may go into the city or stay with us and work for their food and shelter.”

  The looks of relief on the faces of many of the people gathered around William is heart-warming and none more so than that of the young girl standing next to me - she begins laughing and crying all at the same time when she hears that she and her baby will have food and shelter. She is such a dear little thing. Yes she is.

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  Everything is fairly well organized by the time the wounded men are loaded on one of the two wagons that soon arrive. Even the dying slave with the arrow in his side is lifted aboard. Then William announces to the crowd that Father Thomas will say prayers over the dead men at the Limassol Cemetery this afternoon and the wounded are coming with us for barbering, even the dying slave with the arrow in his side.

  I wonder why someone doesn’t give the slave a soldier’s mercy. I heard one of the new archers, who looked at the wounded man as he was being taken off the cog, comment that men have been known recover from such wounds but not often.

  The sailors and some of our men at arms from among those who remained ashore during our voyage are ordered to stay with the ships as guards. Randolph is to be the sergeant in command of the ships with Harold as his second. They are told to bring our dead men ashore and use the other wagon to take them to the churchyard for burial and Thomas’s prayers. Then they are to clean the ships and prepare them for another voyage.

  Me? I am walking at the head of the column when we set out along the track on the beach to walk to our headquarters. More precisely, I am walking next to the cart carrying the wounded men in order to keep a watch on the leather sack with all th
e new coins in it – which I’d personally carried off the cog and placed there. The rest of our party, including most of the freed slaves and the archers and men at arms who sailed with us from Latika, are walking behind the cart.

  Lord William is still carrying George as he and Father Thomas talk as they walk. Also walking with us are several of the passenger families with children and the young girl with the nursing infant who seems to have attached herself to me.

  Some of our paying passengers apparently used the last of their coins and jewelry to buy their passage and now don’t know what else to do except follow along with us; the girl and the baby, it seems have nothing except each other.

  I wonder what William and Thomas will do with the girl and her baby? Surely they won’t sell them as slaves.

  As we come around the city walls I can see the roof of our little citadel and the new wall starting to go up around it. It is swarming with men at work.

  We’ve only been gone for a few days but there have obviously been a few improvements. The parapets and archers’ slits on the west side of the inner wall seem to have been partially repaired and against that side of the wall now stands the biggest change since we left - a number of old and much repaired leather ships’ sails have been strung over a frame of logs and wood to provide protection from the sun and rain. Some of our men are obviously living there now instead of everyone crowding into the house or living on the cog and galley that remained behind. I wonder where they got the ships’ sails and what they cost?

  Thomas the cook has sheets of flat bread stacked up and more baking on his flattened breastplates as we arrive and a young man I haven’t seen before is waving a branch over a stack of cheese cuts to keep the flies off. It is obviously the bread and cheese for tonight’s meal and now it’s being handed out to our now suddenly-hungry men and passengers. I recognize some of the men and women loading the rest of it on to a wagon to take to the men who are at the harbor with our ships.

  No one was particularly hungry on our seasickness-fouled ships but now that we’re on shore we’re all thirsty and ravenous with hunger, at least I am; and from the looks of it, so is everyone else.

  There is a long line at the water barrel where another young man I haven’t seen before, a boy actually, is letting everyone drink from a water ladle he periodically dips into the barrel to refill. I take the girl with the infant to the front of the water line for a drink and then to Thomas Cook for some bread and cheese. Thomas cooks very delicious flat bread on a couple of dead knights’ breast plates he hammered flat and lays across the coals.

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  As soon as we arrive at our keep I carry the leather coin bag up the new stairs and put its coins into the chests in William and Thomas’s room. They’re now so overfull that I have trouble shutting one. But before I do I take the girl and her infant to my corner of the downstairs room and point to a sleeping hide they can use. I’m sure I can find a replacement.

  Her name is Lena and while we were walking here alongside the wagon she very shyly told me she calls her baby Aria even though she hasn’t been baptized yet. Those are very nice names.

  I really don’t know why I am helping her but somehow her efforts to save the infant and the baby’s smile touches my heart. How silly I must look to William and the men.

  I’d barely gotten Lena settled in when William tells me to ride with him and young George on the wagon taking food and water down to the sailors and the men we’d left behind to guard the ships. At Father Thomas’ insistence, four of the English archers are accompanying us with their bows strung and so are five of our men at arms carrying the new and fearsome Swiss pikes mounted on long poles.

  Father Thomas insists we be accompanied by armed guards because there had been some trouble involving the local governor while we were gone. I gather as much when I hear Thomas and William talking about the governor as we follow the food wagon down to the ships - they are discussing whether or not to kill him.

  It seems that while we were gone there had been some trouble with the city’s governor, the rather arrogant young knight who accosted Father Thomas in the market. He apparently had come down from the governor’s castle overlooking the city with a number of armed men and visited our new quarters to demand the payment of a tax.

  The king’s governor and his men only departed when Father Thomas’ gulled him with the lie that we have no coins left because we just finished paying the local merchants for the repairs and provisioning of the house and its walls. Father Thomas also told him that even if there were coins available, which there aren’t, no one except Lord William could authorize such a payment for taxes or anything else.

  Apparently, after a few relatively tense minutes, the king’s governor turned away and marched his men back to his castle on the hill above Limassol – but only after Father Thomas assured him that in a few days Lord William will be returning from the Holy Land and might have coins with him that can be used to pay the governor’s tax.

  We all laugh when, with a twinkle in his eye, Thomas dryly adds that the sight of so many armed men inside our headquarters and its repaired and strengthened walls might have also entered into governor’s decision to go away and come back later - that and the fact many of the governor’s men at arms appear to be peasants newly arrived from France who have never been trained to use the weapons they are carrying.

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  Some of our men come in from the ships and begin gathering about the food wagon as soon as we arrive. Normally, the men on the ships take turns walking up to the cookhouse each morning and evening to get their meals and a cup of the ale Andrew the brewer has started making. That will continue, of course, but this food is primarily for the new men and the sailors who just arrived with us and are staying on the ships. They are very appreciative and eat ravenously.

  While the men are eating Thomas and William talk to the archer sergeant, Andrew the brewer, and the men who had been left under his command to guard the cogs when we sailed last week. They have nothing special to report. To the contrary, except for the governor’s visit, everything in the city seems quiet and normal. At least that’s the gossip from the women from the taverns and brothels who have come on board and don’t seem to be interested in much except spreading their legs to earn some coins. No surprise there.

  Before we leave to walk down to the dock William had me get a little sack of coins from one of the chests. Now George is handing them out - five copper coins for every man who fought and two gold bezants for the family of any man killed or seriously wounded.

  “My son,” William tells our new men by way of explanation as George, with a very serious look on his face, carefully counts five copper coins into the hands of every man who had taken up arms against the Algerian pirates. “I want him to understand that loyal men must always be quickly recognized and rewarded.”

  I’m quite surprised at how responsive and gentle the hard-bitten men are as the boy carefully counts out the coins into their hands. I’m also surprised to learn that neither of William’s new men who were killed have families to claim their death coins. It’s very sad not having a family.

  Chapter Eight

  “THE KING OF CYPRUS”

  Three days after we return William orders me and a number of archers and men at arms to accompany Father Thomas on a march inland to Nicosia. We are going to pay homage to Guy of Lusignan, the French lord who is the new King of Cyprus.

  Why are we doing this? Something is up. But what is it? And why haven’t we heard from the governor?

  Everyone in Christendom knows about Cyprus’s hapless King Guy. He’d succeeded Baldwin and been the bumbling Christian king in Jerusalem until he was captured by Saladin after leading his men to a disastrous defeat at the battle of Hattin. That’s where most of his men were killed and the rest died of thirst because he led them to a battle in a place where there is no water – and, unlike the Saracens, he didn’t think to bring any for his men.

  The Crusader nobles so feared Guy�
�s incompetence that they didn’t want him to return to Jerusalem as king when Saladin finally released him for a ransom. So, in a compromise to end a possible civil war between the French Crusaders and the others, Guy was allowed to buy Cyprus from the Templars and proclaim himself to be its king. That’s why Father Thomas and I are going to pay homage to him. At least that’s why I think we are going to see him.

  Father Thomas is quite talkative on our trek and I learn a lot about Lord William and the archers.

  “William and I are quite fortunate that the archers contracted with Lord Edmund after Richard left instead of with King Guy in Jerusalem. Guy is well born and extremely limited – he governed Jerusalem so badly that his people revolted and he led his men into battle so stupidly that he got most of them killed at Hattin and the rest died in the desert from lack of water.”

  Based on what little I know about his governor in Limassol, the king also doesn’t know how to pick his sergeants very well either. I wonder why we haven’t heard from the king or the governor now that William has returned?

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  Our arrival in Nicosia creates quite a stir. The lookouts on the citadel next to the city gate must have seen the dust raised by our party. They sound the alarm and close the gates. The dust and the alarm dissipates when our men sit on the ground to rest while Father Thomas and I continue on alone until we reach the closed city gate. The good father and I are many things but we don’t look very dangerous.

  “Who are you and what do you want?” demands the sergeant of the guards who come out through the door in the gate to surround us.

  Father Thomas looks at the sergeant of the guards rather arrogantly and announces himself. He does it quite well by the way.

  “I am Father Thomas and we are ambassadors representing William, Admiral of the English Fleet. We are here to speak with King Guy and pay homage to him.” Admiral? Well I suppose he is.