Tom Swan and the Head of St George Part Two: Venice tsathosg-2

by Christian Cameron

  ‘Galata, too?’ asked Swan.

  ‘I see where you are going. I’ll ask around.’ Alessandro nodded. ‘You think the troopships will go home empty?’

  ‘Even if there’s cargo, chances are we can get some space,’ Swan said.

  If Swan thought that Ser Marco was cautious before Naxos, he redoubled that caution after they sailed for the Golden Horn. Twice they made long legs out to sea to avoid Turkish ships along the coast.

  But off Samothrace, they ran into thick morning mist, and when the hot sun burned it off, they were hull up and in clear sight of a pair of galleys.

  ‘Arms!’ ordered the captain, and he put the ship about. ‘Nothing to worry about yet, friends. We are at peace.’

  Peace or not, the ship’s archers were in the bow and stern in a hundred heartbeats, and the men-at-arms had their armour on deck in the grilling sun.

  The Turkish galleys paced them. By the time Swan was armed, there was a galley on either side, a few hundred paces away, matching them oar for oar. The Englishman walked to the side, trying his arm harnesses, feeling his stomach press against his ribs.

  Peter was leaning nonchalantly against the ship’s side, bending one of the archer’s bows. His own was strung, and he had twenty arrows stuck point up through his belt. He grinned at his master.

  ‘Look at this bow,’ he said. ‘It’s Turkish!’

  The Italian archer nodded. ‘Horn, and sinew,’ he said.

  ‘As heavy as my bow,’ Peter said. ‘I would like very much to try it, when we are ashore.’

  ‘Perhaps we could have a little contest,’ said the Italian. ‘If we aren’t taken and enslaved in the next five minutes, of course.’ Swan admired the archer’s sangfroid – the Italians had various words for it, and Swan’s favourite was sprezzatura: effortless performance, whether of bravery or of swordsmanship of just the recitation of poetry. He smiled at the man, who nodded coolly. Then he smiled. ‘Best get your breastplate on.’

  The ship’s trumpeter sounded a long note, and the drummer beat ‘To Arms’. Swan saw Alessandro beckoning. ‘He wants us all in the stern,’ Alessandro said.

  Ser Marco had his eyes on the island to port. ‘I am gong to bear up and leave the island on our port side,’ he said. ‘It’s good sailing anyway, but it will force them to commit. If they want to continue flanking us, that bastard there will have to row across the wind.’ The farther Turk had a striped sail as big as a ship.

  He gave the order, the timoneer repeated his orders, and the Venetian galley spun in the water and went due east.

  The captain watched the Turks for a minute. ‘Very well. They’re coming for us,’ he said.

  Swan didn’t see whatever it was that gave the captain this information, but his stomach flipped over again.

  Alessandro nodded. He drew his long sword.

  One of the ship’s men-at-arms turned to Swan. ‘Would you like a spear?’ he asked.

  ‘Of all things,’ Swan answered. He took a light partisan and a rotella, a steel shield a little more than two feet across and slightly convex. He strapped it on his arm, tried it, and heard a shout.

  The farther Turk had turned and was coming straight for them.

  The captain held up a hand. ‘Archers – whenever you have the range.’

  Peter lofted the first shaft. He shot high, and the arrow went on the wind and vanished.

  The Italian archer said something to Peter that made the Fleming laugh, and his bow came up and he loosed at a much lower angle. His arrow fell into the sea just short of the Turkish galley.

  A dozen arrows rose out of the Turk and fell well short of their ship.

  ‘Wind in their teeth,’ Alessandro said.

  Swan didn’t like the feeling – the slow creep of fear. He remembered it from the first hours at Castillon, when they overran the French archers on the road and then waited, and marched, and listened to the officers dicker. He wanted to get it over with. It was very different from a street fight, or the duel.

  One of the Venetian archers called something, and all of the ship’s archers drew together and loosed, their arrows vanishing into the onrushing ship’s hull. Peter drew, loosed, and watched his arrow. Shook his head.

  Swan turned to see the other Turkish galley. It stood off and seemed content to let its consort do the dirty work.

  Peter looked at the Italian. ‘Ask him how he aims when the two hulls come together so fast.’

  The Italian shrugged. ‘Like this!’ he said, and drew, and loosed. His shaft fell like a thunderbolt into the group on the command deck of the enemy ship. It was a spectacular shot, more than a hundred paces.

  Peter grinned and loosed.

  His arrow fell into the same group.

  The Italian laughed, loosed, and then slapped the Fleming on the shoulder.

  Turkish arrows were beginning to find marks among the Venetian oarsmen. A man on the second oar from the bow gave a cry, thrashed, wrecking his oar’s timing, and then slumped over the shaft, and two of the deck crewmen pulled him off his bench.

  The Venetian galley had just one oar deck. There were three men on each oar, on long benches set at a definite angle to the centreline of the hull. The ram was above the waterline forward, and above the ram was a small bow where the marines waited. Swan headed there, aware as only a classicist could be that galley warfare had hardly changed in two thousand years.

  A Turkish arrow got past his round shield and hit the top of his helmet, making his ears ring.

  He got his shield up and an arrow struck the steel face and ricocheted off it, hit the bulkhead and came back, broken. The arrowhead – twice deflected – scored a deep gash in the top of his thigh, narrowly missing his testicles, and he winced.

  He found himself behind Alessandro. The Italian had excellent armour, all Milanese, all matching – a small fortune in steel. He had to admit to himself that it was comforting to have a highly trained friend in head-to-toe steel between himself and the enemy.

  Spent arrows rattled around the marine box. The Venetian archers were loosing so fast that it looked as if lines of arrows connected the two vessels.

  The Turk was coming up from abeam, and then the Venetian captain changed course. He turned to starboard, so that he and the Turk were on parallel courses – and then he had his starboard oars retract as far as they could while the port oars drove on. The Venetian ship turned so suddenly that everyone aboard was thrown to starboard.

  The Venetian archers, obviously forewarned, poured shafts into the waist of the Turkish ship, and the Venetian’s cathead caught the Turkish outrigger a hard blow. It wasn’t like a ram attack, but oars splintered, and the Venetians seemed to be winning the archery exchange.

  Giannis was quite coolly cocking his crossbow and sending shaft after carefully aimed shaft into the enemy’s boarders.

  And then the Turkish galley was falling away behind them, oars damaged, and with her waist a bloody chaos of arrow-shot men. For a few seconds, the Venetians had been at point-blank range, just a few paces away and eight feet higher in the water. A dozen of them had loosed perhaps six shafts each, and the result was that the Turkish ship, although undefeated – yet – was crippled. So many men were wounded that as she sagged away, blood ran from her scuppers – as if the ship herself was bleeding.

  The Venetian galley settled on a new course and carried on, the sailors mending cut lines and trying to replace one oar that had been broken in the collision and wounded all three of its oarsmen.

  Swan could hear his breath inside the confines of his burgonet. His hand found the catch and he got his visor open.

  One of the Venetian men-at-arms slammed it shut just as another volley of arrows caught them.

  He glanced to port. The other Turk was coming for them.

  ‘Mary, Mother of God, stand with us in our hour of need,’ said the Venetian who had closed his faceplate. He turned and saw a third Turkish galley emerging from behind a rocky islet on the coast of Samos.

  ‘Amen,
’ said Swan.

  Arrows fell like hail, and Swan was hit repeatedly – twice on his helmet, at least twice on his shield, and one that went between his foot and his boot sole, penetrating the boot on both sides and barely cutting his foot.

  ‘You have the luck of the devil,’ said one of the Venetians. He grinned inside his barbute, and in that moment took an arrow under his arm and fell to the deck, dead.

  Alessandro turned. He looked behind them for a long time. ‘They’re going to ram us in the stern and board,’ he said. ‘Follow me.’

  Swan didn’t ask questions. He ran the length of the ship through the arrow storm with the Italian, one stride behind. The Turkish galley was a horse length from the stern, bearing down on them, and the arrows were as thick as snow in London at Christmas.

  Ser Marcos turned to port, hoping to confuse the pursuing Turk by turning towards his consort, but the captain of the enemy ship read his intention and turned inside the nimble Venetian, ranging alongside, and the grapples flew as the enemy ram touched them – the Venetian rowers pulled in their heavy oars and reached for weapons. Venetian oarsmen were among the most feared fighting men in the Inner Sea.

  The Turkish borders came in a rush, with screams to Allah. They had round shields and scimitars – many had long spears, and a few had European-looking long swords. The whole swarm came for the Venetian command deck – forty or fifty men.

  Swan found himself between Ser Marco and Alessandro. He got his rotella up as the first scimitar came at him, and then . . .

  It all happened . . .

  So fast . . .

  That . . .

  There was a sort of hideous pause as his partisan went, untouched, into a gap between a Turk’s shield and his sword, right into the bridge of his nose, killing him instantly . . .

  There was another moment – one Swan remembered for many nights – when his partisan got stuck in a screaming ghazi and the man went down into the oar benches and then – powerless, as he tried to free his weapon – he saw the scimitar that would kill him, coming for his neck. His shield was on the wrong side, and the weapon floated, undefended, into the gap and slammed full force into the place where his neck muscles meshed with his shoulder muscles.

  His armour held. It hurt, but the edge didn’t bite, and he let go of the partisan and reached for his sword. Drawing it seemed to take for ever.

  And then the pressure on him eased. He had been fighting multiple opponents for as long as . . . as there had been time. Beards, teeth, screaming.

  Suddenly just one man, covering the retreat of his fellows. A big, brave man, his sword everywhere.

  Alessandro caught the fellow’s scimitar in a rising, false-edge parry, and Swan was there, following the rising sword into the created opening. His blow wasn’t strong, but strong enough. The Turk dropped his weapon, one finger severed from his hand.

  Then he managed to block two killing blows with his round shield alone. Blood was gushing from his severed finger. He sprayed it at Alessandro and punched with his shield.

  Swan got a foot behind the Turk’s front foot and slammed him to the deck.

  He knelt on the man’s chest and put his sword across the man’s throat.

  The man was beaten. He was down. The sound of fighting was dying away.

  The Turk was smiling.

  Swan had time to think – Damn, this bastard is brave.

  I could capture him.

  That’s foolish. I could just . . .

  I could capture him.

  And then he couldn’t kill the man. An Arabic word came to him. Did Turks even speak Arabic?

  ‘Stop!’ he said.

  The Turk looked at him, raised an eyebrow, and said something rapidly in Arabic.

  Swan had to shrug. ‘Just stop,’ he said, in English, of all things.

  Alessandro helped him up. The oarsmen were killing the wounded and throwing the last Turks over the side. The third Turkish galley was standing off. Even as he looked, the archers aboard the third galley lofted a flight of arrows – into the second Turk.

  ‘We don’t generally take prisoners,’ Alessandro said.

  Swan looked at the Turk. The man looked exactly as Swan himself had felt at Castillon in the shattering moments after the end of fighting.

  ‘He’s—’ Swan looked at the Italian, too wiped by the fighting to come up with the words.

  ‘I agree. Ser Marco?’

  The capitano looked at their prisoner. ‘He’s someone important. He fought gallantly, I’ll give the bastard that. But the Arsenali will kill him.’

  Events proved him wrong. The third Turkish galley had an enormous red flag amidships, and it drove the second galley off quite convincingly.

  ‘Ottoman galley,’ said Ser Marco. His voice sounded thick – his slight lisp was very pronounced. He watched the enemy ship. He spoke again after minutes had passed and they hadn’t been attacked. ‘Those are Smyrna galleys. There’s a hundred flavours of Turks – and Syrians, and worse.’ He shrugged. ‘By God’s nose, they may even be renegade Greeks.’ He spat over the side. ‘The new galley is Ottoman. He may recognise our flag. He may even—’

  Swan pointed. ‘You’re bleeding, messire the capitano.’

  Ser Marco looked down, saw the blood running like a fresh spring stream over the cuisse on his hip, and fell flat to the deck.

  They had to cut the straps on his leg armour – hours of work for an armourer to replace – to get at the wound. His blood was spurting away, his boots were soaked, and Alessandro whipped a sharp knife out of Swan’s hand and slit the man’s hose.

  The wound was just below the groin. Alessandro looked at Swan, who shrugged. He tried putting pressure directly on the wound and the blood spurted past his fingers. He tried to put pressure above it – the man’s muscles were as hard as rock, and he could slow the flow but not stop it.

  Cesare, wearing a corselet and an open-faced bassinet, leaned over, pulled off his helmet, and spat. ‘The bishop has a doctor,’ he said.

  Swan knelt there, feeling like a fool, his hand pressed into another man’s groin. The blood seeped past his forefinger slowly. He pressed as hard as he could – Alessandro pushed back from the other side of Ser Marco’s hip. He wanted his helmet off. He wanted all his armour off, and he wanted to know what was happening. The mate was down – dead, Swan assumed – and Alessandro was issuing orders as if born to it, which indeed he was.

  The silence from the oarsmen was ominous.

  The bishop’s doctor was sent for. The bishop and all his suite had spent the battle in the captain’s coach in the stern. Swan thought the worse of them for it – Cesare, for example, had blood on his sword and four long cuts on his forearm, like the claw marks of some great beast.

  Ser Marco’s eyes fluttered open. ‘Make sail!’ he said, and raised an arm.

  Swan refused to be distracted, and kept the pressure on.

  Alessandro slapped Cesare on the hip. ‘Take over,’ he said.

  Cesare knelt in a clatter of metal. ‘So much blood,’ he said. His face was pale. ‘Such a fight.’

  Swan just wanted his helmet off. There was shouting behind him. The only man he could see through the forest of legs on the quarterdeck was the Italian archer, who had just wiped his forehead and put a fresh arrow on his string.

  The doctor burrowed through the crowd, his black clothes flapping like a raven’s wings. His face was as pale as milk, and he was obviously terrified. But he knelt, ran his hand down the capitano’s thigh, and nodded.

  He was a small man, and his hands shook. ‘Give me room,’ he said acerbically. He looked at Swan. ‘Do you know any anatomy?’ he asked.

  Swan couldn’t shrug, owing to his kneeling posture and his armour. ‘Yes. No.’

  ‘You found the artery.’ The doctor nodded. ‘I need a sharp knife, some vinegar, a needle, and thread.’ He looked at Swan. ‘Don’t let go, young man. Your captain’s life depends on it.’

  Alessandro leaned in. ‘I need him. If they come
at us . . . they’re coming alongside. Thomas—’

  The doctor shook his head rapidly and looked even more like a bird. ‘If he lets go of the artery, Ser Marco dies.’

  Alessandro sighed. ‘If they board us—’ he said. His eyes met the Englishman’s.

  If they board us, let the capitano die and come and fight.

  The sun was grilling him. His slightly too-tight breast and back armour was biting into his hip and the base of his waist, and the pain was growing, running slowly up his side.

  The bishop was there. ‘I must shrive him,’ he said, and pushed against Swan’s back. ‘Out of my way.’

  The doctor looked up. ‘Back off,’ he said, his voice full of authority.

  Bravo, little man.

  ‘You—’ sputtered the Bishop of Ostia.

  ‘Off the deck, Your Grace,’ Alessandro said.

  ‘Ser Marco is my—’

  ‘Clear the deck, Your Grace. The Turks are coming aboard.’ Alessandro’s voice was low and gentle.

  The bishop turned and fled.

  An Arsenali brought vinegar. Peter leaned over, a threaded needle in his hand. ‘Heavy linen cord. I waxed it,’ he said in his Flemish-accented English.

  Swan translated but the doctor had already snatched the needle. He nodded at Peter and turned to Swan.

  ‘This is what we’re going to try,’ he said. ‘You hold on. As hard as ever you can. I will open the skin a little more, catch the end of the artery – I hope – in this loop.’ He’d made a loop like a horse breaker’s lasso. ‘I pull tight. You keep holding. Let me pass seven loops around the artery and put the needle through and tie off. Then you let go. Any time before – pfft. He’s dead. Yes? Are you ready?’

  Swan knew that it was foolish to feel that the pain in his hip was important when they were trying to save the captain’s life – but he muttered, ‘Hurry, then!’

  The doctor took a deep breath. He was praying.

  This is a man with a genuine courage, Swan thought. The Turkish galley was towering over them. The oarsmen were silent. Twenty heads leaned into the circle to watch the doctor work.

  ‘I need light,’ he said.