Knightfall--The Infinite Deep

by DAVID B. COE

  “There’s a ship behind us, as well,” he said.

  Tancrede looked back, muttered an imprecation under his breath.

  Godfrey strode in their direction, Gawain limping after him, and the other Templars following. “What’s happening?” the commander asked.

  “Nothing good,” Tancrede said. “It seems we’re being chased and headed off at the same time.”

  “We should make for land,” Landry said.

  Tancrede looked over his shoulder at the pursuing ship. “Yes, maybe. Let’s see what Killias has to say.”

  By this time, the Melitta had completed its turn and was headed back in their direction. Moments later, she pulled even with the Tern.

  “You see?” Killias called, indicating both ships with a gesture.

  “Yes,” Godfrey said. “Can we escape them by going to land?”

  The captain considered both ships, a scowl on his angular face.

  “We can. I fear you won’t make it to port in time. Not unless we buy you a few extra minutes.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Precisely what I said, Templar. You sail for port. We shall remain here and rain arrows on both ships until you’re safe.”

  “No,” Godfrey said. “You’ll all be killed.”

  “You underestimate my crew.”

  “Not at all. But those two ships are easily as large as yours, and if each has as many men, it will be slaughter.”

  “While the two of you quarrel like old peddlers,” Melitta said from the galley, “those two ships are closing on us.”

  “You have a skiff,” Godfrey said. “Would you be willing to part with it, at least for a time?”

  “To what end?”

  “Let our passengers row to land. We’ll keep both vessels here until they are safe.”

  “And then what?”

  “We are Templars. We’ll fight. It’s what we do.”

  “The women can take Adelina,” Simon said, looking from Godfrey to Landry to Tancrede. “But the rest of us should remain. We can help you.”

  Godfrey shook his head. “You belong with your daughter, Simon. And even if you didn’t, you cannot help us. We are trained for war. I admire your courage, but I cannot risk allowing you to remain.”

  “But—”

  “Listen to him, lad,” Killias said. He pointed a rigid finger at the nearer of the two ships. “Those men are killers. You and the others are more likely to get a knight killed as he attempts to save your life. Take your daughter and the others, and go to shore. Your courage will be needed and tested there.”

  “Please, my friend,” Godfrey said, giving Simon no time to argue. “Gather your daughter, get on that skiff, and go.”

  The commander pulled from his belt the coin purse given to him by Father Dawid. He pressed it into Simon’s hands. “Take this. Provide for them. Keep them safe. That is the most important thing you can do right now. Please.”

  Simon pressed his lips thin, his face pale in the sunlight. At last he nodded and hurried below.

  * * *

  Adelina wakes to shouts from above. She cannot make out what any of the men say, but she hears anger in their voices, and fear. She hears her father’s voice. He is as loud and strident as the others. This scares her. She sits up, pushes a hand through her tangled hair, and stands, intending to go to him.

  She is still upset by the things he said to her earlier. But he is all she has, the only person in her world who can ease her fright.

  Before she reaches the stairs, he is there. She runs to him, and he gathers her in his arms, lifts her.

  “What’s happening?” she asks, her words muffled against his neck.

  “We’re leaving the Tern.”

  She pulls back to look at him. “Why?”

  “There are ships after us. Pirates, I fear. We need to row to land.”

  “What about the knights? What about Melitta?”

  “They will stay and fight,” he says. She can tell from his worried expression and the chill in his tone that he doesn’t like this idea.

  He carries her onto the deck. The Templars await them, grim, their gazes fixed on two ships that come at them from opposite directions.

  “You will be in our prayers,” Godfrey says. He smiles at Adelina, strokes her cheek with a gentle finger. She decides that perhaps he is not so frightening after all.

  The rest of passengers are already in the small boat that floats beside the Tern. Adelina’s father places her in Landry’s arms. Landry, in turn, lifts her over the side of the vessel and lowers her to Nila, who waits in the smaller boat. Her father swings himself over the rail, but hesitates there, his gaze finding Melitta. They stare at each other for a heartbeat, two. She touches her fingers to her lips. He does the same.

  Then he is in the small boat with Adelina and the others. He and two other men row. Melitta watches them from the rails of her ship until a cry from Killias seizes her attention. She moves away from the side of the ship and Adelina loses track of her.

  Adelina twists to look at one of the galleys converging on the Melitta and the Tern, and then the other. They are big ships, the biggest she has ever seen. Their prows are shaped to look like serpents and they cut through the water with a swiftness that frightens her. Shouldn’t she and the others remain with the knights and Melitta? Shouldn’t they fight the men on these two galleys? Melitta told the Templars that Adelina and her father are crew, just as the Templars are. Doesn’t that mean that they should remain and stand with them?

  She pivots back to her father, opening her mouth to ask as much. Seeing his expression, though, the lines etched in his brow, around his mouth and eyes, she swallows the question. If they could have remained, they would have. He would have insisted.

  She looks back again, even more scared for her friends, the people who have kept them alive these past days. It occurs to her that she might never see any of them again. She clasps her hands, squeezes her eyes shut, and prays, hoping that God will honor a Jewish prayer to save Christian lives.

  Chapter 10

  Members of the Melitta’s crew leapt down to the Tern, all of them bearing bows and quivers. Better, Killias and Godfrey had decided, that both ships should be well armed for the coming encounter. Leaving the Tern with only the Templars to fight would have made it an easy target. Perhaps with another dozen men, trained archers all, they could fight off the galleys for a time.

  But Landry knew this for what it was: an act of desperation intended to put off the inevitable. Both ships were about to be boarded, provided they weren’t burned to empty husks, as the pirate ship was the day they first met the Melitta.

  “If we can get close enough to burn them out, as we did the Blood Dawn, we have a chance,” Killias told Godfrey. “That is, if they don’t possess weapons more formidable than oil-soaked arrows. Their bowmen will do all they can to keep us at a distance.”

  “What do you want us to do?”

  “Don’t come too close to the Melitta. We want to divide their assault. The Melitta probably can’t withstand an attack from both ships at once. If you can draw one away, give us time to defeat the other, we can come to your defense before you’re overwhelmed.” He grimaced. “That’s my idea, anyway.” He eyed the two galleys. “If you have other thoughts, I’d welcome them.”

  “I have little experience with naval warfare,” Godfrey said. “I’m a knight, not a sailor.”

  “Enough talk, father,” Melitta called from her ship. “If we don’t separate now, we’ll be trapped together.”

  Landry checked the position of the ships. They were close now. He could hear their oars slicing into the surface of the sea. The sails of both galleys were furled, but Landry noticed black markings on the cloth of at least one of them. He wanted to ask if the marks meant anything to Killias, but this didn’t seem the time.

  “My daughter is right,” Killias said. He proffered a hand, which Godfrey gripped. “Godspeed, Templar.”

  “And you, Captain.”

>   The captain rushed to his vessel. Tancrede steered the Tern away from Killias’s ship. Landry had never been more aware of how slow the Tern was compared with other vessels. It seemed they crawled across the surface of the sea.

  “Perhaps some of us should row,” he said, striding to Tancrede, who manned the rudder, as always.

  Tancrede checked their position relative to the galley behind them. Before he could answer, though, one of Killias’s sailors, a tall, yellow-haired man with bronzed skin and dark eyes, shook his head.

  “Speed won’t matter in this fight. Or rather, it will, but you can’t row fast enough to outmaneuver a ship like that.” He nodded toward the galley. “They have three sails to your one, thirty men on sweeps to your dozen. No, we need every man on deck, with a bow in his hands. That’s our best hope.”

  “Do you know these ships?” Godfrey asked, approaching the sailor.

  “Not on sight, no.”

  “What about those markings on the furled sails?” Landry asked.

  The man narrowed his eyes, turned to stare at the nearer vessel. After a few seconds he blanched.

  “You do know them.”

  “Only by reputation.”

  Godfrey said nothing. Landry waited for more.

  “They’re pirates, but I assume you’d gathered that much. If I had to guess, I’d say those sails bear black crosses. Which would make them Redman’s ships.”

  Godfrey’s eyes narrowed. “Redman?”

  “Redman the Monk, they call him. Word is he was one of your kind once, a knight of some sort. Perhaps even a Templar.”

  “Why do I find that anything but reassuring?” Landry said.

  “You’re clever, I guess,” the sailor said. “He’s said to be ruthless, canny as a shark, and as good with a blade as he is with a rudder. Captain’s done his best to avoid him all these years. I suppose our luck was bound to run out eventually.”

  The man said this last with a backward glance at the Melitta. Landry was sure he would have preferred to be on his own ship, among his comrades. He sensed as well that the sailor blamed the Templars for turning their fortunes where Redman the Monk was concerned.

  Tancrede continued to guide the ship away from the Melitta. Landry chanced a quick look toward the shoreline. The skiff carrying Simon, Adelina, and the rest of their passengers appeared tiny and vulnerable on the gentle swells of the Mediterranean. They had put some distance between themselves and the Tern, but they were still a long way from land. The Templars and Killias’s sailors had to occupy the galleys long enough for Simon and the others to reach the coast.

  Gawain and Draper joined him at the rail.

  “They’ve a long way to go,” Gawain said.

  “I was thinking the same.”

  “All the more reason to fight.” As Gawain said this, he pushed a bow and a bundle of arrows into Landry’s hands.

  Landry tested the tension of the bow then set the arrows at his feet, leaning it against the hull within easy reach.

  A shout went up from the Melitta. Pivoting, he drew a sharp breath to cry out a warning. Not that he needed to.

  A swarm of arrows shadowed the sky above Killias’s vessel. As the barbs reached their zenith and began their deadly descent, the sailors on the ship took cover beneath wooden shields. Moments later, the arrows struck, their impacts like the popping of a violent blaze. A few men screamed in agony. Two fell to the deck, where Landry could no longer see them. But for the most part, the shields protected them.

  At a bellowed order from Killias, the men and Melitta took hold of their bows and loosed a volley of their own.

  He had no chance to see more.

  A warning from the tall sailor pulled his attention back to the galley bearing down on his ship. Arrows flew from the pirate ship. Landry tracked them, gripping his Templar shield, his knuckles so tight they hurt. Belatedly, he realized that Killias’s men had brought their own shields.

  As the arrows dropped, Landry ducked beneath his shield and awaited the impact. It came with the same rapid thwack he had heard from the other vessel. But he heard no shouts or cries. In this one assault, no one had been hurt.

  “Damn!” Tancrede said.

  Landry looked his way, then followed the line of his hot glare.

  The sail. Arrows had sliced through it in two places.

  The Templars and Killias’s men unleashed a flurry of their own. Twenty arrows sailed over the water to the galley. The pirates blocked them with ease. Landry heard laughter and then the snap of bows.

  He and the others shielded themselves again. This time, the impact of the arrows brought a snarl from one man. One of the sailors had taken a barb in his calf, but that was all. Landry didn’t expect their good fortune could hold much longer.

  The galley continued to close the distance between the two ships.

  “Their ship is too big,” Gawain said, as they loosed their arrows again. “And they have too many men.”

  “You may be right,” Draper said. “But their size may not be such an advantage after all.” He pointed a finger at the galley.

  At first, Landry wasn’t sure what the Turcopole was indicating.

  “Draper, I don’t—”

  “Their oars. Or rather, the eyes in the hull where they’re fixed.”

  Landry looked again, squinting against the glare of the sun off the water. The oar eyes were shielded, but the shields had been fixed at an angle, so that archers on a ship as large as the galley could not aim at their oarsmen. From the level of the Tern’s deck, there was a bit of space. A very little bit.

  “That would be quite a shot,” Gawain said. But he grinned as he spoke.

  Landry gauged the distance and the angle. Difficult to be sure. But not impossible.

  “You’re not serious,” Killias’s man said, as all of them took shelter from another volley.

  Arrows thudded into the deck all around them.

  “They are getting close,” Draper said. “If we do nothing, we will be boarded or burned within the next few moments. This may be our only hope.”

  “I don’t know that I can hit a target so small.”

  “I have a silver piece that says you can’t,” Tancrede said. “Two of them if I make my shot.”

  The sailor flashed a quick grin. “You’re on, Templar. The oarsmen,” he called to his fellow sailors.

  “Dunc, that’s impossible,” one of the men answered.

  “Try it. One time. Then we aim for the deck again.”

  They nocked arrows, drew back their bows, and released them. As many arrows thudded into the shields or the side of the hull as threaded the holes. But several found their marks. Wails echoed from within the larger ship. Five oars jerked out of the water, and the galley veered away from the Tern. Tancrede steered them in the opposite direction, catching a gust of wind and putting some distance between the two vessels.

  “You owe me a silver, Templar,” the tall sailor said.

  Tancrede smiled. “But only one.”

  Landry glanced at the other vessels. The Melitta and the second pirate ship continued to circle each other and trade attacks. From what he could tell, neither had gained a decisive advantage.

  “They’re turning back this way,” Gawain said. “Should we try it again?”

  Draper shook his head, clearly deflated. “It won’t work a second time. Already they have replaced the lost oarsmen and shielded themselves from within.

  “It was a good idea,” Godfrey said.

  Draper frowned. “A delay of the inevitable. Nothing more.”

  “It gives us time to think of another strategy.”

  Landry wanted to believe that Godfrey was right, but more arrows rained down on them in wave after wave. On those occasions when they had time to send back barbs of their own, their attacks seemed pitifully small. The galley closed in on them again. Landry could think of nothing they might do to get away or keep themselves from being boarded.

  Another of Killias’s sailors fell to the de
ck. This man didn’t move again. An arrow jutted from his neck and blood stained the weathered wood.

  Their shields looked like the backs of great barbed beasts. Arrows were embedded in the deck and the mast. The sail had been shredded. And still the assault continued.

  The galley pulled abreast of their ship. Some of the pirates fired more arrows at them. But others used long iron hooks to grapple the Tern to their vessel. Then they placed planks across the gap between the two ships, and the Tern was boarded.

  Still gripping his shield, Landry straightened, dropped his bow, and drew his sword. His fellow Templars did the same, as did Killias’s men.

  The pirates were more skilled with bows than with blades. So were the sailors from the Melitta. Landry, Tancrede, Godfrey, and the other Templars, on the other hand, were renowned and feared throughout the world for their skill with steel. The numbers were not in their favor, but Landry preferred this fight to the peek and hide of fighting with bows.

  Without a word among them, the Templars gathered together into a phalanx, instinct and the experience of a hundred battles guiding them. The pirates threw themselves at the knights, only to have their assault break upon the Templars’ blades and shields like waves upon a rocky shore.

  One man charged at Landry, gripping a scimitar in both hands. He was large, muscular, but reckless. He leveled a furious blow at Landry’s head. Landry parried with ease. Shifted his weight. Delivered a strike of his own to the man’s exposed side. The pirate collapsed in a bloody heap, innards spilling onto the deck. As easy a kill as he could recall.

  But two men took the place of the dead one. Both big, both strong. Both wary now that they had seen their brother fall.

  One chopped at Landry’s head. The other swept a blow toward his gut. Landry raised his shield to block one, twisted his blade down to counter the other. His entire body quaked with the impacts. He leveled a strike of his own at the man on his left, pounded his shield into the face of the other man.

  Both pirates fell back a step, then advanced together. Landry feinted, hammered his blade into the base of one man’s neck. Blood arced from the wound. A backhanded blow severed the second man’s arm. Landry finished him with a thrust to the heart.