The Alchemist's Revenge

by Martin Archer

  Similarly encouraging, according to Harold Lewes, the Company’s toll collections which our galleys were collecting, were continuing and there was no sign of any sea-borne threat on the city’s three seaward sides. Harold assured us that our galleys were on alert and safe, and immediately available to carry the Empress and our men to safety in the unlikely event the Greeks were able to break through our defences and get into the city.

  “In the meantime, we are continuing to collect large amounts of coins from the Empress’s subjects and others who want to book passages on our transports and flee before the Greeks attack.”

  “It helps,” Harold went on to say with a big smile and a nod towards my father, “that the Empress ordered that no one else was to be allowed to carry passengers from the city whilst it was under the threat of an attack.”

  What would happen that night when darkness fell was the big question. And although no announcement had yet been made, it was obvious to everyone that the Company’s foot archers would only temporarily be able to be help the Empress’s guards keep the peace in the city. Once the Greek army arrived, most of them would have to man the walls to help fight off the Greeks.

  ****** Horse Archer Captain Alan Strong

  My company was down to eleven men because we lost another two men the day before yesterday, one killed and one badly wounded. Of the eleven of us, eight were standing with me on a hillside overlooking the Greek army passing along the Adrianople road in front of us in great clouds of dust, and the two I could most spare were at our battle camp guarding the supply wagon and tending Mark Bell, our wounded man.

  We did not know for sure if the Greeks had reached the city yet because we were more than a day’s ride from it, but it seemed likely as their army had been passing in front of us almost continuously since yesterday morning.

  At the moment the nine of us were in a stand of trees quietly watching some men who had walked away from the main Greek column on the road that was a mile or so south us. There were forty or fifty of them, and they looked as though they were going off to forage for food and women in the little cluster of houses that were in and around a stand of trees three or four miles north of the main road.

  There was no reason to risk our necks unnecessarily, so we were standing next to our horses whilst we waited for the Greeks to get closer to the little village—and further away from the road on which the Greek army was slowly marching towards Constantinople.

  My company had been down to only me and seven somewhat able-bodied men when we finally came off the mountain with Commander Ryder, but we picked up two newbies newly arrived from Cornwall and still green with seasickness and five men from Edmund Down’s company, the poor sod.

  Unfortunately for Edmund, his company had been disbanded when he and eight of his men lost some of their toes to the cold pox on the mountain. Turned black with a pox from the cold, their toes did, and began to smell and hurt most terrible. So did a couple of the toes of one of my men, for that matter, Ewan Spitalfield for one, him that was a tailor before he went for an archer.

  I am not sure what happened to Ewan. No one knew where he was when the lads and I went to visit him at the hospital which had been set up next to the Commandery. They remembered him at the hospital but had not seen him for several days. Ewan was not the type to run so he was probably sent somewhere on limited duty just as Edmund had been.

  In addition to losing some of his men with poxed feet, Edmund also lost one man who fell in the river whilst pushing out arrows and was never seen again. He, Edmund that is, ended up with soft duty for his troubles. He was now hobbling about on a stick and drinking wine every night whilst sitting on his arse atop one of the gates into the city. Indeed, whilst we was out here sweating our arses off in the hot sun, he was probably sitting up there in the shade with a bowl of wine and looking at the arriving Greeks.

  I had tried to count the Greeks what was marching past us on their way to the city, but finally stopped when someone said something and I forgot my count. But there was certainly a shite pot full of them, and that was a fact. They stretched along the road to Constantinople as far as the eye could see.

  On the other hand, to my surprise, the Greeks did not seem to have as many horse carts as I would have expected or much in the way of cavalry, camp following women, or sutlers. As I recall from years back, the armies of both Cornell and the rebel barons had many more of all of them when they came against us in Cornwall.

  What I learnt later, as everyone now knows, was what we were seeing was only a part of the Greek army, and that even more of the bastards were coming in behind this lot. This bunch had come part of the way by sea which is why they did not have so many of an army’s usual wagons, cavalry, sutlers, and camp followers.

  ******

  We watched quietly whilst the men who had peeled off from the column got closer and closer to the little village. I waited to give my battle orders until the foragers were far enough away from the main column so a relief force, if one was available and came out of the men marching on the road, would not be able to get to us in time to save them.

  There was a little stream running near us. All of us, horses and men, had drunk our fill when we reached it about an hour earlier.

  “Time for one last drink of water, lads. Get it now because only God knows when there will be time for another.”

  Finally, about ten minutes later, I decided that the forage party had gotten far enough away from the road. I had waited longer than usual because of our sad experience a couple of days ago—when we lost a couple of lads due to the unexpected appearance of some Genoese crossbowmen. One of my men was killed and the other, with a bolt still in his leg, was in our battle camp being tended by our camp guards.

  “Mount up, lads, and string your bows. And may Jesus and the saints bless us one and all.

  After I got myself settled in my saddle I made an effort to reassure my men.

  “We should be all right,” I said so they all could hear me. “Yonder forage party looks to be too far from the road to run back to the column before we hit them, and there are no cavalry in sight who might ride out in time to drive us off and save them.

  “But there is no sense taking unnecessary chances—so we will do the usual and pull up some ways off from the foragers, and push our arrows into them from there until they break and run. And the horse holders are to go around to the north three or four miles and wait there for us in case something unexpected comes up and we have to run for it and need fresh horses.”

  And, with that settled, and the men clearly pleased with my caution, I made the sign of the cross, scratched the lice in the hair around my dingle to settle them, swung myself up on my horse, and handed the reins of my spare horse to one of the company’s two remaining horse holders.

  Then I put my heels in my horse’s ribs and off we went. She was a mare, my riding horse was. It was the first time I had ever ridden one in all my years in the company. Even worse, she was not a natural-born ambler and my arse was getting sore.

  The lads followed me with my lieutenant, Alfred Black, riding on one side of me and the company’s first sergeant, Paul from Croydon, riding on the other. We rode at a slow trot and curved around as if we were not going for the foraging party. It was damn hot and we began sweating profusely as soon as we came out of the shade provided by the trees, at least I did.

  My plan was simple and I could tell from watching their faces that my men agreed with it—we would try to appear to be non-threatening members of the Greek army until it was too late for the foragers to escape or for anyone to come out of the column to rescue them. Accordingly, we trotted peacefully, not towards the foragers, but towards the head of the column as if we were new horsemen coming in to join the army or returning scouts coming in to report what we had seen.

  Not until we were directly between the foraging party and the great mass of men and wagons moving along the road did we change direction and head directly towards the foragers. And even when we did mo
ve towards them, it was only at a leisurely pace, a slow and easy canter.

  My hope was that the foragers would think we had come out from the column to help them, or perhaps to get to the little village and forage in it before they did. With a little luck, everyone marching in the cloud of dust that hung over the column would think the same, particularly since the foragers outnumbered us. If they did, the alarm would not be sounded until it was too late to save the foragers or, even better, it would not be sounded at all.

  Our plan seemed to work, at least at first.

  ******

  We slowed down and rode at a relaxed trot in the boiling sun until we were between the foragers and the men marching in the cloud of dust that hung over the seemingly endless Greek column. No one came out of the column to challenge us, at least initially. It was as if we did not exist.

  That no one came out to challenge us was somewhat surprising since we and our brother companies had been constantly raiding the column ever since it marched out of Adrianople. We had done so by riding along it, just out of range of an arrow from a regular bow, and using our longbows to push our arrows into the men and horses walking along the road or shitting or cutting grass or eating on either side of it.

  Our attacks inevitably caused delays and confusion amongst the Greeks and discouraged them from sending out foraging parties. They also caused us to run through our supply of arrows rather quickly since they were virtually impossible to retrieve. That was why we had been surprised when we saw this one—so much so that my first thought upon seeing it was that the Greeks might be baiting a trap. More likely, however, it was going out because the men in the foraging party were low on supplies and getting hungry.

  The Greeks had responded to their mostly unanswered losses by putting together files of crossbowmen from amongst their Genoese mercenaries and spacing them out along road to act as rapid reaction forces. That was how they were able to kill one of my men and put a bolt into the leg of Geoffrey Cook, the son of Thomas Cook, one of the Company’s original archers.

  It was the need to retrieve our arrows after we used them that caused my eyes to light up when I saw the foraging party head off from the main column. We were not short of arrows, but it was still early days and we had already opened the third of the five arrow bales in our supply wagon.

  Richard’s orders had been quite direct and we had all heard them. Priority was to be given to keeping the Greeks from getting food to feed their army. That meant killing their cart-pulling horses, attacking their foragers, and, wherever possible, wounding the Greeks instead of killing them—since wounded men would help eat up their supplies and dead men would not.

  In other words, the killing or wounding Greek foragers and retrieving the arrows we used on them were a pangloss, the best of all possible worlds so far as my lads and I were concerned.

  ******

  At first the foragers merely stopped and watched us as we rode towards them. Then, as we approached them, they hurriedly gathered together and raised a shield wall facing us with the large infantry shields they were carrying. They obviously had planned ahead and had a good captain.

  “Alfred, take your men and ride over there towards that big tree and spread out; Paul, you take yours the other way and do the same. Tell your men to take any pushes they think they can make. No wasting of arrows.”

  The men moved out and arrows began to fly moment later. The Greeks responded to having a couple of their men hit by spreading around in a half circle to face us whilst they crouched behind their shields. We saw no crossbows but there appeared to be a few men amongst them carrying regular bows.

  “Do not get too close, lads. They have archers amongst them. Try to take out the archers first.”

  And then, less than a minute later, after taking a long look at the distant road to make sure it was safe, I added another order.

  “Spread out and circle all the way around them, but stay awake in case we have to leave in a hurry, but for God’s sake watch where you place your pushes; do not hit one of us who is on the other side of the Greeks.”

  At first, placing our men all the way around them did the trick. In an effort to protect themselves, the foragers formed a complete circle facing outward with the shields each man carried—and in so doing left the backs of the men facing outward available to the archers on the other side of them.

  The result was inevitable; several more of the foragers were hit as me and the lads moved around whilst we looked for a clean push.

  The remaining able-bodied foragers, forty of so, must have had a particularly capable captain, for they soon responded by doing something totally unexpected; they began forming very tight little circles of five or six men each with their overlapping shields facing outward and one or two wounded men in the middle.

  Setting themselves up in such a way was a smart thing for them to do because made them virtually unreachable with our arrows. It also left unprotected those of their wounded who were not able to stand with them. We, of course, did not push at those who were seriously wounded because we wanted to leave them alive to help eat up the Greeks’ food.

  Fortunately, standing in tight little circles also made their bows unusable. We had a standoff and time was on their side—sooner or later help was likely to come from the main column or darkness would arrive and they would be able to slip away to safety.

  Sergeant Black was the one who broke things apart. He did so by moving himself and his three men back and out of the way, and then he motioned for the Greeks to run for safety though the opening he created. And some of the fools did; they threw their shields and weapons down, abandoned the wounded men they were shielding, and ran for the distant road. Perhaps they thought they were being offered a chance to escape. If that was what they thought, they were wrong.

  “Mount up, but wait,” I shouted as loudly as I could. “Let them run.”

  We waited on our horses until the disorganized runners were clear of those who remained standing firm in three tight little circles. It was every would-be escaper running separately for himself, and it was a fatal mistake for many of those who ran.

  “Now lads, ride them down. Wound them if you can. And be sure to pick up your arrows.”

  The next few minutes were hectic. The fleeing Greeks had run in every direction, but mostly towards the cloud of dust hanging over the column on the road to Constantinople. We responded by splitting up with every archer galloping after one of the runners.

  A few of the Greek runners got away whilst we were chasing the others and picking up arrows. In several cases they got away because it took more time than it should to retrieve our arrows because they had to be pulled out of, or pushed through, a wounded man who began jumping about as we did. The problem was that the wounded Greek runners usually had to be knocked on the head to put them to sleep before we could get the arrow out of them.

  After we retrieved all the arrows we could quickly find, including pulling them out of the dead and wounded, we reassembled and rode towards the little village. As we did, we watched as the Greeks who had stayed together began slowly walking back towards the dust-covered road to Constantinople.

  The escapers stayed close together all the way back to the road, always ready to instantly form the tight little circles of infantry shields that are so effective against archers, and so rarely used. They had escaped, yes, by abandoning, at least temporarily, their dead and wounded. But they had not brought back any food or water with them. Hopefully, they would come back later to bring in their wounded so they would have to feed them.

  The sun was unbelievably hot as we finally headed towards the little village and the shade of the trees around it. My men and horses desperately needed water and a bit of a rest, and so did I.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Preparations and uncertainties.

  The main body of the Greek-led army raised by the Orthodox Patriarch finally reached the walls of Constantinople in the blistering heat of mid-summer. It arrived weeks after it was
expected, and long after the popular uprising that was supposed to occur at the same time and support its attack. The horse archers’ constant attacks all along the way had delayed and confused the army’s leaders and reduced its strength through casualties and desertions.

  Despite the archers’ initial successes, the Greek-led army that finally arrived was intact and still huge and powerful. On the other hand, it was also untrained, poorly led, and woefully short of supplies. Surprisingly, those were not significant problems, at least not according to the Orthodox priests who had accompanied the army. To the contrary, they assured the army’s soldiers that victory was assured because God would make up the shortfalls.

  Things were no better for the Greeks in the city even though they constituted the great majority of the city’s population. For various reasons, the city’s Orthodox priests and their parishioners had become confused and uncertain as to what they should do next. Encouraging their confusion and uncertainty was that the news had spread that their would-be emperor was being assisted by the Venetians and French in return for promises of great benefits, many of which would be at the expense of the local Greeks and their priests and churches.

  The possibility of the Venetians returning to Constantinople caused a great deal of anger in the city’s population. The Greek-gobbling priests and their parishioners hated and feared the Venetians because they remembered their unacceptable behaviour that had led to the “massacre of the Latins” during their grandfathers’ time and the Venetians’ participation, fifteen years earlier in 1204, when they helped the crusaders of the Fourth Crusade take Constantinople and replace the Byzantine Empire with the Latin Empire.