The Alchemist's Revenge

by Martin Archer

  I took a big swig of water from the skin Edward had fetched for me and began giving more orders.

  “That is the way to do it, Captain, swing their horse-shafts aside and bring the wagons tight up against each other so there are no gaps between them. Good. Good.

  “Fred, have your men take some water to the men in the wagons, and try to find something to cover them from the sun.”

  The men around me were exhausted. Many of them were sitting or lying down on their backs to rest and catch their breath, and every inch of shade under the wagons was taken. Others were guzzling water from the skins that had been thrown across the moat to us or were picking up the shields and pikes that had been thrown across with the skins. Their captains were gathered around me getting their assignments.

  At least a dozen archers had come down the ladders that were now leaning against the city wall on the other side of the moat. They were throwing more of everything over the moat to us as fast as it could be carried down the ladders or dropped down to them.

  A couple of ladders had been tipped into the moat to see if they would reach all the way across its foul waters. They did not. They reached almost all the way across, but almost was not good enough. And everyone was too busy to waste time pulling them out.

  More and more archers were appearing on above us on the wall and shouting encouragements. The distance they would get on their arrows from being up that high was impressive. But would the storm of arrows they pushed out be enough to stop the many thousands of Greeks who had arrived and seemed to be forming up to charge us? Probably not.

  “Over there, Charlie. Move your men over a little more. Good. Make sure their shields leave enough room for the pikes.”

  From the looks of things, we had about ten minutes to get ready; then we were likely to be hit and hit hard. That was when an idea began swirling around behind my eyes. Somehow I knew I had seen something important; I just did not know what it was.

  Chapter Twenty

  Fighting along the moat road.

  Our defences were centered on the four wagons that had been carrying our wounded men and prisoners. They were parked nose-to-arse on the road with their noses facing the distant gate we had been trying to reach. Parked in such a way meant their sides were facing towards the devastated camp of the early arrivals that was now being rapidly filled by the main body of the Venetian-carried Greeks. The rest of the Greek army, the men who would have to walk all the way, were still somewhere on the old Roman road that ran towards the city.

  The four captured wagons were the centre of a quickly established horseshoe-shaped defensive wall, with the men carrying shields and pikes forming the rest of the horseshoe-shaped defensive line, both of whose ends curved around until they reached all the way to the moat. In other words, every one of my hastily assembled company of stranded archers would either be pushing out his arrows from behind the shield wall or whilst standing in the wagons or behind them.

  After briefly thinking about it and getting the opinion of a couple of galley captains, I decided to leave our most seriously wounded men and the three prisoners in the wagon beds. That way they would be less likely to be trampled or slaughtered when the Greeks broke through our horseshoe-shaped defence line.

  The butts of all of our long-handled pikes were set in small holes hastily dug with the archers’ personal knives. That was so the pikes would not slip or give way when a Greek horse or foot soldier ran himself on to their points. In essence, all a man had to do was sit or stand at his position and hold his pike’s point high enough so it would stick into the belly of a charging horse or man who ran into it and impaled themselves. A pike’s point, of course, could also be jabbed into an attacker or its blade brought down hard on his head or shoulders. It was a formidable modern weapon.

  Those of our wounded and heat-stricken men who were strong enough to point a pike were given pikes to hold. We sat them in the shade under the wagon beds and told them to hold their pikes up to impale anyone who charged the wagons. Similarly equipped archers and auxiliaries sat amongst them and in the beds of wagons with the dead and wounded. In other words, our defensive line bristled with pikes from one end of its horseshoe shape to the other.

  Every second man in the shield line that extended out from the wagons was crouched down behind a shield holding a pike; the man next to him was crouched behind a shield and holding a short stabbing sword to finish off anyone who was able to get through the arrow storm and past a pike point. The pike and sword carriers all “took a knee” and crouched down so the archers standing behind them could push their arrows straight into anyone who was running at them.

  It was a formidable defence even though we were relatively few in numbers, and most of us were exhausted. Moreover, behind the pikes, and on the wall above them, were almost two thousand of the world’s best archers. In essence, the Greeks might break through our line of pikes and overrun us by the sheer weight of their numbers. But, if the past was any guide, the first of the Greeks lucky enough to get through the arrow storm would have very short and exciting lives when they reached our pikes and swords. So would we when the rest of the Greeks reached us.

  What was frustrating to me was that I still had the thought behind my eyes that I had seen, and perhaps even commented on, something important that might save us—but I still could not put my finger on what it was. Strangely enough, I felt quite calm.

  ****** Commander George Courtenay

  I was standing with both of my hands on top of the wall looking down at the great mass of men in the arriving Greek army and the little band of stranded archers immediately below me on the other side of the moat. It was quite a depressing sight, and very noisy and dusty.

  Archers with their arrows ready and their bows strung were packed all along the top of the wall on either side of me. Others were using hurriedly brought in ladders to climb down to the narrow strip of land, only a few paces wide in some places, between the city wall and the moat which guarded it. They would push out their arrows from there. Even more archers were available, but they literally had no place to stand that would provide them with enough room to use their bows.

  In front of us, for almost as far as the eye could see, was a good part of the Orthodox army the Venetians had carried to Adrianople. Its men were packed closely together as if they were fish in a sack. Knightly banners and crosses carried by priests were sticking up into the air everywhere.

  Except for the men trying to work their way through the crowd to get to the front, it was as if the Greeks were all waiting for someone to tell them what to do. A great cloud of dust hung over them from their constantly moving about. There were a few clusters of horsemen in the mass, mostly gathered around the banners.

  At the very front of the Greeks, and closest to the wagons and shield wall, were almost certainly the men who had pushed their way to the front in order to lead the attack because they were in search of recognition.

  As the Greek army waited for the order to attack to be given, and without knowing they were doing it, those in the rear trying to press their way forward in order to impress their lords and priests, or perhaps just to get a better look, were crowding up against the men in the front ranks—and pushing them closer and closer to our seriously outnumbered band of stranded mates who were huddled behind their wagons and pikes.

  It was about then that I noticed something else and decided it was important—large numbers of Greek soldiers were drinking from the foul moat and others of them, many others, were pushing their way towards it. They must have been both desperately thirsty as a result of an entire day spent marching in the dust and totally unaware as to the foul soup that festered in front the city’s wall.

  That they were half-mad with thirst was likely the case since the last available water on the road from Adrianople was a small stream that came out of the mountains and crossed the road. It was just before the road entered the peninsula on which the city stood at the very end, about a day’s march away from the city.r />
  As I watched, I realized that the men of the Greek army were making much more of an effort to get to the moat and its water than to Dan and his beleaguered men. The whole Greek army seemed to be moving towards it.

  “Richard, look over there—the Greeks are spreading out and going for the moat water despite it being so foul. We need to move some of the archers we have here, those with no room to push, down there to get those Greeks as well.”

  “By God, you are right. They must be desperate.” … “Hoy, Jack, Bob, follow me and bring your archers. Hurry.”

  Richard and his men had barely reached the mob of men rushing to the edge of the moat for water when the Greek mass moved even closer to Dan and his men. They were close enough for our arrows to reach and those who were closest to our shield line seemed to be readying themselves to charge.

  “ARCHERS,” I roared. “NOCK ARROWS” …. “PICK YOUR MAN” … “PUSH” …. “PUSH” … “EVENS GO LONG” … “PUSH … “PUSH.”

  The sergeants repeated the order over and over again and, as was expected, continued doing so for long as did I.

  In the course of the next five minutes the sky above our trapped archers was constantly filled with arrows. They fell upon the Greeks like great sheets of rain.

  Almost one hundred thousand well-aimed arrows had been grabbed out of their quivers by the best archers in the world and pushed into the nearby, unarmoured and closely bunched soldiers of the Greek army—and then the archers grabbed up arrows from the bales that had been opened and pushed out another hundred thousand.

  Great clouds of dust began to be kicked up as men and horses tried to run every which way, and the noise of the screaming and shouting was so loud that it was hard to think. And we mostly did not even try. Every archer from the Company’s commander to its newest one-striper was at work.

  One might have thought the Greeks would have hurriedly pulled back out of range. It did not happen. Many were still in range as our arrow supply began to run low—because the poor sods were so tightly packed together that they could see nothing and did not know which way to run—and most of them could not have successfully withdrawn even if they wanted to because they were so jammed together and had lost all sense of direction in the chaos and dust.

  The fighting was not entirely one-sided. The arrival of the arrows was as if an order to “charge” had been given by the Greek commanders. Many thousands of the Greeks responded to the sudden arrival of the arrows by surging forward against the four hundred or so archers and auxiliaries huddled behind the wagons they had been pulling.

  Sam’s men and the archers on the wall shot them down by the hundreds, and then Dan’s shield-carrying pike men and sword men cut down even more of them when those who escaped the initial onslaught of arrows reached their defensive line. But there were too many of them, and they broke through Dan’s shield wall on the left by the sheer weight of their numbers.

  It was a scene of absolute chaos which became hand to hand fighting at such very close quarters that the archers above the struggling men could not always get clear pushes.

  ****** Major Captain Daniel Tenn

  A great deluge of arrows suddenly came from the archers on the wall and began falling on the Greeks in front of us. It was as if a signal had been given—a great mob of men from the front ranks of the Greek army began charging towards us brandishing their swords and spears, with many of them falling as the arrows took them. It all happened at virtually the same moment.

  “Here they come, lads. Take the thrusters. Take the thrusters.”

  And that is what we did. At first it worked. It was hard to miss, and any arrow that did miss inevitably hit someone in the mob behind its intended target. Many of the Greeks were carrying only spears, the rest were wielding swords of various sizes and shapes, and they were all screaming and shouting as they came out of the dust cloud and ran towards us.

  Entire ranks of them fell either dead or wounded or tripped and were climbed over by the wild-eyed men behind them. The moving and screaming pile of bodies in front of us grew and grew. Those few of the Greeks who somehow got over or past their fallen friends were hit by arrows or stopped by our pikes and swords.

  For a few moments I thought we would be able to hold them off. Then everything changed. I was looking elsewhere and never did see the great mass of Greeks as they pushed back the left side of our shield wall and broke into the archers grouped behind it.

  It happened right after I put an arrow into the chest of a bearded and wild-eyed man trying to bull his way past one of our pike men. He was broad in the beam, had big yellow teeth, and was only a few feet away. It was one of the easiest shots I had ever made, and the last.

  I never saw the archer who was pushed back into me and knocked me down. What I did see was a sword coming down to chop into my leg as I went down. It was as if its blade was moving very, very slowly. Then I saw a foot moving slowly to step on my stomach and a spear coming down. Strangely enough, I never felt a thing.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  The butcher’s bill.

  As more and more of Dan’s men went down it became easier and easier to hit the Greeks crowded in amongst the archers who were still on their feet. They attracted the attention of all the archers and many went down with four or five arrows in them. And those Greeks who went down were not replaced as it became more and more difficult for the rapidly declining number of Greeks who were still willing fight to climb over the growing and wreathing pile of bodies in front of our men.

  Suddenly, most of the Greeks inside of what was left of Dan’s perimeter were either dead or running, and those who were wounded were trying to stagger away. The wounded Greeks did not get far, and neither did most of the runners nor those who were still alive at the bottom of the great piles of Greek casualties. They were either shot down or suffocated from not being able to breath.

  Unfortunately, the Greeks who had broken through the shield wall ran away too late to do much good for Dan and his men. From where we stood on the wall above them, it appeared that almost all of Dan’s men were either dead or wounded.

  Surprisingly, the men who had been in and under the wagons fared best of all, even the archers who had stood in the wagon beds and pushed their arrows straight into the Greeks who were only a few feet away. We on the wall above them, however, did not know this until some hours after the last arrow flew.

  It was about then that I realized how we might bring Dan and his men to safety across the moat. It had been right in front of us all the time—ever since we had seen the ladder that did not reach all the way across the moat.

  ******

  “Push one of the wagons into the moat,” I shouted down to Dan’s men after I had quieted the men around me so that I could be heard.

  I shouted my order down to the men below us who were moving around to offer help to their wounded mates. At first they were all so shocked and paralyzed by what they had been through, and what they had seen and experienced, that there was no response.

  “Hoy down there. You there, the sergeant in the wagon. Yes you. Unload the men from your wagon and push it into the moat. We are going to run ladders to and from that wagon and get you and the lads out of there.”

  The sergeant did not understand the order, at least not at first, but he had heard an order and it somehow encouraged him. A wounded apprentice sergeant bleeding from a wound to his head also heard it and understood it. He struggled to his feet to wave his acknowledgement.

  It did not take long before an understanding of what I wanted spread among the men below us. They suddenly realized they might yet be saved and began frantically working, at least those who still could. So did the archers on the wall.

  Ladders suddenly began arriving from every direction. They were quickly passed down to the archers who only a few minutes earlier had been pushing out arrows from the narrow strip of land between the city wall and the moat in front of it.

  What was left of Dan’s men did the right thing by
hurrying to build what I hoped would be an escape route. The Greeks who successfully fled from our arrows had retreated deep into the recently ravaged camp of the early arrivals; they would be back sooner or later and much more ready to fight.

  The Greeks’ initial attack against our stranded archers had been totally disorganized and unplanned. It had failed because their commanders ignored the thirst of their men and had neither organized nor directed the attack. Indeed, they almost certainly had never bothered to take the time before they arrived to train their men to make one.

  Unfortunately, the Greeks’ lack of command and control looked to be changing. From where we were standing on the wall we could see that some of the Greeks seemed to be reforming under the banners of their princes and lords. It suggested that the next time the Greeks attacked they would be much more organized and, therefore, even more dangerous. We needed to hurry.

  There were so many dead and wounded men in the area between the wagons and the moat that they had to be dragged out of the way before a wagon could be emptied of its dead and wounded archers and pushed into the moat. We watched from the wall and shouted encouragements as the wagon was pulled to the moat and pushed in. It settled to the bottom almost immediately with only the driver’s bench above the water. But that was enough to know where it was.

  We immediately began laying ladders across the moat to the sunken wagon. A volunteer from among the men at the foot of the wall immediately began carrying a ladder across and laying it from the sunken wagon to the far shore where a number of anxious archers were waiting to hold it in place. It was a sign of our stranded men’s desperation that several of the men holding the ladders were wounded and dripping blood.

  It was dangerous work for the volunteer. The wagon suddenly lurched as it settled under the first man’s weight, and almost dumped him off the ladder and into the water to drown. The look on his face was one of sheer terror. I suddenly understood why.