The Alchemist's Revenge

by Martin Archer

  Similarly, sleeping on one’s stomach can put a foul taste in one’s mouth if he is sleeping too close to his company’s latrine or where birds and mice have been shitting whilst they searched for food. It also can put a crick in one’s neck from turning it too far. There was no doubt about it for a soldier sleeping rough—being flat on your arse with your head on a quiver was the only way to go.

  Things began to change after a couple of hours or so of darkness. We began hearing muffled voices and strange noises coming from both sides of the nearby moat. But they did not sound like the normal noises one would expect from an army’s encampment. To the contrary, the noises sounded like squeaking wagon wheels and periodic loud thumps as if something large and heavy had crashed to the ground.

  Messengers soon began pouring in to report what we already knew—voices giving orders and, most surprising of all, strange noises were being heard everywhere along the city’s outer wall on both sides of the moat. The Greeks were up to something for sure.

  Our response was inevitable. All along the wall anxious archers and auxiliaries were shaken awake and orders whispered to them to be ready to move out with their weapons on a moment’s notice.

  Simultaneously, I sent warning messages to Richard and Harold at the harbour where our galleys were tied up and pulled on to the strand, and to Henry at the gate next to the states’ forces encampment. Similar notices were sent to the commander of the Empress’s Varangian guards, and to my father who had recovered enough from his chest pox to be able to take command of the Citadel’s defences.

  Indeed, the only people we did not bother to wake up and inform were the states’ forces. We did not wake them because there was nothing for them to do since, according to Henry who had been working to train the states’ forces, we could not trust them to defend even the smallest stretch of the wall.

  The archers on the gate in front of the states’ forces, however, were awakened and my senior aide, Michael Oremus, was sent to take command of them so they would be good hands now that Henry was needed on the wall. Henry was the Company’s most experienced ground commander; I wanted him with me to help direct the defence of the wall if the Greeks were going to attack. He came immediately.

  My son, also named George, accompanied Michael to the gate as his apprentice and scribe even though he was much too young to be on active duty with the Company, let alone in a real fight. George did not know it, of course, but two carefully selected chosen men, both long-serving veterans, followed him everywhere he went. They were to do whatever it took to keep him safe and out of trouble “including throwing him screaming and kicking over your shoulder and carrying him away.”

  Two hours later, in the middle of the night, I changed my mind about not using what was left of the states’ forces. I sent a message to Michael and Prince Ivan suggesting they form them up at dawn for a possible coin-earning sortie that might start as early as an hour or two later.

  What I did not tell anyone, not even Henry who had joined me by then, was that I only intended to send the states’ men out on a sally if the Greek army launched an all-out attack such that the Greeks left their encampment undefended and easily sacked—because the sally of the states’ forces might cause some of the Greeks to abandon their attack in order to save their camp.

  Something was happening. That much was certain. But we had absolutely no idea what it might be. All we could do was assume that the noises we heard all along the wall on both sides of the moat meant an imminent attack was possible and get ready to repel it. Or, of course, the Greeks might just be jerking our dingles.

  We spent the rest of the night assuring each other that we were ready for anything whilst constantly worrying about what was about to happen.

  *****

  We finally saw what had kept us awake all night when the sun appeared in the morning. It was the entire Orthodox army and it was breathtakingly huge, by far the biggest force of men any of us had ever seen. And it was formed up in a surprising place—two or three miles away on the far side of the Greek encampment instead of close to the wall that it apparently intended to attack.

  Its men were massed several miles or so beyond the moat and the Greek encampment in about mob-like formations that looked to each have about five or six thousand men—and there many such formations, we could see at least a dozen from where we stood. They stretched all along the wall in front of us until they disappeared from sight where the wall curved.

  “But why are they so far away?” Henry asked no one in particular as he shook his head. “Surely they do not intend to march someplace else after putting all those foot bridges over the moat? And where would they go?”

  What Henry was saying was particularly worrying. It just did not make much sense for the Greek army to be formed up so far away. What made a lot of sense, on the other hand, was what had caused the noise that kept us awake all night—the numerous newly installed narrow wooden foot bridges that had been ingeniously thrown across the moat in the dark.

  What was ingenious about them was the way they had been delivered. In the darkness of the night, each of the footbridges had been carried upright in the bed of a wagon to the edge of the moat, and then pushed over to so that its other end landed on the other side of the moat.

  What was surprising was that the men who had pulled the wagons into place and toppled their footbridges over to cover the moat had done so, and then run off leaving the wagons unattended at the edge of the moat. Why had they done that?

  And what were Greeks waiting for now that the bridges were in place? These were the questions behind everyone’s eyes and much talked about by the waiting archers. One would have thought the Greeks would have immediately attacked as soon as there was enough light for them to see what they were doing. But they did not. Why were they waiting?

  We were confused and uncertain. Could it be that the Greek commanders were knowledgeable enough to wait for the rain that looked to be coming this way to begin falling so our bowstrings would be affected? And how did they know in advance that there would be rain? We did not have a clue.

  The delay of the Greek attack suggested that the Greek commander was either exceedingly stupid or very lucky or very smart. In any event, we all worried because the Greek assault had not started even though there were now at least a hundred narrow foot bridges across the moat. Why were they waiting?

  “Henry, you go to the left and make sure each company has enough pikes and that our best archers and best pike men are in front of every wagon bridge; Nicholas, you go to the right and do the same. Pass along my order to the captains about getting their archers and pike men in front of the wagon bridges. Then continue on to the gate and look around, then come back and report. The gate is easiest way for the Greeks to get in and these foot bridges might be an elaborate feint to draw our attention away from it. ”

  They both knew exactly what I wanted them to do about the pikes, and so would the captains—having our best men on the pikes meant taking them from the auxiliaries and assigning them to our steadiest archers.

  ******

  Our increased readiness had actually begun two days earlier when one of the Empress’s spies came in from the Greek camp and reported that the long awaited major assault on the city’s outer wall would begin as soon as the weather was right and the Greeks had collected enough wagons. We did not know what “the weather was right’ meant or why they needed more wagons, but we certainly understood “major assault.”

  The Greek army, or so it now seemed, was either waiting for tonight’s darkness so they could cross the moat with their ladders on their newly installed foot bridges without being seen, or they were waiting for a storm to wet our bowstrings. Or could it be that the Greeks were waiting for word that the Venetians had launched an attack on the harbour? No one could think of another reason.

  It was the possibility that the Greek army had been waiting for a rain storm that particularly worried me and my lieutenants—there was the distinct smell of rain in the air.<
br />
  Although the Greek commander was probably not experienced enough to know about it, or, based on what we had seen so far, smart enough to take advantage of it, rain greatly reduced an archer’s ability to push out his arrows by wetting his bowstring. And while it was true that every archer was required to carry at least four bowstrings with him at all times, one on his bow and at least two more under his knitted cap and one in his coin pouch, it was equally true that bowstrings get wet quickly and lose their effectiveness when it is raining.

  ****** Archer Harry Driver.

  “It will not be long now.” That is what one of my mates, Guy Falmer, said he heard the Commander say. It happened a few minutes earlier when Guy was standing near the Commander on the narrow pathway that ran all along the top of the city’s outer wall.

  Guy was near the Commander because, at the time, they were both pissing over the wall at one of the places on the wall where the men of our company are supposed to piss and shite.

  According Guy, the Commander also said “It was a good idea for the Greeks to use their wagons like that; we will have to remember it.”

  What the Commander was talking about were the abandoned wagons we could see down below us in the early light of a cloudy Thursday morning. The Greeks had quietly pushed them up to the edge of the moat in the darkness, and then the long and upright wooden plank each wagon had carried was somehow toppled over so as to fall across the moat and create a footbridge.

  We knew from the word that had been passed from man to man along the wall that there were many such “wagon footbridges,” and that they were spread out for miles all along the wall on either side of where Guy and I were sitting with our backs against the wall.

  What was even more surprising and worrisome to me and my mates was that the wagons what brought them were still there. Footbridges we could understand. They meant the Greeks intended to come across them and attack us. But the wagons?

  Last night my mates and I had known something was happening in the dark because we had heard what we now knew was the sound of the bridges’ wooden planks hitting the ground below the wall on our side of the moat. We had all heard them because our entire company had spent the night on the wall anxiously waiting on high alert.

  And we were fairly sure we knew how the moat bridges had been installed because we could see one of the Greeks’ wagons that had carried them off to our left. The long and narrow wooden plank it had been carrying was still upright and pointing towards the sky. What we did not know was why that particular plank had not been toppled over to bridge the moat the way all the other wagons had done with the long wooden planks they had been carrying.

  One of my mates, David May, a long-serving one-striper like me, said that whilst he was visiting the company shite hole earlier he had heard someone say that Alan Gaddie, one of the archers in the company next to ours, was telling everyone that he whilst he was taking a shite he had a heard a lieutenant explain why some of bridges were still on the wagons instead of being pushed over to fall across the moat.

  According to Alan, the lieutenant was telling someone that the bridges had not been completed because the wagons carrying them had had trouble getting through the Greek camp. As a result, some of the wagons reached the moat too late for the men who pulled them to the edge of the moat to finish the job.

  What had happened, according to the lieutenant, was that the sun had arrived before the Greeks could finish getting the wagons up to the edge of the moat. They were afraid of being picked off by the archers when the sun arrived so they, being Greeks without proper bottoms, had run away to save themselves.

  It sounded reasonable. On the other hand, we were never sure about believing what Alan said since he was well known to talk constantly and be a teller of tall tales who was willing to keep talking so long as anyone was paying attention. Last year, for instance, he told us that when he was a lad in the village he had seen a pig that had been born without any front legs because its mother had eaten too many green apples.

  I listened to David tell me what Alan said the lieutenant said without saying a word of my own in reply. In fact, I was too worried behind my eyes to talk. So far as I was concerned, it did not really matter how the bridges had been installed, or why a particular wooden plank had not been toppled over to put another foot bridge in place; the reality we now faced was that the Greek army had numerous foot bridges by which it could bring its men and their scaling ladders across the moat and attack us. And then what would happen?

  But where are the Greek soldiers who are to use the bridges and why are they not here for us to fight? The waiting was worrying me and making me think of all the bad things that might happen. And I could tell that it was getting to the rest of the lads as well.

  ****** Commander George Courtenay

  Seeing the foot bridges in place all along the wall and the huge size of the Greek army formed up and waiting to attack was worrying my men. They were talking too loudly and being overly friendly with each other because they were afraid of what might be about to happen to them, and also because they did not know why the Greeks were waiting to launch their attack.

  They were not the only ones. Neither my lieutenants nor I could understand why the Greeks were waiting to launch their attack. What we suspected and feared was that they were waiting because it looked like rain was coming which would greatly reduce the effectiveness of our longbows.

  On the other hand, we thought it possible they were waiting for darkness to fall once again so they could cross over to the wall with their ladders without us being able to see well enough to push arrows at them. And somewhere along the line we came to understand why the wagons had been left in place—to mark the location of each bridge so the attackers could find it.

  It was not until sometime later that we learned that the real reason the Greek army had not immediately launched its attack was because its commander had just awakened and had not yet finished breaking his fast. It would not have been proper princely behaviour, his courtiers had advised him, to get up early to order an attack.

  And then when he did wake up and break his fast, he got nervous and decided to wait in order to consult his astrologers and the priest who was his personal confessor. They told him to wait until he got word that the Venetians had begun attacking us by sea.

  In any event, after an hour or so of anxiously waiting for the Greek army to begin moving and the attack to begin, I became aware that an idea had popped into the empty space behind my eyes.

  “Bring me a line,” I shouted, “and a man who knows the knots our sailors use when they make a sling to pull a landsman aboard a transport from a dinghy.”

  A few minutes later I found myself being trussed up with a line under my arms and bollocks secured with sailors’ knots so tight they probably would have to be cut to get me loose. Immediately thereafter I was slowly lowered down to the narrow patch of land that lay between the wall and the moat. One of the newly installed Greek foot bridges was only a few paces away from where my feet touched the ground.

  Archers were crowding the wall above me and peering down to watch as I inspected the bridge, and then bent down and tried to pick up and move its end. It took some effort to pick it up and move it because it was so heavy and I still had the rope tied to tight around me.

  I was finally able to lift it by spitting on my hands to get a good grip, and then grunting and suddenly pulling it up. And then, with such a great deal of difficulty that I was afraid my dingle would be strained, I managed to pull the narrow footbridge around sideways so that its end fell into the foul water with a great splash.

  “Haul me up,” I shouted as the men on the wall above me cheered.

  I had just come over the outer wall and begun issuing orders when I felt the first drops of rain. And that was when the Greek army began moving forward into its camp and towards us—with many of its men carrying what were almost certainly long ladders.

  “Belay those orders,” I said to the men who were gathered aroun
d me trying to untie the knots, “and sound the order for the men to repel boarders.

  “And cut the damn line off me.”

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Here they come.

  The Greek army began moving through their camp with their long ladders almost at the same time as it began to rain. First one and then another of the big groups of men in the distance began streaming towards us. The rain was only a few drops at first, but we knew it would be on us soon. But how hard would it rain and for how long? That was the all-important question. It takes time to change a bowstring, and every archer has only four or five, and they lose their strength when wet.

  “Here they come,” one of the archers further down the wall shouted excitedly. Mostly, however, the men just muttered curses under their breaths and got themselves ready to fight. We had had enough time to prepare, so there were now thirty or forty archers standing shoulder to shoulder on the wall above every one of the wagon bridges—nowhere near enough since it looked as though a thousand or more Greek soldiers and dozens of ladders were heading towards each of them.

  The order to repel boarders meant the archers were free to push out arrows anytime they had a target. But I was not taking any chances. I made damn sure they knew they were to do so.

  “ARCHERS TO START PUSHING AS SOON AS THEY ARE IN RANGE. PASS IT ON,” I shouted the order as loudly as I could while the men gathered around me were still trying to cut me free from the lines that bound me.

  All around me the sergeants and captains repeated the order loudly and it was then repeated over and over again as it quickly travelled down the wall in both directions.

  At the same time, the signal men of each company did their duty by quickly tying red rags to the ends of their bows and waving them frantically over their heads in a totally unneeded effort to let the archers and auxiliaries up and down the wall know that they should stand to their arms.