The Alchemist's Revenge

by Martin Archer

  All the Greeks could see, or so my lieutenants and I hoped, was that the gate closed, the drawbridge was raised in front of them, and a line of wagons was parked along the top of the unguarded wall above the gate.

  The Greeks were just standing there in front of me filling the roadway. They were apparently waiting for the bridge to come down and the gate to open. It would be a long wait and, hopefully, eternity and the fires of hell for many of them.

  Our enemies were not the only ones watching. People had appeared in the wall openings of the hovels on the streets and lanes behind us. A few had even come out into the street and were hurrying off to their market stalls or to do their family’s daily shopping.

  ******

  We, in turn, waited and waited for word about the outer gate had been closed to be passed down the interior wall from man to man. It did not come quickly—and that was actually encouraging because it meant the Greek army was still coming through the outer gate.

  Whilst we waited, I watched the Greeks and Michael Oremus took Adam and a couple of other translators and went down to question the prisoners.

  It did not take them long to find out who had attacked us—they were men from the protection-selling gangs of the Greek-gobbling priests whose churches were concentrated in the Greek Quarter. There were even two Orthodox priests, one of whom had an arrow in his chest and was in a great state of agony. He had no chance of surviving and needed a mercy.

  Michael’s initial report stunned me. Why had Eric and the Empress’s chancellor, who also functioned as her spymaster, not known the attackers were coming and warned us?

  Something did not make sense. There was much I needed to know.

  “Tell Sergeant Rutherford to set the priests aside and particularly try to keep them alive, Michael. We will want to question them and the others when there is more time. Give no mercies until we do.”

  Then, once again, I raised my head for a quick look at the Greeks who were packing into the roadway in front of the gate. It was, as always, a very quick look. Of course it was a very quick look. I had heard all about old King Richard and how a mere boy had taken him with a child’s crossbow.

  After another quick look, I began giving orders for the sheltering of our handful of wounded against the wall so there was no line of sight between them and the wagons on the wall above them. A couple of sailmakers were already hard at work trying to sew them up and feeding them flower paste to kill their pain. Michael and his apprentice sergeant, my young son, were soon busy making sure my orders were carried out.

  The dead and wounded members of the mobsters that attacked us, on the other hand, had been left where they fell with a handful of furious archers guarding over them. The archers were doing so from where they were standing with their wounded mates.

  Some of the sixty or so prisoners on the ground in front of the gate were in agony from having arrows in them or having the arrows pulled out so they could be used again. As a result there were periodic scuffles when an archer pulled out an arrow and constant moans and agonized screams and babbling from the wounded prisoners. On the other hand, at least, none of them were trying to get away.

  The prisoners had been warned as to what would happen if they tried to run. Several of them had apparently decided to see if we meant what we said. They were now amongst the dead and the rest of them had gotten the message. We would decide what to do with those who were still living after we finished questioning them.

  Chapter Forty-eight

  Final Preparations and the alchemist’s revenge.

  We waited atop the city’s inner wall and carefully watched the Greek army as it gathered below us. It continued to grow larger and larger for what seemed like hours. And all the time I and everyone else were getting more and more anxious. Finally, the words we had hoped to hear came down the wall from archer to archer.

  “The outer wall gate has been closed. Pass it on.”

  I was ready and did not hesitate for a second when the word reached me. I loudly sent my response back along both the interior walls.

  “Blue companies begin pushing. Red companies, ribaldi men, and everyone else move to your second positions. Pass it on.”

  All of the companies on the walls near the inner gate had been designated as “Red Companies” and given secondary positions on the interior walls along the roadway to which their men were to temporarily run when the order was given. Henry and Richard would be waiting for them there and assign them to temporary new positions. The men did not know why they were running to new positions, but they soon would. Henry and Richard would know where to place them and when to send them back.

  My order was immediately passed from man to man along the parapet both to the left and to the right. It caused the men atop the wall to explode into a great burst of activity with every sergeant shouting to repeat my order. Even the sailors who had pulled the wagons into position ran.

  It was as if a hive of bees had been suddenly overturned.

  *******

  The Greeks who filled the roadway in front of the moat bridge were able to see the activity as men began running along the top of the wall. There were now many thousands of Greek soldiers in front of the gate and there was much pointing and shouting. If anything, the Greeks were encouraged to see the archers and sailors running along the top of the wall to move away from the area around the gate. The tightly-packed Greeks even surged forward slightly in anticipation of the gate opening. So be it. The time had come.

  I gave my first order.

  “Lower the draw bridge and clear the parapet.”

  A great cheer went up from the Greek army as the drawbridge began to come down. I was standing close enough to it that I could hear the rattle of its chains as it did. The Greeks surged forward towards the gate and the last few of our men on the parapet above them ran. Our men were running for their lives even though neither they nor the Greeks knew it at the time.

  I made my way along the wagons towards where Aron and James Howard were waiting. Actually, I met them as they were making their way from wagon to wagon doing a last minute check.

  “Are you ready, Aron?”

  “Aye Commander, I am. The fire ropes and ribaldis are ready on every wagon.”

  “The Greeks are here in force, Lieutenant, so please proceed to take your revenge. Not you, James. You are no longer needed here. You are to leave with the others. Get yourself to safety.”

  Aron wanted more.

  “And you too, Commander. There is naught for you to do here. So please go down the stairs with James and get behind the wall so you will be protected in case the lightning escapes or the ribaldis come apart. I will start putting a flame to their fire ropes as soon as I see you safe.”

  Aron demanded it of me with assurance of an expert who knew what he was talking about and would brook no interference. He looked very tired, but there was fire in his eyes and determination in his voice.

  I nodded my acceptance of Aron’s reasonable request and ran for the stairs by the gate, and then went down them two at a time when I reached them. James and Michael Oremus were right behind me. We were all very excited.

  We ran down the stairs to the ground and turned left to run north along the wall. We would, I decided, take shelter next to the wall with the Company’s wounded. Those of our men who had been killed by the mob were laid out beyond them.

  “Get back against the wall with the wounded,” I shouted to one of the archers who saw us running towards him and started walking out to greet us. He stopped and looked confused.

  “Get back to the wounded and stand with your back against the wall. Hurry damn you,” I shouted as I reached him. He turned as we rushed past and followed us.

  *******

  We had barely reached the wall and were still catching our breaths when Aron made the first lightning. I was kneeling to speak to a wounded archer when, quite suddenly, there was a great clap of thunder that made everyone jump with surprise and the earth shake.

  Almo
st immediately there was another great thunder clap and another one right after that, and they kept coming until I lost count. Finally, there was a long pause such that we thought the lightning storm might have ended, and then there was another.

  My ears were ringing as if I had been boxed hard on both of them. But I had the good sense to shout “wait” to James who had started to move back toward the stairs. He of all people should have known better. After a very long pause, there was yet another great thundering lightning strike.

  By then the air next to the wall had become filled with the strange-smelling smoke caused by the lightning. Everyone was coughing and our eyes began crying from the smoke even though we were not sad. Our wounded men and the sailors and archers tending them were dumbstruck.

  After several minutes of cowering amongst our wounded and trying to reassure my men by saying “it is a new weapon and it is ours,” I finally decided it was safe to move.

  In the distance, as my hearing returned, I became aware of cries and screams coming from the wounded members of the mob who had been left lying in the open area in front of the gate when their fellow mobsters retreated.

  I paid them no attention. The wounded prisoners were of no interest to me except as a source of information. I was not what Uncle Thomas called a hypocrite; I did not wish them anything but bad luck and short painful lives, particularly after having just spent time with the dead and broken archers they had attacked and gratuitously killed and wounded.

  “Follow me,” I said to Michael and James. “It is time to see what happened to the Greek army.”

  I had high hopes and was very excited as my hearing returned and I started to walk briskly back to the steps. I had only taken a few steps when I was suddenly very thankful we had moved the wounded archers out of the open area on the city side of the gate—because big pieces of some of the ribaldi wagons had been pushed backwards off the wall by the lightning and landed on top of the wounded prisoners.

  “That is a not a good outcome,” was my thought, as I climbed the stairs to get back up to the top of the wall—we would have to buy more wagons.

  We ignored what was left of the wounded prisoners as we bounded up the stairs. Their injuries and troubles did not interest me in the least; I was anxious to see what had happened to the Greeks who had arrived expecting to find the inner gate open, and had instead discovered flying rocks and the man-made thunder and lightning of Aron’s ribaldis.

  ******

  The sights and sounds that greeted us at the top of the stairs were beyond belief—for almost as far as the eye could see, the roadway beyond the wall was covered here and there with the bodies of dead and wounded men. They had fallen wherever the ribaldi stones had been carried by the lightning. There were also a number of dazed survivors wandering around trying to help the wounded and a number of bodies in the moat itself.

  Dead and wounded horses were on both sides of what was left of the bridge, probably because the riders had arrived first and had come over the bridge to be closer to the gate when it opened. The terrible screams of the wounded horses’ as they staggered about and tried to rise and run was so horrible that, for a moment, I tried to block it out by putting my hands over my ears. I felt much more sympathy for them than their riders.

  What we mostly saw, however, were the backs and arses of the surviving Greeks as they ran. They were obviously falling back as fast as possible in an effort to get away from the possibility of more rocks and lightning strikes.

  It was a great mistake on the part of the fleeing Greeks and it delighted me so immensely that I laughed and pointed.

  What was so funny was that they were running from the one part of the states’ enclosure where there were no archers or defenders on the walls to that part of the enclosure where our archers were on the walls in force. Moreover, if the fleeing Greeks somehow got past the archers’ arrows they would reach the now-closed outer gate where there were more archers and the two ribaldis which had been pulled along the top of the wall and positioned above the gate.

  It was, of course, a good thing for us that the Greeks were terrified and running away—for we had had neither archers nor any more ribaldis at this end of the roadway. The only two ribaldis we had left were in place over the now-closed outer gate.

  On the other hand, a number of things were abundantly clear to me and everyone with me, even if the Greeks did not know about them. One was that the survivors of the lightning and stones, and particularly the knights and nobles on horseback who had initially massed before the gate in the expectation that it would soon be opened, had suffered such great casualties that they were not likely to return in force in the near future.

  The second thing that was clear was that the Greek soldiers who survived the ribaldis were now running to where they would be subjected to a constant storm of arrows and death. The third was that the fleeing Greeks were going to find it somewhere between difficult and impossible to escape now that the outer gate was closed and the interior walls along the roadway were manned by thousands of archers.

  What we did not know for sure was how much of the Greek army we had caught in our trap. Was it enough to defeat them and end the war or not? We had not a clue.

  Only one thing was certain, at least from our perspective, that it was a good thing the Greeks had turned back from continuing to move against the inner gate. That was because the gate and wall near it were temporarily undefended, and the battlements over the gate were so covered with the wreckage of many of the ribaldi-carrying wagons that it might have been impossible for the returning archers to find a place where they could stand to push out their arrows.

  A few of the wagons atop the wall appeared to be somewhat intact, but most of them and their ribaldis appeared to be beyond repair. In several places the wall itself been damaged, the worst being an archer slit just north of the gate which had somehow lost the stones that protected one of its sides.

  “Where are you James? And where is Aron? He needs to run to the gate in the outer wall so can start the lightning when the Greeks gather in front of the gate to escape.”

  “Aron is gone, Commander. One of the ribaldis got him. What is left of him is over by where the last of the ribaldi wagons was parked.”

  “Oh shite. Are you sure it is him?”

  “Aye, Commander. I have been afraid something like this would happen ever since Thea was killed. It appears the poor sod did not even try to take shelter after he put fire to the last ribaldi.”

  Chapter Forty-nine

  A few minutes later.

  “Nicholas and I are going to the outer gate, Commander Oremus. Sergeant Howard is coming with me to put lightning and stones on the Greeks from the two ribaldis on the outer wall. You and your apprentice are to stay here and remain in command of the city’s inner wall. Throw the wreckage of the wagons and ribaldis over the wall if that is what it takes to clear enough space for the archers. Just be careful it does not land on our own dead and wounded.

  “I will send some of the “Reds” on the southern roadway wall back to help you as soon as possible. But you are only to send your apprentice to summon the Red Companies that were sent to the northern wall if you actually need them to fight off an attack.”

  With those parting words, and after listening carefully while Michael repeated them back to me, Nicholas, James, and I set off for the gate in the outer wall.

  We heard the moans and cries of the wounded Greeks soldiers in the enclosure below us as we walked briskly along the city’s deserted inner wall for a couple of minutes. We continued until we came to the newly installed, and lower, interior wall that stretched along the southern side of the roadway all the way out to the outer wall. It took but a moment to climb down a short wooden ladder to get aboard the lower interior wall and begin jogging along the top of it towards the city’s outer wall visible in the distance a few miles ahead.

  The only Greeks we saw and heard at first were either dead or seriously wounded. Those of the Greek soldiers who c
ould run away from the ribaldis’ devastation had already done so. They did not yet realize that there was nowhere safe for them to go.

  Some of the Greek wounded on the ground near the wall called out to us when they saw our heads bouncing up and down as we ran along the top of it. We ignored them and soon began sweating because we were moving fast in the heat. The early morning coolness had already begun to turn warm. Already the gulls and other birds had begun to arrive to pick at the dead. It was going to be another scorching hot day for sure.

  It did not take long before we began seeing able-bodied Greeks and reached the first of our archers. They were shouting encouragements to each other and competing to pick off the Greeks who were trying to seek shelter amongst the tents and wagons the states’ forces had abandoned when they fled.

  The archers we encountered paid us little heed as we hurried past them—just a brief nod or two or a knuckled forehead salute. Then they returned to nocking their arrows and seeking more targets for them.

  Our men were in rare good spirits and shouting encouragements to each other. Being able to kill or wound an enemy who is not able to fight back effectively will do that for a soldier every time, especially if he had just been scared out of his wits by seeing so many of them.

  At first, each time I came to a “Red” galley captain, I ordered him to send his lieutenant and his “Evens” to reinforce Michael at the gate, and help him “clear away the wreckage from the ribaldis and hold the wall.” Our conversations, when we had them, were brief, to the point, and very similar.

  “Yes, what that loud thunder did to the Orthodox army was a great surprise. No, your “Evens” are not to return to their old positions; they are to report to Commander Oremus at the gate and do whatever he requires.”

  ******