The Green Count

by Christian Cameron

  By then, my archers were ashore, and there was a sort of riot as the horses came ashore in the wrong order, so that a dozen annoyed archers stood on the beach holding the horses of a dozen absent knights. By then, Giannis had come back, and he led the company of crossbowmen into the town.

  I had nothing to do. It was, in almost every way, the most competent army in which I’d ever served, and no one needed me. So I rode about, praising men for their speed and efficiency, and then I directed a party to fill canteens.

  Glory.

  Miles Stapleton did all the things I’d have done, under other circumstances. He’d turned l’Angars into his lieutenant in my absence, and they worked marvellously together, and I did not need to interfere. And Fiore fussed over details, and did it well; I noted that every one of our men-at-arms had every buckle fastened, every belt tight, and their horse harness was as well-fastened as their armour.

  Now, friends, I must confess that I love to command. And I felt that something had been taken from me; there was nothing for me to do but watch.

  Well, and praise. When there is nothing for the leader to do, there is always praise.

  We were ashore in about an hour. That may seem like a long time to land eight hundred men and three hundred horses, but I promise you, friends, it was like lightning, and I was startled by the speed. We approached at sunset, and we held the whole town and all its gates before night fell, and as far as we knew, no one had run ahead of us to carry tales.

  Then Hafiz rode up to me, in the sunset. ‘There is … an incident,’ he said.

  He raised an eyebrow.

  ‘You want me to come?’ I asked.

  ‘The prince gave a command about crime,’ he said carefully. ‘I believe his … son … intends to flout him.’

  Of course he did, the useless lout. Nay, not useless. He had a fine head on his shoulders and enough mother wit to know how to anger his father. He’d already referred to his service with me as ‘exile with my father’s brigands’. Mostly, as I was not his parent, I ignored his japes.

  This time I gathered my horse under me and galloped heavily across the sand towards Portefino, Marc-Antonio at my shoulder and Hafiz trailing along.

  I rode up the steep street, my horse’s hooves sounding like thunder. There were armed men in the town, and there should not have been – mostly crossbowmen. They were in the narrow streets, and no one had opened a door that I could see, but many of them looked guilty as I rode by in the red light, and I made them cringe; one warhorse is about all you can get into the street of a Greek town.

  Bill Vane was standing in a tiny square surrounded by tall stone houses like little towers.

  Behind him was a church, and the doors were open.

  ‘I tried to stop ’im,’ Vane said.

  I nodded and dismounted. I made as much noise as I could, and then I went straight into the church.

  There was Francesco, who called himself Orsini, with two of his scapegrace friends. They had an Orthodox priest by the ear – literally.

  ‘Let him go,’ I said.

  All three of them looked angry. And ashamed.

  But Peacock, the boy who’d insulted Miles’s young lady, didn’t let go of the priest’s ear.

  I broke his nose.

  Then he let go.

  I was very careful with that blow, as I was in my fighting gauntlets.

  Francesco went for me, as I wanted him to. I plucked his dagger hand out of the air with my left, tugged him off balance and threw him. He was in his armour, and he hit hard. I had his dagger in my hand.

  ‘Fucking bastard!’ he said in Italian.

  ‘Get up and go out of the town,’ I said. ‘Keep your childish antics for your father. Or next time, someone will kill you.’

  ‘You wouldn’t dare,’ he spat.

  I was dusting off the priest and wishing I had more Greek.

  It is interesting, when you’ve been a routier, and you know exactly how evil you can be. Even more interesting to try and harness all that … for good.

  I knelt by the lad. ‘Sure, I could slit your nostrils and maybe cut one hamstring,’ I said. ‘Just so your father knew I’d kept you alive.’

  ‘Christ!’ he muttered. ‘You are all horrors!’

  I shrugged. ‘You want to be bad?’ I asked. ‘In the next few days, you will see what bad is like.’ I got up. ‘Right now, you are merely young and angry.’

  Sir Richard Percy and Sir John Partner drew lots to see who stayed to be captain of the town, and Partner lost – or won, depending on how you see it. He took command of the crossbowmen.

  The rest of us ate a cold meal with our reins in our hands, and marched east and south. My little company was in the van. We had the prince with us, and two Greek guides, local shepherds.

  ‘If the Turks get word we’re coming,’ Gatelussi said, ‘a dozen archers could hold us all day up there.’ He pointed to the high ground behind the town.

  But the stradiotes occupied the high ground without opposition, and our march was not interrupted. I understood that we had about twenty-five miles to go, and after the laborious climb up the ridge, we moved quickly, free of the imagined terror of plunging fire from the heights.

  We might have been riding through a desert. Here and there, some industrious peasant had attempted to plant olive trees; some were visibly more successful, even in the darkness, but mostly there was little vegetation beyond scrub.

  The prince was silent. It wasn’t my place to badger him, and he and the guides agreed on all the choices on the roads, which seemed to come every five minutes. For a deserted peninsula, it was a web of tracks and paths, and ancient stone walls and sheepfolds, and once we passed a small citadel of enormous stones.

  ‘That was probably here when Achilles stormed Troy,’ Prince Francesco said. ‘The old people built in those huge stones. They fit together perfectly. Look at them.’

  We rode off the track to examine the citadel in the moonlight, and I thought with a chill how easily it could have been held against us.

  Later, as the stars moved like a wheel and dawn grew closer, the prince began to fret a little about how far behind the main body had fallen, and he ordered me to halt and rode back. I had my people dismount, and drink water and piss it away if they needed.

  I put a hand on Stapleton’s shoulder. ‘You have done marvels,’ I said, or something equally trite, and true.

  I’m going to imagine that he flushed at my praise, because that was Miles. But I couldn’t see him.

  Fiore came over and handed me an apple. I love apples, especially when my mouth is full of dust, and I ate it.

  ‘Why do people say, Live by the sword, die by the sword?’ he asked.

  I loved him in these moods. So focused, so unaware. He suffered pre-battle jitters; he just showed them differently.

  ‘Jesus said that,’ I said. ‘When Peter drew his sword.’

  ‘I know that,’ Fiore said, with the whole patronising force of his disdain. ‘But surely he knew that those who truly live by the sword do not die by it. Not if they practise.’

  Miles Stapleton laughed aloud, and then shook his head. ‘You are the limit,’ he said. ‘I don’t think our Saviour meant sword masters, Messire di Liberi. I think he meant killers.’

  ‘Why didn’t he say so, then?’ Fiore said. ‘I very much doubt that I will die by the sword.’ He paused. ‘And if I do, it will certainly mean that I had not, in fact, lived by the sword. Or not well enough.’

  I spat a mouthful of wine and then shared the flask with both of them.

  ‘Where’s Nerio?’ Fiore asked.

  ‘Somewhere in Romania,’ I said. ‘He promised to rejoin, but I don’t think he even has a ship.’

  Fiore nodded. ‘It is odd without him,’ he said. ‘And I have no money.’

  I laughed.

  Then t
he prince returned with word that the column was close behind, and we should march.

  We reached the flat ground behind the town a little before false dawn. Then passed an anxious time when Rob Stone and Ned Cooper slept, but I was awake, in a sort of fog of fears – noise, discovery, horseflesh, paths, Turkish patrols. It was surprisingly unhelpful to have my new employer remain with us.

  But, say what I might about the Savoyards, their Venetian and Genoese captains were expert seamen, and as the light began to dawn over the straits, there was the Christian fleet. It appeared huge, coming up with the dawn from the east, and of course, I saw it long before any Turk would. I was four hundred feet higher. I suppose I even saw the sun first.

  ‘Bide,’ Prince Francesco said, when I was restless. ‘Let them land.’

  They made a fine show in the red dawn, with the great banner of Our Lady floating on the morning breeze, and all the red flags with white crosses for Savoy, so like the flag of my Order. And indeed, there were a pair of Order galleys with them, and they landed first, putting a dozen knights and forty men-at-arms ashore very quickly, at least in part because the Order practised landings relentlessly.

  Alarms were sounding in the citadel. The camp began to boil; I could see men going for horse lines, and other men wriggling – probably putting on armour.

  And the Turks must have had conflicting orders. A company of ghulami rode out of the citadel to charge the Order’s men-at-arms on the beach, took a volley of crossbow fire from one of the galleys, and only then woke up to the sheer size of the Christian fleet, even as another company of ghulami formed in the town’s gate, where John had been taken, and then vanished – recalled, I assume, to the walls.

  ‘You will let them assault the walls without our support?’ I asked.

  Prince Francesco smiled. ‘I can do it without you,’ he said, mimicking the count’s French. ‘Listen, Gold. My family have been in Outremer for ten generations. Let me tell you a secret about these crusaders. They come and go. They don’t stay. We live here. They can give the Turks some target practice for a while. If they get into the town without us, so much the better. If they get into trouble, we will ride, I promise.’ He smiled in the half-light. ‘You think I’m hard-hearted. But I am not on a crusade. I am not at war with Murad Sultan. I want to rescue my brother-in-law before something worse happens. The last vestige of the Roman Empire is tottering, Sir William. I have chosen to keep it alive. That is my crusade.’

  I saluted, and sat down. I watched ants for a while. I meditated a little, prayed, thinking of Father Pierre Thomas, and lost myself sufficiently that Prince Francesco had to call my name.

  The Savoyards were ashore. They were well formed, and they were headed for the town, ignoring the suburbs to the north, which pleased me. I thought of the woman who’d given us bread and honey.

  The prince seemed amenable, so I described the incident.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Well thought. I will want to protect the Greeks. And you want to rescue your friend.’

  ‘I do, My Lord,’ I said.

  Prince Francesco watched for a while. A Christian army, smaller than ants, crawled to the walls.

  ‘What will you do?’ he asked.

  ‘I expect you will use us to storm the camp,’ I said. ‘I thought that as soon as I went over the walls—’

  ‘Why don’t you go over the walls before I storm the camp,’ he said. ‘We only have three hundred men, Sir William. I think you should go and create chaos inside the camp – free your friend, if you can. I’ll come along in a few minutes and give them something else to think about. Leave me your Greek knights … I’ll send them to the suburb.’

  I had a brief moment of real fear.

  Would he leave me to die, as a distraction?

  He did seem capable of it.

  But he met my eye and smiled, as if he could read my thoughts.

  ‘Yes, My Lord,’ I said.

  I might have liked to spend all day crawling my way to the edge of the camp with my sixty men, but we didn’t have time. So I separated my people, the way the Turks do, so we wouldn’t raise dust, and I showed them which corner of the great camp I wanted them to gather at. The archers had a ladder we’d brought from Lesvos, the kind routiers use, that can be bolted together in sections.

  We rode in a long, open column, down a gully with a sheep path at the bottom. If anyone sounded an alarm, I didn’t hear it. Then, at a walk, an impossibly long ride across the flat ground behind the town; it is only five hundred paces, as I know now, but at the time it seemed a day’s ride.

  Inside the earthworks, the ghulami – those who were not sick – were forming their ranks. Despite this, and as I learned soon after, our surprise was nearly complete. The Turkish emir in charge of Gallipoli did not even know that there was a Christian fleet in his waters; reports had reached the sultan at Adrianopolis, which the Turks call Edirne, but somehow word never got to the target.

  And the fever in the camp was terrible.

  Worst of all, they had no infantry. All their vassals who supplied infantry were across the straits, at Çardak, dying in the other camp, waiting for the Genoese.

  Well. It’s good to know that it is not only Christian armies that suffer unnecessary disasters.

  Given how unprepared they were, and the near state of war existing between the Agha of the Orta of ghulami in the camp and the emir of the city, it should have been an easy conquest.

  Except that the Turks fight well all the time.

  As we were about to find out.

  I was one of the first dozen men to the south-western corner of the earthworks. The ditch was only about four feet deep – the result of slaves working in sandy, stony soil – but the upcast, where they threw the loose sand, dirt, and rocks excavated from the ditch, was almost six feet tall and topped with two rows of palisades. One pointed out like spikes at a would-be attacker, and a second pointed up, making a shelter against archery.

  It wasn’t much. But it would have been deadly if held by determined men.

  Instead, it was completely empty.

  I went up the face of the upcast almost alone. I slid on the loose earth, and filled my fighting shoes with gravel, which annoyed me for the next hour. But at the top, I could see down into the camp. It stretched away to the north and east, with space for ten thousand men and horses, and a large parade off to the north where the ghulami were forming ranks.

  Closer to me was a smaller open square. I guessed that this was the madrasah where the Kipchaks were receiving religious instruction. At the head of the square was the stockade that I’d seen a week before, and that I guessed was where the Kipchaks were held.

  To my left there were a dozen men – slaves, baggage men. They looked at me with more curiosity than apprehension, until Ned Cooper came up next to me in his velvet covered brigantine and turbaned basinet.

  ‘Proper job,’ he said.

  Then, as the rest of the archers followed him, the baggage men ran. But they didn’t run far; seventy paces away, two of them stopped and came back towards us – hesitant. But eager for freedom.

  I had all the archers on the wall by then. Pages were holding the horses, and most of my men-at-arms were gathered at the edge of the ditch.

  ‘Listen to me,’ I called. ‘We’re here to rescue some friends, who are going to look just like Turks to you, so don’t kill everything you see in a turban. The baggage slaves are mostly unredeemed Christian captives – let’s rescue them, too. Eh, mes amis? As far as I can see, the only enemy are all ghulami – mounted men in armour. There’s going to be plenty of loot – don’t even take any now. We’ll collect our loot when we’re done fighting. Any questions?’

  Ned Cooper looked at his strung bow. ‘What do we shoot, then?’

  ‘Shoot when I tell you. Or any mounted infidels that aren’t Hafiz-i Abun.’ Heads turned. Our Persian laughed.
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  ‘Don’t shoot me,’ he said in Italian.

  Cooper nodded, looked at his archers and back at me.

  So much for speeches.

  ‘Miles, I have an inglorious job for you,’ I said. ‘Watch our progress. If we make the side gate, bring up the horses.’

  He flicked his arming sword in a salute.

  ‘Over the wall now, and form like lightning.’ I scrambled down the far side, ran a few paces clear into the open ground between the wall and the first row of tents, and turned.

  L’Angars was the first man over the wall, and he ran to his place, and the other knights and men-at-arms fell in on him, forming a line twenty men wide. The squires fell in behind, and then the archers, who, having climbed the wall first, obeyed the biblical injunction and were last.

  Then I led them off from the right, and we moved cautiously north, through the maze of tents. There were baggage slaves, now – a few dozens – and we sent them to the rear, to the armed pages with the horses. Most were Christians; a few were Jews. I made it plain to the Jews that they were rescued too.

  Or I tried.

  My back burned like fire, my shoes were full of sand and gravel, and none of that mattered. I moved my people along two parallel streets, and just as we entered the square of the madrasah we encountered a company of Turks, all on foot but wearing maille. I had a minute’s warning, as I saw them move on a cross street; I think that if they saw us, they assumed we were friends.

  Right at the edge of the square, I halted, and my files formed to the left across the square.

  I nodded at Cooper and slammed my visor down. The Turks still had their bows in quivers. They were there, I suspect, to guard the prisoners, not to fight us.

  We only had twenty archers, but our first volley went through maille and man. They were caught completely by surprise.

  Listen. You think we were in white surcoats with red crosses? We were sixty men in brigantines and leg harness, with turbans on our helmets against the sun. It was dawn. The Turkish officer made a bad assumption.