They charged us. They gave a long scream, and on they came, drawing their curved swords or using spears. They were recklessly brave; they took one man in ten as casualties and came on.
Our archers loosed again.
I’d been moving with my long sword reversed, held by the blade against Marc-Antonio’s long spear. This is how we practised in Italy; it is the way the Order fought on foot. Now, as the Turks came on, I let go of Marc-Antonio’s spear and it came up, over my shoulder. I took my sword in both hands – one hand on the hilt, and one in the middle of the blade.
Without any command, the whole company pressed from the flanks towards the centre, closing the alleys down which the archers loosed. Most of the archers tossed their bows backwards over their shoulders and drew their swords or their axes, and all of them leaned forward against the men in front.
My Turk had an axe; a small head on a long haft. He swung it up three or four paces out; it’s virtually the only thing I remember from the first fight of the day.
I made the cover from the garde Fiore calls vera croce, the true cross. It is a true cross in every way. You start with your weight back, your sword hilt forward on your left side, and as your opponent cuts, you sweep the sword forward and parry the enemy weapons between your hands. It is perhaps the easiest cover to make in armour, and that’s perfect for dealing with the real world of terror and confusion. Complex swordsmanship is for the tiltyard.
I crossed his haft and killed him – cross, rotate the blade, thrust into his eye socket in the same tempo. It’s more like murder than combat, when you know what you are doing.
I don’t remember the rest. There was another opponent, and then I ran the emperor’s sword through some poor bastard who was already impaled by Marc-Antonio, and then the fighting was over and a couple of dozen survivors broke and ran, mostly from the left end of the line.
Ned Cooper stepped past me – elbowed me out of the way. He had three arrows on his fingers, and as fast as I can tell it, he dropped three of the running men. To my left, Rob did the same, and Bill Vane loosed only one, but dropped a single man running off to the left. Hafiz-i Abun dropped one, as well.
Perhaps six of them got away.
Then we killed all the wounded.
That’s how it is, when you are storming an enemy camp.
Francesco Orsini looked sickened. He stood with his visor up, unable to tear his eyes from the scene of hell in front of him.
‘John!’ I roared, my visor up. ‘John the Turk!’
‘Here!’ he called.
There was a stockade. An arrow came out of the stockade, which slammed into Pierre Lapot’s helmet and he fell.
‘At ’em!’ I roared. These things have to be done; you can’t mill about and plan assaults while archers pick off your knights.
Then the gravel in my shoes was forgotten; it was fifty paces across the square, and there were perhaps five archers loosing at us by then.
One arrow tinged off my sword and clanged off my visor, ripping the visor off the top of my helmet, popping the pins that held it. Bad luck for me. Or good luck; it didn’t kill me. My visor was up; two fingers lower …
But that was the last arrow. There was a sort of strangled roar from within the stockade, and then grunts, and then I was at the gate, which, of course, opened from outside with a simple slide. I slammed it open with the palm of my hand, shoved the gate open, and got my sword over some poor Turkish bastard’s head. He was trying to fight a dozen Kipchaks who were attacking him with nothing but their fists and teeth.
I cut his throat.
They’d killed the rest of their guards.
I whirled. ‘Cease!’ I roared. ‘No more arrows!’
Bill Vane was twenty paces away, at full draw, and Rob punched his arm.
John threw his arms around me. ‘Knew you come!’ he said, his eyes glittering with excitement. ‘Knew you come!’
He called something, a long, fluid speech in Kipchak.
And then the whole pack of them broke past me, headed for the square. I had no idea where they were going and I was already sagging; I remember my greatest wish was to get the gravel out of my shoes.
But, of course, they ran to loot the Turks we’d just put down. They took bows and swords; a few took the time to strip maille, which is a difficult, messy job. John paused only to buckle on a quiver.
We were all spread out; despite my admonition, a dozen of my new people were looking inside tents, or staring balefully at the Turks, or looking for coins. There were men over every part of the square, and so, naturally, that’s when the mounted ghulami hit us.
It wasn’t even a fight. It took them too long to figure out that we were the enemy; the Kipchaks began loosing arrows, as did my archers. But these Turks were mounted, and far more ready; they shot back, and two of my new Breton men-at-arms were face down, dead, before I’d taken breath to shout an alarm.
It was not really like any fight I’ve ever seen, before or since, and I’m not sure I can do it justice. Everyone moved. The ghulami broke off, in among the tents, shooting as they went, and then appearing between two tents to loose again. But our archers ran along the ground, using tents as cover and loosing in their turn – a brutal shot-storm at point-blank range in thick and blinding dust raised by our movement and the horses.
The Kipchaks threw themselves at the Turks and took losses doing it. I confess I didn’t understand their apparently suicidal attack until I saw John loose into a Turk at a range of maybe a dozen feet and then, as the man died, throw him from the saddle – a small leather saddle nothing like ours – and roll into it.
Then John leaned over all the way to the ground from horseback and picked up his bow. He already had an arrow in his rein hand, and long before he righted himself in the little saddle, he had an arrow on the bow. He seemed to lean out from the horse as he shot across his own leg into an oncoming Turk. The range was perhaps an arm’s length, and John’s man went down, shot in the middle of his chest through his maille, and John righted himself and vanished among the tents.
More dust.
I had no control over my troops or the mêlée. I could hear l’Angars shouting for the men to rally, in French, but I wasn’t sure at all that this was the best answer. I began to run along the palisade, mostly so that I would not be a standing target.
But the mounted Turks were not willing to try the open square, and instead they loosed arrows over the tents. They yipped like hunting wolves, and either there were more of them than I had expected, or more were gathering.
Somewhere to the south and east of me was the camp’s south gate. If it was unguarded, I could get to a horse.
That was as much plan as I had. I was painfully aware that my people had been caught out of formation, by cavalry; I’d lost them in the dust, and of course, my young charge, the prince’s son, was somewhere in the mêlée. I passed the last of the palisade with the rueful thought that I might simply have stepped into it and been protected from arrows; the things you don’t think of when you are afraid are legion. An arrow skipped along the packed sand at my feet, but I had no idea where it had come from.
I felt vulnerable with no visor, my back burned like a sinner’s torments, and my company was being crushed.
I plunged into a tent and cut the back with my sword, and I was through into the street behind, headed south. A Turk appeared to my right; he shot, I swung my sword at his horse’s nose, and Marc-Antonio speared him out of the saddle, all at the same moment, or so it seemed to me. His shaft shattered on the hardened plates of my brigantine and the force of the blow made me stumble, but he was gaffed like a fish. His horse went right past us.
I hadn’t even known that Marc-Antonio was with me. I smiled at him.
He grinned, ear to ear.
Fiore appeared behind him with Aldo, the oarsman, at his back. The four of us filled the street of
tents, and we moved carefully down the street, waiting for the thunder of hooves. Off to my left, deeper in the sea of white canvas, one of the Welsh Davids rose from behind a tent and lofted a shaft; I couldn’t see where it went.
A pair of Turks appeared at the end of the street and ended my interest in looking around me. They both touched spurs to their mounts and shot, turned and backed their horses, and we had had time to move, and both arrows missed. Archery from long range is not as dangerous as from close – especially when you have room to flinch.
‘Forward,’ I said, and we trotted down the street.
There was a scream to the left, a flash of movement, and a dozen horsemen erupted from three directions; through, over, and past tents. A horse went down, tripped on a guy rope; a mounted archer loosed at close range into the gut of another, and I could not tell Kipchak from Turk. One horse had a war bow shaft buried in its haunch almost to the fletching.
Ned Cooper stepped out from between two tents, drew, held for one breath, and loosed into a man wearing a conical helmet; a safe bet as one of their ‘knights’. His heavy shaft knocked the man forward, and the needlepoint bodkin went all the way through the man’s armour and his body, and apparently pricked the horse’s neck so that his horse bolted.
Another Turk shot Cooper, his arrow burying itself between two plates of his brigantine. Cooper had his next shaft on the stave and loosed – a broader point that went into the man’s open-faced helmet, snapping his head back. He went over the tail of his horse like a tumbler, except that he never rose again.
Cooper slumped to his knees. Blood was pouring out of his chest over his thighs. He was heart shot; I knew it in a moment.
He looked at the shaft and then at me and frowned. ‘Proper job,’ he said aloud, and died.
I pulled off a gauntlet and made sure, but he was gone.
‘Come on,’ I said to Fiore, Aldo, and my own Marc-Antonio. ‘Gate.’
We got to the south end of the street – the cross street of tents – and there was John, with a dozen of his mates, all mounted.
They looked like the very incarnation of depraved barbarity. One man was just taking the head of a dead Turk, and he was covered in blood, and the lot of them were laughing. But John grinned when he saw me, sprang from his mount and offered it to me.
‘What’s happening?’ I asked.
‘Turks dead,’ he said. Indeed, the dust was settling, and the only sounds were the screams of wounded men.
Then we went back through the tents, finishing their wounded. And most of our own.
‘I kill agha,’ John said.
I didn’t understand what he was saying until some time later, when, as l’Angars directed the gathering of our wounded and I blew his horn to call any stragglers, I saw one of the Kipchaks flourish a horsetail standard. I added that to the gold-mounted sabre John was cleaning.
‘John?’ I called out. ‘You killed the Agha of the Ordo? The officer?’
‘The lord. Yes,’ he said with pride. ‘Broke neck.’
‘Christ,’ I said, blasphemously. Diccon Crewel had an arrow through one thigh and was down; Red Bill had a broken arm; the Prince of Lesvos’s son had blood on his sword. He was upright, his eyes glittered a little, and his German minder looked like a butcher after a long day; Bill Vane was behind the two of them with an arrow on his bow, watching Gospel Mark and Rob Stone arguing over who was head archer; I had eight dead, and Hector Lachlan looked as if he might just die from the sunshine, he was so red. He was weeping; his brother was dead. And he was in some Celtic madness; he wanted blood.
These are the moments when being the captain loses its charm.
I whirled on Mark. ‘Shut it,’ I snapped. ‘White, you are master now.’
They were both silent.
I walked to Hector Lachlan. He was bigger than me, and he had an axe in his hands, and he was, quite literally, foaming at the mouth; there was red in the foam.
His eyes were blank.
‘Hector!’ I roared, from arm’s length. ‘Will you follow me?’
His eyes focused. If I say that they focused on me slowly, I won’t do justice to the dawn of his thought. He had been an animal for some minutes.
‘Hector!’ I called.
He shook himself and the axe came up.
I got a hand on one ear and tugged it, almost hugging the big man. ‘Hector! Come on, man. We need to storm the town.’
His brother was at my feet. He had four arrows in him. His eyes were open. I knelt, and closed them.
‘When we’re done,’ I called, loud enough to wake the dead, ‘we’ll come back and bury them all like Christians. I swear it.’
His mad eyes met mine. ‘Bury?’ he growled. ‘Aye.’
L’Angars gave me a look – a good look, as if I’d satisfied him.
Fiore looked past me. ‘You think we should go for the town?’ he said.
I was watching the dust settle. We had raised a lot of dust. It was brutally hot already, at least in harness; my back was on fire as my sweat soaked into the scars, and I had that bad prickly feeling you have when wounds begin to bleed.
‘What do you tell a swordsman of small stature, Maestro?’ I asked him.
‘Keep inside your distance. Keep advancing, so the big man …’ He paused. ‘Yes,’ he agreed.
I turned to them all.
‘Now we go for the town,’ I said. ‘I won’t order you. I’ll only say I think it is the best way.’
No one cheered. But when I headed towards the town wall, they all came. All the ones who were alive, anyway.
If there was anyone alive in that camp, we didn’t see them. We had no idea what was going on – what the Count of Savoy was doing, how he was faring, where the Prince of Lesvos was – we knew none of those things. Later, I pieced it together; I’m still not sure I’m right, because it was a very confused fight.
When we entered the camp, the first fight raised the alarm as our movement had not, and the agha went in person to investigate; hence the armoured men on horseback. But John killed him; our archery and the Kipchaks defeated the Turks, and the survivors ran off.
Deprived of their commander, the ghulami who had formed on horseback at the head of their camp sat on their horses. And then, when the survivors fled past them, they abandoned the camp, riding out into the plain.
Where they were ambushed by the Prince of Lesvos. The survivors fled, and Prince Francesco then rode south, sent the Greeks into the suburbs, and with his main body, went to help the Savoyards on the beach. He had stayed in the high ground as long as possible – like the canny fox he was, he was the last man to enter the battlefield; he stayed high up to know what his allies and opponents were doing. Hawkwood always speaks of the value of keeping a reserve, even a few men; but I think there is also a sort of reserve of knowledge. The last man thinking and directing has a huge advantage over his adversary who is lost in the fight. Because once you are in the fight, you direct nothing, as I had just learned.
We knew none of these things. We came to the open ground where the Turks had formed their ranks an hour before, and it was empty; the horse dung was fresh, but the men were gone.
I halted my little company. ‘Friends,’ I said. ‘The people of this town are Greeks. The Prince, our employer, says no rape, no theft.’ I looked particularly at young Francesco. ‘He says he will execute any man who commits either.’ I looked them over. ‘I won’t let him,’ I said. ‘I’ll do it myself. Everyone clear? Fight the Turks. Leave the Greeks alone.’
Hector growled. I think he was actually biting at the inside of his own mouth. I’ve known men to cut themselves and enjoy the pain, but Hector was something else again.
A good number of my men wouldn’t meet my eye.
I was about to lead sixty men into a town with a thousand-man garrison, and I couldn’t trust the former routiers not to turn i
nstantly into arsonists, thieves and rapists. And we’d already taken casualties.
I admit it. I hesitated. I didn’t trust them, and I was pretty sure they didn’t trust me, either.
‘On the other hand …’ I said.
Every head turned.
‘I’ll give one hundred florins to the first man into the citadel,’ I said.
Men looked at each other, and one archer spat on his hands and wiped them on his hose.
‘We need a priest,’ l’Angars said quietly.
I knew what he meant. But the offer of gold was going to have to do. Something moved to the south; of course, Miles Stapleton and my pages had all the horses for us to mount. That was part of another plan, from another day. That plan was blown away on the wings of the wind and the edge of Red Bill’s poleaxe.
But I knew that John and his Kipchaks were not going to dismount to storm a town. They didn’t have the armour for it. So I grabbed his stirrup and asked him to find Miles, tell him what we were doing, and then help Miles reach the prince. He waved a riding whip.
‘Sure,’ he said. ‘You?’
‘The town,’ I said. ‘I intend to try…’ I paused, and realised what I intended. I hadn’t even voiced it to myself. ‘The citadel.’
John made a face. ‘Sure,’ he said.
‘On me,’ I called out, and went forward across the parade ground.
The parade ran right to the edge of the wall. Not a single arrow fell among us, and right in front of us was a section of collapsed wall, almost twenty paces long, with a long slope of collapsed rubble and old fill, crumbled brick and dirt. It looked to me as if the whole town used it as their dump; it was littered with broken crockery, a dead dog inflated with its own rot, a pile of rotting vegetable matter.
But no defenders.
The walking was bad – you could turn an ankle in a missed step; much easier, without enemy archery. I moved too fast, shoulders hunched, expecting the first shaft with every pace.
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