The Green Count

by Christian Cameron

  He was silent a while.

  ‘You can preserve the empire without him, but if the Turks take Constantinople, it is over?’ I asked.

  He nodded. ‘You are a deep one,’ he said. ‘I had not thought of it in just these terms. Come and work for me again.’

  ‘Your Grace will have a care for the countess, my wife?’ I asked.

  ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘And your back.’ He paused. ‘I will take my son back now.’

  I nodded. In truth, I seldom even thought of young Orsini as the Prince’s son any more. He was a competent man-at-arms and was growing into Cavalli’s lieutenant, but of course he had other things to do with his life.

  The next morning, he took his galleys and sailed away. We had two small war galleys from the empress and of course, Giorgios and Giannis were wealthy men with their own galleys. Nerio now had his own, a mercenary galley out of Negroponte whose crew were probably pirates in their spare time, and I was in a heavy Gatelussi galley left for me by the prince, with another one of his gold earring-wearing captains in command. He was Andrea Batussi; he, too, had been an Algerian slave for part of his career, and clearly saw the Bulgarian campaign as a waste of his time. On the other hand, he took to my friends, and he was a gentleman-pirate, and he and Nerio’s hired pirate were apparently old comrades in sin.

  We sailed west, into the setting sun, and landed the next day at Sozopolis. There was fighting, but the Savoyards and their routiers did it all. We were last in the column of ships, and we tried to land on the flank of the Bulgarians, got tangled in a swamp, and missed the fight altogether.

  The Bulgarians fought a careful retreat, but they were outnumbered and they had very little armour compared even to the count’s routiers, and the count’s magnificent and remade Virgin banner went up over the castle of Sozopolis.

  That night was our first night in a military camp since Gallipoli. I walked through my camp, checking my sentries and making sure the latrines were well dug. By then, I had read most of ‘The Art of War’ and my Latin was stronger, and the campaign served to remind me of how useful many of the instructions were.

  I was also a little surprised to see the extent to which my company had grown. We had servants; many former baggage slaves from Gallipoli were now currying horses in my camp. There was the cat, stretched out by a campfire like a small and very relaxed lion; there was Katrina, with a dozen of her kind in their own tents, and hard by, Father Angelo with a tent as a chapel and a man saying confession in the setting sun. Possibly confessing a visit to Katrina in the next tent.

  Well, I find it humorous.

  I also noted Francesco Orsini, chatting with Father Angelo as if this was a typical day of the week and he had every right to be there.

  I raised an eyebrow.

  ‘I like it here,’ he said.

  ‘God save you,’ said Father Angelo.

  I had almost two hundred men, by then. And fifty camp-followers of various sorts.

  It was a ‘Belle Companie’ in every way, and I liked what I saw – men cleaning kit and bitching about the weather.

  L’Angars stopped me on my rounds.

  ‘Late in the season,’ he said.

  I nodded.

  ‘We’ll need better cloaks,’ he allowed.

  I winced, because wool was not going to come cheap out on the frontier of empire, but he was right.

  ‘Best send a man you trust,’ he said, ‘because the count means to fight all winter, or so he says.’ The Gascon shrugged. ‘Mayhap he thinks this is the Holy Land.’

  The next day we re-embarked and sailed across the gulf in order to land on a beach below the fortress of Mesembria, which surrounded a big, red-tiled town.

  It was a year, almost to the day, since we’d taken Alexandria.

  The Bulgarians, as it proved, had quite a large army indeed.

  And they were waiting.

  As usual, the Green Count was the first ashore. But the Bulgarians were no more willing than the Mamluks to let us form our army, and their infantry came down to contest the muddy beach – first men with spears and slings, who did a frightful damage among the count’s household, and then the better armed men, voynuks with axes and pole arms. But the count and his household knights made short work of them; the Bulgarian prince would have done better to continue pounding the Savoyards with sling stones.

  We were still in the rear battle, or main battle, depending. The count’s army was well led, but if he was aware of the level of flexibility in tactics and mobility that the routiers had achieved in the last fifteen years, he showed no sign.

  I was on my prince’s rented pirate galley, staring into the October sun and trying to figure out what our commander intended us to do.

  It was disgustingly like Alexandria. All the ships were crowding into the one muddy beach, trying to help the count.

  I spoke to Banni, my captain, briefly, and he agreed. He ordered his rowers to warm themselves, and laid me alongside Nerio’s galley, and I leaped across – no light matter in harness, I promise you.

  I looked at my friends and probably cocked an eyebrow. ‘We have two hundred good men,’ I said. ‘I propose we tack out of the line, go around that headland, and see if there’s another beach.’

  Fiore looked at me. ‘Why would there be another beach?’ he asked.

  I shrugged. ‘Stands to reason,’ I said.

  ‘It does?’ Fiore asked. It really irked him that he hadn’t figured this out; in fact, he wanted me to be wrong.

  Nerio nodded. ‘Let’s do it,’ he said. ‘I have other business to which these men could be attending. I have had enough of your count.’

  ‘I agree,’ I said.

  Nerio spoke to his captain, I went back aboard Batussi’s galley, and both ships waved banners at Giannis and Giorgios. The Gatelussi captain led our little squadron, and we were off.

  Best of all, when we turned into the wind, out of our places in the line, the two Greek galleys sent by the patriarch followed Syr Giorgios, and then the last four galleys in the column, full of routiers, followed them.

  We passed Antoine de Savoy, our nominal commander. He shouted something, which I’ll pretend was encouragement, and the galley behind him left the column and followed me, cutting in between my ship and Nerio’s, so that I was now third in line.

  Then came an hour of heart-stopping terror for me and me alone. To me, battle is terrible, but also wonderful. I fear it like any sane man, but it is my work, and I have spoken to enough craftsmen to know that the very work that ignites passion is often the work that causes the most tension.

  And so with war. I didn’t know there was a beach around the headland; I had merely noted that everywhere in the Aegean, cities were built on points of land with a beach on either side. Why, you ask? Because if you are in a galley, with a very few points of sail and tired oarsmen, you want choices in landing and launching your ship, and two beaches at ninety degree angles offer the good array of choice.

  You see?

  Fiore was from mountains. He cared nothing for the sea.

  And also, because I ordered the ships out of the column, I was, just possibly, ruining my repute, and might even, if the count was in a mood, be accused of desertion and cowardice. Just two days before, we’d tried to get on the flank of the Bulgarians and had ended in a swamp.

  Ah, well.

  For an hour, I watched the headland and the hazy ground beyond it with the intensity of a cat for a mouse hole, and then we reached a point, and the bay on the far side began to open, and there was golden sand.

  On the other hand, we could also see a big troop of Bulgarian cavalry shadowing us as we moved.

  We had no signals – something I promised myself I’d remedy. And I could not move from ship to ship – not in harness, not with oars out. I wanted many things, but most of all, I wanted to be fast.

 
But the speed I required meant we should land our horses. I thought of Alexandria; I thought of the Captal de Buch at Poitiers.

  The problem was that most of our horses were in a round ship, and it wasn’t following us. But there were chargers in each ship, and John’s men had their horses with them in the lead ship.

  Sometimes, there are no tactics, and all you can do is trust your friends and your men to do what they’ve trained to do. I couldn’t alter anything.

  ‘Straight for the beach,’ I told Nerio’s pirate.

  He nodded and grinned. ‘Think there’s any loot in that town?’ he asked, looking at the red tile roofs of Mesembria.

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  He sucked on his snaggle tooth a little while. ‘I will land my oarsmen,’ he said, ‘for a full share of the loot.’

  ‘No rape,’ I said. ‘I’ll hang a man I find doing it.’

  His earring twinkled and he smiled, all cynicism. ‘Sure,’ he said.

  ‘I mean it,’ I said. ‘These are Greeks and Bulgarians.’

  ‘Maybe I won’t land my oarsmen,’ he said. ‘If you are so holy.’

  ‘Suit yourself,’ I said.

  We went in first. It was a good beach for galleys – deep until just a few paces off shore, and then suddenly very shallow. Our pirate landed us stern first, elegantly, and the Bulgarians were like Turks, loosing arrows at us from horseback, as I led the way down the boarding ramp.

  There were a good five hundred Bulgarians awaiting us – all nobles, with maille and some plate, and lances, and bows, all on horseback.

  The sand was very different from the beach at Alexandria – deep, and soft. A man’s feet sank. A horse went even deeper, and the Bulgarians didn’t come down to the water’s edge, but stayed up on the firmer ground.

  Off to my right, Nerio’s galley came in but stopped in deeper water, and Hafiz-i Abun rode his horse off the deck and into the water with a splash. His big Arab swam ashore effortlessly, and John and his Kipchaks were right behind the Persian knight.

  Look, when men tell you that the Mongols are born in the saddle or how superior their archery is, they never get at the kernel, the reality. It’s not just their riding, which is superb, or their archery, which is legendary. It’s that they know how to do things none of our soldiers know how to do. John leaped his horse into the sea from the deck of a ship, and he had his bow, all his strings, and forty arrows waterproofed. Mongols swim rivers and fight. They know how to fight in all weathers, in all conditions.

  Well. So do the English. Use makes master, so they tell me.

  The Bulgarians were no fools, and the moment Hafiz-i Abun leaped his stallion into the water, they split, and dozens of them rode north along the beach, loosing arrows as they rode.

  But even that level of division caused chaos in their ranks. I saw a man in a purple cloak riding along, telling men off in companies, but the whole time he did that, no arrows flew, and I was ashore, and I had my friends by me, and then my Bretons and my Irish, and the beach was filling, and still no arrows were flying.

  My archers were coming down the ramps. The Greeks were forming to our left; they, too, could put horsemen straight ashore, and again the Bulgarian commander had to worry about his flanks.

  Just to my right, the ship that had cut into my column landed bow first, a daring and slightly showy move. Antonio di Visconti was the first man into the water, leaping straight off the bow, and a dozen Milanese knights came into the dirty water with him.

  We were forming the way butter solidifies out of milk in the churn; suddenly, we were an army, not a mob or a few men.

  We still didn’t have a banner, but I’d taken a red Saint George’s cross from the Gatelussi galley and put it on my spear, and now I waved it and started up the beach.

  Sand is brutal under your sabatons, and again, my fighting shoes filled with gravel. An astrologer could doubtless have helped me with this.

  An arrow slammed into my helmet with the sound of mortality, and I palmed my new visor closed. The Bulgarians were aware that we were serious.

  Off to my right, thirty Kipchaks had a shooting contest with almost a hundred Bulgarians that lasted less time than it takes me to tell it, and the Bulgarians broke and rode away, leaving a litter of screaming horses and dying men.

  We got up the beach to the surf line and the deeper sand.

  Our archers were running for their places.

  I watched the man in the purple cloak. He was trying to decide what to do, but in fact, this part of the battle was already over. I knew it, and he didn’t. His best choice was to take his force, intact, and ride away out of our bowshot.

  But he didn’t know that.

  Rob Stone’s voice carried all along the beach. ‘Nock!’ he called. His voice wasn’t as deep as Ned Cooper’s, but it carried well, almost like singing.

  I didn’t even know the archer at my back; a Picard, I found later, who’d marched with les Anglais for years. He grunted as he pulled, shoulder and back in the bow, and his arrow rose past my nose and into the air.

  ‘Loose!’ Rob called. It was an eerie sound – his order blended with the sound of the shafts singing through the air, loooooose sshhh.

  Fifty Bulgarians died or lost their horses. They had no armour against war bows.

  I think every arrow took a man. Listen – our lads had time, and little to fear; the range was chillingly short, perhaps fifty paces, and the Bulgarians were all packed together at the edge of the beach.

  My part of the battle was so obviously over that I stepped out of the battle line and walked back to order the horses landed. Archers began loosing as individuals; to the north, Hafiz-i Abun and John began to drop shafts into the milling confusion that was the Bulgarian gentry.

  Fiore looked at me over his shoulder. ‘We should charge them!’ he shouted, and Visconti called the same.

  I could see Gawain in the sling. And Marc-Antonio had two chargers in his fist and was leading them down the boarding ramp.

  The Bulgarians were melting, like ice when hot water is poured over it. Some died; more ran.

  The Kipchaks started hunting them.

  I trotted back to Fiore. ‘Why?’ I asked. ‘Why charge them?’

  Fiore shook his head in disgust.

  The Bulgarians ran.

  I hadn’t even worked up a sweat.

  ‘It is unknightly!’ Visconti said.

  I sighed. ‘Get your horse,’ I said, ‘And we will have a chance to demonstrate our prowess. In the meantime, let the archers have their glory.’

  The galleys were spewing men. It was clear that all the captains had decided to throw in their oarsmen. Genoese and Venetian oarsmen are as well armed and armoured as brigands – coats-of-plates or maille, spears, swords. The Greek oarsmen were lighter, but had slings.

  Visconti was an officer of the count. I grabbed him. ‘Would you care to go for the town?’ I asked. ‘With the oarsmen, and your own knights?’

  He nodded. ‘Of course!’ he said, and strode away.

  We mounted all the archers we could on Bulgarian horses, but it was all taking too long, and there were Bulgarians coming around the flank of the town and forming against us – voynuks and peasant infantry. The shock of our first onset and our archery was wearing off. It always does.

  And landing horses, unless you swim them ashore, is a long, hard job that makes huge demands on your squires and pages.

  Finally, I left Miles and Nerio with all the men waiting for horses and I took di Cavalli and all the men who were mounted – maybe fifty men-at-arms and some Greeks and Kipchaks – not a hundred men all told.

  But the Bulgarian gentry were game. They formed against us, with their infantry, at a corner of the town. In fact, when they saw the oarsmen going for the open back gate, they charged us.

  The Kipchaks rode off to my right, breaking aw
ay like starlings fleeing from a hawk. The rest of us closed our visors and lowered our lances and rode through them. I don’t remember anything but unhorsing a man with my arm because I couldn’t get at my sword. My lance was gone, and then I was rallying men while the peasant levies broke and ran without being charged.

  In fact, Syr Giannis was shouting at them, and they ran. They were all Greeks – they owed their Bulgarian overlords nothing. Syr Giorgios had a fine banner, a great eagle in gold on red, and some of the peasants simply ran forward and knelt in front of the banner. They thought he was the emperor.

  At any rate, their whole wing unravelled. The oarsmen were already in the town, and the voynuks were throwing down their weapons. And I still had fewer than one hundred men under my hand.

  But the bastards had killed Gawain. I felt him tremble, and I looked down, and saw a shaft in his chest, and he slumped forward, game to the very last. He was, I think, our only casualty that morning, but I missed him sore. I stood by him till his great dark eyes closed, and I wept. I have had great horses; he was among the best, and he was brave and smart, and he loved war. I wasted time trying to get the shaft out, and fighting the obvious truth. Marc-Antonio brought me a fine heavy charger, with a purple housing; the horse fought him, and he almost lost the bastard.

  I didn’t want another horse. I wanted Gawain. On Gawain, I knew I could take any knight ever born.

  His eyes went last; his legs stopped shaking, and a sort of mist came over his eyes, and then they closed, and he was gone. I hope he knew I was there.

  Damn it! I’m crying now, and that was twenty years ago.

  I mounted the purple brute without much thought and used my spurs to keep him in line; he didn’t like me and I wanted Gawain back. I don’t think I’d touched Gawain with spurs twenty times in all the years I had him, and that Bulgarian half Arab got the spurs twenty times in our first twenty minutes. But we were in similar states, he and I; a Bulgarian had killed my Frankish horse, and a Frank had killed my new mount’s Bulgarian master.