The Archer's Return: Medieval story in feudal times about knights, Templars, crusaders, Marines, and naval warfare during the Middle Ages in England in the reign of King Richard the lionhearted

by Martin Archer

  There’s a lesson to be learned from William Chester’s experience according to Harold - our ships need to sail with more bales of arrows and archers on board. Yoram and I promptly authorize Brian to spend coins to employ more fletchers and smiths and I order Henry to recruit more archer trainees and step up everyone’s training. As soon as possible we’ll only send Marines to sea if they are both archers and swordsmen. We definitely need more ships’ shields and long bows in addition to more of the new bladed pikes.

  @@@@@

  The days that follow are filled with preparing our galleys and cogs for their new assignments and training the men who will sail in them. We have the galleys and sailors we need to provide more services to the Holy Land ports but we are woefully short of archery qualified Marine archers and longbows for them to use.

  Henry got a good response when he issued a recruiting call among the refugees and the slaves we brought in from Algiers and from Albert’s five prizes. But even if every one of them qualifies as an archer, which is not at all likely since it requires strong arms to pull a longbow, we’ll still be short of both men and bows.

  I am marshaling all of our men to adjust to our new arrangement with the merchants. One of my first moves is to recall our sergeants at Acre and Alexandria back to Cyprus so the merchants can take over their duties. Yes, after thinking it over I decided to let the merchants also have Alexandria. I need to use Randolph elsewhere – Constantinople I should think.

  Based on what the merchants are telling us it looks like we’ll have eight of our galleys and their crews under contract for merchant evacuations plus at least one each in Constantinople, Beirut, and Antioch to evacuate our own people and two each in Cyprus and England for training and messenger purposes.

  Those commitments and the new prizes means we’ll have twenty three galleys available for our own use to carry refugees – and that does not include one of our galleys which is more than a week overdue and may have somehow been lost or taken. We also have six cogs of which four are available to carry pirate-takers or cargo, the old leaky one we bought in Larnaca is in Cyprus as a training ship, and Harold’s battered pirate taker is still not fully repaired due to the lack of appropriate wood.

  That many galleys plus whatever the two cogs sailing as pirate-catchers take in the future should be more than enough galleys; for sure we need to switch our shipyards to building big cogs with higher sides and archer shooting slits. Not being able to take the big cog in Algiers was a real eye opener.

  @@@@@

  It is agreed. Yoram will go to Nicosia to see the king’s Chamberlain about the mines and wood and I will stay in Limassol and write a parchment for one of our galleys to carry to Thomas. I need to bring him up to date about our raid on Algiers and let him know of the changes we need to make and the things that must be done.

  I thought about going to Nicosia myself or with Yoram to visit the king’s chancellor but Yoram and Henry are dead set against it. They are fearful we’ll both be taken by King Guy for ransom, or worse. After a lot of discussion with my senior sergeants, and then with Aaron and the local merchants, I decide not to go with Yoram - so I can mount a rescue effort or provide a credible threat if one becomes necessary.

  Most important among our problems is that we are desperately short of archers to crew the ships we already have. Accordingly, in my message to Thomas I suggest he send out as many recruiting parties as possible and make a major effort to recruit and train longbow archers and buy longbows and yew wood for our recruits and bow makers to use. Wales, I suggest, might be a good place to recruit archers and buy yew for bows if he can’t find enough in England. They’re tough little buggers up there, you know. Richard had several companies of them.

  I also suggest that when he sets up a shipyard in the spring it should build big cogs with two or three masts such as we could not take in Algiers because its sides were so high above our galley. And, of course, he should always look in the ballast of the messenger galley for a chest of the metal in Yoram’s room. We’re going to send a chest with every ship we send to England.

  Writing to Thomas requires several big parchments - because after I finish describing our immediate needs I begin writing about the old copper and limestone mines here on Cyprus and note that we have access to coal and tin in Cornwall and cogs and galleys that can carry coal and ore as ballast or cargo in either direction. Accordingly, I suggest, it might be a good idea, when Thomas sends out his men to recruit boys and archers and buy longbows and yew, that some of them go where we might very quietly also be able to recruit experienced coiners and iron makers and longbow makers – for example, to Wales in addition to England. Coiners, I suggest, might be really good at making arrow heads.

  And that raises a question for which we need answers before we start making arrowheads – would it be easier to bring the tin and coal to the copper and iron mines or the copper and iron or to the tin and coal mines? And where should we do it and how do we cope with the fact that we have no silver or iron mines. Thomas is smart; he’ll understand what I’m thinking about when he sees my mention of coiners.

  @@@@@

  My trip to Nicosia to meet with the king’s chamberlain takes five rather leisurely days. But it’s not a hard trip because all twenty of us are on horseback and we have a cart with our tents and food.

  The only thing hard is leaving Lena and Mia. Truth be told? I’m glad to get away for a few days.

  Our arrival at Nicosia’s main city gate is expected and we are promptly admitted. I had, after all, sent a messenger from Limassol last week saying I would be coming to see the Chancellor, Lord Alstain, to discuss buying the king’s wood and the abandoned mines. Our troubles begin as soon as we pass through the city gate and dismount – we are promptly surrounded by a large group of guards and disarmed.

  After our horses are led away we are marched to a low stone building which is apparently some kind of guard house or prison. It’s a foul place because its previous occupants obviously stayed here for some time and pissed and shit all over the place. Our reception is very worrisome and my men are extremely upset, and so am I.

  I finally begin shouting for Lord Alstain. He doesn’t come. Instead a group of armed men appear and drag me off to a very dark and wet cell. And then to make things worse I have to shit and there is no bowl of water to use to wipe my ass.

  Oh my god. No one knows I’m here.

  Finally a man I’ve never seen before opens the door and walks in holding his nose. He’s wearing a sword and a couple of armed men behind him are standing at the door.

  “You are the man called Yoram who is in command of the pirates camping at Limassol?”

  @@@@@

  “I’m getting worried, Henry. We should have heard from Yoram by now.”

  Two hours later Aaron hurries in out of breath and I discover I have a great deal to worry about. Merchants traveling from Nicosia have just arrived in Limassol and are reporting that Yoram and our men have been arrested and thrown in the castle’s dungeon. What they don’t know is why.

  I run a quick count in my mind as to what men we have in port that I can immediately marshal. Then I send Peter and Robert running to round up the senior sergeants so I can give them the news and their marching orders.

  The way I see it initially is that we’ve got just under two thousand men in port of which at least a thousand are fully trained as archers and maybe five hundred as pike men. The king is thought to have about three thousand men pledged to him but they’re scattered all over the island and many of them are barely trained. And we’ll be getting stronger and stronger as more and more of our galleys return.

  I’m mad at myself for letting Yoram go and for not knowing more about the king’s forces. I’m also beside myself with fury - taking care of whoever is responsible for this is going to be as enjoyable as eating a piece of warm bread slavered with fresh butter. The only thing certain is that those who are responsible are going to die badly if Yoram or any of the men with him ar
e tortured or killed.

  Thomas Cook and Harold are the first to arrive. They know something’s up from the serious look on my face and what little they might have been told by Peter or Robert.

  “Bad news my friends. Yoram and his men have been taken for ransom by the king and I, of course, am going to marshal our forces and try to rescue them even if it means killing that jumped up French bastard.”

  “Thomas, we’ll need to feed up to two thousand men per day for an unlimited period of time in Nicosia instead of here in Limassol. Work with Aaron and your local suppliers to have them deliver food to the dock instead of here starting immediately. We’ll move the supplies to Nicosia by galley.”

  “Harold, Henry and I going leave immediately in as many galleys you and Brian can arm with pikes so their Marines land with three ranks of trained archers and two ranks of pikes in case they hit us with knights. So you’ve got two jobs. One is to stay here and guard the compound with our Marine archers in training; the other is to see that our ships bring us the rest of our archers and the supplies Thomas and Brian get to the dock. We’ll be in Nicosia as long as it takes – I won’t be back until I either have Yoram and our men safe or the head and guts of the men responsible.” I’m so furious I could pop a vein or fall down in a fit.

  “Oh yes, and I’ll be sailing on the lead galley myself without any pikes.”

  Then I explain to Harold why the first galley is to have no pikes and ask him to assign me the best galley captain and ship’s company he’s got in port that’s likely to help me pull it off. He’s also to add the ten best swordsmen we’ve got among the men now in Limassol to that crew even if they are also archers.

  @@@@@

  It takes me longer than I would have thought to marshal our forces and get the initial galleys underway. We have a problem – we have the archers we need on hand and we have men trained to walk in step and use the pikes, but we only have a little more than three hundred or so of Brian’s newfangled long Swiss pikes. And good pikes they are too – Brian’s smiths are adding a hooked blade near the end in addition to the metal point of the Swiss pikes.

  What we do have, thanks to Henry, are ship’s companies whose Marine are pike men and archers who are also trained to fight and march together on land. The pike men do the rowing and boarding at sea and are paid less until they qualify with longbows.

  And they ought to be well trained. It was Henry himself who came up with the idea of our ships’ Marines fighting on land in five lines with the first two being sword and shield carrying pike men to hold off the mounted knights with their pikes followed by three lines of sword and shield carrying archers to kill everyone in front of the pikes. Hopefully it will work as well here on Cyprus as it worked in Cornwall at Trematon.

  @@@@@

  A warder just looked through the peep hole and is opening the door. “Lord Alstain is here to see you” he announces with a sneer. He’s a bald man with a big red birthmark on his forehead.

  The king’s chancellor is very businesslike and arrogant beyond belief. He’s heard about the chests of coins in our compound and he wants them “for the king.”

  I wonder how he found out about our coin chests. No one is allowed up the steps except me and Lena. He probably assumes that’s where I would keep our coins because it’s the safest place. Well he’s right about that.

  “Your choice is to order them turned over to me or to stay here and die of starvation and a lack of water. It’s your choice.”

  I know I need to play for time so I pretend to be very bitter and resigned - which isn’t hard to do under the circumstances.

  “I can see I have no choice and I certainly don’t want to die. So I’ll pay the ransom even though Lord William will probably kill me when he finds out. But you know, of course, that the men I left in Limassol will not trust whatever your messenger tells them. They’ll pay our ransom if I tell them to pay it, but without a doubt before they do they’ll send someone to see if I really did send the message and that my men and I are still alive and being treated properly.”

  Alstain doesn’t seem to know that William is here on Cyprus. I wonder what he will do, William that is.

  Chapter Six

  The sun is going down as the first seven of our galleys row out of the harbor and begin a high speed voyage around the island to Nicosia with all the men I can initially marshal. If we row hard all night and swap off rowers every couple of hours we should get there sometime tomorrow depending on the weather and winds – hopefully that will be at least two days before the king expects us. Two days early, that is, if he expects us to march to Nicosia like soldiers instead of come by sea as Marines.

  @@@@@

  Our first galley, the one I’m on, enters the Nicosia harbor well ahead of the other six under Henry’s command and the dozen or more that are following along behind his six. Henry and his men are hugging the coast east of the harbor entrance and out of sight - and waiting while a young archer counts off four thousand marching steps on the deck of his galley. That’s how long my men and I will have to try to walk through the city gate serving the dock and into the walled city as if we don’t a care in the world.

  No one pays much attention when our galley rows up to the dock in the intense summer heat and a couple of men jump off and nonchalantly tie it to one to a couple of the dock’s mooring posts. Then more men get off. A few of them are carrying bows over their shoulders but none of them are carrying swords and shields or wearing helmets. In other words, they look like normal sailors bringing cargo into the city from a galley – unless, of course, you happen to notice, which you certainly wouldn’t at a distance, that their bows are strung and that the tunics of some of the men are covering chain mail shirts.

  One reason the men look so harmless as they trudge up from the dock is that the men who get off the galley are in four man cargo carrying teams and each team is carrying a pallet of cargo into the city at the gate that serves the city’s market. The pallets are actually cut down ladders from the construction underway on our third wall and the cargos under the rough cloth covers are swords and quivers of arrows and more longbows.

  There are a couple of guards standing in the shade near the gate who try to wave the first four men to a stop. But the cargo carriers say something in a foreign language and keep right on going towards the market and its stalls. They even ignore a somewhat shouted command to stop. The other cargo carriers following them keep on coming in and go right on past the guards as well.

  It isn’t until the fourth or fifth team of cargo carriers passes through the gate and keeps going that one of the guards begins to get suspicious. He walks out into the hot sunlight and grabs a passing cargo carrier by the arm to stop him. He is shrugged off and the man keeps walking.

  It isn’t until the gate guard pulls back the cloth covering the weapons of the next cargo litter that he jumps back and shouts a warning. It’s just about the last thing he ever does and his shouting doesn’t last long - because the nearest cargo carrier promptly drops his corner of the cargo litter he is carrying and cuts the guard’s throat with a thrust of the knife concealed in his tunic sleeve. He does it so quickly that the end of the cargo litter he drops doesn’t even have time to hit the ground.

  The men at the end of our long line of cargo carriers trudging toward the gate in the sun hear the guard’s scream and a loudly shouted order to hurry. They begin running. More and more of the sweating cargo carriers rush into the city after the alarm is raised – until we’re all in and we shut and bar the gate behind us. We’re in by God!

  Weapons are snatched off the cargo litters and a few seconds later more than a hundred heavily armed and terribly overheated swordsmen and archers are running through Nicosia’s incredibly hot summer afternoon streets. We’re running for the castle gate on the other side of the walled city, the gate that opens on the cart path that leads up to the king’ castle.

  @@@@@

  Before we left Limassol Henry and Harold found several men who kn
ow the city and brought them to me. They’re former slaves and they lead us in a great puffing and gasping run along the cobblestoned streets to the city gate opposite the king’s castle on the hill above the city. One of our men stops suddenly faints and falls down on the hot cobblestones and a little later another stops and leans against a wall with a pain in his side; we go on without them.

  As I follow our guides around a corner where the street turns I can see a small group men up ahead at the gate. Several men who may or may not be guards are standing at the city’s castle gate. They are obviously alerted by the shouts that follow us and the chattering sound of so many running sandals slapping on the cobblestones.

  The men at the gate look intently towards us for a few seconds – and then they run. It’s a good thing they do; we’re too tired to fight. At least I am. It’s damn hot running in the sun of a summer afternoon on Cyprus.

  Nicosia is a big city, almost ten thousand people. It takes a while to run all the way through the city to reach the castle gate. By the time I get to there my legs are tired and I’m sweating like a pig and totally out of breath, and so are the men who are running with me.

  I watch and listen as the escaping and shouting guards run up the cart track to the castle while I’m leaning over trying to catch my breathe. Well it won’t be long now before the alarm sounds. I wonder what the king will do.

  The men running to the castle are not the only ones scared into action. There aren’t many people on the streets because of the heat that virtually shuts down Cyprus’s cities every summer afternoon. But those that do see us watch with their mouths open and growing alarm as our big group of heavily armed and sweating men lumbers past.

  There are a few shouted questions but no one waits to ask questions as we go by – children are shooed inside by anxious women, men dive into doorways, and all over the city doors and gates started being barred and merchant stalls begin closing.

  We quickly shut the gate in the city wall that leads to the king’s castle and leave several dozen men to guard it. Then we lumber off to the other city gates to repeat the process. Only when all the gates into the city are closed and barred will we begin hunting down whatever is left of the king’s men in the city. Hopefully the information we have is correct and there won’t be many.