‘Their masts,’ bellowed someone along the wall. ‘Look to the masts.’
Arnau did so. He couldn’t quite make out what he was looking at, though. The masts, with their many ropes and canvas sails, seemed somehow bulkier than usual, but he couldn’t make it out. He was still frowning at them in confusion when the ships began to turn. Riding with the momentum of their erstwhile speed, they continued to drift towards the walls, side on.
Arnau stared, realising what had been done to the masts only as they broke into action. Spars and ropes and acres of sailcloth had been reworked to form strong ladders with thick sides attached to the mast. As the ships closed on the walls and towers, ropes were untied and released, those new, ingenious walkways pivoting and lowering, forming boarding ramps high up amid the masts.
As the ships drifted the last thirty paces or so towards the walls, men began to swarm up the ropes, their shields on their backs and weapons at their sides, racing for the mobile boarding ladders. Arnau watched in fascinated horror as a ship closed on his stretch of walls. The ladder swung and wavered, and he realised in shock that, given the height of the mast, the boarding ladder was above the level of the wall.
Byzantine archers began to do their duty, peppering the ships with arrows, some burning, trying to pick off the men swarming up the rope ladders to the walkways at the top. As they did so, archers suddenly rose from those same ladders, hidden there by the voluminous sailcloth. They stood, bows drawn and arrows nocked, and in an instant missiles were flying downwards at the men on the walls. Their aim was careful, and the bulk of the missiles that struck home did so in the flesh of an archer. Thus in moments the Venetian bowmen had more or less neutralised their opposite numbers on the walls.
The bowmen continued to loose arrows as the walkways swung over to the rampart. Arnau watched the walkway closing on him and swallowed his nerves. There was a dreadful thump and the whole thing lurched as the ship below touched land, and two archers fell from the walkway with screams, their bodies dashed to pieces far below.
‘Take ye lore of chastising,’ Arnau said, glaring at the walkway swinging towards him and quoting the second Psalm, ‘lest the Lord be wroth sometime and ye perish from the just way. While his wrath shall burn out in short time, blessed be all they that trust in him.’
Ramon, drawing his sword and taking a deep breath, replied in deep tones. ‘For the great day of their wrath cometh, and who shall be able to stand?’
Revelations… Arnau shivered. He wasn’t quite prepared for the end of days yet, though perhaps the Venetians were. Ropes down below were let go and the mobile walkway shook for a moment, and then descended.
With a thud, the shaking ladder with its canvas walls slammed onto the wall top. The first men to appear were the archers who had been hidden inside, though now they had drawn blades and ran forth, desperate to gain a hold of the wall.
Arnau brandished his sword, turning so that his shield faced the charging men. He braced himself, running through several other appropriate psalms as the first Venetian ran at him. The archer, his bow held low in his left hand while his right held a short blade, raised that latter weapon, bellowing something in a thick Italian accent. He never reached Arnau, for the artillerist on the nearest tower had turned his bolt thrower and aimed carefully. The archer was plucked from the ladder, impaled with a two-foot missile that had punched deep into his torso, and thrown him from the bridge, hurtling down to the water or earth below, gurgling his last invective.
The man behind him was not fazed. In a heartbeat he reached the wall top and leaped from the bridge, sword swinging. Arnau caught the blow contemptuously on his shield and punched outwards, foot braced against the stone. The archer, turned aside by shield and push, fell to the left, barking out his surprise, where a nearby Byzantine infantrymen in a shirt of bronze scales swung a heavy mace and stoved in the man’s head. Arnau tried not to feel jealous. What he would give right now to be wielding his favourite mace and not a sword.
No time to brood, though. The men were coming from the ship thick and fast now.
Ramon was beside him as a third man piled off the ramp, swiftly followed by a fourth. They leaped at the Templars fearlessly, hammering down with blades and knocking the knights back with the ferocity of their attack. Arnau pushed the man back, hacking down with his sword and scything a deep cut into the man’s unprotected thigh. The Venetian screamed and fell away, but there was instantly another man in his place. Arnau realised what the men were doing, though there was precious little he could do about it. These men, lightly armoured and armed, were selling their lives cheaply that their fellows might gain the advantage. Leaping into a fray they knew would kill them with the single goal of pushing back the defenders on the wall top sufficiently to allow more and more men to emerge from the bridge. It was working too.
Arnau fought back hard, his sword rising and falling almost mechanically, butchering men, but those initial few leaps had driven them back and the men swarming up from the ships’ decks were coming in force, pouring along the ramp. Arnau felt a weapon strike his sword arm elbow, the mail preventing serious injury, but the blow hard enough to temporarily numb the arm. He resorted to using his shield as a battering ram, hammering out at the ever-increasing sea of Venetians flowing onto the wall. Ramon was under pressure, fighting like a madman, and they had now lost sight entirely of Constantine in the press.
The bodies of the Venetians underfoot were becoming troublesome now as they fought to maintain what looked like an increasingly tenuous hold on the walls. Arnau felt the pain now in his fighting arm, and tested his swing. It hurt like hell, but he retained full use of it at least. Gritting his teeth against the pain, he went back to work with his blade, hacking and slashing at the Venetian mob. The defenders were in trouble. He could see that. The men coming along that bridge were better now. The light-armed archers and men-at-arms who had formed the initial assault and gained a foothold were almost gone, and the Venetians coming now wore chain shirts and had shields and helmets.
The foothold had been gained and now here came the real warriors to take advantage of it and capture the walls. Arnau roared a prayer and threw himself forward into the fray. His sword swung and stabbed, chopped and thrust, biting into chain, wool, flesh. He felt the hammer blows of enemy weapons battering his shield and helmet. Something stamped hard on his foot, causing him agony, yet still he fought madly.
At one crazed moment in the fray he found himself face to face with another of the Byzantine footmen, and both of them had to pull in a blow meant for one another before turning and finding the next target. Momentarily he wondered where Sebastian was, and prayed that the young squire’s faith in the protection of his icon was well founded.
Arnau fought on, marvelling at how this had all happened so easily for the enemy given how ready the defenders had been and how impregnable the walls had seemed. The answer was clear, though. The city had rarely faced a threat here. The Golden Horn had been protected by the chain and enemies hardly ever managed to penetrate it. Consequently, the walls here were not quite as tall or powerful as those exposed permanently. Add to that the unlikelihood of a man on a ship’s deck posing a threat to the walls, and no one could have predicted this peril. The Venetians had used extraordinary cunning and ingenuity, turning their very ships into siege weapons, gaining sufficient height to look down on the walls.
The Byzantines had simply not been prepared for it. How could they have been?
Something bumped into him, and a blade skittered off the chain on his shoulder, tearing a hole in his surcoat. Arnau was forced to step back and to his left. A flurry of blows from two opponents almost pushed him from the wall, and he fought hard to keep his place, sword and shield smashing out.
Something suddenly hooked over his shield and pulled. He felt his left arm yanked painfully, almost jerked from its socket, and he was forced to relinquish his grip on the shield before the pulling either dislocated his arm or dragged him to the floor. The shield fel
l away, a Venetian gripping it triumphantly for only a moment before a Byzantine defender punched his blade through the man. Arnau caught a momentary glimpse of his shield before it was knocked away by staggering feet and fell from the wall. It was already so battered and scarred that he could hardly make out the design on it any more.
He raised his sword and caught a descending blow with it, the blades scraping horribly along one another. Contemptuously, he kicked his opponent hard between the legs, and was rewarded with a crunch audible even over the fight. The man fell away, screaming, as Arnau lowered his foot, the heavy leather boot reinforced with chain mail coverings. The bastard Venetian might get away, but his line would now die out with him.
Arnau was suddenly pushed back by another opponent. The wall was too crowded to make out too much of what was happening now, but he caught occasional sightings of Ramon, struggling in the press. One thing was clear: they were losing.
The young Templar could not even estimate how long he fought on that wall against a seemingly endless tide of fearless Venetians, but the sun was riding high in the sky when the fight hit both its lowest and highest points at once.
Somewhere ahead, east along the wall, someone was blowing a horn. Arnau didn’t know the Byzantine signals, of course, but the urgency and direness of the sound made it fairly clearly a call to retreat. Someone had decided the walls were no longer defensible, that it was hopeless, and the Venetians had control. Momentarily, he caught sight of Constantine Laskaris fighting like a madman, and knew that at least the call had not come from the commander.
But perhaps the signaller was correct. Arnau could see four Venetians now for every Byzantine. It did look hopeless. Even as he watched, the invaders along the ramparts were taking the opportunity to tip the burning braziers from the wall, where they plummeted into houses and shops of dry wood and tile, which burst into flame in moments. Even as Arnau dispatched another screaming Venetian, the conflagration took hold and began to spread.
They were lost. They were at that lowest point. Arnau knew they had to withdraw, lest they die among the Byzantines at the mercy of the vicious invaders.
Then came the reprieve.
A new call.
A new melody blaring out over the fight. Arnau could not identify this one either, but it came from behind him, from back towards the palace, and it sounded angry, yet positive and fierce. It sounded somehow like a mother bear realising her cub was in danger. Whatever it was seemed to give new heart to the Byzantines, and they began to fight once more like lions, shouting prayers and curses as one, stabbing Venetians and desperately trying to regain control of their walls.
Arnau was struggling, fighting off two Venetians at once, when the reason for the new call became apparent. The Venetian to Arnau’s left made to take advantage of his lack of shield, lunging for his armpit. The blow never landed. Instead, the snarling Venetian disappeared in a cloud of flying gore and fragments of bone.
Arnau stared, and struggled to regain his wits and hold off the man he still faced as a Waring guardsman, a clear foot taller than him and wider in the shoulder than most horses, stepped forward and yanked his great axe from the bifurcated remains of his victim.
The tide turned in that moment as giant warriors from the north, bearded and fearless, appeared in droves, fighting back the Venetian plague.
‘Never mind, little knight,’ grinned the Waring, pointing at the man he had obliterated. ‘I’ll save some for you.’
With a grin, Arnau nimbly dispatched the remaining man he’d been facing and went back to work alongside the emperor’s guards, pushing back the Venetian tide in an effort to regain control of the wall. He laughed as he fought and chanted out his favourite psalms, carving his hatred and defiance into the Venetians.
Behind him, Constantinople burned.
Chapter 10: The Imperial Army
July 17th 1203
‘They’re on the run,’ someone shouted.
Arnau, jammed between two hulking Warings with bloody weapons and sharp tongues, wiped the spray of blood from his face, yanked his blade from a shuddering body and stepped back. Enough had changed in the last half-hour that now at least he had room to do so.
It was true. The Venetians seemed to be thinning out, and he could see figures pounding back along the attack ladders, heading for their ships. He looked back and forth along the wall, trying to spot a familiar face. Finally, in the press of flailing blades and bobbing heads he spotted Ramon, who was looking in his direction but waving and pointing with his left hand even as he fought on with the right.
Arnau turned and looked at where Ramon had been pointing. The next tower west, marking the edge of the Blachernae palace grounds, rose above the crowd, and he could now see Constantine Laskaris atop it, beneath his own banner, throwing out commands and pointing hither and thither. The young Templar turned back to his friend, who had been joined by a blood-soaked figure Arnau believed to be Sebastian. Ramon was indicating that he should go to the tower even as the pair also pushed their way in that direction.
In a matter of minutes, Arnau was emerging onto the relatively clear tower top. Waiting patiently nearby, by the time Laskaris had finished with his latest set of orders and spotted the Templar, Ramon and Sebastian had joined him. The squire seemed hale enough, though his left arm hung by his side, covered in blood. His expression was certainly fierce, rather than pained.
‘Have we won back the walls?’ Ramon shouted, crossing to the imperial general.
‘We have,’ Constantine confirmed, pointing out to the water. Perhaps half the boarding ladders had survived the attack, the defenders concentrating on destroying them wherever possible, and the remaining ones were even now swinging back onto the ships, their crews moving to depart. Ships were pushing away from the bank and the walls, out into the water.
‘They run,’ nodded Arnau.
‘Look again,’ Laskaris said
Arnau did so and frowned in realisation. The Venetian ships were not fleeing back across the Golden Horn as Arnau had expected. In fact, they were moving up the channel, inland.
‘Supporting the Franks?’ Ramon murmured.
‘It would appear so. But to abandon a fight they might yet have won? We were making headway. But the struggle could still have gone their way.’
Arnau turned and looked back inside the city wall where whole blocks of housing were now a roaring conflagration, desperate citizens running back and forth from fountains, cisterns and bathhouses, trying to douse the flames, though with little success.
‘Perhaps they’re leaving the city to burn,’ he said with a shudder.
‘What?’
‘I’ve been in burning buildings twice now. It’s not something you seek, believe me. Perhaps the Venetians think they’re done here. They’ve fired the city and moved on.’
Constantine nodded grimly. ‘Certainly ours has been a costly victory.’
‘It may yet not be a victory,’ Ramon reminded him. ‘If the Venetians are heading upstream, we should find out why.’
The general shook his head. ‘You go. My duty is here, securing the sea wall and overseeing the fighting of the fire.’
Nodding, Ramon gestured to the others and disappeared inside the tower door. Arnau and Sebastian hurried to catch up, pounding wearily down the stairs to emerge onto the wall top. The euphoria of battle had begun to fade now, and with it his energy was waning. The aches and pains of combat began to make themselves known and Arnau winced. His sword arm shrieked with pain every time he moved it, and he thought that he probably had at least one broken toe.
‘I’m almost spent, Brother,’ he said.
Ramon turned his head as he walked purposefully. ‘Aye, myself also. And Sebastian here needs to have that arm looked at. But we are not running to a fight. I might be content to push back the Venetian advance, but Bochard strictly forbade us from attacking the Franks, and that is where we are heading, so I sheathe my blade.’
Wiping it on the rag from his belt until i
t shone grey once more, he did just that. Arnau glanced at the hard face of young Sebastian. He was not convinced that the squire shared their determination to obey even in the face of Frankish aggression.
All along the wall, Byzantine soldiers were cheering and jeering, having won back control of their fortifications and bested the Venetians despite their ingenious plan. Arnau knew, even as they moved back west and south around the Blachernae perimeter, that the success could only be pinned upon the timely arrival of the Warings. He had adjusted his thinking now. Before today, he had more or less written off the imperial bodyguard. Oh, they were big and impressive, but their remit was the protection of the emperor and they would only be committed to a fight on his order. Thus Arnau had thought of them purely as bodyguards. Now, though, he had seen them in action. The Warings were every bit the dangerous foe they had been centuries before when drawn from the ranks of the Norse berserkers.
He couldn’t help but feel that despite the ancient organisation and discipline of the Byzantine army, the survival of the city would hinge upon the Warings. Indeed, as they moved along the walls, trying to identify what had spurred the withdrawal of the Venetians, keeping pace with their ships as they hurtled west, they found the next area of engagement also being held together by the great armoured northmen, fighting alongside the Byzantine infantry.
Here, where a gate from the palace complex gave out through the main walls, a sizeable Frankish force was doing its level best to swarm across the defences and gain a foothold in the city. The land walls, though, were far, far stronger than the sea ones, even here where they lacked something of the impressive design of the main stretch. Between the strength of the defences, the lack of attacking siege engines, and the sheer violence of the imperial force, the Crusaders were making precious little headway. Arnau could see no great likelihood of this area falling today. Was this where the Venetians were coming to help?
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