The Edge of the Blade

by The Edge of the Blade (retail) (epub)

  ‘Shall I tell you what they’re like, Lord Baynard? What the fishermen of Pafos say they’ve seen?’

  ‘Tell it, and in detail. Be a shame if we mistook one of theirs for a vessel of our own.’

  ‘For a start then – they are three times as long as the Lampreda. Someone told me four. And how many are we here? Eight or nine of us? Well, a dromond can carry – and laugh if you will, Lord Baynard – as many as one hundred and fifty men!’

  Falkan thought, it’d ease me to laugh, but it’s possible. I’ve heard of Venetian ships as big as that, so why not the dromonds? Even so, Sweet Christ: one hundred and twenty feet long? One hundred and fifty men?

  ‘They have as many as – if I understood it right – as many as sixteen sails. And as for the size of the crew, it’s because the majority are rowers. That’s the thing, you see, Lord Baynard. They need never be stilled in the water. They have a long bank of benches, so when the wind drops—’

  ‘I understand the principles of rowing,’ Baynard told him. ‘If there’s any more, get on with it—’

  ‘There is. And here’s the worst. They’ve a weapon aboard; it’s called Greek Fire, or Wild Fire, or Wet Fire, or – well, anyway, according to the fishermen, it’s a terrible thing to behold. Like a dragon’s breath. A jet of flame they send vomiting from a tube. And once it catches hold, it can’t be extinguished. Do what you like, but—

  Falkan interrupted him, snapping the man to silence. He’d heard of this too, this dreadful incendiary weapon, its ingredients known only to the East. But he’d also heard that it could be extinguished. With sand, or—

  ‘When we restocked the ship at Hierapetra, or when you brought stuff aboard in Pafos. Did you think to buy vinegar?’

  ‘We’ve a keg of it, yes. It’s good for—’

  ‘Then keep it by. And another thing. Place a bucket on deck. Empty a barrel – wine or water, I don’t care which, but empty it over the side. We’re about to refill it, Captain Pino, fast as we can. With our own little jets. With urine.’

  ‘You mean we should—?’

  ‘In the bucket. Then the contents into the barrel. By all means laugh if you will, my friend. But it’s one of the ways, so I’ve been told, to extinguish Greek Fire.’

  * * *

  Weapons covered, metalwork daubed with the soot from lanterns, the Lampreda slithered south-east throughout the day.

  Leather the wanted commodity now, the replacement sails and shelters were piled amidships. Then the men worked together, crew and Crusaders, stitching the sheets into a clumsy, weather-stained awning.

  Helped by a wind that scudded from the coasts of Armenia, the corsair galley cut through the water at close to ten knots.

  The keg of vinegar was broached, its contents ladled on to the leather.

  With ribald comments, the men splashed into the bucket.

  Falkan asked Domenico Balbo, ‘Can you hold this course through the night? If we run on now, we should close with Acre at dawn.’

  ‘If that’s what you wish,’ the Sicilian shrugged, garlic and salted fish gusting the air. ‘It’s for you, Signor Falkan, to tell me.’

  Yes, Baynard admitted, that’s what it’s come to now. All these men – but more than these – the ghost of Sir Geoffrey – the promise of Christiane – the menace of Ranulf and his henchmen – the needs of the Christian army – the lurking presence of Islam – all these things will be influenced, if only in some small way, by what I now decide.

  He looked at Pino, at Enrique de Vaca, at the Hand of Heaven, slowly closing the day. He thought to ask Guthric – He’s more often right than wrong, the old Saxon – then even turned to see what Quillon was up to – Why not? He must have sniffed the wind before poaching the Hexel River.

  But no. It was Baynard’s decision. His alone to make. And he knew it.

  ‘Reason’s on your side, Signor Balbo. So here’s what we’ll do. We’ll slip and slither through the night like the serpent we are. Captain Pino will be in overall command. You will navigate our course. I shall set the defences. The others aboard this blade will aid us in our endeavours. And come the dawn – Deus Vult, come the dawn, we’ll be cheered from the shores around Acre!’

  It was a pretty speech, and it encouraged them into the dark…

  * * *

  But it could not prevent the massive Saracen dromond, known as the Siphon, from cutting toward the Crusader galley in the early light of late August, seventy men straining at the oars, another twenty crouched near the bows; the mixture of naphtha, sulphur and quicklime ready to be bellowed through the long, bronze tube.

  There might, after all, be something to be said for chewing anchovy and garlic. However unpleasant the smell of it, Domenico Balbo was the first to sight the dromond.

  * * *

  His roar of alarm seemed to skid the men from the stern.

  Falkan, who’d been half-asleep, scrambled to his feet, stared at the helmsman, then followed his gaze to the south.

  Dear God, but Pino had been right! They were set upon by a monster!

  Running toward the bows, yelling and kicking as he went, Baynard struggled with the stitched mosaic of leather. Guthric came to help him, then Enrique, then Quillon and the sailors, the men cursing as the sheet was lifted by the wind and pulled from their grasp; cursing as they took hold of it again; cursing anew as they tore their ankles, their shins, their legs against impediments on the deck.

  Domenico Balbo thrust the tiller-bar hard over, the galley veering away from the dromond.

  But the massive and magnificent Saracen vessel matched her course, the half-mile lead reduced to a quarter, the slave-rowers flogged to a frenzy of effort, the Eel no more than a worm…

  * * *

  Bearing down on the Infidel, the nozzle of the dromond spouted fire. It bloomed hungrily across the sea, licking the air, slavering at the waves. Then it gulped and was silent, its engineers yelling as they refilled its voracious throat.

  The Sicilian bellowed, ‘We’ll cut across their bows!’

  Baynard howled in contradiction. ‘No! They’ll sear us as we pass!’

  ‘So what do you—’

  ‘Come around! Bring the Eel around! Pass beside her and— Why in Hell do you think the leather—’

  But by then Domenico Balbo had understood. A good chance of being burned alive by the liquid fire… Yet if the skinny young Englishman knew what he was doing…

  The Lampreda heeled about, clutching at the wind of morning as she turned toward the Siphon.

  * * *

  Its tanks refilled, its bellows pumped with air, the self-igniting fire was spewed at the galley.

  Falling short, it burned the surface of the sea.

  But not for long, for the dromond was also turning, the spouted flames sweeping across the water, nipping and biting at the Eel.

  Close to panic, those aboard the Lampreda kicked at the hem of the leather curtain, the carefully stocked urine thrown on the awning, the shield then left to drape the bows as the crew and Crusaders fled toward the stern.

  There was nothing more they could do; watching as the Saracens hosed fire from their high-riding prow.

  * * *

  The Lampreda began to burn.

  Whatever Baynard had been told, the vinegar-and urine-soaked leather did little more than change the colour of the flames. The sulphurous fire spread quickly, splashing the deck, dripping against the hull, its corrosive heat consuming the ill-stitched shield.

  The corsair galley passed alongside the dromond, dangerously close to the great Saracen warship. For a moment it seemed as if the Eel would collide with the long bank of oars, the smaller ship turning in as tight an arc as Pino and Domenico could manage. Meanwhile, enemy arrows came flittering from the Siphon.

  And then the war cries from those aboard the dromond turned to shouts of alarm.

  As the liquid fire dripped from the leather awning it spread along the channel between the ships, not only burning the Lampreda, but clinging to the oars
and hull of the Siphon. A babble of orders and the dromond sheered away…

  Once astern of the warship, the Crusaders and crew scrambled to save the Eel. Tearing at their clothes, they bandaged their hands to protect them from the dreadful, adhesive fire, then dragged at the awning, tipping it to leeward of the bows. It fell into the sea, the elements of fire and water each eager to claim their victim.

  Glancing back, Baynard could see men lowered from the stern of the Siphon, buckets of sand being hurled at the patches of flame. It was not too late for the warship to turn and bear down on them again, and the thought sent him hurrying to rejoin Domenico Balbo. ‘Can you see the coast yet? Can you see the Christian camp around the city?’

  The Sicilian peered ahead, but the smoke and flames from the bows obscured his view. Then Pino called to them, running back to say there were other ships – ‘Twenty or more, all across the horizon! I can’t be sure, but—’

  Turning to Domenico, Falkan said, ‘Your eyes are the keenest. Go forward and keep watch for us. I’ll take the tiller. If they’re enemy ships we’ll make a run for it to the east.’ He did not need to add that the dromond might pursue them, the flames fan back from the bows, or that their dash to the coast might take them blazing on to the rocks.

  He wondered if God would allow such a thing to happen, here at the very portals of the Holy Land…

  * * *

  It was Quillon who yelled the loudest, punching gleefully at the Saxon, the Sicilian, at anyone he could reach. ‘All with crosses! All with crosses! Every hulkin’ one of ’em!’

  Falkan heard him and understood. The safeguard was describing the vessels that lay ahead of them; Crusader ships; members of the Christian fleet blockading the entrance to Acre.

  The young Tremellion kept the galley on course, flame and smoke still rising from the bows. Now, he thought, so long as we’re not mistaken for a fireship. Then he laughed at the idea, knowing that Sir Geoffrey too would have laughed.

  As, of course, in his own special way, would Ranulf.

  Chapter Twenty Six

  They were now in a different world.

  During the days and weeks to come, images and impressions would be thrust upon them; their preconceptions shattered; their attitudes altered; their daily life coarsened beyond belief.

  They would see men clumsily hanged for petty crimes, the victims left to strangle, their feet but inches from the ground.

  They would roam the camp, learning that the Frankish force numbered close to twenty thousand men, but that the leadership was contested, the English knights siding with King Guy, the French with the absent Conrad of Montferrat, the Germans leaning one way, the Danes another, each of the various nations in dispute.

  They would witness the multiple rape of women who had chosen to sell their favours to the army.

  They would be shouldered aside by the arrogant Knights of the Temple of Solomon – the Templars – and watch in astonishment as these military brethren squabbled and skirmished with the equally powerful Knights of the Hospital of St John of Jerusalem – the Hospitallers. Cast in the same religious mould, these warrior monks were now separated by enmity and ambition.

  They would gaze at the mighty, double-walled defences of the city, glimpsing the helmets and turbans of the enemy as the Moslem guards patrolled the towers and ramparts of the one-time Christian stronghold. A rain of bone-tipped arrows would send the Crusaders diving for cover, though nothing could protect those who were unlucky enough to be doused with the ghastly Greek Fire. It was launched in leather bladders, or in stoppered earthenware jars, the grenades bursting on impact to fount their contents on the crowded plain. Every day scored fresh, searing channels in the Christian camp.

  They would discover the rivers and estuaries that watered the coastal land around Acre. And be warned not to drink from them, for the Saracens in the foothills thought it amusing to tip poison in the streams. Or, if not poison, then the carcase of an animal. Or better yet, the mutilated body of an Infidel.

  They would see the dust of late summer turn to the drizzle of autumn. They’d mature with experience, become hardened to the horrors of this all but stagnant siege, realising now that the twenty-thousand-strong army of the West was riddled with petty jealousies, fissured by a hundred different factions, the fist of Europe no more than an open-fingered claw…

  * * *

  Accorded the quarters due to a knight of the realm, Baynard had been directed to a limp grey tent, half a mile from King Guy’s scarlet pavilion. Enrique de Vaca had been offered a similar shelter, their guide shrugging when Falkan asked what provision would be made for his constable and safeguard.

  ‘Look around you,’ the man had told him. ‘There’s half the army sleeping in ditches, or out on the plain. The only reason you and your compeer get housed is ’cause the knights who was here before deserted and went to Tyre.’ Insolently, he added, ‘In case you ain’t noticed, we got them Moslems up our nose, an’ up our arse!’

  It was crudely put, but the man was right. The city of Acre was in Saracen hands; a mile-wide band around it controlled by the Crusaders; then the foothills – and Palestine – and all the Dominion of Islam poised to drive the Infidel into the sea.

  Room was made for Guthric to sleep in the entrance to Falkan’s tent. Enrique gave space to Quillon. They had come too far together for things to be otherwise.

  * * *

  Within hours of installing himself in his threadbare quarters, Baynard requested an audience with the king. His name was added to a list and he was told to await his turn. ‘But be warned,’ the clerk informed him. ‘There’s fifty men of higher rank than you, Tremellion. Go about your business. You’ll be summoned in due course.’

  Expecting better than this, Baynard said, ‘And what do you suppose my business might be, if not to deliver—?’

  But by then the clerk had dismissed him, the man beckoning irritably to an ill-tempered nobleman from Flanders.

  Two days later, and Falkan tried again. But the response was the same— ‘Await your turn; you’ll be summoned in due time. The king is a busy man, Tremellion. Remark it or not, there’s a war on for the city.’

  True enough – Guy of Lusignan, King of Jerusalem was a busy man.

  But not for the reasons Tremellion imagined.

  * * *

  Hard to believe, yet the uncertain, pale-haired monarch was a stranger to strategy, ignorant of any intended assault on the walls of Acre. Instead, he was plagued by complaints and bickerings, some of them trivial, most of them ludicrous, though all of them mouthed by the powerful warlords of the West.

  ‘I would bring to your majesty’s notice the fact that the flag of Montauban stands further away from the Royal Standard – oh, yes, by a good thirty yards – than the garish banner of Aalborg.’

  ‘A word with you, sire. Where were the English, pray, when we launched our attack, yesterday morning? Are they here to do battle, or roll dice?’

  ‘Fifteen fresh horses, or so I was promised! But to whom do they go? They go to those slouching Norsemen! And how many do I get? I who’ve served this Cause for—’

  ‘A matter of some concern, my lord King. Whenever the scaling-ladders are assembled, the French retire to their tents. Can it possibly be that the entire nation is cursed with a horror of heights?’

  ‘I’d seek your advice about the Danes…’

  ‘With respect to our so-called allies, the Welsh…’

  ‘Those strutting men of the Temple…’

  ‘Those burned-out monks of the Hospital…’

  And so it continued, hour beyond hour, the giants of Christendom growling like wolves and bleating like lambs in the presence of their undetermined monarch.

  No easy task, therefore, for the second son of a minor Cornish seigneurie to gain audience with the harassed and irresolute King Guy. Immaterial that Baynard Falkan intended to offer him the wealth of Tremellion, embellished now with the jewels he’d taken from the Rocca di Losara.

  The Chr
istian army had adopted its own sense of priorities – a madness that much amused the Moslems.

  * * *

  Kicking his heels with impatience, Baynard sought the latch to other doors.

  He returned to the Lampreda to be told by Captain Pino and Domenico Balbo that the galley was less badly damaged than they’d feared. ‘That awning you made us rig across the bows, Signor Baynard; doused with vinegar and the contents of our bladders—’

  Falkan smiled and said, ‘About the easiest thing a fellow can contribute.’ Then he asked what Pino would do with the Eel. ‘You promised to let me know, do you remember? If we ever reached this port.’

  ‘I’ve thought about it,’ the handsome young sailor told him. ‘Even went so far as to kneel in prayer and—’

  ‘Spare me, Captain Pino. Smile and lie as Renato Moretti would have done, but don’t ever pretend piety. It’s not your way.’

  As if cheered by Falkan’s rejoinder, Pino shrugged aside his claim, grinning as he pointed at the odoriferous Sicilian. ‘We talked things over, him and me, and agreed we wouldn’t last long if we played at corsairs. Though neither are we in favour of getting an arrow through our necks on behalf of your Christian army—’

  ‘I must hurry you, Pino. My name’s on the list of those who would meet the king. So tell me quick; as you promised. Might we one day salute each other in passing, out there on the waves?’

  ‘I pray we will, Signor Baynard. That is – piety aside – I hope so. And can you guess what the Eel will be doing! The very thing you yourself suggested! The fastest messenger in all the Mediterranean. Westward from here to Cyprus, to Crete, then up to the southern tip of Greece, and onward again to – no, listen to me, don’t go yet! – onward to Italy, skirting the coast of Sicily and – hey! there’s still the islands of – hey!’