Priest's Tale

by Turney, S. J. A.

  "Look after them, Lord" he muttered under his breath, his gaze falling on the Genovese carrack that was clearly using the last of the light to navigate its way out to the open sea, the busy river becoming less cluttered with every passing minute.

  His eyes drifted back to the colourful boat. It was now out in the river and the men were lowering the oars ready to take her back to the ship.

  Sheathing his sword, Skiouros took three steps to his right and five back, to the edge of the market, where a man was packing away boxes.

  "I must be insane."

  With a burst of speed, the young Greek exploded from the edge of the market, streaking across the narrow open stretch, and then leaping out from the gravel bank, his legs cycling as if to propel him as he arced relatively gracefully through the clear evening air.

  Would that his landing was half as graceful as the jump!

  Skiouros hit the skiff hard, the sternpost driving the breath from his lungs and his head glancing off the sheer strake, almost knocking the sense from him. All but unaware of his situation as his mind flashed and swam with pain, Skiouros felt little, and it was only as his wits started slowly to return to focus that he realised that he was being hauled aboard the ten-man boat by two of the sailors. Even before his vision properly returned, he recognised the pain in his chest and realised that he had broken at least one rib, if not two or more. His eyes flickered and he realised that what he had thought was sensory blindness was in fact caused by the sheet of blood through which he looked, combined with the gluey wet flour. His head had taken a hefty cut as he landed and the flow had gone into his eyes.

  One of the men yelled something at him, angrily, but it was in either Spanish or Portuguese, and he simply shrugged, wincing at the pain the move brought.

  Rapidly, now, his wits were coming back to him.

  He realised that the skiff was shaking and rocking and it took him a moment to come to the conclusion that it was his own unbalanced movements that were causing it. Clearly the angry sailor was trying to stop him capsizing the boat.

  Skiouros steadied himself as best he could, though his mind was still whirling. Reaching up gingerly and slowly to put the least strain possible on his ribs, he wiped the blood from his eye, causing the boat to rock a little again.

  It was a ten man boat, judging by the seats, and already contained twelve. There was no seat for him - not even a space to crouch - and he would have to remain standing and maintain his balance.

  Now he was almost fully compos mentis once again. His mind seemed to be linking things in the right order and performing the calculations asked of it. His body was more or less under control once again, too, though he constantly had to shift his balance to prevent himself falling overboard.

  "Shit" was all he could think of to say.

  Gritting his teeth against the rising tide of pain in his chest and trying to keep enough equilibrium to prevent himself capsizing the boat, Skiouros turned to look ashore. The skiff was already halfway out across the river, between the bank and the great caravels sitting in the deepest water.

  Turks were closing on the point opposite him from both sides, but two men in particular held his attention.

  Mehmi stood, squat and square, watching him and fiddling with something, while Hassan next to him…

  "Shit!" he said again as he watched the Butcher retrieve the ramrod from his musket and slam home the wadding and the ball in the barrel. In that horrible moment, Skiouros realised that he was standing perfectly still in a slow moving boat, with no hope of cover and easily in range of the weapon.

  As Skiouros watched with rising panic, Hassan turned to Mehmi and held out his hand. The Greek could not hear the conversation, but it looked very much as though Mehmi was arguing with his captain. After a short, angry discussion, Mehmi capitulated and with steel and bloodstone struck sparks until the slow-match he was holding took light, smouldering and giving off a tendril of smoke.

  Skiouros looked around at the faces of the sailors as they pulled on the oars. To a man they glowered at him in a most unfriendly manner, and a few of them muttered to one another in Spanish. Skiouros had the distinct feeling they were debating whether simply to throw him back in the river like an unwanted catch of the day, and he knew enough about swimming to recognise the danger inherent in attempting that swift current. Most likely he would drown long before reaching shore or before anyone else helped. He turned back to the river bank, aware that his safety aboard this small boat was precarious at best and rested on the whim of a number of unfriendly sailors with whom he could not exchange even the simplest of words. His hand went to his waist where he had a small pouch that he now remembered contained not a single coin. No buying their friendship, then. Next to the pouch, his hand fell upon the prayer rope. For some reason he had not relinquished it alongside the rest of his priestly garb. All he could do now was place his fate firmly in God's hands and hope for the best. He began to work around the rope with his fingers, casting up prayers to any God who might be listening.

  On the shoreline, Mehmi handed the smouldering match to Hassan, who took it and pinned it in the jaws of the 'serpent' on his weapon before lifting the musket and settling it into position. Everything about the movements of Hassan suggested that he was a master at the weapon. Skiouros felt his heart skip a beat and he slowed his breath.

  Closing his eyes, he listened out for the bang and wondered just how much he had offended God these past months.

  Etci Hassan Reis settled the weapon against his shoulder and took aim. A musket was not a weapon for sailors and his ship only carried a few for the occasional land-based raids, but Hassan was a thorough man. He knew how to use half a dozen different blades, as well as pole arms and daggers. He could throw a knife with a reasonable level of accuracy and was better than many with a bow. He had also, though he rarely found cause to fire one, practiced with a matchlock musket until he was happy that he could hit even a difficult target three times in four.

  The fake priest son of an infidel dog-woman who stood on the boat out on those waves was not a difficult target. Even Mehmi could hit him from here.

  Hassan's attention wandered from his target just for a moment and his eye flashed to the diminutive officer by his side. He feared that Mehmi's time was coming to an end. He had been a faithful servant of both Hassan and of God and the Prophet for many, many years, but these past months the short, ugly man had seemed almost wilfully disobedient, often questioning or even gainsaying Hassan's orders. Well, no more. Once the bane of his recent life out on that boat was dying, clutching at the red-pink hole in his own face, Hassan would return to the Yarim Ay, sever his ties to the old man and put to sea, seeking plunder before returning to the praise and glory of the Sultan in Istanbul. No more fawning around an old greybeard who had less pride and mettle than a harem-bitch. Hassan would become the greatest captain of the Imperial Navy. A scourge of Christianity such as the world had never seen.

  Again, he squinted down the barrel, his sight settling on that strangely mottled white pasty face which even now made his blood surge with fury.

  Oh how he would like to take a musket ball to the face of every one of these jumped up djinn who thought so highly of themselves as they rabidly destroyed a Muslim nation that had stood proud for six centuries. Or better still, he would just wound them and bind them to the seats in their infidel church and then fire the building, crisping, cleansing and purifying everything within.

  Hassan felt a sense of calm settle over him at the thought of such a glorious conflagration. Perhaps he might even sack this town before he left. Allah would preserve him until he was away from Spanish waters, he felt sure.

  The tip of the barrel dropped and Hassan momentarily considered shooting the fake priest through the gut, giving him a few days or even weeks of agony to consider his sins before death took him. But no. There was always the faint possibility he might survive, as he had when Hassan had driven a blade through his side. And there was no small chance that Hass
an would allow that to happen. The boy must die.

  Again, the barrel came up so that the ball would be discharged directly at his face,

  The slowmatch hissed in the serpent as it hovered above the pan full of black powder.

  With a malicious smile, Hassan contracted his finger to squeeze the trigger.

  His death took him so much by surprise that he stood, watching the Greek and waiting for that smug white face to explode in meat, blood and gristle, until he realised his musket barrel had dipped at that very last moment and the shot had gone horribly awry, the ball plunging into the Rio Tinto and disappearing into the deep.

  Something had caused him to drop his shot. What was it again?

  Etci Hassan turned to his faithful Mehmi.

  Or at least, he tried to…

  His body seemed not to work properly. He paused and listened to the symphony of his body. His heart was erratic, hammering out beats with no sense of time or rhythm. As he listened, the beating stopped altogether and he felt sure that had to be a good thing after the strange erratic hammering.

  He looked down at Mehmi, standing squat and grim, as ugly and sour as ever, but with a look of profound regret and sadness on that wicked face. Hassan's cold grey eyes fell to the beautiful ornate silver dagger in Mehmi's hand that ran with crimson, droplets of blood falling to the dusty ground.

  Blood?

  And no heartbeat.

  "I am most profoundly sorry, my Reis" said Mehmi quietly, "but this had to end."

  Hassan opened his mouth to rebuke the little homunculus, but all that came out was a gobbet of blood.

  The riverfront erupted into activity as the crew of the Yarim Ay rushed to their two officers, stunned. Hassan wondered for a moment whether they would kill Mehmi for what he had done. He wondered why Mehmi had done such a thing. And he wondered why in this final moment, Allah and the Prophet - all blessings be upon him - had abandoned him?

  It was the last thing he ever wondered, as his face hit the dirt and the light of jihad faded in his strange grey gaze to be replaced with the peace of the dead.

  Mehmi shook his head.

  All this over one priest…

  Epilogos

  Evening, August 3rd 1492. Rio Tinto, Spain

  Cesare Orsini returned to the stern rail of the Orgoglio Genovese, rubbing his hands in a business-like fashion.

  "The captain's satisfied, then?" Parmenio sighed as he leaned on the rail with folded arms.

  "I don't know about satisfied, but he has agreed to take us as far as their first stop at Malaga in two days' time. If I cannot withdraw funds from a Medici banking house there, we may find ourselves at the short end of Genoese justice, but that should not be a problem. From there, I suggest you two accompany me to Genoa."

  "Strange the paths down which life takes you." Parmenio mused.

  The three men stood at the rail and watched the town of Palos - all twinkling lights in the indigo evening - slip away upriver. The vague shapes of the other ships in the channel were still visible, slowly making their own way back out to sea. All three of them had watched from the deck of the Genoese Pride, their hearts in their mouths, as Skiouros leapt across to the boat, as Hassan took aim and died there on the shore at the hand of his own man. They had watched Skiouros, standing in strange, slightly concussed shock as the skiff took him across to the smallest of three vessels moored close together - the San Teodoro according to the man who'd been standing nearby, though nicknamed 'The Painted' by the locals for its elaborate green and gold decoration.

  Parmenio cleared his throat and gestured to a sailor a few yards away who was busy tightening a rope in its cleat. "Where are they bound?" he asked, pointing at the trio of vessels. The sailor looked around at the last minute passengers aboard ship and shrugged.

  "For the Islas Canarias, around the coast of Africa. Then on to the Indies, or so I hear."

  "Long trip."

  "Too long for any sensible sailor. Genoa's just fine with me."

  The man finished with his rope and moved on about his work, leaving the three men alone.

  "Do you think there's a chance of getting him back aboard this ship?" Parmenio sighed.

  "We're bound through the Pillars of Hercules and back towards Italia" Nicolo answered quietly. "He's heading south and west into the ocean. Not much chance of that."

  "Do you think he'll be alright?" Parmenio found that he already felt guilty having left the boy on the dock. He had voiced his opposition to leaving, but Orsini had pointed out that Skiouros had put himself in dreadful danger in order to keep them safe and to turn his noble gesture into a futile one was unworthy. Nicolo had hustled them aboard the boat with his usual casual expediency. Skiouros knew what he was doing, Orsini felt sure. Parmenio was less convinced. It felt as though he had betrayed a boy who had become like something of a favoured nephew over the past two years.

  He sighed.

  Cesare peered out into the purple evening as the Orgoglio Genovese swung slowly to the east, watching the two caravels and the leading carrack, resplendent in their red and white sails with the cross of Saint George as they manoeuvred from the river out towards he Gulf of Cadiz.

  "I am almost positive Skiouros will be fine. I don't think he was ready yet for what he has to do, and God watches over him. Possibly more than one God."

  Parmenio glanced guiltily about to make sure they were not being listened to. Phrases like that were dangerous in the rabid Catholic world of Spain.

  "Will we ever see him again?"

  Cesare turned to his friends, a wide grin on his face. "Of that I am certain… at the Palazzo Visconti in Genoa, I suspect. Something looms in our friend's future and I think we are a part of it now. But we have a few months' grace, I think, to try and piece together what we know of Skiouros, son of Nikos, and determine whose bitter fate it is that drives our friend."

  The other two turned frowns of incomprehension on their companion, and Cesare Orsini smiled.

  "I play games with observation, and I have observed a number of things about our young friend. We have a fortnight and more of journey ahead of us before we make landfall in Genoa, and that gives us plenty of time to talk and plan. Let us find a friendly crewman who knows the way to the wine stores and I will tell you of my conversation at Tugga and what I know so far of a pair of Greek Brothers who fell foul of an Ottoman conspiracy. It’s a long tale, but we seem to have the time on our hands."

  END

  Author's Historical Note

  While writing The Thief's Tale, which was originally intended as a one-off novel, it quickly became apparent that there would be more to the story of Skiouros than fit in the scope of that book. By the time I had written the word 'END' on The Thief's Tale, I already had the very bare bones of the other two books in the series planned out in my head. By the time the first novel hit the e-shelves, I even had the titles for them.

  The simple fact was that it was clear the story was not over. Lykaion's head rested in exile in Crete, his disembodied ghost plaguing Skiouros. The man who was at the very centre of the plot that killed him remained alive, in captivity certainly, but very luxurious captivity and with the potential to cause further mayhem. Skiouros would never settle until Prince Cem was gone and Lykaion returned to his rightful place.

  Moreover, Skiouros had changed by the end of the first book - he had promised to renounce his thieving ways. What lay ahead for him, then? He was still very young, at the mercy of the events surrounding him. Such a young, relatively naïve, man could hardly hope to hunt down and destroy the great Ottoman usurper, and so Skiouros had to grow. He had to change and to learn. He had to become part of something rather than a solitary creature.

  The result is this book, which is - to use my own comparison when reviewing others - the Empire Strikes Back of my Star Wars trilogy. It is about growth and change and becoming. It is still reactive, rather than proactive, in the same manner as the first book, with Skiouros plunged from one disaster to the next, but it is also
a fulcrum for the overall tale. Occasionally in this story, hopefully, you have seen something of what Skiouros could be.

  The scope of this novel has clearly expanded way beyond the first book, which took place over around a week and all in one city. Here, we have explored the Medieval Mediterranean, from the Greek east, by the Arab south to the Spanish west. As a visitor to - and lover of - Crete, Tunisia and Spain, the opportunity to revisit them in my head in their old days was a great lure.

  And, of course, certain events called me. Having left the story in Crete in 1491 and involving sailors, it was somewhat difficult to imagine a sequel that did not involve another group of sailors who set sail in 1492 from southern Spain in search of a new route to the Indies…

  Oh come on! You got that, yes? The Painted? The Pinta?

  With his 25 companions, Skiouros has set sail on one of the greatest adventures in the history of the later Medieval world.

  A few notes on characters and religion and places may be valid here.

  Parmenio and Nicolo had always been intended to carry over into this book. They had too little limelight in the first, I think, and we can see that they will likely have a role in book three when the time comes. So, Skiouros and his two Venetian sailor friends were a given. Cesare Orsini was a character in flux. In early drafts of the plan, the role was played by a female! But also, he was not originally planned to remain in the book throughout, but to leave partway through so that he could return in the third. If I have to make honest admission, the main reason he stayed 'til the end was that I really enjoyed writing Orsini. For those of you wondering why as yet there is a distinct lack of female characters in the series, it is not misogynistic leanings, but rather an attempt to recreate a more realistic world. Female characters can be strong and influential in this era, but generally not aboard ships or in the world of corsairs and merchants. The Tuareg lady was my nod in that direction, but given what you suspect will come in book three, you can see where the potential for more female characters lies.