Mamelukes

by Jerry Pournelle

  He hadn’t expected San Giorgio to hold when the attackers began sweeping down from Lido and Cannaregio, but the western two thirds or so of it had. Only a few pirate and Five Kingdoms galleys had landed south of the West Channel, and the militia and the squad of mercs Admiral del Verme had sent ashore had held them in check while del Verme himself continued to hold the ship bridge that blocked the channel.

  That hadn’t kept parties of invaders—some a few dozen men strong, but some much larger—from getting past the defenders and circling towards San Marco. Still, that would have been handleable, if not for the galleys which had snuck in through the fishing channel and landed on the inner, eastern side of San Giorgio. The troops they’d put ashore were far better organized than the ones who’d beached south of the West Channel, and they’d been working their way inland for a couple of hours now. But they’d stayed away from del Verme’s defensive lines; instead, they’d moved steadily south, away from the West Channel, because their objectives were the bridges that would let them flank the defenses around the Palazzo.

  Harrison and Private Ezekiel Goodman were supposed to keep them from getting there.

  And this was the last spot where they could do it.

  He scanned the windows of a townhouse on the San Giorgio side of the canal, and his eyes narrowed as he spotted a couple of crossbowmen creeping out onto a balcony that overlooked the bridge below him. He braced his rifle on the back of the chair he’d positioned to use as a rest—the loss of his left hand made it difficult to hold a steady aim firing without one—and drew a bead on one of them. He squeezed the trigger, the rifle slammed his shoulder with a familiar recoil, and his target fell. The other crossbowman fled back the way he’d come, and Harrison snarled in triumph.

  But the crossbowmen hadn’t been alone. A knot of men armed with swords and axes rushed out onto the bridge in what had obviously been intended as a coordinated attack.

  Goodman waited calmly, then picked off two men in the front rank as they got to the midpoint of the bridge. The momentum of the charge broke as more men tripped over the fallen leaders, and the handful of Nikeisian crossbowmen in the guard force took out several more. The survivors retreated—wisely, in Harrison’s opinion. Even if they’d made it across the bridge, the militiamen waiting for them were the survivors of the militia who’d teamed up with Harrison and Goodman even before the enemy broke into the inner lagoon. They’d acquired a lot of experience the hard way in the last seven or eight hours, and they would have eaten those bozos for breakfast.

  They’d started out all the way over on the other side of San Giorgio, but they’d quickly realized the attackers were headed for the bridges. Harrison had radioed it in and asked for reinforcements. He hadn’t been surprised by the order to stop them, but it had been accompanied by the unhappy news that the forty Tamaerthan archers they already had were all they were getting. That was enough, combined with the two mercs’ rifles and the scratch-built force of militia they’d picked up along the way, to hold a solid stopper almost anywhere. But that was the problem. They could hold a solid stopper; they couldn’t hold two of them, and the attackers kept filtering around them.

  They’d almost been cut off a couple of times, but the Girl Scouts had saved them. He doubted that Ginarosa Torricelli would have been very happy if she’d known where the term came from, but she’d adopted it as a badge of honor when Harrison started using it to describe her youthful followers, and they’d been lifesavers. Literally. They knew this city better than anyone else, and they’d spotted oncoming enemy troops repeatedly, well before they got close, giving the militia—and Harrison’s team—time to evacuate as many as they could when they pulled back through the deserted streets to their next position. Nor was that the Girl Scouts’ only contribution.

  “Signorina,” he’d said severely, the second time he came across a clutch of enemy troops with stab wounds in their backs and slit throats, “this isn’t what we need you to be doing! You—all of you—are our eyes and ears. Our sense of direction. You know this city, and we don’t. We need you. Please don’t take chances like that!”

  Ginarosa hadn’t said a word, but her icy gaze suggested that she’d learned a little something from her father. He’d glared back, but his best glare had bounced right off her, and there’d been no hope that any of “her” militia would argue with her. They not only obeyed and trusted her, they clearly feared her, as well.

  But at least he had her safely bottled up behind him on this side of the canal now, and he meant to keep her that way. The last thing he wanted was for the most deadly assassin in Nikeis to blame him for getting his daughter killed on his watch! Besides, he liked the girl. When she wasn’t scaring the shit out of him, anyway.

  Of course, that still left the little matter of holding the bridges.

  Another wave of ships swept into the inner lagoon. There weren’t many of them this time, and they didn’t head straight for the Palazzo.

  “They’re rowing hard,” Harrison said.

  “Spreading out, too,” Goodman said. “Looks like they’re not following the others to the square.”

  “Don’t blame ’em,” Harrison replied. “But you’re right. And that one’s headed our way.”

  “I’ll be a centaur’s uncle. What’re they doing? Ain’t no channels for ’em here!”

  One of the ships had broken off from the others and headed straight for them.

  “If they don’t turn, they’re gonna run aground,” Goodman said.

  “I think that may be what they’ve got in mind—ram a building and jam their ship crosswise in the canal between us and San Giorgio. They come ashore on this end, flank the militia, and the ship turns into a bridge for the bastards on the other side of the canal. If they get away with it, we’ll be flanked again.”

  “Incoming!”

  They took cover as a volley of crossbow bolts, javelins, and darts came raining down.

  “Damn!” Harrison cursed. “Whoever’s in command over there is pretty good. The bastard moved up more missile troops while he figured we’d be distracted by those ships. And it frigging worked!”

  Their surviving archers returned fire, but they had too few arrows to waste on blind fire. They had to pick their shots, and unlike crossbowmen, they couldn’t shoot from a prone position. That meant exposing themselves in their window positions, and they were unable to suppress the fire coming at the bridge guards. More sailed across the canal, and the militia ducked down behind their shields. Those shields were big enough to give them decent cover against crossbow bolts and javelins, but the fire pinned them down while the incoming galley swept closer. White water curled back from its prow, and its oar blades flashed in the glare of the galleys burning along the edge of Palazzo San Marco as the stroke quickened.

  Harrison reached into his rucksack with his remaining hand and pulled out a bottle with a rag stopper. He held it up and shook the viscous, ugly mixture inside for good luck.

  “The wind’s in our face,” Goodman said. “You’ll never hit that ship from here. And I don’t think one Molotov cocktail’s going to stop it, anyway.”

  “You’re right, I can’t hit it from here. But I can from the middle of the bridge, and I ain’t gonna hit it with one cocktail. Hold this!”

  He put the bottle against the side of the rucksack and Goodman held it while he looped the rucksack’s shoulder strap around it and cinched it tight, fastening the bottle to it. There were four more Molotov cocktails inside it.

  “I don’t think those Fivers on the other side are going to let you cross,” Goodman said.

  “Don’t plan on asking permission.”

  “They’ll kill your ass, Jimmy!”

  “Nah.” Harrison grinned. “Mama always said I was born to be hung.”

  “Let me do it,” Goodman pled. “You can’t carry your rifle and the cocktails at the same time!”

  “You don’t have the arm for it, Zeke. ’Sides, I need you up here covering me. You can shoot a hell of a lo
t better with two hands than I can with one. Now grab that shield and strap it to my arm.”

  “You’re a damned fool, Jimmy,” Goodman said as he strapped the shield to Harrison’s handless arm. “Since when did you start taking risks for other people?”

  “Let’s just say I’ve gotten attached to the place. I owe ’em something, and I guess it’s time to pay up.”

  Goodman shook his head as he finished strapping the shield in place. Then the two of them sprinted down the stairs and over to the street-level door nearest the bridge. They crouched, just inside the doorway, and Harrison squinted down at the canal. The galley was getting close, and he looked at Goodman.

  “Still got your Zippo? Good. Light me up!”

  Goodman lit the rag of the bottle tied to the outside of the rucksack.

  “Back in a sec,” Harrison said with another grin. “Cover me.”

  “Covering fire!” Goodman barked to the archers and militia, and Harrison flung himself to his feet and dashed out the door.

  Goodman blazed away with his rifle and their archers and a squad of Nikeisian crossbowmen joined in.

  Harrison darted from stanchion to stanchion, crouched behind the outsized shield, as he ran up the slope of the arching bridge. Crossbow bolts and javelins rained down from at least three buildings on the San Giorgio side of the canal. They weren’t all that accurate, probably because of the fire coming from his own people, and they could only fire at him from directly in front, but there were a lot of them, and he felt repeated shocks, like rain on a skylight, as they pelted his shield.

  He reached the crest of the bridge and crouched, and his right arm came up like a softball pitcher in the bottom of the seventh inning. The rucksack soared upward, trailing smoke from the burning rag, arcing through the rain and wind howl towards the incoming galley. But the throw had brought him out from behind the shield. Before he could raise it again, a javelin struck him in the chest and a thrown stone slammed into his head.

  Goodman watched the rucksack and knew Harrison had been right—he could never have made that throw. In fact, as he watched its arc, he was afraid Harrison had thrown it too hard, that it was going to overshoot. But the wind slowed it as it reached the top of its trajectory, and he realized Harrison had allowed for that nearly perfectly. The rucksack plummeted almost vertically and hit on the forward edge of the galley’s main hatch.

  The outer bottle shattered in a fierce bloom of fire, but then the rucksack toppled over the edge, down onto the middle oardeck . . . and the cocktails inside it went up in a massive fireball that flung liquid flame everywhere.

  Some of that fire, especially from the initial cocktail, splashed over marines and crossbowmen gathered on the galley’s deck, but the true horror came from below decks. Shrieking rowers, covered in clinging flame, clawed their way up through the hatch that was itself a seething inferno. They screamed their way to the bulwarks, flung themselves desperately into the canal in a vain effort to extinguish themselves, and the shrieks of those still trapped below sounded like souls in hell.

  Smoke billowed into the wind-sick night, oars flailed in wild confusion, then hung motionless as they were abandoned, and the galley faltered. It turned broadside to the canal and grounded heavily well short of its intended point.

  “Jimmy!” Goodman screamed. “Jimmy!”

  Harrison didn’t move, and Goodman slammed his fist into the floor.

  “Damn it!”

  He stared at his friend for a moment, then shook himself.

  “Cover me!” he barked and rose into a crouch. He started through the door, but a voice stopped him.

  “Do not worry,” it said, and Goodman’s head snapped up. The voice was Ginarosa Torricelli’s, and it was extraordinarily calm as she crouched on the other side of the doorway, ignoring the crossbow bolts whistling through it. Her eyes met his, and she twitched her head in the direction of the bridge. He followed the gesture with his eyes and saw a team of militia file out into the open and form a shield wall.

  “He is one of ours,” Ginarosa said. “My men will bring him home.”

  * * *

  “McQuaid!” Larry Warner bellowed. “McQuaid!”

  “Here!”

  McQuaid appeared at his elbow as if by magic. The half dozen Roman marines told off to guard the priceless Carl Gustav were right behind him, and Warner gave a choppy nod of satisfaction.

  “Look!” he said, pointing out into the gathering darkness. “There’s two more navibus onerārius out there. Can you take them out?”

  “If I had any ammo,” McQuaid said bitterly. “Still got the tube, but we lost the ammo chest on that last jump forward. Think at least one of the Romans drowned trying to save it. We’re dry.”

  “Well that’s not good.” Warner grinned mirthlessly. “Because I think they’ve seen our muzzle flashes and they’re headed this way.”

  “Shit.” McQuaid watched the two big transports for a second, then nodded. “Sure as hell looks that way,” he said.

  Warner looked around. For the moment, the Romans and mercs held a section of the ship raft. They’d managed to bring along all their wounded—so far, at least—and no one on the other side seemed disposed to threaten their current perimeter. Thanks to the battle rifles, no doubt. He found himself wishing they’d had at least one of the machine guns, as well, but wishes weren’t going to change anything.

  Problem is we can’t stay here, he thought grimly. Whoever’s running those transports must have figured out we’re pinned down, and he has to have enough manpower to overrun everything we’ve got left, especially if his buddies chime in from Lido. So we’ve got maybe twenty minutes before they come down on top of us and it’s over.

  It was funny, in a way. He’d been scared to death a hundred times since they’d arrived on Tran. This time, he was pretty sure they weren’t going to make it, and he wasn’t scared at all.

  The wet deck heaved under his feet, driven by the pounding seas. The outermost ships were little more than splintered wreckage, battered and swamped by the angry waves but they were so tightly jammed only a handful of them had actually sunk. The sea was nothing if not patient, though, and those same waves were beginning to batter the raft apart. It wasn’t going to happen anytime soon, but it was going to happen.

  Not that they could stay where they were long enough for that to become a problem for them.

  He looked to the east. Occasional flashes of rifle fire and the stuttering glare of one of the Bren guns still came from the fortress walls, but there were at least several hundred enemies on the galleys between him and the island. He looked back north. The navibus onerārius were closer, bearing down on them. Maybe their captains hadn’t actually realized there were star men trapped on the ship raft. Maybe the storm was simply bad enough that it was driving them into the raft. In the end, it didn’t much matter, though.

  He turned and waved to Martins, and the lieutenant jogged over to him, his rifle slung over his shoulder and the surviving Gurkhas—all four of them—at his heels.

  “We’re screwed,” Warner said. “Another fifteen or twenty minutes, and those bastards”—he pointed at the transports—“are gonna be right on top of us. So that’s how long we’ve got.”

  “Got for what?” Martins asked.

  “Got to cut our way through to San Lazzaro.” Warner shook his head. “I’m down to my last mag. You?”

  “Afraid I’m empty,” Martins said. “Aside from this, that is.” He touched his holstered Beretta, then twitched his head at the Gurkhas. “My lads are just about down to their bayonets, too.”

  “Well, that’s probably about where we all are.” Warner looked around again, then shrugged. “At least it’s a simple proposition. What you might call a binary solution set.”

  “One way to put it.” Martins surprised him with a smile, then beckoned to the marines carrying the recoilless. “Here,” he said in Latin, unslinging his bayoneted rifle. “I imagine you can use this.”

  “Yes, Praefec
tus.” One of them gave him a Roman salute and took the weapon from him.

  “I suppose we should be going,” Martins said. “Wouldn’t do to be late to the party!”

  “Are all Brits lunatics?” Warner asked, checking his rifle.

  “Probably, a bit,” Martins replied. Then extended his right hand. “I’m sorry we didn’t have longer to get to know one another, but it’s been an honor.”

  “Don’t go all fatalistic on me,” Warner growled, but he gripped the hand firmly.

  “Wouldn’t dream of it.” Martins released his hand, drew his Beretta, and snapped the safety lever down. “Last man to the fort buys the beer!”

  * * *

  “Baker here.” The clipped British voice sounded preposterously calm. “Over.”

  “Galloway,” Rick said into the microphone, staring out into the flame-shot, stormy madness. Half the beached galleys continued to blaze, despite the rain, washing the building fronts in waves of lurid light, but between the storm and the oncoming night, that was about all he could see. “I need an assessment, Major. Visibility’s going completely to hell, and I can’t see much from here. What’s your status? Over.”

  “I believe the situation is in hand, Colonel,” Baker replied. “My lads are short of ammunition, we have only six more magazines for the Bren, and your Passavopolous is down to his last two belts, but the firebombs and the flanking fire have done for them, for the moment at least, I believe. They seem more concerned about covering in place behind the unburned galleys than they are about trying to advance. Can’t say how long they’ll stay that way, especially if more of their friends get around our flanks, but absent some major change in the situation, I believe we’re secure here. I shouldn’t like to see a fresh lot coming at us, though. Over.”

  “Understood.”

  Baker’s last sentence had been more than a little pointed, Rick thought, and with good cause. The major knew their estimate of the enemy’s strength had been disastrously low, and for all his ever-so-British understated calm, he had to be aware of how tightly stretched the defense was.