The Last Crusaders: Blood Red Sea

by Napier, William

  Below them, the crouching Janizary front rank were just getting to their feet once more and reordering the line, when several fire-breathing and heavily armoured men crashed into them: Smith and Stanley, Mazzinghi and Giustiniani, drawing with them the bolder of Baglione’s own pikemen. Mazzinghi was momentarily reduced to using nothing but a bare wooden pikestaff for a weapon, his sword having just snapped off at the hilt in an enemy shield. But he managed to avoid a panicked blow from a kneeling Janizary, knock him senseless and then fight on with the fellow’s own scimitar. Smith himself swung a glaive, a grim, short-handled pike, having abandoned his sword as far too delicate for this bludgeoning close-quarter butchery. He opened a man’s belly, cut away another’s hand and half severed the head of a third in three swift slashes.

  Nicholas ran up to join them, slipped and stumbled on something. Glanced down. A hand, diagonally severed at the wrist. The sole of his boot smeared with its blood. He pressed forward, swerved and kicked down a sword-thrust with his boot, kicked his assailant again in the face, and then killed him with a clean thrust to the heart.

  The Janizaries fell back, rolled, tripped, stumbled into their own second rank, and were impaled by blade upon blade. It was a classic case of their superior numbers, in a confined space, telling against them. Behind them, their own line of musketeers was panicking, trying to reload.

  Smith saw a bugler raise his bugle to his lips, rushed him, slapped the bugle aside and knocked the fellow senseless with a titanic blow of his gauntleted fist.

  ‘It’s called cutting the lines of communication!’ he called to Stanley near by, stomping the bugle flat in the dust.

  Lala Mustafa sat his white horse.

  ‘What is delaying them? Why are they not in yet?’

  ‘Some sort of counter-attack, esteemed Pasha.’

  ‘Counter-attack,’ snorted Lala Mustafa, flicking a fly away with his crop. ‘Send in another regiment.’

  A scimitar swept inches in front of Nicholas’s stomach. He sucked in, raised his arms, for all the world like a Spanish matador, and then drove the point of his sword in a thrust straight enough to please a French fencing master. He impaled the fellow’s left shoulder, pulled swiftly back. The fellow, burly with a hennaed beard, came at him again, not even feeling for the wound. Then a crossbow sang and the bolt went into his stomach below his belt, and he doubled up and knelt. Nicholas finished him with a second straight thrust.

  He glanced back.

  Crossbowmen were swarming up the broken walls of the bastion behind like Barbary apes, some with their bows clutched under their arms as they climbed. They crouched where they could, trying not to slip and fall, and loosed off steel bolts into the oncoming Janizaries as fast as possible. Even so awkwardly positioned, cranking back the powerful crossbow arm while struggling for balance, they could achieve a much faster rate of fire than any musketeer could manage.

  Baglione’s order. Good thinking.

  Baglione himself, meanwhile, had taken thirty hand-picked men and come out of a small sally port on the west wall to savage the flank of the Janizary attack before they even knew what hit them.

  ‘Imagine you are cavalry!’ he shouted. ‘Hit them and run back! Do not get caught up!’

  They followed orders with perfect discipline, emerging from the sally port at a sprint, racing round to attack the startled Janizary flank, loosing arquebuses, pistols and crossbows into them, killing or downing as many as twenty of the enemy in an instant, and then sprinting back again through the sally port and heaving it shut, barred and bulked before the Janizary captain even knew what had happened.

  The assault was weakening.

  Smith and Stanley pressed on, hacking and swiping, closely followed by the rest of Baglione’s elite company, and more Venetian pikemen. They emerged on to the open plain before the front line of Janizary musketeers, still reloading, eyes flaring wide.

  The damned Christians! It was a counter-attack, a sortie. In broad daylight! And so hugely outnumbered. But the Janizaries had shamefully lost their battle order for a moment. They were unprepared.

  An instant later they were reduced to using their unloaded muskets as clubs to fend off a furious frontal assault of flailing swords and pikes. Out on the Janizary right a pack of crossbowmen in studded black leather jerkins had run at the crouch, knelt and were firing into their other flank. Devils and djinns, where were the Sipahis when you needed them?

  Here they came. Red plumes and lances, glinting helmets, the thunder of galloping hooves in the dust, thirsting for the shame to be avenged.

  They were expected.

  ‘Fall back!’ cried Baglione. ‘At the double. Crossbowmen, one more volley at their horses and then the sally port!’

  Then they were clawing their way back over the rubble ramp and falling down within the shadow of the broken bastion, utterly exhausted. Behind them they heard the stricken whinnies of horses as crossbow bolts thumped into rumps and flanks, and red-plumed Sipahis tumbled and rolled with their wounded mounts.

  Fifty fresh men stepped between the defenders up the ramp, arquebuses already smouldering. Another fine order of Baglione’s. They shouldered arms and waited, the matchcords sending a thin drift of smoke into their eyes. And then the Janizaries were reforming and coming back, a thousand strong, with two entire companies of light archers to give extra fire. The arquebuses roared out.

  Some damage. Some sop to morale. But never enough.

  The defenders had also lost men, with far fewer to lose. They were cut and bruised and weary, eyes blinded with sweat, sword-arms shaking and burning. And there were no reserves to take their place.

  Against the length of the west wall, and especially Martinengo’s twin bastion on the north-west corner, the monstrous Ottoman guns kept up a constant battering.

  Something clanged on Nicholas’s helmet. A musket ball? What did it feel like to be shot in the head? A slow, oozy blurring? But no, it was just a small fragment of stone falling from above. He looked up. That huge half-broken arch overhead, suspended by nothing but habit.

  ‘Here, boy!’ Baglione was beside him, plucking a grenade from his belt. ‘You’re still young enough to climb trees. Get up there. And for God’s sake remember to shout a signal when you fire it up!’

  Nicholas stared at him bewildered, clutching the pottery grenade to his chest, the roar of the Janizaries coming ever closer. They were no more than two hundred yards off now, coming at the trot.

  Down among the wounded, a man screamed a high, crazed scream and then was suddenly silenced.

  His head spun.

  ‘There, boy, there!’ shouted Baglione, thumping him hard on the back. ‘Climb! Lodge it there, look, where the plaster is streaming from that crack!’

  Then he understood.

  Baglione thrust a squat wheel-lock pistol into his belt.

  He took a deep breath and closed off his senses to the world around him and forgot any fear. All men must die. Perhaps it will be now. But Christ, let me die and not be maimed. Then he froze out even that thought. There was just him and this arching wall.

  He kicked off his boots and climbed barefoot. He caught a stream of plaster and rubbed it in his hands for more grip. He moved slowly and steadily upwards, never looking down. But from below he heard the first ring of steel on steel as it began again. Shut it out. Nothing but him and the wall.

  Now he came to a jutting pillar top and for a moment had to reach up and hang suspended by his fingers alone. Something smacked into the wall beside him, a puff of dust. Musket ball or crossbow bolt? Ignore it. He swung a foot up and pulled himself over the lip of the cornice. There was no decent handhold here, the arch above was smooth stone, but there was a vertical crevice where he could jam his hand and then cramp it into a fist. It would have to be enough.

  His foot slipped, he cramped his fist harder and his arm was wrenched so painfully he cried out. He scrabbled with his bare right foot and found a tiny hold with his curled toes. His foot began to burn and ache im
mediately as it took almost all his body weight. Then he pulled the grenade from his belt and forced it into the crack. Plaster coursed down. Beyond him stretched the huge arch that had formed the vault of the bastion. Impossible that it still hung there in empty space. But it seemed miraculously sturdy still. This mere pot-bomb would do nothing. Yet he must try.

  He pulled the squat pistol from his belt and reached after the lodged grenade. His other arm burned as if aflame with Greek fire to the bone. The matchcord was well soaked in volatile oil. All he needed was a spark and the fuse would start to fizz. A fuse less than an inch long. Only a few seconds of burn time.

  He pulled the trigger and the little wheel spun. Nothing. He fired again. His arm trembled, hot to the core; his foot was about to go and he would fall. He wondered if he should let himself surrender to it. He would land in a mess of men and steel blades. O Christ let me not be maimed.

  He could not fire the pistol again, he hadn’t the strength. He was going. This one, he prayed. He demanded of God. This one.

  The wheel whirred and sparks flew off in a bright little roundel like a tiny Catherine wheel. The oil-sodden fuse began to smoulder and then smoked. Very fast indeed.

  He dropped the pistol down his shirt front. Pulled himself painfully upright with both arms and shouted down below, ‘She’s going!’

  No one heard.

  The fuse was half burned already. Not just smouldering but burning, a spitting white flare.

  ‘She’s going!’

  Then Stanley’s broad, ruddy face looking up, an arm signal, and suddenly the defenders dropped back. The Janizaries roared and pushed forward.

  He must climb down. But he could not. He was trapped.

  Deaf, blind, crippled, buried alive.

  His foot slipped and he hung by his hands alone. He would die here. He could not move any further. His heart burned, his tongue stuck to his mouth, every muscle, every tendon, burned with a red fire.

  He buried his head between his arms, scrabbled with his feet. Nothing. Not a hold. He could smell the burning matchcord, the oily smoke mocked him. His fingers were slipping from the stone ledge. He tried to cover his ears with his upper arms even as he hung there.

  And then the grenade went off.

  16

  Like any great building, like a great beast brought down by a hunter’s spear, the arch seemed to fall slowly, hesitantly. It broke away from the wall where the grenade had blown and gave a half-turn in the air as it came down, blocks the size of boulders. And then the Janizary front line was crushed and buried, and the rest fell back aghast.

  His eyelids fluttered.

  Stanley was below, his arms outstretched. ‘Fall, boy! Let gol!’

  Something was dripping from his right leg. Coursing down. His foot had gone.

  He closed his fluttering eyelids and fell.

  ‘To the hospital with him!’

  The lower slopes of the ramp were covered with the slain, Christian and Muslim commingled. Cloven helmets, broken spears, dead men, white silk robes wet and stained red. An arquebus that had exploded on firing, its muzzle a shredded steel flower.

  ‘Back off the ramp!’ cried Baglione, perspiring, pale. ‘Sandbags coming up. Time to get building.’

  Bragadino meanwhile ordered every spare gun and arquebus on to the walls beside Martinengo to give covering fire while they worked. The more Janizaries Lala Mustafa sent in at this point, the more would be killed.

  ‘We need to fill this bastion up and pack it tight,’ said Baglione. He looked uncharacteristically anxious.

  ‘Aye,’ said Stanley. ‘They’re coming round.’

  It was true. Well out of range, the Turks were bringing a whole column of guns on their carriages round to the south. Within hours they would be freshly earthed up and ready to fire. Just as night fell.

  ‘We can take it,’ said Baglione. ‘You know from Malta – you are of the Order of St John, are you not?’

  ‘Knight Grand Cross Edward Stanley.’

  Baglione nodded. ‘Happy you are here. You know from Malta, nothing stops a cannonball like a few yards of earth.’

  But Smith was glaring around, up, down, eyeing every man that walked wearily past him with ferocious suspicion.

  Stanley murmured, ‘Less obvious, please, Brother.’

  Smith kept his voice lowered, with great effort. ‘I am thinking, there is no way a few volleys of cannon, not even those two-hundred-pounder basilisks of the Turks, could have brought down these walls so easily.’

  Stanley’s expression was grim. ‘But they could not have mined this far either. Not so soon.’

  ‘Yet there were mines under this tower.’ Smith’s expression was as dark as a storm at sea. ‘We have traitors among us.’

  Baglione gasped. Stanley looked at him; the man was paler than ever, his arms clutched tight over his belly. Then he realised. It was not fear. It was agony. Baglione was hit.

  ‘Sir, you must retire.’

  ‘I cannot. No one else . . .’

  Then he fell against him. Blood leaked from beneath his breastplate.

  Stanley held him with his strong right arm. ‘Stretcher!’

  ‘Remember it was just on noon that the Turkish guns opened up!’ said Smith as he and Stanley ran. ‘When our own church bells rang. It was co-ordinated. Someone lit a fuse underground, and the whole thing blew.’

  Shouted messages were passing along the wide wall above.

  ‘Tell us the news!’ shouted Smith.

  A pikeman looked down. ‘Fort Andruzzi bastion! The Turks are bringing guns round north as well!’

  ‘Tell the Governor to find us there! Urgent!’

  They ran faster.

  Malta was a rock, but Famagusta was built on sand. It took little to tunnel beneath.

  They came to the north-west corner of the city and a familiar figure emerged from a small house near by. Abdul of Tripoli.

  Smith seized him by the collar of his robe. ‘Talk, Moor. This is where you are living?’

  Abdul put his finger to his lips and said very quietly, glancing back over his shoulder, ‘There are buckets inside.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘More buckets than you would expect in an ordinary household. And a pile of earth in the fireplace, which seems curious, does—’

  Smith tossed Abdul aside like a discarded cloak and hurtled inside. Stanley steadied him and kept his hand heavy on his shoulder.

  ‘You still think I betray you, Christian? After all we have been through.’

  ‘I advise you to be silent a while.’

  The Moor stood placidly with his hands folded before him.

  ‘Show me your hands.’

  Abdul did so.

  Not a spot of earth on them, fingernails as clean as a queen’s.

  ‘What were you doing in this house?’

  ‘I thought you told me to be silent.’

  Stanley gave him a gentle shake, which made Abdul’s head loll like a puppet’s. ‘I am kinder than my Brother John,’ he said, ‘but not that kind.’

  ‘Very well, very well. I keep my ear to the ground. I observe. I trade in fine garments, in jewels, in muskets, but most precious of all, information. The moment that south-west bastion went down, I started looking about me. It just took you a little longer to work it out.’ He shrugged. ‘Had I been Governor Bragadino, I would have ordered every house within fifty yards of the walls to be razed to the ground before the siege even started.’

  Stanley felt his jaw tighten. The Moor was right, damn him.

  In a city as mixed and polyglot as Famagusta, there were always traitors.

  Smith hauled two men out howling, apparently by the hair, and dropped them like sacks in the dust. From their bruised and bloody faces, it looked as if he had banged their heads together like bowling balls quite a bit already.

  ‘One Bohemian, one of the Kingdom of Serbia, I think. Look at their fingernails.’

  Stanley trod on their hands. ‘How much are they paying you?’r />
  One howled. The other jabbered.

  ‘In Italian, or some cultivated tongue at least.’

  One said, ‘Our freedom only! No gold, no silver, just our lives at the end of it.’

  ‘Fools as well as traitors,’ said Smith. ‘You really think Lala Mustafa would trouble to find you and save you if this city falls?’

  The man sobbed. Smith drew his sword and touched the edge to his neck.

  Bragadino came cantering down the street on horseback with two lancers.

  ‘Is there any more to learn? You two vermin, are there any more saboteurs among us?’

  The man wept and shook his head. ‘I do not know.’

  ‘Understand this,’ said Bragadino. ‘You are to die before nightfall. Think carefully and tell me all you know. Soon you will be before the Throne of Judgement.’

  He controlled his sobbing and said softly, ‘There are no others I know of, I swear it.’

  ‘You mined the Martinengo bastion? Just the two of you?’

  ‘Impossible,’ said Smith.

  ‘We stored powder in the crypt of the church of St John Chrysostomos. It was not so far to dig, and there was an ancient culvert too. It was not the best mining, but with the cannon fire as well it was enough.’

  ‘You have been the death of many good Christians,’ said Bragadino. ‘You should fear what is to come.’

  ‘I fear it,’ the man said, trembling. ‘Sweet Jesus, I do fear it.’

  ‘They have no more to tell,’ said Bragadino. ‘Imminent death often makes a man truthful.’

  Smith and Stanley nodded their agreement.

  Bragadino relieved the knights themselves of the squalid task, and ordered his men to dismount and draw their swords.

  The traitors’ heads were struck off in the street before a watching crowd, and their bodies thrown over the walls.

  Bragadino looked grave. ‘It was my error,’ he said, ‘a gross error.’

  ‘May we ask why the houses were not razed before?’

  ‘To appease the damned merchants. They demanded not a building should be touched. Now they are overruled.’