Talon glanced forward and saw that Reza had already taken his post with Rostam in the bows next to the Scorpions, and the oilcloth covers had been dragged off the deadly machines. The enormous, oversized bows squatted on either side of the bowsprit. While these were Scorpions, huge bows, which were not uncommon in this day and age, the ones mounted on Talon’s ships had an added sting, a tube of Chinese powder with a fuse which could be ignited just before the spear was launched. The spear would strike the side of an enemy ship and then the tube would explode, causing much damage and even fires on the target vessel. He turned and stared back at Henry’s ship. It, too, carried Scorpions, and the men who manned them were competent, although he would not put them in the same class as Reza. They could inflict much damage at close range, should the need arise.
He felt a nudge at his elbow and turned to find Junayd standing nearby, holding his helmet and a small shield. “You should prepare, Lord,” he said, holding them out respectfully. Dar’an arrived to thrust his bow into his hand. “I have arrows here, Lord,” he told Talon.
“Thank you, Junayd. I shall be fine, Dar’an. Leave the arrows with Junayd. Go forward and support Reza and Rostam. I don’t want any accidents.” Dar’an, he knew, could handle the Chinese powder safely and effectively better than anyone including Reza.
Dar’an grinned and disappeared off the command deck. Yosef stayed with Talon and Junayd. Both men held their bows ready. Even Guy had been persuaded to don a breast plate, a helmet, and to carry a light shield. Larger shields had been hooked to the side of the ship near to the steersmen to offer nominal protection against arrows, which would surely fly if there was danger ahead.
It seemed there would be, as keen eyes up near the top of the mainmast called back that the visitors were definitely not Latin and very likely to be Arabs, which could only spell trouble. Talon strode forward to join Reza, who was standing with Rostam on the head-rail, holding onto a stay while he tried to assess the approaching ships. Spray from the bow wave occasionally flew over the rail, wetting them.
“Make sure that the Scorpions are protected from the spray and the slow match is kept alive.” Reza called back to the seamen crouched over the deadly weapons. “I do not want any hitches when it is time.”
“What do you want to do, Talon?” Reza inquired. “They don’t look friendly to me.”
Talon jumped up on the rail the better to see. He could now make out figures on the foredeck of the leading vessel, which had turned towards their own ships. They were turbaned, and there were many of them. He could just make out the glint of blades, and that decided him.”
“They are not friendly, and we cannot let them get past us, Brother,” he growled. It was the second time that Arab prates had prowled past his port in the last few months. This time they appeared to mean business.
“We will let them come close, and then we will loose our Scorpions,” he said. “I will go back to Guy and leave it to you to prepare the weapons, Brother. Look after the boy.” He slapped Rostam on the shoulder, jumped down and strode back along the deck to where Guy was standing waiting for his orders.
“Prepare for a fight, Guy. They are pirates,” he told his captain briefly. “We cannot allow any of them to gain entry to the port.”
“You heard the Lord Talon!” Guy bellowed to the eager men on deck, who had hauled in their oars and were now arming themselves with swords and spears, and donning chain hauberks. Talon had cleaned out the armories in Paphos to provide his men with suitable armor. They roared back and waved their weapons in the air.
Bowmen arranged themselves along the sides and stood on the higher command deck near Yosef. Dar’an, the man who knew all about throwing explosive devices, returned from the bows and, along with two assistants, climbed into the small platform near the top of the mainmast. They carried some long, narrow, wooden devices which they treated with great care.
“Get the men out of sight. Just leave the sailors in view. Let’s bring them in close enough for Reza,” Talon said. Guy bellowed an order and the armed men, including the archers, crouched down under the cover of the high sides of the ship.
Talon stared back at Sir Matthew’s ship following them. It was not a lean galley like his but a rounder, larger ship of the kind the Latins built, clumsy in any wind other than one directly behind. It would have been almost defenseless against the pirates had they encountered it alone. Now, however, it was firmly established between Guy’s ship and Henry’s. Talon mentally shrugged. They were as prepared as they would ever be, and it now depended upon the intentions of the Arabs and what kind of weapons they possessed.
The Arab ships were lean, fast vessels with two masts carrying huge lateen sails, making them highly maneuverable and able to sail very close to the wind. Now that they were closer he could see men crowding the sides of the lead ship. He realized he would have to strike first or be overwhelmed.
Talon thought about the situation. It would not serve to just cripple one and drive the others off. They might come back while he was in Tyre.
“I want to try to destroy all three, Guy,” he said to his captain, who nodded.
“I agree, Lord,” the big man rumbled. “They are a menace now and in the future.”
“Let’s see what our Scorpions can do. We’ve practiced often enough,” Talon said to Junayd and Yosef.
“Hold your course, Guy. That will bring them to us, but be prepared for any one of them that decides to go for the lamb in our midst.”
Talon realized that his own ships were not quite as fast as those of the pirates, which cut through the water like deadly sharks about to strike at a slower prey. No galleys these; they reminded him of the long, sleek boats that he had seen in Oman and the Red Sea. So now the Arabs of Syria or Egypt were becoming good at building ships of the same design, he surmised. He, however, had range and surprise on his side, which he fervently hoped would be enough.
He began to feel the old familiar rush of excitement and a tightening in the pit of his stomach that came with the beginning of a fight. Taking a couple of deep breaths he felt his heart settle. His responsibility was to protect the ships in his care, he reminded himself, and to drive the enemy away, killing them if possible.
Guy held their vessel on an intercept course, and the Arabs appeared to be happy to oblige. Their lead ship was now only five hundred paces away with the men crowding its decks waving their weapons threateningly in the air. As the ships approached one another, the shouts and insults coming from the Arab ship nearest them became clearer as they promised all manner of horrible things they intended to do once they had taken the ship.
Talon took an arrow and placed it on the string of his bow. His men who had bows followed his lead, and then they waited. The distance shrank to two hundred paces, and now they could distinguish brightly dressed and armed men on the command deck. Several wore polished armor and gold pointed helmets with plumes attached. Talon decided that these men would be his targets, and murmured to Junayd and Yosef that they too should take them down if they could.
Still they waited, and the tension grew as the distance went down very rapidly from two hundred to sixty yards. Arrows began to fly. One whispered past Talon’s head, while several embedded themselves with heavy thuds in the rails and one of the shields protecting the steersmen. Just as Talon was beginning to wonder why Reza had not loosed the Scorpion, he saw a small plume of smoke in the bows, followed by a loud twang, and the huge arrow shot away from his ship. The speed of the rod was phenomenal. Leaving a thin trail of dark smoke behind it, the arrow made a shallow arc across the narrowing gap between the ships and hammered into the side of the enemy ship, burying itself with a loud thud deep into the wood below the railing in its very middle. Moments later there was a loud explosion, the blast of which shook their own ship. The side of the Arab ship was blasted into a welter of splinters and shrouded in a small cloud of dirty yellow smoke. Reza had aimed at the area where most of the men had been standing, and the result was devastatin
g.
“Again, again!” Talon muttered. “We need to sink them! Arrows!” he called out, and drew his own bow, which creaked slightly under the strain. Resting the fingers holding the string just below the corner of his cheekbone and right ear, he took careful aim at one of the more decorative men on the enemy command deck, who appeared disoriented by the explosion.
His arrow flew across the water and struck his target just below the man’s helmet. It went deep and knocked the pirate onto his back. He struggled feebly while his men crouched over him ineffectively, then the body convulsed and was still. Other men on that deck fell to the arrows of Yosef and Junayd, while a hail of arrows fell onto the survivors of the first explosion. Panicked men fled from their steering deck, now a target for all the archers on Talon’s ship.
During this time Reza had prepared another of his devilish devices. He looked back at Talon and waved. Talon waved back, gesturing at him to hurry. He had seen the second ship sailing rapidly past the first, making for Sir Matthew’s vessel. If they attacked and boarded, it could be all over for Matthew and his men. They would be slaughtered.
“Shoot!” Talon called.
Reza crouched over his Scorpion, made a small adjustment, then waved Rostam and the other men back. Another twang of the great string, the Scorpion snapped and shuddered, and its spear-like arrow, a smoking wrapped bundle secured to its shaft, sped the short distance to the pirate ship. There was pandemonium on the vessel, so no one was prepared for the second arrow, which struck the ship just above the water line towards the stern.
The second explosion rocked the entire vessel, which seemed to shiver from one end to the other. When the yellow smoke cleared, the men on Talon’s ship could see a black and splintered hole, as wide as a man’s outstretched arms, where the arrow had struck. The crew of Guy’s ship cheered wildly. Salt water was already pouring into the crippled vessel. A fire had started on the main deck where the first arrow had struck, which the pirates were desperately trying to put out, but Talon and his archers were shooting them down every time they came close to the fire. The flames reached the pitch-covered rigging, after which there was no stopping it. Fire raced up the tar-covered stays and caught the mainsail, which blossomed into a beacon of flame, and then the other sail also caught fire. The ship transformed into an inferno.
Pirates began to leap overboard. Many were dragged down by their heavy armor. Those who could swim called out for help, but Talon’s men watched them in stony silence.
“Do we pick them up, Lord?” Guy asked.
Talon shook his head. “No,” he growled. “They can swim to land, if they are able. We have another problem to deal with over there.” He pointed to the second of the Arab ships, which was closing with Matthew’s. “Turn us, and be quick about it, Guy,” he ordered. “We might already be too late.”
He could see Henry’s vessel turning towards the third pirate vessel. Something dark sped from the bows of Henry’s ship, and even at that distance he could hear the thud of the strike on the pirate vessel. It had been aimed high, however, and merely demolished part of the after deck. The subsequent explosion vented much of its force into the sky, but several small fires broke out on the deck. Talon was impressed by the speed at which the Arab ship spun about, put on all sail and fled the scene. They had witnessed the rapid destruction of their companion ship and clearly wanted no more of this kind of treatment. Henry tried to send another arrow after the fleeing ship, but it vanished into the choppy waves with a splash. The pirate ship raced away, putting as much distance between their ships as possible.
Disappointed, Talon turned his attention back to the nearer conflict. He was disturbed to see that the second Arab ship had closed the distance between itself and Sir Matthew’s. Arrows were flying, and they were merely a dozen or so paces away from boarding. The captain of that ship, undeterred by the destruction of its companion, was recklessly determined to take a prize, or at the very least avenge its lost companion by destroying Matthew’s ship.
“Guy, get us on Matthew’s port side. Hurry! This one is determined to seize his ship! We do not have time to go around. Do you see what I mean?” Talon called out to his captain.
“I do, Lord.” Guy shouted instructions, and his crew dropped their weapons and raced to their oars, pushing them out of the sides of the ship as fast as they could. In a flurry of foam the oars bit into the water the ship wheeled around, heeling over alarmingly, and then they were racing back to help Sir Matthew. Guy was already yelling at the men to trim the sails to catch every bit of wind. Out of the corner of his eye, Talon could see that Henry was making haste to close with the pirate vessel from the other side.
“How many did we lose?” he asked Junayd, as they sped towards the two ships, now about to become locked in mortal combat. “Only one, Lord. He stuck his silly head up and caught one in the eye. Some people never learn,” he added with a grimace.
“Hmm, not bad odds for an entire shipload of pirates. I wish Henry had managed to disable that other one.” Not only might the pirates return to harry his harbor, they might tell other Arab pirates what had befallen, warning them, which would cost his captains the element of surprise in future battles.
He and his men watched with growing impatience as the scene ahead of them unfolded. Reza and Rostam, both fully armed, had rushed to join Talon and Guy on the steering deck. They were still two hundred paces away when the pirate ship closed with an audible, splintering crash against Sir Matthew’s ship, and then pirates began to swarm aboard. Talon and his men could hear yells and screams as battle was joined. The struggling mob of fighting men swayed back and forth across the deck of the Latin ship.
Talon wondered at the boldness of the attack. Surely the pirate captain had seen what happened to the two other ships. The prudent thing to do would have been to make a swift departure and wait for another chance, but this man seemed to put recklessness ahead of caution.
Staring hard at the pandemonium reigning on the deck of the Latin ship, Talon could see that the boarders were not having it all their own way. Sir Matthew, with roars of encouragement to his own men, battered the shrieking boarders back with pike, spear and sword. Talon saw a shield wall forming, which the pirates were having trouble overcoming. It was a nearly impenetrable barrier of overlapping shields, behind which knights and attendants crouched and stabbed at their enemies. It formed the only coherent defense the ship appeared to offer, but it was enough to allow Talon’s ship to arrive just in time.
Talon and Reza were standing together, ready to jump onto the other ship, when Talon noticed Rostam nearby. The boy was clearly eager to come with them. “Stay here, Rostam!” Talon shouted at his son. “Junayd, make sure he doesn’t come with us!” He didn’t have time to see whether Junayd heard him because just then the ships ground together with a shattering crash, sandwiching Matthew’s ship between Talon’s and the pirate ship, and it was time to leap.
Both he and Reza landed on a deck full of yelling, cursing and screaming men trying to hack and stab each other to death. It was already slippery from blood, and men groaned and wept on the deck where they lay. The metallic stink of blood and the stench of opened guts and loosed bowels enveloped the boarders, making some gag.
Talon easily tapped a thrust spear blade aside and stabbed upwards. The spearman fell away with a cry, but another leapt forward with his sword high and shield held close. Without pausing, Talon swept his sword in a short arc and nearly severed the man’s bare leg. The pirate’s scream of agony was cut off as Reza stabbed him in the throat. That was when Talon became aware of a high-pitched yelling going on to his left. He looked in that direction and saw Rostam waving his sword at a big, hairy man with a huge axe in his hand, which he was brandishing in preparation to demolish the boy, who appeared to be quite unafraid.
Both Talon and Reza reacted. They came at the man from two directions, and with their speed and razor-sharp blades finished him off. As the huge man flopped to the deck, bleeding form several mortal
wounds, Talon shouted over the noise, “Stay close to your uncle!” Then he plowed on, with Yosef and Dar’an close by him, into the mass of shouting men. He brushed past Sir Matthew, who called out hoarsely, “Thank you, Lord,” before he, too, waded back into the mass of struggling men, cutting and hacking at anyone who got in his way.
Talon’s blood was racing and his eyes were everywhere as he parried and stabbed at opponents in front and to the sides, boring into their ranks, closely followed by the yelling men behind him. Talon forgot about everything but living and killing during these frantic moments, the all too familiar fire of battle driving him on. Reza led a charge of screaming men to crash into the flank of the gang of plunderers who had not realized their peril in time.
Rostam, realizing he could not keep up, hesitated, but Reza stepped in front of him with a shout, “Stay close to me, Rostam. Don’t get left behind!” Rostam searched for his father, but Talon was in the middle of a group of yelling men, clearing a path for himself with his flashing blade.
Just as he was about to take on a man with scimitar and shield, Reza slipped on the bloody deck. He went down on one knee and was almost on all fours. The pirate, seeing his opportunity, gave a yell of triumph and drew his weapon back to slash down onto Reza’s back. With a scream of his own, Rostam rushed in and drove his own sword into the exposed gap of the pirate’s neck. His sword went in deep, and the blow was fatal. The shocked man gaped at the boy; then, choking on his own blood, fell to his knees alongside Reza, who gave an exclamation of surprise as he leapt to his feet.
The pirate was a dead weight when he slumped to the deck, and Rostam, wide-eyed, had to wrestle his sword free from the corpse. Seeing the boy’s shock, Reza seized him by the shoulder and gripped him hard.
“Glad you don’t always obey your father, lad,” he shouted. “You saved my life! Come on, stay close.” He led the way for his yelling men. Their small charge at the flank of the mob broke the will of the pirates. Those who could fled back to their ship, and once aboard they tried to pole their boat away. Too late. Henry’s ship appeared on their seaward side, blocking off any escape. His ship thumped against their side, sending a shudder through both vessels, and then his howling and shrieking men were pouring over the other side of the pirate ship and the slaughter began. Swords flashed and spears stabbed as the roaring, shouting men took on the remaining pirates. Reza led a rush of eager men across the pirate ship to join Henry.
Storms of Retribution Page 6