A Place Called Armageddon (30 page)

A chance, then. Bending, he placed his foot in the stirrup and pulled the string smoothly up till it caught. Lifting it, he placed the bolt, then pushed the stock into his shoulder, leaned a forearm onto the rail, sighted. Then, as he breathed out, just as he squeezed up the trigger, a jolt ran through the ship, as wood smashed into wood.

When he looked, Baltaoglu was still standing, still raging, unharmed. He was directing his own trireme into the side of the wider, flatter Greek transport.

‘Boarders!’ yelled Bastoni, and Gregoras turned from what was further away to what was close – the bireme alongside, the men upon it whirling ropes and flinging them up, their heavy hooked ends latching onto the carrack’s sides, binding themselves to the larger vessel. He heard the same thud upon the other side, saw ropes and hooks flying up there too. One landed right beside him. He saw the rope tauten as weight was put upon it. Carefully setting his crossbow aside, he untied his buckler from its straps, slipped his fingers into its grip, then drew his falchion from its sheath.

Arrows were flying over the ship’s side, steeply angled. He leaned away from them as he would a spray of water. A hand appeared, clasped wood. Gregoras had time to notice thick scarlet hair on every knuckle before he cut it off.

A jet of blood, a scream of agony, the voice trailing away as the man fell, more cries below from those he fell onto. As three more hooks caught, bit, Gregoras glanced around. Men were standing at every part of the rail, swords, axes, daggers raised, waiting like hunters before a rabbit hole. If one fell back, struck by a projectile from below, another would immediately step up to take his place.

Despite the mass of noise – the drums, the trumpets, death cries, war cries – a particularly piercing shriek turned him. Above him, a Genoan had staggered back, dropping his axe, clutching feathers at his neck. Blood squeezed between his fingers, he fell – and at the hooks, hands appeared. The man next to him did not notice them, focused on his own stretch of rail. There was a gap, and suddenly a turbaned head was in it, the Turk vaulting the wood, landing with scimitar curved back.

‘Captain!’ Gregoras shouted, and Bastoni turned, dodging only just in time the swinging blade. He met its next stroke with his own and the two men spun away – from two more Turks hoisting themselves onto the ship.

A hand appeared on a rope beside Gregoras. Pausing only to slice off two fingers, and jerk his falchion from the wood it bit into beyond them, he charged. The slight slope to the aft deck made it feel like he was running uphill. The first Turk who was over snarled and slashed at him with his sword. Gregoras cut down, swivelling in his run, just enough to guide the razor tip past his breastplate on the falchion’s edge. Bringing the buckler hard round, he smashed the small shield into the man’s face.

Somehow the Turk did not fall. Blood streaming, eyes filled with water, he still saw enough to slash at Gregoras’s hip. Throwing himself forward saved a deep wound, but he felt a burning there, where his armour did not cover. Spinning, he brought the buckler up and round, driving the shield’s edge into the man’s already bloodied face. This time he went down, stayed down.

But the second man over had his sword swirling before him, fending Gregoras away, the longer curved weapon keeping him at a distance. A glimpse told Gregoras that the ropes were taut. More men would soon be there. ‘For the Cross,’ he cried. He had to get close, within a falchion’s shorter reach, so he brought his buckler high and hard across to knock aside the scimitar. At the same time he cut low for the man’s legs, knowing it was a feint, that he was a hand’s span short of his enemy’s shin. But the man did not know, jumped back, half falling over the first man, still groping on the floor for his spear. For a second the scimitar was tangled in his stumble and Gregoras, using the moment, rose and stepped in, opening the Turk’s chest with a tight swipe. The man screamed, stumbled back, and Gregoras closed, slamming the buckler into the man’s chest, knocking him up and over the rail. The other had found his spear, was rising, shouting a curse between broken teeth. But he was half turned to Gregoras and the Greek placed a leg behind the man’s front leg, thrust his sword arm around the man’s neck. Grabbing that wrist with his other hand, he pushed his hip hard against the Turk’s, bent, lifted and flung him after his comrade.

Two ropes before him creaked with weight. Dropping his falchion, he hoisted the axe the sailor had dropped, swung, chopped, swung, chopped again. Two ropes fell, to the sound of crashing and screams from below.

‘Well.’

Gregoras turned, his breath coming in heaves. The captain was standing behind him, a dead Turk at his feet. Wiping his sword blade upon his cloak, he continued, with a smile, ‘Shall I leave you command of my aft deck, Greek? You seem to have it settled.’

‘I would … be obliged … if you would not.’

‘Nay, then.’ Bastoni turned, bellowed above the tumult, called more men.

As five ran up, Gregoras looked the length of the ship. A very few Turks had made it to the deck and now were lying still upon it. On each side, more attempted to climb and were thrown back. On they came, driven by drums and bugles, shouting their cries of Mehmet and the Prophet. Gregoras had never doubted the courage of his enemy. That and the skills of their leaders had led them to conquest far and wide. This assault seemed a hopeless task – yet there they were at the railings of their ships, crying out for the chance to climb and dare death. And Gregoras saw something else below, and at the sides of the carracks on either side – scores of Turkish vessels, riding the swell, waiting for their turn. Thousands of fanatics waiting to kill and die for Allah.

Suddenly he wondered who it was that faced the hopeless task.

Yet if the Muslim had courage, so did the Christian. At every rail, the men of Genoa and Constantinople stood and fought. As he would, as he did, turning to the sound of metal on wood and another hook biting deep.

On they came and on, and the deck was soon sticky with blood and studded with severed limbs. Gregoras’s heavy-bladed short sword became more like a club, lifted and swung. He knew no reckoning of time except in the angle the sun made upon reddened wood. It passed.

And then, through the mist of effort and killing, came the captain’s cry, ‘The Greek founders!’ and Gregoras raised his head to stare and see that the lower-sided grain barge, a mere fifty paces away and flying the eagle standard of Constantinople, was indeed so swamped with enemy ships, she looked as though they would pull her into the deep by sheer weight. He saw his city thus, like a stag with a dozen hounds at its throat. And the sight drove all tiredness from his mind.

‘Can we aid her, Captain?’

Bastoni raised his visor, wiped sweat and sprayed blood from his eyes, and looked about. ‘Aye,’ he said swiftly, ‘for each of is like a separate city under siege. Why should we not fight as one?’

A galley had just swept away from his right side, another waiting for it to clear before entering the fray with fresh men. ‘Here, to me,’ he called to Gregoras, dropping his sword as he did. The Greek did the same and joined the captain at his wheel. ‘There’s not much of a current,’ Bastoni said. ‘Pray Jesus it is enough.’

Both men heaved. The wheel turned … and so, almost imperceptibly at first, did the ship. They heard Turkish cries in the galley below, the crunch of snapping oars. And then a shudder ran through the ship as its sides smashed into the solid frame of the imperial barge. ‘Make her fast!’ yelled the captain, leaning over the rail. The movement had shaken off the galleys that had clung before. For a moment, no ropes twisted with climbing men. Gregoras joined Bastoni at the rail and looked down.

The Greek ship was wider, sat lower in the water, her huge holds filled with life-giving grain. Men were already grabbing ropes that the Genoans slung, anchoring one ship to the other. ‘See!’ Bastoni grabbed Gregoras’s arm and pointed beyond the vessel. ‘They join us.’

Gregoras looked. On the barge’s far side, the captains of the other two carracks had seen Bastoni’s manoeuvre and aped it. Even now their ships were drifting in, to join upon the other side.

He looked down again. He knew that their own vessel bore all the scars of the fight. But it looked like the barge’s wide deck had suffered even more. Men lay around it, some dead, some holding bleeding limbs. Such men as wore metal had not the full dark plate armour of most of the Genoans but the mail and steel turbans more akin to their Turkish foes. And they had another mark that distinguished them – unlike the carefully trimmed beards of the Italians, those of the Greeks spread over their breastplates.

Gregoras’s hand rose to his own neat beard. He had fought alongside Genoans for so long that he looked like them. He could have been one of Giustiniani’s company still, fighting whom he was told to fight, just another paid killer. But looking down upon his countrymen now, he remembered a little of what he’d felt when he’d first gone to war, when he’d fought for things other than gold: for country, family, emperor. For God. Fate had not conspired so determinedly to send him back to Constantinople merely to collect yet another war-wage.

Turning, he snatched up his crossbow and slung it over his shoulder, sheathed his falchion, thrust the buckler’s straps halfway up his arm. ‘Captain,’ he called as he armed, ‘I go to join my countrymen.’

Bastoni raised his sword hilt to his face in a swift salute. ‘Travel with Jesus, Greek,’ he replied, glancing to the barge’s deck. ‘You’ll need his care, down there. Tell the captain, Flatenelas, to hold firm. Genoa will not desert him.’

‘Flatenelas?’ Gregoras smiled. ‘I know that old bear.’ He jumped up onto the rail. The Turks had drawn off a little as the Christian ships joined together, so for a moment the arrows flew less thickly. ‘I will give him your message. Farewell!’

The ships were locked together and the imperial barge’s stays were a leap away. Gregoras jumped, landed in the linked ropes. Climbing up them led him to a spar, and along that a line trailed down past the furled sails. Gripping his legs around it, he slid down, slowly enough to avoid the burn. When he was two men’s height above the barge’s raised poop deck, he dropped into the middle of the group of men who stood upon it.

‘Holy Mother!’ ‘Shrivel the Pope!’ ‘St Peter beat me bloody!’ were just some of the cries his sudden appearance provoked. Weapons were levelled – and Gregoras lifted his visor and raised empty hands. ‘May a countryman offer his services for the fight?’ he said, in Greek.

‘Have you dropped from our city’s walls, boy, or from heaven?’ The man who growled the question was the imperial commander, Flatenelas. Gregoras’s father and he had been in business together, shipping silks.

‘Neither, Uncle. Though I seem to have stepped into hell.’

The men shifted, staring at the newcomer. Flatenelas tried to peer through the mask. ‘Do I know you?’

‘You did.’ He paused before he replied. ‘For I am Gregoras Lascaris.’

The older man whitened. ‘Gregor … but you are dead!’

‘Not yet.’ He tipped his head towards a sudden blast of trumpets, the increased tempo from the
kos
drums. ‘But I may be soon enough. Can I die by your side, Uncle?’

The captain’s mouth opened and closed, no words coming. His gaze shifted to the prow of his barge, the enemy ships approaching head on. One of his lieutenants leaned in. ‘The traitor, master?’

Flatenelas looked back. ‘That story stank worse than his father’s feet – and they were a legend.’ He smiled, looked up at Gregoras’s shoulder, pointed at the crossbow. ‘If you are the man behind the mask, then why do you carry that skilless toy? You!’ He yelled at the man who’d just spoken. ‘Give him your bow. For if he is indeed Gregoras Lascaris, then he is second only to his tutor Theodore of Karystenos in his skill. And we can use that now.’

A shudder ran through the ship as something smashed into it. From the shouting, and where the axes and swords were rising and falling, the Turk had rammed them head on. ‘Follow me!’ Flatenelas cried, lifting his sword.

His officers descended the stair after him, running the length of the main deck to join the crowd at the ship’s prow. The last of them thrust a bow and quiver at Gregoras, muttering something he did not catch, before following.

He took a step in pursuit … and stopped, stunned by what he held, realising now what the man had said. For he had handed over a treasure, and he would want it back and in one piece.

A bow. Yet to call it a bow was akin to calling the Hagia Sophia a church. And to Gregoras, heedless of war cry, death cry, flying barbs and flame, it was as holy. With reverent eyes, he traced the whorl in the polished maple from tip to tip, gazed on the tendons of buffalo sinew that had been gently simmered for weeks to give it strength and suppleness. He whistled – one as fine as this took over a year to make, and would last two hundred years! The wood seasoned, fed daily with oil of linseed, the horn for the grip boiled till pliable, then moulded, the horsehair string saturated in precise proportions of resin, beeswax and fish glue that turned it into resilient silk.

Gregoras closed his eyes, then, folding his fingers one by one upon the grip, sighed. He had wielded one near as good as this from youth, the only way to learn such a weapon, for the strongest men could lack the specific muscles required, formed over years of hard training. But when he’d been maimed and exiled, he’d given up his name and everything that reminded him of his loss – including the weapon he loved. He knew he was proficient with the crossbow, the champion of his company. But he’d always known that it was simply a tool of death. This bow, all it meant, was like a limb he’d lost, restored. He felt … whole, in a way he had not for years.

Reaching into the quiver, he found what else was essential – the bow ring. It fitted loose upon his finger, measured in sealing wax and crafted as it was for another man; but it would do for now. Turks were calling him. Yet though he notched a bone-tipped arrow, he did not seek an immediate target, not yet. Not because the string was a touch slacker than he would have liked – he was slacker too for the years of neglect. He did not shoot because he knew that when he did, the life he’d lately lived was finally, and completely, over. He would be mercenary no more, exile no more, but again Gregoras Lascaris, archer of the Imperial Guard, returned to fight for his name and for his city.