Archers and Crusaders: Historical fiction: Novel of Medieval Warfare by Marines, Navy sailors, and Templar knights in the Middle Ages during England's ... (The English Archers Saga Book 6) (13 page)

       Finally the Venetians have enough and turn to break off contact – and this time we turn back to go after them.

       Jeffrey quickly spins our galley around using both its rudder and oars and then we row hard to get a little behind and slightly off to the port side of our now fleeing prey.  From this angle the arrows of our Marines can drop into the open area behind the Venetian’s mast and reach down to its rudder men and some of its rowers – and at the close range we’re at they mostly do.

       Within minutes the Venetian is virtually stopped with its deck and its upper tier of rowing benches clear of men.  The Venetian captain, however, is not a fool.  At some point he realizes our need to have a specific position if our Marines are to drop arrows into the open area next to his lower rowing benches where his rudder men stand.  He responds wisely – by having his rowers in his lower tier of oars periodically rowing on only one side so that his galley keeps turning in a tight circle to keep us from having clear shots. 

       It’s almost a game.  The Venetian captain is constantly using the oars in his lower tier to swing his galley around so as to deny our archers a shooting line into his rudder men and the open area on his lower deck where his survivors can hide – and we are constantly maneuvering around his galley so our archers can drop arrows on to them.

     Jeffrey finally brings us alongside the Venetian just before the sun starts to go down.  Marines on our deck and in the lookouts’ nest have already cleared the Venetian’s deck and the upper rowing benches on one side of everyone they can see before Jeffrey brings us in alongside the Venetian.

       There are no Venetians in sight as our grappling irons are thrown to grab its deck railing, lines, and anything else their hooks can catch.  With the sun about to start going down it’s now or never if we’re going to make the Venetians pay for the trouble they’ve caused us.

       The shuddering crash as the two hulls come together brings the surviving Venetians charging out to repel boarders from behind the nearside deck railing where they’ve been sheltering from our archers.  Other screaming and shouting Venetians come charging up out of the lower rowing deck – and they all run straight into an absolute storm of arrows delivered at close range by the Marine archers lining the side of our galley.

       For an instant Jeffrey and I and every archer on the deck are shooting arrows at close range as the Venetians launch their forlorn hope and go down.  The handful of survivors who answered their captain’s order to repel boarders quickly drop back down behind the deck railing to cower and try to stay out of sight.

       For a while the two galleys bob up and down together and there is no movement on the Venetian.  All we can see are bodies on the Venetians deck and neither galley dares send a man up its mast to see for fear he’ll be picked off by an archer.  Even so, we make no attempt to board.  We’ve won; there is no sense risking the loss of more men by starting a useless fight.

       Finally there is a loud hail in Italian… “Quarter” … “Quarter.”  …  “We surrender.”

       That’s when Jeffrey surprises me by saying something he might have picked up from one of Harold’s training sessions for those who are the sergeant captains of our galleys and cogs. 
If Harold didn’t say it, he should.

       “Hunters don’t do well when they become the hunted do they?  It’s something they don’t expect until it’s too late.”

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       A goodly number of the Venetian crew’s sailors and soldiers are dead and wounded.  So are some of their galley slaves.  They got hit by the arrows the Marines were dropping into the lower rowing benches in an effort to get the Venetian’s rudder men.

       “I know how you feel about the slaves, but what should we do with the Venetians,” Jeffey asks, “drop the bastards over the side?  Tried to kill us didn’t they?”

       My response is rather sharp and caused a look of concern to pass over Jeffrey face.

       “It isn’t how I feel about the slaves, Jeffrey.  It’s what William has ordered be done if any are taken - you’re to free them as soon as possible.  He really means it, Jeffrey; you’ll be lucky to lose only your stripes and command if ever you don’t.”

      
But I really am torn about the Venetians.  Maybe we should just throw them overboard the way we did with the five crews that tried to pirate us. They did, after all, try attack us.

      
Finally I decide.

       “Free some of the slaves and put the Venetians in their chains.  We’ll free the rest of the slaves when we have more men.  The Venetians can help row until we can ship them off to the Holy Land.” 
Or maybe we can exchange them for a ransom or some Englishmen if they’re holding any.  Hmm; that’s an idea I need to talk about with William.

      
“Come on Jeffrey, let’s go see if any of their slaves are English or French.”

       Darkness is falling as our two galleys begin their long voyage back to England.

                                         End of Book Six

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         Books One, Two, Three, Four, and Five of “The Archers” saga are also available in Kindle editions.   The parchments for Book Seven are being pieced together and translated.  It will be released sometime in the Autumn of 2015.  Readers may also enjoy the similarly action-packed novels of Martin Archer’s  acclaimed “The Soldier” saga which follows a young soldier who stays on active duty after a war and becomes a professional soldier and fights and serves everywhere  from Vietnam to the Middle east. 

       All of Martin Archer’s novels are available as Kindle eBooks and will sooner or later be available in print. (Search for Martin Archer on Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.com.au, and other Amazon websites serving other countries. )

                       
Other exciting eBooks by Martin Archer

“Soldiers and Marines”   (The story of a young frontline soldier’s years of fighting in Korea)

“Peace and Conflict” (An older and more mature Chris Roberts fights in Vietnam with the Legion and then with the allies.)

“War Breaks Out”   (Moscow orders and invasion of Germany and NATO fights back.)

“War in the East”   (The West gets sides with Moscow when China invades the Russian east to reclaim its lost territories.)

“The Islamic–Israeli War”  (A Coalition of Islamic countries launches a surprise attack on Israel that forever changes Israel and the Middle East.)

  
Sample Pages from Book One of the Archer Saga

                       “
THE ARCHER
”

                       Chapter One    

“THE ARCHER AND THE BISHOP”

      The weary men straggle out of the desert and into the port late in the morning.  There are eighteen of them, all English archers, and most of them have walked every night for the past three days.  The only exceptions are two wounded men on a makeshift litter being dragged behind a dusty camel and a brown robed priest riding on an exhausted horse and holding a sleeping young boy.  The boy is wrapped in a dirty priest’s robe to protect him against the chill of the spring day.

       The dirty and begrimed young man walking at the front of the column stops and waits until the priest reaches him. 

       “How’s George?”

        He gestures with a tired wave of his arm towards the sleeping child as he asks.

        “Your son is fine,” answers the priest as the horse stops. 

        The boy wakes up and twists around to get more comfortable in the Priest’s arms when the horse stops.  Then he sits up straight and looks around. 

       “Put me down Uncle Thomas, I want to walk with my father and the men for a while.  My arse is sore and I’m thirsty.”

       And with that he wriggles out of the priest’s arms and slides off the horse.  He is barefoot and wearing a rough brown shirt that hangs to his knees.   Edward the tailor made it for him before he’d been killed by the unlucky stone that had been catapulted over the wall by the Saracens and hit him in the head. 

       “Look Papa, what is that?” 

       The boy asks the question as he massages his rear with one hand and with the other points to the flat gray expanse of the Mediterranean that spreads out beyond stone houses and the ships in the harbor.

       “That’s the big water I told you about, the one that is so salty you can’t drink it.  And those things out there on top of the water are the big ships.  They’re called cogs and they carry people across the big water just like the boats on a river can carry people across the river.  The only difference is that those out there are much bigger.”

        The boy is not convinced as he stands there studying the scene in front of us.

       “They look little.”

       “They’ll look bigger when we get closer.”

       “Really?”

       The boy looks back intensely at the scene in front of him.  Then he shakes his head and looks back at his father questioningly.

       “Your Uncle Thomas is right, George.  All of us can fit on one of those cogs with room to spare.  The big ones can carry as many as a hundred men or even more.  That’s how your uncle Thomas and I and all the archers got here from England.  Almost a hundred of us came on each boat.  And that’s how we’ll go back – all together.”

      
Except we’ve got to get our pay so we can hire a boat and there will only be eighteen of us instead of the one hundred and ninety two that came out from England with King Richard seven years ago - and that’s if we can get the arrow out of Brian’s leg without it rotting and Athol the ox drover stops getting dizzy and falling down when he tries to walk.

       The city is so packed with Christians and Jews fleeing the oncoming Saracens that the city gates are closed and the master of the caravanserai adjacent to the city is only allowing his traditional merchant customers and rich refugees to enter.  Everyone else is camping and starving outside - thousands of them.  Even at a distance we can smell the people and their livestock and see the dust they are raising.

       Shouts and a great wail go up as we come into sight and the people see us walking in.  They know what our arrival means.  It means Lord Edmund’s castle and lands have been lost and the Saracens will be coming.  At best, these people will have to convert to Islam; and most likely they’ll all be put to the sword or taken as slaves.  And so will we if the Bishop of Damascus doesn’t pay us so we can get away or ransom ourselves to freedom.

       The caravanserai master himself, a great bearded man, comes to the gate with several armed retainers as we approach and the shouting and weeping crowd grows around us with their shouted questions and reaching arms.  He looks over my little column and then at me with a baleful eye as I stop in front of him with George holding my hand.

       “So it is true?  Lord Edmund and the castle have finally fallen?”

       “Aye, they have; the road to Damascus is open.”

       The caravanserai master crosses himself.

       “Well, everyone needs a caravanserai so I guess I’ll be a Moslem again until the Christians or Jews come back.  But these people,” he says as he shakes his head in resignation and gestures both towards the people gathering around us and the distant crowds, “I just don’t know.”

      
Well I know.  Anyone who stays here will either be slaughtered or become a slave. That’s why we left four days ago when Lord Edmund fell.

       Where is the Bishop of Damascus?

       “He’s in the city at the Church of Saint Mary.”  Then he gestures at the crowd again and shakes his head disgust and resignation, and adds “but you better hurry if you want to see him.  I hear he’s about to run off and leave us.

Want to read more?  Search Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk for “Martin Archer” or “The Archer.”

Corrections, Suggests and Comments?  Contact Martin at [email protected]  

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Sample pages from Book One of “The Soldier” saga

                       Book One

       SOLDIERS AND MARINES      

       Dust and gravel periodically spray out behind the Jeep as it slowly backs up towards the top of the low ridge.  The early morning sun is bright and already hot, and the periodic sound of thunder in the background has been coming closer for two days.