The Archer's Return: Medieval story in feudal times about knights, Templars, crusaders, Marines, and naval warfare during the Middle Ages in England in the reign of King Richard the lionhearted (15 page)

@@@@@

        Our next rendezvous is a great distance away - the mouth of an obscure Spanish river running into the Atlantic, the Taquin.  Our captains and their pilots have a week to get their galleys there.  They should be able to find it as it as it is just past the first Moorish city one comes to on Spain’s Atlantic coast after passing Gibraltar.  They’ll turn right and head up the Atlantic coast to it after they go past the big castle which looks down at the narrow gap where the Mediterranean opens into the Atlantic.

                                    
Chapter Eleven

       We sail in weather that is placid and extremely warm.  Or perhaps I should say we row in the hot weather for that is what we have to do because the winds are light and infrequent.  Even Harold and I take our turns on the rowing benches. 
And Helen takes to dipping a bucket into the sea and using the water to wash off the sweat that pours off me; she is a treasure.
 

       It’s easy to stay together in the placid weather and mirror-like water and we do.  We arrive together at the little inlet at the mouth of the Taquin River and begin taking on water to fill our depleted waterskins.  

       I host the “captains” flag and the sergeant captains quickly climb in their dinghies and row to my galley. 

       “Well Lads, Almeria was a bust.  Let’s hope Cadiz has more for us.”

       There are sharp intakes of breath and soft whistles at the announcement.  And then smiles.  Cadiz is a great port, perhaps the biggest port in Moslem Spain – and its one day of easy rowing to the north if the weather holds.  If we can’t take prizes in Cadiz we’re in the wrong trade.

       We’ll leave tomorrow in mid-morning so we can hit Cadiz when the day is at its hottest.  Then we’ll all come back here to make sure our prizes are properly supplied and crewed before we send them on the long trip back to Cyprus. 

@@@@@

       Cadiz is a jewel in the Moslem crown and the principal port on Spain’s Atlantic coast.  Its great natural harbor is the home port of a tremendous number of ships and the center of the vast fleet of pirate galleys preying on European shipping.  There are rich pickings to be had when the hunters become the hunted. 
We all hope.

       It makes no sense to tire out our crews so we row easy under the scorching sun as we move north along the coast line to the harbor entrance.  Only our shaded lower rowing benches will be used for rowing until we are hurrying back out of the harbor with whatever prizes we might take.

       We make the turn and enter the harbor entrance with our decks crowded with archers, prize crews, and bales of arrows both lights and heavies.  Then Harold stops our progress and we watch as our nine galleys charge on ahead towards their assigned places.  Our job is cover their retreat. 

      
I’m not about to risk losing all the gold bezants we’re carrying in a desperate fight to take one or two more galleys.

       Harold and I stand with our hands on the deck rail watching as our galleys move from ship to ship anchored in the harbor and along its three great docks.  I’m so excited that I actually begin shivering despite the intense heat of the sun.

       What we see is each of our galleys moving up to anchored ships, swarming aboard with its boarders and a prize crew to kill everyone they find who isn’t at a rowing bench, and then re-boarding their galley to go on the next ship in the harbor - leaving only the men their prize crew behind to get their new prize underway. 

       “So far they all seem to be obeying orders and going for the galleys,” I comment quite unnecessarily to Harold who obviously can see that for himself.

      
I’d made much of going for galley as prizes because those are what we most need for our own use.  As I had explained to our sergeant captains, cogs and other cargo ships may have to be towed out of the harbor to catch the wind; and once you’re towing something out of the harbor will be hard to take another prize - so get them last on your way out and, whatever you do, don’t get greedy and risk losing your ship.

       “Aye, and look there by the dock.  Ralph is going after that string of galleys tied side by side; he looks to be trying to take them all, by God.”

      “Good on him, by God.  Good on him.” … “Damn, I hope they all have their slaves on board.  He and his men will be rich, by God.” 

       This is very exciting.  So exciting that I motion Helen to come out from where she is trying peer out of forward cabin door to see what is happening.  She darts her way through all the men and arrow baskets and runs to me with her eyes bright with excitement and breathing heavily.

       Within what seems like only a few seconds the first of our prizes begin to be rowed out of the harbor past us with great shouts and waves from the men around us. 

       “By God, William, this is much better than Almeria, isn’t it?”

       “Uh oh.  Look over there.  A couple of Moorish galleys are getting underway.”

       “Damn, you’re right.  It’s time to go.  I’ll raise the recall flag and spin us around so we can start moving back towards the entrance.” 

       Seeing our galley pointed out of the harbor with the recall flag on our mast is the recall signal.  It’s time for our captains to quickly finish taking any prizes they’ve got hooked up and begin retreating.  We’ll stay here for a while to cover them and then do a wounded bird.

@@@@@

       Two days later we watch as the last of our prizes gets underway for Cyprus via Crete and Malta.  Then our ten galleys and their archers begin their long run up the coast and across the channel to England.  It’s time to go home.

            End of Book Three

@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@

@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@

@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@

       This is the third book in Martin Archer’s acclaimed rewriting of newly found twelfth century parchments describing the lives and experiences of a company of medieval English archers.   You can find and preview the others by going to Amazon.com and entering “Martin Archer” as the item for which you are searching.

       The first book of this saga tells the tale of the fighting and experiences of the survivors of a company of English archers as they attempt to fight their way home from the crusades.  The second book describes when happens when William and the survivors of his company reach cruel and brutal England in the closing days of the late twelfth century.  This is the third book.  It describes what happens when William leaves his son and brother behind in order to earn coins leading newly recruited archers back to the Holy Land to fight as Marines both on land and on English galleys. 

       There are more parchments in the trunk and a fourth book in this saga of medieval England is in progress.  If the mice haven’t eaten too much of the parchments it will describe William’s experiences when he returns to his son and brother in Cornwall – and gets enmeshed in the fighting between the supporters of King Richard and the supporters of Prince John.

@@@@@@@

@@@@@@@

      Martin Archer is also the author of the acclaimed novels of “The Soldier” saga.  Book One, “Soldiers and Marines,” is about a young man who goes off to war and decides to stay on active duty after his years of hard fighting in the front lines finally come to a close. 

       Book two “Peace and Conflict” follows Chris Roberts as he battles the military bureaucracy to stay on active duty and then is thrown into the senseless meat grinder of Viet Nam, first with the Legion and then with the anti-communist western forces.

       Book Three “War Breaks Out” describes the role of an increasingly senior Roberts in the vicious war between the Soviet Union and NATO that would have occurred in Germany if Moscow had decided to fight rather than tear down the Berlin wall.   

       Book Four “War in the East” describes his participation in the intense combat and likely outcome of a war that still may happen if China invades Russia to regain its eastern territories and the west sides with Russia. 

       Book Five “The Islamic-Israeli” war is about the role of a now-retired Roberts in a coming war when an Islamic Coalition suddenly invades Israel and the Middle East is forever changed by Israel’s support for it surprise new ally, the Kurds.

   Sample Pages from Book One of the Archer Saga

                       “THE ARCHER’S  QUEST”

                     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 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 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 goes 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.