Swan grinned at the implied compliment.
‘You know what the difference between you is?’ Alessandro asked.
Swan grinned. ‘Thirty years?’ he asked.
‘Exactly,’ Di Brachio said.
Peter got the gorget closed around his neck and seated home on his breastplate, and then he hinged open the cheek plates of the armet and slid it on top of Swan’s head, pushing firmly until he could feel that Swan’s head was all the way into the deep ridges of padding, four layers of linen stuffed with sheep’s wool.
‘You’re ready,’ Peter said.
Irene smiled at him, and did a backflip right past them, her long legs flashing in the pink light, and the oarsmen on the nearest six benches found the breath to hoot, altogether, as her man’s shirt licked up above her belly button and then fell back without quite revealing an entire breast.
Alessandro sighed. ‘Women can be …’ he looked amused, ‘spectacular.’
A dozen arrows came aboard all together, and that was the end of conversation. Two sailors came by, unrolling the heavy leather and canvas awning that covered the rowers in action – and soaked up most of the arrow shafts. They were roping it home, and the acting troupe leapt to help them. Swan dropped his gauntlets and belayed a rope to a cleat set in the deck just above the first rowing bench, and the three men on the bench nodded their thanks at him as they pulled their great oar. Swan had noted before that one of the things that made war at sea so signally different from war on land was that the ship lived and died together – so men-at-arms, archers, sailors and oarsmen had a set of links connecting them that they would never have had ashore. Knights belayed ropes. Oarsmen fought like tigers.
Irene caught a heavy stay and climbed up it a few yards, caught another and jumped to the rail on the far side of the rowing deck. Swan would never have attempted such a feat of acrobatics. There she belayed more of the lines that held the heavy canvas housing.
Beyond her shoulders, the shore of Asia seemed to be rushing at them.
‘Prepare to turn to starboard!’ roared Ser Marco.
Most of the marines threw themselves flat. Swan had endured dozens of these high-speed turns in practice, and he grabbed the rail behind him.
The old man put the tiller down, and the starboard side oarsmen backed water, and the great galley turned like a child’s toy.
Swan’s gauntlets, forgotten for a moment, shot across the deck towards the waiting embrace of the sea.
Irene leaped – almost four English cloth yards – from the opposite rail. Her leap was almost down as the starboard rail was now far closer to the sea than the port-side rail – she landed on her toes, did a somersault, and stood, Swan’s gauntlets held aloft in her hands.
The oarsmen laughed. She presented them to Swan as the ship righted, at the end of her turn, and he took them. Her smile was triumphant and his was a little tight.
Behind them, the Turkish ships were slow in responding to the turn – which had clearly surprised them by going south into the current, and not north along the shore, using the current to add to the Nike’s speed. But they recovered, their archers changed sides, and in a minute the arrows came again, and the Turkish ships made their turns – and the Nike was slowing despite the best efforts of her crew.
For a dozen heartbeats the Turks closed the gap. A sailor took a cane arrow in the chest and fell by the mainmast, screaming.
Ser Marco stood by the helmsman like a statue in armour.
Peter had his great bow strung and ready, and now he went to the side, licked a finger, and took one of Antonio’s cane arrows from his Turkish-style quiver.
‘Eh, son of a whore, use your own fucking arrows,’ said the Italian archer.
Peter grunted, drew the arrow to the head, and loosed.
The Fleming’s arrow rose, seemed to hover at perihedron, and then fell to vanish into the nearest galley. Swan didn’t see where it struck, but the Italian spat.
‘All luck, you Dutch bastard,’ he said, but he slapped the big Fleming on the back.
Peter took another of Antonio’s arrows, and Giannis ran to get the Spaniard’s quiver, which was under the opposite scupper. ‘I wondered,’ he said. ‘I saw the Turks use … something to extend …’ He loosed again. The arrow seemed to vanish – it leaped off the bow faster than Swan thought possible.
‘Another hit? Really, I think this cannot all be luck,’ Antonio said. ‘Let me try with one of my own arrows, hey, cocksucker?’ He drew his Turkish bow all the way to his ear, the way Peter drew, and his arrow leaped away. The other marines cheered.
‘Good way to break a bow,’ Giannis said, dropping the Spaniard’s quiver by Peter. He latched his crossbow and tossed a bolt at the nearest Turk.
Behind them, the Turks hit the current.
An arrow struck Swan atop his right shoulder, but it was the very edge of its range and it sprang away.
The three Turks went to fast ramming speed. The sound of their drums rose like thunder, and they began to close in like raptors in the moment they hover before the talons strike home.
The Nike’s timoneer looked over his shoulder at his captain, but there was no order to increase speed. The capitano was smiling, not with insane ferocity, but with a calm that made Swan want to leap on the command deck and ask what is it you know?
The tempo of the Turkish strokes increased in a magnificent crescendo, and all three ships closed to javelin range.
Now all the ships’ marines and archers were exchanging shafts as quickly as they could draw and loose. The Turkish professionals returned three shafts for one on their prey. The Venetians were brave and had better armour, and their plate cuirasses and heavy helmets kept them in the fight, because the Turks lacked nothing in volume, power or speed. One by one the Venetian archers were shot down – Antonio took an arrow in the right arm, Giovanni took one in the nose, and finally Peter was alone, his hands and arms almost blurred with the speed of his loosing. He was using his own heavy shafts now.
An arrow took Swan in the helmet, and the diamond-shaped head cut right through the good Milanese steel and hung there – but didn’t go through the padding beneath. Another hit him in the breastplate, and then a third, and both punched through the plate like an awl through heavy leather, but couldn’t penetrate the mail and leather underneath.
Swan’s Turkish bow was right there. He shook the gauntlet off his right hand, took a shaft from the Spaniard’s quiver and loosed it almost unaimed into the vast maw of the Turkish galley ranging alongside, just three oars’ lengths away and trying to draw even. He saw Omar Reis amidships and his next shaft went with intent. One of the janissaries saw him aim and the return volley from the Turkish ship caught him repeatedly. He was hit so many times he was knocked down. His head collided with the deck hard, and the shaft in his helmet splintered and wrenched his neck, and for a moment he thought he was badly hurt.
He bounced to his feet with another shaft in his hand and had to pause to break off the arrows in his breastplate, which stuck out like pins in a lady’s pincushion.
The capitano roared, ‘Ramming speed! Everything, now, by the grace of God!’
The timoneer’s staff began to thump the deck in a frenzy.
Only two of the Turkish ships were ranging alongside. The third had lost her stroke – a real danger at high speeds, with arrows coming aboard, oarsmen dying or wounded, and the sounds of many sets of drums.
Peter had an arrow in his thigh and another in his hat, and yet he rose from the cover of the high bulkhead and loosed down into the knot of archers in the nearest ship’s waist.