I never did learn what he meant by careful, because despite being over eighty, an age at which in most men, daring is dead, and timorousness is its own form of stubborn accomplishment, he swept down on our foes like the falcon he had himself named. A quarter league from the foe, the Venetian ships furled their lateens; the great yards came down on every deck, covering the rowers with canvas as the first Turkish arrows fell.
I had never faced a barrage of arrows. In the first heartbeats of our combat, I got a taste of what our English archers send to the French, and I confess I did not like it. The Turks mix screaming arrows with their deadlier brethren, and I, the veteran of ten battles, was afraid of the harsh screaming.
I was struck five times in the first three breaths of the action. Each arrow struck like a punch. None of them touched me, but they brought with them a wave of fear that cancelled much of my exhilaration at entering battle.
Marc-Antonio took an arrow all the way through his bicep — it went under his spaulder and right through his maille.
Juan caught him, cut the head, and extracted the arrow. Marc-Antonio’s face was tracked with tears of pain, but he blinked furiously and insisted he was well enough to fight.
The rowers were protected for a hundred heartbeats by the sails on deck, but even as the oars went in and dipped in response to the oar master’s rhythm, the sailors were clearing the sails off the yards and the yards were rotated amidships and laid along the edges of the catwalk.
One of our advantages was our three great galleys. The Turks had nothing like them. Even our ordinary galleys were bigger and often longer than the Turks, but our great galleys towered over them.
Even as the third and fourth volleys of Turkish arrows flashed in the sun, our centre was again gathering speed. I was no sailor then, but even I could see that we had not lost way as we’d coasted during the brief transition from sails to oars, and now the oars were sweeping like wings, or the legs of a mechanical centipede.
The Turkish centre attempted to back water, but their flanks carried forward, sweeping like arms to surround us. In a few moments, we could see Turks on almost every hand, and the sky was full of arrows.
My heart almost failed me. On land, to be surrounded is to be defeated.
I didn’t know much about the sea.
The master mariners at the steering oars gave us a slight turn to starboard, the oars frothed the sea in a massive effort, and we shot forward like a gargantuan crossbow bolt. We struck a Turkish galley and trod him down entire — our vast weight pushed his ship down into the water, the near gunwale went under, the lighter galley filled with water instantly and went down, so that as we swept over the wreck we could see men drowning under our feet, and her mast caught in our steering oars for a moment.
I looked aft, and the admiral was pointing at something aloft, a flag out of place, perhaps.
We turned again. I saw that the dying enemy had ripped away our starboard steering oar, and that limited our ability to turn. And a small cloud of Turkish galleys came at us.
Now, every ship carried a ram — not under water, like the ancients, but a spur above the water for breaking oars and fouling the enemy cathead and his rowing benches. Nonetheless, such was my experience that I assumed that the ram was the principle weapon and could sink us.
Even as I watched, two Turkish galleys turned nimbly out of their crescent formation and charged us. Their archers loosed and loosed, so that there seemed to be a continuous stream of silver-lit shafts in the early morning sun dazzle. But it is very different to shoot up than to shoot a bow down. Our rowers were not directly exposed, and at first we took few losses.
But we could not steer and I prepared for death.
The oar-master roared a command I didn’t know, and then all the great oars began to fly inboard. Under my very feet, the big oarsmen were crossing the shafts of their oars, wedging the handles under the opposite bench so that the oars stood proud of the water like cocked wings. This brought the outboard portion of the oars above the ram of the enemy, so that they struck — when they struck — only Dalmatian oak.
The hull rang, and I was knocked from my feet. I was praying to the Virgin.
I got to my knees and the second blow knocked me flat — again.
Practically at the end of my nose, three oarsmen on a bench were grinning like savages as they pulled maille haubergeons over their canvas rowing shirts.
The nearest one, a gap-toothed giant with a gold earring, grinned as he pulled a wicked axe from under his bench. ‘Eh, messire!’ he shouted to me. ‘Easier to fight on your feet!’
The benches were emptying.
I got my feet under me to find the rest of my marines similarly employed. And forward of us, every Turk ever birthed was pouring over the rails from both sides into the waist of our ship.
Sometimes, when you fight, you are in command of the army that is your body. You parry and snap blows, you deceive and you thrust and you counter as if on the practice field.
Whatever men say, such encounters are rare.
The Turks who got aboard didn’t pause to sweep the benches. They came straight up the companionway, aiming to kill the admiral and sweep the helms clear and take the ship.
I have a memory of the moment before the wave of Turks broke on my line. I had a spear in my hand, held underhand, blade up, as Fiore recommended if one was fighting in line with companions. And I had the man himself on my right and Nerio on my left, and Marc-Antonio pressed so hard at my back that he was pushing me forward.
I remember a man in plate and maille and a pointed helm, with a sword as long as mine and curved like the Crescent of Islam. He was grinning.
And then I was panting like the bellows in a forge, and I hurt: my arms would scarce obey my command. The great scimitar was on the deck at my feet, and my spear was shattered, and the end with the sharp point was reversed in my hand like a thick dagger and sticky and red.
Fiore’s spear was red from iron to point.
Nerio had a dagger in each hand, one his own, one Miles’s.
Miles stood with his longsword upright between his hands.
Juan was on one knee, panting, and he, too, had his sword in his hand.
We had held.
I was just letting thoughts filter into my head — really, there was nothing there. Men call it ‘the black’ or ‘the darkness’ but for me it was just an emptiness, a void that was suddenly filled with noise and light.
The admiral was pounding my backplate with his armoured fist.
‘If you’re done resting, take their fucking ship!’ he screamed. ‘Or do I have to do it myself?’
The last Turks were scrambling over the side, and their sailors were trying to pole off, but our oarsmen were having none of it. I was lucky to be a marine on a veteran ship: I should have led the boarders, and instead I was perhaps the tenth man on to the enemy deck.
And friends, I had to make myself leap.
Perhaps the beating ruined me as a knight. Or perhaps time, training, and a better life gave me more reason to live. But I hesitated at the rail.
Bah! Then I leaped over the sea — instant death for a man in harness should he fall in.
I injured men just by falling among them. I went down, and the Turks piled on me, but they were unarmoured sailors, not armoured marines.
A steel harness is a cruel weapon.
A steel gauntlet can do ten times the damage of a fist, and mine had heavy brass studs on every knuckle. The knees and elbows were hardened steel and had sharp ridges and protective flanges that themselves could flay a man’s unguarded flesh. I lost the remnants of my spear and by the time I was on my feet with my dagger in my right fist, the deck around the mainmast was a slaughterhouse and the Venetian oarsmen were killing the survivors with a ruthlessness that would have been a crime on land, even among brigands. Teams of men, bench mates, would grab a Turk, stretch his neck and cut his throat while the third man riffled his body for gold and coins before they all three lobbed him, dead and robbed, over the side.