They took no prisoners. Neither did the Turks take any.
I have hear men speak of decks slick with blood, and that is a lie. The decks were sticky with blood. My harness was coated with the stuff, and my sabatons jammed with it.
And that was one ship.
We took three.
By the second ship, I could not really breathe. At some point, I drew the Emperor’s sword. And used it in clearing the third ship. The pretty grip, which even the brigand who stole it hadn’t fouled, became a clotted mass of brown gore in my fist.
And then we were done.
But we were not. The Turkish fleet broke, though still two-thirds intact, and ran. But the old admiral knew his business; had known it, indeed, from the moment he looked at the sun. By the wounds of Christ, messires, he was a great knight, the old devil. He fought the Turks with all of us as his weapon. Not for him the void and passion of combat, although his beautiful Virgin spear was red. But he fought more like Miles played chess — with his head and not his heart.
And he didn’t intend to have a partial victory. I hobbled aft — I had a wound in the sole of my left foot, nothing glorious, I do assure you, but the product of stepping on a Turk’s axe. I remember that my left arm harness had taken so many blows that Marc-Antonio, who’d lost the use of his right arm altogether as the fights pressed on and on, had to cut the straps and drop the harness in among the row benches.
Contarini glanced at me and went back to shouting orders at his helmsman. His voice was thin, but he never lost his force all that long summer’s day.
He helped me get my bassinet off and his slave gave me water.
‘Give you the honour of a noble victory,’ I said.
He raised an eyebrow. His trembling eye moved so violently I feared it might fall out. His face was red and a great vein beat against his temple.
‘Not even a skirmish, yet, Sir William,’ he said. He pointed forward and I followed his hand.
The Turks were trying to raise their sails as they rowed away from us.
He turned to the second helmsman, who was finally getting a new oar in the water. ‘Master Foccario, when you have that fixed to your liking, get the banner of the Virgin aloft and dip it thrice to signal ‘General Chase.’ He frowned at me. ‘Now we pay for weeks of soft living,’ he said.
We ran the Turks into the surf of Thessaly. One of their ships, shallow as she was, staved herself on the rocks, and two more weathered the long headland which was like a stony finger pointing into the sea and were away, flying to safety.
We came alongside another, and our crossbowmen, who must have been shooting steadily throughout the action, finally came to my notice. They were able to use the rail to aim, and to shoot down into the lower Turkish ship. Our crossbowmen cleared their quarterdeck before we grappled, and we took the fourth Turk entire. Her rowers were mostly slaves, Christians and Jews and Syrian Moslems.
I could barely walk, I was so tired.
But we were not done.
The admiral recalled his boarding party and we were away, the oars beating the sea. The last remnants of the Turks, the ships not lucky enough to have weathered the cape in the strong wind, were running themselves ashore on the beach, not stern first, either, but bow in.
The admiral called me aft.
‘I’ll place you ashore between those two Turkish galleys,’ he said. ‘And you hold the beach. I want all these ships. If I can’t drag ‘em off, I’ll burn them here.’
Just then, it seemed to me impossible that ten Christian men-at-arms, all exhausted, could hold a beach that was alive like a disturbed anthill.
And as we turned end for end, the great sweeps reversed on one side so that the port side oarsmen rowed facing forward while the starboard side rowed facing aft, my friends and I watched the beach.
Nerio raised a blood-flecked eyebrow. ‘Even for me, this is insane,’ he said.
Marc-Antonio, right arm strapped to his side, brought us wine. It was uncut malmsey, thick and dark and sweet and we drank it like water.
The Turkish arrows began to fall among us.
Alessandro began to lace our helmets. The third men on the benches began to come aft with javelins and axes and arming swords. Some were now armed with Turkish weapons.
‘Oh,’ Fiore said. ‘I though he was only sending the five of us.’
Somehow, that seemed the greatest jest ever told, and we hooted.
‘Last man on the beach buys wine,’ I roared, and jumped into the surf.
This is what a harness of plate is for. I only had to jump ten feet, and the water and the sand took the shock of my leap — but I fell forward, my foot catching on a rock, and my helmet filled with seawater. And then I was up, with no memory of rising. Arrows struck my helm and my breastplate, but thanks be to God not a one struck my unarmoured left arm or shoulder, and I was moving up the beach with seawater pouring out of my harness like milk from a leaky farm bucket.
Perhaps it was the wine, or perhaps the freedom of having space to swing, to engage one opponent and sidestep another, but I remember that fight much better than the four before it. I remember catching the Emperor’s longsword at the mezza spada, the middle of the blade, to face a Turk with a heavy axe, and using the quillons of my sword to gouge his eyes before running the point over his hands and severing the tendons while my armoured knee slammed into his balls. And I stepped through him to plunge my point like a dagger into the unprotected back of Juan’s adversary as they wrestled, and as another Turk tried to put an arrow into my back, Fiore beheaded him.
Behind us, the oarsmen roared ‘Saint Mark! Saint Mark!’
More Venetians were landing all along the beach, and then, finally, it was over.
Sometimes our finest moments are lost in the black and the fatigue. It may be the best fight we all had together.
Well, the fighting was over.
War at sea is the hell of squires. My harness had been drenched in seawater and covered in blood, scorched with fire — I have no idea where the fire happened, but I had burns and scorch marks and all the straps on my left cuisse had to be replaced. Oh, and then I rolled in wet sand.
Marc-Antonio, with the best will in the world, was hurt far worse than I. His right arm was all bandages and they were red with blood, and he’d stayed on his feet and used a sword left-handed — a truly knightly act. But there on the beach, when the Turks broke and ran — to the tender mercies of the local Greek peasants, a tough bunch if ever I saw one — when we’d slumped to our knees, breathed like bellows, and gradually dropped most of our priceless harness in the blood-soaked strand, Marc-Antonio shook his head.
‘You’d better clean that and get some oil on it,’ he said. He grinned, so I didn’t kill him. And I knew he was right.
This is what you are trained for, in the order. Not just so that you can triumph on the day of battle, but to have the will to conquer your own body and the listlessness that comes with survival. Oarsmen were sitting among the dead, passing bottles of wine and water. Crossbowmen were coming ashore to loot.
My four brothers and I began to clean our armour. The Venetian marines knew tricks we didn’t — that one stain could clean another. Under their instruction we waded into the sea and cleaned our sabatons and our greaves of the ordure stuck to them, and while Fiore and I washed the pieces of harness, Miles and Juan dried them and oiled them with sheepskin and whale oil.
Nerio drank wine while Alessandro worked, and then he shook himself like a dog and handed his wine to Marc-Antonio. ‘Sometimes I’m an arse,’ he admitted, and set to work.