His companion nodded. ‘It was one of the greatest battles of the ancient world,’ Syr Giannis said.
‘Who won?’ Miles asked.
Syr Giannis shook his head, the wide head shake of the Greek. ‘No one,’ he said. He pointed to the south and west. ‘The King of Sparta died over there, at Thermopylae. When he died, the Greek fleet retreated.’ He smiled. ‘It is a famous place, to Greeks. I wish to go to Thermopylae someday.’
I had heard of the death of the Spartan king – there was a romance about the Persian Wars making the rounds in Venice. The current fashion for aping the ancient world was just in its infancy then; men like Petrarch and Boccaccio were reading the ancients and even translating them. So I was enthusiastic.
‘Perhaps we could arrange a passage of arms!’ I said enthusiastically.
The idea caught everyone’s imagination, and we drank a toast to the notion.
But first we had to fight the Turks.
Dawn brought us a fair wind and the labour of getting our ships off the beach. But as soon as we were underway – and we were moving before the red disk of the sun was free of the eastern horizon – we could see the Turks moving toward us under bare poles. I’m going to guess that the admiral had received scouting reports the night before – why share them with me? – because he seemed unsurprised.
We stayed with the wind under our quarters while we armed. Most of us had squires by then, but what I remember about that morning, my first sea fight, is Nerio, the proud, buckling the armour for Marc-Antonio, perhaps the humblest squire. We all served each other.
I had commanded men before, and yet that morning, when we formed in two dense and iron-clad ranks, knights in the front, squires in the back, it made my heart soar with joy.
I had never seen a sea fight before. I had some idea, from all the order’s drills and the Venetian drills, too, but I hadn’t experienced how different it was from a land fight. Perhaps the most difficult difference – hard to explain, and hard to endure – is the waiting and the interludes. The ships determine the pace of combat, not the knights. A battle is usually a single long grind of action and terror and amidst the terror, most men fight using nothing but their training and their fear. The grind of battle makes men tired; their armour makes them tired, their fear makes them tired, and their fatigue makes them afraid, until they conquer or die.
At sea, it is different. At sea, battle is episodic. You face an enemy, ship to ship, and when you conquer one, you have time to breathe, to rest – and to be afraid all over again; too much time to think before the next foe. Sea battles can go on for hours, where a land battle would have been resolved at the first encounter.
Perhaps I can sum it up like this. At sea, you have nowhere to run. And neither, under the pitiless Mediterranean sun, does your foe. There you are, locked together in a close embrace of timber and hemp, and you fight until one side is massacred.
At any rate, the Turks came at us. I thought there were too many of them, but I was officer enough by then to mind my tongue.
I clanked my way back to the command deck. On a galia grossa, the command deck was in the stern, raised three steps above the catwalk over the rowers, and covered by a screen of leather against archery. Even as I mounted the steps, the admiral was ordering the screen cleared away.
He glanced at me. ‘I’d rather be able to see,’ he said. ‘You know why old men are sent to command fleets?’
That’s one of those questions you shouldn’t answer.
Marc-Antonio was arming him. He wore full harness, despite his years, but he winced as the chain haubergeon went over his head.
‘Because our bodies hurt so much we don’t care whether we live or die – curse you, boy! I only have six hairs left – no need to pull them out.’ He cuffed Marc-Antonio, but the Chioggian boy seemed to take it in good part.