The Long Sword(162)

            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.

            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.