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.