As I cleared branches, Juan – Spanish aristocrat – piled them and used dead men’s belts to make bundles. The belts came from the corpses that the slaves and servants and junior oarsmen had tossed in behind the driftwood. They didn’t smell rank, yet, but they had the copper-shit smell of dead men, the battlefield smell that northerners call ‘Raven’s call’.
At any rate, I was halfway up the trunk of the tree when one of the corpses opened his eyes. I lifted the axe automatically. His eyes met mine. He groaned.
In a fight, I can kill without a thought. But by the gentle Jesus, on that windswept beach that smelled of death, I’d had enough of it. I knelt and looked him over, fetched him water – hobbling to the fire and back, damn it! And in the end, Juan and I carried him to our fire. The oarsmen had stripped him naked for his clothes, and left him to die.
He should have died. He had a spear wound in his gut – a ticket to a nasty, week-long bout with delirium before death, but God and Saint Barbara had other plans for my Turk.
The admiral’s prediction was as accurate as a sorcerer or an astrologer’s. The next day we had the first rain of autumn, and a heavy wind blew all day. Men huddled by the fires in silent misery; muscles ached, and wounds seemed worse.
Some were, but they weren’t mine.
The second day wasn’t much better, and our old admiral lay in his blankets all day under a makeshift tent.
But the third day dawned bright and clear, and trumpets called us to our duty.
‘Mutton and cheese in Piraeus,’ the admiral promised. ‘And wine enough for every man to forget.’
‘And then on to Rhodes,’ Nerio said.
The admiral glared. ‘I’ve just won the greatest naval victory of these last twenty years,’ he said. ‘More than any Venetian expected of this “crusade”.’
Sometimes it is best to be silent.
We were.
Piraeus was delighted to receive us. The Turks were a constant threat in Attica and Thrace, and I found the attitude of the Greek soldiers and peasants very different east of Corinth from that west of Corinth. I had a good chance to learn about Greeks in Athens and Piraeus.
Thanks to Giannis and Giorgos, I had translators and Greek friends, and my friends and I were the heroes of the hour: all the Greeks in the two Peloponnesian vessels had seen us break the Turks on the beach. They were eager to buy us wine, even though we were Latins and schismatics; that is, heretics to their church.
‘You were magnificent!’ said an older man with a beautiful white beard. He wore scale armour plated in gold, with enamelled scales and fine Italian elbows and leg armour. We were parading our prisoners and captured ships for the people of Athens, Latin and Greek alike. The older man turned his dark eyes on me and grinned. ‘For a brazen-haired heretic, I mean.’
His Italian was better than mine and I wasn’t sure what to say, so I bowed.
‘You are from Thule? That is what I hear, yes? Far away over the sea, where the Emperor’s guard is from – Hyperborea. Yes?’ He looked at me as if I was a rare heraldic animal. ‘The Axe-bearing guard, yes? You know?’
I had Giorgos Angelus at my back. I turned and looked at him.
‘One of the Kantakouzenoi,’ he said.
The old man smiled thinly. He spat something in Greek, and Angelus stiffened.
Giannis Lascarus shook his head on my left-we were lining the pier for the Duke of Athens and his friends. ‘Kantakouzenos calls Giorgos a traitor and a heretic. Giorgos chooses to say nothing, but the Kantakouzenoi betrayed the empire.’