The Archer's Return: Medieval story in feudal times about knights, Templars, crusaders, Marines, and naval warfare during the Middle Ages in England in the reign of King Richard the lionhearted (8 page)

       Henry got a good response when he issued a recruiting call among the refugees and the slaves we brought in from Algiers and from Albert’s five prizes.  But even if every one of them qualifies as an archer, which is not at all likely since it requires strong arms to pull a longbow, we’ll still be short of both men and bows.

       I am marshaling all of our men to adjust to our new arrangement with the merchants.  One of my first moves is to recall our sergeants at Acre and Alexandria back to Cyprus so the merchants can take over their duties. 
Yes, after thinking it over I decided to let the merchants also have Alexandria.  I need to use Randolph elsewhere – Constantinople I should think.

       Based on what the merchants are telling us it looks like we’ll have eight of our galleys and their crews under contract for merchant evacuations plus at least one each in Constantinople, Beirut, and Antioch to evacuate our own people and two each in Cyprus and England for training and messenger purposes. 

     Those commitments and the new prizes means we’ll have twenty three galleys available for our own use to carry refugees – and that does not include one of our galleys which is more than a week overdue and may have somehow been lost or taken.  We also have six cogs of which four are available to carry pirate-takers or cargo, the old leaky one we bought in Larnaca is in Cyprus as a training ship, and Harold’s battered pirate taker is still not fully repaired due to the lack of appropriate wood. 

      
That many galleys plus whatever the two cogs sailing as pirate-catchers take in the future should be more than enough galleys; for sure we need to switch our shipyards to building big cogs with higher sides and archer shooting slits.  Not being able to take the big cog in Algiers was a real eye opener.

@@@@@

       It is agreed.  Yoram will go to Nicosia to see the king’s Chamberlain about the mines and wood and I will stay in Limassol and write a parchment for one of our galleys to carry to Thomas.  I need to bring him up to date about our raid on Algiers and let him know of the changes we need to make and the things that must be done.

       I thought about going to Nicosia myself or with Yoram to visit the king’s chancellor but Yoram and Henry are dead set against it.  They are fearful we’ll both be taken by King Guy for ransom, or worse.  After a lot of discussion with my senior sergeants, and then with Aaron and the local merchants, I decide not to go with Yoram - so I can mount a rescue effort or provide a credible threat if one becomes necessary.

       Most important among our problems is that we are desperately short of archers to crew the ships we already have.  Accordingly, in my message to Thomas I suggest he send out as many recruiting parties as possible and make a major effort to recruit and train longbow archers and buy longbows and yew wood for our recruits and bow makers to use.  Wales, I suggest, might be a good place to recruit archers and buy yew for bows if he can’t find enough in England. 
They’re tough little buggers up there, you know.  Richard had several companies of them.

       I also suggest that when he sets up a shipyard in the spring it should build big cogs with two or three masts such as we could not take in Algiers because its sides were so high above our galley.  And, of course, he should always look in the ballast of the messenger galley for a chest of the metal in Yoram’s room. 
We’re going to send a chest with every ship we send to England.

       Writing to Thomas requires several big parchments - because after I finish describing our immediate needs I begin writing about the old copper and limestone mines here on Cyprus and note that we have access to coal and tin in Cornwall and cogs and galleys that can carry coal and ore as ballast or cargo in either direction.  Accordingly, I suggest, it might be a good idea, when Thomas sends out his men to recruit boys and archers and buy longbows and yew, that some of them go where we might very quietly also be able to recruit experienced coiners and iron makers and longbow makers – for example, to Wales in addition to England.  Coiners, I suggest, might be really good at making arrow heads.

       And that raises a question for which we need answers before we start making arrowheads – would it be easier to bring the tin and coal to the copper and iron mines or the copper and iron or to the tin and coal mines?  And where should we do it and how do we cope with the fact that we have no silver or iron mines. 
Thomas is smart; he’ll understand what I’m thinking about when he sees my mention of coiners.

@@@@@

       My trip to Nicosia to meet with the king’s chamberlain takes five rather leisurely days.  But it’s not a hard trip because all twenty of us are on horseback and we have a cart with our tents and food. 

      
The only thing hard is leaving Lena and Mia.  Truth be told?  I’m glad to get away for a
few days. 

        Our arrival at Nicosia’s main city gate is expected and we are promptly admitted.  I had, after all, sent a messenger from Limassol last week saying I would be coming to see the Chancellor, Lord Alstain, to discuss buying the king’s wood and the abandoned mines.  Our troubles begin as soon as we pass through the city gate and dismount – we are promptly surrounded by a large group of guards and disarmed.

       After our horses are led away we are marched to a low stone building which is apparently some kind of guard house or prison.  It’s a foul place because its previous occupants obviously stayed here for some time and pissed and shit all over the place.  Our reception is very worrisome and my men are extremely upset, and so am I.

       I finally begin shouting for Lord Alstain.  He doesn’t come.  Instead a group of armed men appear and drag me off to a very dark and wet cell.  And then to make things worse I have to shit and there is no bowl of water to use to wipe my ass. 

      
Oh my god.  No one knows I’m here. 

      
Finally a man I’ve never seen before opens the door and walks in holding his nose.  He’s wearing a sword and a couple of armed men behind him are standing at the door. 

       “You are the man called Yoram who is in command of the pirates camping at Limassol?”

@@@@@

      
“I’m getting worried, Henry.  We should have heard from Yoram by now.”

       Two hours later Aaron hurries in out of breath and I discover I have a great deal to worry about.  Merchants traveling from Nicosia have just arrived in Limassol and are reporting that Yoram and our men have been arrested and thrown in the castle’s dungeon.  What they don’t know is why.

       I run a quick count in my mind as to what men we have in port that I can immediately marshal.  Then I send Peter and Robert running to round up the senior sergeants so I can give them the news and their marching orders.  

       The way I see it initially is that we’ve got just under two thousand men in port of which at least a thousand are fully trained as archers and maybe five hundred as pike men.  The king is thought to have about three thousand men pledged to him but they’re scattered all over the island and many of them are barely trained.  And we’ll be getting stronger and stronger as more and more of our galleys return. 

      
I’m mad at myself for letting Yoram go and for not knowing more about the king’s forces.
 
I’m also beside myself with fury - taking care of whoever is responsible for this is going to be as enjoyable as eating a piece of warm bread slavered with fresh butter.  The only thing certain is that those who are responsible are going to die badly if Yoram or any of the men with him are tortured or killed. 

       Thomas Cook and Harold are the first to arrive.  They know something’s up from the serious look on my face and what little they might have been told by Peter or Robert.

       “Bad news my friends.  Yoram and his men have been taken for ransom by the king and I, of course, am going to marshal our forces and try to rescue them even if it means killing that jumped up French bastard.”

       “Thomas, we’ll need to feed up to two thousand men per day for an unlimited period of time in Nicosia instead of here in Limassol.  Work with Aaron and your local suppliers to have them deliver food to the dock instead of here starting immediately.  We’ll move the supplies to Nicosia by galley.”

       “Harold, Henry and I going leave immediately in as many galleys you and Brian can arm with pikes so their Marines land with three ranks of trained archers and two ranks of pikes in case they hit us with knights.  So you’ve got two jobs.  One is to stay here and guard the compound with our Marine archers in training; the other is to see that our ships bring us the rest of our archers and the supplies Thomas and Brian get to the dock.  We’ll be in Nicosia as long as it takes – I won’t be back until I either have Yoram and our men safe or the head and guts of the men responsible.”
I’m so furious I could pop a vein or fall down in a fit.

       “Oh yes, and I’ll be sailing on the lead galley myself without any pikes.” 

       Then I explain to Harold why the first galley is to have no pikes and ask him to assign me the best galley captain and ship’s company he’s got in port that’s likely to help me pull it off.  He’s also to add the ten best swordsmen we’ve got among the men now in Limassol to that crew even if they are also archers.  

@@@@@

       It takes me longer than I would have thought to marshal our forces and get the initial galleys underway.  We have a problem – we have the archers we need on hand and we have men trained to walk in step and use the pikes, but we only have a little more than three hundred or so of Brian’s newfangled long Swiss pikes. 
And good pikes they are too – Brian’s smiths are adding a hooked blade near the end in addition to the metal point of the Swiss pikes. 

       What we do have, thanks to Henry, are ship’s companies whose Marine are pike men and archers who are also trained to fight and march together on land.  The pike men do the rowing and boarding at sea and are paid less until they qualify with longbows. 

      
And they ought to be well trained.  It was Henry himself who came up with the idea of our ships’ Marines fighting on land in five lines with the first two being sword and shield carrying pike men to hold off the mounted knights with their pikes followed by three lines of sword and shield carrying archers to kill everyone in front of the pikes.  Hopefully it will work as well here on Cyprus as it worked in Cornwall at Trematon.

@@@@@

       A warder just looked through the peep hole and is opening the door.  “Lord Alstain is here to see you” he announces with a sneer.  He’s a bald man with a big red birthmark on his forehead.

       The king’s chancellor is very businesslike and arrogant beyond belief.  He’s heard about the chests of coins in our compound and he wants them “for the king.” 

      
I wonder how he found out about our coin chests.  No one is allowed up the steps except me and Lena.  He probably assumes that’s where I would keep our coins because it’s the safest place.  Well he’s right about that.

       “Your choice is to order them turned over to me or to stay here and die of starvation and a lack of water.  It’s your choice.”

       I know I need to play for time so I pretend to be very bitter and resigned - which isn’t hard to do under the circumstances. 

       “I can see I have no choice and I certainly don’t want to die.  So I’ll pay the ransom even though Lord William will probably kill me when he finds out.  But you know, of course, that the men I left in Limassol will not trust whatever your messenger tells them.  They’ll pay our ransom if I tell them to pay it, but without a doubt before they do they’ll send someone to see if I really did send the message and that my men and I are still alive and being treated properly.” 

      
Alstain doesn’t seem to know that William is here on Cyprus.  I wonder what he will do, William that is.

                                   Chapter Six

      The sun is going down as the first seven of our galleys row out of the harbor and begin a high speed voyage around the island to Nicosia with all the men I can initially marshal.  If we row hard all night and swap off rowers every couple of hours we should get there sometime tomorrow depending on the weather and winds – hopefully that will be at least two days before the king expects us. 
Two days early, that is, if he expects us to march to Nicosia like soldiers instead of come by sea as Marines.

@@@@@

       Our first galley, the one I’m on, enters the Nicosia harbor well ahead of the other six under Henry’s command and the dozen or more that are following along behind his six.  Henry and his men are hugging the coast east of the harbor entrance and out of sight - and waiting while a young archer counts off four thousand marching steps on the deck of his galley.  That’s how long my men and I will have to try to walk through the city gate serving the dock and into the walled city as if we don’t a care in the world. 

       No one pays much attention when our galley rows up to the dock in the intense summer heat and a couple of men jump off and nonchalantly tie it to one to a couple of the dock’s mooring posts.  Then more men get off.  A few of them are carrying bows over their shoulders but none of them are carrying swords and shields or wearing helmets.  In other words, they look like normal sailors bringing cargo into the city from a galley – unless, of course, you happen to notice, which you certainly wouldn’t at a distance, that their bows are strung and that the tunics of some of the men are covering chain mail shirts.