The Last Crusaders: Blood Red Sea (26 page)

Everywhere there was treachery and despair, bickering over loot, petty vengeance. A defeat was always soul destroying, but especially one so cowardly and chaotic as this. And yet even amid the carnage and chaos, he saw a mule peacefully tearing little weeds from a wall, and a cat licking her kittens in a cellar doorway.

His hearing came back, accompanied by ringing. He armed himself like a peasant with a long-handled goad he found inside a stable
doorway, slipped down a back alley and through a house, then made it over flat rooftops until he was close to the palace. There was a group of Turks singing down below in a courtyard, as if it was all over, but from within the palace came the sound of gunfire. Twice he was challenged as he clambered along, and once a crossbow bolt clattered over the roof near by. He waved his makeshift spear in the air and called
Allahu akbar!
and pulled down his shirt to show his own blood. None of it made any sense, but they left him in peace.

He went as far as he could go along the rooftops, dropped down into a yard with a tethered goat, went through a stone barn and a back window thick with pigeon droppings. He wedged the goad under his back-belt, climbed up a wooden post and over a loosely tiled roof, sending them skimming to the ground below, climbed in another window, and dropped down on to cool flagstones. He was in a larder. There was even a stone basin in the corner, and a ewer.

He drank the ewer almost empty, poured the rest over his head, rubbed his face with his sleeve. His head felt clearer. He remembered a stag hunt back in Shropshire, when he was still but fourteen and had never killed a man. The stag reach the river’s edge, exhausted, trembling in every limb, almost finished, as the hounds bounded towards it, spittled tongues lolling. The stag drank about a gallon of water and was revived as if by magic. It forded the river and then bolted away up the steep hill faster than any hound could run.

He breathed in the cool damp air of the larder, then headed towards the gunfire.

He ran down a corridor thick with black gunpowder smoke and up a fine carved wooden staircase. He vaulted over a dead man with his throat slit. Somewhere in this palace, the last battle was being fought, and he knew his comrades were there.

The mood was coming upon him again now: ferocious and sublime. The mood he lived for. He knew that some power watched over him, that he would not die, not today. That he could do anything.

He grimaced as he ran, other men’s blood still on him, thinking that this was what the Bektasi felt.

Musket fire raked over his head and splintered a fine wood-panelled wall behind him. A ball may have whispered past his cheek. Then he jabbed a musketeer’s throat with the goad and pulled him down. He seized the musket like a club and struck a second fellow sidelong, but it was a poor blow. He had to draw the musket back and use it again in an instant, not easy with so heavy a weapon, as the fellow brought down his barrel in a long jabbing motion towards his stomach. He just managed to parry the blow and knock it aside while rolling, came up and kicked the fellow behind his knees. Then he was on him and had smashed his head two-handed into the floor so he didn’t move again. He dropped the musket and took his sword. It was an inferior weapon but better than an empty hand.

He dropped into a small room and knelt against the wainscot, gasping. They were fighting room to room, and he was behind the Ottoman lines.

He went climbing. In a narrow, shadowy corner of the palace he ascended a steep spiral staircase until it reached a high-vaulted attic room, leaned out of a narrow window, turned on his back and looked up. Possible. Then he was out and drawing himself up, slowly, slowly. Weight on your legs, arms will tire. Climb it like a ladder. Feet sideways on, sometimes perching on nubbins of stone no bigger than crab apples, fingers clutching cracks in the stones. But enough, holding himself tight to the wall. Forty feet up from the ground. A startled white dove took off and almost killed him.

He pulled himself over a ledge and moved along between two steep-pitched rooftops. He knew he was near when a wooden shutter erupted in a deadly hail of splinters just feet ahead of him. He dropped down, crawled beneath it and then bobbed up as fast as he could and glanced within. With the accelerated senses that danger brings, he saw a dark arquebus barrel already turning on him, the matchcord smoking. He ducked down again as the gun fired a ball through his hair, and yelled out, ‘St Michael and St George!’

A mighty hand, black with powder smoke and burns, grabbed him by the edge of his jerkin and hauled him inside.

Smith.

‘What kept you?’ he growled.

‘I thought you were dead,’ said Hodge.

‘How did you all find each other?’ said Nicholas.

‘We never lost each other. Only you.’

They were in a lofty vaulted chamber with a huge stone fireplace, bearing the lion crest of Venice above the lintel. But now was not the time to appreciate architectural features. Besides, the chamber was still drifting with black smoke.

One end was massively barricaded with a dark oak table on its side. Stanley crouched behind it. He stood swiftly, fired straight through the wooden panelling, reloading furiously. The muzzle smoked.

There were about twenty men in all here. Four or five were dead or dying.

Why had he come?

Then the doors at the other end of the chamber were flung open, and there stood none other than Governor Niccolo Dandolo himself. He had donned his finest crimson robe for the occasion, and wore neither sword nor armour.

Their guns fell silent. Beyond the barricaded door, the Turks were still shouting.

‘Gentlemen,’ said Dandolo, imperturbably serene. ‘We have done all we can. It is time to give ourselves into Ottoman hands, with dignity intact.’

Not five feet from him, a young Venetian pikeman was spluttering his last breath, a musket ball in his lungs.

There was a sudden movement, and Captain Paolo dal Guasto was at Dandolo’s side. His expression was dark and contorted as he drew back his sword.

‘Dal Guasto, no!’ cried Giustiniani.

Dandolo turned, oblivious of danger to the last. But then one of his bodyguards standing behind him raised his pike high in the air and brought the heavy iron head slamming down upon Dal Guasto’s bare skull. He fell like a poleaxed heifer.

Stanley ran to the fallen captain. He who had held the bastion of San Luca to the very last minute, even after half of it was destroyed by the mines. Dal Guasto was taut and shaking, his eyes rolling. Stanley knew he was done for.

The pikeman was impassive. What point was there in anything
now? It was all too typical. But let the last wretched scene be played out.

‘Draw back that table,’ said Dandolo. ‘We shall present ourselves.’

They hauled back the heavy oak table and then hurried to the opposite end of the chamber, fifteen desperate, panting men. Dandolo stood alone before the holed and splintered double doors and drew them open.

Beyond, it was carnage. The Turks were dragging away the dead bodies of their comrades to make space for further attacks. Somewhere below, a team was actually trying to bring a field gun up the stairs. They had fought half the length of the palace, room by room, a savage and bitter fight in a city already fallen. But rumours flew that there were Knights of St John in the palace, guarding Dandolo to the end.

That would explain it.

Finally the smoke cleared, and there was a Janizary commander with his hand raised, his men twitching but obedient.

Dandolo gave a curt bow. ‘At your service.’

The commander grinned an unsettling grin and strode into the room. His scimitar was gripped tight in his right hand.

‘We have our orders for your capture already, from Lala Mustafa,’ he said. ‘I shall have pleasure in following them to the letter.’

Dandolo frowned. Understanding nothing to the last. The commander took a two-handed grip on his scimitar and swept it cleanly through the air at shoulder height.

The head fell to the floor with a hollow thunk, brains leaking. The surprised trunk in its crimson robe toppled sideways a few moments later.

The commander signalled to his men and they swarmed in. One picked up the severed head and dropped it into a sack. Two more took the headless trunk by its arms and legs and went over to the window. They swung it back and forth a couple of times and then slung it out.

The mortal remains of Governor Niccolo Dandolo tumbled through the air, crimson robe billowing, and came to land with an ugly thump. A great cry went up from the soldiers outside. It was over.

The Janizary commander eyed the huddle of men in the far
doorway. A mere dozen or so, but their expressions were grim rather than placatory or pleading, and they still gripped their weapons. They had fought hard. He indicated the floor with the point of his scimitar. Behind him, a dozen arquebuses were trained on them.

Then one of their number, a bull-like figure with burning eyes and black beard speckled with grey, produced something from behind his back.

Something with a smoking matchcord.

Smith tossed it in the air.

They ran from the chaos behind them like boy sprinters, with no plan but to keep running. There was still a chance they might hide themselves somewhere, in the maze of alleyways and courtyards of the ruined city, or some dank cellar.

Arquebuses cracked out behind them, only two or three rooms back.

They clattered down stone steps and into a small courtyard, where Stanley and Smith whirled their swords and cut down two astonished guards on the gate. A hue and cry went up and a hundred men came after them.

Bektasis.

Somehow they found a moment’s respite in a quiet street, beneath an archway. But they would be found soon.

They sank down wearily and Mazzinghi took a slug of water from his flask. A last drink.

‘On your feet, my brother Luigi Mazzinghi,’ said Giustiniani, his voice very gentle amid the approaching yells and curses. He took the young knight’s arm, for it was trembling as he held his sword. ‘On your feet, my courageous English gentlemen. Before heaven, I know you have been brave fellows, and I would as willingly die beside you as any Knight Hospitaller.’

There were tears in the old man’s eyes. They had all heard the cry of the Bektasis, surging towards them like the sound of hell unloosed.
Allahu akbar! Death to the unbelievers!

And, more soul destroying, they heard an old woman calling out
in Greek from an upper window, ‘There they are! There are the Franks!’

There would be no call to surrender now. This was a sack, with no quarter given: chaotic and bloody yet carefully calculated by Lala Mustafa, most ruthless of military commanders, so that Famagusta should hear of its atrocities and promptly surrender without a fight.

Smith raised his sword high. ‘Acre! Jerusalem! Malta!’

Round the end of the street came a horde half hidden in a cloud of roiling dust. They glimpsed topknots and henna tattoos, white teeth, flashing steel. There was a dervish racing towards them with a scimitar in one hand and a severed head in the other. Most fought naked, already daubed with blood. Some were sexually excited. Their eyes were bloodshot and maddened, rolling in their heads. The Bektasis were so holy and beloved of Allah, they even allowed themselves to drink alcohol. Nothing impure could harm ones already so purified by fire and blood and the love of God.

Much of the Ottoman army, especially the Janizary regiments, had nothing but contempt for these savages, and others said they were no part of the religion of the Prophet, but of Shaitan. Nevertheless, as Lala Mustafa well knew, they had their uses. Savagery and terror, principally.

Nicholas laid his hand on Hodge’s shoulder one last time.

Hodge raised his sword too. ‘For England,’ he said softly. ‘For what it’s bloody well worth.’

Giustiniani pulled them back into the archway, where at least they could not be outflanked, and might pile up the bodies before them.

The Bektasis were not thirty yards away. They had seen their armour, their swords shining, and were howling, running.

Smith glanced back into the small courtyard behind them, open to the sky, surrounded by low buildings. At the back of the courtyard was a high wall. With a door in the far corner.

He glanced out of the archway again. They were coming. One came ahead of all the others. He flailed his arms at them. Stanley struck him down.

Smith sprinted back across the courtyard and tried the door. Bolted, unyielding as a rock. The wall was twelve feet high. Stanley
had one pot-bomb left hanging from his belt, just one, but it was too precious.

Giustiniani read him immediately and drew the others back to form a small triangle, standing five abreast across the corner. They formed a tight line that could not be outflanked, bristling with blades. God send the Bektasis had no guns or they would simply shoot them down. But they always preferred scimitars. More blood.

Now the howling dervishes swarmed through the archway towards them, a flesh-coloured tide.

Stanley reached out and grabbed a donkey-barrow that stood against the wall, and with one giant heave, turned it on its side. A singe small obstacle, but it might help.

Behind them, Smith was hurling himself at the bolted door.

It wouldn’t budge.

The crowd of fifty or more came towards them, chanting, jabbing spears in the air. Many more surged on down the narrow street. Somewhere a woman screamed.

Stanley reached for the single pot-bomb on his belt.

‘A moment more,’ murmured Giustiniani. He held a smoking matchcord close to the pot-bomb’s short fuse. Even his veteran hands were shaking. Sweat stung his eyes.

The Bektasis were doing a kind of dance of death.

Oh, to have one small field gun full of grapeshot. But it would be hand to hand and ten to one.

Smith hurled himself at the door again. Still it did not budge.

One Bektasi rushed at them, ecstatic, smiling, swinging his spear almost uselessly. Mazzinghi clouted it aside, took a single brisk step forward, skewered him through the throat with a thrust of his sword, planted his foot in the fellow’s chest and pushed him off it, and took one step back into line as the fellow was still falling to the ground.