The Last Crusaders: Blood Red Sea (27 page)

The horde howled, dancing, their spears weaving in the air before them. Six feet in front of them. A single charge and they were done.

And more were climbing up on the roofs of the buildings around the courtyard, coming almost behind them to hurl down tiles and stones.

Smith drove himself at the door.

‘Now!’ said Giustiniani.

The matchcord touched the fuse, it fizzed into life, and Stanley lobbed it high over the horde before them.

‘Down!’

They ducked low, squatting, faces lowered, hands over their heads. The pot-bomb exploded in the air. They stood again, instantly reforming.

The heart of the horde had been flattened by the blast of nails, glass and potsherds like a field of wheat under a hailstorm.

‘Forward!’ cried Giustiniani, and as one they stepped up to the front rank of still-bewildered dervishes. Nicholas bent one knee and drove his sword forward long and hard. He caught his man in the thigh and he went down groaning, surprised. He could not finish him off before two more came forward and they all stepped back into line within the enclosed space of the walls.

Then they were under full attack.

Nicholas had not fought like this since Malta, and yet for the first few moments that seemed to last so long, it was horribly easy. These were no trained soldiers but fanatics, ardent to die and go to paradise. They came on to the sacrifice willingly. Yet after only a minute or two of duck, thrust and skewer, the five were blood-slathered to the shoulder, and all but Stanley, perhaps, were beginning to tire in the sword-arm. It was exhaustion that would kill them, exhaustion alone, swamped by sheer numbers.

Then Mazzinghi was cut, a long spear thrust more calculated than most, which laid his temple open to the bone and blinded him in one eye with his own blood, so that he could no longer judge distance and scale.

‘Get that door open, Smith!’ roared Giustiniani, hacking down another spearman. ‘Hit it again!’

Hodge took a savage blow to his left arm from a studded cudgel, and sank to one knee with the pain. Nicholas whirled his sword over him and caught the assailant a shallow slashing cut across the side of his neck. The Bektasi stepped back, not mortally wounded, and another came on in his place.

Beyond the howling, there were sounds of a city being raped. But for them, for now, the whole vast battlefield of the central Cyprus plain, the fall of this great walled city of ten thousand, had
shrunk to this single courtyard, and an old wooden door with a bolt that wouldn’t budge.

Then Mazzinghi cracked.

He shot his bloody sword home in its scabbard, vaulted forward on to the side of the donkey-barrow, and then leapt up with a spring that only a young man in terror could perform. It was just enough for him to reach the top of the courtyard wall, holding on by his fingertips. He swung left and right, legs flailing. A spear clattered into the wall not a hand’s breadth away from him, and then he swung far enough to hitch his right foot up on top of the wall. He rolled over, dropped down the other side and was gone.

The cowardice made them redouble their ruthless sword-work. At least they’d not die like that yellow Florentine.

Smith abandoned the door and drew his sword and pressed forward into the line.

‘Remember Acre!’ he bellowed.

It was in the final flurry of slashes and thrusts, all of them half blinded now by dust and sweat, arms barely able to raise their blades, that they heard the sound of a bolt being shot, and knew from the way the sound opened up that the door behind them was ajar. And there stood Mazzinghi.

They seized the moment of chaos and opportunity, Nicholas kicking one last fellow hard on the kneecap, and then they were back through the doorway.

Smith put his less battered shoulder to the door and slammed it shut again. A dervish had his arm through the door. It must have been half severed by the door slamming shut with all of Smith’s weight behind it. Smith wrenched the door open one last time, as if exasperated, punched the fellow full in the face, and slammed it shut a second time, shooting the heavy bolt.

It would buy them all of a few seconds. Other Bektasis were already coming over the wall above them.

‘Run!’

They tore round the corner into a wider street, and there was a column of two hundred fresh Janizaries ahead of them, eight abreast, long wheel-lock muskets held across their chests.

They might have been a different army.

Behind them they could hear the soft thunder of two or three hundred bare brown feet. Silent now. Intent.

The Janizary captain shouted an order, and the front rank raised their muskets, setting the butts not against their chests but nestled hard into their shoulders in the modern style.

The Bektasis came on behind them.

They were done for.

Yet even in this last moment, Giustiniani had to speak.

‘Fra Luigi,’ he gasped, ‘forgive me, I doubted you. I thought you had fled us.’

Mazzinghi actually managed a last grin as he raised an empty, bloody hand, facing the execution of the Janizary muskets. ‘Forget it, Brother. Pardon all.’

The captain shouted again, and dropped his straightened arm imperiously.

‘He means us!’ shouted Stanley, suddenly understanding. ‘Drop!’

They hit the ground just as a disciplined volley cracked out from the Janizary front rank. It was aimed to sheer just over the heads of the onrushing Bektasis, who even in their opiate delirium and bloodlust came to a jumbled halt, scimitars trailing, staring.

‘Hold yourselves back!’ roared the Janizary captain. ‘These six are in our custody now!’

The six lay still in the dust while the two factions stood opposing one another. Then the captain called out once more, clear and commanding, and used the name ‘Lala Mustafa’.

The Bektasis muttered dark curses and eyed each other. Then they slunk away and were gone.

The six lay still. Out of the frying pan, into the fires of hell. They had been found out. They had been taken prisoner as knights. And instead of quick slaughter at the hands of the Bektasis, a far worse fate now awaited them. Led captive to Lala Mustafa himself, and death by slow and exemplary torture.

A voice said, ‘Yes, it is them. The Venetian embassy.’

‘You are certain?’ said the Janizary captain gruffly. ‘They look like very martial and sword-ready ambassadors.’

‘They went armed,’ said the other. ‘There was necessity. But this is them. They should not be harmed but taken in safety. They came into the city with orders for Dandolo to make peace.’

Nicholas looked up, face begrimed. Blood everywhere, and his neck throbbing. His arm tingled likewise.

Beside the Janizary captain, serving as his translator in this ravaged polyglot city, stood a thin-faced, clever-looking Moor.

Abdul of Tripoli.

‘On your feet,’ said the captain.

As they hauled themselves up and wiped the sweat from their faces, Abdul gave them a surreptitious wink and murmured in English, ‘An eye for an eye.’

They remained expressionless.

The captain looked at him sharply. ‘What tongue was that?’

‘Italian,’ said Abdul in Turkish. ‘But Venetian dialect. An old proverb.’

The captain grunted.

By the beard of the Prophet, thought Abdul to himself, a liar and cheat has to think fast.

‘Your weapons,’ said a Janizary sergeant.

Smith shook his head.

Giustiniani said, ‘Brother John, I order you to surrender your weapon. It may be returned to us after.’

Smith threw his beloved jezail at the sergeant, who caught it smartly. He raised it and admired the perfect barrel, then slung it over his shoulder and smiled. They were chained and marched back through the city towards the Famagusta Gate and the Ottoman camp beyond.

Up a ladder, a drunken Greek dragged down the flag of St Mark and hoisted the Turkish standard.

‘You see why we lost,’ murmured Stanley.

They saw an old woman being beheaded where she knelt in the dust. Old women, beyond work or childbirth, were always regarded as particularly useless booty of war. Then they threw her with other bodies on to a pyre.

Smith, even weaponless and in chains, seemed to bristle visibly with fury.

‘Wait,’ murmured Stanley softly to him, ‘wait. Hold it all in. Our time will come. Now is the time to be strongest of all. To watch all this and do nothing. That takes strength.’

Giustiniani nodded grimly to him too. It was a humiliation almost beyond endurance, yet by a strange fate, they might yet survive the charnel-house of fallen Nicosia.

There was a fire burning in a side street, and they glimpsed a group of Janizaries, wearing expressions of grim disgust, beheading two naked, kneeling Bektasis. Near by they saw a boy of no more than twelve years of age hanging crucified from a wooden gate.

That Lala Mustafa should still regard this hideous sacking of a city as a personal triumph and a great victory told them all they needed to know about the enemy commander.

They halted to watch. Their guards raised their muskets to belabour them onwards, but they stood as stubborn as mules.

A big bearded Janizary waved at the murdered and crucified boy. ‘Get him down!’ And then he rained curses on the dead Bektasis at his feet, and finished by spitting on them.

The Janizary captain glared at his captives, as if angry with them for even witnessing this shame upon the armies of the Sultan.

‘The sack of a city is always a foul thing,’ he growled, ‘and only
the lowest can take pleasure in it. But those dogs of Bektasis are nothing but a disgrace to us all.’

Giustiniani said sharply, ‘You cannot unloose such men on a fallen city and not expect carnage. But carnage has a habit of returning on those who commit it.’

The captain said, ‘Walk on,’ and they were jerked forward in their chains.

They were left in a large framed tent surrounded by guards.

‘What happens to us now?’

The captain, still angry and mistrustful of them, grimaced and departed without a word. A little later a black slave brought them a little bread and water.

All night the fires of Nicosia burned, and their hearts burned within them for shame and sorrow.

‘The shame of the survivor,’ murmured Stanley.

On the second day, a small, slender Turk stepped into their tent, flanked by two burly bodyguards who looked like wrestlers, bare to the waist, shaven headed but for nodding topknots. They were too dark skinned for Bulgars. Perhaps Kazakhs or even Tajiks.

The Turk wore a fine silk robe, unspotted by battle. He had darting eyes and a moustache as thin as a blade of grass, and standing in their tent he wrinkled his nose. They lay and sweated, still exhausted, defeated. Their own bloody shirts and boots lay on the ground around them.

‘You fought hard, I see,’ he said. ‘For peaceful ambassadors.’ His voice was very crisp and he spoke fast.

Ottoman intelligence. There was no mistaking it.

Time to sharpen their thoughts. The feel of the rack was in their joints and bones.

Giustiniani got to his feet and bowed, pulling his filthy shirt on over his powerful frame. The others shuffled upright and did likewise.

Giustiniani said, ‘We were cornered in the palace and attacked, even as we tried to urge Governor Dandolo to make peace. Yet we came as ambassadors, not soldiers. My name is Federico da Mosta, at your service.’

The Turk’s eyes narrowed. ‘Ertugul Bey. Most humbly your servant.’

Stanley said, in the fluent Turkish that might be expected of a Venetian ambassador, ‘Be assured, My Lord, that it was bitterly frustrating for us to be so ignored and overruled by the gallant and fearless Governor Dandolo, who so longed to taste the glory of war.’

As Stanley spoke, Nicholas saw his fists clenched so tight behind his back he thought his knuckles might pop.

Ertugul Bey said, ‘Well, though I have no doubt at all that you are ambassadors, you are officially captive for the moment, and indeed a part of that fifth of all captive booty set aside for the Sultan himself.’

‘So now we belong to Selim,’ muttered Smith. ‘There’s a funny twist.’

Giustiniani caught his eye warningly. And Ertugul Bey in turn caught his warning. He said, ‘Now that Nicosia has fallen to us, we hear that the Venetian relief fleet has already turned and sailed for home. Without a shot being fired!’ He smiled. ‘Your masters must have decided that Famagusta, too, is a lost cause.’

He eyed each of them in turn. Not a flicker.

‘If you would release us,’ said Giustiniani, cold to the heart at this appalling news but hiding it with absolute mastery, ‘we would willingly ride on to Famagusta in embassy once more, and persuade them to sue for peace.’

‘I’m sure you would,’ said Ertugul Bey. ‘But there are a few more matters to be gone through with you first. There was a Malta standard seen on the walls. And a rumour went round that there were Knights of St John fighting in the palace. An idle rumour, of course.’

‘Of course,’ said Giustiniani.

Their inquisitor turned on Mazzinghi like a polecat. ‘Grand Commander de la Valette was a tall man, was he not?’

‘I, I never met him,’ stammered Mazzinghi, ‘but I believe so.’

‘Taller than Commander Piero del Monte?’ Ertugul Bey snapped, still staring at Mazzinghi, ‘would you say, Da Mosta?’

Pietro Giustiniani didn’t miss a beat. ‘I couldn’t say, My Lord. I have not met him, but Del Monte is accounted a fine commander.’

Ertugul Bey whipped round and smiled at him again. A smile more disconcerting than any scowl.

Then he eyed Hodge. Light brown hair, blue eyes, rosy sunburned cheeks. ‘God save the Queen!’ he said in heavily accented English.

They stood in frozen agony, but Hodge merely frowned and shrugged.

Ertugul Bey patted him on the shoulder. ‘Rumours said the knights in Nicosia were English, or perhaps had English among them. Very far from home, no?’

‘And very implausible,’ said Stanley. ‘The Protestant English and the Catholic knights are no friends.’

‘No. Yet the world is very complicated and confused these days, is it not?’

Stanley nodded. ‘That it is.’