Stormbringers

  The man shrugged his shoulders. ‘You are not to know, but I’m not a slave taker. I am on a journey, not raiding. I don’t raid anyway.’

  ‘Can you command that the slaving galleys don’t raid our village?’

  ‘I can request it of them.’

  ‘Then swear to me that you will urge the slaving galleys never to come here again.’

  ‘Not for a year,’ the man bargained.

  ‘Ten years,’ the captain of the fort demanded.

  ‘Two.’

  ‘Five.’

  ‘Heras. All right,’ he said in agreement. ‘Five.’

  ‘And instead of payment for the mast, make him release all the slaves from the galley,’ Luca suggested.

  The captain hesitated.

  ‘You don’t need money,’ Luca said. ‘We don’t need paying for a mast and a sail. This is a great opportunity. Let some of those poor devils get home to their families.’

  ‘Do you have any Christians at the oars?’ The captain yelled.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Any Italian men?’

  A brief shout for help came clearly across the water and then they could hear the sound of a quick blow.

  ‘We may have some,’ the man at the stern of the galley said cautiously. ‘Why?’

  ‘You must release them all to us, and we will give you mast and sails for free.’

  ‘I cannot release them all, or we cannot row home,’ he said reasonably.

  ‘You can sail!’ Luca shouted, interrupting the negotiations as his anger overcame him. ‘You can sail with the mast and sails that we will give you! Those men must be freed.’ He found he was shaking with rage and that he had stepped out of the shelter of the fort. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said to the captain, stepping back. ‘I should not have interrupted.’

  Luca rejoined Freize. ‘I can’t bear it,’ he said in an undertone. ‘My own father might be on that damned ship. That might have been his voice that called out that he was Italian. That might have been him who was struck.’

  ‘God help him,’ Freize said quietly. To the captain he said, ‘Probably best to make them wait outside the harbour and we bring the mast and sails down the spit, so they don’t come inside the chain. Probably safer not to let them in too close to the town. They may carry the plague, as well as being a people who are not well known for their reliability, in the friendship line of things. Not that I wish to be unpleasant.’

  ‘You will row back down there,’ the captain ordered gesturing to the seaward side of the fort. ‘You can tie alongside at the very end there. You must stay where we can see you and all your men must stay on board the ship. We will bring you the mast and sail and you will release all the Italians you have on board. Agreed?’

  There was a low groan from the captives of other kingdoms.

  ‘Listen to them!’ Luca said fiercely. ‘Hear them!’

  ‘I will release ten Italian men,’ the master of the galley said. Still the drum sounded, regular as a heartbeat. The sea raised the galley up and down and the master of the ship swayed easily standing on the prow deck, as graceful as a dancer as the rowers kept the ship exactly where he had commanded it to be: still on a moving sea.

  ‘No, all of them,’ the captain said steadily. ‘You stole these men from us, now you need our help. You must restore all the Italians to us.’

  There was a brief silence.

  ‘Or go,’ Luca shouted. ‘Though the wave is going to rise again, and this time you will not survive it. It will wash you to hell.’

  At once they could hear the master of the ship laugh. ‘What do you know of the wave?’ he demanded.

  ‘We have great scholars here,’ the captain of the fort said with dignity. ‘This is an inquirer, from Rome. He understands all about the ways of the sea, of land and of the heavens.’

  ‘Has he read Plato?’ the commander of the slave ship taunted. ‘Has he read Pliny?’

  Hopefully the captain of the fort looked at Luca. He gritted his teeth and shook his head.

  ‘Do they agree to the price for the mast or not?’ Freize prompted.

  ‘Do you want our help?’ the captain demanded. ‘For we have named our price.’

  The master of the galley said something quietly to himself. Then aloud, he said, ‘I agree.’ He gave an order and at once the oars dipped and rowed on only one side of the ship while the other side of rowers held it steady. It was an extraordinary piece of seamanship; Luca acknowledged the masterful control of the galley, even as he stared at them with hatred. The ship turned almost on itself, and glided to where the captain of the fort had directed them. The oars that were beside the quay folded themselves in, like a monstrous skeletal wing, so that the craft could come close to shore, and two men leapt on shore and took up the ropes, prow and stern.

  ‘Go to the sailmaker,’ the captain ordered his men inside the fort. ‘Get a lateen sail off him. Tell him we’ll all settle up later. And you, run to the shipyard and get them to bring a mast down here. As fast as you can. Tell them to hurry. Tell them why. I want those scoundrels back out at sea and away from here as soon as possible.’ To Luca and Brother Peter he said, ‘Will you come and see that the rowers are freed?’

  ‘I’ll come,’ Luca said.

  ‘I go with him,’ Freize added.

  Brother Peter hesitated. ‘We are travelling with a young woman who is under our protection,’ he said. ‘She is not obedient to the orders of the Church nor to our command; but she does know languages. I believe she has read – er – Plato. She may speak their language. It might be useful to have her with us, in case they try to cheat.’

  ‘A Muslim woman?’ the Captain was scandalised. ‘You men of the church are travelling with a heretic?’

  ‘She’s slave to the lady that we are escorting to her godfather’s son,’ Luca said quickly.

  ‘Oh, a slave,’ the captain said. ‘That’s all right then. Can you fetch her?’

  ‘It brings her into danger,’ Luca said quietly to Brother Peter. ‘What if they try to take her?’

  ‘She’s enslaved already,’ the captain said reasonably. ‘Why would you care? And your friend is right, she can listen to their talk, and warn us if this is a double-cross.’

  ‘I’ll fetch her,’ Freize offered, handing the culverin to the captain, and setting off to the inn at a trot, coming back with Ishraq.

  She was almost unrecognisable. She had been dressed by the landlady in the clothes of the stable lad. Her long hair was caught up under his floppy hat, and she was wearing his dirty trousers, baggy shirt, and jerkin. The hat was pulled so low over her face that there was no way of seeing that she was a beautiful girl. Only her slim ankles showing above the clumsy heavy shoes betrayed her, to anyone who was looking closely. She stood behind Freize as if she were a frightened youth.

  ‘This?’ the captain said, his idea of a beautiful girl in Luca’s private harem disappearing quickly.

  ‘This,’ Luca said. To Ishraq he said, ‘Keep right out of the way and if it goes wrong at all, then run back to the hiding place in the inn. Get yourself to safety and we will follow. Save yourself before anything else. But listen to what they say. You speak Arabic, don’t you?’

  ‘Of course,’ she said quietly.

  ‘Warn us if they are pretending to agree with us, but planning something among themselves. The moment you hear them plotting something, just touch my sleeve, I’ll be watching for a sign from you. They say that they need our help but these are devils. Devils.’

  From the shadow of the hat her dark eyes regarded him. ‘These are my people,’ she said quietly. ‘These that you are calling devils.’

  ‘These are nothing to do with you. They are devils,’ he said flatly. ‘They took my father and my mother from their own safe fields and I don’t know where they are now, or even if they are alive.’

  She started to put out her hand to him, and then she remembered Isolde’s jealous rage and tucked both her hands firmly in the jacket pockets. ‘I’m ready,’ sh
e said.

  Freize stood one side of her and Luca the other. From the sailmaker’s loft came four men, carrying a heavy rolled sail on their shoulders. Further down the quayside a dozen men carrying ropes slung under a long mast, were walking in slow step towards the fort.

  The captain of the fort came forwards to meet them. ‘Are you all carrying knives?’ he asked. They nodded in silence. ‘Keep them hidden until I give the word,’ he said. ‘If they keep the peace then we will too. If anything goes wrong fall back on the fort.’ To Ishraq he said. ‘Warn us at once if you suspect anything.’

  She nodded. ‘I understand.’

  He glanced at Luca. ‘Are you ready, Inquirer?’

  Luca nodded, and they led the way past the fort to where the quayside sloped down to the sea and the galley was held to the harbour wall by two waiting men. One of them was a tall broad man from the coast of Benin, his black face completely impassive, his dark eyes scanning each one of them as they walked towards him. The other was a tall white man, blond-haired and blue-eyed. The master of the galley stood in the stern of his ship, the drummer beside him.

  The master was a young man, little more than eighteen, richly dressed in a pair of wide navy brocade pantaloons with beautiful red leather short boots. He had a richly embroidered white linen shirt, the sleeves billowing, and a surcoat over the top, encrusted with precious stones. At his side he wore a belt with a long curved sword and on his head – strangest of all for Luca – was a tight small white turban with a stone and the white floating plume of egrets’ feathers at the front. His skin was a light brown, his eyes dark, almost black, and squinting now against the bright sky as he looked up at the quay as the Christians arrived, followed by the men carrying the sail and the long mast. He stood like a young man filled with joy in his own strength and confidence, accustomed to command, unbeaten. He was, as even Luca could see at once, dazzlingly handsome.

  Luca, the captain of the fort, Freize and Ishraq came to the brink of the quay so that they could see down into the slaving galley; it was a pitiful sight. Every oar had two men chained to it, and there were forty, perhaps fifty oars. That was only the first deck. Below the enslaved rowers was another deck with another set of men chained to their oars, dressed in rags, burned brown as dried nuts from the constant blaze of the sun, sitting in their own filth, dully awaiting the order of the pounding drum. Luca gave a horrified exclamation and stepped back, cupping his palm over his nose and mouth against the stench, trying not to retch.

  ‘Will you help us to fit the mast?’ the master asked.

  Ishraq listened carefully to his accent, looked from the one man onshore to the other, strained to get a sense of their purpose, to see if there was double-dealing planned here. Unnoticed, she eased her feet out of the ill-fitting shoes. If she was going to have to run or fight, she was not going to stumble.

  ‘First, you will release the Italians,’ Luca said, his anger in every clipped word.

  ‘Are you in command here?’ the young man asked politely, bowing his head a little. The great ruby in his turban winked in the sunlight. ‘Are you the one that he said was an inquirer? From Rome?’

  ‘I am visiting the town. The commander of the defence is this captain,’ Luca explained.

  ‘You are a traveller?’

  Luca nodded.

  ‘Appointed by the Pope?’

  ‘I am a Papal inquirer,’ Luca said. ‘But it is no business of yours. What are you doing here?’

  ‘I have been inquiring too – I take an interest in coastal defences.’

  Ishraq eased towards Luca. ‘He’s a very senior commander,’ she muttered. ‘See the ruby in his turban and the jewels in his coat.’

  ‘Where are you going to?’ Luca asked.

  ‘Homeward bound,’ he showed them a taunting smile. ‘We call it home now. You called it Constantinople, but we call it Istanbul. Do you know why?’

  At the new name that the conquering infidels had given to the Christian city of Constantinople, Brother Peter hissed in horror and crossed himself. The commander laughed at the gesture. ‘We named it from the Greek.’

  Luca, who had not been taught Greek, gritted his teeth on his own ignorance.

  ‘The Greek istimbolin means “in the city”. We are in the city now and we will never lose it. So we have called it In-the-city.’

  ‘What’s your name?’ Luca asked.

  ‘Radu Bey,’ he replied. ‘Yours?’

  ‘Luca Vero.’

  ‘Priest?’

  ‘Novice.’

  ‘Ah, I know who you are,’ he said with sudden understanding. ‘You’re one of those commanded to make inquiry for the secret order. You will be a servant of the Order of Darkness.’

  Luca exchanged a quick shocked glance with Brother Peter. ‘What do you know of the Order of Darkness?’ he demanded.

  ‘More than you would think. A lot more than you would think. Am I right?’

  ‘I don’t discuss it with you.’

  ‘Do you know your commander? Do you know any other inquirers?’

  Luca kept his face impassive.

  ‘I think not,’ the commander said in Arabic, quietly, almost to himself. ‘It’s just how I would do it.’

  ‘He said “I think not . . . it’s just how I would do it,”’ Ishraq translated in Luca’s ear.

  ‘First, the children,’ Luca said, as the Piccolo men, sweating, dumped the long heavy mast beside the folded sail.

  ‘Will you take them, whether they want to come with you or no?’ Radu asked. ‘Will you take them against their will?’

  ‘No, of course not. But why would they choose to go into slavery with you?’

  ‘Because they are not going to be enslaved. They’re going to be janissaries. The greatest soldiers in the world. They could rise through my army, they could become commanders.’ He smiled at Luca, inviting him to see the joke. ‘When we conquer Italy, they could be the ones riding at the head of the invading army, the triumphant army. Either one of them could rise to be governor, and come back to his home as a lord. He could march into his own village, he could live in the castle in the place of the Christian lord. They may prefer this future to coming back to plough the fields and muck out stables for you.’

  Luca ignored him and called directly to the children. ‘Do you want to come ashore? I will see that you get back to your homes. You have been saved from the flood by a miracle. Do you want to come home now and go back to your father and mother and serve God?’

  ‘They are brothers,’ Radu remarked, watching them. ‘And their father beat them every day, and their mother starved them. That’s why they ran away in the first place. I don’t think they’ll want to go back home.’

  ‘I can put you into a monastery,’ Luca offered. ‘You can live and work in the Church. That’s how I was raised, and Freize my friend here. It was all right. We ate well, we were educated.’

  ‘But you didn’t learn Greek,’ the slave galley commander taunted him.

  ‘That hardly matters,’ Luca said, irritated.

  Clearly the boys did not know what to do.

  ‘My brother and I were both taken by the Ottomans,’ Radu remarked to the boys. ‘We might be an example to you. We chose different routes. He went home to the Christians and is now a great commander; one of the greatest. You could take his path and rise as well as he did. You could go with these men; I am sure they would put you in a safe place.

  ‘But I stayed in the Empire and I am as great a commander as my brother. I eat better than him, I am certain that I am better dressed, and I am on the winning side. The Ottoman Empire is over-running the world, our frontiers expand every year. Now you two can choose. By luck – by the breaking of a mast and the loss of a sail you are free to choose. Not many boys get such a choice. It is a moment of destiny – fate – funny that it should come to two such little boys as you.’

  ‘We’ll go with you,’ the eldest boy said. He looked up at the handsome face. ‘You promise that we can stay together and
that we will not be made slaves?’

  ‘You will live with a family of Turks in the country, and they will feed you and educate you. You will have to work hard but you will be trained as soldiers. You will be forbidden to marry or take up any trade but soldiering. When you are big and strong enough, you will join the army and serve the Sultan Mehmet II, as I do. His command runs from Wallachia to Armenia and there’s no doubt that you will march into Christendom, to the very gates of Vienna and beyond, to Paris, to Rome, to Madrid, to London. Every year we advance. Every year the Christians are defeated and fall back before us. You will be on the winning side under my command. The Christians say themselves that the end of days is coming for them. They predict that the world will end: we know that it will be us who ends it for them.’

  ‘We will never be defeated,’ Luca said fiercely. ‘You lie to the boys. We will never be defeated and you will never ride into Vienna, for we are under the hand of God.’

  ‘Inshallah, we are all under the hand of God,’ the Muslim said quietly. ‘But clearly, even you must see, that us both believing this makes no difference to who wins the battles. At the moment, as you must see, we are winning.’

  ‘We will never renounce our faith!’

  ‘We don’t ask you to. You can believe what you like. You can even pray as you like. But we will rule all of Christendom.’

  ‘Come home!’ Luca exclaimed, holding out both hands to the boys as if he would have them jump on shore.

  The eldest boy shook his head. ‘Thank you very much,’ he said with careful politeness, ‘but this man saved us from the flood and will teach us to be soldiers like him. We’ll stay with him.’

  ‘Don’t you want to see your home again? Your mother and your father?’

  ‘Not at all,’ the boy said clearly. ‘They treated us worse than their hounds. We will make a new home.’

  Luca stepped back, looked at Brother Peter. ‘I have no words,’ he said wretchedly. ‘I have failed these children twice over. Once when I could not foresee the wave, and now I cannot stop them selling their souls to the devil.’

  Radu smiled. ‘Cheer up, Inquirer! The galley slaves won’t choose to stay with me. They are all yours, poor wretches. Now, I’ll have to unchain them. I will have to take my men and go down among them.’