Some dozen big iron grapnels were brought out to have lengths of strong cordage rove to their shank eyes and their-bits tested for sharpness and, where necessary, touched up with file and stone; then they were laid in convenient spots by the starboard rails.
The ship’s carpenter and his mate supervised the bringing on deck of several long, thick planks varying in width from a foot to about eighteen inches, then set about driving iron spikes, two or three of them, through each end of the planks — boarding-bridges-to-be .
The boatswain and his mates began to pass among the common seamen, arming them with short, heavy swords, dirks, battleaxes, and boarding pikes. They also passed out plain, simple skullcaps of steel to go under turbans or kafiyehs and twine-tied bundles of foot-long fletched darts and a few longer javelins. Last of all, they brought up and carefully unwrapped a few short bows, which were delivered to certain older men, all of them Turks.
Bass noted that the bows must be extremely powerful, for two men’s strength was required to string them. Strung, however, no one of them was more than a bare three feet in length, and the arrows, plucked out of lacquered leather cylinders and carefully examined, were short as well, two feet or less from nocks to points. With bows and arrow cases hung down their backs, eight Turks took to the rigging, climbing swiftly and surely up to spots that were obviously predetermined.
When but twenty yards separated the two ships, both of the French galleon’s starboard-bow chasers fired loads of langrage at the packed forecastle deck of the Revenge, but with poor results. One piece was fired too soon and the antipersonnel charge was wasted against the bow timbers; the other was fired a split second too late, sending most of it aloft to pepper the sails and foremast.
Then they were gliding alongside the battered French galleon, with a bare three or four yards of water between the two hulls. Every other gun of the starboard batteries was fired, directly at the French gunports, then, while swivels, slingpieces, and other smaller ordnance swept the decks from rails to both castles and fighting-tops, with arquebusiers and archers adding their ounces of lead and feathered shafts to the deadly sleet, brawny arms whirled the grapnels about to gain momentum, then hurled them across the narrow space to thud onto decks and sink their points deeply into rails and coamings, ladders and woodwork. Seamen and soldiers alike heaved at the lines of well-imbedded hooks, slowly warping the ships even closer, as others stood ready with the spiked planks.
Ax-wielding men rushed to where the grapnels had imbedded themselves and some few were able to ax through the taut lines before being transfixed by short arrows from the small but powerful bows of the Turks aloft in Revenge’s rigging. They were, Bass noted with a part of his mind, far more valuable than would have been an equal number of arquesbusiers in that their “reloading” took split seconds, so that they could drop the original axman in one breath and the man who rushed to take up that ax in the very next.
One more salvo was fired from the sakers in the waist and the swivel guns, poured full into the mob in the waist of the enemy galleon—which rode some two feet lower than did the larger, four-masted Revenge—then the waiting planks were tipped over and thudded down to sink their spikes into the Frenchman’s rails. At once, soldiers and seamen swarmed onto the narrow, springy footing, weapons out and ready.
CHAPTER
THE FOURTH
The three cardinals, di Bolgia, Sir Ugo, and the lieutenant had arisen and now stood about a large table in a better-lit area nearer to the glass doors. With goblets and hands they were anchoring a huge parchment map D’Este had just unrolled. Using an antique ballock dagger’s slender blade as a pointer, D’Este explained, “Your grace and his company would board ship here, in Palermo harbor. There will be three large ships— two three-masted galleons and one four-masted—so there should not be overmuch crowding on the voyage. The two three-masters are really merchant ships owned by a man I know quite well, but still the both of them are well enough armed to hold their own against most marauders.
“The larger ship, on the other hand, is a line-of-battle ship, leased from the King of France and originally scheduled to take part in an attempt to revictual and resupply the besieged City of London. Unfortunately—or, possibly, very fortunately, since that entire fleet was sunk or captured by King Arthur’s navy—this galleon was very late in arriving at Livorno and missed the sailing date of the supply fleet by over a month. She and her French captain and crew have been in Livorno since, but I have dispatched a message summoning them down here, to Palermo. After all, their rent is paid for a twelvemonth; no profit in letting them sit useless.
“Beyond the Pillars of Hercules, your ship captains will have orders to stand southwestward along the Afriquan coast to the port of Anfa Antiqua. There, additional persons, cargo, and ships will be added to the fleet, and all will, allowing God’s grace of decent weather, proceed immediately due north to Irland and your landfall.
“Once landed, your grace should report at once to Archbishop Giosu£ di Rezzi. He will be our—your grace’s employers’—voice in Irland, and though ostensibly you will be King Tamhas’s general, you will be answerable only to the archbishop. Understood?”
“Understood, your eminence,” Timoteo said, then asked, “But this archbishop . . . there is a retired condottiere, a very great captain in his time . . . ?”
D’Este replied, “The archbishop is a younger brother of the still-esteemed Barone Mario di Rezzi, though it is my understanding that the two brothers differ in many ways.
“But back to our subject. In addition to the troops with which your grace lands in Irland, you will be expected to take in hand and reorganize some two thousands of Flemish mercenaries—both foot and horse—who were routed, badly battered, by a much smaller force of Irlandese under the King of Lagan, last year. Their captain was slain in that action, and they retreated behind the walls of Dublin City, from whence they were brought down south by ship by King Tamhas at the instigation of Archbishop Giosud, subsequent to the departure of their erstwhile employer. Cardinal Mustapha il-Ganub.
“They are rather dispirited, I understand, but a captain of the well-earned reputation of your grace should be able to whip them back into shape. Your grace has carta blanca in this matter; flog, maim, or hang as many as necessary to make them reliable soldiers once more. You and those of your officers and sergeants involved in this task will, of course, receive additional recompense.
“The port fortifications and the principal citadel in King Tamhas’s capital city are commanded, officered, and partially manned by Venetian specialist-cannoneers serving long-term contracts to the king. The archbishop attests them to be a prickly lot and easily offended, but your grace can only do his best to remain on at least civil terms with them.
“The third and largest group of fighting men will be King Tamhas’s Royal Munster Army. Being supposedly the king’s hired general, a part of your job will be to see what can be done to make this army battle-ready.”
“Does his eminence know aught of the general makeup of the army of mis pocket-king?” asked di Bolgia slowly, keeping his gaze on the map and pulling absently at his lower lip.
D’Este shrugged. “Very little, really. Archbishop Giosu£ avers that while a large force for those climes, most of it is ill trained and not very reliable. The best, he says, of all the pack are a contingent—numbers unstated—of Irlandese noblemen who have all soldiered elsewhere than Irland and one or more units of a class of soldier called ‘galhogleses’ or some similar barbaric term.”
” ‘Gallowglasses,’ your eminence,” corrected di Bolgia politely. “I, myself, have yet to see aught of them, but I have both heard and read reports concerning them and their origins, uses, strengths, and weaknesses. Originally, they were all footmen, employing as principal weapon-of-choice an early variety of poleax. But over the years they are become a type of dragoon, all mounted. They still carry an oversized ax and can wreak as bloodily afoot as ever they could, but now they wear half-armor and carry pistols, swords, fuzees, and, sometimes, even darts or throwing axes. There are not over many of them in any one generation, and they seem to fight noplace save in Irland, for all that the most of them come not from Irland but the western islands of the Kingdom of Scotland.”
“Your grace seems wondrous well versed in these matters,” the youngest of the cardinals, Murad Yakubian, commented. “That is, for one who claims never to have soldiered in Irland or England.”