The Archer's Gold: Medieval Military fiction: A Novel about Wars, Knights, Pirates, and Crusaders in The Years of the Feudal Middle Ages of William Marshall ... (The Company of English Archers Book 7) (22 page)
Shouts and a great wail go up as we come into sight and the people see us walking in. They know what our arrival means - it means Lord Edmund’s castle and lands have been lost and the Saracens will be coming.
At best, these people will have to convert to Islam; and most likely they’ll all be put to the sword or taken as slaves. And so will we if the Bishop of Damascus doesn’t pay us so we can get away or ransom ourselves to freedom.
The caravanserai master himself, a great bearded man, comes to the gate with several armed retainers as we approach and the shouting and weeping crowd grows around us with their shouted questions and reaching arms. He looks over my little column and then at me with a baleful eye as I stop in front of him with George holding my hand.
“So it is true? Lord Edmund and the castle have finally fallen?”
“Aye, they have; the road to Damascus is open.”
The caravanserai master crosses himself.
“Well, everyone needs a caravanserai so I guess I’ll be a Moslem again until the Christians or Jews come back. But these people,” he says as he shakes his head in resignation and gestures both towards the people gathering around us and the distant crowds, “I just don’t know.”
Well I know. Anyone who stays here will either be slaughtered or become a slave. That’s why we left four days ago when Lord Edmund fell.
Where is the Bishop of Damascus?
“He’s in the city at the Church of Saint Mary.” Then he gestures at the crowd again and shakes his head disgust and resignation, and adds “but you better hurry if you want to see him. I hear he’s about to run off and leave us.
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Sample pages from Book One of “The Soldier” saga
Book One
SOLDIERS AND MARINES
Dust and gravel periodically spray out behind the Jeep as it slowly backs up towards the top of the low ridge. The early morning sun is bright and already hot, and the periodic sound of thunder in the background has been coming closer for two days.
Three men are in the slowly backing Jeep as it moves backwards over the abandoned farm land and up towards the ridgeline. The passenger sits impassively almost as if he’s in a trance. The gunner on the mounted machine gun crouches and squints down the barrel into the sun as he constantly moves it to the left and right. He is chewing furiously on a mouthful of gum.
Everyone in the Jeep is trying to be as quiet as possible. But it’s not working because of the engine noise and the periodic burst of sound each time the Jeep runs over a patch of rocks or breaks a stick. Each of the men is terribly anxious without saying it out loud.
The occupants of the Jeep are nervous. And rightly so. It’s the morning of July 29
th
and thirty four days earlier the Soviet-trained and equipped North Korean army poured over the border into South Korea. It catches the poorly equipped and under-trained garrison troops of the South Koreans and their allies by surprise - they are everywhere overrun and either killed or pushed back.
The sky is partially cloudy and the flat field of the upward sloping rocky farmland is empty of life and crops. There are great towering white clouds to the north, but at the moment the men are traveling in bright summer morning sunshine. It’s dusty and hot on the rough track across the abandoned farm.
The mud ruts from a previous rain are baked hard and the men in the Jeep don’t know what they will find when they get to the top of the rise they are slowly approaching. But they are highly visible as they slowly bounce over the uneven ground and seriously worried about it.
“Careful, goddamn it, careful,” the passenger hisses in an unnecessarily low voice as they slowly approach the summit. He is twisted around and trying to see over the crouching gunner behind the gun mount. The driver is slowly backing the Jeep upwards towards the top of the rise.
Damn
the passenger thought to himself as he tries to stand so he can see better,
and just when I was about to rotate back home for a new assignment.
He is about six feet tall with close cropped gray hair, about 190 pounds, and, although he never did really think about it, glad he only has daughters who won’t be called in the draft.
He’d picked up the driver’s carbine ten minutes ago, checked its banana clip to make sure it is full, and clicked its fire selector from single shot to automatic. The carbine had ridden wedged between him and the driver until they reached the start of the gradually rising farm land a couple of miles back.
Now, holding the carbine in his right hand like a pistol and trying to keep his balance by holding the edge of the lowered windshield with his left, he is standing as high as possible in the slowly bouncing and rocking Jeep in an effort to see around the gunner and over the top of the ridge.
The passenger is a fairly chunky man wearing the shoes and summer uniform of a garrison officer instead of boots and battledress. His pants are filthy and ripped, but that’s what he’d been wearing when the war started and he hadn’t taken them off yet.
There is a colonel’s badge on the summer soft cap he’d grabbed off the bedroom table and jammed on his head when he’d gotten the 3am call about the invasion and rushed to headquarters.
Brown hair streaked with white pokes out from under the Colonel’s cap. It was cropped short and neat when the war started, but it hasn’t been cut or combed for weeks. He is forty two years old and desperately needs a shave and something to eat. He’d been the commander of a tank battalion in Germany during the big war and knows trouble when he sees it.
What happened? Why weren’t we ready?
Even bouncing along in the Jeep he can’t get the disbelief out of his mind. Once again the United States and the United Kingdom have been caught flat footed and ill-equipped.
The Jeep lurches to a stop at his whispered order. He hoists himself on the barrel of the carbine and slowly raises himself up as high as possible.
Damn, still not far enough to see what’s on the other side.
He isn’t taking any chances. He’d quickly learned in Germany that it is really stupid to show yourself on a ridge line until you are damn sure you know what’s on the other side.
He hasn’t slept for days, his clothes are filthy, and he is totally exhausted. Being worried and backing slowly up a hill in a jeep brought back fleeting memories of the earlier war. He almost smiles at the memory.
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* Read more: Search Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk or your local Amazon website for “Martin Archer.” Or “Soldiers and Marines.”
**Martin Archer can be contacted at
[email protected]
. He would greatly value your comments and suggestions regarding edits and corrections to improve these novels and the publication of print versions.**
