The Archer's Marines: The First Marines - Medieval fiction action story about Marines, naval warfare, and knights after King Richard's crusade in Syria, ... times (The Company of Archers Book 5) (16 page)

       The result is a slaughter with a virtual wall of dead and dying Byzantines piling up all along our front lines as the great cloud of dust they’ve raised slowly drifts in to engulf us all.  And now I badly need to pee.  So I lift my gown and do even though I still standing below Henry on his ladder.

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       The withdrawal of the Byzantines turns into a panic stricken retreat with desperate men throwing away their weapons and running for their lives towards the city gate they used earlier this morning.  And once they start running they are right to throw their weapons away - because Henry orders a counter attack and they are indeed running for their lives.

       “Archers stand firm; Pike men charge”…. “Pike men charge.”

       “That’s it; chase them lads, kill them all.”

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       An hour or so later Henry and I walk through the battlefield towards the distant city gate.  It’s incredibly hot and all around us our men are picking up weapons and giving a soldier’s mercy to the wounded Byzantines who need it and some that don’t. 

       “I held the Marines back because of the foot who got around us on our flanks. Otherwise we’d have gotten even more of them.”

       “You don’t have to explain, my friend.  It was a good decision and a great victory.  The men you trained did very well, very well indeed.  Now let’s go make sure our wounded are being tended to and get something to drink while we wait to hear from the emperor.”

       We wait all day and hear not a word from the city.  The next morning the city gate opens and a procession of priests walks out of the main gate carrying little handheld tents to keep the sun off their heads. Two of the emperor’s courtiers are with them.

      I do not go out to meet them and I do not offer them a place to sit or a drink when they finally reach the shade tent where Randolph, Henry, Peter, and I are sitting.

       “Now what do you propose?”  I asked the head courtier rather benignly in French as I stood up.

       “The emperor has graciously agreed that there is a misunderstanding and that you are entitled to the ten thousand gold coins to compensate you for your trouble.”

       “Surely you jest?  You just attacked us,” I told him rather angrily as I stand up and poke him in the shoulder for emphasis. 
People don’t do that to you, do they?

       “I told you it was ten thousand and all the rest of my men and galleys and only if they are all immediately freed.  You refused and attacked us instead - and you lost.”

       “Now the price to save your city and your emperor from burning is twenty five thousand gold bezants and ten thousand more if you don’t immediately produce my missing men.  I’ll take the equivalent in silver if you don’t have enough gold.  I also want all Latin slaves within your empire immediately freed, dock space for three ships and an acceptable compound near the docks, and the right to carry passengers and cargo to and from Constantinople without fees or taxes.”

       “But that’s impossible.”

       “You’re wrong.  It’s quite possible and you know it.”

       “His Imperial Highness will never agree.”

       “Those are my minimum requirements and my offer is only good for one day.  Either you provide them by tomorrow morning or we will continue with our preparations to destroy the city and kill the emperor.  And since we do not trust you we are going to proceed as if you will not pay. Accordingly, tonight we’ll be bringing more galleys across to the river and proceed with our plan to starve you out and sack the city.”

       And that’s exactly what we did.  The second and third galleys were easier to move and by sunup observers on the city wall could see three of our galleys well inland and on their way to block the river. 

       Several hours later the courtiers came once again.  This time there are no priests among them.

       “The emperor has agreed to all of your requests for the damage caused by his people.  The city’s merchants and the church will pay the thirty five thousand bezants.”
Robert Monk and his men are dead.

       Things move quickly after that.  Within hours wagons begin delivering chests of coins and Randolph is taken to see our new compound and the dock space. 

       Five days later we sail for Cyprus with nearly one hundred newly released slaves and the coin chests spread around in our various galleys for safekeeping. 

       We took the priest half way to Cyprus.

                                     -End of Book Five -

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Books One, Two, Three, and Four of “The Archers” saga are also available in Kindle editions.   The parchments for Book Six are being pieced together and translated. It will be released sometime in 2015.  Readers may also enjoy the similarly action-packed novels of the author’s “The Soldier” saga which follows a young soldier who stays on active duty and becomes a professional soldier. 

All of Martin Archer’s novels are available as Kindle eBooks and will sooner or later be available in print. (Search Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk  or Amazon.com.au for “Martin Archer.”)

Other exciting eBooks by Martin Archer

“Soldiers and Marines”   (The story of a young soldier fighting in Korea)

“Peace and Conflict” (He fights with the Legion and then the allies in Vietnam)

“War Breaks Out”   (The Soviet Union invades Germany and NATO fights)

“War in the East”   (The West gets involved when China invades Russia)

“The Islamic–Israeli War”  (An Islamic Coalition launches a surprise attack on Israel and changes the Middle East.)

   Sample Pages from Book One of the Archer Saga

                       “THE ARCHER”

                     Chapter One    

“THE ARCHER AND THE BISHOP”

      The weary men straggle out of the desert and into the port late in the morning.  There are eighteen of them, all English archers, and most of them have walked every night for the past three days.  The only exceptions are two wounded men on a makeshift litter being dragged behind a dusty camel and a brown robed priest riding on an exhausted horse and holding a sleeping young boy. The boy is wrapped in a dirty priest’s robe to protect him against the chill of the spring day.

       The dirty and begrimed young man walking at the front of the column stops and waits until the priest reaches him. 

       “How’s George?”

        He gestures with a tired wave of his arm towards the sleeping child as he asks.

        “Your son is fine,” answers the priest as the horse stops. 

        The boy wakes up and twists around to get more comfortable in the Priest’s arms when the horse stops.  Then he sits up straight and looks around. 

       “Put me down Uncle Thomas, I want to walk with my father and the men for a while.  My arse is sore and I’m thirsty.”

       And with that he wriggles out of the priest’s arms and slides off the horse.  He is barefoot and wearing a rough brown shirt that hangs to his knees.   Edward the tailor made it for him before he’d been killed by the unlucky stone that had been catapulted over the wall by the Saracens and hit him in the head. 

       “Look Papa, what is that?” 

       The boy asks the question as he massages his rear with one hand and with the other points to the flat gray expanse of the Mediterranean that spreads out beyond stone houses and the ships in the harbor.

       “That’s the big water I told you about, the one that is so salty you can’t drink it.  And those things out there on top of the water are the big ships.  They’re called cogs and they carry people across the big water just like the boats on a river can carry people across the river.  The only difference is that those out there are much bigger.”

        The boy is not convinced as he stands there studying the scene in front of us.

       “They look little.”

       “They’ll look bigger when we get closer.”

       “Really?”

       The boy looks back intensely at the scene in front of him.  Then he shakes his head and looks back at his father questioningly.

       “Your Uncle Thomas is right, George.  All of us can fit on one of those cogs with room to spare.  The big ones can carry as many as a hundred men or even more.  That’s how your uncle Thomas and I and all the archers got here from England.  Almost a hundred of us came on each boat.  And that’s how we’ll go back – all together.”

      
Except we’ve got to get our pay so we can hire a boat and there will only be eighteen of us instead of the one hundred and ninety two that came out from England with King Richard seven years ago - and that’s if we can get the arrow out of Brian’s leg without it rotting and Athol the ox drover stops getting dizzy and falling down when he tries to walk.

       The city is so packed with Christians and Jews fleeing the oncoming Saracens that the city gates are closed and the master of the caravanserai adjacent to the city is only allowing his traditional merchant customers and rich refugees to enter.  Everyone else is camping and starving outside - thousands of them.  Even at a distance we can smell the people and their livestock and see the dust they are raising.

       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’ve heard he’s about to run off and leave.

Read more:  Search Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk for “Martin Archer”

                     or “The Archer’s Quest.”

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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 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 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.