The French Executioner (23 page)

‘One stroke! Now ship oars!’ Corbeau cried.

The port oars gave a final push that directed the ship almost directly down the throat of the Arab. Almost directly, for the
manoeuvre had taken them just past and, with port oars shipped as well but with a strong wind still filling its sail, the
wingless bird that was now the
Perseus
crashed at full speed along the length of the corsair, splintering its port oars, crushing those rowers not swift enough
to dive beneath their benches.

Within seconds it was over. It had all happened so swiftly, the enemy so surprised that only a few arrows had been loosed
to fall harmlessly on the deck or stick in the sail.

‘Port and starboard oars out! Row, you bastards, row like you’ve never rowed before!’

As they passed the aft end of the Arab ship, the oar tips were hurled into the water and the men immediately took the strain,
to a triple-time beat. The corsair they had crippled lurched in their wake, and open sea lay ahead, with wind in their sails
and the two other enemy vessels struggling to come about.

‘That will do, Corbeau,’ the captain called down. ‘They’ll never catch us now.’

He was so nearly right. He would have been but for the one man on the crippled ship that had kept his wits in the suddenness
of the assault.

John Hood was an Englishman and a former master gunner in King Henry’s navy. By a series of misadventures, through battle,
piracy and slavery, he had finally found himself working for a new master – a heathen, to be sure, but one who gave him a
life of profit and luxury he could never have dreamt of in Kent. Now he saw his first chance of booty since their defeat at
Tunis slipping away to aft. He may have risen to captain’s rank but he was still a gunner at heart.

‘I’m not bloody ’avin’ that!’ he said.

Swivelling the basilisk gun on the rear platform, a light weapon he usually used against infantry on a deck, he swiftly sighted
along the barrel and fired it. The shot within, at that range a dense cluster of metal fragments, hit exactly what he was
aiming at: the junction of mast and sail beam. It shattered, dropping the heavy wooden pole and the yards of cloth onto the
deck and the crew of the
Perseus.

‘Under!’ yelled Jean, and he, Haakon and Januc, with all the instincts of the battle-trained, dropped their oars and dived
beneath their hard wooden benches, seconds before the collapsing rigging fell on top of them.

Many were not so quick or lucky. When they emerged from the rolls of sail cloth, a grim sight met them. Some men were squirming,
pinned between bench and beam, limbs crushed.
Others lay still, heads split, already beyond the hardships of the oar. The screams were terrible.

One struggling figure, shrieking and crying, was trying to force itself from under the cloth. Jean pushed his hands into a
rent and ripped a hole in it, enough for the yelling, toothless head of Da Costa to emerge.

‘By Chrisht, ladsh,’ he shouted, ‘I thought I wash drowning there!’

Haakon put his arms under the old man’s, but when he tried to pull him up the Portuguese let out a yell.

‘No, shtop! Shomething’sh got my foot.’

Jean widened the hole a little to look. Da Costa’s left leg was pinned by the main beam and, by its angle, he could see the
foot was undoubtedly broken underneath it.

‘Leave him, Haakon. We’ll need some help.’

It was not long in coming for de la Vallerie was urging Corbeau to clear the mess. Only half his crew were rowing at the moment
and he needed to put some distance between him and the galleys, which were already coming about.

Soldiers descended, lifting the debris out of the way, hurling what was obviously beyond repair over the side. Some of their
number had been in the rigging and lay now among the dead and dying. The lookout would never have to face his punishment for
it had come to him much quicker in a long fall to the deck.

As swiftly as they could work, the tangle of cloth, sail and heavy wood was cleared away. When they came to lift the beam
off Da Costa it took ten soldiers plus the strength of Jean, Haakon and Januc to achieve it. The old man let out a scream
and fainted. He was dumped on the central gangway along with eleven more of the crippled; the dead were simply tipped over
the side. Spare oars were produced to replace those broken by the impact. Within minutes, the
Perseus
was once more pulling through the water.

They were ahead of the galleys by maybe a quarter of a league, but de la Vallerie could see that the enemy had now
come about and the wind that had so favoured him in the recent manoeuvre was now fully behind the corsairs. He could also
see that the two undamaged galleys were leaving their crippled sister in their wake.

What mischance,
thought the captain, strangely calm.
My brilliance defeated by a lucky shot. With the wind behind us in our own sail we could have outrun them: without it …
In a short chase the light
Perseus
could easily beat the bulkier Arab galleys, just on oar power. But the enemy had double the men to replace tired oarsmen
at their posts, and every soldier on their ship could also row. His own were too proud to have learnt and too inept to be
taught now.

No, he sighed. This contest cannot last long.

As if to echo his thoughts there was a boom of the forward cannon on the smaller of the pursuing galleys. The shot dropped
well short and drew ironic cheers from his crew, but he knew that the Arabs were merely checking the distance. They wouldn’t
fire their cannon unless necessary. They wouldn’t want to damage their prize.

Down on the bench, Jean and Haakon were rowing hard, driven by the double beat of the drum and the crack and whistle of the
bullwhip above them. But Januc, it seemed, was rowing hardest of all. Anyone who knew the lie of his ‘Christianity’ would
have found his efforts hard to believe. Anyone who had overheard his nightly prayers or, like Jean, seen the light in his
eyes when the corsairs were first sighted.

But all hope had turned to dust in his mouth, crushed as surely as Da Costa’s foot. And it had taken just a moment, when he
saw second banner flapping on the main galley’s mast. Above it was the inevitable red and gold flag with the crescent of Islam,
a sight to cheer any of the Prophet’s faith; below, however, was an end to all hope, unless he could pull the
Perseus
out of range by his own efforts.

The second banner was the captain’s personal one. It was a hissing serpent picked out in silver on a cloth of purple. It was
the emblem of Hakim i Sabbah, slave master, brutal killer, rapist, torturer – and Januc’s sworn and most personal blood enemy.
He had slain one of Hakim’s swarm of brothers in a quarrel over a woman in Tunis five years before. There was no redemption
for Januc under the banner of the silver serpent. Only an agonising death that would make Ake’s, still swinging upside down
at the aftdeck, look like charity.

On that deck, the captain was giving his orders. ‘Corbeau, on my command, we’re turning the ship around. We’ll let them get
close, close, and then hold them even closer. My guess is they’ll try to sweep wide and catch us between them so, Ganton,
take out the mast of the second galley, delay their joining of the fray. Augustin, get all your arquebusiers to save their
volley till we are joined to the big ship. They will grapple us, but we will let them board and set up our killing ground
here. Is that clear?’

The three men looked nervously at each other. Corbeau said, ‘Captain, the odds—’

‘Are four to one by my calculation. Reduced to two to one if we take and defeat the big ship before the other can join. Good
Christian odds, for we have God on our side. Remember, we are fighting the heathen.’

A heathen shot plunged into the water not fifty yards aft, raising a plume of water.

‘Nearly time. On my command, Corbeau.’

They were about to be dismissed when Augustin spoke, just controlling a voice near cracking. ‘And the rowers?’

De la Vallerie raised the pomander to his nose, inhaled a waft of pot-pourri, and considered. The Muslims he could discount
for obvious reasons, but that still left ten volunteers who could be armed and forty prisoners who might not wish to swap
Christan chains for infidel ones. Starved, weakened and whipped as they had been, they could provide little more than a shield
for his soldiers, a way to absorb the first volley of arrows. An armed shield could be useful, though. It changed the odds
slightly in his favour.

Glancing back, he saw that he still had a few moments, so he said, ‘I will speak to them. Corbeau, single time, if you please.’

He descended to the gangway as the rowers eased up on their oars. Immediately another plume of water was raised, this time
to starboard. The heathen were now in range.

‘Volunteers, you shall shortly be given weapons to aid in our glorious fight and certain victory. But I speak now to the prisoners,
with your tufts of hair, you whose hideous crimes have condemned you to your just sentences. Would you like to make amends
for your sinful acts? Do you wish to be slaves of Islam, or do you wish to bear arms in glorious crusade against Christ’s
enemies?’

A silence greeted these questions as each man considered the prospect. If they hid under their benches during the fight there
was a good chance they would survive, for rowers were the commodity on which the galleys thrived, slaves the mainstay of trade.
Whichever side won would need hands on oars.

It was Jean who gave voice to the obvious question. ‘And what’s in it for us?’

There were mutters of assent from up and down the benches. De la Vallerie tried to focus on the area where the voice had come
from.

‘You would not become slaves under the crescent. Is not that enough?’

Jean stood up. ‘A slave is a slave, no matter the flag at the masthead and, from what I’ve been told, a Turkish oar feels
no different to the hand than a Christian one.’

There were more murmurs of agreement. Yet another plume of water, this time to port, emphasised the necessity for speed in
these negotiations. If there’d been time, de la Vallerie would have taken this man out and killed him on the spot for daring
even to address a captain of France. Instead, he just smiled. He was thinking of the odds.

‘But, dear countryman, didn’t I say? Fight well, help us gain
the inevitable victory, and you will be freed as soon as we return to a French port.’

Jean had heard the minor nobility of France cajole, whine, bargain and beg on scaffolds the length and breadth of the kingdom,
just before he took their heads off their shoulders. He knew a lie when he heard one. He also knew that in a fight, if he
was going to be a slave, he would rather be a slave in arms.

‘In that case, dear countryman, I am at your service.’

A cheer echoed him, and de la Vallerie smiled, for he knew he had decreased the odds a little in his favour and at a cost
he would never have to pay. Even if, by the mercy of God, they were victorious, most of this rabble would not survive. And
a bargain with a slave was no bargain at all.

‘Issue them weapons,’ he said to Augustin as he made his way back to the foredeck. ‘You will find more in my cabin.’

While the Muslims and Ake’s tribesmen remained the sole and half-hearted means of propelling the ship, the others’ chains
were slipped and the armoury disgorged into their hands a variety of weaponry: swords, cudgels, cutlasses and halberds, rusted
and misshapen in the main but which the prisoners and freemen still grabbed eagerly.

‘By the balls of a bishop,’ Jean sighed, and moved forward, reaching out his hand as if greeting an old friend. Which, in
fact, he was. ‘Mine, I think,’ he said, and the man who had seized it looked just once into Jean’s eyes and let go of the
strange square-headed sword with a resentful curse.

The man who held Haakon’s axe was not so prudent, but the dispute over ownership ended swiftly with the big Norwegian’s hands
on a Spanish throat and a quick squeeze.

‘Ah, my beautiful, have you missed me?’ Haakon was kissing the blade again and again. He turned to Jean, shaking it in the
air. ‘My friend, life is once more sweet.’

‘Sweet, and probably very short. If the Fugger were here, I don’t think he’d give us very good odds. Stay close, and we’ll
watch each other’s backs.’

There was one other person he wanted beside him in what was to come, and he quickly sought Januc out. He found him slashing
the air with a scimitar. Ducking, he said, ‘Keep that away from my head. Once in a life is enough for a taste of the crescent
cut.’

Januc laughed and lowered the curving blade.

‘I need to ask you something, Januc.’

‘Well?’

In a low voice, Jean continued. ‘I know you were – are – a janissary.’

‘So?’

‘So our pursuers are of the same faith as you – no, don’t deny it, I know why you have chosen to pretend otherwise. You told
our captors you were a Croatian, stolen as a child, an unwilling convert to Mohammed. Am I right? You get the better rations
and kept your hair.’ He pointed at the tuft on the younger man’s head.

Januc’s gaze was steady. ‘And you are wondering whose side in the fight I will be on.’

‘Something like that. I told you, I do not relish another taste of the scimitar. Especially from behind me.’

Januc glanced back, saw how much closer the galleys had got. He sought out the figure swathed in black robes standing beneath
the serpent’s forked tongue. They were close enough now that he could see Hakim, waving, shouting, urging his rowers to greater
effort for the glory of Allah. He smiled.

‘I have prayed for rescue by my Muslim brethren, it is true. But the man who hates me more than any other in this world is
the leader of those who pursue us. This is beyond faith. This is blood feud. And Allah has willed it that either he or I must
die this day.’

It was the Frenchman’s turn to smile. ‘Then I think we veterans of Mohacz should stick together. I would be honoured to fight
by your side.’