The House of the Red Slayer

as he dressed for battle. The crew had done everything they could. Now there was a deathly hush, broken only by the slap of water against the ship’s sides and the growing murmur from the approaching, dark-shaped galleys.
    ‘Bearers of death,’ the knight murmured.
    The captain heard him and spun round.
    ‘Why so many?’ he asked, perplexed. ‘It’s as if they knew we were here.’
    The knight struggled into the mailed shirt and clasped the leather sword belt around his waist.
    ‘Your cargo?’
    The captain shrugged. ‘Passengers,’ he replied. ‘Barrels of fruit, some pipes of wine, a few ells of cloth.’
    ‘No treasure?’
    The captain sneered and went back to search the sky for a breath of wind but the golden dazzle of the sun only mocked his anxious scrutiny. The knight studied the galleys, long, black and hawkish. On their decks he glimpsed the massed troops in their yellow cotton robes and white turbans. He stiffened and narrowed his eyes.
    ‘Janissaries!’
    The boy looked up. ‘What, Master?’
    ‘By the Bones!’ the knight replied. ‘What are elite troops, the cream of the Muslim Horde, doing packed in galleys hunting a ship which bears nothing but wine and fruit?’
    The boy looked up mutely and the knight patted his head.
    ‘Stay with me, lad,’ he whispered. ‘Stay beside me, and if I fall, show no fear. It’s your best chance of life.‘
    The galleys swept in and the knight smelt the foul stench from the hundreds of sweating slaves who manned the oars. He heard the Moorish captain’s commands, the harsh Arabic syllables carrying clear across the water. The oars flashed up, white and dripping, like hundreds of spears as the galleys surrounded the becalmed ship. One took up position on the stem, another on the prow, with a third and fourth huge galley to either side. The captain of the Saint Mark wiped his sweating face with the cuff of his jerkin.
    ‘They might not attack,’ he whispered. He turned and the knight saw the relief in his eyes. ‘They wish to talk.’ Agile as a monkey, the captain scrambled back on to the poop. The galley to starboard moved closer and the knight saw the brilliant liveries of a group of Moorish officers. One of these climbed on to the side of the galley.
    ‘You are the Saint Mark from Famagusta?’ he shouted. ‘Yes,’ the captain answered. ‘We carry nothing but passengers and dried fruit. There is a truce,’ he pleaded. ‘Your Caliph has sworn oaths.’
    The Moorish officer clasped two of the upraised oars to steady himself.
    ‘You lie!‘ he screamed back. ‘You carry treasure — treasure plundered from our Caliph! Hand it over, and let us search your ship for the culprit who stole it.’
    ‘We have no treasure,’ the captain whined back.
    The Moorish officer jumped down. One beringed hand sliced the air, a guttural order was issued. The captain of the Saint Mark turned and looked despairingly at the knight and, as he did so, both he and the helmsman dropped under the hail of arrows which poured in from the galleys. The knight smiled, closed the visor of his helmet and pulled the young boy closer beside him. He grasped his great two-edged sword and placed his back against the mast.
    ‘Yes,’ he whispered, ‘it’s a good day to die.’
    The kettledrums in the galleys beat out the clamour of war, cymbals clashed, gongs sounded. The Genoese archers on the merchantman did their best but the galleys closed in and the yellow-robed, drug-emboldened Janissaries poured across the decks of the Saint Mark. Here and there, pilgrims and merchants fought and died in small groups. Individuals tried to escape into the darkness below; the Janissaries followed and the blood poured like water through the tar-edged planks of the ship. But the real struggle swirled around the mast where the knight stood, feet planted slightly apart. His great sword scythed the air until the gore swilled ankle-deep, causing further assailants to slip and slide as they tried to close for the kill. Beside the knight, the young boy, his face alive with the excitement of battle, screamed encouragement but no man could resist such a force for ever. Soon the fighting died and the galleys drew off, their stems packed with prisoners and plunder. The Saint Mark , fire licking at its timbers, drifted gently on a strengthening breeze until it became one blazing funeral pyre. When darkness fell, it had sunk. Here and there a body still bobbed on the surface, the only trace that