Jon Grimwood - The fallen blade

This simplified matters.

"One hundred," Temujin said.

"Take us in."

A swirl of oars carried them close, the Quaja's side looming so large it threatened to crush their lugger in the swell. An anchor rope hummed with tension above them. That was where they would board.

"I'll go first."

"Chief…"

"You heard me."

Even Temujin, sworn to protect Roderigo, knew better than to query an order given in the field. When the captain reached deck, he found a man from his other lugger already standing over a dead Mamluk.

"Sweetly done," Roderigo said.

At his gesture, others climbed aboard.

"Right," Temujin said, keeping his voice low. "You and you by that cargo hatch, and you by that door… And you, why isn't your crossbow loaded?" This last hiss because a string wasn't ratcheted back.

"Give me a…"

One second the sergeant was glaring, the next shock replaced anger in the hiss of an arrow from high overhead. Temujin stared at the shaft in his chest.

"Rigging," Roderigo said.

As Temujin fell to his knees, blood running between his fingers, the troop's newcomer planted his feet, raised his own half bow and hesitated.

"Dead or alive?"

"Kill him."

The man put an arrow between crows nest's boards, through the Mamluk archer's foot and into his groin. The lookout fell with a thud. He should have fired the moment they appeared or held his element of surprise.

"Alive was better." Temujin's words came from between blood-frothed lips. "So any bastards we leave living could kill him for being useless. Good job he was, though. We'd be fucked otherwise."

"Help Temujin up."

Two soldiers did as ordered. The arrow was a yard long, with its point exiting from Temujin's lower back. Sighing with relief, Roderigo confirmed the point was unpoisoned and snapped the feathered end without saying what he intended to do.

"Bind the arrow in place," he told a guard.

"Sir…"

"Seen it." A door was opening. As half a dozen crossbows shifted in that direction, Roderigo said, "Wait on my order."

Opening a little more, the door suddenly started closing and then stopped. The man behind must know it offered minimal protection. Steel-tipped quarrels would rip straight through.

"In the name of Marco IV," Roderigo said. "Show yourself. We search for a missing glass-blower. And have reason to suspect he may have come aboard. Any attempt to hinder us will be regarded as an act of war."

The door shut with a bang.

"My God," one of the men muttered. "We've found him."

It looked that way. Roderigo hoped it was true. Although the glass-blower would die horribly, his children and grandchildren-those left living-would be spared a similar fate.

Strange words came from behind the door.

Guttural and impassioned, the man speaking sounded young to captain a ship, never mind a vessel as large as the Quaja. When Roderigo didn't reply, the sentence was repeated, as far as Roderigo could tell word for word. Problem was, Roderigo had no idea if it was a question, a statement or a boast that the Quaja's crew would fight to the death. "Anyone understand that?"

The newcomer nodded.

"What are you called?"

Bato sounded like a nickname.

"Tell him I'm looking for a glass blower. We think he might have been smuggled aboard this ship."

"They haven't got him," Bato said eventually.

"What's the language?"

"It's Turkic. Good Turkic. Formal. Very proper."

"Tell him I'm Dogana chief and I will search his ship. If what he says is true, he can wait out his quarantine, or sail on tomorrow's tide. We will count his dead and my sergeant's injury as the cost of a misunderstanding."

The answer when it came was calmer.

No glass-blower was aboard the ship. The manifest of goods given to the Dogana was accurate. All the same, they would let the Venetians search where they liked. Since they had nothing to hide.

"Tell him, if it was up to me I'd take his word and leave now."

Untrue, of course, but any honeyed words that helped get this over with, and Temujin to Dr. Crow, were fine with Roderigo. As he watched, the door opened and a fine-featured Mamluk stood blinking in the moon's rays. His robe was rich with silver thread and a scarlet turban wrapped his skull.

He looked little more than a boy.

Identifying Roderigo by his sash, the Mamluk touched his hand to his heart, mouth and forehead in formal greeting and gestured the Dogana captain inside. The vessel's layout was like dozens of others he'd searched before. A captain's cabin at the stern and quarters for crew below deck. Half of that area being put aside for cargo. Below this was a crawl space where the hull curved towards the keel. Under that, a stinking slop hole filled with stones for ballast.

Roderigo checked the lot. All the time carrying the weight of Desdaio's betrayal like stones in his own heart. Two of his troop were helping Sergeant Temujin towards the upper deck when Roderigo stopped. At a growled order, his men did likewise and a flicker of blind panic filled the Mamluk's face.

The crawl space was twenty-one steps long. The cargo deck nineteen. Had it been reversed Roderigo could have dismissed the difference as loss for the curve of the prow. But that way round?

"Tell the man we're going to break this down."

Roderigo pointed at the bulkhead of the stern. A torrent of impassioned Turkic greeted this news. And the Mamluk went to stand in front of it.

"He says his ship will sink and we'll die. It will be your fault and his country will go to war with Serenissima. A thousand ships will sail up the Adriatic sacking every Venetian colony on the way."

"Tell him it's a risk I'll take."

It took five minutes to find a large enough axe. In which time the Mamluk's crew gathered, silent ghosts watching uneasily. Only the loaded crossbows of Roderigo's men kept them from attacking.

"Now," he ordered.

Bato swung the axe.

"And again."

A second blow widened the crack.

"No water yet," Temujin growled.

The planks were too thin to be the Quaja's outer skin and their timber too green. Venice's own shipwrights used wood from trees stored for at least two years before cutting planks that had to dry in their turn.

"Hack the lot down."

Planting his feet, Bato swung a blow to behead a horse. His next opened darkness. And a tanner's stink of shit and stale piss hissed through the gap. Not waiting for more orders, Bato gripped one edge of the planking and tugged. Wood split and a plank creaked free from battens behind.

Another plank followed just as noisily.

"Light," Roderigo demanded.

Stepping between the wreckage of Bato's handiwork, he entered a fetid compartment behind the wall. A moment later, the Mamluk followed.

Roderigo was thirty years old. He'd fought his first battle at fourteen and taken his first girl a year earlier. He'd lived through cities sacked, and seen a Florentine spy torn apart by wild horses. He expected the missing glass blower. He got…

The captain crossed himself.

A naked boy hung in chains, his wrists raw from fighting shackles. In life, the boy must have been about seventeen. Nineteen at the most. Long silver-grey hair half hid a face so beautiful it belonged to an angel. The corpse had the sheen of wet marble. Almost alabaster in its translucence.

Black earth strewed the deck beneath him.

Lurching past his commander, Sergeant Temujin lifted the boy's head to the light.

Amber-flecked eyes snapped open.

As the foreign captain shouted a warning, the sergeant drew his dagger, and turned to slash the Mamluk's throat, drenching himself in blood.

"Temujin…"

"Kill them all," Temujin shouted.

Outside, his troop obeyed without question. Crossbows snapped, arrows flew, daggers found hearts. Fifteen seconds of hellish slaughter ended in the stink of blood, Mamluk corpses, and Bato leaving, bow in hand, to hunt down stragglers.