Simon Scarrow - Sword and Scimitar

‘Protect the standard!’ La Valette shouted in alarm.

Richard was two paces to Thomas’s right, thrusting a ladder back. The moment it fell away he turned and lunged at the Janissary. The man saw the danger and released his grip on Thomas’s wrist. He threw up his arm to ward off the blow and knocked the steel point aside. Thomas moved at once and stabbed his dagger into the man’s arm, and again. With a bellow of pain and rage, the Janissary thrust his sword hand out, smashing Thomas in the chest and unbalancing him so that he tottered on the edge of the fighting step for a moment and then fell back, the standard falling with him.

At once a groan rose from the lips of the nearest defenders, matched by a shout of jubilation from the other side of the wall. The Janissary swung his other leg over the wall and rushed at Richard, slashing wildly with his scimitar. Richard desperately blocked the blows with the shaft of his pike. Another Janissary came over the wall and turned towards La Valette, warily eyeing the lowered point of his pike as he closed. Two more men came over the wall and then a fifth, carrying Suleiman’s standard which he planted on the parapet and waved from side to side. Thomas scrambled to his feet and snatched up the standard of the Order in his good hand, leaving the dagger on the ground.

‘Stand firm!’ he bellowed to left and right. ‘Stand firm!’

‘Drive them back!’ La Valette yelled. ‘For God and St John! Kill them!’

Figures surged past Thomas and he saw a young boy, no more than twelve, pull himself on to the wall and throw himself at the Janissary attacking Richard. His puny fists clawed at the Turk’s face and he bit into the bare skin of his arm, above the gauntlet. The Turk glared at the boy, then grabbed his hair and wrenched him away before dashing his brains out on the parapet and flinging the wretchedly skinny bag of bones down beside Thomas. A shrill cry of grief and rage cut through the air and a thin woman stepped over the body and hurled a rock at the Janissary. The sharp-edged stone split his eyebrow open and blood coursed over his eyes, forcing him to pause and wipe them clear. The moment’s distraction cost him his life as Richard rammed his pike into the Janissary’s stomach, twisted the point to both sides and ripped it free. The Turk tumbled inside the wall and at once the woman leaped upon him, another rock in her hand, which she punched into his face repeatedly, pulverising flesh and bone as tears streamed down her cheeks and an animal keening strained at her throat.

More women and children charged forward, snatching and tearing at the Janissaries, pulling them from the wall and beating them to death. The enemy standard bearer on the wall looked down aghast as the Maltese slaughtered his comrades like wild animals. Then Richard cast his pike aside and rushed at the man, striking him in the face with his mantlet, the metal finger guards tearing into the Janissary’s cheek. He struck the man again and again and then seized the shaft of the standard in his left hand in a desperate struggle for its possession. There was a sudden lull in the fighting around the two men as the combatants on both sides watched the struggle.

The Turkish standard bearer clung on to the shaft as he endured Richard’s blows. He tried at first to ward them off with his left hand, and then suddenly thrust it forward, clamping his fingers round Richard’s throat. Thomas saw his son’s face contort in agony. Richard renewed his efforts, punching with all his failing strength. Then the man’s head snapped back with a deep groan and he staggered, dazed, his fingers releasing their grip on Richard. He stumbled and fell across the parapet and Richard tore the enemy standard from his hand before thrusting him over the side. At once Richard held the standard aloft and a wild cheer erupted from the defenders on and behind the wall. Richard waved it back and forth for a moment, taunting the Turks, and then contemptuously hurled the standard back towards Birgu where it landed in the mud.

The Turks fell silent. Then the first of them began to back away, and the motion rippled through the ranks as the rest followed. Thomas climbed up beside Richard and held the Order’s standard high in the air and added his cheers to those of the other defenders. Below him he saw Mustafa Pasha threaten his men with his sword as he screamed at them to continue the attack. Some stopped and turned back, and then a rock struck the enemy commander on the chin and he stumbled and fell to his knees, blood pouring from a deep gash. A wail of despair rose up from those immediately around him and the urge to retreat became unstoppable. Mustafa Pasha’s bodyguards hurriedly picked up their commander and bore him away, towards the breach. Around them the Turks fell back across the open ground to the main wall.

‘After them!’ La Valette commanded. ‘Drive them out! They must not be allowed to hold the wall!’

His order was repeated and the defenders slid over the parapet and began to chase after the Turks. Knights, soldiers, women and children all joined the pursuit, sprinting after the enemy and falling like wolves upon those that lagged behind their comrades. Watching from the wall Thomas felt sickened by the sight. This was not a war any more, but a savage, bloody massacre. Women and children attacked their prey with knives, axes and clubs, splattering blood and gobbets of flesh across the ground where the rain struggled to wash them away. An old woman hacked away at a fallen Janissary and then leaned down to clench his beard in her fist and raise the bloodied head aloft with a shrill cry of triumph.

‘Richard!’ La Valette called out. ‘Take up the enemy’s standard. The trophy is yours. Then follow me.’

The three men waited briefly while the wagon was unchained and rolled aside. Then they emerged from the wall and picked their way through the bodies scattered across the open ground and returned to the bastion. Romegas greeted the Grand Master with a wide smile, then waved his arm in the direction of the enemy trenches. The ground in front of Birgu’s outer defences was covered with a sea of fleeing figures. Ranged along the wall and standing on the piles of rubble in the breaches the soldiers and people of Birgu stood in the rain, cheering, waving, and shouting their contempt at the backs of the enemy.

‘Thanks be to God,’ Thomas heard the Grand Master mutter. ‘We survive.’

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

11 September

The rain stopped and for several days the sky cleared and the sun shone down on the devastation of the battlefield. The Turkish bombardment resumed, interspersed with a handful of attacks that were not pressed home and quickly disintegrated under the withering fire from the defenders crouching in the rubble along the line of the walls of Birgu and Senglea. The Grand Master no longer held meetings for his advisers. There was nothing to discuss. Rations were running short, their numbers were so diminished that one more determined assault was bound to result in defeat and annihilation. It was simply a matter of holding on for as long as possible.

Each morning Thomas rose before dawn to take his position in the bastion, alongside Richard and the other defenders, and then watch and wait, senses straining to pick up any warning of another assault. But eventually the attacks stopped coming and only a few of the enemy batteries still maintained their bombardment of the defences. To Thomas it seemed as if the enemy no longer had the heart to continue the siege and for the first time he allowed himself to hope that he, Maria and Richard might yet survive. They would return to England, he resolved, and begin to live the life that had been denied them for so long. There was a rightness about the quiet fantasy he allowed himself to indulge in. It was meant to be, Thomas told himself with a smile of contentment, surely, after all that they had endured?