Manly Wade Wellman - Novel 1940 (11 page)

There I was kept under close guard, while the chief
stumped away to investigate.

He returned after half an hour, and dismissed the guards,
but kept his dagger drawn lest I attack him.

"I am amazed at the cunning and courage and labor of
your attempt," he began. "How did you manage to cut through the door,
copper and all?"

I DESCRIBED my method, and he listened with interest.
Several times he asked me to amplify my remarks.

At length he smiled. "You have science and
inspiration. How great would be your works if.
they
were turned to honest, godly uses!"

"Being held prisoner, I can turn them only to an
effort at escape," I replied.

"Aye, that. Your months of toil, so brilliantly
planned and so wearily carried out, came to naught within short minutes.
A tragedy."
Father Augustino paused and meditated.
Then:

"My son, what if I gave you freedom?"

"Freedom!"
I echoed him
hopefully.

"Within limits, of course.
Take you from that cell and let you live among us. You could work more science,
with true materials to aid you instead of such makeshifts as you fashioned in prison."
He gazed at me encouragingly.

"Say but
the word—swear
that
you will not seek to flee from this island—"

"I am sorry," I broke in, "but I cannot so
doom myself."

"Doom yourself? But you are now held by iron bars and
guards."

"And by a false charge, brought against me by a vile
rascal," I finished for him. "I thank you, good Father, for your
offer, but I live only to escape and to avenge myself. I cannot give you a
parole."

He shook his scarred head sadly.

Going to the door, he called his monks.

"Hither, some of you," he commanded. "We
must find this fellow a straiter prison still."

A new figure pushed through the circle of black gowns, a
man in the dress of the world, all parti-colored hose and plum-purple mantle,
with a gay beard and curling locks. Plainly he was a visitor from some Italian
city.

"Surely," quoth he, "this is Ser Leo, the
artist and scientist, who is held captive by order of Lorenzo the
Magnificent."

"Aye, that." Father Augustino nodded. "You
know him?"

"I know him," was the reply. "Where doth he
go now?"

"To an oubliette, I fear. From there he will need
wings to rise."

Two of the armed brothers had torn away my disguising,
robe, and now marched me down steps, more steps, to a level of natural rock
where no light shone save a torch. One of them hoisted a great iron trap-door.
I looked into a bottle-shaped pit, at least twelve feet deep.

At that moment the upper levels of the castle wakened to
noise—a blown trumpet, a chorus of yells. The two monks turned to look. I
tightened my sinews for a desperate fight against them before I might be hurled
into that tomblike prison. A flying figure came downstairs.

"The infidel Turks!
Their galleys
blacken the seas! Come to the defense!"

"As soon as we lower this captive into—" began
one of my guards.

"No!" A bearded face looked over the black-clad
shoulder of the newsbringer. It was the visitor who had recognized me.
"Bring him along, he will help fight!"

"Well thought of!" came the deep voice of Father
Augustino, higher on the stairs. "Free every captive who can bear arms!
Let them fight for life!"

We all raced up the steps together.

Defense
of the Fortress

MOUNTING to battlements around the upper wall of the castle,
we all saw that the sea was indeed full of craft. There were galleys, a full
dozen, many smaller feluccas, and open rowboats swarming as thick as a school
of mullet. Drums resounded from the larger ships; and horns. Our own bugles
brayed back defiance.

Father Augustino was rasping orders, like any seasoned
captain. "Man and load each gun," he commanded. "Line the walls,
keep lookout for where they may land." His eye found me.
"Ha, wrestler!
Canst use a sword?" He motioned to
an aide, who thrust a hilt into my hand. "You have fought your fellow
Christians overlong. Fight now against infidels!"

I shifted the weapon to my left fist, trying its balance.
At an opposite rampart stood the man who had recommended my joining the
defense,
and to him I made my way.

"I do not know you, sir, though you know me," I
said. "Thanks for saving me from that spider's hole into which they would
have thrown me."

"We will speak more of it anon." He pointed to
where, inside the little harbor, lay a trim sailing vessel among the boats of
the Holy Pilgrims. "Yonder is my craft, and upon it a fair lady who must
not set foot on this monk-owned island. I pray heaven naught befalls either of
them."

But I showed him where some of our men strung a heavy
chain at the mouth of the inlet. That would prevent the approach of enemy
boats, which in any case sought to storm us from the other side.

At that point the wall dropped straight to the sea, and
had been badly damaged not long before—perhaps in the fight a spring ago, when
I had heard crumbling of stones. The brothers had built it up roughly with
broken masonry and spaded earth, faced it with timbers and logs, but it was
still the weak spot of the defenses. Even the stone flooring at the top had
collapsed and was replaced with planking; while, instead of an adequate parapet,
a work of earth-filled goatskins had been laid in and topped by a great log,
nearly a hundred feet long.* From this log ran back crosspieces, lashed on as
slanting supports.

Here
the fire from the galleys was concentrated. Hound shot tore holes in the
goatskins and let out cascades of the heaped earth, while a blizzard of arrows
and slings picked off such of the brothers as manned the log-topped parapet.
The others crouched low.

"They
will seek to carry this quarter," announced Father Augustino sagely,
limping across to the log.

His
gown, looped up to kilt length, showed great steel greaves upon his shins, and
he had thrown back his cowl to don a plumeless helmet. A bolt from a crossbow
struck his shoulder,
then
glanced away. He must be
wearing a steel cuirass under his robe.

"Aye,"
he called, "here they come, a hell's spawn of boats, under cover of their
fellows' fire! Keep down, brethren, until they mount our wall. Then the fire
must slacken, and we will meet the unbelievers with an argument they will
understand."

Drawing his sword, he spat between big hand and worn hilt.

* A log of this length was by no means rare in the Fifteenth
Century, well before the deforestation of
Italy
.

I dared look over the log. A shoal of boats swept swiftly
toward us from the galleys, boats filled with gesticulating and howling Turks.
I saw the glitter of their mail, the curves of their flourished scimitars,
the
upward jut of helmet spikes from their turbans. A

moment
later, a jagged little stone
sang upward and against my forehead—slung, like David's pebble, from a sling.
Like Goliath I fell sprawling on my back, half dazed and almost dropping my
sword.

FATHER AUGUSTINO leaned farther from his point of vantage,
careless of the rain of missiles. "They raise ladders!" he cried. "Here
they mount!" He turned to his followers.
"Strike,
brethren, for the true faith!"

I made shift to rise, a little shakily, and watched as a
line of black-robes came swiftly forward over the planked-in floor, swords and
axes and halberds at the ready. The sound of firing had ceased from galleyward,
as Father Augustino had predicted. A moment later, a yodelling cry rose from
below:

"Ululululallahuakbar!"

One prolonged bellow of challenge and of profession. Then
the outer side of our log was lined with turbaned, bearded heads.

The storming party was upon us, eager for trouble. Nor
could they have come to a better place to find it.

The Holy Pilgrims hurled themselves upon the attackers,
calling upon the names of every saint in the calendar, and hewing and thrusting
like fiends instead of clergymen. At their head, and in the hottest press, nimbly
hobbled Father Augustino, his straight sword playing like a striking adder
against a whole forest of scimitars.

Something impelled me in his
direction,
and in good time for him. While his point wedged in the neck-bone of one
adversary, another charged close and, catching him by a fold of his gown,
slashed a scimitar viciously at his head.

The blow was turned by Father Augustino's helm, but its
force staggered him, and a second effort beat him to his knee. With a whoop,
the Turk lifted his blade for a third and finishing cut, but at that moment I
hurled myself between, my own steel forestalling his.

He
was a deep-chested fellow, brown as chocolate, with mad foam on his black
beard.

"Ya
Nazarini!" he snarled. "Ya 'bn
kalb
!" *

And
he fell furiously upon me. But for all his fierceness, I was more than his
match. My first slicing lunge laid open his face, my second bit into the side
of his neck. He collapsed, bleeding from nose and mouth, to die even as I
turned away.

The
surviving Turks were reeling back, whipped along by the savage garrison. They
tumbled down their ladders and rowed hurriedly away in their boats, under a new
curtain of shot and arrows.

Father Augustino was up again, glancing around to estimate
the situation. "We suffered sorely, but they suffered worse," he
commented. "What says Holy Writ
? '
Blessed be the
Lord my strength, who teacheth my hands to war, and my fingers to
fight.
'
" He
turned his eye on
me. "Thanks for the rescue, my son. Yet I make no doubt that, with
heaven's help, I could have risen and overthrown him. Whence will
come
the next assault?"

We found out soon enough. Three great galleys moved
against the mouth of our inlet. Our gun crews toiled madly, but could not
batter them back.

When the galleys had drawn close, a great throng of little
black figures dived overside and began to swim for the inlet.

"By heaven, I see that they carry
axes
!
" spoke up my friend, the bearded visitor. "They will attack
the chain! If it is cut, they will come in and seize our ships!"

"A sortie!
A sortie!"
yelled Father Augustino. "Out, brethren, and meet them in the water!"

*Arabic: "Oh, Christian!
Oh, son of
a dog!"
Perhaps spoken by a Saracen rover.

He led the rush downward himself, leaving only the armed
prisoners and a dozen black-robes to hold the upper ramparts. We watched,
fascinated, from above, as the monks burst from the great gate, hurried down to
the water's edge. Some of them were shot by crossbows on the galleys, but the greater
part reached the water and swam forward to meet the Turks. There was a fierce,
clumsy melee in the waves that lapped along either side of the chain.

THE
brethren
triumph!"
pointed out a monk at my side. "Look, the forgotten of God are retreating,
swimming away."

"They do so more readily than I had hoped," I
replied, thinking of the previous stubborn assault. My own words gave me a new
disturbing wonder.

"What," I demanded, "if it were a false attack,
to withdraw us from our own defense?"

Even as I spoke, I saw that the galleys were pulling away
with all their oars, skirting the rocks narrowly and speeding around to the
point from which the earth-mended wall had once been stormed.

"Rally!
Rally!"
I shouted, and led the rush across to the rampart of earthbags and log.

It was as I had been inspired to guess. The sea was full
of boats again, scores of them, rowing swiftly forward to the attack. A spatter
of shafts and shot made the few of us who were left put our heads down.

"What is to be done?" demanded a wide-eyed
brother with a smear of gore on his chin. "See, their whole force comes to
this side, more than the first time! Their rush will beat us back, and our
comrades outside, returning from the chain, will not arrive in time to hold the
castle!"

"Stand to the rampart, hurl down their
ladders !
" stoutly shouted an armed captive.

As he leaned forward to suit action to word a crossbow
bolt whacked into him, and he crumpled across the log, dead. The rest of us
crouched
low, swords in hand, determining to die hard.

I found myself kneeling beside one of the lashed
cross-pieces that propped the great log which was our temporary coping. It was
none too firm, that cross-piece, I judged. And again I was inspired.

"Hark ye, all!" I cried at the top of my voice.
"We can save ourselves! Form in parties by these cross-pieces! Clutch them
in your arms! If we bear with all our strength at once, it will force the great
log forward and outward!"

"To what good?" demanded
another.

"To overthrow the ladders, as we cannot with such a
fire against us. Do not argue, friends, but do as I say!"

There was no time or hope otherwise. In a trice we formed
in half a dozen knots, all crouching or kneeling, our weapons flung down and
our arms wrapped around the cross-timbers.

Whoops and execrations rang from beneath us, where the
ladders were being reared from the boat bottoms to give access to our fortress.
I felt my heart race like a drum-roll, but kept my ayes steadily on the
parapet, where the spiky ends of the ladders showed.

"Allahuakbar!" thundered the enemy, and again a
row of heads shot up into view.

"Now!"
I shouted my
loudest, and taxed all my muscles to drag forward on the cross-piece I
clutched.

There was a concerted grunt from every defender as we bore
mightily against the log. And, as I had dared hope, so it was. The mass of
timber slid gratingly forward, as a drawer slides from a bureau. With it swayed
the storming ladders, so precariously balanced, and toppled. A single concerted
shriek assailed heaven from the many throats of those who were suddenly hurled
back, down, among the boats and into the surf.

Dragging back our timber defense, we cheered each other in
wild and thankful joy.

THAT unexpected reverse gave the Moslems pause—a blessed,
blessed pause, enough for the return and remarshaling of the swimming sortie
led by Father Augustine He clapped my shoulder with a hard hand.

"You have saved this holy place," he told me,
"and if it were in my power to free you—" He turned away to thunder new
orders.

I stood alone for the moment,
then
a hand clutched my sleeve. I turned, to see the bearded man whose name I did
not know but who knew me; the man whose boat was in the little harbor below.

"Come," he said softly. "If he cannot give
you liberty, I can."

"How?"
I demanded, hope
pounding in my breast.

He did not pause to reply, but drew me with him to the
stairs and down.

We went unchallenged through the lower part of the castle,
and came to the gate. He unfastened it, and we stepped outside.

"See,"
he bade me. "The Turkish boats have all gone around to the other side,
hoping to make good that assault which you foiled. Now is my time to flee. I
have too fast a ship for them to catch, and I will take you along."

I was
too amazed and thankful to speak. A moment later we had hurried down, sprung
aboard his halfdecked sailing vessel, and were headed out for that quarter of
the sea just now unguarded by either Holy Pilgrim or infidel Turk—the sea
beyond which lay the Italy from which I had been carried captive six years
before.