Stormbringers Read online

  The man shrugged his shoulders. ‘You are not to know, but I’m not a slave taker. I am on a journey, not raiding. I don’t raid anyway.’

  ‘Can you command that the slaving galleys don’t raid our village?’

  ‘I can request it of them.’

  ‘Then swear to me that you will urge the slaving galleys never to come here again.’

  ‘Not for a year,’ the man bargained.

  ‘Ten years,’ the captain of the fort demanded.

  ‘Two.’

  ‘Five.’

  ‘Heras. All right,’ he said in agreement. ‘Five.’

  ‘And instead of payment for the mast, make him release all the slaves from the galley,’ Luca suggested.

  The captain hesitated.

  ‘You don’t need money,’ Luca said. ‘We don’t need paying for a mast and a sail. This is a great opportunity. Let some of those poor devils get home to their families.’

  ‘Do you have any Christians at the oars?’ The captain yelled.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Any Italian men?’

  A brief shout for help came clearly across the water and then they could hear the sound of a quick blow.

  ‘We may have some,’ the man at the stern of the galley said cautiously. ‘Why?’

  ‘You must release them all to us, and we will give you mast and sails for free.’

  ‘I cannot release them all, or we cannot row home,’ he said reasonably.

  ‘You can sail!’ Luca shouted, interrupting the negotiations as his anger overcame him. ‘You can sail with the mast and sails that we will give you! Those men must be freed.’ He found he was shaking with rage and that he had stepped out of the shelter of the fort. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said to the captain, stepping back. ‘I should not have interrupted.’

  Luca rejoined Freize. ‘I can’t bear it,’ he said in an undertone. ‘My own father might be on that damned ship. That might have been his voice that called out that he was Italian. That might have been him who was struck.’

  ‘God help him,’ Freize said quietly. To the captain he said, ‘Probably best to make them wait outside the harbour and we bring the mast and sails down the spit, so they don’t come inside the chain. Probably safer not to let them in too close to the town. They may carry the plague, as well as being a people who are not well known for their reliability, in the friendship line of things. Not that I wish to be unpleasant.’

  ‘You will row back down there,’ the captain ordered gesturing to the seaward side of the fort. ‘You can tie alongside at the very end there. You must stay where we can see you and all your men must stay on board the ship. We will bring you the mast and sail and you will release all the Italians you have on board. Agreed?’

  There was a low groan from the captives of other kingdoms.

  ‘Listen to them!’ Luca said fiercely. ‘Hear them!’

  ‘I will release ten Italian men,’ the master of the galley said. Still the drum sounded, regular as a heartbeat. The sea raised the galley up and down and the master of the ship swayed easily standing on the prow deck, as graceful as a dancer as the rowers kept the ship exactly where he had commanded it to be: still on a moving sea.

  ‘No, all of them,’ the captain said steadily. ‘You stole these men from us, now you need our help. You must restore all the Italians to us.’

  There was a brief silence.

  ‘Or go,’ Luca shouted. ‘Though the wave is going to rise again, and this time you will not survive it. It will wash you to hell.’

  At once they could hear the master of the ship laugh. ‘What do you know of the wave?’ he demanded.

  ‘We have great scholars here,’ the captain of the fort said with dignity. ‘This is an inquirer, from Rome. He understands all about the ways of the sea, of land and of the heavens.’

  ‘Has he read Plato?’ the commander of the slave ship taunted. ‘Has he read Pliny?’

  Hopefully the captain of the fort looked at Luca. He gritted his teeth and shook his head.

  ‘Do they agree to the price for the mast or not?’ Freize prompted.

  ‘Do you want our help?’ the captain demanded. ‘For we have named our price.’

  The master of the galley said something quietly to himself. Then aloud, he said, ‘I agree.’ He gave an order and at once the oars dipped and rowed on only one side of the ship while the other side of rowers held it steady. It was an extraordinary piece of seamanship; Luca acknowledged the masterful control of the galley, even as he stared at them with hatred. The ship turned almost on itself, and glided to where the captain of the fort had directed them. The oars that were beside the quay folded themselves in, like a monstrous skeletal wing, so that the craft could come close to shore, and two men leapt on shore and took up the ropes, prow and stern.

  ‘Go to the sailmaker,’ the captain ordered his men inside the fort. ‘Get a lateen sail off him. Tell him we’ll all settle up later. And you, run to the shipyard and get them to bring a mast down here. As fast as you can. Tell them to hurry. Tell them why. I want those scoundrels back out at sea and away from here as soon as possible.’ To Luca and Brother Peter he said, ‘Will you come and see that the rowers are freed?’

  ‘I’ll come,’ Luca said.

  ‘I go with him,’ Freize added.

  Brother Peter hesitated. ‘We are travelling with a young woman who is under our protection,’ he said. ‘She is not obedient to the orders of the Church nor to our command; but she does know languages. I believe she has read – er – Plato. She may speak their language. It might be useful to have her with us, in case they try to cheat.’

  ‘A Muslim woman?’ the Captain was scandalised. ‘You men of the church are travelling with a heretic?’

  ‘She’s slave to the lady that we are escorting to her godfather’s son,’ Luca said quickly.

  ‘Oh, a slave,’ the captain said. ‘That’s all right then. Can you fetch her?’

  ‘It brings her into danger,’ Luca said quietly to Brother Peter. ‘What if they try to take her?’

  ‘She’s enslaved already,’ the captain said reasonably. ‘Why would you care? And your friend is right, she can listen to their talk, and warn us if this is a double-cross.’

  ‘I’ll fetch her,’ Freize offered, handing the culverin to the captain, and setting off to the inn at a trot, coming back with Ishraq.

  She was almost unrecognisable. She had been dressed by the landlady in the clothes of the stable lad. Her long hair was caught up under his floppy hat, and she was wearing his dirty trousers, baggy shirt, and jerkin. The hat was pulled so low over her face that there was no way of seeing that she was a beautiful girl. Only her slim ankles showing above the clumsy heavy shoes betrayed her, to anyone who was looking closely. She stood behind Freize as if she were a frightened youth.

  ‘This?’ the captain said, his idea of a beautiful girl in Luca’s private harem disappearing quickly.

  ‘This,’ Luca said. To Ishraq he said, ‘Keep right out of the way and if it goes wrong at all, then run back to the hiding place in the inn. Get yourself to safety and we will follow. Save yourself before anything else. But listen to what they say. You speak Arabic, don’t you?’

  ‘Of course,’ she said quietly.

  ‘Warn us if they are pretending to agree with us, but planning something among themselves. The moment you hear them plotting something, just touch my sleeve, I’ll be watching for a sign from you. They say that they need our help but these are devils. Devils.’

  From the shadow of the hat her dark eyes regarded him. ‘These are my people,’ she said quietly. ‘These that you are calling devils.’

  ‘These are nothing to do with you. They are devils,’ he said flatly. ‘They took my father and my mother from their own safe fields and I don’t know where they are now, or even if they are alive.’

  She started to put out her hand to him, and then she remembered Isolde’s jealous rage and tucked both her hands firmly in the jacket pockets. ‘I’m ready,’ sh