Peter looked at the Italian. ‘Ask him how he aims when the two hulls come together so fast.’

The Italian shrugged. ‘Like this!’ he said, and drew, and loosed. His shaft fell like a thunderbolt into the group on the command deck of the enemy ship. It was a spectacular shot, more than a hundred paces.

Peter grinned and loosed.

His arrow fell into the same group.

The Italian laughed, loosed, and then slapped the Fleming on the shoulder.

Turkish arrows were beginning to find marks among the Venetian oarsmen. A man on the second oar from the bow gave a cry, thrashed, wrecking his oar’s timing, and then slumped over the shaft, and two of the deck crewmen pulled him off his bench.

The Venetian galley had just one oar deck. There were three men on each oar, on long benches set at a definite angle to the centreline of the hull. The ram was above the waterline forward, and above the ram was a small bow where the marines waited. Swan headed there, aware as only a classicist could be that galley warfare had hardly changed in two thousand years.

A Turkish arrow got past his round shield and hit the top of his helmet, making his ears ring.

He got his shield up and an arrow struck the steel face and ricocheted off it, hit the bulkhead and came back, broken. The arrowhead – twice deflected – scored a deep gash in the top of his thigh, narrowly missing his testicles, and he winced.

He found himself behind Alessandro. The Italian had excellent armour, all Milanese, all matching – a small fortune in steel. He had to admit to himself that it was comforting to have a highly trained friend in head-to-toe steel between himself and the enemy.

Spent arrows rattled around the marine box. The Venetian archers were loosing so fast that it looked as if lines of arrows connected the two vessels.

The Turk was coming up from abeam, and then the Venetian captain changed course. He turned to starboard, so that he and the Turk were on parallel courses – and then he had his starboard oars retract as far as they could while the port oars drove on. The Venetian ship turned so suddenly that everyone aboard was thrown to starboard.

The Venetian archers, obviously forewarned, poured shafts into the waist of the Turkish ship, and the Venetian’s cathead caught the Turkish outrigger a hard blow. It wasn’t like a ram attack, but oars splintered, and the Venetians seemed to be winning the archery exchange.

Giannis was quite coolly cocking his crossbow and sending shaft after carefully aimed shaft into the enemy’s boarders.

And then the Turkish galley was falling away behind them, oars damaged, and with her waist a bloody chaos of arrow-shot men. For a few seconds, the Venetians had been at point-blank range, just a few paces away and eight feet higher in the water. A dozen of them had loosed perhaps six shafts each, and the result was that the Turkish ship, although undefeated – yet – was crippled. So many men were wounded that as she sagged away, blood ran from her scuppers – as if the ship herself was bleeding.

The Venetian galley settled on a new course and carried on, the sailors mending cut lines and trying to replace one oar that had been broken in the collision and wounded all three of its oarsmen.

Swan could hear his breath inside the confines of his burgonet. His hand found the catch and he got his visor open.

One of the Venetian men-at-arms slammed it shut just as another volley of arrows caught them.

He glanced to port. The other Turk was coming for them.

‘Mary, Mother of God, stand with us in our hour of need,’ said the Venetian who had closed his faceplate. He turned and saw a third Turkish galley emerging from behind a rocky islet on the coast of Samos.

‘Amen,’ said Swan.

Arrows fell like hail, and Swan was hit repeatedly – twice on his helmet, at least twice on his shield, and one that went between his foot and his boot sole, penetrating the boot on both sides and barely cutting his foot.

‘You have the luck of the devil,’ said one of the Venetians. He grinned inside his barbute, and in that moment took an arrow under his arm and fell to the deck, dead.

Alessandro turned. He looked behind them for a long time. ‘They’re going to ram us in the stern and board,’ he said. ‘Follow me.’

Swan didn’t ask questions. He ran the length of the ship through the arrow storm with the Italian, one stride behind. The Turkish galley was a horse length from the stern, bearing down on them, and the arrows were as thick as snow in London at Christmas.

Ser Marcos turned to port, hoping to confuse the pursuing Turk by turning towards his consort, but the captain of the enemy ship read his intention and turned inside the nimble Venetian, ranging alongside, and the grapples flew as the enemy ram touched them – the Venetian rowers pulled in their heavy oars and reached for weapons. Venetian oarsmen were among the most feared fighting men in the Inner Sea.

The Turkish borders came in a rush, with screams to Allah. They had round shields and scimitars – many had long spears, and a few had European-looking long swords. The whole swarm came for the Venetian command deck – forty or fifty men.

Swan found himself between Ser Marco and Alessandro. He got his rotella up as the first scimitar came at him, and then . . .

It all happened . . .

So fast . . .

That . . .

There was a sort of hideous pause as his partisan went, untouched, into a gap between a Turk’s shield and his sword, right into the bridge of his nose, killing him instantly . . .

There was another moment – one Swan remembered for many nights – when his partisan got stuck in a screaming ghazi and the man went down into the oar benches and then – powerless, as he tried to free his weapon – he saw the scimitar that would kill him, coming for his neck. His shield was on the wrong side, and the weapon floated, undefended, into the gap and slammed full force into the place where his neck muscles meshed with his shoulder muscles.

His armour held. It hurt, but the edge didn’t bite, and he let go of the partisan and reached for his sword. Drawing it seemed to take for ever.

And then the pressure on him eased. He had been fighting multiple opponents for as long as . . . as there had been time. Beards, teeth, screaming.

Suddenly just one man, covering the retreat of his fellows. A big, brave man, his sword everywhere.

Alessandro caught the fellow’s scimitar in a rising, false-edge parry, and Swan was there, following the rising sword into the created opening. His blow wasn’t strong, but strong enough. The Turk dropped his weapon, one finger severed from his hand.

Then he managed to block two killing blows with his round shield alone. Blood was gushing from his severed finger. He sprayed it at Alessandro and punched with his shield.

Swan got a foot behind the Turk’s front foot and slammed him to the deck.

He knelt on the man’s chest and put his sword across the man’s throat.

The man was beaten. He was down. The sound of fighting was dying away.

The Turk was smiling.

Swan had time to think – Damn, this bastard is brave.

I could capture him.

That’s foolish. I could just . . .

I could capture him.

And then he couldn’t kill the man. An Arabic word came to him. Did Turks even speak Arabic?

‘Stop!’ he said.

The Turk looked at him, raised an eyebrow, and said something rapidly in Arabic.

Swan had to shrug. ‘Just stop,’ he said, in English, of all things.

Alessandro helped him up. The oarsmen were killing the wounded and throwing the last Turks over the side. The third Turkish galley was standing off. Even as he looked, the archers aboard the third galley lofted a flight of arrows – into the second Turk.

‘We don’t generally take prisoners,’ Alessandro said.