Chapter 51: Neither Mercy Nor Patience

The cabin hadn’t agreed to make itself larger for Domenego, and the man hadn’t agreed to remember that on his way down.

He came in still carrying the splendor of his speech on deck, then his skull snapped against the low crossbeam a heartbeat before his good sense could stop it.

The crack shook the whole cramped cabin.

He complained with a snicker. "Sant’Antonio preserve me from whatever carpenter thought soldiers ought to be built like altar boys."

Bepi couldn’t bother and simply cleared a space on the little table.

Vito ducked in behind them, having learned the ceiling’s ways by now, and spread the chart across the table without ceremony.

It was the very chart they’d used sailing down from Constantinople, its coastline worn soft at every fold. In one corner, still coiled around its own doomed little ship, was the sea serpent some long-dead hand had drawn for reasons nobody aboard had ever managed to discover.

"Still there, I see." Vito tapped the serpent once. "Frightening as ever."

"Frightens the fish, at least."

The chart itself wasn’t absurdly detailed, but it had the general shape of the island and marks for Candia, Chania and Rethymno in between.

Bepi held down the chart’s corners with whatever lay closest at hand, be a cup, a coil of twine, and a small knife he clearly wasn’t ready to give back. "Now, what for you dragged us down here to discuss? Or did you only want an audience for your great mind?"

Vito put one finger on the coastline and brushed it west from Candia toward the ragged mark that stood for Chania.

"How long, Bepi? Water to Chania."

Bepi bent over the chart and tapped his thick finger along the coast. "Day and a half, if the wind keeps this temper. Two, if the breeze starts to sulk out of pure spite."

"And at night?"

"We will raise canvas and anchor."

Bepi said it as though the matter needed no further discussion. "No map’s worth trust past what a sailor’s eyes can tell him, and I’ve no desire to intimately learn this coast in the dark. We’ll pass close by Rethymno around midday tomorrow, near enough to smell her harbor.

"We’ve no reason to knock on her door this trip, leave her be a while longer."

Vito’s finger passed the mark without slowing.

Domenego had recovered from his collision well enough to lean over the table himself, one hand pressed against his skull while the other jabbed toward Chania’s coastline with all the confidence he could muster.

"Then here is what I propose, Barozzi."

He said it like he was ready to proclaim a whole new crusade. "We go straight in. Oars up, soldiers over the side, the whole company onto those docks before the bells can sound the alarm. Take the city by the balls before she’s finished waking."

Vito shook his head. "No, amico. Storm those docks and we’ll be forced into a kill or die struggle for the city. What I want is a decisive victory that lets us occupy the city without resistance thereafter."

Domenego rubbed his skull in silence for once, then stepped back from the table.

"A fair point," he admitted, gruffly. "Poorly delivered, but fair."

"We’re not sneaking in, either."

Vito’s finger moved off the harbor mark and stopped on a stretch of open coast and countryside some distance from the city.

"We sail in plain sight, flags up. Then we land here, past the walls and well away of the docks."

Bepi’s eyebrows went up.

"So, you want them to see us."

"Not only that, my dear Bepi. I want want them obscenely angry that they spotted us."

Vito tapped the spot again, with a grin. "One galley, the raiding force too small to besiege any city, yet still sat their arse bold as brass on the coastline and refused to acknowledge any prior governance. The archon’s ego inside those walls will be as wounded as if you cursed their mothers."

He gave the spot another tap. "And a crass insult has a way of making a noble leave his comfortable wall to finish the matter himself."

Domenego’s head came up fast, his headache forgotten.

"Then we draw them out into open ground."

"I mean exactly that."

"God’s blood, Barozzi."

His grin spread slowly across his face.

"Now that’s a battle worth the bruises."

Bepi wasn’t smiling. "And if they simply wait you out? A city that size has no need to risk a single soldier in the field when they can just sit behind stone and watch you starve on the beach."

"I doubt that, amico."

Vito said it as easily as gamble he already won. "Cazzo, think about it plainly. Sixty of ours against whatever Chania can put in the field, and I’d wager good coin that garrison outnumbers us by a fair margin once you count every sword in the city."

He leaned over the chart. "Even a patient general wouldn’t sit it out but charge into the open to finish it quickly. Otherwise, you have a noble hiding behind walls against a force he could crush in an afternoon, it’d make him look like a coward to his own people. Their pride does half our work before a single blade is drawn."

Bepi considered that for a moment, running his thick finger along the coastline once more.

At last he grunted, and there was more agreement in it than complaint.

"Reckless, but not stupid, which is more than I usually get from you."

"High praise, coming from you."

"Don’t get used to it."

Domenego had already returned to studying the landing site, muttering under his breath about ground for a formation. He was already lost in his private rehearsal of the fight to come.

Vito let him have it.

"Then that’s done."

He put out a dangerous grin. "No more left to argue about, amici. Just the water between here and there, and whatever Chania will do do about the fact that we’re coming."