Chapter 56: Battle of Chania

The walk back into the formation felt like walking into another country altogether. Behind them was empty ground, and ahead was the place where every man would make their stand to tooth and nail.

Vito went through the armored footmen first, with Domenego a step behind. Up close, the line was not a wall at all, but some dozens little decisions made by some dozens of men, and from a distance those decisions had the good manners to look like one solid monolith.

Shields overlapped rim to rim, their lower extremities dug an inch into the turned earth so they would not slide when heavy pressure came into them. Spear-points stayed low and even, held by the backline soldiers who meant to put them inside some bastard rather than waste more time in admiration how sharp they were.

Nearby, the picchieri stood hidden in the streambed, their boots on the old salt crust which cracked beneath them, while the butts of their pikes were driven into earth the summer sun had baked hard as brick.

The points reached up and out toward the field, making a hedge of iron that a smart man would not walk into, and a cavalryman with a functioning brain ought not to ride into either.

On the rise, the crossbowmen stood in two staggered ranks, close enough for the soldiers behind to shoot cleanly over the shoulders of those in front.

Every bow was spanned, every bolt was nocked, every string checked again by hands that had already done so a dozen times and would doubtless check them another dozen times before the battle finally let them the privilege to stop worrying.

"Ready as they’ll ever be."

Domenego said taciturnly, though he seemed to be saying it more to himself than to Vito.

"That’s as ready as anybody gets," Vito clicked his tongue.

His eyes went up to the three banners catching what little wind the day cared to provide. Gold lion on red, wine-dark cloth beneath it. And beneath both, black and lean, the lion that had sixty men prepared to die beneath it.

Through the formation, Ruggiero had taken up a place near the hillside.

The man had his helmet on one knee while he drew a whetstone along a blade that needed sharpening about as badly as he needed more hair. His hands, however, seemed determined to keep busy.

He called out to nobody in particular and everybody within hearing. "If a horse flattens me today, I want what’s left of me buried face down. I’ll not have some Greek priest peering into this mug while he conducts the ceremonies."

The man beside him repeated, plainly pleased with the idea. "Face down? And there was me thinking you wanted a grand funeral, Ruggiero."

Ruggiero snorted. "I want my wife to remember me without being disappointed. Face down, she can tell people I died charging bravely instead of staring at a horse’s arse for the last sight of my life."

"Not a bad deal either. One less mouth to feed and a widow’s purse for consolation."

"She’ll spend it on a fatter husband before the month is out. Good luck to him, he’ll need it."

Farther down the ranks, two soldiers argued in low, filthy voices about whose will actually named the more voluptuous whore, while a third prayed so rapidly that the soldier beside him finally snapped before he wore a groove into his own chest.

Vito moved through the company trading one remark for another, clapping a shoulder here, stealing a soldier’s joke there and throwing it straight back at him. The whole company was loose, profane, and alive. That is often what men become when they know unpleasant business is coming and have the good sense not to stare too closely.

Then Chania’s battle horns washed across the field, faint but unmistakable, and every bit of that looseness vanished from the company at once.

Domenego stepped forward and planted himself where the entire platoon could see him. Whatever silence had reigned over the men lasted only until he opened his mouth.

"Sons of Venezia! Sons of taverns so foul God Himself has forgotten to put them on a map!"

His voice went through the length of the formation, formal enough for a ceremony and enormous enough for a battlefield. "Five hundred men march toward us today, and I want it written down that not one of you asked me to make the odds fairer!"

He paused.

"Which is fortunate, because I haven’t got any."

A rough cheer rolled along the ranks, with laughter mixed into it.

Then he continued, loudly as ever. "History has always shown a rather touching partiality toward men who fought while comprehensively outnumbered. There is something undeniably romantic in it. Five against fifty, ten against a hundred, the mathematics become so grotesque that courage is almost compulsory."

He let that thought linger a moment. "But an even contest? History has remarkably little patience for one of those! Two bodies of men, equally equipped, equally numerous, marching toward one another with every reasonable expectation of slaughtering precisely as many of their opponents as are required to make the exercise respectable."

His smile widened. "No. There is no poetry in that. The Almighty Himself would have better things to do than watch two equally matched collections of idiots beat one another to death until luncheon."

He waited just long enough for that to settle, then let the grand voice fall away and showed them the man underneath it. "Hold this ground, and every man among you shall have the considerable satisfaction of walking back to that beach tonight possessed of a story sufficiently improbable to inflict upon his grandchildren for the remainder of their natural lives."

He looked from one face to the next. "That is, of course, assuming any of you succeed in the rather more delicate enterprise of having grandchildren."

Then a pause, just enough to let it simmer.

"Looking at some of you, I confess I would not wager heavily on it."

For a moment the ranks broke into curses, laughter, obscene gestures and objections, one man making a show of inspecting his own face while another loudly demanded to know who had been spreading rumors about his reproductive prospects.

Then, as Vito stepped forward, the noise died away at once.

This time he kept his speech short and sincere.

"Trust the man beside you, trust the men on that rise, and let them come to us."

His eyes traveled slowly down the ranks.

"I’ll see every one of you on the other side of this."

The soldiers nodded and checked their weapons, tightened straps, and met one another’s eyes with the hard, simple brotherhood that meant to see the battle through, to the end, side by side. Whatever fear remained had been given no room to speak.

The signal came a breath later. The horns thunderously roared beside the three banners, short and hard, and the banners moved forward together, put a pace behind the line they represented.

Then the command traveled down the ranks by voice, lieutenant to sergeant, sergeant to soldier, until every soldier on the field knew the wait was over.

Across the field, the enemy vanguard broke away from the mass behind them and started forward.