Chapter 57: Fire From the Rise

Vito watched the vanguard tear themselves loose from the main body and start forward.

Then he turned his back on the infantry ranks and climbed toward the rise, following the worn track his crossbowmen had beaten into the slope since dawn. Domenego remained below at the frontline, where the ground narrowed to its tightest point and the footmen kept their line.

From the rise, the whole field finally came clear. The dust hung pale over the trampled ground below, and the great mass that had seemed to advance as one beast toward them was actually two.

The vanguard marched forward just as the horns had promised, but they had company. Between the infantry, lighter skirmishers had moved out ahead and gained ground fast, archers on foot running low and quick across earth the footmen behind them plainly had no intention of crossing yet.

Amidst them, the dozen crossbows flashed in the sun, iron and dark wood scattered through a looser crowd of bows brought by militia who looked much less certain about their tactics.

Behind it all, the cavalry had managed to keep a little sense in their heads. Pride had apparently not overcome it yet.

Around Vito, his crossbowmen shifted their feet without a word. Their strings were tight, their bolts were seated, and every man was just as ready as he had been an hour ago.

They were also no happier about waiting, which was hardly a surprise.

The rise, along with everything stretched across it and waiting, lay behind a fold in the ground that hid Vito’s men from anyone coming up the road. It was much like water hiding a stone, right up until a man’s foot found it.

By then the skirmishers passed the distance Vito would have called good enough for effective shot, yet he still let them come.

Near his shoulder, Zuane’s knuckles had turned white around the stock of his crossbow.

"Ser Barozzi."

The words came low and urgent, scarcely more than breath.

"They’re close enough now, surely."

"Not yet." Vito kept his eyes on the field. "Wait."

Zuane swallowed and held his aim.

Sweat began to drip down more than one neck through the rise during the silence that reigned. The soldiers had nothing to say, up until the enemy finally acted.

Vito had been waiting for precisely this moment.

The skirmish vanguard stopped together, as if some unseen hand had passed the command through its ragged front. Their bows and crossbows began to rise, while the soldiers planted their feet, drew their strings, and took aim at the footmen above.

The enemy had stopped moving, had both hands occupied with their shots, and not one of them thought to look up at the rise looming over their exposed flank.

Vito raised his hand.

"Now."

Twenty strings let go in the same heartbeat. The crack tore across the field, sharp enough to cut through any noise.

The volley struck before the skirmishers could loose, bolts punching through leather and mail and breaking the loose formation apart. The front of the screen collapsed almost at once, bodies driven backward into the ranks behind them as the enemy formation dissolved under the first impact.

Blood flashed across leather and jerkins while bows dropped into the dirt, half-drawn strings snapping uselessly loose as the formation staggered into itself. What had been a screen only a heartbeat before became a tangle of fallen bodies, abandoned weapons, and soldiers trying to find somewhere to stand.

The first counterattack came late and disorderly. Their arrows rose in uneven handfuls, released wherever frightened hands happened to point, with little of the discipline needed to make them dangerous.

There was no longer any volley, no common aim, and no sense that the skirmishers knew how to recover their ground.

The Genoese crossbowmen understood the danger first. Their place in the formation allowed them a clearer view of what had happened, and they began to retreat in good discipline with their numbers still largely intact while the militia was still trying to make sense of the sudden violence.

These skirmishers twisted between two instincts, run for the safety or fire toward the rise that had just torn them open. Some started to shoot at the footmen, who had endured worse than a few arrows and were not impressed by these.

The platoon infantry caught the arrows on their shields, iron and wood taking the shafts with hard thuds and keeping the ranks underneath them alive. The whole formation held without so much as a shrug.

Up on the rise, Vito’s men dropped behind the standing pavese boards they had planted along the slope for precisely this sort of occasion.

They were tall shields of layered board and boiled hide, meant to take the hits while the man behind one worked his crossbow back into readiness. The arrows hammered into them, some striking hard enough to splinter wood, burying their heads deep in the boards.

Behind the shields, the crossbowmen pushed their strings back with foot and hook, preparing another volley while the enemy’s broken ranks still struggled to finish its miserable reply.

For a few moments the field had a handful of loose exchanges.

Then the whole screen broke. Whatever remained of its discipline vanished beneath the pressure of fear, the survivors streaming back toward their army in a ragged flood and leaving the fallen scattered across the field.

Vito’s crossbowmen kept shooting into the retreat, making the most of the moment while the retreat became its own kind of chaos.

The fleeing skirmishers trampled through the wounded, scattered equipment, and broken bows, while bolts continued to find the mass from behind. The ground that had brought the enemy forward so confidently moments earlier was now choked with the wreckage of its advance.

Below and beyond, the real strength of Chania’s army started moving.

Several hundred spear-armed men closed in one slow, steady mass, with the calm that only a large number of men could afford.

Their dust rose thicker than anything the skirmishers screen had managed, an army’s worth into the afternoon light. What remained of the archers and crossbowmen scrambled after them, trying to disappear behind the infantry wall where their spearmen’s backs might prove more useful than their courage.

The broken screen vanished into the larger mass, swallowed by shields, spears, and dust.

The archers and crossbowmen who had come first were already broken.

What came now was everything else.