Chapter 67: The Ruse at Rethymno

There was, as it turned out, plenty of time to talk on the road to Rethymno. Most of that time was spent complaining to Bepi over a simpler question.

Whether the sea still existed after sunset.

Bepi received news of a departure after dark as he received most things of the sort, namely as a personal insult delivered to him, his ancestors, and every sailor who had ever drowned because one thought daylight was optional.

Then, with the enthusiasm of consent to his own execution, he admitted it could be done.

It would be done badly, and it would cost him a piece of whatever remained of his nerves, but it could be done.

Chania kept nothing of the compagnia behind when they cast off.

Vito hated the rush it in that condition. He simply hated the thought of leaving Rethymno to finish its business without him even more, and there was only so much safety to be gained by waiting for a night that looked safer.

The voyage required rather less courage than Bepi had predicted and considerably more attention.

Two galleys keeping company in complete darkness is mostly a matter of shouted checks across black water, the oars finding their rhythm by feel after the eyes have given up being useful.

Dawn arrived gray and unhelpful, then revealed the coast sitting exactly where memory had put it.

Vito considered this one of history’s better habits.

They put in well short of the harbor, near a strip of shingle that not a soul in Rethymno had any reason to watch. The Zustignana slipped free of her blockade to meet them, and Pellegrino’s platoon came ashore.

With the whole company finally brought together, three platoons and lieutenants, Vito laid out the only plan the numbers would permit.

Three galleys, oars out and banners spread wide enough to be read from shore, would make a handsome show of intending to force the harbor.

The reason was simple, to get the garrison to stare at it. And when the soldiers stare at the ships, the wall gets thinner.

While the others discussed about the plan, Vito stopped to estimate how many men in Rethymno would like to see him killed.

He had no informer inside Rethymno’s walls like Ansaldo, who had supplied him with names in Chania.

But he had enough information and knowledge for guesswork.

Some provincial archon in this century didn’t keep a standing army, whatever some historian writing two hundred years later might confidently tell the world.

He kept a household, some sons and cousins, and whatever hired muscle his purse could persuade to stand nearby.

Said purse, belonging to two or three houses and made fatter by Genoese silver could buy fifty such men without much difficulty. Perhaps a hundred, if the church had decided to open its own strongbox.

Behind those men was the town itself, probably the levy in the low hundreds, hauled out of farms and fishing boats, handed a spear, and told by nobility with more silver than sense that Venezia intended to burn their houses down.

Chania’s levy had broken the instant its own leader hit the mud.

Vito could see no good reason to believe Rethymno’s would prove made of sterner material.

When the whole company finally stood on the sand, arranged loosely by platoon because nobody had thought to bring a parade ground along to the beach, Vito walked its length once.

Then he chose a number without making a ceremony of it.

A hundred and sixty, more or less. Every man who could climb a rope and still stand when he reached the top was counted.

By midday the three galleys had gone back out. They made the most of their three ships, rowing where everyone on Rethymno’s walls could see them, keeping the banners spread wide enough to see from the harbor piers, and generally looking like a fleet that had pumped up its courage and meant to force an assault.

That was precisely what was necessary.

The rest of the day belonged to preparation.

Grapple hooks were blackened over a low fire until they stopped shining, while blades and buckles were wrapped or dulled anywhere a stray flash might carry across the open ground.

It was slow work, cautious work, and therefore exactly the sort of work that leaves soldiers with far too much time to invent trouble.

The light left the sky quickly, and the humor left with it.

The ropes were checked once more, this time for business rather than amusement.

Voices fell to whatever required and not a word more.

By then the company moved from the beach toward the dark shadow of the walls, boots already wrapped for ground that promised to be less forgiving than sand.

Vito divided them at the forest into five groups, close enough in size that wasting time over one extra man here or there would have saved nothing and cost plenty.

Thirty-two each, roughly.

One under Vito himself, with Toffolo close beside him, and one each under Zaccaria, Orso, Pellegrino, and Domenego.

Each group was given its own stretch of wall and the simple instruction to wait for the time to act.

Rethymno’s walls rose from the dark exactly as promised and looked considerably less impressive than the city suggested.

These were low, uneven stretches of stone, patched more than once by hands that hadn’t troubled themselves to match one repair to the next, with lanterns scattered so thinly along the battlement that whole stretches sat beneath nothing but starlight.

Whatever watch remained above had plainly spent most of its attention on the water, just as three galleys and an afternoon spent making a great deal of noise had been designed to encourage.

Vitale crouched at the foot of the wall with Toffolo and thirty some other men, all of them holding their breath as best they could while someone nearby began feeding out a coil of rope.

In that last breath before the work began, Vito found himself thinking that after this city was taken, Crete would truly be theirs.

He gestured forward.

The first grapple went up into the dark.