Free Blood on the Sand by Michael Jecks

Berenger heard commands and the pattering of many booted feet.
    ‘Fuck! Block the gates, use anything you can!’ he roared, and helped the men pull the gates shut, blocking them as best they could with some wagons and a cart. And then, as swiftly
as they could manage, the men jerked and rattled their way down after the Genoese.
    The clinking of metal was deafening. From the ship, Grimault could hear it like a satanic percussion all around him as the men lurched clumsily with their hobbled ankles. It
was good that they had been shackled so quickly, for most of them had chains between the irons that were considerably longer than they should have been. In Genoa they would have been much shorter,
designed to hobble the men and prevent escapes. The French blacksmith was not experienced at making prison restraints.
    Chrestien de Grimault stood on his ship and watched as the men arrived – a shambling, ill-stinking mess of men, anxious and fretful. He already had four small oared vessels waiting at the
quayside, and two cables holding a small supply vessel had already been slipped. ‘Hurry!’ he called, beckoning with his entire arm. ‘Come! Leave that papal usurer and join us
here!
    ‘What will you do, my friend?’ he said to himself as Berenger stood staring at him from the quay. ‘What would I do? I would tell me to go fuck my mother, and then find a smith
who could remove all the metalwork, in case I was the sort of disreputable thief and mercenary who would merely take each of you and toss you over the sheers into the sea. With all that iron, none
of you would float – and you know that. Just as you know that if you delay, the cardinal’s men will surely come and capture you, and even if you kill the cardinal, you will die. There
is no profit in death, my friend.’
    Berenger and he stared at each other over the water, and then Berenger snapped a command, and the first of the men began to make their way to the nearer boats. Soon the vintener and the others
were helped down into small craft, and before long they were being rowed across the waters to the great galley.
    ‘Prepare to sail!’ Chrestien roared. He was still speaking in French, for with so many crew members from all over France, it was easier to use the common language. Besides, as the
English began to appear, clambering up the rope ladders dangling from the upper hull, it would make most of them more comfortable. Most Englishmen understood at least some French.
    ‘Welcome aboard my ship,’ he said as Berenger appeared. ‘Did you kill him?’
    ‘He thought I was going to, but no. I tapped him on the head to shut him up. He’ll wake with a headache, but no more. He’s lucky. I should have killed him.’
    ‘Undoubtedly. But it would have made my return more problematical,’ Grimault said with a grin. ‘And now, I think I owe you the services of one of my finest men.’
    ‘Who?’
    ‘My friend,’ Grimault said, smiling and shaking his head at the naked suspicion flashing in Berenger’s eyes, ‘I feel sure you require the aid of my blacksmith.’
    He could not make out the Genoese. Berenger stood near the mast, gripping a rope tightly as the waves sucked and hissed at the galley’s hull, staring out at the white,
gleaming track in the water, trying to understand the man.
    When he and the other archers had hurried from the cardinal’s hall and straight into the shipman, he had thought they were doomed. These were the very men who had caught him and his own,
and it was natural to consider the Genoese their enemies. Yet now they had been freed by the same fellows, and from the chattering and ribald humour shared on board, it seemed as though Chrestien
de Grimault considered himself to be Berenger’s host: he was treating him as an honoured guest.
    The man was there now, up at the rear castle, his eyes fixed on the horizon ahead as though daring it to display some threat to him and his ship.
    He was a natural mariner; that much was