The Pirates of the Levant Read Free

stern. To be fair, they fought with great courage until our second boarding party reached the bulkhead where the last of the crew were still fighting.
    Captain Alatriste and I were in that second party, he — once he had emptied his harquebus — armed with sword and shield, and I wearing a leather corslet and wielding a pike which, halfway through, I swapped for a sharp spear wrenched from the hands of a dying Turk. And thus, always keeping a watchful eye on each other, advancing prudently from bench to bench, leaving not a soul alive behind us just in case, not even those lying on the deck pleading for clemency, we finally reached our comrades in the stern. We continued to press home our advantage until the badly wounded Turkish captain and those survivors who had not jumped into the sea threw down their weapons and begged for mercy. Such mercy, however, was a long time in coming, for what ensued was nothing less than a bloodbath, and it took a repeated command from our captain before we men ceased our labours, infuriated as we were by the pirates' resistance — for along with those killed by their cannon shot, the battle had cost us nine lives and twelve wounded, not counting galley-slaves. Even the Turks in the water were being shot at like ducks, despite their pleas, or lanced or beaten to death with oars when they tried to climb on board.
    'Leave it,' said Diego Alatriste.
    I turned, still breathless from my exertions. He had cleaned his sword on a piece of cloth — a Moorish turban — picked up from the deck, and was putting it back in its sheath as he watched the unfortunates drowning or swimming, afraid to come too close. The sea was fairly calm, and many of them managed to stay afloat, although the wounded floundered, groaning and gasping for air, water bubbling from their lungs as they died among the red-tinged waves.
    'That blood isn't yours, is it?'
    I looked at my arms and felt my corslet and my thighs. Not a scratch, I discovered to my joy.
'Everything in its place,' I said, smiling wearily. 'Just like you.'
We surveyed the landscape post-battle: the two ships still locked together, disembowelled bodies sprawled among the benches, the prisoners and the dying, the men trying to climb on board despite the threat of pike and harquebus, and our comrades brazenly plundering the galliot. The easterly breeze dried the Turkish blood on our hands and faces.
'Right, let's see if there are any spoils to be had,' sighed Alatriste.
'Spoils' was what we called the booty from a ship, but this time there was almost nothing. The galley, chartered in the pirate port of Saleh, had not yet taken any booty itself when we saw it approaching our convoy; and so, even though we lifted every plank on the deck and smashed all the bulkheads, we found nothing of value, only food and weapons, not even a gold coin to pay the King his wretched quint. I had to make do with a fine cloth tunic — and I almost came to blows over that with another soldier who claimed to have seen it first — and Captain Alatriste found a large damascene knife, with a good blade skilfully worked, which he filched from the belt of one of the wounded. He returned to the Mulata, while I continued foraging on the Turkish galley and looking over the prisoners.
Once the galleymaster had, as was the custom, taken the sails from the captured vessel, the only items of any value left were the surviving Turks. Fortunately, there were no Christians at the oars — the corsairs themselves rowed or fought, depending on the circumstances — and when Captain Urdemalas, very sensibly, ordered the killing to stop, there were still some sixty men alive: those who had surrendered, the wounded and the remaining survivors in the sea. On a rough calculation, that meant eighty or a hundred escudos each, depending on where the slaves were sold. Once you had subtracted the King's quint and what was due to the captain and the other officers, and when that was shared out among the fifty