The African Samurai by Craig Shreve

Author:Craig Shreve
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2023-08-02T00:00:00+00:00

17

In the school of the Jesuits, I learned I was a savage.

The great ship I boarded after the Portuguese defeat hugged the coast for the first few days of sailing before it was set to go out to sea, but at a stop in port we were given new orders, and redirected to break up a siege at Hormuz.

The first strong winds and rains signaled the beginning of the monsoon season, and we sailed toward another battle as the ship’s captain carefully watched the skies. I carried cannonballs to supply the men who lit and fired the deck cannons. The ship rolled and yawed in the rough waters, and though we were close enough that we could see the faces of the men on the enemy carracks, any strikes landed against them were more a matter of chance than of aim.

Through the barricade we dropped anchor and rowed the skiffs into the shallower waters, our arms aching from straining against the storm.

Ashore, the town had suffered heavy damages. The slaves were deployed to tear houses down to clear lines of sight or deprive the enemy of advantageous positions. We dug trenches, erected earthen walls and other fortifications, repaired the walls of the garrison, which had been punched repeatedly with heavy artillery fire, and we were beaten or kicked or whipped if we stopped to rest.

The combined forces of the Indians and Ottomans were separated from us by just the edge of eyesight distance. They shoveled dirt into the shallowest part of the river by shifts, building a land bridge, and we raced to prepare the defenses for their eventual charge. Every day we watched their progress, and they watched ours.

The storm was in full force when they launched against us, and we fought in wind and rain that turned the normal chaos of battle into something unknowable. Relaying orders was impossible. Enemy soldiers appeared from the lashing gray sheets without warning. The flash of matchlock pistols popped in the darkness like fireflies, and the sound of a musket ball passing by your ear was drowned out by the gale, detectable only by a muzzled whine and a momentary sensation of heat, if it passed close enough.

I was struck once, in the forearm, and I could barely hear the crack of bone, but I had no choice but to fight on, swinging a halberd with one good arm. We slipped in the mud and fell against our enemies and dragged each other to the ground and killed there, rose again. When the night brought a reprieve from fighting, an officer pulled my arm to set the bones and tied the arm against a short wooden stick to keep it straight, then sent me back out to continue the digging, the repairs, the preparation for the next day’s battle. I was bone-tired and was still yet a boy, but I was forced to my tasks under threat of a whipping, or torture, or execution.

In the early days of the siege, the officers

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