Christian Cameron - Tom Swan and the Head of St. George Part Six - Chios

‘Messire Drappierro,’ the Turkish general said in his near-perfect Italian.

And then Swan found himself face to face with Maral Khatun. Auntie.

She was thirty-five — five feet of muscle and silk and black hair. In the dark, she was merely a shape and a set of shawls, but he still knew her — by scent, and by the deference of all the men around him suddenly.

He made himself bow.

She chuckled. In Arabic, she said, ‘Well, he doesn’t lack for manners. Bring him along.’ She turned to her Africans. ‘Mustafa — what is all the shouting in the Frankish tongue?’

‘I do not know, mistress.’ The African bowed. ‘Hamza Beg is … debating, with your brother.’

‘Find out, there’s a dear.’ She looked at Swan. ‘You speak a little Arabic, I think.’

There were men aboard who knew he spoke Turkish, so he bowed again. ‘And Turkish, my lady.’

She laughed. ‘Oh, you are revenged on a poor woman, are you not? So you understood every word, you scamp?’ She seemed neither spiteful nor annoyed.

‘I know we were interrupted,’ Swan said. It was a line he’d practised for this moment. All his dice were thrown.

She stepped back, and her laugh pealed across the deck. ‘You are bold. ’ She leaned forward. ‘You know I have purchased thee?’

He nodded.

More shouting from aft.

‘There is talk of taking the Englishman from thee, mistress,’ Mustafa said.

‘Let us be away to our own ship,’ Auntie said. ‘Immediately. I command it. Englishman, what have you done?’

Swan bowed his head. ‘As I serve God, lady, I have done nothing but carry a message from this man Drappierro to the Lord of the Knights of Wrath and then I have brought the lord’s answer to Drappierro.’

She smiled as they settled in a small boat. Her Africans began to pull them away from the side. There was more shouting aboard the flagship, but no heads appeared at the side. Swan could hear Omar Reis and another, deeper voice.

‘Truly, you are the very son of iniquity and father of lies, young man. Despite which, I can see thee as … Ganymede.’

‘Hermes,’ Swan managed. ‘Ganymede’s tastes ran to other things than messages.’

The woman laughed again. ‘Oh, infidel, how I shall use thee.’ She turned to her rowers.

Swan saw his small boat still tied under the stem of the flagship.

‘Shall I merely cut out his tongue?’ she asked Mustafa.

The African grunted and pulled his oar. They were passing down the length of the ship.

‘Why is my brother so wroth with the Genoese ambassador?’ she asked.

Mustafa grunted. ‘This infidel brought the Genoese a message from the Pirates of Rhodos,’ he said.

My hands are not tied, and I do no think this is going to get any better , Swan thought.

‘So he is a double traitor,’ Auntie said with real satisfaction. She smiled at Swan. ‘If my brother kills him, I won’t have to pay him a thing for you!’

Swan smiled at her with every bit of forced flirtation he could muster. All he could see was her eyes.

‘I can use my tongue for many things,’ he whispered.

She giggled. ‘Well — perhaps we will have a test of that. If you pass, you may keep it. We could apply these tests one part at a time — anything that fails is removed.’

‘Anything that fails you, mistress, deserves nothing more,’ he said in Arabic. His right hand moved very slowly.

They were twenty cloth yards from his little boat.

He saw her close her eyes as he leaned forward to kiss her, and his hand trailed along behind Mustafa’s back.

He took Mustafa’s belt knife out of the sheath at his back and cut the man’s throat before Auntie’s eyes were open again. The other rower went for the knife — Swan broke his arm and he screamed and got the knife in his eye for good measure, and then Swan slammed the pommel into Auntie’s head as she drew her own knife.

The woman moaned and subsided, eyes wide with terror and the weight of the blow. She was stunned, but not unconscious.

The boat was suddenly full of blood.

Swan was sick of all of it.

He knelt by her in the bow and wrestled the boat with one oar alongside his own. No one looked over the side to see the source of the dying man’s scream. Swan panted twenty long breaths, his mind almost blank.

The woman opened her mouth.

He put his hand over it and she bit his hand until he put the knife to her nose.

‘I won’t kill you,’ he said. ‘But I’ll take your nose off.’

‘Try, you dog! You killed Mustafa, you-’

He rammed a thumb up under her jaw and she grunted in pain and subsided.

Carefully, he tied her hands and feet and then crumpled one of her shawls into a gag and shoved it into her mouth. She was unresisting.

‘Please note that I am not killing you,’ he said carefully. ‘I could. But I’m sick of the whole thing. I’m … sorry about Mustafa.’ He sounded insane, even to his own ears.

For a moment, in the darkness, he almost lost it. The man’s skull popping under his hands — the feel of the dagger. In the stinking, hot darkness.

He threw up over the side.

He rolled into his own boat, and shoved Maral Khatun’s boat as hard as he could, sending each of them in opposite directions.

Forty feet away, Drappierro said, ‘Your accusations are pure foolishness, Pasha. Get a grip on yourself. There is no mighty Christian fleet, and there is no trap.’

Omar Reis did not sound angry. Merely professional. ‘Why the letter, then, messire?’

‘A forgery!’ Drappierro spat. ‘An obvious forgery.’

Swan went into the water. It was colder than he expected, and he felt the current as soon as he went in. He fought fatigue and revulsion.

And fear.

As soon as he put his head under the water, it was dark, and he felt the man’s neck go just as he pounded the blade into the man’s skull. The skull cracked like an egg and then the whole head collapsed under his weight. Then he felt himself repeat the blow, even though he knew the man had to be dead.

He tried to rise off the new corpse, but his leg failed him and he sank back — now kneeling on both knees. He could see nothing. He could hear at least two men dying. Everything smelled of blood, and faeces, and despair.

He was there for long enough to feel the total panic. He couldn’t get his head under the water. He would not do it.

Any moment, a Turk would put his head over the stern and see Auntie — or him.

He tried again.

Damn it.

He tried prayer, and nothing came.

Tried thinking of beautiful women. Of the head of St George.

Of life.

He didn’t breathe deeply enough, but in the end he got his head under water, and he got under the boat, and his desperately questing hand found the little keg secured by the rope. Weighted with lead.

Fuck them all , he thought. I’m going to pull this off.

He made enough noise to wake the dead, getting back in his boat.

No one paid him any attention, because Drappierro and Hamza Beg and Omar Reis were shouting like bulls.

Swan opened the small keg. Inside it was full of tallow, except for the bars of lead that killed its buoyancy, the oiled leather packet of gunpowder, and the small oiled silk packet. Swan took that. He didn’t smile. The fun of the prank was gone with Mustafa’s throat.

Now it was just a job.

Inside the powder bag was the length of a man’s hand of slow match, and his tinder box. Swan reassembled his device — the packet of powder inside the tallow, which he packed back, his hands greasy with the stuff. He pulled the waxed plug on the barrel and fed the fuse through it, and then he tapped the top of the keg into place until the thin board snapped past the ends of the staves.