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

Then his eyes flickered over Swan and froze.

Swan offered him the smile that the lion has for the gazelle.

‘In the aftermath of such a brilliant stroke, surely we should be thanking God,’ said the bishop.

The captain bowed. ‘What we should be doing is attacking their rearguard and stinging the bastards so that they think twice about coming back.’ He looked at the president. ‘What we are doing is — nothing .’

‘More violence may only force the Turk into greater efforts!’ the president said. But he was looking at Swan, and sweating.

Swan didn’t push past the bishop. Life at his father’s episcopal court — and at Hampton and with Bessarion — had taught him a great deal about patience. And revenge.

Instead of acting prematurely, he watched the bishop. The man was almost a head taller than the president, and looked more like a man-at-arms than some of the men-at-arms. He spread his arms and gave an invocation, and then all the people in the square knelt and said three prayers.

And then the bishop glanced at Swan.

Swan stepped forward past the bishop, and placed himself in front of the president.

‘You have misplayed your hand, you know,’ Swan said pleasantly. ‘The Turks are beaten and they will run. They know the Allied fleet is on the way.’

‘There is no Allied fleet!’ the terrified man hissed.

Swan, who knew perfectly well that there was no Allied fleet, kept his composure. ‘You can’t imagine that the Turks are running from nothing?’ He smiled. ‘I call on you to release this sortie, to wreak the havoc on the infidel that is your duty — your duty!’ Swan bowed. ‘And please, release my friend the Lord of Eressos immediately.’ Swan leaned over and spoke very quietly. ‘I have your correspondence with Drappierro.’

Swan had also learned, in gutters and palaces, that sometimes a really big lie is better than any amount of truth.

The president turned a chalky white.

He stepped back as if struck — and raised a hand. But he was not utterly without cunning. ‘You will ride with the sortie, sir?' he said, his voice already rich with unction. ‘A man as full of knightly virtue as you!’

Swan laughed. He had laughed more in the last six hours …

‘I will ride with the sortie, unarmoured. I will go unto the battle front like Uriah, but I will not be touched.’ He grinned like a maniac at the president of the Mahona. And held up his left hand, where a brilliantly carved diamond glittered. ‘Because I am invincible,’ he said.

He bowed to the bishop, and one of the bishop’s servants ran for a horse.

What he got was a fine black churchman’s horse, a heavy beast that the bishop rode in parades and occasionally to falconry. But Swan didn’t care.

He vaulted into his saddle, and joined the captain of the town.

The mercenary was no older than Swan, and wore a fortune in armour. ‘Messire is a Knight of the Order?’ he asked. The bishop’s servants handed Swan gauntlets and a bevoir for his neck and a fine German sallet — none fit well, but all were far better than nothing. And a sword and a dagger.

‘I’m merely a volunteer,’ Swan admitted.

The young captain twirled his moustache. ‘Well, by Saint George, Messire has already won the day with the Mahona, so if Messire would do my little company the honour of carrying the standard of the town, perhaps we will show these worthy Turks that Italians have some skill in arms. Eh?’

Swan took the lance with the town’s small standard.

With mounted crossbowmen and every local gentleman who had a horse and arms, they mustered a hundred cavalry for the sortie.

The Turks were well prepared for such a move, and the captain, for all his youth, was too professional to waste men late in a victory, so the next hour was spent in a series of dashes from cover to cover, quite unlike Swan’s former notions of armoured combat on horseback before he came out to Rhodos. Under the captain’s shouted commands, they would ride at the beach, swerve in behind a hill, and their crossbowmen would snipe at the enemy rearguard from cover, while pages held their horses — and then, when the janissaries prepared a counter attack, the men-at-arms would sweep away.

It was exactly the sort of warfare that Swan had practised under the turcopilier of Rhodos.

By the time the sun was high in the sky, Swan, in almost no armour, had sweated through all his clothes, and the fully armoured men’s faces were as red as beets when they raised their visors or removed their armets or sallets.

There were fewer than a dozen Turkish ships left on the beach when the janissary commander made his lethal error. He had a great deal of beach to cover, and he elected to spread his men in open ranks — only two deep, and four paces between men.

The captain was eating an apple. He watched for a moment, and turned to Swan. ‘It is like the moment when she kisses you — you know what I mean, messire?’

Swan laughed. ‘Oh, I do,’ he said.

When they charged, the Turkish bows plucked men from saddles — or shot horses. But the Turks were too thinly distributed to stop the charge, and clearly had been misled as to their number — and in the time it takes a man to bleed out, the situation went from an organised retreat to a rout, and then the horsemen were in among the galleys, killing sailors, and after that, it was a massacre. The oarsmen were mostly slaves — and as soon as the horseman came down the beach, they screamed like ghazis and ripped at their captors with their bare hands.

It was too late to be decisive. Eight of the dozen galleys got off the beach, and there was little the horsemen could do to stop them. But four ships were taken. And when the Turks tried to come in with other ships and take them back, they were greeted by the Italian captain’s little surprise — a pair of guns on wheeled carriages.

The Turks ran for the open sea, and the garrison cheered from the walls.

When they returned through the sally port, the Lord of Eressos stood there in half-armour with a borrowed sword.

‘Damn you!’ he said. ‘I’ve missed everything!’

Swan slid from his borrowed horse. ‘I doubt it. I think this war will go on a long, long time.’

He introduced the captain of the town to his Lesbian friend, and the three of them, when the horses were curried and the weapons cleaned, proceeded to bathe — first in water, and later in adulation.

Late that night, Swan sat in a waterfront taverna, and gazed at the diamond on his finger.

‘Is that the jewel that the whoreson Drappierro wanted?’ The Lord of Eressos spread his hands.

Swan looked at him. ‘Where did you hear that?’ he asked, his head racing. Theodora said …

‘People talk.’ Zambale smiled, then shrugged. ‘I suppose one of the guards said something.’

Swan looked at him in wine-soaked puzzlement. ‘What would they know? Drappierro sent everyone out of the room.’

And then it hit him. Drappierro had spies everywhere — on Chios and Lesvos. Swan’s eyes locked with Zambale’s.

He regretted opening his mouth.

Zambale backed up a step and drew a dagger.

‘Son of a bitch,’ Swan said. He got his back to the wall and reached for his borrowed sword.

It wasn’t there, of course. It was leaning against the wall of the bishop’s palace.

‘You have to know everything, do you not, Englishman?’ Zambale flicked the dagger with easy competence between his hands.

The Italian captain took a sip of wine.

‘In this case,’ Swan said, ‘I can let it go. If you can.’

Zambale pursed his lips.

Swan didn’t relax — he was in one of the guards the order taught — but he raised a hand. ‘Zambale — I like you. Let it go. I don’t care. If you reported to Drappierro, or if you didn’t — I don’t care.’