Christian Cameron - Tom Swan and the Head of St. George Part Five - Rhodes

Swan laughed. ‘I’m the bastard of a bastard. Nonetheless, John of Gaunt really is my grandfather.’

‘A famous line, even if reached the wrong way,’ Zambale said. ‘Prince Dorino intends to make much of you tonight. Can you dance?’

‘I know all the Italian dances,’ Swan said, suddenly thankful for Violetta’s instruction and a month of home entertainment.

Zambale nodded. ‘Well,’ he said. ‘It should be quite an evening.’ He looked around. ‘The oarsmen say you are quite the swordsman. That you killed ten Turks fighting in a mine under Rhodos.’ He grinned to take the sting out of his next remark. ‘You don’t look like such a firebrand.’

Swan scratched his beard. ‘Swords fascinate me. I … practise. And the knights — they have very high standards for everything — wrestling, swordsmanship — even fighting with the dagger.’

Zambale’s eyes fairly glowed with enthusiasm. ‘Would you care to teach me?’ he asked.

‘Teach you what?’ Swan asked.

‘Anything!’ Zambale said. ‘I’m a young pup in a backwater and nothing ever comes here. We don’t get good sword masters and we don’t get good dancing masters. I learned everything from Da’s friends.’ He said it with the air of a man who didn’t believe a word of his own modesty.

Sweet Jesu , Swan thought. He thinks he’s a swordsman.

The Lord of Eressos dismounted and threw his reins to an oarsman, who glared at him with the resentment of a free man for an aristocrat.

‘You don’t practise with sharp swords,’ Swan said as kindly as he could manage. ‘In Italy and Rhodos they have practice swords.’

Hector Zambale was young and immortal. ‘Oh — we do. Nothing to it. I’ll be careful.’ The younger man was bouncing on his toes. He was a clear six feet tall and probably three fingers taller than Swan, and had shoulders as broad as an ox. He drew his heavy long sword with a flourish.

Swan wasn’t wearing a long sword. ‘If you’d like me to show you some things, perhaps you’d like to use an arming sword?’ he asked.

The other man nodded. ‘Sure, it would be a great shame to have a mismatch.’ He went to his horse and drew a smaller sword from the scabbard on his saddle.

‘The big sword was my da’s,’ he said. ‘Now we’ll have a proper tiff.’

His arming sword was much more modern — with a finger ring and a complex ricasso, it was like a slightly more aristocratic version of a Venetian marine’s sword, complete to a spur on the backbone for trapping the unwary.

‘Guard yourself, now,’ Zambale said, and attacked.

The Graeco-Scot was big and fast and, unlike a genuine swordsman, seemed to be willing to squander energy with every blow, so that he twirled his weapon, made a dozen fanfaronades, cut the air, and bounced on his toes. Swan moved around the beach as quickly as he could, trying to remain fluid and graceful and hoping desperately that someone would come and put a stop to it.

Instead, the oarsmen gathered in a ring and began wagering.

‘Stop running away!’ Zambale shouted. ‘You were going to teach me. ’ He laughed.

Swan cursed and backed away again. The younger man would have been easy to kill — his whole style invited Swan to cut his sword-hand off at the wrist, and the temptation to do so was growing. The redhead was swinging hard — swinging to intimidate. If he missed a parry, he’d be dead.

Swan tried a simple overhead cut, and the other man parried heavily, so that the sword-blades locked for a moment. Zambale pushed — hard — and made Swan stumble.

Swan thrust outside into the bigger man’s covered line — a foolish move, but it did guarantee the man would be safe. As Swan stepped back from his failed attack, Zambale twirled his sword over his wrist …

And Swan cut at his head, forcing him to make a rapid parry. It was the same blow as before — the Graeco-Scot grinned as the blades locked.

He began to use the force of his wrist on the bind, but Swan had a different notion, and had stepped forward and offline. His left hand shot out and he grabbed his opponent’s blade high in the air — near the point — while keeping the blades locked by the hilt. Then he pushed with his left hand, rotating the other man at his knees and midsection. His left elbow passed over Zambale’s head, and the blade — his own blade — lay along his neck.

‘You canna catch a man’s blade in your hand!’ Zambale said.

Swan continued to exert force. He put a foot behind the other man’s and began to force him inexorably to the ground with his knee. ‘Now,’ Swan said pleasantly, in Greek, ‘I can kill you with your sword, or break your arm, or simply put you face down in the sand.’

‘You canna catch a man’s sword in your bare hand in a real fight,’ the local man insisted. But he slumped, and Swan let him go.

‘You can,’ Swan said. ‘I just did. Look. Stand on guard.’ Swan noted that, in fact, the man’s guard was fifty years out of date — he stood with his left leg forward and his sword cocked back over his shoulder.’ He nodded and took up his own guard. One of Maestro Vadi’s.

‘Cut at my head. A nice simple fendente .’ He raised his sword’s tip.

Zambale didn’t like this, as it was not the game he’d imagined — so when he cut, he did it with a clumsy feint and a lot of force.

Swan caught his blade with a high parry and held it well to the inside of his head — and then reached up and caught it with his hand. Very lightly, he tapped the big man on the head with his sword.

‘Well!’ Zambale said. ‘That’s a trick. It must be that new swords are lighter. You couldn’t do that against a heavy sword.’

Swan didn’t feel like relenting. ‘It is easier with a heavy sword.’

Zambale looked at his blade, which had several deep nicks, and frowned. ‘Hmmf,’ he said. ‘School tricks.’

‘I thought that you wanted to see what the Italian schools offered?’ Swan said.

‘I don’t need a lesson from you ,’ Zambale said. ‘I know what works in a real fight.’

Swan was old enough to know invincible ignorance when he saw it. ‘Well — a pleasant Saint George’s Day to you.’ He examined his blade and sheathed it.

The stradiotes were paying off their wagers. The oarsmen clapped Swan on the back. There was some evident ill-feeling, and Swan was pretty sure he hadn’t done the cause of Christian unity any good.

And he’d sweated through his doublet.

Swan arrived at the citadel exactly as the hour of eight o’clock rang from the chapel. The knights had told him to be on time, and he had heeded them.

There was no one in the hall but servants laying tables.

The positive side of being the very first guest was that he had time to change into his costume. Servants took him to an old solar, where he changed. He stripped off his Italian clothes and played with the chiton for ten minutes until a bored slave approached him and offered, in a pantomime of gestures, to pin his chiton. When he was pinned and belted, and he’d played with the pleats — it was a surprisingly complex garment for its apparent simplicity — he tied his sandals, and pinned his beautiful cloak over his shoulder, and wished for a mirror.

Instead, he put his Italian clothes in a neat pile and went out into the hall.

There was still no one there. If it hadn’t been for the boards newly laid and the smell of a feast in preparation, he would have worried that he had the wrong day.

He began to wander the hall. There were cabinets — three of them. Each filled with delightful antiquities. There was an entire lacquered tray of ancient coins — some of the finest that Swan had ever seen, including a great many from Samothrace, and more with dolphins and beautifully realised women — Swan found one big silver coin breathtaking.