Tom Swan and the Siege of Belgrade: Volume Seven

by Christian Cameron

  Somewhere, a world away, Alessandro would be getting married to a lovely, and probably very talented, fifteen-year-old girl. They would wed in a magnificent church, and they would live in a fantastic palace on the Grand Canal. Swan thought of them with a sort of distant pleasure.

  He also thought of Šárka and the other girls, and all the men and women in the crusader camp, and what the fall of Belgrade would mean.

  He wondered whether he should, indeed, attempt the Sultan’s assassination.

  He shook his head. ‘Very well, my lord,’ he said.

  The governor bowed low. ‘I will give you the best clothes I can spare, and my last good horse. Who will you take?’

  Swan sighed. ‘No one,’ he said. ‘I won’t drag anyone to my grave with me.’

  Szilagyi frowned. ‘I hope I do not send you to your death. But in any case, Hunyadi will be here before you depart. Until tomorrow, Ser Suane.’

  Suane sighed again, and bowed. When he was out of the apartment, he realised that he’d thanked the man.

  Back in the room they all shared, Swan had enough professional interest in life to find his purse and take some things he knew he’d want. He took his eating knife, a folding spoon, and a pricker, a small, sharp spike that Englishmen and some Continentals used to spear food at meals. He took his razor, so that he could shave. He bought a little packet of soap from a washerwoman, and considered trying to buy her favours as well – he was deeply afraid, and he wanted something to make him feel alive, but he couldn’t – somehow, the spirit was not willing, and he returned to his room to find all his people asleep.

  They made him angry, in a foolish, obscure way, and he thought of Jesus and the Garden of Gethsemane, and then he dismissed that thought as maudlin and probably blasphemous as well.

  I think I’m Jesus? I was trying to buy a woman five minutes ago.

  He lay down on his clean straw and stared into the darkness.

  No wine, no woman, and the prospect of immediate death.

  Swan thought through a number of things, and determined, in the morning, to find some Turkish clothes. But his head seemed set in mud – it was hard to think, and he couldn’t stop seeing the death of the boy guiding him through the rubble – ebullient and joking in Hungarian one moment, dead, his head blown half off by a fist-sized marble splinter, the next.

  He stared, and thought.

  And then it was morning, and he felt like hell. Again.

  Hunyadi and Capistrano entered the fortress early. Swan had slipped into sleep with the first light, and now awoke to cheering, and he rose, washed and dressed as carefully as he could for the coming day. Another boy found him drinking a cup of questionable water, which was all any of them had to break their fasts. Swan followed the boy, obscurely afraid of seeing him explode like a bomb of meat the way the first boy had gone.

  Capistrano’s robes all but shone in the morning sun. He looked at Swan carefully. ‘Someone has had a whiff of mortality,’ the madman said. ‘Well – ready to give your life in God’s cause, Englishman?’

  Hunyadi was writing quickly at a low table on two trestles. He looked up. ‘I don’t think Ser Suane is called upon to give his life,’ he said. ‘But I do like the notion that he might visit the Sultan.’ Hunyadi nodded.

  He was far more alert and alive than the last time Swan had seen him. He smiled – a somewhat wolfish smile. ‘Ser Suane, I need to move soldiers into the fortress. I need a few hours.’

  ‘You mean to move troops under cover of the truce?’ Swan asked.

  Hunyadi shrugged and looked at Capistrano. The Dominican made a motion with his hands, as if dismissing Swan’s comment as sophistry.

  ‘The Turk is infidel,’ he said. ‘He lies and cheats and sets the snares of Satan for the unwary.’

  Swan was almost too tired and low in spirits to protest, but he did so for form’s sake. ‘It will not be good – for the ambassador caught in the enemy camp – if you break the truce and are discovered.’

  Hunyadi nodded. ‘Yes. I imagine that Omar Reis would delight in just such a thing.’ He blinked once, and Swan had a moment of doubt. Was Hunyadi sending him to his death deliberately?

  Whatever for?

  The ring twinkled on Hunyadi’s hand.

  Swan winced. ‘When does the truce begin?’ he asked.

  ‘Late afternoon. I will ring the bells of the town.’ Hunyadi nodded. ‘Thanks, Englishman. Occupy the Grand Turk for a few hours, and Belgrade will hold another week.’

  Swan bowed, knelt to be blessed by Capistrano, and noted that Lord Szilagyi didn’t meet his eye.

  Swan left the tower with one clear thought of alarm.

  Why had Hunyadi not asked him to spy on the Ottoman camp?

  The sun was not much more than a hand’s breadth above the horizon when the Turks began tormenting the partly flayed man by their own trenches. Swan was appalled to find that the poor wretch still had the strength to scream.

  After the third scream, Swan found all eyes on him, and he nodded. Ser Juan put on his breastplate, and Swan did the same, and the pages and squires armed themselves as best they could. Kendal took his great war bow and caressed it.

  The party moved quietly down out of the citadel and through a postern gate. The guards spoke only Hungarian and Swan overawed them easily, and then he and his men were moving through the ruined streets of the lower town, choked with rubble and charred timber. There were a few corpses rotting in the sun to add their sticky-sweet odour to that of burning and the sharp smell of crushed stone. The smaller Turkish guns were firing, throwing light balls of iron and lead across the top of the breaches pounded during the night, trying to make it impossible for the Christian workmen to effect repairs. The heat was already brutal, and Swan’s breast- and backplate cut into the trenches in his skin, worn there two days before, and reminded his body of various agonies, but another piercing scream from the torture victim provided him with the urge to action.

  Because he knew that in a few hours, that wretch might well be him.

  No one challenged them in the lower town, but when they reached the outer walls, there were parties of pioneers clearing rubble, or repairing the breaches, and soldiers covering them against a sudden assault. The men spoke only Hungarian, and having ascertained that Swan’s party were not Turks, lost all interest.

  Swan led his men into one of the ruined towers. The top had collapsed outward, and there was a hole the size of a wagon where a heavy stone ball had struck about halfway up the tower, but the rest of the shell still stood. The wooden floors had collapsed when the back wall went. It occurred to Swan that the tower had been injured as a man would be, with its smaller entry wound and the massive exit wound, but the collapsed interior was easy to climb and provided cover for a cautious, active man. Swan climbed as far as the hole, and Kendal came up behind him.

  Kendal stood in the shadows, well back from the sunlit area, hidden from the Turks. He looked under the shield of his hands at the Turkish lines, now less than two hundred paces away. One of the Turkish falcons fired, and the ball grazed the top of the breach, scattering gravel that wounded one of the Hungarian peasants clearing rubble. Swan raised his own hand above his eyes and watched, getting his best view yet of the Turkish lines and of the layout of the Turkish camp. He tried not to let his eyes rest on the ruins of a human being who rose, like the crucified Christ, as a sort of hideous banner over the Turkish gun position.

  Kendal watched for a long time, or so it seemed to Swan, whose nerves were frayed. He found his hands shaking whenever the victim screamed, and whenever the Turkish guns fired. He crouched and put his hands on his knees to keep them still. He could feel his heartbeat in his own throat …

  ‘Aye,’ Kendal said. He climbed down the collapsed floor until he found a space he liked and took time stringing his heavy bow. Then he laid out a half-dozen arrows and eventually selected one that appeared to have a lighter shaft and a slender head.

  Swan pointed. ‘Have to assume that as soon a
s you loft it, there will be return fire,’ he said.

  Kendal made a face. ‘Best get gone then, ser.’

  Swan smiled. ‘I’ll stay,’ he said.

  Kendal nodded. He put the other arrows head-up into his belt and then stepped forward, his right hand on the bowstring, into the brilliant sunlight at the very edge of the ruined tower, ten paces above the plain. He seemed to point his arrow at the ground, and then, with a small half-step and a grunt, he pulled the string all the way past his mouth while raising the bow until the head rose past the horizon and into the sky – and in the same motion, he loosed.

  And then, when perhaps he should have run, he drew from his belt and loosed again, and a third time, and a fourth.

  Swan tried to follow the fall of the long shafts, but he could not – the sun-dazzle was too much. But Kendal, watching, gave a grunt of satisfaction, and then came down the collapsed timber in a rush.

  A dozen spent cane arrows skittered against the stone, their sharp heads making a malicious noise, and the shafts clattering as they fell through the ruined tower.

  ‘Cannon!’ Ser Juan roared. He had apparently climbed the next tower – or rather, its ruins.

  Swan, halfway down the tangle of stone and timber, lay against the slope and crossed his arms over his head. A gun roared, very close, and the whole tower shook.

  Kendal eschewed the fallen floor and leapt to the ground, risking a broken ankle. Swan, guessing that the Turks could only have so many guns laid and ready to fire, scrambled down at a more cautious rate.

  Ser Juan and Orietto’s pages were already down from their tower. Di Silva slapped Kendal on the back.

  ‘You got him,’ he said in Portuguese-tinged English.

  Kendal nodded. ‘I know,’ he said. He wasn’t smug. ‘I got the bastard laying the falcon, too,’ he said with a touch of pride. ‘Bastard was wearing a doublet,’ he added, meaning he was European.

  Hungarians came and congratulated Kendal, and one armoured giant pumped his hand and beamed and gave them all a sip of beer.

  And then they all went back into the fortress and sagged on to their pallets. Swan knew he had only a few hours. But the little raid had comforted him, and he felt somewhat more alive.

  He got out of his harness and slept for two hours.

  When he awoke, the slave girl was shaking his shoulder. She handed him a cup of broth.

  After that, things moved very quickly. Swan changed into borrowed finery and had time to embrace Kendal and to pass him two letters – one for Alessandro, and another for Šárka. His letter to his own lady was long delivered, and her dowry assured. Swan went to confession with Father Herman, who seemed unimpressed with his sins, and then, after embracing his people, he went to his horse. A trumpeter on the walls was already sounding his instrument, and the bells of the citadel were ringing.

  Swan was stopped by Di Silva. ‘You are going to your death,’ Di Silva said.

  Swan shrugged. ‘It was always part of the mission,’ Swan said. In fact, the curious fatalism that infected him was like a disease. The action in the lower city had pushed against it, but it was back, sitting on his chest, so to speak.

  Di Silva hugged him. ‘Do not die. You are the most entertaining captain I have ever had. We all like having you around.’

  Swan felt tears come to his eyes. ‘I will do my best to live,’ he said. He went to Kendal. ‘Listen …’ he said carefully.

  Kendal nodded. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘I have another fifty paces past yon.’ He met his eye. ‘I won’t let ye hang there long, ser.’

  And then he checked the little leather pack he’d prepared. He gave his sword to Di Silva.

  ‘You won’t go armed?’ Di Silva asked.

  ‘They’ll only take it from me,’ Swan said. He shrugged. ‘If I … live it’ll be here for me.’

  Di Silva had tears in his eyes, and Swan was moved. They liked him.

  He mounted with a lump in his throat.

  Then he rode out through the gates of the citadel. He noted that most of his people went with him, and then vanished into the Hungarian earthworks along the walls, and he hoped that they were not going to take any foolish chances.

  And then he was riding through the ruins of the lower town.

  He rode along, head down, until he was almost at the gate. Then an odd thing happened.

  Someone was baking in one of the outdoor ovens. The smell of fresh bread floated down a side street into the rubble of the main thoroughfare – a warm, rich smell of human life, growth, texture, skill. He reined in his horse and breathed in the smell, and had he been a horse, his ears would have pricked.

  He laughed aloud. He backed the horse two steps, as if by this action he could avoid the path on which he was launched, and his brain burst into fevered action, as if he had, up until that moment, been asleep. In fact, he did indeed feel as if he was awakening – from post-battle darkness, from fatigue, from nameless fears …

  Oh, I am an idiot, was his first clear thought.

  Terror pierced his heart like a sword of ice, but his head was on straight and he sat up in his saddle, evaluating some choices.

  I was just going to ride to my death? But it wasn’t that simple. He had, in fact, packed a few surprises. But he blessed the baker anyway.

  It all depended on who came with the Turkish escort. He could see the options rolling away like a battlefield of decisions. It was like playing an elaborate practical joke at court … all the options, all the chances.

  By the time the Turkish escort met him at the lower gate he had a dozen plans. There they were, twenty men mounted on magnificent horses, each more beautiful than the last. The captain of the escort was, of course, Idris, son of Omar Reis. Swan smiled. He didn’t even have to pretend, and his choices whirled away, plans forming and being discarded …

  ‘You are a great fool, to come to us like this,’ Idris said politely.

  They were a few paces from the great outer gate of Belgrade, which, pounded as it had been, still stood, and the outer walls were manned, if thinly.

  And Tom Swan liked to win. He had little interest in being dead, now that he’d come to his senses. And his eye was better already.

  ‘How’s your sister?’ he called cheerfully, in Persian.

  Idris froze, and his eyes gave him away – first to his escort, and then to Swan.

  Swan spoke in his halting Persian, because he knew Idris loved Persian poetry and he doubted the escort knew a word. ‘Listen, brother. I saved your life. Your father and his sister have attacked me twice. I let them both live.’ He drew himself up. ‘I have left letters with the garrison, and given others to Lord Tepes – I see you know him. If you kill me – words will be read aloud, where men speak Turkish. Sad words, brother. Boastful, salacious words. Words that once said will never be unsaid.’ He smiled grimly. ‘Swear that my life is sacrosanct. Swear by the Prophet, or I will ride back to Hunyadi and tell him that the Turks are false.’

  Idris spat. ‘The Turks are false?’

  For a moment, Swan wondered whether his Persian was so bad that his threats hadn’t carried.

  One of the sipahis put a hand on his scimitar. ‘Shall I shorten him by a head?’ he asked.

  Swan didn’t let the fear into his voice. ‘It will be your last action,’ he said, wondering whether there was even one crossbow pointed in his direction from the walls. He hoped that Will Kendal was there somewhere, an arrow in his bow.

  Idris frowned. ‘Vlad Tepes? You know him? He is here?’

  Swan spread his empty hands wide. ‘We are like brothers,’ he said. ‘I will not say where he is. I will only say that your father would have done well to buy him when he was on the market.’

  ‘By the beard of the Prophet, may his name be holy,’ growled Idris. ‘Who knew you were so dangerous? You seemed the usual soft-handed Frank.’ He shrugged, and then a small smile played under his moustache. In Persian he said, ‘In truth, brother, my sister speaks well of you, and my father wants you d
ead. Dead, and silent, so that men will fear to speak your name. You understand? The kind of dead that no one will ever dare question.’ He looked at the escort. ‘My father is the favourite, now.’

  Swan scratched his beard. ‘I hear he has problems besides one adventurous Frank,’ he said. It seemed a safe bet. All powerful men had problems. ‘But I will say to you, Idris, and to your father – I am an emissary from the Pope of the Western world to the Sultan. I will even say that if your father would sit and drink kahve with me … men would think. Would they not? Men would not let their tongues wag. They would be silent. I say no more.’

  Idris raised an eyebrow and considered. ‘Eh, Ser Frank, I had forgotten what you are like. As slippery as five eels. Your horsemanship is better.’

  ‘So is my archery,’ Swan said. ‘I am not your foe.’ He paused, and then laughed – real laughter. ‘Bah – rather, I am your foe, as a soldier. But not in this personal matter.’

  Idris curbed his horse. ‘I cannot tell if you are a great fool or a brilliant man,’ he said.

  Neither can I, thought Tom Swan. I’m making this crap up as I go.

  Idris swore, and had two of his officers swear as well. And then they turned their horses to leave the gate. Swan thought that their oaths sounded heartfelt, but suspected in his heart that they no more meant an oath to an unbeliever than Hunyadi meant his oath to a Turk.

  ‘Aren’t you going to bind my eyes?’ Swan asked.

  ‘Why?’ Idris asked. ‘The Sultan, whose slave I am, wishes you to see every detail of his power, that you may the sooner despair and submit.’

  What Swan saw was more than a little disheartening, but not all of it. The camps of the janissaries were clean and as neat as a soldier could make them, but the ghazis lived like the uneducated peasants that they were – much like the Christian crusaders on the far side of the river, except that some of them had some notions of hygiene. Swan saw signs of disease – most fearsomely, a line of corpses laid out in the sun.

  Plague.

  But set against the plague was a magnificent artillery park in three lines on three rising mounds of earth that must have been moved by thousands of slaves, and there were the slaves themselves, emaciated, working to build a new gun-mound.