Tom Swan and the Siege of Belgrade: Volume Seven

by Christian Cameron

  Ruthlessly, Swan levered the Turk to the ground and kicked him between the legs. But even as he kicked he saw it was Idris, and even as he saw, he knew he could not kill the man. His kick had no force. Swan’s blade came free from the Turk’s arm.

  No one was taking a prisoner that night. But Swan was two paces deep in the Turkish mob, and Idris was at his feet.

  ‘Run, brother,’ Swan shouted in Turkish. ‘Or I will slay thee.’

  Then he wriggled back, taking blows and giving them.

  But the Turks were running, and Swan stood, then knelt, past any reasonable point of fatigue.

  ‘Time to go,’ Hunyadi called. ‘Back! Back! Follow the torches!’

  Men grabbed Swan and hauled him to his feet. The wall was emptying as the whole of Hunyadi’s force retired, following torch-bearers through narrow streets.

  It seemed senseless to Swan, especially as the Turks would surely try one more time. He cursed at how narrowly he’d missed Omar Reis. And then he was going through another postern gate in an intact stone wall. He followed the Hungarian ahead of him, climbing the steps to the top of the wall and then looking out over the burning hell of the upper town.

  Men were moving all along the top of the wall, and there was Ladislav, and there were all the Englishmen, and hundreds of crossbowmen. Swan thought that Hunyadi must have pulled every man out of every tower for this. The rest of the fortress was empty, no doubt.

  Will Kendal flashed a smile. ‘Sorry we weren’t with ye,’ he said. ‘We’ll pay ’em out now.’

  And indeed, even as Kendal spoke, the Turks cheered again, and they came on.

  Hunyadi had released all his garrison. Swan could see torches moving on the curtain walls on either side of the upper town – the garrison running along the walls, in some cases ignoring Turks fifty feet away and just below them.

  Swan understood. He understood immediately, and long before the Turks understood.

  Their attack came forward with spirit, and they went over the rubble wall and paused – obviously puzzled to find it undefended. And then they came on, even as the Hungarians ran along their flanks, high above them, safe on the still-intact lateral walls.

  And then someone at the breaches in the upper town understood, possibly the Sultan himself, or Omar Reis, recovering from the blow to his head. Trumpets sounded, a blare of desperate recall.

  But men who have survived two assaults and been repulsed want only blood, and the janissaries came on, over the bodies of their dead, and into the upper town.

  Right to the base of the wall where Swan stood. An untouched stone wall, eighteen feet high, with archers and crossbowmen shoulder to shoulder.

  ‘Now,’ called Hunyadi in Latin. He wore a look of elation, like a master craftsman in the last moments of a great work.

  Swan didn’t watch. After the first flight of arrows, he came down from the wall. He found Di Silva alive, and Cornazzano and Morbioli and all the rest – taking an enemy by surprise and wearing good armour are two ways to see to it that your men survive. Ser Niccolo Zane was badly wounded, a spear in his thigh and a sword wound under his arm, and almost all of them had cuts, but no one was dead – not a page, not an archer.

  Behind Swan, the Hungarians began to hurl the branches soaked in sulphur down into the town. They threw them from the walls, and threw so many down at the south end that they almost closed the breaches, and then they set the branches afire. The fires killed a few Turks and roasted a great many corpses, but they made a choking smoke, blocked the Turkish retreat from the upper town and gave the archers light.

  Swan walked slowly into the citadel. He found Ser Niccolo, and knelt on the blood-sticky cobbles next to the older man.

  ‘I’m done,’ Ser Niccolo said. ‘Is it a victory?’

  Swan hid his disgust. ‘It is, Ser Niccolo.’

  Zane turned his eyes up to the stars above. ‘Well,’ he said, after two difficult breaths, ‘if a man can kill his way into heaven, I’m safe from my sins.’ He clasped Swan’s hand. Swan leaned over.

  ‘Look after my son,’ Zane said.

  ‘What son?’ Swan asked.

  ‘He’s still in the Malatesta service,’ Zane said. He sounded perfectly rested, and completely at ease. ‘I wasn’t going to bring my son on a one-way trip like this.’ He smiled, and coughed. ‘Christ, that hurts. But God’s wounds, lad …’

  Swan waited for him to speak again. But the big man was gone.

  He got to his feet, and went to where his men stood, or sat, or knelt. No one was playing dice, but there was still a line for confession.

  Swan realised that he still had his long sword in a death grip in his right hand. It was filthy, and he wanted rid of it, but he couldn’t sheathe it and he couldn’t fling it to the ground.

  He shook his head.

  ‘My friends,’ he said quietly, ‘Ser Niccolo has died. But let us give thanks that … for …’ Swan paused. He didn’t feel like giving thanks. But he knew that this was required of the captain. This was what captains did.

  He really didn’t want the job.

  ‘… for his courage, and his puissance. And for all the mercies we experienced this night, let us be truly thankful.’

  ‘Amen,’ they muttered.

  Without his saying anything, all the men-at-arms had formed a neat line. As if Ser Niccolo were still there to bully them into it.

  ‘We’re not done,’ Swan said suddenly. ‘Just so you know. Smashing the janissaries will hurt the Turks, but this is not the end. Don’t … let go. Assume you have to fight again tomorrow. Do whatever you do, what you must … but be ready again tomorrow. As for me …’ Swan looked around. ‘I intend to buy some hot water, and clean my armour. As soon as I get this fucking sword out of my hand.’

  No one laughed. It wasn’t like any post-battle oratory in Caesar or Livy.

  But then they gathered around him, and began to help each other disarm.

  And as the other men-at-arms came back from the fight, they found the Italians cleaning their armour, polishing, and at a little forge a pair of German armourers knocked out dents and riveted leather straps. Swan stood by one of Elspet’s washtubs as the woman poured hot water over his hand until the dried blood was washed away, and his hand twitched like a live thing, and the blade clattered to the cobbles.

  ‘You stink,’ Elspet said.

  ‘I’m out of gold ducats,’ Swan said.

  ‘I think you earned a bath,’ the washerwoman said.

  And later, dripping wet and less than sane, he was leaning by the high gate with Columbino and Di Silva when the Greek girl, Maria, came. She was not alone – she was merely the last of a long line of women going down to the boats. Hunyadi was clearing the citadel in case of assault, and their victory in the upper town bought them time to bring the ships in close.

  Maria came up to Swan. She was dressed in a nun’s habit, and her arms and feet were bare. She reached up and touched his face. ‘Thank you,’ she said in Greek.

  He went down on one knee. ‘Anything for a lady,’ he said with something of his usual humour. He was recovering.

  She nodded. ‘Be good to women, Ser Thomas. So few are.’ She leaned down, and kissed him on the cheek. Then she stood up and strode away, down the steep cobbled road to the outer port, with the other women.

  Elspet waved.

  Swan was just realising that Maria had called him Thomas.

  ‘What language was that?’ Di Silva asked. ‘It sounded like English.’

  Swan took a big cup of wine from Columbino and drained it over his companion’s protests. The big castle bell began to toll midnight.

  ‘How could she know English?’ Columbino asked. He never could be dissuaded from asking the difficult questions.

  But Swan shook his head and staggered away. He missed the archers struggling back from their massacre of the trapped janissaries. He missed Will Kendal demanding that they make up a cross of St George so that the infidels would know they were English. He missed Clemente w
inning five ducats at cards.

  He was asleep.

  They cleaned their harness, and they cleaned their swords. The pages returned from the walls to find their work done and their masters like corpses on tickings full of straw, with their armour piled neatly beside them.

  Swan awoke with a hand on his shoulder, and for a moment he was in combat and he reached for the other man, his thumb looking for an eye …

  Will Kendal stepped away. ‘Christ on the cross, Cap’n!’ he said.

  Swan sat up. Dawn was just breaking, and there was birdsong. And the smell of baking bread. Both lifted Swan’s heart. As did the memory of Maria.

  ‘It is the day of Mary Magdalene,’ Swan said. He had had a dream. Myrophora. Myrh bearer. He shook his head.

  Kendal shrugged. ‘Sure, my lord. Listen … Hunyadi wants us to look over the upper town. We’re willing, but he ain’t my lord, you are.’

  Swan got up. ‘Will, that’s the nicest thing you have ever said to me.’

  Kendal grinned.

  ‘You remember the slave girl we rescued?’ Swan asked.

  Kendal’s grin widened. ‘Do I,’ he said. ‘Sweet Jesu, what a body. Hard to pull a bow with that next to your ear.’

  ‘Did you ever speak to her, Will?’ Swan felt more paternal than was quite right, as if he was scolding his son, not a man nearly his own age.

  ‘Oh, as to that?’ Kendal shrugged. ‘She didn’t speak Greek or Italian, like. We made some signs when she had water or wanted a towel.’ Kendal made a face. ‘I fancied her, but something told me she’d had enough o’ that, eh?’

  Kendal was a hard bastard. But not, Swan thought, all the time.

  ‘Just so,’ Swan said. He realised that he sounded exactly like his father, the cardinal. He shook his head. ‘You want to go out and scout the Turkish lines? Why? Are they out of Hungarians this morning?’

  Kendal looked away. ‘You and the knights got all the glory yesterday.’

  Swan flirted with the idea of bashing the man on the head, but was wise enough to know that Kendal could probably knock him down and walk on him.

  ‘Be careful. The Turks are not beaten.’ Swan nodded.

  ‘Right.’ Kendal smiled. ‘That’s what Hugh said, too.’

  Swan felt awake and alive. He was tempted to pray – again – and he succumbed, although he found little to say to God other than some mangled thanks for his survival.

  He couldn’t face his arming coat, and he fetched his clean doublet and clean hose, dressed in the courtyard – all the women were gone – and then began putting on his armour. A pair of boys came and helped, and long before he was done he’d been given bread and soup, and Di Silva was just getting his mail on, and Columbino was trying to get an armourer to fix a rivet on his sallet. Nothing was said, or nothing much; men complimented the beauty of the morning, and then set to work arming. A few grumbled, but it was not a morning for grumbles, and men ate their soup, chewed bread, and stretched weary limbs. Swan determined to get himself some liquorice root for his teeth – he hated the taste in his mouth – but settled for a mouthful of wine.

  The sun rose, and he was armed. So were many of the Hungarians and most of the Germans, with the sluggards hurrying, although no one had given an order.

  Pages moved back and forth, and one demonstrated the resilience of the young by pelting others with bread until they fell on him like a horde of Turks and all of them squealed with laughter.

  Swan felt very old. And wanted some of their energy, their spirit.

  But an old man gave him an apple – a nice, sound winter apple – and he bit into it and his cares receded. He picked up his sword, tested the edge, buffed it on his ruined arming coat, which was no more than a stinking rag, and then put it carefully in his scabbard.

  Perhaps oddest of all, his shoulder felt better. Not perfect. But solid, and without much pain.

  Sabatons ringing on the cobbles, Swan walked out of the south-facing gate and stared over the smoking ruins of the lower town at the Turkish camp.

  He was standing there, armed, eating an apple, when Clemente, whom he had not seen all morning, came running. Swan knew him three hundred paces away – the boy’s form was unmistakable. He was sprinting, but his back was bent.

  ‘Ser Columbino,’ Swan said calmly.

  Columbino trotted across the courtyard as if he, too, had not fought all the day before.

  Swan took the last bite of his apple. ‘I think we are about to be called,’ he said.

  ‘Master Willoughby says there’s no Turks in the gun positions. They are empty, and would you come? And bring Ladislav?’ Clemente’s eyes were huge and the boy panted as if he’d fought for an hour in armour.

  ‘You run well.’ Swan wished they had horses, but their horses were on the other side of the Sava.

  Ladislav and the Bohemians were already there. So were most of the German crusaders – their own, and Von Ewald’s.

  Swan gathered the commanders as best he could. They seemed to be the only men awake, and Swan didn’t see this as a moment to defer to higher authority.

  Von Ewald slammed his fist into his palm. ‘I say go,’ he said.

  ‘Long walk,’ Di Silva said.

  ‘We can go out the horn work,’ Swan said. ‘Oh, yes. Easy as kiss my lady.’ Where had that statement come from? But he could see it – out along the upper town’s intact wall and then south along the horn-work walls.

  Di Silva shook his head. ‘Have I mentioned how much I hate walking in my armour?’ he asked.

  Swan sent Clemente for Hunyadi before taking a third of the men-at-arms out through the gate. His own pages had to hurry to catch up.

  Most of the men averted their eyes as they passed above the smoking ruins of the upper town, avoiding looking down into the char-pit of dead men and broken stone. One glance was enough for Swan. But he kept looking at the corpses.

  It was a very strange morning. Full of beauty, marred by death. Far from having his heart hardened, Swan felt it all, if a trifle remotely. The Turks, in death, looked like men. They didn’t look foreign. They might have been Hungarians, or Greeks. Some of them might have been English. The men who had burned to death were like stumps, and they lay in poses of agony, and Swan could only think of the peasants his own men had burned in their houses. Their corpses had looked the same.

  Swan led the men down the walls and over a short wooden bridge he hadn’t seen the night before because he’d been out in the town, fighting. Then they were on the walls of the horn work. It had breaches, but they were far to the south, and quite close to the Turkish lines.

  Swan’s company and the crusaders made their way down to the first breach. Dry grass stretched without break all the way to the edge of the Turkish battery. There was no cover of any kind, and Swan stopped and shielded his eyes with his hand. He was baking inside his armour, even with his heavy arming coat replaced by a linen doublet. He had a Hungarian boy carrying his armet, and he himself wore a straw hat. So did most of the men-at-arms. It made them look incongruously like a band of armoured wagoners.

  ‘Does it ever rain here?’ he asked the sky.

  A head came up in the Turkish lines, and Swan tried waving. It waved back.

  Will Kendal – obvious in his livery coat – leapt up and waved again.

  Swan turned to the Bohemians. ‘We are just the covering force, and there’s no point in our walking all the way there. Go blow it to hell and come back.’

  Ladislav grinned. ‘I always like making war with you,’ he said. He jumped lightly down into the breach, a large keg on his shoulder, and one by one the Bohemians followed him down the rubble and on to the dry grass.

  Di Silva stepped up behind him, drank some water, and spat. ‘May I disagree with you?’ he asked.

  Swan raised his eyebrows. ‘Of course,’ he said.

  Di Silva spread his hands. ‘If Di Vecchio were here, he’d tell you that we are too far from the battery to support them. If a hundred janissaries rush them from the ca
mp, most of our men will be dead or fleeing before we could get there … and we’d be winded.’

  Swan thought about it. ‘But if we stay here, we are safe, and they can simply run back to us. If we go out there, we are all at risk, and a thousand Turks can overwhelm us.’

  Di Silva sat on a stone. He looked, waved his hat at a fly, and drank more water. ‘If they can make it all the way to the walls, why are we here? Piss, or get off the jakes, capitano.’

  The conversation wasn’t private, and couldn’t have been. Men grinned; men looked at each other. Columbino obviously shared Di Silva’s view.

  Swan tried to shrug, but for once his shoulder simply refused to raise the paulders enough to make his views clear. So he managed a smile. ‘If you are all so eager,’ he said.

  Di Silva glanced up. ‘Me? Eager? Listen, say the word, my lord, and I’m back to my little pallet of straw. But now that I’ve walked all the way here, I feel honour bound to kill some Turks.’

  Cornazzano leaned forward. ‘If I may – it is our day. Saint Mary Magdalene’s day.’

  ‘I have never heard that she killed a single Turk,’ Swan said, but he knew he’d lost the argument. He knew that this was probably why commanders didn’t discuss orders with their men. But the truth was, he felt an odd desire to do something great, and he wanted to do what they wanted to do. And anyway, he’d always hated his commanders when they demanded thoughtless obedience.

  He found he was smiling.

  ‘All right, to hell with it, then. On your feet, gentles. We’ll go forward to the Turkish battery.’

  Down off the wall, they could see very little, and if Swan had not been in the grip of some odd caprice, or perhaps some fey spirit, a fate, Dame Fortuna, he might have feared that a thousand Akinjis could come over the low ridge in front of him and pounce on his men-at-arms before they could defend themselves.