Tom Swan and the Last Spartans - Part Three

by Christian Cameron

  ‘Ride for Nemea. Farther.’ Swan didn’t have time for more. At some point he’d sheathed his sword, and he drew it.

  Maestro Crespi had been silent since the fighting started; now he put a hand on Swan’s sword arm. ‘I forbid you to fight,’ he said.

  ‘That’s nice,’ Swan said, and touched his beautiful mare with his spurs, and she, indignant, leapt forward.

  Swan needed Di Silva. He needed to talk to the man, in person; he’d already considered sending Bembo, sending Crespi, even, and disregarded both options. He had to go himself, had to get the Portuguese knight to see the danger and extricate himself from the fight with the spahis.

  For their part, the cavalry had spread all across the hillside. The Turks hadn’t broken; instead, they’d collapsed and then exploded in all directions, and then turned, as much as they could, on their pursuers, who they outnumbered. It was a vast, swirling fight; here four armoured men caught a pair of Turks and killed them with lances, there ten Turks shot one of Columbino’s squires with arrows, killing his horse and then shooting him where he lay helpless on the ground.

  Swan had no intention of fighting. His drawn sword was his armour; he was merely riding through a battle. He expected Di Silva to be in the midst of it all; he even thought he knew which armet was Di Silva’s, and he moved across the ridge-top at a gallop, threading through fights; his magnificent horse following a series of gaps and eddies in the fighting …

  … it was heady; exhilarating; a thousand thousand decisions made without thought; mortality and fate and speed and danger in a rich brew that he drank with every breath. Twice he stopped heavy blows on his sword and then his path was blocked, a wall of Turkish maille and Italian plate between him and his goal; his mare pushed her way between two bigger horses on guts and impetus and his point went home over a younger Turk’s hopeless attempt to guard his face, and Swan was through, his blade angled down over his unprotected back to ward the flailing counter-blow of his third opponent, and there was Di Silva, horse half reared, pulping a man with a Turkish mace.

  There was one advantage to being unarmoured in the midst of a cavalry melee; Di Silva recognised him instantly.

  ‘We need to run!’ Swan said. ‘Look!’

  He pointed at the mountainside to the north.

  But while he waded through the cavalry fight, the world had changed.

  The force on the mountain had moved faster than Swan had expected, and he might have flinched from the fate about to befall him – capture and imminent death – except that as they grew closer, their commanders had moved, and banners had unfurled, and there, not half an English mile away, was Orietto’s golden lion on a field of azure; that meant that the force on the mountainside was Mathew Asan; Greeks, not Turks.

  ‘What did you say?’ Di Silva asked. He made a heavy cut with his mace and then backed his horse, covering his captain.

  Swan had all the time in the world to whisper a prayer to Mary Magdalene. Then, ‘Drive the Turks down the hill!’ he yelled. ‘The battle is as good as won!’

  As soon as the Turkish column saw Asan’s men coming down the hill, they ran. It was not so much panicked rout as intelligent calculation; they’d worked out how much trouble they were in, and they broke, heading south and west.

  There was no way for the Venetians and the English archers to pursue mounted men on foot, and the mob of infantry who streamed away from the Turkish baggage so vastly outnumbered Swan’s entire force that no one felt an immediate urge to follow. The battle seemed to pause …

  And then Asan’s Greeks came over the last lip of the ridge and fell on the fleeing Turks like furies. Swan had no time to count, but Asan’s force, which appeared to look exactly like Scanderberg’s, composed of hard-looking light cavalry, swept into the broken Turkish infantry, threaded them, and went on to pursue the Turkish cavalry.

  Michael Asan, as he was known in Venice, was a handsome Greek, roughly of an age with Grazias. Orietto saluted Swan smartly and rode on, headed for the last knot of fighting on the ridge-top, where Di Silva was breaking the last resistance around their own looted baggage.

  Swan saluted with his sword. He hadn’t meant to be so showy, but he hadn’t sheathed the weapon yet.

  Asan had a small, Turkish-style axe. He saluted with it and reined in.

  ‘You are Ser Suane of Venice?’ he asked in good Italian.

  ‘I am Tommaso Swan, an Englishman,’ Swan said in Greek. ‘And I serve Bessarion.’

  Asan’s whole demeanour changed. ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘Bessarion!’ He nodded, or perhaps bowed his head. ‘When your knight came to me, I almost didn’t believe him. It seemed too good to be true. And now?’ He grinned, and his smile was as wolfish as any in Rimini. ‘I will not leave a Turk alive this side of the sea,’ he said. ‘And my devils will make sure of it.’

  Swan was watching the dust around his precious wagons.

  ‘As soon as my men have water and food, we’ll join the pursuit,’ he said. ‘I hear Omar Reis commands them.’

  ‘And you want him, I hear?’ Asan said. ‘Heh! We’ll see. He is a wily bastard, full of oil and old rope, and I will be surprised if we take him.’

  The last dozen armoured Turks at the wagons surrendered. Swan rode over to see that there was no massacre, but Columbino had the Turks together, with Marco the Venetian and two other pages guarding them.

  Di Silva bowed to Asan. ‘My lord,’ he said, and then turned to Swan. ‘Capitano?’ he asked. ‘I have sent the pages for remounts. We will pursue?’

  ‘To the utmost,’ Swan said. He had not expected this kind of victory. In fact, the result stunned him, and he was unprepared; he filed this feeling away; victory required preparation, as much as defeat did, and he had prepared to lose.

  But their big horse herd was about to prove a major military advantage.

  ‘Water for everyone. Wine, if the pages can bring it forward. Keep the men-at-arms together; food.’

  Asan bowed. ‘Do you really have water and wine? My devils would be the better for a drink. We have been in the saddle since yesterday.’

  In the event, the horse herd came forward immediately because Alessandro Bembo guessed correctly about the end of the battle and ordered it done; the horses and the water seemed to appear out of the dust to the west, like a third army, with Alessandro, Clemente and Crespi mounted among twenty pages left to guard the rear. The water and the remounts became the focus of hundreds of men; it was chaos, but controlled chaos, with corporals bellowing for men to drink up and fall in; the Venetian marines were the most orderly, and the gunners fetched the looted wagons back down the hill; the Turks had cut open many things and ruined a dozen tents, but they had not staved any of the water barrels.

  Swan rode along the plain. The English were looting the Turkish baggage, and Swan saw the woman who had carried water for the gun crew pulling silk fabric off a donkey. Fifty of Asan’s Greeks, or perhaps Albanians, were stripping a field forge; farther east on the road, a hundred wagons waited, unlooted, because of the small size of the victor’s army.

  Not for the first time, Swan wished he had a dozen household knights, as a real commander would. Or light crossbowmen on horseback, a popular affectation among condottieri in the north. But Grazias was back from his fight off to the west; he had a bandage around his head and another on his bridle hand, but he looked sharp enough, and he had a dozen men with him.

  ‘I want the baggage intact,’ Swan said. ‘I’ll divide it when the pursuit is done.’

  Grazias looked pained, but he rode off among the Albanians, yelling, and Swan did the same with the English archers. Luckily, they had not been blooded; two volleys of arrows had been their entire participation, because the southern end of the ambush had never worked out as Swan intended. But as they had taken no casualties, they were calm; Swan roared at them, and most men calmly pocketed one more bauble and then feigned discipline; a few ignored him, and were treated like awkward sods by the master archer.

  ‘There’s a
fortune ’ere, Cap’n!’ Bigelow said.

  Swan was tired, and a lot of him hurt; his wound had taken in all his salty sweat and now burned as if the cut was fresh and not weeks old. But he had to agree with Bigelow.

  ‘Horses, gentlemen,’ Swan said. ‘I need you to chase the Turks.’

  Bigelow looked at the clouds of dust away to the south with the eye of a man who had spent his entire life pursuing beaten enemies. ‘Fresh ’orses?’ He nodded. ‘An’ a fair split on all yon?’

  ‘My word on it,’ Swan said.

  ‘Right,’ Bigelow said with an easy smile.

  Then Swan crossed the plain to the Venetian marines. He saluted Matteo Corner, their captain.

  ‘I would take it as a favour if you would be so kind as to take all your people over the baggage train; the Turkish one. Unhitch all the animals; catalogue what’s in the carts. We will distribute the … prizes after the pursuit.’

  Corner raised an eyebrow. ‘You are trusting my oarsmen to watch your treasure?’ he asked. ‘Your English must be remarkably rapacious.’

  Swan shrugged. ‘You have no horses to pursue,’ he said. ‘And your marines had discipline.’

  Corner bowed. ‘Too kind, Capitano Inglese. We will do our best.’

  Asan’s stradiotes swept away south, fed and watered. Di Silva followed, with the men-at-arms and most of the pages in loose order; formed in two bodies half a mile apart, to support the Greeks. Swan rode with them until the last of the pages had crossed the gully and the dry stream bed at the bottom, and then he watched them go. His English, well to the east, moved along the plain, also formed; watching the southern end of Asan’s pursuit net.

  Swan’s marvellous Arab was still in fine shape; he rode her down into the gully and up the other side, and she didn’t flag, and then he cantered east along the south edge of the gully until he met up with William Kendal, Alessandro Bembo and ‘il dottore’ Crespi.

  He was the only man not in armour. Clemente handed him a canteen, and he emptied it, and then they rode south, into the olive trees. It was some time in the mid-afternoon; there were no churches or bells to give the time, but Swan’s estimate was that he had six or seven hours for his pursuit, and every peasant would be on his side. On the other hand, the olive trees were old and mostly wild, or abandoned from a richer, more populous time, and the dust rose through the groves and made any line of sight impossible. He could no longer see any part of his company; he and his companions seemed to be alone and very vulnerable in the dust.

  ‘There is so much to learn in war,’ Swan said.

  Bembo gave him a wry smile.

  ‘I’ve never commanded a pursuit before,’ Swan admitted. ‘Or much else, really. I’m better off in Rome; at least I know what I’m doing with the Orsini and the Colonna.’

  Bembo frowned. ‘It seems to me that you just won a famous victory,’ he said. ‘Venice will think so.’

  Swan nodded. They rode on.

  They crossed a road half an hour later, and there were guides; a pair of Albanians communicated that the open ground on the far side of the road had already been swept, and pointed towards the hills looming back to the west, almost the way they’d come up that morning.

  Swan led his companions south and west, parallel to the road, for several miles as the evening came on, and then they passed the first dead Turks. There was a man alone, his body already stripped naked, pathetic in death, and then a dead man pinned under a dead horse, unlooted, and then three dead men together. And then the crises came thicker; foundered horses, some not dead but just ruined, lying quietly or breathing badly.

  Swan was almost immune to the deaths of men, but he felt for horses.

  Their path became a trail of death. The Albanians were thorough; there were no wounded. They came to a village of perhaps twenty houses where all the doors were locked, and a dozen Greek men leaned on axes covered in gore. They waved and shouted, and pointed, and Swan and his friends rode on, past the town, and found the tail-end of a desperate fight; some spahis, their horses foundered, tried to sell their lives dearly, holding a barn.

  Swan rode up. There were none of his own men, only stradiotes, and he shouted in Greek until they fell back from the barn.

  ‘Who is in command?’ he asked.

  None of the Greeks or Albanians would admit to being in command.

  Swan called out in Turkish for the men inside to throw down their arms.

  ‘Fuck your mother!’ shouted a Turk.

  ‘I have more than a hundred prisoners,’ Swan called out in Turkish. ‘Throw down your arms. You will not be killed. My word on it.’

  The decision took longer than Swan thought possible, but finally a curved sword flew out into the abandoned farmyard, and then a dozen more, and the Turks stumbled out into the evening and threw their bows down as well.

  ‘Who are you planning to send to guard them?’ Kendal asked.

  Swan winced.

  ‘Thought you wanted to stay with the pursuit?’ Kendal said. ‘Because if you send them back with this lot, they’ll be dead before they cross the gully.’

  ‘And I wouldn’t leave them with the villagers,’ Bembo added. He smiled gently. ‘Unless you want them dead.’

  Swan sighed.

  But with a mixture of bribery and shouted Greek, he got some of the stradiotes to join him as guards; they rounded up horses, and after further delay they turned back. Riding along the edge of full darkness and recrossing the gully was more adventure than Swan had expected. There were pickets on the Turkish baggage, and his pavilion was up. He drank a cup of wine by the fire and went to bed, where he lay awake, thinking about how many men had died in the pursuit and how many more would die.

  Bembo was no help. He was asleep as soon as his head hit his blankets.

  Swan writhed, too hot and then too cold, and then he got up and stumbled out into a surprisingly cool night. The plain between his pavilion and the Nafplion road was filled with men sleeping on the ground, and hastily picketed horses. Swan walked a hundred paces and found a pair of Venetian oarsmen, wrapped in blankets, cursing the darkness and Capitano Suane.

  Swan didn’t take it personally. He went back expecting to lie looking at the roof of his tent, but instead fell asleep at last.

  There was nothing easy about the pursuit, because it began to turn into an entire campaign, and his men were tired and had seen too much fighting. The day after the battle, Swan moved the whole column to Nafplion; Bembo went from observer to commander, arranging for militia from the city to come and take the baggage train; arranging barracks space and a hero’s welcome. But the welcome was wasted; Swan spent one night in a bed and then rode off to the south with the gunners and the falconet and most of the Venetian marines on nags, with Grazias and his stradiotes scouting. Rumour had it that Omar Reis was holed up in a tower; Swan arrived to find Turks, but not Omar Reis. The Turks would not surrender; to his great sadness, the tower had to be stormed, and Di Silva was wounded. None of the Turks survived.

  ‘You are not cut out for a life of arms,’ Bembo said. ‘How is it you can kill some bastard you’ve never met without turning a hair, but you cannot stomach the death of a few Turks?’

  Swan shrugged, in a black funk. He didn’t feel like a victorious commander. He felt like a man who conducted massacres.

  But after taking the tower he went deeper into the Morea. The Hellenistic theatre at Epidaurus healed him; his stradiotes fretted for a whole day while he climbed on the seats and shouted from the stage and wandered among the rubble of the temples of Apollo and Asclepius. The next day, Asan joined him on the coast, and a pair of Venetian military galleys beached close to them, but when they followed the last organised body of Turks out onto the peninsula by ancient Hermione, they were too late, and the local fishermen said two Turkish galleys had come into the harbour and collected two hundred men; Omar Reis, in fact, and his personal spahis.

  It all had a curious feeling of impersonality. Swan hadn’t fought much, hand to hand. The
new sword was spotless; not a nick, despite the light blade.

  He sat in a fine room in Hermione, in the Despot’s palace, or at least his small military tower. Bembo had the other bed. Swan was writing a letter to his lady, to thank her for the sword. He’d intended to sound dashing and romantic and fascinating; rereading, and getting ink on his lips as he chewed the nib of his pen, he knew he sounded tired and cynical and despondent instead.

  ‘Do you know where we fought the battle?’ Alessandro asked. He was lying on the second bed, reading, or rather, looking at pictures. The Turkish baggage had yielded riches, but the last lot, abandoned outside Hermione by Omar Reis, had included the great man’s erotic library, fantastically illustrated and with the best Persian calligraphy. Alessandro was fascinated; Swan might have been, if he’d been less angry all the time.

  ‘What battle?’ Swan asked.

  Bembo blew out his cheeks. ‘You know, my English friend,’ he said, ‘victories over the Turk are not so frequent that most men forget them.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Swan. ‘That.’

  ‘It is going to be difficult for me to ride the coat-tails of your victory if you refuse to write an official letter and claim it,’ Bembo said.

  Swan shrugged, trying to think of a phrase to describe what he felt for Sophia.

  ‘At any rate, do you know where we fought?’ Bembo asked again.

  ‘West of Nafplion,’ Swan said.

  ‘Mycenae,’ Bembo said.

  Swan took in a deep breath, as the name penetrated his dark mood. ‘Mycenae?’ he asked. ‘Ancient Mycenae? That was a Roman temple!’

  Bembo nodded. ‘The bishop of Nafplion told me. He said that Cyriac always meant to go but the countryside was too dangerous. I suppose it never occurred to him to hire an army to help him view antiquities.’ Bembo smiled.

  Swan found that he had chewed his pen again, and he spat. ‘Fuck! Bast. Dannazione.’

  Bembo was smug. Swan could see his smug look. ‘What?’ he spat. ‘I feel like crap and you think I should be the butt of your jokes?’

  Alessandro sat up. ‘No,’ he said. He looked quite serious.