Tom Swan and the Last Spartans - Part Five

by Christian Cameron

  ‘Fish! Fucking fish,’ muttered another Albanian. ‘Hey, Greek, is there a village up here? Eh?’

  Stefanos nodded. ‘Oh yes, great lord. There is a village in the saddle between the mountains, called Vasileus. But you are going the wrong way.’

  The Albanian looked at Swan. ‘And you? What do you say?’

  Swan grinned. ‘I say, fuck those bastards in Vasileus. They screw us all the time on taxes.’

  The Albanian laughed, a gold tooth glinting in the lantern light. ‘You can lead us, then,’ he said.

  Swan looked surly. ‘If I could see and knew where I was going, do you think I’d be here, watching you steal my fish?’

  The Albanian laughed. ‘Fuck your mother,’ he said. ‘Move.’

  Swan made a face, shouldered his basket and led off into the growing light. He led them down the mountain; they were right on the outskirts of Mithymna’s abundant fields and orchards, and Swan could see the Turkish camp. In five minutes he had learned that the siege was not particularly close; it didn’t surprise him that Stefanos could get people out.

  More interesting, and already visible, was the landing of guns from the Turkish ships. Swan could see a big galley in the deep water north of the town, with her bows low in the water as men worked on the metal banks that held the tube to the ship. Cliffs hid the movement closer in, but almost at his feet, another party of sailors or slaves was raising a big gun on ropes with a winch.

  He crossed a sheepfold that reminded him of the hedges and stone walls of France and then paused. Clouds were rolling in, a cold tang to the air that would, in England, have heralded a heavy fog. Swan watched the clouds while the Albanians caught up, and then turned inland, away from Mithymna. They were keeping Stefanos at the back of the little column of a dozen soldiers. Swan had no idea where Vasileus was, or how to get there, but he had a good idea of where Greek peasants hid their villages and he had no interest in being the proxy cause of a massacre, so he headed south and west. Below him, at the base of the long ridge, the coast curved in sharply from Mithymna to Petra at the base of the bay; a tiny church sat above the town on a sheer rock, the rock that gave the town its name, and there were two large islands off in the middle of the bay. There was another Turkish squadron hidden behind the islands; only a dozen ships, but cunningly positioned.

  Then he turned more sharply uphill as he found a narrow track. A wall of clouds rolled in and Swan paused to pray.

  ‘Move your worthless pagan arse,’ muttered the Albanian captain.

  ‘Pagan yourself,’ Swan said. He thought he had the measure of the Albanians; they weren’t any worse than his own archers or pages, and they probably just wanted coins to take home, but he was damned if he was going to lead them to a village. They had not, apparently, seen Petra at the base of the bay.

  The fog rolled in. They were passing through an ancient volcanic caldera; two huge rocks protruded like jaws, or fangs; one moment they arched above Swan like a gate to a foggy English hell, and the next they were gone, hidden in the swirling mist.

  Swan stepped to his left, felt his way around one of the jaws, and lifted his long Greek robes to piss.

  No one followed him, and he heard the men pass him, a few feet away; he could even smell them in the fog, sweat and fear and cardamom. He fell in at the back. There was arguing at the front, where his absence had been noted, and he bumped the man behind Stefanos, spat ‘Fucking infidel’ in good Turkish so that the man started, and hauled on Stefanos’ shoulder.

  In two beats of his heart, the two men were moving south and east over bare rock, unable to see more than a few inches. Behind him, the Albanian captain was shouting.

  They could still hear him a half an hour later, when they were five hundred feet lower and had managed not to fall to their deaths in the fog.

  ‘You almost led them straight to Vasileos,’ Stefanos said. ‘Christ Pantocrator! It was as if you really did hate them.’

  They made their way down, and down; they emerged onto the shingle of a narrow beach at the base of the cliff. Mithymna was now north and west around the point, and the two of them hurried along the strand, happy to be in the one place where they could not get lost. Twice they hid as parties of delhis or ghazis went by them but Stefanos kept them moving fast because he wanted to use the fog to pass the enemy lines.

  Swan lost track of time, but he was game enough, and they walked briskly along the beach and then, when they could hear the creak of ropes in the fog and the sound of gunfire was pulsing dully from close by, Stefanos and Swan paused, and without a word exchanged, agreed by head-nods and started up a goat path to the top of the beach cliff. There was a road there, a white nightmare with a fall to the left and a deep ditch to the right; after some experimentation the two of them got into the ditch and walked along it, sometimes crawling over rocks. A party of Turkish speakers passed them an arm’s length above, unaware that they were there; and over the next two hours, as the fog darkened, they got close enough to the town that the gunfire and the shouts of combatants covered any noise they made.

  ‘We need to go uphill and around the town,’ Stefanos whispered.

  They clambered up a sandy bluff, the ground crumbling under their fingers, and then hauled themselves up a huge rock to the level of the terraces and valley farms. They could hear voices in the fog, but visibility was virtually the length of a man’s arm.

  ‘Climb again,’ Stefanos said.

  They climbed straight into a hive of slaves, Christian slaves, building a battery. Most of them were naked, or almost naked, and they were working so hard that they were sweating, piling sand and red-brown earth into gabions of wicker that were being made at incredible speed by women and children.

  The fog was patchier up in the battery, but no one looked at them, and Swan walked boldly through the huddle of wicker-weavers and around the base of the battery, where fifty Christian men were trying to raise the tube of a heavy galley centre-line gun up onto the newly built earth platform. Swan turned his head to look with professional interest, and he saw the Turkish officer in his silk kaftan and long curved kilij in the same moment that the officer saw him.

  The recognition was instant and mutual.

  ‘Take that man! In the blue robe!’ shouted Idrahim, son of Omar Reis.

  Swan ran. His feet flew over the uneven ground and now, heedless of the defenders’ crossbows and hand gonnes, he leapt down from the Turkish lines and into the vineyards and small farm plots that ringed the town. The fog was still thick.

  A gun fired close by him, and the vineyard around him was stripped by flying shrapnel and the gravel it kicked up. He was on the edge of the blast and caught only gravel in his legs, but he felt as if he’d been flayed.

  An arrow whispered out of the darkening fog and then whickered along the dry rocky ground, but Swan was hobbling and jogging on, moving under trellis supports, anything to put distance between himself and capture.

  ‘Follow me! Fifty golden sequins to the man who takes him. He is a Frankish spy!’ shouted Idrahim in the fog. He was very close, either that or the fog misled Swan, but he turned and ran along the line of trellises; parallel, he thought, to the Turkish lines.

  He fell flat.

  His long Greek gown tangled his bloody legs; it was soaking wet, a clumsy garment for running, and the slippers he was wearing were not as capable as his Italian boots. He managed to get to his feet, looked back, and saw a ghazi right on top of him.

  Swan killed the man before he had thought of the method; he charged him, got a hand on his sword-wrist before the man completed his draw and sank his fish knife into the man’s temple through his turban, a clumsy strike and not one Swan would ordinarily have recommended.

  He drew the man’s scimitar and ducked under the vines. The fog was full of voices and his legs were bleeding worse than he’d thought, but he had a sword and he thought he had a chance. He crouched, and a Turk in a turban ran past him from behind.

  Swan stayed put, and a janissary in
a tall felt hat passed behind him, called a war cry, paused to spit, and screamed as a crossbow bolt, shot at random or carefully aimed at his war cry, took him in the middle of the gut. The man lay screaming and no one came to his aid.

  Swan didn’t want to give himself away, but everything was wrong. The janissary had come from the wrong direction, and so had the crossbow bolt; so he was running the wrong way in the fog.

  The gut-shot Turk screamed gain, and then began to pray in Turkic. Swan could hear him; the poor bastard was begging his mother, his father …

  Swan stepped over to him and put a hand on him.

  ‘Blessed Saint George,’ said the Turk.

  It seemed like a very odd thing for a Turk to say, but Swan was aware that many Turks viewed St George with religious veneration.

  ‘Peace, brother,’ Swan said.

  The man groaned.

  Swan took a deep breath and the Turk screamed, a harrowing, mother-in-childbirth scream.

  Swan crept away, calculating that if he killed the man, his silence would give away his position. But two screams later, Swan’s conscience smote him, and he crept back.

  ‘Oh, my God, my God,’ the man said.

  Swan killed him.

  Silence, and a little light rain out of the fog. The sharp snap of a heavy crossbow, quite close, almost as loud as a gunshot.

  Swan started in what he hoped was the right direction and there …

  … was Idris. Their blades crossed, a janissary charged Swan from the left, and Swan stepped back and cut, low to high, and crossed both swords in one blow. He snapped a back-cut into the janissary and ducked under the grape trellis and then, desperate, dropped down a six-foot terrace without looking, landed on his feet without twisting his ankle, and ducked through a second trellis.

  ‘On me! On me, my children!’ Idris yelled. ‘I have the Frank right heeeeeerrrrree.’

  There was a thump as Idris fell over the edge of the terrace. There was also a sound of rushing feet, and Swan hesitated, his sword six feet from Idris’s head, shook himself and ran down into the gully that separated the vineyards from the town like a natural moat.

  He moved almost a hundred paces along the moat and several guns fired, and not all of them from the Turkish side. He found a projecting overhang; his questing hands found stonework, and he felt marble. The abutment or the pier of an old bridge over the gully; perhaps very old …

  Swan got in between the ancient stone and the dirt. It was surprisingly dry.

  He waited there until it was fully dark. It took a long time, and he thought dark thoughts and some religious thoughts and felt like a fool.

  And then, with enormous care, he began to climb up what he hoped was the town side of the gully. Bowstrings hummed from time to time; crossbows snapped. Not a shaft came close, and he climbed, found no access to the top, climbed down, and had to start again. The whole process was interminable, and he was lost again; the gully apparently had bends in it that had confused him and he was exhausted and felt as if he’d been climbing for hours.

  Another gust of rain hit, swept over him, soaking him, and then it stopped, and stars appeared. There was a little moonlight, and suddenly Swan could see where he was, well up the slope on the north side of the fortified town. The fortress loomed directly above him.

  He got a hand up to the top of the rock he was climbing, and very carefully, cursing the basket and the now sodden salt fish, he pulled himself up onto a narrow path that ran along the base of the wall. Even in fitful moonlight, he could see that the walls of Mithymna were indescribably ancient; huge Hellenistic blocks in the foundation layer, and maybe blocks older than that, with Roman and Byzantine courses above and Genoese work in repair.

  If the Turkish guns had done the town any damage, he couldn’t see it. He moved cautiously until he was north and east of the walls, on the side where he didn’t think the Turks had a serious presence, and then he knocked at a postern gate.

  Fifteen minutes later he was standing before a short middle-aged woman in armour.

  ‘Ser Tommaso Suane,’ he said. ‘Knight of Saint Mark.’

  ‘You caused the ruckus on the south side?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes, my lady. By the new Turkish battery.’ He bowed.

  She shook her head. ‘Well, you may be brave, but you are an idiot,’ she said. ‘There’s no one on the north side, or not twenty of the bastards. Here, have an apple.’ She tossed him one. ‘I’m leading a sortie just to keep Omar Reis aware that I’m alive. My steward will feed you.’ She glanced at the huddle of armoured men in the gateway, Greeks and Italians and at least one suit of obvious German armour. ‘Any news from Dorino?’ she asked.

  ‘Here are my messages,’ Swan said. ‘Anyone want some salt fish?’

  The next morning, Swan met Caterina di Orsini dressed as a woman and was surprised to find how pretty she was. Out of armour she was not short, merely petite; she had the elegant manners of a Roman princess, which, of course, she was.

  She had Prince Dorino’s letters on a table in front of her. ‘I gather Omar Reis wants you alive,’ she said. She smiled. ‘His son identified you in the fighting, and Reis offered me protection for my town if I would hand you over.’

  Swan’s stomach did a flip.

  She raised both eyebrows. ‘And I think my father would praise me,’ she said with a nasty and very Orsini-esque half-smile. ‘I think you are no friend of the Orsini.’

  Swan sat, weaponless, in the lair of the warrior princess of the Orsini and contemplated his own foolishness.

  She shrugged. ‘But I am not so venal,’ she said. ‘I fear that I grew to womanhood on romance. Rolando, Giron le Courtois, Lancelot …’ She smiled. ‘You are a brave cavaliero, a true knight, who came through the enemy lines to bring me news. I do not think that the heroine of romance sells her knight to be eviscerated by the Turk, do you?’

  ‘No, my lady,’ Swan agreed piously. ‘Although to be fair, evisceration would be the easy part of what Omar Reis has planned for me.’

  Caterina raised her eyebrows. ‘You fucked his son and his daughter, or that’s what my people tell me,’ she said. She threw back her head and laughed. ‘Listen, Ser Suane. I have lived my entire life in camps, with soldiers and whores. I’m a better blade than any man in this garrison, and I say “fuck” when I feel the urge.’

  ‘Of course,’ Suane said. He was warming to her.

  ‘Still, Reis hates you, so I will have to get you out of here tonight. Before one of my people decides to sell you. He’s tightened the ring, and he’s landing more guns.’ She smiled wryly, a very mannish smile. ‘If Trevisan would move his worthless arse, he could have Omar Reis and his whole fleet.’

  ‘Reis has a covering squadron down by Petra, behind the islands,’ Swan said.

  She leaned forward, her chin on her hands. In another woman it might have been flirtatious, but the Orsini princess merely seemed curious. ‘Interesting,’ she said. ‘I hoped you weren’t just a pretty face.’

  ‘But not insurmountable,’ Swan said. ‘Do you know how many ships have landed their guns?’ he asked.

  She nodded. ‘The fog comes and goes. But I would say at least fifteen and perhaps twenty.’

  Swan sat back.

  ‘Are you the same Tommaso Suane who fought at Belgrade?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes, my lady,’ Swan said heavily.

  She grinned. ‘Well met. We share some common friends. You must know the Despot Thomas.’

  ‘Of course, my lady. I was just in Glarenza. We … fought a battle together.’

  She clapped her hands together. ‘Did you meet his wife? The Basilia? Caterina, like me?’

  Swan bowed. ‘I did not have the honour.’

  ‘Oh! We were schoolgirls together, in a way; when Achaea still had a court and I was learning what it was like to live in the East.’ Caterina di Orsini smiled, and then the smile vanished into fatigue. ‘I can last about ten days. Maybe more; the walls are very strong, and all the women and childre
n are gone, so the men will fight well, up to a point. And then, perhaps, they will surrender. I don’t really fancy a harem; one husband is one too many, for me.’ She shrugged. ‘Can you leave tonight?’

  Swan rose. ‘My lady, I would like to have whatever view I can have of the Turkish fleet.’

  Orsini sent him with a pair of her Italian men-at-arms and he was escorted to the top of the walls and out onto a tower. The tower had taken a dozen hits from the Turkish guns and was beginning to lose its lower courses, but the stone was ten feet thick and the tower had a long way to go before it collapsed.

  Swan looked out over the sea in the last grey light of another stormy day, but the wind had finally moved the fog. Most of the Turkish ships were beached on the dark shingle along the base of the cliff below the town; far, far below.

  ‘Achilles landed here,’ said one of the Italians. ‘Buono Giorno and Blessed Saint John be with you, brother.’ The man had a donat’s ring like Swan’s own, and Swan took his hand.

  ‘You bring honour to our order,’ the man said, and Swan felt like a charlatan.

  ‘Did Fra Tommaso make it to Mytilene, then?’ the man asked.

  Swan nodded.

  ‘Achilles?’ he asked. He was looking at a pair of ancient pillars set lengthwise in the wall. He wondered whether the town was laced with antiquities.

  ‘Oh, by the Trinity,’ the Italian said. ‘Local people say Briseis came from here, not Lemnos.’

  ‘You are a student of the classics, brother,’ Swan said. ‘You have the advantage of me; I don’t know your name.’

  ‘Ah; Francesco Della Rovere,’ the man said. He had ruddy hair made redder by the sunset, with red bristles in his unshaven face; he was short and stout and looked very strong. ‘I’m a bastard son.’

  ‘Aren’t we all, brother?’ Swan joked.

  ‘I came out here to be nearer the land of the Iliad. It is my honour to fight here for the faith, and on the ground Achilles and Hector walked,’ the man said.

  ‘How long can this place hold?’ Swan asked him.