Tom Swan and the Siege of Belgrade: Part Five

by Christian Cameron

  Tom Swan and the Siege of Belgrade

  Volume Five

  Christian Cameron

  Contents

  Title Page

  Tom Swan and the Siege of Belgrade: Volume Five

  Also by Christian Cameron

  Copyright

  Tom Swan and the Siege of Belgrade (Transylvania)

  The Danube flows from Vienna to Belgrade and past it to the sea, but Tom Swan, Englishman, knight of St Mark of Venice, servant of Cardinal Bessarion, volunteer of the Order of the Knights of St John Hospitallers, and currently crusader, had chosen to lead his company of lances and his newly recruited German noblemen by road rather than by river. His reasoning had everything to do with horseflesh and nothing to do with money – in fact, for once in his cash-strapped life, he was all but rolling in funds.

  In Bratislava, where Bohemian heretics seemed to rule the town, he bought his men the best dark beer and paid them a month’s wages in advance – a virtually unheard-of action for a captain. De Vecchio – an ally, if still a hesitant one – approved, but Ser Columbino shook his head.

  ‘It is better to be feared than loved,’ he said. ‘Someone will desert, and someone else will commit rape or murder.’

  Swan shrugged, as he did all too often, armour or no armour. But he did pick up more than a dozen Bohemian heretics, big, handsome men with hand-gonnes over their shoulders, swords, bucklers and ponies. They seemed to have half a dozen women with them – two of them the handsomest wenches Swan had ever seen. They had their own wagon and did their own cooking.

  ‘Whores?’ Swan asked the leader in his new, and not very efficient, German.

  The Bohemian’s name was Ladislav – in fact, everyone who was not Jiri appeared to be Ladislav that summer. Ladislav was taller than Swan and wider, too. He had a heavy blond beard and big blue eyes and the eyes were the expressionless pits that killers bore. They were not windows to the soul – or if they were, there was nothing at the bottom. He had deep lines on his face. Only his ability to laugh saved him from seeming nothing but an empty thug.

  ‘Whores?’ Ladislav asked.

  For a moment, Swan thought he’d misspoken badly. He actually took a step back.

  Ladislav didn’t seem to notice. He raised an eyebrow. ‘Perhaps,’ he said after some thought. ‘You are a soldier – hein?’

  Swan nodded. In fact, he was beginning to remember why he hadn’t liked soldiering back in France. But after Vienna, spying held no charm either.

  Ladislav made a face. ‘I killed my first man when I was thirteen,’ he said. ‘Catholic crusader. Hein? He was old enough to be my father.’ Ladislav shrugged. ‘After Český Brod – that was almost twenty years ago now.’ He didn’t laugh. He just looked at Swan. ‘I was an Orphan. You know what that means?’

  ‘You were a radical,’ Swan said gently.

  ‘I was a boy!’ the man said suddenly, and too loudly. ‘Then I was a man. All I can do is fight.’ He shrugged. ‘The girls – all they can do is fuck. Does that make them whores?’ His mad blue eyes looked at Swan. ‘This is how it is, here.’

  Swan thought of many things when he looked into the man’s eyes. He thought of Tilda, long ago in France. And of a French whore emasculating an English archer, and what that said about her life. The nuns in several convents.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. He turned and walked away.

  The Bohemians spoke all the local languages. Peasants feared them – many made the horned sign of evil whenever the Bohemians looked at them. They did the same for the stradioti.

  ‘They call us Turks,’ Constantine Grazias said with a laugh. ‘Because some of us were Turks.’

  ‘And might be again?’ Swan asked.

  Grazias glared, and Swan thought he needed to think of more clever lines. But it was true – the handful of Albanians and Greeks were feared like no one else by the peasants in the countryside, most of whom spoke German, but some a startling cacophony of Slavic languages.

  Past Bratislava, with the Bohemians as guides, they swung south towards Budapest, where they purchased horses and more wagons, wheels and a wheelwright. Swan didn’t ask how they were ‘buying’ a wheelwright. He simply authorised the purchase. He visited the Jews in Pest and found a house that would cash one of his letters of credit on the Medici. His efforts to socialise were firmly and politely rebuffed.

  His soldiers seemed to feel that Hungary had been made for looting, and he had real difficulty explaining to his German ‘crusaders’ that they could not steal poultry to feed themselves. One night south of Pest, with the great Hungarian plain beginning to roll endlessly in front of them and a sky beginning to fill with stars above, Swan confronted a ‘crusader’ whose squire and men-at-arms had just killed a house full of peasants for their sausages. Swan suspected they’d raped the women, too.

  Ser Columbino put a hand on his shoulder. ‘We are not choirboys,’ he said.

  The German knight was incensed at Swan’s anger – an all-too-human reaction. ‘These people should pray for us!’ he shrieked. ‘We are saving them from the Turks!’

  Swan had had enough.

  ‘Your men killed them,’ Swan said. ‘This is saving them?’

  The German paused, his mouth moving. Another of the crusading gentlemen rode up with his retinue at his back.

  Swan eyed them.

  He had to walk away. They were not his soldiers …

  One of the German soldier laughed. ‘What’s he going to do? The Italian piss-ant? Scold us?’ the man asked, in German.

  Swan took a deep breath and silently counted to ten. In German. In his hand was his staff – a short baton of command that Ser Columbino had put in his hand after Vienna. Perhaps a reminder to act like a great nobleman, and not a bravo.

  Then Swan stepped forward until his breastplate was almost touching the German officer’s.

  He tapped his baton on the man’s armour. It was not quite a rude gesture. ‘Give over that one,’ he said.

  ‘Why?’ asked the German. He was Carl von Drassag, a younger son with half a dozen ill-armed ‘men-at-arms’ more like English hobilars with rusty helmets and poor horses. If Swan had to make an example, Drassag was the one.

  ‘Because I’m going to hang him,’ Swan heard himself say.

  The peasant’s cottage smoked. Swan could clearly see a black, shrivelled thing just inside the ruin – a dead person. Man or woman – now cooked meat.

  Von Drassag took a step back. ‘Now – good my lord,’ he said. He smiled without any good intent. ‘These men are gentles. A few peasants? Slavs and heretics. What matter?’

  Swan pointed his staff. ‘That man. Di Vecchio? I want him hanged.’

  Swan had seldom been prone to rage. Anger, yes, but Vienna had unleashed something new and dangerous and ugly. Swan’s body was crying out for violence. Violence was the solution he craved.

  He fought himself.

  The German shrugged. ‘That is impossible,’ he said. ‘He is one of my men.’

  Swan’s baton licked out and caught the German knight in the temple. The German was fully armoured, but his helmet was on his saddle.

  Swan’s blow staggered him.

  Swan stepped in, passed the baton under the man’s flailing left arm, and threw him to the ground, then kicked him between the legs with his steel-shod sabaton.

  ‘Di Vecchio?’ he asked, his voice low.

  ‘Messire?’ came the older voice.

  Swan forced himself to back away. The German knight was weeping, and had fouled himself.

  It was as if a red mist had come in front of his eyes, and he was … afraid. The only experience to which he could compare this
was being under the earth at Rhodos.

  He wondered whether he was possessed.

  ‘Take the criminal and hang him,’ Swan hissed. He turned and began to walk away.

  Di Vecchio had a dozen men-at-arms and Ser Columbino had five. They took the man, who had been injured cruelly in trying to resist. They put him, moaning and begging for mercy, abject, a pitiful thing, on a pony with a halter around his neck.

  Swan mounted and rode until he was face to face with the German soldier, who was perhaps six years younger than he.

  ‘You can’t!’ the man moaned. ‘I – please! Oh, mein Gott!’ he screamed. ‘I only want to fight the heathen. I’m a good Christian.’

  ‘We have no priest,’ Swan said. ‘Would you care to pray, mein herr?’

  The boy mumbled, terrified, through a paternoster. It was grotesque.

  Another of the German lords came forward – Bertold von Nymandus. Swan knew their names.

  ‘This has gone far enough, Captain,’ he said. ‘I will see this man does not offend again.’

  ‘Please!’ the boy shrieked.

  Swan looked back for a moment at Ser Columbino with his squire, and Clemente, now dressed as his trumpeter. Columbino shrugged.

  Di Vecchio passed a hand across his throat.

  ‘Pleease!’ begged the boy. ‘Oh, sweet Christ!’

  Swan shrugged and looked at Von Nymandus. Then he rose slightly in his stirrups and beckoned Clemente. ‘All officers,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, mein gott, mein gott, lass mich loss. Bitte, mein herr!’

  The trumpet sounded – the pony started.

  Swan had the little beast’s bridle.

  All of the officers – all the corporals and leaders of lances – responded to the trumpet. It took a long time. The young German was as white as winter snow, and Swan had his pony’s bridle.

  There were almost thirty of them, when they had all come – even the wheelwright came.

  Swan looked at the Germans in particular. ‘I will not bother with a lecture on morals,’ he said. ‘I will only say what my law is. We only kill Turks from here to Belgrade. We will pay for food we take. We will not rape.’ He looked around. ‘If you do not think you can follow these rules, you should leave. Anyone who disobeys will die. These rules are simple, and I will see that they are obeyed.’

  He turned to Nymandus. ‘Let me offer you “‘crusaders’” a simple choice. You may all leave. Go back to Vienna! Or stay. And fight by my rules. If you choose to stay, I will release the boy. But the next crime committed by a German – I will hang the German and the boy.’

  Nymandus was unafraid. His blue eyes met Swan’s. ‘You killed many men in Vienna,’ he said. ‘We all know what kind of man you are.’

  Swan thought, fleetingly, of debating the matter. But it was hard to demand sympathy as a good man when he was about to hang a man young enough to be called ‘child’.

  Swan nodded. ‘If you know what kind of man I am,’ he said, ‘then you know that this boy’s life – and yours, ritter – are worth less to me than those of rats.’ He spoke in Latin so all the men would understand.

  The German spat. ‘What do your kind know of the rule of law? Brutal men. Thieves in armour.’

  Swan looked around at all the men – Italians, Englishmen, a Bohemian. He spoke, voice level. It was almost dark.

  ‘This boy murdered three peasants and helped burn their house,’ he said. ‘So don’t tell me how brutal I am. Last chance.’

  ‘I swear, my lord! I will be good!’ The boy was crying.

  ‘You do not have the right to try this boy, much less hang him,’ another German said.

  Swan shrugged, and his baton came down sharply on the horse’s withers.

  The pony leapt forward.

  And the boy’s neck snapped. His gut emptied, as hanged men’s guts do.

  He swayed back and forth, legs still kicking, in relative silence.

  Swan hated himself. But when he spoke, his voice was level.

  ‘You have heard my rules. Goodnight.’ He backed his horse, and then rode off into the darkness.

  He was in the dark a long time. He couldn’t even weep. He wanted to apologise to the boy, but that was silly.

  For the first time in his life, Tom Swan wished he was dead.

  Eventually he rode back to camp.

  He was surrounded by cautious silence, and he hated it.

  They were afraid.

  He went and drank three cups of wine, and lay awake.

  All night.

  In the morning some of his German ‘crusaders’ were gone. Ten lances remained – including Bertold von Nymandus and his black-armoured men in their elaborate sallets and tall boots.

  The Bohemian, Ladislav, rode up on his pony. He gave a casual salute.

  ‘If you take one o’ my lads,’ he said, ‘I’ll gut you.’

  Swan still had the baton, although he’d flinched when he’d seen it first thing in the morning. ‘Then you should leave,’ he said. ‘The rules are the same for all of you.’

  The Bohemian looked off into the distance. ‘You think you can take me?’ he asked, surprised.

  Swan didn’t care. It carried in his tone. ‘Yes,’ he said. He was already sick to death of war, and soldiers. Spying was better.

  Stealing artworks was looking like heaven.

  The Bohemian laughed merrily. ‘All right, then,’ he said. ‘Let’s just see what happens.’

  The next three days were terrible.

  Nothing overt happened. They entered the Pannonian plain, and the villages were just a litany of alien names – Dabas, Orkeny, Varosfold.

  But Swan was alone as he had never been alone before. It was, he imagined, like being a leper.

  Clemente waited on him and brought him food. And was clearly afraid.

  Swan took to setting pickets, and then checking them himself.

  On the fourth night, Grazias came to him with Ser Columbino and Di Vecchio.

  ‘You do not have to do this,’ the Greek said. ‘We can do it. There will be no more burning.’

  Swan thought of many, many answers to give. But instead, he nodded.

  ‘Very well,’ he said calmly. ‘I’d like to make better time. We will start earlier – the stradioti out front to look at the route, and the Bohemians with you. The wagons can leave at first light and the rest of us will be on the road an hour later. We could make contact with the Turks any day.’

  ‘I pray to God we do not,’ Grazias said.

  But at least they had spoken to him.

  The next day Clemente developed a cough. Swan listened to his chest as they did in Italy. ‘What are you eating?’ he asked.

  Clemente shrugged. ‘I take some of your food,’ he said. He coughed again.

  Swan looked him over. The boy was straighter every day, it seemed, and filling out rapidly. But the cough was a worry. And unlike Italy, the Hungarian plain did not have cities every thirty miles full of educated men.

  However, the next day they passed a monastery that had an Italian-trained doctor-monk. They camped close under its walls, purchased food from the fortified barns, and got good bread while the doctor treated young Clemente and a dozen other victims of accident or casual disease.

  A monk emerged to tell ‘Kapitány Hattyú’ (Captain Swan) that his page would spend the night in the priory. Swan took the opportunity to say his confession. The monk gave him a very light penance and told him that crusading would free him from all sin.

  Swan didn’t think that was likely to be true, but he felt enormously better for having confessed. And hungry.

  And pleased with his Hungarian.

  He got his own armour off and, after regirding his sword belt in case any of the Germans held a grudge, went off in search of food.

  It was a beautiful summer evening, and the cooking fires were burning cheerfully in neat rows, the wagons parked in a square right up against the south wall of the fortified monastery in case of sudden attack. There were mounted pickets
far enough away that Swan had trouble picking them out, but he collected Grazias and the two men rode from guard post to post.

  ‘We should have an officer every night,’ Swan said. ‘A different one, so that you and I and Columbino get more sleep.’

  Grazias nodded. ‘This is a good notion,’ he said. ‘The Bohemian is a good soldier. Two of the German knights are solid. Zane is reliable, and so is the Spaniard. Several of Di Vecchio’s lances are led by very responsible men.’

  Swan knew he was being gently admonished.

  He chose to accept it.

  ‘Get them together for me in the morning,’ he said. ‘All those you see as responsible.’

  ‘Me?’ Grazias asked. ‘I am a Greek schismatic.’

  ‘Spare me,’ Swan said, in Greek.

  Grazias was such a professional that he moved from post to post without ever silhouetting himself against the setting sun or the skyline. Often he rode circuitously around a post so that it could be approached up a gully.

  Swan had been learning these details since leaving Budapest. The Order didn’t teach such perfection of guard-mounting, but Swan could see its utility when the enemy had whole herds of light cavalrymen waiting to snap up an unwary sentry – or his whole camp. He was learning a whole new form – like fencing, but conducted with the bodies of other men.

  The last post they visited was the Bohemian’s. Ladislav was there in person. They hadn’t seen him approach, but he must have come recently – the post was a small depression on the flank of a hillside – perhaps a great rock had sat there, but now it was a dimple on the landscape, and the little dell smelled of rich, delicious soup or stew and fresh bread. Ladislav and another Bohemian giant were eating with their folding spoons and their bread while a third man, his stomach rumbling, watched the plains below and the setting sun.

  ‘This is the time of day,’ Ladislav said as Swan entered the dell, ‘when the last of the sun lights up armour and swords far away.’

  ‘You only say that so you can eat my share of the soup,’ said the man on watch. They all spoke Latin. Swan knew a little Bohemian, but the former Hussites seemed to all use Latin as a lingua franca, or perhaps because of some religious requirement. Swan knew that, zealots or no, they all read the Bible, which was more than most men he knew could claim.