Tom Swan and the Siege of Belgrade: Part Five

by Christian Cameron

  ‘Actually, yes,’ Swan said. ‘I believe the banda ahead of us on the road will confirm. We were here before the fog set in.’

  Hunyadi nodded curtly. ‘I see. Very well – now we will ride.’

  Swan bowed.

  Hunyadi looked down at him. ‘You could mount,’ he said.

  Swan didn’t know what he had done to annoy the voivode, but he was used to temperamental cardinals. ‘I will, Excellency,’ he said. ‘When the wagon ahead of me begins to roll.’

  ‘You are not much of a horseman, I assume,’ Hunyadi said.

  Swan wondered where this was going. ‘Enough of a horseman to keep my mount fresh, Excellency,’ he said.

  Hunyadi rode on without another word. His older son, László, leaned down from the saddle. ‘No Hungarian likes to be seen walking,’ he said. ‘My father thinks you look like a fool on foot.’

  Swan nodded slowly. ‘I see,’ he said.

  Young Mattias laughed and punched his brother in the arm. ‘He’s not anybody important,’ he said. ‘Just a stupid Italian! Pater is always telling us what fools the Italians are, and how they know nothing of making war.’

  László winced. Behind him, Ser Hargitai looked amused – and then contrite.

  Swan smiled. ‘Thanks for your concern, young gentlemen,’ he said. Then he mounted and rode down the column to calm any Italians who’d heard the exchange in Latin, and understood it.

  It was a long day. The army raised enough dust to choke a man who didn’t have a scarf – Swan’s men had not been in a large column all summer, and they weren’t ready for the slow pace, the beating heat or the oppressive dust. They marched through fields of ripe wheat – and peasants bold enough to reap it, with the Turks just over the river, by all reports.

  Swan sent Grazias out, and the Bohemians, and the English. At noon Grazias returned.

  ‘Lord Hunyadi has good horsemen well out from the column,’ he said. ‘Front and rear and both flanks.’ He spat and handed Swan a flask of water. He pointed to an unridden horse covered in water bottles. ‘Don’t worry, the girls are filling for everyone.’

  Swan drank most of it in a long pull, and then pissed it away. There was no break for lunch, and he ate sausage as he rode, cursing the grit in his teeth.

  When the sun was halfway down the sky, a herald came and demanded that Swan attend the voivode. Swan rode forward with Clemente and Will Kendal, who was unsure of his status but happy to be a galloper for a few days.

  Swan saluted his commander, who was dismounted in a clump of trees at the edge of a low ridge.

  He dismounted and a Vlach groom took his horse and the other two as well.

  Servants gave all three of them fresh water and then wine and small white cakes.

  Hunyadi rose. ‘I was snappish this morning,’ he said. ‘Old wounds hurt. Not my best time. And someone informed me that we were waiting on you. A stupid lie,’ he said, glaring at a stone-faced Catholic priest.

  The priest looked anywhere but at Hunyadi – or Swan.

  Swan shrugged. ‘My lord, I took no offence. How may I be of service?’

  ‘Can your people do another four hours?’ Hunyadi asked.

  Swan shrugged. ‘It’s not a festival, but I’m sure we can manage.’

  ‘Pity the rearguard,’ Hunyadi said.

  Swan nodded agreement.

  Hunyadi got to his feet and his armoured arm swept the horizon. ‘Still clear. My worst nightmare was to crest this hill and see tents. Still two hundred old stades – forty Roman miles – to Kovin. Belgrade is over there.’

  Other men were writing, or drinking. Some watched Swan intently.

  ‘Stades,’ Swan said. ‘That’s the old Greek measurement.’

  ‘You are an educated man,’ Hunyadi said. ‘But we’re at the edge of Dacia. My people and Tepes’ people – we were the Getae. Do you know the name?’

  Swan nodded. ‘I know that Herodotus says that if they’d all banded together they’d have ruled the world. Bessarion quotes it often, although I’ve never seen the text myself.’

  Hunyadi laughed grimly. ‘And it is still true. So many factions – Christ and Saint George, the lords of Hungary – the King himself – aren’t here because they hate me more than they hate the Turks.’

  Swan nodded.

  Hunyadi scratched his beard and drank off his cup of wine. ‘I didn’t want to face the Turks again,’ he said. ‘But sweet Christ, if I don’t, who in hell will?’

  They rode to the very edge of darkness. The nights were short and the days long, and the evening lingered, with a kindness in the air that belied the horror of midday and dust.

  They made four camps – the vanguard, two for the main body, and a third, well back, for the rearguard. Each camp was well sited, on low hills with easily reached water.

  The Hungarians knew their business, right enough.

  Swan’s people were lucky enough to get a campsite by a small river, or large stream, and just to the north of the campsite was a deep bend with a pool the size of a small farm field and a low sand beach. Grazias located it an hour before the wagons arrived, and Swan ordered the wagons to be laagered with those of the other part of the camp, the teams released, and all the horses watered in shifts.

  ‘With care!’ he said. ‘Take your time. Do not let them drink their fill.’

  Most of the grooms just looked frightened when he spoke to them. And he didn’t yet trust Mercia with his warhorse anyway, so he rode the big bastard down to the beach and watered him himself while keeping his eyes on the other grooms. The horses were the lifeblood of the company, and hot horses and cold water were sometimes not good friends.

  He saw that most – if not all – of the men-at-arms were watering their own mounts, and he was, for a moment, proud.

  He had to fight his charger – finally snapping a leather thong on the brute’s nose – before convincing him that he was not going to drink all he wanted just yet.

  Mercia was pale under his tan.

  ‘Cold water hurts a horse,’ Swan said in his best Hungarian.

  Mercia blinked.

  Šárka rode down with a dozen of her girls on all the wagon horses.

  ‘Tell him cold water is bad for horses,’ Swan called to her.

  She laughed, stripped off her shoes and hose, and came across the sand. She spoke in rapid Hungarian, and the boy wilted – and then brightened.

  He looked at Swan, and with painful slowness said, ‘I understand.’ He went to the stream, upriver of where the horses were watering, and drew two leather buckets of water and used them to lead his charges away from the stream. He watered them carefully.

  Šárka yelled at her girls. They were bantering with the men – one of the Hungarian girls had stripped to her shift and ridden a carthorse into and out of the water, and the soldiers were cheering her.

  ‘You can lead a horse to water, but you should not always let him drink, eh?’ Šárka said.

  Swan laughed. He stripped to his braes, walked upstream of the horses despite the sand and the piles of horse dung that sprouted everywhere, and leapt from the bank into the water.

  It was cold.

  It was, in fact, so cold that he gave an involuntary scream as part of his body hit the water – the shock was intense – and just for a second his arms refused to move. And then he was out of the water, basking on the grass at the top of the bank, using his shirt to dry himself.

  He bathed twice. The sun was sinking, red as blood, in the west. Half his company was in the water – all the women.

  He walked back along the bank to his horses, and led them, clad only in his braes, back up the ridge to camp. By then, a dozen German mercenaries and some Vlachs were all going down the hill. One mocked him in German.

  Swan smiled.

  The man made another comment, and Swan suddenly realised that he was nearly naked and facing men who meant him harm.

  The nearest German drew his dagger, a long, broad thing almost the size of a sword.

&n
bsp; Swan looked around for help and backed towards his horse.

  The German tracked him with the knife, called him a whore’s son, and came at him, knife hand low, blade up. The other Germans began to flank him and the Vlachs called out.

  Swan saw Grazias out of the corner of his eye and raised a hand – his immediate opponent tracked where his eyes were, and Swan took the knife blade in his right hand – dammit, he had meant to grab the wrist. But he broke the man’s grip and stripped the blade away, rolled the man’s hand behind his back and forced him to the ground. His right hand was bleeding, but not too badly.

  Grazias rode up with Dmitri and the other Dmitri. They were still mounted, still armoured, and the Germans scattered.

  Swan let his man go. The man began to back away, and Swan tossed him the knife.

  The German blew him a kiss.

  ‘Crusade,’ Swan said, through gritted teeth.

  Grazias laughed. ‘Two religions, ten languages, and not enough women to go around,’ he said. ‘Luckily we have plenty of priests, eh?’

  Swan went back down the hill to the beach and washed the blood off his hand. He’d only cut his callus in one place. But he washed it upstream of the horses.

  He sent Mercia for honey and vinegar, but it was Šárka who found him. She and the Vlach boy washed the hand again, with soap, and poured hot wine over it before using honey and bandaging it. The honey brought wasps. Swan was tired and feeling a little sorry for himself, but Šárka, wearing only a shift and very clean, was restorative.

  ‘He must have been one of them from last night,’ she said.

  Swan was painfully aware that he could see almost all of her when she bent over his hand. But then, he was nearly naked himself.

  ‘I wonder if you’d join me,’ he said. ‘After dinner.’ He said the words thickly. It was astounding how hard it was to ask.

  She smiled. ‘I would be delighted, sir,’ she said. ‘Is this fancy dress?’

  Later, he lit a candle to look at her – which embarrassed her.

  ‘But you are beautiful!’ he said.

  But he didn’t say it again. She didn’t particularly like it. He liked making her smile, not because it was easy, but because it was hard. He thought that she saw making love as work, and that it never touched her, and that saddened him.

  Because he liked her. ‘I’ll add the girls to the company rolls,’ he said.

  ‘Good,’ she said.

  His camp bed wasn’t really wide enough for both of them, and he moved his straw pallet to the floor. It was odd – to sleep with someone, after so long.

  In the morning, Clemente woke him in time to arm before first light, and she was already gone.

  Lack of sleep combined with dust and extreme heat and a general lack of water made Swan’s day exceptionally difficult. He was not temperamental – Šárka had restored his humours to a degree that made him feel less like a rational man and more like an animal. Even Peter’s death threatened him less.

  But the dust and the heat beat him down all day, and the knowledge that the Hungarians apparently held the Italians in contempt had its own cost. Swan noted that all his men-at-arms were in full harness, their arming coats done to the throat, their gorgets buckled. Everyone had heard the younger Hunyadi’s biting contempt.

  Once again there was no halt at noon. Grazias reported that there was a sizeable town to the west, called Uzdin, and that the priest there said that the Turks were on the Danube and marching very fast. Swan sent Clemente up the column to report to Hunyadi.

  He had just found a perfect arrangement – where his war saddle would cushion his backplate just enough to allow him to sleep – so perfect that it kept his sweat-soaked spine just off the backplate, so that the sweat could run down his back unimpeded.

  ‘My lord?’ asked a young man.

  Swan had no idea how long he’d been asleep. He’d slept in the saddle before, but not as a commander. ‘Yes?’ he spat. His mouth felt as if it was made of old leather.

  ‘His Excellency the voivode requests your immediate presence at the head of the column,’ the young man said.

  Swan nodded. The linen band on his Venetian cap was so soaked in acidic sweat that it burned him. He trotted Karlos, his big half-Arab gelding, alongside Šárka’s wagon.

  ‘Would you do me the honour of either burning this accursed thing or washing it?’ Swan asked.

  One of the Hungarian girls plucked it out of the air and whistled.

  Šárka laughed. ‘Before or after we take this gold brooch out of the hat?’

  Swan had forgotten the brooch. As he rode up the column, he had to struggle to recognise himself as a man who could discard a gold brooch. He could hear what Peter would say.

  He bowed to Hunyadi. His household cavalry had halted on a round hill that only rose a few feet above the plain – but from it, the curve of the distant Danube was clear. And there – suddenly – was Belgrade.

  Belgrade sat on a rock as large, it appeared, as a small mountain. Swan could smell the town – the strange mixture of burning wood and human odours that meant a city.

  The Danube curved sharply around Belgrade, and then again, turning almost due east a few Roman miles ahead.

  And there, across the river, were the twinkling day-star ripples of the sun on swords or spears. And again, closer, on this side of the river, but a little farther east.

  ‘The Danube is uncrossable here,’ Hunyadi’s son said.

  ‘We should dig in,’ one of the Hungarian lords suggested.

  ‘I want Kovin,’ Hunyadi said. ‘I’ve spent a small fortune on pioneers and on wood.’ He stood in his stirrups, craving a little better view.

  ‘Tell me what this priest told your Greek?’ Hunyadi asked Swan suddenly.

  ‘He said the Turks were across the river, and that they had marched very fast. I took that to mean that they were not on this side.’ Swan watched the nearer of the two distant bodies of men and horses, and their dust clouds. ‘I suppose I was wrong.’

  Hunyadi was handed a water bottle. He drank a good deal and handed it to Swan. ‘I hate fighting the Turks,’ he said. ‘Because they are so fucking good.’

  Swan could see a man making a terrible decision. Since there was nothing he could do to help, he sat silent. Other men felt differently, and a brief hail of advice was offered in Hungarian – most of it in favour of building a fortified camp. Or at least laagering the wagons of the vanguard.

  Hunyadi glanced at Swan. ‘And you, Englishman?’ he asked.

  Swan shrugged. His armour was parboiling him, and his arse itched terribly, and he wanted to sleep. And spying increasingly looked much, much better than war.

  ‘You said the Danube was uncrossable,’ Swan said.

  Hunyadi nodded.

  Swan pointed at the Turks on their side. ‘Then those men are cut off from support.’

  Hunyadi smiled. ‘Ah, a thinker,’ he said. ‘They will have another body, half as big but better armed, waiting behind them in ambush – somewhere east of Kovin along the Danube,’ he said. ‘So that if we try to fall on the Akinji in front, we’ll be slaughtered by the ambush.’

  Swan nodded. ‘If they can do that, they are very good indeed,’ he said.

  Hunyadi’s grin was feral. ‘It is routine to them, this sort of thing. For Italians, it would be the coup of a lifetime, I think. For Turks, it is everyday war.’

  Swan tried not to resent his tone and his contempt for Italians.

  Hunyadi stood in his stirrups again. ‘But for us, this leaves three choices. We can encamp, and wait them out. But that will lose us a chance to move into a fortified camp at Kovin, which I have prepared.’ He smiled. ‘And for which I can now pay.’ He laughed. ‘We can attack the vanguard anyway, and move so fast that we fall on them before they can retire on their supports – or simply abandon our pursuit before the ambush is sprung. This is the easiest.’ He looked back at his older son. ‘What is the third choice?’ he asked.

  László shrugged. ‘To
charge harder, and fight through the ambush like men.’

  Hunyadi sighed.

  An older man-at-arms grinned. ‘To send an attack to pin the ambush,’ he said, waving his left hand out on a flanking motion of its own.

  ‘Ah, there speaks an old Turk-killer,’ Hunyadi said.

  He watched the Turkish cavalry along the river. László began to speak, and Hunyadi raised his baton for silence. He rode a few paces nearer the enemy and sat, alone, for a long minute.

  Then he turned his horse. ‘It is now or never, I think, gentlemen. Indeed, every day from now until we, by God’s grace, vanquish the infidel – or fail – it will be at risk of everything. We are sore outnumbered.’ He looked over his captains. ‘That village in front of us is Bavanište. The van will move there and halt until the first division of the main battle catches up. The second division of the main battle will turn east and move to Dolovo and then Mramorak. The ground is very swampy there, between Mramorak and Deliblato. I’m guessing the Turks will have their reserve on the old Roman road at Gaj, in the woods.’ He pursed his lips. ‘László, you will take this wing. Do not be reckless, my son.’

  László Hunyadi bit his lip, but nodded his agreement. Swan could all but see the palpable weight of the command settle on the young man’s shoulders. Hunyadi’s eldest son was perhaps five years older than Swan himself. Then the Hungarian straightened up, smiled, and raised his right hand. ‘I’ll get there,’ he said.

  ‘See you do,’ his father said. ‘Because otherwise we’re all going to have a hot afternoon for nothing.’

  László caught Swan’s eye, and the two turned their horses and rode down the low hill, gathering their retainers as they went.

  ‘You understand what my father intends?’ László asked.

  Swan nodded. He was looking at the high ground ten miles away across the river, and more of it to the east, past the marshes they were to outflank.

  ‘If they have watchers on the hillsides …’ he said.

  László nodded. ‘The Turks are very good, but they cannot work magic. We must be quick, before they can receive enough reports to guess what we do. Can your Italians be quick?’

  Swan made a face. ‘We’re all mounted,’ he said.