Текст книги "Rhodes"

Автор книги: Christian Cameron

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Swan nodded sagely. ‘I will consider what you say, as I have very little interest in being killed as a tax collector.’

‘In this you show real wisdom,’ said the man.

‘You know there is a Turk fleet on its way here?’ Swan asked.

‘Pagans as well as thieves. This is why God has given us the crossbow.’ The Greek islander was missing no teeth – indeed, his head seemed to be full of them. He was an excellent advertisement for mastic.

‘Have you seen them?’ Swan asked.

‘Of course!’ the Greek answered.

Swan dug in his purse and produced a nameless silver coin roughly the size of a silver mark from England. And worn perfectly flat.

The man made it disappear with the same facility as that with which Swan had made it appear. ‘Two days ago. Two galleys. They watered south of Mesta. You are very polite, for a Frank.’

Swan shared some wine from his leather bottle and the man found him even more polite and offered him several pounds of mastic.

‘At a very good price,’ he added.

After some genteel dickering, Swan carried away about twenty pounds of the stuff. He had no idea if he’d been swindled or not. It seemed cheap enough. Five gold ducats had purchased the whole basket. He carried it down to the ship, almost lost his investment trying to negotiate the beach, and then spent his evening rebagging the whole and putting it in waxed linen. He pointed the bags out to Peter. ‘That’s your wages,’ he said.

Peter frowned. ‘I am not so well paid, I tink.’

Swan found the galley’s commander working on his own armour, and passed the news of the Turkish galleys. Fra Tommaso nodded. ‘Could be true. You have to be leery of these heretics. Many of them prefer the Turks to us. Eh? Be a good lad and do my tassets, please?’

Midday, and they weathered the Korfas headland. Asai was a stone’s throw off their starboard oar tips, and the wind was directly in their teeth.

Which proved to be altogether in their favour.

‘Ready about!’ Fra Tommaso screamed. Swan hadn’t really ever heard the old man stirred to emotion before – perhaps flares of anger, but nothing like this urgency. Swan was in his hammock, forward with the archers – he rolled out, grabbed his sword, and ran for the helm, feet pounding along the catwalk.

The oarsmen cursed, but those on the port side were already reversing benches. And behind him, the vessel’s sailors had the sail on the great yard, ready to be raised.

Swan leaped on to the command deck from the catwalk. Fra Tommaso pointed forward over the bow, and Swan turned.

There, framed against the strait, was a fleet that seemed uncountable – more than a hundred vessels of all sizes. In the van there were at least a dozen military galleys, and most of them had their sails up and their bows threw white waves as they came on.

‘The Turks,’ Fra Tommaso said.

Behind Swan’s shoulder, Peter grunted. ‘Son of a bitch,’ he said.

The Blessed Saint John turned like a dancer and had her main yard aloft and her great lateen full in the time it would take a pious man to repeat a single paternoster. And her clean hull and her beautiful lines paid off – in an afternoon’s run, she gradually buried the Turks below the horizon, and they docked at Rhodos without further incident – that is, without food or sleep for two days.

But two thousand professional soldiers could accomplish an immense amount of work in a day. When the Turkish fleet hove into view on the northern horizon, the towers had their hoardings up, and Swan had a brief instruction on the use of a light artillery piece. The noise it made on firing caused him to twist his ankle on a chunk of rubble, but he knew what it took to put several ounces of charcoal, saltpetre and sulphur into the iron tube.

The tube in question was attached to a frame of good Greek oak. The whole contraption looked like a candlestick bolted to a table.

Peter watched the whole performance with contempt. ‘What can it do that my bow cannot do?’ he asked. ‘Ah – it can explode and kill me. My bow cannot do this.’ He handed his master a beautiful Turkish bow and two quivers of arrows. ‘I found these for you. If your new rank doesn’t preclude a little archery.’

When the Turkish fleet came over the horizon in the hours after dawn, the garrison was resting, the walls were barely manned, and the ships were safely inside the fortified mole. The only men working were slaves and conscripted Greeks, who were toiling with picks under a sun already ferocious despite the season, improving the network of trenches behind the weakest portion of the wall.

Swan rose late, with the other Donats from his section of the fortifications who had stood guard or worked far into the night. He climbed the windmill nearest to the English bastion and from it he watched the Turks disembark.

Sir John Kendal, the senior English knight under the turcopolier, and the acting commander of the forces in the English bastion, came up the windmill and seemed surprised to find Swan watching the Turks. He nodded and leaned his elbows on the edge of the parapet.

‘Do they intend an actual siege?’ Swan asked, after a period of silence. ‘Sir?’ he added.

Sir John seemed on the verge of muttering a platitude, but he paused. ‘You’ve seen some fighting?’ he asked.

‘Yes, sir,’ Swan answered.

‘You’re the young hellion who gave Sir Kenneth the bruise on his neck?’ Sir John managed a thin-lipped smile.

‘Yes, sir.’

Sir John nodded. ‘Fra Tommaso speaks very highly of you. So you know they aren’t landing any artillery.’

That’s what I was getting at, Swan thought. ‘Yes, sir,’ he said.

‘It’s a razzia. A raid. They’ll burn our crops and kill our Greek peasants and sail away.’ The older knight shrugged.

Swan might have agreed, except that the men he was watching on the hillside opposite him were men he’d seen in Constantinople – sipahis, or elite cavalry. They had no horses, but they were the Sultan’s best assault troops, and Swan had a difficult time imagining that the Sultan had sent his best troops – noblemen’s sons, no less – to burn crops.

‘They seem very interested in our section of wall,’ Swan noted.

Sir John fingered his beard. ‘So they do.’

Swan decided to take the plunge. ‘Those men there – in the silvery armour – are sipahis. Noble cavalry. The Sultan’s own.’

Sir John raised an eyebrow. ‘Really?’ he asked. ‘I had no idea.’ He smiled the sort of smile that older men give to young enthusiasts who assume that older men have never seen or done anything themselves.

Swan was defensive. ‘I saw them in Constantinople,’ he said.

Sir John nodded. ‘I’ve been fighting them for my whole adult life,’ he said.

Swan went down the windmill, determined to keep his mouth shut in future.

Late afternoon of the first full day. Thus far, not a single man had been killed or wounded. The Turks had summoned the town, sending a messenger and shooting arrows with demands for immediate surrender on very lenient terms. The knights, of course, refused.

Shadows lengthened, and the word came along the walls that everyone was to watch carefully. Dawn and dusk were the times when both sides would try stratagems, alarms and surprises.

Swan was at his ‘frame’, as the little gonne was called. He and his three Burgundian gunners were the crew. The Burgundians were less fiery than they had been in the days before the siege. The Turkish camp was like a city, larger than Rhodos itself. The Turkish fleet was vast and seemed to cover every beach in every direction.

‘How many men do you think they haf?’ one of the Burgundians asked him. ‘Sir?’ he added.

They all sounded like Peter. Their English was pretty good – half of the Duke of Burgundy’s army was made up of Englishmen, and the language was a lingua franca, but among themselves they spoke Dutch.

Swan shrugged. He was in half-plate, with a chain shirt under and a fustian arming coat under that – he was very hot, and emptied every canteen of water that was brought to him. He now owned leg harnesses – courtesy of the order’s armoury – and they were polished and ready, lying on his narrow bed. He wore Alexandro’s thigh-high leather boots instead.

He wiped his face with a linen rag. ‘About twenty thousand, give or take a thousand,’ he said.

‘Christ crucified, we will all be horribly kilt,’ muttered the senior Burgundian, Karl. The man had the nose of a heavy drinker and something was wrong with his eyes.

Swan ignored him, although he wasn’t too happy himself. His burst of enthusiasm for the Church militant had landed him in this desperate outpost …

There were men moving on the hillside opposite.

Swan plucked his armet off his head and put it on the stone walkway. He leaned out over the crenellations and looked.

A pair of arrows leapt from bowmen hidden in the rocks near the beach. Swan saw the bows move and ducked back. A pair of light arrows struck the parapet.

‘Let’s fire,’ he said. He pointed at where a dozen Turks were pushing big siege shields.

Next to him, Peter suddenly stood up to his full height and loosed a shaft. He didn’t loose at the men with the bows, but at the small crowd huddled on the hillside opposite, with wicker shields – siege mantlets.

His arrows struck a mantlet and pierced it.

The Burgundians hung back, as if actually using the gonne frightened them.

Swan ladled powder into the bore and ran it down. Then put a heavy patch of raw cotton atop it and rammed that down, and finally pushed a one-ounce stone ball down – laboriously chipped from Parian marble, no doubt, he thought. He took a goose quill from the pouch on Karl’s waist, ignoring the man, and aimed the gonne as he’d been taught – as he would a bow, a little to the left of the target because of the wind, and a little high – he put bricks under the front legs of the frame. In the time he did this, Peter loosed nine arrows.

Karl shook his head. ‘We should wait for orders,’ he said.

Swan was aiming again.

He heard, very clearly, the unmistakable sound of steel on stone. Or rather, he felt it, rather than heard it. He looked around.

He rammed the goose quill full of black powder into the touch-hole of the gonne. He felt the very slight grinding under his thumb that meant the goose quill was in contact with the powder in the barrel – the main charge.

The Turks had four mantlets set up, and a shower of arrows began to fall on the English wall. The Burgundians backed away down the nearest ladder.

‘Fire?’ Swan said, suddenly feeling foolish. The youngest of the Burgundians, also Karl, had the portfire. And he was climbing down the ladder.

Swan leaned over the wall. ‘Stop. I order you. And get your arses back on the wall or I’ll …’ Swan stopped, unsure what he’d do.

‘We’ll come back when you’ve fired the gonne,’ Elder Karl spat. ‘You’ve overcharged it. It might explode.’

‘Fuck you,’ Swan swore. He pulled the tinder box from his belt purse and struck a spark on to some tinder. He checked his aim one more time and touched the glowing char-cloth to the top of the quill.

The little gonne barked like a bolt of sulphurous lightning. The mouth of the barrel rose a foot in the air and slammed down, and the whole frame jumped back a handspan, smacking into Swan’s arm, which might have been broken if he hadn’t been in plate armour.

Across the ravine, on the hillside opposite, a man was screaming. Otherwise, there was no change – the gonne hadn’t hit anything. And yet a half-dozen Turks suddenly burst from the cover of the mantlets and ran back up their ridge.

Peter loosed three arrows in rapid succession and scored two kills. As the last Turk vanished over the crest, he made a wry face. ‘Niet zo slecht,’ he said. ‘Not bad.’

Sir John appeared from the other side of the English tower. ‘Who fired?’ he demanded.

Swan pointed.

One of the Turks was still screaming, his horrible cries echoing around the ravine in an unnatural way. ‘We killed three,’ he said.

Sir John looked at Old Karl, who was just poking his head over the parapet. ‘We were not to fire without orders,’ he said.

Old Karl looked smug.

Swan was suddenly tired. ‘Why?’ he asked.

‘Because we were ordered not to fire,’ Sir John said gently. ‘Young man, obedience is one of our order’s virtues.’ He nodded to the Burgundians. ‘No more firing without orders.’

‘Ve told him not to fire,’ Karl said. Just at that moment, Swan hated all of them.

Sir John was in full plate, and he didn’t shrug. He stood straighter. ‘It would take the wisdom of Solomon to decide whether it is better to disobey and kill three Turks, or to obey the original order and fail to kill the Turks.’ Sir John’s smile wasn’t genial. He leaned over to Karl, who shrank back. ‘It is Master Swan’s business whether he obeys me. It is your business to obey him. Understand?’

The thin English knight went back towards the tower, his steel sabatons rasping on the stone.

‘Obedience is one of our order’s virtues,’ Peter quoted. ‘Along with chastity and poverty. Master Swan, you have brought us to hell.’

Swan, angry as he was, had other thoughts crowding in. He raised a hand for silence.

There it was again – the sound of steel on stone. Like Sir John’s sabatons. Somewhere under his feet.

‘Peter, did you see what they were doing on the hillside?’ Swan asked.

‘Heh!’ Peter said. ‘Dying?’ He laughed his nasty laugh. ‘Is that the sound their black souls make shrieking to hell?’

‘Before you potted them, Peter.’ Swan was looking out under the shade of his hand again. An arrow was lofted from the beach. Swan ducked back and then popped out from behind another merlon. ‘Hello – look, Peter, I got one!’ he said. From his new angle he could see that there was a Turk lying face down behind the nearest mantlet.

It wasn’t the mantlet at which Swan had fired, but that wasn’t important.

‘Doesn’t it look as if there’s an opening?’ Swan asked.

Peter was sulking. ‘Gekke machine,’ he said. ‘Smells like hell come to earth.’ But after both of them had ducked under a new salvo of arrows, he leaned out and glanced. ‘Too dark,’ he said.

Holes in the ground didn’t interest Peter. But Turkish arrows did, and he began to collect a few. He held them up in the last light. ‘Cane. Beautiful. Why don’t our fletchers make them like this?’ he asked. He picked up his own Turkish bow and fitted one. And watched the rocks by the beach. ‘Show yourself,’ he ordered his master.

Swan leaned out and Peter smiled and loosed.

A second later, a man stood, raised his bow, and Peter’s arrow took him in the chest.

Peter was insufferable for the next hour.

After they were relieved, Swan didn’t unarm. Instead, he picked up a pair of lanterns and a long Arabic headscarf. He stopped by the well in the English tower to drink water.

Peter still had his brigandine on. ‘Vere do you tink you are going?’ he said.

Swan frowned. ‘I want to investigate a theory,’ he admitted.

Peter sighed theatrically.

Fifteen minutes later, they were easing past the stinking privies in near-total darkness. Each of them had lanterns, and both were armed.

‘You are insane. You know that,’ Peter said. ‘Christ Jesus, this smell will never come off my good jack. You deserve to be hanged. Sweet Christ!’

Past the privies, moving very carefully. Past the cat piss. Swan’s boots were silent, but his arm harnesses made distinct sounds each time they tapped against stone.

Into the ancient underground street. ‘Which way do you think we’re going?’ Swan asked Peter.

‘I haf no idea, you madman!’ Peter complained. ‘Ve are in hell.’

Indeed, the hidden under-city of Rhodos was a fair simulacrum of hell. It stank – and it was very hot. And absolutely dark. The lanterns with their olive-oil lamps burned with too little light to illuminate any more than a step or two in front of them.

Swan crept down the ancient street. He could feel the slightest breeze on his face, as he had the last time he’d been here – with Salim.

Far away in the darkness, there was a distinct clank.

He eased the sword in his scabbard. And pressed forward.

After ten slow steps, he reached a cross-tunnel. He ran a gauntleted hand over the stone – held his oil lamp in the tunnel and saw the flame move.

‘This way,’ he said.

He struck his head – a ringing blow that staggered him and might have knocked him unconscious if he hadn’t had a helmet on. When he recovered, he raised his lamp and saw that his cross-street – it had cobbled paving under his booted feet – was only four feet high.

‘Must we do this?’ Peter asked. His voice was very loud.

‘I think the escaped slaves are trying to let the Turks into the town,’ Swan said.

‘Vere the fuck are we?’ Peter asked.

Swan rested a moment, his hips against what he suspected were the under-shorings of the English wall. ‘This is the ancient city,’ he said. ‘Many of the old floors – and old walls – still bear weight. So there are empty spaces – and a path among them. Salim knew it. I didn’t think about it at the time – about who exactly lived down here – but it must be escaped slaves.’

‘And they would help the Turks. Of course they would,’ Peter admitted. ‘So – there is a way out?’

‘Can’t you feel the breeze? They must have opened one – or found an old one. There was a great siege here in antiquity.’ Swan levered himself to his feet, avoided striking his head, and crouched, feeling a variety of pains in his back.

Behind him, Peter asked, ‘Just what do you expect to find? Turks?’

Swan hadn’t really given it any thought. Now that he did think about it …

‘Why not just tell Sir John?’ Peter asked.

‘He thinks me a fool,’ Swan spat.

‘No, he thinks you are young,’ Peter said fondly. ‘Vich you are, of course. But I keep you alive and make you much more smart, eh?’

Swan tried to ignore the Dutchman’s banter as crawling on his hands and knees in a tunnel frequented by cats in near-complete darkness was not easy. His breastplate didn’t seem to want to fit in places that his eyes told him he could.

He had to pull the lantern forward, then wriggle past it, then pull it forward again. In the process, something crossed his hands. He flinched.

Peter felt the flinch. ‘Vat vas dat?’ he asked.

Swan’s hands were shaking. ‘A cat,’ he said. ‘Mother of God, I hope it was a cat.’

Swan had never been a great one for prayer, but several more minutes of scrambling along a narrow tunnel in the stinking dark caused him to start a veritable litany of prayer, interspersed with curses.

There was a noise ahead of them. It wasn’t a single clank, but a series of noises – a rattle, a long grinding, a muffled thump.

‘Shit,’ Peter said. ‘Now I’m tinking you are in the right of it.’

Swan heard him sigh.

‘Ve should perhaps go back and fetch help, yes?’ Peter asked.

‘I want to be sure,’ Swan said.

‘I’m plenty sure,’ Peter put in. ‘Lamps out!’ he hissed.

Swan obeyed.

He had thought it was dark before. Now it was utterly dark, the kind of dark he remembered from the cisterns under Constantinople. But they had been clean and airy, and this was hot, close, and reeked of cat and worse.

Swan pushed forward. It was his usual reaction to fear and terror – to go at it – and now he scraped along in the stifling dark until his questing right hand found … nothing.

He reached down, and his breastplate scraped against the floor – or the street, hard to tell. But his right fingers found stone.

To his front, suddenly there was light.

And voices, speaking in Turkish.

‘No! We will take you right into the city!’ complained one.

‘Silence, dog! The knights can hear you. We don’t want to come into the city. We will use your tunnels to place a charge of the powder that burns.’

‘Stapha, you are an old woman. Let’s press forward and seize the wall! We’ll be famous! The Pasha will make us all lords!’

‘Stupid Ghazi! The Pasha is a fool and will not reward anyone.’

‘Shh! In the name of Allah, the merciful and the compassionate, will all of you be silent!’

The last voice had authority.

Swan turned his head. ‘Go and get help!’ he hissed.

Peter grunted.

After a moment, Swan reached out to touch the other man – and there was nothing there.

Tom Swan was alone in the stinking darkness with twenty Turks.

Very slowly, while the Turks debated their next move, Swan swung his booted feet over the low sill he’d discovered and tested the lower floor. Cautious experimentation revealed that he was dropping down into a room – a larger room, judging from the echoes. Or perhaps just a broader corridor. Swan contemplated going back – back along the cat-infested crawlspace behind him. But he couldn’t face fighting in such a constricted place. He was too afraid of coming to a place that his breastplate wouldn’t fit going backwards.

Having got his feet down to the new level, Swan reached out to right and left. The walls were there – just beyond easy reach in both directions.

His heart was beating like an armourer planishing metal – tinktinktinktink. It was so loud he was afraid it was making noise, and so close under his throat that he felt he might throw up. His breastplate suddenly felt too small.

He drew his sword. He did it very carefully – left hand reversed, a long, slow pull.

‘Son of a whore, we can take the town now!’ one man shouted, in Turkish. His voice rang off the walls.

Swan estimated that they were about sixty feet away. He could see two tongues of flame – oil lamps, or lanterns – and a little bit of red which was someone’s cloak, or hood.

He took a cautious step forward and almost fell – there was something lying across the corridor. He felt it with his sword-tip, slid a foot across it, slid the other foot across it. He was sweating so much that he was afraid he would drown in his armour.

Very, very carefully he felt his way another step along the corridor.

And another. Whatever the blockage behind him, he now had space in which to fight.

He checked his dagger.

‘And I say now!’ shouted the most aggressive Turk.

And the torches began to move.

Swan’s hands were shaking so badly he had trouble finding the top edge of his visor. He reached up with his sword-point and touched the ceiling overhead. There was a hissing fall of gravel over his armour, but the ceiling was at least four feet above him.

He brought his visor down. In the stinking darkness, the visor did nothing to limit his vision.

And the torches, or lanterns, crept closer.

‘Pig! Dog! Heretical scum of the underworld!’ a man swore.

It sounded to Swan as if the man had just stubbed a booted toe on something. Swan had a moment’s fellow-feeling for a man he was about to fight.

He brought his sword into a low guard position and waited, knees weak, hands shaking, and breath short. It was very different from being on the deck of a ship in the sunlight, surrounded by friends.

Now he could see the lead man – who walked slightly bent because he was huge, both tall and fat, with dyed red hair and a dyed beard and a short axe in his hand. Swan assumed the man was the aggressive one. He had the look. The torchlight made the man’s red kaftan glow. It almost hurt Swan’s eyes.

Of course, they were all watching the floor.

Swan watched the axe. The sheer size of the first man intimidated him. Intimidation made him angry – always had. Bigger men had bullied him his whole young life.

The torchlight illuminated the floor of the tunnel for five yards. They still hadn’t seen Swan, and he couldn’t stand the tension any more.

He leaped forward and cut, a rising snap from a low guard that sheared through the big Turk’s cheek and nose, so that the tip cut through his left eye and stopped on the ocular ridge. Swan leaned into the weapon and pushed it home into the skull and the man died instantly. The sound of his own wild scream echoed and roared and he wasn’t fully aware that it was his own as he recovered, again low, this time into Fiore’s dente di cinghiare. He was afraid of catching his sword on the walls or the ceiling – but his first strike had made him calm, and having recovered, he struck again, gliding, feet flat, slightly offline to the right and thrusting over the corpse even as the dead man’s torch went out on the cobbles.

The second Turk made a parry – but some of the blow caught him. Swan stepped in and caught his sword with his left hand, halfway down the blade, and thrust it – almost blind in the dark. He thrust three times, sure he’d hit, and then flicked a cut from his wrist as he backed a step. Now the only torch was held by the last Turk, or perhaps an escaped slave, and there were two corpses and Swan could see – a little. He doubted that they saw much of him.

‘Back! Back! The knights know we are here! Back, you fools!’ shouted the one with the voice of iron.

But it was chaos in the corridor.

An older, more experienced man would have leaped at them in that moment, but Swan was still amazed at his initial success and still cautious.

The third man had time to ready his weapons – a light axe, and a curving sword.

‘It is just one man!’ he shouted. ‘Aiiee!’ and he attacked.

Swan ignored the sabre and cut at the axe. The sabre blow rang on his helmet, and his pommel struck something – he had one of the man’s arms, and he broke it at the elbow, and punched his armoured right hand into what he assumed was the face as yet another weapon struck him – he dropped his opponent and stepped back, looking for balance. Two weapons struck him together – a blow to his visor that almost brought him down and a cut to his left arm that rang like a bell on his left vambrace. He had his sword up, and he cut down, into the darkness, and connected – and there was a vicious pain in his right calf. He screamed – or roared.

Someone had his left arm. He slammed his right fist and his pommel at this new threat – connected, and the man fell away – then he took a kick or a punch to his knee that caused him to fall backwards.

His head struck the stones that had almost tripped him as he entered the corridor. He hit hard – but his armet took the blow and his thickly padded liner saved him.

He could hear them coming, and he knew he was hurt, and more on impulse than by training he hauled himself over the rock – under his desperate hands, it became a stone column with deep fluting. He knelt because his left leg was having trouble supporting him, took his sword in both hands, and put the point up.

Forty feet down the tunnel, there was a scream and the last torch went out.

‘One, two, three! Charge!’ called a voice in Turkish. They had taken twenty of Swan’s gasping breaths to ready themselves.

Swan had used the time to get against the right-hand wall, crouched down behind the fallen pillar. He couldn’t see them. But he could certainly hear them.

They all screamed together – the long, undulating scream that had taken Constantinople.

The two leaders hit the pillar together. And fell.

Swan cut – in panic – at the sounds. Hit something soft, cut again, and again. And again. Cut – thrust, cut.

A desperate Turk, heroically brave, seized his sword-blade – probably in his death throes, but his sacrifice was not in vain. By luck, or fortuna, he plucked the blade right out of Swan’s hands. Swan felt it go – heard it fall.

A man hit his chest. And tried to wrap his arms about Swan’s shoulders.

Swan pulled the man over the column – every Turk had to discover the downed column for himself, and it had become Swan’s greatest advantage. He used it to break the man’s balance and threw him, and then fell atop him, steel-clad arms and hands working brutally.

A heavy weapon rang off his helmet. And there was suddenly weight on his back – he rolled, a man screamed, and Swan got his right hand on his rondel dagger. It was still there. He got it out – reversed – and stabbed with it.

He realized that the roaring sound was his own voice.

He felt the man’s neck go just as he pounded the blade into the man’s skull. The skull cracked like an egg and then the whole head collapsed under his weight. Then he felt himself repeat the blow, even though he knew the man had to be dead.

He tried to rise off the new corpse, but his leg failed him and he sank back – now kneeling on both knees. He could see nothing. He could hear at least two men dying. Everything smelled of blood, and faeces, and despair.

Perhaps he whimpered. He certainly wanted to.

That was how Fra Tommaso found him, when he came at the head of a dozen knights. Swan was still kneeling, facing the corridor. His armour was caked in blood and dirt, and he had a dagger blade in both hands, and he was weeping. He couldn’t stop it, and he couldn’t get his helmet open. As soon as he heard the Italian voices coming, he’d burst into tears.

He was ashamed of his weakness. But that only made him sob. He choked.

Fra Tommaso clutched him to his chest – steel to steel. Torches illuminated the charnel house – seven dead men, all looking as if they’d been savaged by demons or wolves.

‘Ave Maria!’ muttered Sir John Kendal.

Swan couldn’t speak. The man with the crushed skull had been Salim. He had time to see that before he vomited.

‘He’s bleeding,’ said Fra Tommaso.

It took them an hour to get him above ground, and in the end, he lost consciousness.

Swan dreamed about it and awoke, screaming. And Fra Tommaso comforted him.

Either this happened many times, or it was all part of the same nightmare. The dark. The choking heat, the faceplate, the smell of blood, the pressure of a man on his breastplate and the feel of the face caving in under his knife. Again, and again.

And again.

And again.

When Swan recovered himself, he had a moment of extreme disorientation as the man at the end of his narrow bed was Fra Domenico Angelo, known the length and breadth of the Inner Sea as Fra Diablo. The conqueror’s ring burned on his finger like the fire of God.

Swan tried to remember where he was. It probably said something about him that he knew the ring – and felt lust for it – before he came to the conclusion that he was in the Hospital of Rhodos.

He could taste the opium in his mouth. His left leg was wrapped like an Egyptian mummy’s.

The slightest flick of thought and he was in the dark with the weight of a man on his chest and—

‘The conquering hero,’ Fra Domenico said.

Down the ward, a man screamed.

Swan’s body spasmed. And he leaned over the bed and vomited into a basin.