Tom Swan and the Siege of Belgrade: Part Five Read online

  A Hungarian knight in good Milanese plate rode by and slapped Swan’s right hand with his own.

  ‘Kurva szép!’ he said. Swan knew that much Hungarian.

  Columbino reined in. ‘Oh, may God bless us all. That was … oh! I have charged the Turks.’ Columbino was in a transport of professional joy. Then he smiled. ‘What did he say?’

  ‘He says we are beautiful. Very beautiful,’ Swan said.

  He wanted his pick back. He dismounted – Ataelus was very tired, and the horse gave him no trouble. Swan had a happy thought, dug in the pouch behind his high war saddle and came up with a rather ancient and withered apple given him days before. He gave it to Ataelus, who munched it away in three delicate bites.

  Swan didn’t see any arrows in the big horse.

  ‘They call me lucky,’ he said fondly. ‘You are a lucky horse.’

  The Hungarians were passing through them.

  Swan waved at several – happy that at least they knew he wasn’t a Turk – saw his pick in the wheat, and bent to pick it up – and saw the Turk he’d thrown to the ground. The man was lying very still – his eyes were open.

  His left leg was obviously broken. The angle made that clear.

  Swan picked up his war-pick with the hesitation a man might use in approaching a snake.

  In Turkish he said, ‘Will you surrender?’

  The Turk’s eyes widened at the sound of his own tongue. Swan looked again at the man’s leg. ‘If you surrender …’

  The Turk’s lips were locked in pain.

  ‘Uuuugh,’ he said.

  Swan bellowed for Clemente.

  Most of Swan’s men were so thirsty after the charge that they had to move all the way back to the marsh, collect their rearguard and water their horses – and use the village well, which the English, sensing victory, had already found.

  Swan’s bubble of assurance that the campaign was won was destroyed by finding László at the crossroads in Deliblato. They rode to Kovin together, and László seemed to bear him no ill will for stealing the glory.

  ‘I have been fighting for my father ten years,’ the young Hungarian said. ‘He’s missed the right road many times. I’m glad you made it. But it sounds as if it was all a waste of time.’

  ‘Waste of time?’ Columbino asked. ‘We were victorious!’

  The younger Hunyadi smiled. ‘Well, it is always better than being beaten. I see you have a prisoner,’ he said. Swan’s Turk was unconscious but alive over a mule.

  ‘He had a lot of armour,’ Swan said.

  Hunyadi laughed. ‘He looks like a Turk – a real one, not some Greek or Serb or Albanian who fights for them now and not for us,’ he said. ‘But unless Pater caught their Akinjis and slaughtered them, it was nothing but manoeuvre. And even the Akinjis – the Grand Turk will spend them like water, and care nothing if we exterminate them like a nest of stinging wasps.’

  Swan deflated. And thought of Di Vecchio. ‘It was for nothing?’ he asked, but he had the sense to ask quietly.

  Young Hunyadi frowned. ‘Not nothing,’ he said. ‘Just not much more than nothing.’

  The day ended with the whole army marching into Hunyadi’s fortified camp at Kovin. The wagons were already there – the camps all laid out and orderly, because the baggage had moved quickly behind the main battle.

  Swan didn’t bother to change his clothes when summoned by Hunyadi. His arming clothes were so soaked with sweat that he felt as if he’d gone for a swim. But he had the ‘light as air’ feeling of a man stripped of armour, and he walked to Hunyadi’s tent because both his horses were exhausted. Passing among the fires of his camp, he was happy enough to hear banter – and to see loot.

  He stopped to ask Father Pietro to arrange for two burials. The wounded page had died. Otherwise, the bill was astoundingly light.

  Clemente went with him, wearing two water bottles, and Swan drank whenever he felt the urge. He was light headed, and somewhere between euphoria and black anger. And very tired.

  Hunyadi had a dozen of his captains with him. When Swan entered, they all fell silent, and a pageboy knelt and offered him a cup of wine. László winked.

  ‘Ser Suane,’ Hunyadi said. ‘A fine ruse and a nice piece of manoeuvre. Unfortunately, we caught only a few of the bastards. On the other hand,’ he went on, and a slow smile crossed his face, ‘we beat them. And the Turks are very, very good. So any time you beat them,’ he raised his cup, ‘is a good day.’

  Swan basked in their praise, while acknowledging that it had all been luck.

  ‘God’s grace and Dame Fortuna,’ he said.

  Men nodded.

  Swan rolled his shoulders, which hurt. ‘My lord, I lost a dozen good warhorses and a few men. I’ll need more horses—’

  Hunyadi shook his head. ‘I doubt we’ll fight on horseback again this year,’ he said. ‘Mehmed has brought a hundred thousand men. We have four thousand.’ He raised an eyebrow. ‘And whatever our esteemed Dominican friar can raise, eh?’

  The captains all laughed.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘No more horses. Now we build boats.’

  That night, Swan lay on straw. Šárka lay beside him, her side and back illuminated by moonlight. They did not make love at first. She stroked him for a while, and long into the night he looked at the roof of his tent.

  And then, when he thought sleep was impossible, and she breathed deeply, he moved a little to ease the pressure of her head on his chest – his shoulder had a bad numbness to it, and he had a black bruise on his hip where the sabre hadn’t killed him.

  And suddenly her mouth was on his, and her eyes were wide. And pain fell away for a little while.

  And then, he slept.

  Also by Christian Cameron

  Tom Swan and the Head of St George

  Volume One: Castillon

  Volume Two: Venice

  Volume Three: Constantinople

  Volume Four: Rome

  Volume Five: Rhodes

  Volume Six: Chios

  Tom Swan and the Siege of Belgrade

  Volume One

  Volume Two

  Volume Three

  Volume Four

  The Tyrant Series

  Tyrant

  Tyrant: Storm of Arrows

  Tyrant: Funeral Games

  Tyrant: King of the Bosporus

  Tyrant: Destroyer of Cities

  Tyrant: Force of Kings

  The Killer of Men Series

  Killer of Men

  Marathon

  Poseidon’s Spear

  Other Novels

  Washington and Caesar

  God of War

  The Ill-Made Knight

  Copyright

  An Orion eBook

  First published in Great Britain in 2015 by Orion Books

  This eBook first published in 2015 by Orion Books

  Copyright © Christian Cameron 2015

  The moral right of Christian Cameron to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the copyright, designs and patents act 1988.

  All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN: 978 1 4091 5633 8

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  ian Cameron, Tom Swan and the Siege of Belgrade: Part Five