Read Online Tom Swan and the Head of St. George Part Five: Rhodes by Christian Cameron - Free Book Online Page A

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.
    Fra Domenico sat on his bed and kept his long hair out of his chamber pot. ‘Ahh,’ he said, in his disturbingly gentle voice. ‘It was bad, under the earth, wasn’t it, boy?’
    Swan felt a disobedient temptation to punch the brother knight.
    ‘Listen, lad,’ the other man said. ‘That’s what it is like. And will be like, in your dreams, for many nights.’
    Swan flashed on … darkness. Hot darkness. A skull bursting under his weight like a hot chestnut on the frozen Thames. He got hold of himself. ‘Sir …’ he panted. ‘What do I do?’
    ‘Pray,’ Fra Dominco suggested. He knelt, and began to pray – simple words; the Lord’s Prayer and the Ave Maria.
    Two days passed. The bandages came off, and Fra Tommaso and Fra John came to take him to the English Langue. Peter came with clothes. Swan was so far from himself that he didn’t feel dirty and didn’t feel any need to shave. He simply put on the clothes.
    Swan walked between them like a prisoner. He didn’t look around himself, and he didn’t have much of a sense of where he was. Sometimes he had trouble breathing.
    Fra John Kendal brought him along the main street to the English tower, and together they climbed the internal stairs to the second floor, where the knight had his command post.
    He sat. Swan sat opposite him with Fra Tommaso. Even Peter sat.
    ‘Talk,’ John Kendal said. ‘Tell it.’
    Swan looked at the darkness for a long time. ‘Can’t,’ he said.
    Peter leaned forward. ‘Sooner you tell it. Sooner it stops eating you.’
    A cup of wine was put in front of him. He drank it without tasting it, and another, while the others talked.
    Suddenly – without even intending to speak – he said, ‘It was hot and it stank and I liked Salim. ’ He sobbed the last.
    Peter sloshed wine into the cup. ‘Tell us.’
    Swan swallowed wine. ‘I fought them. You know,’ he said. He made a motion.
    The other two knights sat, silently. Tommaso leaned forward and put a hand on Swan’s shoulder. ‘We all know,’ he said. ‘Now you know, too.’
    ‘Who was Salim?’ Kendal asked.
    Swan took a deep breath and steadied himself. ‘An African slave – a prisoner of war. He showed me the tunnels. Weeks ago. And he – I think he was the one – betrayed them to the Turks.’
    Fra Tommaso splashed some of the wine into his own cup. ‘Hardly a betrayal,’ he said with a sad smile. ‘Hmm?’
    ‘He was the last man I killed,’ Swan said. And then it began to come tumbling out of him – phrase by phrase, like pus