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

leaving a wound. The waiting. The fight.
    And then the long nightmare in the dark, listening to them die.
    Tommaso drank more. ‘Some of them got away,’ he said. ‘We saw them come out of the opening. Peter showed us. They had torches, and there was a sally. They threw a feint against the walls.’
    Swan’s brain was beginning to function. ‘That makes sense,’ he said. ‘When some of them charged me – some ran.’
    He drank more wine. ‘They couldn’t see me in the dark,’ he said. Almost as if he felt for them.
    Peter frowned. ‘Polished armour is almost invisible in the dark,’ he said.
    ‘None of them had any armour,’ Swan added.
    ‘Several of them didn’t have weapons,’ Fra John Kendal said. ‘Young man, no one denies your courage. Then or now. Tell the story.’
    After several false starts, Swan did his best. He was drunk by the end, and Peter carried him to his bed.
    ‘In a year, it will be a tale to amuse the ladies, eh?’ Peter said.
    ‘Never,’ Swan spat. ‘Sweet Jesus saviour of the world, let me sleep without dreams.’
    While he fought with dead men, the Turks buried their dead and sailed away empty handed. The next day, with the worst hangover of his adult life, Swan stood in the pounding sunshine and looked at the empty beach with the refuse of war—barrel staves and human excrement and an old sail flapping noisily. He felt dirty. He bathed, and shaved, and laced all the laces on his clothing. It felt like improvement. And then, obedient to orders, he sailed with both Fra Domenico and Fra Tommaso for Chios.
    He managed to walk on board the galley, and he made himself take a turn rowing. When he was done, he drank down a gallon of delicious fresh water tinged with lemon, and threw up over the side. His left leg was weak. But his head was beginning to clear – both from the hangover and from the fight underground. He stumbled along the deck, drank more water, made sure he was clean, and presented himself to the two knights in the stern cabin.
    ‘You look better,’ Fra Tommaso said.
    ‘What are we doing?’ Swan asked. ‘Sir?’ he added, as respectfully as he could manage.
    ‘We’re bound for Chios,’ Fra Domenico said.
    Swan swallowed his reply and tried to look eager.
    Fra Tommaso pointed out of the stern windows.
    There in the sun lay six more galleys – five of them the order’s entire fleet, and the sixth bearing the banner of Genoa.
    ‘The Turks have gone to attack Kos,’ Tommaso said. ‘We have information that their real target is Chios, and their attacks on us were to keep us pinned at home while they looted the most valuable Christian possessions left in this sea.’
    ‘I have been appointed the order’s admiral,’ Fra Domenico said. ‘There should be a Genoese squadron at Chios and perhaps a few ships at Mytilini. I intend to gather them, and force the Turks to fight at sea.’
    ‘And God help us all,’ Fra Tommaso said.
    The sea was clean, and it was sunny, and very different from the stinking heat under the earth, and Swan felt better every day – better when he practised with a spear, and his left leg held under him, and better when he drank three cups of wine and ate a little opium to get himself straight to sleep. He created little ways to protect himself. He didn’t go below decks. He avoided being alone in the dark.
    They were two days going to Chios. They ran into an empty harbour, and left an hour later, sadder and wiser about the Genoese empire.
    Swan was accepted aboard as an officer, and was invited to the command meeting held in the stern cabin. A dozen knights sat along the low benches under the great silver oil lamp, which Swan suspected had been looted from a Greek church, and watched Chios fall away astern.
    ‘You’d think they’d have kept their fleet in these waters,’ Fra Tommaso said quietly.
    Fra Domenico shook his head. ‘Incredible. The fleet sailed home? Because the danger was too high? What danger are we speaking of,