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

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.
    He was there for long enough to feel the total panic. He couldn’t get his head under the water. He would not do it.
    Any moment, a Turk would put his head over the stern and see Auntie – or him.
    He tried again.
    Damn it.
    He tried prayer, and nothing came.
    Tried thinking of beautiful women. Of the head of St George.
    Of life.
    He didn’t breathe deeply enough, but in the end he got his head under water, and he got under the boat, and his desperately questing hand found the little keg secured by the rope. Weighted with lead.
    Fuck them all , he thought. I’m going to pull this off.
    He made enough noise to wake the dead, getting back in his boat.
    No one paid him any attention, because Drappierro and Hamza Beg and Omar Reis were shouting like bulls.
    Swan opened the small keg. Inside it was full of tallow, except for the bars of lead that killed its buoyancy, the oiled leather packet of gunpowder, and the small oiled silk packet. Swan took that. He didn’t smile. The fun of the prank was gone with Mustafa’s throat.
    Now it was just a job.
    Inside the powder bag was the length of a man’s hand of slow match, and his tinder box. Swan reassembled his device – the packet of powder inside the tallow, which he packed back, his hands greasy with the stuff. He pulled the waxed plug on the barrel and fed the fuse through it, and then he tapped the top of the keg into place until the thin board snapped past the ends of the staves.
    It took him ten tries to light his char cloth. Auntie was a hundred yards away, coasting on the current.
    He giggled.
    He reached out and grabbed the anchor chain and pulled, so his boat began to float north along the side of the galley. Swan got this oars in the water, set the keg on the stern post and gave three long pulls so he was moving well – he was clumsy, using one hand to balance the barrel every other stroke, and the boat swung back and forth and bumped along the galley’s low sides.
    A sailor – deck crew – looked out over the side, his head silhouetted against the moon.
    Swan ignored him and touched the char cloth to the slow match. The fuse began to burn, a thin wisp of smoke rising in the still air.
    Drappierro shouted, ‘Of course it’s the little bastard. He’s made the whole thing up – forged the letter! Listen, Pasha! He’s a thief and liar!’
    ‘There’s a man in a boat!’ shouted the sailor.
    A hackbut appeared over the side, the torchlight sparkling on its polished barrel.
    Swan had expected to have another minute to let the fuse burn. But his time was up – he could hear the gods telling him he was done.
    Or just God.
    He rose at his oars, plucked up the keg, and threw it with both hands as hard as he could into the air.
    And then, without awaiting the result, he dived into the water.
    And at the bottom of his dive, he swam down, even as he heard the bark of hackbuts above the water.
    The dreams of death – Salim’s death – followed him in the water, but he out-swam them.
    He swam until he could no longer hold his breath, and even then he moved his arms. It was suddenly light all around him.
    All around him.
    He was trying to rise when the fist of a giant slammed into the water above him, and he was forced out – and down. He swallowed water, but he was past his panic.
    He coughed out the last of his air, utterly disoriented. Unable to choose which way led to the surface and air. The light dimmed – but fortuna showed him the glint of a glass bottle on the bottom of the harbour where some reckless sailor had dropped the precious thing – and suddenly his brain worked, and up and down were restored.
    He gave a kick to the surface.
    The Turkish flagship was on fire.
    Swan laughed.
    Swan swam into the town on the exuberance of success, and climbed the central pier unaided and undetected. The