Free Tom Swan and the Head of St George Part Three: Constantinople by Christian Cameron Page A

at him from a horse length away, and the arrow went through the outer rim of his buckler, passed up the length of his arm, and cut into his neck. Swan was again forced to cut across his body because his damned horse wouldn’t turn – he missed his cut, but by sheer luck the mare’s stumble and the alignment of his point spitted his opponent on his sword, and the man grabbed the blade in his neck with both hands and ripped it from Swan’s grasp.
    At that moment, Swan’s horse, shot by a dozen arrows, subsided to the ground. Swan fell and hit the ground gently enough, but now he lost his buckler too.
    He rolled to his feet.
    There was dust everywhere, and they couldn’t see him, and he had trouble finding them, even a horse length away. He drew the dagger from his hip, ran three steps and threw himself at a man who was looking the other way in the dust. The dagger went home in the man’s back and Swan dragged him from his saddle, but instead of a clean kill and possession of the man’s horse, Swan found himself pinned under the falling man, his feet still caught in his stirrups, and the horse wheeling around them like the equine rim of a human wheel. Swan let go in disgust and fell backwards, and the horse bolted, the corpse of the dead man jolting obscenely behind.
    Swan just sat in the swirling dust. It was as if he was a puppet and his strings had been cut. He couldn’t seem to get to his feet.
    But the Turks – the survivors – had given the fight up as a bad job, and ridden free. They’d cantered away north, to the next major intersection almost a stadion away. Even as Swan tried to watch them amid the dust and his own fatigue, he saw the first of their arrows winging towards him.
    It missed.
    He began to crawl back towards the bishop. Then he realised that his most prized possession – the count’s sword – was lying pinned under a dead Turk. He turned and crawled like a baby to the man’s corpse. His hands were still locked around the blade.
    Swan got his feet under him and rose.
    Arrows began to sink into the street around him.
    He got his hands on the hilt and pulled. He wiped it on the dead man’s kaftan, and sheathed it.
    And, out of pure stubbornness, he took the man’s curved dagger and his belt purse. Only then did he lurch into an exhausted run. It was only a hundred paces back to the bishop, but it seemed like an English country mile. Men were shouting – another of the Venetian marines was loosing arrows, and arrows were falling around him. The Spaniard slumped to his knees and then fell to the ground.
    The bishop rose to his knees and lifted his pectoral cross. The second marine took a Turkish arrow in his shoulder and fell. The sailor who had carried the head lay unmoving. Even as Swan stumbled up, Alessandro lifted the Spaniard over his shoulder – the man must have been hurt worse than had at first appeared. And Giannis snapped another shot at the now-distant Turks and slung his crossbow.
    ‘Bishop!’ croaked Swan.
    Giannis saw what he wanted and went to the bishop.
    Swan got his hands on the armet. The tight-wrapped cloth inside the helmet looked intact.
    He shuffled towards the market.
    Giannis got the bishop on to his shoulder and followed him.
    Cesare joined the Greek and took the man’s legs, and they ran in a sort of sideways shuffle towards the fountain.
    North along the avenue, Swan could see a man in a plumed turban on a fine bay horse. He was at the head of a squadron of Turks – perhaps a hundred. He had a horse-tail riding whip in his hand, and he used it to gesture – at them.
    Swan placed his helmet carefully on the ground, picked up the Spaniard’s abandoned bow, fitted an arrow from a Turk’s nearby quiver, and took a deep breath.
    ‘Swan!’ roared Alessandro.
    They had the bishop at the edge of the fountain.
    He raised the bow. The range was extreme – two hundred paces, at least.
    He drew the nock of the arrow all the way to his own ear, as his uncles had