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

bishop’s servants ran for a horse.
    What he got was a fine black churchman’s horse, a heavy beast that the bishop rode in parades and occasionally to falconry. But Swan didn’t care.
    He vaulted into his saddle, and joined the captain of the town.
    The mercenary was no older than Swan, and wore a fortune in armour. ‘Messire is a Knight of the Order?’ he asked. The bishop’s servants handed Swan gauntlets and a bevoir for his neck and a fine German sallet – none fit well, but all were far better than nothing. And a sword and a dagger.
    ‘I’m merely a volunteer,’ Swan admitted.
    The young captain twirled his moustache. ‘Well, by Saint George, Messire has already won the day with the Mahona, so if Messire would do my little company the honour of carrying the standard of the town, perhaps we will show these worthy Turks that Italians have some skill in arms. Eh?’
    Swan took the lance with the town’s small standard.
    With mounted crossbowmen and every local gentleman who had a horse and arms, they mustered a hundred cavalry for the sortie.
    The Turks were well prepared for such a move, and the captain, for all his youth, was too professional to waste men late in a victory, so the next hour was spent in a series of dashes from cover to cover, quite unlike Swan’s former notions of armoured combat on horseback before he came out to Rhodos. Under the captain’s shouted commands, they would ride at the beach, swerve in behind a hill, and their crossbowmen would snipe at the enemy rearguard from cover, while pages held their horses – and then, when the janissaries prepared a counter attack, the men-at-arms would sweep away.
    It was exactly the sort of warfare that Swan had practised under the turcopilier of Rhodos.
    By the time the sun was high in the sky, Swan, in almost no armour, had sweated through all his clothes, and the fully armoured men’s faces were as red as beets when they raised their visors or removed their armets or sallets.
    There were fewer than a dozen Turkish ships left on the beach when the janissary commander made his lethal error. He had a great deal of beach to cover, and he elected to spread his men in open ranks – only two deep, and four paces between men.
    The captain was eating an apple. He watched for a moment, and turned to Swan. ‘It is like the moment when she kisses you – you know what I mean, messire?’
    Swan laughed. ‘Oh, I do,’ he said.
    When they charged, the Turkish bows plucked men from saddles – or shot horses. But the Turks were too thinly distributed to stop the charge, and clearly had been misled as to their number – and in the time it takes a man to bleed out, the situation went from an organised retreat to a rout, and then the horsemen were in among the galleys, killing sailors, and after that, it was a massacre. The oarsmen were mostly slaves – and as soon as the horseman came down the beach, they screamed like ghazis and ripped at their captors with their bare hands.
    It was too late to be decisive. Eight of the dozen galleys got off the beach, and there was little the horsemen could do to stop them. But four ships were taken. And when the Turks tried to come in with other ships and take them back, they were greeted by the Italian captain’s little surprise – a pair of guns on wheeled carriages.
    The Turks ran for the open sea, and the garrison cheered from the walls.
    When they returned through the sally port, the Lord of Eressos stood there in half-armour with a borrowed sword.
    ‘Damn you!’ he said. ‘I’ve missed everything!’
    Swan slid from his borrowed horse. ‘I doubt it. I think this war will go on a long, long time.’
    He introduced the captain of the town to his Lesbian friend, and the three of them, when the horses were curried and the weapons cleaned, proceeded to bathe – first in water, and later in adulation.
    Late that night, Swan sat in a waterfront taverna, and gazed at the diamond on his finger.
    ‘Is that the jewel