Tom Swan and the Head of St. George Part Five: Rhodes by Christian Cameron Page A

or found an old one. There was a great siege here in antiquity.’ Swan levered himself to his feet, avoided striking his head, and crouched, feeling a variety of pains in his back.
    Behind him, Peter asked, ‘Just what do you expect to find? Turks?’
    Swan hadn’t really given it any thought. Now that he did think about it …
    ‘Why not just tell Sir John?’ Peter asked.
    ‘He thinks me a fool,’ Swan spat.
    ‘No, he thinks you are young,’ Peter said fondly. ‘Vich you are, of course. But I keep you alive and make you much more smart, eh?’
    Swan tried to ignore the Dutchman’s banter as crawling on his hands and knees in a tunnel frequented by cats in near-complete darkness was not easy. His breastplate didn’t seem to want to fit in places that his eyes told him he could.
    He had to pull the lantern forward, then wriggle past it, then pull it forward again. In the process, something crossed his hands. He flinched.
    Peter felt the flinch. ‘Vat vas dat?’ he asked.
    Swan’s hands were shaking. ‘A cat,’ he said. ‘Mother of God, I hope it was a cat.’
    Swan had never been a great one for prayer, but several more minutes of scrambling along a narrow tunnel in the stinking dark caused him to start a veritable litany of prayer, interspersed with curses.
    There was a noise ahead of them. It wasn’t a single clank , but a series of noises – a rattle, a long grinding, a muffled thump.
    ‘Shit,’ Peter said. ‘Now I’m tinking you are in the right of it.’
    Swan heard him sigh.
    ‘Ve should perhaps go back and fetch help, yes?’ Peter asked.
    ‘I want to be sure ,’ Swan said.
    ‘I’m plenty sure,’ Peter put in. ‘ Lamps out! ’ he hissed.
    Swan obeyed.
    He had thought it was dark before. Now it was utterly dark, the kind of dark he remembered from the cisterns under Constantinople. But they had been clean and airy, and this was hot, close, and reeked of cat and worse.
    Swan pushed forward. It was his usual reaction to fear and terror – to go at it – and now he scraped along in the stifling dark until his questing right hand found … nothing.
    He reached down, and his breastplate scraped against the floor – or the street, hard to tell. But his right fingers found stone.
    To his front, suddenly there was light.
    And voices, speaking in Turkish.
    ‘No! We will take you right into the city!’ complained one.
    ‘Silence, dog! The knights can hear you. We don’t want to come into the city. We will use your tunnels to place a charge of the powder that burns.’
    ‘Stapha, you are an old woman. Let’s press forward and seize the wall! We’ll be famous! The Pasha will make us all lords!’
    ‘Stupid Ghazi! The Pasha is a fool and will not reward anyone.’
    ‘Shh! In the name of Allah, the merciful and the compassionate, will all of you be silent!’
    The last voice had authority.
    Swan turned his head. ‘ Go and get help! ’ he hissed.
    Peter grunted.
    After a moment, Swan reached out to touch the other man – and there was nothing there.
    Tom Swan was alone in the stinking darkness with twenty Turks.
    Very slowly, while the Turks debated their next move, Swan swung his booted feet over the low sill he’d discovered and tested the lower floor. Cautious experimentation revealed that he was dropping down into a room – a larger room, judging from the echoes. Or perhaps just a broader corridor. Swan contemplated going back – back along the cat-infested crawlspace behind him. But he couldn’t face fighting in such a constricted place. He was too afraid of coming to a place that his breastplate wouldn’t fit going backwards.
    Having got his feet down to the new level, Swan reached out to right and left. The walls were there – just beyond easy reach in both directions.
    His heart was beating like an armourer planishing metal – tinktinktinktink. It was so loud he was afraid it was making noise, and so close under his throat that he felt he might throw up. His breastplate