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

them took a Turkish arrow in the gut. The man sat abruptly, legs spread, the arrow sticking out of his back. He fell forward a little, and blood ran out of his mouth, but he didn’t scream. He just looked . . . surprised.
    The bishop began to weep.
    He was holding the hand of a little girl, and trying to drag her along, and a woman – her mother? – followed them, reaching for the girl.
    An arrow struck her, and she fell.
    Swan swept the little girl up and held her in his helmet arm, and ran for the gate.
    No arrows touched him.
    The bishop grabbed another child and dragged him along behind. The child screamed. The child’s father called ‘Run, run!’ in Greek.
    Looking back from the gate, Swan could see very few bodies, and a great deal of screaming panic.
    They ran through the gate, and out into the main thoroughfare of the northern part of the city – almost like a country road, so far from the inhabited core.
    But there was no Turkish ambush. A dozen mounted Turks were quietly rounding up the slaves, but they offered no violence to the embassy. They did smile, and laugh, and point.
    Alessandro didn’t stop moving. ‘This way,’ he called, and they were off, across a rubble-strewn field where once there had been a set of noblemen’s houses. The child sitting on Swan’s arm seemed to weigh ten stone, and he cursed the useless helmet. He was breathing like a bellows.
    The mounted Turks watched them go, laughing and calling things.
    They went almost a quarter-mile across the rubble, down old streets with no buildings left on either side, and through a great field that looked as if it had been recently burned.
    A great semicircle of churches, their gold or bronze domes rising above buildings, tenements and rubble, marked the edge of the inhabited city, still another quarter of a mile away. To the north, behind them, a column of mounted Turks trotted out of the Blacharnae Palace.
    ‘We’ve come away with nine slaves,’ Alessandro said. He motioned for them to stop, and everyone – armoured or not – stood, virtually unable to speak, breathing like so many armourer’s bellows.
    ‘If I escape this, I will burn a hundred candles of white wax on the altar of Saint Mark,’ panted one of the young Venetian men-at-arms.
    Cesare simply leaned over and threw up. He did it neatly, wih the economy of the heavy drinker, and then he spat.
    Swan had a water bottle, and he passed it to his friend, who raised it in a mock toast. ‘When I die, see that Donna Lucrescia has all my love, and give my money to the poor.’ He stood bent over, and his breaths came in great gasps.
    Alessandro was watching the Turks to the north. Ahead of them, at the edge of the suburbs, there was a low roar like distant surf.
    Alessandro rubbed his chin. ‘I’m going to assume, for the sake of speed, that you ignored my advice and took some petty revenge on Omar Reis.’
    Swan looked at the Turks. ‘I—’
    Alessandro raised a hand, forestalling argument. ‘I have misspent my life, wasted my patronage, squandered my father’s money, and lived a life steeped in sin. Despite which, I’m not sure I ever managed to be so complete a dangerous, ignorant fool as you.’ He shrugged. ‘Although I admit that you perform these little miracles of idiocy with a certain sprezzatura .’
    ‘What did you do?’ gasped Cesare. ‘Sleep with his wife?’
    ‘Daughter,’ said Swan, with some pride mixed with regret.
    Cesare laughed. ‘I’m so glad I’m about to die in a great crusade – a true reflection of the state of the faith, by God! We are not a handful of Christians standing against the horses of Islam! We’re a dozen dupes of Thomas Swan’s love affair!’ He laughed.
    ‘He wasn’t going to let us go,’ Swan argued. There was a whine in his voice.
    ‘He might have,’ Alessandro said. ‘He might not have. I’m sure you made the Sultan’s choice easier.’ He spat. Pointed with the dagger in his right fist. ‘See the crowd?’ he