Tom Swan and the Siege of Belgrade: Volume Seven

by Christian Cameron

  Will Kendal laughed and patted a bundle affectionately. ‘Where do you think these were made?’ he asked. ‘London, that’s where. Why are they here? A Scotswoman appeared and produced them. It’s a miracle.’ He laughed.

  Sam Cressy, recovered from the blow to his head, showed Swan a cane arrow, the kind the Turks used. ‘I found a few dozen that I can use,’ he said. ‘Some are uncommon thick.’

  The pages and squires were playing dice; Clemente was playing piquet with the Greek girl.

  Swan could see the whole Turkish army from the walls. Most of it seemed to be forming in three huge divisions behind the far gun line, between the camp and the really big Turkish guns, which had to fall silent.

  Almost at his feet, in the lower town, the Hungarian peasants and volunteer labour pulled down houses and threw up a long temporary wall. Huge piles of brush were carried into the lower town.

  The sun was like an enemy.

  But his arming coat was dry. He lifted it, stretched his arms, rolled his bad shoulder, and thought of Šárka. Then he spared a thought for Sophia. A Turkish gun fired, and Swan winced.

  Most of Hunyadi’s professional soldiers were already out in the lower town. But the voivode formed his elite; knights of his banderium, a big contingent of German knights in magnificent new Gothic armour, Swan’s small company of lances, and several hundred Serb and Albanian stradiotes in the fortress’s central square.

  He didn’t give a speech. He’d have had to give it in three or four languages anyway; instead he insisted that all the soliders lie down, or at least sit. A small horde of priests and nuns went through the square, giving communion. A line formed by two Dominicans, who heard confessions.

  Of course, there was another kind of line for sword-sharpening. Men played cards, and many drank, and from the sounds under the portico, some had convinced the laundresses to do more than wash. Swan moved from group to group, wishing that he was not the captain, and could get drunk, or embrace a woman, or just sit down and close his eyes.

  There was a crash, and a sound like an almost eternal scream. It carried very clearly because the Turkish guns had been silent most of the afternoon.

  Swan’s eyes met Di Silva’s.

  The first Turkish wave had attacked.

  Swan drank his third cup of wine and noted that his hands would not stop shaking. He’d never had so much wine before a fight, and he noted with vinous detachment that he was showing all the signs of fear; the smallest stone in his shoe troubled him, and the pain in his shoulder seemed enhanced.

  ‘I hate waiting,’ he said rather unnecessarily to Elspet the laundress, who was gathering up her pasteboard cards.

  She met his eye and frowned – just a hint of a frown, which conveyed that she, as a woman and potential victim, had every reason to find the waiting more oppressive than he, in his armour. And then she smiled, her bright, never-affront-a-customer smile. ‘Shall I comfort you, sweetie?’ she asked. ‘There’s some as like a priest, and some as like a lady.’

  Swan looked over the fortress’s central square. The sun was sinking out in the west, towards Burgundy and France and England. That sun was setting over all the countries that had not sent a contingent – most not a single man – to face the Turks. In a few short weeks, there was one element of the Hungarian and Serb character that matched that of the Morean Greeks perfectly; a sort of contemptuous anger at the rich, powerful princes of Europe who left them to die before the most powerful military machine to be seen since the Caesars.

  Only Hunyadi’s banderium and Swan’s lances were left. Company by company, the reserves had been fed into the lower town, and when that was lost, into the upper town, which was now in play. Or so men told Hunyadi. He stood with his family, his son and his brothers-in-law.

  A pair of messengers came in, light-armed Hungarian archers running like the men on ancient Greek vases, or so Swan thought.

  I have had too much to drink.

  He rose and blew Elspet a kiss. ‘Another time,’ he said. ‘I’m afraid it’s my turn to dance.’

  Hunyadi waved at him, and Swan nodded to Clemente, who blew three sharp notes on his hunting horn.

  To Swan’s immense satisfaction, every man in the company, praying, drinking, wenching, playing cards, polishing armour or counting coins, rose as one man from whatever they were doing, and loped into their ranks.

  Hunyadi nodded. ‘This is how I imagine the legions must have been,’ he said. ‘Listen – no plan is perfect, and the Turks are very good. They have stormed the water gate behind us.’ He shrugged in the near-darkness. ‘I do not know how. At least a hundred, maybe more, all janissaries. You must clear the water gate. As fast as you can. And then you must come all the way to the upper town and help us hold it.’

  Swan nodded. His mind ran on, picturing, in order, the gates from the citadel down to the fortification and three towers that guarded the quay and the fortified dockyard of the fortress; seeing in his head the three lengths of wall and the towers.

  ‘Are any of the towers still held by our people?’ he asked.

  Hunyadi shook his head. ‘I have no idea,’ he said. ‘Panicked men count every Turk ten times, but Ser Suane, if the Turks gain the water gate and get enough reinforcements to hold it, we are done. And we won’t even be able to send the women and treasure away.’

  But having said that, Hunyadi put a heavy hand on Swan’s steel-plated shoulder and smiled. ‘But by God, if you can clear it, we are close. Understand!’

  Swan bowed, as if to an emperor. Then he turned to Ser Niccolo.

  ‘Men-at-arms, then pages. Archers last, and master archers can decide where they go. We have to retake the water gate.’

  Will Kendal tugged his beard. Hugh Willoughby’s professional glance took in the fading daylight and the light wind. ‘Archers on me!’ he roared, and they were running.

  Swan put himself at the head of his men-at-arms. ‘Follow me,’ he said.

  The men at the fortress gate that faced the Sava knew that the Turks were in the water gate fortifications but no more.

  Swan took a deep breath, wishing he had time – time to climb a tower, time to make his guesswork more educated.

  High above him, Will Kendal saved him. Swan saw an arrow flash, its fletching catching the red sunlight as it plummeted into the Danube side of the water gate fortifications, and he looked up to see his archers on the wall high above him, marking targets to his right and below.

  That told Swan that the Turks had moved through the upper town and along the south-facing walls of the citadel, and climbed something – an unguarded tower, perhaps. But he could hear fighting, and that meant someone was resisting. He watched two more heavy arrows sail across and down – far down.

  So it was possible that the Turks had not yet reached the Sava walls, and thus the sally port that lay almost in front of Swan.

  A huge risk. His men would be entering one by one – if the damned thing was even unlocked. But if it was unlocked, and if the Turks were still on the other side of the waterside fortress, he’d be in unscathed, with time to form the company.

  He heard a Hungarian war cry. That decided him.

  ‘On me,’ he said, and ran down the inner-wall stairs. During the day, even during the siege, many people used this postern door and the one in the water gate as a short cut around all the ‘official’ gates and their guards. Swan was delighted to find the postern unlatched. He stepped through, wincing as part of him expected a Turkish scimitar, but the steeply sloped grass was empty and the light was still good.

  Swan ran. He was tired and hot and wearing almost his own weight in armour, but he had forgotten how to be afraid now and he had wings. He ran across the slope without looking back, and the closer he got to the little black postern gate, the more it appeared that it too was unlatched and slightly open.

  Men were dying on the other side.

  Swan didn’t even slacken his run. His armoured left shoulder hit the door and it sprang open, smashing back again
st the stone wall behind it, and Swan was in.

  One glance told him that the Turks were on the opposite curtain wall and in one tower. His side of the open ground – usually full of small sheds used as warehouses, but clear now – was empty. Up on the far catwalk, storming parties of janissaries in tall hats, brilliant feather, kaftans, gleaming mail and plate and long trousers tucked into yellow boots with steel greaves were trying to break into the taller, central tower from both sides.

  Swan turned and held his partisan at shoulder height, in both hands, so that it was parallel to the ground. ‘Here! Form on me!’ he yelled.

  Men-at-arms poured in, intermixed with pages. Many of the pages had latchets or Hungarian bows, and as soon as they were in place they began to loose their shafts and bolts. The Turks were above them, but they had no cover and they had a stone wall as backdrop.

  ‘On me!’ Swan screamed. He thought that, by sheer volume, he could force the slowest runners like Ser Niccolo to fly the last paces and get into line. It was in his head that he would not charge the Turks until he had all his swords at his back.

  The Venetian boy who had helped build the water craft was loosing bolt after bolt from a small but apparently very powerful self-cocking crossbow. His speed was great enough to catch Swan’s eye even in the midst of battle – the boy had six bolts in his fingers, and then he had none. When he loosed the last, he dropped his latchet crossbow on a bandolier so that it hung from his shoulder and grinned at his commander.

  Swan had been standing with his back to the Turks, forming his men. Now he turned to find that his pages had cleared the upper walls – not at all what he’d expected.

  He took a deep breath, looking at the situation, which was changing before his eyes. And then, ‘Di Silva! Take the contingent of men-at-arms on the left up those stairs. Now!’ He turned to the Venetian boy. No officer was ever appointed over pages – they were really glorified servants.

  ‘Marco!’ he said. The name came to him as if whispered by an angel. Ser Zane’s page.

  ‘Capitano?’ the boy asked.

  ‘You are now ensign of the pages. Keep up the fire on any Turk who shows himself on the wall. See there.’ Swan pointed, even as Di Silva roared his Portuguese war cry and reached the head of the stone steps. The Turks coming in at the corner froze – even brave men full of opium feared Di Silva. ‘That is where they come in, and now this near tower. Understand?’

  Marco’s eyes shone. ‘Yes!’

  Swan waved his partisan at Columbino and the others from the left-hand division of the company. ‘We go this way,’ he said, pointing at the two towers of the water gate.

  Ser Columbino raised a hand. ‘Wait!’ he said.

  Swan turned to him, one hand on his visor, ready to slam it shut.

  ‘Tomorrow is our day. Saint Mary Magdalena.’ Columbino shrugged.

  Swan laughed. ‘Then she can’t be too busy to spare us a little help today. Ready?’

  The men-at-arms growled.

  ‘We go in under the gate, and up all the steps at once. Kill anyone who wears a turban. We don’t need forty men on one set of steps – only the lead two will be killing. Rest when you can. Try to clear the water gate and drive the survivors on to the walls where the pages can finish them.’

  Men nodded. High above them, a Çorbacı of janissaries fought his way to the tip of the water gate and emerged on to the roof with a great green silk flag in hand. It took him a moment to unfurl it, and for that moment every man froze.

  Swan’s mouth formed a curse.

  And a hundred and seventy paces behind Swan, and high above, Sam Cressy pulled his great yew bow all the way to his ear, gave a little grunt, and his fingers leapt clear of the bowstring. The massive arrow vanished into the rose-tinted sky even as Hugh Willoughby began to draw his own.

  A man might have counted three while the arrow was in the air, if he was quick. By luck, it caught the Çorbacı as he stretched to untangle part of his banner caught, by ill-luck, on the banner-pole’s spear-point. The arrow struck him in the centre of his back, and the big barbed swallowtail head severed his spine so that he was dead before he hit the ground, eighty feet below, almost at Swan’s feet.

  Swan looked down at the dead man, and the banner with a verse of the Koran lying on the cobbles.

  He pointed with his partisan. ‘Tell me our patroness is not here beside us!’ he called. He had never, in all his life, felt so full of … something. Awe, wonder and rage.

  He went up the stone steps, already slick with other men’s blood. The Hungarians had died hard, and the Turks had given no quarter – and taken none.

  When Swan finally found the Turkish storming party after an exhausting climb, they had laden the steps with corpses, Turks and Hungarians intermixed.

  And they had bows. Swan came around a loop of the tightly curving steps and an arrow whanged off his breastplate. Swan pushed up, a foot on a dead man, and got another foot up. He could see the Turkish archer looking for a joint, even as he raised his partisan one-handed – high, point forward, the only position he could manoeuvre it into on the turning stair. His shoulder screamed, and he thrust, and the first Turk parried the blow easily on his sword – Swan’s left foot slipped on a corpse, and he went down on his knees, three steps from the top, and the Turkish archer’s arrows glanced along his helmet crest and vanished, clattering down the steps. Swan’s fall threw him forward, not back, and his partisan point went down into the foot of the Turkish swordsman guarding the step. Blows rained down on Swan’s backplate, and he crawled forward, his right shoulder a crescendo of pain, his armoured knee slipping on the blood-slick stone steps but the swordsman was down and screaming and Columbino’s partisan was inflicting death behind him, and he got his knees under him even as another janissary hit him – hard – on the head with a hammer. He went down, again, across the man whose foot he’d all but torn off. The man was screaming, and rolling, and Swan got an arm on the wounded man’s shoulder and let him roll, putting the Turk atop him. Then, while the man tried to pound at him with bare fists, Swan got his right hand to his dagger, and drew it. He killed the man atop him with one blow, and then rolled to his left side so that he could use his strong left arm to get to his feet. Nothing hit him, and he got his back to the near wall, climbing to his knees, his armet slightly askew, and almost blind, his heart fit to explode – got his right leg up, and powered to his feet.

  He shook his head to settle his helmet.

  All the Turks were dead, and the room was full of men in steel. Columbino was leading them up the next steps. Swan was now at the back.

  ‘And the first shall be last,’ he said.

  Young Cornazzano turned, easily recognised in his old-fashioned bassinet. ‘Capitano!’ he said. ‘Are you good?’

  Swan’s shoulder felt like something alien, his hips hurt, and his head was still ringing from the war-hammer blow. He couldn’t get enough air into his lungs.

  ‘Good,’ he said. ‘Everything is good.’

  The last Turks trapped on the upper storey fought like tigers and died, hopelessly outmatched by the armour. In the semi-dark of twilight-lit castle rooms, armour was the edge in every fight – no man could parry every blow, especially when five fought five in the space of a stairhead or a doorway.

  Swan didn’t fight again. He was at the back, prowling, checking the downed men to make sure there were no surprises beneath them – an ugly job. But he seized a moment to lean out of an arrow slit and drink in the relatively cool air of evening. In the yard below, the pages had cleared the walls, and were pointing to Di Silva’s men whenever a Turk showed himself.

  Swan knew they were coming to the moment when men would sag – the storming action over, all of them, he among them, would want to collapse to the ground and cry, or pray, or simply drink water and stare.

  He never made it to the top floor, as Orietto’s squire Lucca announced it clear, and then they were all coming down, and suddenly, again, Swan was in front again.

&n
bsp; It was time to clear the south wall. The pages had done most of the work, and Swan, having reclaimed his partisan, made his way along the wall carefully, prodding the Turkish corpses as he went. The catwalk was so narrow that a fanatic could push a man-at-arms to his death on the stones below, armour or no armour, and Swan was not interested in losing anyone.

  He made sure of every corpse. It was disgusting and brutal and he tried to seal his mind from it.

  And then he was spear to spear with an armoured Turkish soldier – an officer, no doubt. The tower had a hole blown in its side and the Turks had ladders against the outside, and they were still coming through, even though they had lost, by now, and they knew it. They had no hope of taking the gate behind Swan, which was clear, and the courtyard had become a trap.

  Swan couldn’t be sure of any of this, and it didn’t matter – it was just his spear-point and that of his adversary. Behind whom Juan di Silva and Niccolo Zane loomed, fighting their way to the head of the breach from the other side of the catwalk. The janissary officer allowed his glance to flicker to the other door, where one of his men was cut nearly in half by Zane’s long sword-blow, and Swan won the crossing of the spears, mastered his opponent’s shaft, and his own spear-point slammed down, breaking the man’s armoured fingers, and then leaped up like a trout rising from still water into the man’s unarmoured face, the spear-strike of a lifetime, and the officer was down, Swan passed him into the chamber, his partisan mysteriously broken between his hands, and he flung the halves away and got the war hammer off his belt, took blows on his heavy left shoulder armour, and then he was by Ser Niccolo, shoulder to shoulder, at the head of the two Turkish ladders, and the men below – Allah and opium notwithstanding – did not want to climb. Columbino came up behind Swan and killed a man over his shoulder with a spear …