‘To horse. With me.’ He gestured.
Swan dropped his bow atop the arrows and got a foot in the nearside stirrup.
Peter and Giannis loosed together. By bad luck they both picked the same target, and a young squire died with two heavy arrows in his body.
‘Get them,’ Alessandro said. He and Swan were now mounted, and the two of them charged the survivors, Swan’s heart hammering away. The two men were turning to run. Their horses had galloped up the steep hill, and now they were blown.
Alessandro was like an arrow. His horse passed across the two fleeing opponents’ front, and he cut back into them. In his first pass, he killed the horse of the lead man with a flick of his sword and a dainty montante into the animal’s unprotected neck. He and the second man swaggered swords – heavy, downward cuts ringing together.
Swan rode up on the man’s left side and thrust under the arm while his full intention was on the Italian. He turned, mouth open to scream, and Alessandro ran him through the mouth. The blow cut away his jaw as he fell off the sword.
Alessandro gave Swan a short salute, hilt to his lips. Then he rode across the face of the hill and waved up at Giannis. ‘Make sure they are all dead,’ he called.
Giannis waved and aimed. And loosed. His quarrel hit the count, still running towards them. It knocked him down, but in a second he was up. His armour was good enough to turn a light crossbow.
Peter’s arrow struck him a few paces farther on. It bounced off his breastplate, leaving a dent visible to Swan on his horse, twenty paces away.
Swan, unarmoured, had no intention of engaging the count. His sword high, he swept wide of the armoured man, riding carefully to stay clear of the archer’s line of fire.
‘Face me!’ roared the count. ‘You sons of bitches!’ He had his visor open.
Another arrow hit him – missed his face by a handspan and struck full on his lifted visor, ripping it away from the helmet.
Swan angled towards him, trying to draw his attention away from Alessandro, who was coming up from behind the armoured man. But Alessandro caused him to turn – and then swept by to the right, his horse labouring on the hillside.
Giannis shot a bolt into the back of the man’s unprotected thigh at twenty yards.
The count screamed and went down.
Alessandro rode up and dismounted even as Swan dismounted himself. Alessandro handed the Englishman his reins. ‘I’ll do this,’ he said. He shrugged.
‘Arrhhh. Arrhhh!’ the count grunted. He was rolling back and forth, his left hand scrabbling at the quarrel that had penetrated his thigh, broken the bone and probably lodged against his thigh armour – in front. He was clearly in incredible pain. His head thrashed back and forth.
Alessandro walked over to him – and suddenly the man dropped the pretence and got to one knee, his sword sweeping low in an attempt to cut one of Alessandro’s legs.
Alessandro blocked some of it with a sweeping downward parry, but the cut was low and he had no leg armour, and he stumbled and went down.
‘Fuck you, you bitch!’ screamed the count. ‘I’ll kill every fucking one of you, you whores!’ He was on one knee.
He began to drag himself to Alessandro, who tried to roll away.
Swan had no armour, and he had a feeling that the count was far out of his league as an opponent. And he wasn’t sure he owed Alessandro anything.
He considered intervening, and thought, I don’t have to do this.
But he wanted to be a knight, and not a thief. He had a feeling – in a long moment between stillness and an explosive leap – that this was his moment to choose. As was so often the case, in one moment of decision, he dared himself.
I don’t have to do this.
I really don’t have to do this.
He leaped over the Italian.
The count cut down.
He caught the cut on his high guard, as his uncles had taught him. The count twisted, but he was on one knee and probably not as powerful as he was used to being, and their blades locked, the two keen edges biting into each other just a little.
Swan had the enormous advantage of being on his feet, armour or no armour. He lunged with his left foot and rotated his sword on the point where the two blades were locked, and punched his pommel into the count’s unprotected face.
He was very fast. People always underestimated his speed.
The count’s teeth exploded over his pommel, and the man fell back, and Swan, almost as surprised as the count by his own success, cut wildly, his point bouncing up from the count’s gorget and cutting across the man’s lips and left eye.
He stumbled back.
The count screamed a long, drawn-out scream. Swan had only ever heard such a scream from a woman in childbirth. He looked like some sort of nightmare monster.
The count got his good leg under him and powered himself to his feet, his scream now a roar.
Peter’s arrow struck his breastplate right over the heart. It didn’t penetrate. But it knocked the count back, and he unbalanced and fell down again, and the spell was broken.
Giannis was shouting in Italian, ‘Get out of the way! Get out of the way!’
But Swan stood between the monster in armour and Alessandro, who he wasn’t sure he liked.
Alessandro was staunching the flow of blood from his ankle. ‘You have to kill him,’ he said.
Swan walked over to the count, who was lying on his back with one leg cocked and the other flat on the ground. He was breathing as if he’d run a race.
‘Je me rends,’ he said heavily. ‘Je me rends.’ He waved his sword-hand.
Swan put his right foot on the hand, pinning it to the earth.
‘Jesu! Get off it, you little bitch. I have yielded.’ The fire in the count’s eyes was unholy. Even with a foot on the man’s sword-arm, his face ruined by the pommel strike, a crossbow bolt in his thigh, he was terrifying in his full plate, and his size. Swan feared him, even now.
‘Pray, Messire Count. You are about to die.’ Swan placed his sword-point near the man’s face, and found that his point was wobbling from the trembling of his hand.
‘I’m worth a thousand ducats, sodomite. Get off my hand.’
‘Pray, messire.’ Swan found his hand was steadying.
‘God is a fucking lie, boy.’ The man lay there, his one good eye staring.
Swan wished he would make one more attempt to rise – to fight. Anything to justify what he was about to do.
His point wavered.
Alessandro said, ‘Just kill him, for the love of God.’
He took a deep breath and . . .
Giannis leaned over and pulled the latch on his crossbow, and his quarrel blew through the man’s skull and killed him instantly. ‘There’s money wasted,’ he said cheerfully. ‘You hit bad, messire?’
Peter was hobbling, favouring his side.
In the distance, four dust clouds on the plain gradually merged to two, and then to one. By the time Stefanos came riding back, Alessandro was on horseback, one foot out of the stirrup and dangling, with Swan’s neck cloth around his ankle.
Stefanos had Marcus over his horse. He shrugged at his capitano. ‘Bad luck,’ he said.
Alessandro shook his head. ‘Dead?’ he asked.
Stefanos nodded.
‘What a waste,’ Alessandro said. ‘You get them both?’
‘Yes,’ Stefanos said.
‘Where are the bodies?’ Alessandro asked.
‘In the river. In armour. What do you think – I was born yesterday?’ The Greek spat. ‘Any of them have anything worth taking? Those two had nothing but their swords.’
‘Leave it. Take nothing but coins. Nothing to mark us.’
‘What about the horses?’ Giannis asked with a whine in his voice.
Alessandro was in pain, and his temper was short. ‘What did I just say?’
‘Fuck. What do we get out of this?’ complained Stefanos. ‘Marcus is dead. I got less than an ecu.’