It took them less than a day to sail back to Kalloni, and Swan lost precious hours dickering with a Kalloni bureaucrat for the loan of a horse. He signed a document he didn’t read, in the name of the Sovereign Order, used the Lord of Eressos’s name as often as he dared, and finally rode a small horse – but a good one – up over the ridges towards Mytilini. He alternated canters and walks, and every hour he walked beside the horse.
He lost the road with Mount Olympos visible against the moon and stars, and wound up in a deep valley with a Roman aqueduct. He spent half the night sorting out this error and reached the road by a farm track just after dawn. He was exhausted and angry, and he crested the great ridge above Mytilini only to find two bearded men with halberds blocking his way.
‘All your money, and the horse and the boots, my lord,’ said the nearer man. He grinned.
His brother – the resemblance was plain – grinned too.
A twitch in the gloom, and Swan saw a third man with a heavy crossbow, fully spanned.
Swan had no idea how well trained his horse was, but he knew they’d kill him either way.
He leaned forward, put his right spur firmly against his horse’s right side, and got his right hand on his sword hilt – and drew. The sword went straight forward as the horse turned, and his cut took the older brother’s eyes and cut through the bridge of his nose.
The man screamed and fell forward, and Swan wasn’t there as the crossbow bolt ripped through the air. The horse turned with its back feet, pivoting on its forefeet, and Swan was almost under the saddle he was bent so low. As the second man came in reach, Swan began to rise in the stirrups, and he cut at the pole arm’s haft – three strong cuts, one, two, three – to keep the man off him, and then his horse was galloping down the road, throwing sparks in the early morning gloom.
Swan looked back once, to see the two surviving bandits crouched over the blinded man.
He stopped to clean his sword and found the blade bent from his heavy hacking at the pole arm haft – worse, there was a deep chip in the blade where he’d cut into the iron on the haft.
He cursed. He had loved that sword. Showy as it was, he’d bought it with Violetta.
He rode into Mytilini after Latin matins, and found the knights of the order in church. He knelt and prayed, and followed Fra Tommaso out into the sunlight.
‘You smell a treat,’ Tommaso said. He embraced the younger man. ‘You survived.’
Swan looked away. When he looked back, all of his choices were made, and his plans laid. ‘Very well. Sirs, I am a spy for Bessarion. I will tell you everything. The men of Chios are in the process of selling the town to the Turks. I was sent —’ He paused and looked at Fra Domenico. ‘I was sent to get your ring, which the traitor Drappierro wants. If I do not get it – he kills Zambale and …’ Swan looked at the two knights. ‘And my wife. So he claims. As far as I can see, he’s running both sides of the negotiations at Chios, and the Turks dance to his tune.’ He shrugged. ‘He wants me to abandon Bessarion and work for him.’
Domenico smiled at Tommaso, who frowned. Domenico stripped the ring off his finger and put it in Swan’s hand. ‘Take it, then. Go buy the young lord’s freedom. He is, as I understand it, a volunteer of my order.’ The man that all Christians called ‘Fra Diablo’ gave a laugh that would have chilled a murderer. ‘Listen, Master Swan – never let a material object own you. I won it at cards. Take it.’ He smiled. ‘And think – when you have a chance – of the difference between men like us and Drappierro.’
Swan all but fell on his face. ‘You mean it?’ he asked.
Domenico laughed. ‘Now – can you fight? Your return will fill a very useful place.’ He gave the Englishman a hard smile. ‘I will choose to trust you. If you fail us – God’s curse on you.’
Sunset.
Swan was beyond exhaustion – a little light headed, his hands shaking. He wore the red coat with a white cross of a full knight of the order, and he stood on the command deck of the Katherine Sturmy, which towered over the other ships pulling off the beach as a castle towers over a host of infantry.
He’d had a busy day. Out into the town, meeting the silversmith and the wine seller, up to the palace to find a sword, three meetings with the captains to plan Fra Domenico’s mad attack …
And no visit with Theodora. He’d smelled her perfume while he chatted with Prince Dorino.
In the end, Dorino had offered all the help he could have dreamt of, including the fine German long sword that hung heavily at his side.
The prince had smiled. ‘It’s not what you came for,’ he said. ‘But unlike my fair cousin, it may save your life.’
Swan smiled as he thought of Prince Dorino.
All five galleys were forming inside the breakwater, and there was nothing that the Turks could do without risking the fire of the great castle. But they were forming halfway across the strait, a dozen black hulls in the failing light.
Richard Sturmy was also wearing the habit of the order, and he had good armour – half-armour – which shone as red as his coat in the red sunset.
‘I feel like a great man,’ the Englishman admitted. ‘Always wanted to be a knight. Whew! Look at me. Katherine – I wish she could see me!’
Goodwife Sturmy and her daughter were safe in the castle. The great merchant ship with her high sides and bluff bows for fighting the northern Atlantic had unloaded most of her remaining cargo of lead and all her new alum and was now mounting a pair of Prince Dorino’s cannon, and her waist was full of his mercenaries. The fighting tower forward was fully mounted, and from it floated the banner of the order.
A dozen knights appeared to grace her decks.
Indeed, every one of the galleys appeared to be full of knights, their red and white glowing in the red sun. One of the tallest knights was Peter the Dutchman, bow laid aside on the deck and wearing German half-armour from the Mytilini armoury. Few men so looked the part, and he rested on a poleaxe as tall as he was as if to the manor born.
‘You take a great risk,’ Swan said.
Sturmy shrugged, and Master Shipman grunted an order to an English sailor at the helm, and the man steered small and watched for the opening in the breakwater – orders were shouted from the forecastle, because with fighting castles mounted, it was very difficult for the helmsman to see forward, even leaning well out.
Sturmy watched it all and grinned. ‘If this works, I’ll be away in the morning and scot free all the way to Venice. It this fails …’ He shrugged. ‘By Saint George, Master Swan, I don’t think there’s a ship in these waters that can do my Katherine a hurt. Perhap with cannon – infernal engines. But only if they take me by surprise or there’s no wind.’
‘Flagship says to proceed to sea,’ called Shipman’s son Nicholas. ‘Red flag,’ he allowed, as if his father might doubt him.
‘Very well,’ Shipman allowed. He nodded. ‘Let go, forward there.’
The mainsail was let go and sheeted home very quickly, and the tub-like Katherine Sturmy began to gather way very slowly. Behind her vast bulk, five galleys crawled into a neat formation and then rested their oarsmen.
The Turks formed a neat crescent to receive them. Swan could already see the ghazis and the marines forming in the bows, and the glow of matches.
Fra Domenico had said it – For the first minutes, the Sturmy will be alone against all their ships.
The sun had not quite left the sky when the Turkish ships leapt to ramming speed. The Sturmy was under full sail, her round hull ploughing the water at a third of the speed of one of the order’s galleys or one of the charging Turks – a speed that was pitifully slow. Swan regretted allowing Sturmy to risk his ship, which was going to be hulled by half a dozen rams, anyway.