Far away in the darkness, there was a distinct clank.
He eased the sword in his scabbard. And pressed forward.
After ten slow steps, he reached a cross-tunnel. He ran a gauntleted hand over the stone – held his oil lamp in the tunnel and saw the flame move.
‘This way,’ he said.
He struck his head – a ringing blow that staggered him and might have knocked him unconscious if he hadn’t had a helmet on. When he recovered, he raised his lamp and saw that his cross-street – it had cobbled paving under his booted feet – was only four feet high.
‘Must we do this?’ Peter asked. His voice was very loud.
‘I think the escaped slaves are trying to let the Turks into the town,’ Swan said.
‘Vere the fuck are we?’ Peter asked.
Swan rested a moment, his hips against what he suspected were the under-shorings of the English wall. ‘This is the ancient city,’ he said. ‘Many of the old floors – and old walls – still bear weight. So there are empty spaces – and a path among them. Salim knew it. I didn’t think about it at the time – about who exactly lived down here – but it must be escaped slaves.’
‘And they would help the Turks. Of course they would,’ Peter admitted. ‘So – there is a way out?’
‘Can’t you feel the breeze? They must have opened one – 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 suddenly felt too small.
He drew his sword. He did it very carefully – left hand reversed, a long, slow pull.
‘Son of a whore, we can take the town now!’ one man shouted, in Turkish. His voice rang off the walls.
Swan estimated that they were about sixty feet away. He could see two tongues of flame – oil lamps, or lanterns – and a little bit of red which was someone’s cloak, or hood.
He took a cautious step forward and almost fell – there was something lying across the corridor. He felt it with his sword-tip, slid a foot across it, slid the other foot across it. He was sweating so much that he was afraid he would drown in his armour.
Very, very carefully he felt his way another step along the corridor.
And another. Whatever the blockage behind him, he now had space in which to fight.
He checked his dagger.
‘And I say now!’ shouted the most aggressive Turk.
And the torches began to move.
Swan’s hands were shaking so badly he had trouble finding the top edge of his visor. He reached up with his sword-point and touched the ceiling overhead. There was a hissing fall of gravel over his armour, but the ceiling was at least four feet above him.
He brought his visor down. In the stinking darkness, the visor did nothing to limit his vision.
And the torches, or lanterns, crept closer.
‘Pig! Dog! Heretical scum of the underworld!’ a man swore.
It sounded to Swan as if the man had just stubbed a booted toe on something. Swan had a moment’s fellow-feeling for a man he was about to fight.
He brought his sword into a low guard position and waited, knees weak, hands shaking, and breath short. It was very different from being on the deck of a ship in the sunlight, surrounded by friends.
Now he could see the lead man – who walked slightly bent because he was huge, both tall and fat, with dyed red hair and a dyed beard and a short axe in his hand. Swan assumed the man was the aggressive one. He had the look. The torchlight made the man’s red kaftan glow. It almost hurt Swan’s eyes.
Of course, they were all watching the floor.
Swan watched the axe. The sheer size of the first man intimidated him. Intimidation made him angry – always had. Bigger men had bullied him his whole young life.