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.
The torchlight illuminated the floor of the tunnel for five yards. They still hadn’t seen Swan, and he couldn’t stand the tension any more.
He leaped forward and cut, a rising snap from a low guard that sheared through the big Turk’s cheek and nose, so that the tip cut through his left eye and stopped on the ocular ridge. Swan leaned into the weapon and pushed it home into the skull and the man died instantly. The sound of his own wild scream echoed and roared and he wasn’t fully aware that it was his own as he recovered, again low, this time into Fiore’s dente di cinghiare. He was afraid of catching his sword on the walls or the ceiling — but his first strike had made him calm, and having recovered, he struck again, gliding, feet flat, slightly offline to the right and thrusting over the corpse even as the dead man’s torch went out on the cobbles.
The second Turk made a parry — but some of the blow caught him. Swan stepped in and caught his sword with his left hand, halfway down the blade, and thrust it — almost blind in the dark. He thrust three times, sure he’d hit, and then flicked a cut from his wrist as he backed a step. Now the only torch was held by the last Turk, or perhaps an escaped slave, and there were two corpses and Swan could see — a little. He doubted that they saw much of him.
‘Back! Back! The knights know we are here! Back, you fools!’ shouted the one with the voice of iron.
But it was chaos in the corridor.
An older, more experienced man would have leaped at them in that moment, but Swan was still amazed at his initial success and still cautious.
The third man had time to ready his weapons — a light axe, and a curving sword.
‘It is just one man!’ he shouted. ‘Aiiee!’ and he attacked.
Swan ignored the sabre and cut at the axe. The sabre blow rang on his helmet, and his pommel struck something — he had one of the man’s arms, and he broke it at the elbow, and punched his armoured right hand into what he assumed was the face as yet another weapon struck him — he dropped his opponent and stepped back, looking for balance. Two weapons struck him together — a blow to his visor that almost brought him down and a cut to his left arm that rang like a bell on his left vambrace. He had his sword up, and he cut down, into the darkness, and connected — and there was a vicious pain in his right calf. He screamed — or roared.
Someone had his left arm. He slammed his right fist and his pommel at this new threat — connected, and the man fell away — then he took a kick or a punch to his knee that caused him to fall backwards.
His head struck the stones that had almost tripped him as he entered the corridor. He hit hard — but his armet took the blow and his thickly padded liner saved him.