He kept his buckler up near his head.
He heard the flat crack as Giannis discharged another bolt.
And then he was on them, although his mare was suddenly sluggish – she slowed from a gallop to a canter, and he couldn’t make her turn. His buckler slammed into an archer’s hands as he raised his bow, and Swan almost lost his seat cutting across his body to get the man – a weak blow that nonetheless mangled his opponent’s bow-arm.
Swan had never actually fought from horseback before.
The second Turk loosed at him from a horse length away, and the arrow went through the outer rim of his buckler, passed up the length of his arm, and cut into his neck. Swan was again forced to cut across his body because his damned horse wouldn’t turn – he missed his cut, but by sheer luck the mare’s stumble and the alignment of his point spitted his opponent on his sword, and the man grabbed the blade in his neck with both hands and ripped it from Swan’s grasp.
At that moment, Swan’s horse, shot by a dozen arrows, subsided to the ground. Swan fell and hit the ground gently enough, but now he lost his buckler too.
He rolled to his feet.
There was dust everywhere, and they couldn’t see him, and he had trouble finding them, even a horse length away. He drew the dagger from his hip, ran three steps and threw himself at a man who was looking the other way in the dust. The dagger went home in the man’s back and Swan dragged him from his saddle, but instead of a clean kill and possession of the man’s horse, Swan found himself pinned under the falling man, his feet still caught in his stirrups, and the horse wheeling around them like the equine rim of a human wheel. Swan let go in disgust and fell backwards, and the horse bolted, the corpse of the dead man jolting obscenely behind.
Swan just sat in the swirling dust. It was as if he was a puppet and his strings had been cut. He couldn’t seem to get to his feet.
But the Turks – the survivors – had given the fight up as a bad job, and ridden free. They’d cantered away north, to the next major intersection almost a stadion away. Even as Swan tried to watch them amid the dust and his own fatigue, he saw the first of their arrows winging towards him.
It missed.
He began to crawl back towards the bishop. Then he realised that his most prized possession – the count’s sword – was lying pinned under a dead Turk. He turned and crawled like a baby to the man’s corpse. His hands were still locked around the blade.
Swan got his feet under him and rose.
Arrows began to sink into the street around him.
He got his hands on the hilt and pulled. He wiped it on the dead man’s kaftan, and sheathed it.
And, out of pure stubbornness, he took the man’s curved dagger and his belt purse. Only then did he lurch into an exhausted run. It was only a hundred paces back to the bishop, but it seemed like an English country mile. Men were shouting – another of the Venetian marines was loosing arrows, and arrows were falling around him. The Spaniard slumped to his knees and then fell to the ground.
The bishop rose to his knees and lifted his pectoral cross. The second marine took a Turkish arrow in his shoulder and fell. The sailor who had carried the head lay unmoving. Even as Swan stumbled up, Alessandro lifted the Spaniard over his shoulder – the man must have been hurt worse than had at first appeared. And Giannis snapped another shot at the now-distant Turks and slung his crossbow.
‘Bishop!’ croaked Swan.
Giannis saw what he wanted and went to the bishop.
Swan got his hands on the armet. The tight-wrapped cloth inside the helmet looked intact.
He shuffled towards the market.
Giannis got the bishop on to his shoulder and followed him.
Cesare joined the Greek and took the man’s legs, and they ran in a sort of sideways shuffle towards the fountain.
North along the avenue, Swan could see a man in a plumed turban on a fine bay horse. He was at the head of a squadron of Turks – perhaps a hundred. He had a horse-tail riding whip in his hand, and he used it to gesture – at them.
Swan placed his helmet carefully on the ground, picked up the Spaniard’s abandoned bow, fitted an arrow from a Turk’s nearby quiver, and took a deep breath.
‘Swan!’ roared Alessandro.
They had the bishop at the edge of the fountain.
He raised the bow. The range was extreme – two hundred paces, at least.
He drew the nock of the arrow all the way to his own ear, as his uncles had taught him. It felt odd with the small Turkish bow, but it seemed to pull very much the way the bows of his youth pulled. Heavy. But beautifully balanced.
He raised the sharp, barbed point of the arrow twelve fingers above Omar Reis’s head. He compensated for the breeze, let out a little breath, and loosed, his hand flying from the string as in a dramatic plucking of a harp.
He ignored the shouts of his companions and watched the fall of his shot, because it felt right. An archer knows.
The arrow rose high over the streets of the ancient city, and then, like one of Idris’s falcons, it fell.
The Wolf of Thrace and his horse fell silently, two hundred paces away. The horse kicked, and dust flew, and Swan could see no more. He turned, scooped up the helmet, and ran.
‘I got him!’ he whooped like a boy when he caught Alessandro.
‘Got who?’ asked the Venetian.
‘I put an arrow in Omar Reis!’ He laughed.
Alessandro looked at him in disgust. ‘If you have done such a foolish thing, they will hunt us to the ends of the earth,’ he said wearily. ‘Now lead us through your sewers.’
There was no further pursuit.
In an hour, the exhausted and bedraggled survivors were in the Venetian quarter. Swan was pissing blood; the Spaniard had an arrow in his left thigh that the Venetian quarter barber-surgeon refused to touch, and Alessandro sent him on his way. A sailor was dead; another of the marines badly wounded with an arrow in the shoulder, and all of the men-at-arms were virtually unable to move from exhaustion.
The two Venetian galleys were on their way, halfway across the Golden Horn. The sun was setting. But north and west of the Venetian galleys, half a dozen Turkish galleys were crossing their lateen yards and making ready for sea.
The bishop had been pinked by two arrows, and was badly bruised by rocks and clods of earth, and despite that, he was everywhere, hobbling on a makeshift crutch, full of spirit – almost cheerful.
Alessandro watched him.
‘Not what I expected,’ Swan said carefully. Alessandro seemed to blame him for the whole incident.
But the Venetian shrugged. ‘He has surprised himself,’ said the Italian. ‘He is braver than he thought, and a better man. It has made him . . . happy. I have seen this before.’ He managed a rueful smile. ‘Perhaps never such a volte-face as this, but still . . .’
Cesare was downing a cup of wine. ‘Christ, what if we had to like him?’
The Venetian bailli entered the yard of the inn and began to shout at the bishop.
Alessandro still had his armour on. He waved at the rest of the party. ‘Get your kit to the wharf. Now. Immediately. The bailli is threatening to hand us over to the Turks.’
Swan was on his way to his room when he realised that the small boy standing at the open front door of the inn was familiar. The boy brightened when he saw Swan.
‘King David is looking for you. At the gate!’ he said. And off he ran, in the way of small boys.
Swan thought about it.
Isaac might have something useful to say. He would certainly have a packet of his letters for Venice.