Tom Swan and the Head of St George Part One: Castillon Read Online Free PDF

have a penny of my own, friend.’
    The man glared. ‘I guess if that horse is all you have you don’t have much.’ He nodded. ‘Your boots are nice.’
    Swan nodded. ‘Is that a professional opinion?’ he asked.
    He didn’t order wine. He backed his horse out of the yard. The two Italians were looking at him. He waved a hand and they moved out of the village at a trot.
    ‘ Brigandi ,’ Swan said. and touched his heels to his horse’s flanks.
    They rode for almost a mile before Swan pulled up.
    ‘Where?’ asked Cesare. ‘What are you talking about?’
    ‘The peasant in the auberge was no peasant. He was a soldier slumming, wearing a peasant smock.’ Swan was watching the hillsides.
    ‘How do you know?’ Giovanni asked.
    Swan shrugged. ‘I can’t tell you. Maybe that he was so bad at begging. His hands were clean. He had wrists like me. But I can’t pin it down.’
    ‘But you’re sure,’ Giovanni said.
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Sure enough to go back and find another way?’ Cesare asked.
    Swan looked back and forth between the two Italians. ‘Messires, you are both older than I am,’ he said humbly. ‘But if you will be guided by me in this, you will not go back.’
    ‘What do you propose?’ Giovanni asked.
    ‘That we move fast and stop for nothing. We ignore mothers with wounded sons and priests who only need a moment of our time.’ Swan suited action to word and touched his boot-heels to his horse, which responded with a burst of what, in a better horse, might have been a canter.
    The three of them rode along, leaving a dust cloud, for ten minutes. By then, Swan’s horse was flagging, and he felt like a fool. He reined in. ‘Perhaps you two are better without me,’ he said.
    ‘Nonsense,’ Giovanni said.
    They went on at a walk. Swan looked behind them.
    ‘Gentlemen, I’ve made a number of mistakes. The dust cloud,’ he pointed behind them, ‘is like a red flag.’
    Cesare winced. ‘Why us?’ he asked. ‘What brigand wants us?’
    They were climbing steadily, and Swan could see a long, sharp slope ahead, a set of rapids in the river, and tall bluffs. He stood in his stirrups, trying to make out the path of the road.
    ‘The road crosses the river at a ford,’ he said.
    Before a nun could say three paternosters, they were across.
    On the far side, just where the road turned rocky as it passed over the end of the eastern ridge, was a wagon. It was one of the wine merchant’s wagons, and there were four men by it.
    They looked uncertainly at the new arrivals.
    They were not any of the men who’d been dancing the night before, and none of them wore livery.
    Thirty yards away, by the stream-bed, Swan saw a pool of blood and an arm sticking out of the weeds. The arm was blue and red.
    ‘It’s a trap,’ he said quietly. ‘When I attack them, ride like lightning.’
    ‘Why?’ asked Giovanni.
    Cesare muttered.
    Swan’s horse was tired, so he rode straight up to the nearest man. From a few yards away, he called out, ‘Wheel trouble?’
    The man nodded. But he didn’t speak. He was watching Swan as a cat watches a mouse – and yet he was utterly confounded when Swan whipped his sword from his scabbard and cut him down with a powerful blow from above.
    The other three men stood rooted to the spot.
    Giovanni, who had a fine Arab, put his spurs to her, and she went straight to a gallop.
    Cesare did the same, but aimed his Arab’s head at one of the men by the wagon and rode him down.
    Swan whirled and his horse misstepped. Swan cursed and slid from her back, ducked, and moved with her a few horse lengths while the other three men shouted at each other. He burst round the end of the wagon, catching the man Cesare had knocked down by surprise, and rammed his sword into the man’s gut despite his coat of plates. He almost died trying to get it out. The point was wedged between two plates. The third man had a falchion, a heavy sword like a scimitar, and he cut overhand at Swan, an untrained blow