Tom Swan and the Head of St. George Part Four: Rome by Christian Cameron Read Free Book Online Page A

pounce of a cat to kill the man who had turned to face Swan.
    Swan jumped up, climbing three steps in a leap, and got his own back to the bridge’s wall – bound a man’s sword with his own. The man was left handed, and he had a small shield, and Swan thrust his dagger into the man’s shield, cut him in the forearm over the rim, stomped on his extended foot, and muscled his dagger into the man’s bicep. The man’s defence collapsed and Swan hit him in the face with his sword-hilt, stepped behind him and, as he collapsed forward, kneed him in the face and threw him over his left leg and over the collapsed parapet into the water.
    All that in the time it would take a monk to say the words ‘ Pater noster qui est in coelus ’.
    Di Brachio fell at his feet, stretched full length on the timbers of the bridge, and Swan cut a great mezzano from right to left at head height, brushing the two immediate assailants back off his friend.
    Di Brachio rolled to his feet, swearing like a sailor.
    The survivors had used the moment’s pause to realise that there were only two of them left now, and they turned to run.
    Di Brachio threw his sword – hard, and overarm, so that it made a torchlit pinwheel and slammed into the farther man’s neck. It wasn’t spectacular – the sword didn’t hit point first – but it had enough power and weight to make a great wound, and the fellow went sprawling on the planks, screaming, both arms reaching for the back of his head.
    Swan cursed his tight scarlet hose and ran after the closer man, who was scrawny, short and partially bald. He ran with a limp, and Swan caught him in ten steps. The man turned – and fell to his knees.
    ‘Spare me, master!’ he said. His eyes gleamed dully, like old metal.
    Behind Swan, the man who’d taken the sword in the back of his head screamed as his questing fingers discovered that there was a big piece of his skull missing and he was a dead man, and then his screams stopped abruptly as Di Brachio finished him.
    ‘I could serve you – I’d be a slave. Oh, God, messire, please …’
    Swan thought a thousand things in a second – how he’d spared the young Turk, and how this man had intended to kill and then rob Di Brachio. What Christ intended. What he would think of himself tomorrow. Whether Violetta was yet available. The eyes that watched him were bereft of anything like innocence.
    He ran the man through, and kicked him off his point. He felt neither joy nor horror. Killing street trash was no longer incident. It was a professional decision, and he left the corpse and ran back to Di Brachio, but the Venetian hadn’t taken a bad wound, merely a hard cut to the side below his dagger hand.
    ‘You are a fool,’ Swan said fondly.
    ‘Am I?’ Di Brachio said. ‘Sweet Christ, that hurts.’ He shrugged. ‘But I no longer feel like killing an innocent girl. That part is all better.’ He turned. ‘Did yours get away?’
    ‘No,’ Swan said.
    They sat in the main room of Madame Lucrescia’s and debated how long Pope Nicholas would live and who might be Pope after him. Accudi thought that Bessarion would be Pope, and Di Brescia laughed him to scorn. Swan tried to listen while scanning the room for Violetta, but she was gone – riding another customer, no doubt. He found himself angry. It made no sense to be so angry – he’d made his choice and chased after Di Brachio – but there it was. He couldn’t listen to Di Brescia’s mock insults, or to Accudi’s ribald comments.
    Like Di Brachio before him, he rose to leave.
    ‘You came back!’ Madame Lucrescia said, placing a hand on his chest. ‘I sent her to her room. She was going to make a scene.’ She narrowed her eyes. ‘Are you in love with your Venetian?’
    Swan laughed. ‘Not that way,’ he said. He smiled, though.
    She nodded. ‘I thought not. But – never mind. I will send a slave for Violetta, and you may resume your evening, although if these two gentlemen do not stop fighting