Swan laughed. ‘You don’t owe me a thing.’

‘It is not much of a life, but the only one I haf,’ Peter said. ‘Here. Don’t wear it until Avignon.’ He opened the linen stocking that held his bow and took out the count’s sword.

Swan took it. It was a fine weapon – a single sword, a riding sword. The cross-hilt was plain steel, but it had the two finger rings of the new style, and a pair of deep fullers running down the double-edged blade. It was longer than Alessandro’s borrowed sword, and heavier in the hilt, differently balanced, with a complex ricasso. The blade was virtually unnicked.

‘A fine piece of steel. Eastern, I think. Bohemia, perhaps.’ Peter looked it over. ‘I almost kept it for myself.’ He shrugged. ‘I watched you. You are very fast.’

Swan nodded. ‘Thanks.’

‘You’ve had some training, yes?’ Peter asked.

Even in the close confines of the nun’s cell, Swan was thrusting and cutting. Peter pretended to cower. ‘Careful, master,’ he whined.

Swan laughed.

‘But you could be much better,’ the Fleming continued.

Swan stopped. ‘Really?’ he said, not entirely pleased. He imagined himself a good blade.

‘Watch Alessandro some time when his ankle is healed,’ Peter said. ‘Perhaps in Rome we can take lessons.’

‘We?’ Swan asked. He grinned.

‘We,’ Peter said.

Once again, they shook.

They rode hard out of Paris once the cardinal had settled his debts. They had no wagons and only four servants, the lawyers and the soldiers. They made twenty leagues a day, and if the servants complained, the soldiers enjoyed the pace.

Peter had assumed they’d stop in Avignon for a week, but they didn’t come close to the formal papal city. Instead they went east into the mountains, crossing Savoy. Leaving Turin, Swan buckled on the count’s sword for the first time. They were a mile on the road before Alessandro saw it. He frowned at Swan, who nodded.

‘Peter picked it up,’ he said. ‘I never wore it before today.’

Alessandro frowned, but later in the day he rode up and smiled. ‘I’m used to getting my way all the time,’ he said. ‘It is still a risk. A fine sword. Let me see.’

Swan watched him roll the weapon around with his wrist – moulinetto, stramazone. He knew those Italian terms from his own Italian master. ‘Beautiful,’ he said. ‘As good as my own.’

‘Here’s your spare back,’ Swan said, suiting action to words.

Alessandro accepted his blade. ‘What about my nice boots?’ he asked.

‘I need to earn some money to buy my own.’

‘I think they’re about the same value as my life, which, I think, perhaps, you saved.’ Alessandro nodded. ‘So keep them.’

‘I don’t know. They have a cut in the thigh.’ Swan grinned.

They rode down into Italy.

Also by Christian Cameron

Catch the next instalment of Tom’s adventure in Tom Swan and the Head of St George, Part Two: Venice

Also by Christian Cameron and available as Orion ebooks:

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Follow Arimnestos, a slave of Thebes, as he breaks his chains to join one of the greatest conflicts in the history of the world – the epic clash between the Greeks and Persians

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The ultimate historical adventure novel: the life of Alexander the Great in a single, epic volume.

Alexander: God of War

Copyright

An Orion eBook

First published in Great Britain in 2012 by Orion Books

This eBook first published in 2012 by Orion Books

Copyright © Christian Cameron 2012

The moral right of Christian Cameron to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the copyright, designs and patents act 1988.

All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

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ISBN: 978 1 4091 2721 5

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