A Place Called Armageddon

by C. C. Humphreys

  They had been moving slowly; now they moved fast, stumbling down the slight slope. Achmed placed his foot on something that first moved, then screamed. He had stepped on the body of a man crawling across his path. He saw something feathered sticking from the man’s neck and, without thinking, he bent, grabbed the man with one huge hand by the back of his shirt and dragged him to the side of the rush.

  ‘Good, good,’ said Raschid, one hand on the man’s leg, not lifting at all, ‘helping a brother is good.’

  Screaming men kept rushing by them as they laid the man down upon his side. With one hand he was clutching the crossbow quarrel, with the other he clung to Achmed’s shirt, mumbling feebly, the words lost in the blood that bubbled over his lips. Achmed stared, helpless, until Raschid tugged him away. ‘Come,’ he said. ‘He is either for paradise or the surgeons. Come,’ he repeated, pulling him forward.

  The slight slope ended in a lip of stone, and over it, a huddle of men were pressed together in a ditch and in the lee of a stone wall that rose from the far side to twice the height of a man. They slipped down swiftly, their feet finding the piles of bound wood that had been thrown down to fill the ditch, and leaned into the bodies there, as more quarrels, arrows, shots fell from the flaring darkness above.

  ‘The walls of Constantinople?’ Achmed said.

  Raschid snorted. ‘This?’ he said, glancing up. ‘This is a mere breastwork over the fosse. The Christians won’t even defend it. The walls are beyond. And we shall be at them soon enough. For look!’

  Achmed looked. Another rush of men came, every second one bearing a ladder. These were passed overhead to the men right below the breastwork, one end held and steadied on the wood of platforms or the mud of the ditch. There was a moment’s pause, as the other ends clattered onto the stonework above. Men leaning against the wall peered into each other’s eyes, waiting. Then the drums began beating double time and, with a great surge, the bashibazouks began to swarm up the ladders. Some made it, many did not, knocked back by bolt and flung stone.

  ‘You!’ Farouk was poking him with his bastinado. ‘Big man. Strong with it, eh? How about hoisting some of your friends over the wall?’

  Achmed nodded. ‘Effendi,’ he said, handing his sword and shield to Raschid. He interlaced his fingers, stooped. A man stepped forward, placed palms on his shoulder and a foot in his cupped hands. Immediately, Achmed stood straight, flinging up his arms. With a yelp, the man flew over the breastwork and disappeared.

  ‘Sodomite donkey!’ the officer laughed. ‘Not so hard! They are warriors, not pigeons. Just get them to the top.’

  Achmed stooped, a man placed his foot, he rose carefully this time. The man grasped the stonework, pulled himself up and over. ‘Good,’ Farouk said. ‘Another.’

  Achmed bent to his work, Raschid content beside him in his role of sword-bearer. A half-dozen men lifted, and the crowd was thinned, more making it over on ladder top as well – ladders that were now being pulled over the walls. ‘Enough!’ Farouk commanded, stepping forward. ‘Me, then him. You can climb up after.’ He placed a foot, was lifted, scrambled over the wall.

  Raschid propped Achmed’s sword against the wall, sheathed his own. ‘That was a blessing from Allah. With His grace, there will be too many people between us and the Greeks. Lift me! I’ll wait for you the other side.’

  Achmed lifted him till he could sit. Raschid pulled his one bad leg over and disappeared.

  Achmed looked around. The first assault had passed, leaving a mess of men who hadn’t made it, still or writhing in the ditch. Above him, arrows were flying fast over the walls, from a mass of archers who had run down from the stockade. Another massed mob came with shovels and mattocks and began to dig at the ditch’s walls, filling it in. Grasping shield strap and sword hilt in one hand, he jumped, grasped a jutting stone above him and hauled himself, by various promontories, to the top.

  And into mayhem. The noise had been lessened by the wall. Here it hit him like an open-handed slap. The screams – of men falling as ladders were pushed off the far higher wall ahead of him, of other men slashing and smashing blade onto blade, onto shield or helm. The cries of the attackers: ‘Allah!’ Of the defenders: ‘Christ! Holy Mother!’ There they were, the first time he had seen them this close, his enemy, the men he’d come to kill. His enemy, men just like himself. Some in armour, striking down with swords, axes, spears. Others, like him, in nothing more than shirts, hurling stones and oaths. Lit by flames from torches that flared upon each tower and at spaces along the walls between each one. He saw an archer lean through the crenels of a tower and shoot down into the mob, saw the man he plucked from a ladder top with his shaft, saw that same archer knocked flying back by a slingshot stone to the face. Everywhere he looked, men were striving to kill, striving harder not to die.

  It was hell, and he was staring into it. Frozen atop the wall, with missiles flying around him, Achmed found he could not move, could only stare. Something tugged at his leg, jerking it hard; he forced his gaze down and saw Raschid there, face twisted in rage, mouthing words he could not hear. He looked away from him, to the mobs and the madness beneath the high wall beyond.

  And then he saw it. The banner of the Prophet. It was being carried forward through the crowd and appeared to be drawing the worst of Greek metal and stone. A bearer would fall, the pole would slip, the banner sag, and then another would snatch it up, to fall in his turn. Somehow it was always kept aloft.

  The Prophet. It was why he was there, to serve him in this holy cause, to glorify him and Allah, most merciful. To be a martyr for him if he so chose. Yet the banner was something else too, something that had been cried out before the attack began – that it was worth more gold than he would see in a lifetime of labour in his fields. Gold could not return his little Abal to him. But it might return the smile to Farat’s face when she realised that no more of her children would die because they had no food.

  Gold he could have – but only if he were the one to plant the banner of his saviour on the walls of Constantinople.

  He slid down. Raschid’s words were clear now, cursing him for a fool for sitting there, a giant target for every Greek archer and slinger. Achmed began to push through a crowd that was beginning to thin near the back, as the wounded dragged themselves rearwards. But there were yet enough of the crazed or the ambitious hurling themselves at the walls, and ever another man to take up the banner when it dropped from life-fleeing fingers.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Raschid was limping beside him, striking his arm. ‘Keep your shield up! Raise your sword!’

  Achmed ignored him. He had reached the point of the solid mass, men pressed six deep to the wall. He began to move them aside. They protested, looked up, then moved. There was something in the giant’s eyes.

  He reached the banner as it fell, this time from a height, for the latest martyr to carry it had got halfway up the ladder. Achmed dodged the falling body, caught the pole as it passed him. Jabbing its butt end back, he took the wind from the protesting Raschid’s chest. Free of him, he began to climb.

  For so much noise, there was such a silence in his head that he could hear his own prayers there, words of praise for Allah, most merciful, and for Muhammad who was His Prophet, peace be unto him. But other words came too, the first his little daughter had ever spoken. ‘Gobe,’ she’d said, pointing at a goat. ‘Gobe.’

  Something passed through the flap of shirt at his chest. A stone glanced off his shoulder. There was a man right above him on the battlements, raising an axe. Achmed lifted the banner of the Prophet to protect himself … and then watched the man loose his grip on his axe, reaching up to the bolt that protruded from his arm. He tumbled from sight, his weapon fell, Achmed felt its edge open his side as it passed. But he did not feel pain; there was not time between the clear space suddenly before him and his stepping into it.

  He was standing between two crenels. Before him, the body of the axeman was still sinking onto the flagstones. Either side of him
, Greeks fought to push back ladders that had Turks on their top rungs, men who stabbed and jabbed and fought not to be dislodged. But already others were turning to him, to this giant suddenly stood amongst them. He had a moment. One.

  ‘Allahu akbar!’ he cried, and swept the banner left to right, Muhammad’s name unfurling from the cloth in flaming light.

  The moment passed. Something struck him hard in the forehead and he fell, the pole whipped from his grasp as he tumbled back, down, his fall broken by bodies, some of which broke in their turn, until he was lying on the ground, watching flame reflecting in a widening pool of blood. He saw a shadow reach into it, knew that someone was thrusting their face close, screaming more words he could not hear. Then he felt hands on him, thrust into his armpits, one at the back of his neck, all dragging. He began to move, slowly at first, then faster over the slick ground. When he stopped, it was suddenly, and he vomited, just as sound came back.

  ‘Up, fool! Up! Or you die!’

  Raschid was beating him, shouting in his ear. Achmed looked up to see men flinging themselves up and over the first wall, low enough on this, the city side. He lurched up, fell onto it, over it, sliding down onto a crush of mud and stacked wood. He was in the ditch, and then he was clawing up its mud sides, crawling out of it, stumbling forward. The gate in the stockade was wide open. There did not seem to be the crush to get in that there had been to get out.

  Men were marching forward, men in plate and mail and helm with big round shields and spears slanted to the sky. He was slid out of their path, dragged into the lee of the wooden walls.

  His eyes were closing. Just before they did, he saw a familiar face. It had one eye, and that eye shone with amusement. ‘Well, well, farmer boy. You are a deli and no mistake.’ Farouk thrust his hand forward in the traditional gesture to banish the mad. Then he let it fall onto Achmed’s shoulder. ‘Still, once we’ve cleaned you up a bit, I have no doubt our sultan will be happy to see you. To reward you. To reward us all.’ The one eye narrowed, as the hand stroked. ‘For we are comrades, are we not? All gazis for Allah, praise Him, yes?’ He rose, smiling. ‘So all will share in the sultan’s bounty, is that not right?’

  He moved away. Achmed wanted to understand more clearly what was being said. But he found that he could not stay awake, even with the cold water thrown in his face, even with the pain the rough cloth brought.

  Oblivion found him. He sank into it, gratefully.

  – EIGHTEEN –

  Exile’s Return

  20 April: two weeks into the siege

  It was a Greek upon the Golden Gate who saw them first. He was one of several stationed there, at the southernmost towers of the land walls, who were gifted with long sight. He did not stare, as the rest of the garrison did, at the mass of Turks two hundred paces away behind their stockade. His duty, for the length of his watch, was to look to the sea, to its horizon. Though it was optional, he was encouraged to pray.

  Which he did, in a way, when he first glimpsed them. ‘Christ’s hairy balls,’ he muttered, rubbing his eyes, trying to dislodge what had to be motes of dust. He raised a hand to the side of his face to shelter his vision from the sun, halfway up its climb through the sky. Sunlight on water, seabirds, a school of dolphins had all had him reaching for the bell rope before. He had even pulled it once in his excitement, just once, stopping when he realised that the sail he saw was single and slanted, just another Turk making for the Bosphorus.

  This time he’d wait. This time he’d make sure he was spared his comrades’ mockery. Even when the single blur resolved into four distinct ones, even when he saw the sails were not lateen, like most Turks, but square-rigged, he did not pull and shout. But he did begin to pray, correctly this time. And even when he was certain, he still took a breath before he grasped the bell pull, closed his eyes. For a moment, he was the only one in the city who saw its deliverance, and it filled him with a power that he’d never imagined.

  The bell rang loud at his pulling. But it was his voice, the words, that brought men running. ‘Sails!’ he cried. ‘Sails from the west, and the cross of Christ upon them.’

  A lieutenant ran up the flight. ‘How many ships?’

  ‘Four that I can see, master. But mayhap they precede the many.’

  ‘Four will do for now.’ The officer turned to two men just appearing, both booted and spurred. ‘Ride – one for the Commander, one for the emperor. Tell them of four ships, and more to come.’ He laughed and clapped his hand upon one messenger’s shoulder. ‘Tell them that salvation is here.’ He turned back to the man with long sight. ‘Keep ringing that bell, brother. Soon every bell in the city will ring the glorious news.’

  More men came, and he sent them all off, on foot along the ramparts, on horseback into the city. They must have cried the news as they went, because as the first bell ringer fell back in exhaustion, another in the nearby Church of St Diomedes began his peal. St John Studius was next, and then the monastery of Gastria, and on, like flame in a forest leaping from tree to tree. It was different from the alarums that signalled an attack and brought defenders to the battlements. The toll had a joy to it that the city had not heard in weeks.

  Theon, showing papers to his lord, heard it just before the panting messenger was admitted to the emperor’s chamber. As soon as the news was blurted out, Constantine was calling for boots and cloak. ‘They will be making for the boom. We must make sure it is ready to be raised. To horse.’

  Sofia, picking over the meagre produce at a stall upon the Hippodrome, heard the wave of bells, waited as they appeared to pass overhead and crash into the Hagia Sophia, whose deep voice joined and drowned all others. A messenger galloping into the oval was surrounded, and not permitted to pass till he had barked his news. It came back to them in ripples of voices.

  ‘What is it, Mother?’ said Thakos, looking about at the running, smiling people.

  Sofia gathered her son and daughter into a hug. ‘A fleet approaches. Relief for the city, perhaps. Come!’ She began to lead her children where everyone else was going, up the hill to the Splendome, beneath the tower of St Irene, one of the highest points in Constantinople.

  Her son dragged. ‘But I am to go and practise my sling with Ari,’ he said, holding up the rope weapon that all boys seven and over had been issued with.

  ‘Perhaps this means you will not need to use it,’ Sofia said, adding, when she saw his pout, ‘and you want to greet our rescuers, don’t you? We can see almost everything from up there.’

  Less reluctantly, her son followed. They were still early enough to get a good spot near the summit.

  The Greeks were not the only ones with long sight. On the shore of the Marmara sea, Turks were stationed for the same purpose. Only the tower’s height had meant that the defenders had seen the ships first.

  The bells had woken Mehmet, resting from a long night of carousing with his favourite, Radu. The younger Dracula was snoring softly beside the divan when the sultan heard the horse gallop up to his tent, heard the shouted news. Such was his hurry that he was already dressing himself, while bellowing for servants, when the officer of the guard entered. ‘I heard,’ the sultan said, strapping his sword belt round his waist, throwing on his long cloak. ‘Send your fastest rider ahead, to Baltaoglu. Tell him to make ready the fleet. Tell him not to cast off until I have spoken to him. I will be on the messenger’s heels. Go!’

  He ended on a roar that finally woke Radu. ‘What is it, beloved?’ He yawned as he spoke.

  Mehmet kicked him, not gently. ‘Get dressed fast, unless you wish to be left behind. A Christian fleet is coming. And, by Satan’s testicles, we have to sink it.’

  He had last seen it lit by a single sunbeam that had split the clouds. He’d hoped it was for the last time. Now the dome of the Hagia Sophia glistened in full morning sunshine. No Turkish crescent flew over it; the men who lined the walls waved banners of the city and the other nations who defended it. The enemy was still outside, and he was in time.


  The young voice came from right next to him. ‘Is that where God lives, sir?’

  Gregoras looked at the boy beside him. A son of Genoa, and so of the Roman faith. ‘Perhaps. There is some dispute about it.’ He smiled. ‘Though I would prefer he lived with us this day, upon the water.’

  The nine-year-old looked around, as if seeking. ‘But do we not make for land, sir?’

  ‘We do.’ He reached out and rubbed his hand through the boy’s thick hair. ‘But someone is going to try and stop us getting there.’

  ‘Who, sir?’

  He turned the boy forward. ‘Them,’ he said, and swallowed. He had seen Turkish fleets before. But never one of the size that approached now.

  It was close enough to study in detail. Suddenly so, for his own ship, Stella Mare, and its three companions had just rounded the curve of Lighthouse Point, St Sophia looming above it, and entered the stretch where three famed waters met – the Sea of Marmara, the Golden Horn and the Bosphorus. Clear of sheltering land, the sea became instantly choppier. Anafor, thought Gregoras, giving the swell its Turkish name. Yet his vessel – its three masts of sails filled with the same south-westerly wind, the lodos, that had driven them fast from Chios – seemed to leap forward in the rougher sea, flying between wave tops like a dolphin, as if she sought safe harbour as eagerly as those who sailed her.

  ‘Are those the infidels, sir?’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘S … s … so many?’

  Gregoras glanced down. He could see the terror in the eyes of the boy, who was probably little older than his and Sofia’s son. The lad, Bartolomeo, had adopted Gregoras ever since he was plucked from the sea. ‘Aye, they are many. But look at them.’ He knelt so his eye was level with the child’s, rested one arm on the rail, lifted the other. ‘That one ahead is a trireme. It has a mast but no sail raised, for we have the wind. Still, it is driving hard towards us, propelled by men on oars.’ He shifted his hand. ‘Those beside it are biremes, smaller, fewer oars, and those on either side, still smaller, are fustae.’