A Place Called Armageddon

by C. C. Humphreys

  The boy did … and Gregoras stepped back, too late. Thwack, the rope caught him on his bare back. ‘Ouch,’ he cried.

  ‘I am sorry, Uncle,’ Thakos said, concern on his face.

  ‘My fault,’ replied Gregoras, rubbing, adding ruefully as he indicated his scars, ‘You’d have thought I’d have learned to dodge flying rope by now!’

  The boy burst out laughing and Gregoras joined him. Then, stepping away to a safe distance, he said, ‘Now try.’

  Thakos lifted the slingshot, swung it round. After a few swings the whirr came. ‘Wait!’ Gregoras called and, as the rope dropped, stepped in. ‘Wider here,’ he said, moving Thakos’s legs until they were shoulder-width apart, squaring off his shoulders. ‘He’s your target,’ he said, standing behind him, pointing at a piece of crumbling wall about twenty paces away, the faded shadow of a figure frescoed onto it. ‘Swirl till you hear the hum. Two more, and fling the knot at it.’

  ‘The knot?’

  ‘If the loop is the bow, the knot is the trigger – and the sight – of my crossbow.’ He stepped behind Thakos, placed his hands over the boy’s, the slingshot still stretched between them. Moving it slowly around the boy’s head, he continued, ‘When you are sighted, you throw the knot at what you want to hit.’

  He stepped swiftly back. The boy swung, flung. The knotted end jerked straight out, then dropped. ‘Good,’ said Gregoras. ‘Now with a stone.’

  Excitedly, Thakos dug into his pouch and drew out a jagged lump of masonry. ‘Wait!’ Gregoras commanded again, stepping close. He took the rock, threw it away, began to search the ground. ‘What you throw is near as important as how you throw it … Ah!’ He stooped, picked up a stone, showed it. ‘See. Smooth-sided, close to round, not too large. Like a dove’s egg.’ He tossed it hand to hand. ‘It should fly true.’

  ‘As true as your arrows?’ Thakos’s eyes were bright. ‘My mother tells me that you are a champion among archers.’

  Does she? Gregoras thought, but said, ‘Perhaps.’ He threw the stone over and the boy caught it. ‘Let us see.’

  Thakos pressed the stone into the leather cup, held the rope out to full length, swung. Gregoras winced – stones had been known to fly out at strange, wounding angles. But this held, Thakos flung the knot … and the stone hit the wall if not the faded figure upon it.

  ‘Not bad,’ Gregoras grunted. ‘The Turk would have killed you, though.’

  Thakos held the weapon out. ‘Can you do better?’

  The challenge was clear in the mismatched eyes. Gregoras smiled. ‘I can try,’ he said, reaching.

  He found a stone that would do, fitted it, took his stance, swung, flung …

  ‘Missed!’ Thakos yelled in delight at the puff of mortar. ‘That Turk would have killed you too, Uncle!’

  Gregoras handed the weapon back. ‘Then we had better kill him first. And see who does, eh?’

  Thakos bent, scooped, loaded, shot. ‘A hit,’ he cried, delightedly. ‘I win!’

  Gregoras snatched back the slingshot. ‘Didn’t I say first to three?’

  He smiled, then bent to the ground, seeking. Thakos bent too, a new game started, and both of them swept around trying to find suitable ammunition, bumping into each other, laughing. Through his own laughter he heard the boy’s and thought, he does have my mother’s tone! Then he pounced on a stone, a moment before Thakos, was up, swinging, flinging …

  ‘A hit! A Turk apiece and the game’s afoot.’

  Thakos seized the weapon, didn’t plant himself, missed. Gregoras, steadier, swung and hit. The boy breathed deep, took his time, waited till the air hummed with spinning rope, shot. ‘There,’ he cried, ‘took his nose off …’ He broke off on the realisation of what he’d said, mouth opening wide. ‘I … I am sorry. I …’ He swallowed, staring. ‘Does it hurt?’

  ‘Well …’ Gregoras stepped close, his face a dark cloud. Then, laughing, he tapped the ivory on his face with one hand and grabbed the slingshot with the other. ‘Not as much as the Turk’s is going to – if only I can find the right stone to finish him.’ He pointed near the boy’s feet. ‘There!’

  Thakos dived, Gregoras shot a hand down, they both grabbed the smooth rock. It slipped between them. Laughing harder now, they stooped again, Thakos kicking it beyond reach towards what had once been the mansion’s doorway – from which a voice came now. ‘What are you chasing, Taki? Is it a mouse?’

  They ceased their chase, looked up. Under the ruined arch stood Sofia, with her daughter held before her.

  Boy and man stood slowly. ‘Mama,’ Thakos cried, ‘my uncle has made my slingshot better, see?’ He pointed, and Gregoras held it up. ‘And now I am beating him with it.’

  ‘Are you?’

  Gregoras could see that Sofia’s face was caught between a smile and a frown. ‘Your son has a keen eye for a target,’ he said, reaching out to tug at the boy’s thick hair. Thakos gave a yelp of pain, snatched the slingshot, moved out of range, delighted.

  ‘Has he?’ Sofia said. ‘Well, he also has a keen eye for his studies. Which he is late for. Again.’

  ‘I am sorry, Mother, but I …’ Thakos looked up at Gregoras, ‘I am studying fighting.’

  ‘Yes,’ Sofia replied, ‘and now you are going to study geometry.’ Thakos groaned but took a step towards her. ‘Wait! Show Minerva over your battlefield. I have to talk with your … uncle.’

  Was there a slight pause between the last words, or did Gregoras only imagine it? Anyway, he watched as sister ran to chase her brother among the fallen stones. ‘It is true, what I said,’ he murmured, watching them run, ‘he does have an eye for a target.’

  ‘It is also true that he has a mind for studies. He is already gifted in rhetoric, in Latin …’

  ‘Like his father, then,’ Gregoras said, in a whisper.

  Thakos was loading his slingshot, talking fast to a transfixed Minerva. Then he raised the cup, flung the rope round, shot. Mortar and dried fresco erupted from the figure’s chest. ‘Like both his fathers,’ Sofia said softly. Gregoras turned to look at her as she stepped down beside him, continued, her eyes on her children, ‘You have not visited us.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And yet …’ she gestured to her son, ‘and yet you found him.’

  ‘It was not hard.’

  ‘But you have not told him,’ she swallowed, ‘what I told you?’

  Gregoras shook his head. ‘He has a father. The only one he’s ever known. And I will not win him that way.’

  She glanced at him. ‘Do you mean to win him?’

  ‘Perhaps. I do not know.’ He stared at her. ‘Perhaps I mean to win back more than him.’

  She looked away then, from his hawk gaze, took a step further into the ruin. ‘You have won your name back. I am happy for you. For your family.’

  ‘And for yourself?’

  She turned to him fully then, looked at him properly for the first time. ‘Your name was never in doubt for me.’

  It was his turn to be disconcerted by her stare. ‘Well,’ he mumbled, reaching up to the ivory tied upon his face, ‘there are some things I can never get back.’

  ‘Oh well,’ she said, almost carelessly, ‘would you truly want your nose back? That nose?’

  ‘Why is it,’ he burst out, ‘that everyone keeps slandering the nose I have lost? My old tutor Theodore was doing it only last week. Was it so very unshapely then?’

  ‘No. It was merely very … huge. Certainly not your best feature.’

  ‘Oh really?’ He laughed. ‘Then tell me what is?’

  Her eyes narrowed, her gaze flitting briefly over his bare chest before returning to meet his. ‘I am a married woman, sir,’ she said, her voice deepening a shade. ‘How could I possibly say?’

  She was there, finally there, back in the light in her eye, in the curve of her lips, the Sofia he remembered and hadn’t seen in seven years. Teasing. Provocative. Alluring. Before he could summon words, she spoke again, in the same tone, with the same smile, ‘You know
I do not mean …’

  ‘No. No, of course not.’ Gregoras smiled. ‘A woman who prays as much as you …’

  ‘The mistake you make, sir, that most men make,’ she said, as softly, ‘is to think that just because a woman seeks the Holy Spirit, she must deny herself the human flesh.’

  It was as if he was seeing her again, as she was that day upon the rock, before he went away to war and never returned. ‘Sofia,’ he said, stepping closer.

  A shriek turned her away. ‘Mama!’ her daughter cried. ‘Look! Look at me!’

  They both looked. Minerva had the slingshot now, was whirling it above her head. Thakos was dodging in fear, but the girl let fly and her stone struck the wall.

  ‘She’s good,’ Gregoras murmured.

  ‘Minerva?’ Sofia laughed. ‘If my son is mainly mind, my daughter is all flesh and spirit. At five years old, you could set her down on the streets of a strange city and within the night she would have food, shelter and protection.’ She raised her voice. ‘Come, children. We must leave.’ She turned back to him. Their previous conversation was only in the colour on her cheeks, not in her words. ‘Do you go to fight the walls?’

  ‘Not tonight. Tonight they have me in mind for something else.’

  ‘Something more dangerous?’

  Gregoras shrugged. Too many people knew of the midnight mission, and Sofia had enough cares already.

  She stared at him. ‘Be careful then. And visit us when you are done. Thakos would like it.’

  The children were getting close. ‘And you? Would you like it?’

  The heat came to her cheeks again. ‘I would,’ she replied, then reached out and touched his arm. ‘Walk with God,’ she said, turning, moving through the doorway.

  Thakos waved the slingshot as he went, and Gregoras lifted a hand. When they disappeared round a corner, and she had not looked back, he went and fetched his shirt, pulled it on, strapped on his falchion. ‘Walk with God,’ he murmured in echo of her, as he ducked beneath the ruined arch, ‘but dance with the devil.’

  – TWENTY-FOUR –

  Into the Dark

  29 April

  ‘Can you see anything?’

  ‘Am I a cat, Zoran, that I can pierce the darkness any better than you?’

  Gregoras grunted. His friend Amir was one of the few things he could half see, and that was only due to the light colour of his cloak. It was saffron, an exact shade, and though it had been more beautiful in its youth, Amir would not give it up. He had worn it from his days as a spice trader, driving camel caravans across the Arabian sands, and during his time commanding a galley, which was where Gregoras had met him, for he had been a slave upon the vessel, Amir its master. Though they had not actually ‘met’ until the time when the galley caught fire in a sea fight off Trebizond and the chains were slipped so even the slaves could take their chances in the water. Gregoras had thought such chances small, he had seen the bloated corpses of too many drowned men, so when he’d noticed that the galley’s captain – in his distinctive cloak – had not abandoned his vessel like the others but was staying aboard it to fight the fire, Gregoras stayed too, fought too. Somehow, luck, effort and Allah’s blessing of a rogue wave had extinguished the flames, though the ship was much damaged. Two men could not sail her; so for a week they drifted with only each other for company and conversation, a long one they found they both enjoyed enormously as it ranged over the delights of God and the iniquities of man. When a Genoese fleet of mercenaries, commanded by one Giovanni Giustiniani Longo, appeared to claim them, Gregoras presented himself and Amir as two swords for hire – if the Genoan would kindly provide the swords. They’d been taken on, and Amir had found the role of renegade as comfortable as any of his others – linked as ever by that distinctive fraying saffron cloak.

  ‘I tell you what does pierce the darkness, man.’ Gregoras leaned forward and clapped his friend on the shoulder. ‘When are you going to wash this thing?’

  A slight gleam came as Amir smiled. ‘When the campaign is won, or ended, as I always do,’ he replied. ‘It would be an unlucky thing to wash its protection off me before that is settled.’

  Gregoras shook his head. Soldiers were superstitious. Many wore amulets; others grew beards, or dressed for battle in a certain, unwavering order. He could hear, in the darkness around them, mumbled incantations of men trying to ward off the danger that the coming combat would expose them to, appealing to God, however they saw Him. Sofia would be angry with him for likening prayer to superstition. But from the day he was disfigured, he made no time for God in his life. He preferred to put faith in the falchion that hung now at his side, the crossbow that was within arm’s reach, and his skill with them. He had reluctantly left his Turkish bow ashore, the closeness of the dark, hot work foreseen better suiting quarrel than shaft.

  Dawn had to be an hour or two away, at most; and so the time appointed for the attack was upon them. He heard Amir slip onto his knees beside him and begin to pray, at the same time as he heard the pad of soft-soled shoes upon the central deck, the histodoke. The man upon it whispered, loud enough to be heard, ‘To oar!’

  Gregoras leaned closer to the saffron cloak. ‘Say one for me, brother,’ he whispered.

  Amir paused in his Arabic to answer. ‘Allah will look after His faithful child,’ he murmured, ‘while the devil has care of you, as ever, Zoran.’

  Gregoras laughed, listened to the familiar sound of oars dipping. He was glad that he was not pulling upon one, that his position meant he had only to fight, not row then fight. For none of the men at the oars of this bireme were slaves; each had been hand-picked by Coco, its Venetian captain, as both sailor and warrior. It was true also, Gregoras knew, of the crews of every vessel in their small fleet, every man a free-born Venetian, Genoan or Greek; every one – save for Amir – a Christian. Slaves could find a way to hinder a vessel in combat. Muslim slaves could cry warnings. And their one hope of success in this mad mission was silence and, for most men there, faith.

  He felt, rather than saw, the heavy shapes of the ships setting out from Galata’s harbour. He had been at the meetings, knew what they were: two larger transports that had some oars and whose sides were thickly padded with wool and cotton bales to shelter the swifter triremes, biremes and fustae, which were filled with combustible agents and carefully nursed pots of fire. If the plan held, if they could get close enough to the Turks’ eighty-strong fleet moored in a bay on the Asian shore before they were heard or seen, they had enough fire to destroy the enemy. If the enemy was unaware of their coming.

  The last great ‘if’, Gregoras thought, and shivered, from the thought and from the breeze that swept him now they nosing into open water. And no sooner did he feel that than his eyes were dazzled. ‘A comet,’ said Amir, breaking off his prayer to murmur. ‘A blessing on our enterprise?’

  The light did not fire and fade straightaway, as a comet’s would. It lingered, flickered long enough before it went out for Gregoras to mark where it flared. ‘It is atop the Tower of Christ in the centre of Galata,’ he hissed, ‘and unless I am much mistaken, it is the light of betrayal. Someone is marking our departure. Someone is warning …’

  He broke off, as a hiss came from the histodoke. ‘Double speed,’ came the command, and the oars quickened their strokes. ‘That is not good,’ said Amir, the former galley captain.

  ‘It is not,’ added Gregoras, the former galley slave. Both men knew the plan – to proceed as a fleet, so the padded high-sided transports could shelter the others from the enemy’s land-placed cannon and the swifter vessels could dart out and cause their havoc. But Coco’s fusta, which they were on, had seventy-two rowers and the build of a sleek greyhound. The transports had forty-eight and the bulk of an ox.

  ‘We are leaving them behind, sure,’ said Gregoras, rising. ‘I will go and see the captain.’

  He descended the stair from the aft deck, ran along the histodoke, passing the bosun there just as he hissed, ‘Triple time.’ The surge nea
rly threw Gregoras off his feet, but he found them, ran on, mounted the foredeck. He saw the bulked shadow of a group of men at the front railing. Spray was rising over the prow and splashing them. ‘Captain,’ he hissed, but not as quietly as he had spoken before, for he had to top the sound that triple-time oars made in the water, ‘what are you doing?’

  He was close to the men, who split apart at his voice, and alarmed that he could now make out their features – for that meant some light was creeping into the sky. ‘Ah, Constantinople’s latest hero,’ said the smallest man there, his dark face darkened further by a beard that reached from high cheekbone to chest. ‘Well, we have heroes too in Venice!’ he said, sweeping his arm around his assembled officers. ‘And we would be first among the enemy and claim the glory of destroying them!’

  ‘Captain …’ Gregoras began heatedly, then stopped himself. Though he had some status as the emperor’s man, he could not let his exasperation show, not on the man’s foredeck. Pig-fucking Venetian braggart, he thought, and took a deep breath. ‘Captain,’ he went on in a more reasonable tone, ‘the plan agreed was to approach as one, attack as one. There are upwards of eighty of the enemy ahead and they are protected—’

  ‘Eighty times the honour, eh?’ Coco interrupted loudly. ‘The others will catch up soon enough. And they will engage an enemy we have woken rudely from their dreams. No!’ He raised a hand and his voice as Gregoras made to speak. ‘Do not counsel caution, Greek … or is it Genoan?’ He sneered a smile. ‘We of Venice do not know the meaning of that word. We—’

  It was strange to be looking a man in the face one moment and staring into the stump of his chest the next. Strange too, the reversal of sound and sight, for Gregoras realised he must have heard the cannon’s blast before he saw the cannon’s effect. Blood hit him as spray had done before, and he had to wipe his eyes to clear them, in time to see the legs collapse, the stump fall. The Turks’ remarkable first shot had cut Coco neatly in half, and taken most of his officers. Shocked, Gregoras shifted his gaze from the dead and the near-dead to the source of the next flash that came, from the east. This he clearly heard before he saw, before he threw himself down onto boards already slick with blood and entrails, though the ball probably struck the ship before he reached them. It made a great tearing sound, wood ripped aside by the entry of a stone ball fired, he realised, from less than two hundred paces away, undoubtedly from the shore. It accounted for the accuracy – and for the flare he’d seen atop the Tower of Christ. The Turks knew they were coming, and they had laid their ambush well.