A Place Called Armageddon

by C. C. Humphreys

  ‘Inshallah,’ she murmured, and bent over again. Still she saw nothing. She was not as gifted in the cards’ use as she was with palms and mirrors. Her lover, the Kabbalist Isaac, had only just begun her instruction in his people’s ancient technique when he’d … died. But the pretty pictures pleased her clients.

  She frowned. Truly what did the querent need? Not for her to wrench up her soul. He only needed hope. That she’d always been able to fake.

  She reached for a card’s blank back, hesitated. For she needed hope too. Her vision had grown cloudy, her certainty compromised. Near seven weeks of siege, a never-ending bombardment, ceaseless assaults, a fleet in the Horn – and still the city stood. She knew from the women of this outer camp, mainly whores whose cooking fires she shared, and from some of the men who sat before her carpet begging for a sign, that doubt had overtaken most minds. The Red Apple had never fallen. Why should it now? Only yesterday, one of their greatest hopes had been crushed. The Greeks had discovered the tunnel that would have brought a great bastion crashing down and allowed the faithful to storm in. They had destroyed it, massacred the men who’d dug it, while those few who had escaped had been horribly burned, their death screams filling the camp.

  Her hand hovered. The youth leaned in, transfixed. Still she did not reach.

  She was thinking of Mehmet. She had not seen him, except from afar, since that night in Edirne when she’d prophesied his great victory. Should she go to him now? He was as prey to doubts as great as any of his soldiers’. Greater, as were his ambitions. Should she soothe him with portents? Rouse him with prophesies? Hope could be faked for sultans as well as soldiers.

  A voice jolted her out of her trance. ‘You do see something,’ the young man whispered. ‘What is it?’

  Leilah looked up into blue eyes wide with apprehension, then down again to her hand suspended over the deck. Now she let it fall, touched the card, turned it … crying out as her vision cleared fast, like a veil ripped back.

  ‘What?’ the youth gasped. ‘What do you see?’

  She’d been concentrating, but not on his question. On her own. And the answer was clear.

  Ayin. So it was called in the Hebrew. To some it was the temple of God in Jerusalem, long destroyed. To others a stone pyramid. To others … a tower.

  Lightning struck the structure, the first spark in its destruction.

  She turned it back over swiftly, melding it in with the other cards, rising as soon as it was lost among them. The youth did not move. ‘What did you see?’ he repeated, his voice becoming shrill. ‘Am I to die?’

  She looked down at him. What had cleared her vision kept it clear. Death was stamped on his unwrinkled brow. His fate, and there was nothing she could do about it. ‘You are in God’s hands, as are we all,’ she said, stooping for his coin, throwing it back between his knees. ‘Inshallah.’

  Carelessly and swiftly, she stuffed the cards into her satchel. Grabbed her cloak, looked back. The youth had not moved. ‘Take back your money. Come another day.’

  Still he did not bend for his silver coin. ‘You did see, didn’t you?’ he mumbled.

  ‘Go!’ She bent, snatched up the coin, shoved it into the same hand she jerked him up with. She pushed him through the tent flaps and he stumbled off. Leilah went the opposite way.

  Sometimes the meaning of a card was obscure and she had to go deep within herself to find it. Sometimes it was as unambiguous as the symbol itself. That was true of this young man, marked for death. And unless she reached Mehmet, perhaps it meant something else too – the death of her dream.

  ‘Ayin. The tower,’ she muttered as she ran, weaving between the cooking fires. ‘It must not fall.’

  ‘The tower,’ the sultan shrieked. ‘It must attack. Not in a week. Not tomorrow. Now! Now! Now!’

  Hamza stood at the back of the group of men that Mehmet was screaming at. He had not yet been seen and for that he was grateful. The sultan’s fury was a wild fire that could switch direction in a moment. When he was first summoned, Hamza had thought that Mehmet wanted to chastise his new admiral for yet another failure to capture the boom across the Horn and unite the two Turkish fleets. Like the unfortunate Baltaoglu, he feared he would soon be feeling the strokes of the bastinado across his back. But he’d been met at the entrance to the sultan’s otak by Zaganos Pasha, who revealed that he was the one who’d sent for him.

  ‘We need you, old friend,’ he’d said, greeting him. ‘Perhaps he’ll heed you as he will not me.’

  Hamza had stared at the man, wondering if the siege had carved such fresh lines upon his own face. He recalled the apple-cheeked youth from their time together in the old sultan’s household. Zaganos had been part of the levy, the devsirme, that took the strongest and brightest – and the prettiest – from the Turk’s vassal lands. A Christian from Albania, but such a Muslim now that he put those born in the faith to shame. He was also a ‘coming man’, completely dedicated to Mehmet and so at odds, like Hamza the tanner’s son, with the old nobility. Both knew their own star rose and fell with Mehmet’s.

  Taking his arm, the Albanian had led Hamza aside and spoken to him in urgent whispers. ‘The Greeks blew up his mine this morning,’ he’d said, ‘and the long-bearded bastards somehow keep patching every piece of wall he knocks down. It is making him, as you hear, crazy.’ He jerked his thumb over his shoulder, to the almost unintelligible noises of rage within the tent. ‘Now he wants to send in the tower, which is only half finished. Now, this hour, in broad daylight, right up against the section that that immovable goatfucker Giustiniani defends. I think Mehmet means to fling himself from the tower top, sword in hand, and take him on in single combat.’ A man had come out of the tent and stared at them, so Zaganos pulled him further away. ‘For the love of Allah, most revered, you have to stop him. I don’t know how many more setbacks the army can take. That shit-faced Anatolian is already sowing doubt: “Oh, most exalted, I feared this would be the outcome. Perhaps it is time to reconsider.”’ Zaganos turned and spat onto the otak’s silk-draped side.

  Another time Hamza would have smiled. It was an almost perfect impersonation of the high-pitched Iznikian accent of the grand vizier, Candarli Halil. ‘What do you think I can do that you have failed to do?’ he said. ‘He is hard to move once he is decided. That’s why we are here, after all.’

  ‘Think I don’t know? I do not ask you to stop the storm. Just deflect it. Get me a night at least. If we can finish the tower and move it into position so the Greeks wake up and see it there at dawn, we might have a chance.’ He’d taken Hamza’s arm, half squeezed, half shoved. ‘Go, before it is too late.’

  So Hamza stood at the back of the crowd of apprehensive men, watching the sultan rage. Zaganos’s likening of it to a storm was accurate. Mehmet’s arms whirled as if in a high wind; his breath came in great gasps and was expelled with gobs of spittle like fat raindrops. Accusations, of treachery, of incompetence, of cowardice exploded like thunderclaps.

  Like any storm, though, it needed force to sustain it, and Hamza could see that Mehmet lacked the stamina. It had only been three weeks since he’d last seen the sultan, on the day he’d been appointed kapudan pasha. But Mehmet had thinned, his big wrestler’s body diminished, his vibrant thick red hair hanging lank around his temples. His eyes were sunken, sockets bruised by lack of sleep. He looked younger because of it, younger even than his twenty-one years. And it was the youth who, lacking the breath to continue, suddenly subsided, leaned on his knees in tiredness, raising his face with a look that was more appeal than fury.

  It was his time. ‘Balm of the world,’ Hamza shouted, pushing through the startled men, who turned at the noise. ‘I beg you to let me be the one to lead this attack. To die, if Allah so wills it, a martyr for Him and for you.’

  He’d reached the front rank now, and Mehmet could see him. He knew he had the advantage of not being tainted with this recent failure. He had his own, true. But the past could be lost, for a time, in the present. />
  Mehmet looked up. ‘Hamza. My cakircibas. Have you a hawk for me to fly?’

  ‘Fly me, master,’ Hamza said, prostrating himself on the ground, kissing Mehmet’s curling slipper, ‘at any game you desire.’

  The sultan stared down for a long moment, then quietly said, ‘Leave us alone.’

  Hamza did not move, did not look up. Didn’t need to, to hear a familiar high-pitched whine: ‘But, lord, let your most trusted stay and speak more on this. Perhaps it is time to reconsider …’

  ‘Go!’ Mehmet roared. ‘You dare to dispute with me, Candarli Halil?’

  The tent cleared, swiftly. Hamza heard the fall of cloth at the entrance, then Mehmet’s voice, a single word. ‘Rise.’

  Hamza rose. Mehmet had flung himself back onto the divan at the centre of the room and covered his face with his hands. He spoke through clenched fingers. ‘The cowards try to thwart me, falconer. I cannot bid them to my fist.’

  Hamza stepped closer, spoke softly, as he would to a bird that was straining to the limit of its jesses. ‘So bid others, lord. You cannot fly a heron against a hare.’

  After a moment, Mehmet gave a sharp, muffled laugh, then dropped his hands. ‘He is a proper heron, that smug Anatolian. And he wants to see me fail. He tries to make me fail.’

  ‘Yes, lord,’ Hamza continued, as softly. ‘But there is a goshawk outside, awaiting your command.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Zaganos. May I call him in?’

  After a moment of staring, Mehmet nodded. Walking slowly to the entrance – you didn’t make sudden moves with a nervous bird – Hamza pulled up the cloth, sought Zaganos, beckoned him with his eyes. The Albanian came swiftly, his own eyes wide in query. At Hamza’s nod, he sighed and followed him into the tent.

  ‘Well, Zaganos?’ Mehmet said. ‘Are you willing to obey my orders?’

  ‘Every one, star of the sky. And to hurl myself with your other good servant from the tower. We will be the first to die for your glory.’

  The younger man was rising during these words, but he stopped halfway, like a wrestler ready to counter a move. ‘Eh? Are you both so ready to die?’

  ‘As you command, lord. I admit I would rather take my chance in the half-light of the dawn tomorrow, with the tower fully finished,’ Zaganos replied, then snapped his fingers. ‘No! As it is, and in the blazing sun of this afternoon, so all will witness the loyalty that surpasses death.’

  Mehmet straightened now, looking between the two men. Both could see, for the first time, some uncertainty in his eyes. ‘You truly think the dawn a better time?’

  Zaganos tipped his head to the side, considering. ‘Well, it would mean that we would have time to not just once but triple-ward the front of the tower with soaked ox hides. They would better resist their fire arrows.’

  Mehmet looked at Hamza. ‘What think you?’

  Hamza also took a long moment to consider. ‘I can see another advantage, lord. Imagine if the Greeks wake up to see a mighty tower standing flush to their wall where no tower existed before. They would think it magical. They would gaze upon it with the same awe …’ he paused, ‘as the Trojans did upon the horse that brought their city low.’

  It was the best arrow in his quiver, for he knew the young man’s obsessions. And he saw it strike home. ‘Yes,’ said Mehmet, smiling too. ‘Yes! Let it be so. It will give me time to supervise the last parts of its construction. And choose the men who will fight from it. The ablest that I have. Come …’ he gestured to the back of the tent, his table there, filled with rosters and maps, ‘advise me.’

  The young sultan led Zaganos back. Servants appeared, bringing flagons, sweetmeats. Hamza, breathing deep and about to follow, stopped when he heard a hiss. He turned. An officer stood at the entrance, beckoning. Hamza moved to him. ‘What is it?’

  ‘A message for the sultan, kapudan pasha. A woman brings it.’

  ‘A woman?’ Hamza sighed. Mehmet had forbidden all his officers their wives. But he had brought a few concubines from his own saray. ‘It is not the time,’ he said, turning away.

  ‘Forgive me, pasha, but it is not that … that sort of woman.’ The officer’s voice dropped to a whisper. ‘It is a sorceress. She has a prophecy for the sultan.’

  Hamza sucked in air, then stepped past the officer out before the tent. A dozen paces away, at the gap in the silk rope that surrounded the otak like a thin crimson wall, stood a woman in a veil and cloak. Hamza shivered, although the sun was hot upon him. She could have been any woman. But she was not. She was the witch from Edirne, who’d predicted the Red Apple’s fall, and sealed the decision in the blood of an importuning Jew.

  He crossed to the unmoving figure. ‘Do you know me?’ he said, more sharply than he meant.

  The voice came muffled through indigo-dyed cloth. ‘I know you, master.’

  ‘You cannot see the sultan now.’

  ‘I must. I have a prophecy for him.’

  ‘I tell you that you cannot. You can tell your prophecy to me.’

  ‘It is not for you.’

  Hamza hesitated. He knew his lord set much store by portents. Too much, many said. And though Hamza himself did not altogether discount them, he preferred to trust in what he could see rather than in the stars or in the guts of a freshly slaughtered goat. Like a hunting bird, he had just recalled Mehmet to the fist. He would not have him jostled again. ‘You cannot see him, woman,’ he said harshly. ‘Be gone.’

  He’d taken a step back to the tent when her words came. He did not turn, but he heard them clearly enough.

  ‘I do have a prophecy that is yours, Hamza Pasha,’ Leilah said softly. The man was a blur through her veil. But her vision of him was clear. ‘Enjoy your glory. All the success you could desire will be yours. Until a forest grows where no forest has been. And a dragon makes you climb upon a tree.’

  He turned then, fast, but she was gone. He thought he glimpsed a flash of indigo, thought to chase it, catch her, ask what she had meant. But Zaganos was behind him, calling. So he went.

  ‘Up, peasants. Up, lazy sons of the devils. It is our turn.’

  Achmed opened his eyes, squinting against the late afternoon sun. Farouk, their bolukbasi, was moving among his company of men. The lieutenant, they said, had one eye that saw all, one ear that heard all, one cock that fucked all and one thumb … Well, he used the other hand to grip the bastinado that he wielded now, poking and striking his men to their feet.

  Achmed sighed. The sun was hot and he would have been content to lie in it and sleep some more, maybe dull the throbbing in his head, maybe find some more boza to dull it with. He saw a few of his comrades hiding a bottle of the fermented barley from Farouk’s single, eagle eye – not because he would have objected, but because he would have demanded the lion’s share of it.

  It had been the same with the hundred gold coins that Achmed had won raising the Prophet’s standard upon the walls. Half seemed to have gone into the lieutenant’s bottomless war chest, the rest to drink and better food for the company. There was nothing he could do about it. When he complained, he got his answer. ‘You wouldn’t have got to the wall without us, giant,’ Farouk had said, when Achmed had woken from the three-day delirium caused by the Greek stone that had opened his head. ‘So we will drink to the martyrs now in paradise who died for you, and we will reward those who survived your immense stupidity.’

  Achmed didn’t want to drink. Hadn’t, in the long march from his home to the walls of Constantinople. It was forbidden by the Qur’an and there were many, like him, who kept faithful to the law. There were also many who did not. His little companion Raschid, with his twisted right leg and endless dreams of women, was one such. And he had fed Achmed boza when he was helpless in the darkness of his wound. It had reduced the pain, kept reducing it as the weeks passed. It had reduced the fear, when they were called again and again to the attack. For a while it had given him dreams – of home, of his beautiful wife, of his sons. And of his dead daughter, his wild rose,
little Abal, alive again and running through his fields of golden wheat.

  It was surprising how fast a hundred gold coins went – on boza, on sheep bought for feasts held in memory of the dead, in payments that his lieutenant and some of the company made to certain women who lived in a tent village on the shores of the Marmara sea. Achmed did not go, though Raschid always did. But when the hundred coins were gone, the company found rougher liquor that brought pain almost as soon as it brought oblivion. Achmed had tried to drink less, pray more. But the cannon that boomed above him day and night needed quieting, as did his fear.

  ‘Up, hell hounds,’ bellowed Farouk, nearing him and Raschid. ‘The sultan would unleash you.’ He stopped in front of them, struck Achmed’s bare toe. ‘Up, gazi! Allah, most glorious, calls you to Him.’

  ‘Is it another general attack, lieutenant?’ Raschid pulled himself up to standing, using Achmed’s shoulders.

  Farouk smiled, something that Achmed always hated. It was not just the ugliness of the face, the near-toothless mouth stretching under the puckered eye socket to the missing ear. He’d smiled like that each time he ordered them to the walls – twice since the first attack when the standard had been raised. Each time many comrades had not returned. Yet the company was full again the next day, for the largely unschooled bashibazouks sought out an officer like Farouk, his experience written on his face, while his reputation for seeking the best plunder once a city fell was unmatched.

  Now he smiled, spoke loudly, addressing all. ‘A general attack? Not now. But perhaps later, and perhaps it will be the last of them, the one that sweeps the Greeks from their walls and opens their coffer lids and their wives’ legs to us.’ His few teeth gleamed. ‘For our glorious sultan, praised of heaven, has found a new way to do that. He has enlisted the services of a great djinn, a powerful wizard who has, overnight, created a marvellous tower that reaches to the skies and overlooks the Greeks’ puny walls.’ Gasps came at this, many men reaching within their clothes for talismans and protective objects. Farouk’s smile broadened. ‘So come, devil spawn, and see what magic has wrought for the destruction of our enemies.’