A Place Called Armageddon

by C. C. Humphreys

  A moment, before Minotto of Venice spoke. ‘I hear nothing, basileus.’

  ‘No,’ replied Constantine. ‘The Turks have stopped their music.’ A murmur spread through the tent. All there knew what the silence foretold. ‘Yes,’ the emperor said. ‘You know your positions. To your posts, with God at your shoulder and courage in your hearts. Those who are to die, be sure your names will live for ever, wreathed in glory. Those who are marked to live, let us meet tomorrow at the Church of the Holy Wisdom, at sacred Sophia, and celebrate a glorious victory.’ Constantine raised his arms above his head and roared, ‘To your posts – for God, for Christendom … and for Constantinople!’

  ‘Constantinople!’ The name was shouted back, then each man departed at speed. Gregoras turned, but Theon was gone, off to his own position. Gregoras knew his, and made for it. ‘Commander,’ he said, as he appeared at Giustiniani’s elbow.

  ‘Ah, Rhinometus! Or Zoran, or … Gregoras. Whatever you call yourself now, you’re still a noseless bastard.’ He squinted at his bow. ‘Are you become Constantine’s pampered guardsman, or do you come to fight where the action will be hottest?’

  ‘The emperor has spared me for you. Though I do not think he will be far from the heat himself.’

  ‘Good. So let us to it.’ He clapped his great hands onto Gregoras on one side, and the Sicilian on the other. ‘Let us to it, boys,’ he cried, driving them toward the entrance.

  ‘You are merry, my lord,’ Gregoras said, coughing.

  ‘Of course,’ Giustiniani bellowed. ‘I am about to kill Turks.’

  Through squadrons of soldiers mustering to trumpet calls, they crossed the short patch of ground to the bastion, mounted it. Constantine joined them, Theodore as ever by his side. All looked to the Turkish lines, the fires still raging there, silhouetted men crowding before them. Below them, fifteen paces away, men were still cramming timber and mud onto the stockade that, in this spot and for hundreds of paces in either direction, had replaced the outer wall. ‘Enzo,’ Giustiniani called, ‘admit the chosen men of Constantinople and of Genoa into the Peribolos.’ He gestured to the space between the inner and outer walls. ‘When they are all in, and we with them, lock the gate. Then let the key be placed here, in this tower.’

  The Sicilian nodded and left. ‘Lock them in?’ Constantine queried. ‘Might you not want to bring more men in and the wounded out?’

  ‘More men?’ Giustiniani laughed. ‘What men would they be, basileus?’ He shook his head. ‘No. All my men will be here, fighting beside the elites of your city, and the wounded and the dead will lie where they fall. Nothing focuses the mind of a fighting man better than knowing there is no retreat. Do you do the same, lord, further up at the Charisius gate. And give the key into the charge of some steady fellow who is not going to succumb to the weeping of men.’ He nodded towards Gregoras. ‘The man of many names will guard ours here.’

  Gregoras frowned. ‘You are certain you do not want me beside you, lord, down there?’

  ‘No. I need you for the task I have just stated – and for your prowess with the bow. From here you will see more clearly if some sheep-fucking Turk is trying to stick me in the arse. Before he does, you will kindly put an arrow through his throat.’

  Gregoras nodded. Though he was good with falchion and mace, he was better with the bow. He looked down, as the gate on the inner wall swung open and the Genoan mercenaries, the light from reed torches glinting off their black armour, marched four by four into the Peribolos. Following them, less ordered but almost equally well armed, came the chosen Greeks.

  ‘I will away,’ said Constantine briskly, ‘and go wherever I am most needed.’ He looked down at the stauroma, frowned. ‘Most probably close to here.’

  ‘Most probably, basileus,’ Giustiniani grinned. ‘And bring a few hundred Venetians with you if you return. Otherwise the bastards will sit on their arses for the entire battle and still claim all the glory.’

  Constantine half turned, hesitated, turned back. ‘Commander,’ he said, his face a frown, ‘I wish I could …’

  He broke off. Giustiniani nodded, spoke softer now. ‘Go with God, lord. And let us kneel together tomorrow and praise Him in the Hagia Sophia.’

  The emperor descended the stair. Theodore briefly ran his fingers up Gregoras’s bow arm, muttered, ‘Better,’ then followed. Giustiniani and Gregoras peered down again into the Peribolos. All who were to enter it had come.

  ‘When you have the gate key, put it in that alcove there. Tell another archer, in case you fall. Tell him too that nobody gets the key but on my command, or if I am dead …’ he paused. ‘Well, if I am dead, a plague on it, do what you want.’ He smiled, gripped the younger man’s arm. ‘Go with God, my friend.’

  ‘Go to the devil, lord,’ Gregoras replied, putting a hand behind his ear. ‘Can’t you hear him calling his son?’

  A smile, a wave and the Commander descended, reappearing a moment later in the Peribolos. Enzo locked the gate behind him. ‘Zoran!’ he called, and threw something up. A glitter reflected torchlight as it spun up through the night air. Then the key was in Gregoras’s hand. He held it a moment, before laying it carefully in the alcove.

  Other men joined him – archers, crossbowmen, Greeks, Genoans. All placed their quivers beneath a crenellation, then peered over them. A short distance away, figures moved before the flames, trumpets calling them to assembly, voices crying both to Allah and to man. Silhouettes, it was hard to tell much more about them, what type of warrior the sultan would fling at them first. It does not much matter, thought Gregoras, trying to conjure some moisture into his mouth. Come, whoever you are.

  And then, as if God had thrown a blanket over his sight, all the fires ahead of him went out. The darkness spread rapidly along the Turkish line, flames extinguished down the ramparts toward the distant Sea of Marmara, up the hill towards the Charisius gate and no doubt all the way to the Horn beyond it. Maybe the odd fire spluttered before it died. But darkness came swiftly, everywhere. It was masterfully done.

  Gregoras had fought them perhaps a dozen times and knew that, whatever Constantine had said to raise his officers’ hopes, the enemy were mainly not slaves and certainly not cowards. They were some of the finest fighters in the world.

  But so are we, he thought, looking down at the silent, black ranks. Sucking in a breath, he reached for his bow. ‘Come, Turk,’ he repeated, to no one in particular, and notched an arrow.

  – TWENTY-FOUR –

  A Place Called Armageddon

  29 May: fifty-third day of the siege: 1 a.m.

  As soon as the fires went out, the chanting began, a single word exhaled, followed by a sharp inhalation.

  ‘Ismicelal.’ Breath. ‘Ismicelal.’ Breath. ‘Ismicelal.’ Breath.

  Achmed did not join in. He had before, on other attacks, had felt the heat rise in him till sweat broke from his skin. Chanted again and again, the short breath fuelling it, exploding it out. Filling the faithful with hate, making them stronger, more vicious, determined to slaughter all the infidels or offer themselves as martyrs in the attempt, one of God’s ninety-nine names on their lips, the rest in their hearts.

  Achmed did not hate the men he would try to kill. He assumed they were men much like him, fighting for what they believed in. He had never needed anger to accomplish what he must. As for God, he had appeased and appealed to Him in three days of fasting while others took one, only breaking bread, eating meat at each sunset, as at Ramazan. And he wore beneath his robe the only armour he had aside from his shield – his name and Allah’s, merged in eight squares, stitched into the centre of his undershirt.

  So, as Raschid and one-eyed Farouk and such men of their troop who had survived till this moment chanted themselves into a killing rage, Achmed murmured his name, conjoined with one of Allah’s. Then, as an officer with a plumed headdress walked along their lines, urging them off their knees and their weapons into their hands, as the men around him grew louder, he changed to a different chant.<
br />
  ‘Ya daim. Ya daim. Ya daim.’

  It was what he would chant in the fields, grasping the stalks of wheat, scything them down, again and again, the rhythm helping him keep going, long past exhaustion, till all the work was done, the fields clear, his family’s future waiting to be collected, threshed, milled, made into life-sustaining bread. What lay ahead of him now was the same. The sultan had promised three days of pillage. Raschid had told him again and again of the fortunes that were theirs if the city fell. The gold to be stripped from infidel churches, from the very street stones. The slaves to be sold.

  Achmed did not desire a fortune. He did not want, like the others, to return to his village and be the lord of it. He only wanted to be sure that his family would never lose another child to hunger. For that, and for Allah, and for the sultan, he would kill as much as he must. With his scimitar he would scythe the Greeks who stood between him and that hope.

  They were on their feet, then they were moving forward, down the slope of the valley, across the stream, up the other slope. They were swung round, jabbed and prodded into rough lines. Only when he settled did Achmed allow himself to look up, over the heads of archers and slingers and the wheeled barricades they sheltered behind to what lay beyond them. It was there, what remained of the wall, chipped crenellations scattered like teeth in an old man’s mouth, the gaps between filled with wood, and barrels, and earth. He could see it by the torches the Greeks had placed, for their own army was still shrouded in darkness.

  The tremulous whisper came from beside him.

  ‘Ismicelal.’ Breath. ‘Ismicelal.’ Breath. ‘Ismicelal.’ Breath.

  He looked down at Raschid. He was attempting fury but his eyes darted everywhere in fear. His arm, which had been scorched by the dragon in the tower, twitched repeatedly, a mass of scars and livid flesh. The dragon’s hot breath had taken what scant courage the little man had had.

  Farouk walked before them, tapping every second man with his bastinado, his one eye fixing on theirs. ‘Each of you touched, pick up a ladder as you pass forward. You will throw them against the Greek stockade and the man next to you will climb up.’ The wooden stick jabbed into Achmed’s chest, rested there. ‘But you, giant, and every man from here down, have a different task.’ He stepped back, bent, lifted something from the ground. ‘Here,’ he said, offering a long pole with an iron hook at its end. ‘You men are to try and destroy the Greek’s barrier. Grab the timbers that stick out. Pull them down. Dislodge the barrels. Understand?’

  Achmed took the pole, hefted it, nodded. Glanced at Rashid, who had stopped chanting and looked ever more terrified – he was next to a ladder man and so designated as one to climb and fight. As Farouk moved off down the line, assigning tasks and tools, the big man whispered, ‘Stay behind me. No one will see.’

  Raschid nodded, swallowed, lips moving again, no noise emerging. Then they both started as sudden, violent sound came in a great crash of drums, in the smash of cymbals, in a wild fanfare of trumpets. Farouk was before them again, right in the middle of the troop. Drawing his sword, he thrust it high into the air, shouting to be heard above the musical din.

  ‘Allahu akbar!’ he cried.

  The shout joined thousands more, rippling down the lines, reverberating over the hills, from the waters of the Golden Horn to the Sea of Marmara, drowning out even the mehter bands. Then, as one, ten thousand bashibazouks charged the walls of Constantinople.

  There were men ahead of them, fighting first, firing culverin and kolibrina, the hollow sticks exploding in flames, shooting bullets that buried themselves in earth, ricocheted off barrels, sank into wood, sometimes into flesh. Scores of archers drew and shot, drew and shot, walking slowly forward behind the wheeled barricades till these stopped just before the fosse. Slingers, twirling their ropes, stepped from shelter to fling and dart back. But many were caught, as were many archers, by scores of bullets, bone arrowheads, flung stones hurled from the stockade and from the towers behind it.

  They had halted, as the barriers halted. Now, with their missile men shooting when they dared ahead of them, and the music growing ever louder behind them, with the chanting of God’s name and the declaration of His greatness resounding from thousands of mouths, the order came.

  ‘Forward!’

  Achmed had charged the walls a half-dozen times now, by day, by night. Night was better, the Greeks found it harder to see and so to kill. Night was worse, for death came unseen and sudden from the darkness. All he could do, he did now. Made sure his scimitar was safe in the sling across his back. Lifted high the large round shield strapped to his left forearm, covering as much of his body as he could, leaving his name conjoined with God’s to protect the uncovered rest. Beyond the shield, his left hand held the great pole an arm’s span below its hook, his right near the butt.

  By day and night, during scores of assaults, the fosse had been filled in to almost a height with the low, outermost wall. Running up the slight slope, Achmed vaulted the crumbling stonework. A short drop, a crouch, scores of men ducking and flinching into a torrent of metal and stone. ‘On!’ yelled Farouk, up and moving, shield raised, projectiles falling on it like hail onto a roof. All around him men ran forward, with ladders, with hooked poles, many dying in the running, their burdens snatched up and taken forward again. Over their heads their own archers shot, flighted death snatching men above who screamed and fell away. Achmed saw a gap between two barrels, suddenly vacated, ran towards it, jabbing the great pole up, hooking the end of a tree branch wedged there; dropped his full weight backwards, jerking the pole down hard. The branch sagged then shot out, and suddenly he was dodging heavy falling wood, and earth that filled his mouth, choking the roar he had not realised he was giving.

  Spitting, he fell back, kicking away the branch. He looked to the side, where Raschid was trying to seem busy, prising a ladder from dying fingers. Farouk was shouting, but his words were lost in so many others, in so many languages – Greek and Italian from the defenders, Turk dialects from many of the assailants, but by no means all, for there were as many Christians attacking the stockade as defending it. Achmed could heard the Hungarian’s yell, the guttural grunt of the Bulgar, the mercenary’s shout and the vassal’s. He heard a man beside him crying out in Osmanlica, ‘I will braid your beard into a dog leash, Greek!’ Heard the shouted reply in the same tongue, ‘Come feel my bite!’

  A babel of language, in curse, in prayer.

  Again and again Achmed reached up, seeking to snag parts of the stockade, to pull it down, his shield rattling with flung stones, his magical undershirt warding off all arrows. Until one cry pierced them all, a universal one. ‘For the love of Allah! Run! Run!’ None stopped to consider if it was a command from any officer’s throat. It was still obeyed; men turned as one and ran.

  Dropping their tools, back they poured, pursued by jeers and bullets, over the low wall, slipping down the mud and bracken of the filled-in fosse. Thousands of men fleeing, laughing as one, laughing to be alive and out of hell, Raschid laughing louder than any – until a sharp crack changed his laugh into a shriek of pain. Men were ahead of them in a loose line, wielding lead-tipped whips or heavy wooden clubs. ‘Back, dogs!’ they screamed, lashing, jabbing. ‘Back!’

  Achmed crouched to pick up Raschid, who was clutching his face, a purple welt clear between his fingers. With a shout, he rose, and three men before him gave back. ‘You dare …’ he roared, stepping forward, arms outstretched. And then he was struck from behind, hard across the back.

  He turned … and it was his own officer, Farouk, his scimitar raised for another blow with its flat side. ‘Did you think we were done there, giant?’ he yelled. ‘Back, hound of the sultan. Back until your master calls you to the leash. Or would you rather run past these and meet … them!’ He pointed with his sword, past the whip-bearing chaouses to where torches had been lit and flames glittered on ranks of men. Men in tall white turbans, row on row. ‘Janissaries!’ spat Farouk. ‘While these will merely bea
t you, those will kill you if you seek to flee before your task is done.’

  More bashibazouks, fresh men, had filed through gaps in the janissary ranks and were charging now, past them, running towards the enemy. Farouk swivelled with them. ‘Now come! Come all of you!’ He turned, laughing, pointing back the way they had fled. ‘Follow me to paradise!’

  Fury filled the large man, fury he had not managed to raise against his enemy – until now. Now it was guided, directed by his officer, who turned him, shoved him, stooped to lift and fling the whimpering Raschid after him. Both men stumbled forward, picking up speed on the slight slope, urged by the men charging just ahead of those who had already fought, the universal cry in their throats.

  ‘Allahu akbar!’

  Once more the filled fosse was climbed, the lowermost outer rampart straddled, the body-strewn stretch of ground the Greeks called the Parateichion run across. They were at the stockade again, but this time Achmed had no barbed pole in his hand. This time he leapt, wrapped huge arms around a thrust-out beam, kicked hard against the remains of stone beneath it, and shot from the wall, still clutching the wood, showered by the earth that came with it. He landed hard on his back, the air knocked from him, looking up at the hole he’d made, an enemy tottering in it, a Greek judging by the length of his beard, looming over the sudden gap then falling through it. His enemy landed two paces before him, struggled up, terror in his eyes, turning back to the stockade, sword dropped, fingers scrabbling at the mud-faced wall. A spear passed Achmed’s face, thrust hard, piercing the Greek, who screamed, did not turn, still tried to climb. Then men were rushing at him, Raschid among them, swords slashing. The Greek squealed, thrashed, could not avoid them, still trying to crawl upwards to his safety. Somehow he managed to get halfway, before Raschid dropped his sword, grabbed the man’s legs, pulled him down. And then Achmed lost him, in the sprayed blood that misted his eyes.