A Place Called Armageddon

by C. C. Humphreys

  Air returned to his lungs along with his rage. Rolling onto his feet, sidestepping the writhing mass on the ground, he drew the scimitar, ran again at the stockade and the gap he’d made in it. He got purchase on the debris there, his shield hand reaching up to grab another piece of wood. Hauling on this, digging his sword elbow into the earth, he swung his legs up and over. And suddenly he was sitting on the lip of the rampart, in the gap between two barrels.

  He did not know if he was more startled than the men who faced him. Perhaps they were, their shock expanding as he rose to his full height. He had stood here once before, weeks earlier, had earned gold for his feat that his brothers, in arms and in Allah, had drunk and pissed away. He saw the faces before him, mouths wide in shrieks of rage and fear. But all he could hear was the music of the mehter band, the drum beating like his heart, the sevre singing like the blood in his ears.

  ‘Allah …’ he began, then stopped, as something sliced across his chest, opening his shirt, passing through the place where his name and God’s were joined, straight through his shield arm, pinning the flesh to the wood. It spun him, the force of it, his feet slipping on the uneven edge of mud and timber. He grabbed for the barrel before him to stop his fall, wrapping arms around it. And then he was plunging back down the slope, ripping the barrel from its mount, just managing to tip it to the side as he fell.

  His landing was softer this time, for he landed on a body, his head jerking down and slapping the ground hard. Stunned, he lay there a moment, until his eyes cleared and he was staring into other eyes, ones he’d seen filled with horror before, filled with death now. The fallen Greek stared at him through blood-sheen, and Achmed looked past him, to his own splayed-out shield arm. Still held in leather straps, it did not look the same. It took him a while to understand that there was an arrow in it.

  He lay there, while his arm streamed blood, while air slowly returned and brought back other senses. Men were rushing past him, screaming, falling. Stones were thumping into the earth near him, jagged pieces of masonry from destroyed walls. One hit him in the side, the sharp pain finally clearing the mist from his eyes. Words came, a tugging at his chest.

  Raschid was there. ‘You are wounded. Come!’

  They didn’t go far. Crawling and slithering over mud and bodies, they slid over the outermost low wall, sheltered in its lee. More men ran past them to attack, yelling to God in all His different names, to Christ Risen, to saints, mothers, lovers. One officer tried to raise them, drive them forward again, but Raschid lifted Achmed’s shield arm, displayed the arrow driven through it. So the officer ran on to harry other men.

  ‘Rest easy,’ Raschid whispered, tearing cloth from a body to staunch the flow of blood. ‘We have done enough.’

  Men passed into the attack, again and again. Some came back, some only as far as the wall they sheltered behind, to cough out their lives beside them. Many fled and were whipped and beaten back yet again. Later, much later, within the music and the screams, a different sound, piercing all, a single clear trumpet. Something familiar in it, Achmed had heard it often enough, been taught to recognise it, and eventually he did, words shouted in his ear confirming it.

  ‘They recall us. Our task is done. Come. Come!’

  They rose, as men ran or staggered or crawled past them. Crouching low, for shot and arrow still came from behind and before them, they stumbled back up the slight slope to the siege lines and through them. The chaouses with their whips and clubs were gone and other men were there to greet them, water bearers with jugs, surgeons in purple turbans and grey robes, their assistants moving among the men who now fell gasping to the ground.

  ‘How fares the giant?’

  Achmed looked up. Farouk stood over them. Raschid eagerly thrust his companion’s arm out, to a groan. ‘He is wounded, as you see. He cannot fight again.’

  Farouk stooped, bringing his own blood-splattered face close. Light came into the single eye, a smile twisting the maimed face. ‘Good enough to let you lie here, giant. But call that a wound? After you stood again upon their ramparts and took all they could give you, that is all you have for it?’ He pointed to his puckered eye socket. ‘This is a wound!’ He pulled his half-ear. ‘This is a wound!’ He laughed, straightened, called to a turbaned man nearby, ‘Master, I have a wounded hero here.’

  The surgeon came over, knelt, carefully lifted the arm and shield together, felt. ‘Hmm!’ he said, examining. ‘You are blessed by Allah, most merciful. It has passed through the flesh under the upper arm, but I do not think …’ He tilted the arm. ‘Yes,’ he said, tapping the shield. ‘Hold this.’ His assistant did. ‘And now …’

  He pulled a pair of sharpened tongs from a bag and snapped the arrow beneath its bone head, drew the shield off. Then, as Achmed sank back, the surgeon gripped near the feathers and slid the shaft from the wound. He gestured, and his assistant poured water from a jug over and over, the surgeon squeezing as he did. Then he pulled a long strip of clean cloth from his bag, wound it tight, tied it off. Rising, he nodded. ‘Rest it. Keep it bound. Wash it every day. With fortune you will have no more than a memory and a scar to frighten your grandchildren with. Inshallah.’

  He was gone, to another man groaning nearby. Raschid pointed after him. ‘You heard what he said, master. My recruit must rest.’

  ‘Your recruit? And the recruiter with him, I suppose?’ Farouk shook his head. ‘Well, I don’t think you will be called upon to display your courage again, Raschid. I think our time of fighting is done. It will be up to others now.’ He looked up, as the music that had halted since the retreat began again. ‘Others who come now. You can get our wounded hero to your tent.’

  He moved away. Raschid leaned in. ‘Does he think we will sit in our tents and wait while the walls are taken and others get the plunder? No.’ He stuck his hand under Achmed’s good arm, bidding him rise. ‘Come.’

  The ground seemed a good place to be. ‘Where?’ sighed Achmed.

  ‘Away from this place of flying arrows.’ Raschid grinned. ‘I heard Farouk say that the walls by the Horn are the weakest, and the palaces and richest churches close behind them. When they fall, that is where he’ll be, and we with him. Come.’

  Achmed rose, groaned. He seemed to hurt everywhere and in his arm the least.

  ‘That’s right, hero.’ Raschid was smiling now, though his body and voice still shook. ‘Let us go and find our share of plunder.’

  29 May: 3 a.m.

  While his fellow bowmen jeered the fleeing enemy, Gregoras threw a knotted rope over the tower’s wall. Making sure it was secured to a crenellation, he climbed over and lowered himself swiftly, knot by knot, into the Peribolos below. He was the first but the others would follow, intent, as he was, on refilling their quivers, all but emptied by the sustained attack. He pushed through the throng, through men praising God, the Virgin, each other for their victory. Praising themselves too, for feats of combat and courage. For the miracle of survival.

  Gregoras made for the stockade, crouching when he neared it, though only the occasional arrow still flew from the enemy lines. There were bodies dangling off the timber there, and before the Greeks cleared them away he wanted his share of their bounty. Turkish arrows or his own, he didn’t much care as long as he was armed for whoever was to come next.

  He gleaned his harvest, sometimes using his knife to prise free any deeply lodged barb. When he came to the point of the stockade where a barrel was missing, he risked a quick look outside, down, but he did not see the huge Turk’s body below. He could have been buried beneath others, there were plenty there. But somehow Gregoras felt he’d missed, or at least not killed. He’d seen the giant fall, that was all. He’d have liked that arrow back, to make surer of his target the next time.

  His quiver was nearly full, he was crouched over a last body, when someone tapped his back. ‘You live, Ragusan.’

  He looked up. ‘I do, Sicilian. And it is Constantinopolitan. Especially today.’

  ‘Too many
syllables. Like Greg-or-as.’ Enzo grinned. ‘I prefer Zoran.’ He extended a hand, pulled the other up. ‘The Commander wants you.’

  Giustiniani was in a small huddle of officers, near the back of the Peribolos, just before the ditch that had been dug out to provide earth for the rampart. It was being refilled – with bodies, men clearing them from underfoot and dropping them in, friend or foe, at peace in death. He nodded at Gregoras, was about to speak, when another’s arrival distracted him.

  ‘Have we triumphed?’ the emperor called as he moved through bowing men whom he gestured off their knees.

  ‘Your majesty is hurt?’

  Giustiniani stepped closer to study the stained breastplate, but Constantine waved him away. ‘Not my blood,’ he said briskly. ‘A mix of many, for they kept coming and coming.’ He glanced down into the ditch as another body was tumbled in to join the mass. ‘As here, I suspect. As all down the lines, for I have had reports from the palaces and the fight was as hot there, the enemy as unsuccessful. Some seamen did try to land at different points along the Horn walls but all have been repelled. Have you heard from further down?’

  Giustiniani gestured to a begrimed officer, who saluted. ‘Your cousin, Theophilus Palaiologos, greets you, majesty, and says the Pege gate holds. He sends word too that venerable Cantacuzenus has driven off an assault on the Golden Gate.’

  A cheer went up from those near enough to hear. ‘Have we won, then, Commander?’ said Constantine. ‘Was that an attempt to take the city by surprise and, having failed, will they draw off?’

  Giustiniani pointed at Gregoras. ‘Tell your emperor, Rhinometus. Let it come to him in Greek, so he will not think it is only Italian crows who croak the bad news.’

  Gregoras turned to the emperor. ‘Majesty, if you look at the bodies, you will see that none are men of the first rank. Yayas. Foreign fighters. All bashibazouks.’

  Giustiniani interrupted. ‘They were sent first to weaken us, for what is yet to come. Peasants from Anatolia. Scum from Balkan slums.’ He spat. ‘Expendable.’

  Constantine grimaced, swallowed. ‘I feared as much. And what is to come, think you?’

  The Commander gestured Gregoras to continue. He hesitated. And as he paused, sound came. A great blast of trumpets, the smashing of cymbals, the hammering of deep-voiced kos drums. ‘That is, basileus,’ Gregoras said.

  The group moved to the stockade, peered. It was still too dark to see anything clearly. But then a darker mass flowed over a ridgeline marked again in fire and there was another sound this time beneath the war music, one that had not been there before – the rhythmic pounding of shod feet on the earth. A more regular chanting came then too, the inevitable appeal to anger and to Allah.

  ‘Give me fire,’ commanded Giustiniani, the order passed back in shouts to the looming bastion and beyond. In moments, a huge ball of flame shot over the walls in a high arc. There were a few mangonels, siege slings that had come to seem almost redundant with the bringing of the great guns. And though there was little naphtha left for fuel, most having gone to the Scotsman and his Greek Fire, there was enough for this ball. It passed in flame across the sky, then dropped, to plunge into the advancing black mass. Fire briefly lit the sweeping ranks of armoured men – and, in their midst, one yellow oriflamme.

  ‘The Anatolian division,’ declared Giustiniani grimly. ‘Back to your position, lord. The real battle is about to begin.’

  Constantine sighed, saluted, turned and was gone, his guard following at a run. The Commander looked at Gregoras. ‘And to yours, Noseless One. I need your arrows.’ As he turned away, Giustiniani called after him, ‘Did you see that huge fucking Turk that danced atop the stockade?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why didn’t you kill him?’

  ‘I tried, master.’

  ‘Well … try better next time, will you?’ Giustiniani grinned. ‘Kill them by the score!’

  There were other men lined up at the knotted rope and Gregoras had to wait his turn to climb. While he did, arrows began to fall thicker over the stockade, kolibrinas cracked and their bullets whined off walls. The music drew closer, the mehter band of the Anatolians accompanying their men right up to the fosse, the music a ferocious blare. But the Christians had music of their own. Every bell in the city pealed the alarm, recalling its citizens to the fray, beseeching God. Somewhere nearby, a water organ groaned with the approximation of a hymn.

  When his turn came, Gregoras climbed swiftly, slid over the battlements, grabbed his bow, slipped the finger ring he’d had fitted into place, notched an arrow. With one eye only showing past the crenel, he watched the stockade jerk and dance as if alive as the enemy poled and hooked it. A ladder drew his eye, the first of scores slapping down. ‘Come on,’ he whispered, and when a helmeted head appeared, he put his first arrow through it.

  It was harder to shoot after that. The Anatolians in their black armour, the Genoans in theirs merged into one long, seething, striving mass along the ill-lit rampart, friends and targets near as close as lovers. And in their bastion, he and his bowmen were targets too, for the mass of Turkish archers, slingers and culverin men clustered a bare sixty paces away, just the other side of the fosse. Arrows careened off the crumbling mortar of the crenels; bullets struck, sending splinters of stone near as fast as lead. To lean out, to take that hard shot, was to lean into a death-bearing storm. Yet the bowmen did it, again and again, and many paid death’s price for it, reeling back with a shaft jabbing through a limb, scoring fire across a skull, buried in a chest; with a ball lodged in lungs fast filling with blood, coughed out with a last plea for forgiveness. Gregoras felt death pass him on each side, above, below. Once he felt a sting at his temple like some biting insect, reached up to wetness, rubbed blood between his fingers then off onto his jerkin. And still he leaned out more than any other, defiant, a wild thirst taking him as he sought another victim for the next arrow, one less Turk to stab at his friends, to push his way into his city, to threaten what he loved. He sought, shot, missed, sought, shot, killed, and then his quiver was empty and he was reaching for what belonged to the dead and the dying beside him. When those arrows were gone too, he looked about him, spied a falling crossbowman with a bunch of quarrels, snatched the weapon up even as the man went down. It was big, heavy, did not have a stirrup; but a crannequin leaned against the wall to hook and pull up its string. He placed the metal hooks, wound up the cord, loaded a bolt, stepped forward again, glanced through projectiles to the scene below.

  There was enough fire to see by. The Greeks had poured burning pitch down at spaces along the rampart. Ladders, stacked wood and men all burned. The Turks were shooting fire arrows from their lines, and Gregoras watched the flaming arc of one, its exquisite parabola ending as it thumped into a barrel and spread flame over wood. The black mass of men at the line heaved as the disciplined Anatolians threw themselves again and again up the ladders, and many straddled the walls. For the moment there was not a distinguishable target to be had there, so Gregoras looked again to where the enemy archers had to be in the darkness, and when an arrowhead of flame appeared there and started to slowly rise, he aimed two hand spans to its left and squeezed his trigger. The arrow jerked up in its place, then fell to splutter in the mud.

  A sharper, higher-pitched trumpet cry in the night. The indistinguishable line at the stockade separated into two, the Anatolians stumbling away, the Greeks hurling insults and a few last stones at the black-armoured backs. Gregoras didn’t even look for another quarrel, to take a last man as he fled. He wasn’t sure he had the strength to draw his string up, crannequin or no.

  The music had stopped with that one clarion call, all the noise was being made on his side of the rampart, the arrows and metal ball had ceased to fly his way and Gregoras could look down safely and for longer at the men below, many on their knees from exhaustion, many weeping. He looked for his close comrades – and found them together, Enzo helping to lift the Commander’s great helmet off. The Sicilian looked for
him too and he put a thumb up. Both men returned the gesture and then Gregoras sank back, reaching to the stone jug beside him, drinking deep of the water it contained. He looked at the dead and the exhausted around him. More alive than dead he was glad to see, and the wounded already being helped.

  He raised the jug again … then stopped without pouring. Put it down, struggled up, leaned again into a gap in the front crenels to stare out into a darkness that moved beyond the rampart. ‘What is wrong, brother?’ A voice came from beside him and he lifted a hand to silence it, kept peering out, trying to hear beyond the noise of his own soldiers into the silence of the enemy.

  Something was wrong. The Anatolians, the heart of the enemy, proud warriors with a legacy of triumph and a belief in Allah, had drawn off quickly or been allowed to withdraw, far faster than the wild, undisciplined troops who had preceded them. It did not make sense. Unless one of their main commanders had been killed. Or unless …

  He did not want to think of another reason. Tried to avoid thinking of it with unaccustomed prayers. He only prayed in battle, when everyone else did.

  ‘Holy Maria, bless us. Protect us, your servants. Shield us with your light. Hold us …’

  He ceased murmuring, to strain his ears for what he did not want to hear … and did. The roll of something heavy, like a stone down a metal slope. The squeak of too much cloth pushed into a space too narrow for it. The sudden splash of water, a bucket thrown.

  And then in the darkness close to where he’d sent his last bolt, he saw flame. Not a fire arrow raised and shot, a light that rose steadily as if someone was climbing with it. It halted, hovered.

  He was at a side gap in an instant. ‘Commander!’ he screamed, trying to be heard above the drone of prayer, the moaning, the bells. ‘Enzo! It’s …’