A Place Called Armageddon

by C. C. Humphreys

  It was as he remembered it from when he’d escorted Hamza after his last embassy – a bare room, scarce four paces across. A plain, thick oak door, the Kerkoporta itself, criss-crossed with bolts and iron bindings before which tall barrels were set as further barrier. He looked around, placed his torch in a sconce, leaned his sword against the wall, then stepped to the nearest barrel.

  ‘And what might you be doing here?’

  The voice was soft enough, but it made Theon gasp and reel back. His hand made three attempts at his sheath before he pulled out his dagger. ‘Who … who is there?’ he called, his voice quavering.

  A shadow moved out of the gloom of the stair. ‘I am,’ the voice came again … Then a man leaned into the flickering light.

  And Theon recognised him. ‘Johannes Grant,’ he hissed, his voice still high.

  ‘Plain John will do,’ replied the Scotsman, stepping off the last stair.

  Theon had had dealings with the fellow before. As few as possible, for he was always demanding this rare chemical or that precious commodity. Demanding them in execrable if fluent Greek, heavily larded with blasphemous obscenity. No gentleman, though he had been useful to the State, above and below the ground. While he wondered at the Scot’s sudden appearance, Grant spoke. ‘Are you here for the same reason I am?’

  For a wild moment, Theon thought it might be true. If one reasonable man would betray the city, why not two? But before he could consider a way to voice this, Grant continued, ‘I was fighting alongside those mad Venetians, the Bocciardi brothers. Christ on the cross, they delight in slaughter, those shitters. We’d just driven back yet another attack, and were all excited about how those bastard Turks kept failing, when a vision of this place popped into my head. Just came like that.’ He snapped his fingers. ‘I always had it marked as a weakness, ye ken, even though it canna be seen from the front, being as it lies in the dog-leg of the wall. Still …’ he leaned over and spat on the floor, ‘I couldn’t shake the vision so I thought I’d best check. You?’

  Theon was breathing a little more easily now. ‘Much the same.’ He gestured to the arm he’d slipped back into the sling. ‘I took a wound and was sent to a surgeon. Returning to my post, the idea came to me …’

  Another ball struck, even closer this time, making both men reach to steady themselves. Funnelled down the stair came the sudden roar of music, and the loud glorying of Allah.

  Grant turned to the sound. ‘That’s them donkey-loving sodomites coming again. I’d best away back so’s I no miss the fun.’ He turned. ‘You with me, Lascaris?’

  Theon nodded. ‘Once I have done what I came for. Checked the bolts, the hinges of the door.’

  ‘Aye. Do that. And give my salutations to your brother, if ye see that madman.’

  He went, and Theon leaned back against a barrel, cursing softly. By what evil chance had he been witnessed here? But there was little he could do about it, save run after the other man and stab him. And the foul-mouthed Scot looked more than capable of defending himself. Besides, the man had given him a reason for being there. Checking a weakness. No one was to say what happened after they both left.

  Slipping off the sling, Theon bent and grasped the nearest barrel. They were filled with bits of broken stone and sand; heavier, certainly, than his father’s sword. But he found that, using his weight to tip it onto its metal-hooped edge, he could shift the barrel. And two more after that, clearing a path to the door. The bolts had been used recently and so slipped open easily. The hinges squealed as he opened the door, though their sound was swiftly lost in the noise of battle, the shrieks and curses, the music and the blows. He pulled it fully open, leaned out. The Scot was right; the sally port was in a dog-leg of the wall, not visible directly from the enemy siege lines. But he assumed that since Hamza had asked him to open it, he would have told someone that it might be opened.

  A rising shriek came from closer by, someone crying out in sudden agony. Then, soft but distinct, he heard whispers beyond the door. In Osmanlica. They were coming.

  Theon drew back inside, snatched up his sword, stumbled across to the stairs, up them, his legs barely taking him so much did they shake. The Kerkoporta was a cold place to die and the Turks about to come through the door would kill him in a moment. But his horse was near, and warmth a short ride away.

  5 a.m.

  The cry to arms had been unnecessary. The Turks had not come through the dark again … yet. Gregoras had had time to don the rest of his armour so that he was accoutred like the Genoan mercenary he had been, swathed in sleek black metal from barbuta to sabaton. Then time to remove his helm and lean his head on a stoved-in barrel. All around him warriors slumped in equally uncomfortable positions and tried to rest while keen-eyed men stared into the night – a task that got easier as the world grew lighter.

  But though the Turk did not come, there was no ceasing of his activity. Cannon still blasted, knocking chunks of masonry from the crumbling inner wall, sweeping away swathes of hastily raised stockade, which were just as hastily rebuilt. Arrows still flew at any who dared show their head. The mehter bands still played, bass drums and cymbals keeping the beat for the seven-note shriek of the sevre, the cry of the flute, the wailing of pipes. Though he had slept through many a bombardment, sleep, so desired this time, could not come, and after a while Gregoras rose, stretched to ease the cramp that had taken every limb, looked about. He saw Giustiniani twenty paces away, neatly severing the flesh from a mackerel’s spine, picked up his helm, and went to join him.

  The Commander sat on a small wooden camp stool. ‘Help yourself,’ he said, pointing into a bucket beside him, where a dozen or so of the blue-dappled creatures lay. It was one foodstuff that consistently made it into the city, for not even the Turk could cut off the swimming of fish, and any soldier not manning the land walls stood at the sea ones and cast lines and nets into the water. Though Gregoras rarely broke his fast before noon, he reached and ate. He did not know if he would see another noon, nor when he might eat again.

  The Genoan waved the skeleton at him. ‘What do you think? Are they done?’

  Gregoras, knowing he was not being asked about what they chewed, answered simply, ‘No. They will come again. And soon.’

  Giustiniani nodded, throwing the bones over his shoulder and into the ditch behind him, under the inner wall, where it fell amidst the bodies of Greek and Turk. ‘I agree. Mehmet must sense how hard pressed we are. He will try again, one more time. And he will try here.’ He leaned over, spat beside him. ‘While you were lost in dreams of naked houris, messengers came reporting the Turk’s failures elsewhere. Those flags said to fly on the palace bastions? Torn down. Some of the enemy had got in, no one knows how, and it looked bad for a while. But then those mad bastard Bocciardi brothers – who almost give Venetians a good name – drove them out, and hoisted again the eagle of the city and the banner of St Mark.’ With a groan and a clink of linked armour, Giustiniani rose. ‘No. He will make his final attempt here. Hold here, and we will have won. Certainly this day’s fight. Perhaps … all. Pray God I am right.’

  ‘Amen.’ Gregoras rose too, looked up into the Commander’s eyes, near as black as his armour. ‘And who, think you, will make this last assault?’

  The eyes narrowed. ‘I am sure you know.’

  ‘Aye.’ Gregoras nodded, crossing himself. ‘May God protect us.’

  It was Giustiniani’s turn to say amen. And just as he did, the ceaseless music ceased. It had been building to a climax with a shrieking of sevre, with a smashing of cymbals, with simultaneous strikes on fifty kos drums, exploding like the cannon shot that had rarely stopped their pounding on the walls. Men flinched, many ducked, as if anticipating some blow, as a complete silence, as terrifying as any of the sounds that had come before, took over the enemy lines. Joined by Enzo, Gregoras and the Commander moved forward and cautiously raised their heads above the parapet.

  No arrows flew at them, where twenty would have flown before. And of all the str
ange sights he had seen, Gregoras knew this for one of the strangest.

  The enemy’s advanced line, as close as the filled-in fosse, was almost deserted. Behind the wheeled screens that usually sheltered hundreds of archers and gunmen, within the always bustling wood-lined trenches, nothing moved. And no one did on their side either. Like Gregoras, all simply stared at a barren landscape, which stretched from the ditch to the ridge two hundred paces away, ground usually crowded, thrumming with life. Stared and wondered what the silence and the emptiness foretold.

  Until one man nearby gave words to everyone’s hope. ‘They have gone!’ he cried, his young voice soaring. ‘Gone! We have won!’

  Acclamation could have come then, relieved men filling the horrid silence. But Giustiniani cut it off with his bull’s roar. ‘Quiet, you dogs. Hold your barking!’

  The silence returned. Held but for a moment. Ended with the stillness as a single figure stepped over the ridge line. He was tall, almost unnaturally so; a monster perhaps, for he was wide as well. Then he turned slightly into profile, and all could see that it wasn’t a vast and swollen belly but the father of all kos drums that he bore. See him raise twin sticks high into the air. See him let them fall. Hear the strike of wood on stretched skin.

  It was the only clear sound for a while, for the men barely made any, the thousands that marched now over the hill’s lip. They were not in formation but they came slowly, with disciplined stride, the sun that rose behind the defenders, over the city, glinting off what they carried – scaling ladders, poles with hooks, the barrels of culverins and kolibrinas. Mostly, everywhere, arrowheads.

  ‘Solaks, in their white turbans,’ whispered Gregoras. ‘The archers of the household guard.’

  ‘Peyk, with theirs of yellow,’ said Enzo. ‘Guards too, Mehmet’s near companions. Some with their halberds, many with ladders.’

  ‘And see.’ Gregoras raised an arm, pointed. ‘See the men wearing the leopardskin cloaks. The serdengecti. If all will die for Allah, these crave death, joyfully.’

  ‘Enough,’ grunted Giustiniani. ‘Let these come and no more and we will eat them. Men who seek death so are wild with their lives. It is the calm soldier who wins battles. The others, well …’ he shrugged, ‘the sultan’s guards are no prouder, nor any more martial than the Anatolians we drove off.’ His eyes narrowed, as he peered at the hill’s crest. ‘It is who follows them that I would see.’

  ‘And I,’ muttered Enzo and Gregoras together.

  Then they did, for even as the rough crowd of men reached and halted at the lip of the fosse, that monstrous drum was struck once again and one voice called a single word.

  ‘Forward.’

  At which command, in perfect order and with measured tread, the janissaries marched over the hill. Rank on silent rank they came, four hundred in each one, their first reaching the men already drawn up at the fosse before their last had crested the ridgeline.

  ‘Holy Mother of God, protect us.’

  No one said amen now to Enzo’s whispered prayer. No one could speak; they could only stare as the last rank halted. There had to be close to ten thousand men drawn up silently before them. The elite of the Turkish army, the best trained, best fed, best led and most experienced soldiers of all. They had been used sparingly so far, taking part in few assaults. They had been saved – for this moment.

  Something rippled in the very middle of the first silent rank. From behind two tall warriors bearing huge shields a man stepped out. It was hard to see him completely, with men surrounding him. But Gregoras glimpsed a scarlet surcoat, saw sunlight flash over gold links that joined the breastplate, noted the silver turban helmet, trimmed with more gold. Yet even without the richness, even if he was dressed only in the armour of the janissaries he had led to the fosse, Gregoras would still have recognised him by the solak archers beside him, one with bow in his left hand, one with it in his right. And so he breathed the name.

  ‘Mehmet.’

  He had brought them as far as he could. He would have led them further, as ready to die for his cause as they were for him, and all for Allah. But those closest to him had dissuaded him – Hamza Pasha, out there now upon the waters of the Marmara, attacking the sea walls. Zaganos Pasha, as vigorously assaulting the palaces to the north. Lastly, tellingly, his spiritual adviser, Aksemseddin, cautioning against the vanity of such an action. Though both knew he could wield a scimitar with as much skill as any of his janissaries, that his wrestler’s lithe body was as primed as any for the fight, that he was as young and fast as any of his guardsmen, the imam had reminded him of the general’s holy duty to command, to make the decisions still needed to be made beyond the parry and the thrust.

  Yet Mehmet knew one certainty among all his doubts – that before this sun had reached its zenith he might still choose to run at the walls of the city he so desired and set his life at the hazard of the sword. For if this ultimate attack failed, it would be the last he could command. All those who had cautioned against this war, and carped while it progressed, would have been proven right. Inshallah, they would say. It was not written for us to succeed this time. Candarli Halil and the old men who surrounded him would quietly rejoice in the retreat to follow, the disbandment of the army, the slinking back to Edirne. And soon enough they would find a way to rid themselves of the young and troublesome sultan.

  Instead of that, Mehmet thought, I will borrow the leopardskin of one of my serdengecti and offer my life to Allah, most merciful. Rather a Greek steel blade through my throat this dawn than a Turkish silken bowstring round my neck one night.

  In the silence that lingered he looked again at the men before him, in their gleaming armour, at their bows, turban helms, spears, swords. The fiercest warriors in the world. Yet he knew that all their fierceness, all their skills, might not be enough this day. The Greeks and their Latin allies had fought them off for seven weeks. Driven back every brave and brilliant assault, survived every trick and chance that war threw up. Not two hundred paces away another monarch stood, as convinced, however mistakenly, that the God he worshipped stood also at his shoulder. Closer still, the lion Giustiniani still roared. What land, what fortune, would he have given to have had the Genoan fighting beneath the crescent and not the cross? He had held the centre throughout the siege, even up to this night’s work. Driven back thousands of bashibazouks, broken the proud nobility of Anatolia. He stood there still, awaiting this last roll of the bones upon this tavli board.

  Mehmet peered, hoping to see, if only for a moment, this leader, this esteemed warrior. Yet if he did, he knew he would snatch a bow from one of his solaks and try a shot. Kill the Commander, he thought, and I cut the throat of their defence.

  Disappointed, he looked away from the dark ramparts and the dark men manning them to the lightening sky. It ended now, he knew, within these next few hours, before the sun had reached its high point in the sky.

  His mind was drifting. He saw that the agha of the janissaries was staring back at him, waiting. This silent advance, this pause, had been Mehmet’s idea. But you could only hold a greyhound on the leash, or a goshawk by its jesses, for so long.

  Mehmet focused. First on his commander; next on the banners: the green of the Prophet, the red and yellow of the corps itself, the cleft sword of Ali emblazoned in its middle. Lastly on his own sword, which he drew now. He took a breath, hummed to make certain his voice would not crack. Ready, he thrust the scimitar high into the air, the writings on it – his name, the basmala and other prayers for victory in exquisite calligraphy vanishing in the flash of morning sun that transformed it into one shaft of pure white light. Cried what he always cried, what they all cried. Breaking the silence with the universal declaration of their faith.

  ‘Allahu akbar!’

  The roar of ten thousand janissaries drowned out the roar of the great cannon, which fired again. One last time.

  5.30 a.m.

  It was sight that told Gregoras just before the sound, the perfect ranks splitting in one
place; the little flame, almost lost in the sunlight, stabbed down.

  ‘Cannon!’ he screamed, even as he leapt sideways, throwing his whole weight into it so that he could take down the armoured bulk of Giustiniani. As they tumbled, many men around him reacted to the call, fell as they did. Those who did not were swept away as the great ball smashed into the stockade.

  The Commander was up in a moment, Enzo and Gregoras with him. There was no time for thanks, as foul-smelling smoke engulfed them, the enemy’s cries within it as if devils rode it. Those cries had to be answered, those devils fought. ‘For the emperor. For the city. For Christ,’ roared the Commander, and hundreds of men took up the cry, doing as they had always done – rolling barrels to replace the ones the cannon had torn away, timbers and branches borne in to fill the gap. And then, as the smoke shredded, more sounds came from within it and men were screaming, ‘Down!’

  There had been few moments when arrows and bullets had not fallen onto them. But what passed before had been a spring shower to this storm, for the great mob of men who’d preceded the janissaries – archers and other men of the sultan’s guard, gunners from every part of the army – now charged forward, shooting bows and crossbows, firing the smaller kolibrina, the longer-barrelled culverin. Projectiles fell, many glancing off fluted breastplate or hastily snapped-down visor, their sheer number meaning that some found their way into the gaps between pieces of steel or punctured what was less well forged. Men fell back, silently or with screams, blood pouring from a wound suddenly opened or feebly plucking at a shaft as if to remove it quickly was to deny its entry.

  Crouching, face bent toward the ground, Gregoras listened to the whistle, the ricochet, the strike, his body tensed for intrusion … that didn’t come. After an age, the metal falling ceased as suddenly as the halting of a hailstorm. Silence followed – and lasted for the eternity of ten heartbeats. He knew it in the thumps against his breastplate, saw it pass in the eyes of the man crouched next to him. They had been there before, he and Giustiniani, alone in the waiting silence. Yet as his heart counted down the moment, Gregoras knew something else: he had never been in a fight like this one, the stakes never as high as the ending of the world.