Now I Rise

by Kiersten White

  A stone cannonball slammed into the wall beneath Radu and Giustiniani. They fell to their knees, the impact jarring Radu from his toes to his teeth. He shook his head, trying to clear the strange ringing noise in his ears.

  No. Not ringing. Screaming. He looked up past the defensive barrels to see a shouting horde rushing toward them. There was no order or sense to the approach. They ran like a swarm of locusts, over each other, pushing and shoving, each trying to get there first.

  Those that did were cut down. But it did not matter. The ones behind them climbed over the bodies. When they, too, were killed by arrows, their bodies added to the pile. Radu shot into the melee, watching in disgusted horror as the irregular forces of Mehmed’s army used the corpses—and sometimes the living injured—as steps. They clawed over each other, death itself a tool to crest the wall.

  There were so many men that Radu could not help but hit someone with every arrow he fired. It was as effective as shooting at waves of the sea. The men never stopped coming. Giustiniani directed his own forces, anticipating whenever a group of irregulars would breach the wall. “There!” he shouted, pointing toward a stretch not far from Radu. Radu ran toward it, watching as the first few soldiers clawed and tumbled their way on top.

  There were not enough men behind Radu. He had gotten there too fast. He hacked and slashed and blocked, but there was no hope. A man screaming in Wallachian barreled into him, tripping him. Radu fell flat on his back, looking up into the face of death. No matter where he went, his childhood followed. And now it would kill him.

  Then the man was gone. Except for his torso, which fell across Radu’s feet. Radu blinked away the dust and smoke. All the irregulars who had breached the wall had been cut down by one of their own cannonballs. Radu kicked the man’s body away, laying his head back onto the wall and laughing.

  Urbana and her cannons had saved his life after all.

  He pushed himself up, rushing to Giustiniani. He was certain that he had been fated to die just then. But he was still here. Which meant he could still accomplish something. This time, if an opportunity presented itself, he would not falter.

  Much farther along the wall, Constantine threw a man over the side. He pointed and a spray of Greek fire lit up the night, burning the bodies of the living and the dead against the wall. The Greek fire moved up and down, consuming everything that wasn’t stone. Men ran screaming, the attack’s momentum gone.

  “They are retreating!” Giustiniani roared. The men around Radu cheered, some crying and some praying. Between Constantine and Giustiniani, the city still stood a chance. Giustiniani clapped Radu on the shoulder. “You made it! I am glad.” They ducked as a cannonball whistled overhead, falling somewhere in the space between the two walls. “Do you think we have them on the run?”

  “They were intended to wear us down. Next he will send Janissaries.” Mehmed would have saved his best men for last. And Radu knew without question that the next wave really would be the last. If numbers could not overwhelm the wall, only the Janissaries stood a chance. And if they could not win…Mehmed was finished. He had nothing left to throw at them.

  “We can hold. We will hold.” Giustiniani favored his wounded leg as he limped toward a ladder. “Get something to drink and eat. You men, pick up the wounded. Take them to rest against the inner wall. We will shift positions to compensate, then—”

  Everyone stopped as the music started. Radu watched as faces of weary happiness shifted into exhausted terror. They would have no break tonight. The metre music of the Janissaries crashed against the wall with as much force and intimidation as any bombardment. The white flaps of their caps glowed like skulls in the firelight as they rushed, screaming, toward the wall.

  This was it. This last wave would overcome the wall and flood the city, or it would recede, taking Mehmed’s chances with it.

  Mehmed himself rode back and forth, just out of crossbow range. Radu could see him, would have known him anywhere. But his heart did not sing, did not yearn for him. So little land separated them, but that distance was soaked in blood and lit by flames.

  Giustiniani shouted for Radu. “Cut the ropes! Throw down the hooks!”

  Radu ran back and forth, hacking at ropes, dislodging hooks. Every man under Giustiniani followed his commands without hesitation or question. Radu could not see or hear Constantine, but he was certain that section of the wall was the same. Two men to hold back an empire.

  Radu stopped, sitting with his back against a barrel and watching. All the men around him were Italians, Giustiniani’s men. They were as good as the Janissaries, and they had the high ground. What could he do? Even if he stopped helping, stopped throwing down hooks and ropes, he would do nothing to turn the tide.

  A man jumped over the wall next to Radu. Radu looked up at him in surprise, seeing Lazar’s face under the Janissary cap.

  No. Lazar was dead. Radu had killed him to save Mehmed. Radu pushed himself up, stabbing the Janissary and letting his body fall. But there were more. Janissaries leapt over this section of the wall, led by a giant of a man. He towered over everyone, the white of his cap gleaming above the mass of bodies. He held a broadsword. Unusual for an Ottoman, but fitting for his size. The man swung the sword from side to side, cutting down everyone who came at him with eerily silent efficiency. Protected by his fury, more and more Janissaries climbed onto the wall.

  “With me!” Giustiniani slashed his way through to the giant. Radu followed in his wake, protecting his back. Not even Giustiniani could take the giant in hand-to-hand combat, though. As he got close, the man swung his sword. At the last moment, Giustiniani dropped to his knees. He swung his own sword with all the strength he had in him. The giant stopped, looking down in surprise. Then he slid to the ground, both his legs cut off at the knees.

  The Janissaries around them stopped in shock. Giustiniani stood, raising his sword in triumph. And this time, when he knew what Lada would do, Radu did not hesitate. He swept his sword across the backs of Giustiniani’s legs. Straight through the muscles and tendons. One swift cut to turn the tide.

  Giustiniani fell. Radu caught him. “Giustiniani!” he shouted. “He is wounded! Help!”

  The Italian’s men rushed to them with all the energy they had left. The Janissaries remaining on the wall were quickly overwhelmed.

  “What should we do?” one of the Italian soldiers asked, tears streaming down his face as he looked at the man he had followed in defense of a foreign city.

  “We have to get him to the boats!” Radu stood, grasping Giustiniani under the arms.

  “No,” Giustiniani moaned, shaking his head. He was white with shock and blood loss, eyes wild. “We cannot open the gate.”

  “We have to! To save him!” Radu nodded to the crying soldier, who carefully took Giustiniani’s ruined legs. They maneuvered him down from the wall with the help of the rest of the Italians, passing him from one man to the other. Giustiniani groaned and cried out in pain, all the while telling them to stop.

  They rushed across the open stretch, dodging arrows and cannonballs. All the Italians had followed, more than a hundred men this section of the wall could not afford to lose.

  “The key!” Radu shouted. “Who has the key?”

  “Giustiniani does!”

  Radu heard shouting over everything else. On top of the wall, Constantine stood, gesturing. He was frantic, waving his hands and shaking his head. If that gate opened and men went through, it would be a mortal wound to the city. Too many would choose to flee if given the option. Men ran toward them to stop them, swords drawn.

  “If they keep us here, Giustiniani will die!” Radu shouted.

  The Italians, ever loyal to Giustiniani, drew their swords against the soldiers they had fought shoulder to shoulder with all these long weeks. Everyone stopped, waiting to see what would happen.

  Radu reached into Giustiniani’s blood-splattered vest and pulled out a heavy iron key. Giustiniani grabbed his hand. “Please,” he said. His face was pa
le and bathed in sweat, but his eyes were lucid. “Do not do this.”

  Radu looked up at the wall. Constantine stood silhouetted against the glowing night sky. His shoulders drooped. Then he took off his cloak, throwing it off the wall. His helmet, with a metal circlet on it, followed. He turned and joined the fight at the wall as one of the men he had lived with. As one of the men he would die with.

  “It is the only thing I can do,” Radu whispered. He tugged his hand free, then opened the gate. As soon as he was through, he ran toward Blachernae Palace. If any of Giustiniani’s men noticed he did not stay with them, they were too busy saving themselves to stop him.

  There were not many men left at the palace. Just a handful to guard the Circus Gate. And, in a stroke of luck or providence, they were all Italians. “Giustiniani has been wounded!” Radu shouted. “His only chance is to get to the boats! They need your help!”

  The men stood still for a few seconds, then ran. The gate was his alone. Radu walked to it, his feet dragging. The bar across the door carried the weight of a thousand betrayals. He managed to lift it, and left the door open. He had chosen this one because it was the most poorly guarded, but it was not big enough to let a whole army in. He needed something more. If anyone could still claim victory in the midst of this, it was Constantine. Radu needed to break the defenders’ spirits. If he did, the city would fall. He climbed back along the wall to the palace itself, where Nazira was waiting with a cloth-wrapped bundle.

  She threw her arms around him, pressing her face into his shoulder. “I feared you were dead.”

  “Not yet.” He pulled out the Ottoman flags they had stolen from Orhan’s tower. They ran through the echoing palace, climbing and climbing until they reached the top. From there they heard the sounds of dying, the clash of metal, the screams of fury.

  They tore down the emperor’s flag, and in its place they hung the flag of the Ottoman Empire. Splitting up, they found every place they could hang a flag where the combatants would see it, finally meeting back on the wall above the gate that Radu had left open. He waved the last flag he had, before draping it over the wall above the way in.

  He looked, then, at where Constantine stood between his city and destruction. Though it was too dark and Radu knew it was not possible, he felt as though they locked eyes one last time. A cry went up among the men; the desperate push at the gate to the city intensified. They thought the Ottomans were inside, and would abandon all to go save their families, or die alongside them.

  Radu turned away. He had done his part. The pendulum had swung in Mehmed’s favor and would never return to the defenders’. He had managed to kill Constantine after all. But too late to be merciful to any of them.

  “What now?” Nazira whispered.

  “Cyprian,” Radu said.

  They clasped hands and ran from the palace into the dark city, racing against the coming flood.

  THE BODY OF LADA’S brother Mircea rotted in a shallow grave a short ride from Tirgoviste. He had been heading for Snagov, the monastery island where their father had once taken them. He had not ridden fast or far enough to find sanctuary. Where he lay, the earth was nearly indistinguishable from that around it. Lada had only found his body because one of the soldiers who had run him down was now hers.

  Ah, the loyalty of men.

  She dismounted and kicked idly at the finally thawed ground. The morning mist had settled in the depression, softening everything. It was a beautiful morning, damp, with the slow promise of heat on the way. Petru and Bogdan stayed on their horses, scanning the field and distant trees for threats. Lada was prince now, which made her an even bigger target. But this was something she had felt she needed to do.

  She could not share her victory with the brother she loved, so she would resolve the fate of the one she had hated.

  Now that she was here, she did not know what she had expected to accomplish. Rebury him? Bring his remains back to the castle? Say a prayer over his body, one that might as well be blasphemy for all the sincerity it held? She finally had to admit that she had seized on this adventure mainly as a way of escaping the city. Toma had been pestering her, wanting to talk about various Danesti boyars and their loyalties—how to gain them, why she needed them, what marriages might cement them. The other boyar lines were not thrilled with her ascension, but they would not object as long as they profited. The Danesti lines took it personally, though. Toma never passed up an opportunity to circle back to the subject of marriage with a Danesti, dangling the possibility in front of Lada with all the subtlety of a noose.

  Finally she had told him she would meet with every Danesti boyar at the same time, and left him to plan it for her. She was certain his letter-writing skills far surpassed her own; he would know what to say to get the boyars to come. Her idea had been to tell them to come or forfeit their land and their lives. Toma had laughed like she had made a wonderful joke.

  At least Mircea was dead, and she did not have to listen to him. That made him preferable to Toma. “How did he die?” she asked.

  “He died well,” the soldier said, voice tight as he stared straight ahead.

  Lada snorted. “You are a liar. My brother was a bully and a coward. He would not have died well. He would have died fighting, or begging for his life. Which was it?”

  The soldier shifted uncomfortably. “He died fighting.”

  “If he died fighting, why did you not say that to begin with?”

  The soldier swallowed, saying nothing further.

  “Dig him up.”

  The man finally met her eyes, horror shifting his dull expression into something childlike. “But—”

  “Dig him up.”

  The man looked from the grave to Lada, then back again. “But we have no shovels, no tools.”

  Lada reached into her saddlebag and pulled out a hard loaf of bread. She broke off pieces and passed them to Bogdan and Petru. They dismounted and dragged an old stump over for Lada to sit on. She made herself comfortable. The soldier still stared dumbly. Lada pulled out a knife, setting it on the stump. “You have your hands. For now.”

  The man began digging.

  The sun was directly overhead by the time he finished. His fingernails bled and he cradled his hands to his chest as he backed away from the body he had unearthed. Lada held her cloak over her nose. It would have been better had she taken the throne in the winter. It was warm enough now for her to smell him.

  But that was not the troubling part. Her brother—Mircea the cruel, Mircea the hated, Mircea the dead—did not stare up at her with the accusing eyes of the dead. He did not stare up at all.

  She was looking at the back of his head.

  “Turn him over,” she said.

  Gagging, the soldier reached into the grave and maneuvered the corpse so it was faceup. Mircea’s skin was waxy and thin where it had not been eaten away to the bone. His fingers, too, looked like the soldier’s—nails broken and caked with dirt. Mircea’s mouth was open in a scream, black with rot. Lada leaned closer. No—it was black with dirt, all the way down as far as she could see.

  “You buried him alive,” she said.

  The soldier shook his head frantically. “I had nothing to do with it. It was Hunyadi’s men and the Danesti prince.”

  “But you were there.”

  The man shook his head, then nodded, foolish tears of desperation leaking from his eyes. “But I did not kill him!”

  Lada sighed, kicking the corpse of her brother back over so he could not see her. It was a terrible way to die. She imagined him twisting and turning, the weight of dirt suffocating him as he grew more and more disoriented. In the end, he had been clawing deeper into the earth, instead of toward the sun and freedom.

  She wondered how her father had died. No one in Tirgoviste knew where he had been killed. Or, if they did, they were smart enough to say nothing. And she wondered about her own loyalty—and disloyalty—to Hunyadi, the man who had helped the Danesti boyars kill both her brother and father. The boya
rs whose support she was still courting. Guilt and regret warred with resigned exhaustion. She did not know how to feel about this. Why could she have no easy relationships? Why was there no man in her life she could feel only one way about?

  “I did not kill him, I did not kill him,” the soldier whispered, chant-like, as he rocked back and forth.

  Lada did know how to feel about the soldier. She latched onto it with a startling ferocity. It offered her a lifeline, something solid and secure to react against. “I do not care if you killed him. He is dead. That problem is past us.”

  The soldier slumped in relief. “Thank you, my lady.”

  Lada sheathed her knife. “I am not your lady. I am your prince. And while the death of Mircea is not our problem, your lying to me is.”

  The soldier looked up, fear curling his lips to reveal his teeth, sticking out just like those in Mircea’s agonized skull.

  “Bogdan, a rope.”

  Bogdan took a rope out of his saddlebag. Lada tied it tightly around the soldier’s wrists. She tossed the free end to Petru. He nodded grimly, then tied it to his saddle.

  “What are you going to do to me?” the soldier asked through clattering teeth.

  “We are taking you back to Tirgoviste as an example of what happens to those who do not honor the truth.”

  “What if he cannot keep up with the horses?” Petru asked.

  Lada looked at the open grave of her brother, where his corpse once again faced the dirt that had claimed him. “That is what the rope is for.”

  She spurred her horse forward, going too fast for any man to run long enough to keep from being dragged to his death.

  She did not look back.

  DAWN CAME AT LAST. Birds circled overhead, dark silhouettes against the sky, drawn by the carnage beneath. Soon they would descend.

  Nazira and Radu ran as quickly as they could. The streets had filled with groups of citizens, clustered together and panicking. “Is it true?” a man shouted as they sprinted past. “Are they in the city?”