A Place Called Armageddon (13 page)

A part of Gregoras still seethed – from disappointment, from recognition of his own stupidity. From a virulent desire to stick to his vow and never again see the city that had taken his all. But he had been soldier long enough to recognise a fight he could not win. He would have to choose other ground. Besides, for all that they quarrelled, these mercenaries were the closest to family he had, and Giustiniani the nearest to a father.

‘I will … accompany you.’

The other three cheered. Giustiniani changed his grip and hugged Gregoras to his huge chest. Enzo appeared with wine, and the four men pledged ‘Damnation to the Turk’ and drank.

Two flagons later, Amir leaned forward and refilled their goblets yet again. ‘What sort of man is he, this German?’ he asked.

‘For the first three days he sweated out enough liquor to get three regiments of Switzers drunk,’ Gregoras replied. ‘After that, he shook and sweated but drank wine only when there was not water for his thirst, and then in moderation.’ His audience gave a collective shudder as he continued, ‘He talked a lot as well.’

‘Of what?’ Enzo asked.

‘His home. His exile from it. His wanderings and his service to various courts and kings. He is a soldier too, though it seems his main skills lie not in weapon play but in the mechanics of war, especially to do with siege. In mine and counter-mine.’

‘And in Greek Fire, Zoran?’ The Commander placed his mug down and stretched. ‘Is it true he knows the lost secret of it?’

‘You will have to ask him that. From what he’s said, he knows what it’s made of, he is just not sure of the proportions.’ He set his own mug down. ‘Which reminds me, Commander. You may not be able to leave on the next tide.’

‘What’s that?’ Giustiniani looked up sharply. ‘We are already delayed …’

‘I know. But the … German told me that one of the things he needs, and in quantity, is pine resin. This island abounds in the tree that makes it, apparently. So he will need to collect it.’

‘Ah. Then our delay may not have been fruitless.’ The Genoan gestured, and Amir rose to root among the papers on the table. ‘This island has few things of worth, but we have collected what they have – a few girls to accompany us, more of this sweet wine and …’ he squinted at the paper Amir handed him, ‘twelve barrels of Aleppo gum. Will that suffice?’

‘You will have to ask him. Shall I send for him?’

Giustiniani shook his head. ‘Plenty of time to talk when we are aboard. And plenty to do before we sail with the evening tide. I have a sad farewell to take …’ He smiled, his eyes misting. ‘A widow of the island, a ravishing creature.’ He collected his hat and sword and moved to the door. ‘You’ll sail with us, Zoran. It will be a little cramped, as we needs must return a few of the city’s ambassadors to their home. But you’re used to that.’

Ambassadors? For a moment, Gregoras stiffened as he wondered if he’d know them. But then he remembered that he would be masked, by both his name and the cloth before his face. And he would be thrice hidden, catching up with old mercenary friends.

When he followed the others from the room, like them he squinted against the winter sun, which seemed twice as sharp after the days of fog. Instinctively, he noted its position and glanced away, north, slightly east. If fortune and wind favoured them, their destination lay there, three days away.

He whispered the word. ‘Constantinople.’ He was disturbed to discover that the feeling it gave him was not, as formerly, all hate, and resolved to drown it forthwith in more wine.

–
EIGHT
–

Yaya

Mucur, Central Anatolia, Turkey
January 1453

As the exhalation ended, the wailing began.

It was his daughter, Abal, who breathed out. She had been named for the wild rose that overran the southern wall of their house in the spring. Now, in the deep of winter, she was as withered as last year’s blooms.

It was his wife, Farat, who keened. She was named for the sweet water, the first of the ice melt that flooded their dried-out ditches, filling their hearts with hope and, eventually, their fields with golden wheat. But that was yet months away, and the water that fell from her eyes was bitter.

Achmed was at the door with no memory of having got there. Jerking it open, he stood for a moment on the threshold, looking back. His wife had fallen over the corpse, voice shrill in denial of what they’d known was coming for weeks. The dead girl’s brothers, Mustaq and Mounir, looked at their mother, at each other, helpless, tearless. He knew he should go to them, console, wail, weep. But he also had no tears, no words, had never found much use for either. Instead he stooped under the lintel, crossing the threshold into the weak winter sunlight.

Behind the glare, shapes. He raised a hand and saw villagers, relatives. They questioned him, with word and look, but he could not answer them, could not move, just stood, and the women had to squeeze past him, for he was big, taller than the doorway, near as wide. The men formed a half-circle before it. There was space for him there.

He pushed through it, brushing aside hands that sought to detain him.

It was warm, so strangely warm. It happened, one January in ten perhaps. The wind had veered, blew from the south now, passing through deserts, not from the north and cooling snow peaks. While it blew, it ate the snow on the ground, and began to warm the frozen earth.

It is the one blessing in the curse that is my life, he thought.

He knew what he must do. The previous winter had been harsh and lingering, the spring too wet. They’d planted late, the crop sparse as a result. All of them starved, a little, enough. Enough for his Abal, his wild rose, flower of his eye, light of his darkness, to be too weak to resist the sickness when it came. And since he had no excess, he had nothing to sell or trade in Karseri for the food or remedy that might have saved her.

As he moved to the side of the house, the wailing inside it became a choir, and he knew only one thing: no one else he loved would die because he’d been too poor to feed them.

The two oxen stared at him from their pen, grinding chaff. Like him, they were leaner than they should have been. But they would still do their job, better now perhaps than in their normal time after another three months of hunger.

Achmed opened the gate, moved past the beasts, put his shoulder against the wall and lifted the plough from it. It was heavy, made from the Y of a beech where two branches forked from the trunk. He hardly felt the weight, nor that of the single-log harrow and the straps he scooped from the ground. He did not look at those. Abal’s first sewing had been to put blue beads the length of the leather, ward against the Evil Eye.

He clicked his tongue. If the oxen thought it was early to hear such a sound, they did not show it but obeyed, and moved out of the yard.

Some men had followed him. Some called, ‘What are you doing, Achmed? Has a djinn taken you, Achmed?’ He ignored them. If he was to do what he must do, then he had to do this first. Once he went away, there was every reason to believe he would not return. Yet if he prepared the land now, at least his widow and his orphans would be able to sow when the season came.

Inshallah
. It was all in God’s hands, as ever. But His will could be manifested in man’s efforts.

Achmed guided his oxen with whistles, with blows from a switch he picked up. The weight upon him made him plod like them. Slowly man and beasts climbed from the bowl of the village and onto the hills beyond it.

He had a patch of land that he’d never ploughed, with only grass and his goats upon it. If any land would give his family a worthy crop, it would be there. Reaching it at last, he set down his load and let his oxen root among the dead leaves of a stand of poplars while he began to walk in straight lines, bending to scoop and throw aside the smaller rocks, stooping to lift and carry the larger to the edge of his land.

He did not think. He did not feel. He did not remember.

‘
Ya daim. Ya daim
,’ he chanted, as he would at sowing, at reaping. The chant to keep going, to keep life as it was, to keep someone alive. And though it had not helped before, it helped now when the ache came, helped him carry beyond the ache, through the day, into the darkness, pausing only to pray, and afterwards to break the ice crust on the small pond and suck upon shards.

The ground was white with starlight and moon-spill when he noticed the figures standing near the oxen. His two sons. Mounir, the elder at seven. Mustaq, near as tall but only five. One held a goatskin of milk, some cheese in a cloth, a wheel of hard-baked bread; the other Achmed’s sheepskin coat and a bag of chaff.

He took them, drank, ate. After a while, his elder son spoke. ‘Come back. She needs you.’

Achmed didn’t reply. Just shook his head and turned back to the field.

For two days more he cleared the land of rocks, large and small, piling them into cairns to mark the perimeter of his field. At night he slept under the poplars, between his two oxen, dreamlessly. On the third day, his sons returned with more supplies, enough for them too, and for two more days they watched as he drove the plough across the earth, which, if it was not full winter frozen under the still-warm wind, was still hard enough to the ploughshare. Yet its tip, which he’d seasoned in fire while still green, only fractured on the fifth day, and by then he’d ploughed three-quarters of the land. Good enough in a good year, which this would be,
inshallah
.

Unharnessing the plough, he fitted the beasts with the harrow, a log wide enough for the boys to stand upon, their weight forcing it down upon the clods the plough had turned over, breaking them up.

It took a day and then it was done. The harrowing would have to be repeated perhaps if the warm wind died and the land froze again. But the worst of the work was finished and his wife had brothers who were the boys’
dayi
and as such would have a special responsibility. Should Achmed not return.

He left the broken plough at the edge of the field, the harrow propped against a poplar, carried the harness, whistled the oxen home. The boys ran ahead, and by the time he reached the village many lingered on the roadway to see the madman and perhaps glimpse the djinn who had driven him mad.

Looking at no one, Achmed made straight for the house. From a distance he saw his wife in the doorway. Closer, he let the beasts go on, the boys coming to take the harness and drive them to their pen.

He was ten paces away when Farat spoke. ‘We buried her,’ she said, her face pinched around her mouth. ‘We could not wait.’

Wordless still he moved past her into the house. She closed the door. ‘What have you done, Achmed? Have you gone crazy? Ploughing in January? Are you going to sow now too and kill us all next winter?’

He moved to the back of the room. He was tired and yet he could not rest. He reached into the chest, lifted out the sack of seeds and, for the first time in days, spoke, his voice rough with disuse. ‘You know the time. Mounir helped last year and Mustaq will this, but get your brothers to watch them.’ He replaced the bag. His axe hung on the wall before him. He took it down.

‘And where will you be when that time comes?’

Her voice was trying to show anger. It only showed her fear. He moved to her, stopping close. ‘I will be where Allah guides me. Seeing that we never lose another child to hunger,’ he replied.

Her eyes shot wide, tears filling them, flooding out. ‘How? How?’ she wailed.

He reached a hand, caught a tear on his finger as it fell. He raised it to his lips, tasted it, her. It was sweet, and he remembered how well she was named, for the sweetest of spring waters.

He bent and kissed her – brow, both cheeks, lips. Then he moved past her to the door, out of it, between the lines of staring villagers again. At the edge of the village, his sons caught up with him, thrusting another cloth of cheese, another half-wheel of bread into his hands. He knew he should talk to them, counsel them, but he could not. So he just hugged them, turned and left.

He walked half the night, slept in a ditch, walked another day. It was early evening when he reached the town of Karseri. He had been there before in the good years to sell his excess and knew it a little. But it was not hard anyway to find the inn he sought. An
alem
, verses of the Qur’an cut into the steel spear point, marked it out, as did the noise of many men within it.

Achmed crossed the room to the man he recognised. Men leaned away to make him a path, for he was the largest there by far.

‘Ah, so you have come!’ Raschid rose from behind the table and limped round it to stare up. ‘What changed your mind?’

Achmed looked down. Did it need explaining? ‘When you passed through our village you spoke of gold.’

‘Gold, yes, so much gold.’ Raschid’s wide smile glimmered in the reed-torch light. ‘The streets of the Red Apple are cobbled with it, the walls of their sacrilegious temples studded with precious stones. Our sultan, balm of the world, peace be unto him, has promised us three days of looting when the city falls. Three? The place is so wealthy that a poor man will be rich in one day. And then he’ll have two more to indulge other … delights, eh?’

He laughed, poking Achmed in the stomach. The bigger man frowned. ‘Other delights?’

‘Slaves! We can turn every one of their citizens into slaves. To sell. To use.’ He winked and looked around at others who were listening. ‘For does not a good female slave need breaking in, eh?’

Men laughed. Achmed did not know what he was talking about. And then he did. He knew that if he died in this holy cause, Allah would reward him with one hundred virgins in paradise for eternity. He had not heard that such a reward could be taken this side of death.

He shrugged. Raschid studied him. ‘You are huge, my friend. I think Allah will be pleased with me that I have recruited you.’ He grinned, lifting a bottle from the table. ‘Come, drink some
boza
. And do not look shocked, my big man. There are special dispensations for warriors. Eat. Drink your fill. Our shepherd the sultan, praise him, looks after his
yaya
. And then sleep, for we leave with the sunrise.’