A Place Called Armageddon (24 page)

Theon wished he could have slipped away too. Vanished at the same time as his last hope: that Constantine would take his very subtly delivered advice – for it would not have done to be caught advocating this line too strongly – and accept Mehmet’s terms of surrender. The city would have been saved from pillage, its women from rapine, its children from slavery – and Theon could have accompanied Constantine into some very comfortable exile in the Morea. Or stayed, and seen what accommodations could be made with the new masters. Instead … well, he had never had much hope. Constantine was too proud of his family name of Palaiologos, of his title. And too lacking in imagination to heed subtlety, or recognise a good offer. He was a blunt soldier only, entirely without imagination, without any of the true qualities of leadership. He was of the type that had presided over the steady erosion of all Byzantium’s power. And now, lacking the wit to do anything else, he would preside over its inevitable fall.

‘And I,’ Theon muttered to himself, ‘lacking the wit to do anything else, will fall with it.’

He heaved himself onto the first of the battlement stairs. Behind him, in the Judas trees, the bird mocked him all the way up them.

When he emerged onto the palace’s main turret, he was at the top of a flight of three steps and so able to see above the men who crowded at the crenels. See – and gasp.

He had not been on the battlements since the day, three before, when the word had come that the sultan had himself arrived with the bulk of his army. Theon, like most in the city, had come to view them – and had only seen a blur of movement on distant hills.

Now he could see men. Faces. Armour. Banners. Thousands upon thousands upon thousands of men.

The Turks had advanced to within two hundred paces of the walls. Behind a trench and a raised wooden stockade, a vast throng that looked a hundred ranks deep spread all the way to the Horn to the north and no doubt over the hill and all the way down to the shores of the Marmara sea. If there were not a hundred thousand men before the walls, he knew it would not be far short. Facing them – and he knew this because he had helped to compile the figures – were fewer than five thousand Greeks and around two thousand foreigners.

‘Impressive, are they not?’

The voice, which seemed always to be gurgled from mud caught in the throat, came from beside him. Theon turned. It was the man all knew as ‘the German’ – all except the man himself, for he would protest that he was from some other, equally barbarous, place. Theon had had dealings with him, because he had been charged with trying to recreate a saviour of the city in previous sieges – Greek Fire – and Theon had tried to find him some scarce, and strange, ingredients.

John Grant pointed. ‘His Highness is there at the front, as ever. Giustiniani’s renegade Arab has been describing who are ranged against us here. Their strongest forces against our weakest point, or so our leaders say.’ He turned, and spat over the edge of the turret, though a contrary wind took the sputum and flung it back onto his cloak. Theon watched him with distaste as he rubbed at the material, swearing unintelligible oaths that sounded like gravel in a drum, before he looked up. ‘Did you find me that supply of saltpetre yet?’

‘Perhaps. Come and see me later. You will excuse me.’

Theon moved down the stairs, though he tripped the last step when his scabbard swung between his legs. The German’s chuckle came, as mocking as any bird’s, but Theon ignored it as he tapped backs and pushed his way through to the emperor. He arrived as Amir, Giustiniani’s tame Musselman, was describing the standard that flew in the distance before a huge tent.

‘It is Mehmet’s tug. As sultan he is entitled to nine horsetails to dangle below the golden globe and the half-moon of Cibele. There are bells too. Silver, with a sweet chime …’

‘Balls to bells,’ Giustiniani grunted. ‘We’ve all seen a tug before. Can the keenness of your infidel eyes see what stands before the standard? As near as straight opposite us?’

Amir grinned. ‘My infidel eyes, gift of Allah, praise Him, and my memory of such things, tells me that it is a gun emplacement.’

‘Of course it’s a fucking gun emplacement!’ Enzo, the Commander’s right hand, growled. ‘But how many are emplaced there?’

‘In the centre? I see but one eye. One big, most evil eye.’

A murmur arose, warding gestures were made, halted instantly when one voice spoke. ‘Is that the one our spies told us of? What did they call it?’ The emperor turned. ‘Ah, Lascaris! You are the scholar amongst us. Was it not a scholarly name?’

Theon shrugged. ‘The Turks named it, so I do not think so,
basileus
. But they named it in Greek. They call it Heleopolis.’

‘“The Taker of Cities,”’ repeated Constantine. He stared in silence for a long moment. ‘Well, that is hubris, I think. At least until we have seen this “taker” try to take. Will we soon, do you think?’

‘Soon, highness.’ Giustiniani raised a large arm, pointed. ‘Even my aged Christian eyes can see that they are busy about it. I wasn’t sure which weak point they would commence at. But they chose to start here, at your palace, where the walls are only two deep and shaped like a dog’s leg, leading up to the Horn.’ He looked that way, towards the right, then straight down, frowning. ‘That door there. The sally port. What is its name again?’

Reluctantly taking his gaze away from the gun and its preparations, Theon stepped forward till he could also peer down, over the battlements, see the small wooden door set into one wall, just where it joined the other.

‘The Kerkoporta,’ Constantine said. ‘It was walled up till recently. Some old men remembered how useful it could be to sally out and strike at invaders. The Bocciardi brothers proved it so again, when the first of the Turks arrived.’

‘Glory to our Venetian allies,’ Giustiniani commented drily. ‘It is sealed again?’

‘Triply so, Commander.’ It was Enzo who replied. ‘Though we could have it open again in minutes when you order the counter.’

‘See that it remains sealed. The days of the sally are passed. And we do not want any doors opening to our flanks, however small.’ Giustiniani looked again to the front. ‘They seem to be getting busier there, majesty. Will you retire?’

Constantine shook his head. As protests came, he raised his voice over them. ‘My friends, if God chooses to kill me with the first shot of this fight, then He has already given this city over to the infidel. We will see many shots before our deliverance. I will not flinch from first to last.’

In a new, uneasy silence, all men turned again to stare at the one eye gazing back. But it took only a moment for the silence to be broken – by a screech of laughter. Everyone looked up, shocked – except for Constantine. ‘A laughing dove,’ he said, smiling. ‘It is a little late. But spring is finally here.’

‘Do you hear her, big man?’ Raschid whispered. ‘It is the laugh of the first virgin of Constantinople who sees you unsheathe your manhood.’

Achmed looked down, into a grinning mouth, isolated teeth standing out like yellowed rocks in a red sea. One had grown in before another had left and stuck out through the gum above it. For some reason, his recruiter had never accepted Achmed’s first answer, that he was there for the glory of Allah. Nor his second, given when pressed once on the long march to the city from Edirne – that he needed gold to make sure his family never starved again. For Raschid, these reasons were important, but secondary. What lay within the conquered walls of Constantinople were Greek women, whom he could take at will. Slaves he could use brutally, repeatedly and then, when they were worn out, sell. He could not believe that all others did not share his lust. Especially the big silent man whom he had chosen as both his bodyguard and his butt.

‘Think of her, Achmed.’ He gripped the man’s arm. ‘Laughing at you, the bitch. She will laugh a different way when you take her, eh? They are all wild, these Greek sluts. Animals, groaning in the dark. Begging us for it. Not like our wives, lying there like stones.’

Farouk, their
bolukbasi
, hissed at them, pointing with his
bastinado
, which he would not hesitate to bring down upon any recruit’s back when the order of silence was upon them. Raschid closed his gaping mouth, and Achmed returned to his search of the sky. He knew the little man had no wife, had never had one. But he had, and he had thought of Farat immediately when he heard the dove’s cry. It had been at this time of year that their families had agreed that they should marry. He knew her, of course, for she was his father’s cousin’s daughter. But he had only thought of her in that way at the time when the doves passed through their village, flying west.

There! He heard it again, then saw it as it flew up from the stockade before them with a different type of call, a shriek of outrage at a soldier’s flung stone. He followed the bird’s flight over his head, remembered his little Abal’s delight when he’d brought her one he’d managed to snare in a flung net. His wild rose had cooed in imitation, and cried when the little bird had died. He had promised her another. He had promised to save her life. He had failed in both.

He turned again to the walls before him. The mortar between the stones was not gold, as he had been told, but he still believed the streets beyond would be full of it. Yet though he had stared at them for several days now, still he could not believe that man could have built anything so enormous. And he knew that he was going to be ordered to climb them soon, a feat that would be difficult enough without all the men he saw raining stones and shot upon him as he tried.

He licked his lips. He was tall and could see over many of his fellows, above the forest of spear tips, up to a hill. It seemed to be the only place where there was movement, men scrambling down into a wood-lined hole and back out again. There had been talk about a fire-mouthed dragon there, that some called a basilisk. Perhaps the wooden structure was its cage. Perhaps they would unleash it, let it tear the walls apart with its claws before he had to climb them.

The cry came again. Six notes, the third emphasised. ‘Ha ha
ha
ha ha ha,’ went the bird. Achmed turned and looked at the walls once more. I’ll laugh too, he thought, when I am over them.

It is good to be about my trade, Hamza thought, as he dismounted and moved towards the covered wagon. Good to be out and hunting on a day that feels, at long last, like spring. It made him almost forget everything else, all that awaited him beyond the crest of the hill, all his other roles and duties. For now, he was only
cakircibas
– chief falconer to the sultan.

Only
. Hamza smiled. As a boy in his father’s dingy warehouse in Laz, tanning hides all day, he had dreamed of being free in the sun, chasing game across sun-blessed valleys. He could never have dreamed that he would be doing it while holding one of the most important ranks in the empire. But his skills with birds had been noticed by none other than Murad Han, Sultan of Rum. As had his intelligence. As had his beauty. And somehow he had managed to survive the old sultan’s death and retain his position with his heir, his son, Mehmet.

The smile left him. He glanced back, at the sultan astride his horse, in the middle of his
belerbeys
and pashas. No one was smiling there, no one talking, though he was sure they had all mumbled their complaints – out of Mehmet’s hearing – as to why today, now, he had chosen to go hawking. They wanted to be with their clans, with their soldiers on the other side of the hill. Now they were finally there, and any choice was over, they wanted to be fighting.

Hamza knew why they were not. His master, for all his education in science, religion and philosophy, believed absolutely in signs and prophecies. One year ago on this day, a sorceress in Edirne had told him that if he fired his first shot on this day, at this hour, success would be his. The closer it came, the slower that hour had approached – and Mehmet wanted to show his army that he had no cares. So he had called for horses and hawks.

Hamza halted by the wagon. It was beautifully crafted, black leather stretched over bent willow wands, divided into compartments. Inside each one, separated from his rivals, a bird perched. A groom was just putting one away, hooded now, a saker called Aisha who had flown from the sultan’s fist and returned to it unblooded. It was the latest of three birds to do so. It partly accounted for the frown on Mehmet’s face. All knew that with a foraging army camped nearby, any game would be swiftly netted, trapped, shot. Still, Mehmet was a man for signs and portents. At the start of a lot of killing, a kill would be propitious.

Hamza studied the leather compartments before him. He knew the bird in each one, had trained most of them himself in the happy days of leisure. Each had its skill, each was more suited to a particular terrain and type of game. In this land, with most of the wood cover chopped down to build the stockade that faced the city, he had thought sakers would have the best chance. But each had failed. It was time for something different.

‘This one,’ he said, pointing, and as the groom hurried to part the leather straps, Hamza pulled on his glove. It had never ceased to give him pleasure, the feeling as his fingers slipped into the supple leather, his eyes pleasured too by the craft of the glove and, more, the words carefully stitched onto it in gold thread. He murmured them now. ‘“I am trapped. Held in this cage of flesh. And yet I claim to be a hawk flying free.”’ When he had taught at the
enderun kolej
, a student of his had made the glove for him as a gift. An exceptional student, a prince no less. Vlad Dracula. They had been … fond of each other, for a brief time. But that Dracula was lost now, either already dead or dodging assassins in Hungarian alleys, no doubt, having failed to hold his throne of Wallachia. While his younger brother, Radu the Handsome, was one of the men clustered around Mehmet, still the sultan’s occasional lover, still his confidant.

The straps were undone. The groom stepped back. Hamza called softly, ‘Easy, my beauty. Easy.’ Then, moving the flap aside, reaching in, he placed his hand beside the bird called Baz Nama.