A Place Called Armageddon (27 page)

‘
Inshallah
,’ was all Achmed could manage, his mouth suddenly dry.

A loud shout drew their eyes back to the flames below. It was one cry of assent from a dozen throats. The group split up, the
peyk
with their halberds lowered, parting the ranks of Anatolians to allow the sultan’s party to climb the hill back towards the guns. Other officers came the other way towards them, including the leader Raschid had called Ishak. Still more men were moving through the mob, each bearing a staff from which they were unfurling a long banner. They were shouting out words that Achmed struggled to hear at first above a rising acclamation, and then did, just as he saw the Prophet’s name. He could not read, but he knew Muhammad’s symbol, his
tugra
, shining silver in the moonlight on the nearest banner.

‘A hundred pieces of gold for the first man to raise one of these upon the Greeks’ second wall,’ came the cry, rising above the tumult. ‘
Allahu akbar!
’

‘God is great!’ came the echo from thousands of voices, as men struggled to grasp one of the dozen banners. Achmed took a step forward. A hundred pieces of gold were more than his farm would produce in his lifetime. But a tug at his sleeve delayed him.

‘Do not be in such a hurry to die,’ another voice said. It was Farouk, their
bolukbasi
, the officer to whom they, and a hundred of their fellows, had been assigned. He was a Karaman, who had fought against the Turks and now fought for them. He was distinguished by the body parts he’d left on various battlefields – an ear, a thumb, an eye. He stared out of the unpuckered one at Achmed now. ‘The first who bears the banner will be killed, as will the second and the third, joining him swiftly in paradise.’ He grasped the big man’s shoulder, pulled him lower so he could speak in his ear. ‘This is your first battle, farmer boy, and it will be different than you think. Stay close to me.’

Small fights had developed between men who did not have such cautions spoken to them. Officers stepped in and wielded
bastinados
till the banners were in one grip only. Then everyone moved up towards the top of the hill.

Farouk halted them about twenty paces behind one of the great gates that punctuated the stockade. ‘Far enough,’ he said, drawing his scimitar.

Achmed did not have a sheath to draw his from. He just laid the back edge against his shoulder, clutched the small round shield to his chest and stared at the white-clad back before him. Defend me, Allah, most merciful, he prayed silently. And if it is Your wish that I should die this night, let me die well, for Your glory.

Other men muttered beside him. Then all fell silent as the trumpets called. In that silence, a great
kos
drum was struck – once, twice, again. Its echo died away, all eyes fixed on the wooden wall before them. In its middle, directly before the gate, Ishak Pasha drew his great scimitar. ‘
Allahu akbar!
’ he cried, stepping aside. The gates were swept back.

‘God is great!’ yelled thousands of voices as, up and down the Turkish line, men charged through the gaps.

‘Keep your head down,’ shouted Raschid.

There was little Achmed could do but obey. He watched the back before him, trudging a few paces when it moved, halting when it briefly did. His sight was that patch of white cloth, the sweat stain, like a lamb’s kidney, already expanding upon it, although the night was cool. His hearing, though, was full. The mad beating of the drums, the wail of the horns, the hammering upon their shields of the warriors up and down the lines was joined by new sounds – the constant thrum of arrows as the archers upon the rampart step notched, pulled, released, notched, pulled, released, a near continuous glint of arrowheads rising into the moonlight, falling into the darkness beyond. Interspersed with them, other men would raise and point what looked like thick sticks, sticks that gave a sharp crack and then ejected flame, the shooter’s head instantly hidden in a small cloud of smoke that joined with others to form a bank along the ramparts. A cloud that Achmed now pushed through, coughing on some sharpness in the smoke, as he and Raschid finally made the gate.

They had been moving slowly; now they moved fast, stumbling down the slight slope. Achmed placed his foot on something that first moved, then screamed. He had stepped on the body of a man crawling across his path. He saw something feathered sticking from the man’s neck and, without thinking, he bent, grabbed the man with one huge hand by the back of his shirt and dragged him to the side of the rush.

‘Good, good,’ said Raschid, one hand on the man’s leg, not lifting at all, ‘helping a brother is good.’

Screaming men kept rushing by them as they laid the man down upon his side. With one hand he was clutching the crossbow quarrel, with the other he clung to Achmed’s shirt, mumbling feebly, the words lost in the blood that bubbled over his lips. Achmed stared, helpless, until Raschid tugged him away. ‘Come,’ he said. ‘He is either for paradise or the surgeons. Come,’ he repeated, pulling him forward.

The slight slope ended in a lip of stone, and over it, a huddle of men were pressed together in a ditch and in the lee of a stone wall that rose from the far side to twice the height of a man. They slipped down swiftly, their feet finding the piles of bound wood that had been thrown down to fill the ditch, and leaned into the bodies there, as more quarrels, arrows, shots fell from the flaring darkness above.

‘The walls of Constantinople?’ Achmed said.

Raschid snorted. ‘This?’ he said, glancing up. ‘This is a mere breastwork over the fosse. The Christians won’t even defend it. The walls are beyond. And we shall be at them soon enough. For look!’

Achmed looked. Another rush of men came, every second one bearing a ladder. These were passed overhead to the men right below the breastwork, one end held and steadied on the wood of platforms or the mud of the ditch. There was a moment’s pause, as the other ends clattered onto the stonework above. Men leaning against the wall peered into each other’s eyes, waiting. Then the drums began beating double time and, with a great surge, the
bashibazouks
began to swarm up the ladders. Some made it, many did not, knocked back by bolt and flung stone.

‘You!’ Farouk was poking him with his
bastinado
. ‘Big man. Strong with it, eh? How about hoisting some of your friends over the wall?’

Achmed nodded. ‘
Effendi
,’ he said, handing his sword and shield to Raschid. He interlaced his fingers, stooped. A man stepped forward, placed palms on his shoulder and a foot in his cupped hands. Immediately, Achmed stood straight, flinging up his arms. With a yelp, the man flew over the breastwork and disappeared.

‘Sodomite donkey!’ the officer laughed. ‘Not so hard! They are warriors, not pigeons. Just get them to the top.’

Achmed stooped, a man placed his foot, he rose carefully this time. The man grasped the stonework, pulled himself up and over. ‘Good,’ Farouk said. ‘Another.’

Achmed bent to his work, Raschid content beside him in his role of sword-bearer. A half-dozen men lifted, and the crowd was thinned, more making it over on ladder top as well – ladders that were now being pulled over the walls. ‘Enough!’ Farouk commanded, stepping forward. ‘Me, then him. You can climb up after.’ He placed a foot, was lifted, scrambled over the wall.

Raschid propped Achmed’s sword against the wall, sheathed his own. ‘That was a blessing from Allah. With His grace, there will be too many people between us and the Greeks. Lift me! I’ll wait for you the other side.’

Achmed lifted him till he could sit. Raschid pulled his one bad leg over and disappeared.

Achmed looked around. The first assault had passed, leaving a mess of men who hadn’t made it, still or writhing in the ditch. Above him, arrows were flying fast over the walls, from a mass of archers who had run down from the stockade. Another massed mob came with shovels and mattocks and began to dig at the ditch’s walls, filling it in. Grasping shield strap and sword hilt in one hand, he jumped, grasped a jutting stone above him and hauled himself, by various promontories, to the top.

And into mayhem. The noise had been lessened by the wall. Here it hit him like an open-handed slap. The screams – of men falling as ladders were pushed off the far higher wall ahead of him, of other men slashing and smashing blade onto blade, onto shield or helm. The cries of the attackers: ‘Allah!’ Of the defenders: ‘Christ! Holy Mother!’ There they were, the first time he had seen them this close, his enemy, the men he’d come to kill. His enemy, men just like himself. Some in armour, striking down with swords, axes, spears. Others, like him, in nothing more than shirts, hurling stones and oaths. Lit by flames from torches that flared upon each tower and at spaces along the walls between each one. He saw an archer lean through the crenels of a tower and shoot down into the mob, saw the man he plucked from a ladder top with his shaft, saw that same archer knocked flying back by a slingshot stone to the face. Everywhere he looked, men were striving to kill, striving harder not to die.

It was hell, and he was staring into it. Frozen atop the wall, with missiles flying around him, Achmed found he could not move, could only stare. Something tugged at his leg, jerking it hard; he forced his gaze down and saw Raschid there, face twisted in rage, mouthing words he could not hear. He looked away from him, to the mobs and the madness beneath the high wall beyond.

And then he saw it. The banner of the Prophet. It was being carried forward through the crowd and appeared to be drawing the worst of Greek metal and stone. A bearer would fall, the pole would slip, the banner sag, and then another would snatch it up, to fall in his turn. Somehow it was always kept aloft.

The Prophet. It was why he was there, to serve him in this holy cause, to glorify him and Allah, most merciful. To be a martyr for him if he so chose. Yet the banner was something else too, something that had been cried out before the attack began – that it was worth more gold than he would see in a lifetime of labour in his fields. Gold could not return his little Abal to him. But it might return the smile to Farat’s face when she realised that no more of her children would die because they had no food.

Gold he could have – but only if he were the one to plant the banner of his saviour on the walls of Constantinople.

He slid down. Raschid’s words were clear now, cursing him for a fool for sitting there, a giant target for every Greek archer and slinger. Achmed began to push through a crowd that was beginning to thin near the back, as the wounded dragged themselves rearwards. But there were yet enough of the crazed or the ambitious hurling themselves at the walls, and ever another man to take up the banner when it dropped from life-fleeing fingers.

‘What are you doing?’ Raschid was limping beside him, striking his arm. ‘Keep your shield up! Raise your sword!’

Achmed ignored him. He had reached the point of the solid mass, men pressed six deep to the wall. He began to move them aside. They protested, looked up, then moved. There was something in the giant’s eyes.

He reached the banner as it fell, this time from a height, for the latest martyr to carry it had got halfway up the ladder. Achmed dodged the falling body, caught the pole as it passed him. Jabbing its butt end back, he took the wind from the protesting Raschid’s chest. Free of him, he began to climb.

For so much noise, there was such a silence in his head that he could hear his own prayers there, words of praise for Allah, most merciful, and for Muhammad who was His Prophet, peace be unto him. But other words came too, the first his little daughter had ever spoken. ‘Gobe,’ she’d said, pointing at a goat. ‘Gobe.’

Something passed through the flap of shirt at his chest. A stone glanced off his shoulder. There was a man right above him on the battlements, raising an axe. Achmed lifted the banner of the Prophet to protect himself … and then watched the man loose his grip on his axe, reaching up to the bolt that protruded from his arm. He tumbled from sight, his weapon fell, Achmed felt its edge open his side as it passed. But he did not feel pain; there was not time between the clear space suddenly before him and his stepping into it.

He was standing between two crenels. Before him, the body of the axeman was still sinking onto the flagstones. Either side of him, Greeks fought to push back ladders that had Turks on their top rungs, men who stabbed and jabbed and fought not to be dislodged. But already others were turning to him, to this giant suddenly stood amongst them. He had a moment. One.

‘
Allahu akbar!
’ he cried, and swept the banner left to right, Muhammad’s name unfurling from the cloth in flaming light.

The moment passed. Something struck him hard in the forehead and he fell, the pole whipped from his grasp as he tumbled back, down, his fall broken by bodies, some of which broke in their turn, until he was lying on the ground, watching flame reflecting in a widening pool of blood. He saw a shadow reach into it, knew that someone was thrusting their face close, screaming more words he could not hear. Then he felt hands on him, thrust into his armpits, one at the back of his neck, all dragging. He began to move, slowly at first, then faster over the slick ground. When he stopped, it was suddenly, and he vomited, just as sound came back.

‘Up, fool! Up! Or you die!’

Raschid was beating him, shouting in his ear. Achmed looked up to see men flinging themselves up and over the first wall, low enough on this, the city side. He lurched up, fell onto it, over it, sliding down onto a crush of mud and stacked wood. He was in the ditch, and then he was clawing up its mud sides, crawling out of it, stumbling forward. The gate in the stockade was wide open. There did not seem to be the crush to get in that there had been to get out.

Men were marching forward, men in plate and mail and helm with big round shields and spears slanted to the sky. He was slid out of their path, dragged into the lee of the wooden walls.

His eyes were closing. Just before they did, he saw a familiar face. It had one eye, and that eye shone with amusement. ‘Well, well, farmer boy. You are a
deli
and no mistake.’ Farouk thrust his hand forward in the traditional gesture to banish the mad. Then he let it fall onto Achmed’s shoulder. ‘Still, once we’ve cleaned you up a bit, I have no doubt our sultan will be happy to see you. To reward you. To reward us all.’ The one eye narrowed, as the hand stroked. ‘For we are comrades, are we not? All
gazis
for Allah, praise Him, yes?’ He rose, smiling. ‘So all will share in the sultan’s bounty, is that not right?’