A Place Called Armageddon (54 page)

Dropping their tools, back they poured, pursued by jeers and bullets, over the low wall, slipping down the mud and bracken of the filled-in fosse. Thousands of men fleeing, laughing as one, laughing to be alive and out of hell, Raschid laughing louder than any – until a sharp crack changed his laugh into a shriek of pain. Men were ahead of them in a loose line, wielding lead-tipped whips or heavy wooden clubs. ‘Back, dogs!’ they screamed, lashing, jabbing. ‘Back!’

Achmed crouched to pick up Raschid, who was clutching his face, a purple welt clear between his fingers. With a shout, he rose, and three men before him gave back. ‘You dare …’ he roared, stepping forward, arms outstretched. And then he was struck from behind, hard across the back.

He turned … and it was his own officer, Farouk, his scimitar raised for another blow with its flat side. ‘Did you think we were done there, giant?’ he yelled. ‘Back, hound of the sultan. Back until your master calls you to the leash. Or would you rather run past these and meet … them!’ He pointed with his sword, past the whip-bearing
chaouses
to where torches had been lit and flames glittered on ranks of men. Men in tall white turbans, row on row. ‘Janissaries!’ spat Farouk. ‘While these will merely beat you, those will kill you if you seek to flee before your task is done.’

More
bashibazouks
, fresh men, had filed through gaps in the janissary ranks and were charging now, past them, running towards the enemy. Farouk swivelled with them. ‘Now come! Come all of you!’ He turned, laughing, pointing back the way they had fled. ‘Follow me to paradise!’

Fury filled the large man, fury he had not managed to raise against his enemy – until now. Now it was guided, directed by his officer, who turned him, shoved him, stooped to lift and fling the whimpering Raschid after him. Both men stumbled forward, picking up speed on the slight slope, urged by the men charging just ahead of those who had already fought, the universal cry in their throats.

‘
Allahu akbar!
’

Once more the filled fosse was climbed, the lowermost outer rampart straddled, the body-strewn stretch of ground the Greeks called the Parateichion run across. They were at the stockade again, but this time Achmed had no barbed pole in his hand. This time he leapt, wrapped huge arms around a thrust-out beam, kicked hard against the remains of stone beneath it, and shot from the wall, still clutching the wood, showered by the earth that came with it. He landed hard on his back, the air knocked from him, looking up at the hole he’d made, an enemy tottering in it, a Greek judging by the length of his beard, looming over the sudden gap then falling through it. His enemy landed two paces before him, struggled up, terror in his eyes, turning back to the stockade, sword dropped, fingers scrabbling at the mud-faced wall. A spear passed Achmed’s face, thrust hard, piercing the Greek, who screamed, did not turn, still tried to climb. Then men were rushing at him, Raschid among them, swords slashing. The Greek squealed, thrashed, could not avoid them, still trying to crawl upwards to his safety. Somehow he managed to get halfway, before Raschid dropped his sword, grabbed the man’s legs, pulled him down. And then Achmed lost him, in the sprayed blood that misted his eyes.

Air returned to his lungs along with his rage. Rolling onto his feet, sidestepping the writhing mass on the ground, he drew the scimitar, ran again at the stockade and the gap he’d made in it. He got purchase on the debris there, his shield hand reaching up to grab another piece of wood. Hauling on this, digging his sword elbow into the earth, he swung his legs up and over. And suddenly he was sitting on the lip of the rampart, in the gap between two barrels.

He did not know if he was more startled than the men who faced him. Perhaps they were, their shock expanding as he rose to his full height. He had stood here once before, weeks earlier, had earned gold for his feat that his brothers, in arms and in Allah, had drunk and pissed away. He saw the faces before him, mouths wide in shrieks of rage and fear. But all he could hear was the music of the
mehter
band, the drum beating like his heart, the
sevre
singing like the blood in his ears.

‘Allah …’ he began, then stopped, as something sliced across his chest, opening his shirt, passing through the place where his name and God’s were joined, straight through his shield arm, pinning the flesh to the wood. It spun him, the force of it, his feet slipping on the uneven edge of mud and timber. He grabbed for the barrel before him to stop his fall, wrapping arms around it. And then he was plunging back down the slope, ripping the barrel from its mount, just managing to tip it to the side as he fell.

His landing was softer this time, for he landed on a body, his head jerking down and slapping the ground hard. Stunned, he lay there a moment, until his eyes cleared and he was staring into other eyes, ones he’d seen filled with horror before, filled with death now. The fallen Greek stared at him through blood-sheen, and Achmed looked past him, to his own splayed-out shield arm. Still held in leather straps, it did not look the same. It took him a while to understand that there was an arrow in it.

He lay there, while his arm streamed blood, while air slowly returned and brought back other senses. Men were rushing past him, screaming, falling. Stones were thumping into the earth near him, jagged pieces of masonry from destroyed walls. One hit him in the side, the sharp pain finally clearing the mist from his eyes. Words came, a tugging at his chest.

Raschid was there. ‘You are wounded. Come!’

They didn’t go far. Crawling and slithering over mud and bodies, they slid over the outermost low wall, sheltered in its lee. More men ran past them to attack, yelling to God in all His different names, to Christ Risen, to saints, mothers, lovers. One officer tried to raise them, drive them forward again, but Raschid lifted Achmed’s shield arm, displayed the arrow driven through it. So the officer ran on to harry other men.

‘Rest easy,’ Raschid whispered, tearing cloth from a body to staunch the flow of blood. ‘We have done enough.’

Men passed into the attack, again and again. Some came back, some only as far as the wall they sheltered behind, to cough out their lives beside them. Many fled and were whipped and beaten back yet again. Later, much later, within the music and the screams, a different sound, piercing all, a single clear trumpet. Something familiar in it, Achmed had heard it often enough, been taught to recognise it, and eventually he did, words shouted in his ear confirming it.

‘They recall us. Our task is done. Come. Come!’

They rose, as men ran or staggered or crawled past them. Crouching low, for shot and arrow still came from behind and before them, they stumbled back up the slight slope to the siege lines and through them. The
chaouses
with their whips and clubs were gone and other men were there to greet them, water bearers with jugs, surgeons in purple turbans and grey robes, their assistants moving among the men who now fell gasping to the ground.

‘How fares the giant?’

Achmed looked up. Farouk stood over them. Raschid eagerly thrust his companion’s arm out, to a groan. ‘He is wounded, as you see. He cannot fight again.’

Farouk stooped, bringing his own blood-splattered face close. Light came into the single eye, a smile twisting the maimed face. ‘Good enough to let you lie here, giant. But call that a wound? After you stood again upon their ramparts and took all they could give you, that is all you have for it?’ He pointed to his puckered eye socket. ‘This is a wound!’ He pulled his half-ear. ‘This is a wound!’ He laughed, straightened, called to a turbaned man nearby, ‘Master, I have a wounded hero here.’

The surgeon came over, knelt, carefully lifted the arm and shield together, felt. ‘Hmm!’ he said, examining. ‘You are blessed by Allah, most merciful. It has passed through the flesh under the upper arm, but I do not think …’ He tilted the arm. ‘Yes,’ he said, tapping the shield. ‘Hold this.’ His assistant did. ‘And now …’

He pulled a pair of sharpened tongs from a bag and snapped the arrow beneath its bone head, drew the shield off. Then, as Achmed sank back, the surgeon gripped near the feathers and slid the shaft from the wound. He gestured, and his assistant poured water from a jug over and over, the surgeon squeezing as he did. Then he pulled a long strip of clean cloth from his bag, wound it tight, tied it off. Rising, he nodded. ‘Rest it. Keep it bound. Wash it every day. With fortune you will have no more than a memory and a scar to frighten your grandchildren with.
Inshallah
.’

He was gone, to another man groaning nearby. Raschid pointed after him. ‘You heard what he said, master. My recruit must rest.’

‘Your recruit? And the recruiter with him, I suppose?’ Farouk shook his head. ‘Well, I don’t think you will be called upon to display your courage again, Raschid. I think our time of fighting is done. It will be up to others now.’ He looked up, as the music that had halted since the retreat began again. ‘Others who come now. You can get our wounded hero to your tent.’

He moved away. Raschid leaned in. ‘Does he think we will sit in our tents and wait while the walls are taken and others get the plunder? No.’ He stuck his hand under Achmed’s good arm, bidding him rise. ‘Come.’

The ground seemed a good place to be. ‘Where?’ sighed Achmed.

‘Away from this place of flying arrows.’ Raschid grinned. ‘I heard Farouk say that the walls by the Horn are the weakest, and the palaces and richest churches close behind them. When they fall, that is where he’ll be, and we with him. Come.’

Achmed rose, groaned. He seemed to hurt everywhere and in his arm the least.

‘That’s right, hero.’ Raschid was smiling now, though his body and voice still shook. ‘Let us go and find our share of plunder.’

29 May: 3 a.m
.

While his fellow bowmen jeered the fleeing enemy, Gregoras threw a knotted rope over the tower’s wall. Making sure it was secured to a crenellation, he climbed over and lowered himself swiftly, knot by knot, into the Peribolos below. He was the first but the others would follow, intent, as he was, on refilling their quivers, all but emptied by the sustained attack. He pushed through the throng, through men praising God, the Virgin, each other for their victory. Praising themselves too, for feats of combat and courage. For the miracle of survival.

Gregoras made for the stockade, crouching when he neared it, though only the occasional arrow still flew from the enemy lines. There were bodies dangling off the timber there, and before the Greeks cleared them away he wanted his share of their bounty. Turkish arrows or his own, he didn’t much care as long as he was armed for whoever was to come next.

He gleaned his harvest, sometimes using his knife to prise free any deeply lodged barb. When he came to the point of the stockade where a barrel was missing, he risked a quick look outside, down, but he did not see the huge Turk’s body below. He could have been buried beneath others, there were plenty there. But somehow Gregoras felt he’d missed, or at least not killed. He’d seen the giant fall, that was all. He’d have liked that arrow back, to make surer of his target the next time.

His quiver was nearly full, he was crouched over a last body, when someone tapped his back. ‘You live, Ragusan.’

He looked up. ‘I do, Sicilian. And it is Constantinopolitan. Especially today.’

‘Too many syllables. Like Greg-or-as.’ Enzo grinned. ‘I prefer Zoran.’ He extended a hand, pulled the other up. ‘The Commander wants you.’

Giustiniani was in a small huddle of officers, near the back of the Peribolos, just before the ditch that had been dug out to provide earth for the rampart. It was being refilled – with bodies, men clearing them from underfoot and dropping them in, friend or foe, at peace in death. He nodded at Gregoras, was about to speak, when another’s arrival distracted him.

‘Have we triumphed?’ the emperor called as he moved through bowing men whom he gestured off their knees.

‘Your majesty is hurt?’

Giustiniani stepped closer to study the stained breastplate, but Constantine waved him away. ‘Not my blood,’ he said briskly. ‘A mix of many, for they kept coming and coming.’ He glanced down into the ditch as another body was tumbled in to join the mass. ‘As here, I suspect. As all down the lines, for I have had reports from the palaces and the fight was as hot there, the enemy as unsuccessful. Some seamen did try to land at different points along the Horn walls but all have been repelled. Have you heard from further down?’

Giustiniani gestured to a begrimed officer, who saluted. ‘Your cousin, Theophilus Palaiologos, greets you, majesty, and says the Pege gate holds. He sends word too that venerable Cantacuzenus has driven off an assault on the Golden Gate.’

A cheer went up from those near enough to hear. ‘Have we won, then, Commander?’ said Constantine. ‘Was that an attempt to take the city by surprise and, having failed, will they draw off?’

Giustiniani pointed at Gregoras. ‘Tell your emperor, Rhinometus. Let it come to him in Greek, so he will not think it is only Italian crows who croak the bad news.’

Gregoras turned to the emperor. ‘Majesty, if you look at the bodies, you will see that none are men of the first rank.
Yayas
. Foreign fighters. All
bashibazouks
.’

Giustiniani interrupted. ‘They were sent first to weaken us, for what is yet to come. Peasants from Anatolia. Scum from Balkan slums.’ He spat. ‘Expendable.’

Constantine grimaced, swallowed. ‘I feared as much. And what
is
to come, think you?’

The Commander gestured Gregoras to continue. He hesitated. And as he paused, sound came. A great blast of trumpets, the smashing of cymbals, the hammering of deep-voiced
kos
drums. ‘That is,
basileus
,’ Gregoras said.

The group moved to the stockade, peered. It was still too dark to see anything clearly. But then a darker mass flowed over a ridgeline marked again in fire and there was another sound this time beneath the war music, one that had not been there before – the rhythmic pounding of shod feet on the earth. A more regular chanting came then too, the inevitable appeal to anger and to Allah.