A Place Called Armageddon (56 page)

And then he felt it, the sudden giving. Not just the man leaping backwards, though he did, and it made Gregoras fall himself to his knees. A space opened before him, widening in moments as the enemy began to run. He had seen the same thing in birds, flocks of them turning in the air in an instant, as if one will governed all. Perhaps they were birds here, the sudden looming of a double-headed eagle turning them to prey, and so to flight.

‘Constantine!’ came one roar above so many. And Gregoras looked up to see his emperor beneath his standard, leading his own guard of men, right in the centre of his enemies who were there and then were gone, flinging themselves over what remained of the stockade, sliding down slopes of bodies and mud.

There was no need to pursue, no strength to do so. It wasn’t a silence, there were too many moans, but the music had stopped and men did not have the breath left to jeer.

Gregoras knelt, gasping, as did most around him. Constantine, though, leading his guard, surged on, up to what remained of the stockade. There for a moment the eagle flew above the heads of the defenders, before a volley of arrows and culverin shot made them stoop, give back.

‘There! There!’ came a familiar voice, and Giustiniani was striding forward, directing a dozen men who rolled barrels and bore wood to the gap the Anatolians had just swept through. ‘Do not fear!’ the Commander cried, when he saw the men hesitating to approach the expanse. ‘The great cannon can only fire every two hours. Stack it up, boys. And, Enzo, bring up a squad.’

Gregoras watched the Sicilian run forward with twenty armoured men, who crouched behind the barrels rolled into position. More came forward with barrows full of earth, with tree limbs, with nets filled with vine cuttings. In moments, the gap the cannon had blasted was loosely filled.

Constantine, raising his visor, joined the Genoan. ‘Is that your blood or your enemy’s?’ he said, pointing.

Giustiniani took off a gauntlet and wiped his face. ‘Mine, curse it. A rock splinter, I think. Enzo!’ he bellowed. ‘Some cloth here.’

‘Do you …’ Constantine hesitated. ‘Do you need to withdraw to have it tended?’

Gregoras noted the hesitation. The emperor knew – all knew – what effect Giustiniani’s leaving would have. He was the heart of the defence. Men would lose theirs and fast.

The Genoan knew it too and shook his head. ‘No. I do not leave this place unless I am carried out.’ Cloth came, and beneath his dabbing he glared at Gregoras. ‘You are meant to be up there,’ he said, as if the breakthrough was his fault.

Gregoras smiled. ‘And miss the glory? Besides, you needed help.’

‘That we did,’ Giustiniani muttered, wincing as Enzo dabbed, ‘and will again.’

Constantine, who’d been drinking from a water jar, looked sharply at him. ‘Surely … surely the Turk is beaten now?’

‘Beaten? No.’ Giustiniani looked at the cloth. ‘There is more blood to be shed yet.’

‘More? But—’ Constantine began, and then was interrupted by a shout.

‘Where is the emperor?’

‘Here he stands!’

The shouting man was pushing through the armoured Genoans, as begrimed and bloodied as any of them. He knelt, as much from exhaustion as respect. ‘Liege,’ he gasped, ‘the enemy fly their flags on the palace of Porphyrogenitus.’

Though he was hissed to silence, a murmur spread rapidly through the mob of soldiers. All men turned to the north, straining into the darkness, though even had there been light, no one could have seen beyond the hillcrest topped by the gate of Charisius. ‘I must … must go there,’ said Constantine.

‘No!’ Giustiniani shouted, then lowered his voice. ‘We discussed this,
basileus
. We cannot rush to every alarm. Each leader must hold his position, retake it if necessary. Ours is here. Here!’ He thumped his breastplate, making the armour clang. ‘For they will come here again, believe me.’

Constantine closed his eyes, swallowed, nodded. ‘You are right. And we have good men there, resolute men. Minotto the
baillie
. The incomparable Bocciardi brothers.’ He glanced down, spotted Gregoras where he still knelt, smiled. ‘And your brother, Theon Lascaris.’

‘My … brother?’ Something Sofia had said of him, of his politician’s arrangement with the enemy, came back to Gregoras now. His brow flushed cold, chilling the sweat. He rose. ‘My liege,’ he said, his dry voice cracking, ‘Theon is—’

‘To arms! To arms! They come! They come again!’

Shouts drowned out his cautions. All around him, men were lifting weapons.

‘Back to your place, lord, and we to ours,’ Giustiniani commanded, dabbing a last time at the still flowing blood. ‘And you to yours, Zoran.’

It was true. Each man had his position. And he could no more run through crowds of warriors to the old palace and hope to find Theon than Constantine could rush there to defend it. Each man had his destiny that day, for good or ill. Gregoras straightened. ‘I am out of arrows, Commander. So I may as well stand beside you here.’

Giustiniani smiled. ‘Good. Then take your place.’ He looked Gregoras up and down. ‘But for Christ’s sweet sake, put on the rest of your armour. You look like a
bashibazouk
.’

As drums beat, as bells and trumpets sounded, Gregoras turned to the bastion and sighed. The rope looked unclimbable now; it was hard enough to raise his weapons above his head. ‘You! You! Nico!’ he called. The young man who’d helped him before peered down. ‘Tie the rest of my armour to this rope. Lower it to me.’

He turned as he waited, looking north. There was the faintest lightening in the sky. Dawn was coming. But even with it, he wouldn’t be able to see to the palace of Porphyrogenitus, and the green flag of the Prophet flying over it. ‘Theon?’ he murmured. ‘Brother?’

The palace of Porphyrogenitus
One hour earlier

‘Megas Primikerios! The men hear movement below. Perhaps they come again.’

‘Good. I am tired of waiting.’ Theon pushed himself slowly off the ground, groaning, careful not to use the left arm in its sling. He had spent much time giving the impression of great pain; he did not wish to dispel it now before his sharp-eyed junior officer. He also did not raise his head. A tic had started near his left eye and distorted his whole face. ‘Go ahead,’ he said. ‘I will follow.’

But he didn’t. Instead he stepped up to the bastion’s front arrow slit and peered through it. The Turks had put out their torches again, which usually boded ill. And the music had stopped, which would be a blessing if it was not also a bad sign. It would start again, after the cannon’s blast and fire arrows lit the night; just before they stormed up the rubble-and body-strewn slope created by the tumbled bastion beside the one he stood in.

They had charged five times. Each time they’d been repulsed. But each time more of the few defenders died. He’d avoided the front line of the fight so far, an already hurt officer standing aloof but in command. He wouldn’t be able to do that much longer, sling or not. Soon, perhaps, only hurt officers would be left.

He looked at his father’s sword, leaning in the corner of the stone room. Cursed thing, he thought, bequeathed to him from a cursed man because he was the elder of the twins by a mere few moments. He had hated his father, though he had known him but little. A soldier, always away defending the empire’s shrinking boundaries. A rough man, given to boisterous jokes, ones he shared with the younger brother, for plain reasons. When only his sword returned from war, it was also plain which of the brothers should have the fine weapon. So Theon had insisted on his birthright, and enjoyed Gregoras’s impotent fury.

He could barely draw the thing. He was not the son his dead father would ever have been proud of. Though he possessed many other skills, greater weapons by far than any rusting blade. Skills of diplomacy. Skills of intellect.

Skills of survival. He had raised himself to the point where an emperor called him
oikeios
. And were all those skills to die with him because he was a failure at others? With a sword, the bluntest of all tools? It was unfair, as well as foolish.

It was obvious what was about to happen. Possibly here, in this next attack the Turks were preparing. Probably elsewhere, down the Lycus valley, where the feeble stockade stood.

Beyond obvious. Certain. Even to a man who was not a soldier. Theon thought back to his meeting with Hamza Bey, in the avenue of Judas trees. The Turk had asked a question. ‘What do reasonable men do, when certainty is reached?’ And he had replied, ‘They consider their options.’

Now he twitched and considered those options. To go out now and wield a sword he could barely lift? To die in a breach that was going to be stormed anyway, defending a city that was doomed to fall? Or to …

He thought about Hamza’s banner. Hung from his house, it would protect his property, his family, himself from the ravagers, the pillagers, the slaughterers and enslavers. But only if he had done something to earn protection. For only then would that protection be maintained. His family, the very name of Lascaris, made safe.

What was it the Turk had said at their first meeting in Genoa? That they had more in common with each other than the Greeks did with the Romans. That they were men of the East. ‘You of the city will stay on and see it great again … Help us restore its greatness, the centre of an empire it once was and can be again.’

It was true. Theon gave a little laugh, reached up to rub at his jumping face. He was about to lose his life for a corpse that would not lie down. And yet Mehmet promised a renewal, and toleration too, no forced conversion to Islam … or to Catholicism. Orthodox Greeks at the heart of that renewal. Men with skills, with intellect.

Reasonable men like himself.

Theon pushed himself away from the arrow slit and the sounds of impending assault. It was beyond obvious. It was inevitable. More than that, it was his duty. To his family. To his faith. To his city. And he could not trust Sofia to do what must be done. A frightened woman cowering with her children? No, he had to take care of it. He had to go home.

But first, he had something to do. To prove his value.

He was at the door to the bastion, just about to step out onto the battlements, when the young Greek officer almost barged into him, such was the haste of his return. ‘Excuse me, Megas—’ he began.

Theon interrupted him briskly. ‘I have assessed the situation. I go to Minotto. We need more troops here. To your post.’

He turned the opposite way to the fight, headed for a descending stair. The young man called after him, ‘Megas Primikerios …’

‘Do what I command,’ Theon roared, taking steps swiftly.

‘But,
kyr
… you have forgotten your sword.’

Theon stopped. He looked up – at the young man above him, the cursed weapon in his hand. He reached up, snatched it, continued down the stair. ‘To your post,’ he called. ‘Hold the breach till I return.’

Any further reply was lost in the cannon’s blast. Their own trumpets blared the summons. Men passed him, armour jangling as they ran up.

He reached level ground, swiftly walked fifty paces further, seeking. To his left was the avenue of Judas trees, long since stripped of their pink bloom. To his right, a deeper darkness. Grabbing a flaring torch from its sconce, he descended the stair. Just then he heard the sharp bark of cannon fire, felt, a moment later, the shudder as great stone balls slammed into the wall close by him. His torch crackled and sparked as dislodged roof dust fell into it. He steadied himself against the wall.

It was as he remembered it from when he’d escorted Hamza after his last embassy – a bare room, scarce four paces across. A plain, thick oak door, the Kerkoporta itself, criss-crossed with bolts and iron bindings before which tall barrels were set as further barrier. He looked around, placed his torch in a sconce, leaned his sword against the wall, then stepped to the nearest barrel.

‘And what might you be doing here?’

The voice was soft enough, but it made Theon gasp and reel back. His hand made three attempts at his sheath before he pulled out his dagger. ‘Who … who is there?’ he called, his voice quavering.

A shadow moved out of the gloom of the stair. ‘I am,’ the voice came again … Then a man leaned into the flickering light.

And Theon recognised him. ‘Johannes Grant,’ he hissed, his voice still high.

‘Plain John will do,’ replied the Scotsman, stepping off the last stair.

Theon had had dealings with the fellow before. As few as possible, for he was always demanding this rare chemical or that precious commodity. Demanding them in execrable if fluent Greek, heavily larded with blasphemous obscenity. No gentleman, though he had been useful to the State, above and below the ground. While he wondered at the Scot’s sudden appearance, Grant spoke. ‘Are you here for the same reason I am?’

For a wild moment, Theon thought it might be true. If one reasonable man would betray the city, why not two? But before he could consider a way to voice this, Grant continued, ‘I was fighting alongside those mad Venetians, the Bocciardi brothers. Christ on the cross, they delight in slaughter, those shitters. We’d just driven back yet another attack, and were all excited about how those bastard Turks kept failing, when a vision of this place popped into my head. Just came like that.’ He snapped his fingers. ‘I always had it marked as a weakness, ye ken, even though it canna be seen from the front, being as it lies in the dog-leg of the wall. Still …’ he leaned over and spat on the floor, ‘I couldn’t shake the vision so I thought I’d best check. You?’

Theon was breathing a little more easily now. ‘Much the same.’ He gestured to the arm he’d slipped back into the sling. ‘I took a wound and was sent to a surgeon. Returning to my post, the idea came to me …’

Another ball struck, even closer this time, making both men reach to steady themselves. Funnelled down the stair came the sudden roar of music, and the loud glorying of Allah.

Grant turned to the sound. ‘That’s them donkey-loving sodomites coming again. I’d best away back so’s I no miss the fun.’ He turned. ‘You with me, Lascaris?’