The Walls of Byzantium (51 page)

The Serbian knights will be in their front line
.

Luke shivered and drew the sodden folds of his cloak around his shoulders. He thought about the French knights of his age who’d be lying in their tents listening to the rain. How many, like him, would be facing their first battle tomorrow? How many, like him, would be thinking of the long training that had brought them to this point? How many were worrying whether it would be enough not just to survive the battle but also to uphold the honour of their calling?

He looked down at the plate next to him where his untouched food sat like an island in a sea of brown water. Around him, the campfires of the army had long succumbed to the rain and the dawn was still some way off. He could just make out a shape moving slowly, hesitantly in the dark before him. He closed his eyes and then opened them, wiping aside the rain and straining to see what was out there. He heard a sniff, and then a growl.

It was a dog. A large dog was coming towards him. Had it smelt the food?

Luke was seated on the ground next to the wagon wheel and his hands were bound either side of its axle, the chains reaching through its wooden spokes. He edged closer to the hub and felt the manacles around each wrist. They were immovable. He
tried to shift himself sideways, to get to the other side of the wheel, but the chain was too tight. He turned back to the dog and could now see its size and hear the rasp of its breathing. The animal had stopped and its head was just above the ground It was watching him with yellow eyes that flickered through the rain.

It wanted the food and Luke was in the way.

Luke tensed himself, readying his legs to intercept the creature in its leap, to somehow kick it away. He thought of dodging the impact but the chain made movement to either side impossible. But if he could move forward, if the chain would slide …

The dog sprang. With a growl, it leapt through the air and Luke flung the top of his body forward, joining his fists and pushing them out so that the chain scraped up to the hub. The dog smashed into the wheel rim above him, its jaw scraping his knuckles, its hot breath on the back of his neck. He heard a crack, a crack not of bone but of wood. The dog had missed him and he could see its black shape rolling away on the ground. He flung out his legs and his boots hit something hard: a head. He kicked again and this time the crack was of bone.

The dog lay still.

The wheel was at an angle. The animal’s charge had broken the axle at the hub. He pulled the chain towards him and heard another crack. He pulled again and the wheel came away and the wagon crashed to the ground, narrowly missing him. He was still chained but he was free.

Luke waited in the darkness to hear if the sound had alerted anyone.

There was nothing. Just the sound of rain.

He could feel his heart beating against his chest and his
breathing was uneven. He began to crawl away from the wagon towards where he’d heard the sounds of horses earlier. He got to his feet and began to run slowly in a crouch, the chains dragging between his legs. He heard the whinny of a horse.

He reached a rail and saw movement beyond. He ducked beneath it and held the chain still as he whistled softly into the dark, turning his head to left and right. Then he heard the pad of hooves on wet earth and a horse trotted out of the night, its head held high with uncertainty. Luke lowered himself to his haunches and offered his chains and the horse’s head stretched out to sniff and inspect. Then, slowly, Luke took the long nose in his hands and stroked it and his mouth came close to the horse’s ear and he whispered into it and the horse nodded and Luke knew he was trusted.

Luke led the horse by the mane, feeling his way along the rail until he came to a gate. Only then did he mount the animal, talking to it as he did so. He listened for a while, judging the direction, then kicked its sides. It had stopped raining and the first light of day would soon outline the hills to the east.

But he had been heard.

He saw movement out of the corner of his eye. Riders taking shape in the darkness. Riders coming towards him. Silent riders who knew what they were following.

Luke dug his heels in, grabbing the horse’s mane with both hands to keep himself on. He leant forward and whispered again into its ear and it started forward down the faint outline of a road at a trot. He looked over his shoulder and saw that his pursuers were following but making no attempt to catch up with him. Who were they and what was he to do? Any thought of going back to find Anna would have to be abandoned. He’d have to try and make it to the crusader lines.

Before him rose a darker mass. A wood and a chance, possibly, to hide. He slowed as the first trees loomed up around him, weaving his way between their trunks and ducking to avoid branches. He heard the soft crack of twig beneath his hooves and then the same noise behind him as the riders entered the wood. They were closer now. Was this another of Suleyman’s games? Was he watching it all from somewhere with his cat-eyes, his night-eyes?

Who are you behind me?

The wood was dark inside and got darker as he went further in. His horse seemed to have picked out some path between the trees and Luke lay low, breathing in the comforting smell. He glanced awkwardly up at the stars, now visible through the branches, and the parting clouds. He thought he saw the North Star ahead, which meant that they were going towards the crusader camp. But the Christian army was three miles away and his pursuers just behind.

The warm, earthy scent of early autumn was all around him, a smell of pine essence released. All he could hear was the horse breathing and the steady drip, drip of rain.

Then his world exploded.

Something living landed on his back and his horse reared and he was thrown to the ground with his assailant on top of him. The air was punched out of him and he was pinned to the earth with a knife to his throat.

‘If you want to live, don’t move,’ hissed the man through the cloth that masked his face. The language was Greek. ‘Don’t move at all.’

Luke lay rigid, feeling the cold of the blade against his neck. His cheek was against the ground and he could see other men emerging from the trees around, men with bows. He heard the
sound of arrows being released and shouts in Italian and a scream where an arrow found its mark. The riders that had been following him were wheeling their horses, trying to escape, black shapes buffeted by panic.

‘
Venetians!
’ hissed the man on top of him. He was wearing the padded, buff leather of the gazi and he smelt strongly of horse.

They lay there together for a while, both breathing hard, as the riders fled and the archers returned, forming a circle around them. One of them lit a torch. The man got up and put his dagger into his waistband. He took a sword from one of his companions, broke Luke’s chains, then walked over to one of the horses and found a thick pelt, which he threw at him.

‘There is an hour before it is light enough to move,’ he said gruffly. ‘Sleep, if you can. Then I have something to show you.’

Of course Luke didn’t sleep. He lay on the soft pelt in wet clothes and watched the dawn light creep slowly into the shadows around. The sky through the leaves was grey and without colour, as if uncertain what to do. Then, gradually, it turned into blue, a blue pregnant with the promise of sunshine held just below the horizon. Rain dripped from the branches.

He turned his head towards the sound of footsteps. The man was approaching; his companions had stayed sitting around the fire. They were talking in whispers and poking the embers with branches. The man knelt on one knee beside him.

‘You are Luke Magoris,’ he said, ‘and I am Yakub, chief of the Germiyan tribe.’ His face was dark and worn by sun and wind and his heavy beard was streaked with grey. He looked old but was probably no more than forty. ‘You will want to know who I am and whom I rescued you from.’

Yakub swept away some debris with his palm and sat, lifting his sword to rest across his legs. ‘I am a gazi, a gazi from the Germiyan lands in Anatolia.’ he said. ‘That means that I have even less love for Bayezid than you Greeks because I have already lost my lands to him.’ He paused. ‘The men following you were from Venice. I don’t know why they want you.’

From Venice. Luke frowned. Why would Venetians be so close to the Ottoman camp unless they were supposed to be there? Had they been waiting for him?

‘You were meant to escape,’ said Yakub as if Luke’s question had materialised before him. ‘The wagon’s axle was sawn through so that one hard pull would dislodge it. In the end they had to send a half-drugged dog to persuade you.’

Luke found his voice. ‘Why?’

But before the word was out, he knew the answer. He thought about the unlikely generosity of the sipahi knight, of how he’d attached himself to him and brought them both to ride just behind Suleyman as they’d come down to Tarnovo. He thought about some information he’d been meant to overhear.

As if to himself, Luke murmured, ‘The Serbians will be in the front line.’

‘My guess is that the Venetians were to take you to the crusader commanders so that you could tell them that.’ Yakub picked up a twig and began prodding the ground. ‘The Turks want the crusader knights to charge first. They know that they’ll like nothing better than charging other knights. It’s a trap.’

He paused and looked up. ‘There won’t be knights in our front line but hyenas. The akincis are like hyenas, snapping and snapping until you go mad. We use them to lure you in, to tire you out with pretend charges and waves of arrows. Then we pounce.’

Luke turned this over in his mind. He’d seen the akincis as they’d marched away from Constantinople. He’d seen their small, fast horses and little bows that could fire an arrow every three seconds. But there was still a question to be answered.

‘Why should I trust you? You are a gazi from the same tribes that gave us Bayezid. Why should I trust you?’

Yakub looked again at the ground. He picked up a leaf and examined it, turning it in the gathering light. ‘This will be the first time that the armies of Christendom have met the Ottomans in battle. If they lose, there will be nothing to stop Bayezid watering his horse in Rome. You have heard this boast?’

Luke nodded.

‘And there will certainly be no chance of the Germiyan tribe regaining its freedom.’ He ran his finger along the central spine of the leaf. ‘So you see, Luke Magoris, that much depends on the battle’s outcome. Both of our freedoms depend on it very much.’

Yakub watched Luke carefully while he put fingers into the cowl of his cloak and stretched it away from the thick trunk of his neck, turning his head to left and right. He threw away the leaf and picked up his sword.

The gazi rose to his feet. ‘I will show you,’ he said. ‘Now get up. We don’t have much time.’

It took less than five minutes for Luke to change into gazi dress and remount his horse, which had been given a saddle and harness. It took another ten minutes for Yakub to lead him to a partially wooded ravine that lay to the front of the Sultan’s army. With their four companions they were, to any onlooker, an akinci scouting party. They rode out to the front line.

There were no signs of Serbian heavy cavalry.

All Luke could see were line upon line of akincis, their bows slung low over their skins and their quivers crammed with
arrows. They kept no sort of order and instead rode up and down, shouting to each other. Scouting parties were galloping in from the flanks and they rode up to Yakub and made their reports before rejoining the seething mass of horsemen.

Luke stopped and looked around him. On one side, the ground fell away into the ravine to the army’s front. There was a wood there that screened any view beyond. To the east, the ground rose gently to another wood. There were no signs of any sipahis, either Rumelian or Anatolian, on either flank, but the wood could hide a regiment at least. Luke looked down the hill fronting the army.

The Frankish Knights will come through the wood and see the ravine. By then it will be too late
.

Yakub had ridden up beside him. ‘Come! We don’t have time to stop.’

As they rode into it, the thick, screening mass of the akincis parted. The soldiers greeted Yakub but hardly glanced at Luke who, like his companions, was wearing a nose-guard and earpieces so that most of his face was obscured.

Then they were through the ranks of horsemen and Luke’s heart almost stopped.

There, like the teeth of some open-jawed dragon, stood line upon line of sharpened stakes. There were hundreds of them, certainly enough to stop a cavalry charge of any weight, and they looked well dug in.

It is a trap
.

Yakub was riding close to him. ‘Don’t look so surprised! Remember, you know they’re there. Come!’

They rode along the back of the akincis in the direction of the hill and the wood at its crest. Yakub reined in his horse halfway up so that they were able to look down upon the army.

‘Now look behind the stakes,’ said Yakub. ‘Janissary archers with all the time in the world to bring down the knights as they try to get through the stakes.’ He glanced at Luke. ‘Remember what I said. My akincis are no match for your Frankish knights. They’re not meant to be. They are the hyenas which will send them mad with their snapping.’

He let his words sink in. Then he said, ‘But this is not the main trap. It gets much worse.’

Yakub spurred his horse forward up the hill and then turned south so that they were skirting the end of the janissaries. It was now that Luke saw that the ground fell away behind the janissary lines, a feature invisible to anyone approaching from the front. And, as they approached the crest and were able to see behind, Luke reined in his horse and let out a groan.

There, hidden from view, was the main army.

There were the élite Kapikulu heavy cavalry and, beside them, rank upon rank of Serbian knights, thousands of them.

Suddenly Luke recognised the genius of the trap. By the time this cavalry charged, the crusader army, or what was left of it, would be too exhausted to fight. It was terrifying.