Tom Swan and the Siege of Belgrade: Volume Seven Page 8

  War-bow arrows began to flay the Turks waiting to climb the ladders at the base of the water-gate wall. Willoughby had moved, his archers running the length of the citadel walls and down to the lower curtain, and now their first shafts broke the janissaries. Their heavy mail and splint armour offered no protection against the big bows, and they fell, trapped, with nowhere to run but south into the Hungarian archers on the far curtain walls. It was exactly the kind of situation for which the fortress had been designed – to annihilate any intruder, trapped on three sides.

  Swan didn’t have to watch, once the Turks abandoned their ladders.

  He sank to one knee, and allowed himself one hundred breaths, which he counted carefully. For the first fifty, there was nothing in his head but the horror of killing wounded men on the catwalk. For the second fifty, he imagined the route he’d take back up to the citadel, and then down into the upper town.

  But the Turks must have come across the upper town, he thought. He examined that for several breaths, growing calmer. They must have initiated the assault on the water gate as soon as they cleared the lower town, so that the Hungarian defenders would be too busy to see them creep along the edge of the citadel. He examined his mental model of the fortress several times.

  He hated the risk he was going to take. He could, all too easily, imagine spending the night wandering the space between walls, locked out of the fighting, possibly mauled by his own archers.

  Except that he had to be right, and if there was a way, they would come in on the heels of the Turkish survivors, and save both time and spirit.

  Ser Niccolo was just raising his own hammer to begin splintering the ladders and Swan rose to his feet, back protesting, and waved him to stop. ‘Hold hard,’ he said. ‘We’re going down them.’

  It was all taking too long, and the last light was fading from the sky. Swan was losing his bet with Dame Fortuna, and he muttered a prayer to Mary Magdalena – less and less of a joke now – as he stumbled along the rocky slope. It had taken too long to get down off the walls by ladder, and too long to pick their way, single file, along the stony slope at the base of the great citadel.

  And the sounds of Turkish cheers were like waves smashing on a shore – storm-driven waves that grew and grew in intensity. And when they reached the next curtain wall, Swan realised with sinking heart that it was the entry to the horn work, the long, pointed bastion that covered the end of the rock that Swan thought of as the acropolis of Belgrade. They were still three hundred paces from the upper town, and a level too low. But Swan couldn’t face climbing the rock in harness, and he doubted anyone else could, either. Even if they made the climb, they’d be in no shape to fight, and darkness was falling.

  This must be how disaster happens, Swan thought. One desperate decision at a time.

  He paused and prayed. He’d never done this before in his life. He’d muttered prayers, heartfelt or absent-minded, but he’d never made the conscious decision to stop and pray before taking an action, and he felt like a fool even as he did it.

  But desperation knows no limits.

  Neither God not the Blessed Virgin nor even St Mary Magdalena vouchsafed an answer, so Swan shook his head and rose to his feet.

  He looked up at the towering curtain wall leading to the horn work, and was rewarded by a voice from the wall summoning him – in Hungarian.

  Before the light was altogether gone, the whole of the company had slipped in through a postern gate in the horn-work wall. From there, with the help of the Hungarian archers – peasants, for the most part, who had been working on trenches and hauling brush – they could move easily along the catwalks, up to well-carved and broad flights of stone steps, and on to the wall of the upper town.

  Swan didn’t want to stop, for fear he’d fall to the ground and never get up. The front wall of the horn work was riddled with breaches – so many that it looked as if it was the hem of a moth-eaten garment. But the Turks had only tried two incursions – one that broke through to the water gate, and the other which had been flattened by the peasants now on the walls.

  It was a measure of Hunyadi’s desperation that every pioneer and workman was now armed. And on the walls, fifteen feet above their foes, even with light hunting bows, they were deadly.

  And some had crossbows.

  Swan climbed the last steps to the full height of the upper town and crossed the width of the wall to look down on the fighting.

  Almost at his feet, the tide of ghazis had reached its high-water mark. A line of dead – with an occasional eddy or hole in the path of corpses – told the story. The ghazis in their colourful dress had not made it over the new trenches that the pioneers had cut across the upper town.

  But the janissaries were in the midst of having their turn, and they were over the shallow ditch and climbing the piles of demolished buildings and old stone and dirt even as Swan watched, like the migration of a nest of ants, except these ants gleamed in the last red light of the sun with a steel malice.

  For almost a whole minute Swan watched.

  He had to get this right.

  He hated the whole thing – he was not a real captain and he was not ready to keep making decisions. It was not at all like being by himself in the dark of the Ottoman camp. That was like a prank. You planned, you made shit up, and things happened. And if you failed, you got caught, and then you tried something else.

  This was different. As the janissaries, with an almost insane courage, fought their way up the rubble slope of the Hungarian trench and wall, as men gave their lives to get two more paces into the storm of crossbow bolts, as their reserves raised their horsetail banners and pushed forward where the defenders flagged, six ortas together in one massive rush of armoured men …

  Swan felt it all on his shoulders, and he hated it. Sixty wearied men. All obeying him.

  But he had his plan. And the rest was just fear, fatigue and the last vapours of wine.

  ‘Is there a gate in this wall?’ he asked one of his Hungarian peasant guides.

  The man made a certain head gesture. He did not want to open the gate. Swan could see why. The peasants – Jobaggi or peasants who carried weapons – had bows or crossbows and nothing else – most didn’t even have a long knife. None of them had harness, or even helmets. A dozen armoured janissaries would kill them all.

  Swan looked into the man’s eyes. ‘What’s your name?’ he asked.

  ‘Janos,’ said the peasant. He was tall, well built, with brown-blond hair and a heavy beard.

  ‘Janos, if you will open the little gate for us, you may close it when we are gone. And these fine young men will stay and help you hold the walls.’ Swan indicated the pages, who were following Marco as if he had always been an officer.

  Janos pursed his lips, and his eyes went to the fires in the upper town. ‘Yes, lord,’ he said.

  He and two pages hurried to open the postern. It was just about fifty paces behind the Turkish line of assault.

  Swan stood on the wall as his men filed into the horn work and down the steps, and prepared to go through the gate.

  ‘Listen!’ Swan called. ‘We are on the flank of the Turkish assault. This is for everything. They’ve thrown in the janissaries. Hunyadi has nothing left. We are few, but we are behind them. Men panic when an attack comes in behind them.’ He blew out a great breath of tension. ‘Pages stay on the walls. As soon as we’re through and forming, Clemente will sound the trumpet and you can start shooting. Get every one of these Hungarian peasants you can to join in. Act like an army. For those going through the gate,’ he looked them over, ‘don’t stop. Into the rear of the janissaries, kill all you can, then up the rubble and into the Hungarian entrenchment and join them. Hold as long as you can. If I fall, follow Columbino. If he falls, Di Silva. After that …’ Swan smiled. ‘Trust in God. If the upper town looks to be lost, perhaps we’ll try to get back up here, with the pages. Look at me. Everyone understand!’

  There was no cheer. They nodded mutely. Men were
still panting from the climb and the long march around the city in armour. Swan wished he had the English archers. And the Greeks. And the Bohemians. He especially missed them. But they were with Willoughby.

  Then they passed through the small gate. One of Orietto’s pages grabbed his arm.

  ‘You really want this shut, capitano?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes,’ Swan said, without hesitation, or so he hoped.

  No, I really want you to lock it with me on this side, he thought.

  And then they were out on the dry grass of the upper town. They were on a little-used path or road that ran along the wall, and they formed quickly in the last light.

  Ser Columbino gave him a very Italianate grin and pulled down his sallet. Di Silva grinned too, and pulled his visor shut. Even young Cornazzano was grinning.

  Swan thought they were all insane, until he realised he was grinning too.

  He raised a hand with his war hammer in it and waved it at Clemente, safe on the wall. The boy sounded the trumpet.

  And they went forward.

  The houses of the upper town were a mix of stone and wood. One was afire, and the line shredded to pass it. They moved carefully through the streets, narrow, twisting streets with walls and little yards and tiny squares where there was a well or a fountain. Before they found the Turks, they were no longer forty men in armour, but four clumps moving roughly parallel, each group a glimpse of fire-lit steel in the next alley or the next street.

  The trumpet sounded again, very close – they weren’t moving very quickly. But Swan’s next step forward brought him out into the line of destruction where the Hungarians had cleared a wide space among the houses and the cover. The line of janissaries was at the top of the rubble pile, just twenty paces away.

  His men-at-arms emerged all around him. There was no reason to pause, or worry. There were no further decisions to be made, and no further risks to be run but this.

  Swan relaxed. He raised his hammer, and ran at the Turks.

  For a few moments, he was not tired. He was not even really aware. He pulped several men before the Turks were generally aware they had been taken in the rear, and then they collapsed. They cringed, or broke away.

  Swan was almost sympathetic. They had lost so much, fought so hard to make it to the top of that wall of rubble …

  He didn’t stop swinging the little hammer. It was a terrible weapon against men in chain – he broke bones through armour, he smashed teeth and jaws, the pick on the back dug deep into light helmets and split mail rings wide.

  And then he was at the top of the rubble. There was no one facing him, and Juan di Silva was on his knees next to Swan puking his guts out on a Turkish corpse.

  There was a very young Hungarian crossbowman in a good helmet and Hunyadi’s arms standing a horse length away, his spanned crossbow still pointed at Swan. It struck Swan he’d been there throughout the melee.

  Swan slapped his helmet and popped his visor. ‘Got any water?’ he asked.

  Swan shared the boy’s canteen with all the knights around him. There was still fighting to the north, and Swan gulped air and water – and began to walk that way along the top of the wall of rubble.

  ‘We cannot stop,’ he shouted, or perhaps he croaked it.

  Other men in armour nodded, or simply shuffled along. They were like animated corpses, but they moved silently, northward, into the flank of the janissary attack. They only made it fifty paces before they were bogged down in fighting, but the trumpet sounded, a hail of crossbow bolts swept away a party trying to envelop them, and the janissaries began to panic as full darkness fell, the Christians having turned their flank. Better yet, somewhere close by, men roared war cries in German, and Von Ewald and Von Bulow appeared, smashing forward from the rubble wall, taking advantage of the change in pressure on their front – and suddenly there were more than a hundred armoured figures in the light of the burning city.

  Swan could go no farther. He slipped to one knee, and stayed there, unable to do anything but breathe. Around him, most of his Italian men-at-arms were in the same state. Indeed, only Cornazzano, who was so muscular as to resemble a Greek statue, and Columbino, who lifted stones for pleasure, were still fully on their feet.

  But the Germans needed neither rest nor instruction. The hunter-knight, Von Ewald, led his men in a rush that cleared another fifty paces of wall. The janissaries were giving ground now, all along the front, and the Christians gave a weak cheer.

  Swan just stared at a particular brick for a long time. He never knew how long he studied that brick, but in that time nothing came into his head. A boy brought him water, and he drank it, and then, later still, he wiped his blood-smattered hammer on a dead man who he hoped was a Turk and rose unsteadily to his feet.

  A second boy tugged at his bloody elbow. ‘Lord? Are you the lord of the English? The voivode wants you.’

  Swan was too tired even to swear.

  He staggered a little, felt the intensity of the pain in his right shoulder, and wondered whether he’d taken a blade. Columbino came and supported him, and Swan felt a fool – he wasn’t even wounded and Columbino was older.

  At the top of the rubble, his wits came back to him, and he pointed. ‘Gather the men,’ he said. ‘Get them behind this. The Turks will come again.’

  Swan hobbled along the top of the wall to where Hunyadi could be seen, giving orders. He was in full harness now, a monster in plate, all gleaming, the newest German Gothic steel from gorget to sabaton.

  A boy was holding his sallet. His head was, in fact, bare.

  He looked at Swan and laughed, which Swan thought was odd.

  ‘You were supposed to come back to the courtyard,’ he said.

  ‘You said the upper town,’ Swan replied with a little savagery.

  Hunyadi laughed again, but his eyes were elsewhere. Swan watched the Turks. They were quite close here, at this point in the trench, and the Hungarians were flaying them with archery. Many of the janissaries shot back.

  They were rebuilding shattered regiments. A Çorbacı died exhorting his men, shot by a crossbow bolt, but another stepped into his place. But more officers were moving to the front – always a sign the assault was imminent. And there, suddenly, was Omar Reis – unafraid, in an Italian barbute under a magnificent turban. He was on foot with a huge, two-handed sword, and he waved it at the Hungarian lines.

  ‘We were going to lose this rubble wall, and retreat,’ Hunyadi said. ‘And lead them into the trap. Now I think we’ll just hold it a little longer. I don’t think I can get you all out.’

  ‘You mean we did too well,’ Swan said bitterly.

  Hunyadi shook his head. ‘Englishman, you think too much. At the moment, assuming you cleared the water gate, we are winning. It no longer matters how. My plan, your plan, God’s will. It only matters that Omar Reis has to lead his people in person. That means they are almost beaten.’

  And then, as a shower of arrows skittered and clacked to the earth around them, he and Swan jumped down off the rampart and let their archers and crossbowmen reap the Turks. The exchange of archery was deadly, arrows fell like heavy drops of storm-driven rain, and Swan had a deep cut on his face from a spent arrow that ricocheted off another man’s armour into his open face. He hadn’t shut his visor.

  Little by little, the Turks won the exchange. Here and there, a crossbowman died, another lost his nerve and knelt, and didn’t loose again, or an archer didn’t fully raise himself over the lip of the rampart before loosing, so that his arrow sailed away into the night.

  Swan wished for his Englishmen and his Bohemians.

  But instead, the Turks charged. They had thirty paces of open ground to cover and they had suppressed much of the archery, but they still took losses. And then, when they’d covered the ground, they had to climb the rampart of wood and rubble and earth, and the archers regained their courage, rose, and shot into them.

  It was fully dark. The only light was from burning houses, and the only sound a whit
e noise of death and horror, steel on steel, church bells, heavy guns and dying men.

  The Turks came up the face of the redoubt resolved to die or conquer, more afraid of Omar Reis and the Sultan than of the Hungarians.

  Like most of the men-at-arms, Swan used the last few seconds to clamber to the top of the rampart from his side, so that he would be above his opponent. But just as he settled into his stance, half a dozen well-armed men pushed up next to him – all in Hunyadi’s colours.

  He had committed his banderium. He was eight men to the right of Swan, and Swan saw him as he pulled his sallet down. He had his arms on a small flag atop his helmet, and a heavy pole-hammer, five feet long, in his hands.

  Swan almost didn’t have to fight. Hunyadi’s men were fresh, and confident. The Turks were tired and many knew they were beaten. Any drugs they’d taken had worn off, just as Swan had burned off his wine. Swan put one janissary down, swinging to clear the front of one of the Hungarians, and then, as the Turks suddenly received reinforcements, they were all pushed back by the sheer weight of the second assault coming in behind the first. One of the Hungarian knights fell, hacked down by a heavy axe.

  Omar Reis stood three paces away, his great, broad-bladed Eastern sword above his head. He’d just killed, a strike like a swooping falcon.

  He never had a chance to recognise him. Swan cocked his hammer back and threw it. He caught the Turkish lord with the butt, not the head, in the helmet, towards the nape of the neck, and Omar Reis went down like a sinking ship.

  Swan’s shoulder all but wept from the agony of drawing his long war sword, but spirit and terror got it clear, and then Swan went forward, looking for Omar Reis. He wanted to kill him, to have done with him, and he used his sword with both hands, mesa spada, his left hand halfway down the blade. He was, for a moment, irresistible to Turks with scimitars, but covered their strikes on his armoured arms and then used the sword like a pick or an enormous dagger. His first victim parried the point, and Swan simply pushed it into his neck, a little at a time, his two hands stronger than the desperation of the other man’s one. And then the next man died, a short stab into his brain, and Swan’s sword locked sharp edge to sharp edge with another heavy sword as both men swung hard. The blades cut into each other at midpoint. Swan turned his blade a fraction, unlocking it, as the Italian masters taught, and thrust, catching his desperately twisting adversary on the inside of his right bicep, perforating his mail with the long point.