City of God

by S. J. A. Turney

  ‘That might be too late,’ Ramon said, though his voice faltered now. Clearly, he had underestimated the value of the items the preceptor still sought. The shroud in which Christ had been buried, to shed when he rose upon the third day, and the head of the spear the Roman Longinus had thrust into the Saviour’s side on the cross. What treasures they were, to rival anything kept in Rome.

  ‘Leave me to my work,’ Bochard said. ‘And cause no trouble. You go to observe this siege, yes? Not to take part in it.’

  ‘That is our intention,’ Ramon said quietly.

  ‘Good. Should I secure those remaining items, I shall attempt to send word to you. God go with you.’

  ‘And with you,’ the two knights replied in a rather formulaic manner, turning and leaving the room. As the door clicked shut behind them and they gathered up their shields which lay propped against the wall in the corridor outside, Arnau turned to Ramon, speaking quietly.

  ‘That was not a promise, was it?’

  ‘Far from it. It is my stated intention to not take part in the siege. Sadly, often plans can go awry. Especially when one’s viewpoint is a little too close to the enemy. Come, Vallbona.’

  The two men left the building and crossed to the walls. There was no sign of Sebastian, and had not been since the early morning. He had disappeared before dawn, likely to form part of the city’s garrison. No one had the heart to deny him that. Once upon the city walls with Octa and two of his Warings, they travelled down the slope of the hill towards the water. Even as they neared the walls of the Golden Horn, they could see the shapes of the great Venetian vessels detaching from the far shore and beginning to pull out into the water.

  The fleet had separated into sections and covered the inlet in a great line perhaps a mile long, war galleys with their artillery towing great rafts filled with soldiers interspersed with the transport craft also crammed with men and horses, but also with siege weaponry.

  ‘This is going to get messy,’ Arnau said, peering at the worryingly large fleet. ‘The Franks are part of this force every bit as much as the Venetians. How can we hope to maintain our stance in not attacking the Crusaders?’

  Ramon gestured onwards and broke into a light jog, Arnau running alongside. ‘It is easy enough to tell the difference in most cases, and I believe we can position ourselves with little danger of facing Franks. Fight those of whom you are sure, and despite Bochard’s certainty that the Franks will not touch us, that will not apply in this fracas. If a man makes to wound you, you wound him first. God will separate the just from the wicked in the end. You know who you are.’

  And that was that.

  They reached the sea walls and started to move along them. The enemy fleet looked set to hit this stretch of the defences – the same one with which they had achieved such success the previous season – all the way from the Blachernae to the foreign enclaves, past the burned-out sections of the city. This was, in some ways, an advantage for the defenders. There was little to worry about inside the walls now, and plenty of space in the destroyed regions for the mustering of men and equipment. Moreover, Doukas had established his command post at the top of that burned-out slope, near one of the few churches to have survived two conflagrations more or less intact. From there the emperor and his officers could see the entire stretch of the city under threat.

  Arnau peered down over the parapet. The silting up that had all but rendered the Prosphorion harbour useless these days had affected the waterline along most of the southern shore. One long stretch had escaped it, the water lapping against the stones of the ancient defences in that specific place where the Venetian galleys had come against them the previous year. In many places, though, silting had moved the shoreline away from the walls, in some cases to more than a hundred paces distant.

  Ramon kept them running past such areas towards that section where the walls met the sea directly. Arnau nodded to himself as he ran. Sensible. The Venetians would land the Frankish Crusaders on the shoreline where they could, but where there was no available shore, it would be the Venetians’ ships in direct assault. Ramon had reasoned it through and put them in a position where they would invariably face the excommunicated Venetians, whom both men could resist with clear conscience.

  They reached the nearest edge of that great stretch and came to a halt, breathing deeply. Thank the Lord the weather had warmed as spring came to the city. In the frosty winter it had been perilous running on the slippery white stones of the wall top. Now at least the temperature was comfortable and the skies were largely clear.

  As they reached that section in direct contact with the water, they arrived at the recent works to heighten the walls and found themselves climbing rough-hewn timber stairs up onto the wooden hoardings that raised the effective fighting height by more than ten feet. It felt strange to be standing on timber rather than stone now, but the additional height made a great deal of difference.

  Arnau readied himself, shield on arm and sword drawn, peering out over the wall top as a couple of Byzantine infantry shuffled along to make room, their faces betraying uncertainty about the loyalty and effectiveness of the red-crossed knights beside them. The young Templar’s heart picked up pace as he spied the fleet coming towards them.

  The enemy were no fools. In the centre of their fleet, the Venetian warships were more prevalent, the transports and rafts fewer.

  ‘Hail Mary, graceful Mother,’ Arnau said, eyes fixed on the nearest of the Venetian ships. ‘The Lord be with thee; blessed art thou among women, and blessed the fruit of thy womb, Jesu. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for we sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen.’

  ‘Amen,’ responded Ramon.

  The Warings and the Byzantine soldiers nearby looked at them quizzically, unable to comprehend the Latin in which Arnau had prayed, but all present nodded their understanding as the two knights crossed themselves.

  All too aware of the danger posed by fire to the timber additions, the men of the city’s defence began to prepare. The outer face had been covered with stretched hides, giving additional protection from missiles, but also from flame, for now the Byzantines threw bucket after bucket of water down them, soaking the outer face of the new section, making it sodden and almost impossible to ignite.

  In addition to the huge barrels of water brought up here from the nearest cisterns, there were braziers again. Atop the towers stood catapults and bolt throwers of ancient design, yet effective despite their antiquity. Arnau frowned as several soldiers moved an odd contraption into position ten paces away along the parapet. A barrel with a pump handle atop it, reminiscent of those used to spray water on fires, fed a long hose that ended in a metal tube some six feet in length. This the men kept below the battlements, hidden from sight.

  ‘Greek fire,’ Octa said quietly, noting Arnau’s puzzlement.

  The young Templar shuddered. He’d not seen the weapon in use, but its reputation was dreadful, and he’d some idea of the effect from its use on siege weapons and fireships.

  ‘Just one could be spared on this stretch. The majority are being prepared along the walls where the enemy will land, rather than attacking directly from their ships. Sadly, much like the imperial navy, the firethrowers have largely gone from the city’s forces, with no attention paid to their upkeep and replacement under the Angelids. Few men are trained as siphōnarioi, and few know how to prepare it.’

  Arnau frowned. ‘If you had this weapon, why was it not used last year?’

  ‘Inadequate supplies,’ Octa replied. ‘Theodoros Laskaris has had crews building, manufacturing and teaching in secret for months to achieve what we have here. The equipment and knowledge both had all but vanished from the army.’

  Arnau nodded. That sounded like Laskaris. While the city floundered under its joint fools on the Byzantine throne, the silent Laskaris, away from court, had devoted his time to preparing for when the city stood up for itself once more.

  The ships closed in. Arnau paid attention to them now, almost
able to see the faces of the men aboard. The vessels looked like arrows from this angle, arcing towards the walls, their grimacing occupants like demons, preparing to destroy and burn.

  Demons…

  For truth is not in their mouth; their heart is vain. Their throat is an open sepulchre, they speak guilefully with their tongues. God, judge Thou them. Fall they down from their thoughts; after the multitude of their wickednesses, or unpiousnesses, cast thou them down; for, Lord, they have stirred thee to wrath.

  The words of the psalm thrilled through him, filling him with righteous fury. His knuckles whitened in their tight grip on his sword. He would make the Venetians pay today for their assault on a Christian city.

  He glanced at Ramon and noted his companion’s lips moving in silent prayer. He could see the same determination on his face.

  The attack began first back along the wall, towards the Blachernae, where the silting had taken the shoreline furthest from the walls. There, fast Venetian transports disgorged their cargoes with the same speed and horrific efficiency as on that first day, when the knights had leaped ashore, already ahorse, to rout the Byzantine defences in Galata.

  The transports thudded against the shore and huge ramps immediately dropped from their bows, men howling and bellowing, charging up and over, flooding onto the ground. No cavalry this time, for horses were no use against city walls. This time, huge swathes of men-at-arms in their drab greys and browns were spotted with the colourful surcoats of knights in their midst. Some were carrying scaling ladders, others spears and more bows and crossbows.

  Arnau, safe in the knowledge that he had several minutes before his own wall section was threatened, leaned forward and peered west along the ramparts, watching intently. Those men on land were already running at the walls, their siege ladders arcing up and teetering, ready to slam down against the stonework. Behind them, horses were dragging wheeled siege weapons from more ships and trundling them down to the grassy shore, where men swiftly made them ready for war. Other Crusaders were carrying huge timber-framed tunnels covered with hides, which they ran forth and butted up against the walls to cover engineers as they began work to undermine the ramparts.

  It was all so quick that it stunned Arnau. Men were screaming and falling as arrows and rocks fell into the mass of invaders below, but it was a scattering of damage in a sea of Crusaders, and did little to prevent the covered tunnels and ladders and engines moving into place.

  Then he saw something that made his soul curdle. Something he would never be able to unsee, and that would haunt his future dreams.

  A long nozzle appeared through the battlements. There was a terrible, thunderous belching sound, as if from the throat of a dragon, and suddenly something poured from the tube. Golden and red, the Greek fire spurted forth not like water, but more like some glutinous soup, dragon’s breath at its heart, all engulfed in clouds of acrid black smoke.

  The terrible weapon had an instant and horrifying effect.

  The sheds covered in hides already glistened where the shrewd Venetians had thoroughly wetted them against fire arrows. It made no difference against the Byzantine siphons. The liquid fire spattered against the sheds and instantly engulfed them in terrible, roiling flame. Men screamed and howled. Arnau watched in mounting horror as men emerged aflame and dropped to roll and put out the fire, but the act did nothing to lessen the conflagration. Rolling did not extinguish this fire, for it burned on and merely spread across the ground where the men rolled. Others threw themselves into the water in desperation and even in this found no solace, for the fire merely burned on the surface of the water itself. A hapless man who had already been badly torched and had dipped below the water, rose in relief from the deeps that had extinguished him only to find he had emerged into liquid flame that coated his face and hair.

  Arnau uttered a short and devout prayer for the man’s soul. Frank or Venetian, Christian or heathen, no man deserved to die like that.

  Other pots of the stuff were being hurled to strike the siege engines, and catapults and bolt throwers were bursting into flame before they could be used effectively against the city. Arnau turned away from the dreadful sight only to remember that another such demonic device rested by the parapet mere paces from him. He shuddered with revulsion.

  The first ship to reach the walls did so a little to Arnau’s left and he stood, watching impotently as the Venetians launched the first stage of their naval assault. With its prow still facing the wall, the ship’s crew threw out their anchor astern, keeping the vessel pointed at the ramparts. A bolt thrower in the bow began to thud and crack, launching great arrows up against the parapet, and a dozen archers on the deck loosed at will, peppering the wall with shafts as, behind them, one of those long sailcloth gantries was unfastened from the mast and swung out towards the wall.

  Doukas’s defensive measures had been good. Perhaps not quite good enough, but good. The extra height on the walls caused two difficulties for the Venetians. Firstly, their ingenious boarding ramps no longer had the height advantage they’d enjoyed the previous year, and secondly their archers and bolt thrower were too close with the walls’ new height to effectively attack anyone atop them. Consequently, the arrows almost uniformly clacked off the stonework or thudded into timber, one or two thrumming high into the air, passing way over the heads of the defenders.

  The Venetians were no fools, though. While they had watched Doukas’s men heightening the walls, they had adjusted their gantries to suit. Though there was little they could do, for they could not heighten their masts, they had extended their gantries as far as practicality allowed. Arnau watched the walkway swing around and could see that with the extra length, it was almost unmanageable. It dipped this way and that several times before reaching the wall and when it did, it was still a little short, so that the men aboard it were forced to run up at the wall top rather than leap down to it. The result was that unlike the previous year, the attackers were at the mercy of the Byzantine soldiers as they tried to rush the walls. Arrows ripped into the men along the gantry, and two soldiers hefted long pikes and began to jab and poke at the end of it, lancing a foot of steel into the torso of anyone who got too close to the defences. The young Templar squinted, hoping to see green tunics. He had no love of any of these men, and would kill them one and all to save the city, but should he spot the men of Almerico Balbi, what was a duty would become a pleasure. Sadly, they were not Balbi’s men on that ship.

  A thud drew Arnau’s attention and his head snapped back to the right. A second ship had struck the wall to that side, and the same tactics were being used. Arnau watched, feeling a little sick, as the siphoneers readied their dreadful weapon.

  He shivered.

  The Venetian arrows clacked, clattered and thudded into the wall below them, a rock from a catapult making the entire timber extension shake a little. Arnau felt a moment of panic as he watched the siphoneers desperately holding their barrel still as the timbers shook. The idea of that entire thing spilling or exploding on a timber wall top was unthinkable.

  The ship’s mast-ramp swung and dipped, the unwieldy extended weight making it hard to control, and almost broke as it swung down to near deck level. Arnau could see the grey-clad men on the ramp clinging on for dear life and shrieking as they were thrown about. One toppled, losing his grip and plunging to the deck below, where he landed with an audible crunch. Finally, the crew got the gantry under control and managed to swing it to the wall.

  Arnau knew with a sickened feeling what was about to happen. The Byzantine artillerists heaved the siphon tube straight, while one of their number lit a long, pitch-soaked taper the length of a spear. He stood back, burning spear lifted. In perfect unison, three groups of siphoneers worked together. Those holding the tube thrust it out of the wall, directly into the mouth of the Venetians’ canvas-and-timber gantry. The man with the burning spear pushed it out of the next embrasure along, flaming, pitch-wrapped tip at the tube’s nozzle. And a third pair pushed down on the
pump handle, hauling it up with grunts of effort and then pushing it down again, repeating the process over and over until it became a rhythm.

  Arnau wanted to look away. After what he’d seen even from a distance in the other direction, he was not sure he could stomach a better view, yet there was an appalling fascination to be had in watching, and he found that no matter how much he might wish it, he simply couldn’t turn away.

  The liquid fire gushed forth from the pipe, directly into the gantry like an open mouth. The men inside did not stand a chance as the burning gobbets splashed across them and ignited their clothes, their flesh, their hair – even their iron armour burned.

  But worse was to come for the Venetians. The liquid fire poured down the sloping gantry, murdering men all the way until it reached the far end, where it poured freely down the mast and onto the ship below. As it fell, it became a flaming rain that deluged the men on the ship, spots of liquid fire falling among them, burning faces, arms, backs, killing indiscriminately and refusing to be extinguished, no matter what the sailors did.

  In moments, the entire galley was aflame. The attack had failed utterly, and the siphoneers stopped pumping, extinguishing both the nozzle and the spear by holding them under water until the remaining drops of fire burned themselves out. Then, efficiently and very, very carefully, they lifted that dreadful weapon, barrel and all, and took it further away along the wall, looking for where it was most needed.

  Arnau prepared as the next ship faced him directly. He gripped his sword tight, trying to banish from his mind’s eye the image of men tearing at the liquid fire eating their faces. The same tactic was used once more. Arrows clacked and thudded in front of and beneath him, not quite able to crest the wall, the ones that did arcing so high that they were more likely to skewer a gull than a soldier.

  He remained behind the parapet, not risking opening himself to a stray lucky shot, and listened carefully. He heard the noises below as men fought to control the heavy, swinging gantry and felt the bang as the timbers of the walkway thudded against the wooden wall top. They were coming.