Men who wanted help from the Hungarians.
Luke and his three Varangian friends had watched all this from the wood below. They’d seen the carnage wreaked by the akincis’ arrows and they’d seen the crusader knights recover and charge up the hill to the rows of stakes. They’d seen the charge of the sipahi cavalry and how it had been repulsed. They’d seen heroism and reckless courage beyond what they could have imagined and deaths that would haunt them for the rest of their lives.
Throughout it, they’d anxiously checked behind them and had seen the Hungarian army draw closer with a slowness that was painful to watch. As the knights repulsed the sipahi cavalry and began to regroup, Luke knew that the time had come for him to ride to King Sigismund and implore him to throw forward his army.
But there was a problem.
Riderless horses, some crazed with pain, were charging back into the knights still advancing up the hill. They trampled and bit their way through their ranks and were now coming through the wood to reach the open ground beyond. Horses with their chamfrons pierced with arrows, horses with sliced, open arteries. Horses that were running in panic towards the advancing Hungarians.
Horses that would tell of a catastrophe ahead.
Luke mounted quickly and rode fast out of the wood, his friends behind him. It was perhaps five hundred yards to the Hungarians and he could cover it within minutes if he didn’t collide with any of the horses that were galloping beside him. He had no time to lose.
On the hill, the knights of Christendom were preparing themselves for another sipahi charge from both sides. If they could withstand it, then the battle could still be won.
They yelled encouragement to each other from parched throats, their voices cracking with fatigue. They looked behind for reinforcements and shouted of Hungarian cowardice and they took off their helmets and wiped their brows and tried to ignore the pitiful sounds of the dying around them.
D’Eu had lost his horse. He held a sword in one hand and a mace in the other, both dripping with gore. His visor was still open and his face was caked in blood, his own and others’. He shouted to those around him to hold firm but his words were hardly audible. He looked round for de Nevers and saw the young Count not far away, also unhorsed and standing amidst a pile of bodies. The remains of the Burgundian household stood around him and the green of their livery was splashed with blood and dirt. Some held on to their lances to support them in their exhaustion. Some simply sat on the ground to recover their strength. None had mounts.
De Vienne and the Sire de Coucy were further down the slope, also standing. Together they held the banner of the Virgin aloft and together they prayed that their patron saint would send them the Hungarians they had so rashly left behind. De Coucy was wounded, an open gash visible through the mail on his arm. But he still had his voice, his deep voice of authority, and he used it to rally the men around him.
‘Courage!’ he shouted. ‘We are Christian knights and we can still win this day!’
Then came the rumble. This was a deeper rumble than that made by the sipahi cavalry. This was the rumble of armoured knights on armoured horses and it came from the other side of the hill. Thousands of Christian eyes looked towards it: eyes that had been full of fatigue were now full of fear.
The Serbians are coming.
Luke had, by now, reached the Hungarian lines and had found the King. Riding beside Sigismund was the Voivode Mircea of Wallachia, whose troops were on the left of the column, and Prince Laczković, whose Transylvanians were on the right. The fleeing horses had reached them and were now tearing swathes through the ranks of soldiers that felt new fear for whatever lay ahead.
‘Highness!’ yelled Luke as he brought his horse to a halt before them. ‘Highness, the battle is in the balance! The knights have broken through but they are tired. Bring forward your army and the field can still be ours …’ He gasped for breath. ‘… but you must act quickly.’
He saw Mircea and Laczković exchange glances. He turned to them.
‘Lords, this battle can still be won. But you must act now!’
Mircea spoke. ‘Have the Serbians engaged?’ he asked. His face was grave.
The answer was there in Luke’s silence.
‘Then the day is lost,’ said Mircea. ‘If the French are unhorsed and exhausted, they will not stand against a Serbian charge.’ He turned his horse.
‘Voivode!’ shouted Sigismund at the man riding away. ‘We cannot abandon them! We cannot leave our Christian brothers to the Turks! For mercy’s sake!’
Mircea stopped and turned in his saddle. ‘Mercy? What mercy did these knights show to the prisoners they took from Rahova? They slaughtered them! They slaughtered them before the battle began because they needed the guards to fill their ranks! They slaughtered men, woman and children. Don’t talk to me of mercy, Sigismund. Bayezid will show no mercy to us when this deed is told, I’ll warrant you.’
And the Voivode rode away towards his countrymen whom he would take with him back to Wallachia. Rode away to make peace, in any way he could, with the victorious Bayezid.
Sigismund turned to the Prince of Transylvania. ‘And you, Prince Laczković,’ he asked, ‘will you desert me too?’
Laczković looked at the men from Transylvania, the men who’d hoped this Christian army would save them from the Turk, the men who had stopped marching. ‘I think, lord,’ he said, his face sad and drawn, ‘that my army has already decided.’
And he, too, turned his horse and rode away.
There was the sound of harness and de Naillac approached, his long face a study in calm. Behind him rode a Hospitaller knight with the standard of St George in his mailed fist. De Naillac reined in his horse and looked from Luke to Sigismund.
‘Our allies desert us? No matter. We have a battle to fight. Come, my lord king, we have God’s work to do this day and we cannot delay.’
Sigismund looked back at the three columns behind him, two of which were already beginning to march away. He looked at the fleeing crusader horses riding through his army in their pain and panic. ‘God help us,’ he said quietly.
‘God will help us but only if we help ourselves.’ de Naillac urged. ‘Send forward your army now, sire, before it’s too late. My knights are ready to ride. Just give us the word.’
King Sigismund pondered this advice. Then he turned to face his army. He stood high in his stirrups and filled his lungs with air. He threw back his head and held his sword above him. ‘Soldiers of Hungary!’ he yelled. ‘Today we are under the eyes of God! Are we to prevail against this infidel horde or submit to its barbaric creed? Will you follow me to hurl the might of Hungary against this enemy or will you leave the field as cowards?’ He paused and breathed deep. ‘Will you follow your king?’
Luke looked at the ranks of soldiers behind. He saw undecided faces, questioning faces; he saw fear in them. He saw men considering life and considering death. He saw men torn between loyalty to God and King and the instinct to survive. He saw an army in the balance.
‘I will follow you, sire!’
It was not a knight but the voice of a common man, a man who’d left his fields to march with this army on its holy purpose.
‘And I!’ yelled another, and so the cry went up. Soon the whole army was a sea of waving spears and bows. The soldiers of Wallachia and the soldiers of Transylvania were leaving the field but the soldiers of Hungary would march on.
King Sigismund turned back to de Naillac and Luke. ‘De Naillac, take your knights forward and see what you can do to help the French. I’ll bring up my army as fast as I can.’
‘And I, highness?’ asked Luke.
‘You and your friends go with the Hospitallers,’ replied the King. ‘And use your axes well!’
On the hill the battle was going badly for the Christian army. The Serbian cavalry, with Prince Lazarević at its head, had torn into the ranks of the French and Burgundians, cutting a path of death in its wake. Now mostly on foot, the crusader knights were pa
rrying lances with swords and those that weren’t speared were crushed under the monstrous hooves of the destriers that came down the hill at a speed impossible to resist. As the knights fell back, they slipped and fell on the entrails of men and horses and they lay there in their exhaustion, unable to rise and fight again.
Behind the Serbians came the janissaries who were silent and efficient in their killing. Visors were raised and daggers plunged into eyes that looked up at their last morning. No quarter was given to any that asked for it and few had the energy to try. Screams of terror and pain filled the air and from the younger knights came the pitiful cries to mothers and to a God that seemed to have abandoned them. This was not the chivalrous adventure they’d been so keen to join. This was a terrifying, brutal affair played to rules they didn’t understand.
D’Eu was still standing, his armour no longer bright and his voice no longer strong enough to shout. Around him lay piles of dead and wounded and he lurched like a drunk as he swung his mace at men and ghosts. He’d removed his helmet and his long black hair clung to the gore on his face, his eyes wild and unseeing. Part of his jaw hung open from a sword slash and blood bubbled in the neck of his cuirass. The janissaries had spared him so far and seemed reluctant to bring him down. He was a leader and leaders brought ransom.
De Vienne was on his knees. The heavy flag of the Virgin was still in his grasp, although five men had died to keep it aloft. He knew that his fifty-five years of living were nearly over and was thanking God for a good life and praying to him for a worthy death.
‘Come on, you bastards!’ he yelled in a language they couldn’t understand. ‘Come on and take this flag! You’ll burn in hell for the deed and I’ll be there to watch it!’
The janissaries paused and frowned at a courage that would deny them profit. Then one stepped forward and raised his sword and brought it down on the arm holding the flag and the blood from the severed limb spattered his mail. The standard fell and the janissary raised his sword again and this time it fell on the old knight’s helmet and the head within it broke apart and de Vienne lay still.
It seemed, then, that a great groan went up above the clash of steel on steel. The knights of Christendom had fought within sight of this standard for over an hour, had taken heart from its message.
Now it had fallen.
De Nevers saw it come down and, for the first time, considered defeat. He looked around him at the countless dead of his household, at the Burgundian banners trampled into the ground, at the janissaries’ remorseless advance and at the Serbian cavalry already regrouping for a second charge. He saw de Coucy nearby, fighting alongside Boucicaut. He lifted his visor and called out to them. ‘De Coucy!’ he shouted. ‘Is the day lost?’
The older knight was fighting with a strength that belied his years. Two janissaries lay dead at his feet and two more were about to die. He glanced back at the Count. ‘The Hungarians, lord!’ he yelled back. ‘Are they near?’
De Nevers looked behind him. The hill was a mass of confusion, of tangled armour and rising and falling swords and maces. If the Hungarians were there, he couldn’t see them.
‘We are alone, de Coucy!’ he shouted. The voice was unsteady.
‘Should we yield?’
De Coucy stepped back from the fight and found behind him the carcass of a destrier, a wooden stake embedded in its chest. He found a shield lying on the ground beside it which he laid as a ramp and climbed to see above the heads of the armies around him.
The crusader army was surrounded on three sides. Above them were the Serbs and the janissaries, and the Kapikulu cavalry, and on either flank were the sipahis with the akincis behind them, and all were slowly, remorselessly closing in. Only at the bottom of the hill, at the treeline beyond the ravine, was there any hope of escape and he could see scores of men who’d abandoned their weapons pouring into it.
Nowhere could he see help.
Had de Coucy looked a moment longer, he would have seen it. Had there not been so many men and horses fleeing in panic through the wood, he would have seen the tight ranks of the Hospitallers emerge from the trees like a white, welcome surf.
Had he waited a minute longer, he might not have turned back to de Nevers and said, ‘Lord, the day is surely lost.’
Luke urged his horse into the ravine along with three hundred others, calling on the panicked men that passed him to turn and fight, crying out that behind them came more soldiers, more men to turn the tide of this battle.
Then he saw de Nevers’s standard drop.
The household knights had formed a ring around their prince. He saw a man in front of them pinioned to the flank of a horse by a lance driven down through his windpipe. He saw him feebly raise his arms to beg for death and he saw a knight from Burgundy step forward, cross himself and deliver that death with his head averted. Around the knights were the enemy, many with arrows strung to bowstrings. Then he saw the knights kneel as one and lay down their weapons.
‘Stop!’ he yelled. ‘Stop! We have come!’
But he was too far away and, even if he hadn’t been, he doubted if he’d have been heard. This was an army exhausted beyond listening, an army that had no strength left to fight.
The Hospitallers saw it too and all heads turned to de Naillac.
‘Engage!’ he bellowed, and the knights kicked their destriers and drove them into the flanks of the sipahis. And Luke and his three friends charged with them.
Up to this moment, Luke had felt everything but fear: the sharpened focus of adrenalin, the ebb and flow of hope and dismay, but he’d not felt fear. Now, as he spurred his horse forward and lowered his lance, as he saw numberless turbaned helmets through the slit of his visor, he realised that he was about to join battle for the first time and he felt the clutch of fear deep in his stomach. He knew his father was somewhere close, watching.
For the Empire. For you.
Then they were upon the enemy and there was no time to think of anything but kill and not be killed. Luke and his three friends fought as a unit, protecting the others’ flank as each discarded his lance, drew his axe and picked an opponent. Luke felt a surge of excitement, each of his senses heightened to meet the imperatives of destruction and survival. He fought with a skill his father would have been proud to see.
He was a Varangian Prince and he was the best of the best.
Soon the sipahis were falling back and some, desperate to escape this scythe of ruin, had turned and were riding over the janissaries behind. Now the screams and curses were Turkish and the banners that fell had holy verses on them.
But the rush of the Hospitaller charge was slowing.
Swinging his axe and controlling his horse with his knees, Luke could feel the momentum of the charge lessen. He felt it stall, then stop. And then he felt his horse take its first, grudging step backwards.
We are three hundred. They are forty thousand. This is madness.
There was a cluster of Kapikulu cavalry to his front, the same guard he’d seen earlier. They were fighting in close formation, protecting someone behind them.
Suleyman.
Then Luke saw him. A gap had appeared in the Kapikulu ranks and the heir to the Ottoman throne, splendid on a black charger, was there urging his men on. The flag of the Prophet was behind him. He turned in his saddle and his eyes met Luke’s. A smile spread across his face.
He shouted something that Luke couldn’t hear. Then he yelled at his guard and they began to fight their way in Luke’s direction.
Suleyman was closer now, still screened by his men, but close enough to be heard.
‘Congratulations on your escape,’ he yelled, his voice booming over the clash of steel. ‘The crusaders fell into our trap and the credit must go to you, Luke Magoris! You have the Sultan’s thanks and, if you drop your axe, I’m sure he’ll want to give them to you in person.’
‘What does he mean?’ cried Nikolas. ‘Who is he?’
‘His name is Prince Suleyman,’ Luke answered, ‘and he�
��s practised in lying. Don’t listen to him.’
Suleyman laughed. ‘I’m sorry, Luke, I hadn’t realised we would be understood if I spoke in Greek. Forgive me.’
Luke dug his heels into his horse’s sides and sprang forward and, with a roar, his friends did the same. Taken by surprise, the Kapikulu fell back.
Then Luke heard de Naillac’s shout from behind him. It was the command to withdraw, a command that would be obeyed without question by every Hospitaller.
‘What do we do now?’ shouted Arcadius, pulling up his horse. “Go with them?”
Luke looked at Suleyman, who was smiling behind his noseguard. He was much closer now.
‘Yes, Luke Magoris, what do you do now?’
Luke turned and saw Matthew beside him, loyal Matthew already having to engage two of the enemy because the Hospitaller to his right had pulled away.
Matthew who will die if I continue this fight.
‘Will you spare them if I surrender?’
Suleyman nodded. ‘I will spare them. You have my word.’
His word?
Suleyman lifted his sword, ready to give the command.
Luke turned to his companions. ‘Drop your weapons!’
Three faces turned to him in horror.
‘Do it!’
The Varangians lowered their axes and pulled back their horses.
Luke looked back at Suleyman.
His word.
Behind them, the Hospitallers had crossed the ravine, fighting as they went, and now fifty of the knights had dismounted and turned to face their enemy. Meanwhile, de Naillac and the rest of them had galloped back to the Hungarians.
‘The Burgundians have surrendered,’ panted the Grand Master. ‘Your Grace should retire with your army. My men are holding them at the ditch but they will soon come through from the flanks.’
Some of de Naillac’s reserve had left him and it was this, as much as the news, which struck the King. Beside him was John de Gara.
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