Qaashiq smiled. "Now you are thinking like a winner, Cem Sultan."
* Istanbul: The Year of Our Lord Fourteen Hundred and Eighty Two *
The column of five hundred selectees of the Devsirme trudged along the dusty, gravelled road, the summer sun pounding mercilessly down on them and draining the last drops of moisture from every boy in the line. The enforced recruitment - some would say slavery, though not within earshot of the conquerors - of Christian children was an annual plague in the lives of the subjects of the empire, but these past two seasons had seen a step up in the system. The wars between the two feuding brothers at the head of the Ottoman world had drained the armies of the empire, and many strictures that protected the peasant farmers had been bypassed in order to restock the military.
'No family will have more than one child taken' was stressed in the terms of the Devsirme, and yet the Orthodox Christian families in the lands around Hadrianople and Bizye had lost whole generations this past two years. The family of Parios the farmer had tried to hide one of their boys in the pig sty when the selection officers and their men had come, but the result had been all the worse: the boy had still been found and taken and Parios had lost his left arm below the elbow as punishment and would struggle on the farm in the future.
Parents had wailed and lamented, begging the officers, asking what would become of their farms with their children taken. Most of the soldiers and officials had been aloof and pushed aside the distraught parents, but the one who had come to the farm to take Skiouros and Lykaion had simply shrugged and suggested their parents start having children again.
Skiouros glanced across at Lykaion, and once more was impressed at how well his brother was taking the situation. Their mother had actually gone for one of the guards when they'd been pulled out from the yard, but their father had restrained her in his usual, stoic, sensible way. Lykaion had apparently accepted his fate calmly, while Skiouros had kicked up enough of a fuss that he'd already been beaten twice before they were out of sight of the walls of Hadrianople.
The journey had been hell on earth. Four days of slogging along dusty roads in the endless heat, with only three ten minute breaks from sunrise to sunset, each filled with a little bread and gruel and a few mouthfuls of water. Then they slept in the open within a ring of soldiers like the prisoners of some battle until the sun's first glow passed the horizon and the column of boys were heaved to their feet and goaded on once more.
And now, at last, the great city was before them and the trek almost over.
Again Skiouros glanced at Lykaion. The taller boy, older by two years and taller by a hand, had not spoken all day. It was as though every step that brought them closer to Constantinople drove the sparkle and the life from the curly haired farm boy. Lykaion had always been taciturn and serious compared to his younger brother, but this was a noticeable change, and not one that Skiouros welcomed.
For the first two days of the journey, Skiouros had cried and despaired, fearing the bleak future of slavery and inevitable death that awaited them in the great city. Aisopos the trader had said that the boys taken in the Devsirme system were forced to renounce God the maker and worship their false Allah and his Arabic prophets and then they were sent either to be castrated and abused by the Sultan or to die in his armies. Neither option sounded particularly good to Skiouros.
And then, during one disturbed wakeful night by a parched river bed, he'd had an epiphany and decided that the Sultan was not the master of his fate, but that he would be his own master. The great city of Constantine was said to be full of wonder and promise even in these days of Turkish oppression. Skiouros had watched their guards and knew that he was fast enough and smart enough to evade them. When they were in Constantinople, he would run from the column and make the city his own.
The next morning, he had tried to discuss the possibility very quietly with Lykaion as they trudged, but had been forced to do so in whispers and fragmentary snippets whenever guard proximity allowed and the other boys weren't listening too intently.
At first, the older brother had been strangely uncommunicative but, as that third day wore on, he had finally turned to Skiouros and told him that he was being stupid. Their life may be forfeit, but that was the path upon which God had set them and to fight it was not only to fight God, but to break the law and all rules of morality.
"Besides," Lykaion had snapped with surprising force, "what do you think will happen to mother and father if we disobey the Sultan's men? Just walk and do as you're told."
The rest of the day's attempts to convince Lykaion were even less successful, and by the fourth day, the older boy had fallen silent entirely.
Shouts in Turkish rang out suddenly at the head of the column, and the guards along the edges prodded and goaded their charges into a narrower column as they approached the walls. Lykaion felt the breath torn from his chest at the sight of the great defences of the city.
How had this place ever fallen to Mehmet the Conqueror? God himself could not smash these walls! By comparison, the walls of Hadrianople were a pile of bricks. Even the first barricade, a wide moat filled with brackish algae-covered water, presented an obstacle that Skiouros could hardly comprehend crossing were it not for the serviceable bridge either recently constructed or fully refurbished by the Ottoman lords. The column of boys, aged from eight years to even eighteen, trooped unhappily across the moat without allowing their gaze to stray too much from directly ahead in case of a jab or a slap from one of the guards. Skiouros, his curiosity too powerful to be contained by such a threat, carefully examined everything as they passed.
The moat was clearly deep enough to drown a man in armour or even a horse, and wide enough to discourage any thought of swimming, particularly given the phenomenal field of fire from the towers and walls beyond, where archers and crossbowmen would stand.
Beyond the moat lay a low wall, about the height of a man's shoulder, with a crenelated top behind which defenders could stand. As the column passed this low barricade, they approached the first of the true walls, showing scars and repaired damage but more than five times the height of a grown man and with projecting towers. There, they caught their first sight of the force of arms that had ripped this great prize from the hands of the Romans and which kept the lands of the Sultan safe from his enemies.
The men standing on the walls and watching the new recruits arriving were armed with bows and crossbows, with spears and swords, sheathed in steel or mail, with gleaming helms. Men even stood with long muskets on their shoulder. Each man at that wall was better armed and armoured, appeared stronger and more fearless than any of the Turkish soldiers who protected the low walls of Hadrianople.
As the column passed within the outer wall and Skiouros studied the great wooden gate that had opened for them, they moved out into the strange, deadly space between the two stretches of walls. Any attacker caught here was totally at the mercy of the men on the high inner wall; and what a wall it was. It was quite simply the most incredible construction that Skiouros had ever seen; had ever even imagined. More than half as tall again as the outer wall and with towers three times as wide, the inner wall was surely impregnable.
It was said that Mehmet had found a weak spot where his cannon had broken through in the end, but that even then it had taken more than a month. Skiouros could well imagine.
The great Gate of Charisius loomed powerful and unimaginably huge as they approached, the flanking towers bigger than any Skiouros had ever seen. The enormous arch welcomed them as the massive gates were swung ponderously inwards, and Skiouros and his companions saw for the first time the city that was going to be their home until they died.
If they submitted willingly to their new masters.
The interior of the city was less cluttered here than he'd expected. Hadrianople's buildings were tightly packed right up to the inner face of the walls, but then the city outside which the family farm lay was as a bug on a bison compared to this great ancient city of emperors. They said you could walk fo
r four miles from the walls before you reached the palace, so it was no surprise to find sparse building this far out.
Skiouros mentally adjusted his plans. There would be no chance to slip away here, with so few structures crowding towards them. He'd expected a warren like Hadrianople and not wide thoroughfares. Perhaps a little further in, when the city condensed a little…
On the column marched, the boys dragging their feet through the weariness of walking more than a hundred miles in the height of summer with insufficient rest or water, and with the reluctance of slaves approaching market. Their journey towards hell was almost over, but each selectee present knew what that meant.
Again, Skiouros glanced around to make sure the guards were paying him no attention and leaned closer to Lykaion.
"Nearly there, brother."
A grunt was his only reply, and the larger boy kept his eyes forward, his pace steady.
"I'm not going to let them make me die for the crescent, Lykaion. And I'm not going to let them turn me into a woman for the Sultan's pleasure."
Lykaion's head turned slightly.
"You don't believe that shit, do you? Aisopos spun tales to entertain the children, and that's all that is. The Sultan has wives. What use would he have for a castrated boy?"
Skiouros shuddered. "I'd rather not find out. As soon as we're in a more built-up area and the opportunity arises, I'm leaving. God gave us the will to choose our destiny, Lykaion. Father Simonides used to say that, you remember?"
"I remember. But I gave my oath, as we all did, brother. I don't break my oath. I promised to obey and to serve and to do whatever they asked."
"You promised with an oath on their unholy Qur'an. An oath on that is hardly binding to a God-fearing Christian like you, Lykaion."
The larger boy glared at his brother. "My oath is my oath, whatever it's given on, brother, as is yours. Our word is all we have, now!"
"I will not hold myself to a heathen oath I was forced to take. For the last time, Lykaion, come with me. Once we're safe we can decide what to do. We can either go back to the farm and try to do what we can, or we can forge a new life in the city. Either way we'll be our own men."
"Be quiet and walk."
Lykaion turned his face from Skiouros and concentrated on the road ahead. Skiouros opened his mouth to have the last word on the matter but a guard, having approached unseen, reached out and cuffed him heavily on the cheek hard enough to make him stagger, barking something at him in Turkish.
"And your mother's arse!" snapped Skiouros, ducking back hastily as the guard made to slap him again. The Turk moved on with a last warning glance.
"Well I'm going as soon as I can, whatever you decide to do."
The pair strode on in silence along with the trudging column, the only sounds emanating from them the occasional shouts, orders and slaps of the guards, and the cries of pain or fear that resulted. Gradually as the first half-mile ground beneath their feet, the buildings began to close up and form heavier blocks, the streets narrowing and showing signs of having been planned in long-gone eras. The city was becoming truer to expectations.
"Constantinople is huge" Skiouros announced, almost to himself.
"Istanbul" said Lykaion quietly.
"What?"
"It's not been Constantinople since before we were born. It's Istanbul now."
"Maybe to them."
"To everyone, brother."
Skiouros flashed an angry glance at his brother, but Lykaion was paying him no attention. To him, it was Constantinople and always would be. Their father and the other adults of the Adrianople district had refused to call their own city Edirne, so why would they adopt the conquerors' name for the ancient capital?
Greeks, it was said, had long memories so that they could hold a grudge 'til doomsday.
"Will you help me if I go?"
Lykaion's gaze remained resolutely forward.
"I will have nothing to do with oathbreaking and your insane schemes."
"Then I will have to wish you farewell now, Lykaion, for when the chance comes, I may not have time."
At last the older boy turned his face to Skiouros, and the smaller brother suddenly found there was a lump in his throat as he saw a tear drop from Lykaion's cheek. The bigger boy rarely cried, and the look of almost heart-breaking loss Skiouros could discern in his brother's eye was almost unbearable.
"Don't do this."
"I have to, Lykaion. I cannot serve them the way you seem to think you can."
"What will you do? You're a farmer, Skiouros. You have no skills you can use here. You will be a vagabond; destitute. I don't want to make my way in the city and achieve something good only to find that one day I'm dragging the bodies of the diseased beggars from the street and it's my brother's eyes I'm looking into. Better to be a soldier for the Turks than a Christian corpse, eh?"
"I can't, Lykaion. It's not me."
"Do you harbour that much hatred of the Turks and their crescent, Skiouros? I've never noticed you being so holy and pious before? You've never really embraced the cross, so why worry about the shape of your faith?"
Skiouros frowned. The brothers had long ago decided that God paid little heed to those with no power, and that consequently they felt no pressure to return the missing attention, but they had been born, baptised and groomed in the eyes of the church. Like it or not it was ingrained in Skiouros, like a scar. Apparently not so in his brother.
"It's not that I hate the Turks with every ounce of my heart, Lykaion. You know that. God, I've never known a world without a Turkish ruler. They're just a people with a God like we are. But that's the problem: It's not our people; not our God. I'm a Greek, Lykaion, not a Turk, and no amount of forcing me to kneel in a mosque is going to change that."
"Then it's just as well you're going" the older brother said with a sad sigh. "If you defy them things will just go bad for you."
Skiouros opened his mouth to speak again, but that same guard was returning along the column and his eyes fell on Skiouros with a silent warning.
The column trudged on, the streets becoming more densely packed and built-up as they moved, to the point where they put Hadrianople to shame. The folk in the streets made way for the Devsirme column and gave them all a wide berth, but Skiouros noted with interest the prevalence of Ottoman inhabitants. It seemed somehow odd that only perhaps one in fifty in the street was a non-Turk. Perhaps Lykaion was right in calling it Istanbul, for how could this now be the city of Constantine?
His chance, when it presented itself, was so sudden and unexpected that he almost missed it.
The same guard who seemed to have taken a personal dislike to him had been watching him almost continually since the walls, and Skiouros had begun to despair of the opportunity ever arising. Then, in a flash, it all happened. The guard turned to bring a ringing slap to one of the other boys, and at the same moment, a merchant with a handcart of melons appeared from a side street, bumped into a passer-by and his wares scattered and rolled from the cart across the street.
As the guard swung his arm, one of the rolling, bulky fruit bounced beneath his feet and his next step came down heavily on the curved skin, sending him bowling over with a yelp of surprise.
Skiouros was gone before the man touched the ground, past the surprised and panicky melon trader and into the narrow alley behind.
The guard's shouting and bellowing in the street was incomprehensible to him, but was almost certainly aimed at the fruit merchant anyway. By the time it was sorted out, the man had been beaten for his ineptitude, and the column had begun to move again, Skiouros would be impossible to find. The guard would realise almost immediately, then, but it would be no use.
He was free.
Running like he'd never run before, grateful for the shade of the narrow alley despite the smell of warm dung that seemed to cling to the city, Skiouros ducked left and right, making sure to keep to the same rough direction and not to accidentally return to the main street. Heaving with pai
nful, rasping breaths, he slowed for a time in an alley, and then stopped to take his bearings. A clothes line strung between two windows above him dipped at the centre to just above head height and it was then that Skiouros realised that he was dusty and travel-worn and wearing the shapeless smock of a country farm boy. If he was to survive here, he had best start looking as though he belonged.
Reaching up, he grasped a light grey linen shirt from the line and was then off again. Three alleys later he paused once more to discard his peasant smock and slip into the shirt.
"You throwin' that away?"
He looked up in surprise at the words and saw a woman standing by a door into a wooden house. By all that was holy, she appeared to be a non-Turk, and she was speaking his language! It was then he realised that the shirt he'd pulled on was also distinctly western in its cut and not the fine baggy wear of the Ottomans.
"Erm, yes?"
"Throw it here. It'll make cleaning rags if nothing else."
As he stooped to pick up his discarded smock, he frowned.
"You're Greek?" he asked as he passed it over.
"And so are you. So?"
"But I've hardly seen any non-Turks here?"
The woman shook her head and rolled her eyes. "You must be new. You're in Phanar - the Greek district."
Skiouros smiled and turned a slow circle, taking in the tall, tightly packed wooden buildings.
"The Greek district? I'm… I'm home."
Again the woman rolled her eyes, and then she returned to her home, closing the door behind her. Skiouros stood for a long moment. This was it, then. This was where his new life would begin. He realised suddenly with regret that he'd not had the chance even to look at Lykaion when it had happened. He'd not expected to, really, but he'd also not expected to feel such a wrench at the sudden absence of his brother.
Almost a mile away, Lykaion trudged along the street, his face a tapestry of cuts and bruises from the beatings of the guard when he'd noticed the missing boy. The Turk had gone off to report to his commander after he'd run out of strength and had not been back since.
Thief's Tale Page 2
