by Dan Davis
They stared but some already nodded in agreement.
“There is more,” I said, holding up a finger. “Once you are granted this power, there is no going back. You will never be a mortal man again. You will be as ageless as we five before you.” Many grinned at that, glancing at each other. “And you will never father a child.” Their smiles fell from their face. “You may try for all you are worth but no matter how many women you lay with, no matter how often you do so, your seed will never grow.”
They were rightly appalled and I gave them time to consider it.
“It is a steep price,” Garcia said. “I had hoped to return home one day.”
“And you may do so,” I replied. “If you decline what I offer. And if you survive the assault on this city.”
“Is there more?” Jan asked.
I nodded. “You will never again feel the warmth of the sun on your skin without it burning you. Wherever sunlight falls on your flesh, it will swiftly redden, and blister, and then burn. You must cover your skin and always cover your head.”
“And pray for clouds?” Claudin quipped.
“Even overcast days will burn you, I am afraid. But night will be your friend. You will be able to see into the dark better than any mortal.”
“But I have seen you,” Jan said, frowning. “I have seen you many times with the sun on your face, Richard. You take pleasure in it, just as any man does.”
“Ah,” I said. “But you see, Jan, I am different. I am not as you will be. I can make immortals but you cannot.”
I did not admit that my immortals could use the same process to make mad, savage revenants. I would hide such knowledge for all I was worth.
“So, where did you get your power?” Garcia asked.
“Let me tell you a story,” I said, “about a man named William de Ferrers and the Order of the White Dagger.”
After speaking for so long that my throat grew hoarse, I answered their many questions until they fell silent. Serban stared at me in surprise and wonder and I nodded to him before turning back to my men.
“Each of you must decide for himself whether to join the Order. I will welcome you all but you must know that some of you will not survive being turned. I do not know why but some men cannot take it. It is not strength, nor age, nor any other common factor as far as I can see but it is unavoidable for some. With that in mind, I ask that you make your decisions. Certainly, you have been thinking on it for some time.”
“I will do it,” Claudin said, getting to his feet.
“As will I,” Jan said. “I will risk death and pay the price for the power it will give.
Others agreed, one by one, until only Garcia and Serban had yet to speak.
“Serban?” I asked. “You have not been with us for as long as the others but you have been welcomed by all. You knew what I was within days of meeting me, having witnessed me drinking the blood of a fallen enemy. And you have heard stories about people like us in your homeland. What do you say? Will you become one of us?”
He stood upright, looking me in the face, and crossed himself. Then he fell to one knee and bowed his head. “Please forgive me, my lord, but I cannot. I do not think you evil, nor have I ever divulged your secrets, but I cannot do it.”
I shrugged. “Very well. You will continue to serve me faithfully as a mortal.”
Serban looked up, relief on his old face. “I will, my lord.”
“Garcia?” I said. “You have spoken of your desire to return home and make a family. It is a good wish. You do not need to give it up.”
“No, sir,” he replied, standing. “I will join you, gladly. It is a worthy cause for a knight. To fight evil. I see now why you named our company after Saint George. I believed that the saint was a warrior of Christ and the serpent was the Turks. But now I see that the saint is us and the serpent is evil. It is your brother William.”
“Very well,” I said. “You will all take the oath. And I will make you into immortal men.”
***
Before I was halfway through turning the men of my company, the Turks attacked again in the night.
They came in force against many parts of the wall, attacking the partial breaches and crumbling towers. Where the walls were damaged, the rubble fell down and out to fill the gap between the two walls and to partially fill the moats. The piles of rubble created unstable slopes for the attackers to climb up to the top of the breaches and down the other side or up onto the wall walks either side of the breach.
But the militia worked tirelessly every day and through many a night to repair the breaches, to clear the rubble, and to throw up new walls and barricades of timber. These repairs would be blown to pieces by the cannons and the garrison would repair them. Every day and every night, the pattern repeated but the Turks and their cannons were irresistible. We could not repair and rebuild as swiftly as they could destroy.
And so they came in the darkness on the 7th May, crossing the moats on rafts and throwing in vast quantities of earth and rock to create causeways. All the while our men shot arrows, fired cannon and guns at them, killing hundreds. Still, they crossed the moat in many sections and climbed onto the lower, outer walls through the breaches.
I held my men back. I would not lead them down into that hell amongst the fires and the cannonballs unless there was no hope.
And the militia and the proper soldiers of the city did well. The Catalan mercenaries also threw themselves into the thick of the fighting and the Turks were turned back from the outer walls.
We cheered as hard as anyone when the sun rose that day but we knew it had merely been the start. Repairs continued and the cannons fired, bringing down the battlements on four towers in just one day.
As quickly as I could, I turned the rest of the men in my company, each and every one of them, apart from Serban, who still declined. I lost five good men in the process. They were drained of their blood and they drank mine but they did not wake up. We buried them and I felt enormous guilt for their deaths, even though they had accepted the risk. And though I lost five, I gained thirty-nine immortal soldiers who swore to follow me until the end of their days in my pursuit of William and his monsters. Eva said it was a good trade.
“If we meet the immortal Janissaries in battle,” I said, “they will still be outnumbered ten to one.”
“Far better odds than we had last week,” Eva said. It was hard to argue.
It was five days later when another attack came, again at night.
The Turks focused their forces on the north-western section of the walls by the Golden Horn in the Blachernae district. In their attacks there they were supported by their fleet in the Golden Horn and it seemed for a while that they would break through. By the time my company arrived, the fighting on the walls was confused and it was hard to know where best to place my men. I held them back in reserve, ready to counter any breach into the city that occurred.
At sunrise, fighting slowed as the Turks stopped receiving reinforcements and it became clear they would not get through. Still, it had been a close run thing and, no doubt because of their success that night, the Turks concentrated their efforts on that district even more.
Serbian miners had been sent to Mehmed by the Despot of Serbia George Branković, along with two thousand Serbian cavalry. It was the miners, working tirelessly to undermine and breach the walls, that became the greatest danger and many of the tunnels were aimed at the Blachernae district. Our militia dug their own tunnels to counter those of the Serbs before they could undermine the walls or even come up inside the city.
Some of the Serbian tunnels were flooded and others were set on fire and the miners smoked out.
For others, though, where there was danger of them breaking into the city, we had to get down there and kill them.
“It is good work for us,” I said to my company. “We can clear out the enemies in the tunnels with our strength.”
My men were unconvinced that it was a task for knights and mercenaries.
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“Any wounds we receive we can heal by drinking the blood of our enemies and we can do so without being seen by our allies,” I said, which they were intrigued by. “Besides, I have already volunteered our services to Longo.”
It was horrible fighting. As bad as war can get, and that is saying something. Dark, sometimes black, smoky, often cold but sometimes roasting hot. No room to flee because of the men behind you. It was dirty, awful work and two of my men were killed before I could get blood into them and another was crushed when a tunnel collapsed. But because of my company, we defeated all of the Serb’s best efforts.
Our successes in the tunnels and the militia’s tireless work in sealing breaches meant that the Turks would only find success through storming the walls. Incredibly, in just a few days, the Turks constructed a bridge across the Golden Horn, allowing them to bring up their troops much faster. Sorties were carried out in an attempt to burn the bridge but it remained intact.
On 24th May we stood on the walls and silently watched a lunar eclipse.
What it meant, whether it was a good omen or bad, none could agree.
Word spread that a vast crusader army was approaching to relieve the city. Many rejoiced at the news but others were cautious. Previous rumours of the sort had proved false and we had received no official word of such a thing and so cooler heads questioned where the rumour had started. For many, this in itself was somehow proof of the army’s existence, reasoning that the crusaders would not have sent word that could have fallen into Turkish hands.
During the night of the 27th May, fires appeared all over the Turkish camp. There was further rejoicing, for it was concluded that the Turks had seen the approaching crusaders and were burning their supplies before their flight back to Anatolia. Indeed, many a Greek began drinking to their victory and drank themselves into unconsciousness.
“Sieges can drive people mad,” I said to my company. “The fear causes them to lose their wits.”
“What if it’s true?” Claudin said, grinning. “See the fires burning out there. They must be burning their supplies, what else could it be?”
But in the morning, the enemy was still there. In fact, there seemed to be more than ever before, and the enemy soldiers began coming forward to fill the foremost defensive ditches closest to the walls.
“It was a feast,” Stephen said, looking out at the distant scenes. “A celebration of some sort.”
“What was?” I asked.
“The fires. The great fires in the night was not them leaving, it was a celebration of the victory to come. A great feast where they ate until they were bursting and they burned their fuel, as they will not be needing it when they take the city.”
“By God,” I said. “You think that is it?”
He pursed his lips. “Perhaps the Sultan had his supplies burned so that his men would have to achieve victory or starve?”
I sighed. “So you do not, in fact, know anything at all.”
“Looks like rain,” he replied. “I know that much.”
Stephen was not wrong. A great rainstorm started and did not end, drenching everything. The gunners stayed within the towers and fought to keep their gunpowder dry and the fields turned to mud. On the walls, I met the commander of the Catalans, Pere Julia, who cursed the rain and the Turks with equal vigour.
“They will come soon,” he said. “Mark my words, Richard, they will come. Look at them, the dogs. You see the stacks of ladders there? They do not care that we can see. They want us to see. They want to break our hearts.”
“How are your men?”
“My men are angry. They want the Turks to come. They want to kill them.”
“I am happy to hear it,” I said.
“Oh, you think mercenaries do not have passion, sir? Is that how it is in England?”
“I am a mercenary, sir,” I replied. “And I want to kill them, also.”
He nodded, barely placated. “My men love God, Richard. Above all, they love God. They will do their duty for God, mark my words.”
“I believe it,” I said.
“Look at the dogs,” he muttered. “I hope they drown.”
The rain continued to fall.
Just a couple of hours before dawn on the 29th May, the Turkish cannons sounded. All of them fired at once and then over and over again, as quickly as each one would allow. As the dawn lightened the sky behind us, thousands of azab infantry emerged from the darkness. They were massed at the gate of Saint Romanus where the great cannon, the Basilisk, had created a wide breach in the outer and inner walls.
We brought up three thousand soldiers from the reserve behind the line and filled the walls either side of the gate. Longo himself came, as did Emperor Constantine, though he kept well back.
The azabs advanced through the rain in their thousands toward the breach and our cannons fired, blasting them apart. Our gunners fired from the crumbling towers and from the battlements of the inner wall. Crossbowmen shot down at the advancing battalions, killing and wounding hundreds. Before they even crossed the moat, the azabs suffered massive casualties.
Along the sea wall in the north, Turkish ships came swarming through the Golden Horn to the base of the walls and threw up ladders for the troops in the ships to scale so that they might breach them and get into the Blanchernae district. Reports came through to Longo that the fighting there was terrible and he sent a few of his reserve forces to the north to ensure that the assault by the river was thrown back.
In front of us, the azab assault ground to a halt under our terrific fire. The sound of the guns was endless and trumpets blared and banners hung limp in the relentless rain. I made my way to Longo’s position so that I might through him gauge what was happening throughout the battlefield. He sat upon his fine horse with a confident expression on his face, receiving messages and sending riders in all directions. In the distance, the Emperor’s guard held position.
“What do we do now?” Stephen asked behind me.
“We wait.”
The great guns sounded again, in another timed and almighty barrage that shook the walls over miles at once. As the echoes died away, thousands of Anatolian soldiers came charging out of the rain, attacking the breaches by our position at the Saint Romanus Gate.
All the breaches made by their guns were too high and too narrow for them to walk through but still they tried. The Anatolians were armoured in mail and lamellar and good, steel helms. They crossed the moat and attacked the lower, outer wall and attacked our soldiers there. Longo ordered militia units forward to reinforce those positions.
“Should we help?” Rob asked.
“We keep our men back for as long as possible,” I said, and pointed at the breach in the inner wall and the fan-shaped hill of rubble that lead up to the broken top of the breach. “When the Turks come charging down that slope, we will stop them. Not before. Tell the men.”
When the Anatolians retreated, our men cheered for a long time but there was sense of dread settling on the defenders. We were already exhausted by the struggle and yet the Turks had used only a fraction of their strength. Still, we had killed thousands of them and lost few ourselves.
After the Anatolians retreated, we received yet another bombardment and a hit by the Basilisk brought down a massive section of wall at the breach, throwing up an enormous cloud of white dust and sending chunks of masonry and brick flying in all directions. When the dust settled, we realised that the walls were now beginning to crumble with almost every shot and I am sure the dread spread further.
Beyond the walls, the enemy’s war drums started again and their horns sounded.
“Here they come again,” Walt said, before raising his voice and turning to my company. “Here they come again. Prepare yourselves.”
The Anatolians came back to assault the breaches in their thousands, swarming the outer walls. Our gunners shot down from the inner walls above us and the elite crossbow units shot and reloaded and shot again, with incredible speed. In every moment, I
expected to see the helms of the enemy appearing at the top of the breach.
And yet we threw them back again. Banners were waved and the men cheered their victory. The wounded and the dead were carried back from the walls and filed past us, heading east toward the rear.
“Jesus Christ, there’s a lot of them,” Walt muttered, crossing himself.
Riders came galloping in from the north, drenched and covered in mud kicked up by their horses, calling for Longo and other commanders.
I caught Pere Julia, the commander of the Catalans, and asked him what the panic was.
“They assault the Blanchernae Walls also, in force, and threaten to break through. Just Minotto and the Venetians there to stop them.”
“Is that where your men are going?” I asked him.
“No,” Pere Julia said. “I am ordered to defend the imperial family and the great and the good in the southeast.”
“You what?” I said. “Why?”
“The Turks are making an attack also on the Contoscalion Harbour. If they break through the walls there, we must stop them.”
“Then God be with you. All of you.”
“And with you,” he said. I watched him ride away with his men following through the rain. It was a long way and when they got there, they would be on their own and at the opposite side of the city from the ships that might take survivors away.
“Shall I take some of our men north to the Blanchernae, Richard?” Rob asked. “Sounds like it’s in danger.”
“Everywhere is in danger. And we must stay together. It is for others to guard that way. All we can do is protect this breach. This is where the hammer blows are falling. Here is where the Basilisk has done its work. The Sultan’s flag is flying behind it. Here is where we must be.”
Later, we had word that the assault in the north was thrown back by the Venetians. Indeed, it had been a long day but we could sense it coming to an end. And we were still standing. There was fight left in the men, whether militia or professional soldiers, and despite the breaches, we had slaughtered thousands of the enemies who had attacked us. We had a sense now that it could be done after all. The Turks had thrown their worst at us and we had done what was necessary, and more. I saw Longo congratulating his men and drinking wine with them.
