by J A Deriu
The red tunics flooded across the road and around burning motor vehicles and dead horses. “They are forming to attack,” the monk said. “We have no cover.” The tunics looked organized. They moved in tough lines with some standing and some low to the ground. There were more of them than before. The gray of the Cossacks fell away in front of them. Any lying on the ground were bayoneted. The bodies jerked with the violent thrusts.
The khan shouted at the Cossacks. He turned to Nico and the monk. “We must attack now, or it will be finished.” Nico could see what he meant. More of the Ottomans were joining the formation. The attack was growing, and any Cossack in front was shot down.
The Cossacks rallied to the khan. The Ottomans started shooting at their group, which was not more than the throw of a rock away. The head of a Cossack that moved in front of Nico was snapped back, and some of the blood splashed over Nico’s face.
Nico lifted his arm and shouted. “For the fatherland!” He lowered his rifle and fired into the mass of red. He was sure that a body fell, but it was impossible to tell across the haze.
The Cossacks next to him shouted in Russian. “The prince!” There were many joining the group. The khan yelled, pointed his bayonet, and charged. The Cossacks went with him. Nico, without thinking, was at his side. He mirrored the khan with his bayonet pointed. His mouth was dry, but he kept yelling. His legs hurt with the exertion. He stumbled and glanced behind. There were many Cossacks charging. He was near their front. Only the khan and a few others were strides in front of him.
The rifles of the enemy lowered and steadied, and smoke came from the barrels. Men who were close to Nico fell awkwardly with surprised shouts. For a moment Nico’s body steeled, expecting an impact and not knowing how it would feel. The Ottomans only had time for one coordinated volley of bullets before the Cossacks, led by the khan, were among them. The Mongol crashed into the Ottoman ranks. The weapons that were pointed toward him were futile. Soldiers were skittled. He attacked three Ottomans at the same time using a slashing sword, his bayoneted rifle, and a leg kicking at the closest body.
Nico fired his rifle. This time it was certain that he hit an Ottoman. He saw the face and the teeth, stark, inside the wide-open mouth. The face was hardly older than his own. He only saw it for a moment. It fell away and was replaced by that of another snarling Ottoman. He was a thick man who was bulging out of his tunic. He slashed a saber at Nico. He yanked back his head, and it passed under his chin. He fired his weapon at the bulk, but there were no bullets. The monk smacked the butt of his rifle into the chest of the stretched Ottoman, and the khan stabbed the body with his bayonet with barely a glance at the action. Instead, his eyes were on activity farther along the road. He shouted orders at those around him. They organized so that each side was protected. Nico stood at his back. There were more Ottomans coming. These ones did not have rifles, only long lances pointed at them. They charged.
The shooting of the Cossacks stopped many of the charging lancers. Their bodies were flung backward and to the side. Fragments of them snapped away. The khan glanced a lance away and grabbed its owner to throw him to the ground. A Cossack attacked the helpless Ottoman with his bayonet. The same Cossack was hit and grabbed at his chest before landing on his knees. There were yet more Ottomans coming. Some of these had rifles and pistols. Nico crouched. He felt bullets fly past. The Cossacks who were in front started to take steps back.
He looked across the road to see what had happened to the Cossacks coming from that side. They were being killed. A horde of red was among them. The glint of the Ottoman sabers blazed across the gray of the Cossacks. Nico was forced to look away. The monk knocked into him and growled. “There are too many.”
The monk pushed himself in front of Nico. His arm moved as though it had been tugged and then hung limply. Grigory grimaced. “You have been hit,” Nico said. The monk would not move. “What are you doing, you fool?”
“I am going to protect you.”
“No one protects me anymore. Only I do.” Nico picked up the monk’s rifle. It was cold, which meant that it had barely been fired. He elbowed the monk out of the way, aimed, and shot at the moving Ottomans.
A Cossack with blood across his face signaled for them to move back. Nico fired until the gun was empty. He dropped it and grabbed at a saber that was planted in the dirt upright with the hilt facing the sky. He curled his fingers around the hilt and pointed it at the action. Cossacks were being shot and falling within spitting distance of him. The khan was a blur of movement, but even he edged back. There were yet more Ottomans coming, and these were in organized lines with flags.
Nico stepped into the river. The water was at his ankles. Reeds brushed against his sides. A Cossack fell, and water was splashed across Nico’s pants. The monk clutched at his arm and dropped to his knees. Nico had a deadly taste with every breath. River water was kicked up by the retreating Cossacks. The khan had stopped moving. He looked at the Ottomans and shook his head.
“Keep fighting!” Nico shouted without knowing why. “For the fatherland!” Muted cheers came from behind him. “For the fatherland!” The cheers were louder, and the Cossacks lifted their weapons.
An Ottoman slipped as he thrust his bayonet at Nico. He slashed the saber across the falling body, and his arm jarred. He had no time for more thought as they were thick in front of him. He glanced toward the khan. He was pushing away an Ottoman and butted another, yet he had lost the power of before and grimaced when he had finished, to look up resignedly at all the red tunics he could see in front of him. Nico ducked a lance that was speared at him. The thruster was hit by a bullet and splashed into the water. The bullet had been fired by the monk, who was half in the river and had found a gun.
Nico slashed at a red blur. He shrieked and slashed at another one. He realized that he did not feel fear. Instead, he felt a thrill like when he was about to get drunk. He fended off a bayonet with the guard of his saber. The owner pulled it back for another thrust. The water slowed the Ottoman. Nico swung the saber. The Ottoman backed away.
He felt a body at his back. A quick turn of his head showed that it was the khan, holding his weapons toward the cautiously advancing Ottomans. At his side, the monk reached up and held Nico’s jacket with one of his hands, and the other pointed the rifle and bayonet. The watermarks were at his chest, and blood had seeped to stain the top half of the old monk’s shirt.
Nico kept yelling. The khan looked at him with bemused eyes and a wry grin. There were not many Cossacks within earshot to hear. Those who could were being beaten, clubbed, strangled, stabbed by the surging Ottomans. Nico had never thought about how his life would end. He speculated that he was close to it. His actions were not affected. He lifted a leg off the mud and charged at the closest batch of Ottomans. The monk lost his grip on his shirt.
The Ottomans opened their mouths at him. He avoided a bayonet and hit a pole with the saber. It cracked. The flag fell into the water. The Mongol was next to him and speared another Ottoman with a lance. The water shallowed, and Nico stepped over a body. The Ottomans in front moved back.
On the riverbank fresh Ottomans stood. Their uniforms were clean. Nico looked at the khan, and they took a step back together. A poised soldier aimed his rifle. His head snapped from behind. The Ottomans turned abruptly. Then another fell and another. Bullets splattered against the fabric of their tunics. Cossacks attacked the Ottomans from behind.
Nico saw the long hair of Regina whipping in the throng. Her arms gesticulated wildly with a saber in one and a pistol in the other. She shouted orders, and the scene was covered with the gray of the Cossacks. The river was thick with bodies. Nico lowered his saber, brushed the hair from his eyes, and watched. The Cossacks were overwhelming. They roared past, chasing the Ottomans into the trees and bayoneting any that had fallen.
The countess saw Nico and splashed toward him. Her face gave a tired grin. “This will be a victory. We ha
ve broken their ranks. Three legions. The Ottomans have lost three legions today. How did you fare?” she asked, moving her saber toward Nico.
“I am tired,” he said.
The khan put his hands onto Nico’s shoulders and shook him. “He was a warrior,” he said.
“Anton has fallen,” the countess said with no emotion. “As have many. We must make certain that our advantage is not lost.”
There was a growl from the side, and their eyes were diverted to the monk for a moment. His shoulder was being bandaged by a medic. His face was pale and his beard wet. He raised his eyebrows toward Nico, lifted his chin, and almost smiled.
There was commotion from the road. It was a squad of Cossacks yelling, full of bloodlust. They surged around the group. One of them picked up the chopped Ottoman flag from the river and showed it to the others. Dragan was at the front of the group. They were shouting and thrusting their weapons at the sky. Some of them grabbed Nico, pulled at his jacket, and grasped his hand. Dragan shoved them out of the way. He stood in front of Nico for a moment, his face warlike. Nico’s head dropped. He yelled, repeating the same words. They were in Russian, but Nico understood them well. “For the fatherland! For the prince!” Dragan lifted his arm, and Nico could hear many others joining. As far as he could see, there were Cossacks. “For the prince!” He closed his eyes and let the words and the euphoria engulf him.
Chapter Thirty-Six
The four of them were jammed together at the table in the crowded café. Pierre lifted the small glass of coffee to contemplate it before drinking. He disliked the Ottoman coffee. It was the harshest thing he had tasted. The watchful eyes of Taymoor gave him no choice but to drink it. The smells of smoked fish and nutmeg wafted to them from a nearby table.
“Is there any of that dried meat here?” he asked Taymoor who was looking at the menu. “I have a taste for it.”
Ernest sniggered. “That is not the kind of thing served in a restaurant, especially a swish place like this.”
“Dried meat?” Taymoor queried, picking at a bowl of olives.
“Yes. Hard as a rock. You nibble on it.”
“You mean pastirma?” Taymoor said.
“I don’t know. Could be.”
“No, there is not. I would not feed that to my cat.”
Tarja laughed. “Let me order dinner. I will order something that you will like.” She looked at him with a sugary smile. He diverted his eyes from her and instead landed on Ernest, who was looking at him with a schoolboy smirk on his face.
For all of the day, they had been tourists, with Tarja as the guide. She had tried to orient them. “The Bosporus is this side,” she would say, lifting her arm. “The Golden Horn, here.” Arcing her arm. “And the Sea of Marmara, this side.” Pierre tried to look attentive, but his mind was elsewhere. The Wall of Constantine. The Wall of Theodosius. The Hippodrome. Hagia Sophia. He was as interested as if they were looking at a council apartment block.
“The greatest city on earth.” Taymoor grinned. “The capital of the eternal state. The city favored to be unconquered until the end of time. The earthly home of God.”
Pierre nodded without thinking. His mind was stuck thinking about what they were forcing him to do. If he denounced the Metropolis as warmongers, he would be a traitor. His fate on his return to the city would be ugly. There were those already who wanted his demise. This would fuel those devils beyond what even Ida could control. In the Metropolis they could kill you in a million ways. They could make it impossible for you to work. Drown you in the legal fees needed to defend your name. Turn your own family against you. Make you a pariah in every social circle that counted.
It would not matter too much to him – other than his family estate, his lordship, was bankrupt. It had probably already gone to the jackals while he had been away. The one person who would support him for certain, his mother, could not pay for her heating. He worried about Ida. Would she stay loyal to him? This is what gnawed at him the most. If he made a fool of himself on a world stage, would she sacrifice power for him? He could not blame her if she did not – this was the way the city operated.
Taymoor played with his photographic camera. He had been taking photographs at every stop. He wore a smile when he photographed and acted the part of an affable companion. Pierre suspected that he was documenting every moment for a damning file to haunt him sometime in the future.
“This city is not what we were told,” Ernest said. “We were told that the Ottomans lived in the Dark Ages. That people lived like prudes or with morals enforcers watching over them. I don’t see that. There is liquor pouring as freely as in any Metropolitan alehouse. Most women are not covered, like yourself. We believed that if you walked the streets of an Ottoman city, you would not see the smiling face of a lady.”
“It was not always like this,” Tarja said. “It depends on the sultan. We have had sultans that have ignored the laws, and we have had sultans that have been righteous. The sultan is God’s ruler on earth. The adherence to laws is his will.” She was the draw of attention in all of their outings, and true to this, the heads of the tightly seated patrons turned to the Amazon as if by obligation every few moments.
“The sultan is not one for the strict laws, then?”
She lowered her head and leaned to the center of the table in a conspiratorial way. “The sultan is a man of moods. His mood has been light for the last years. It has not always been this way. In our history your version may have been right and may be right again.”
“What do you mean?”
“The laws will change. The sultan is salty because of what happened in the Qing. There are those that will want to change back to the rigid ways. They will have his ear and argue that the loss was punishment for the lack of God-fearing and decline into immorality.”
“What do you think about this?”
“Think? I await the decrees from the sultan like all others. I do not think, no more than Taymoor here.” She dipped her head at Taymoor and then glared at Pierre. “What about you, Lord Revel? You are not talking. Do you not have questions, like the little man? Is this world not strange to you?”
Pierre groaned. “It is strange, yes. I am quiet because I am thinking of this interview. Is it really something that has to happen?”
“If you are worried about what you will say, do not be. The Mahsusa will tell you everything that you need to say.”
“Hmm, that is probably why I am worried.”
“When they are ready for you, they will contact us. For now, let us enjoy the pleasures of the capital of the world. Our food will come soon. It is busy, but we will get preference.”
Three men came into the restaurant. They all looked like Taymoor, with serious faces and bland suits. They moved straight to their table without looking and knocked anyone who was in the way. Tarja stood and spoke to one of them. They spoke in a back-and-forth manner, broken by glances at Pierre. Tarja returned to the table. “They are Mahsusa. We have been summoned.”
Taymoor sighed. “To the headquarters? I have not been there for many years.”
“No,” Tarja said. “They have summoned us to the Topkapi Palace.”
“What?” Taymoor exclaimed. “This is unexpected. Why would they want us to go to the palace of the sultan?”
“I do not know,” Tarja answered. “It cannot be for good. As we have talked, the sultan is in a foul mood.”
“Saint Hilarius,” Ernest said, listening to the conversation.
“It is to do with the Qing.” Taymoor nodded. “And Lord Pierre – he is to do with the Qing.” Tarja shrugged. “He can go.” Taymoor nodded at Pierre. “The rest of us need not.”
“The instructions were for us to accompany the two of them,” Tarja said.
“I do not like this,” Taymoor lamented. “The sultan can be cruel.” The three men looked impatient. “They will not even allow us time fo
r our food.”
“There could be many reasons for a summons to the palace,” Tarja said.
There was a motor vehicle waiting for them outside of the restaurant. It was polished and bright. A crowd had stopped to look at it. The flag of the sultan flapped from a short metal pole on the bonnet and kept people from getting too close. There was enough room for all seven of them in the back seats, with a driver and another Ottoman in the front. The seats were of hard leather, and the cabin smelled like freshly picked flowers. The men sat across from them in silence with their hands resting on their thighs, militarylike.
“We do not know much about the sultan,” Ernest quietly said. “The last head of an empire that we met was not what we expected. He was a young man that preferred board games.”
“We will not be seeing the sultan,” Taymoor said with a serious grin. “He would not meet with foreigners. Few of his loyal subjects have seen him. And there is only one empire – the Ottoman.”
“The sultan is not a young man,” Tarja added.
The motor vehicle moved with speed. Pierre looked out the window. The other vehicles and pedestrians seemed to spring out of its way.
“The sultan has sat on the throne of the Shadow of God on Earth for twenty-one years. He is a healthy man in his sixties,” Tarja continued. “A man who likes to camp, hunt, swim in rivers, hike to mountaintops. He is like the empire – virile, ageless, and full of wisdom.”
“You have met him?” Ernest asked.
“No. I have certainly not. Few people are blessed enough to meet the sultan. It is a celebration if a photograph of him is published. The last one was years ago.”
“And we won’t be meeting him today,” Taymoor interjected. “At the very highest, we will be meeting a lowly official of the vizier or, more likely, some junior eunuch.”
