A Place Called Armageddon (37 page)

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TWENTY-FOUR
–

Into the Dark

29 April

‘Can you see
anything
?’

‘Am I a cat, Zoran, that I can pierce the darkness any better than you?’

Gregoras grunted. His friend Amir was one of the few things he could half see, and that was only due to the light colour of his cloak. It was saffron, an exact shade, and though it had been more beautiful in its youth, Amir would not give it up. He had worn it from his days as a spice trader, driving camel caravans across the Arabian sands, and during his time commanding a galley, which was where Gregoras had met him, for he had been a slave upon the vessel, Amir its master. Though they had not actually ‘met’ until the time when the galley caught fire in a sea fight off Trebizond and the chains were slipped so even the slaves could take their chances in the water. Gregoras had thought such chances small, he had seen the bloated corpses of too many drowned men, so when he’d noticed that the galley’s captain – in his distinctive cloak – had not abandoned his vessel like the others but was staying aboard it to fight the fire, Gregoras stayed too, fought too. Somehow, luck, effort and Allah’s blessing of a rogue wave had extinguished the flames, though the ship was much damaged. Two men could not sail her; so for a week they drifted with only each other for company and conversation, a long one they found they both enjoyed enormously as it ranged over the delights of God and the iniquities of man. When a Genoese fleet of mercenaries, commanded by one Giovanni Giustiniani Longo, appeared to claim them, Gregoras presented himself and Amir as two swords for hire – if the Genoan would kindly provide the swords. They’d been taken on, and Amir had found the role of renegade as comfortable as any of his others – linked as ever by that distinctive fraying saffron cloak.

‘I tell you what does pierce the darkness, man.’ Gregoras leaned forward and clapped his friend on the shoulder. ‘When are you going to wash this thing?’

A slight gleam came as Amir smiled. ‘When the campaign is won, or ended, as I always do,’ he replied. ‘It would be an unlucky thing to wash its protection off me before that is settled.’

Gregoras shook his head. Soldiers were superstitious. Many wore amulets; others grew beards, or dressed for battle in a certain, unwavering order. He could hear, in the darkness around them, mumbled incantations of men trying to ward off the danger that the coming combat would expose them to, appealing to God, however they saw Him. Sofia would be angry with him for likening prayer to superstition. But from the day he was disfigured, he made no time for God in his life. He preferred to put faith in the falchion that hung now at his side, the crossbow that was within arm’s reach, and his skill with them. He had reluctantly left his Turkish bow ashore, the closeness of the dark, hot work foreseen better suiting quarrel than shaft.

Dawn had to be an hour or two away, at most; and so the time appointed for the attack was upon them. He heard Amir slip onto his knees beside him and begin to pray, at the same time as he heard the pad of soft-soled shoes upon the central deck, the
histodoke
. The man upon it whispered, loud enough to be heard, ‘To oar!’

Gregoras leaned closer to the saffron cloak. ‘Say one for me, brother,’ he whispered.

Amir paused in his Arabic to answer. ‘Allah will look after His faithful child,’ he murmured, ‘while the devil has care of you, as ever, Zoran.’

Gregoras laughed, listened to the familiar sound of oars dipping. He was glad that he was not pulling upon one, that his position meant he had only to fight, not row
then
fight. For none of the men at the oars of this bireme were slaves; each had been hand-picked by Coco, its Venetian captain, as both sailor and warrior. It was true also, Gregoras knew, of the crews of every vessel in their small fleet, every man a free-born Venetian, Genoan or Greek; every one – save for Amir – a Christian. Slaves could find a way to hinder a vessel in combat. Muslim slaves could cry warnings. And their one hope of success in this mad mission was silence and, for most men there, faith.

He felt, rather than saw, the heavy shapes of the ships setting out from Galata’s harbour. He had been at the meetings, knew what they were: two larger transports that had some oars and whose sides were thickly padded with wool and cotton bales to shelter the swifter triremes, biremes and
fustae
, which were filled with combustible agents and carefully nursed pots of fire. If the plan held, if they could get close enough to the Turks’ eighty-strong fleet moored in a bay on the Asian shore before they were heard or seen, they had enough fire to destroy the enemy. If the enemy was unaware of their coming.

The last great ‘if’, Gregoras thought, and shivered, from the thought and from the breeze that swept him now they nosing into open water. And no sooner did he feel that than his eyes were dazzled. ‘A comet,’ said Amir, breaking off his prayer to murmur. ‘A blessing on our enterprise?’

The light did not fire and fade straightaway, as a comet’s would. It lingered, flickered long enough before it went out for Gregoras to mark where it flared. ‘It is atop the Tower of Christ in the centre of Galata,’ he hissed, ‘and unless I am much mistaken, it is the light of betrayal. Someone is marking our departure. Someone is warning …’

He broke off, as a hiss came from the
histodoke
. ‘Double speed,’ came the command, and the oars quickened their strokes. ‘That is not good,’ said Amir, the former galley captain.

‘It is not,’ added Gregoras, the former galley slave. Both men knew the plan – to proceed as a fleet, so the padded high-sided transports could shelter the others from the enemy’s land-placed cannon and the swifter vessels could dart out and cause their havoc. But Coco’s
fusta
, which they were on, had seventy-two rowers and the build of a sleek greyhound. The transports had forty-eight and the bulk of an ox.

‘We are leaving them behind, sure,’ said Gregoras, rising. ‘I will go and see the captain.’

He descended the stair from the aft deck, ran along the
histodoke
, passing the bosun there just as he hissed, ‘Triple time.’ The surge nearly threw Gregoras off his feet, but he found them, ran on, mounted the foredeck. He saw the bulked shadow of a group of men at the front railing. Spray was rising over the prow and splashing them. ‘Captain,’ he hissed, but not as quietly as he had spoken before, for he had to top the sound that triple-time oars made in the water, ‘what are you doing?’

He was close to the men, who split apart at his voice, and alarmed that he could now make out their features – for that meant some light was creeping into the sky. ‘Ah, Constantinople’s latest hero,’ said the smallest man there, his dark face darkened further by a beard that reached from high cheekbone to chest. ‘Well, we have heroes too in Venice!’ he said, sweeping his arm around his assembled officers. ‘And we would be first among the enemy and claim the glory of destroying them!’

‘Captain …’ Gregoras began heatedly, then stopped himself. Though he had some status as the emperor’s man, he could not let his exasperation show, not on the man’s foredeck. Pig-fucking Venetian braggart, he thought, and took a deep breath. ‘Captain,’ he went on in a more reasonable tone, ‘the plan agreed was to approach as one, attack as one. There are upwards of eighty of the enemy ahead and they are protected—’

‘Eighty times the honour, eh?’ Coco interrupted loudly. ‘The others will catch up soon enough. And they will engage an enemy we have woken rudely from their dreams. No!’ He raised a hand and his voice as Gregoras made to speak. ‘Do not counsel caution, Greek … or is it Genoan?’ He sneered a smile. ‘We of Venice do not know the meaning of that word. We—’

It was strange to be looking a man in the face one moment and staring into the stump of his chest the next. Strange too, the reversal of sound and sight, for Gregoras realised he must have heard the cannon’s blast before he saw the cannon’s effect. Blood hit him as spray had done before, and he had to wipe his eyes to clear them, in time to see the legs collapse, the stump fall. The Turks’ remarkable first shot had cut Coco neatly in half, and taken most of his officers. Shocked, Gregoras shifted his gaze from the dead and the near-dead to the source of the next flash that came, from the east. This he clearly heard before he saw, before he threw himself down onto boards already slick with blood and entrails, though the ball probably struck the ship before he reached them. It made a great tearing sound, wood ripped aside by the entry of a stone ball fired, he realised, from less than two hundred paces away, undoubtedly from the shore. It accounted for the accuracy – and for the flare he’d seen atop the Tower of Christ. The Turks knew they were coming, and they had laid their ambush well.

He felt it through the soaked deck, heard it too – the timbers tearing apart. Screams confirmed it. ‘Mother of God,’ someone cried, ‘we sink! Jesu, save us, we sink!’ Rising, Gregoras looked back along the vessel. In the flash of the next Turkish shot, he glimpsed what had happened – the
fusta
had been hit amidships, the ball passing straight through, opening a hole on either side. In the dying glare he saw men already throwing themselves over the sides, most silent, some calling on God to save them. If I was a praying man, thought Gregoras as he stripped his little armour off, I would have time for just ten paternosters before this ship is gone.

Another thought struck. ‘Amir!’ But he’d left the Muslim praying on the aft deck, and the
histodoke
that had brought him there was already awash. Gregoras would have to leave him to Allah and hope to find him again in the water. Flinging aside his breastplate, the last of his armour, cursing that he could not even manage his falchion, he ran to a rail and launched himself over it. He did not have far to fall.

As ever, the water cascaded through the gap in his face. He rolled onto his back, spat it out. ‘Curse them, curse them all,’ he spluttered aloud as he trod water. ‘Curse every captain who has had me on his boat and has tried to drown me. Jesu Christ!’ He swallowed a mouthful of sea water, choked. If I survive this, he thought, I swear to St Anthony that I will walk wherever I want to go.

Other men were appearing from the broil of water where the ship had gone down. He did not know how well any of them could swim, so made sure he moved away from them. Men could drown others as well as themselves; he had learned that in his two encounters.

But which way should he go?

Another gun flashed. He turned about in the water. Where was he, other than close to the north shore of the Golden Horn? He looked away, opposite to where the muzzle flash had come. He must have been facing roughly eastwards, for the great bulk of Constantinople was slightly backlit by the rising sun, below the horizon. He squinted, spat more water out. They’d headed west up the Horn, rowing, in the end, at triple time from Galata harbour. So they could have reached …

He searched the gloom, and there, he saw it, or thought he did. Further down, away from the dawn, a slightly taller piece of darkness upon the Constantinople shore. The Phanar, the flame in the lighthouse tower extinguished for now to give no guidance to the enemy. It was maybe four hundred paces away if measured upon the land. The currents in the Horn were ever treacherous; but the nearer shore was held by the Turk, and Gregoras had not returned to his city and reclaimed his name to give himself up to the enemy now. To slavery, at the least. Probably to death.

He rolled onto his front, struck out, his arms sweeping before his chest, his legs driving. Though the waves were slight and he kept his head raised high, he had to stop every twenty kicks to breathe, to spit out water, to check. It was hard to tell if he was getting any closer, and a current was taking him down and west of the city. If it swept him past its walls, he would make landfall on the enemy’s beaches. Taking a deep breath, he flipped onto his back, began kicking hard again, angling against the tug of tide. When he next looked up, limbs and lungs burning, the bulk of the lighthouse was more or less before him. He surged again, and soon his hand hit something solid, bringing pain, flesh scraped off on one of the rocks the lighthouse, in less warlike times, warned ships against. He pulled himself atop it, resisted the current’s attempts to drag him off. But the cool breeze was making him shake near as much as his tiredness, and soon he had to plunge again.

He lost senses then, only keeping the ones he needed to propel him through the water, and spit it out when it flowed in. He wasn’t even sure of direction now, could only hope that his last sighting still held, that he was moving toward the Phanar. Then, when he thought that he would have to just roll over in the water, was almost welcoming its embrace, a leg hit rock. He looked up and saw the tower ahead of him, and waves splashing over the foreshore it was built upon. With a last surge he pushed for the land, touched it, scrambled onto it, careless of jagged rock that cut and bruised him. Then he was out of the water, stumbling clear of the tide’s final reach, falling onto sand.

He could have rested there, sunk into the silence that he’d nearly found under the waves. But every wall was watched, and on this morning even more so, with the city’s hopes afloat upon the water. So he was not surprised when he heard a voice ask, in Italian, ‘Are you alive?’

‘Barely,’ he replied, and closed his eyes again.

‘It is over. They part.’

Gregoras sighed. He’d nearly fallen asleep, despite the discomfort of the stone corner he was wedged into and the constant cursing of the men alongside him. For the time he’d watched, the battle in the Horn had taken the same course as the one he’d lately been involved in – the swarming of Muslim vessels around their far fewer Christian opponents in higher-sided ships. The continuous attempts to board and their repelling. He’d lived it once and recently and did not need to see it again. He was also very tired.

But Theodore’s shout – Gregoras had reached the shore near the palace where the old archer stood sentinel – made him drag himself up. ‘Have we triumphed?’ he said, rubbing his eyes.