‘Prince Yakub!’
Yakub wheeled his horse around. ‘Prince Suleyman.’ He bowed stiffly from the saddle. ‘I was on my way to you with my scouting party. They report no movement from the crusaders yet. The two armies have formed up and seem to be deciding what to do.’
Suleyman was with a small guard of Kapikulu cavalry and had the Grand Vizier with him. He didn’t answer immediately; instead looking up into the heavens. The sun was now rising in a cloudless sky and the day was getting hotter. He pushed his helmet back from his brow and put the cold mail of his hand against it.
‘Deciding what to do?’ he asked. ‘They’ve already decided what to do, I think, or will do quite shortly. If it weren’t forbidden, I’d wager good money that your akincis will feel the weight of the Frankish knights before noon. Are they prepared?’
‘As always, lord.’
Luke was facing away from Suleyman, pretending to calm his horse and with his head low to the animal’s ear.
‘Good. Now, you must send your scouts out again. We need to know the minute this crusader army moves.’
Yakub gave the order and the akincis, Luke included, kicked their horses and cantered away.
They rode fast to the wooded summit of the hill and saw the ranks of Suleyman’s Rumelian sipahis standing in eerie silence beneath the trees with their lance tips wrapped in hessian to prevent them catching the sun. They cantered around the back of the wood and north towards the Danube, crossing the ravine where it was shallower and where a muddy brook pooled at its centre. They came to a smaller valley and rode down it until they reached the banks of the river. Then they turned left and rode to the prow of a hill from which they could see the fortress of Nicopolis about a mile to the west.
The two Christian armies had struck camp and were formed up in two blocks, side by side, about a hundred yards apart. The Burgundian army’s ranks were ablaze with colour and its front line was in constant movement as gorgeously dressed knights and their pages walked destriers up and down to calm them before the charge. It seemed as if every Christian king west of the Danube had emptied his coffers to send his nobility east to fight.
There was a patch of white at the back that Luke guessed
must be the Hospitallers. He could see perhaps three hundred knights and sergeants gathered beneath a white flag bearing a giant crusader cross. He saw that they were more ordered than the rest, sitting astride their horses and waiting patiently for their grand master’s command. Behind them were the archers and crossbowmen, most of them mercenaries and some holding the deadly English longbow.
The Hungarian army had fewer knights. It was largely made up of horse archers, many of whom were little different from Yakub’s gazi cavalry. Here were Kipchaks and Pechenegs, Vlachs and Wallachians and they were mounted on smaller, swarthier horses and had skins beneath their saddles and curved bows by their sides. These were the tough and fearless men of the Hungarian steppe and an obvious match for the akincis at the front of Bayezid’s army.
The akincis stayed with Luke awhile, watching the scene to their front. Then one of them said something and they turned their horses and rode away. He looked down at the armies before him and wondered how he was to get to their commanders. He was dressed as a gazi and would be shot on sight if he simply rode down to them. He remembered his hair and removed his helmet so that his long fair hair tumbled down to his shoulders. Then he took off the leather armour from his upper half. Beneath was the simple white tunic that he’d worn on the journey from Constantinople. He ripped an arm from the tunic and tied it to the whip he found attached to his saddle and held it aloft.
The white flag of parley. Would it work?
Luke kicked his horse. He had a few hundred yards to ride but he knew that there were thousands of eyes watching him, the eyes of men stirred into a frenzy of blood lust.
What language was he to use? He knew Greek, Italian and
some Latin. But these men would most likely be French. He tried to remember the few French words Fiorenza had taught him.
‘
Attendez!
’ he yelled, waving his white flag and riding hard. ‘
Je suis ami! Je suis chrétien!
’
He saw heads turn and arms point. He saw swords drawn as if he might be the vanguard of something bigger. Then he saw a single knight detach himself from the army and ride forward, a mace swinging languidly from his mailed arm. The rider cantered some distance from the army and stopped. He was dressed in silver armour so polished that it caught the sun in dazzling ignition. His horse was caparisoned in gold fleur-de-lis and it trailed the ground. His visor was lowered and he looked unlikely to want to parley.
Luke slowed his horse and halted. ‘
Je parle avec vos commandants!
’ he shouted. ‘
C’est important!
’
It sounded lame and the knight remained impassive. His mace continued to swing and he looked at Luke through a snout of pointed steel.
Luke considered his options. He could try to outride this fool but that would just bring others keen to spill the first blood. He raised himself in the saddle and yelled above the head of the man in front of him.
‘I am Serbian!’ he screamed in Greek. ‘I am a deserter!’
For the first time the knight looked back from where he’d come. Luke could see some discussion in the front rank and there was a shouted command. A second rider emerged from the ranks, this time a squire in Burgundian household livery. He rode up to Luke.
‘
Venez
.’
Luke followed him at the gallop. As the space between the
armies emerged, he could see that a pavilion had been erected between them and that several expensively caparisoned horses were being led up and down outside it. Men-at-arms held the standards of Burgundy and Hungary and other kingdoms. Clearly this was the place where the plan of attack was being discussed. Luke would be able to tell them what he knew.
Another knight, middle-aged, had arrived from the direction of the Hungarian army moments before. He had dismounted and was handing his reins to a page and looked up as Luke approached.
‘
Qui est?
’ Luke whispered to his companion.
‘That is the Constable of the Kingdom of Hungary, Lord de Gara,’ answered the page in Greek and bowed from the saddle as they rode up to him.
The Constable was looking at Luke curiously.
‘I am Luke Magoris, lord,’ Luke said in Greek. ‘I bring news of the Turk army.’
The man looked over his shoulder at the entrance to the tent from where raised voices and even laughter could be heard. He took Luke’s arm. ‘You’ve seen it?’
‘Yes, lord. All of it. It’s not as it seems.’
‘Tell me,’ he said.
Luke told him and, as he listened, de Gara began to nod his head.
‘Have you told anyone of this?’ he asked at last.
‘No, lord. Only you.’
‘Good. Come with me.’
He turned and walked towards the small tent, lifting aside the flaps to reveal a space crowded with heavily armoured men, some holding helmets with tall plumes, some goblets of wine. In the centre was a table with a hand-drawn map on it. Sitting
before it, looking intently at the coloured squares of wood that represented the armies, was a young man in his early twenties with a long nose and weak chin. His hair was cut short, like a tonsure, and sat between two prominent ears. His complexion suggested recent drinking.
The Comte de Nevers
.
Next to him stood a man in his fifties with a shock of white hair and a broad, rubicund face lined by weather and, perhaps, experience. He looked heated and was pounding the table. ‘Sire, on my sortie yesterday, we saw no sign of the Serbs. It is their irregulars that front their army. We cannot waste our knights against them!’ The language was Latin.
‘But, de Coucy,’ said a younger man on the other side of the Count, ‘are you suggesting that his highness will not lead the
avant-garde?
When we have come all this way? When Burgundy has all but
paid
for this crusade?’ This man had a goblet in his hand and waved it as he spoke. Luke wondered if he was drunk.
The older man addressed de Nevers directly. ‘Lord, no one doubts the Comte d’Eu’s courage but we must consider our enemy. Listen to the Admiral de Vienne. He was part of the Count of Savoy’s expedition in ’66. He knows how these Ottomans fight.’
‘Like hyenas.’
There was silence and everyone looked at Luke. The Admiral had not spoken.
Had he spoken?
The young Count looked up last and his eyes travelled, without enthusiasm, down Luke’s mud-caked tunic. ‘And you are?’ he asked.
Luke quickly marshalled his thoughts. He glanced at the
other men in the room, most of whom were regarding him with a mixture of surprise and distaste.
‘Highness,’ he said, ‘I have claimed to be a Serbian deserter to persuade them to bring me to you. In fact I’m Greek. I have ridden direct from the Turkish lines. I have seen how they are deployed and I know their battle plan. They would have you believe that the Serbian knights are in their front line. But it is their akincis that are there and they are there to mask sharpened stakes and, behind them, janissary archers. They mean to lure your knights into a killing ground and then attack them with their sipahi cavalry from the flanks. Then they will unleash the rest of the army, which is hidden behind the hill. It is a trap.’
There was silence in the tent as Luke’s words were acknowledged. A gruff laugh came from a short, muscular man to his right. De Nevers looked at him.
‘Marshal Boucicaut? You have something to say?’
‘I am wondering, highness,’ said the man, ‘why we are wasting time by listening to someone none of us recognises and who might, for all we know, have been sent to misinform us.’ He looked at Luke. ‘You said you were Greek?’
‘Yes, lord.’
‘Ah … well then,’ said the Marshal, and looked away. Others in the tent laughed.
Luke felt the blood rush to his face. ‘Your meaning, my lord?’
Boucicaut arched an eyebrow. ‘Meaning, you insolent young pup, that you are not to be trusted. Meaning that your
Orthodox
ways do not invite trust!’
There was an awkward silence in the tent.
‘Or mine?’ asked a voice from the other side of the tent. ‘Are my Orthodox ways not to be trusted either?’
The voice came from a big, heavily bearded man dressed
from head to foot in a coat of mail. He wore a loose hauberk on which was emblazoned a black raven with a cross behind it: the arms of Wallachia. Under his arm was a helmet with a crown around it.
‘Is that why your crusade has seen fit to rape and plunder its way down the Danube?’ he asked. ‘Because people of the Orthodox faith are not to be trusted?’
He paused and walked slowly up to Boucicaut. He stood very close, looking down at him. He was breathing hard. ‘Why fight with us, then, if we cannot be trusted? Perhaps we should go home? We, the Transylvanians, the Hungarians – should we all go home?’
The silence was now oppressive. A centuries-old emnity was alive in this tent, an emnity that made these men unhappy allies, that seemed as great as their hatred of the Turk.
‘Enough, gentlemen,’ said a deeper voice that came from someone Luke had not yet noticed. He turned to see a man in his middle years seated on a camp stool in a corner of the tent. The man’s voice was tired, as if he’d heard the argument before, but there was no mistaking its authority. Luke guessed he must be King Sigismund of Hungary.
‘The decision must be the Comte de Nevers’,’ he said, ‘perhaps advised by those of us who’ve seen action against these Ottomans.’ He pointed towards Luke. ‘I don’t know who this man is, but what he says has the ring of truth. They do indeed fight like hyenas, snapping at you with their irregulars until you charge into their trap.’
He stood up and walked unevenly over to Luke, a limp, perhaps from some old wound. ‘Who showed you these things?’ he asked.
Luke’s mind raced. ‘I cannot tell you his name, lord. But I
will tell you that he is a gazi chieftain. Someone to trust.’
He heard Boucicaut snort behind him.
But Sigismund raised his hand. ‘No,’ he said, ‘it makes sense. Most of the gazi tribes were overrun by Bayezid some years ago. They have no love for the Ottomans. It would suit them for us to win this battle.’
De Nevers was watching the King closely but also glancing nervously at d’Eu. He seemed overwhelmed by the responsibility placed on his young shoulders. ‘So what does Your Grace suggest?’ he asked.
‘I suggest that these akincis are unworthy of the lances of your Burgundian knights,’ Sigismund said carefully. ‘The Voivode here’ – he gestured towards Mircea – ‘should meet them on equal terms with his Wallachian horse archers. I suggest using the same tactics that they use. Let us harry and provoke them into attacking
us
.’
There was silence in the tent. Outside could be heard the sounds of an army that waited for the word under a September sun that was rising fast in the sky. A nearby horse neighed and a page could be heard calming it.
De Nevers turned to a man who had yet to speak: Philippe d’Artois, Constable of France.
‘Constable,’ he asked, ‘what is your view?’
D’Artois sighed and looked around him. He was an experienced soldier with many campaigns behind him, though none against the Turk. He walked forward to the edge of the table and looked down at the map for a long time. Then he looked straight at de Nevers.
‘Prince,’ he said slowly, ‘de Coucy, de Vienne and their highnesses urge caution. These are men that know this enemy.’ He
paused. ‘But I think it will be nigh-impossible to tell our knights that they must wait upon others before making their charge. However, I think we should ask the Kings of Hungary and Wallachia to send forward their horse archers with us to protect our flanks against these sipahi cavalry. And I think the knights should advance with the Hungarian infantry hard behind them.’
He looked now at Philibert de Naillac, Grand Master of the Knights Hospitaller. They were old friends. ‘Philibert, do I thus speak reason?’