The Walls of Byzantium (55 page)

De Vienne was on his knees. The heavy flag of the Virgin was still in his grasp, although five men had died to keep it aloft. He knew that his fifty-five years of living were nearly over and was thanking God for a good life and praying to him for a worthy death.

‘Come on, you bastards!’ he yelled in a language they couldn’t understand. ‘Come on and take this flag! You’ll burn in hell for the deed and I’ll be there to watch it!’

The janissaries paused and frowned at a courage that would deny them profit. Then one stepped forward and raised his sword and brought it down on the arm holding the flag and the blood from the severed limb spattered his mail. The standard fell and the janissary raised his sword again and this time it fell on the old knight’s helmet and the head within it broke apart and de Vienne lay still.

It seemed, then, that a great groan went up above the clash of steel on steel. The knights of Christendom had fought within sight of this standard for over an hour, had taken heart from its message.

Now it had fallen.

De Nevers saw it come down and, for the first time, considered defeat. He looked around him at the countless dead of his household, at the Burgundian banners trampled into the ground, at the janissaries’ remorseless advance and at the Serbian cavalry already regrouping for a second charge. He saw de Coucy nearby, fighting alongside Boucicaut. He lifted his visor and called out to them. ‘De Coucy!’ he shouted. ‘Is the day lost?’

The older knight was fighting with a strength that belied his years. Two janissaries lay dead at his feet and two more were about to die. He glanced back at the Count. ‘The Hungarians, lord!’ he yelled back. ‘Are they near?’

De Nevers looked behind him. The hill was a mass of confusion, of tangled armour and rising and falling swords and maces. If the Hungarians were there, he couldn’t see them.

‘We are alone, de Coucy!’ he shouted. The voice was unsteady.

‘Should we yield?’

De Coucy stepped back from the fight and found behind him the carcass of a destrier, a wooden stake embedded in its chest. He found a shield lying on the ground beside it which he laid as a ramp and climbed to see above the heads of the armies around him.

The crusader army was surrounded on three sides. Above them were the Serbs and the janissaries, and the Kapikulu cavalry, and on either flank were the sipahis with the akincis behind them, and all were slowly, remorselessly closing in. Only at the bottom of the hill, at the treeline beyond the ravine, was there any hope of escape and he could see scores of men who’d abandoned their weapons pouring into it.

Nowhere could he see help.

Had de Coucy looked a moment longer, he would have seen it. Had there not been so many men and horses fleeing in panic through the wood, he would have seen the tight ranks of the Hospitallers emerge from the trees like a white, welcome surf.

Had he waited a minute longer, he might not have turned back to de Nevers and said, ‘Lord, the day is surely lost.’

Luke urged his horse into the ravine along with three hundred others, calling on the panicked men that passed him to turn and fight, crying out that behind them came more soldiers, more men to turn the tide of this battle.

Then he saw de Nevers’s standard drop.

The household knights had formed a ring around their prince. He saw a man in front of them pinioned to the flank of a horse by a lance driven down through his windpipe. He saw him feebly raise his arms to beg for death and he saw a knight from Burgundy step forward, cross himself and deliver that death with his head averted. Around the knights were the enemy, many with arrows strung to bowstrings. Then he saw the knights kneel as one and lay down their weapons.

‘Stop!’ he yelled. ‘Stop! We have come!’

But he was too far away and, even if he hadn’t been, he doubted if he’d have been heard. This was an army exhausted beyond listening, an army that had no strength left to fight.

The Hospitallers saw it too and all heads turned to de Naillac.

‘Engage!’ he bellowed, and the knights kicked their destriers and drove them into the flanks of the sipahis. And Luke and his three friends charged with them.

Up to this moment, Luke had felt everything but fear: the sharpened focus of adrenalin, the ebb and flow of hope and dismay, but he’d not felt fear. Now, as he spurred his horse
forward and lowered his lance, as he saw numberless turbaned helmets through the slit of his visor, he realised that he was about to join battle for the first time and he felt the clutch of fear deep in his stomach. He knew his father was somewhere close, watching.

For the Empire. For you
.

Then they were upon the enemy and there was no time to think of anything but kill and not be killed. Luke and his three friends fought as a unit, protecting the others’ flank as each discarded his lance, drew his axe and picked an opponent. Luke felt a surge of excitement, each of his senses heightened to meet the imperatives of destruction and survival. He fought with a skill his father would have been proud to see.

He was a Varangian Prince and he was the best of the best.

Soon the sipahis were falling back and some, desperate to escape this scythe of ruin, had turned and were riding over the janissaries behind. Now the screams and curses were Turkish and the banners that fell had holy verses on them.

But the rush of the Hospitaller charge was slowing.

Swinging his axe and controlling his horse with his knees, Luke could feel the momentum of the charge lessen. He felt it stall, then stop. And then he felt his horse take its first, grudging step backwards.

We are three hundred. They are forty thousand. This is madness
.

There was a cluster of Kapikulu cavalry to his front, the same guard he’d seen earlier. They were fighting in close formation, protecting someone behind them.

Suleyman
.

Then Luke saw him. A gap had appeared in the Kapikulu ranks and the heir to the Ottoman throne, splendid on a black
charger, was there urging his men on. The flag of the Prophet was behind him. He turned in his saddle and his eyes met Luke’s. A smile spread across his face.

He shouted something that Luke couldn’t hear. Then he yelled at his guard and they began to fight their way in Luke’s direction.

Suleyman was closer now, still screened by his men, but close enough to be heard.

‘Congratulations on your escape,’ he yelled, his voice booming over the clash of steel. ‘The crusaders fell into our trap and the credit must go to you, Luke Magoris! You have the Sultan’s thanks and, if you drop your axe, I’m sure he’ll want to give them to you in person.’

‘What does he mean?’ cried Nikolas. ‘Who is he?’

‘His name is Prince Suleyman,’ Luke answered, ‘and he’s practised in lying. Don’t listen to him.’

Suleyman laughed. ‘I’m sorry, Luke, I hadn’t realised we would be understood if I spoke in Greek. Forgive me.’

Luke dug his heels into his horse’s sides and sprang forward and, with a roar, his friends did the same. Taken by surprise, the Kapikulu fell back.

Then Luke heard de Naillac’s shout from behind him. It was the command to withdraw, a command that would be obeyed without question by every Hospitaller.

‘What do we do now?’ shouted Arcadius, pulling up his horse. “Go with them?”

Luke looked at Suleyman, who was smiling behind his noseguard. He was much closer now.

‘Yes, Luke Magoris, what do you do now?’

Luke turned and saw Matthew beside him, loyal Matthew
already having to engage two of the enemy because the Hospitaller to his right had pulled away.

Matthew who will die if I continue this fight
.

‘Will you spare them if I surrender?’

Suleyman nodded. ‘I will spare them. You have my word.’

His word?

Suleyman lifted his sword, ready to give the command.

Luke turned to his companions. ‘Drop your weapons!’

Three faces turned to him in horror.

‘Do it!’

The Varangians lowered their axes and pulled back their horses.

Luke looked back at Suleyman.

His word
.

Behind them, the Hospitallers had crossed the ravine, fighting as they went, and now fifty of the knights had dismounted and turned to face their enemy. Meanwhile, de Naillac and the rest of them had galloped back to the Hungarians.

‘The Burgundians have surrendered,’ panted the Grand Master. ‘Your Grace should retire with your army. My men are holding them at the ditch but they will soon come through from the flanks.’

Some of de Naillac’s reserve had left him and it was this, as much as the news, which struck the King. Beside him was John de Gara.

‘De Naillac, can we not turn it?’ he asked.

The Grand Master shook his head. ‘They are too many, lord. They have made prisoner some of the greatest names in Christendom. Don’t give them more.’

The Constable turned to his king. ‘You should ride for the boats, sire. The Hospitallers will guard you. I will come behind you with the army.’

‘No,’ said Sigismund. ‘Why should they fight if their king deserts them?’

‘Because they will live to fight another day when we can do it free from Burgundian folly!’ said the older man hotly. ‘Go, sire, while there is still time.’

By the time that the bashibozouks had filled the ravine with their dead, by the time that the last Hospitaller knight had fallen, the Hungarian King, together with de Naillac, had reached the safety of the boats.

His army had thrown back charge after charge by the sipahis, horse archers fighting on foot beside foot soldiers.

But then the Serbians came, ten thousand of them, and the Hungarians’ last hope was extinguished. They’d fought for an hour against impossible odds and hardly a man had looked behind him. But now the line began to break and first one, then another threw down his weapon and turned for the river.

De Gara cursed and pleaded with them but it was no use. This army knew it was defeated and its soldiers thought only of their wives, their fields, their future. With de Gara were the knights of Hungary that had stayed to shield their king, knights who could at least expect some ransom if captured and who’d fight to help men of lesser station get away. They prepared to make their stand, standing shoulder to shoulder across the plain, facing both ways as the Turks encircled them, some looking back to Nicopolis where the gates had opened and another army was riding out to fight them.

‘Stand!’ shouted de Gara. ‘Let’s bring as many down as we can before they take us!’

And then it began. Sword clashed with sword and mace with mace and sparks flew into the air with the blood. The Hospitallers rejoined the fight towards the end, having delivered the Grand Master and Hungarian King to the ships. The river had been full of soldiers trying either to board the ships or swim to the other side where the Wallachians were already forming up to march away. Sigismund and de Naillac had stood side by side at a ship’s rail to watch a vessel slowly capsize under the weight of men clambering up its sides.

Then they’d heard a cheer. De Gara had raised his hand and the flag of Hungary come down, and a cheer had gone up from the Turks that could be heard in Nicopolis. The battle had been won. The Ottoman Empire had proven itself superior to Western valour and the gates of Europe were thrown open.