Marc of Battle

Untitled Part 1

Pressed into a doomed relief mission to save the city of Constantinople, a country sheriff arrives at the besieged city to deliver the news that, other than a wagon load of the first printed Bibles, no help is coming.

MARC OF BATTLE

Volume two of Marc of Ashes

Prologue

Marc looked up at the first wall, and he could see the stone giants with their backs to them: they were finally inside the city.

Another gate creaked open and out strode a gang of men. Their leader was tall, blond, dressed like an emperor and had the demeanor of a happy tavern keep. He strode right over to Marc and extended his hand, clasped Marc hard on the shoulder: "Welcome dear friends and comrades, welcome to Constantinople. We bid you hurrah. I am Giovanni Justinian Longo. Head of the defenses here. Welcome!"

The sun had hit the top of the upper wall and began to paint it with light.

"I had thought we might be a disappointment to you in terms of reinforcements. I have only a few more than a hundred men, though supplies for many more. We at least won't be a burden."

"Burden? Nonsense!" Longo acted as if he were just told an amusing story. They were striding towards the head of the column again where Longo's few men had brought theirs, and his, horses.

"The emperor may be disappointed but he'll never show it."

He was hoping for a thousand men," offered Marc.

Longo stopped and turned. His smile steady. "Thousand? The emperor was hoping for ten thousand."

Marc was chagrined. He had forgotten the gathering storm of numbers outside the walls, which now seemed so distant.

Marc was a swirl of emotions. Never had he a welcome like this one. Never an effort to enter a city which may or may not be doomed. His heart had flow, crashed against branches of fate, thudded to the dirt and rose up again and again just to get here, and now that he was here, he felt the close of the gates cut across his life. he felt a slackening of his life line like a boat cut adrift by the jaws of the final gate. He was here. he may never leave. This may be the last place he would ever be in his life and it was all foreign to him. Everything was different. He was exhilarated and both intimidated at once. A new world to explore, but a world where he knew nothing of. He could not even find his own room and once show there, the map of corridors and passage ways spun helplessly. The place was larger than the church at Lyons and that had been the largest building he had ever entered.

Marc had to remind himself that his duties were discharge. True, he was not about to ride off from this siege, he was trapped as well as anyone and he knew it perhaps more than anyone. But he was inside a fortified citadel with more than ten centuries of success in defending itself from sieges. It fell only once, that he knew of, to crusaders themselves. These were not crusaders outside now. These were... Infidels.

He was a new man. A new man with a new life in a new city. His fate, like all men, unknown. All he had ever known had been closed off behind the gates of the city walls. All he might ever know now awaited him beyond the doorway of his room. He knew not how to even retrace his steps; his climb was that intricate and his sleep that devastating to all he knew before.

Yet his whole life now, was this simple: go through the door, see what awaits you.

He did.

Chapter One:

The Turks fired another volley of iron stones through the night air, slamming into the centuries-old walls of Constantinople. The missiles chipped and splintered into the rock, crushing round bruises on the face of the wall. Fierce cheers rose from the gathered armies outside the city as debris rained down in small clouds of broken rock dust. The cannoneers had found their range and honed their mark. They reloaded. A process which took hours, waiting for the barrels to cool from their meteoric vomiting.

The impact of the shot shook the walls with a sharp dent, like a hammer on a stone bench where you might sit, feeling the pinch of the strike without any fear of collapse. An annoying knock felt through your bones but as harmless as distant thunder.

Marc stood on the upper rampart of the parapet of the outer wall. He had made his own way through the palace walls and stair wells, following the sound of the angry hornets which stung the mighty city. He followed others who walked leisurely upwards to the nearly road wide pathway that crowned the defensive wall and gathered with strangers, citizens of this new life, whatever it would be and however long it would last. Together they watched the angry throng of ants lit and blast their cannons into the walls, over and over.

It was a mission of math: which would last the longest? The thickness of the wall or the tenacity of the Turks? Would they have the will and the powder and the ammunition and the patience to outlast that which had outlasted a thousand years and more? At the moment, they seemed to. Rows of guns were set up in batteries of four and they took turns blasting away nearly once an hour, like some hellish clock chiming away without music or comfort. It brought a cheer though from those tending them, and those waiting for the city to crack open so they could run into it, killing and sacking where no easterner had done before. Pillaging where only weeks ago they shopped in peace, slaughtering where only days ago they supped in peace with the people now gathered on the ramparts. A Wall between them. An oath to battle to the death.

"They'll tire soon". Longo had come up behind Marc, sharing the view of the angry, teeming insects lined up the length of the wall. "This is where you and your men will stand", he swept his arm further down the wall from the palace. People of all types crowded the ramparts, unafraid of debris or archers or any danger at all. It was as if a parade were being held, a spectacle for their benefit. Men and women, soldiers and citizens, even some small boys and even younger children, safely atop the wall, beaming, as if looking down into some great tiger pit, watching an agitated beast kept well at bay.

"I'll be here". He sounded calm and confident, as if preparing for a pageant or a parade. Marc looked him over. He was relaxed, almost happy. Longo noticed the scrutiny. "Worry for nothing, brother, we will win this thing."

"They seem determined. And well prepared. And so many.'

"The numbers matter nothing if they can't get in." Longo seemed sure of himself and Marc realized it was the effect of much experience.

"I've never been under siege before."

"It's something to see all these people lined up and wanting to taste your blood, juggle your head at a party, meet us all on pikes." Marc wished Longo was a bit less detailed.

"Yes", he admitted.

"Not to worry, it goes away. The biggest part of the siege has already taken place and has fallen to us." Longo drew Marc's studied stare again and enjoyed it. "Preparation. That's what makes or breaks a siege. Luckily, I arrived in plenty of time. We're prepared."

"Against all this?" Marc was still wrestling with the extreme of the situation. He was glad to be in the oldest city on earth and in the mightiest fortress ever built, but he was keenly aware of facing the largest army he had ever known, maybe the largest ever, larger than anything he could have imagined. And guns. Cannon like he had never seen before, and never used like this before.

"All this won't last the summer. They'll tire of the sweltering heat, the lack of shade, the lack of progress. We've estimated the progress of their guns already and it will take them years to bring down a wall. They've not the patience for it."

"We can last the year?"

"Oh yes, preparation. The most important part of a siege. We've laid in plenty of stores for a population twice our size. We've had a lot of citizens leave in the last few months. As soon as they saw the Sultan's second castle being built, people got feverish for safer cities. Fled westward. And the Turks that used to live inside the city were at once imprisoned and shut up within the gates. This, of course, just infuriated the Sultan and gave him more of an excuse to war, but it was his aim all along. After three days, the emperor softened and let them out. Fewer mouths to feed."

"And water? Arms? Medicines?" Marc was voicing a list he was throwing together off the top of his head, having never had to think through siege preparation, but as a constable, knew the value of planning in advance to care for people, to keep the peace among them.

"Water is endless. We've gates that reach the fresh flow of the Bosporus." Longo was almost chuckling as he rattled off the elements in their favor. "We've access to ships still; we own the harbor. A great chain has been hauled across the mouth of the river and the Turkish fleet is kept out of it. We fish every day, bringing fresh food in when our stores are already full. We've harvested wheat and dried meats and salted away herring and fatted ourselves on vegetables and fruits. We've driven livestock into the city and have pastures as large as villages within these walls where food is stored on the hoof and continue to multiple with births and feed us fresh milk. We've stores of wine. Stocks of medicine. Stacks of ammo. I've never been happier with the condition of a city to defend."

"Then why the reception we got, why the worry over resupply?"

"That's the emperor. He's nervous. Doesn't want to be known as the emperor who lost the city. He's a Constantine, name like the founder. What he would really like is to ride out the front gate with a huge army and smite the Turks where they stand and end this battle with a day or two of bloodshed. Fill the moats with Turkish blood and secure his place in history."

"He hasn't the men?"

"No one has the men. Have you seen this army? I've never seen bigger" Marc wondered why Longo's face didn't cloud with his thoughts. Why no dark effect on this siege master to match this gloomy assessment? "But it's not about numbers. A soldier that stand around is but a target. Time is on our side. As prepared as we are, we can last longer than we'll need to."

"How long is that?" Marc was testing him now.

Longo grinned. "Troy lasted ten years. This rabble won't last the one"

Marc was happy to see the confidence unshaken. He hid his own lingering doubt. Best to keep doubts to himself till he knew what the situation was. As confident as Longo was, Marc was still a man who drew his own conclusions. The Spartans were stirred by the kidnap of their Helen and she launched a thousand ships. The Turks had as much. Was Constantinople such an apple of the Sultan's eye that he would wait ten years to gain her? No one knew. Troy, he worried, had fallen.

"Come. It's time to meet the Emperor. He'll be happy to know you're a man of cold assessment." Longo seemed to know the skepticism Marc has tried to hide within himself, and it only seem to make him grin all the more. If the city were guarded only by Longo's confidence, it was indeed a safe place to be.

Past the walls, the city was darker. Night was shaven off by the high walls and cluttering of roof tops among the metropolis. The Smith brothers and dead Tyrol had been shown the sights by the locals. They had made their way to some fine ale houses, feasted well on good red meats, succulent dishes, fresh fish and risen breads. They had found ample ale to drink and Dead Tyrol had drunken both Smit brothers under the table, and then joined them.

Others of the relief column scattered about the same tavern and others like it, and in the houses of the priestess which welcomed them with love and attention. There were festivities everywhere and the city churned on as it did in its high days. The lesser population concentrated into fewer spots but crowded them all the same. Those men who had feasted to oblivion were well watched over by a kind collection of citizens, peace loving and good and kind. The men slept like heroes in their home town, truly welcomed.

Still others with more appetite than drink fulfilled, met well into the night with the lovely women of the city. Those whose profession it was to make men happy and those whose opportunity it was to replace a lover or husband and those who lost their heads and hearts in joyous times among terms of trouble were all locked in a gleeful wrestling everywhere. There seemed no shortage of excitable young women, and certainly no shortage of eager, healthy soldiers. The city teemed with life and love.

In the inn where the men were quartered, some slept still, exhausted, or troubled over where they were, how far for home, how deep in dire straits.

At the end of the hall in the top floor, a solitary monk sat outside a door way, the door closed, sealed, the room and the hall silent. Father George fingered his tattered robe. He was no longer playing at the married husband spying for the knights. He was a simple man of the cloth, servant of God, knocked low by the turn of events and the cruelty of life. Inside, sat or slumbered his heart's holder. She was wounded, treated with rage and rape and disgrace and he suffered for her. His vigilance would never waver again, had this been their fate all along, cast out of Lyons by the church as punishment for their lust and corporal love for each other? Was this the fate God had decreed for them, to deliver them this way to this place for this fate? They may die in this city at the hands of savages but that would be the fate of all the citizens. What was special for them was the rape and bondage they suffered through. Father George boiled at the thought of having watched what should have never happened, what should have never been seen. He also burned with the unmistakable lust in his own heart, that his own appetites were flayed open by the loins of other men. Was this God at work? God could not have smitten his heart any harder had he attacked him instead of her. Maybe this was just the way of men, and God wept as much as he did. He did not truly know.

Father George rubbed his wrists where they were sill raw from having been bound. His penitence at his own impotence while bound, at his own lust which would not untangle itself, causes him to rub his own blood into his hands. Would that it has been that simple, that easy, his blood for theirs.

Jon had just left the monk, alone in his vigil, and unaware of him peering from the stairwell. He descended back to the main floor and had completed his head count. He knew roughly who had left the building and who was quartered still within. Some wrote letters home, spoke near the fire, some still ate and some still drank and others slept like the dead. They deserved it. It was a long and hard march from Lyons and they were scarcely recovered from the campaign before that. He knew that they were all further from home than they had ever been and in a situation, which was unclear of its outcome. No one knew what the gods had in mind. And now they were in a city where no one even agreed on which gods were in charge. There were Romans and their pantheon of Gods, Christians with their one God risen from the Jews who believed in the same God or another one God, it was all confusing and many men lost their lives trying to declare the truth among men. The Muslims had their own one God and there were even more gods than that.

Jon was a good Christian but mostly he believed in what he saw and what was before him. Right now, it was a new city he had never seen and he longed to taste it deeper. He stopped at the exit to the inn, as it was blocked by the hulk of a giant who also stared out into the night. It was Pup. A new enlistee but also a new comrade. All his men were accounted for, and if Job had any further duties in the absence of his captain, it was to reconnoiter the city and become familiar with their new camp.

"This city is in need of patrol. Interested?" Pup turned at the sound of the voice and recognized the second in command. The big man had more energy than all the rest, Job guessed. The two took off into the city streets, littered with torches and oil lamps, thrown light from the many constellations of hearths and windows, doorways left open in welcome.

There were still more people left in the city than any of the men had ever seen in any other city. Though they were nearly outnumbered by the silent statues that adorned the city everywhere. They were the population of over a thousand years of arts and victories and gods and goddesses. It seemed that very religion offered up stone likenesses and every community carved their heroes and set them out. Some, whose people to religion had waned and waxed, were dark and covered with moss or mold. Others sported torn limbs or the gouges of accidents and the wounds of time.

No of them turned as the two strangers in town passed by. Two strangers in a stream of millions and millions of strangers over the years. These stone giants had seen it all, even another giant of flesh and blood passing by now, eye level to many of the silent sentries.

Neither did these silent sentries look up, either, as the sound of distant hammering muted by high, thick walls, crept through rarely but unmistakably through lulls in the music, the laughter of the Queen of Cities.

The ambient city light spread evenly, like star light trapped in a drawer, and seeped through the window of an upper level inn room where a woman laid upon a bed like a corpse. Sister Margaret was rigid, immobile, locked in a gritting of teeth as she relived the horror of the past day. The crone cut to pieces by savages who then savage her and others. She had thrown herself in harms path, a sacrifice, desperate plea for sympathies the savages didn't have. A plan to delay them till rescue came also failed. It was them who were called away long before any rescue had arrived. Had they not left, and left hastily, they would have finished crushing the women in their lust and would have hacked them up for amusement and left them bead and butchered. Sister Margaret had erred and paid for it just as others had. She imagined the face of the drowned mother, never being a mother herself, but only imagining the missing piece of heart that came with the death of a child, she wept, hard and bitterly but through clenched teeth, so the sobs did not drift past the door to the man waiting outside for her.

Marc followed Longo down the wall and across a wooden bridge to the second, mid wall, and then along that to yet another wooden bridge. "These bridges serve only us and are easily burned or knocked down should we ever have to retreat. This will be a one wall siege" he smiled.

Atop the third wall, the guns were more faint and out of sight, as well as the entire army. Things were peaceful here but hidden did not mean gone. Marc braced himself against false comfort.

Longo stepped to the inner side of the wall and they looked down over the parapet of that edge and into the city. There in a cleared field between the wall and the structures of the city were a ring of catapults and behind them, cannon. Stacks of stones and barrels were lined in formations near each as an ammo dump to supply the war machines. Longo grinned again as Marc surveyed the arsenal.

"Why not mount the cannons on the wall?"

"There is no room- we've too many archers to place upon the wall. The cannons and catapults will find their targets by reaching over the wall and finding the heads and helmets of the enemy."

Even placing one of the cannons atop the wall would have an effect on the troops, wouldn't it, without even having to fire?" Marc wondered why the cannons were kept from sight.

"The cannons will have even more effect fired when we please and out of surprise to the boastful jackals out there. They will have much to think about once we decide their spirits need dousing."

Marc wondered if Longo were holding something back. Sure, he should, as siege master he had many secrets and Marc was not to be privy to them by nature of his position and even if taken as a confidant, he was still fresh to the plans and situation. Longo would not blurt out all he knew like a school child smitten by some basic revelation of the world.

Marc knew two things. Longo held back. And Longo held back good as well as bad. Marc did not know then, that the engineers would not allow the cannon atop the walls because of the age and fragility of the walls. And if they could not stand to mount cannon, how could the old walls withstand cannon?

Sister Margaret sat on the edge of the bed. She examined her wounds. Most, she thought, were spiritual and deep. Others were to the heart. She had failed to protect anyone and then was brutally raped before her father of the cloth, while he was tied to a post. Still, he may be alive to scorn her now only because of what she did. Maybe she did prevail, and some lived who would have died and some who suffered, suffered less and those that were harmed were spared more than they suffered. She did not know. She knew that she was alive and that there was a man on the other side of the door that would not leave her. She knew that the man on the other side of the door would not leave her and that she could never face him.

The moon was out and up above the walls and had just stepped into her room through the window and she watched its toes upon the floor.

The noise of the great hall could be heard walls away, in the courtyard before the grand stairwell which lead up to the level of the hall, in the foyer to the hall where the guards stood, ceremonial and safe. Where the guests were ushered to the grand entrance to the hall, as Marc looked out over a sea of joyous colored silks waving like flags in a parade of dancing and feasting. Long tables flanked the hall where scores sat in line toward the head table at the far end and there, under the grand double headed eagle of Byzantium, sat the Emperor of Constantinople. Constantine himself.

The crowd turned nearly at once, an impossible seeming thing with all the conversations and action and distraction of the room going on all at once and in all directions. It was Longo that made the entrance noteworthy and the room received him like a savior. Longo grinned again, glowing in the reception and then lifted Marc's arm as well as if declaring a victor in the contest, as if declaring the contest all but over. The cheer turned roar as the crowd seized upon Longo's enthusiasm for the newcomer. The roar organized into hurrahs of salute. The cheering subsided only after Long and Marc descended down the stairs and into the crowd, disappearing from the sigh of most, and plunging into the crowd which both swarmed and greeted them.

The march towards the head table took nearly an hour as people presented themselves, women adorned them with hugs and kisses, soldiers and statements introduced themselves and spewed hastily their own ideas about a course of action. There seemed to be as many ideas as people.

Longo shouted whispers into his ear as they passed forward through hand clasps and back pats and two handed embraced and shakings as if prodigal sons returned lush with success. Longo's confidence seemed contagious and very well received.

At long last the two men had made their way through the music and eating and dancers and crowded line of receivers who handed them slowly through the room towards the head table. Once there, the Emperor rose and the crowd hushed. He raised a goblet to the air as sign that he was to speak. Marc stared up at the large man, almost a Saint Nicholas figure, but with ermine and gold crown and full regalia of kingship, and behind him, visible once again since the stair well and ten times as large, the double headed eagle of the nation's crest.

If there was disappointment in the eyes of the king that Marc had arrived without ten thousand troops, it did not show. There was only a regal glint, perhaps the confidence of Longo gilded in the right of royalty to know the true plans of God. Here was a man who may know what it is that Marc did not: the fate of him and all the city.

The silence waited like a hand maiden. The emperor looked back and forth across the room and up to the stairwell and back to the head table as if surveying his loved ones at Yuletide.

At each single word, the color of the room transformed unmistakable: a king was speaking. "Citizens of Constantinople! Subjects of Byzantium! Welcomed Guests." Then, in summation: "Friends!"

"We swell tonight, in ranks, with the arrival of good men and brethren from the east. Proof, that we are loved, and not forgotten by the capitals of Europe. Our binding together in this dire hour has been so strong as to attract the likes of heroes come to stand among us and fight, if need be, with us."

"Our good friend and siege master, Justinian Longo," he indicated with is other open hand, as all turned to adore him once again, silently this time. Marc felt red just standing near that strength of attention from so many, but Longo merely beamed it back, a child who has pleased his mother, and in turn, enjoyed his mother's pleasure.

The emperor continued, "...has come to ensure our safety. With is help and the blessings of the heavens, our city will not come to harm and will even evade the effort of battle. How much stronger can our thousand-year-old walls be, than have them topped by the likes of Master Longo!" A cheer sent up.

"This Queen of cities will stand for another thousand years, because it is the welcome hearth to heroes such as these. It will stand as the legends say, until the moon no longer shines in the heavens. It will stand as long as the legends say because this city, the oldest in the world, stood witness to the legends birth." More cheers and huzzahs.

The Emperor acknowledge the Grand Duke and Cardinal Isidore and others who deserved esteem if not for who they were, then what they stood for, or what they brought or kept at the city. "Our Thanks to the Genoese, the Cretes, the Italian archers, the Greeks, out Turkish friends who remain with us and all the others who make this city as rich in spirit as it is in size and history. You, my friends, are the living statues of this city, and it is your magnificence that guarantees our glory."

Marc felt huzzahs stirred up in his own belly as the crowd rose to their feet. The king drank from his goblet, marking the end of the speech and the coronation of the toast. The room was frenzied in spirit and Marc himself moved to give his life to save this city, and glad to do so. If the war was won with words, this emperor was surely the victor. Words, as strong as walls. "Hail Byzantium. Hail Constantine! Hail Constantinople!"

The music began again and the Emperor sat down and the room turned into motion again as the eating and conversations returned. Everyone was drunk on the honeyed words of the speech and the beaming presence of Longo. The siege master steered Marc to the head table where they took up seats, were presented with platters of food and drink and feasted on attention.

The man to the right of Marc was Cardinal Isidore. Marc's superior in the knighthood and he had no reported in to him yet. The Cardinal was kind and warm. Marc told him of the cargo, that there were books sent from Lyons, Bibles and the Cardinal marveled at the production used in them. "I can't wait to see these', he said, turning his gaze out among the happy crowd and then to the ear of the man to his right, the emperor himself.

Marc tasted an uneasy thought. He had not delivered the Bibles and knew not what was done with them. He turned left to ask Longo. "I've sent the books you told me about to the university, for their library and their study." Marc blanched. "Did I do wrong? They're with Professor Xerxes there, in charge of the library, I think. I'll send word to retrieve them, or better yet, I'll send you to retrieve them. See the city. Meander. The walls keep us safe. That rabble outside will there for weeks to peer at for our amusement. Tend to your cargo tomorrow.

Somewhat relieved, the cardinal seemed to need no more information about the mission, his mind returned to the music., Then the dancers and when the entertainment finished, one of the dancers in the green silks came round the table with the others. They selected guests at the designation of some discrete authority and the green clad dancer slid onto Marc's lap. She was hot and misted from her dance and still heaved some. She reminded him of the witch who landed in his arms at the end of her dance, heaving, vulnerable and yielding. He had not thought of her since he accepted Pup into his ranks. He looked long and deep into the eyes of the dancing girl to make sure that this was not her, not her in another's form. His drink was talking to him.

The young lady mistook his stare for passion and moved her hands to his loins. Marc was alarmed at this and the public view of such discretions. He was sitting next to the Cardinal! He took her hand away roughly and then turned her to his other leg as if on excuse of shifting her weight and she was not rebuked. He glanced at the Cardinal who was still busy in the business at his far hand and did not paid heed to the knight and the dancer. The cardinal seemed to enjoy the dance as much as any, but he was deep into conversation now, the liquor of statesmanship.

The room had thinned some after the dance, a sign that the organized festivities were at an end for the night. Couples drifted off. Soldiers with early duty retired. Others paired with the dancers had also slipped away for private activities. Longo was seen walking out with a dancer in either hand and Marc, without adieux to anyone, left, the dancer clinging to his side.

She was glad to be with him to have been awarded this guest of honor to please tonight. Her dancing had aroused her to the point where she needed to please herself and him. She throbbed in his arms as he whisked her around the turns and corners of the palace walk ways and corridors towards his room. He was near the room. He pulled his nose from the soft curls of her hair and the secret musk of her scents to look out the window, orienting from the view. There, in the moonlight, he saw the inn where his men were bivouacked. There was one window where inside he knew a woman raped and ravaged, hurt and prayed.

At the door to his room, he broke the girl's grip on his manhood and pushed her gently away. He told her he must remain chaste tonight, devout, but it was an excuse. He could not betray his oath like this, and he could not shake the memory of the witch. He was wary of any spell that might be weaving in the night amidst the grog and drink and fatigue. He would keep to himself tonight, and she bid her off and she slunk away with disappointment, her scents still in the air, her taste still on his lips. His heart questioning him.

At the top of the stairs, the lone monk sat tearing his robe into tatters and did not see Marc approach. He looked up as the knight sat down beside him, their backs to the same wall that hid the grieving woman.

"Is she stirring? Marc asked in a whisper.

"Not a bit. No cries, no sobs. I am tempted to look in on her and afraid at the same time".

Marc answered with easy silence. After a while the monk asked "how's the city, are we well?"

"It seems well protected. Certainly, well through of. If we were ever to be attacked, this would be the place to defend us."

Another shared silence. Then the monk confessed, with quiet bitterness and rage: "I should have been quick to kill them." It was all he could get out.

Marc considered his answer carefully. "You are not a warrior."

"I am God's soldier,' he shot back.

Marc could see this argument drowning in self-pity. He had to pull the monk free of that morass of blame and recrimination he had to be harsh to snap him out of it. "You're not trained. You'd been dead and the women suffering more so for your resistance. I do not need dead men at my side, brave fools instead of strong minds: if you were a soldier, your answer would have been different. You job is to heal men, not kill them."

"I would not heal the likes of them." The bitterness was deeper.

"No.' Marc agreed, then turned stern again: "your job is to heal that which is within," nodding towards the wall, "and that which is here" he nodded at the monk. "I need these people healed. If you job was done, if your service to god was over, you'd be dead. There's is still work for you to do and I need you doing it."

The monk was startled by the harsh words but chewed them carefully.

The mood crept past them.

Marc spoke: "I've killed more men in the past year than I ever thought I would. I wonder if this is the task God has set down on me, to take so much life. Each man was deserving, to be sure, and each many left little ways around it, but I did not see my keeping the peace by counting so many skulls on my sword."

Silence played again.

"I am like you, in the service of God now. Did he mean that to be his slaughtering hand? And if so, why did it begin with tangling my own comrades into death?" Father George heard the blame in his companion's voice.

"I am not even sure of my god's mission for me. Do any of us get to know that/? Do you know what God has intended for you, father? We are in a city where there are many people serving many gods and yet each one sure they are doing right. I agree to do what most men consider right, but beyond that, you want to know that the God you are answering is not false, not an error on your part, not the devil emerging in men's clothing. When you kill, father, it is final. There are no answers for it till judgment day. Until then, it is all faith. I don't know if I have the faith to do so much killing."

"I know that you do" said the monk. "Knowing faith is my job and I have heard many like you cry out in uncertainty. It is human. It is the human answer to faith. You will rise to the job as I must do, you are right. I will try to be a better healer of men. It seems there is much more of that to come. Sadly, there seems to be more killing to come as well. That will fall on you. Is it right for you to kill? The lord uses all sorts of men for all sorts of tools. You are His weapon. If killing did not bother you, you'd be the devil's weapon instead."

Marc did not know if the father was right. He felt comforted nonetheless. And he felt better knowing that the monk was coming out of his morass of guilt and bitterness. Marc has counseled many victims of life's crimes. He knew this path. The father was easier to lead towards the light than most. He was a strong and wise man. He had indulged in a weakness of regret and barbaric emotions, easily justified in men, after what he went through. But it was his nature as a priest to rise above that. The monk was trained for it and recognized the call when Marc put it out.

Marc didn't expect the monk to return call for call, though. He was right. He was now a soldier. And as far as one could see, he saw the right thing to do and if he had to fight again, it would be without hesitation in his heart. If not god, then this monk, his men, the knighthood and the emperor had chosen him as God's weapon. God, would let him know by fate, or by tally on judgment day. Until then, men will struggle as best they can.

On the far side of the door, Sister Margaret heard the droning of the two men. He moved closer to hear their conversation. They all hurt. It was almost more than she could bear to hear more suffering like this, in people she loved, helpless to comfort them. Things had gone so wrong in her last effort.

The knight moved off and left the monk alone. She knew how long he had been there. He must be hungry, He must be tired, he cannot rest for worry over her. She cannot release him. She cannot resist their presence and their suffering any more than moth to flame. Hurt her though it will, she cannot leave their presence. Now only his presence.

By morning she knew that she would come out and greet him and let the life that was insisting so hard behind them all, sweep them on past. She was tried, called and sacrificed. It was not what she thought would happen but then life rarely is. If she was tested, she passed because she was alive. If she failed, she was alive to do better next time. She knew what to do in the morning. Live as though life were meant to be. As though God does not make mistakes.

For now, she did not know what to do so she sat down on the bare stone and placed her back to the door where the monk leaned on the other side. He would know she was here. That she was this much closer. They would sleep together all night, sitting, a door between them. A door and so much more between them.

Asif moved easily and freely throughout the night streets; he was truly happy in the doomed city. What did he care that they would all die in weeks or months or even years? He was dead from the moment he was taken captive. Dead a dozen times over in the bowels of hell where they held him and tortured him. Dead and reborn the day the knight captain came to retrieve him for this mission, sorting him out from the writhing bodies yet unstill within their graves. This life he had now was all life beyond his death, all time given to him after his hour glass emptied, indeed, after his hour glass was shattered and no longer worked or stirred at all. After the winds blew away the small sands that were his days, he lived and breathed still. How could he not be happy?

The thoughts that formed the ghost of Asif were treading happily through a new city. How odd it was to hear among all these strangers his own tongue spoken here and there. And the friendliness of the place, all doomed passengers of the same ship talking happily to each other, fingering the tattered threads of this or that rumor that might keep them alive longer, or fool the fates from their determined collection of debts. Asif heard many languages and had again gathered some information useful to his guards, who were likewise his guardians. Few here were not preparing for the city to change hands though many thought they would survive it. Many thought they would buy their freedom and safety by sharing what wealth they hoarded to themselves now, or that by changing allegiance during the march into the city, they would be spared, or that they would even be overlooked by soldiers and generals who had bigger game to chase than they, the lowly survivors of a siege.

How sad some of this was to Asif. He had seen a city sacked before, the looting and plundering of anything of value and the destruction of anything worth having which could not be carried off. The slaughter and rape that went on when men were given free will to do what they would to a people they had no value for, indeed, a people they had trained to loathe and hate. He had seen children slain and torn from their parent's bosoms, or hacked away with grisly dispatched and tormented for a moment's vengeance. The fall of the city would not be a simple minded changing of the guard. There would be no time for bargaining, for fetching hidden treasures, and what was offered to one man to buy your life would be canceled by the next madman though the door.

But tonight, the sweet air could wash away all those fears and the entrance of more soldiers had transformed dread and doom into hope and festivity. The whole city danced lightly upon its feet just as Asif moved like a happy ghost among those who may also be nothing more than writhing dead, drunk with life for now, but doomed to forfeit it all soon. Only Asif, he thought, had already been there and back. Maybe only Asif really deserved such euphoria as the night fed to them all.

He had ridden in the back of a wagon into the city in it triumphant parade and had looked at the throngs of people welcoming them. He ran his eyes to the back of the crowd, looking for spies and assassins, for those less happy and more interested in what was going on but found none. The few he found that shared his language had no different opinions then those he did not understand. Hope was let loose like a dove today, but a dove among gathering falcons.

They were all locked in here together. Friendly Turks and Greeks the same, Christians and Muslim and Romans all waiting for the gates to be torn down and their fate to sweep through like a fire. One that would burn everyone else butt them. Asif had to laugh at the gods. There was no shortage of them here and each one of them handed out hope to all their followers. Hope was as free as the air. The air was no shield against arrow or blade or even bullet.

Asif smiled as the thought of being locked into another prison dawned on him. These prisoners were much better company. Healthier, happier, more hopeful. Tonight, they all celebrated like free men, and no one more so than Asif, who danced with strangers and sang along with songs he didn't know. At night's end, people were carried off to bed, not cells, and tortured only with headaches and sunlight and loud noises in the morning. Oh, what a happy prison. Oh, what a strong drink this life. Oh, what a happy ghost, this Asif.

Chapter Two:

In the morning, the sun lay like the hand of God upon the slumbering citizens. They stirred gently, lazily, from their sleep to their next day. Most woke without thought to the far distant noise of books falling off a shelf, or doors banging after children, or heavy cargo being heaved onto carts by morning merchants for happy markets.

One by one they put together their life and thoughts and the memories of their circumstance came stumbling back in upon them. The noises were guns. Battering slowly at their walls.

Marc had slept well. Too well. He had pulled the ropes of his bed frame tightly but the weight of his falling onto them undid them some and the sleep was soft and longer than he had hoped for. Daylight was strong within his room before his eyes would open. His first thought was of panic: The Bibles were undelivered. His mission, technically, was unfulfilled. He must find this professor Xenon..., Zenith..., Xerxes! He must find this man at the university and return the books to Cardinal Isidore.

He reached for his clothes but there beside them were new clothes, brought to his room by sleepless attendants whose task it was to toil the night through caring for the guests of the Emperor. He thought back on the huge man and how he commanded the hall with this toast and his presence., If he could bring such men as Longo to his aid, how could anyone succeed against him. His mind was now racing through the events of the last few days just as he would soon be racing along the ramparts to confirm them all.

Throughout he felt the warm glee of being in a magical city, of his new life having opened and lay unfolded yet unread before him. He wanted to see more of the city, and would, as Longo said, on his way to find the university, but first, and always, the constable had to make his rounds. The city's fortunes had to be counted and attested secured.

The sun was nearly blinding as it beat down upon the well-worn stones that crested the ramparts. Centuries of sentries had paced and ran these same pathways as this knight constable did now. As he climbed and labored and made his way through the maze of bridges and wall tops to the outside walls, he marveled against the strength of the defenses, the thickness of the walls, the number of them and the long years they alone were all that were needed to turn back many ambitious pirate and invader.

The cannon barking grew louder as he reached the tops of the outer wall. Many were gathered still, citizens again who could not sleep or did not sleep thronged the parapets sizing up the spectacle of the enemy, witnessing the progress of the cannon against this old city.

Marc saw that the cannon batteries were still in place, still laboring away to cough stones at them, each in turn, long minutes apart. Each cannon took an hour or more to cool its barrel with the pouring of oils and water, then drying and repacking and finally a fire with ceremony. The besiegers seemed more relaxed, less cheering as the cannons had been spitting now for days.

Behind the cannon were other machines for hurling stones, darts, even rotting carcasses to infect the city and demoralize the citizens. Catapults and sling machines were ready to hurl further attack when the time was ready.

In the center of the lines, back and behind and above was the Sultan's tent. And before that, the Sultan himself, sitting astride a marvelous white stallion, stone still, like a statue. His rank was revealed by the others who lined either side for consul and still others who rode up to report and take orders. This stone statue, the robed sultan atop the white stallion and beneath the red turban, was the man driving this huge war machine against the city. He seemed arm with the same sort of patience which hid within these old walls.

Marc leaned out and over the all to see the damage of the cannons. There were now pits in the wall where cannon had been successful in chipping away the face of the rocks, breaking into the larger stones, but the seam and structure was unchanged. It was damage stone masons could correct, if the firing stopped, if the hostilities ceased.

He saw Longo, next to the Emperor himself, studying the situation and strode over to them. Longo was intent on his gaze but lightened with cheer when he saw the constable. "Good Greetings,' he smiled, "I see you slept well and long. Just what we had intended for our guest of honor." His face relaxed again, "you see that" his gauntlet gleamed in the morning sun as the pointed towards the Sultan's and his tent. Marc stared had and saw that before the ten, closer to the cannon line were two huge guns. "Those are the bombast. Cannon bigger than this world has ever seen, and we", he smiled again, "have the honor of trying them out!" The men laughed. The emperor was busy taking and giving dispatches. He was not given to levity like Longo. Marc almost felt shame in enjoying Longo's humor. He had not earned the right to take these things as lightly as Longo did. He wanted to show no offense in the presence of the emperor and so cut short this enjoyment of the wit.

Longo turned to the emperor. "they are a bit too comfortable out there, laying siege to us, and perhaps we should sally forth and test their resolve more closely. I think a quick skirmish might take their minds off the progress of the cannon. Who knows, with any luck we might find a way to reach those bombasts and pull them down." The emperor nodded slowly, thoughtfully, considering the plan but tempering it with his own experience. This emperor was not unfamiliar with warfare. He conferred with Longo and seemed to agree upon some plan. He turned and left with a troop of attendants following after him. Longo turned back to Marc.

"You find your cargo Yet? The university will be easy to find, ask anyone along the way. Start from the inn where your men are in barracks and continue into the city along the orchards, you'll see the spires of the churches that surround the university temples. Xerxes is in the library, a splendid temple. I plan to spend some time there once this nuisance is ended." He nodded at the sultan.

Just then the bombasts were fired. They were much louder than the other guns. They splintered more rock off the wall and worse, were focused at the same spot. Their aim was confirmed by a great cheer going up from the Turks. The days of unending bombardment had dulled their spirits till now. Now this was something new to cheer about. The Sultan sat motionless as before, but his generals were waving, excited and animated.

"We may just have to do something about this," said Longo. "See me when you get back." The smile returned, 'we have a plan to go on the attack. I'd like your thoughts of it. We may ride out tomorrow. Go get your books. We'll talk later." Without waiting for a response Longo turned and hailed several of his men to confer and take orders. Marc felt like a student at class feast and less like a soldier or officer. Yet he had his duties and orders and he needed to finish them before he worried about his place in the next scheme of things. Battle. He relished the idea of attacking, but was concerned about the plan. What horse would charge such a monstrous sound and fury as those cannons. And the effect on muscle and bone must be ten times that of its splintering of rock. One well-placed shot would down a dozen men and turn a score or two more. They would have to ride around the shot. Maybe the cannon could not be aimed that low, or that quickly. Yes, speed would be their ally.

He was already off into the plan as his feet hit the connecting bridge to the middle wall. He was lost in thought before he reached the barracks. Jon met him outside and reported in. Most everyone was accounted for. Asif sat beside the inn's door just as comfortable in the dust of the road as he were a soldier at bar. Marc nodded through the gates. Inside were the monk and sister, sitting together at a table in the courtyard. 'Yes," said Jon, "she is talking, only a little, but she moves now with the rest of us and seems closer to her old self. He seems less like his old self. The men are glad to see them but skittish in their company. Still," he said, "I think It is progress."

Marc agreed and was happy at the sight. He told Jon quickly of the arrival of the bombasts. Without a word he somehow told Jon of his concern for their effectiveness. "We may attack them as soon as tomorrow."

This Jon enjoyed hearing. "We'll be ready." Jon turned to ready for tomorrow's action as Marc hastened off to find this university. He was not even sure what he was looking for. It might be like some of the academies he saw in Lyon. Great schools, taller and broader perhaps than a church. He would look for the presence of scrolls and books among the people who gather there. He was looking, he guessed, for a marketplace without food or goods, just conversation and manuscripts.

He tried Longo's advice and asked people along the way. Many other people he appealed to recognized him or knew of him in some way, as if he stood out by his color or dress. They were all eager to assist him in any way. The languages presented something of a challenge: there were so many, but being so diverse, each citizen had a patience for the difficulty and ways around it. Each citizen was helpful and often stopped others to enlist help with the language or the deciphering of the message. Many knew more than one language and for a time Marc felt very ignorant and peasant like in his knowledge. There were sign languages and gestures that were universal. Marc spread his arm out, pal upturned when he stopped someone and asked the question about the university. This word, university, he found was well recognized. Many hands confirmed the way.

By and by he found the university, he was wrong about the size of the building. He was right about the size but wrong about it being one building. He was actually in a market place of ideas, just as he imagined it, but the university was contained in many buildings which seemed to be organized around the square. These were roman and Greek masterpieces of beauty, white marble glistening in the sun, tall columns and archways meant to dwarf man and remind him of the scale and grandeur of the gods. He was but an ant climbing among the Parthenon of the Gods worshiped for so long by the Romans and Greeks and the Byzantines, and there were many who still now, in the face of so many Christians, still held to the old ways. In a city full of such mingled and mixed religions and ways of life, there was a peacefulness about it, as there as about the mix of languages among the citizens. An understanding of the difference of idea and people's rights to choose which they live among, but to live peacefully so. It was a shame that such a city itself would become the target of destroyers.

Marc enjoyed taking in the sights, the sound of many languages speaking fervently about cherished beliefs. There was discourse everywhere and while there was disagreement, there was no discord. This was like family feuding about which meals to bring to festival, or drunkard arguing over how would have the honor of buying the next round. There was passion everywhere, nothing of anger or violence or ill will.

The buildings were magnificent and soon the muscles in his neck arched from being pulled so short in the back as he started up at them, letting the sun come at them from all angels as he moved along the sun dial of the open square.

Inside the museum, which sat atop a score of long steps, the marble cooled the air and the columns converged to walls to stop the outside din and provide a silence respectful of the sanctuary. It was a church for books, he thought to himself.

He now drew the target of a man in his quest and asked those inside of Xerxes. Some knew and others did not and the trail of help lead him deeper into the library till he was at its back. Then through the rear entrance he was guided to another building, smaller and certainly not as grand and through that were many people toiled among stacks of books and scrolls, as though they were preparing for some giant sale. Marc envied those who had the time and ability to sit upon a bench and pour over some document of great interest or sprawl upon the floor itself near some shaft of sunlight to spend time with the words of another, long dead and long proven in their wisdom or storytelling.

In the smaller building, these people hustled about their business, not examining the scrolls or tomes for more than a moment, to ascertain their nature and assemble them with others into crates and onto carts and ferry them here and there. The direction, though, were the same. He was shown the back door and there was a neighborhood of even smaller buildings, some the size of mere houses. He wandered out and into them, still able to see the dark shadow of the library temple as it cut into the light of the sun itself. In one such building he was told that Professor Xerxes was that man over there, toiling away with a box of books and disappearing out through yet another door. He was dressed more like a craftsman than the white robed librarians and scholars of the temple proper. He followed him out.

The old man, with salt and pepper beard and hair, labored his box into a small place which smelled of new construction, of wet mortar and clay. There were indeed blocks set about outside in piles and some students, younger scholars, carrying them about as it hey were books as well. He could not make sense of the activities here. He hailed the professor who stopped and stood upright and then looked about as if waking in a strange land. He hailed him again and the men locked eyes. The professor eyes glistened somewhat, as if he recognized the constable. Marc offered his hand. As they clasped, he told the professor of his lost cargo and how it was indeed meant for the Cardinal instead. At this the professor squeezed hard and his eyes lit up like lanterns. "Yes, yes", he said in Marc's own language. "We have your bibles!"

Marc winced, the secret contents of his cargo being so easily revealed to many within ear shot and while a few looked up, most seemed not to concern themselves. The professor seemed astute enough to pick up on this and confided more lowly "worry not, the Bible are safe, and what a marvel. You must tell me about them. Made by machine? The word of God turned out by a thing of man and not the hand of man itself? Amazing!"

The professor seemed to be musing along more than asking Marc for information. "I know not their origin other than what I was told." He seemed no harm in sharing with the professor who has already guessed at most of which Marc knew.

But the professor was way ahead of him, "They are able now to make these books by the hundreds in a week's time. One or two men, toiling alone. And they are created by the hand of man, but no longer with the hand upon a quill but that of a handle of a pressing machine which pushes letters by the page full onto the sheet itself." The professor looked at Marc as thought they were sharing a joke together: "the word manuscript itself means written by the hand, but now we need a new word for this new way. Maybe machine-u-script?" He chuckled while Marc smiled politely.

The professor seemed to sense the urgency of Marc's unease. "The Bibles have been reloaded, examined by many and well appraise and appreciated, what a marvelous opportunity for those who love books you understand, but they have been resettled in their trunks and await you in a cart. I will send a student for them." He held onto Marc's arm while he turned to implore a student in a language Marc had not heard before. The n student ran off for the errand, happy to serve any special request of the professor.

Xerxes turned his bright blue eyes back upon the constable. "Come. We've a few minutes to wait for your wagon. I'll have a student rive you back so you will have no difficulty being a stranger here in our new city. How do you find it? It is a collection of mankind's greatest efforts in all areas. Take this library for example." The professor seemed to be in no need of an answer from Marc on any of his questions and prattled on as if accustomed to teaching without response, talking without interruption he also seemed intent on towing the visitor as he walked, refusing to release his arm.

"This city has seen so much; I wish I could tell you all that it has seen. The construction by the great Emperor Constantine the First over eleven hundred years ago and all the history and legend and lore I s more than one man can recall, of course, which is why we have books, it allows man, any man, to conquer time and distance and pass on knowledge from the dead to the yet born. Come, there's someone I want you to meet"

This last was said as if all were understood, and all was agreed on. The professor seemed sure with all his knowledge, or maybe all knowledge.

They walked out of one building and into another where the two men stared staring at empty walls. The professor blinked as if he were getting used to the light again. "I sorry, I could have sworn there was someone in here." They turned and walked out. "Wait a moment." He let go of Marc's arm finally and went back inside. He could hear him call out "Nyad?"

Marc thought that Nyad were some sort of wood nymphs. Was the old man senile? Was he conjuring up some sort of sprit, or trying to? It would be understandable if the pressure of the siege had made everyone crazed. He through he heard whispering, two voices. Then out of the darkened room and out into the brilliant sunlight came a goddess draped in a green dress flowing to her ankles. A scholar of sort, though all curves and tresses, whose make up was Beauty itself.

Marc was not sure but he may had taken a step back from the sight. She stopped close enough to touch him though didn't., She spoke: "My name is Nyad. I am honored to meet you as is the professor. I will prepare a dinner for you in your honor upon your return from delivery to the Cardinal. The professor has much he would like to talk to you about, if your duties permit."

She spoke in soft low voice, borrowed from bells or harp string. He was not sure but he may not have made a noise, let alone reply one way or the other. She turned and went back into the room. He gathered his wits and then tried to follow in after her but again, the room was empty. Where did she go? He stepped outside again to look for the professor.

"She is lovely, isn't she?" Marc whirled as the professor came out of the same empty room. He looked back inside to see if it also held the goddess. "She's is a student of mine though she is more worthy of being a scholar of her own, she will not brook too many people. I had to use some effort to get her to extend our invitation to you. I know enough about life outside of books to know that you would less likely refuse the offer from her than from me, a grizzled old librarian." The professor was enjoying a laugh to himself as Marc wondered about the magic of the empty room

There, there's you cart. He'll drive you" the professor indicated the student on the wagon through the alignment of open doors through the smaller temple before them. "When you return from your business, no matter the time of night, we will be waiting here to sup with you. It is a great honor you will be doing us." Still smitten by Nyad's appearance, and disappearance, the professor easily steered Marc toward the cart and just as quick was back to his duties toiling along just as he had found him, busy with the unfathomable work of moving books from this pile to that, like a worker ant.

All along the ride to the palace, Marc pondered the mystery of the empty room. Was there some secret entrance, and if so, what for and why the secrecy? Why the hiding for him and to what purpose? Marc felt no alarm when he recalled the motion and countenance of the professor or the goddess. Nothing made him tingle with suspicion or fear, though he was indeed tingling with the sight of a shy beautiful vision. And an invitation! He was unsure what business they had with him or what he could say or do to entertain or amuse a professor and a goddess, but he had not refused the invitation. He could certainly ignore it, or send back regrets with the boy who drove the wagon, but he felt that he was helplessly pulled into this engagement and was not sure at all if he wanted to fight against it.

Was the goddess and the professor the same person? He almost started when this though crossed his mind. Had he conjured up not another person but another form? That would explain the sudden appearance and disappearances. And if so, which one was the true form? Was the professor disguises d as a beauty or the beauty hiding as a professor? This was crazy foolishness, he told himself. A man of evidence and proof plagued by myths and fables. Still, the library was full of powerful and ancient and secret knowledge and the professor had it all at his beck and call. Maybe a book of spells could conjure up exactly what he saw, or fool him into think that was what he saw. Maybe it was the professor who stood before him and he saw only a beautiful woman, but if so, one he had never seen before. She was of this land, this city, of a people he had not traded with before.

That was it. He would go back to the professor's for dinner if only for the chance to see the two of them in the same place at the same time. That much of the mystery would be solve. But then a new set of worries et on him. Who was she, if she was real? A daughter, wife, lover? Did she have another man? Were they alone? Did she live under a vow disavowing men? He realized his worries were forming from his fear that she was beyond his reach and only then did he realize that he was reaching for her.

If the professor was a wizard, maybe he could wish away the army that threatened the, maybe there was a curse or spell that would harden the city walls or weaken the Sultan's bombasts.

The wagon was dead still. He looked at the boy student who stared back. They were at the palace. "Wait here." He told the boy. The wagon was not to be unguarded even though Marc could not imagine anything befalling it now that it was in the city. Still, a guard, even a student, wouldn't be unwise.

He found cardinal Isidore after being directed to his study. The Cardinal was supping and offered Marc to join him. He could not refuse. As they broke bread and dank wine, Marc again found himself in the position of audience instead of reporting in. A bible was brought to the Cardinal as the wagon had been passed from the boy to the Cardinal's guards and then staff.

"These," said the Cardinal as he handled the book, "will best serve us dispersed among the faithful of the army. With five hundred of them, they will go about one for every four soldiers. I will see to it that they are so distributed. If it strengthens the faith of the soldiers, then it serves us all with its strength."

Marc thought that somehow the books were destined to circulate among the unbelievers but he could see that circumstances had changed. They were walled in. The books, as the professor had said, could last for centuries. There would be time in the life of these Bibles to be handed from many men. What difference would it make for them to begin in the hands of the faithful. These were decisions that were not up to him and there was good reason that they were left to men like the Cardinal who knew more about these matters.

It seemed that the Cardinal handled the Bible roughly. Maybe he was used to handling of Bibles and it had less reverence to him than to someone like the constable but Marc had thought it would be the other way around. That as a tool of the trade, so to speak, the Cardinal would be handling it with more respect. Maybe he was testing the integrity of the machine-made Bible, to see if had the substance and quality of what man had always rendered by hand. Maybe it was contempt for the method. Marc could see reason in the last two arguments.

He could also see that he was being fattened by the hospitality of the city. There was surly no shortage of food. And then he recalled the new clothes laid out for him, New but perhaps not pristine as there may be a surplus of unworn clothes in the city. A hundred thousand people but melted former greater numbers. What was not taken on the road was left behind and now at the disposal of those who did stay. A riches of abandoned goods. The shadow of that the city had been only a year ago.

"We have so many infidels right here in the city," the cardinal was musing to himself as much as to his company, but then he locked eyes with Marc, harshly. "If we had the allegiance to Rome that Rome deserves, we'd have the aid of the Pope. There are too many in this city who will not swear allegiance to Rome, and so we have cut off our right arm, as well as our road to salvation. The irony is that if these walls fail, the citizens within that did not embrace the true faith will have caused the death of us all, but it will be their souls who are cast into damnation. There is no room in heaven for the unfaithful. Those who worship Byzantine gods and the gods of moors and Arabs will burn in eternal torment, but they will drag us with them into the torment of defeat. This city is about to be spoiled with the touch of infidels because it would not reconcile itself to the Vatican. That's why we have no greater aid. We are cast out to save ourselves or die."

Marc was uneasy. He was truly on the side of the Cardinal and the Cardinal did not take it otherwise, but there common good was not all good. He was hearing the same bickering of religion and views that he had heard at the taverns, before a brawl. Here, though, it was a man so close to God that Marc did not expect this level of vehemence.

The cardinal seemed to recover, soften a little. "You do not know, as an outside to this city, what we have suffered through. Just months ago, there was rioting in the streets. We fail to come together to ask assistance in any cohesion until it was too late. The anti-unionists finally offered a token pact to recognize Rome but it was too little too late, and too transparent as well. It was for the sake of the war and the city only. At times it seems that as many gods that are worshipped around here, it is the city that is most regarded by all. The one thing we agree on. The Queen of Cities commands a loyalty where gods cannot."

"And that's why I will be up there on the all with you, sword to sword, shoulder to shoulder." The Cardinal smiled. "I am not a man of the cross alone, but know the value of being a solider of God. I will cleave the infidels who threaten both city and faith, both crown and this:" he held up the new Bible. I will shield myself with this and we will see its power first hand. God bless you for coming to this fight, for being the good knight you are."

The Cardinal blessed Marc who kneeled quickly for the benediction. He was fortified by both the completion of his mission and the blessing of the Cardinal. It would be, he hoped, enough to ward off any evil spells cast by wizard or witch, friend or foe. For it as his intention now that the cargo, the secret weapon had been delivered, to thrust himself into the matter of whether the professor was a wizard, the goddess a witch, or himself, smitten hard in love.

Chapter Three:

The wooden cart wheels creaked and cried as they stumbled over every crack in the road, the paving stones worn smooth by centuries of travel. Marc considered them: beneath them were no doubt the ruins of earlier neighborhoods and houses and buildings, brought down by time or disaster or even the need of new and better. Some parts of the city were rumbled and covered and reused by men who just had the time and money to put their better vision into fact.

He was being a constable again. Looking at the ordinary and figuring from it the extraordinary, seeing the past history he wasn't alive to see then. He wondered how much more history he would live to see now.

He envied the professor, being able to travel through time to the minds of other men through the written word. How wealth the professor was to live among such great books, stores secret and public of times forgotten, details of the immortal stories others never hear. It would be like being a confessor to the great minds of the ages. Hearing all that they had to tell. The constable envied the professor.

And the envy did not stop at books. The goddess with whom he worked, and dined, wait: did they live together? Were they man and wife? These were ideas that tormented the man who once again became the constable. He was going back for an investigation. At least that's what he told himself. Lying to a constable as well: he was going back to see if there was the slightest chance that they could be closer.

He had to tread carefully here. This could be the man's daughter, or wife or lover or concubine, anyone of which would evoke a death threat if the wrong overture was made. He had to tread carefully, keeping his heart on a tight leash and not letting his desires wander too far from his role as guest and stranger.

Still, there was something that the professor wanted from him, hence the invitation, and the beguiling server of the invitation. The professor must be somewhat aware of the woman's effect on men, all men, this man. And yet he was comfortable with it. How was that to be?

There were mysteries to be solved and the cart grazed along the road at a maddening slowness.

Then he thought he spotted someone in the crowd. He thought it was Asif. Well, at least I'm not seeing giants and ghosts, he thought to himself. Or witches. He quickly compared the two beauties he had known, and then briefly the dancer who nearly invaded his room at the palace, and then dismissed it all for fear of intertwining the women into a form of madness.

He needed to do something about Asif. His role here was over, he thought. No one else to interpret. There were plenty of locals which could speak the languages Asif was sent to do. He had done his job and did it well. He was free to move about the city but that was quite another thing than having a purpose, a place to belong. Perhaps the professor could take him on at the university. Asif was learned, and read, and showed interest in the Bible he carried in the dungeons of Lyon. Maybe this would be an opportunity Asif would welcome. he would discuss it with the professor first, and if a possibility, then offer it to Asif. Give Asif a place away from the walls and fighting. Asif was not a warrior and Marc felt that to press him into service as a soldier was an injustice, a harsh payment for service well done.

Night was creeping up on the city by the time they returned to the university. The student showed Marc the way to the professor's quarters, two or three buildings over and beyond the one where they met, where they disappeared into. And out of again. He tingled with anticipation of solving this riddle, or was it just of meeting her again?

The guns sounded faint at this distance into the city but they still sounded. Once and sometimes twice an hour a volley would bite into the outer wall of the Queen of Cities while all about her the citizens droned on about their business, looking up only occasionally, as if a shared chore that rotated among a team of watchers. The guns fired reliably but never evenly. they could discharge twice in twenty minutes and sometimes wait as long as an hour, and anything in between, but they rarely let an hour creep past without jarring the peace of the city.

The great wooden door to the house was open but there was a purple blanket drawn across the opening as the nights tended to chill quickly during spring time. The house was sheltered against the cold but open for his arrival. He knocked, the student trailed away into the darkness, his services completed, off to fend himself for the evening. Marc did not know what to expect but it was the bushy head of the professor that pooped out of the curtain. He seemed to focus on Marc and beyond him on all sides all at once. "Welcome", he smiled briefly' "welcome friend. I am so glad you could join us." Marc caught the plural. The professor was not sloppy with words. His heart quickened. They were not one and the same. There was no illusion, she was there as well as he.

And then, as if to burst it, the professor drew the blanket aside to admit him and there in the dark room, on the far wall, a goddess in a white sheer dress, lifted a lantern to the wall. Its light ran through her dress and around her breasts and throat and straight into his drunken eyes.

She turned and smiled to him as he ducked out of the doorway and into the room. "And you remember Nyad." The professor then chuckled to himself as if recalling something amusing. The constable knew that no one could forget Nyad.

She nodded to him and dipped slightly, the darkness returning the privacy to her gown. It was white and embroidered with bands of gold and was what Marc thought would be the uniform of the Goddesses. He could not think of no other dress he might have expected her to appear in. She turned and stepped through another doorway into a back room, perhaps the kitchen. The room was filled with two tables, one was piled high with papers and scrolls, maps and plans, quills and crystals and candles and lanterns: all the makings of a study for the professor but seemed chaotic, heaped with extra as though the second table, now set for dinner, had been hastily cleared from its usual function as a second desk, and everything heaped aside for company.

"You must have great things to tell me from your travels" Xerxes said, and then notice as he settled down to the table that his guest was distracting his glances towards the back room. "AH, yes, Nyad is beautiful, no?"

The two men listened to the report of cannons for a moment, then, confidentially, Xerxes leaned in. "Her husband was killed by the barbarians.' Xerxes nodded towards the walls. "She had no one else, a neighbor, really, I took her in. Now I worry for her., the barbarians are besieging both the city and her mind. I rely on work, books and, well, you, to distract her." Marc looked up in surprised. Xerxes grinned plainly.

"Tell me friend, who have you've seen along the road to the city? News of anything is welcomed."

Marc gave a spattering report of people they had run into, reconnaissance from Asif and so forth, nothing critical, nothing of military value, nothing of the secrets he carried or the mission he had. Nothing of the chances of the city which rose and fell with each wave of opinions. Xerxes had his own: "I fear for the worst and prepare for it, but I hope for the best and cheer for that. You will wipe out these barbarians for us, won't you" still smiling, the men shared the enormity of the request. Then again, closely, whispered: "for her". The joy leapt from Xerxes face for a moment, then Nyad walked into the room.

Neither man saw the joy spread over the other's face. Nyad noticed them both and kept her gaze upon the plate as she spread the food upon the table. She sat opposite them. Finally, she lifted her face in the silence and looked full into the face of each man, as if besieged with two suitors. She kept her expression pleasant but unflinching.

"Nyad is just as curious as I am about your travels." Xerxes turned the attention and conversation back to the crusader. Marc told them more, he told them of Asif and the dungeons, and asked if Asif might find use among the library now, and told them of people he interpreted for, especially the book trader who Xerxes seemed to know. He turned to Nyad and nodded. "You see, he has made it through, though that was probably the last of them."

Nyad offered an explanation, the first she had spoken and her voice was like cool bells jingling in the spring night's breeze. "The Professor has been working hard to preserve the library. He has many strategies, but one of them was to smuggle the books west. He has sold, bartered, traded and even given them away to anyone who can offer passage to a safe harbor in some other church, university or school. These books mean the world to him." She almost blushed with the speech's conclusion.

"They mean the world to me but you mean the stars". There was something between them. They both enjoyed this compliment and just as quickly they both seemed to set it aside lest they make their guest uneasy. There as more to this conspiracy than the ease of their guest. They both wanted something from him, he more than her. She had reservations. Xerxes prodded Marc some more.

Marc recounted the trip to the dervish camp and they were spellbound. Marc enjoyed the attention. It was flattering to hold the attention of such a learned scholar. Yet it was intoxicating to hold the rapture of such a beautiful woman. No children, Marc has guess, of the marriage. And he was curious how long ago it has been. But his time was to talk and not to inquire.

Marc even told Xerxes of his dream and the city sign and Xerxes concurred the interpretation. Istanbul was the pronunciation in Arab of the phrase, "on to the city" or "to the city!"

"Awf!" Blustered Xerxes, with a wave of his hand. "Infidels, barbarians, a blowing wind. They will pass. Do you know how many people have coveted this city in its history? We've been swarmed by Arabs many times before, and Huns and even crusaders. It was only the crusaders who managed to get the city, and only then with inside help. I fear that more than barbarians: that we tear ourselves apart. Save the barbarians the job. They will be the jackals at our own defeat."

Marc wanted to know more of this. Xerxes complied: 'this city was founded just three hundred years after Christ was put to the cross. It was the second head of Rome itself. The new capital of the empire and named for Caesar Constantine who founded it. Before that it was a small city which no one bothered much with. But as the capital of the eastern empire, everyone wanted it.'

Marc darted his eyes at Nyad each chance he got, whenever Xerxes was wound up in his history, or distracted by some bug on the table cloth, or needed to adjust the wax dripping down the candle. Every so often, Nyad would look back, and smile as if a duty of a hostess, but they eyes were holding something else back.

"First the Visigoths wanted the city, then the Huns. Even Attila himself stormed the city but failed to take it. He settled for a treaty and some tribute. The he tried again and failed again. Somewhere in the long list of barbarians barking at our doors, we managed to build a great city with a great civilization, emperor Justin delivered us the Justinian code. You'd have thought that would have been the last word on bad behavior for the barbarians, but they just kept switching cloaks. Now they are huddled outside as the sultan's army. Illiterate barbarians!'

Marc and Nyad studied each other for a moment. The food went down slowly as Xerxes continued his lecture. Marc felt this must be what it is like to be admitted to the class of a great professor. He was torn between his thirst for knowledge and his lust for beauty. The lamp light peeked through Nyad's blonde tresses.

"We were attacked by Syrians, and then Persians, and then Vandals and so on. The worst anyone ever did was to inspire us to add another wall here to there. No one got in. We saw Lombards and Avars and Arabs and Franks and everything else. No one won till the crusaders. Only the black plague crept past our doors on its own. The crusaders, we let in.'

The candles guttered and Nyad rose to replace them as the night wore then down. Marc watched as the curves of her body turned to press against her dress and offer their outline to his feasting eyes. Sitting down, he looked past the hem of her neckline and saw the soft shadows blessed between her breasts and then, she looked at him. He was flustered. She was the same, polite, a smile, no rebuke. Something was afoot.

"Mohammed himself wanted this city, and maybe that's where all our troubles arise form: Islam. There cannot be enough Jerusalems or Constantinoples or even Romes in the world to satisfy the Muslims. Theirs is a greed for empire than soaks all the maps with blood. And if there is anything that will knock down the doors of our city, it will be this fanaticism, this" he nodded at Marc, "this ferocious dervishness, that does us in."

The professor was straying, oblivious at times to the two in his company. Marc nudged him. "How did the crusaders take this city. Weren't they allies?"

"Allies, on yes, allies in deed, we all are till something like politics, or greed, or betrayal comes around. The nits every man for themselves until we are all reduced to barbarians.' Xerxes stayed quiet for a moment. Then without prodding, as if he had located the book from which to read this next part from: "let's see, it was well after the Saracens siege, after Suleiman, after the Bulgars... You know we sent a lot of ships to the bottom of the seas defending this city. That's our true fortification. The seas and navies allow us to force the enemy to concentrate all their effort on the walls, which we defend and have tripled. Barbarians are easily fooled like that. Have you seen those wall, have you seen the Golden Horn? By Gods, you've got to see the golden Horn. Nyad, you must show our guest the sights. I am sure he's been too busy being soldier to tour the non-combatant walls of the city" Xerxes was illuminated again, as if having solved some sort of puzzle. Nyad still polite and unchanging. She did peer directly into Marc's eyes and confirm the second invitation.

"I'd be honored to show you the golden Horn, if you have not yet seen it." Marc figured it for quite a sight, and the offer genuine. His heart was jumping at the chance to spend more time with Nyad, and time alone, away from the professor. But his head was throwing on the brakes, asking himself what was behind the condition, as if seeing it once was enough, or that she did not want to impose, or sought out of the obligation. His mouth was not listening to his mind. He surprised himself by accepting in mid thought.

"Tomorrow night, then, its settled" the professor was only too happy. Then he returned to his story as though the way had been cleared for its competition. "Let's see, it was after the Great Saladin, after Constantinople launched the first three crusades, yes, yes. It was during the time of the fourth crusade."

Marc's mind turned its gaze back to the bearded Xerxes.

"The bankers, and it's always the money men who corrupt things, it was the banker who financed the fourth crusade, had the army over a barrel. They had provided a fleet which the crusaders could not afford to pay for. They needed the fleet to said to war. To get the money, they allowed themselves to become goons of the bankers.'

Nyad interrupted with a grin: "you're getting the editorial with the history now"

"It's true!" Xerxes feigned a wounded spirit but didn't miss a step. Scholar and pupil had a smooth rapport the stranger envied.

"The money men had the arm y at their disposal and sent them to secure a town they had lost to barbarians and regain their cherished seaport. This done, there was not enough loot and plunder available, even from their own seaport, to repay them. Churches were sacked and crosses melted for their gold by crusaders themselves! What a sorry state of affairs, but it drove to worse. In their finite wisdom and their infinite greed, they told the crusaders to march on Constantinople. There was a dispute about lineage and the bankers exploited it to dethrone the sitting emperor and install the Flanders. The prize in all this was that the new emperor sold off the city's treasures to finance the backing of the crusaders. The rich got rich, blood flowed, churches were looted, the people were subjected to rapine and plunder and when it was all over, the fourth crusade was ready to fight its true foes after having decimated its own treasuries, subjects and morals."

"Many say we have never recovered our greatness. You've seen the statues of marble? No value to Marble that's been carved. But the bronze statues used to outnumber them and were works of art this city was proud of. They were all smelted down for coins and weapons." A sadness roosted in Xerxes. It flowed from his face through his shoulders and the evening seemed to droop on him.

"I have work to do," this, almost bitterly, and then, more hopeful: "I leave you in Nyad's company. She has a treat for you and I hope you accept it, it is with my blessing, you've been a kind and entertaining guest. I've books to... Work on." Xerxes left his plates half covered with neglected food and shook hands with Marc. Then he went out through the purple blanket, pausing half way and telling Marc to send Asif around to see him, he was sure he could put him to good use.

When he turned, Nyad had already begun clearing the stone table of dishes. He watched he work, and walk, going in and out of the back room. He enjoyed her movement like an after-dinner wine or a lush desert atop a satisfying meal. He had many questions but only one tongue and it was tied in thought. No children, he assumed, but certainly old enough to have a child of ten or more. She was not a youth, but not quite aged. Perhaps it was only the etching of misery that made her not look like a student. A face, beautiful as it was, that had worn responsibility and great tragedy. He did not want to conjure up ill feelings by asking about her husband or her past. He would ask about Xerxes. There was more between them than books and scrolls.

"I lived near him, and watched him for years. I always envied a life like his, access to the great books., Not a common thing for women to have.' She intoned this from the back room, then walking out, "when my husband was killed, I needed a way to live. Soldiers have such poor pension. But I thought if I could work for the professor, I could get closer to the things I wanted to know.'

"Which was?" Marc prodded.

"Everything I wanted to know everything. I wanted to know why my husband died and why I could not be a woman among the lyceum and what the bronze statutes once looked like and many other things. I had a void to fill but that void was on top of an already long life of questions. Father was a traveler and mother always greeted him with questions and great curiosity about the things he had seen on his journeys. I always envied them so close in sharing those stories.' Then, sadly, "they died of plague. I had to marry early." And then brighter: "hearing you talk reminded me of them." She turned back into the dark room and emerged with a white lien cloth which she spread upon the table. He was still spellbound by her form. She returned with a chalice and towels.

"I would like to offer you a massage. It is a token of our appreciation for your presence. You are gracing our home as well as our city." Marc's mind was moving too fast. Did she say 'our home". Did she live with the professor in marriage? And a massage. Surely this overly educated woman was not ignorant of the effect on men. Maybe that was the intent.

She could see him having difficulty with the offer. She strove to make it more plain. "If you will remove you clothes and lay down upon the table, I will tend to you." Then, as if committed him, she poured oil from the chalice onto her hand and then rubbed her palms together to spread the oil. She noted his continued hesitation. "Is the room too cold?" She smiled and was inviting enough.

Again, his heart had faster command of his body than his mind and he found himself slowly standing to remove his tunic. He was not sure how far he would go, or this would go. "Are you and the professor..." He didn't want to choose the words. Nothing sounded right other than the beginning of the question. It had to be asked, it didn't have to be finished. If she ignored him, he would accept that, and accept what she was offering, whatever it was. Wherever it led.

"The professor has taken me in." She said, plainly, thoughtfully, as if what she said now mattered. "He is a kind man and I work for him. I would do anything for him." She let that last hang in the air to show its import. Then, as if explaining, "he has asked me to tend to you, to offer you this."

Was this some strange hospitality ritual. Was the professor offering to share his wife, or lover? Was she offering that? Or was this nothing more than as service., he had heard strange things about Romans and Greeks and other foreigners, but had no hint what was right and wrong among them. He was giving in to the moment before him. He bared his back and that was all, He took off his sword and gauntlets, worn by habit more than proximity to battle. She waited patiently while he readied himself and then climbed upon the table and laid down. He turned his head and felt the slick hands light upon his back and glide towards his shoulders. He thought of swans landing on the water.

He felt his muscles train towards her touch. She explored his shoulders and down to his lower back and out towards each flank and then stopped. Something was wrong, he feared. She did not like the touch of him. She did not like being thrown to him. But then the oil poured directly onto his back from the chalice and she brought her fingers into the wet pool and splayed the oil outwards towards all points of his back. His muscles were surrendering now.

She changed the topic to match the movements of her hands. "the golden Horn is beautiful in the spring time., It catches the setting sun and twists it into the waters, as if lacing each wave with light. It is reason enough to have built this city here and anchor it for a thousand years, just to enjoy that sight. I will be very happy to show it to you tomorrow."

Yet there was some lingering thought hiding in her voice, some reservation that the constable picked out but could not make plan, could not push it into the light well enough.

The silence melted out of his shoulder s like months of fatigue. She bent over him to rub harder now and he felt her body raft up against his in spots. First at the waist, then the ribs. She moved around to the other side to reach better and he saw that her gown was stained with oil where they touch, as if a stain of sin. He was certainly thinking enough sinful thoughts for it to show like that.

She bent over to do his neck, which was easier to reach after the shoulders had retreated in utter surrender. This was not the hands of a window who had not touched a man for years. This was a woman who knew how to do what she was doing, who was practice and these ideas excited the constable about her relationship. Finally, he could not stand them. "Do you belong to Xerxes?" There was no more denying the tension that was welling within him in a different way. There was no more pretending that this seduction was innocent or something that was easily set side. He had to know before going on.

She read him through his skin. Knowing more from his body than his voice. "I belong to no one," she said smoothly, almost cooing it to him as she worked her fingers deeper into the sides of his neck and shoulders. And then, while letting her fingers assure him through the silence, added" I give myself to him, I would do anything for him." Marc sunk with her reiteration of her devotion. He did not want another dancing girl thrown at him from the gratitude of strangers. He was in this fight of his own and would have to fight as hard as he could to get out alive. He needed no treasures or gifts or bribes or rewards. He struggled to remind himself that he was still serving Christ in this battle.

She leaned closer, and whispered as Xerxes had done: Her breasts had touched his back and were pulled across his oily back towards his shoulders as she leaned to his ear. "you are different. If I give myself to you, it is because I choose to. Xerxes knows. And approves."

Marc sat up with vehemence at his situation. The goddess stepped back, startled, supplicant and obedient. This was not what he wanted. This was not how he wanted her. "How can you serve two masters!?" Marc was angry with confusion. Blinded by lust, he almost drank from a poisoned cup. He would not share a woman with another man. Yet he could not take his eyes of this other man's woman. It was all he could do to sit up, knowing that would cause her to take her hands away from his yielding skin.

Her breasts were nearly bare by the thin gown that had soaked through with the scented oils from his body. They glistened in the flickering light, as if talking to his eyes the whole time the silence reigned. She blinked and stood quietly. He had nothing more ready to say. She decided to reach out and tame the silence between them.

Slowly, calmly, with the politeness resolution she wore during dinner, she continued; "I serve no man as master. What I give, I give of myself."

He though on this. His eyes were stolen by her beauty glistening through the oil-soaked fabric that caught the flickering light the way a sail catches the wind. He was fighting a mesmerizing vision. She let her hips and belly touch the gown to reveal her shape. She was all that he imagined her to be. And her image choked any words his mind tried to fly. His anger was melting. His lust, though, was boiling again.

She stepped closer, placed her hand upon his hand, as if tending to a startled colt. She let her eyes find his and lift them up. He was afraid there were powerful spells in her face. He was so vulnerable to the spells of women; he knew not to trust himself. Neither could he resist.

"Xerxes is afraid the city will fall. He has sent as many books as he can from her, but the roads, the escape routes, are all shut off now. Now he fears the city will fall, the books will be destroyed. He fears, for me as well. He fears that there is no one to protect me. He has chosen you to do for me what he cannot. He thinks you can protect me."

She let this sink in. Then, he was afraid that she would take one more step and place his head into her bosom and then he would do anything she asked of him. She did not move.

"I do not expect you, or anyone, to protect me from the fate of God. I accept what will happen just as I accept my burden to do what is right. I will fight against defeat, but I will not place on you the responsibility for God's way. Or on him. I will let him have that one notion, that he has done what he can to save me. Hatched this scheme. I agreed to it. I do not know you well but know goodness when I see it. I do this for him but your goodness makes it easy."

Marc's head was swimming with the revelation. This was the conspiracy. He was somewhat sore of savior for hire. How could such a learned man as the professor believe that such an alliance could guarantee the future? Maybe he was old and passing her off. Maybe he was doomed and needed someone to catch her when he died. Maybe he was up to something else. There was too much new information here to make any strong conclusions. He needed time to think. He needed to leave and it was one of the hardest things he had ever done without a sword, but it needed doing and he knew the best way was to do it without thought.

He slid off the table and picked up his tunic and looked her once in the eye to show her there was no fear or hatred, no rejection of her, but of the trade, the deal, he was not to be dealt. She was not to be given away like that. But he didn't know how to say that or anything as well, so he slipped through the purple blanket and out into the cold clear starlight of the night.

He dressed as he walked and the air stung his oiled skin. He saw the lights on in the house where they first met. He looked into the doorway. There the professor was standing, but only half of him! Marc fought to adjust his eyes, wipe the stinging oil from them. There was only half a figure. Then the Professor stepped to the side and his whole body appeared.

Marc was tired of the wizardry tricks of the professor and well irritated at the insolence of the man to share his woman with him. Maybe he was really angry at the old man for having such a goddess for a lover and then treating her so, or for imposing such a job on him as to be a personal bodyguard during the siege. Or was it that the old man had given up so easily on the city? Whatever it was, or it if were all of it, the old man might benefit from a piece of his mind. Marc strode through the open doorway.

The professor turned on him as if he felt the change in winds. "Ah, honored guest! Delightful to see you again." Xerxes stepped forward and then saw the oils on Marc's arm and at once Marc was both embarrassed and disarmed. "I see you accepted the gift we wanted to honor you with. Excellent, excellent. Here, while you are here, there is one more thing I want to show you."

The professor stepped back towards the spot where he was only half visible. He vanished again and Marc took a step or two towards the trouble spot and then realized that it was a false wall that the professor was stepping behind. He stepped over to the wall and beyond it. There, in a narrow passage way, lit by one lamp, was a stack of books piled high to the roof and the professor digging through them. He came back with one in hand, blowing dust of fit. The dust was from the new masonry work installed to hide the books.

"I came across this the other day and thought it relevant and then decided to hid it with the others." Xerxes held the book out but looked at Marc who was peering past him at the passageway. "If the city calls, the barbarians will cart off the books to burn for camp fires. They will be destroyed and lost for all time. There are thousands of original manuscripts here in this city and I want to do what I can. I tried to have the smuggled westward but with the siege, well I became defeated."

Then, closely again, more conspiracy, "only Nyad and I know about this, and you. She is helping me do this, hide these books., We have plenty of abandoned buildings here, A city once filled with millions now down to half or less. Plenty of room and rooms, and I am laboring away to hide these books., If I am wrong, we break them out. If I am right, well, hopefully no one realizes the dimension of these rooms is far different than their outside walls." Then, gleefully, "I am relying on the stupidity of the barbarians to help me trick them away from the books." Then very somberly, "no one else can know-" he locked eyes with his 'honored guest'. "I have not put anyone in the position of offering this secret for safety or revealing this trick under torture. You understand..."

The gravity of the siege fell back upon him and he was nodding in agreement. The secret was safe. So was his host: the toil of hiding the books behind false walls took all the steam out of his own temper. People were doing what they felt they needed to do to survive.

The professor opened the book and let it lay in his hands like a dying bird. His old eyes moved stiffly around the pages. The silence crept in from outside as the professor mulled over his thoughts. Then he spoke, his voice alone in the silence like a storm on a prairie.

"This is a book of history, written by one man. One mere mortal with great aspirations. It is a biography of himself and all the things that he has done in life. In this chapter, here, towards the middle, he conquers..." His quavered. He looked up from the text to his honored guest. "He conquers Constantinople".

The constable fumbled with the thought. How could it be? "Who conquered Constantinople? I thought you told me no had ever done it save the crusaders, who gave it back."

The professor smiled, as if a lesson had been learned by an eager student. "He does", the professor closed the book and pointed to its cover. "The man who wrote this book says in his own history that he conquers Constantinople for all time."

"Who wrote such a thing?"

"He did." The professor nodded again towards the sound of the cannon. The Sultan that sits outside our gates. He wrote this book and in it, has predicted the end of the Queen of Cities."

The professor turned and tossed the book back into the darkness of the stacks behind the false wall. "It is just a book. Anything can be written in a book. It does not make it so." He stiffened as if curing a bad back. We will write out own book about this. We shall see who conquers whom."

The old professor signed, then sniffed and lifted his head to meet the stare of the constable. He looked back at the oil still glistening on his arm. Dust from the masonry disturbed off the Sultan's book had wafted onto it. The old man smiled.

What sort of man writes his own destiny and prints it in a book? A determined man, the constable reasoned, and one with the wealth to see his dreams made true. Marc wondered what the Sultan would think if he could see the professor, outsmarting the barbarian's threat to loot the city, and the irony in his tossing the Sultan's book into the stack with the rest. The professor would save even the man who threatened to destroy them all, books and men and city alike.

His heart softened, softened as if Nyad had gently caressed it just then with the swans of her touch. He would let the old man have the illusion for the moment that he accepted the 'gift' and would not tell him that he knew of his ulterior plans. Instead, he thought he would reward himself for being such a good guest and he told Xerxes this: "Tell Nyad I look forward to tomorrow night."

The professor smiled and the knight stepped out of the room with the wizard who was casting a spell of invisibility over the books of a civilization. There, two buildings away in the grape darkness was the cart. The same student sat upon it waiting for him, his own day not over. He wondered how the professor knew to have him standing by, that he would not have accepted the 'gift' of Nyad and stayed the night. He could have easily let himself slumber under her touch with no further concession from her pleasures.

But he didn't. He was leaving now. He was a bit amused as he climbed into the cart. He had turned down the offers of a goddess. He had more will power than he had thought. And more riches. He looked forward to tomorrow night. The guns sounded. He wondered if there would be a tomorrow night.

Chapter Four:

Marc was standing guard between two crenellations of the rampart. They were under attack. The dervish horde used scaling ladders and as they enemy climbed to Marc's position, he dispatched them one by one. After killing the same man four times, he woke up. He was done with dreams, done with sleep. He stared out at the empty sky. There was no hint of daylight.

The man he killed four times was Bull. Or was it Pup. Once ran through the throat, then bludgeoned, another time tossed off, and then throw down after severing his arm at the elbow. Had he continued to sleep, Pup would continue his relentless climb.

The knots in his shoulders had returned. Despite the most comfortable bed he may have ever slept in during his live, he was like those marble giants on the ramparts. How he missed Nyad's touch. Had the dancing girl been here last night he would have taken her to sweep the lingering touch of Nyad away. Just as sure as he knew it would not have worked.

He was of two minds about her, or more. He didn't know what to think about 'the gift'. Was the professor considering doing something dire? Was he preparing a successor like one might prepare a will? From what Marc knew, they all had the same chance of getting through this alive or not. Unless his chance was less. As a combatant, he might fall at any battle, at any day. They would live and die with the city. Most likely.

If he died in battle, he would not know their fates. And if he lives till the end, and it wend swell, well, then he still didn't know their fates. What did he know? No more than any other man.

There was a scuffle in the hall way and a scratch at the door. He rose and opened it. A page was disappearing down the hallway and under the brass knocker of his door was a note. It read: come to the wall. It was signed by Longo.

The halls and bridges and stairs leading to the wall were well lit and guarded. The city became alive as a fortress. Gates were being oiled and inspected, locks and bolts checked and double checked. The city knew what to do to make itself in hospitable to invaders.

The ramparts were crowded with soldiers and citizens both. There were those who would watch from the walls, people who have homes and families at stake, like keeping vigil on some terrible volcano which smoked for a hundred years and could at any moment come to terrible life.

He made his way through the crowd, past the guards and soldiers to the main part. H eh ad heard the cannon twice since waking. At the target of bombardment, there was a clearing and atop the wall was a row of logs and atop them, were piles of rope. Longo was pacing behind it, checking the stacks which were ten feet high stacked upon the tops of the jagged crenellations. Behind him were men with long poles standing ready. Longo looked up at Marc and grinned as if a school boy about to show a secret trick to his friends.

"Good, Morn, you're just in time" Longo shook his hand as if to be sure he was wide awake for this. "Our engineers have come up with this to slow the progress of the bombardment."

"Will it work?" Marc was unsure what it was that was about to be tried. It looked like a ship's rigging.

"It may or may not. Even if it doesn't stop the crashing of the stones, it will at least conceal the damage and that may be enough to discourage their attempt. At least force them to train their guns elsewhere if they can't see their progress." That was not as rosy an assessment as Marc had hoped for. The defenders were pressed to counter the effects of the gun. The walls were not invincible and now make shift efforts to protect them were being tried.

"These people should not be here," the constable was speaking out. Longo looked the wall up and down He enjoyed the attention.

"It's good for their morale, good show for the enemy out there. They need to see this support, these numbers. At this distance. They can't tell soldier from citizen." Marc had not considered that. There was a clear difference between being a constable and being a siege master.

Longo turned and held up his hand. "Watch this." The men standing by turned and watched the siege master. He put his hand toward the low horizon over the enemy and the poles were lowered from their resting position and placed against the wall, two men were now on each pole, braced to shove the entire mass off the wall. Longo's hand went down and the crew shoved the mass over the side of the wall.

The logs rumbled off the stone works as the crew shouted a heave ho. The mass of ropes followed after the dead weight and the entire mass unfurled like a wicked sail. The ropes crisscrossed like a net for whales and on the outside of the net were cow hides. The bottom of the net was anchored by logs. They thudded against the bottom of the wall, a different sound than the sharp bite of the stone bullets. The citizen crowd and soldiers alike let out a lout ballyhoo. It echoed off the opponents watching in silence below.

The logs bounced once and settled in, pulling the ropes hard. The ropes were anchored against the far side of the wall, tied off to stone work below. As Marc looked down the wall, he could see bales of hay stacked along the wall. The citizens had been busy. While he visited the librarians and worried over his wounded pride, plain folk had worked hard day and night to prepare this defense. The knight felt foolish and small for a moment. Longo, larger than life, stepped back from the wall's precipice and ordered the pole crew to work again.

They placed the long poles down in the cut out of the stone work and angled the poles downward to catch the net. The men threw their combined body weight into their push and shoved the net away from the wall while the log anchors scraped upwards a few feet.

Others were now commanded to bring the bales down the wall to the net line. They lifted them up and tossed them over the side. They dropped down with a hiss along the scarred wall and fell into the catch of the net, stacking atop each other till the pocket was full. The wall was protected and padded. The ropes groan with additional weight as Longo's engineers passed among them to test their strength and gauge their reliability. Here and there other ropes, stout anchor ropes from the wharves on the far side of the city were added and tied off. Some to large stones that were then pushed off the inner side of the wall. It was a feat of engineering.

The Turks watched with great interest. When the huge patch was dropped over the wall, they saw not just cow hides, but the double headed eagle painted on them in black. The Queen of Cities was signaling her disdain. And her pride.

"That will test their mettle". Longo was pleased. Marc had to agree. This certainly inflamed the spirits of the city.

The cannon roared out again. The plumes went up over the Sultan's troops and their stone missiles careened into the wall. The citizens rushed at once to the precipice and leaned over as one. The stone had torn into the cow hide, splintered through the bale of hay and sent its dust and stalks into the air in a small dirty cloud. The wall behind it took the brunt and more of the thousand-year-old wall chipped away, but it was invisible to the Turks, and overlooked by the citizens who sent up another loud cheer.

Daylight had rolled slowly out onto the field. Marc could see that the Turks had made progress in another way. The fosse around the city walls had been partially filled with debris. They had thrown in old equipment, dirt, stones, tree limbs and whole trunks to fill the moat and prepare it to be over run.

Longo join him at the wall with a clap on the back. "At noon, we sally out to give them yet another taste of blood to think about. Choose a dozen of your troops and meet us back here. Longo looked past Marc and left without a word. The emperor was coming down the wall and the citizens all kneeled before him. Longo rose and went to confer. The people went back to the wall. It was a time to celebrate, of them. For him, it was time to suit up.

It was noon. The light favored no one on the battlefield. The city's defenders had organized between the two outer walls at the St. Romanus gate. The constable was in full armor but he was outclassed by many of the knights from the city itself. There was no shortage of armor or weapons and those who did not also have lances were issued one, and those who need more arrows in their quiver ere supplied. Anyone wishing to add a mace or a short sword did so and the armory furnished shields to those without.

What men volunteered from the citizens were well appointed but those chosen to ride out and take the battle to the enemy were few of the citizens and more of the professional soldiers in the ranks. There were Longo and his Italians, the Genoese, the Cretes and Cardinal Isadore's men, and then the dozen from the reinforcements from Lyon. Jon rode up with the Smits and eight more, including Pup. Pup rode past with a steely icy stare that pierce into the constable's heart.

"He heard about the way his brother died." Jon reined his horse closer to Marc's.

"I don't blame him then, for the hatred I just saw."

"Well I do!" Jon spoke sharply. "The battlefield is a wicked place for fates. Anything happens. Anyone is fair game for death at any time. We make our way but not our fates."

Marc warmed in Jon's defense of him. Quietly, he calmed Jon: "Still, we would all feel anger at the fates or whomever should we lose our brother in battle." Marc let his hand fall upon Jon's shoulder, as brother to brother.

"Still," said Jon, "I will not take my sights off him during the battle. Or be far from your side."

Longo raced by to the head of the column, all fanfare and excitement. The battle plan had been agreed upon by the wisdom of a half dozen leaders. Marc had been brief. He was glad that he was not elevated to the council of defenders by virtue of his mission. He was satisfied to be just another soldier, although he still felt responsible for his men. Even Pup. Maybe, especially Pup. He did not want to hand that family its second son to bury.

The troop of two hundred warriors moved towards the massive gate yet the gate did not lift. The men stopped, waited, stirred. Something was amiss. Longo gave a shout out but the gate did not move, the soldiers did not respond. At length, the Emperor appeared on the outer wall to give his blessing, then in an aside, passed down the order that Longo would not lead them. Constantine forbade his siege master to risk himself upon the field. A wise decision from the emperor. One that had been made and told already but Master Longo was hoping for an exception. The emperor was vigilant.

Longo replaced himself at the head of the column and rode out and along, waving his sword and saluting those that did ride out. His denial would not dampen his spirits for those he cheered on in his place. Marc hoped that no one else felt a bit of unease at the change of plans, at the loss already, of the expected leader of the fray.

Just then Pup made his way up beside the two men. He positioned himself on the right of Marc, just as his brother Bull had once been. Again, the fiery look of a cold heart shot out through his eyes and into those of the constable. He had his brother's stone headed mace sheathed into his belt behind his shield arm and a stout lance gripped in the other. Then, with deliberate slowness, Pup back his horse up, and moved around the rear of the knight and came up on his left side, as if to say, I am not dying the way of my brother.

Marc's heart took another knock but he locked it down as he had a hundred times before when faced with the hard or cruel execution of a duty. It was good that there be scorn between them, it will add to the fight, it will brace each man for what would come.

The gates rose, the horses stamped and reared and then bolted through the archway and through the dark thin shadow of the wall and out into the brilliance of the noon sun. Cheers went up from the wall that could be heard over the thunder of hooves and the rattle of armor and weapons. The released had been timed to steal away any new shot from the cannons.

As the men rode out onto the plain outside the walls and before the fosse, the riders spread out of their own steam. Lances waved from shoulder height, the men themselves yelling out their words of war.

There was an outcry from the fosse as well, where workers had toiled hard to fill the ditch with every sort of debris. This was one of their targets. There were guards among them who brought out their buckles and scimitars, raised arrows to shoot against them

From beyond the fosse, great commotion. Clearly no one had expected the defenders to attack. There was fast and furious action near the Sultan's tents as advisors went to report the news. Few organized to attack from the lines and that was what they counted on.

The cavalry bent towards the right and raced along the castle walls towards the golden Horn and electrified the citizens above along the wall. Somewhere was the Emperor, and soon, Longo, as well. Gauging their success, studying the response of the Turks.

Marc saw as they raced along the wall that it was an explosive ripple along the ranks of the enemy as they scrambled to prepare and respond. People mounted but no one organized and before any archers came forward, they were out of arrow shot. Then, as if one, they moved to the attack and swept away from the wall and rode down into the fosse and back up the other side.

They choose a clear place within the fosse, where there were the least trunks and rocks to consider, nothing to jump, just soft dirt that slowed some horses momentarily till they scrambled up the far bank.

Now there was near panic in the ranks of the Turks as the defenders were now on the attack and between the fosse and their own lines. The cannons fired away but were aimed at the wall and could not be turned to let loose upon the men, even were they to make a stand for an hour.

The crusaders make a colorful swath as they moved across the green and towards the enemy lines, long cloaks and robes, banners flapping from helmet and lance. They charged right into the enemy lines, a direct attack. Arrows flew from both sides but it was the lances that found their targets all too easily, charging into the thick of the enemy, unprepared, routed the ones in the immediate vicinity and many took a lane through the back as they fled. The crusaders were in no shortage of targets. One by one, the lances were plucked from their hands by a stubborn corpse and the knights drew their swords, the men in the back of the column, took up bows and let loose at the enemy out of slashing range of the others. Marc had bloodied his on three men before hooking into a rib cage that wouldn't release. He let the deadpan fall, raising his lance into the air.

The leader of the charge, a big roman general, pushed on through the lines creating pandemonium and ran as long as they dared into the camps and turned back towards the center of their line. The Roman general had to both fight, track his men, and their danger, and assess the reaction of the Turks to tell him when to press in and when to fall back. Marc was glad that all he had to do was ride and fight. His sword came out to do its work.

They moved again towards the cannons towards the Sea of Mamarra. The cannons were too heavy to topple or turn and too well defended by their crews who had nowhere to flee and fought with swords and torches, hiding from the crusaders on the far side and underbelly of the cannon.

Now and then a janissary would ride out with two or three other riders and challenge the crusaders on their own, and fall quickly by the sword, lance or arrows from the out riders on the castle side. When no targets presented the archers, they would fire into the work crews hiding in the fosse, or over the cavalry and into the further reaches of the camp to keep the panic going.

By now, seasoned leaders from the Turks were gaining control of the men, and organizing archers and their own cavalry. Yet their defense was hampered by the clutter of their own men blocking a way to charge the crusaders. They could only follow at a distance. The defenders surged forward again and ran along the line of the camp wreaking devastation all along the way. Anyone who could not leap out of the way of ten or twelve horse line of charging knights and their sword reach, had to watch for archers as well.

The Roman lead the men along the deeper line of the besiegers and the effect was to drive a portion of them into the fosse for protection. This was part of their plan. As the Roman led them far enough to the west, the enemy lines had already anticipated the attack and had time to scatter further back. Mounted troops were able to ride down to confront them and the Roman lead his crusaders right into their midst. It was meant to demoralize the counter attack and it did. Outnumbered, unorganized, and poorly armed in comparison, the Turks were overwhelmed by the screaming banshees defending their homes.

All along the attack, shots rang out here and there as the Turkish soldiers grabbed for their calverins and muskets. Any well aimed shot would penetrate the armor of the riders but in the chaos, clean shots were hard to take.

Pup was holding his mace in his left hand with his shield buckled on his arm above the shoulder, his right arm sung with a blade that had wide arcs and little slowing down as it met flesh and bone. Jon continued to shoot with his cross bow, stealthily riding around the other defenders to keep at least one sword and rider between him and anyone with a sword. His marksmanship allowed him to take out more of the enemy than any sword could do. And he stung the enemy where the swords could not reach. Idle men waiting to join the fray dropped to the dust with a dart through the neck, startling the others around him to back away even further.

Marc swung with the Order of Hell. He reaped. He did not hesitate and chose any target he could reach. His job was as simple as it had even been: to kill. He did not lead, did not design the attack, he was just one tooth in the monster as it ate through the lines of the besiegers. He was a mindless tooth, free to cut down any man and every man who offered himself to his reach. He measured no blow but attack with full force and went for the first deadly mark offered. He did not have to set up his intended with a parry or feign a stroke to make them vulnerable. There was no need for style or strategy. If he did not kill a man on the first pass, he rode them over or let them fall to the next crusader behind him. He had the job, moving up towards the lead, to softening the attackers by cutting through them as quick as possible. He splayed them, bowled them over and scattered them for the others to find easier slaying

The right side of his horse was painted in blood. His shield was barely used as he was riding on the right side of the column and few made it to his left to threaten him. Then they stopped and wheeled. They had broken far enough to the west and they were turning to the east again to see if any resistance had formed behind them needing their attention. None had. In the moment that they wheeled and considered their next charge, Pup rode hard from the back towards Marc. Jon, not far from Marc's side, as promised, saw it and charged to head off Pup, raising his cross bow to the ready. Before Pup had reached Marc, he cried out a loud bellow and sprung from his saddle as if he would fly. He landed on two of the wounded cannon crew and took them with him to the ground as many of the crusaders turned to watch. He dispatched their heads upon each other and dropped their bodies like broken hale bales. Jon lowered his bow. Pup staggered over to the cannon the crew had manned and grabbed one around the barrel. With great force and effort, he cried out and stood with shaking legs pushing against the cannon barrel, trying to lift it, which he did, but by mere inches. That was enough for it to shift off its braces and nose into the mud.

Mar did not know if the people on the all could see that for all the stamping horses, but the General did. Jon had Pup's horse in hand. Pup mounted and as he came over the saddle, he looked again into the face of Marc but this time did not seem to see him, or anything else.

The General gave the charge again and the group turned back on itself as if to make yet another pass along the lines. The enemy was forming ranks to break the charge but without signal the crusaders turned again towards the fosse again and this time, riding down into it, they did not come up. The general led the charge along the fosse, jumping trunks and stones and riding on both sides and down the middle, slower now, but with deliberate horror, dispatching all the workers who took refuge in the fosse. These were men with shovels and picks to defend themselves more than sword or pike. But they were men who would just as easily put down their picks for a bow or lance to kill the crusaders if they had the chance.

The charge was slower, the slashing easier but more deadly. A musket took down one of the crusaders and another was dragged from his horse to disappear in a swarm of workers, digging and picking. There was no stopping or going back for those who fell. The charge continued past the gates of St. Romanus and then they drove up out of the fosse towards the wall, turned and galloped back towards the wall. Only now could Marc hear the mad cheering atop the wall. Cannons fired and hit the wall near the gate, smashing the log anchors and making the ropes and hides of the tarp bounce wildly. Stone fell from behind it but the tarp looked worse, the wall damage was still hidden and thus unknown and thus uncountable to the Turks.

Somewhere above them in all that sunlight stood the Emperor, the Siege master and the citizens.

A few hundred Turks were now mounted and well led and chased the crusaders from across the fosse, but as soon as they crossed to the castle side, there were rifles discharged from the wall and several of them fell with each of three volleys until they broke off the attack. More mad cheering and the crusaders slowed to a canter and the gates were raised for them to disappear into. Pup had stopped beside the gate to study their damage. The cannon lay pointed into the ground. There were dead all up and down the fosse, all up and down the line. But there were thousands of soldiers now fortifying the lines. There would be no more surprise attacks. There were one hundred and eighty some riding back into the city. The bodies of the fallen defenders were marked by swarms of angry men, taking out their grief and rage against the dead corpses.

Marc rode past and slowed. "You did well defeating the cannon." Pup had no reply. Marc waited for nothing further and rode into the cool shadow of St. Romanus Gate and back behind the wall.

As they rode from the first gate to the second wall, they were showed with flowers from the crowd above.

They rode through the second wall and there they dismounted and were met with squires who returned their weapons to the armory, the horses to the stable. Flies were everywhere with the blood smeared on the mounts and sprayed on the men. It took buckets of water to wash down each man and ward away the flies. Six were wounded, none seriously. They lost less than twenty men from two hundred. They had slain hundreds. Longo came down to greet them, ecstatic at their results, exuberant with victory. There was no hint of his dismay at being kept safe during the sally. It was the same old grinning Longo, triumphant in the execution of yet another well worked plan.

Swords would need sharpening after this day's work.

Marc, like the rest, were weary and needed rest, now. They were still charged from the fight but a slow walk back to the bed would wind that down. Some would eat first, some would eat later, all would be hungry. Only a few were vomiting now from the carnage. It took or than a though stomach to hack men to pieces and not get ill with it, it took a strong mind. This was more death than most had seen in a lifetime. As Marc wondered why more were not sick, he thought perhaps the hatred grown by the last few years had toughened them enough.

For everyone inside the walls, it was now a fight for their lives.

Marc became aware of a sudden chill. It was not temperature, but an emotional cloud that had somehow rolled in or over the people. His first reaction was to look up and the sky was the same. But the wall empty. He glanced over at the siege master. He too was staring up at the wall. There was nothing but quiet.

Most of the warriors were busy disarming, cleaning up and staggering off to rest or swaggering off to celebrate. Longo headed for the stairs in the second wall, Marc followed. They bounded up and when they reached the top, they stared across to the outer wall where the people stood, facing away from them, no longer throwing flowers down upon their heroes.

The two men raced across the foot bridge, no longer feeling the fatigue as much as they felt their fears. Perhaps the wall had breached, or an attack was forming, or that the canopy of hides had been torn asunder. The crowd was silent and focuses away from the men as they walked up on. Longo sought the emperor's side and people made way for him. Marc moved to a spot further down the wall where he could see over those before him.

On the long green expanse that sloped away from the castle wall to the fosse and beyond, the Sultan was in command of his men. There was order now in the camp and all along the line. Men had lifted the great cannon back upon its stands and were oiling it to load.

The line was now fortified with pickets, wagons and bales of hay and other supports, hasty built or called up from the rear. Before the Sultan's tent were an army of guard, full battle dress and well-armed, in red flowing uniforms. Further down irregulars still camped here and there but within easy reach of their weapons. The number of men swelled after the attack to well over a hundred thousand by his guess. He wondered where the others had been, what had kept them busy away from the front line, and what and where that they were so close and so quickly recalled.

Between the front line of fortification were phalanxes of cavalry. Lances held in stirrups, banners waving the Sultan's colors. They were a guard formation, ready to charge at any more defenders that came through the door. That was a once in a battle opportunity, the surprise offensive, and it had been played. The sultan, in his high turban and seated back on his white horse before his tents, saw that there would be no further surprises, and no further humiliations on the battle field. No doubt people were answering for today's defeat with their heads.

But what had silenced the crowd took place between the fosse and the Turkish phalanxes, Workers, more than before, we busy clearing their dead. Several hundred dead left in the path of the defenders' charge out of St. Romanus Gate. The replacement workers, and those not too badly wounded to work, we dragging their fellow workers up to the fosse and tossing them in. They were using their own dead to fill the fosse. The citizens watch soberly.

It was clear that the Sultan did not take defeat easily. Here was the man who had written his own history yet to happen, tossing his dead into a ditch, using them as a weapon, even in death, using them as stones. Dirt. Making clear to all who had eyes or ears to hear, that you did not fail the Sultan's honor.

It was a bold move.

Emperor Constantine countered it. He stepped up onto the rampart wall and turned to face his subjects, nervous advisers holding onto his cloak and boots. He raised his hands to gather the eyes of his subject and when he did, he announced "this is the folly of assailing our great city. This is the fate of those who come to harm us: that they be harmed instead, and though the next wave walks on the backs of the dead, they will never stack so high as to reach our ramparts. To the banquet hall, my people! We have a victory to celebrate!"

The cheered as one, loud and hearty, instantly restored and knowing that each voice was a stake through the heart of the weak and defeated miserable enemies left outside to stack their dead like paving stones on their way to ruin and defeat.

Marc was too tired to celebrate, but was helplessly carried along with the crowd and then, hefted above it, carried by the crowd itself. Their jubilant nose almost drowning out the next round of cannons.

Chapter Five:

Mehmed the second, son of Mehmed the First, Head of the Ottoman Empire, Ruler of the Turks, Lord of the Sultanate, Mehmed the Conqueror, King of Adrianople. Mehmed the Magnificent, stood barefoot at the end of a rich Persian carpet which rolled out from a city of tents like a tongue from a wounded beast.

He stared at the Great Apple of Western civilization, the plum of the Byzantine empire, the last capital of the Holy Roman empire, the gem of the infidel Christian and pagans and prize he wanted most, and the prize his dead father had craved all his life but had never taken. He was determined to take it now.

He dug his toes into the nap of the carpet, sweep clean hourly by attendants, like the dirt that led to it from all sides. Above was a canopy protecting him from the sun itself and everywhere was the ripple of pennants. Down the hill, and across a plain, and a fosse, and a moat, and behind three walls, was the city of his desire, defended by thousands of Romans, Greeks, Genoese, Cretans, Italians and other westerners, as varied and diverse as his own people. They had been there for a thousand years or more, longer than anyone could remember. They could have been there forever; it made no difference to the young Sultan. They were soon to be his people.

Mehmed admired the city. Its art, its size, its history were not to be scorned but marveled upon. As soon as he would capture it, he would not cleanse it of its western influences, but embrace them. He would bring his own people, by force if need be, to mix with the current citizens. He would repopulate it back to its million-man glory and rebuild all that he had torn asunder breaking into it. He would fortify it so that it would never be taken from him and his descendants. It would be forever in his realm. All its art, its treasures, its streets and buildings would be restored and preserved and redone and outdone. Just as he had built Adrianople into the Watchtower of the World, so would he rebuild Constantinople. Just as he had built Hislar Rumenli, he would bring the same thousand masons and their two thousand helpers to make the new capital one worthy of him.

He stared at the dome of the infidel's church and ached to convert it to Islam. He stared into the Hippodrome and longed to run his own races there, celebrate his own victories and holidays there. He would spare them all, all who lived there now, should they but surrender to the inevitable. He would also kill as many as need be, should they not surrender. But no more than need be. The rest would be free to leave or stay as his subjects, in an open city, an international capital, one which would allow travelers from far and wide to come and reflect on the glory of his empire. Behold not just the work of Mehmed the Conqueror, but also Mehmed the Builder.

As a young man, he had dressed in disguise to enter the city of the westerners, the one called the Big Apple. He had found his way to the circus at the hippodrome and entered, watched the races and drank in the roaring crowds. He envied the joy and pride he felt there and coveted the city itself. He was impressed by the statues, the silent gods standing guard everywhere. He noticed the three headed snake that stood in magnificence over the Hippodrome itself. These Greeks and Romans had such strange religion. He strolled by Atlas, hefting the gilded rock of the world on his shoulders for all time and he promised himself, when he took this city, he would take that statue for his own trophy. It would be the symbol that the whole world would be his.

His stern countenance turned angry as he watched the fosse being filled by the bodies of his workers. The infidels had ridden by surprise and sliced into the heart of his lines and the courage of his warriors. The cut into his plans and his vision. Now, Mehmed the Builder must do something terrible to rebuild what was lost.

The Sultan was young, too young, said some, to lead, or at least to led in such a great undertaking. And there was the accusation of madness, that the son, like the father, was blinded with ambitions towards the west, and this Big Apple was bright and glittering jewel which bedazzled them beyond reason and into a madness which spilled too much blood and lost too much time and treasure of the Empire. He could not see the statue of Atlas holding aloft the world but it was renowned through the world and waited for him in the city he besieged. The globe was said to be made of gold and worth a small kingdom itself. Mehmed longed to see this marvel, to own it, to rob it from its pagan makers. Their religion was dead long ago and now lived on only as myth and literature, stories to tell the young, to teach some lessons. It was nothing that Islam would not supplant. The old must give way to the new. Isn't that the lesson the Gods taught to the Titans? Well now there was one God, and his name was Allah.

He looked to the west and there was a cavalry five hundred strong, saddled and readied to charge anything that came out of the city. He would not be caught by surprise twice., he had perhaps underestimated the courage of these defenders. Their charge today was a bold and brazen move. It showed spirit and fight, the kind he could not allow to take hold among his men in the form of fear, or even respect. He could not allow his detractors to point to this as a reversal, or a sign of doom. He had both the defenders and his critics to worry about with each success or set back.

He looked to the east and there stood another cavalry five hundred strong. They would stand there, sitting in the saddle a third of the day, just waiting. No, not just waiting. The young Sultan did not do anything one thing for its own sake. He was young but skilled and schooled and wise. They were on display to both his men and the Byzantines who watched him. They were a flag raised to show resolve. A thousand troops sat in saddle a third of the day, to be replaced by fresh troops, and again at night. An unwavering vigilance. An unshakable resolve.

He smiled softly for a moment, pleased that his vigilant horsemen were garbed in bright red tunics with golden shields. Not just the riches of the royal guard or the pageantry of military parade show, but that they stood out, easily seen by the enemy standing atop the far wall. They made a presence, a sight. It was a glad that could not be missed. And though they had rallied after the charge they had made, and relished their small victory, he had many more men to commit. More men than citizens inside. And he would bring even more if needed. He would not fail for lack of bone or muscle, for lack of cunning and desire, for lack of money or weapons. And he would surely not fail for lack of strategy. Already the cheering of the defenders was muted by the sight of his own men tossing his dead into the fosse like diseased cattle. Fascines of bones.

The Sultan's hand rose to his thin, scrawny beard, which he had grown to offset the youthfulness of his person. Beside him stood a much older man, a fatherly figure: The Grand Vizier. Counsel to his father, and now counsel to him, and perhaps the glue which held the empire together while death coronated the son after the father.

"I must be cruel". Said the sultan.

"Yes" the Grand Vizier replied.

"I must be cruel to show strength," said the youth.

"Yes" echoed the old man.

The pair turned and strode along the carpet towards the city of tents and soon were inside the flutter palace of silks. Outside was dirt, barren earth, denuded and trampled and twisted into a military camp, trodden flat and lifeless by hoof and sandal. The cool antechambers of the tents gave way to darker and more sumptuous interiors of larger tents. Everywhere was thick carpet piled upon other carpet, soft enough to sleep upon as a king's bed. A king's bed but not a sultan's. The walls of the tents were decorated with rich tapestries depicting brave warriors, bold hunters spearing lionesses, and great feats of Mehmed the First. Back in Adrinanople, the Watchtower of the world, from where the lad spied the Apple of his dreams, were workers weaving new tapestries already showing the city of Constantinople under the throne of Mehmed the second. History, illustrated, before it happens.

The two men continued their slow purposeful walk through the complex of tents, each threshold guarded by special warriors and the curtains between tents held back by servants and young girls, each tent opening before them and swishing closed as they passed into the next. The roofs of the tents were stood upon tall poles, some with ornate carvings. The tents were large enough for banquets, or war councils.

They heard the trumpets and calls of their announcement as they turned near the center of the small undulating city and headed westward and came out again into the sheltered sunlight of a bright blue canopy over another runway of carpet. They strode to the end and there, before the Sultan, a hundred thousand men kneeled prostrate in the dirt. He glared over the backs of his men, their turbaned heads to the ground. It was a sea of flesh and had he been inclined, he could have continued walking for miles, stepping onto the backs of men who would consider themselves blessed to be the paving stones for the Sultan, never touching the dirt as he went. For a moment he amused himself with the thought of walking all the way to Adrinanople on the backs of men who would shuttle themselves from back to front making a human track. Had anyone ever done so? He had that sort of power. If he felt the feat would add to his fame in a useful way, he would order it.

The Grand Vizier likewise was lost in his own thoughts. The Sultan nodded and the Grand Vizier gave the signal and the sea of backs became a forest of faces. A hundred thousand men stood as one. Only the wind and the snapping of the pennants obeyed a higher power.

In the front of the assembled men, those who could be spared and those who need be present, were an unlucky six dozen men who did not rise. These were men who had been identified as responsible for today's embarrassment. These were men who had failed their Sultan and they lay now prostrate in the dust, not allowed to rise and afraid to look up.

Each prostrate prisoner was guarded by two soldiers who held their scimitars in their hands, one ready to jab down, the other ready to swing downward with a slice, so that each possible movement from the prisoner was doomed.

The pitiful men were selected by their peers and commanders. Not too many lowly ranked as they would be discouraged to stay and work or fight, most likely to desert. Not too many advanced ranks as they were advanced for a reason: their skills and experience were valuable. But there were some of each and then the rest of middle men, those whose position it was not to think but to execute the orders of the higher ranks. And there were enough to make a showing of the demonstration, more than a token sacrifice, but not a senseless slaughter. The sultan was showing discipline, control, determination, mercy and ferocity. He was showing his men these things because he wanted them to take them on. This was not a wicker retribution, not a summary justice and not a wanton indulgence in rage. This was... Leadership.

"We were cut today, by the blades of infidels..." He spoke slowly so that the words would be considered. "We were surprised by those who were not idle in this fight. We were felled by those who hearts leapt out like lions, as they leapt out of their gates like lions."

The wind flowed over the pennants like an icy water even though the sun warmed earth and man and stone alike. There was wild onion in the air. Some of the men on the ground whimpered. Those that did felt the sting of the scimitar as a guard let the point rest on the back of their neck to command greater discipline.

"We have come to take this city because we are greater than the Romans. We are greater than the lions. Greater than any who have been here before. We do not fail. We do not run. We do not weaken at what must be done. We do what must be done because we are conquerors. And we are conquerors because... We are great!"

The Grand Vizier led the men in a great cheer. The speech, as he had intuited, had reached its maximum impact. He had rallied his troops by fist chastising them for not being greater than the bravest of the day, and then for urging them onto greatness by sharing his own greatness with them. The sultan included all his men in that 'we' that only a Sultan could utter. The cheer rose up thrice fold and surely could be heard over the hill and past the tents and walls and into the city itself.

The Grand Vizier smiled that his young master was sage enough to wield this weapon with two edges. One struck fear into the hearts of his listening enemy while the other edge carved finer the resolve of his own men. The Sultan was crafting weapons from defeat. Doing magick on the day by reversing the set back and spinning it into momentum.

Now the cruel part. The Grand Vizier nodded to the red festooned Janissary who stood nearby. In turn, he nodded to runners who fetched a team of laborers who hefted and carried large timbers out to the men who laid face down in the dirt. They squirmed and bemoaned themselves, some praying and some asking for forgiveness. The Janissary was in charge now, dispensing the Sultan's justice and he motioned to one prisoner who cried too loud for forgiveness and his guard put his scimitar to work with a swift and terrible stroke, rolling the man's head out into the dirt where bright red blood browned with the thirsty earth.

All wondered if this was mercy.

The groans increased as the large timbers were laid across the back of the doomed men. Four up front were spared this weight. The crimson executioner then nodded again and a runner disappeared around the edge of the wall of tents and then, slowly, in front of all eyes, out strode a giant o a man, holding chains in his hands. Chains which lead up and behind the giant out of sight behind the tents. But the ground trembled and the men who could stand and see murmured the name of Hassan!

No sooner had Hassan been recognized and his name escaped from those who did, then the name of Hassan churned to gasps as the huge chains pulled into view two large bull elephants. Their long white tusks capped in gold and tapered to a killing sharpness. Tassels hung from the rugs on their heads and on their backs. Hassan's chains were tied to harnesses around the great beasts' skulls but were threaded through holes punched in their large ears for control. Other men, of a normal stature were Running alongside the beast, dwarfed, but holding sharp sticks to jab and hook the elephants by the ears and legs should they need controlling. Out of sight were archers with poisoned arrows to bring them down should the blood work of the day excite them into a frenzy.

Several of the men trapped beneath the beams began to weep. Their guards drew blood from them with quick cuts to their backs or legs. Small chunks of meat were flayed off them by blade point, flicked into the dirt, or the eye of their neighboring wretch.

One rose to run. He had not quite stood completely erect before three guards cut his hamstrings, swung a blade up through his groin and lopped off his hand at the wrist. He was screaming in pain and grabbed and forced down into the dirt, weighed down by his fast injuries and the sword tips of his guards. The others remained weighed down by the madness of their situation.

The staggering beasts lumbered towards the men whose tearful faces were caked now with mud. The Sultan commanded his heart and face to stone. The Grand Vizier was impassive, He had seen these demonstrations many times, though none quite like this. This young sultan liked to be different, to think in new and bigger ways. It appealed to the Vizier, but it also had its cost. Here they were fighting a battle for a city they could mostly likely have by treaty and assimilate over time. The battle was costly and, in the Grand Vizier's eyes, unnecessary, but he was merely the Grand Vizier and not the Sultan.

The elephants had stepped onto the planks with their first leg and then the second fore leg. The men were crushed beneath the timbers and you could hear bones break and split as the elephants raised their trunks and trumpeted.

The six men closest to the Sultan were raised up and turned and then forced to their knees to witness the deaths of the others. They watched fearfully as skulls broke open under the weight and blood gushed out through ears and nose of the doomed and dead. Even the dead continued to suffer as the weight of the great animals lunged forward onto the beams and into the broken bodies of the lifeless. The forms rolled, disjointed and unnaturally, like a puppet mauled by a dog, like a sack of bones pushed this way and that, jumbling the order, poking through the hide of those still barely alive. The screaming reached its peak as the crushing animals moved to the next set of timbers and now more than half the men were dead.

The six kneeling in front wept in misery. Anyone looking away or dropping their gaze was guided back to the spectacle by the razor of sword.

Soon all but the six lay mangled and dead in the gory mud. There was the wind and the weeping of the six. Hassan gave the chains of one beast to the handlers and it was led off. Only one brute remained and the eyes of all six were fixed upon it.

Then, the Sultan raised his hand, not to his scraggly beard, but to the air over his shoulder: a signal. The Grand Vizier saw and nodded, turned to the Janissary and spoke: "the Sultan shows mercy." The Grand Vizier nodded to the crimson garbed Janissary who spoke to Hassan. The honor was given to the giant. Cheers rose up in the men as the giant was a favorite of theirs and was cheered whenever he was recognized.

Hassan stomped over to the six dead men and bent over, hands on his knees to look better into the faces of the men. Some looked away and some looked up for mercy but Hassan shopped among them like a fish wife at a market place. Soon, he placed his hand on one of the men's head's and before he could express relief, Hassan the Giant forced his head down into the dirt. He was not to be spared. The twice condemned man wailed but the guard pinned him fast and the elephant was brought forward. Without benefit of timber, the great beast placed one foot on the head of the first chosen and pushed down, the skin of the leg tightened but then sagged again as the foot reached the ground. All that was heard was a short yip and a crack of the skull to those closest to the executed man, the guards, the five, and the giant. He went to the next man and placed his large hand on his head and then to the cheers of the crowd, lifted the man by his head to full height and then some, his feet dangling for a moment, and then dropped to the ground, spared, overcome with relief. He looked with gratitude on the giant and shameless joy on the next man, whose head was now palmed by Hassan.

The man held his breath and was then lifted high and again cheers, the name of Hassan, repeated by the hundred thousand throng.

Only one of the remaining four would be spared. The next man wept loudly as he figured his chances were not good., Each had plenty of time to look into their own hearts and into the messy pools of flesh that had been men before them. Hassan shoved the man's face into the ground till he tasted dirt. He screamed. His tendons were hacked. The brute stood on him and his life was over. Is name was never uttered again and disgrace fell upon his family. They would be dispersed into servitude to compensate the Sultan for this betrayal.

Three were left. One would live. Hassan passed over the next man and reached down to the heads of the next two and put his large palms on their crowns and drew them up. As they reached full height, the giant quickly clapped their heads together, smashing them in his own hands, bone and blood flying from his fingers onto the guards and the startled man spared next to him. The elephant trumpeted. The crowd threw out another cry for the Giant. Hassan raised the two dead men in his hands and turned to the Sultan to exult in the glory and to pay tribute for the honor of service to the Sultan.

The blood red Janissary was pleased but emotionless. The Grand Vizier smiled. Mehmed the merciful waved as the throng changed from Hassan to Mehmed, cheering over and over. The Janissary ordered black tunics brought to the three forgiven prisoners. They were spared from death but would wear these tunics as marked men and be given lower ranks and a second chance to serve the Sultan. They continued to weep helplessly as they donned their black tunics. They would be accepted and respected by the men, examples of the Sultan's charity, paragons of the Sultan's wisdom.

The Sultan retreated up the carpet concourse and into the tents again, followed by the Grand Vizier. The cries of adulation soon subsided as the crimson Janissary put the army back into motion, the laborers back to work, the siege back to plan.

A new cannon had arrived, larger than anything that had ever fired before. It was so large that it came in two pieces and was being assembled now and readied to be unveiled. The Sultan and Grand Vizier came upon it through yet another opening in the tent complex which they knew as well as the back of their hands but which was obscured to all outsiders. Only the special guard, the servants and the women of the Sultan's harem knew the inner layout. Any assassin would stumble upon a dozen guards before finding his way to where the Sultan might be. Only the Grand Vizier knew of the inside as well as the Sultan, and there were parts of the soft palace that each other knew alone. Here, in a cruder tent made of canvas and not poplin or silk, was a huge workshop welding together two large portions of the greatest cannon ever built. Overseeing this work was a western, Urban.

"This is one reason why we will prevail, my dear Vizier." The sultan nodded towards Urban and smiled. Urban bowed and returned the smile, obviously pleased with the attention and the progress of his works. To the Vizier the sultan continued quietly, "it is not the great weapon he assembles for us, but the fact that he was bought by the highest price. No loyalty. With mere money I can turn the best of them to serve out side. They are not like our Janissaries, Christians captured and raised as servants of Islam. We do not have to worry about them being turned by the glint of a coin. The west is weak. Their treasures deserve us."

The huge cannon was as tall as urban himself and longer than his famed black carriage.

He stroked his chin as he spoke and smiled again at the master gun smith and then turned and disappeared through the guarded tent curtain. "I am eager to see his big gun knock down the St. Romanus Gate."

"The only other time the city was breech was done so by the glint of a coin. The westerners betray themselves too easily."

"But the city has more often been opened by the try of a treaty, my lord." The Grand Vizier did not pass up a chance to press for peace.

"Make your treaties, Vizier, you have my confidence, but you do not have my patience. Should the emperor shun your offers, then my guns will bring him down."

"As you wish, my sultan." The Grand Vizier was pleased at enjoying the young sultan's confidence, but he knew he could not steer him from his end game of possessing the western capital.

"Where's the fleet?"

"Almost arrived, milord".

"Excellent."

"And the great cannon will be ready to fire in a day or less."

"And the siege machines?"

"All will be ready when the fosse is filled"

The sultan and Vizier reached one of the Sultan's private tents. The walls were hung with tapestries depicting naked women in provocative poses, some being ravaged by lovers, some ravaging. On hand were servants and with a gesture one went for his harem and returned with two of his favorites. They were quiet and demure and attended the Sultan without interfering in the conversation or disturbing the Vizier. One was a dark hair beauty with olive skin and the other brown hair and more fair skinned. They were clothed in rich silks which were sheer and veiled only the darkness of their nipples of the pelt of their mounds. Young girls brought trays of refreshments, offering them to the Sultan and then, in turn, to the Grand Vizier who waved them away. The women fed the young Sultan slices of fresh melon and olives and grapes as his hands began to appreciate the smoothness of their skin, the roundness of their curves and the intimacy of their delicate places.

The Vizier seemed not to observe them at all, but he was aware of their activities. Soon, his presence would be an intrusion.

"You know", the Sultan's voice had relaxed, changed, "to be truly happy, all one needs is a woman, the sound of water and something green to gaze upon." He was considering which of his favorites he would have.

The Vizier listened carefully, perhaps there is some homesickness welling in the Young Sultan that could be applied toward peace. Maybe the Sultan was entertaining a visit back to Adrianople, content to oversee the siege from the Watch Tower of the World. The Vizier waited. Now he would consider which of his favorites, he would have first.

"We have turned this all to mud and dust..." He ran his hands over his female companions and closed his eyes, as if picturing some far off place. The women were even more aroused than when they entered the room, excited to have been the ones chosen, to have the ones to be summoned. "I think I want my garden brought to me. Send for it."

The Vizier nodded in obedience. The sultan was now relishing the idea of having each one in turn while the other remained.

"My young master, there is one other thing." The Grand Vizier moved to the concern of the room where a box laid upon heaps of rich rugs. He retrieved the box and rubbed his hand along the front till he found the clasp and released it. The brown-haired woman had slide down to the floor of the tent and was Running her hands up along the Sultan's leg. The black-haired woman was rubbing his shoulder, bringing her full bosom into the face of the Sultan. Her nipples now commanded the tastes of the Sultan's mouth. He turned from her slightly when the Vizier presented the open box. Then he half rose from his seat, the women forgotten, their caresses temporarily withdrawn, they too, stared at the box.

The Sultan reached into the box and paused, his hand inside, and then withdrew from the box a mace of silver and bronze. Its wooden handle light and the head of the mace, hollow iron covered with bronze and silver work, was well balanced and easy to swing. It was shaped like an upturned goblet, a sort of bell shape to it. He took the head of the mace through a few short swings, the women ducking back and down behind him. He let its weight pack into his free hand and was tempted to crush it into the box it was presented it to test its promise. He would not assault the Vizier or alarm the women any more.

"An excellent gift, Grand Vizier. Well balanced. A favorite, I can tell already." The Young Sultan beamed with pleasure.

The Grand Vizier moved mystically forward in his long robes, as if floating. He reached out an older, bony hand and pointed gently to the side of the mace handle. "And here," he said, drawing the young Warrior's attention to the weapon. "Something new for Mehmed the Conqueror."

The sultan read the inscription. "Rum Keyser". He grinned broadly. Roman Caesar.

Chapter Six:

His muscles hurt everywhere as he walked. As in other battles, other fights, the body shuts down what it can feel. A man can walk through flame and has his hands and arms severed before he realizes it in the pitch of battle.

The cheering crowd has carried him back to the King's banquet hall and the celebration began. Down below in the streets, his men were returning to a similar reception in the streets. There would be much celebration tonight and many women would loosen their corsets tonight for the heroes of the battle field.

Women were far from his mind. Even the goddess he had surrender to meet tonight. His mind was woozy. He had wounds, small wounds, which he had paid no heed to till the rush of adrenaline had worn off. There were places where his armor bound him, or rubbed him raw in the fast bounce of the saddle. Nicks in his skin where debris or pieces of weaponry had done their harm. He was not in the mood to celebrate and spent some time of the feast pushing pieces of skin back over their wounds and letting scabs from where chunks of meat were missing from him now. Nothing serious. Nothing grievous. Just a small map of where he had ridden through a battle severing other men from their woes and wounds.

It was hard to focus on the joy of the revelers when he was seeing only the men he had dispatched. He reviewed each foe over and over, easily, as if he were still there on the field. And uneasily, as if he had done God's work on his own merit, or those of his mortal commanders, but without the consecration of knowing absolutely. He had to shake off the abstract worries. He knew that as a prisoner of the sieged city, he was attacking those who would have been only too glad to take his life from him. He advanced against those who had come to do harm. He met out what they had brought to the table. Death. Violence and death.

He looked about the room and the people were happy. Festive now, they had struck a blow at the enemy. They had witnessed a victory, they had forgotten, unlike him, that the enemy had discarded their dead into the fosse as fill dirt, as if life meant nothing to them. It was a queasy thought for Marc. Perhaps he had not dispatched enough.

He caught site of a beautiful streak of something moving into the room. It was the goddess, and with her, Asif. He seemed to be her guide now, even though they were afoot in her home town, not his. But then he realized that he did not really know Asif well and did not know where he hailed form.

Asif spied him and led the goddess towards him. He watched her move. Though well concealed beneath her tunic, he recognized a body that craved to be loose, that tested the fabric as it moved, seeking a way to slip free. Or was it him, that his eyes were seeking a way to free her from it?

Each time the desire for her welled up within him, his thoughts stumbled into the pit of dark thoughts: this was another man's woman. Not wife, but not free. He did not care if they stopped laying together months ago, it is a hunting that would not be put to rest. He should have nothing to do with her, but when she looked at him, from several reaches away, and their eyes joined, he could not remember any of his dark thoughts, save to take her and make her his.

She smiled and stripped him of all troubles. Let the war be long, let the war be long, let the war be just. They would all die or live, but it would be together. Let not his worries guide him through these final days on earth, or this pause in a long and happy life. All he cared about was diminishing the distance between his flesh, and hers.

Asif arrived first. "Master, you're, all right? You were fierce in battle. No wounds?" Asif seemed to be inspecting him without waiting for an answer. She came closer to them.

"No, Asif, well enough to fight again tomorrow."

"Are you riding out again so soon? She mixed the pleasure of a greeting with the hint of concern.

"No plans that I know of, but then, anything can happen. I am not the planner here." He realized immediately that his words had more than one meaning and felt pained that she may feel chided or upbraided for the other night.

If she smarted, she did not show it, or she took it as if deserved and gladly borne. He could not tell which. He offered a different subject. Turning back to Asif: "they treat you well, you've found something to your liking?"

"The university is magnificent. So many books. So many minds held in covers like cages. It is a dungeon of liberation. It is a holy place of ideas. I am indebted to you."

Marc thought that perhaps it was too much gratitude, that Asif may have been a scholar before he was a prisoner.

As if reading his mind, Nyad spoke softly, "he is an excellent reader in many languages and has been a great help to Professor Xerxes.

Marc winced at the name. An intruder again. His presence, green poison to him. He looked at Asif's hands and saw the cuts and callous of masonry work, the light color of the dust. Asif was helping the professor hide the library's treasures.

If the professor thought best to hide the books from ruination, how different would it be for him to hide and protect the other thing he loved, this woman. Was he really expecting the city to fall? Marc was unhappy that such a learned and wise man took such extreme precautions. He had hoped Xerxes was wrong. And he had hoped that he was right, and that the woman was somehow ceded to him. But lovers or not, shared or not, he would take on the task of protecting this woman. He was a knight and it was his Christian duty. The blood boiling in his man's heart would have made it his duty were he a pauper.

"If you have feasted and drank enough, the sun is calling for us," she said as she turned him towards the exit. He had moved stiffly since the fervor of battle had worn off. He had sat and ate and grown cold and tired among the crowd, but now, as her slender fingers played on the inside of his wrist, he was light as a feather and she was as graceful as wind. She swept him up the stairwell, Asif following, as they found their way outside the palace and a top a section of the wall Marc had not seen. The sun cut downward across their heads and threw their shadow upon the open stone stairs and then the ramparts along the wall. He could smell sea air blowing in as they climbed to the view of the bay. This was the water he had last seen with a burning galley at night, with a blue corpse of a crone sinking below it. He was not sure what he would see as the sky ebbed at the horizon of the wall.

Then, as she squeezed his arm lightly, he saw the land fall into view and the far side of the bay and the expanse of water itself, dancing in the long light of the late afternoon. The breeze stirred harder and brought them more whiffs of the sea, and air healthy with water with life.

She turned him again, as a small girl turning a bull hobble by ring, and they walked along the wall towards the south. She stepped in between himself and the wall so that he looked out at the beauty of the golden waters, playing and slapping at the sunlight, and stared across this goddess.

The wind pushed against her as if the whole world and all its gods wanted to touch her. Her breasts pushed back, her stomach flattened out against the tunic as small ripples of wind licked across and around her.

He followed her gaze out and into the golden harbor of light. He could see why this city was built here and why, with just this one sight alone, this one privilege from God, that men would stay here and live forever, for a thousand years. And why other men might covet this spot.

They walked for several minutes in silence. She stared out at the waters and the lands beyond it and the eastern sky which considered a far distant lavender hue, as though a ship about to hoist sale. The wind took wisps of her hair and played about her face. She seemed so serene and calm. There were lines about her eyes which were the gifts of worry and turmoil, maybe even the laurels of grief for her husband, but that was at least one man ago, and he would be one more, should he take her.

He tried to stop entertaining such thoughts. He forced his sight higher and further out. There were at least ten tall ships in the bay, the fleet of the Emperor, guarding the mouth of the river. "There she said, is the great boom. A large iron chain drawn from shore to shore and supported with those ships there, the four, that never move."

Marc saw a thin silver ribbon that ran in a and out of the waters, running up to four of the large ships like a rampart wall and the towers that marked them. The chain snaked over the ship and back into the water, running off to the next ship. It was never far below the surface and would stop any ship from getting across.

"Does the Sultan now have a fleet? Asif asked from behind?

"Oh yes, a large one, and it shall soon be here, we've no doubt."

"But when they arrive, will they not just attack the chain and entangle with the four ships and board them, or set them afire?" Asif was studying the naval strategies through the beauty of the sunset.

"The ships will never be boarded," she said with simple confidence. "The Byzantine fleet may be more secure than the whole of the city? There are many kinds of walls." Marc envisioned the ships moving off, using spars to keep from being boarded, even perhaps canon.

She seemed to nestle closer to him as if the winds were chilling her, or driving her to his flank for protection. He smelled her hair. Lilac and lilies. A bed of perfume. He sniffed for the scent of Xerxes. They walked on. As they reached the mid-section of the wall, half way to the sea, the winds picked up and became more spirited. She turned them and they walked back, looking now, at the sights of the city, and still, at her.

The setting sun found its favorite places within the walls of the city, too. Picking out which monuments its moral subjects had fashioned best to its liking. Marc saw large dome, glinting with the sun as if a nugget of gold. He asked her about it.

"The church of Sofia. One of the most important places in the city, especially with war. That is where they tried to unify the factions before the siege. It is one place where the Romans and the Christian and others can meet in agreement. The unionist who want to join with Rome and the anti-unionists who want Constantinople to continue on its own were brought together there. It took the fear of the Turks to push their minds together, and some say they are merely mouthing words of unification, but there is one thing that knits these varied people stronger than religion."

Stronger than God, Marc wondered? "What is that?"

"Their love of this city."

Asif spied the library from there, and asked about the oval race track and she told them about the hippodrome. There were other monuments that came and went from her lips like doves lighting and landing from a marble perch strewn with red rose petals but he did not hear them, did not know them. He knew only the peals of small bells that clung to her words, that fluttered about her mouth when she spoke.

Asif was learning a city, a nation's history, but the constable stared mindlessly at the face of beauty, it pulled his eyes and the sun towards her from different direction and soon Marc felt he had to look away lest they collide. She turned her green eyes upon him and he must have blushed with the guilt of envying the sun.

"Asif is a great help to the professor, but, "she paused under the weight of her thoughts. "I fear that the professor plans more than he confides. I fear that he is about to do something rash, or reckless, or dire."

What was this now, he thought, was she angling back to the original scheme, that she was to throw herself on him at Xerxes bidding? Was it not enough that she binds his heart with her loveliness, but must she also chain his mind to her professor? But her next words tripped him. "I want you to talk to him and see if you can deduce what it is, he is hiding from us all. He has some dire plan and I do not trust him to be prudent with his own life. If he could smuggle books out in his corpse, he would attempt it."

He saw that she was genuinely troubled about her mentor and lover. But after that, he fell into her eyes and finally could only look away. He was back in that puzzle: was this their last days where nothing matters, or the same days where everything was the same except their worries? Was God seeing them through this, or tossing them to lions, a fate easily earned by each of their sins. He did not even know who he was at this moment: Christian knight, defender of the city, confused constable or weakest of mortals. He wanted her. Instead, he said, "Xerxes will be fine. I will call on him soon."

He decided swiftly that the best way to handle this temptress was to give in to her so that he could send her away, beyond his reach, far enough perhaps to be out of his mind. Then to Asif, "take her back, my friend, enjoy those books. I half suspect that Xerxes is hiding them in there as well" he tapped Asif's forehead. Then leaned closely and whispered, be my eyes and ears there..." Asif nodded and turned. The two disappeared down the stairs, darkened by the retiring sun. Marc looked one last time over each wall. The shadow of the city was creeping up on the bay. He could see himself, wavering in the waves, a shadow atop a shadow.

He wished he could read omens. That was a science he had not yet learned.

On the other side, the city was bleeding its shadows into nightfall. The city grew dark before the open fields before it, and the open waters around it. Man's walls cast shadows like tombs. It gave him a chill and he moved back inside off the bay wall. He was glad to have seen the fleet, another demonstration of the city's well-honed might and a symbol of confidence. The boom worked. How could the city fall with such great defenses? He was beginning to see what fueled the siege master's swagger.

He came down the stairs past the banquet hall where the festivities continued and instead of turning towards his room, he headed on down into the streets. He would check on his men. He may have finished his mission and been relieved by the cardinal and they may be at the end of the world now but they were still his men.

The twilight of the dusk was tempered by torches everywhere. The city had a surplus of some items and the population remained enjoyed them where they could. The towers on the walls had ample weapons and gear in them, more than enough for the soldiers who manned the walls. The same was true with the torches and with housing. Plenty of space. He wondered, though, about the food. From what he saw from the wall, it seemed that the hippodrome was turned into a sort of pasture or cattle pen for livestock. A prevention against panic and starvation. The banquet hall seemed to have no shortage of stocks but he knew that the rich would go hungry only long after the poor starved to death.

The people were crowded in the streets around the palace and the inn where his men stayed was well lit and attended and hard to get to with all the bodies dancing in the streets. There was plenty of wine being passed about and women and men dancing and laughing and feasting. He saw the Smit bothers with garlands in their hair and beards, being carried about on a table towards the back of the courtyard. He bumped into someone, quite drunk and happy and then surprised to see it was dead Tyrol. "I hope you are not going to sleep the next week away, we may all be gone when you wake up next!" Tyrol just winked and smiled and staggered off another way. Marc did not know if he was recognized or heeded at all.

He glimpsed Jon across the crowd and made his way through the merry bumping bodies. Musicians were set up in odd places, trying to stay above the fray but fueling it with their songs, some within overlapping distance and playing at odds with each other but no one seemed to care.

Jon was glad to see his friend and he saw that Jon bore no obvious wounds and did not seem to suffer the stiffness that once found Marc. "We've women to spare, or is that 'to spear', if you'd like one." Jon had a nod towards some slender young things who were laughing back behind him as if they were all in on a joke together. One was already half exposed and the other had enough grease and wine stains on her to make her blouse too weak to cover her dark nipples.

"You look well, my friend. Ready for another run at them tomorrow?

"Tomorrow and every day till they leave or I run out of arrows and from what I can see there are many trees growing in these walls so I doubt I will ever..." his eyes narrowed over Marc's shoulder. Marc turned. Pup was bounding around in the crowd, drifting this way. Jon was ever on guard about him now and Marc thought that could not do. He had to make peace or resolve the situation. He was going to offer Pup a place on the other wall, away from him, and away from Jon's charge. He felt Jon leave his women and follow him as he approached the giant. He put his hand on his back to get him to turn around and face him. He did and narrowed his eyes as well when he recognized the constable.

All the festival drained from his face at the sight of the knight captain. He swayed back and forth, a bit unsteady and Marc thought it might be a bad time, if he had the comprehension of dead Tyrrell. "You!?" The giant uttered. Marc could feel Jon tensing behind him. He was not sure if it was anger in Pup's voice or not. His hand was full of drumstick and goblet. No sign of weapon but with hands like his, no weapon was needed. He recalled Bull's hands dangling people from windows. Did his younger brother have the same penchant for risky merriment?

"Look, I know how you must feel about your brother and if serving with me is not to your liking, I can arrange for you to serve elsewhere. I don't want you riding with someone you feel is to blame for your brother's death." The music cut in and around their words.

Pup's face was motionless, stony. "No sir. I am in your charge. I just won't ride next to you, if you don't mind." He wiped some drink from his chin. His stare was steady. It's not that I don't like you. It's just that you're..." Here it came. Marc braced for the words He felt them deserved: responsible for his death, even a murderer. He would not shrink from either accusation but he was unprepared for what Pup did say. "...you're ...unlucky."

Marc felt cut. He felt like his legs would go out. Blame was something he could shoulder, even fight, but unlucky. That was something outside his control. And it was something that would destroy a command if others felt that way. Jon pushed past him, ready to defend his captain, reaching toward Pup yelling "go on you're drunk!" But the giant had turned and moved slowly back through the crowd, bumping and being bumped by the other celebrants.

"Don't listen to him, it's his wine talking. He doesn't even know you." Marc smiled and told his friend not to worry. The music played on and Marc kept a strong face till the two friends parted and he chose a way different than following in the wake of the giant who had just sized him up so accurately. It was the witch months ago who told him he was cursed. And now it was this creature, whom she sent on to him, that carried the same message. It must be obvious to all who looked at him, as if a cross of ashes on his forward: cursed. Unlucky.

The music soured for him and the people laughed too loud or too hollow and he made his way towards the quiet places of the city and then into the halls and up towards the walls. He needed a dose of confidence. Or another reckoning from higher up who might dismiss him. He could not find the cardinal and thought that it might be imprudent to confide in him. The cardinal would reinforce the service to God, but how can he be of service to God if he was unlucky? The Cardinal did not recognize luck in the face of divinity. But every warrior on the field knew that God turned his head when the armies closed and what happened on the battlefield was as much divine grace as it was divine evil. The cardinal would excommunicate him for those thoughts. He needed someone else.

He started back towards the inn but then realized that Father George and sister Margaret were no longer there. They were no longer together either. Just how much did he play a part in that? Were those tow hearts bruised by his unluckiness? How could he be responsible for so much. He started to sober from the curse Pup renewed in his heart. He was not that important. The cold thinking of the constable was recovering him.

Still, it would warm his heart to be in the presence of a higher authority, his commander. Someone whose confidence was infectious. Someone who would see the ashen cross of doom on his face and pronounce it, or dispel it. He headed for the wall.

As he climbed the stairs towards one of the towers, a guard motioned for him to be silent in his approach. As he reached the top of the wall, another guard, leaning against the rampart as if concealing himself from enemy arrows, motioned with his hand, palm back as if pushing something, for the visitor to move carefully. Marc crouched down and moved back against the far wall of the rampart to avoid being seen and moved towards the section where the siege master was likely to be.

There, in a clump of men, was Longo. He was intent on something below the wall. He leaned over the crenellation and then, when he leaned back, Marc saw his face black with soot. When he turned to see Marc, a white smile broke out of the darkness. It was Longo.

He motioned for Marc to join him. There were no words, but Longo took his hand and ran it alongside a pot that was near them, and Marc smelled some acrid odor he could not identify. It was like tar or pitch but stronger, worser. Longo blackened Marc's face with a couple of crude swipes. He seemed almost boyish in his delight in slapping the soot onto his companion's surprised face. He nodded towards the wall and pointed downward at the same time. Marc took a look. He saw blackness. The dark shadow of the wall's base and then he saw some of the blackness rearrange.

The torches were all set atop the wall so as to leave the outside dark. No torches in the standards that jutted out from the wall. They were there, but unused. The darkness was purposeful, created as a trap to draw the enemy closer. Marc could not tell what they were up to but it did not seem to matter to Longo. They were drawn in and so the trap was sprung. Longo and others took ladles from the pots and readied to fling the acrid sauce over the wall. It did not seem hot enough to burn anyone. Was it a poison? Some sort of acid?

Others moved nearby. A set of small torches had been concealed behind horse blankets held by several other guards. The rest reached in and grabbed them, about to reveal the light and show activity upon the wall. Longo gave the signal and the men along the wall stood up with the ladles and flung the stew downward onto the surprised men, some of whom called out low oaths. They scurried but did not immediately retreat as they did not know what rained on them or why, did not know they were discovered, let alone seen the whole time. Longo called for the torches aloud as others dipped their ladles back into the pots and flung more of the strange stew onto the spies sneaking about below. The torches went over the wall and fell like stars in the night down the long length of stone work and landed on and near the men, coals scattering from the firebrands as they twisted through the air.

The beauty of the fire fall ended in the ignition of the men below into horrible burning masses. The spies had tried to rub the tar off of them and succeeded only in spread it more. When the fire came near it, it caught, and the men now screamed in horror and ran in panic into each other and away from the way, turning and stumbling, falling to their knees, portions of them on fire, their clothes burning away and the stench wafted up to the top of the wall where Marc thought he would be sick from it. Twenty or so men were now writing in their death dances upon the ground. Some crawled as far as the fosse and rolled in, like burning bales of hay, and the fire spread to a dead branch or clump of dried grass and burned a bit brighter.

He could not see them in the darkness, but he knew the Turks were standing to watch this horror. Longo meant it that way. He had planned this show for night time and needed only a few men to chill the rest. Longo stood beaming. He was a grim master of defense. He enjoyed his success. The poor bastards still moaning and calling out fell silent except for the wind, fanned still by the night breezes.

Longo turned to Marc and said "Greek Fire" Marc had heard of it. "Not even water can put it out. We've all we need of it." And then he thought and grinned wider. "We've all they need of it."

If there were signs of doom on Marc's face, Longo did not see it. He saw only his own victories in defending the Queen of Cities in any way necessary. "This will save us a ride tomorrow". Longo looked over the wall again and then back at Marc. "You should see this in a catapult!" Instead, Marc was picturing it flung from the ships in the harbor if the Turkish fleet tested the boom. That was the wall his goddess spoke of, a wall of fire, even one that water would not put out. How many other terrible weapons were in the secret of this keep?

Longo busied himself among his men again. Marc stood back. The cries of the men had long stopped. They many burn for hours; he did not know and did not care to watch. He took his thoughts and walked along the wall to the tower nearest the palace and his room.

Perhaps the best solace was to sleep, to get some rest and let the clear mind of the morning sort things out. He knew as a warrior that it was not good to think too deeply after a battle. What happened had happened. What would happen next would require readiness, not hindsight.

He got back to his room and his armor, cleaned and polished, was waiting for him without scent of blood. He walked around it to the bed and tested the ropes again and tightened them some. He had strong muscles which would fight sleep tonight. He needed something solid to make them yield. This was not the soft curling sleep of babes tonight.

The night came thought he window and the noise of the street party floated up on mixed anthems. The battle ran back and forth before his eyes again. The arm he severed cartwheeled through the air again. The Turks he had run through were still struggling on his blade. The slashing strokes were blunted in mid arc by meat and bone. He saw his sword tip sink once again into the face of a young man who left this visor open. The sword retracted, wet and bright.

These sights did not trouble him as much as it might. He was doing right and fighting what must be fought. Sleep crept up around these scenes like a busy day does to a child. Soon the breathing was that of a sleeper and not that of a warrior.

He saw the faces of the dead give way to the living. Dead Tyrrell dancing away in a drunken haze. Jon, enjoying his girls. The cardinal giving him a blessing again and Longo, looking confident and happy. Asif, the monk, Sister, the Smits being carried on tables. All whirled around him in a gentle snowfall of thoughts. Faces of the living gave way to the faces of desire. His goddess came to see him again, offering, in his sleep, in his dreams, to lather him with oils again and to rub down every aching muscle lacing his frame. He groaned aloud as her hands visited each place on him that she was invited to go. He was on his back as she reached around and under him and massage away all of his woes and cares. She let her green eyes drown his own. She let tones and white doves tremble from her red lips. She let the winds of the golden Horn push her robes against her breasts and thighs so that her image as a woman was plain to him and irresistible.

He rolled over to her, to surrender to her. To let her oil-soaked gown, reveal her dark tips and soft curves. He rolled over to let her take him if she wished, to sit astride him and sacrifice herself down on his manhood, and she did, moaning as she did, throwing her head back, dropping her blonde whips behind her and then bringing her tresses forward in a jerk. He shuddered. He opened his eyes. She opened hers. They were not green. They were red! Burning red. She leaned forward and looked him in the face. He was locked within her legs like a trapped creature. She was no longer a goddess, or even herself. She smiled slightly like a demon, and then, pursing her lips to kiss him, instead, she whispered: unlucky!

Chapter Seven:

It began with the slender hands of the goddess reaching out to him through the darkness, snaking their way under his clothes and into his flesh. He burned and relaxed both. She found every knot in his muscles and pleaded with them by touch until they surrendered. They eased before her grip like the dead yielded to death. He quivered and as soon as he did, she moved her warm hands to new cold swaths of skin. His goose flesh melted before her hands as she moved them freely wherever she wanted, wherever she needed them

He rolled over on his back and then look up at her. Her green eyes shone in the dark and the moonlight walked her blonde tresses but then, as the moon moved behind a cloud, her golden hair darkened and her green eyes pooled to mud and she leaned forward with the huskier limbs of the witch. She smelled of fire and smoke, was luscious to the touch but he turned from her and it was the goddess whose hands took her place, she gently straddled his low back with her naked legs, sliding slowly over his. She smelled now of lavender and lilies. She leaned forward and slide the tops of her feet down the inside of his legs till they met his feet. Her arms moved up across his back to his shoulders and then to his neck, and then she cradled his head while she leaned forward and began to push her lips into his neck, working her way up behind his ear, along the ridge and then over into his ear as if to whisper nothing but small wet breaths.

He squirmed some more, pushing his face into the bed, rustling his beard along the cotton sheets, nuzzling up into the coverlet. AS the goddess writhed atop his back, he felt his loins stir, and then stir hard. Too hard. Something was pushing against them and it was the hips of the witch again, beneath him now, and pushing her haunches into his groin and brushing back and forth and then grinding in a slow circular motion. He tried to open his eyes. He thought he saw her dark locks cascade as she turned to look him dead in the eyes, her pupils excited with silent laughter, then closing with joy and satisfaction. He was caught between them. He turned again and the goddess was now facing him but the hands of the witch reach swiftly under his own buttocks and grabbed hard, relaxed and then squeezed again, inflaming him further. The goddess looked down at them and smiled that same smile, as if two women would share the same man as well. That whatever his pleasure, she would give it to him. However, she could have him, she would go willingly.

He was sinful. He was breaking his vow of celibacy, being unfaithful to his knighthood but he could not stop. He was disgracing the church and the guard he served, and he could not stop. Now he did not want to stop and all over the city, everyone now somehow knew, that he was giving into his temptations, falling as a savior, failing as a knight, getting lost as a leader and getting anyone who followed him as lost. His shame burned from fevered brown to raging loins, and then down all his limb. He filled with lust and lust rubbed him passionately on either side. A lust too great to hide from anyone.

Despite everyone knowing, despite his shame and his disgrace, he could not resist the sirens as they swarmed him and every inch of him, and together at once. He struggled and resisted, not touching them but being touched and he erupted against them and felt his emissions staining his soul as if cooled.

The cardinal knew. He was alarmed, He called for his mean and sent them for him. They were clamoring up the stairs, coming for him in his room, to catch him in the act its. They had terrible weapons with him, a rope and knives, he was to be castrated! He was to be cast out of the church. He tried to push the women away so he could block the door, save the three of them, but the guards called for the door to open. Called him by his Christian name! He froze halfway out of the bed. The guards parted on the stairwell and the Cardinal himself strode upwards and with a look of sheer disgust for the fallen knight, pounded on the door himself, calling for confession, penance and castration!

The door shook. He blinked at it, then at the bed where the women were but no more. He looked about the room as if smoke and lavender would be lingering in some human form. There was nothing. His named was called again but this time as the caller hastened away from this door and down the hallway.

He looked down. The bed held his stain. His soul recognized the sin.

He grabbed now clothes and dressed quickly. Something was afoot and he was alerted to it but it and no one would wait on him. He unbolted the door and hurried down the hall to the stairs that lead to the wall and the towers. He saw others but they were headed another way. He stopped and watched and decided to follow them. They were brisk but not panicked, not eager but not charging.

They led him up the other stair well to the wall along the golden Horn and they ran in the gray dawn light towards the far end of the wall. All of Constantinople was to his right but mired in muddy shadows of night. The torches that had not burned down were carried off by people as they made their ways through the streets towards the other end of the city. It was as if the city were a table of molten gold among dark bricks, and small rivers flowed towards the low end where the Horn met the Bosporus and the sea.

People were talking excitedly amongst themselves and filling in the others who joined into families and circles of friends or neighbors. He overheard them and knew that the fleet of the Sultan had arrived. They were turning out as if a parade, instead of marching to peer at their doom.

He ran for several minutes at a slow run, waking up the limbs and body and mind for possible duty. He knew not what to expect but knew from experience that the best thing to do when you did not know what to expect was to be ready for anything. He ran for several miles along the wall, dodging the slower pedestrians, the civilians whose mission was to peer and glimpse the spectacle.

The wall was thick with people and down at the far end he could see Longo and the Emperor and others he knew from the high council. They had arrived earliest with the first warning. He was not overlooked or forgotten but he was not waited for. And that's as it should be, he thought.

He could get no closer. The crowed was too dense and turned from citizens to soldiers further on, a phalanx protecting the Emperor and his council. The soldiers were new to him. They were dressed like sailors but in brilliant costume. He learned later that they were Venetians. The Genoese and Venetians did not get along and so they were separated on the wall, given different portions to defend.

Out to sea, the first ships were clearly in view. No doubt they were spied early by the morning guards up in the towers, using glasses to see them prick the horizon. There were a dozen ships close enough to count the men aboard. They were large ships but low in the water, and not as high as the Byzantine ships. These were more like galleys, some with masts and sail but their decks were easily a whole man or more below that of the sailing ships holding up the boom. From here he could see more ships under the boom. He counted ten in all. There were eight more in the harbor itself and there were another eight outside the boom, holding close and lining along the tip of the city. Perhaps they were tucked away out of sight to invite an attack. We hold the advantage, he thought, then realized he was the 'we' he thought of. Had he become one of them?

He scanned the horizon. Two dozen more ships behind the leaders. They slowed facing the boom and its shits just outside the doom. They dropped anchor. A face off. The other ships were gaining fast, smaller ships, of various sizes. Some looked no more than fishing boats pressed into naval service to haul men and supplies, or armed with a spare to ram against their enemy and take down whatever they could. He smelled the same sort of sacrifice as the dead laborers tossed into the moat for fill.

"Pageant, pageant! All pageant." Marc turned to see the haggled face of the professor as he felt his clasp on his shoulder. It looked like he had spent the night walling up books. They traded greetings and the professor resumed: "this is the show that the sultan has ordered. First his men, then the cannons and now the ships. All meant to hypnotize and impress, induce as much fear as drums and cymbals on the battlefield. I would be wary about this. Here we all are, watching one hand, while the other hand, does what?"

The professor had a point but Marc trusted in the city not to make as simple a mistake as that. Surely the land walls were well guarded and the enemy line as closely watched as the sea ward horizon. He would not scold the professor by differing with him. Instead he used it as an opportunity of a more personal nature.

"Nyad is worried about you. She thinks you are about to do something brash. Unwise." He stared the professor full in the eyes, his constable instincts on full, searching for any glint of misdirection. He would watch both the professor's hands as well as they watched the Sultan's hands.

Brash? Unwise?" At firs the professor seemed to be denying any complicity at all. "What I do is necessary and natural." The professor turned his gaze from the warships to the knight. "She needs to get beyond me, and this," he gestured from warships to city. "He husband is dead and she cannot have an old man like me fill his shoes!" He was irascible. Truly provoked by her situation, or at least the way he saw her situation. "She needs to get out of here, and she need someone young like you. You have to take care of her, I cannot do it. I am leaving soon and where I am going, she cannot follow. I cannot leave her alone, she deserves more. She deserves someone like you." The old man had run up and down the emotional gamut in his speech, from fond affection to brave logic and sound illustration to fear and anger.

This was more than mere match making. He had a plan to leave but could not take her, probably due to the danger involved. It must be risky indeed to think her better off in a besieged city. Marc studied his eyes and then looked out to sea again. Another two dozen ships moved into view and the fore-sea was filling with anchored Turks.

"I'll do what I can for her, but what is it you are up to? Smuggling more books out of the city? "

"Yes. Exactly."

"It's too risky. Don't do it."

"No choice, lad, but the risk is the last thing to worry about. I can afford the risk easy, but she can ill afford it at all. Promise me you'll take her over, turn her from her concerns for me. Make her feel safe and that all is well or will be, as I plan for it to be just that. I can say no more."

Marc could say more but the activity of the sea boiled a bit more. Now there were fifty ships, two to one, but they were smaller and less formidable. A few raced forward past the city and gave the Byzantine ships a modest berth and then turned back and joined the fleet at anchor. One thing was certain, the Sultan now commanded the sea and he was ready to engage the fleet.

Marc felt a chill that did not belong to the morning air. He had not though much about it but when Nyad showed him the Golden Horn, which was now plain and sleepy, he felt that the city had its back door open. That there was an escape to the sea if needed, and that there was a battlefield that was uncontested and all theirs. But now he felt the back door closing and it made him feel pent up and hunted.

The largest ship yet had sailed forward from the distant mist and it turned before reaching the others and went to shore somewhere on the far side of the Horn. It must have been the flag ship and whatever admiral was in charge of this monstrous fleet was on his way to meet with his master, the Sultan. There's be no attack today, Not yet. But then he ships on the far horizon continued to pop into view. There was fifty or sixty near anchor and another two dozen still coming into sight.

Suddenly, there was a boom, and the crowd moved as one who had been shoved. That was canon fire from the front gate, but none like they had ever heard before. There was some sort of new attack afoot and it electrified the soldiers present. They ushered the Emperor down a tower to the road below where there were other soldiers waiting with horses. Longo saddled up along with the other counselors and the Emperor and they turned to ride through the city towards the front gate. Much faster than following the wall.

Marc flung himself down the nearest stairs down another tower and to the road below. He had made it in time to see the men riding past him. He didn't know what to do. He saw Longo look back at him as he rode off. Then, giving orders on the move, he sent another back to offer his horse to Marc. He saddled up and leapt to the chase. He wasn't too far behind and was able to catch them as they closed in on the front gate. They stormed up the stairs of the main tower next to St. Romans Gate.

There the guars stood saluting and the rest faced the Turks. They had not left the wall unguarded and no one seemed in a panic. The guards pointed out towards the center line where the Sultan's Red and Gold tent stood. There, fifty years before it, was a new canon. It had been assembled in the night and the team of sixty oxen who had pulled it to the line last night were tethered off in the woods towards the sea.

To the side of that. Marc could see the black coach he had seen in Lyons. The man with the toy design had turned his toy into a terrible machine. The canon was joined in the two halves to make one, the largest ever seen by man. It dwarfed the bombards next to it. And the bombards had dwarfed the other canon.

The sultan sat upon his huge white horse and stood before his tent behind the bombard. He had gotten everyone's attention. He saw the Emperor from afar. The sultan turned to his vizier and spoke: "if I don't come back, take the city. Burn it to the ground, level the building, kill everyone and throw the stones into the sea.'

"Yes, master," the Grand Vizier would do just that. He thought the young Sultan overly brave but knew he was too headstrong to deter him from his plans once he seized upon them. He was riding out to speak directly to the Emperor. His best chance, he thought, to make the treaty that the vizier had urged so strongly. He saw the Sultan carrying the mace he had just given him.

The Sultan rode down the hill with a half dozen riders with him. He followed the gentle stream of the Lycus River that ran towards the center of the land side. This stream disappeared beneath the iron gates covering its entrance near the base of the wall and fed the city fresh water. Damming it was useless since the Golden Horn and the Bosporus also yielded fresh waters. The city was well supplied with drink and sea food. There'd be no staring the city into submission.

The small stream did cut a valley through the land in the approach to the main gates and the land on eight side of the stream dropped down and pulled the wall with it. This was perhaps the most vulnerable section of the city, if the city was to be taken by land. the currents on the west side of the side, in the sea of Mamara, were too swift to risk a landing. The tides and currents were favorable on the Horn side of the city, where the city built its wharves and docks for trade, and the wall was a single wall, but as long as the boom was in place and the Byzantine fleet afloat behind it, the war would come to this wall. The sultan was getting a closer look.

He rode up to the unfilled moat. The stench of rotting bodies greeted him and his men. He showed no remorse for using them as objects to fill the moat. He motioned for his men to stand before the wall while he rode easily a short distance up and down the base of the wall, Sizing up the work and the effect of the siege so far.

Constantine watched impassively from above, patiently. The men below were unarmed and unthreatening. he too was sizing up the boy Sultan as he rode back and forth in his naive and precocious manner. Did this boy have the stomach for war, and the maturity to weather its fortunes, or was he just a tempestuous tyrant who demanded forfeiture and held no value for anything else and so was able to easily sacrifice his men. Perhaps, if he lost enough of his toys, he would go home.

The Sultan rejoined his men and looked up at the Emperor. They did not speak. The Sultan gestured to a warrior on his right who lifted a bow and arrow sideways, to show his intent, a scroll around the arrow's shaft. At once a hundred men on the wall raised their bows, arrows seated and drawn, ready to fire. Constantine slowly raised his hand to lower them with the opening of his palm, then, he simply pointed and another warrior leaned out of the walls' crenulations and put up a small round wooden buckle. The archer below seated his message and shot it up into the buckle. The scroll retrieved and handed over to interpreters. Among them, Prince Orhan, one of the pretenders to the Ottoman Empire.

The message said: my term s of surrender will guarantee the safety of all your citizens and soldiers. Properties will be respected yet taxed and anyone wishing to leave will be free to do so. Failure to surrender will bring about the destruction of your city, the death of all soldiers and the looting and plundering of your empire as spoils of war to myself and my men. The population would be massacred or enslaved.

Marc studied the face of the emperor. It was motionless as the words were read out to him and the busy counselors muttered their various points of view and offered up options to the emperor though, from what could be seen, the options were nearly predetermined. The emperor turned and stepped up upon the wall. Soldiers spun into place behind him, turning and reaching up to grab the great belt around his robes while another solider grabbed the waist of that man so the Emperor, while standing perilous upon the wall, was anchored and secured from fall. There were ropes around his ankles and those were secured by other men, sitting low on the ground, braced to catch the emperor, to ensure he did not fall or slip from the wall. Four other soldiers stood by on either side with large shield, crouching low, as not to be see but at the ready to shove those shields up before their emperor faster than he could be pulled back. Other shield would go up over him and he would be boxed in to a personal fort in the blink of an eye, in the cry of an order.

Such preparations, such protection, was impressive to watch. The Turks saw only a sage and robust Constantine mounting the walls like a reckless raw recruit. He stood there motionless save for the ruffling of his great ermine and purple robes in the strong wind. He had command of the stage and wielded it majestically. The Young usurp sat below, awaiting an answer, awaiting the response of the man who command all eyes of the battlefield.

Finally, slowly, Constantine raised his left arm, as it to make a point. As soon as his hand was outstretched, as soon as he touched the heavens above, there was action from the towers to his left and right, nearest the gates of the city. Prearranged warrior appeared with bows and lighted arrows readied. They were aimed downwards at the bridges to the city. At the same time, they were shot and the bridges to St. Roman's Gate and the Gate of Charius were set ablaze. They must have been prepared with the Greek Fire as the dozen or so comets that struck downward from the towers devoured the bridges from end to end, side to side in flame. There was only the iron gate and stone wall, charred now, that kept the city safe should any demon walk through the fire and try to enter it somehow.

The Sultan's men reared back and two wheeled as if expecting an attack. But the Sultan remained calm, staring up at the Emperor who still did not move but stood like a god calling down the thunder from the sky with his upraised arm. Then, as black smoke billowed up on either side of the small Lycus river, bringing a spell of night to mid morn, the Sultan allowed his men to back up a few paces, to calm the horses, if nothing else.

The Emperor, still a stone giant carved for just this moment, knew he commanded the scene and used it to his advantage. He would show all that he was the man to his boy upstart.

The sultan took new the dynamics of the moment and he refused to back away or run the Emperor's show. No one knew what was next. The Sultan's demands were being rejected. The Emperor was sealing the city. Committing his hand. It would be a fight to the death.

Slowly, before anyone dare waver their eyes from the figure, the impressive Constantine began to lower his finger and arm, keeping it out stretched and before him until, he reached a point where he was pointing at the Sultan himself. This too was a prepared signal and the walls began to shake with a low groan and then a rumble.

Holes in the wall, close to the ground and ignore till now, sled open and through their iron teeth spewed fountains of water. The city had cisterns in great numbers and many were dedicated to just this event. They had not been used for years, maybe decades. Maybe centuries, Marc wondered, but they worked. They began spilling out into the moat, splashing against the mud walls and dousing the dead and all the stumps and rocks and dirt and debris that had been flung into it by the Turks for the past week. It covered it all and the water began to rise. The city must have looked like a dam burst to the Sultan's army. A great wall letting out enough water to wash away whatever came before it, whatever tried to take it.

The roar could be heard all up and down the Sultan's loin and when he had made his show, the Emperor simply fell backwards, slowly and fell off the wall and from the sight of the Turks, caught and cradled by his men.

It was grand spectacle and the constable was awed by the demonstration. If the Turks were as affected as he was, he was sure that they would be packing by nightfall. But the Sultan was less impressed. The Young leader wheeled his horse and galloped back to his tent and stood there, while the great cannon was prepared and then, personally, signaled its firing again. For the second time that morning, ever, the grant canon roared out its tongue of flames and spit an iron bolder at the ancient city. The ground shook for four miles all around. The monstrous barrow bounced and panicked the crew and others around it but did not fluster the Sultan. The massive barrel bounced back down on its planking, splinter several boards. It was grabbed and swabbed with water and oiled down and the preparations for another shot were begun. A cycle that would take hours before the monster belched again.

Its spit had struck the wall and the walls shook like never before and down from the wound fell more scrap and stone than ever before. A new monster had set about chewing on the walls of the capital and it seemed to have a greater bite and as big an appetite as the other guns. As big an appetite for destruction as the young Sultan.

The emperor had vanished from the wall with his counselor and the man who was once again n charge was Giovanni Justinian Longo. Siege master.

The walls were pouring their ponded stores into the moat faster than the ground could soak it up. It filled in sections where the moat had walls built between it and rocky formations. At some points, invisible when filled, it was only a few feet deep, thanks some to the rubble dumped in by the attackers. In other places, the moat was a hundred feet deep. The Queen of Cities cried into it.

The bridges continued to burn. Black smoke rising up to touch the winds that sheared them off towards the sea. Marc wondered what would happen next. The smaller cannon began barking. The cargo net and bales of hay were smashed and shredded. They would not stop the bite of the canon. Not the goliath, not the bombasts, not the pack of smaller ones. Given time, they would tear down this wall in sections. Marc was sure of it. He looked at Longo. Longo was looking down in the moat, gauging the fill rate, assessing the debris piles, watching the bloated corpses of yesterday's kill bobbing up and down in the fetid waters that pooled in the clay shoals of the moat.

It was barely noon.

The Sultan's fleet had arrived and without so much as consulting with his Admiral, he had ridden down to demand the forfeiture of the city, or all live within it.

The Emperor's answer was considered, and considerable.

If Marc felt the pinch of a trap as the back door was shut by the anchored fleet of the Turks, this, then, was the front door banding shut. He was on the inside of the door, but the door was firmly bolted and outside it waited fire and canon and swords and death. Only the walls stood between them. Walls that shook when the river ran though it and the canon fired into it.

Walls protected him, and the bravery and strategy of leaders like Constantine and Longo. He felt good about that. Their answer had been prepared and far better than anything he had imagined or could have invented. These people were prepared, determined and their defense well thought out over hundreds of years.

Perhaps he was on the best side, the right side. Perhaps being on God's side was the only wall they needed.

Chapter Eight:

It was late afternoon; the sun had grown tired and sagged in the sky. Marc was fifth in a column of men mounted up and armored, waiting behind the Gate of St. Roman. They numbered a hundred or so. They waited patiently for the gate to be raised. They stood far back from the gate where a work crew had waited to roll out huge timbers across the moat and into the smoldering ashes of the bridge that had burned over the moat just hours ago.

The ends of the timbers were roped and the ropes lead through the gate ahead of them and up over the wall where they would be raised by another crew atop the wall. All of this was invisible to the Turks waiting outside, firing their canon as they had all day. The two bombards and the great behemoth took their tolls on the city's ancient walls. Something had to be done. This was it.

There were outnumbered but not out matched. Their heavier horses, stout armor, determination and wealth of arms was being combined with the element of surprise to form a favorable strategy. Yet something was holding them up. The work crew stood by listlessly awaiting orders to move the bridge out. This city was full of surprises, both good and bad.

Constantine appeared on the tower stairs near the gate. Runners moved on horseback from the base of the tower where some of the Emperor's counselors stood waiting, all eyes on the attack column. The riders sweep out and met the column just behind Marc and walked their horses slowly towards the back. About twenty men back of Marc, they stopped and sniffed. A knight in armor with green pennants and flourishes was culled from the ranks. He was in full visor. It was Longo.

He had attempted to join the foray out into the battlefield but just as before, the Emperor had forbidden it. Her knew Longo's heart and had assigned men to keep track of him. Alerted to his plans, the emperor foiled them. No one could see his face for the visor was down, but Marc imagined a grin behind it as he rode slowly over to report to his master.

Now the gates were pulled up. It would draw attention. There would not be that much of a surprise here. There were five hundred horsemen at the ready waiting for them to stick their lances out of the city, and they would see this coming in plenty of time to be prepared. The timbers were hoisted up by the ropes and the crews ran them out and then other crews, almost before the timbers dropped on the far side of the moat, ran out sections of planking stout enough for two horses side by side to tremble across, and they were quickly laid into place.

As the men charged out, Marc noticed the design of the bridge, easily assemble and laid into place without tools or finishing work, easily withdrawn and if needed it could be pulled by the ropes quickly to draw up or draw short, dropping its far end into the moat and sealing the city again. He wondered if it would be sealed as soon as they rode off of it, if they would be shut outside with the Janissary cavalry. He had no time to look back.

The red swath of horsemen was already closing in on them as they cleared the moat and charged up to meet them. They clashed and swords crossed after lances dumped men from their saddles. The weight of the armored Christians helped unseat the lighter Turks and cast them to the ground in good numbers.

Other Turkish riders had sped past them towards the gate where they had hoped for an easy and quick entrance into the city, a foot hold to flood with tens of thousands of soldiers. They were disappointed in death. Archers from the walls and towers stood on queue and laid down a deadly barrage or shot and arrow, and for the few close enough, a stone or two upon their heads. Inside, unseen also and waiting, more archers and a canon set to bellow out the gate's mouth. That was one of the surprises.

Marc urged his horse forward it not he thick swarm of the Turks. The column quickly spread as it broke out of the gate and off the draw bridge. The work crew was busy dousing the bridge again and at first Marc feared they would torch it as well but the lack of acrid smell told him it was not Greek fire but plain old Greek water to douse the members of the old bridge. The plan was well thought out.

The spread of the attackers was to maximize the targets within the enemy ranks as the enemy swarmed all around the heavier knights. A few Byzantines fell but far more were cut from the red warriors whose colors soon bled through and seemed to be cut loose from their clothing. Somewhere in the pack were the Smits, swinging broad axes which cleaved easily through unarmored limbs. Jon was nearby, whizzing arrows he had loaded beforehand and then again as he rode on the move. He liked to stay out of the fray, drawing attackers out after him who could never close on him before he reloaded with lethal accuracy.

The battle raged for mere moments before the Byzantine defenders turned as one and rode towards the eastern end of the battlefield, to meet the other five hundred Janissary cavalry men racing to slaughter the Christians. Just as they forged past the far Gate of Charius, the gate was raised and a draw bridge swung out and from there, another attack column of knights twice as large streamed to attack the second red cavalry from behind. Some realized the threat and stopped and turned to fight briefly before being overwhelmed and others were riding towards the west when the Charius column caught up with them from behind.

The column from St. Roman's Gate was the bait and as they drew over a thousand enemy riders onto their core, The Charius Gate column, twice as large, had an easy time attacking from the rear. This was the main surprise.

As soon as the second attackers reached the core of the bait, they turned and headed back towards the Charius gate. The St. Roman's bridge was withdrawn already. They had been shut out, but only as planned.

They had to fight their way to the walls of the city but once within distance, they had help. The plan counted on the enemy to be caught up in the surprise attack and the heat of the battle to rely on their overwhelming numbers. They kept after the Byzantines for too long and as the moving battle rolled into the shadows of the wall, archers released their prayers. Many Red tunics thudded to the ground before the commanders had realized their situation once again. They called for a retreat and as they did, the Byzantines separated out of the battle and rode successfully back into the city. This gate had the same razor-sharp teeth of a trap that the other gate had. The canon sounded off through the gate as soon as the last rider cleared the inside. It was for show of force more than any tactical blow of the moment. The emperor wanted the Turks to get an inside glimpse of what awaited them if they ever made it through the gates.

They had angled three canons together to shoot at differing vectors. The Emperor wanted the sound of the bark of the canon to be sharper than the bite. Another show for the faint of heart that may be lurking among the Sultan's less faithful.

The bridge was withdrawn, and the battlefield lay strewn with the dead. The spotters upon the wall had already counted the casualties left upon the field and the injuries outnumbered in favor of the city, 20 to 1. The Emperor and his siege master had correctly calculated the odds and the best use of their advantages.

The forces outside had something more to do while firing their canon at the wall. Fear what was inside those walls. Wait and watch for yet another attack, another surprise, one more trick played to show the cost they would pay for coveting the Queen of Cities. Let that work on their wills, silently, between the blasts of the behemoth and its bombards.

Marc rode through the men inside, and found his men, all in good shape. The younger Smit had a slash wound but it looked superficial. Jon had a broken bow string and was not pleased about it at all. He even checked on Pup, riding through the man's view and returning his stare without animosity. The act brought the concession of a nod from the giant.

He rode to the waiting squires and dismounted, His horse had received an arrow in the hind quarters and lightly would not make it to sundown. He may end up on the victory table at the banquet tonight. Nothing could be wasted under siege.

He doffed his armor and let it into the hands of the armorer's pages who would wash it and hammer out any dents, repair any breeches and oil the leather hinges that held it together. Marc thought that the city was rich enough in armor that he could water new each time, if there were time to tailor the fit. Or were they just that poor in soldiers. They seemed to have a dearth of men at fighting age. He remembered the healthy men he saw along the Spice Road. He did not size them up for cowards or see that they had the desperation of those fleeing a fight. Merely refugees, but now that he saw what they fled from, this magnificent city that so many were willing to die defending, he thought less of the refugees.

Buckets of water were doused over him and they washed away his gloomy thoughts. The sun was still strong enough to add some warmth to the skin but he accepted the blankets to dry off in. He became aware of one of the sets of hands attending him had seem to take some liberties, to linger on his shoulders a bit too long, as if a mother's hands, caring for a child, enjoying a moment of nurture. He turned to look into the smiling green eyes of a goddess. He was smitten of any words.

"You were magnificent out there. I watched from the wall, and prayed for you." Marc wondered to whom did she pray and did it do any good? Could there be more than one god looking out for him? Her hands roamed the front of the blanket, pressing it to his chest to dry him. He was still dumb with silence, shocked by her appearance and her intense interest in him. It was not altogether unpleasant attention and his surprise was dissolving into pleasure as she rubbed him though the blanket.

"Come. I've something to show you." He followed her, she leading the way by holding his hand. It was still stinging from the grip on his sword and he glanced won to make sure that he wore no blood or flesh that wasn't his. He hoped that he was not gripping her with the numb vice of a sword hilt, he didn't want to hurt, or offend and he was led like a puppy through the inner walls and into the streets of Constantinople.

It was a short walk. The city was full of surprises, he thought, and of empty houses left behind by the people who fled down the spice road. She led him to one and took him inside. There, was a table set with food and a fire in the hearth. She had brought new clothes for him and had spent most of the day preparing this assignation. He was impressed by her effort, her attention to details, and flattered.

She led him into an inner room which had a fire going as well, but it was on the floor, in an indentation and above it a clay tub with porcelain tiles and enough water to soak into it up to your chin. It was a Roman bath. He had heard of them. Built originally for cooking oysters but their warm waters were irresistible to the people who used them and they soon became more known for their bathing pleasures. The soak of sore muscles in warm waters was said to cure the spirit as well as the body. It was something to heal the sick and ward off any curses the flesh might succumb to. He stood there looking at the vapors rising up from the water's surface, which was still and clam and very blue from the pigments used to colored the tiles of the inside of the clay pool.

She stood behind him, holding him in position before the tub by the gentle touch of her hands upon his biceps, a child, steering a docile beast to water. She moved slowly to his shoulders and took off the drying blanket. She did not want him dry, only warm and now that they were here... She slid her fingers under his woolen shirt and raised it up will he surrendered his arms towards the ceiling. The warm light of the fire danced out all along the tubs bottom and laughed on every wall of the room in warm hues.

Somewhere in the back of his mind were alarming messengers, knocking weaker and weaker at the doors to his concentration. Would the warm waters make him weak in battle, would they sap his strength? Would she?

He let the voices smother. She undid his buckle and stood back. She wanted him naked and she would let him decide this part, showing him only the way and not taking his decision from him. He appreciated this. The charm of that though worked on his resistance and aided her plans. He let drop his last vestige of covering. He did not know what to do next. He did not know the customs of these people, the rituals of the bath. Would she be joining him? Could he resist her any further if she did? Was he resisting her now?

Naked, lit by the thrown fire light, he waited till she gently found the small of his back with her slender hand and pushed him ever so slowly. He stepped up the pool, slid in one foot, the leg, felt the embrace of hot bath, and then climbed the rest of him in.

He sank down till his chin rested upon the surface. He did not know her intentions and when he cast his eyes to catch her, she was gone. He worried not. He slipped slowly beneath the surface of the waters till he was buried in warmth. Slowly, he rose out till his chin was again resting on the surface where the ripples argued themselves into stillness.

The goddess reentered the room bearing a chalice of wine for him to drink, and some grapes. She reclined along the edge of the tub and reached over to hand him the wind, and to feed him the grapes. She was a goddess, he a god for the moment, and this, was heaven.

He closed his eyes to see with all his senses. He smelled the slats of the waters and the perfume from her hair. He smelled the sweat and musk of her skin. Demons tried to swim out of the dark spots of the water and ask him about the professor, her other lover, her desires and plans for him, the trueness of her heart, and his, but he drowned them one by one.

Her face was inches from him, so that she could easily take the chalice from him or reach his lips with another grape. The wine seemed to swim through him faster for the heat of the waters. He felt the aftermath of battle retreat from him faster than he had ever known. He saw the world fall away into deep space till there was nothing left of it save for a set of luscious lips, framed by laughing green orbs. He moved towards their sweetness, as if the wine, the grapes, were but appetizers. She looked at his lips and then back into his eyes. She waited, not turning, but not running to him, waited for him to do what he would. She was part sacrifice, part seductress.

The distance between their mouths crumbled into nothingness and when they touched, they tasted each other and locked in an instant recognition of the rightness of it. Like two parts of a whole joining together immutably, they sensed the rightness of it. The two halves, recognizing each other as they lock into place.

She slid her arm into the waters as her hand sunk along his chest, an anchor nuzzling its ship as it dropped deeper. He reached with his sword hand and caught her by the head, pressing their lips harder in his grasp, and then, moving his hand down her back, clothes and all, he rolled her into the water with him, and onto him. The surface raised up with her body and the lip spilled and dripped upon the stone floor and the fires made it sizzle.

He could no longer care about right and wrong, about what the cardinal would say or the professor would do. He no longer cared if he was making promises of safekeeping he could not keep or being used to do the bidding of others instead of his own free will. He no longer cared of witchcraft and spells, fate and religions. He thought briefly of the witch who first cast this spell of doom over him, made him a man of ashes. He closed his eyes and pulled this woman to hi, her robe floating up to the top of the waters and out behind her as she molded to him. He was this man, in these waters, with this creature in his arms and he knew what to do. He pierced her.

When he awoke, she was gone. Nothing left but the scent of her on him and in the linen of the bed. The city was filled with old richly appointed houses, abandoned and left in care taking should the city survive and the occupants return. Each citizen had neighbors throughout the city who had turned over their homes to their trust. Some trusts were honored and some were violated. Some houses stripped of their riches, some left intact. He did not know who lived here and whether his Nyad was in charge of it or the professor or what, or if the furnishing were from here or other places, perhaps hers, but it suited their needs.

He soured at the thought of the professor. Did she go back to him? The thought darkened his mood which was a travesty coming down from such heights as he had just attained. She was gone, he was there in suspicious spirits and the fire had cooked low on the bath. He roiled with the fresh memories of her passion and the coolness of the arrangement Xerxes wanted. She had probably returned to tell him that she had accomplished what he sent her to do. Did that passion mask her true loyalty? Was the heat feigned, or displaced from Xerxes to him? Now that he knew they were two distinct people and not the twin spirits of one body as he had first thought, he now longed for the time when he never saw them together. He knew he would quickly torment himself to madness if he did not put a check on his ranting. He left the bed and the scent of her and tread out into the outer room. Dinner was still there and other appetites now satisfied he turned to the food and though he ate alone with his thought, he ate well.

Darkness was his only company walking back to the wall. He wanted to check with Longo to see where the situation was. What had the fleet in the harbor done? What was the mood in the camp? In the city it was festive again, as if the citizens, desperate to celebrate each and every victory, were living at the end of the executioner's noose. The desperation bothered him and he made his way past the celebrations and back to the walls.

As he climbed the inner wall and made his way to the bridge to the outer wall, he noticed activity below. There were people milling about in small groups down below. He thought it odd. The city was once again sealed, what could be of interest down there?

He crossed over to the outer wall and looked up and down for Longo. There was no finding him. There was a wealth of guards, all archers and shootists, crouched behind the wall as if waiting for another trap. Talking to someone one charge, Marc was directed back to the groups of people on the ground between the walls. They were clearing the moat. He trudged down the tower steps to the base of the walls.

Groups of people were moving in and out of the sluice gates used to fill the moat from the cisterns. The moat was filled once but the ground had wicked away some of the water and the debris had absorb others. It was a fetid putrid mess. The stench was powerful, an invisible sword.

He was about to step through it, onto some timbers for a make shift bridge when Longo came back in through it, looking foul and smelling worse. But that grin shown through it like a beacon.

"My friend, good, come to join us? You've made your contribution today on the field. Well done, well met and well done, warrior." This was high praise from the siege master, who didn't stop long to clasps hands and then with an embarrassed look, apologize for the mess covering his hands. He had not a clean spot to wipe his hand upon. The bucket brigades would be busy again at the end of this task.

"I've not the number of warriors the sultan has, but I've a number of ready hands. I'll use them like weapons- we're emptying the moat." The grin welled up again. Marc looked about him more closely and in the dark he saw men who were not fit to fight but able to labor, women and youngsters with all the spirit to fight but none of the years. They were wiggling through the sluice gates and tip-toeing across the timbers to labor in the moat, they used hooks on poles and hooks on ropes and even a swimmer on a rope here and there.

Longo grabbed some buckets of the acrid stench Marc had come to recognize as the Greek Fire. There was more use of it tonight. "The sultan threw all his dead into the moat again. Part fill dirt, and part attack on our noses." Longo made a face and then grinned again, making light of the grim task. "C'mon". He disappeared through the sluice gate and Marc followed him, slowly, unsure of the path in the darkness they had to labor under.

"We've given him more dead to work with today," long could be seen grinning even in the darkness outside the wall. He whispered more: "you and yours cut a fine swath through their finest. I'd wished I been there with you", this last without the grin.

"We'll do that every day till the Sultan has enough and takes his men away," Marc vowed.

Longo remained grim as he handed his buckets off to another. "Even though we felled twenty of theirs to every man we lost, they outlast us at that pace. That was our last ride outside the city."

Silence sealed the delivery of that message.

"But we can do this, "he gestured up and down the moat. In silence, in darkness, workers had pulled limbs, trees, casks, debris and bodies from the moat, emptying it out. "The drawback of overwhelming numbers is that you need space for them. If we give the Sultan's army no place to stand, no gate to crash through, no wall to tumble over, the numbers won't mean a thing. And a thousand men can lose heart at the same time as one."

The canon boomed out again and some people ducked and fell while others worked oblivious. They knew to rush into the moat areas right after the bombardment for the half hour or so that it would take to reload those guns. The wall was now a running wound of rubble where the canons chewed into it. Longo returned to the moat business.

He directed a few others to take more of the debris and place it into heaps that were forming every few dozen yards. He led Marc back through the wall to grab more fire. Marc carried two buckets this time, knowing his way in the dark now. They strode over to the piles of oozing mud and corpses, branches and board sticking out of it. "Enough fuel to fire but not soaking wet." Longo doused the piles with the buckets of oily stench. It fought with the foul of the rot. "By morning the water will have left the pile and they will be wet only from the Greek Fire. The stuff does not evaporate. It doesn't wash off; it can't be extinguished by water..." His grin was building again. "It's the damnedest thing to see, and the damnedest thing to fight. Besides the walls, and of course, you men, it is the best weapon we've got.

Marc disagreed but did not speak. Strategy from men like Longo and the emperor were the best thing they had. And then there were the ships and the boom and the moat and the workers who cleared the moat while the soldiers slept or stood guard in shifts. There were so many good weapons given to them by God.

The work continued through the night. "By morning, the sultan will wake to see these fires, see what we've accomplished." Longo lead Marc back through the sluice walls again and again. They took turns hauling out the bigger trunks and even getting waist high in the muck to knot ropes around barrels of stones and help haul them out. The mud and the stones themselves were simply spread about the ground before the moat, making them useless to gather up again to fill the moat. No one would gather them in the arrow fall of the wall's archers. And the shootists who manned the culverins in the towers were said to have deadly reach beyond that of the archers.

They were lucky that the enemy did not have as many culverin and muskets. Had they, the forays into their midst might not have favored them twenty to one. Marc still thought those were worthwhile odds. How many times would they play them till the losing side lost heart? They did not have to wipe them out, only make it clear that they may be wiped out if the pace of the battle continues.

Still, he did not know all there was to know about warfare by any means. This was mostly new to him, as new as horseback fighting on frozen lakes. He knew slightly more after the fight was over. Still not enough to make the fight as easy as he'd like it. The Sultan was no fool. He could easily have as many advisors more than the emperor the same way he had as many more soldiers. They may make changes and adapt to the strategy to change the odds, thus heartening their war. Cutting their lose rate from twenty to one to ten to one would seem like a victory to them, and indeed may be one. They had lost twenty men out there today, good stout knights, but the Sultan's losses were closer to five hundred. They had wiped out nearly one half of the standing cavalry. Though by sunset, the cavalry had been replaced, and doubled!

They could fight to the last man, slaying twenty for everyone and by the time the last knight fell, there would still be thousands and thousands of Turks to plunder the city and enslave the citizens. They had to find another way. Maybe simply outlast them. Marc was anxious to see what the bonfires to the next morning would so to the on lookers that throng around the sultan's tent.

He stopped, as if seeing a ghost, he made out the figure of the goddess. He nearly called out to her, forgetting the silence needed to perform this task in the dead of night. It was her, covered with the same reeking muck of all the other workers. So, this is where she had gone. She had not left him for the professor. He looked about as if he may also be out here in the disguise of muddy laborers, they all wore equally. His heart raced out to her but he checked it.

Instead he hefted two more buckets of the Grecian fire and ferried it over the timbered moat to the funeral pyres beyond. He splashed them well and returned.

They stopped well before any sunlight could creep up on them. Nyad had vanished in duties or had left, her chores dismissed. Then he realized as the squires manned the bucket brigade to douse them of their muck instead of battle gore this time, that the ladies surely had their own area to be cleansed in. They were not warriors and he knew better than any how the sight of naked women might inflame the lust in a warrior. Satiating those desires would be left to the festivals of the night.

The morning breeze was sweet and atop the wall it was lifted out of the stench of muck and corpses. The piles lay in heaps at regular intervals all along the Mesosteichen Wall stretching out between the two main gates and beyond on each side. They watched the men from the camp rise and stop to gawk at the new landscape assembled during the night. The towers had torch bearers standing on the tops of the towers in grand effect, and archers, reading for ignition.

There would be no Emperor to signal the show, no grand ritual or performance. This was the simple act of defenders showing how well they could defend. This was ordinary warfare the Turks had to face, done by ordinary foes but exceedingly well. It had its own simple message.

Marc was joined by members of his troop as the on lookers multiplied upon the wall, word spreading through the city and guards and warriors reporting for duty, others seeing the blaze growing atop the towers and knowing that it was an unusual show of force, that something was up. Everyone had to know, and once knowing, everyone had to see.

Marc stood on the wall and Jon came up to greet him and stood on his left. Something neither gave much through to till Pup came along. He greeted them both gruffly and was scorned by Job, but Pup went further and would not take the space beside Marc, the unlucky space on his right. He instead, stood to the left of Jon. Which annoyed Jon, who moved away from him and stood on the right of Marc, like boys feuding in a class room over chairs. Pup did not move, Nor Marc nor Jon and no one filled the void between them. Marc figured Jon was uncomfortable standing next to Pup but at this range felt close enough to protect him should Pup show any intent. Or had Jon reassessed Pup to be less of a threat. Just more of an insult. They men stood there in their uneasiness trying to ignore it in favor of the sight before them.

Once the attention had been focused on the battlefield before them with sufficient drama. The arrows were lit and loosed, flying long and true into the pyres and they lit with a whoosh. The Greek fire had survived the water and the mounds burned fast and hard, churning out black and gray smoke to stumble the dawn.

The three men stared and stared past the fires and the battlefield and the trench and the cannon and to the Sultan's tent but they could not see the Sultan. The sultan was being tore by the news from the arms and legs of lovers and he was not pleased. He was not pleased about the battle that morning and despite the arrival of his fleet, this new set back was an irritation. He thirsted for blood. He summoned his admiral and instructed him to attack. But it was not enough. He had to spill Greek blood and he knew just how to do it. He ordered his troops to assemble and they rode off, the Sultan at their head, away from the city and back up into the country side.

Someone filled in the void to the left of Marc. It was Xerxes. He looked as if he had been up all-night walling books. He looked like he had not slept for days. He looked mad. He nodded silently to Marc. Too tired to think, Marc had mistakenly thought.

"This city's too lazy to defend itself. They've got women and children cleaning the moat at night, can you believe that? Not enough soldiers to get the job done. Not enough Romans with back bone to fight a war. Nyad is exhausted.' Marc felt a tinge of sorrow for her and a tinge of jealousy for the man who saw her come home, who she came home to. Yet he was here. And it was clear that nothing had happened between them. Not in his disheveled and maddened state. His hands were still chalky from the clay he worked with. No longer the scholar's hands, if they ever looked that way.

"I've got my students making arrows. Can't make them worth a damn but that is not important. I doubt that any of them will fly straight but the point is they've got to contribute. Class is out. I've more important things to do and what better education can these youths have than to learn how to defend themselves. Defend their civilization, unlike their neighbors have done. And there are neighbors still here who harbor hopes of a treaty or think they can deal their own peace when the walls fall. Aw, baff!" The professor was tiring of his own flow of exasperation.

"Good gods, what is that?" Xerxes had looked deeper into the pyres to see the outlines here and there of some poor soul, fanning himself in hell.

Marc was looking out further towards the Sultan's tent. No one had seen them ride out and away. It would have looked like a retreat except for the great army that remained behind. Much of the Sultan's army remained hidden. He showed enough to demoralize the guards of the city and to get the job done, but there were other towns which held truces the Sultan could not trust and his greater army sprawled out around and behind them to make sure the truce was held.

Standing before the ten was the dandy Urban. He had come to supervise his own behemoth. He took great relish in the ritual of the canon loading and seemed to aim it himself. Marc cursed the bastard for turning on his own people. Xerxes prattled on. "I hope to the gods that I won't have to be the one to train those youths how to shoot, how to use those arrows. I may have to. Learned to make them from a book and I suppose I can learn marksmanship from one as well. But it's not their job. It's not something children should do." Xerxes was upset. There was little that anyone could say.

They watched as Urban marched slowly down to his prize monster. The crew bowed and scraped before him with great deference. He stood beside the great joined sections of the canon. One of the crew tried to pull him aside but he waved the man off.

The four faces at the wall stood staring with disgust fear and loathing mixing in their minds. There was little to do and no more sallies out into the field to strike at the canon. What else could they do to it. Maybe, Marc thought, in his constable ways, as a thief, as a reverse constable, if they packed it with gun powder and finished it off with Xerxes' clay mortar, they might let it cool and harden so that they could light it and explode the barrel, but such a plan would call for a full day of control of the gun and the utmost secrecy to secure it. It would not work and was not even mentioning.

The other crews and the standing army in the area of the behemoth stood turned towards the great gun to watch the spectacle the traitor Urban had made of the monstrous gun. He patted it as though it was a charmed beast doing only his bidding. Marc wonder what he had gotten for it, how much wealth was worth the lives of the city, an end to history. Of course, he knew, that some men, perhaps Urban, certainly the Sultan, craved the turning of history's chapters. Wanted nothing more than to wash over the old with the paint of the new, deserving or not.

He wished that Xerxes had been a conjurer. That he was wizard of sorts. He looked over at the old man again, straining his eyes past the reach of a book off into the distance where Urban stood, bright purple cloak and tall hat with a feather plume which made him a mark upon the landscape, a target for guns and arrows that could never reach that far. Only his canon could reach that distance and he was demonstrating that over and over as the old block stones shattered in the concussion and slagged downwards into a heap. Soon it would be possible to charge the wall and run right up the slag heap. Perhaps that too must be cleared away, and before the sultan's laborers could chunk it into the moat for fill.

Urban was about to give the command. The huge barrel had been choked with shot and stuffed with powder. All eyes were upon him. The wall that had been targeted stood empty, none braving its blast. Urban gave the signal. The big gun was touched by torch. It belched smoke, followed by a huge boom that shook the ground in all directions, ran under the wall and half way through the city. A shrill shriek preceded the stone crashing short in the battlefield, tearing a scar in the dirt. The great gun had misfired. A yell went up from the crowd of citizens. They were eager to cheer the least setback for their foes.

"Look" the professor had struck out his bony finger and pointed at the canon where the mist had turned red in part and was drifting into the smoke. The crew members had half fled from the canon and the other half fled to the side where Urban stood. Had stood. The man was gone. Half vaporized in the misfire; his remains were being converged on by the bravest of a startled crew.

The great traitor was dead. For all his engineering, he had created a weapon to knock down castles and cities, to change history, but not to enrich his own. He would not spend whatever riches the sultan had paid him. His own creature, the behemoth, taxed him for his life.

As the citizens realized that Urban was dead. The cheer doubled in size and sound.

Marc looked back at Xerxes, there, standing with arm outstretched and smiling, as though a wizard throwing a spell, the old scholar seemed.... Rested.

Chapter Nine:

The Sultan and his men raided out of the rear of their camp towards a Greek Fort left open to attack. The Great Mehmet the Conqueror had bypassed these fortifications in his zeal to encounter the city. Now he doubled back, seeking an object for his wrath. And found them.

The first Greek fort was wide open, farmers still laboring in the field when the Sultan's Bashik-bazouks rode upon them. It was more sport than war. Many men and women were felled in the filed outside the city, the gates failed to close and the fighting inside was fierce but brief. The slaughter was still continuing when the Sultan broke off the main of his men and rode for a second Greek city to the west.

The raping of women and children continued, as the soldiers torched the buildings which were not quite looted, and the citizenry were made to pay for the resistance of their capital neighbors. Women, young girls, wives or children were caught by the arm or hair or ankle and pulled into submission, their clothing undressed by the sword point or the rip of a knife. Gangs did the raping, standing guard for each other while they took turns with the bruised fruit of the spoils. Still naked, sobbing or mute with grief, sometimes in sight of their husband or brother, sometime in sight of their freshly bloodied mate, the young and succulent were ravished by the brutes who tasted their pleasures and their blood. Some fought to the death but it did not matter. Others were used to test swords and fury once their violations came to an end. Once raped, the women and children were enslaved, roped together and marched to the front. The city was plundered of anything of value, food, weapons, horses, cattle and gold stripped from the churches. These would be all fuel and supplies for the great war machine of the Sultan's army which was growing daily, now by the addition of slaves. If nothing else, their bodies would become paving stones in the moat on the way to breech the walls.

The harvest was loaded onto wagons by conscripted men who were randomly slaughtered to keep the mob in turmoil and obedience. The fathers watched in horror as their families were raped before their eyes. Laughing monsters of men tossed around severed arms and heads in sport. Buildings watched their work boil in flames. Farmers watched their work go to feed their enemies and starve their own. The elders of the city and their servants now wept and anguished together.

The rest of the fields and crops were set ablaze. The widespread smoke raised up a call to heaven that went unanswered from the Byzantine captives. Those that survived the barbaric cruelty of the rioting troops marched towards their capital to help render it asunder.

Justinian Longo was without grin. He furrowed his brow as he watched the canon continue to spit at the walls with their stones and missiles. He had called for his engineers and his officers. Marc had become somewhat of an advisor. Xerxes was still there. Longo lost his grin while the others were still celebrating the death of the canon master by his own designs. Surely God or Gods were with them.

"Why don't they toss that bastard's bone into the moat?" Longo was staring off into the distance where there was still a swirl of activity around the red stain that had once been a maker of canon.

"My friend here," Marc pulled the professor closer to the siege master, "has students fashioning arrows."

"How many?" Longo took the information straight-away.

"A thousand a day, perhaps, more if I steal their sleep from them," said the professor.

"No need, but those who cannot sleep need to come here at night: we've work for them here.

"The arrows are not of, "Xerxes sorted his words, "of fine caliber. Some I doubt would fly straight if you shot them down a pipe."

"No need, "again, nothing surprising the experienced veteran. "With a little Greek fire on their tips they will make a nice display. Their inaccuracy will be lost in a sea of targets." Then this more to Marc than Xerxes, "I've some two thousand archers at the ready, and they need something to shoot. I've a hundred thousand targets awaiting.

Longo looked at the professor again, "send the arrows here and keep up your production. Marc resolved to go along and secure the tasks, but Longo looked back at Marc. There are six armories throughout the city. Guides will help you locate them but they need to be emptied and brought to the fore where we can get our hands on them."

"I'll go with the professor" Jon chimed in, silent till then and ever present near his captain.

Long dismissed the men by stepping through their midst and grabbing Marc by the arm and turning him so that the others could no longer hear their conversation. "the Mesotichien Wall is about to fall. We've got to be ready for that. We will meet these demons sword to sword in a matter of days, if not hours. If it be days, it will be because our laborers fight as well as our soldiers. I must tend to these details, my friend, but be swift, and round up the idle who have yet to decide their minds about fighting for their lives. We have work here they can contribute."

Long stepped away without waiting for a response, each moment measured to some pressing task. Longo was at once swarmed by his advisors and the engineers he summoned, but they had to keep stride with a purposeful siege master who strode down the wall to the nearest tower and down the stairs to where more crowds waited for him below. As Marc strode towards the palace to find his guides, he kept looking backwards along the wall. Soldiers stood helpless sentry duty while a barrage of shot eroded the very walls they stood upon. On one side, over a hundred canon and a sea of lances and scimitars.

On the other side, inside the city, the siege master was organizing wagons and men and barrels and timbers among the canon and catapults on the grounds inside the wall.

Ahead of him, as he neared the palace, the walls there seemed weakest. The stones had sloped down to the ground and a good runner could climb it to the crest in a minute or so, yet only to be met by death from the guards. No one could climb under archers who stood guarding it, but in some sections, Marc had to tread carefully and along the back wall as the crenulations themselves had dropped into the rubble like lost teeth. This was the section that Longo worried over and it was this section that the wagon train below made its way towards. Longo was setting to organizing the activity below as Marc disappeared into the still solid palace.

The second fort fell more slowly under the Sultan's boot heel. Their garrison had been alerted by the slow smoke which climbed swifter into the sky than the stain of savages that poured over land towards them. The people were pulled in and the gates shut and archers at their ready when the dreaded Bashik-bazouks surrounded the fortress.

Horsemen split off in both directions and began encircling the fort, riding for several minutes at full speed to get all the way around the walled citadel. Houses left outside the fort built in safer times were already put to the torch., The horsemen fired their muskets and culverins and arrows up at the wall looking for any exposed defender. The sultan's wealth was likewise measured in gun powders and he boasted a small army of arrow makers who had stripped the forest of saplings to keep his bows singing.

The defenders were spread thin instantly with a prodding attack against all sides at once. Catapults were drawn up by horses and wet casks were loaded onto them and then smoldering coals poured into them and shot over the wall to find their way to anything that flamed. If not burning the city from the inside out, treasures be damned, the shower of hot coals would keep the citizens busy with bucket brigades and not with helping the defense on the walls. They would not be passing arrows to archers, or hurling stones down with untrained but deadly skills.

The battering rams were brought up and as the foot soldiers amassed outside the gate road, many of them shooting their culverins up into the walled defenders who came to discourage their effort. The rams were brought into play and boomed into the wood and iron doors that kept the city sealed. The sultan's generals were busy directing other attacks and hundreds of scaling ladders were sent round the city to find a foot hold anywhere, everywhere at once. Even grappling ropes were thrown into the air with their claws to bite into the walls or even limbs inside the wall. It took more than one man to pull the claw free of the grip on the wall with at least one man hanging on the rope below. Sometimes two or three men would seize onto the rope as soon as it caught and then they could only be loosened from the rope by death, or a good sword fall across the rope. But to slice the ropes, the defenders had to expose themselves to the iron bullets that pierced their breast plate and shields. Bodies fell one by one the tops of the wall as smoke from inside showed the progress of the rain of coals.

After only a few hours of this merciless onslaught, the doors broke way and the sultan's men cheered as they charged inside, outnumbering the soldiers without measure. The Sultan watched as his generals waved in some of the Janissaries to control the city. They were more disciplined and would make sure their men finished the tasks of securing the city while the lesser disciplined mercenaries would be drawn into the spoils of war. Whatever structures were not already burning in full force were entered and stripped of anything usable. The soldiers were like locust, and out of the poor fort came a boiling froth of wild celebrants, despoiled women and wretched captives, encumbered with plunder and goods no longer meant for them, but to fuel their tormentors only.

Fewer survived this attack. The sultan's sent one general into the city who surveyed the damage, the remains, the hanging corpses and those burned in their dwellings rather than face the rape and carnage of the rioting Turks. Strewn along the road were the bodies and pieces of bodies of those who resisted, or were spent in the lust and anger of the soldiers who had to force their way into the city and upon the populous.

When the general saw that all was laid waste and all captives had been forced out and roped to each other, or chained with fear, he walked his horse back through the smashed gates of the city and saluted his master. The Sultan, without smile, turned and headed back towards Constantinople. A stream of wretched refugees, now slaves of the empire, now property of the empire, marched off after the Sultan to a fate more hideous than they imagined.

Marc fairly raced along the corridors of the mostly emptied palace. He need only find a few sentries of the Venetians who guarded this section of the city and he could commandeer the guides and the manpower he needed to move the armories. He heard voices ahead. He slowed: the voices were raised in argument.

As he drew nearer, he heard someone snarl: "you weaken us. Your time is near and hell awaits infidels like you!"

Marc rounded a corner and there in the torch light were the glints of swords drawn and waving. By instinct he put his own hand to the hilt but stayed when he saw that these were all defenders. There was some sort of internal dispute. Five men were in the corridor, two facing three and the three with their back to Marc. He did not recognize them until he saw the face of the Cardinal, his black robes hiding him in the darkness of the passageway.

His hand went again to his hilt and he prepared to pull his sword out when he heard the other man speak. At first Marc thought the man was Prince Orhan, the Ottoman Turk who laid claim to the crown that the Sultan now sullied with the blood of Byzantines. But closer inspection showed the man to be not him.

"I'd rather see the Sultan's flag fly over this city than the papal Miter!" This was blasphemy. Worse, it was a threat to the city and the Cardinal. Marc pulled his sword and the five men jumped at the hiss of steel. The three men turned slightly to meet him and backed against the passageway wall, no outflanked and the numbers no longer in their favor, they seem to lose a lot of their mettle.

The cardinal softened, no longer threatened. It must have been his snarl that Marc had stumbled in on. Here were two leaders of the city at each other's throats, and about to spill their own blood without any help from the Turks.

Cardinal Isadore spoke. "My friend here' he addressed Marc, 'the Grand Duke Notaras, has a disagreement with our plans for the future of this city. He opposes the union of churches." The Cardinal relaxed his stance as well and all five men seem to be ebbing down.

We all have plans for the city but we are all joined in making sure the city has a future." The Cardinal was now playing the peacemaker. The Grand Duke sheathed his sword and smiled thinly. His men lowered their swords without sheathing them. Marc's still held at the ready.

"Your grace is correct." The Grand Duke was warming now, "we serve the same immediate purpose, service to the Queen of Cities. After we dispatch the infidels outside, we will next decide who among us is the infidel inside." Without hurry, he bowed, and withdrew, his men following behind him, walking backwards as Marc pivoted at their pass.

"These walls protect us from each other by giving us so much space to guard. We are able to take those who do not get along and man the walls with them side by side but with great distance between them." The Papal Legate motioned for Marc to join him in their common direction before the scuffle. Those who do not join in the same church can still join on the walls in the same fight, but afterwards, there will be sorting done, by us, or by God, my son."

There was no doubt whose soul it was that Marc would have fought for back then and the Cardinal recognized the loyalty and the fortuitous appearance that kept the encounter from robbing the city of more of its leaders. Marc was shaken inside by the tenuous peace that held the leadership together. It seemed that, like the old walls, the leadership too might be easily shaken apart.

The constable side stepped his fears by stepping into his other duties. "Father, I have need of guides". Quickly Marc outlined his task and the Cardinal arrange for all the help that Marc needed. Marc advanced on the chore without any outward sign to the Cardinal that he was shaken by the sight of defenders making mortal threats on each other. He did not know the Grand Duke except for his love of the city and his bitter hatred of the Pope's rule.

He was glad that he did not have to rule on this, that he had only concern himself with the city surviving and not how the city would rule itself afterwards. No doubt it would go on for the next thousand years much as it had for the past thousand years. He was glad he was only fighting for their lives, and not for their souls.

The Sultan was back. He sat astride his steed surveying the order he had given.

Down below, before the palisades and ditch that the army had erected to seal the city before it, were men digging holes and erecting posts. His cavalry was ready on either flank, doubled from the last skirmish. Pennants fluttered everywhere. The canon continued their sporadic barking and that failure of a canon master had been scraped to the side and his masterful behemoth put back to work. The Sultan had saved a great deal of money when Allah pinched that western traitor off of the earth. Praise Allah in his wisdom. The swelling of the coffers with Urban's payment made the success of this venture more assuring, and his men, more devoted to it. The death of the forge master was unsettling to the troops at first but now rumor ran among them that the Sultan had prayed for the western demon to be so smitten. That it was Allah who was blessing the men with the gift of Urban's payment, and the lesson that those no longer necessary to the capture of the city were of no longer of any importance to the Sultan or to Allah.

The men needed that reinforcement of fortitude for what they did next.

The poles had been sharpened at both ends. As the Sultan raised his mace, his troops paraded out seventy-six people captured from the last Greek fort, the one which resisted so well, so briefly. They were mostly silent, some prayed and murmured, others cried softly, some wailed aloud as if they were approaching the last moments of their lives. Indeed, they approached the truth of that.

On either side of the bedraggled column of captives were rows of fierce troops, chosen for their cruelty and grit. They grabbed the first captive, who then let out a wail like the end of the world. Some demon in him came alive as he fought the hands that swarmed his limbs and held him at the ready. Other men lifted the first post. There was a hush on all sides, as if no one dared think what may come next, as if there were a moment when men of decency would turn away from this barbaric act. Then the mace fell. The post was handled like the battering ram used against the gate. The poor creature, hardly human now, was impaled on it.

Whatever demon was inside him fought its way out now and the sound of its freeing scream stung the ears of everyone who looked on that horror. The post was raised, the man writhing upon it, spitting blood out of his mouth. Men on both sides were throwing their meals to the ground. The women on the wall began weeping as did all the poor captives. More people rushed to the wall as the word spread and more mouths flung open in horror and then fervent praying. The poor creature stabbed onto the post slid a half inch of agony as they raise him into the air like some tormented puppet of a flag. They waved him. Then, with a jolt, they dropped the pike into the post hole and it slid home and grounded, the creature uttering a final scream and blood spewed from his nose and eyes as it seated.

Above it all, the Sultan sat, near smiling at the effect it was having. He was at once punishing all those who opposed him. The citizens who refused to surrender, let this be on their heads. The Greeks who fought so hard in that second fort where he went to slake his thirst for blood on the defenders, let them now pay for their resistance as well. This was the price of opposing the will of Allah, the plans of the Sultan, the orders to his armies. Let them see. Let them brink in this carnage so that they know of the end to which they flee.

Another was impaled. More screams, more citizens rushed to the wall only to behold and vomit down the outside wall or on fellow men as they twisted from the shock while the sight still sunk in to their bowels to purge them.

Some captives tried to run. Some tried to run blindly. Some tried to run away, some tried to run onto the more merciful spears and scimitars of their tormentors. None succeeded. Each was shoved back or down, stood upon or grabbed. The most successful ones won a blow to the head so that when they came to, they were already facing the wall of tearful praying strangers, elevated from the ground, unable to command their limbs or touch the earth or raise an arm. The world was red tinged and blurred through swollen orbs and pain grew through them like the root of a tree.

The process was taking too long. The Sultan thought of his beauties and how he longed to make them submit to him and throw themselves at his feet and writhe in promised pleasures. He summoned a general who spoke to a captain and then to a sentinel and then to a rider and the Sultan's next order was carried out to the doomed column of captives when they were half way impaled. The process would be sped up.

The workers, their hands slick and sticky both with new and old blood, gripped the pikes and hoisted them over the holes and dropped them in. Riders now grabbed the next suffering soul and raise d them up over the sharpened end of the upturned post and dropped them onto it, without letting go of the arm s which flailed wildly in their limited reach and kept the weight of the body over the pike to be used to force the impalement.

The ones who had been rammed, hoisted and then dropped, slid too far down the post, died too quickly or lost consciousness. They were not as effective against the hearts of the defenders. What sort of men, the Sultan wondered, would wish this upon their people, would let this happen?

The ones impaled from horseback were more alive, more in pain and move vocal about their agony. They wailed, cursed, made threats and babbled. They prayed for death but the prayers were all empty for now. The stakes were shaking with the efforts of the most lively victims. Soon, if such a word can be used so cruelly, all were impaled. Some had died already. Some withered into mute shock or unconsciousness.

This is what awaits them all, thought the Sultan. Give them time to consider this. He took in the wailing grief that emerged from the city's wall, for no one on this side of the wall had any pity or grief to offer anymore. The seventy-six captives had been skewered. They sat like hideous sunflowers, some kicking still, others just drooping as the life flooded out of them as the pain flooded in.

Let's see you wall spit forth a moat of kindness to save these, the Sultan thought to himself. Let's see your wizardry burn up the stakes without burning the souls upon them. There will be no tricks to defeat this lesson, so have I show this to be true.

The Grand Vizier looked on from the tent as the Sultan approached. He smiled slightly to show that all was well with the Sultan's plan. Inside his stomach churned but he would show nothing to his master. He burned for a treaty, for a chance to mend this madness with words, but neither side would have it yet. By the time they were ready for peace, the madness may be out of control. The Vizier had seen this happen before. Dogs so riled that they had to be slain when their fight was over.

If he could not prevail with peace or a treaty, the grand Vizier wished for a simple bloodless defeat of the spirit so that the sultan would withdraw back to his empire and spend his days ruling his kingdom peacefully from the Watchtower of the World. Damn this Golden Apple of the west. It is a sorry treasure to covet. But by now the Sultan had retired to the chosen harlots of his harem and nothing would be done soon but a painful dying upon the stake. He wished that Allah would be merciful.

The armories had been emptied and their plunder brought to the front lines along the walls and distributed to the west to Prince Orhan and his Turks, the Catalans and the monks. To the east to the Venetians, and the Genoese sailors so that all there were well armed. And to the north, Marc watched the third arrival of a dozen wagons to dump armor and arrows among the Greek, Roman and Cretes who guarded the land walls.

The professor had likewise arrived with Jon and the student's cache to date of new arrows from the freshmen makers. They were piled high and sorted, the crookedest ones, being the first efforts, were stacked to one side and numbered several thousand. They would run through those reserves in a single attack. Some were so bent that only Greek fire gave them deadly promise.

When Marc heard the commotion on the wall, he had to finish a few details before he was free to bound up the wall. Jon was following and the professor, lagging behind like a man who gave up sleep at night. By the time they were close to the top of the wall, the sun was setting and the wailing and prayers became too easily heard. The men rushed across the wall to the stone crenellations to peer into the amber slant of the sun.

They saw the hellish row of flowers writhing in stark cruelty.

Marc's eyes flew wide. He took in the scene, drawing every detail in like a stunned warrior, like a surprised constable, preparing himself for whatever it is that must be dealt with. His nostrils flared to the sting of acrid vomit that spotted the parapet, then caught the blood and bile that oozed from the impaled damned upon their stakes.

The old professor stared in shock and then sadness as he studied the hell below them. Jon teared up but shook at the same time, trembling with rage as he took in the depth of the scene down away. Finally, Jon squeezed out a few words: "we must save them".

"There's no rescue from that fate, "Xerxes winced. They cannot be saved that have been sunk on those spits. Only released from their suffering.

Marc measured the distance. They were well out of shot range of the guns in the towers or even along the walls, and no arrow could travel as far as the musket ball. There were no gates to ride through to carry a force out to save them and even if there were, the Sultan's cavalry was sitting in wait. There'd be welcome instead of surprise in that effort.

There were only the sluice gates. Not big enough for a force to charge through, or retreat to: they'd be slaughtered if caught out in the open now. There was room for a few men to get out and perform an... execution. Marc thought the word again in his head, slowly. Execution.

"Jon, how close do you need to be to guarantee a shot without miss?" Jon measured the distance through his wet eyes. Shooting form, the angle of the ground up at the targets, and he hated to think of them that way, any release would have to pierce the heart or lungs. If he missed, his shot would fly into the camp and alert the Turks to defenders outside the walls. They'd be discovered and cut down before they reached the gates again.

"If I could crawl out half the distance from the wall to the stakes, I could hit them with sureness. But to be sure to kill them, I'd need to be half as close as that."

Marc didn't like the distance. Too close.

Xerxes pushed in closer to the two warriors in their plot. "I have someone who can help. A chemist. If your arrows are tipped right, you need only get a nick to release them. You could shoot from further back, less force."

They stared into the gray care worn face of the scholar. "Get him," Marc said. And then to Jon: "choose your quiver and meet me at the sluice gate. As soon as it is dark, we will out."

"Angels that crawl on their bellies," said Xerxes. "Deliver them poor folk with Godspeed."

The men started off on their separate duties, Marc to inform Longo of the plan, but it was just a second later that Xerxes placed his hand hard on Marc's forearm. He spun to see Xerxes staring off own the wall. There, along the back rise of the wall, among the crying and sick at heart, sat Nyad. She was staring stoically.

Xerxes grip tightened even more. "You see, this, this is what you must spare her from. This is why you must take her away." Then, locking his eyes onto Marc: "don't let them set her upon a stake, or worse. There's worse they can do. You know I am right. Spare her. If you have,' and at this he choked, swallowed harder and leaned closer, "if you have to dispatch her to save her, you do it!"

Marc was stunned and the old man was Running off in the direction of the chemist and he could not see the old man's face. His words had chilled him. He turned back to Nyad, like a low, frail blonde gargoyle sitting in lonely misery upon the floor of the parapet. Surely, he would not be the reaping angel of this beautiful creature. It was too much to think on. She did not see him. She did not see. Her open eyes were just empty windows overlooking the stone path around her feet.

Beyond her, Longo stood. He looked past her, then back. He wanted to run to her, to carry her off, to wash away the sight and smells of this horrible scene in the Roman bath they had shared just the day before, but he was crossed by the idea of having to slay her to spare her. Would it be merciful to push her under the water of the bath than to spear her with a sword when the hour came? Would the hour come? Could he not slay all of them instead of her? He hated this foul suggestion, this odious duty Xerxes foisted on him. Xerxes had a way out. He would find the man and choke the answer out of him. But till then, the constable would run from the sight of his lovely Nyad and straight into the arms of duties. There were good people who deserved killing.

He took his plan to Longo, who nodded in consent.

When night fall had also consented to the plan, the two men crept out again. They pushed a timber over the moat and crawled over it to the dry side and in the shadows of the walls, made great by bright flickering trebling of the torches to deepen the wall's shadow and to dazzle foreign scouts.

Longo set to his plans above. The Turks had begun singing earlier in the day and the Sultan forbade them as he wanted the cries of the damned to waft into the city. The citizens then took up the singing of a hymn of their own. But it was a hard task to do, to sing and swallow such a reviling sight. Longo started them up again. Their singing would make the swish of the arrows unheard, and the dampening of the tortured cries unnoticed.

Marc pulled an arrow from Jon's quiver and opened the jar from the chemist. He tipped the darts and laid them out side by side between the two men. Jon fitted them carefully into the cross bow. Since the darts were poisoned, a scratch would do and hence Jon was able to loosen the string to accommodate an easy stretching in the laying position. He chose his target, the one closet to them and zip! The dart struck home and the angels' kiss put him soon to sleep.

Jon eyed three more and without fail hit each one dead center. They rolled to the right, pushing the quivers between them and sliding over till they were within reach of the furthest post. The two men continued their dispatch of poor souls into the night's darkness without detection. The song was a long hymn and repeated. It seemed to grow in strength as the writing quieted silently in the strains. More citizens seemed to join in and those who sang seemed to strengthen in note and pitch and calm as the work hidden away was coming to light among the choir.

Longo had all the sluices open and blanketed from the inside light with timbers stretched across the moats so that the two men, if need be, could pell-mell to any nearest gate for escape. The timbers would be shoved out if necessary, to close the gates in time. Of course, a few hundred archers would lay waste any guard foolish enough to pursue them this close. But the Sultan would rather see the two adventurers dead than let them escape, even at the price of two hundred of his own men. Long knew this. For this to work, I had to go undetected. The singing continued.

Zip. Zip, zip, zip! Jon was cool and steely eyed as he went about his marksmanship. Marc tried not to think of the cruel aspects of their mission, the easy targets, the willing targets, the wanting targets. Their numbers and the ease of shots, the deadliness of their sloppiest aim, their weakest sting. Zip, zip-zip.

Jon pierced them all, even the ones who appeared to be dead. Marc thought that when the sultan inspected them in the light, he would be enraged with the idea that they were all dispatched in this way. He wanted to leave a Christian dart in each body. The Cardinal had offered holy water to taint the poison with a divine touch for these last rites delivered on prayers of arrowheads.

It chilled Marc to think that when the Sultan did discover their work, and was enraged, to what depths that rage might plunge to next. He thought of Nyad and the fates that may await her should the city fall. Xerxes was right. He must dispatch her with mercy should the city fall. It was a bitter thought that poisoned him as surely as a dart.

They had finished their mission. The dead were released. They scrambled back through the sluice gate and made their report. All were pleased. The singing went on and then, at Longo's signal, stopped. The citizens silently turned from the spectacle, their work done, and retreated off the walls. Two of every three torches were blinded. The silence swept between the two armies and the Turks began to notice the difference. The writhing had stopped, not soothed by the music and the light of the flames upon the wall, but by death. All had died and all at the same time. How could this be? Did the Christian God take them into his bosom?

The Sultan was deep in the throes of passion with his harlots and the Grand Vizier thought that this mercy would wait upon the morning. Between then and now, the Grand Vizier would simply

Enjoy the peace.

Chapter Ten:

The Vizier's peace did not keep. Worn out by the harlotry, the young Sultan slept and slept well but briefly. Before the sun rose a council was summoned into the grand red and gold tens of the Sultan's war room. A crowd of twenty or so men in long robes, red of eye and lacking the young sultan's energy, stood about attended by coffee and food to wake the hungry.

"No one has taken this city before us except the westerners themselves, and then they used internal treachery and even then, they did not break the triple walls of the front door." The young sultan sprang from foot to foot as he paced among the quarry of brilliant robes and well considered minds.

"The Arabs, the Bulgars, the Russians, the Avars, the Pechenegs and the Persians all tried and failed. Why? Because the walls of the fortress are as thick as the walls of Babylon!" The fiery prince was talking more to himself than his captive crowd of advisors. He strode back and forth between his audience and the table upon which the city map was sprawled. No one dared test the Sultan on this discourse as all knew that no one knew more than he about this prize. He knew its history, each attack and the reason for their failure and he would accept no such reasons from them.

"Only now do we attempt this capture, two hundred years since the first, only and last time the city was felled, and we do so by use of canon. They will chew the walls to pieces but I cannot, will not, wait for that. Admiral!" The former governor of Galliopli stepped forward and bowed. "By sunrise, be upon your fleet. We must gain access to the harbor. There are too many Christians on this front wall because they've nothing to fear on the other two sides. We must assail the city walls from the sea or we allow the infidels to fortify their mighty walls with manpower strong morale. Bring this boom down. Severe the chains and lay waste the Christian ships. Today!" The Sultan had worked to a pitch and dismissed his admiral to his fleet. Baltoghlu mounted a great dark stallion and rode off to launch his fleet.

The Sultan then whipped a great sheet of parchment as large as the map from underneath the table and covered the war plan like a magician's trick. It was a star chart. The royal astrologers came forward through the crown as the experts of the moment. "Our time is near," spoke Mehmet the Conqueror. "Allah, praise be on him, is speaking to me through the stars." Mehmet stepped to the door of the tent to look deep into the dissolving darkness. His canon brought to him the heartbeat of the war. He turned back to his mod of advisors like a man illuminated by vision: "The city will fall to our hands and a glorious new reign of Turkish power will begin. The western capital will no longer stand in our way. All of Europe will be ours to seize Belgrade, Vienna, Rome!"

At the far end of the tent a breathless runner arrived and fell to his knees and bowed, heaving out his message. "Oh, Great Caliph! The Great Tower is about to fall!"

Nothing more was said or needed. The air in the room rustled as it was swept by a flourish of silk robes as all exited after the Sultan. They marched to watch the infidels main gate burst open to their swords.

The tower of the fifth military gate, the gate of St. Romanus, was listing. Walls had been shot through and sagged inward. Other sections had fallen. The guard atop it had abandoned their posts and the archers within the windows and rooms had fled. Floors had caved in upon each other and the stones had slide into a hill of rubble that was blending earth and parapet together. No one was willing to stand near it as the tower, when toppled, could fall in any direction.

Justinian Longo conferred with his advisors. They gestured and spoke among themselves with little consensus. Yes, it would fall, but when and which way was anyone's guess. He began walking slowly, slowly away from the front wall, the sagging tower, the sounds of canon. He walked closer toward s the second wall. He was siege master, not an engineer. He did not know what was advisable or practical or even wise when it came to construction of towers and walls. He knew that the thicker the better. He knew that the tower had taken a great amount of the sultan's canon stones and gun powders and now was about to yield. But siege masters did not yield.

He ordered the gate in the second wall to be opened and his surprised advisors stared as he walked through it. He reached the third wall and commanded the same. The great iron gate heaved up into its mechanism and the oaken doors swung open on both sides of it. He stepped through it and started at the great buildings within the city. This was what he had to protect. These monuments and the people within them. But if he was to prevail, he knew as a commander that he had to order some men to their deaths. So be it with these monuments.

"Guards!" The sharp bark drew not only guards from both walls a running but also the gaggle of engineers.

Longo pointed to the white marble building before him, the monument closest to the gates that lead to the tower. "Gather a thousand men. Bring me that building!'

Longo turned while the others gaped. Only disciplined guards moved into action without question, leaving the engineers pondering the orders. Longo walked back to the tower and told his guards there to assemble wagons and horses and a line of men up to the tower base when he went in. His advisors flocked to his side once again. "Bring me timber. Well shore up the inside as we build. We will take that building and pack it in here. I don't need a tower as much as I need a victory over those damned canons. We'll fill this tower with fresh stone before it falls. See to it!"

Seeing finally what the siege master intended, the engineers began organizing themselves to the task. Men set to the building in the city with hammer and pry bars and began toppling its walls. The blocks were hoisted by hand, by winch and lifted onto wagons which ran in a circuit to the tower. Once off loaded, they were handed to other men who hoisted them by pulleys from the wall tops or walked into the tower and up the stairs. The tower began to fill with stone. They laid a new floor and then another and then another till the bottom room was walled in and the stones were then handed down from above as the worker lines lead up the steps and along the wall and back into the tower.

If we can build faster than they can destroy, we will win this war, he thought to himself.

Like the pyramids of Egypt, the stones came and were laid and stacked without pause until the tower was filled and rebuilt from the bottom up, from the inside out. The tower stood strong again, the walls of a monument stuffed inside it. The canon shot continued to hit but the tower stood and would stand forever now.

A small tunnel was left so that men could flow two by two through the tower along the wall. Another walk way would be built in the next few days so that men would run around the tower to the inside of the wall. Steps would be built as they went, as they needed them and a short wall extended on either side of the tower to provide some protection to the men who climbed the ladders to the tower top, manning the hoist and then, later, manning their bows and muskets.

As Longo watched the beginning of his project, a rider came galloping through the streets of the city and sped to his side. The rider reported. "The Turks are attacking the boom. Longo took the rider's horse and without word, rode off toward Serraglio Point to the barrier chain tower.

Father George walked the walls along the city facing the Sea of Marmora. It was a big and empty as his heart. He had not seen anyone of his party for weeks and had not seen his love, sister Margaret, for an eternity. His only companions now were Tyrell, who would not leave his side, and his new brothers from the monastery.

To his surprise, he found that he was welcomed here and not chastised or ostracized in any way for his behavior back in Lyon, or along the route. though there could be no punishment greater than the rape of his sister and the loss of her companionship, he was somewhat relieved that his arrival was no branded with his sins. If he were to be punished, they seem to know nothing about it.

His other great surprise was the pipe in his hand. He was on guard duty. He patrolled the section of the wall that the monks were given to defend. He was a soldier.

There was little to guard and little to do. The steep and thick wall of the city had been scaled once by great crusader ships; he had been told. They sailed in close and some even ran ashore to raise bridges and plans from their forecastles to the wall tops and fight their way in. He was wary and on the lookout for anything of that kind, but the only ships he had seen were the Turks and they were not tall enough to challenge the walls of the city. Down below the sea lashed at the jagged rocks. The currents made this section of land worthless for anything excerpt smashing ships upon it.

This morning he walked alone. There was ten miles of walls to guard along the sea and he knew every bit of it. Only once had been forward enough to the north to get sight of the army that had encamped along the land. He could hear the canons fire but they were faint and far away. There was a great capital between him and the fighting and it seemed as though nothing could get through it.

He had been watching the only thing here to watch: the sky, the sea, the birds and the few Turkish ships that ran the waters along the wall he guarded. It seemed that all the action was east of him or north of him. He had hours each day to mediate and mostly he meditated on the loss of his love and the price of his sins.

The Turkish ships were moving east. They moved further than before in their patrols and he watched as within half an hour they were moving out of sight. A retreat? He walked over to where Terrill laid sleeping along the wall and jabbed at him with the kind end of his pike. "Wake lad, and run the wall to the harbor. Something's amiss. The Turks may be retreating. Go see if we've won yet, and keep an eye out for any of our friends. Should they be alive, let them know we are too!"

Dead Terrell rose slowly and shook the sleep from his face. He stared out at the empty sea and then looked east. He wrapped himself tighter in his blanket as he stood and then started off in a dazed stagger which gained steadiness and speed till he was slapping his sandals along the wall stones in a light run.

Father George watched him till he too was out of his sight and then he returned his attention this duty, guarding the empty sky, the empty sea. A world as empty as his heart.

Baltoghlu was at sea aboard his command galley, a trireme of 120 oars. Three levels of rowers dipped their oars into the waters in unison to the drum beat and the galley's sails filled with a breeze, a good wind of attack, thought the admiral. Signals were flagged and trumpets communicated among the ships as they were all drawn in. Inside the ship two hundred fighting men sat patiently with spars and arrows and ropes all at the ready. His canon hungered for the Christian ships sitting in the harbor mouth.

Ten tall ships were outside the boom. Baltoghlu thought that he would simply draw these into the fray by attacking the boom and boom ships directly. His great galley would become the center of the storm and bring the larger, faster infidel ships together in one battle where his smaller and more numerous ships could have the advantage.

The Turkish fleet hailed to its summon and began the attack on the boom chain across the harbor of the Golden Horn. They attacked from the Bosphorus and from the Sea of Marmora. They attack before the great forts of Rumeli Hisar and Rumeli Andor. The sky is filling with blue as the sun attacks the heavens, so shall Baltoghlu shine his victory upon the seas.

The ten Christian ships outside the boom sped to its defense along with the tenor so ships that held the boom and supported it. Six other ships lay deeper in the Horn and were answering the call of the battle.

The Great Pashaw Admiral spearhead the attack with six of his grand war galleys followed by another dozen biremes. Behind that, more than two hundred sails charged to the infidel boom.

They opened fire with a salvo of canon and swept the Christian flanks with iron balls and stones.

Then their archers stood and let loose a swarm of angry fangs to find the infidel sailors to pierce. Other archers fired firebrands into the ships themselves.

As the two fleets close din, ramming and rushing each other, the Admiral of the Turks ordered the out the grappling irons and ladders. The lower lying Turkish boats were now in the same position of the Turkish soldiers: they had to scale the heights that protected the larger western vessels.

The dark angels slept in. When the boom of the admiral's salvo came in through the open window, both men awoke. Stumbling out of the palace they secured mounts and rode hard towards the tip of the Golden Horn. Marc thought of Nyad and wondered where she was, and was she well? He had last seen her in shock, sitting atop the wall where she did not belong, mulling over a sight no woman should have seen. The souls of the dispatched were somewhere blending into the blue of the sky by now as they raced through the early morning streets of the empty capital. When they arrived, the wall was packed with citizens who had thronged to see the battle. If Byzantium should fall, would it be by the destruction of their fleet? Would the boom fail to protect them as their great walls had begun to crumble?

The men shouldered their way to Longo. Marc watched him to assess their predicament. The waters were filled with ships of all sizes and shapes, sails eclipsing small ships, long boats and oared vessels. Canon fired from both sides and arrows flew back and forth like angry swarms of bees trying to chase everyone away.

Long turned towards Marc. He was stern. "The St. Romanus tower was shot through and verged on falling". Then the grin: "we built her up inside with stone and now it will never all. The sultan will see that he's wasting his time. Now we need only prevail here. The grin fell back into the stern expression as Longo looked back out to see.

Marc tried to take in the length and breadth of the scene. There were ships coming from all direction s and on both sides of the boom as if the great chain were a magnet and the ships metal filings drawn into some chaotic design. The churning of the waters stirred like some unseen demon was dancing in it.

Marc wondered if Longo ever slept.

The battle raged for an hour. The Turks assaulted the Christian ships with the canon fire but the stout Byzantium planking was too thick and most of the stones and ball bounced off and fell into the sea or back onto the decks of the lower ships, burning all those it touched. The /Turks shot fire arrows into the hulls and up into the masts and here and there a sail would burn through and flash away into ash like a page thrown upon a hearth.

Someone nudged in next to Marc. It was a crowded space upon the wall near the boom tower where the great chain climbed up and was anchored in the stone tower where it would be raised or lowered on great drums turned by gears and many men.

He was nudged again and look down to see an arm bolding forth a piece of bread between him and Jon. He looked over at Jon who was already devouring a fist full of bread as he watched the sight. The citizens had begun to lunch and dine upon the wall at the many spectacles of battle though Marc found it strange to be so practical about being attacked. Still, there was nothing to be done here or Longo would be fast about it. This was the navy's wall to protect and it was being tested this morning.

He could not resist the smell. Marc took the brad and ate it.

The ships were locked in on each other and if Marc were there and of a mind to, he was sure he could jump from ship to ship and run from one side of the battle to the other without getting wet. The Turks fired their brands but the Christian marines were well organized. They had bucket brigades to douse each and every arrow, and a sea to fill their buckets forever.

Holding the high ground was an advantage. The spears and arrows and shot from the calverins were more deadly raining down then they were shooting up. The Turks could not elevate their canons to rake the men on deck but the Christians easily shot through the higher galleys, through mast and said, over small vessels and into other small vessels further out. It seemed that not a shot or tip was sunk without finding at target. In this mass of ships, the numbers of the Turks did them a disservice, providing a target that could not be fired wide of.

There was another nudge and Marc looked over to see the same arm offering an apple. He looked back along the arm and there, wedge in the crowd behind the two soldiers, was dead Terrill. Marc has never seen him grin before. He was ugly at it but Marc was glad to see him. Jon turned when he heard the greeting. "Father George says he is alive and well but he is not well. We've not seen sister Margaret since we arrived and we miss her." Marc could see the hurt in his face. He could see Father' George's pain in Terrell's face as well.

"We've not seen her either but we will set a search out for her. I am sure the Cardinal Isadore will know where she is."

"Cardinal Isadore sent us to be soldiers. We protect the far wall." Terrell nodded away from the raging fleets. "I will tell him that you are well." Terrell produced more bread and a shank of jerky out of his shirt before twisting off into the crowd. Marc was amazed at the food. Where did he get it? At least Father George and Terrell were alive and well fed.

Marc turned back to the fight, broke some jerky for Jon and turned to Longo who was now watching him curiously, feasting on the battle front. It was Marc's turn to grin as he offered Longo some bread. He accepted.

What was more successful than the canon for the Byzantine marines were the ballistas. They hurled rocks from the decks of the taller ships which came crashing down on a target of any height with the same devastating effect. Even from the walls ashore people could see the huge stones rip through sails splinter masts on their way down to the bottom of the harbor. If a Turkish small ship or long ship lay in its path, the stone dropped through it like a boot through a rotten step. The water would splash up from within the ship itself and the men would flee over the sides and into the foaming waters. There they would swim for other friendly ships and hope to avoid a spear or dart on the way and not be crushed by the big hulls grinding together.

Turkish sailors were still climbing the sides of the tall ships, like rats over a carcass, they swarmed from hundreds of smaller ships which could easily work their way between the larger ones and grapple in close. As they climbed, darts and javelins would harpoon them off their ropes and fed them back to the sea. Others got cut loose from a sword or ax or knife from the defenders and the rope would slither them all back to the decks below where they would try again or be so wounded as to give up. Others scrambled over them as replacements.

Those that reached the tops were met with sword and their hands or fingers severed from their hold on the railing. Some lost arms or heads and others were pierced through by harpoon from below the railing when they climbed too well or too high. Red streaks marked the sides of the ships.

Longo pounded on Marcs arm as he bit into the bread and pointed at the fleet. Marc stared and considered the sight. It seems that the Byzantine ships were encircling the Turkish Admirals warship. Longo saw the threat before Marc did. Now it was clear that the admiral saw it as well. His ship began withdrawing to escape the trap before it was too late. The rest of the fleet began to follow suit and once again, as the quarters opened up, the canon and arrows flew back and forth till the ships were separated.

While there was wooded carnage soaking in the surf, there was not a single Byzantine ship lost. The hail of the marines was echoed by the cheer of the people as the day was turned it heir favor once again. The boom was secured. The harbor safe and the sultan dealt another blow.

The cheering crowd turned towards the right as they face the great chain tower. There, emerging from it, was the Emperor, who had watched from the best vantage point. Perhaps the mere sight of him by the sailors gave them the heart to repulse such vastly greater numbers. The emperor was indeed inspirational, Marc thought.

Constantine moved out of the tower, down the stairs with nary a wave to the pole and was off by carriage towards the front of the city again. This danger had passed.

"They're moving their guns," Longo reported as the men started back down to their mounts. "The tower was rebuilt so well that they have abandoned it and now they are moving their guns to the wall nearer the palace. I'm afraid you'll have to find someone else to sleep if you want any peace." Again, the famous grin. "this might be his revenge for you stealing the fun out of his cruelty last night."

Marc was not able to joke about that. Nor Jon, who looked away and then tossed the rest of his jerky to the ground.

In a stark and empty building, dust settled through the sunbeams that found each window opening. Asif the wanderer was now Asif the Scholar and sat outside near the shadow of one wall reading a book. He held the scrolls of the book in either hand as his eyes wandered through its runes and markings. It was an ancient treasure. Older than his father's father's, father's, father and so on. It was a gift from time itself and it rested in Asif' lap. It rests in the freely streaming daylight that men in dungeons dream of and hope to see again.

Asif not only saw it again but was free and now sitting in the grace of knowledge more ancient than the Bible.

Inside the building worked a tireless professor who would let Asif read during breaks from the work he assisted with. It seemed now that there were many hands to aid the professor but they were all busy making arrows for the war. Asif may have been all alone in the city reading. He never could have imagined he would have ended up here from the bowels of the dungeon. He would have never been convinced that the gates of hell allowed people to walk back to the living safely.

Indeed, it was months before he would accept the sense that he was free. When he was given a horse and told to ride and ride off if he liked, he was sure there was an arrow aimed at his back the whole time. He could not shake the feeling. Sometimes he feels it still now. But not when he is reading.

He heard a noise from the inside of the room. A foreign word that he did not recognize. He knew the voice; it was the man they called Xerxes. He knew the tone, elation, but nothing more. It was one word, a name perhaps.

In the dust swirling sunbeams inside the empty room, a disembodied voice called out in delight: Eureka! Then, magically, the professor stepped into view, staring down at an old book in his own hands. Again, not quite as loud, he called again, smiling into the pages. "Eureka."

The professor looked up. The room was empty. He looked about as if counting the sunbeams. There was no one there. He had forgotten about Asif just outside the room. Rising to see what was afoot. He saw only emptiness and wondered where Nyad had gone.

He said again, softly, unsure of himself now, distracted by the absence. He called out: "eureka..."

Asif appeared at the door and for a moment Xerxes blinked at him, trying to see that it was Nyad instead. It was still Asif. The professor held up the book. "We've got to see your master right away."

Chapter Eleven:

Asif could see better than Xerxes and traveled faster. He scouted the streets as they made their way to the palace. Asif, thanks to Nyad, knew where his master's room was and where the corridors of the palace led. In a sieged city, no one inside was suspect. True, there were spies about, but once you were known in the company of defenders, you were admitted wherever you needed. Asif left the professor standing down below as he checked the vacant rooms.

Asif scouted the people all along the way and overheard their conversations. He knew that there as a great naval battle this morning and that by noon it had gone the way of the populace and they were rejoicing. He ran along the wall from the palace to the Charius Gate, appalled at how the gate lay in ruins. No one was going in and out that gate. Maybe over it, but there was no longer a 'through it' left.

Asif looked out over the foreground beyond the moat and fosse and saw the canon of the great invading army were being assembled at the east end of their lines. They had decided to focus their fire power on the wall around the palace because it was only one wall great. Asif counted quickly and saw over a hundred guns.

He sped along, fearful for what may happen to the professor down below, though, strangely, it was his city and Asif was just a guest. Asif had felt some loyalty to the man who had offered him so many chances to read what few mortals ever knew about and even fewer ever saw.

There were men and workers everywhere, soldiers laboring alongside of women and children in great building projects. The walls, where it had fallen, were being retrieved, stone by stone and heaped into a most stout pile of rubble. Everything was reinforced. Atop the walls, stockades were being built, lashed together and set into large casks then filled with dirt and gravel from the rubble. They were counter set to brace each other and unlikely to topple or be pulled over. Behind them archers could return to their deadly defense of the wall.

There was a fury of construction since the guns had stopped to reposition. Soon the bombardment would begin again but certain sections of the felled outer wall would be repaired for the final time as they were no longer in the sights of the guns.

Asif leapt about the rubble and found solid wall to race upon again. He did not know what Xerxes had to tell the Knight Captain but he was sure it was urgent. The professor did not stop for anything, ate while he worked and listened to messages and news of the battles from his students. He may be one of the most informed people in the city without having to spend any time upon the wall. He worked upon his own wall and slept only when it got the better of him.

Asif searched the crowd for Nyad as well. Everyone missed her. Xerxes was heart broke but stayed away from her like he carried the plague. She had not been seen for days and all had thirsted for some knowledge of her.

The invaders had such magnificent colors afloat in the afternoon sun. The red and gold pavilions of the Sultan's tents were bright against the azure spring sky decorated more by the red silks of the great Janissary Guard. Asif knew many of them to be Christian slaves, taken young and converted to Christianity, raised as soldiers, devoted to Allah through their Sultan. They would do whatever it took to win. Asif was glad that the Christians inside considered their lives spent if they lost, or worse. The fear of torture made these unruly allies work together. They would need all they could muster if they were to defend these walls. And if the walls fell, they would need more than that.

He stopped. He saw something in the distance. Something poking over the far horizon down the main road to the city. It was something new but he could not discern what it was. It quivered, as if moving, but it was more like a house being built far off, one he had not seen before. Surely the Christians must have known that the army was but a fourth of the men the great Caliph had brought to wage war. They could well be building a town to house themselves, building new roads and bridges while they were waiting for the city to fall. Only certain slaves were raised to be fighting Janissaries. Others were enslaved to other duties. The Sultan had built a fort city in a year by using a thousand masons and two slaves to help each one. Asif was sure that hidden out of sight were a hundred thousand slaves or more, laboring away on projects of the Sultan's wish and whim.

He squinted but still could not make it out to be anything other than a steeple. A minaret, the thought, convinced and satisfied. Mosques for the faithful and a prayer tower to call all to service.

He turned back towards the city of churches and descended in his search.

The Pashaws were gathered once more into the war room of the Sultan's pavilions. They had been defeated it he harbor and the tower they had brought so close to ruin now stood out like a stone mountain, filled with white marble block that hid only more white marble block. They were concerned for the fury of the Sultan at these setbacks. It would not be unheard of if he dispatched one or two of his advisors for their lack of successful advice. The system of terror seemed to make for inspirational thinking when it was needed. And it discouraged all but the very best for seeking the position.

At the far end of the ten, two razor sharp scimitars split through the flaps of the tent and splayed them out as the Sultan burst through the opening between them. He was smiling. Perhaps from the scandalous joy of his harem delights. Whatever the reason, the Grand Vizier and others hid their great relief.

"Baltoghlu! Report!" The Admiral stepped forward and bowed. He gave the numbers of the casualties and the number of the ships lost. "Enough! Why the failure! What do we Do?"

Again, the Admiral launched into his prepared report and suggestions. The sultan listened carefully while scanning the room for the eyes of his advisors, seeking their reaction. Did they heed the Admiral? Believe the Admiral? Were they lost in thought, hiding behind feigned contemplation, or did one of them burn with an idea? He saw little to bemuse him.

The admiral finished his report. There was silence. Somewhere during the report, the advisors realized they had lost the attention of the sultan. They need not produce suggestions as the young prince had his plans already prepared.

"First! Bring the ships back along the river and refit them. Our cannons were ineffectual. We blasted at their stoutest timbers and failed to threaten a single man aboard. Elevate those guns. Next! Prepare some of the smaller ships to ram. Hard sharp iron spars and fast rowers to man them. Third!" The Sultan had begun his strut again, banging his fist on the map table, sending ripples of air beneath the star charts, floating them like magic carpets, anxious to serve him.

"Bring some canon around the river side of Galata. Those ships in the river and sea can be fired upon from shore. We will enhance the canons of the fleet. Go!" He dispatched the Admiral while the rest remained.

"If it is a war of workers we wage, we will win it that way. Those crusaders must be kept busy. I have ordered the guns to center on the weakest section of wall, here!" He pounded the table again. We will only win this battle by land but we must make use of the sea. Our fleets must keep the defenders spread out along the whole wall of the city. Let not one section go unassailed. We will work round the clock and we will not let them rest. We will out work them, out think them, and outnumber them as well."

The air was as silent as it were solid. No one breathed or moved. "Dismissed!" The silk robes whirled and were gone. Only the Grand Vizier remained. "Another treaty is in order, my lord."

"Why? To give your Christian friends the chance to live again? They've scorned my offer; you offer a weakness to them."

The Grand Vizier knew he tread upon dangerous ground here. He could not show too much compassion for the foes of his master. "A treaty serves to distract them. There is great dissension among the populace of Constantinople. They fight over Gods and churches and Doctrine. There was once riots not long ago. Those embers still burn and should be fanned. A treaty gives the solid wall of defenders a test of their resolve. It allows those among them that differ to offer an alternative to unity, a sap to resolve."

The Sultan stared at the Vizier for a long time, expressionless, hard and unflinching. The Grand Vizier looked back without staring, relaxed, confident, clear of his allegiance.

"Do it. Offer the fools new terms. Cater to the dissidents. Get them feuding. Has my garden arrived?"

"Yes, Great One, it awaits you to the west. The two men walked through the castle of tents to the far west side of the pavilion. When they reached the end and the flaps of the tent were parted by the spears of the guards, the two men beheld a brilliant sight: wagonloads of tulips had been trucked in from through the country side and rebedded in fields for nearly as far as the eye can see. Not a single red tunic fluttered among them. The green stems raised flags of yellows, pinks, whites and many other shades. The barren dirt once ravaged by his army for fuel and materials was now transformed from that barren wasteland back into a field of beauty.

Only a great king can make the world over, the sultan thought to himself. How can the world deny him such a prize as the Big Apple? Nothing can stop him. The defenders only played among the sand of time; it ran out for them. They could shovel some back and delay him but they would not stop him.

"Send in the war machine."

"Yes master." The Grand Vizier bowed and left.

Marc was admiring the St. Romanus Tower resurrection when Asif found him. He had been searching for Nyad himself when the thin servant had come upon him. He thought for a moment that he had news of her.

Asif too stared up at the tower, filled in with white marble and now a solid stone. He turned to look down the busy road through the two walls and into the city where a mansion of marble had been raised to the ground and now a second one was being dismantled and its block taken further down the wall towards the other gate.

"Xerxes seeks you". Plain enough, the two men set out to where the professor was last abandoned. In time they came upon him, standing with the book in his hands, mumble to himself, he looked like a priest praying over the labors that moved in all ways around him.

Marc has quizzed Asif about Nyad and Asif only answered by saying that the professor had not found her either. He was dismayed that Xerxes still looked for her, but then they were companions in concern for her.

The professor looked up at Marc and met him in midstride thrusting the book into Marc's ribs. "This," he said, "is how you can save her." He dropped his voice to a low whisper. "Read this, there is a gate, an old gate, secret now because the minds of men die, only their written words live on. Someone from the dead has told me this secret and now I tell it to you. But you must use it to save Nyad." The professor stared at him, searched his eyes for some sign of promise.

Marc looked down and took the books. He looked where it was written and it was in a language he could not read. "Xerxes, what tongue is this?"

The professor looked down again and then back at marc, two steps ahead of him. Its Latin, the Byzantines can read it but do not show it to them. Here, look, he turned the page, a map anyone can understand. Here, his bony finger scared with masonry cuts, pointed to an illustration. "Here is how you can get out. This is the route you can escape from and save Nyad. I cannot go but you, you can go. Promise me you will take her, save her."

The Professor seemed almost bedeviled. Marc studied the book Xerxes did not wait for an answer. He took Asif by the sleeve and started off, still staring back at Marc. The Knight Captain was trying to decipher the map quickly before the professor was no longer at hand but it was less than plain.

Xerxes stopped, pulling Asif to a standstill as well. But the professor was no longer staring at Marc and the book. Marc looked up to see the professor looking over his head and turned to the wall behind him. There were guard waving their swords over the wall, signaling. He saw Longo bounding up the steps and slammed the book shut, losing the page. He tossed the book to Asif and called for them to wait. Asif caught it but the professor was already in pursuit of Marc. Many now were clamoring up the steps to see what was afoot above.

As the men reached the top of the wall, Asif recognized the cause of the commotion. The building had moved. The far-off minaret he had thought built in some town was now closer and quivering more.

"A siege tower." Xerxes said flatly. Longo was barking orders at his men. He sent them for more stones to cover the parapet and placed more archers atop the solid tower. He sent arrows with firebrands and buckets of Greek fire aloft and down the sides of the wall. The road ran to the main gate. If the war machined stayed on that track, this is where it would strike. Longo worked to try and make its height. "Eighty feet. Eighty-five", said Xerxes, flatly again.

"Agreed" said Asif and all three men looked at him in surprise. That height put it as tall as the military tower they had just rebuilt. Had it been allowed to collapse, Marc reasoned, the siege tower would command the walls and they would be forced to retreat, or fight a bloody battle uphill against the well protected platforms.

The Turks banged their drums and blew fifes and the ruckus could be heard now carried by the breeze. Trumpets blared and the shouts of men could be heard but not seen for a few moments until the siege tower, rolled forward on rounded logs, showed a great mob of warriors behind it.

Longo barked some more orders and squadrons of soldiers arrived with metal shield and buckets of water were brought up and stored along the back of the wall. Axes were distributed to cutting grappling lines and pikes for pushing away scaling ladders. Marc could already see the scaling ladders carried by the mob which seemed to grow without end.

The tower loomed closer and the clamor greater. Citizens rushed to the walls to look but those that did rushed equally as fast away. Others were turned away as the military took control of the entire wall in anticipation of its fight. Marc could not spare the time or energy to return to his quarters for his armor so he stepped to the smaller tower and gathered new armor. Asif and Xerxes did the same and Marc stopped them, warning them away from the fight. He gave Xerxes the book to hold for him "we'll have to look at this later." He promised Xerxes.

The two of them retreated to the second wall and found a place there among the archers and reinforcements that were readied should the siege machine prevail.

The tower loomed above them "Do you suspect canon aboard?" Marc was thinking of the ships at sea that morn.

Longo shook his head. "The canon they have can barely stay on the platforms on land. They jump with each shot. Here they would rock the tower if fired and the tower cannot risk having gunpowder aboard. Marc was reassured by Longo's steady assessment. It showed much experience and command.

Long readied his archers, still crouched behind the crenellations. The tower was massive. Built by heavy timbers it rolled across logs as it crushed the ground beneath it. Men would sling oil from cow and sheep fat onto the logs and the stench of it reached their noses. Longo wrinkled his. "I wonder how well that stuff burns?"

The tower was indeed eighty feet, the equal of the great tower of St. Romanus. The tower had several platforms and ladders inside protected by plants and cow hides that hung from the riggings to hide the men and machines behind it. As it neared range, Longo gave the signal to fire. The archers stood in rows and let loose at the tower and the men below and behind it. At the same moment, archers from the tower revealed themselves and let loose. The Turks at the top of the platform dueled evenly with the defenders atop the military tower. Only their armor made the difference. The Turks ducked behind their frame work and cow hides.

Arrows clattered among the wall and ramparts, deflected off of shields as the tower neared and the archers were able to begin to pin down the defenders atop the wall. Longo and Mark stood behind the short wall that extended from the tower. Marc looked it over carefully, being freshly masoned in spots and merely stacked rock in other places. It could topple easily. It protected them from arrows but could just as easily be the weapon to crush them to death.

Longo signaled the fire brands and a flash of flame rippled away from the wall and struck the tower. Arrows glanced off the hides, which were soaked, and stuck in the wood timbers, which were also wet and made from green wood. From loophole sin the cow hides, arms reached out and pulled burning arrows that stuck in the wood, or poured buckets of water down the timbers. Greek fire on some of the brands could not be put out and the attackers had to clamber down to the arrow and pull it out and toss it down. Whether it fell on empty ground or on their own men was of no concern.

The Turks returned with flaming arrows, though there was little to burn atop the wall. Even their shields were metal. Darts glanced off the shield and skittered every which way. Longo and Marc held their shields in a stack to form a third wall to protect legs and torso.

Longo signaled again and the archers again stood in rows and fired arrows but this time down into the mob which was more exposed. Soon the tower had moved, at the cost of many men, to the edge of the moat and stopped. It stood even with the tower, above the ramparts and arrows sailed out of its loop holes and off its platforms. The mob stretched out as far behind the siege tower as the front lines of the enemy camp and beyond. They were lining up for Christian blood.

Sweat poured down Marc forearm and pooled around the heel of his hand as he gripped his sword tightly. The drums and trumpets and fifes were giving way to the roar of men as the tower loomed, poised to attack. Arrows flowed to and fro. Marc looked down the long row of water buckets and stone piles. There'd be no dropping of stones on the attackers. They were now charging from level ground. Or above, from high ground.

Asif and Xerxes stood on the distant second wall and watched as the tower raised its cow hides to reveal platforms of warriors, brandishing swords and spears and torches. Archers let fly more arrows at the defenders who had no recourse but to hide behind their shields. The attackers were loaded onto the war machine, standing on stairs and ladders throughout its skeleton waiting for the advance. Planks were run off the platforms and fell onto the top of the military towers and onto the top of the wall below. Turks began crossing over into them. Swords waving, screams emitting over the tops of their wooden buckles and shields.

The guards at the top of the military tower succeeded in kicking off the plank and it fell below just inches from where Marc and Longo poised to spring from their spot. It spun in place, grating splinters against the stones and then fell against the filled in tower. Had the tower not been filled this day, Marc realized that the platform would have allowed them to push more planks into the doors and windows of the tower and they would have more places to defend.

As the first Turks leap over the plan and through the crenellations, Justinian Longo stepped forward with hi sword singing and cut the first man through the neck and into the face of the second. Using them as shields, he stepped in front of them and used their falling bodies to push down the next three on the plank and then he fell backwards as a swarm of arrows raced past him and struck the far wall or sailed into the chasm between the walls.

Marc stood ready to step out with his shield to save Longo but Longo was along the rampart to were the plank lay and by falling on his back he used his boot heels to push the plank up and off. Then he rolled back to where Marc had stood without making a move of his own.

They were startled by the scream of one of their archers. A grappling hook fell over the wall from the tower and was pulled taunt catching the man in the chest with the claws of the anchor, crushing into him. Longo rushed to sever the rope but three more hooks landed between him and the now dead archer. Marc moved out to assist and instantly was knocked back three paces as the force of the arrows hitting his shield. He felt for sure that there were invaders hacking at him with their clubs or axes. He swung his sword to clear them but it was only air. He brought his sword back with the return slice and cut through the two closest ropes. The Turks hanging on them fell into the moat below.

More fire brands reached the timbers of the war machine but they were soaked and pulled before any damage to the green wood. The tower quivered with the stomp of warriors up the steps and ladders More men were jumping onto planks secured against the wall on either side of the tower and the defenders along the wall began to turn more of their attention to those. Down below, the lack of arrows falling on the Turks allowed them to place scaling ladders from the far side of the moat and climb the walls. Men with pikes pushed some over and others were deflected enough to slide along the wall and drop their champions into the moat below. But for every fallen ladder, a swarm of hands grabbed it and raised it up again.

Now soldiers from the steps pushed forward to join the archers in the fighting upon the wall. There were still other archers on the ground behind the first wall, firing blindly into the air, sailing their arrowheads over the wall and the defenders to drop without choosing among the attackers gathering at the gate. A blind aim often hit its mark in this mob as good as the other.

Longo was cutting the other ropes when some hurled a man at him. Marc looked in disbelief. Then he realized the Turks were jumping off the military tower. They had over run them there. The few archers above were either shot or pushed the wall and the Turks were running a plank from tower top to tower top and streaming onto the wall. The jump was high and the men rolled with angry ankles or knees that twisted badly. They were easy foes and their backs made soft targets for Marc's sword. Soon he worried mostly about stumbling over the bodies as he met them as they jumped.

With horror Marc remembered the path around the tower they had built when filling it with stone. If the Turks got command of that, they would flow from either side of the tower. He trusted that the other side was defending as well as he was and should either side fall, the wave of attackers would double and they would be coming round the back of the tower with swords drawn. They had to get that tower down, or at least drop that plank.

Marc backed up to Longo and yelled to him "we've got to drop that plank!" Longo saw and nodded. He turned and shouted out orders and half the archers dropped their bows and lifted up shields to hold up as cover for the others. They directed their fire at the top of the tower. Others tried to fill the bodies flowing up the ladders inside the machine with death. Once dead, the way was blocked till the men were able to wrench the corpse out of their way and cast it from the tower.

He gave another order and the Greek fire was brought forward. They lifted ladles of it and flung it on the ladders themselves, or poured buckets of it on the ladders. All they needed to do was burn it a few feet, or weaken it so they no longer reached. Marc looked out over the wall and there was a sea of attackers and they brought ladders over their heads by the scores. He did not know how much Greek fire they had. He hoped that some river of it flowed from inside the city. They would need it.

The archers were safe only away from the tower. Closer to the tower the arrows fired from Turkish bows kept them down and kept the idea of flinging Greek fire on the tower from being successful. Marc pulled up a grappling rope onto the wall. Archers below had lined up inside the wall to direct their aim at the back of the tower should it become a highway for the attackers.

Longo brought two other ropes and they hurled them as well over the plank while their archers kept the Turks from cutting them. Others rushed up behind them and got the ropes and securing them to a large stone. It took twelve men to lift the stone and shove it atop the wall and edge it forward. Then the rock dropped, the line pulled taunt and the plank bowed in the center. Instead of breaking as they had hoped, the ropes snapped, three quick slaps and the stone continued into the moat, but the plank had bowed too far and when the ropes gave, it sprang upwards in the center and trembled in the air, leaving the edges of either tower. The plank twisted and turned and bounced twice on the edges of the towers as the fighting nearly stopped to watch and then it slipped off the edge of the wooden tower and began to fall, end first, into the moat.

The defenders cheered. The Attackers roared back and brought more planks up the back of the tower and more ladders swung onto the wall. The fighting raged on and the sun tired in the sky. Turkish archers continued to fall from the tower top and continued to be replaced by others.

Night was falling and Longo ordered the torches out on the wall so the siege tower archers could not see well. Their own torches worked against them outlining the attackers who made inviting targets. On the ground between the walls, Longo had his archers use the student's worst mistakes as firebrands and they went whizzing up erratically and plummeted down in unpredictable ways. Some even fell upon the wall but few enough to make the orders stand. The zigzagging fire arrows added more confusion to the darkening sky and at length, the mob retired. They could no longer climb the ladders or attack the wall without light and light on their side merely made them targets.

The tired exhausted defenders were happy to see them withdraw. Longo summoned a counsel. Asif and Xerxes had returned from the inner wall by then and partook in the council. Longo was impressed by their joint wizardry in predicting the size of the tower from a distance. Perhaps they had other skills. Longo saw no reason to exempt any advice from his counsel at a time like this.

While they conferred, they peppered the tower with fir arrows and each time they were reached by some inner guard who climbed the tower and reached out between the wet cow hides and plucked the arrows. The green wood was stubborn to burn. Buckets continued to slather the timbers and hides with water. And they shot back.

"We need to take out those guards. Only then can we start a fire of any great hunger." Longo framed the problem.

"Can we shoot them with poison arrows? Like last night? Said an advisor.

"They won't show themselves as targets. Longo pleaded for other answers.

Jon spoke next: "they do show themselves. When they reach for the flaming arrows and pull them out."

"Can you hit them when they show merely an arm? If we got you closer to the tower?"

Xerxes spoke up: "you can shoot them before they reach out. Kill them with poison". They all looked at the old man, whose fingers were lost in his beard. "They are pulling out the flaming arrows. I have a chemist, friend; we can concoct a poison deadly to the touch. We pour it over the shaft. When the Turks pluck the arrows, they touch the poison. Ten minutes later: dead. We shoot till the burning arrows remain untouched. That's the signal the tower is emptied of life."

Then we burn it," Longo agreed. They sent for the chemist. Two hours later the poison was ready. They used Jon's cross bow as there was no safe way to hold the arrow in a bow without coming in contact with the poison as the arrow looses into the air. Jon pulled the bow carefully, wearing falconer's gloves. The first arrow sunk into the timbers with a thunk. Shortly, a hand reached through the cowhide curtain and tore the arrow and tossed it to the ground. An ungloved hand.

They fired another, and another. In two hours more work, the tower no longer plucked the arrow. They waited. Nothing. The arrow sizzled in the front of the timber but would not spread.

They needed to lower a man to the ground and Asif said it should be him. Longo demanded why. "If there is any guard or any investigation, I can lay down on the ground among the dead and not be noticed." It was simple truth and it compelled them.

Soon Asif was being lowered down the wall by rope. Beside him were half a dozen buckets half full of Grecian fire. Each rope was pushed out from the wall by a scaling ladder so that they landed away from the wall on the dry side of the moat. On the ground Asif untied the buckets and carried them over to the tower. Then, not in according with the plan, he disappeared inside it.

The stunned defenders held their breath. The buckets were close. Longo ordered archers to be ready to shoot them should Asif be discovered. Minutes passed. Nothing could be seen or heard until Asif appeared again. He waved. The tower was guarded only by the dead. He began pouring the buckets all around the base of the platform, over the steps and timbers and along the slick logs which wheeled it out that far.

Asif fixed himself to the rope and was pulled up again, the ladder retreated till his bare feet slapped against the cold wall and he helped climb the rest of the wall. Once safely in, Longo gave the command. Six dozen firebrands arced from the wall at once. None strayed. The tower erupted in fierce flame. The Turks cried out from their lines and the mod rushed back to save the tower but could not. Water might have doused the flame but only if enough was used. The mob could have formed a mighty bucket brigade and used the moat but the moat was within the deadly reach of the defenders' arrows and so the cause was lost. The mob stood by helplessly as the tower burned to the ground.

The defenders straighten and with great cheer congratulated themselves in their success. This would surely vex the Sultan into defeat. Xerxes called out to Marc and he turned. Jon was laying on the stone floor. Poisoned.

Chapter Twelve:

The Grand Vizier looked on the back of the young Sultan and the young Sultan took in the scene of destruction. The tower lay in ashes and ruin, a charred heap upon the charred end of the log road that carried it to the city's walls. The Sultan had not stopped to dress and stood in the morning breeze, naked, with only his mace in hand. None dared look upon him. For all his nakedness he was as safe as if in the privacy of his harem tent.

Maybe this, thought the vizier, may bring us all peace.

The sultan stared. His words, chosen carefully, came slowly. "Should I have had the word of the thirty-seven thousand prophets that this would happen, I would not have believed it."

The Grand Vizier listened closely in the morning breeze for sounds of peace. The sky filled in with the blue of daybreak. Clouds said behind the city as if ships leaving a harbor. His army waited like so many waving tulips in the newly arrived garden: wordless, infinitely patient. And helplessly rooted to the sultan's wishes.

The sultan turned. The vizier averted his eyes. "If the infidels fight this hard, it can only prove the value of that which we seek as ours.". He looked back at the ashes without turning and then back at the Vizier. "Make more".

The room in the bottom of the tower was set up as a make shift hospice. Inside, Marc, Jon, Xerxes and Asif lay as if dead. Only the chemist continued to labor over Jon, who still labored to breath. Xerxes had speculated that excess poison from the shaft of arrows built up in the slip of the cross bow and may have splashed into Jon's eyes. The gloves he was wearing to shoot with were stripped off carefully with knife points and then burned. The bucket emptied outside the wall and abandoned to the moat. The bow itself was rinsed over and over for hours and then left to soak in some solution the chemist had also used to wipe down the shooter. The chemist had been summoned and met the victim down in this tower room after he had been carried down by his friends. He had assured them the archer would be all right, that he would live. He had lied. The chemist knew not the fate of the archer but did not see the concern of his friends as something that would aid him in his effort. After several hours of vigil, the night, like its own sweet poison, took the vigil keepers one by one. They slept soundly now and did not watch the chemist's efforts or see the worry in his face.

Even Longo slept. The siege master was very pleased with the pile of ashes that had been the Turk's weapon of choice. But the siege master had not time to gloat or enjoy the sight of the Sultan as he rose to see his war machine splintered and ruined. It was now a monument of ashes to the fortitude of the city. Go home, it spoke, we will not fall.

Nor will we falter, Longo thought as he moved through the night to make plans for the next day. The archer who had died handling such poisoned darts as were necessary, was a hero, and was carried off by his comrades in arms. There was much grief among them.

The siege master now turned to his other army. Legions of laborers awaited their next order. They had gathered in the night as they had for the past week, waiting to tear down the efforts of the invaders. Or build up the defenses of the city. They had rebuilt the St. Romanus tower, they had cleared and cleaned the moat many times over, and now they must rebuild the walls that threatened to collapse in too many places.

Longo gather his engineers and gave them their instructions. The wall closer to the palace, along the Blackernae, was the weakest. Longo had his conference and then strode off to sleep himself in the comfort of his palace bed. He had fought hard and fought well and needed sleep as much or more as his comrades who had carried off their fallen friend. Indeed, he ordered all his night men to sleep. The day was unstoppable and the enemy was merciless. They would all need what rest they could find for the test that waited for them like a tiger.

As the siege master vanished into the palace, great columns of oxen driven wagons were set into motion. Tons of earth were dug from the ground between the first and second walls and loaded into boxes, casks and piles on bare wagon boards. They were hauled down the way to the breeches in the wall. Workmen and women, youths and soldiers labored to reconstruct the walls into mighty defenses again.

Workers on ropes were lowered to recover what stone could be grappled back into place, or pushed further down to create a chasm. Anything that made the approach more hostile was done. When the way was set, the large casks were put into place along the breeches, then posts placed in the casts and then fill dirt and water loaded into the cast to weight them down. To these, other beams were laid across, connecting the casts and posts as a fence and to them were cross laid other timbers which were hammered into place with spikes so that the whole frame were nailed together as one piece. After that, workers shoveled in stone and gravel and dirt to fill in the places between timbers, raising the wall level once again. Atop the fresh wall were placed pales and pickets to deter climbers and another fence to fight behind.

It was not the noise and commotion of the construction that woke Marc, but the sun that had finally poked him awake. He stared at the sleeping men. Jon, still succumbed to the poison but still breathing shallowly. "How goes he?" Marc fumbled his way to the chemist still attending him.

"He's in God's hands." The chemist did not look good. He looked like sleep might be along to rob him of his senses at any moments. As if to answer that thought, he said "I've done all I can do. It's all between God, the poison and him."

Marc noted the one god and felt better somehow that the chemist was a Christian. Then he saw the nun enter the room and attend to Jon, mopping his brow and rubbing his hands gently. "There's nothing you can do. He must rest." The Chemist seemed to give into the lack of sleep and may have been heeding his own words. There is no telling what other duties the chemist had before this poisoned affair. He may have been up for days, toiling in the tower reconstruction or clearing the moat at night as so many citizens had been doing. It was citizens like the chemist who would save this city. He walked off into the direction of the strong light pouring in through the tower doorway. The nun remained.

"He'll pull through" it was Xerxes. Wide eyed if not wide awake. He was holding up the open book of the secret exit. Asif reading his mind, the professor said, "Try the Church of St. Sofia. You might find her there. Use this knowledge, "he waved the book slightly, "to get her out of here."

Marc looked at the book. He had not thought out his next moves. He had looked through the makeshift hospice for her and had for a moment hoped the nun was his Nyad in disguise. Xerxes must have read this on his face.

"I'll watch over your archer. You watch over her." Marc wavered as well. He had no designs on the day but to serve. Now he had two masters: the city and the woman. He took the book from the older man.

"I must check the defenses first."

Xerxes nodded in agreement but added: "St. Sofia, the big domed church. Anyone can guide you."

Marc was still uneasy taking directions, and a woman, from this man. He left without further word.

Outside the sun stabbed at his eyes and burned like lye. He cursed himself for sleeping so long. May haps he got a taste of the poison. It was a cowardly excuse for being indulgent and he regretted the thought immediately. Only Jon had been poisoned and paid the price now, perhaps fatally.

The knight captain churned his ill feelings into action by bounding up the tower stairs. The siege tower was reduced to ashes and the bones of the poisoned guards could be seen as the wind dusted them off lazily.

Beyond that, the posts of the damned doomed were perches for so many buzzards. The flesh of the dead rotted away in the bulging slings of their clothing and were slow to fall away. They remained on the stakes for the carrion birds to pick their bones. By and by some Turk gunner would take a shot at the big black birds, maybe killing one, sending them up for a moment of disturbance before they resettled to their grim feast.

He peered over the inner side of the front wall and noted the construction effort below. Again, he found his eye wandering the line of workers, looking for Nyad.

He turned towards the city and there to the south lay the copper dome of the Church of Saint Sofia. He marked its distance and position and descended the stairs. At the second wall gate he commandeered a mount. Every moment of energy must be conserved for the tasks that lay ahead, he thought, whether it was a battle, the final battle, or some other event. No one knew what came next. Even the gods might be arguing that.

He burned at his blasphemous thought and said a quick prayer for his own soul. He did not want to test his faith. He did not want to end like the pour souls on the stakes pulled at by ravenous beaks. Hell could keep you alive for that. Wasn't it the Greeks who had a pour tormented hero who was devoured by birds every day, only to be made whole and devoured again, for having scorned the gods?

God. There was but one God. He would protect him.

The constable put his mind on the matter of finding the church. Anyone could guide him. Even himself. He had a good feel for cities and directions and had made a mental map of the city whenever he surveyed it from the walls, like when he walked the Golden Horn with Nyad....

He was sharp about the way she commanded his thoughts. The book in his belt moved with the cadence of the horse to remind him of his mission. Could he use the book's secret only to save her, and thus himself? Was he to do Xerxes' bidding, or God's bidding? Was he meant to usher one poor soul out of the city in singular chivalry? Or was he obligated to show this secret to Longo for the use of Constantine and the good of all the citizens?

As the church loomed into view through the maze streets, he did not know what to do. Except find her.

The church was a fortress. How many clergy had said that in metaphor for the soul, but now this massive coral stone building stood before him in all its presence like a fort within the fort? Its high front doors were pushed to the full and anyone was welcomed by the gap. He tethered his mount and entered. The silence and the size hushed him as much as the change from broad sunlight to shade sliced open by streams of colored light through stained glass windows.

If the fort within a fort was huge, the size was dedicated foremost to the hall of the church. His boots made intruding echoes as he walked into it, his head upturned towards the soaring ceiling and domed architecture. He was marveling at the grace of its style. As if a trinket made by god for man to be mesmerized by its mastery.

His boot falls made him slow. There were others, a few moving about, a few at prayer in the benches, but so few for such a monumental space.

He let his eyes fall servant to the light. As he began to see better, he swept the room for signs of Nyad. Almost all were women. A sanctuary. Half of them nuns. Each moving off from him with missions of their own which he was loath to interrupt.

His mind began to play with him: he did not need guidance to the church, but now inside, he needed guidance in the church. And he had not come to seek his Lord, but to seek his woman. He felt a hand on his arm. He turned to see a nun in full robe, hooded, her face secret within the shadow of the hood. Her other hand came forward and up, peeled the edge of the robe and brought it back away from her face. For a moment, he feared it was Nyad.

"Good Knight Captain Sir, it is sweet to see you again" Said sister Margaret. The shock must have leap from his face. "It is a surprise to see you," she continued, her face calm but smiling. "I am afraid I have been busy with my duties and once within the city, I have not seen anyone which whom I have traveled with and I do miss them all so dearly."

Marc struggled to put aside the memories of what Margaret had been through, the gang rape, the death she witnessed but could not stop. How she must miss her monk of a husband.

"I saw dead Ty- ", the constable corrected himself, "I saw Tyrol the other day. He was well and said that he and Father George guarded the far wall along the sea. We watched the sea battle together." Marc was unsure what else to say. News seemed to be as painful as no news, yet nothing showed on sister's face except calm and a slight smile. She seemed glad to see him. He hugged her.

She held him for a moment and then signaled it to be over, like a teacher embracing a student for a moment. The smile remained. He struggled to fill the silence of his awkwardness. How could he tell this woman that he was driven to church by the carnal burn for another woman? He felt his sins push to his face again.

"All the men are doing well, save Jon, who was poisoned but we pray for him and expect him to reawaken. "He bit his lip when he thought about comparing Jon to Tyrol's wake. It seemed he could think of nothing proper to say that would not twist some knife wound in this poor woman. Her smile remained. She did not ask about the siege and he was not ready to intrude that subject into the church, into her world.

"I am kept busy here, assigned by the cardinal to this great sanctuary." She beamed about the vaulted ceilings and stain glass windows that hung rainbow sin the air and, on the walls, and floors. I do miss all you and pray that God watches over you."

"He does." Marc knew this much in the ashes of the siege tower. The rest they were able to do with his help: release the suffering, defend the good and innocent and deserving like sister Margaret.

Sister Margaret put her hand on his belt, surprising him for a moment. "The Good Book?" He realized the book of secrets was still in his belt.

"No, a book I've been entrusted to," Marc saw an opening to ask for the Sister's help. He was unsure if he should do so. "I am looking for someone, here, to give it to. A woman..." Marc did not know how to describe her usefully: a scholar, a lover, a goddess...

"What does she look like." Marc was embarrassed by the simplicity of the issue. He was all tied and bound by his guilty thoughts. He had a lust I his heart and a temptation. He thought about asking the sister for guidance. Anyone can give you guidance. Xerxes words haunted him now. What would sister say about a book that could help one or help the many? He blushed again knowing that this woman sacrificed herself and risked her life to save others.

She looked at him expectantly. He realized the hanging question. "Tall, blonde, green eyes," he was struggling for some information which was not mere physical, something that might betray their relationship as something other than lovers. "She's from the university." The vaulted ceiling seemed to pass his words on to everyone in the church, though none looked up or stopped their work.

Sister's smile continued. "Try there", she pointed towards a bench near the alter. "And tell all the men that I pray for them." She said as she lifted her hood and was gone again in the shadows of the robe, and then turned away to her own work. Marc waited. Unsure about mixing the two worlds, the church and the business he had been put into by the professor. His heart knew there was no answer but to seek out the woman. He knew a spell when he was under one. He approached the figure Sister Margaret had pointed out.

He knew her hair before he reached her and measured how his heart leapt out. Then he smelled her, lilies and lavender. She turned as if she had been waiting for him. Her smile was intense, though her face weary. The last time he had seen her was the night of the release. She had witnessed the horrible impaling of the victims and no one, not he or Xerxes, had fended her from that awful sight. Now she was here. He sat beside her and turned as she turned, and he moved to take her hands which did not move to take his. He was startled by the roughness of them. These hands which had rubbed such demons out of him, and into him, were now like a slave's hands. They had cuts and calluses from hauling stone and brick, from clearing rubble. This scholar of a woman was now reduced to hands of a soldier. She tended rough block now instead of scrolls and parchments. His heart teared at the sight and fell of them and next to the tears was also a rage.

"Isn't it beautiful?" She looked around the church and he looked with her, briefly, unable to keep his eyes off her. "So quiet and peaceful. This place used to be packed by worshippers. I never came here often, only out of curiosity. It is not my church, not my way. I am Byzantine. But the other night, the horrible fate of those poor people. I thought of this place and have been here since. It makes me feel better. Like there is hope. Hope for us all." She lit her face up into his. Her green eyes swelled with water. He waited, fighting the urge to pluck her tears before they could fall. He wanted now to use the secret book to steal her away, make her safe. Make her his.

"When the two factions of the Christians united, few believed it was in true spirit, it was only to save the city. A cause greater than god it would seem to some. But they had a great ceremony in this place, and it was a moving ceremony, I had never seen it before, your..." She searched for the word, "mass?' He nodded.

"Since then, it has been shunned, as if fit for neither faction now. Neither Russian Envoy or Roman Priest rush to embrace this place." She wandered around the room with her eyes. He could not bring her to think on matters of the war, the siege, their terrible fate. "It is as if the church is built out of great stones not to outlast the years, but to outlast the silliness of men."

"Xerxes sends this." He blundered into his business. He brought the book out and showed it to her. She took it and looked it over, like a scholar, a lover of books. For a moment she saw Xerxes in her love of books. She found a passage Xerxes had marked. She read it. She read with mounting excitement.

"A secret gate?" She looked up at him with enthusiasm. "This is wonderful news.' He pictures the two of them stealing through it at night and riding off nit he darkness to safety. "Xerxes must be delighted!" He pictured the professor making one last haul of sacred manuscripts out through the secret gate, stealing them away in the darkness to safety, too burdened with treasure to risk taking Nyad.

"You must get this to the emperor at once." This stunned him. She seemed to be in no mind of the two men who loved her. She saw its value to all at once and there was no hesitation in her heart. He was struck by her charity, her values. "Doesn't this have a great advantage for us?" She was not talking about the two of them, or the three of them, but all the citizens.

He felt some shame at the woman's uptake on the right thing to do. He had promised Xerxes, or had he? He had been asked by Xerxes to use it for the woman's safety alone but she has rejected it. He did not think it proper to tell her about that now, to sully Xerxes in her eyes with Xerxes own weakness for her. He understood Xerxes wish. It was his own. Now she chided him unknowingly for not being a greater servant of God and the city. He would end this fool's errand.

"Here, show them this passage. How could Xerxes expect you to read this? He thinks that everyone speaks all the languages he does. It's called Kerka Porta. They'll know the words, and this shows them the location." She did not seem to wonder why he had been sent to her for interpretation. Perhaps she figured an oversight on Xerxes' part, or that they had not been talking and that the book had been sent by courier. Nor did she seem to think it strange that he sought her out in this church and found her. she must have felt plain before God.

He stood to leave. She offered up the book and he took it. Then he bent to kiss her, catching himself, these carnal thoughts in the midst of a church. But she leaned up to meet him and they pressed their lips briefly. There are many kinds of poisons, he thought, his lips burning at here touch. Let the world end if this siege fails, he will go to God willing to confess his love for a woman strong enough to kiss in this great church. God will forgive him his weakness, for God has much to forgive his warrior before the fight is over.

He rode back with lighter spirits. He had found Sister Margaret and he had found Nyad and both were safe in body if not all together in spirit. Their spirits were in a place to care for them better than he could. In the fort within a fort, at least they would not witness any more cruel sights.

He stopped for a moment outside the large horse track where games were played. The Hippodrome seemed to sport more statues than the walls themselves. He was struck by two of them. On one side of the crossroads near the gates stood a large marble Atlas, holding the world upon his shoulders. The Greeks had so many myths. Marc knew of only a handful. This giant grew tired of holding so much weight on his shoulders and was never able to rest. He was besieged by the world, thought Marc, knowing both the weight of the world at times and the irresistible urge to let burdens slide off your back.

The globe upon this statue's back was gilded with gold and Marc soot wondering at the citizenry that would allow such a thing to stand unguarded and unbothered both. There was a reverence and he must liken it to breaking the stain glass windows in a church. A crime no one was low enough to commit. Wouldn't the Sultan like that as a trophy. The thought made him angry and the rage beside the tear in his heart grew brighter.

He turned away and looked at the statue on the far side of the cross roads. A three headed serpent. He did not know what this beast meant to the people, or the story behind it. He thought he would ask Nyad, or the professor, when he got a chance. Something to talk about besides their miserable predicament and all the unsaid things caught on spikes between the three of them.

Marc was hard on his mount on the way back to the wall. He was rude to many people in the streets as he lunged down them. He might have spread some panic by his charge through the city but he did not care. They were fighting for their lives, or should be, and they could afford to feel some panic. There was much at stake here. Gods, glory, citizens. A city. An empire. History. A treasure of written works, a treasure of priceless people. He rushed back to the walls to defend it. Defend it all.

He left the mount, panting, at the second wall gate, checked on Jon. Xerxes and Asif were gone. Jon was breathing better than before and seemed strong. The chemist was gone. The nun was vigilant and so Marc climbed the wall to the ramparts. He took in the sights. The Turkish army seemed unmoved and unmoving. Waiting. The canon continued their hellish bombardment. They did not seem to miss its creator at all. They brought more and/or wall down along the palace side of the Mesotichen wall but it was fortified again, as if weeks of canon would arrive at nothing but a new wall a new tower. surely the men, if not the Sultan, would lose spirit.

He took his supper among the men on the wall, standing guard. He then walked the lines again, like a constable, checking on all, watching over everything, keeping the spirits of his men aloft. He spoke with the Smits, and others in his old command. None seemed to regret where they were or why. He wondered if any of them worried about their fate as much as he did? At times it seemed to be a sure thing and at other times it seemed to be as surely lost.

Pup was at watch along the wall and Marc stopped to find out why. Pup pointed down the palisades to a pile of rubble outside the new fortifications. It was one of the statues that fell. It now lay on its face, turned sideways in the dust. "Aphrodite," Pup explained. Marc recognized the goddess of Love for the Byzantines. "Too far down to bring up safely, but once darkness falls, I think we can get her." Marc looked down to where Pup kicked a coil of rope with his foot.

Marc managed a smile and left the giant to his plan. He wondered if the Goddess of Love was a sign, or did everyone in the city know his heart and his business. He would have no part of that rescue. He would save his rescue efforts for the very few which would need him. He took the book and went looking for Longo. Hours passed before the siege master reappeared on the ramparts, looking refreshed and grinning like he slept past chores. Marc showed him the book and they studied it. Longo was no better at the Byzantine languages than Marc. They sought out advisors to Constantine and then the Emperor himself was summoned. The book was authentic. The Kerka Port was remembered by some of the older advisors. An old forgotten gate concealed by the old walls near the Golden Horn. If they could locate it and reach it from this side, if it were unburied still, they might use it for night raids again. It could handle many men moving quickly in or out and allow for an attack greater than the sluice gates would permit. They could take the war to the enemy again, maybe to their beds in the middle of the night.

The book was surrendered to the advisors who poured over it like a battle map. Men more familiar with the history of the city were sought and engineers set about trying to locate the exact location. Marc felt a twinge of guilt as he walked back along the wall with Longo. He had given Xerxes' secret to the emperor. It was the only thing to do and it was the only thing Xerxes would not understand

"Looks like you man has fallen in love." Marc was scrambling to decipher his meaning when Longo nodded down the wall. Pup had taken the rope and gone over the side. The torches were put out along that section of the wall. If the Turks had anyone as savvy as a constable, Marc thought, they would be onto the darkness as a sign that they were up to something by now.

Pup was down to where the goddess rested in the rubble, her white marble body glistened in the moonlight. He had the rope around her torso and others were pulling to lift it. The giant of a man seemed almost capable of carrying her off himself, like a hero in some Greek story. An arrow whizzed by and clattered into the rubble. Pup looked up. Three more arrows fell nearby. He was seen. He must retreat now, but he kept at the statue, trying to lift the base and wedge her free to be hauled up. A shot rang out. That alerted everyone up and down the wall on both sides.

Marc and Longo hurried down to the wall where the men labored on the rope. It was taunt but unmoving. "Come on," urged Longo, first to the rope haulers, then to Pup. Marc was sure that the siege maser was going to cut the rope and end this foolish rescue, but he was wrong. "C'mon, harder." Then to Marc, "he needs help."

Marc could not believe his eyes but Longo, the siege master of Constantinople, the hope of emperor Constantine, the key to the city's defense, was climbing over the wall to help Pup lift the goddess to safety. Maybe this goddess meant more than he realized to the Byzantines. Longo was Italian but the Greeks and Romans seem to embrace the same gods, same history. Maybe this was something of a symbol for the city, the war, he thought, as he watched Longo scramble down over the side.

They needed shields as well as muscle as the arrows were getting closer., Archers had crept out from the ranks of the trenches and were letting loose a small cloud by now. Byzantine archers were firing back and muskets began sounding from both sides. Even a canon shot landed near the fallen goddess. Pup did not flinch, as if even canon shot would bounce off him. Longo was scrambling nearer and joined in on the hefting. Marc could now see Turkish warriors charging out of the ranks. They wanted to catch the men outside the walls. Now this could turn into a symbolic win for the attackers. He wondered if the attackers knew who it was that they were trying to catch outside the walls, that it was the siege master himself.

Marc grabbed two shields and went over the wall himself. He made his way through the spiked timbers and over the palisades onto the rocky rubble slope and worked his way down to Longo. "We're under attack," he told them as they looked up long enough to see long shadows in the darkness crossing the open field in front of the moat. They had seconds to abandon the statute and return to the wall safely but neither man stopped. Finally, Marc dropped the shields himself and grabbed onto the stone goddess to try and pry her free and thus unpin his comrades.

She slid. Then twisted, grinding against the darker stones. An arrow fell and would have pierced her had she been flesh. Longo looked annoyed. Pup stood again, making a giant of a target and surveyed the attackers. He looked like he was preparing to fight. Not here, Marc thought, not outside the wall!

Someone threw over another rope and Longo began fastening it to the goddess' ankles just above the base. They would drag her up if need be, but they needed more muscle to lift her over the snags than they had, and now Pup had stopped to fight the attackers but he was barehanded. He had left his mace atop the wall. Marc drew his sword and pulled a knife to hand to Pup. Pup looked at it but went back to the task of lifting the statue. "We've got to go, "Marc hissed to Longo. Longo looked over his shoulder at the first warriors reaching the rocks. They began to climb, falling and trying again as they recovered, finding a way in the dark maze of hand holds and level surfaces. The arrows slackened as both sides were too close now. Marc picked up one of the shields and stood before the two laboring figures. Someone had to fight.

As the first warrior drew close, Marc had surveyed his grounds and knew where to step to and where to avoid. He took two steps out and jumped to a flat rock and pierced the first Turk that reached them. Longo let go of the statue and picked up the other shield and drew his sword. Maybe this fight was what the statue was all about, a chance to see some action. The siege master is battle hungry and brash. Mac counted two dozen men in the rooks now, and below, the dozens swelled to hundreds.

The statue was not going to be saved. Pup strained at it one more time and in the process, he pulled off her right arm with a great crack. He stood there, looking at it, white in the moonlight. Upright, a full target. Only Longo and Marc held shields to protect him. Two more Turks arrived unsteady and were dispatched by sword point. They were being outflanked, slowly, by others climbing the rubble slowly. Archers from the wall kept them even slower. Longo and Marc began to retreat up the hill. Three more Turks closed in and were slashed and skewered from the advantage of the two defenders.

Longo turned to face two who had outflanked them. They were no match for Longo., their lances glanced off his armor and he used them to pull the attackers into his cutting swath. Marc face two more alone and one had gained sure footing and brought his scimitar into play. Two others outflanked him from the other side. Marc could see a hundred Turks climbing in the rocks below. He was stuck here defending Pup's wish to retrieve a lifeless icon. Now who was bad luck?

Suddenly there was an ear shattering roar and Marc looked up to see Pup, turning slowly, the arm of Aphrodite in his hand. He held it by the wrist, her hand reaching for his wrist, the stump broken off just below the shoulder, as if she told him to leave her where she lies. He raised the milk white arm in the moonlight and yelled again and then stepped forward and brought the marble arm down on the head of the flanker and crushed him dead. He swung it again and bashed the other off the rocks and into the spaces between them. His comrades climbed over him and met the same faith. Slowly the three men fought their retreat up the hill but the invaders were swarming the rocks and moving faster as they showed each other the way to steady footholds.

The speed of attackers had increased and Marc had to settle for debilitating blows, rather than solid kills, he had to dispatch them faster, knock them out of the fight as quick as possible. Several times a scimitar or lance got through to him and was turned back by his armor. He even felt a ping of a rock and realized two attackers later, that it was a musket ball that had reached him but with insufficient force.

Only Pup dispatched his enemies with deadly force still, cracking their skulls with the arm of his goddess. His vanquished would not rise again. The white marble arm was not bloodied by many and looked as if it were a real arm ripped from the body of an unfortunate. Pup continued growling as he beat them over the head with his new mace.

Longo had cut the ropes from the statue and they were withdrawn up over the palisades. Six more of their men came over the wall to reach them and helped even the fight, helped all nine reach the palisades and scramble safely over, but the Turks kept coming. There were several thousand now thronging the edge of the rubble and more than a hundred in the rocks. A first wave reached the timbers just as the defenders retreated safely and they were repulsed by sword and pikes.

The palisades protected the defenders but also hobble their fighting. They were now repelling the attackers rather than meeting them in open battled. Arms were hacked off as they reached over the timbers. Torsos were pieced by pikes and lances as they climbed past a hiding defender in the tangle of branches and timbers that held the fort work together. Others were shot by culverins or arrows. The defender's armor protected them from blows but not from hacking and slashing blood work. They fought for an hour, two hours, three and still the Turks climbed up over their own bodies, mounting now to give them better foot holds to climb the palisades faster. Men had to be sent with longer pikes to push the bodies away from the timbers.

The attackers were emboldened with drums and bells and fifes to drown out the screams of the dying as the defenders slew them without mercy and without stop. After four hours, the Sultan, dismayed at his losses and called a halt to the fight. Marc watched as the attackers withdrew down the rocks and past the Janissary guards on horseback who slew anyone who dared to retreat early. They turned back even the wounded. If they could climb down the rocks, they could climb up and up was where the fight was. He shuddered at the coldness of this army.

Longo was no longer grinning but heaving for air as the rest of them were. Pup was no longer growing. "Assemble." Said Longo, the spit catching in his throat. He cleared it and said again, much louder this time: Assemble!"

The men dragged themselves to the wall top and lined up in formations. Captains counted guards and added their figures together. Four hundred. Four hundred men had battled four hours to stop several thousand Turks from over Running the breech. They had won. Longo was grinning.

"We've not lost a single man. Not a single man! It a miracle. It's God's gift to the Emperor." Longo was obviously pleased.

Marc surveyed the rubble before the palisade, there were hundreds of dead strewn throughout. It was a defeat that would make any of the attackers think twice about repeating.

Marc looked the men up and down. They were undead but they were tired, exhausted and many were covering wounds that needed treating and some had wounds they would not even know about till inspection. They were relieved by fresh guards and sent downstairs to wash away the blood. They staggered down the steps, none more so than Pup, Longo and Marc, who had fought on open rubble for twenty minutes before reaching the safety of the palisades.

Marc loosened his armor and tossed it to the ground where squires ferried it away for cleaning. Others brought water to him and it took several buckets to wash him clean. There was plenty of water to wash away and the ground was soaked in it and would need fresh dirt to cover it from the flies by morning. This was the job of laborers. One laborer stepped forward in the moonlight towards Marc. She was green eyed and blonde and smelled of lilies and lavender.

She took his hand and led him away. Out the gates and to the house where they had met once before. She led him inside, to the tub which was warm with fire, and guided him into the tub. The waters turned red from blood still in his skin, ground into his flesh, soaked into the few clothes he still wore. She removed those and flung them out of the tub.

She took her hands, still rough from man's work, but far more tender than his own, and she mapped his body for wounds and injuries, finding bruises where armor took a hit without allowing a cut or a piercing. She found cuts where scimitars wandered far too close to her lover's skin. She found burst flesh where he fended off a shield or a pole, or a scrape from the palisades itself. Beneath those, muscles ached with the marathon of fighting and the strain of trying to lift the marble woman from her grave.

And beyond that, parts of him that were still alive, that a thousand dead soldiers could not bury and she found them and found her touch welcomed. She slid her wet gown over her head and embraced him. Above. And below.

Chapter Thirteen:

The knight constable slept the sleep of the little death and then some more. He slept with Nyad warped within his arms and when she stirred, he stirred. He kept sharp vigil less she leaves him in the night, or morning light, to go to labor on the walls. He kept sharp vigil to make sure that the Turks did not try to attack again that same night, or the next day. The Sultan must know that they were tired. They had fresh troops to defend the breech but they could not man the whole wall, day and night. There were only seven thousand strong at arms Maybe another ten of workers.

The only thing they had in numbers equal to the invaders were weapons, and then only if you counted the stones in the harbor, a few thousand sailors on ship, balistas, some canon... He drifted in and out of sleep. When awake, he would check with one eye to the wall and see that torches there still burned, but that was not enough. He feared stealth. He checked for sentries in the tower doors and windows, and one at the inside of the third wall gate.

Nyad stirred in his arms and thoughts. He smiled. He slept again. He smelled lilies and lavender. He dreamed a dream in which he never slept. His eyes were like the stone statue's eyes, carved open with no lids to move, no curtain to drop down, no break from ever seeing. He saw the men he sliced open and ran through, the faces as they were hurled back over the palisades into their screaming fates, back breaking on the jagged stone edges of the rubble, trod underneath by their replacements who were spurred on by threat of death by the Janissary horsemen below.

Each time she stirred he checked on the world. Checked on the guards standing guard, the walls, which flew pennants now in the day light rather than torches. He saw the color of the men atop the wall and everything was fine again. She stirred and he smelled her scent and tightened his grip, loosened it, and ran his hands up and down her form like sentries running the wall. He wanted to know every inch, to reaffirm, over and over that all was well.

It wasn't the smell of breakfast cooking that woke the lovers. They waited till the smell of lunch told them the day was leaving without them. The lovers dressed and Nyad drained the tub and rinsed it of its pink stain. They strode out into the bright day together to check on the city. To see if the hourglass was nearly empty, or somehow refilled.

They called first on Jon, whose sleep was still without end, but whose breathing was gaining strength. He left word with the nun that the chemist need not haul stone or hammer timber while his friend needed care.

They were able to walk past the food once but after surveying the Turks and the wall and seeing the palisades reinforced yet again, they shunned the sound and bite and stench of the cannon and returned to the city for food. He felt like an emperor walking the city with this goddess on his arm. He would gladly fight another night on the palisades if it were followed by another night with Nyad.

They ate well and slowly, resting in chairs outside the inn where his men were quartered. Most slept or had wandered off. The ones in the battle slept still. Stories floated in a and around them and many wanted news of Jon. In time, everyone afoot had checked in with their old captain and all were satisfied of the list of living and dead. All knew as much about their future as any had to share.

In time Xerxes and Asif trod the dusty street towards the tower. Nyad hailed them. They sat down and greeted each other warmly, tiredly. Marc imagined that the professor went back to his own stone work after sleeping an hour or two. He wished he had that sort of stamina himself. The professor would rather have Marc's youth and strength than stamina.

Nyad blurted out Marc's fears: "the Kerka Porta was welcomed news to the Emperor. They are looking for it now." She smiled as though they were somewhere in a world without wars, without men who killed for women and less.

Xerxes stared at Marc. Marc had the stone eyes that did not close. He used them to turn Xerxes stare away. "This could be a great weapon in the war, this could save thousands."

"Or two", Xerxes said. Nyad saw his haggard look and asked him to get more rest. She spoke more to Asif than to Xerxes.

Marc could brook neither topic, the betrayal of Xerxes' secret book or the care of Nyad for her mentor. "Why doesn't anyone steal the golden globe?" The three others just stared. "The one Atlas holds, near the three snakes."

"I don't think I'd tell you if I knew." Xerxes was unhappy.

"The Big Apple", said Nyad.

"No, a globe, the world."

"Yes. It's called the Big Apple. It is why this city is oft called the Big Apple. It is from the old days, the Olympics first issued apples as trophies. Atlas has the largest one, the big apple of everything. It is coveted by many but touched by none." She said.

"Another useless Greek tradition," said Xerxes. Asif hung on every word, as if they were discussing his fate. "When Olympians made homes in cities, they tore down part of their wall. The more Olympians, the less wall. Had we done that here, we'd be speaking Arabic right now."

Xerxes struck the table with his thumb for emphasis, spilling out a little more anger than the subject held. Chalky dust formed a ring on the table where it had struck. "They want the heart and soul of this city, the Big Apple that Atlas holds. We are the key to the western world and they want this city to launch into the far countries, to make the world their Islamic domain, their Caliphate."

Marc looked off at the nearest statue, one of a Roman emperor. No doubt his gift to the city. It was absurd to think that such statues could incite men to war against each other. Or was it absurd to think that these statues could incite men to peace?

The head of the Roman Caesar nodded as if in agreement and Marc froze in his thoughts. Nyad felt it through his arm where her hand lies near like dog and master. It nodded again and then turned partly away from Marc's stared and leaned as if changing weight on his marble feet. Then he tilted forward and back and his head toppled off.

Marc was up out of his chair and had his hand to his sword hilt out of reflex. Asif had jumped up and back, spinning around to take in everything. Where the statue had stood, a hole in the ground and from that hole grew helmets and hands and lances. Marc flipped the table from under the unwary Xerxes and turned it as shield for Nyad and her mentor. By then others screamed.

Turks were pouring forth from the hole in the ground and scrambling up to gain foot hold in the city itself. If they won the moment, they'd charge the gates from the other side. Nyad gathered her wits faster than the professor, or was it the professor who told her to run into the inn. Marc swung into the first one and dropped him with his hands bloodied upon his face. He lunged past that corpse and skewered the next and then shoved him back into the hole to bar others from a quick egress. There was only him and them. Help was far off. A few others dropped their plates of food and fled their tables and the area.

Xerxes had grabbed three men who looked of fighting age but had no weapons or training. And only Xerxes to lead them.

Marc redoubled his effort and circled the hole quickly to spread chaos among those coming out, to appear as though they might be surrounded. At the least, they would be slowed coming out and not know from which direction to defend. Marc could see down into the hole; it was the end of a long tunnel under the walls and ran past this spot. There were Turks on all sides below the hole, the cave in spot, and it may not have been their intention to come out at that spot. Certainly, late at night would have allowed them to go undiscovered.

Asif ran up to the hole and lifted overhead the large head of the roman Caesar and threw it into the hole, breaking one man's arm and smashing another's foot. This added to the chaos, but having spent the one weapon, to Marc's surprise, Asif ran off.

Two more made their way up and gained ground. Marc was quick to engage them but they likewise engaged him. Four more made their way out and Marc saw the advantage slip quickly to the other side. Should they over power him, the city may be lost. The guards on the wall tops were used to the commotion of the work trains and crews and this scuffle was but an echo of that.

Suddenly, seven of his men issued from the inn. Nyad had roused the warriors still sleeping off last night's battle. The fight evened, turned in their favor and then, unable to close off the gate of hell, lost more ground as more Turks issued up, almost flying out of the hole as others below gave them hand holds to jump off of. They looked like they sprang from the earth itself. Demons, popping straight from hell.

Suddenly the popping stopped. Marc slew his foe and stepped back from the fighting to assess it. Xerxes and his crew of diners had lifted the marble Caesar and dropped his headless body in the hole. He had the help of three women who worked to save their own lives, the lives of their men. Nyad was one of them.

Marc quickly double teamed two fights on either side of him Running through the Turk who was engaging his western counterpart. By that tactic the tide turned fast and the last invader fell fast. Marc ordered the dead searched for anyone alive. They brought a wounded man to the table where Marc was righting it again. It was the man who still grasped his bleeding face. Marc ordered the man pinned backwards over the table; his arms stripped away from his bleeding face.

Just then hell broke loose again. Oxen were running out of a side street in their direction. Marc turned and Xerxes screamed as a lance came out of the ground and struck him on the thigh. He fell, the lance disappeared under the ground again. Then it struck up, in plain air, but sending several who had gone to help the old professor sprawling away in fear. Marc strode of to the site and pulled Xerxes free before he got a second wound. It was not deep. Nyad took him and he sent two of his men to help both the professor and Nyad into the inn for repairs. He did not want her around for what he had to do to the prisoner.

The oxen were headed towards the wall away from the battle.

He grabbed a spear and threw it to one of his men and stood above the ground. They waited. Soon the spear came through the thin sod again and Marc grabbed it and then nodded while the invader tried to free his spear. The defender brought his spear downward hard and parallel to the one Marc held. It struck home and then, slowly, the grip on the first spear faded and Marc drew it forth. He put two archers over the are to keep vigil less another Turk attack.

He turned to the herd that was forming by the wall and still issuing from the side street. Then Asif came banging a cow bell and yelling in his native tongue, driving the oxen out of the street and into the plaza by the inn. He had them trapped by the wall the battlefield. Then moved back and forth and Asif drove up and long their flanks, beating and yell till one collapsed, then another. The others lowered objections and milled about senselessly till two more fell. Marc saw that they were not dead or crippled as much as mired in a hole. The four oxen fell in a straight line from the wall to the headless Caesar. They were collapsing the tunnel. Good for Asif.

Marc turned back to the prisoner on the table. He was trembling and fuming his own blood out of his mouth as he fought for clear air. The slash across his face laid back the skin on either side in a nice deep gash. There was pain, blindness and panic. Now Marc need only stir in some fear. He sat down and leaned into the man's ear and talked. The man did not understand and that was the point. To be ignorant and fearful, unknowing of what to expect, helpless to help oneself. After a few pauses, he would grab part of the wound and tug it or twist it, eliciting a scream from the prisoner. He sent for Asif.

Asif did as commanded and sat down on the either side. When Marc uttered something in one ear, he was to translate it into the other ear. They began to work on the man, probing his fears. Marc told him that they were very upset about the people put on stakes and they were going to do the same to him. Marc motioned and one of his men put a sword tip near the man's exposed parts, pushing just enough to make its presence known to the man through his sufferings.

Others were unhappy about the buzzards that had eaten the flesh of their comrades while they were impaled and so Marc would allow him to eat his flesh, while still alive, before, during and after impaling. Asif blanched but did what he was told. He sweat and fought back memories of the dungeon and similar threats to his own life. Did all Christians have the gift of cruelty, he wondered.

Again, Marc twisted some fleshy point near the wound. The man began blabbering. Asif translated a pray or two, and then Marc put his knife point in the man's ear and the prayers stopped. He withdrew it and asked his one question. Where are the mines?

The prayers returned but so did the knife point. Silence, then a list of details. There were many of them begun, four into the city. They're be no sleep tonight. Not unless it was to be their last night of sleep. Longo needed to know this.

Marc wanted to behead the prisoner, dispatch him more quickly than the poor souls who lived upon the stakes. He raised his sword and looked at the man's throat. It was clean and exposed upon the wooden table which had just earned Xerxes ring of dust before this man and his like came to kill them all. To kill his beloved Nyad, Xerxes, Asif, last nights' warriors still asleep in their beds. He would have done no differently.

Inside the inn Nyad looked out at the man about to behead the prisoner. She had seen so much cruelty, and these were the men who took her husband so long ago, yet the hatred was fresh, like a wound that was easily broke open again. She could not watch the evil that was life creep into her knight captain. This was not battle. But this was war. She turned away.

He deserved to die. He would not torture him but make it clean. The knight captain brought his sword down swiftly, like judgment and it bit into the table sending small chips of wood in all directions. The blade spared the throat. The prisoner had jerked but did no cry out. Did not pray again. Some prayer he had already uttered worked.

He ordered the man taken away. They could do what they want with him, toss him over the wall and let him crawl back for all he cared.

Longo met him inside the walls where guards were already deployed and the workers moved back out of danger. They used a hoist and winch to lift another heavy statue and position it over the route of the mine where the oxen had collapsed it. Longo gave the signal and it was dropped, it hit the ground with a thud and broke through. They could hear some screaming where a soldier was pinned beneath it. The statue was hoisted again. "the Gods are with us on this." Longo grinned; "That's Vulcan."

The roman God of the forge was lifted out again and dropped closer to the wall this time, smashing through another pit ten or so feet from the first crater. No screams this time. "They've retreated. The land between the two pits caved in and now there was a trench running for twenty feet to the base of the wall where it descended further into the ground to avoid the weight of the walls. Longo drew his sword and grabbed a torch and jumped into the pit. Marc followed along with twenty others. Another twenty jumped in as soon as the men climbed down under the wall and the second troop headed back towards the city to make sure there were no more Turks between the outer wall and the plaza where Asif collapsed the tunnel with the herd.

The air was dank and stale as the men walked, he uneven ground of the mine floor into the depths that ran under the wall and the moat beyond. Some of the moat water seeped through the roof and walls and made the ground wet and slick. You could tread lightly but not quietly in the water. There was a hiss each time a torch touched a wall or the top of the shaft, or sputtered into the water at their feet.

They moved slow, examining the tunnel and its work. There were timbers and cross beams to hold the earth in place, and nearly a wooded tunnel beneath the greater outer wall. It must have taken weeks to build and dig out. The Sultan had an army of workers underground: their information was that this was but one of five or more.

The Turks had deserted this section of the tunnel and as they moved further from where the walls were, Longo directed a chain to be placed around the timbers of one of the supports. And then the next and the next. The chains lay in the hands of a chain holder who stood against the wall to make room for others to pass. There must have been wheeled trucks used to cart the dirt away.

They moved onward. After a time, they heard noises. Each man had a shield tied to their torch and a sword drawn. If there be fighting, it would be too close quarters for more than one or two to fight at once. Maybe a lance could push past a swordsman and kill effectively. Marc hoped that the Turks did not think of this as well

Marc ordered two men with lances to come up behind him and then stepped ahead of Longo in the tunnel, the siege master must not die first. Marc moved a few steps ahead before Longo pushed past him to take the lead again. He would not be denied.

The tunnel was widening and as it did so, more swordsmen moved up and were backed by lance men behind them. They had formed a battle phalanx.

When the formation reached another tunnel, they stopped. This one slanted off towards the city as well. It was a branch or artery of the first tunnel and must also be collapsed. But what was beyond it? The noises. Longo had to make a decision. Pass the tunnel or go down it. He chose neither.

Longo posted guards down the entrance of the branch and left his main body in the tunnel at that spot. This is where they would make their stand. He motioned to Mark to come with him as they went yet further, and alone, down the dank dark main tunnel towards the noises.

Marc figured they were well past the moat and perhaps beneath the impaled damned still rotting on their stakes above them. It made him swallow hard. Then he thought a worse thought. He pictured Asif collapsing the tunnel with oxen on the heads of the Turks and then picture the elephant monsters above. They may suffer the same fast burial at any moment. This was not a task to his liking and his sword hilt bruised for it.

The tunnel widened more and now opened into a great chamber large enough for wagons and teams to haul dirt out of it. One wagon remained, its harness empty. This was where they had split the tunnels into branches. They saw at least one more. And that's where they came from.

Howling loud enough to raise the dead entombed within the walls, the Turks poured out of the two tunnels into the main room. Longo ordered a retreat back into the tunnel. The size would restrict the numbers to an equal fight and man to man the well armored knights did better against the Sultan's bashik-bazouks. The Janissaries might be another matter but the Sultan reserved those troops to keep his mercenary and front-line troops at the battle. Here it worked for the defenders.

They got back into their tunnel and ran far to meet with the main body standing guard at the subterranean juncture. They were braced as they heard the howling echoing down the tunnel behind them. Suddenly the howling was doubled and came from the branch as well. It was a trap, an ambush. The branch troops poured out into their midst as they forced their way up the branch and into the main tunnel. Marc and Longo were cut off along with half their men. Now they turned to fight the other charge coming from the cavernous room.

Longo braced his shield and thrust his torch towards the first unfortunate who was pushed by the zeal of those behind him, further from the blade tip. The fire roasted his eyes. At the same time Longo ran one though so hard he stabbed into the man behind that. Marc let this shoulder into Longo's back to brace the man and blunt the attack and reached over his shoulder with his sword and ran through the throat of another. The strangled cries mixed with the screams of the burned man. And the sword and torch were busy in the dark air as the two men stepped back one foot at a time, till the dead clogged the tunnel and slowed the press of the attack.

Now the two men were backed up against the other defenders fighting the horde from the branch tunnel. If something did not turn soon, they would be worn down and killed. Marc took two more soldiers to their final reward. The bodies were being clawed away by the ones behind them so that they could get to the fight. This slowed them to the point that one man could hold them back, which was Marc, as Longo deserted him. He fought blindly and was determined to end this way until a lance came from behind him and took down the man he fought and the next behind him as well. Longo had turned the tide at the tunnel and now he was dragging Marc backwards while others held lances at the ready. They passed the juncture and there were now ten of them where there were once twenty-two.

Longo turned Marc before him and shoved him roughly yelling at him to run. "To the chains!" Longo told all his men and they ceased their fights and took off Running after Marc, who was now chased by his own men and his siege master.

The men sprinted down the tunnel till they could see the torches of the men holding the chain. The chain holder had fixed the end of the chain with a wooden rod, perhaps spears bound together, to form a harness. The harness blocked the tunnel and Marc feared he would be crushed now when his men ran into the spar running for their lives.

The chain holder held the spar up as if to hand it off like a baton in a relay. As Marc hit the spar he understood and the two men strained into it all they could. Marc ducked underneath it and held the other spar and leaned back, digging his boots into the soft wet mud of the tunnel floor. The chain drew taunt and ran up to the beam that anchored the other end. Marc put his shield on the other side, for those coming to run into. He hoped they minded their swords and lances and did not run him through in their effort. The men came and slammed into the spar, Marc, the shield and all, grabbing onto the chain they heaved as hard as they could, urged on by the loud siege master. The chain moved and the great timber overhead budged and groaned. The oaken growl halted the charging Turks. It silenced all of them and was felt in their bones. The Turks looked up fearful, then took orders and resumed their charge. If they could kill the defenders before the beam fell, the beam would not fall. The city would.

"Heave!" Yelled Longo. The men did and the beam twisted and groaned, splintered and fell, the roof above did as well, burying the men who lie beneath it. Others were wiggling through the debris. Longo ordered the men to the next chain and stepped back to the cave in and finished off the few who might recover enough to give chase.

The next brace fell more quickly as the men, no longer in panic, knew what they were out to do and had a feel for the weight of the timbers. The strut came off the pillars and fell with a thud but the earth did not collapse. "Move!' Shouted Longo. There was one chain next. As they heaved at it, the timbers once again groaned like a choir of dead men. It fell. The earth did not. Longo stared and then backed slowly out. He ordered the men out of the mine. They ran, he continued his slow backwards walk, appraising, or praying.

Marc waited for him in the wooden tunnel that braced the ground under the walls. "If it does not fall, we can to burn this section"

"If we burn this section, the walls above will collapse." Longo stared down the tunnel as if something would chase after them. Or a long moment they stood under the great walls of the city where few had set foot before, and waited. Then, softly, as if distance, a muffled rumble began and then grew to a loud 'fffttt'! The wind blew past them carrying dust and the smell of blood, sod and dank waters. The section fell.

That took care of one tunnel. Others remained. As if reading his thoughts, Longo turned and spoke to him. "C'mon. We've got a river to turn."

END OF VOLUME TWO