The Siege Read online

  “Calm down,” the Quartermaster General said. “These things happen.”

  Saruxha started laughing like a hysteric.

  “One of these days these ignoramuses will drive me crazy,” he groaned, putting his hand to his forehead. Then, mumbling to himself: “Mother of mine, what have I got myself into? Woe is me! What am I going to do with these manifolds?”

  The Quartermaster General looked at the engineer with friendly concern, and put his hand on the man’s shoulder.

  “Keep calm!” he said once more. Then he added: “Let’s move away from here. It’s getting dangerous.”

  They took a few steps away from the artillery. Looking over the fence that protected the forbidden zone, the chronicler noticed two young soldiers from the volunteer units lying on the grass. They were looking hard at the cannon, and as they talked they drew signs on the ground with a sharp stone. One of them was a redhead.

  “They’re curious lads,” Saruxha said, seeing the Quartermaster General taking an interest in them. “They come almost every day and just sit there on the other side of the fence, staring at the cannon. Maybe they’re dreaming of casting cannon themselves one day.”

  “When did you singe your hair?” the Quartermaster General asked.

  “The first time we fired,” the engineer answered, mechanically raising his hand to his scorched forehead. “I didn’t get out the way in time.”

  “Be careful!”

  At that instant, the largest gun fired again. The ground shook beneath them. The Quartermaster General and the chronicler held their hands to their ears. Saruxha’s eyes gleamed with pride.

  “It makes heaven and earth tremble!” he said.

  “Yes,” the Quartermaster General said slowly. “You’ve done something great, Saruxha. Your name will be remembered.”

  “For good or for bad?” the engineer asked with a touch of irony.

  The Quartermaster General smiled.

  “Does it matter? In this world nothing is either good or bad for all men.”

  Saruxha’s assistant and the head gun-layer came over towards them.

  “The cannon’s been mended,” the latter called out from a distance.

  “Then fire it!” Saruxha commanded.

  The assistant turned on his heels and moved off slowly on his long and scrawny legs.

  “He’s unusually bright,” Saruxha said wearily. “There are some things he’s even better at than I am. One day he’ll be a great inventor, I’m sure of that.”

  “Saruxha, you’ve got a generous soul,” the Quartermaster General said. “You’re devoid of the poison of jealousy. In any case, the weapons that today appear to tear the sky in two are your work.”

  The gun roared. They blocked their ears once more. The master caster followed the trajectory of the cannon-ball and saw it crash into the citadel’s wall, to the left of the main gate, where it made plumes of stone and dust spew up into the air.

  “How do you think you’ll describe that noise?” he asked Çelebi, who was stuck for an answer.

  “Well, that’s just what I was wondering. I’d like to represent the noise as accurately as possible, but words are powerless to describe such a terrible din.”

  The caster smiled.

  “Of course they are,” he said. “Cannon don’t have much connection to poetry.”

  Suddenly the great drum could be heard. The storming of the castle was about to start.

  “We’ll leave you now,” the Quartermaster General said. “You must have lots to do.”

  “The really dangerous work begins now,” the master caster explained. “We have to rely on mortar fire only from now on. Their projectiles have to go over the parapet. If they fall short they will land on our own men.”

  “Farewell, Saruxha!”

  “Farewell!”

  They walked off at a smart pace.

  “Come,” the Quartermaster General said to Çelebi, “let’s watch the assault from the command tent.”

  “I don’t dare go near it.”

  “Stay by me, nobody will object.”

  The great drum went on thudding. As the cannon had stopped firing, the solitary drum-roll felt grave and overpowering. It moved ever further off as if aiming to envelop every soldier in the whole army. Near the pavilion, they saw the Pasha’s white horse and alongside it the orderlies carrying his arms. The members of the war council who were not due to take part in the attack stood in line behind the horse. Among them were the Alaybey and Kurdisxhi. Further off stood a large group of junior officers and mounted heralds waiting for their orders. The Pasha was gazing at the top of the ramparts. There was nobody to be seen up there. He turned his head and looked at the sun, which had barely begun to go down from its zenith.

  “Pasha, sire,” an oily voice said from behind him. “Now is the time.”

  Tursun Pasha raised his right hand. The Mufti emerged from the group and stepped forwards. In his hand he held a gold-tooled Koran. He mumbled “Bismillah!,” opened the book, and inclined his head towards the holy scripture. He stayed still in that position for a moment, then looked up, and all could see joy beaming from his eyes.

  “Thanks be to Allah! I have just fallen upon the following passage: ‘Victory is with the soldiers of Islam.’”

  “Spread the good word,” the commander-in-chief said in an icy tone.

  Messengers raced off in all directions.

  The great drum came to a halt. Silence reigned, as if the entire world had suddenly fallen into a deep sleep.

  The Pasha raised his arm once more. The large ruby on his ring finger glinted in the sunlight. Someone was whispering something behind his back. Then the rustling of a silk flag being unfurled could be heard, and all of a sudden, the air filled with the hubbub of hundreds of kettle and hand drums banging, bagpipes wailing, horns and trumpets blaring, with calls to Allah and to the Padishah, with shouts of encouragement and bawled commands. The irregulars began to move, waving their lances and their standards in the wind. Behind them came the archers, whose job was to harass defenders on the tops of the walls during the attack. Then the unending column of the azabs set off, with their axes and shields gleaming in the sunlight. Ropes, ladders, shields, screens, pitchforks, stakes and instruments of every kind with names drawn from goats and scorpions, and some with no name at all, swam like flotsam over the turbid ocean of soldiers.

  The eshkinxhi divisions were slow to start, and took up positions vacated by the azabs while waiting to attack. The sun glinted on the quivers they wore on their backs. The grave and imposing divisions of the janissaries were further off and had not yet started to move. Now the volunteers were getting near to the ditch before the main gate. For his part, the Pasha carried on staring hard at the parapet, where there was no sign of life. He was still hoping that the defenders would not appear behind the slits, but he knew it was a crazy idea. The volunteers had now got as far as the moat. The first men who rushed over filled it with a living torrent. They were sucked into it as by a whirlwind. From the distance it looked like a nightmare vision. Suddenly the Pasha imagined they were moving more slowly, too slowly in his view, and that silence had suddenly overcome them. They must now be climbing up the opposite bank. But they were advancing at a snail’s pace. He still couldn’t see them coming up and out on to the other side. But there’s the first man up, then the second. Suddenly the Pasha thought he could hear a noise like the distant rustling of leaves in the breeze. It came from his archers, who had just let off the first volley aimed at the parapet. They had seen the defenders before he had. He closed his eyes and kept them shut for a minute. His head was throbbing and making him dizzy. When he opened his eyes, the volunteers who had climbed up out of the moat were now running towards the wall. At that moment, all four mortars fired and their cannon-balls fell somewhere over the other side of the wall. The cry of “Charge! Charge!” rose up from a thousand throats, and the great river of azabs dashed forwards. For a moment the ditch disappeared under the flood of soldiers.
Then the men poured out of it and with their shields held before them raced for the wall. Many of them headed towards the main gate, and others went for the breaches that had been opened on the left of it. The mortars roared anew. Drums, big and small, and trumpets combined to make an ear-splitting racket. Where the ditch must have been, ladders could be seen waving in the air, resting on the attackers’ shoulders. The first ladder was laid against the wall. It was a short one. Then came a gigantic ladder, which rose up slowly, and, as if bemused by the crowd of assailants, stopped in mid-air, plumb vertical, before gently resting itself against the wall. Struggling clumsily to get the ladder in the right position, the azabs put it off balance and it slid sideways, slowly at first, then fell on top of the swarming troops at the foot of the wall. Now more ladders had been laid by the sides of the various breaches. The giant ladder rose up once more like the long thin neck of a legendary beast and came to rest against the wall again. Hundreds of archers ceaselessly emptied quivers of arrows on to the spot where the ladder’s top rung rested. A horde of azabs began to climb up it. Some fell, but most kept on going. A second long ladder was raised twenty paces further along, and two others could be seen being carried by a group of men. The first attackers had now reached the top of the citadel’s outer wall. Thousands of arrows spilled over their heads to protect them from the besieged. The first man grabbed the edge of the parapet. He hauled himself up on to it, then stayed still, clutching the stone to his breast, as if he had suddenly dropped off to sleep.

  “They’ve cut off his hands,” the Quartermaster General murmured as he watched the body swoop down to the bottom again.

  The second man was bent double and didn’t even get to stretch out his arm. The soldier behind him clambered over his dead body with the skill of a cat and jumped over the parapet to the other side.

  A Turkish fighter had at last set foot inside the fortress. Tursun Pasha closed his eyes. Don’t retreat, my soldier! he implored silently.

  When he opened his eyes two more fighters were on the parapet. One withdrew, and the other was thrown down, knocking another soldier off the ladder in his fall. The archers had stopped shooting now, for fear of hitting their own men. Taking advantage of the situation, dozens of defenders suddenly reappeared. Tursun Pasha thought their lances were longer than ordinary ones. In any other circumstance he would have asked what this new weapon was and where it had been forged, but his curiosity was instantly dissipated.

  “At the double, send in the eshkinxhis!” he shouted.

  He watched the hindquarters of the horse bearing the herald who sped off to deliver the command.

  The cheers of the eshkinxhis reached him in successive waves from somewhere near the right tower. At first he thought he could make out Tahanka’s voice screaming above the others, but he soon realised it was only a buzzing in his own ears.

  There were now dozens of ladders set against the wall, bearing more or less dense bunches of men. On some of them the bodies of the dead still hung on in strange poses.

  “Look at those hanging corpses,” the Quartermaster General said to the chronicler. “The carpenters did a hasty job, and left lots of nails sticking out.”

  Çelebi listened in amazement.

  The forward thrust of the attackers grew more violent around the right tower. The bat-wing symbol on the crown of their helmets seemed to help them climb up. One ladder that was alive with soldiers swung back and fell into the void, but another one was put up straight away in its place.

  “People who have heard Tahanka roar in battle say there is nothing more terrifying,” the Quartermaster added.

  “Ah! The demons!” someone from among the Pasha’s silent retinue cried out.

  At that moment several bright lights flashed on the ramparts, shot out like comets, and then fell, one by one, on to the attackers.

  “Fire-bombing demons!” someone muttered. Now there was a phrase that would embellish his chronicle, Çelebi thought. He said it over to himself again: fire-bombing demons. He mustn’t forget it.

  The crowd at the foot of the wall swayed like a stormy sea each time one of these comets shot out from behind the parapet.

  “They’re balls of rags soaked in a mixture of resin, sulphur, wax and oil,” the Quartermaster General explained to the chronicler. “They make burns that never heal up entirely.”

  The chronicler knew that, just as he knew many other things he pretended not to know, so as not to deprive his distinguished friend of the pleasure of explaining them to him.

  “Never ever heal,” he repeated with a deep frown.

  The Quartermaster General pulled up his wide sleeve to show his bare left forearm. Çelebi could barely mask a grimace.

  Some of the ladders now seemed deserted. Attackers carried on storming up the others, holding their shields over their heads for protection. Down below, men ran to take shelter beneath the testudos while waiting their turn to go to the wall. Some fighting had broken out on the top of the rampart. Two of the long ladders had caught fire in several places. Another one split in two down the middle. But the number of ladders increased by the minute.

  A herald galloped up.

  “Burxhuba has been killed!” he yelled from a distance.

  Nobody said anything.

  Cannon-balls fired by the mortars constantly whistled over the defenders’ heads. They were still falling inside the citadel, but the fateful moment was not far off when they would start to fall on the wall itself.

  “If Saruxha manages a direct strike on the parapet, then he’s a genius,” the Quartermaster General said. “But he’s being cautious, and quite right too. Just a few paces off target, and our own men will be pulp.”

  A cannon-ball then hit the parapet dead on. The bunch of defenders preparing to repel a new wave of attackers was annihilated. Dismembered body parts rained down together with lumps of masonry.

  “Bravo!” someone standing behind the Pasha cried out.

  The almost entirely demolished parapet at the spot where the mortar had struck stayed empty for a moment or two. The azabs rushed into the breach and were quickly in command of the rampart walk. One of them unfurled a standard. Cheers rose from all around, in a deep-throated clamour. The flag fluttered for a moment, but then something happened: long black lances emerged from all around the men, a struggle ensued, and then the flag disappeared as if it had been whisked away by a gust of wind.

  Meanwhile, to the left of the main gate, a horde of attackers thrust forwards towards the great breach. Some climbed along on wide ladders, others were moving screens towards the places where molten pitch and fireballs were hitting the ground. Many azabs had caught fire and were running away with their arms flailing, looking like giant torches. Some of them rolled themselves on the ground to put out the flames that were consuming them. Others pranced about like lunatics among the throng which parted in terror to leave them passage, then crawled along the ground, got up, fell again, and finally groaned until their last breath. Smoke still rose from the dead as if their souls were not finding it easy to quit the body.

  Çelebi had been wondering for a while about how to find an image that would properly translate the sight of these burning men. He thought of comparing them to moths fluttering round a cresset, but the word “moth” hardly seemed adequate to suggest the ardour and heroism of these fighters. However nothing else occurred to him, and, in addition, if he likened the fires of a holy war to the candle of Islam, as he had read in ancient chronicles, then the word “moth” might do in the end. He could call these soldiers “the moths of the Sacred Candle”.

  Suddenly the earth shook and a terrific clap of thunder cut off the train of his thoughts. The Pasha and his retinue turned towards where the noise had come from. Something had happened somewhere near the artillery. A great column of black smoke rose into the sky in that quarter. An officer rushed off at a gallop.

  Everyone behind the Pasha started asking questions in muffled tones.

  A few moments later the office
r came back.

  “One of the mortars has exploded,” he reported. “Many men killed, and many others wounded.”

  “And the master caster?” the Pasha asked.

  “He is unharmed.”

  The Pasha turned back towards the citadel and nobody dared say another word.

  He ordered fresh troops to move up to the assault. As he watched the Persian and Caucasian regiments dashing towards the walls to relieve the azabs and the eshkinxhis (as for the volunteers, they were for the most part no such thing), the commander-inchief thought to himself that it was still too soon to send in the elite units of the dalkiliç, which he usually threw into battle after the janissaries.

  The assault was now in progress along the entire length of the citadel’s surrounding wall. There were hundreds of ladders large and small reaching up to the parapets or to the edges of the breaches opened in the masonry. They sucked up a proportion of the flood of soldiers swirling at their feet and raised them to the top of the wall. And as soon as those scorched and bloodied men clambered over the parapet or through the breach, they threw away their shields so as to brandish their adzes and swords. The shields, dripping with pitch and molten wax, fell on top of the soldiers following behind, and they screamed as they tried to avoid being hit by the falling objects.

  “They’ve not stopped climbing,” the Quartermaster General said pensively. His tone seemed to say: they are climbing, but what’s the use? “It seems to me we are fighting a losing battle,” he added in a dull voice.

  “A losing battle,” the chronicler repeated to himself. The words were so terrible as to stick in your throat.

  The eshkinxhis pressed on obstinately up the escarpment. Many fell from their ladders into the void, but that didn’t stop others from returning to the attack. Their red turbans looked as if they had been bloodstained in advance.

  The strongest thrust was still being played out at the main gate. The assailants had massed around it, and in the midst of that awful swarm there arose, incomprehensibly, a kind of wooden hut. The azabs threw wetted goatskins on top of it to stop it catching fire. Men rushed under it and used a great iron battering ram to try to knock a hole in the gate, while sappers and müslümans attempted to smash the hinges with huge metal bars.