Sunday, July 11, 1683
Ahmed
Hainburg
Ahmed’s chest swelled with satisfaction. The main force of the Ottoman Army had crossed into Imperial territory some days before, and now they’d made it to the Danube. He gazed at the walled town before him: their next target. Hainburg still stood, even though Tatar troops had surrounded it over a week ago. Tatar light horsemen were speedy, traveling ahead of the rest of the sultan’s forces. They were terrifying from across the battlefield or in the open, but they weren’t equipped to get past walls, even old ones.
Ahmed and his brother janissaries would change that. They’d arrived a few hours ago, and the artillery even now battered at the wall. The ancient thing was no match for gunpowder and gravity. The Christian inhabitants had put their faith in the wrong type of defense just as they had put their faith in the wrong tenants of worship.
Murad stood beside him. They’d been members of the same orta since they were boys studying religion, horsemanship, and Arabic and Persian literature. They’d also learned how to fight with sword, bow, musket, and javelin. Now both led detachments of fifty men in the mighty Ottoman Army.
“I think we can take the town by nightfall.” Murad motioned toward Hainburg, making the blue feather plume on the front of his cap dance and sway. They wore the same uniform of coarse wool caftan over breeches, with white felt hats and the yellow leather boots of officers.
A pair of cannon boomed from a nearby hill. The impact made a portion of Hainburg’s wall crumble. Ahmed nodded to Murad. “I think you’re right. And I’ll bet my men can get inside before yours can.”
Murad chuckled. “I doubt it.”
The friendly competition began, not so dissimilar from the times they’d seen whose arrow could pierce a hat from a greater distance or who could hold out the longest in a wrestling match. The constant push to become better together, as a unit, had been the driving force of Ahmed’s life.
The two men split to prepare for the assault, and Ahmed went back to his men. They were like brothers to him. They ate, slept, marched, and trained together. And today, they would win glory together.
Ahmed had once had brothers by blood. Memory of the time before he’d been taken into the service of the sultan was faint—almost forty years had passed since the day the Ottoman child-collectors had come to his Serbian village. He remembered his siblings crying and his mother trying to cut off his ear because if he were disfigured, the child-collectors wouldn’t want him. He’d run from his mother and her knife. Only on the long march to Constantinople had he come to understand why she’d tried to harm him. She’d wanted to keep him. He’d even forgiven her, but she’d been wrong. Being taken by the Ottomans had been a blessing. Service to the sultan had given him a far better life than his uneducated parents ever could have provided. Devshirme had many translations, one of which was “the lifting.” And Ahmed had indeed been lifted to a better position in the world.
The child-collectors might have overlooked him if he’d been missing an ear, but he’d gained plenty of scars since devshirme because the Ottomans had changed him into a warrior—one of the best in the world. Everyone admired or feared the janissaries. There was no longer a need to take Christian children to fill out the ranks of the janissary corps because the privilege, prestige, and glory of being a janissary was enough to make even Muslim parents offer bribes so their children could join the elite unit.
The two cannon continued to fire, slowly bringing down a tall stone wall designed long before artillery had made such walls only flimsy obstacles. Soon it would be time to storm the town.
Ahmed turned to his men. They stood in perfect formation, organized into assault parties of five men: a swordsman, a grenadier, an archer, and two musketeers. Their weapons were sharpened or polished, and the men were silent but eager.
“A triple portion of the spoils to the first man inside the city. They refused to surrender, so you need offer no mercy to those within.” Such was the way of war. If a city refused to negotiate, it became nothing more than a prize to be plundered.
Nearby, Murad spoke to his men for a much longer time. He’d always been a little long-winded. Ahmed jerked his head toward Murad’s group. “Make sure you pass the breach before they do.”
Another boom, another explosion, another cloud of smoke and destroyed stone. The debris cleared, and the breach in the wall extended to the ground.
“For Allah and glory!” he called. He and his men ran forward, rushing closer and closer to the broken wall of Hainburg. His ears filled with the sounds of battle: musket fire from the defenders, the rattle of weapons as his brother janissaries ran, the calls for courage and victory. No one could know what it was to live until they had been part of the anticipation and thrill of battle.
One of his archers stumbled and fell in front of him. Ahmed tried to avoid him but tripped and landed on his knee. Why had Sinan fallen? The townspeople of Hainburg still fought, but they’d barely come within musket range, and Christian muskets weren’t as powerful or as accurate as Turkish guns.
“Sinan, are you hurt?”
A saka, one of the soldiers who carried water and helped the wounded, ran to join them.
Sinan rolled and sat. A sheepish frown lined his face. “I stuck my foot through a rabbit hole.” He pulled up his trousers and tugged off his boot to reveal a swelling ankle.
“I’ll help him back to camp,” the saka said.
Ahmed nodded. He stood, and though a slight pain registered in his knee, he wasn’t harmed in any significant way. In his younger days, he would have kept up with the fastest of his men, might have been the first one into the city. Today, he would be among the last. In truth, he would have been in one of the later groups anyway, even if Sinan hadn’t tripped him. He could still fight as hard and as long as any of his men, but his feet were no longer so swift. Soon it would be time to accept his pension, but last summer when he’d heard the Grand Vizier’s plans to campaign in the west, Ahmed had wanted to be part of it. One last chance to serve and win honor. Today, Hainburg. Next week, Vienna.
The pull of honor was strong. So was the pull of hope. The beautiful widow, Hadice, had completely enticed him. But her stepson, heir to her late husband’s wealth, treated her well. She would live better with him than she could with Ahmed on his janissary pension—unless Ahmed became rich on this campaign.
By the time he stepped through the breached walls, all resistance had ended. Blood and bodies lined the area around the battered stones, mostly men, few of them janissaries. The bodies were more scattered beyond that and more mixed when it came to men, women, and children.
The city was filthy. Refuse filled the gutters, and overturned carts spilled their contents across the cobbled streets. Closer to the city center, Ahmed caught up to his men. Several of them tied women and children together, making them easier to march away as captives. One of his men gathered cooking pots and candlesticks from a tall home. Another had an arm wrapped around a girl’s waist, her screams high-pitched and piercing as her arms and legs dangled. None of the impotent punches and kicks she aimed at her captor did anything to dissuade him from carrying her toward a house for a bit of privacy.
Ahmed blocked the man’s path. His men were entitled to pillage, but the girl was too young. “Find a woman instead. Tie that one up with the other slaves.”
The man’s face turned red with anger, but he obeyed.
Murad joined Ahmed and gave him a grin. “I beat you into the city.”
“Hmm. But you didn’t beat my men.”
Murad chuckled. “You’re getting slow in your old age. But you’ve trained them well. Come, we’re to round up the burghers who led the resistance. The Grand Vizier wants their heads.”
Later that evening, Ahmed stood before the Grand Vizier. Kara Mustafa Pasha was tall, with a thick black beard and a large silk turban. He’d married into the prominent Köprülü family, and that meant he had a score to settle with the Christians who had defeated an Ottoman Army his family had commanded at the Battle of St. Gotthard.
Ahmed opened his bag of canvas and dumped the contents—severed heads that had once belonged to the leading citizens of Hainburg—onto a rug to join the growing pile. He stepped back so Murad could do the same.
A janissary drove a line of slaves past. The little girl with the high-pitched scream was third in line. She was about the same age as Hadice’s youngest child but with different coloring. Ahmed handed her a scrap of hard bread. She took it, but her dirty, tear-streaked face betrayed no emotion—no fear, no gratitude. Perhaps she was too young to come to the proper conclusion: God was not on the side of the Christians. She would learn soon enough. So would the others the Ottoman Army planned to conquer during this campaign. The slaves disappeared beyond a line of tents. In the distance, Hainburg burned. Before him, wind pulled at the tassels of the horse-tail tuğ standing sentry before Kara Mustapha Pasha’s tent.
The Grand Vizier stood and lifted his hands. The pile of heads before him attracted flies, but his words carried easily over their buzz. “Today we have won glory here. Soon, we will humiliate the Christians in Vienna, and we will win a far greater glory there!”