Tuesday, August 24, 1683
Toby
Vienna
Toby had seen more of Xavier over the last week, since the day of their shared victory, but he hadn’t expected to see him speaking with Captain Hafner at the entrance to the countermine.
Hafner nodded and turned to Toby. “Vischer, you and Heller come with me. Bring your tools.”
“Yes, sir.” Toby tried to catch Xavier’s eye for a hint of what was going on, but he didn’t worry too much about it. He would find out soon enough. He went into the mine and found Ferdinand coming into the main gallery from one of the side branches. One hand held an oil lamp, and the other held a drum and some peas. “Did you hear anything?”
“No.”
“Captain Hafner wants us to help him with something. We’re to bring our tools.” Toby hesitated, but Ferdinand was his friend. If their roles were reversed, he’d want all the information Ferdinand could give him. “He was speaking with Ensign Schor. Maybe they heard something on the ravelin.”
The Turks wanted that ravelin either in their hands or destroyed. As it now stood—the majority of it still in Imperial control—it was a huge barrier to their goals. The Turks couldn’t take Vienna unless they broke the wall. They couldn’t work at the wall unless the bastions were destroyed. And they couldn’t attack the bastions without being slaughtered so long as the ravelin was in the defenders’ hands. Fire launched from the ravelin was too effective to allow any major Turkish movement beyond it.
“Katja’s brother?” Ferdinand asked. “Maybe he’s challenging you to a duel.”
Toby huffed. If Xavier had a problem with the dozen or so kisses Toby had shared with Katja over the last week and a half, he’d tell Toby to stop. He wouldn’t challenge him to a duel. And Katja . . . what would beautiful, wonderful Katja say if Xavier warned Toby away? She’d probably convince her brother to mind his own business, because she seemed to look forward to their kisses as much as Toby did.
Toby blinked when the glare of sunlight struck them as they left the countermine.
“Lead on, Ensign Schor.” Hafner walked beside Xavier, giving Toby little chance to talk to him. Ferdinand and Toby followed with their tools.
As Toby had suspected, they made their way to the ravelin. That seemed to be the focus of Turkish attacks of late, though certainly not the only target. The last week had been busy. Turkish mines sprung. Countermines sprung. Some effective, some less so. The defenders had launched at least two assaults to take back the ravelin completely, one in combination with another countermine, but neither attack had succeeded. Not only were the Turks holding on to their bit of the ravelin, but they were also building works along the bottom of the ditch again, creeping ever nearer to the bastions. They were close enough now that the defenders were throwing lit vessels of pitch and sulfur at them. But no matter how many enemy soldiers were burned by the flaming projectiles, more were always ready to take their place.
When they arrived at the ravelin, some distance behind the Imperial lines, Xavier led them to a pair of men. Both were on the ground, and one had his ear to the dirt.
“Do you still hear them?” Xavier asked.
“Off and on, sir.”
“One of my men heard something earlier,” Xavier explained. “We think they’re digging another mine. If it’s here and if it’s big enough, they’ll take most of the ravelin.”
Exploding a mine beyond the main line of defense would cut off all the men best able to stop a new Turkish advance. It was the type of strategy Toby would employ if he were in the Turks’ position. Ferdinand was already on the ground, listening. He didn’t listen for long before he sat up and nodded at Captain Hafner. “I hear it too.”
Xavier walked closer to Toby as Ferdinand listened in a few other spots to determine the best place to dig. “Sorry to draw you into this.”
“I don’t mind,” Toby said. “It will give me a chance to dig in the sun instead of digging in the dark.”
Xavier nodded. “Will they fight back?”
“Can’t say. We all keep something we can use as a weapon nearby. I imagine they do the same.” The picks were sharp, and the shovels were heavy. Toby also kept a knife tucked into his boot.
Xavier glanced at the ground. “I’ll talk to Captain Heisterman to see if some of my company can stay nearby in case you need backup.”
They started digging before Xavier returned and quickly worked up a sweat. The sun was high—the heat of summer warmed Toby all the way through. For nearly six weeks, he had spent most of the daylight hours underground; he’d almost forgotten how hot Vienna was in August. They tore into the ground to the depth of their knees, then their waists, then their chests, digging at an angle. Then the ground began to feel less stable.
Ferdinand handed Toby a grenade. The city made a variety of them, and this one was a rough glass sphere filled with black gunpowder. Ferdinand lit a match, then stuck it into the dirt of the wall of the nascent tunnel so they would have something with which to light their weapons. They also had their picks and shovels—probably the same weapons they would face when they found the Turks.
Toby swung his pick into the ground and broke through. The dirt crumbled and fell beneath him—dropping into a Turkish tunnel. Just a tunnel, not a powder room. Ferdinand lit his grenade and tossed it through the hole Toby had dug, then held his shovel over the opening.
The blast wasn’t anything like the blast of a mine, but the tremble moved through Toby’s legs, and the screams sounded in his ears. He and Ferdinand used their picks to break more fully into the Turkish tunnel. One of the enemy miners lay dead, and the rest ran.
Toby and Ferdinand crept inside the enemy tunnel to see how close it had been to completion. The branch was low, not tall enough for a man to walk upright in. Captain Hafner and Xavier followed them. Toby had expected as much from Captain Hafner but not from Xavier. As a child, he’d hated confined spaces. He could have stayed on the surface, but he hunched over with the rest of them and followed the shaft to where the Turks had begun to stop it up.
“Do you want us to force our way through?” Toby hoped the answer would be no. They’d gone far enough that he assumed they were under the Turkish lines now. The tunnel was too small for a large group to ambush them, but there were only four in their group, and they were four men Toby didn’t want to see dead.
“No, but we’ll stop it up on our end.” Captain Hafner stared at the sandbags that had hastily been thrown in front of them. “And we’ll rig an alarm.”
* * *
The Turks didn’t give up trying to destroy the ravelin. The next day, Toby and Ferdinand extended a mine some of the other countermines had started overnight. Once again, they found a group of Turkish miners trying to undermine the ravelin. This time, the miners were ready to fight back when Toby’s pick drove through the earth and ended its swing inside the enemy tunnel.
The end of a pistol appeared in the hole, aimed at Toby. Fear flared, but he grabbed the barrel and forced it to the side. The blast sent the ball harmlessly into the earth.
Ferdinand broke through more of the dirt that separated them. They needed to see into the enemy tunnel, needed to make sure the Turks weren’t packing a room full of gunpowder before he and Ferdinand tossed in their grenades.
One of the enemy miners swung a pick at Toby. He blocked it with his own pick. It wasn’t anywhere near as graceful as a sword duel, but the intent was the same. Kill or be killed. He barreled into the enemy tunnel with Ferdinand right behind him.
Three Turkish miners waited. One of them threw a wheelbarrow at him. The wheelbarrow didn’t get anywhere close to hitting him, but the flying, overturned dirt blinded him. He drew back for just a moment, blinking furiously and gripping his pick to keep from losing it while he couldn’t see.
Above ground, sound was constant. Artillery boomed, carts creaked, and muskets discharged. Below the earth, it was normally quiet, but not now, with a skirmish taking place. Each grunt and thunk echoed strangely in the dim light. Toby blinked away the last of the dirt and swung his pick again, this time right into one of the miner’s heads. When the Turk dropped his shovel, Toby grabbed it.
A musket discharged, and the echo was thunderous.
Ferdinand collapsed to the ground.
“No!” Toby ran at the man with the musket, knowing he would reach him long, long before he could reload.
Toby pummeled into him, and they both hit the ground. They also hit the lamp, and the light went out. In the pitch black of the mine, Toby grabbed the knife from his boot and stabbed at what he thought was the other man’s chest. The man’s cry told him he’d hit his target. He held until the body beneath him no longer fought.
Another man was still in the dark with him. Toby could hear him, but he couldn’t tell where he was. He stayed on the ground, hoping that would keep him hidden.
It didn’t.
Something bumped his leg—a foot prodding for information in the dark. Then he felt a sudden thwack as the enemy pummeled him with something hard. A shovel? Toby winced and rolled, hoping to catch his enemy.
His fingers brushed something. A leg? He lunged toward it and pulled the man down with a grunt. The shovel, or whatever it was, hit Toby across the shoulders, and something sharp scratched his face.
He kept his grip tight around his knife and slashed at where he thought the man was, only to plunge his blade into dirt. Then the shovel hit his hand, and he lost his grip. He reached for the knife, feeling along the ground, but with a cry of rage, the other man found him and grappled with him. Toby punched and kicked, but he couldn’t see to aim. He connected once, then twice.
Then his opponent found his neck. First one hand gripped and clamped around Toby’s throat and then the other.
Toby couldn’t breathe. He scratched at the man’s hands, but the chokehold didn’t loosen. He couldn’t see the man’s face, but he guessed and jabbed with fingers out, the better to claw and poke. For an instant, the man’s grip loosened, and Toby inhaled. But then the man’s hands fastened tightly around Toby’s neck again.
Toby guessed where the man’s neck was and slapped toward it, trying to find vulnerable flesh. He found it with one hand, then the other and squeezed and prayed. He’d never wanted to wrestle with an enemy in hand-to-hand combat, but he did want to live. He didn’t want to die inside a black tunnel. He wanted to see the sky. He wanted to see his city. Most of all, he wanted to see Katja.
Pain engulfed his head. His lungs burned, but he kept his hold. If he died down here, no one would ever find him. He’d just disappear. He didn’t want that, so he kept holding on even when the world seemed to spin beneath him and the pain was so intense he thought his lungs would rip apart.
Gradually, the fingers around his neck loosened their grasp. Toby almost couldn’t detect it because he was so engulfed in pain, but he twisted and came free. He inhaled again and again. And he kept his grip on the other man’s neck while he recovered.
Eventually, he let go. He coughed and gasped and rubbed his throat and said a prayer of desperate gratitude.
“Ferdinand?” Toby crawled forward, feeling for bodies. The first he came to had something warm and sticky on its torso, but that could have been the man Toby had knifed. He felt the shoes. Ferdinand had well-made boots high enough for him to tuck his breeches into, not shoes that curved up slightly at the toes and didn’t cover the ankles.
The next feet he found were covered in the right sort of boot. He felt the body, finding blood somewhere on the torso, but he thought he felt movement. Was his friend still breathing? Toby positioned himself at Ferdinand’s head and prayed none of the Turks was still capable of pursuit. He bent and felt for Ferdinand’s shoulders, then slid his grip underneath them. He heaved, stepping backward and feeling with his heel for open space before he heaved. Toby tugged and pulled and pulled and tugged, all in the dark. He was still trying to catch his breath, and Ferdinand was heavy. Getting back into the countermine was the most difficult part. He had to go up. But maybe the difference in heights was a blessing, in some ways. Even in the dark, Toby knew he was returning to the countermine and not going farther down the Turkish mine they’d smashed into.
As he hauled Ferdinand along the countermine, light from the opening to the surface came into view. It wasn’t enough to illuminate his path, but it gave him a goal to move toward. Then the light began to show more and more of Ferdinand’s injury, and Toby looked away.
A man posted at the entrance helped Toby pull Ferdinand up the sap they’d made, and only then did Toby really look at Ferdinand’s wound. The ball had blasted into his ribs. Clothing hid most of the damage, but daylight revealed the open, unseeing eyes that had once belonged to his friend.
The other man felt for a pulse and shook his head. “I’m sorry. He’s gone.”
* * *
Toby sat on a street near the barracks. Artillery exploded in the background, but he tuned it out. A weariness clutched him, deep in his soul, and he couldn’t even manage the walk to a well so he could clean off all the blood that still covered him.
He didn’t know how long he’d been sitting there when Xavier sat beside him and handed him a wet rag.
“It’s been a while since I’ve seen you with that much blood on your face. And I haven’t seen you look so tired since . . . well, maybe not ever.”
Toby looked at the rag and then at Xavier, trying to focus, trying to understand.
“Blood splatters on the left side and a cut on the right. And dirt.” Xavier leaned in a little closer, staring at Toby’s cheek. “But the cut doesn’t look very wide.”
Toby tried to rub his face clean.
“Hard day?” Xavier asked. Dark skin shadowed his eyes, he hadn’t been shaved recently, and his uniform had holes in it. Like most of the men defending the city, he looked exhausted—the way Toby felt.
“We found a Turkish tunnel. There were three of them and two of us, and I’m the only one who walked away.”
“The other one on our side—Ferdinand Heller?”
Toby nodded.
“I’m sorry. You were friends?”
“Since he asked me to build the shelves in his shoe shop. He was the first person in Vienna who hired me, even before I was a master joiner. He just wanted to make shoes. Maybe find a wife and have a family. He never wanted this. A siege and death and an end in a dark mine.” Toby inhaled deeply. “It could have been me. One of the Turks had a musket. He could have shot either of us. We were both within range, and that was before I knocked over the lamp and everything went black.”
“Your neck—it looks like someone tried to strangle you.”
“Someone did.” Toby looked at his hands. A joiner’s hands. A counterminer’s hands. Now a killer’s hands. “I should be grateful. I’m alive. But I just feel tired. I don’t want to move. I don’t want to think. And I don’t want to remember.”
“I understand.” There was a look in Xavier’s eyes—he did understand, maybe even better than Toby did.
“There was a lot of action today above ground too. Were you involved in it?” Toby asked.
Xavier made a movement that was part frown, part wince. “We made another sally to try to clear out the Turkish works near the Löbl Bastion. Drove the Turks back all the way to the counterscarp. We could have sabotaged their cannon if we’d had the right tools, but then they sent in reinforcements and we couldn’t hold it.” Xavier looked at the ground. “We lost two hundred men. We can’t afford to lose two hundred men. Several captains dead and the Prince of Wittenberg wounded. One of the artillery captains was killed today too, but not in the sally.” Xavier crossed his arms. “Two hundred men. And three of them were my men, my musketeers.”
Toby imagined the pain of losing Ferdinand and multiplied it by three. “I’m sorry, Xavier.”
Xavier had his knees pulled up. He clasped his hands around his legs and leaned forward. “Do you remember when my mother died?”
“Yes.” They’d been eight. She’d given birth to a stillborn son and died of fever a week later.
“We were all shattered. I remember looking at the sun and being angry. How dare it go on shining as if the whole world hadn’t suddenly changed in a most horrible way. My father would play his violin, sad melodies. Piercing. A perfect expression of his grief.”
“I remember. Katja called them the haunted songs.”
Xavier nodded. “But then he started playing happy songs again. Ones my mother had loved. I asked him how he could possibly play something so cheerful. Do you know what he said?”
Toby didn’t remember, not well enough to repeat it back to his friend, so he shook his head.
“He said she wouldn’t want us to be sad forever. She’d want us to be happy. She’d want us to enjoy every beautiful note, every new experience, every smile and laugh, even if she wasn’t there to enjoy it with us.” Xavier sighed. “It was devastating, losing her. But there were beautiful things again, even after the tragedy. We just had to hold on to the good. Hold on to each other.”
Hold on to the good. Like friendship and hope . . . and maybe love because Toby had never found anything more beautiful than that. “Xavier?”
Xavier turned his head toward him. He seemed more at peace now than he had a few moments ago, but he still looked exhausted.
Toby felt that way too, so often, but not when he was with Katja. That was the good he wanted to hold on to, even in the middle of a siege. “Xavi, I’m in love with your sister.” He wasn’t sure what to expect from a confession like that, but he’d said part of it. He might as well get all of it out. “I want to marry her.”
Xavier eyed him but not with hostility. “I suspected as much. Have you asked her?”
“No.” Until recently, he hadn’t thought there was any chance that she’d say yes. “I wanted to talk to you first. She needs your support. I won’t ask her unless you consent because if I caused a rift between the two of you, I’d hurt her. Marrying me will involve enough sacrifices without it costing her your approval.”
Xavier was quiet for a long time.
Toby looked away. He shouldn’t have been surprised. He might have been good enough to play with the twins when they’d been younger, but not now, not when the family had more money and prestige than before, not when it was marriage rather than friendship. “Never mind, then. I won’t ask her.”
Xavier reached out and held his arm. “No, I just want to make sure the reason I want you to marry Katja is for her sake and not as a way of rebelling against Wilhelm. He wouldn’t approve, because it wouldn’t impress his wife’s family or increase Schor prestige.” Xavier met his eyes. “But I want Katja to be happy. She needs her music for that, and friendship. I don’t see you interfering with her music.”
“No. I love listening to her play. But if something happens to that Amati, I don’t know how I’d afford a replacement. I can make furniture but not instruments.”
“She’ll take good care of it, so she’ll have her music. And you’re one of the oldest friends she has.” Xavier gestured to the surrounding buildings, most of them damaged by cannon fire. “There will be no shortage of work for you, so she won’t starve, and I think she likes wearing Maria’s clothes instead of the fancy things she’s used to—she said the thinner petticoats make it easier to move—so she’ll have everything she needs other than maybe a long life and freedom, but none of us have much control over how the siege will end. If she says yes, you should get married at once. Before the Ottomans take the city and end things, before Wilhelm returns and tries to arrange something different.”
“I’ve thought of that. What happens if the city falls?” Toby gritted his teeth against the vision of Vienna in flames, Turks and Tatars running through the streets in a rampage of looting and death. “Will she regret marrying me if we’re going to die anyway? I don’t suppose I’ll survive if the Turks win, but she might, as a slave. Would marrying me be the best thing for her, if that’s what the future holds?”
“I think all three of us would rather her be with child by you than by some Turkish soldier pillaging the city when it falls.”
Toby’s stomach turned, thinking of the likely consequences for Katja if Vienna were overrun. The city couldn’t fall, it couldn’t, because the cost was so terrible, so painful, so horrible that Toby couldn’t fathom it. But it was a possibility. A very real one. “Sometimes I wish she’d gone with Wilhelm. I wouldn’t have seen her, but then she wouldn’t be here if the city falls.”
“If the city falls?” Xavier looked at the ground. “When it falls.”
“It can’t fall.” Toby had prayed so hard for relief, for mercy. Surely God had heard him. And surely the emperor was doing all he could to gather allies into an army strong enough to challenge the Ottomans.
Xavier shrugged. “Marry her soon. Then you’ll both have something good in your lives regardless of what happens.” He glanced at Toby. “But you should probably wear a cravat to hide the marks on your neck. And wash the blood off a little more thoroughly. You missed a few spots.”