Thursday, September 2, 1683
Ahmed
Ottoman Camp outside Vienna
Ahmed loved the rain, had since the time he’d been caught in a downpour in Constantinople and had run for shelter in the arch where Hadice and her two children had been waiting out the storm. Ismail, the boy, had recognized Ahmed from their past encounters and had immediately asked question after question about janissaries. Ahmed had told him about life with the orta and their training and had let the boy handle his sword. Eventually, despite social norms that discouraged women from speaking to men who weren’t relatives, Ahmed had drawn Hadice into a conversation. It began with her thanking him for his attention to her son, then progressed to questions about Ahmed’s previous campaigns, and then had turned to Hadice and her past. The exchange had ended long after the rain, with Ahmed completely smitten by the widow’s dazzling eyes and gentle, lilting voice.
The rain outside Vienna wasn’t as heavy as the rain had been that day in Constantinople, but it was welcome. It cut down on the stench . . . a bit. The battlefield south of the city was a churning, rotting disaster, and even the Ottoman camp was falling into a sloppy, shabby state. Normally, the army was so disciplined, so tidy—unlike the disrepair common in Christian military camps. No doubt the Grand Vizier was responsible. His leadership failed to inspire the men, and the carelessness was a sign of falling morale.
Ahmed tested the sharpness of his yataghan as he sat with members of his orta in their tent. The short sword was his favorite weapon, long enough to strike the enemy but compact enough not to be cumbersome while marching.
“Still sharp?” Murad asked.
“Yes, but only because I had it sharpened.” He tossed his friend a bunch of grapes. The fruit grew abundantly in the vineyards around Vienna, and though they were underripe, the sour flavor made a pleasant change from their normal fare. “Why haven’t you driven those men off that ravelin yet? There’s only a handful of them left.”
Murad grunted. “Not worth the bother. They can’t shoot at us anymore—they’re all huddled in the middle, trapped and weak. Why lose men trying to attack them? There’s not enough ravelin left to blow up, so the miners have moved on. They’re concentrating on the bastions. I hear they’re going to destroy one today.”
“Then we’ll have our victory.”
Murad grinned. “I also heard that Kara Mustafa Pasha himself is leading the assault.”
“Leading it? He’ll risk getting blood on his silk robes?”
Murad chuckled and popped a sour grape into his mouth. “From a safe distance, I’m sure, while surrounded by his personal guard.”
Before Ahmed or Murad could insult the Grand Vizier further, their orta’s leader pulled back the tent’s flap, letting in a glare of summer sun. “Come, we’re wanted.”
Ahmed gathered his men from their various tents, and they assembled outside. The rain had stopped. He placed his left hand over his right bicep, where the detachment’s symbol and Ahmed’s number had been tattooed shortly after he’d completed training. Even the sultan was symbolically enrolled as a janissary and given the number one. Others made the same gesture, with hands over tattoos, and they set out for the trenches.
Once they came within range of enemy artillery, they marched beneath cover of timber, fascine, and sandbag, underground where the enemy couldn’t see them or hurt them. The air was fetid, but Ahmed ignored the stench. The group in front of them slowed, and then an explosion shook the earth and knocked him into the side of the trench.
The crash of destruction mingled with the cries of the men. Then the way before him cleared, and Ahmed led his warriors into the open and across the ditch between the ruined counterscarp and the stone wall of the city.
Musket balls rained down on them from the curtain wall, from the Löbl Bastion, and from what remained of the Burg Bastion. But the Burg Bastion looked different than it had the last time Ahmed had seen it. Now a gap cut into the center.
The Christians weren’t giving up. Ahmed didn’t expect that of them, not anymore. Foolish and misguided they might be, but they had consistently resisted every assault. Yet now the ravelin was unable to support the bastions it was designed to defend, and there were blind spots where the Christian weapons couldn’t hit them. More and more advantages were tipping toward the Ottomans.
Ahead, rubble had fallen in front of the breached bastion, piling into a mound that led up to the broken tower. Some of the Turkish soldiers ran forward with baskets of earth on their backs to fill in the gaps and make it easier for those behind them to advance.
A man from another detachment planted a horse-tail tuğ in the center of the bastion’s breach. He crumpled to the ground in the next instant. Moments after that, one of those devilish logs with protruding spikes rolled over the fallen warrior.
Ahmed looked away, focusing on his duty to his men, not on what was currently beyond his reach and beyond his help. “Come on!” he called. He led his troops to a pile of rubble where they were sheltered from the Christians who fired from the Burg Bastion and the curtain wall. The men at the Löbl Bastion would be able to fire at them, but it would take luck and extraordinary aim for them to strike anyone from that distance.
When they caught their breath, Ahmed took out his yataghan and charged toward the breach. “Allah!” he cried, and his men echoed the call.
They slowed slightly as they reached the bottom of the mount and began climbing. One of the men beside him jerked away and cried out, then crashed back into the ditch. Bodies of the fallen already lined the path to the enormous hole their miners had created for them. Ahmed pushed everything around him out—in moments like this, every man was to show his mettle. For Ahmed, that meant fearlessness despite enemy fire.
He dodged a piece of rubble as tall as his hip that fell from the breach toward him, then he leaped over a dead Ottoman warrior. When he reached the top, he crossed blades with one of the defenders. The metallic crash rang over the other sounds of battle. The man he fought was not fresh. Blood stained his uniform, still red and recent; sweat dampened his hair and trailed down his forehead. He parried the first two strikes, then Ahmed sliced his yataghan across the man’s neck and heard the cry and the crash that followed. Another defender took the first one’s place, this man with a bayonet on the end of his musket. Ahmed twisted to evade, then tried to charge again, but the Christians had placed a bale between themselves and their attackers.
“Cowards! Hiding behind your barricades!” Ahmed doubted they understood his words, but frustration ate at him. He tried to find another opening, another place to fight them man-to-man. If they would stop hiding behind their walls and fences and blockhouses, the battle would end swiftly in an Ottoman victory.
Sandbags and planks filled in the holes, completely blocking the defenders from Ahmed and his brothers. A piece of wood that resembled a rafter fell from the barricade and smashed into Ahmed’s head. Pain shot through his skull, and the world turned gray. He gasped for air and fell to his knees. Overwhelming dizziness made it hard to focus on anything other than the corpse he knelt beside. All this fighting, all this danger, and he might fall because he’d been clobbered by a piece of wood accidently dropped by the Christians.
“Ahmed?” Murad tugged at his arm and pulled him to his feet.
“It’s nothing.”
“You’re bleeding, and your voice is slurred. I’ll help you get back.”
Ahmed didn’t want to admit it, but he was no longer fit to fight, not until he recovered. His legs shook with each step. Just a piece of wood. Not a musket ball. Not a shard of cannonball. A bit of fallen barricade.
“I don’t want to miss storming the city.” If Ahmed didn’t go in with the first group of invaders, he might go home no richer than he’d left.
“It won’t happen today. We almost got through, but they’ve closed things off enough that we’ll need another mine, another breach. I’m sure the miners are already digging it. By the time they’re done, you’ll be ready to fight again. We’ll have our victory, Ahmed. And it will come soon.”