Wednesday, September 8, 1683
Katja
Vienna
Katja held Toby in her arms for longer than was proper, but she didn’t care. He felt well enough to go back into the countermines today, and she didn’t want to regret anything if he didn’t come out again.
He clung to her too but eventually loosened his grip. “I have to go.”
“I know. But be careful, won’t you?”
“I’ll do everything I can to protect you.”
Katja sighed, because she had a good idea of what that meant. It meant he would do everything he could to find the Turkish miners even now trying to undermine the curtain wall, regardless of the danger to himself. Yesterday the defenders had dropped bombs on the ground leading to the wall, their last line of defense. If the ground was cratered, the Turks would have a harder time tunneling through, but Toby had said the Turks would just dig deeper. Xavier had already disappeared, and the thought of losing Toby too . . . She wasn’t sure she was strong enough for that.
“Have faith, Katja.” Toby kissed her forehead. “Promise me something?”
“Yes?”
“Play your violin tonight. Every night, regardless of what happens.”
Sister Amalia had convinced her to keep the violin at the convent and to play for the patients. She hadn’t wanted to play the night Xavier had disappeared, the night part of the Löbl Bastion had been destroyed, but the pleading faces of her patients had convinced her. And though she had been reluctant, the act of playing had restored her hope, for a while. That was what Toby was really telling her—to keep her hopes up, no matter what was discovered about Xavier and no matter what might happen to Toby.
“I will. I promise.” She would play until her blood was spilt or the Turks broke into the city and smashed the Amati in the course of their pillage. After that, she wouldn’t worry about promises, just the decision of whether she would live as a slave or die with her city.
She stood on her toes to press her lips against his. They stood in a main street—kissing was most certainly not appropriate. But the city was about to fall, and that overwhelming fact swept aside everything else. Toby kissed her back, briefly, just long enough for her to feel warmed all the way through.
“I love you, Katja.”
“I love you, Toby.” And she did, so much that the fear of losing him almost made her weep.
She watched him walk away, toward Captain Hafner and the waiting tunnels leading far below the surface, where another sprung mine might bury him again, this time maybe for good. His steps didn’t falter. Why couldn’t she be as brave as him? But maybe courage wasn’t so much about how she felt but about how she acted. She’d let fear keep her from marrying him, but she wouldn’t make that mistake again. She might feel fear, but she wouldn’t let it stop her. Like her city, she would hold out until the end.
A variety of sounds fell on her ears. Hammers as men worked to fortify the old blockhouse behind the Löbl Bastion—perhaps their final hope if the curtain wall was breached. The rattle of large steel chains as they were pulled across the streets, slung along to stop Turkish artillery and slow Turkish assault troops who advanced into the city. Every building was being turned into a fortress; every street was being converted into a redoubt with barricades of carts, sandbags, and gabions.
Katja caught sight of Captain Heisterman and hurried to catch up with him. “Captain?”
He turned and met her with a somber expression. The deep lines of weariness on his face reminded her of Xavi’s exhaustion. So did the determination in his shoulders, still upright. “Fräulein Schor, I’m sorry. No word. We pulled a few more bodies out, but none of them were your brother’s.”
Her throat felt tight, and she nodded rather than try to speak and risk a sob. He’d told her much the same thing yesterday. He excused himself to organize the defenses, leaving her to wonder which was worse—the strongest of likelihoods that Xavier was dead but having no confirmation or knowing, being certain he was gone.
She headed to the hospital when the captain passed from view. It took longer to move now, because the defenses blocked the roads, save for small holes that could easily be plugged should the Turks breach the walls. With the partial destruction of the Löbl Bastion, the enemy would be able to bring their cannon close enough to break their way through the walls within a few days. Should the Turkish miners get lucky, they’d bring the walls down even sooner.
Katja walked past the field where townspeople, mostly women, stirred huge vats of boiling pitch to be dropped down on the attackers. Children waited to run buckets of it closer to the walls. She strode along homes with sandbags blocking portions of the windows, providing loopholes where anyone with a musket or pistol could fire from relative safety—at least until the Turks took the bottom level or lit the whole building on fire. And she passed the graves, huge pits where sixty people a day were being buried, just from illness and starvation. Was Xavier’s body buried somewhere? Beneath a pile of rubble or in a shallow trench? Or was his among the unburied bodies rotting in the sun, food for flies, and source of the sickly sweet smell of decay that hung over the city? Maybe he lived, but that hope seemed more and more foolhardy with each day that passed.
At the convent, too, townspeople made preparations for the time when the Turks would storm the city. A convent, then a hospital, and now a little citadel, with windows and doorways covered with baulks of timber and guards of the very old or very young variety learning the ins and outs of their new post.
Vienna waited, defiant. The only question was if the wait would end in the miracle of deliverance or in a slow death as the Turks advanced from street to street, destroying everything in their path.