Giustiniani shook some of the grit from his hair. “So far there are no holes big enough to threaten us. They fire wrong. They should fire in sets of three, one on each side and then one in the middle, to bring a whole section down. Instead, they fire at the same spot over and over again. They are doing damage, but not enough.”
Giustiniani leaned out, watching without flinching as a massive ball shattered against the wall some ways down from them. The sound was louder than any Radu had ever heard, like thunder smashing against thunder.
“We cannot absorb these blows. The fragments from the wall are as likely to kill our men as the cannon shot itself.” Giustiniani was silent for a while, deep in thought. “We cannot answer their cannons, nor can we trust the strength of the walls.” He smiled grimly. “It is time to become more flexible.”
Because of Radu’s shoulder injury, he helped Cyprian with organizing rather than going to fix the walls. All day they ran, directing men to dump mortar paste down the walls to strengthen them. They attached rope to bales of wool and lowered them to absorb impacts. The palace was raided of all tapestries, the elegant stitching and bright depictions of the past now draped over the walls in a desperate attempt to secure a future.
By nightfall, everyone in the city was wide-eyed and trembling from the ceaseless bombardment. But they were ready. As soon as it was dark, Giustiniani sent the supplies up. At each significant breach in the wall, they put down stakes with stretches of leather hide nailed tightly between them. Into the space between the hides and the remains of the wall they dumped stones, timber, bushes, brushwood, and bucket after bucket of dirt.
A few stakes to save a city.
“Will they burn?” Radu asked Cyprian as they oversaw a patch along the Blachernae Palace wall.
“The hides will not light easily. But we will need to station guards with crossbows to keep men away, regardless.” Cyprian paused to shout directions to men rolling large barrels packed with dirt toward them. “Along the top so we have something to hide behind!”
The men had only just finished placing the barrels when a stone ball came sailing out from the blackness. Radu did not have time to hold his breath as he watched it smash directly into the makeshift wall.
The loose materials held by the skins absorbed the cannonball’s impact, and the ball rolled harmlessly to the ground.
The men around them cheered. Many dropped to their knees in prayer. Cyprian whooped joyfully, throwing his arms around Radu in a hug. Radu cringed at the pain in his shoulder, and at the shout of joy that had escaped his own lips before he realized he was cheering for the wrong side.
The next five days brought no rest, no change. The cannons fired, the sound of stone shattering stone so constant Radu stopped noticing it. The acrid scent of smoke was everywhere. When he came home to sleep for a few hours, Nazira made him dump water over his hair outside to try to rinse some of it away.
But as soon as sleep claimed him, the noise from the wall would jar him awake. He stopped trying to go home, instead slumping in the shadow of the inner wall for a few minutes of rest. The hours blurred, only the sun or the moon marking the passage of time. Even those were so obscured by smoke that they were hardly visible.
In addition to the ceaseless bombardment, Ottoman troops threw themselves against the walls at random. They used hooks to pull down the barrels of earth protecting the defenders. The Ottomans were packed so tightly that a single shot of a small cannon could kill several, yet still they came.
That was the part Radu wished he could block out, the acts that made him certain he could never wash the scent of the wall from his soul. Because he had to be on this side, and he had to play his part. And so, when the Ottoman soldiers—his brothers—ran up to try to retrieve the bodies of their compatriots, he sat on top of the wall with the enemy and picked them off one by one.
The first time he hit a man, he turned and vomited. But soon even his body was numb to the horror of what he was doing. That felt worse. With each shot he prayed he missed, and with each hit he prayed the walls would fall soon and spare them all.
On the sixth day of the bombardment, an explosion cracked through the air, echoing off the walls. It was notable only because it had not come from the walls—it had come from the Ottoman camp.
Radu ran to the top of the wall, leaning over. Black smoke billowed from the bank of earth that hid the Basilica. The location of the cannon had been identified on the first day, but Giustiniani had not been able to destroy it. They had not needed to, apparently.
Even from this distance the devastation was obvious. The gun must have finally succumbed to the heat and pressure of so many firings and exploded. Radu wiped furiously at his face, his hands leaving more grit than they cleared away. He had no doubt that Urbana had accompanied Mehmed to take care of her precious artillery. Had her greatest triumph been her end?
An exhausted and ragged cheer rose around him, but this time he could not even pretend to join in. The Basilica was gone. The wall still held. And his friend was more than likely dead.
Cyprian found him sitting with his back to the barrels, staring blankly at the city on the hill. How much more would this damnable city cost them all before the end?
“Come. Giustiniani is at the Lycus River Valley section of the wall. He is guaranteed to have some food worth eating.” Cyprian led Radu down the line to the Italian. He ate the offered food in numb silence as the sun set, realizing too late that he had not even remembered to pray in his heart.
“You should go rest,” Giustiniani said, his tired smile kind. “We have had a victory today, through no merit of our own. But we will take it.”
Radu felt as though he could sleep for years. That was what he wanted. To fall asleep and wake up with the city already the Ottoman capital, everything changed and settled and peaceful once more. Because he still believed Constantinople should be and would be Mehmed’s. The Prophet, peace be upon him, had declared it.
But Radu did not want to see anything more that happened before the city fell.
That was when a rhythmic pounding broke through the smoke-dimmed quiet of the night air. It was followed by the clashing of cymbals and the calls of pipes. Finally, the screams of men joined the chorus, a chilling cacophony promising death. The hair on Radu’s arms stood. He had been on the other end of this tactic before, at Kruje, exhilarated to join with his brothers in a wall of noise.
He had never been on the receiving end. He understood now why it was so effective, to hear what was coming and be unable to flee. Flares bloomed to life in the valley beneath them. With a wave of noise, thousands of men surged forward to crash against the wall.
Radu followed Giustiniani’s screamed commands. Men raced from other sections of the wall to help. Radu fired arrow after arrow, switching to a crossbow when his injured shoulder became too much.
Still the Ottomans came.
Where they breached the wall, Giustiniani was waiting. At some places the bodies were piled so high they formed steps nearly to the top. Ottomans scrambled on top of Ottomans, clawing their way to the death that waited for them. And then their bodies became stepping-stones for the men behind them.
Everything was smoke and darkness, screaming and drums, blood and fire. Radu stared in a daze. How could these be men? How could this be real?