I remember the heat. The heat prickling the backs of my hands and coming up through the soles of my boots. The perspiration running down my face and making my eyes sting.
I also remember the isolation. I was alone inside my helmet. I could hear my own breathing rasping in my ears. I could hear other people’s voices, clear but tinny and remote. I could also hear roaring flames, crashing buildings and screaming people. Biometric readouts flashed before my eyes and there seemed to be some sort of sit-rep trickle down. Red and green symbols and figures clustered at the edges of my vision. I had no idea what they meant and neither did I care. I ignored them.
I remember the piles of bodies lying everywhere like discarded dolls. Some of them were small enough to be discarded dolls. They lay half in and half out of doorways. Whether fleeing the burning building or seeking shelter from the slaughter, we’ll never know. They lay heaped against the walls against which they’d huddled. Men lay in front of the families they had tried and failed to save. Dead women curled protectively around dead infants.
But mostly I remember the blood. Everything was red with it. We ran through sticky pools of it. I gave thanks for the breathing filters in my helmet. That I didn’t have to breathe that distinctive copper smell or taste the metal in the back of my throat.
Everything around us was being destroyed. Flames licked around roofs and billowed from doors and tiny windows. And it wasn’t just this street or a few streets around us. A whole city was burning. Constantinople – the queen of cities – was being devastated. Churches, palaces, monasteries – ancient and beautiful buildings were being torn apart for the treasures they contained.
The same went for the people. They too were torn apart for the treasures they carried. Necklaces were ripped from dead necks. Arms were hacked off for the bracelets and armbands they wore. Hands were chopped off living people and thrust into a bag because there was no time to prise the rings loose now. That was for later. Later – three endless days later – when some semblance of sanity would return to the invaders, they would find a skin of wine and a quiet corner, and rummage through the stinking, fly-swarmed bags for the treasures therein. I saw a woman standing motionless in shock, handless arms held rigid in front of her, screaming a long, high, thin scream as she watched her life blood arc through the air.
So I ignored Captain Ellis’s well-meant advice and I looked. I saw it all. It was far worse than anything I had ever seen and I’ve seen a lot. This wasn’t a battle between more or less equal forces with some rough sort of soldiers’ code – this was armed men, blind with lust and greed, pitted against an unarmed, abandoned population.
Ellis kept us moving. Emerging from a dank, dark alleyway, we found ourselves in a small square. On another day, this would have been a pleasant place. Someone had placed a bench against a sunny wall. A few pots of herbs stood nearby. On another day, their scent would have filled the air. But not today. Today, something bad was happening here. A group of about twenty people mostly women and old people were grouped against a wall. They were surrounded by a group of laughing men, their swords drawn. A small pile of probably valueless trinkets lay on the ground in front of them, and even as we watched, a few coins were tossed down as well. Were they trying to buy their safety?
Satisfied they had extorted everything of value, the group of men lifted their swords. It was obvious what was going to happen next. Women screamed and cowered against the wall while one of the old men made useless appeals for mercy. At the same time, another man appeared at the other end of the square. A Crusader, it seemed, wearing the traditional long white surcoat emblazoned with the red cross – although the cross was no redder than the wet blood streaked around his hem. He was helmeted but his visor was raised. Shouting, he strode forwards, gesturing the men to keep away.
Reluctantly, they obeyed him. It was obvious this man held authority. Still shouting, he placed himself between the helpless civilians, many of whom were crying and wailing hysterically.
The mercenaries paused. I imagine greed was warring with discipline, but eventually their leader, a big man in a leather jerkin, bareheaded but wearing a breastplate, nodded. He stepped back, motioning to his men to do the same. It seemed this lucky group of people might be allowed to live after all.
Satisfied, the Crusader sheathed his own sword and turned away. They let him take three, maybe four paces before someone shouted. He wheeled around and the big man stabbed him in the face. He fell to the ground. He was probably dead already, but two men leaped on him, and while the leader stabbed him repeatedly, the others men fell on the screaming civilians.
Within half a minute, everyone was dead. The bench had been overturned, the pretty pots smashed, and the little square was running with blood. I watched it twist across the paving, seeping through gaps in the stones, mixing with the dirt, shit, straw and scummy water, and turning everything a bright, brilliant red. It was hard to imagine that anyone would ever again sit in this little square, feeling the sun on their face or smelling the herbs.
I stared at the dead Crusader, lying in his own blood. At some point his helmet had come off. His face was gone. A good man who had tried to do a good thing on this very bad day.
I dragged my eyes away. I wasn’t here for this. I was here for my boys.
Ellis motioned us back the way we had come.
Bearing in mind my own advice about not interfering in any way, I stayed at his shoulder and concentrated on keeping my feet as we picked our way through rubble-strewn streets.
In my ear, a female voice said, ‘Two minutes. Estimated landing site one hundred yards to your right. Remain where you are. Maintain safe distance.’
‘Copy that,’ said Ellis.
We stood in our teams, backs against a solid wall for protection. I was looking all around me. Where were they? Where would they appear?
I had forgotten to count down the seconds in my head and the two minutes seemed a very long time. Were their calculations wrong? Had we missed them somehow? I took a pace forwards to see what was happening around me and Ellis pulled me back against the wall. Something dropped from above, missing us by inches and shattering on the ground at our feet, but he still wouldn’t let me move.
I was turning my head, trying to see everything at once, worried I wouldn’t be looking in the right direction when the pod materialised. Straining my eyes for a familiar tiny flicker in all this noise and movement.
It wasn’t like that at all. I don’t know why I worried I would miss them. You would have had to have been dead to have missed them.
From nowhere, there came a great rushing wind. A roaring wind that picked up thatch, wool, dust, splinters of wood, and left them all whirling in its wake. Something blurred past like an express train, destroying the wall opposite, bringing down the house behind it and the one behind that and so on, shattering everything in its path, right across the city. Like a runaway express train. New fires bloomed in its wake.
Everyone else did the sensible thing. They screamed and ran away. Everyone ran. Crusaders, mercenaries, the local inhabitants. Rubble, timbers, thatch, stonework were all exploding into the air and, then, as is usual in the scheme of things, dropping heavily back to earth again.
We did the unsensible thing. We ran towards. We followed the trail of destruction. We scrambled through unsafe buildings, clambered over smoking debris, fought our way through people so terrified that nothing we could do could possibly make things any worse. We followed – for want of a better expression – the skidmarks.