Shadow of God (52 page)

But still the Turkish fighters advanced, scrambling over their dead and wounded, with only one thought: they would finally enter the citadel of the knights. They would face their enemy in hand-to-hand
combat. After long weeks of waiting, the Sultan’s army had been unleashed, and would finally get their first real taste of blood.

The first of the Janissaries and Azabs scrambled up the last of the approach and climbed through the rubble. The hole that appeared so wide from the trenches now would admit only fifteen or twenty men at a time. As the first Turks clawed their way up, with shot still raining from above, they rose to their feet and moved more cautiously through the opening. More and more of their comrades piled in through the opening, until there were two dozen men standing face-to-face with the enemy. There, in the dust and the smoke, they saw a sight that made their bowels turn to water.

And that was just what the knights had counted on.

For the first time since landing on the accursed island, the Janissaries stared into the face of the devil. Before them were fifty knights in full armor. All wore identical battle cloaks of deep scarlet, emblazoned over the left chest with a white, eight-pointed cross. Each wore a cylindrical iron helmet, visor in place, with only a horizontal slit through which the Turks could see the unblinking eyes of the knights. Broadswords were drawn, held almost carelessly, as if the knights feared nothing of the Janissaries’ scimitars. Shoulder to shoulder they stood. A wall. Motionless. Immovable. Deadly.

For thirty seconds or more, the two enemy lines faced each other while the battle outside the walls continued. In the center of the line of knights, one man drew the attention of all the Turks. His white beard flowed out from his visor. Long, gray hair draped his shoulders. Next to him, another knight carried a long staff from which a banner waved in the afternoon air. The figure of Christ on the cross looked down upon them all. The old man raised his sword and shouted. A terrible cry filled the air as the knights rushed forward, swords in the air, lances leveled.

The Turks hesitated momentarily. Then another shout of
Allahu akbar!
was heard, and the two armies met for the first time in deadly hand-to-hand fighting.

The knights pressed forward, protecting each others’ flanks with their bodies. Their body armor deflected the slashing sweep of the Turkish scimitar. Only their necks and limbs were open to
attack. It took the Turks a few moments to know where to strike. Those few moments cost many Turkish lives. Men began to fall. The dead and wounded clogged the gap in the walls even more. The knights knew just how to use this human plug in the gap to their advantage, keeping the odds down to nearly one on one. They at all costs, had to prevent a massive breakthrough of Turkish soldiers.

Back in the ditches, the fire continued to decimate the Turks. The forward surge was wavering now, and the officers had to yell and push to keep the momentum toward the fortress. With every passing moment, the going became more difficult. Piles of bodies physically blocked the advance. Jellied blood sent the soldiers slipping down onto the bodies of the fallen. Some trampled their own men. The emotional horror of the slaughter took its toll as well, as the Turks began to lose heart. It had seemed so easy when the mine exploded. There was an open doorway to victory before them, and they had only to walk through it. Now, instead, they lay writhing in their own blood, burning and dying without even the chance to fight.

As the main body of the Turkish army tried to make its way across the no-man’s land of the ditches under the fire from the wall, the knights engaged the first of the Janissaries to enter the city. The phalanx of armored knights moved forward in unison, swinging their heavy broadswords in front of them and clearing a swath of bloodied ground as they moved. The momentum of their advance was overpowering, and the Janissaries were forced back into the gap in the wall.

When the broadsword connected with the limbs or body of a Turkish soldier, there was little hope for survival. Great muscled arms, trained for years with the heavy swords, wielded a force behind the sharp steel edges that was unstoppable. Whole arms and legs fell to the ground, as the wounded man bled to death in minutes while the battle raged around him. The knights kept advancing against the enemy. Now, there was chaos as the Janissaries and the few Azabs who had joined them were pinned in the small space.

From his position in the front ranks, Mustapha Pasha saw the blockade at the breach and shouted his fury. He exhorted his men
to press forward, even as they were sprayed with shot and arrows from the walls. Suddenly, the
Bunchuk
appeared on a rampart
.
There, in the early light, was the standard of the Sultan, himself; for from this standard waved the seven black horses’ tails. The ringing of its little bells was drowned out by the melee, but the sight of the tails and the golden crescent of Islam gave heart to the attacking Turks. The rush forward began again.

Mustapha was carried onward by the crush of soldiers. So fierce was the attack that those who tried to retreat in the face of the guns had no choice but to move ahead.

Again and again, the Turks tried to force their huge army into the city, but the strategy of the knights was working too well. They pushed the advance soldiers back into the hole and effectively blocked the entry into their city with the living bodies of the enemy.

Gabriele Tadini fought viciously in the front line of knights, slashing away with abandon. He was furious that the Turks had blown a hole in
his
wall; that they dared to escape
his
countermeasures. It was personal, and Tadini would avenge it here on the forefront of the ramparts.

At Tadini’s side stood Michel d’Argillemont, head of the knights’ fleet, now caught up in the fighting with all the other knights. It was a welcome change from the inactivity on board his cloistered galleys. He pushed forward with his pike, swinging it in wide arcs and slashing away at the enemy. In one particularly forceful swing, he followed through too hard and lost his balance. As the point of his sword swung up, he nearly impaled Tadini, who was fighting shoulder to shoulder with him.

“
Hiens!”
Tadini shouted at Michel. “Over there!
They
are the enemy!” His smile lost beneath his steel visor, he moved forward another step, knocking a young Janissary to his knees and then splitting the man’s skull directly down the middle with the sharp edge of his heavy sword. He looked to his right and was about to protest again in jest when he saw Michel fall to his knees. Tadini stepped forward, putting his own body in front of a Turk moving in for the kill. The scimitar slashed down and across Tadini’s breastplate, tearing his cloak and scratching the metal. Before the Turk could strike or
thrust again, Tadini stepped forward, stomping his right foot as he drove his sword straight from the hip, skewering the soldier through the chest with a thrust more like a foil than a broadsword. As the Janissary fell, he grasped at the blade still protruding from his ribs. Tadini had to use his boot to push the man off and retrieve his weapon.

Another knight stepped up to the front line, blocking Tadini from further attack. Michel was still on his knees, struggling with something in his helmet. Tadini reached down and grabbed him by the cloak. When he had pulled Michel to his feet, he saw the wound. An arrow had pierced the inside corner of the left eye and had exited through the left temple, where it protruded though the knight’s helmet.

“
Dio mio!”
Tadini said, as he dragged his wounded friend to the rear ranks. Once out of immediate danger from attack, he lowered Michel to the ground and knelt beside him. Michel was becoming rapidly incoherent.

“Can you walk?” Tadini shouted. Michel did not answer. “Do you hear me? Can you walk?” Again no response. Tadini sheathed his sword and lifted Michel’s body by one arm. He pulled the man over his shoulder and slung the body over his back, grabbing the two thighs in his arms. He ran through the streets of the Merchant’s Quarter, and made his way to the
Collachio
. Turing into the Street of the Knights, he moved as fast as the heavy weight would allow him and climbed the stairs to the hospital.

Renato was working on the wounded already brought in from the battle at the Bastion of England. He didn’t look up when Tadini shouted to him. Tadini gently put Michel’s body on an unused operating table and called to Melina. She was wrapping bandages about the head of a wounded knight who lay upon the floor. She finished and went over to Tadini. She knew him well, for Tadini had often visited the hospital in search of Jean, who had become his close friend. Tadini had stayed many a night to help out when he was needed there, and had grown very fond of Melina. He never missed the opportunity to make veiled comments about the poorly kept secret of Jean’s and Melina’s little family.

Melina reached the table and nodded to Tadini. “Who is it, Gabriele?” She looked down and said, “Oh, dear God! Not Michel.” Then, when Michel in his pain and delirium turned his head in her direction, she saw the arrow feathers protruding from his eye. Her hands flew to her mouth, and she was unable to stifle the cry that rose in her throat. “Oh. Dear God!” she said again. She touched Tadini on the arm and said, “Go back to your post, Gabriele. I’ll get Doctor Renato, and we’ll take care of Michel.”

Tadini touched her hand and walked quickly out of the hospital.

Philippe’s eyes burned as he slashed his way into the enemy. At fifty-eight, he was the oldest man fighting in the field. But, his age belied the physical man. Years of battle and training had kept him as fit as any younger man. With his strong arms and chest, he slashed and drove the heavy weapon through dozens of unfortunate Turks that afternoon.

Henry Mansell stood behind Philippe, and to his left. He kept just enough distance to stay out of the way of the powerful sword strokes, but close enough to protect his master’s back. Mansell held the banner of the Crucifixion high above the heads of the knights. At its tip, the wooden pole was sheathed in brass and sharpened to a point. If the need arose, Mansell could protect the Grand Master using the standard as a lance. He held the standard in his left hand, while in his right he carried his own unsheathed broadsword. The years he had spent as standard bearer had given him enormous strength in his shoulders and arms. It was nothing for him to spend hour after hour in battle or on parade holding both his heavy weapon and the Holy Banner of the Crucifixion.

Philippe moved a step forward as his brothers-in-arms advanced yet another foot against the incoming tide of Turks. One Janissary moved in under Philippe’s upraised sword, hoping to gain safety by entering inside the killing perimeter of the sword’s reach. He thrust his scimitar at Philippe’s neck, trying for a skewer between the breastplate and the visor of the helmet. Philippe parried the thrust with his chain-mailed hand and, closing the distance, brought the shaft of his sword down upon the helmet of the Janissary. Though
still conscious, the man was stunned enough to stagger for a second, dropping his guard long enough to regain his balance. Before he could recover for a second attack, Philippe raised his heavy sword from its place directly in front of his chest, up and over his left shoulder. With a downward, backhanded sweep of the blade—now notched from impacts with other blades, and running with blood and dirt—he cut through the right collarbone of the young soldier, through the chest, and out under the left armpit.

The man looked into the slit in Philippe’s visor as he fell backwards from the impact. Before he could focus on the two cold eyes staring back at him, he collapsed in a pile of disconnected parts, like a child’s doll ripped to pieces in a temper tantrum.

Philippe recovered his stance, and moved forward another six inches.

Mustapha Pasha felt the mass of his army slow, then waver. The crush of bodies impeded its own movement forward. Mustapha shouted again and again for his men to advance. He raised his scimitar and struck at his own troops with the side of the blade. He cursed and reviled them as cowards, but still the momentum stalled.