The Walls of Byzantium (54 page)

‘Hold your ground!’

The knights with d’Eu had now reached the jagged lines of stakes and those without horses were pulling them from the ground, all the while rained on by arrows that fell from the air or tore into them from the front. Somehow, miraculously, they were gaining ground. The stakes were being thrown aside and the knights were engaging with the janissaries and their armour was giving them the upper hand. The Turks were falling back and no quarter was being given.

On the flanks, the tide seemed to be turning too. The sipahi charge had been halted on both sides and the knights were driving them back. But this was what the Turks had expected. Suleyman, who was in the thick of the fighting, raised his sword and signalled a withdrawal. The sipahis turned and, with perfect precision, wheeled their horses and rode away.

A cheer went up from the Christian ranks. But it was different from the cheers before. This was the ragged cheer of tired men, men who were at the limits of what they could do.

Men who wanted help from the Hungarians.

Luke and his three Varangian friends had watched all this from the wood below. They’d seen the carnage wreaked by the akincis’ arrows and they’d seen the crusader knights recover and charge up the hill to the rows of stakes. They’d seen the charge of the sipahi cavalry and how it had been repulsed. They’d seen heroism and reckless courage beyond what they could have imagined and deaths that would haunt them for the rest of their lives.

Throughout it, they’d anxiously checked behind them and
had seen the Hungarian army draw closer with a slowness that was painful to watch. As the knights repulsed the sipahi cavalry and began to regroup, Luke knew that the time had come for him to ride to King Sigismund and implore him to throw forward his army.

But there was a problem.

Riderless horses, some crazed with pain, were charging back into the knights still advancing up the hill. They trampled and bit their way through their ranks and were now coming through the wood to reach the open ground beyond. Horses with their chamfrons pierced with arrows, horses with sliced, open arteries. Horses that were running in panic towards the advancing Hungarians.

Horses that would tell of a catastrophe ahead.

Luke mounted quickly and rode fast out of the wood, his friends behind him. It was perhaps five hundred yards to the Hungarians and he could cover it within minutes if he didn’t collide with any of the horses that were galloping beside him. He had no time to lose.

On the hill, the knights of Christendom were preparing themselves for another sipahi charge from both sides. If they could withstand it, then the battle could still be won.

They yelled encouragement to each other from parched throats, their voices cracking with fatigue. They looked behind for reinforcements and shouted of Hungarian cowardice and they took off their helmets and wiped their brows and tried to ignore the pitiful sounds of the dying around them.

D’Eu had lost his horse. He held a sword in one hand and a mace in the other, both dripping with gore. His visor was still open and his face was caked in blood, his own and others’. He
shouted to those around him to hold firm but his words were hardly audible. He looked round for de Nevers and saw the young Count not far away, also unhorsed and standing amidst a pile of bodies. The remains of the Burgundian household stood around him and the green of their livery was splashed with blood and dirt. Some held on to their lances to support them in their exhaustion. Some simply sat on the ground to recover their strength. None had mounts.

De Vienne and the Sire de Coucy were further down the slope, also standing. Together they held the banner of the Virgin aloft and together they prayed that their patron saint would send them the Hungarians they had so rashly left behind. De Coucy was wounded, an open gash visible through the mail on his arm. But he still had his voice, his deep voice of authority, and he used it to rally the men around him.

‘Courage!’ he shouted. ‘We are Christian knights and we can still win this day!’

Then came the rumble. This was a deeper rumble than that made by the sipahi cavalry. This was the rumble of armoured knights on armoured horses and it came from the other side of the hill. Thousands of Christian eyes looked towards it: eyes that had been full of fatigue were now full of fear.

The Serbians are coming
.

Luke had, by now, reached the Hungarian lines and had found the King. Riding beside Sigismund was the Voivode Mircea of Wallachia, whose troops were on the left of the column, and Prince Laczković, whose Transylvanians were on the right. The fleeing horses had reached them and were now tearing swathes through the ranks of soldiers that felt new fear for whatever lay ahead.

‘Highness!’ yelled Luke as he brought his horse to a halt before them. ‘Highness, the battle is in the balance! The knights have broken through but they are tired. Bring forward your army and the field can still be ours …’ He gasped for breath. ‘… but you must act quickly.’

He saw Mircea and Laczković exchange glances. He turned to them.

‘Lords, this battle can still be won. But you must act
now
!’

Mircea spoke. ‘Have the Serbians engaged?’ he asked. His face was grave.

The answer was there in Luke’s silence.

‘Then the day is lost,’ said Mircea. ‘If the French are unhorsed and exhausted, they will not stand against a Serbian charge.’ He turned his horse.

‘Voivode!’ shouted Sigismund at the man riding away. ‘We cannot abandon them! We cannot leave our Christian brothers to the Turks! For mercy’s sake!’

Mircea stopped and turned in his saddle. ‘Mercy? What mercy did these knights show to the prisoners they took from Rahova? They slaughtered them! They slaughtered them before the battle began because they needed the guards to fill their ranks! They slaughtered men, woman and children. Don’t talk to me of mercy, Sigismund. Bayezid will show no mercy to us when this deed is told, I’ll warrant you.’

And the Voivode rode away towards his countrymen whom he would take with him back to Wallachia. Rode away to make peace, in any way he could, with the victorious Bayezid.

Sigismund turned to the Prince of Transylvania. ‘And you, Prince Laczković,’ he asked, ‘will you desert me too?’

Laczković looked at the men from Transylvania, the men who’d hoped this Christian army would save them from the
Turk, the men who had stopped marching. ‘I think, lord,’ he said, his face sad and drawn, ‘that my army has already decided.’

And he, too, turned his horse and rode away.

There was the sound of harness and de Naillac approached, his long face a study in calm. Behind him rode a Hospitaller knight with the standard of St George in his mailed fist. De Naillac reined in his horse and looked from Luke to Sigismund.

‘Our allies desert us? No matter. We have a battle to fight. Come, my lord king, we have God’s work to do this day and we cannot delay.’

Sigismund looked back at the three columns behind him, two of which were already beginning to march away. He looked at the fleeing crusader horses riding through his army in their pain and panic. ‘God help us,’ he said quietly.

‘God will help us but only if we help ourselves.’ de Naillac urged. ‘Send forward your army now, sire, before it’s too late. My knights are ready to ride. Just give us the word.’

King Sigismund pondered this advice. Then he turned to face his army. He stood high in his stirrups and filled his lungs with air. He threw back his head and held his sword above him. ‘Soldiers of Hungary!’ he yelled. ‘Today we are under the eyes of God! Are we to prevail against this infidel horde or submit to its barbaric creed? Will you follow me to hurl the might of Hungary against this enemy or will you leave the field as cowards?’ He paused and breathed deep. ‘Will you follow your king?’

Luke looked at the ranks of soldiers behind. He saw undecided faces, questioning faces; he saw fear in them. He saw men considering life and considering death. He saw men torn between loyalty to God and King and the instinct to survive. He saw an army in the balance.

‘I will follow you, sire!’

It was not a knight but the voice of a common man, a man who’d left his fields to march with this army on its holy purpose.

‘And I!’ yelled another, and so the cry went up. Soon the whole army was a sea of waving spears and bows. The soldiers of Wallachia and the soldiers of Transylvania were leaving the field but the soldiers of Hungary would march on.

King Sigismund turned back to de Naillac and Luke. ‘De Naillac, take your knights forward and see what you can do to help the French. I’ll bring up my army as fast as I can.’

‘And I, highness?’ asked Luke.

‘You and your friends go with the Hospitallers,’ replied the King. ‘And use your axes well!’

On the hill the battle was going badly for the Christian army. The Serbian cavalry, with Prince Lazarević at its head, had torn into the ranks of the French and Burgundians, cutting a path of death in its wake. Now mostly on foot, the crusader knights were parrying lances with swords and those that weren’t speared were crushed under the monstrous hooves of the destriers that came down the hill at a speed impossible to resist. As the knights fell back, they slipped and fell on the entrails of men and horses and they lay there in their exhaustion, unable to rise and fight again.

Behind the Serbians came the janissaries who were silent and efficient in their killing. Visors were raised and daggers plunged into eyes that looked up at their last morning. No quarter was given to any that asked for it and few had the energy to try. Screams of terror and pain filled the air and from the younger knights came the pitiful cries to mothers and to a God that
seemed to have abandoned them. This was not the chivalrous adventure they’d been so keen to join. This was a terrifying, brutal affair played to rules they didn’t understand.

D’Eu was still standing, his armour no longer bright and his voice no longer strong enough to shout. Around him lay piles of dead and wounded and he lurched like a drunk as he swung his mace at men and ghosts. He’d removed his helmet and his long black hair clung to the gore on his face, his eyes wild and unseeing. Part of his jaw hung open from a sword slash and blood bubbled in the neck of his cuirass. The janissaries had spared him so far and seemed reluctant to bring him down. He was a leader and leaders brought ransom.