Shadow of God (51 page)

“How long can we stop them from detonating their mines and destroying our walls, from creating a major breach?”

Tadini shrugged. “
Je ne sçay pas, Seigneur
. It could happen any time. With enough miners and enough tunnels, it’s inevitable that they will succeed at some point. I can only impede their progress and hope that if a breach occurs, our knights will be able to repel them. If they open many breaches at once, we could never hold them off. But, if it is only one or two at a time, we can plug the hole with our men. Even though they have thousands of fighting men to throw at us, they cannot physically get through a small breach all at once. Their cavalry remains useless. If my gunners can pin them down from the walls and slaughter them
before
they enter the breach, then there’s hope that we can stop them.”

“Michel? Do you have any thoughts?”

Michel d’Argillemont was Captain of the Galleys. While his crews were stationed behind the booms of the blockaded harbor, Michel had little to do. He watched the battles from the city and kept his crews ready for any naval engagement that the Grand Master might order. “My Lord, I can only say that we are fortunate that
Gabriele has chosen to fight for us. God help us if he were born a Muslim.”

The knights laughed, and Tadini nodded to d’Argillemont.

Gabriel de Pommerols, Philippe’s lieutenant and close friend, raised a hand. “My Lord, have we any hope for reinforcement? This is getting to be a problem whose solution is clearly mathematical. We kill a hundred or a thousand Turks, and they kill twenty-five of us. We kill, they kill. In the long run, they will win. Our only hope is that our determination is made clear to them, and that they will tire of this slaughter of their people before they have taken the lives of all of us here.”

“Quite right, Gabriel. To the point as usual,” Philippe said. “No, I expect little if any help from Europe. They have shown their colors and will not step forward to aid us. And I don’t expect any resupply. Perhaps our victory in the last siege has led them to believe that we are indestructible.”

“It took us forty years to recover from our ‘victory,’” Henry Mansell interjected.

“Yes,” said Philippe, his voice weary and hoarse, “I was only a boy when I saw the results of that siege. I was not yet old enough to fight there, but it was difficult to look upon the rubble of Rhodes back then and decide who had won.”

Mansell continued, “My Lord, I have carried your banner for these many years. Never has it fallen to the ground. Never will it fall if I have a single breath left to keep it aloft.”

Mansell was Philippe’s standard bearer. In every battle, he would be there at Philippe’s side, holding the oak staff from which flew the silk banner of the crucifixion. The banner itself was presented to Grand Master Pierre d’Aubusson following his defeat of Suleiman’s grandfather in 1480.

“Be there at my left side, Henry, and God will be on my right. Now, it is time for Vespers. All of you, come with me to the Church of Our Lady of Victories, and let us pray for a successful conclusion to our battles.”

The knights left the Palace of the Grand Master and walked behind Philippe to join the mass at the church. The service was led
by the Latin Bishop, Leonardo Balestrieri. The knights knelt in prayer, encumbered slightly by their armor and chain mail, which, with the battles still raging about their walls, they never took off. Swords were fastened to their hip belts, their helmets placed at their left knee. Other weapons, pikes and halberds, were set down upon the floor, where they could be reached with dispatch, should the occasion arise.

Together, they bowed their heads in prayer.

On their side of the walls, while the knights prayed, the Turks were waiting. They crouched in the ditches and hid beneath the carcasses. The Azabs and the Janissaries were poised in the vanguard, backed by mounted troops hidden from sight, hoping for the chance to follow the foot soldiers through a major breach in the walls. The Pashas stayed with their men. Mustapha was dressed in full battle gear, his forehead covered with sweat in the late summer heat. Silence was maintained throughout the ranks, as the men took shallow breaths of air. The minutes moved slowly by while the whole of the Turkish assault force waited for their chance.

Down in the tunnels, the charges were set. Tadini’s men had not heard them this time, for the miners were wary now after so many terrible deaths in the tunnels. They had placed the mines with absolute stealth and silence, making no vibrations to set the alarm bells ringing. The sappers backed out of the tunnel in the darkness, and the last remaining man lit the fuse. He turned around with difficulty and crawled as fast as he could from the tunnel. He looked like a crab as he scampered away from danger. The fuse sizzled toward the massive charge of gunpowder.

It had taken almost three weeks to make this tunnel and plant the charge. Day and night the men waited as they worked, expecting at any moment to be blown to bits or buried alive by Tadini’s counter-miners. Though they didn’t know his name, they knew that behind the walls of the Sons
of Sheitan
worked a man who had taken thousands of their lives. Now their work was done, and in two more minutes there might be a hole in the great wall of the fortress; if the
charge was big enough; if it didn’t explode harmlessly up the venting shafts; if the counter-miners didn’t blow it away first with their own charge. And, most uncertain of all, if they had measured correctly and placed it in exactly the right spot.

As Balestrieri intoned in Latin, few of the knights could concentrate upon the words. They could hear the battle outside and the cries of the wounded.

Philippe knelt in the very first row. Mansell had placed the holy standard in a holder nearby and was kneeling next to Philippe. The rest of the knights filled the rows to the rear. As Balestrieri was concluding his prayers and preparing the golden chalice for communion, the earth shook beneath the church. The mortar holding the massive stones together crumbled and dust filled the air. A powerful blast filled the church and rang in the ears of the knights. The foundations shook. Balestrieri fell to his knees, catching himself on the edge of the altar.

“A mine!” shouted several of the knights. Mansell grabbed the standard from its holder and rushed after Philippe, who was already up and pulling his helmet onto his head. His gray hair hung over his cape, and his great broadsword clanked against the pews as he rushed to see what had caused the blast. The rest of the knights followed quickly in his wake.

Tadini cursed, for he knew too well what had occurred. Once out of the church and into the piazza, the knights had a clear view of the city. From the south, they could see smoke and dust completely obliterating the horizon. Clearly, the explosion had occurred there, under the Bastion of England. In the confusion came the sounds of trumpets and drums, of flutes and cymbals, the inevitable overture to the Turkish attack.

The streets were filled with people rushing about in fear and panic. The knights fought their way across the city, pushing through the crowds. More knights joined them, emerging from the houses and the Inns. By the time they reached the walls near the bastions, some of the smoke had cleared. A giant, gaping hole stood in the middle of the Bastion. It was over thirty feet wide. For the
first time since they landed on Rhodes, thousands of Turkish troops were preparing to force their way into the city.

Debris and dust hung in the air for several minutes. At first, the Turkish troops had no idea what damage the mine had done. They heard the blast and felt the earth rock beneath them. A few of those standing nearest the walls had fallen down from the impact. The front-line Janissaries and Azabs were momentarily deafened by the noise.

Mustapha Pasha waited with his troops, as did Bali Agha, Achmed Agha, and Qasim Agha. The dust and smoke slowly blew away in the breeze. When the air had cleared, the Aghas saw before them the enormous breach in the Bastion of England. Cheers filled the air, and the men waited for the order.

Mustapha rose from his crouching position. With his scimitar held high, he screamed into the air, “
Allahu akbar!”
God is great! At the sight of him and the sound of his voice, the Turkish forces rose as a unit and began running toward the breach. To the knights on the walls, the mass of bodies moving as a unit looked as if the earth itself had stood up and was rushing forward.

The Janissaries and the Azabs led the charge, scimitars waving in the air. There were long pikes and halberds. Some of the archers ran alongside the Azabs, and Arquebusiers joined the charge.

The Sultan watched the attack from a small hill just out of range of the knights’ gunners. He sat upon his agitated horse and stared impassively at the erupting battle. Behind him waved the sacred green banner of the Prophet, carried, as always, into battle as the talisman for the Muslim armies.

Trumpets from the Sultan’s band blasted the call; drums boomed as loud as the cannon fire that preceded the men’s advance. Their famous cymbals crashed and nearly drowned out the sound of the martial music. With the music and the cannons and the screaming, nothing could be heard but the sounds of the attack. No orders given. No corrections made.

The Turkish soldiers crossed the first escarpment and dived down into the outer ditches. As they scrambled up the other side,
they met a fusillade of small-arms fire. Some of the knights’ smaller cannons could be lowered enough to cover the advance.

And the slaughter began.

On the knight’s left flank, Frenchmen fired their muskets and
arquebuses
from the Post of Provence. The new quick-aiming muskets were deadlier than ever. Turks started falling as they ran. Men died on the spot as dozens at a time were blown to bits by light cannon and small-arms fire. From the right flank, Spaniards defending the Post of Aragon poured down musket fire. Hundreds of arrows filled the air, chasing the running Turks like a swarm of angry bees. Bodies began to litter the approaches, and within a few minutes the corpses completely covered the bottoms of the ditches. Musket holes ran with blood, and arrows stuck out from bodies like quills.

The attack upon the breach faltered slightly as the soldiers began to slip on the piled-up bodies of their fallen comrades. Blood congealed into slippery layers on top of the dead. The wounded could not be helped. There was no possibility of evacuation. The injured men lay in the bottom of the ditches alongside the dead, their bodies a walkway for their fellow warriors in the advance to the fortress wall. The Sipahis remained useless on their horses.

Cannon fire from the Turkish batteries raked the walls, distracting and disrupting some of the archers and musketeers. The Aghas urged the men onward, though the defenders were tearing the Turkish lines to pieces. The brave men of the Sultan’s army never faltered in the face of the withering fire, but continued their advance up the sloping path to the walls.

As they neared the Post of England, they came under heavier fire. With each step forward, they became clearer targets for the gunners and bowmen above them. As the walls neared, a new plague erupted upon the frontline Turks. The dreaded Greek Fire poured down from copper hoses on the parapets, setting men afire, screaming in agony from the terrible burns they incurred.