The Walls of Byzantium

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

NICOPOLIS, BULGARIA, 24 SEPTEMBER 1396

The great fortress of Nicopolis stood next to the Danube at a point where the river was nearly a mile wide. On this evening, the standard that flew sluggishly from its tallest tower was the flag of the Prophet, topped with a moon, which meant that its experienced commander, Dogan Beg, had yet to surrender to the two crusader armies encamped to its front.

Watching the armies from the prow of a hill was the heir to the Ottoman throne. Behind him and flanked by Kapikulu cavalry, was Luke.

The armies were as impressive as they were different. That commanded by the Comte de Nevers was the more flamboyant, with a vast green tent at its centre surrounded by sixteen magnificent banners given by his father, the Duke of Burgundy. Each bore the image of the Virgin Mary, patron of crusaders, and beneath it the Count’s motto ‘Ic houd’ or ‘I never yield’. Surrounding it were the pavilions of the other French and Burgundian commanders: the Admiral de Vienne and Marshal Boucicaut; the Comte d’Eu and the veteran Sire de Coucy. Further out, a sea of gaudy silk washed across the wasted fields like a quilt and beyond stood a tilting ground with stands and emblazoned shields and pennants and all the accoutrements of the joust.

Suleyman laughed. ‘This is more Lenten fair than army camp. All that’s missing are the dancing bears! Where are the scouting parties, the sentries? Where are the siege engines?’

Luke rose in his stirrups to see better.

Yes, where are the siege engines?

The camp was positioned out of arrow range of the fortress walls and in front of it were some desultory earthworks but no catapults or battering rams or siege towers. And there were certainly no cannon of any size.

The other camp was better. Here flew the flag of Sigismund, King of Hungary, and alongside it fluttered the standards of Wallachia and Transylvania. The tents there were less colourful and there was no tilting yard, fewer banners and much less silk. It was the nearer of the two and Luke could hear the sound of hammer on anvil and see the smoke of campfires curling into the sky as soldiers prepared their evening meals.

The land around the fortress consisted of blackened fields lined with charred stubble, in one of which stood a scarecrow dressed in Saracen armour, a donkey’s tail attached to its turban. Surrounding these was a landscape of gently rising hills and scattered woods from which clouds of starlings exploded like rain-bursts.

Beyond both armies and the fortress lay the mottled brown of the Danube with its marshy islands and, across it, the plains of Wallachia marching north towards distant mountains. The water looked sullen in the late-afternoon sun and upon it, lying at anchor, were ships flying the flag of Venice.

How many men are there in these armies? Enough to beat the Turks?

Luke heard his neighbour’s stallion snort and its rider’s mail clink with the movement. The day was still hot and flies gathered on the heads of the animals to be shaken aside. These Kapikulu had been his silent companions on the long ride from Constantinople along with other, more talkative sipahis from Anatolia. Zoe had explained to Luke that the sipahis were akin to the feudal knights of Christendom in that they held a plot of land, or timar, directly from the Sultan and were expected to come to war with retainers equipped at their expense. They were magnificently dressed in richly decorated mail and plate armour, with chest medallions and pointed turban helmets, and they carried maces and bows and had large quivers of arrows slung at their sides.

Suleyman had chosen to take just Anna with him to the crusade. But Zoe was unpeturbed. She didn’t enjoy life on the march and staying behind gave her the opportunity to further investigate Siward’s tomb before Luke’s letter arrived with Plethon.

Throughout the journey, Anna had remained hidden from view inside a carriage at the rear of the column. If the thought of Anna so close had raised Luke’s spirits, the country they’d travelled through, the woeful evidence of an empire in its final days, had lowered them again.

To begin with, they’d ridden across Thrace, a land where birds had taken the place of people. It was a flat, open country, crossed by rivers and mirrored by lakes, which had once been rich in corn and wheat and where the peasants had lived in prosperous villages with fat churches and fatter oxen in their fields. Now it was desolate and the fields were choked with weeds and the villages abandoned, their churches open to the sky.

As they rode further west, there appeared the first signs of change. People of darker skin were rebuilding the villages and pointed minarets were replacing domes. With them were groups of black-coated Bektashi dervishes who would provide the religious nucleus of their new communities.

One night they stayed at a zaviye, or hospice for travellers or settlers from Anatolia. Luke had usually slept with the horses, often with no dinner inside him. But that night, a sipahi knight had taken pity on him and had brought him roasted bird with a sauce of saffron and mushrooms and unsmoked honey and Luke had slept deeply and dreamt of Anna.

The next day they came to villages being built by people of lighter skin who didn’t seem to want a church or mosque, people who dressed in simple robes and wore no crucifixes or other ornamentation and barely looked up as they rode past.

‘Bogomils.’ It was the sipahi knight who’d given him the food. He spat.

‘What are they?’ asked Luke, wondering if the man spoke Greek. ‘They don’t look as if they’ve come from your homeland.’

‘They haven’t. They’re from around here. They’re heretics to your church but suitable to us for repopulating these lands. They’re insolent but they understand the country and work hard.’

‘Why are they heretics?’

‘Because of what they believe. They think that God had two sons, one bad and one good. The bad one created the world, so all material things are evil. They don’t like priests or popes or churches or any form of authority. So they were persecuted by their Christian lords. But we leave them alone as long as they pay their taxes. And they don’t believe in fighting.’ He spat again.

‘They won’t fight for their beliefs?’ asked Luke.

‘Not here. But in France they did. They were called Cathars there and your pope launched a crusade against them two centuries ago. He razed whole cities to exterminate them in the name of your God.’

The sipahi knight had turned in his saddle to look at Luke, his dark eyes bright beneath the shadow of his helmet.

‘Do you know what this crusade has done so far to win the hearts of the people they are liberating from us? Since crossing the river at Orşova, they have harassed and murdered the local peasantry. They massacred most of the citizens of Rahova even after they promised to spare them. Is this your God of love?’

Luke looked to the sky as if He might defend himself.

But all he saw were birds. So many that it seemed that heaven had sent a plague. There’d been herons, cormorants, ibis and white-bellied geese. Kites and falcons had ridden the currents while swifts and warblers darted and screamed their way low across the fields and lakes around them. Many of the birds were on their way south ahead of winter. Others had chosen to stay in this land devastated by war.

An empire of birds.

That evening, north of Kazanlak, they’d reached the foothills of the mountains and the guards had donned their cloaks and wrapped them tight against a chilling wind, their heads sunk deep into cowls and their eyes searching the landscape for bandits. The mountains here rose through pine-forested sides to snow-capped peaks where eagles circled on their giant wings spread out in benediction.

They had ridden down into Tarnovo as the sun fled west, turning the meandering Yantra river below into spilt honey. This city had once been the ‘Third Rome’, the capital of the Bulgarian Tsars that, three years ago, had held out for four brave months against the Turkish onslaught. Now it was the meeting point of armies.

The road was narrow, allowing only pairs, and Luke found himself again riding beside the sipahi knight who seemed to have attached himself since giving Luke food. In front of them rode Suleyman and he was talking to his companion loudly enough for Luke to overhear.

He was talking about the Christian commanders. The ones he claimed to respect were, on the French and Burgundian side, the Admiral Jean de Vienne and Sire de Coucy and, on the Hungarian side, King Sigismund himself and the Voivode of Wallachia, Mircea, whose army had defeated the Turks at Rovine a year beforehand. He also admired the Grand Master of the Hospitallers, Philibert de Naillac, who had sailed there from their fortress in Rhodes with a detachment of monk-knights.

‘If they have any sense,’ Suleyman had said, ‘they will listen to these men. But they won’t. De Nevers is vain and stupid and thinks only of Burgundian glory and he has the right of what they call the avant-garde. His knights will charge and our Serbian knights will stop them. You’ll see.’

And Luke had listened and remembered what he’d heard.

He was thinking about it now as he stared down at the two Christian armies outside Nicopolis.

The Serbians will be in their front line.

He didn’t know why, but he felt that this information would be of importance to the crusaders. He looked over to the tents of Burgundy. Somewhere in there would be men like de Vienne and de Coucy who would know what to do with it.

But how could he get it to them?

Luke didn’t sleep at all that night. It wasn’t just that he had not been given a tent, being tied instead to a wagon wheel where the camp dogs fed on the scraps from janissary cauldrons and howled and fought their way through the night. It wasn’t that a gentle drizzle had begun shortly after nightfall and continued ever since, soaking him to the bone. Luke had not slept because he kept turning over in his mind what he now knew of the battle to come..

The Serbian knights will be in their front line.

Luke shivered and drew the sodden folds of his cloak around his shoulders. He thought about the French knights of his age who’d be lying in their tents listening to the rain. How many, like him, would be facing their first battle tomorrow? How many, like him, would be thinking of the long training that had brought them to this point? How many were worrying whether it would be enough not just to survive the battle but also to uphold the honour of their calling?

He looked down at the plate next to him where his untouched food sat like an island in a sea of brown water. Around him, the campfires of the army had long succumbed to the rain and the dawn was still some way off. He could just make out a shape moving slowly, hesitantly in the dark before him. He closed his eyes and then opened them, wiping aside the rain and straining to see what was out there. He heard a sniff, and then a growl.

It was a dog. A large dog was coming towards him. Had it smelt the food?

Luke was seated on the ground next to the wagon wheel and his hands were bound either side of its axle, the chains reaching through its wooden spokes. He edged closer to the hub and felt the manacles around each wrist. They were immovable. He tried to shift himself sideways, to get to the other side of the wheel, but the chain was too tight. He turned back to the dog and could now see its size and hear the rasp of its breathing. The animal had stopped and its head was just above the ground It was watching him with yellow eyes that flickered through the rain.

It wanted the food and Luke was in the way.

Luke tensed himself, readying his legs to intercept the creature in its leap, to somehow kick it away. He thought of dodging the impact but the chain made movement to either side impossible. But if he could move forward, if the chain would slide …

The dog sprang. With a growl, it leapt through the air and Luke flung the top of his body forward, joining his fists and pushing them out so that the chain scraped up to the hub. The dog smashed into the wheel rim above him, its jaw scraping his knuckles, its hot breath on the back of his neck. He heard a crack, a crack not of bone but of wood. The dog had missed him and he could see its black shape rolling away on the ground. He flung out his legs and his boots hit something hard: a head. He kicked again and this time the crack was of bone.

The dog lay still.

The wheel was at an angle. The animal’s charge had broken the axle at the hub. He pulled the chain towards him and heard another crack. He pulled again and the wheel came away and the wagon crashed to the ground, narrowly missing him. He was still chained but he was free.

Luke waited in the darkness to hear if the sound had alerted anyone.

There was nothing. Just the sound of rain.

He could feel his heart beating against his chest and his breathing was uneven. He began to crawl away from the wagon towards where he’d heard the sounds of horses earlier. He got to his feet and began to run slowly in a crouch, the chains dragging between his legs. He heard the whinny of a horse.

He reached a rail and saw movement beyond. He ducked beneath it and held the chain still as he whistled softly into the dark, turning his head to left and right. Then he heard the pad of hooves on wet earth and a horse trotted out of the night, its head held high with uncertainty. Luke lowered himself to his haunches and offered his chains and the horse’s head stretched out to sniff and inspect. Then, slowly, Luke took the long nose in his hands and stroked it and his mouth came close to the horse’s ear and he whispered into it and the horse nodded and Luke knew he was trusted.

Luke led the horse by the mane, feeling his way along the rail until he came to a gate. Only then did he mount the animal, talking to it as he did so. He listened for a while, judging the direction, then kicked its sides. It had stopped raining and the first light of day would soon outline the hills to the east.

But he had been heard.

He saw movement out of the corner of his eye. Riders taking shape in the darkness. Riders coming towards him. Silent riders who knew what they were following.

Luke dug his heels in, grabbing the horse’s mane with both hands to keep himself on. He leant forward and whispered again into its ear and it started forward down the faint outline of a road at a trot. He looked over his shoulder and saw that his pursuers were following but making no attempt to catch up with him. Who were they and what was he to do? Any thought of going back to find Anna would have to be abandoned. He’d have to try and make it to the crusader lines.

Before him rose a darker mass. A wood and a chance, possibly, to hide. He slowed as the first trees loomed up around him, weaving his way between their trunks and ducking to avoid branches. He heard the soft crack of twig beneath his hooves and then the same noise behind him as the riders entered the wood. They were closer now. Was this another of Suleyman’s games? Was he watching it all from somewhere with his cat-eyes, his night-eyes?

Who are you behind me?

The wood was dark inside and got darker as he went further in. His horse seemed to have picked out some path between the trees and Luke lay low, breathing in the comforting smell. He glanced awkwardly up at the stars, now visible through the branches, and the parting clouds. He thought he saw the North Star ahead, which meant that they were going towards the crusader camp. But the Christian army was three miles away and his pursuers just behind.

The warm, earthy scent of early autumn was all around him, a smell of pine essence released. All he could hear was the horse breathing and the steady drip, drip of rain.

Then his world exploded.

Something living landed on his back and his horse reared and he was thrown to the ground with his assailant on top of him. The air was punched out of him and he was pinned to the earth with a knife to his throat.

‘If you want to live, don’t move,’ hissed the man through the cloth that masked his face. The language was Greek. ‘Don’t move at all.’

Luke lay rigid, feeling the cold of the blade against his neck. His cheek was against the ground and he could see other men emerging from the trees around, men with bows. He heard the sound of arrows being released and shouts in Italian and a scream where an arrow found its mark. The riders that had been following him were wheeling their horses, trying to escape, black shapes buffeted by panic.

‘Venetians!’ hissed the man on top of him. He was wearing the padded, buff leather of the gazi and he smelt strongly of horse.

They lay there together for a while, both breathing hard, as the riders fled and the archers returned, forming a circle around them. One of them lit a torch. The man got up and put his dagger into his waistband. He took a sword from one of his companions, broke Luke’s chains, then walked over to one of the horses and found a thick pelt, which he threw at him.

‘There is an hour before it is light enough to move,’ he said gruffly. ‘Sleep, if you can. Then I have something to show you.’

Of course Luke didn’t sleep. He lay on the soft pelt in wet clothes and watched the dawn light creep slowly into the shadows around. The sky through the leaves was grey and without colour, as if uncertain what to do. Then, gradually, it turned into blue, a blue pregnant with the promise of sunshine held just below the horizon. Rain dripped from the branches.

He turned his head towards the sound of footsteps. The man was approaching; his companions had stayed sitting around the fire. They were talking in whispers and poking the embers with branches. The man knelt on one knee beside him.

‘You are Luke Magoris,’ he said, ‘and I am Yakub, chief of the Germiyan tribe.’ His face was dark and worn by sun and wind and his heavy beard was streaked with grey. He looked old but was probably no more than forty. ‘You will want to know who I am and whom I rescued you from.’

Yakub swept away some debris with his palm and sat, lifting his sword to rest across his legs. ‘I am a gazi, a gazi from the Germiyan lands in Anatolia.’ he said. ‘That means that I have even less love for Bayezid than you Greeks because I have already lost my lands to him.’ He paused. ‘The men following you were from Venice. I don’t know why they want you.’

From Venice. Luke frowned. Why would Venetians be so close to the Ottoman camp unless they were supposed to be there? Had they been waiting for him?

‘You were meant to escape,’ said Yakub as if Luke’s question had materialised before him. ‘The wagon’s axle was sawn through so that one hard pull would dislodge it. In the end they had to send a half-drugged dog to persuade you.’

Luke found his voice. ‘Why?’

But before the word was out, he knew the answer. He thought about the unlikely generosity of the sipahi knight, of how he’d attached himself to him and brought them both to ride just behind Suleyman as they’d come down to Tarnovo. He thought about some information he’d been meant to overhear.

As if to himself, Luke murmured, ‘The Serbians will be in the front line.’

‘My guess is that the Venetians were to take you to the crusader commanders so that you could tell them that.’ Yakub picked up a twig and began prodding the ground. ‘The Turks want the crusader knights to charge first. They know that they’ll like nothing better than charging other knights. It’s a trap.’

He paused and looked up. ‘There won’t be knights in our front line but hyenas. The akincis are like hyenas, snapping and snapping until you go mad. We use them to lure you in, to tire you out with pretend charges and waves of arrows. Then we pounce.’

Luke turned this over in his mind. He’d seen the akincis as they’d marched away from Constantinople. He’d seen their small, fast horses and little bows that could fire an arrow every three seconds. But there was still a question to be answered.

‘Why should I trust you? You are a gazi from the same tribes that gave us Bayezid. Why should I trust you?’

Yakub looked again at the ground. He picked up a leaf and examined it, turning it in the gathering light. ‘This will be the first time that the armies of Christendom have met the Ottomans in battle. If they lose, there will be nothing to stop Bayezid watering his horse in Rome. You have heard this boast?’

Luke nodded.

‘And there will certainly be no chance of the Germiyan tribe regaining its freedom.’ He ran his finger along the central spine of the leaf. ‘So you see, Luke Magoris, that much depends on the battle’s outcome. Both of our freedoms depend on it very much.’

Yakub watched Luke carefully while he put fingers into the cowl of his cloak and stretched it away from the thick trunk of his neck, turning his head to left and right. He threw away the leaf and picked up his sword.

The gazi rose to his feet. ‘I will show you,’ he said. ‘Now get up. We don’t have much time.’

It took less than five minutes for Luke to change into gazi dress and remount his horse, which had been given a saddle and harness. It took another ten minutes for Yakub to lead him to a partially wooded ravine that lay to the front of the Sultan’s army. With their four companions they were, to any onlooker, an akinci scouting party. They rode out to the front line.

There were no signs of Serbian heavy cavalry.

All Luke could see were line upon line of akincis, their bows slung low over their skins and their quivers crammed with arrows. They kept no sort of order and instead rode up and down, shouting to each other. Scouting parties were galloping in from the flanks and they rode up to Yakub and made their reports before rejoining the seething mass of horsemen.

Luke stopped and looked around him. On one side, the ground fell away into the ravine to the army’s front. There was a wood there that screened any view beyond. To the east, the ground rose gently to another wood. There were no signs of any sipahis, either Rumelian or Anatolian, on either flank, but the wood could hide a regiment at least. Luke looked down the hill fronting the army.

The Frankish Knights will come through the wood and see the ravine. By then it will be too late.

Yakub had ridden up beside him. ‘Come! We don’t have time to stop.’

As they rode into it, the thick, screening mass of the akincis parted. The soldiers greeted Yakub but hardly glanced at Luke who, like his companions, was wearing a nose-guard and earpieces so that most of his face was obscured.

Then they were through the ranks of horsemen and Luke’s heart almost stopped.

There, like the teeth of some open-jawed dragon, stood line upon line of sharpened stakes. There were hundreds of them, certainly enough to stop a cavalry charge of any weight, and they looked well dug in.

It is a trap.

Yakub was riding close to him. ‘Don’t look so surprised! Remember, you know they’re there. Come!’

They rode along the back of the akincis in the direction of the hill and the wood at its crest. Yakub reined in his horse halfway up so that they were able to look down upon the army.

‘Now look behind the stakes,’ said Yakub. ‘Janissary archers with all the time in the world to bring down the knights as they try to get through the stakes.’ He glanced at Luke. ‘Remember what I said. My akincis are no match for your Frankish knights. They’re not meant to be. They are the hyenas which will send them mad with their snapping.’

He let his words sink in. Then he said, ‘But this is not the main trap. It gets much worse.’

Yakub spurred his horse forward up the hill and then turned south so that they were skirting the end of the janissaries. It was now that Luke saw that the ground fell away behind the janissary lines, a feature invisible to anyone approaching from the front. And, as they approached the crest and were able to see behind, Luke reined in his horse and let out a groan.

There, hidden from view, was the main army.

There were the élite Kapikulu heavy cavalry and, beside them, rank upon rank of Serbian knights, thousands of them.

Suddenly Luke recognised the genius of the trap. By the time this cavalry charged, the crusader army, or what was left of it, would be too exhausted to fight. It was terrifying.

‘Prince Yakub!’

Yakub wheeled his horse around. ‘Prince Suleyman.’ He bowed stiffly from the saddle. ‘I was on my way to you with my scouting party. They report no movement from the crusaders yet. The two armies have formed up and seem to be deciding what to do.’

Suleyman was with a small guard of Kapikulu cavalry and had the Grand Vizier with him. He didn’t answer immediately; instead looking up into the heavens. The sun was now rising in a cloudless sky and the day was getting hotter. He pushed his helmet back from his brow and put the cold mail of his hand against it.

‘Deciding what to do?’ he asked. ‘They’ve already decided what to do, I think, or will do quite shortly. If it weren’t forbidden, I’d wager good money that your akincis will feel the weight of the Frankish knights before noon. Are they prepared?’

‘As always, lord.’

Luke was facing away from Suleyman, pretending to calm his horse and with his head low to the animal’s ear.

‘Good. Now, you must send your scouts out again. We need to know the minute this crusader army moves.’

Yakub gave the order and the akincis, Luke included, kicked their horses and cantered away.

They rode fast to the wooded summit of the hill and saw the ranks of Suleyman’s Rumelian sipahis standing in eerie silence beneath the trees with their lance tips wrapped in hessian to prevent them catching the sun. They cantered around the back of the wood and north towards the Danube, crossing the ravine where it was shallower and where a muddy brook pooled at its centre. They came to a smaller valley and rode down it until they reached the banks of the river. Then they turned left and rode to the prow of a hill from which they could see the fortress of Nicopolis about a mile to the west.

The two Christian armies had struck camp and were formed up in two blocks, side by side, about a hundred yards apart. The Burgundian army’s ranks were ablaze with colour and its front line was in constant movement as gorgeously dressed knights and their pages walked destriers up and down to calm them before the charge. It seemed as if every Christian king west of the Danube had emptied his coffers to send his nobility east to fight.

There was a patch of white at the back that Luke guessed must be the Hospitallers. He could see perhaps three hundred knights and sergeants gathered beneath a white flag bearing a giant crusader cross. He saw that they were more ordered than the rest, sitting astride their horses and waiting patiently for their grand master’s command. Behind them were the archers and crossbowmen, most of them mercenaries and some holding the deadly English longbow.

The Hungarian army had fewer knights. It was largely made up of horse archers, many of whom were little different from Yakub’s gazi cavalry. Here were Kipchaks and Pechenegs, Vlachs and Wallachians and they were mounted on smaller, swarthier horses and had skins beneath their saddles and curved bows by their sides. These were the tough and fearless men of the Hungarian steppe and an obvious match for the akincis at the front of Bayezid’s army.

The akincis stayed with Luke awhile, watching the scene to their front. Then one of them said something and they turned their horses and rode away. He looked down at the armies before him and wondered how he was to get to their commanders. He was dressed as a gazi and would be shot on sight if he simply rode down to them. He remembered his hair and removed his helmet so that his long fair hair tumbled down to his shoulders. Then he took off the leather armour from his upper half. Beneath was the simple white tunic that he’d worn on the journey from Constantinople. He ripped an arm from the tunic and tied it to the whip he found attached to his saddle and held it aloft.

The white flag of parley. Would it work?

Luke kicked his horse. He had a few hundred yards to ride but he knew that there were thousands of eyes watching him, the eyes of men stirred into a frenzy of blood lust.

What language was he to use? He knew Greek, Italian and some Latin. But these men would most likely be French. He tried to remember the few French words Fiorenza had taught him.

‘Attendez!’ he yelled, waving his white flag and riding hard. ‘Je suis ami! Je suis chrétien!’

He saw heads turn and arms point. He saw swords drawn as if he might be the vanguard of something bigger. Then he saw a single knight detach himself from the army and ride forward, a mace swinging languidly from his mailed arm. The rider cantered some distance from the army and stopped. He was dressed in silver armour so polished that it caught the sun in dazzling ignition. His horse was caparisoned in gold fleur-de-lis and it trailed the ground. His visor was lowered and he looked unlikely to want to parley.

Luke slowed his horse and halted. ‘Je parle avec vos commandants!’ he shouted. ‘C’est important!’

It sounded lame and the knight remained impassive. His mace continued to swing and he looked at Luke through a snout of pointed steel.

Luke considered his options. He could try to outride this fool but that would just bring others keen to spill the first blood. He raised himself in the saddle and yelled above the head of the man in front of him.

‘I am Serbian!’ he screamed in Greek. ‘I am a deserter!’

For the first time the knight looked back from where he’d come. Luke could see some discussion in the front rank and there was a shouted command. A second rider emerged from the ranks, this time a squire in Burgundian household livery. He rode up to Luke.

‘Venez.’

Luke followed him at the gallop. As the space between the armies emerged, he could see that a pavilion had been erected between them and that several expensively caparisoned horses were being led up and down outside it. Men-at-arms held the standards of Burgundy and Hungary and other kingdoms. Clearly this was the place where the plan of attack was being discussed. Luke would be able to tell them what he knew.

Another knight, middle-aged, had arrived from the direction of the Hungarian army moments before. He had dismounted and was handing his reins to a page and looked up as Luke approached.

‘Qui est?’ Luke whispered to his companion.

‘That is the Constable of the Kingdom of Hungary, Lord de Gara,’ answered the page in Greek and bowed from the saddle as they rode up to him.

The Constable was looking at Luke curiously.

‘I am Luke Magoris, lord,’ Luke said in Greek. ‘I bring news of the Turk army.’

The man looked over his shoulder at the entrance to the tent from where raised voices and even laughter could be heard. He took Luke’s arm. ‘You’ve seen it?’

‘Yes, lord. All of it. It’s not as it seems.’

‘Tell me,’ he said.

Luke told him and, as he listened, de Gara began to nod his head.

‘Have you told anyone of this?’ he asked at last.

‘No, lord. Only you.’

‘Good. Come with me.’

He turned and walked towards the small tent, lifting aside the flaps to reveal a space crowded with heavily armoured men, some holding helmets with tall plumes, some goblets of wine. In the centre was a table with a hand-drawn map on it. Sitting before it, looking intently at the coloured squares of wood that represented the armies, was a young man in his early twenties with a long nose and weak chin. His hair was cut short, like a tonsure, and sat between two prominent ears. His complexion suggested recent drinking.

The Comte de Nevers.

Next to him stood a man in his fifties with a shock of white hair and a broad, rubicund face lined by weather and, perhaps, experience. He looked heated and was pounding the table. ‘Sire, on my sortie yesterday, we saw no sign of the Serbs. It is their irregulars that front their army. We cannot waste our knights against them!’ The language was Latin.

‘But, de Coucy,’ said a younger man on the other side of the Count, ‘are you suggesting that his highness will not lead the avant-garde? When we have come all this way? When Burgundy has all but paid for this crusade?’ This man had a goblet in his hand and waved it as he spoke. Luke wondered if he was drunk.

The older man addressed de Nevers directly. ‘Lord, no one doubts the Comte d’Eu’s courage but we must consider our enemy. Listen to the Admiral de Vienne. He was part of the Count of Savoy’s expedition in ’66. He knows how these Ottomans fight.’

‘Like hyenas.’

There was silence and everyone looked at Luke. The Admiral had not spoken.

Had he spoken?

The young Count looked up last and his eyes travelled, without enthusiasm, down Luke’s mud-caked tunic. ‘And you are?’ he asked.

Luke quickly marshalled his thoughts. He glanced at the other men in the room, most of whom were regarding him with a mixture of surprise and distaste.

‘Highness,’ he said, ‘I have claimed to be a Serbian deserter to persuade them to bring me to you. In fact I’m Greek. I have ridden direct from the Turkish lines. I have seen how they are deployed and I know their battle plan. They would have you believe that the Serbian knights are in their front line. But it is their akincis that are there and they are there to mask sharpened stakes and, behind them, janissary archers. They mean to lure your knights into a killing ground and then attack them with their sipahi cavalry from the flanks. Then they will unleash the rest of the army, which is hidden behind the hill. It is a trap.’

There was silence in the tent as Luke’s words were acknowledged. A gruff laugh came from a short, muscular man to his right. De Nevers looked at him.

‘Marshal Boucicaut? You have something to say?’

‘I am wondering, highness,’ said the man, ‘why we are wasting time by listening to someone none of us recognises and who might, for all we know, have been sent to misinform us.’ He looked at Luke. ‘You said you were Greek?’

‘Yes, lord.’

‘Ah … well then,’ said the Marshal, and looked away. Others in the tent laughed.

Luke felt the blood rush to his face. ‘Your meaning, my lord?’

Boucicaut arched an eyebrow. ‘Meaning, you insolent young pup, that you are not to be trusted. Meaning that your Orthodox ways do not invite trust!’

There was an awkward silence in the tent.

‘Or mine?’ asked a voice from the other side of the tent. ‘Are my Orthodox ways not to be trusted either?’

The voice came from a big, heavily bearded man dressed from head to foot in a coat of mail. He wore a loose hauberk on which was emblazoned a black raven with a cross behind it: the arms of Wallachia. Under his arm was a helmet with a crown around it.

‘Is that why your crusade has seen fit to rape and plunder its way down the Danube?’ he asked. ‘Because people of the Orthodox faith are not to be trusted?’

He paused and walked slowly up to Boucicaut. He stood very close, looking down at him. He was breathing hard. ‘Why fight with us, then, if we cannot be trusted? Perhaps we should go home? We, the Transylvanians, the Hungarians — should we all go home?’

The silence was now oppressive. A centuries-old emnity was alive in this tent, an emnity that made these men unhappy allies, that seemed as great as their hatred of the Turk.

‘Enough, gentlemen,’ said a deeper voice that came from someone Luke had not yet noticed. He turned to see a man in his middle years seated on a camp stool in a corner of the tent. The man’s voice was tired, as if he’d heard the argument before, but there was no mistaking its authority. Luke guessed he must be King Sigismund of Hungary.

‘The decision must be the Comte de Nevers’,’ he said, ‘perhaps advised by those of us who’ve seen action against these Ottomans.’ He pointed towards Luke. ‘I don’t know who this man is, but what he says has the ring of truth. They do indeed fight like hyenas, snapping at you with their irregulars until you charge into their trap.’

He stood up and walked unevenly over to Luke, a limp, perhaps from some old wound. ‘Who showed you these things?’ he asked.

Luke’s mind raced. ‘I cannot tell you his name, lord. But I will tell you that he is a gazi chieftain. Someone to trust.’

He heard Boucicaut snort behind him.

But Sigismund raised his hand. ‘No,’ he said, ‘it makes sense. Most of the gazi tribes were overrun by Bayezid some years ago. They have no love for the Ottomans. It would suit them for us to win this battle.’

De Nevers was watching the King closely but also glancing nervously at d’Eu. He seemed overwhelmed by the responsibility placed on his young shoulders. ‘So what does Your Grace suggest?’ he asked.

‘I suggest that these akincis are unworthy of the lances of your Burgundian knights,’ Sigismund said carefully. ‘The Voivode here’ — he gestured towards Mircea — ‘should meet them on equal terms with his Wallachian horse archers. I suggest using the same tactics that they use. Let us harry and provoke them into attacking us.’

There was silence in the tent. Outside could be heard the sounds of an army that waited for the word under a September sun that was rising fast in the sky. A nearby horse neighed and a page could be heard calming it.

De Nevers turned to a man who had yet to speak: Philippe d’Artois, Constable of France.

‘Constable,’ he asked, ‘what is your view?’

D’Artois sighed and looked around him. He was an experienced soldier with many campaigns behind him, though none against the Turk. He walked forward to the edge of the table and looked down at the map for a long time. Then he looked straight at de Nevers.

‘Prince,’ he said slowly, ‘de Coucy, de Vienne and their highnesses urge caution. These are men that know this enemy.’ He paused. ‘But I think it will be nigh-impossible to tell our knights that they must wait upon others before making their charge. However, I think we should ask the Kings of Hungary and Wallachia to send forward their horse archers with us to protect our flanks against these sipahi cavalry. And I think the knights should advance with the Hungarian infantry hard behind them.’

He looked now at Philibert de Naillac, Grand Master of the Knights Hospitaller. They were old friends. ‘Philibert, do I thus speak reason?’

De Naillac had the long, unkempt hair and beard of the warrior monks from Rhodes and a reputation for common sense. ‘I fear that here we see reason supplanted by some strange idea of honour, but I cannot see we have much choice. However, with your highnesses’ permission, I will hold my knights back with the Hungarian main army. We may be needed later, I fear.’ He looked at d’Eu. ‘We of the Cross are less impeded by honour.’

D’Eu coloured and said to de Nevers, ‘Sire, the Hospitallers must be their own masters, but now we have it clear. The knights will charge.’

He turned to the rest of the men in the tent and threw down his goblet. ‘You have heard the decision!’ he shouted. ‘Forward in the name of God and St George; today you shall see me a valorous knight!’

Luke saw the man lift his helmet and turn to leave the tent. He saw the stricken face of the Admiral de Vienne, who would guard the standard that day, and he heard him say quietly to de Coucy, ‘When truth and reason cannot be heard, then must arrogance rule.’

De Nevers had risen to his feet. He was flushed and reached for his sword and helmet, which lay on the table beside the map. Sigismund approached him.

‘Comte, my army is not yet ready to advance.’

De Nevers turned to him. There was something wild in his eyes. ‘Then you must get them ready quickly, my lord of Hungary,’ he said. ‘The glory of our Christian knights must wait on nothing!’ His young face was aglow with excitement. He raised a mailed hand as he walked to the tent door. ‘For God and St George!’

Luke was left with Sigismund, Mircea and de Naillac. Sigismund turned to him.

‘You said you were Greek yet you seem to speak Latin. You are educated but can you fight?’

Luke felt a surge of pride. ‘I am a Varangian, lord.’

The effect was less than he’d hoped for.

‘Ah, I’d wanted a rider.’

Luke drew himself up. ‘I am a Varangian who rides. In fact I ride very well.’

‘An educated Varangian that rides.’ The King smiled. ‘A wondrous combination.’ He put his hand on Luke’s shoulder. ‘Varangian, I want you to follow this French army in its charge. I want you to ride behind them and, when they are engaged, come back with the news to me. I will be bringing up my army as fast as I can.’

Luke nodded.

‘You will need an escort.’

Luke considered this quickly. ‘Highness, there are other Varangians with one of these armies. Three of them, recently joined.’

‘Yes, they are with me,’ said de Naillac. ‘What of them?’

‘They are my friends, lord,’ said Luke. ‘Since childhood. I would trust none more.’

‘Then you shall have them,’ said Sigismund. ‘Now go and find your friends and join the knights. And remember: stay alive. You are my eyes.’

Outside, all was commotion in the ranks of the French knights, with pages tightening girths and leading destriers to masters throwing back last beakers of wine before donning their helmets. The stench of defecation, human and animal, was overpowering. There were shouts of encouragement and forced jollity and curses as horse collided with horse, and a cheer went up as the red oriflamme of France was raised. Another, louder cheer accompanied the raising of the saltire of Burgundy and there was general tumult as de Vienne’s men hoisted the flag of the Virgin. D’Eu, who was to lead the first battle, was already in the saddle and cantering up and down the front rank, brandishing his sword in the air as he yelled orders.

De Naillac led Luke down the side of the ranks until they came to a gap separating them from the second battle which was to be led by de Nevers. Luke could see the green hauberks and banners of the Burgundy household knights and men-atarms who would surround the young Prince in the battle to come.

At the back of the second battle, they found the Hospitallers. Dressed in their white surcoats, they wore no other adornments and there were no pennants atop their lances. They held their helmets, square in the old-fashioned style, before them on their perfectly still saddles and the faces above the long beards were serious. Behind them, dressed in Varangian blue and with their axes slung at their saddles, were Luke’s friends.

‘Matthew, Arcadius, Nikko!’ he yelled.

Three heads turned and three faces lit up in delight.

Then there were embraces and jokes and laughter quite out of keeping with the Hospitaller tradition, and many, many questions, which Luke cut short.

‘We can talk later,’ he said and gestured to de Naillac, who was standing behind him, smiling. ‘The Grand Master is to give me a mount and some arms and then we are to ride out together. I will explain on the way.’

The horse was brought, then a sword without a dragon head for its pommel and an axe with two blades, and soon Luke was on his horse and cantering down the side of the two battles with his three companions. They reached a point where they were between the two armies and Luke could see how far the Hungarians had come in their preparations.

They were not ready. Not nearly ready.

He saw Sigismund in front of the horse archers shouting orders and men riding to the rear. The King turned in his saddle and waved. He looked worried.

Behind Luke, someone laughed.

‘Friend of kings now, Luke?’ said Nikolas. ‘Does the Pope write to you too?’

By now, the French front rank was beginning to move. It was as if the four of them were standing at the edge of a beach and some Flemish dyer had thrown all his colours into the surf. Beneath a thousand bright banners, the whole line surged forward with d’Eu at its head roaring, ‘Saint Denis et Montjoie!’ This army had boasted that it could hold up the heavens with its lances and it seemed that it almost could. Luke could see the Admiral and his knights raise the Virgin higher still and the shout that went up was deafening.

Luke turned to his friends. ‘We are to follow the charge,’ he bellowed, ‘but not engage with the enemy. Hungary will be bringing up his infantry behind and we need to ride back to tell him what’s going on.’

‘Tell that to our horses!’ yelled Nikolas.

The second battle was passing them now, with de Nevers standing in his stirrups and turning to left and right, his sword weaving circles in the air. He was shouting something Luke couldn’t hear and his eyes were alight beneath the raised beak of his visor. Rank after rank trotted past and the destriers tossed their armoured heads and bit at their neighbours as they jostled for space and the ground shook with their passing.

Then they were ahead and the four Varangians fell in behind, keeping good distance between them and the last rank.

Luke knew how such a charge should go. His father had told him how the Templar knights had done it in the desert when they’d scattered the forces of Saladin. The trick was to start slow, the riders keeping rank knee to knee, to advance in close formation so that the whole line struck the enemy together. Only in the final moments of the charge would the horses be spurred into a gallop so that the impact would be overwhelming.

But this didn’t seem to be happening. The horses ahead of them were moving too fast too soon. They had at least a mile to travel and would be exhausted by the time they met the Turks. And what of the Hungarians? How would their foot soldiers keep up?

Luke looked over his shoulder. The Hungarians were still forming up and it would be some time before they were even ready to march. He swore beneath his breath and kicked his horse towards the knights in front.

Slow down, damn you. Slow down!

Up ahead, the chivalry of Europe was enjoying the ride. The ground was even and sloped gently away towards trees in the distance beyond which stood the infidel. The distance was great but it was closing fast and although the sun was now high in the sky, the heat was bearable so long as their visors remained open.

But some older and wiser heads within the ranks began to worry.

‘Hold, d’Eu, damn you!’ yelled de Coucy. He looked around him and saw the rest of the front line was made up of young knights who were as inexperienced as they were out of control. It was a stag hunt not a cavalry charge. How would these men face their first Ottoman arrows?

Now they had reached the wood and were passing amongst trees that were well spaced so that the momentum of the charge was not lessened. The young knights hacked at branches as they passed with screams of joy as if they were already amongst the Turks.

‘Conserve your strength,’ bellowed de Coucy.

Then they were out of the trees and, one by one, the shouts faded and the horses pulled up.

Ahead of them was a deep ravine with what looked like thick undergrowth at the bottom of it. On the other side, a hill rose sharply and on it were the akinci horsemen, wave upon wave of them, with an arrow on every bowstring.

A ravine. A ravine and a hill. A wet hill to charge up when they’d already cantered for over a mile.

The riders behind them came up and horses collided and shouts turned into curses.

But d’Eu rounded on them. ‘What are you waiting for? Look at them! They’re unarmoured peasants! Kill them!’ So saying, he shut his visor with a sound that echoed through the trees. ‘Saint Denis et Montjoie!’ he shouted again and spurred his horse into the ravine.

Then all the visors came down in a ripple of steel and the battle cry went up and passed from rider to rider. The front rank followed d’Eu down into the undergrowth of the ravine, hacking at low bushes as their horses stumbled their way through. Then the hill was before them and the akincis were riding forward at the gallop and shrieking their terrible war cries. The knights of the front rank now couched their lances and kicked and kicked at their horses, horses that were tired and hating this new, steeper ground, which was slick with mud from the night’s rain. But their hooves eventually gained traction and the knights gathered some speed and began their long charge up the hill.

The akincis were coming down fast, expertly controlling their wiry horses with their knees as they aimed their bows. Then there was the sound of thousands of bowstrings unleashed. The arrows came low, not aimed at the knights but at their horses’ chests, which were padded, not armoured, and were exposed by the gradient of the hill. Scores of horses fell and their riders fell with them, pinned beneath their bodies. The knights behind, part-blinded by their visors, crashed into those in front and men were pitched forward to land in agony on the ground. Some picked themselves up only to be cut down by arrows fired at point-blank range.

It was carnage and some of the knights at the front wavered. But men of more experience were coming up behind, men who knew that Milanese armour could withstand all but the closest Turkish arrow, and these men rallied them and helped those that could remount.

D’Eu was unharmed and still in front and was driving his heels into the sides of his horse whose white eyes rolled either side of its armoured nose. His sword had been replaced by a mace and he swung savagely at an akinci who dared ride too close, and the crack of the man’s skull was loud and gave heart to those around him.

‘Follow me!’ he screamed as he brought another Turk crashing to the ground.

The akincis were backing off now. They had done what damage they could and knew they were no match for these knights in close combat. They turned their horses and fired arrows behind them as they galloped away up the hill and the crusaders resumed their charge, heartened by the fleeing enemy.

But as the akincis dispersed, they did so out to the flanks and d’Eu could now see for himself how accurate Luke’s warning had been. Row upon row of sharpened stakes faced them fifty paces to their front, and behind them stood the serried and silent ranks of the janissary archers.

On a command, the archers released a storm of arrows, but this time high into the sky so that they fell on the knights like hail. The sound of metal on metal was deafening and the knights lowered their heads and those that bore shields raised them in cover. The arrows did not penetrate their armour but they hit and maddened the horses, which twisted and reared and tried to turn away. More knights fell to the ground, their armour too heavy for them to dodge the hooves that thrashed above them.

D’Eu was still in front and next to him was the knight with the oriflamme. He leant over and wrenched the banner away and lifted it high, swinging it in circles. He turned to the knights behind, raising his visor as he did so. ‘Who will ride with me?’ he yelled. ‘Who will join me in these Turkish ranks? Who will help me kill these heathen scum?’

Arrows were falling all around him but he seemed immune. His courage was contagious and another cry went up and the whole line moved forward. De Nevers was now well ahead of his battle and his household knights were still with him, some unhorsed. He raised his visor. ‘I’m with you, d’Eu!’

Then there was a sound from their flank. It was a single trumpet blast and de Nevers turned towards it and his face changed.

Charging down the hill towards them, in perfect formation, were the sipahis of Rumelia and at their head was Prince Suleyman. These were not the undisciplined horsemen of the akincis. These were heavily armoured cavalry who charged as the crusaders should have charged. They were knee to knee and their lances were lowered and there were thousands of them.

Then a second trumpet sounded from the other side and de Nevers spun round to see more sipahis charging from their right. At their head was the Sultan’s second son, Prince Mehmed.

And the protection that the crusaders should have had from the Hungarian horse archers was far, far behind.

The knights on the flanks turned their horses to meet this new threat, dropping their lances to the ground and unsheathing their swords. They were still the flower of Christendom and more than a match for these vermin.

‘To me!’ shrieked de Nevers as he wheeled his horse. ‘Stand with me!’

The sipahis hit them on both sides, their lances lifting men from their saddles. They smashed into the Christian ranks, slashing with their scimitars to left and right and bringing knights down in droves. Screams of agony filled the air as the ground became strewn with fallen men and wet with their blood. The Admiral de Vienne was now holding the banner of the Virgin and around him were the corpses of others that had held it before. He thrust it aloft.

‘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.

De Vienne was on his knees. The heavy flag of the Virgin was still in his grasp, although five men had died to keep it aloft. He knew that his fifty-five years of living were nearly over and was thanking God for a good life and praying to him for a worthy death.

‘Come on, you bastards!’ he yelled in a language they couldn’t understand. ‘Come on and take this flag! You’ll burn in hell for the deed and I’ll be there to watch it!’

The janissaries paused and frowned at a courage that would deny them profit. Then one stepped forward and raised his sword and brought it down on the arm holding the flag and the blood from the severed limb spattered his mail. The standard fell and the janissary raised his sword again and this time it fell on the old knight’s helmet and the head within it broke apart and de Vienne lay still.

It seemed, then, that a great groan went up above the clash of steel on steel. The knights of Christendom had fought within sight of this standard for over an hour, had taken heart from its message.

Now it had fallen.

De Nevers saw it come down and, for the first time, considered defeat. He looked around him at the countless dead of his household, at the Burgundian banners trampled into the ground, at the janissaries’ remorseless advance and at the Serbian cavalry already regrouping for a second charge. He saw de Coucy nearby, fighting alongside Boucicaut. He lifted his visor and called out to them. ‘De Coucy!’ he shouted. ‘Is the day lost?’

The older knight was fighting with a strength that belied his years. Two janissaries lay dead at his feet and two more were about to die. He glanced back at the Count. ‘The Hungarians, lord!’ he yelled back. ‘Are they near?’

De Nevers looked behind him. The hill was a mass of confusion, of tangled armour and rising and falling swords and maces. If the Hungarians were there, he couldn’t see them.

‘We are alone, de Coucy!’ he shouted. The voice was unsteady.

‘Should we yield?’

De Coucy stepped back from the fight and found behind him the carcass of a destrier, a wooden stake embedded in its chest. He found a shield lying on the ground beside it which he laid as a ramp and climbed to see above the heads of the armies around him.

The crusader army was surrounded on three sides. Above them were the Serbs and the janissaries, and the Kapikulu cavalry, and on either flank were the sipahis with the akincis behind them, and all were slowly, remorselessly closing in. Only at the bottom of the hill, at the treeline beyond the ravine, was there any hope of escape and he could see scores of men who’d abandoned their weapons pouring into it.

Nowhere could he see help.

Had de Coucy looked a moment longer, he would have seen it. Had there not been so many men and horses fleeing in panic through the wood, he would have seen the tight ranks of the Hospitallers emerge from the trees like a white, welcome surf.

Had he waited a minute longer, he might not have turned back to de Nevers and said, ‘Lord, the day is surely lost.’

Luke urged his horse into the ravine along with three hundred others, calling on the panicked men that passed him to turn and fight, crying out that behind them came more soldiers, more men to turn the tide of this battle.

Then he saw de Nevers’s standard drop.

The household knights had formed a ring around their prince. He saw a man in front of them pinioned to the flank of a horse by a lance driven down through his windpipe. He saw him feebly raise his arms to beg for death and he saw a knight from Burgundy step forward, cross himself and deliver that death with his head averted. Around the knights were the enemy, many with arrows strung to bowstrings. Then he saw the knights kneel as one and lay down their weapons.

‘Stop!’ he yelled. ‘Stop! We have come!’

But he was too far away and, even if he hadn’t been, he doubted if he’d have been heard. This was an army exhausted beyond listening, an army that had no strength left to fight.

The Hospitallers saw it too and all heads turned to de Naillac.

‘Engage!’ he bellowed, and the knights kicked their destriers and drove them into the flanks of the sipahis. And Luke and his three friends charged with them.

Up to this moment, Luke had felt everything but fear: the sharpened focus of adrenalin, the ebb and flow of hope and dismay, but he’d not felt fear. Now, as he spurred his horse forward and lowered his lance, as he saw numberless turbaned helmets through the slit of his visor, he realised that he was about to join battle for the first time and he felt the clutch of fear deep in his stomach. He knew his father was somewhere close, watching.

For the Empire. For you.

Then they were upon the enemy and there was no time to think of anything but kill and not be killed. Luke and his three friends fought as a unit, protecting the others’ flank as each discarded his lance, drew his axe and picked an opponent. Luke felt a surge of excitement, each of his senses heightened to meet the imperatives of destruction and survival. He fought with a skill his father would have been proud to see.

He was a Varangian Prince and he was the best of the best.

Soon the sipahis were falling back and some, desperate to escape this scythe of ruin, had turned and were riding over the janissaries behind. Now the screams and curses were Turkish and the banners that fell had holy verses on them.

But the rush of the Hospitaller charge was slowing.

Swinging his axe and controlling his horse with his knees, Luke could feel the momentum of the charge lessen. He felt it stall, then stop. And then he felt his horse take its first, grudging step backwards.

We are three hundred. They are forty thousand. This is madness.

There was a cluster of Kapikulu cavalry to his front, the same guard he’d seen earlier. They were fighting in close formation, protecting someone behind them.

Suleyman.

Then Luke saw him. A gap had appeared in the Kapikulu ranks and the heir to the Ottoman throne, splendid on a black charger, was there urging his men on. The flag of the Prophet was behind him. He turned in his saddle and his eyes met Luke’s. A smile spread across his face.

He shouted something that Luke couldn’t hear. Then he yelled at his guard and they began to fight their way in Luke’s direction.

Suleyman was closer now, still screened by his men, but close enough to be heard.

‘Congratulations on your escape,’ he yelled, his voice booming over the clash of steel. ‘The crusaders fell into our trap and the credit must go to you, Luke Magoris! You have the Sultan’s thanks and, if you drop your axe, I’m sure he’ll want to give them to you in person.’

‘What does he mean?’ cried Nikolas. ‘Who is he?’

‘His name is Prince Suleyman,’ Luke answered, ‘and he’s practised in lying. Don’t listen to him.’

Suleyman laughed. ‘I’m sorry, Luke, I hadn’t realised we would be understood if I spoke in Greek. Forgive me.’

Luke dug his heels into his horse’s sides and sprang forward and, with a roar, his friends did the same. Taken by surprise, the Kapikulu fell back.

Then Luke heard de Naillac’s shout from behind him. It was the command to withdraw, a command that would be obeyed without question by every Hospitaller.

‘What do we do now?’ shouted Arcadius, pulling up his horse. “Go with them?”

Luke looked at Suleyman, who was smiling behind his noseguard. He was much closer now.

‘Yes, Luke Magoris, what do you do now?’

Luke turned and saw Matthew beside him, loyal Matthew already having to engage two of the enemy because the Hospitaller to his right had pulled away.

Matthew who will die if I continue this fight.

‘Will you spare them if I surrender?’

Suleyman nodded. ‘I will spare them. You have my word.’

His word?

Suleyman lifted his sword, ready to give the command.

Luke turned to his companions. ‘Drop your weapons!’

Three faces turned to him in horror.

‘Do it!’

The Varangians lowered their axes and pulled back their horses.

Luke looked back at Suleyman.

His word.

Behind them, the Hospitallers had crossed the ravine, fighting as they went, and now fifty of the knights had dismounted and turned to face their enemy. Meanwhile, de Naillac and the rest of them had galloped back to the Hungarians.

‘The Burgundians have surrendered,’ panted the Grand Master. ‘Your Grace should retire with your army. My men are holding them at the ditch but they will soon come through from the flanks.’

Some of de Naillac’s reserve had left him and it was this, as much as the news, which struck the King. Beside him was John de Gara.

‘De Naillac, can we not turn it?’ he asked.

The Grand Master shook his head. ‘They are too many, lord. They have made prisoner some of the greatest names in Christendom. Don’t give them more.’

The Constable turned to his king. ‘You should ride for the boats, sire. The Hospitallers will guard you. I will come behind you with the army.’

‘No,’ said Sigismund. ‘Why should they fight if their king deserts them?’

‘Because they will live to fight another day when we can do it free from Burgundian folly!’ said the older man hotly. ‘Go, sire, while there is still time.’

By the time that the bashibozouks had filled the ravine with their dead, by the time that the last Hospitaller knight had fallen, the Hungarian King, together with de Naillac, had reached the safety of the boats.

His army had thrown back charge after charge by the sipahis, horse archers fighting on foot beside foot soldiers.

But then the Serbians came, ten thousand of them, and the Hungarians’ last hope was extinguished. They’d fought for an hour against impossible odds and hardly a man had looked behind him. But now the line began to break and first one, then another threw down his weapon and turned for the river.

De Gara cursed and pleaded with them but it was no use. This army knew it was defeated and its soldiers thought only of their wives, their fields, their future. With de Gara were the knights of Hungary that had stayed to shield their king, knights who could at least expect some ransom if captured and who’d fight to help men of lesser station get away. They prepared to make their stand, standing shoulder to shoulder across the plain, facing both ways as the Turks encircled them, some looking back to Nicopolis where the gates had opened and another army was riding out to fight them.

‘Stand!’ shouted de Gara. ‘Let’s bring as many down as we can before they take us!’

And then it began. Sword clashed with sword and mace with mace and sparks flew into the air with the blood. The Hospitallers rejoined the fight towards the end, having delivered the Grand Master and Hungarian King to the ships. The river had been full of soldiers trying either to board the ships or swim to the other side where the Wallachians were already forming up to march away. Sigismund and de Naillac had stood side by side at a ship’s rail to watch a vessel slowly capsize under the weight of men clambering up its sides.

Then they’d heard a cheer. De Gara had raised his hand and the flag of Hungary come down, and a cheer had gone up from the Turks that could be heard in Nicopolis. The battle had been won. The Ottoman Empire had proven itself superior to Western valour and the gates of Europe were thrown open.

And as King Sigismund sailed away down the Danube, past the river’s islands and on to the Black Sea, his cheeks were wet with tears.