Chapter 68
Southern battle line
“Silesians, my lord,” Stroe Leurdeanu said, looking through a spyglass at the blocks of fresh soldiers pushing across the stone wall. “Our men are falling back and—”
“I know what they’re doing, Stroe,” Matei said, his left hand shaking at his side. “I don’t need a spyglass to know that. I can see that with my own eyes.”
We are beaten. The reality of it struck Matei’s heart like a hammer. Or, perhaps more fittingly, a mace. There was no doubt now that the Sultan would bring his own mace down upon Matei’s head for this defeat, and at the hands of Jews no less. It was just a matter of when and where.
For a time, it seemed as if the wolves in his dream had stopped howling. So much success in the early hours of morning. Now this defeat. Would the wolves ever stop howling?
Matei looked at his young assistant. A bright, intelligent man who would survive him and perhaps even go on to rule Wallachia in his own good time, assuming, of course, there was such a country in the future. Stroe’s eyes were respectful, but accusatory. We should have linked arms with the Moldavians and attacked together.
“Any word from that corbaci?” Matei asked, incapable of saying the man’s name.
“No, my lord,” Stroe replied. “No word at all.”
Matei didn’t need word from him either to know what was happening. Scores of Dorobanţi infantry had fallen back from their push in the center. Janissaries were tough, indeed. Perhaps the toughest men Sultan Murad possessed. But no one thousand men ever born could survive alone without full, dedicated support from its army, and Matei Basarab had no more support to give.
He sighed, deeply, closed his eyes, and nodded. “God’s will. Order the men to fall back to the Maros. I want everyone still alive across that river by nightfall. And order our rockets and cannons to expend all remaining munitions. Let’s give our men a fighting chance to escape.”
“There are no more rockets, my lord,” Stroe said.
“Cannons, then,” he snapped, “and keep them firing until they too run dry.”
Central battle line
Usan swiped his yataghan left, right, cleaving Silesian faces in two. He did not even care about the gunfire popping randomly around him, mini-balls buzzing past as the line between friend and foe collapsed. Nothing now but groups of men slamming into each other, bayonets buried into throats and bellies, swords slashing and stabbing, rifles barking, men screaming, falling. The bright red uniforms of his orta were enough to keep him from cutting down his own men, but the smoke and sheer numbers in the killing field made it difficult not to draw friendly fire. He had never been in such a fight in his life; both exciting and terrifying at the same time.
A Silesian in front of him tried raising his rifle. Usan shouted, knocked the rifle from the man’s hands, and drove the khanjar dagger into his belly. He twisted the blade, watched as the life bled from the man’s eyes, and then withdrew it and let him fall dead at his feet.
His ear was nicked by gunfire.
Usan fell to the ground beside the dead man, the sting of the shot hot and debilitating, sending shards of pain through his face. He dropped the khanjar and clutched his bleeding ear. A piece of it hung loose. He gritted his teeth and ripped the piece away, letting the blood flow freely down his cheek. His eye patch was still in place, thankfully, though he wished now that he had two functioning eyes. Then, perhaps, he might have seen the man, somewhere in the confusion, raising his rifle to fire.
Dozens of Janissaries raced past him, not realizing—or perhaps not caring now—that their corbaci was wounded and lying at their feet. Then hands grabbed the back of his coat and yanked him up.
“Corbaci,” the boy who had pulled him up said with real concern on his face. “Are you wounded?”
Usan gained his balance by gripping the boy’s shoulder. “I am fine. Thank you. Now…forward!”
The white tent and enemy banners were close now. So close. The only thing between them and the capital was the ditch. Cross the ditch and take Gyulafehérvár.
The Silesian line suddenly broke and fell back. Usan could not contain his joy any longer. He grinned like a hyena. He knew how those creatures smiled; he had seen one as a pet in a bazaar in Istanbul as a child. It grinned from ear to ear, yipping like a madman, and now Usan repeated the look, no longer a corbaci, an officer. He was a soldier now, a simple Janissary, one of many.
The Silesians who reached the ditch alive jumped into it. Usan imagined reaching the lip of that ditch and firing down, killing dozens, hundreds as they scampered madly up the back slope, trying to break free from the slaughter. But he had no rifle. He had smashed it against the hull of the Ifrit and had not bothered to find another. If necessary, he, like all his men, would jump into that ditch too and—
A line of hidden Silesian riflemen raised out of the ditch and fired a full, powerful volley into Usan’s charging lines. Then the volley guns in the tree line roared again.
Usan took a shot into his belly and dropped. Lead buzzed over his head so thick it seemed as if he had wandered into a beehive. Oddly, he felt less pain from this gut shot than just a moment ago when his ear had been severed; less pain than when his eye had been destroyed. There was a warm, soothing quality to the wound, like the comfort he had felt in the arms of his mother, in the security of family. He was in the midst of family now, all the men around him taking shot after shot after shot as well, and he wondered in those last moments how they felt about him. Do they blame me for leading them to their deaths? Do they blame me for not bringing guns, cavalry in support? What will Sultan Murad think of me, my decisions, when he learns of my death, my failure?
None of that really mattered now. All that mattered was getting right with Allah, and did he have time for that?
Usan slept. How long, he did not know. Then he awoke. He was nothing more than a pile of meat, bone, and blood, staring up into the overcast sky, staring into the silhouette of a soldier.
Not a Janissary. A Silesian. A boy. A nobody. Perhaps a farmer, a herder. He stood over Usan as if he were a king, ready to pass sentence, pointing a cocked pistol at his face.
Usan smiled and tilted his head up to get a better view of the boy. A handsome boy with just a small smear of blood on his chin, a spattering of mud on his uniform.
“Görevini yap genç adam. Ben Allah ile barış içindeyim,” Usan said as he stared deeply into the boy’s eyes, waiting for the shot.
Instead, the boy turned his head suddenly to receive an order from a superior officer. The boy sighed but nodded, uncocked his pistol, knelt beside Usan, turned the pistol in his hand, and smacked Usan hard across the face.