“Very well,” I said. “I shall fire, then, if I need to fight. But let no man fire before me—if he does, I shall surely be obliged to fire after him in order to silence the pasha’s complaint.”
The bannerman’s confident grin wavered for a moment. “Have no worry, young lord; we are all able enough with bow and lance. My brother can loose a single arrow to down a running stag by moonlight from a hundred paces.”
Being inappropriately armed for silent combat beyond sword’s reach, I hung back to the rear of the formation as we spread out in advance of oxen and infantrymen. In a well-practiced routine, the men rode out ahead by pairs and trios, coming back into view to wave a light-colored flag along the best route, returning to report if they found something of particular interest, such as a farmhouse, a stream, or a ditch that might present a hazard in the dark. My night vision was sorely tested in the period between moonset and growing false dawn, for no man can see well or far by starlight alone. The spyglass tucked into my pocket was useless for addressing the lack of light.
That dark starlight stretch of our journey was nearly silent, the exception being a brief and unfortunate encounter between a trio of my soldiers and a wakeful farmer whose fate and family I would prefer not to discuss in any great detail. No guns were fired, and as the wife’s screams were both muffled and brief, I could not say that there had been as much noise as a gunshot. Once I arrived, though, I wished I had been given such an excuse to prove I had made my threatening statement in earnest. While a confessor later assured me that I was responsible only by negligence rather than malice, sins of omission rather than commission, I felt the need to perform substantial penance.
In the dark, shrouded shadow of the deepest dark of night, though, I did nothing but give the scene a quick glance, my hands briefly touching the shield hanging from my saddle and the handle of one of my pistols. Silently, I was glad I could not see as well as I had during the assault through the streets of Constantinople, and glad also for the darkness.
Dawn found me on the peak of a hill southwest of Pantikapaion, my squad waiting on the lee side of the hill as I lay in the grass and watched the city below. With the light of the dawn, naturally, there followed the opening of the gates for daily business. To the east, I could hear a rumble of thunder, a plume of black smoke rising into view moments later. A few minutes later, a caique came into view, its sails spread wide to catch the hands of the generously swift sirocco that had rescued it from the hidden source of both smoke and thunder, turning so sharply that it lost several baskets of fish off the side as the helmsman forced the rudder into motion with fear-fueled strength.
It was not much later that the paddlewheel steamship came into view, threatening a sparsely populated harbor with the weapons on its central elevated gundeck. The timing of the attack meant that most fishermen were out of harbor in their best fishing spots—as the light of the rising sun stirs the fish into hunger, only the laziest of fishermen will wait until dawn to launch their boats. The largest ships in the harbor were a pair of galliots; had they been ready to set out and rushed past the steamship in different directions, one might have escaped.
One early cannon shot sounded from atop the walls, the ball falling well short of the steamship. Men swarmed towards and up the eastern wall of the city as bells rang, the city moving into a state of alarm. Carts moved through the streets of the city with urgency, bringing precious powder supplies from central storage to the eastern wall. Then the moment I had been waiting for came: Men on fast horses riding out of the city, likely messengers. Two headed west on the road to Theosodia, and another two followed the coastal road in the direction of Nymphaion, either scouts or messengers. We could not conceal long the fact of the presence of an Osman force attacking Pantikapaion, but we could hope to delay any messages begging for the assistance of the city’s neighbors.
“You three—take the western road,” I said, pointing at a trio of my soldiers whose names I did not yet know. The riders headed in that direction would likely find themselves trapped by Bey Ishak and the rest of the army, but a lone rider can sometimes evade an entire army if he sees it well enough in advance. “Everyone else except for you two—south.”
The two men I excepted were the bannerman and his younger brother. As I mounted my horse, the bannerman spoke to question my decision. “What do we do, watch you and play dice?”
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“Watch for birds,” I said, pointing back at the city. “They may send a pigeon as well, and you said your brother was the best archer. And you have the best eyes.”
I drew one double-barreled pistol, pointing the muzzle to the sky before pulling the wax plugs off in case a ball had come loose from the wadding and dropped. Then I strapped my shield to my left arm and headed north to help intercept the men traveling west from the city. Three men were not many to catch two, even with an army on the opposite side. However, more importantly, I, as a junior officer, had run out of orders to follow and give, and I would rather have my next orders straight from Bey Ishak’s mouth than relayed through a messenger.
After all, matters had not gone to plan. Bey Ishak and the main force were late. Pasha Mustafa’s plan had called for him to arrive with the sunrise, taking advantage of the cover of darkness to set up bombards within range of the city before the city’s own artillerists could strike with whatever cannon they had. I had not known the pasha’s plans for the use of his steamship, but I assumed the plan was to press the city on both sides at once to overwhelm its morale and force a sudden surrender. It was a clever plan, but with no way to communicate, there had been no way to coordinate adjustments to the schedule. The six great naval bombards that had been mounted as chase weapons in our galleys were very heavy; my guess was that they had proven more difficult to manage than Pasha Mustafa had expected when he drew up his marching orders for Bey Ishak.
When the westbound messengers veered north to avoid the riders who had come out from concealment behind the hill, I did not follow in the wake of my men northwards to chase them; instead, I turned west, riding along the road. If their destination was Theodosia, they would wish to return to the road sooner or later, and I would find Bey Ishak all the more quickly along the road.
“Where are the rest of your men?” Bey Ishak had a worried look on his face. “Have they all been lost?” He was riding in the vanguard of the army, staying ahead of the cloud of choking dust kicked up by a thousand men.
“None had been lost when I left them—they are scattered chasing down enemy riders,” I said. “You did say to hunt down enemy scouts, though I suspect them messengers instead.”
Bey Ishak nodded. “As useful,” he said. “Though there will be no surprising the city. I have heard cannonfire already—they must be testing their ranges.”
I glanced back. “We are not very far—one more row of hills and you will see it. As far as the cannonfire goes, the pasha engaged with the steamship. He is holding the harbor closed.”
More cannonfire rumbled, a call and a response followed by a regular successive rumbling.
“Battle must be joined already—and without me,” Bey Ishak said, shaking his head. He turned to shout behind him. “Step lively, men, we are nearly there!” Waving his arm over his head, he spurred his horse forward.
I followed, the two of us drawing ahead of the army along with another officer, Bey Ishak’s aide, who was also mounted. At a canter, we wound around the next hill very shortly, setting eyes on the city. In the distance, beyond the city, I could see the column of smoke that marked the position of the steamship, a slanted column indicating movement and maneuver.
Bey Ishak slowed, squinting. “What is going on?”
“This way to see better, my lord,” I said, pointing up at the hill where I had lain. There was another crack of thunder from a bombard, and then a louder and deeper explosion two seconds later. “There is something going on in the harbor.”
Putting action to words, I was first up the hill, rejoining the bannerman and his brother, the precious spyglass put to my eye to make out what detail I could. From there, I could see the paddlewheel of the ship churning as it tried to maneuver. A trio of nimble galleys had come from somewhere, presumably the other side of the strait. The remnants of a fourth ship of some kind, less nimble, floated in scorched pieces, casualty of the greater explosion I had heard—likely its powder stores had been set alight, whether by misfortunate accident of its crew or by the work of an opposing gun or fire mage. As the bey joined me on the hill, his own spyglass clutched in one hand, one galley sent forth a volley of mortar fire from amidships, three shots leading to two explosions on the low elongated foredeck of the steamship, the third shell being either a dud or a clean miss into the water.
“Hermonassa has already sent aid.” Bey Ishak shook his head. “The Golden Empire is already in the fight. If they can land soldiers from Hermonassa, we shall be outnumbered quite badly. This could not have gone worse.”
The bannerman and his brother nodded in agreement as a flock of birds flew overhead—pigeons. I eyed them suspiciously. I did not think trained messenger pigeons would be sent in a great flock together, but I was ready to practice my authority. “Bannerman, did I not tell you to watch for birds?”
The bannerman looked over at the retreating flock, then loosed an arrow in their direction. It flew in a high curved arc, passing some twenty or thirty yards beneath the flock as it dropped. “My apologies, young lord,” he said, nodding deeply to me and then the bey in a gesture that might have been a display of respect.
Bey Ishak ignored the exchange, his gaze instead fixed on the steamship as it moved forward in a slowly turning arc and crunched into a galley diagonally. A pair of men on the steamship’s deck maneuvered a thin tube around on its prow-mounted swivel, directing liquid fire down at the wrecked vessel below to deter boarders. Liquid fire was a secret alchemical art made famous by the Greeks that now, along with Constantinople, belonged to the Sultanate. Then a man standing in the forecastle of one of the other two galleys flared with brilliant light, a line that connected him and a copper tank connected to the distant fire tube, ending in a fiery explosion of the reservoir of the fire projector.
Thus, the steamship’s nose was on fire as its paddlewheel began to churn in the opposite direction, its battery of bombards firing in an irregular sequence. One of the galleys shuddered partway through the volley, slewing sideways as oars splintered and then starting to slowly roll due to the great hole opened in its side. The last galley turned about, opening its sails to catch the sirocco and flee north, leaving three wrecks behind and countless little bobbing dots in the water, a mixture of flotsam and swimming crewmen that was indistinguishable to me at such a distance.
The steamship, turning as best as it could, grounded itself at the end of the thin spit of land that blocked most of the southern entrance to the strait, the paddlewheel coming to an abrupt halt as it stuck into mud or sand. The sudden shock had the effect of sending flaming debris sliding up the foredeck and then back down as the ship’s rear end had become elevated. From the vigorous thrashing movements seen within the fire as it danced upon the water, there must have been still-living crewmen entangled with the mess of debris and liquid fire that had been swept off the prow.
A set of three little dots in a triangular formation broke the surface of the Axine Sea just south of the strait, then began moving rapidly north before submerging below the surface. A large mottled shadow like that of a great school of fish followed behind in the bright shallow waters of the strait. Not for the first time, I wished I had an eagle’s eyes to see more clearly what was taking place so far away—even with a spyglass in hand, men were little more than dots.
Razor's Edge is a professional-grade work that has just launched, and I think some of you will like it. The first 20,000 words are up & there's a pretty solid guarantee of continued posting after.
