It was full dark when Constantine's column came up the last of the road to Kalavryta. The town sat high in the mountains under its castle, and torches were burning along the wall and in the open gate, where Thomas stood waiting with half his garrison behind him.
He was out through the gate before Constantine had got down from his horse. "Brother, thank God," he said. He took Constantine by both arms and shook him, then pulled him in and held on.
"Your rider came in yesterday," he said when he let go. "I made him tell it three times, and I still didn't believe half of it. I had the bells rung anyway." He looked past Constantine down the column. "Where are they? I want to see these carts that throw thunder before I believe the rest of it."
"Come and see," Constantine said, smiling.
Thomas didn't wait for anyone to bring a torch. He went back down the column at a half run, and Constantine had to lengthen his stride to keep up with him. The carts were just coming up to the gate. Half the town had come out to see them, and the crews had to shout people back from the wheels before they could stop the teams. Thomas went along the line slapping each barrel as he passed it and counting out loud.
"Ten," he said at the last one. "Ten of them, and Turahan had six thousand horse." He put both hands on the barrel. "Is it true they jump back on their wheels when they fire?"
"Like a mule, my lord," the gun sergeant said.
Thomas laughed and slapped the barrel again.
One of his officers had come down with them, a man called Kallistos, who had sold his sword to the Venetians as a young man and spent two years in their fort on Corfu. He walked all the way round the last cart before he said anything. "They had two bombards on the sea wall at Corfu," he said. "It took a morning to load one, and in two years I never saw either of them moved." Then he asked the gun sergeant how much powder went into a charge, and how many charges they had left.
When the first of the wagons came in behind the carts, the women began handing the children down. Thomas asked who they were.
"Turahan's men took them for slaves," Constantine said. "When they ran, they left them chained in a camp on the road."
"They take a few hundred every time they come." Thomas was already looking back at the carts. "I can't feed them all, brother. Turahan's riders stripped the valley before they left. The women can work in the castle for their bread."
"Feed the rest too," Constantine said. "I'll send grain up from Glarentza to cover it."
Thomas shrugged and said his steward would see to it.
Iskandar climbed down from the last wagon by himself, with the man George had set to watch him a pace behind.
Thomas had supper laid in the hall for the officers and the archons of the town, who came up from their houses to drink to the victory. Constantine sat through the first toast and the second, then left them to it and went up to the room Thomas had given him. He had not slept since the battle.
The last thing he heard was Thomas in the hall below, telling the archons about the carts again.
Constantine slept nine hours and could have used nine more. They met in the great hall in the morning, with the supper tables pushed back against the walls and a map of the Isthmus weighted flat on the one that was left. He and Thomas sat together at its head, with Thomas's archons and officers on the benches down either side. George stood at his shoulder and Andreas by the hearth.
"My riders followed Turahan's rearguard as far as Vostitsa," Thomas said. "He is not stopping to burn anything now. He is going home the way he came, through the wall."
Someone had marked the breach on the map in charcoal, a little east of the middle. Kallistos had pulled his bench up close to it, and he still had the black on his thumb.
"He will be back," Constantine said. "Or the Sultan will come himself. Murad will not leave a defeat like this one unanswered."
"How long do we have?" Thomas asked.
"Months," Andreas said. "He'll gather more than Turahan had, and that takes a season. Next spring, I'd say, and he'll come the way Turahan did, over the Isthmus and through that wall." He looked across at the charcoal on the map. "It's six miles of it to put right before then."
"Then the wall comes first," Thomas said. "Every day it stands open is a day we give him."
"Or we press the advantage while we have it," Kallistos said. "Turahan's horses have been ridden hard for two days, Despot. If we go after him now and keep pushing, he never gets the chance to rest them or to regroup. Every man who falls behind is ours."
"He has most of his army still mounted, and we have fifty horse," Constantine said. "The men have not rested since Glarentza, and the carts could not keep up with horsemen if they left this morning. If we chase him to the Isthmus, we leave everything behind us open."
Kallistos looked at the map a moment longer and then sat back.
At the far end of the table an old archon with a white beard had not touched his cup. "Will the Sultan come so soon, Despot?" he said. "Turahan was hurt badly. A man may think twice before he sends good men after bad."
"He lost the best of his horse in front of half the Morea," Constantine said. "He will come, if only to be seen coming."
George had one voice for grain lists and bad news, and he used it now. "We should not overreach," he said. "We cannot build a wall at the Isthmus and watch Mystras at the same time. We asked the Despot Theodore for men before the battle. He did not answer, and he has sent none since."
"Nor will he," Thomas said. "Mystras cannot be relied on. We know that now. Why wait for help that will never come? We build it with what we have."
The old archon looked down the table at Constantine. "Your father repaired that wall, Despot," he said. "I paid my share for it, and eight years later Turahan rode through it in a morning. If we pay for it again out of what Turahan has left us, we will be defending a fine wall with empty hands and hungry men."
Thomas had gone red at the mention of their father, but Constantine spoke before he could. "Coffers can be filled again," he said. "A wall cannot be built once the Sultan is standing in front of it. The wall will be rebuilt. What the archons can give, I will take gladly. What they cannot, I will pay from my own purse. We leave for the Isthmus tomorrow, to see what Turahan has left of it."
The old archon looked at him for some time before he got up and came round the table with the others to find the breach on the map. Constantine decided to take that as a yes.
When the benches had emptied, Constantine kept George and Andreas back at the end of the table.
"We'll see the wall," he said, "but I don't mean to sit at the Isthmus and wait for spring. I want us ready for anything. Even moving against Theodore."
"Theodore will not come at us openly," George said. "But his actions speak volumes. If he takes advantage of our focus on the wall, Glarentza will be left vulnerable."
Constantine had managed not to think about Theodore for almost a whole day.
"Then we keep riders on the Mystras road," he said. "If he moves, we either go straight at Mystras or go back for Glarentza, wall or no wall."
"Either way, we need more men," Andreas said. "The pike blocks are thinner after the battle, and if we're to hold the wall or march on Mystras, we need more powder too. What's left in the carts is enough for one big fight, maybe two."
"Recruiting takes time we don't have," Constantine said. "Could we hire men? What the books bring in would pay for a season of them."
"Italians will fight for coin," George said, "but their loyalty is as thin as the gold we give them. There is a cheaper way. Every village in the Morea will have heard about the battle within the month. Offer the young men a wage by the year, and Andreas will have more of them than he can drill."
"I'll drill as many as you send me," Andreas said, and made it sound like a threat.
"And they'd be fighting for their own villages," Constantine said. "That's worth more than anything we could pay an Italian. Draw it up, George. What it costs, and how many we could arm. Nothing gets signed until we've seen the wall."
George made a note on his tablet. "The scholar asked my man this morning when you would see him."
"This afternoon," Constantine said.
George wrote that down as well.
* * *
That afternoon Constantine went down to the stables, where Iskandar had been given a room over the stalls. He found him sitting on the outside stair in the sun with some bread on a cloth beside him. George's man was on a bench across the yard, mending a strap.
Iskandar stood when he saw who it was. When Constantine sat down two steps below him, Iskandar sat again.
"Your man has not let me out of his sight since the road," Iskandar said. "Am I your guest or your prisoner?"
"Both," Constantine said, "until I know you better."
Iskandar looked across the yard at the man with the strap and nearly smiled.
"How do Bedreddin's followers keep his teaching alive, with the Sultan's judges looking for them?" Constantine asked.
"By word of mouth," Iskandar said. "A father teaches it to his sons, or a dervish passing through teaches a village. A little of it is written down. Most of it is only remembered."
"And if they rose again?"
"They would die again. We rose too soon, in a few towns, and the Sultan's men rode from one to the next and put us down."
"Come to Glarentza," Constantine said. "You'll have a room and paper, and nobody's judges. Write down what he taught, before the men who remember it are dead."
"And then, my lord?"
"I told you I wouldn't make you any promises."
"Then I will come for a while," Iskandar said, and picked up his bread again.
Toward evening Constantine asked the steward where the women from the road had been put, and the steward took him round to the kitchen garden himself, past the bakehouse and down a flight of steps cut in the rock. The guard who had gone everywhere with him since the ambush on the road stopped at the top of the steps.
The garden ran along the foot of the castle wall where it caught the last of the sun, beans on canes and rows of onions, with an old well at the far end. Maria was kneeling by the well with a heap of cut herbs in front of her, sorting them into two baskets. Two of the other women were weeding further down the rows, and the boy she had carried on the road was asleep in the shade of the wall with his knees drawn up.
She got up when she saw him and wiped her hands on her skirt, which did nothing for them. They were stained green to the knuckles. "Despot," she said.
In the low light she looked even more like Emily than she had on the road the day before. He hadn't gone looking for a woman since Theodora died. He was nearly sixty, whatever the mirror said, and he knew coming here was a bad idea. He couldn't help it. He'd wanted to see Emily's face again, even on another woman.
"How are they treating you?" he asked.
"Well enough. The steward's fair, and the children have eaten twice today." She glanced down the rows at the other women. "They say you leave tomorrow."
"For the Isthmus."
"Then they want to know what happens to us. Most of us have nothing to go back to. The Turks burned everything behind them."
The boy against the wall turned over in his sleep. "Whose is he?" Constantine asked.
"Nobody's now. His mother died in the camp." She looked at the boy for a moment. "He won't go to anyone but me."
He crouched down by the baskets, and after a moment she knelt again on the other side of them. He picked up a grey sprig and put it in with the green ones. She took it out again and dropped it in the other basket.
"That one's for the cooks," she said. "These are for your wounded."
"There's work in Glarentza for anyone who wants it," he said. "The town's growing faster than it can find hands."
"I've never lived in a town."
"It's noisy," he said, "and it smells of tar. You get used to both."
"I'm a peasant, Despot. I can dig and carry water, and I know herbs. That's all."
"That's enough."
She sorted three more sprigs before she answered. "Then I'll go. And the others, if they want it."
"All of you who want it. George will see to it before we leave."
He stood up. She looked up at him once with her chin up, the way she had on the road, and by the time he reached the steps she had gone back to the herbs. The steward was waiting at the top with the guard, and he was careful not to ask what the Despot had wanted in the kitchen garden.