By the fourth day, the battery at Blachernae had opened a small breach high in the wall left of the Anemas Prison. The gun nearest Constantine fired first, slamming back against its chocks as the axle groaned, while smoke rolled low across the slope and the crew heaved it into line again. The shot struck under a broken stretch of parapet and burst white chips from the outer face; for a moment men showed on the wall behind the damaged crest, then dropped out of sight. The tower beside it had already lost part of its crown.
Andreas watched with his hands behind his back. Mud had dried on his boots in plates. "It's weaker than the center, and it's starting to show," he said. "Still strong for our guns, but it's taking damage. Another few days and we might have a usable breach."
"And the Mesoteichion?" Constantine asked.
"Less luck. Those walls are monstrous. We'd need heavier pieces for a true breach." Andreas spat into the grass and looked south. "But if we keep it loud, Halil keeps men there."
Constantine looked toward the low ground of the Lycus. "That'll do. We just need Halil thinking the center matters. Fill the ditch, show ladders, keep his eyes south."
Andreas nodded. "Laskaris sent word from Galata. He has most of the wooden towers mounted on the ships. Another day or two and he'll be ready."
Constantine looked back at the wall as a fresh hit knocked coping loose and sent it bouncing down the outer face. "Then we strike in three places," he said. "At the Mesoteichion, here, and at Petrion. It'll have to be enough."
"It's a gamble," Andreas said. "Three at once, we might break in. It'll be costly. If they fail, we won't have the powder or the men for another try, and the siege won't hold."
Below them, the crews worked through smoke and shouted counts, hauling fresh stone on sledges because wheels sank in the cut ground. Constantine watched the damaged stretch by the Anemas side. "That is where we are already," he said. "Once Laskaris is ready, we go in."
Laskaris's next message came the following evening, and orders went through the camp before dark. Powder was counted again and redistributed. Ladder parties were called by name. Hooks were wrapped in cloth, lashings tightened with mallets, and pavises and heavy mantlets were pushed forward in the dark with rawhide bound over the iron.
After midnight, Grgur sent up the picked Serbs from the southern camp. They came north on foot, cloaks over armor, and an officer marked a chalk cross on the back rim of each chosen helmet so the files could be recognized in smoke. Men sat on bundled fascines, chewed bread and onions, and checked straps by touch. By the time the sky turned from black to thin iron grey, the center guns had been loaded in the dark, and the whole line was waiting for the first shot.
The center opened first. The Mesoteichion battery fired in a rolling line, close enough that the sound overlapped and stayed in the valley. Smoke spread under St. Romanos and along the Charisius line. Large mantlets went forward on wheels, men straining at the poles while arrows began to fall around them, with pavises close behind and the pyrveloi of two tagmata moving up under their cover.
They fired from behind the cover in pulses. One rank discharged and stepped back to reload while the next came forward and fired in its place. Behind them, ladder parties of Bulgarians and Roman infantry came on with the ladders flat on their shoulders and brush bundles dragging at their knees. From Constantine's rise north of the Lykos, the assault looked convincing enough: smoke in the valley, mantlets edging forward, ladders coming on through the filled ditch. Even with the guns covering them and the pyrveloi firing in volleys, men in the ladder parties were beginning to fall as arrows thickened from the wall.
The northern battery fired harder before the center smoke had drifted clear. At Blachernae the ground was tighter, the slope worse, and the wall closer and more broken. Those guns had been hauled into ugly places over six days, with planks under the wheels and ropes on the trails in case a carriage slipped. Now they struck the same damaged stretch again and again: the broken parapet left of the Anemas side, the wall beneath it, and the battered tower to the right. Stone burst outward, and fresh timber showed where the masonry had opened. Every time the heavier pieces landed close, the wall-walk emptied.
"Forward, Ieros Skopos!" Andreas said.
Mantlets went up the slope first. Men shoved them from behind with shoulders set and heads turned from the arrows. Pavise men followed close behind, giving the gunners room to lean out, shoot, and duck back. The picked Serbs came after, ladder parties in files, their armor knocking softly under cloaks as they climbed. Each man knew which section and which officer he followed. Constantine had told Grgur not to lead the assault in person, but he had refused and come north for this. He was there now, near the second ladder file, sword drawn, shoulder to shoulder with his men.
When the Serbs reached the foot of the wall, arrows came down from the broken crest and the tower alike. A stone smashed the end off one ladder before it could be raised. Another went up, slid on broken masonry, and came back with three men under it in the mud. A third caught under the lip of the cracked parapet. Men hit the rungs at once. The first two were shot before they reached the top. The third got an arm over the edge and vanished into dust and shouting.
Pyrveloi fired upward from behind pavises set close to the wall. Their shots chipped stone and drove defenders off for breaths at a time. Those breaths were enough for more ladders to go up. One ladder on the left was shoved away with hooked poles and came down sideways. Another held. Then another. The footing was bad, the wall split and dirty with fresh breaks, but there were places now where a climber could reach rubble and broken crest instead of smooth stone.
Captain Aristos moved along the forward line with two aides and a file of reserves behind him. He dragged one pavise half a pace to clear the next gun lane, then sent up more hooks with his own hands when a Serb officer shouted for them.
A knot of Serbians reached the parapet together at last, not over a clean breach but over two ladders whose tops had bitten into shattered stone. They gained no more than a foothold, crowded shoulder to shoulder on the broken edge, hacking and shoving while arrows from the tower came in almost level with them. One was shoved backward and fell onto the ladder below. Another got both feet onto the crest and drove far enough for three more to follow. Constantine watched the broken crest fill and empty again, and sent word back to Andreas to feed the next file in.
In the Horn, Laskaris stood on Katarina's quarterdeck and watched the formation close on Petrion Gate. He had crossed himself before dawn with two fingers and no witness but the pilot and the helmsman. Since then, his eyes had kept moving: ship spacing, current, the two tower-ships nearest Katarina, then the other pair behind them, then the supporting galleys packed with pyrveloi. Ahead, Petrion's wall and towers ran low over the water.
The wooden towers were ugly, makeshift things. Fresh timber had been bolted and braced atop merchant hulls that had never been built for this work. Wet hides hung from the outer faces. Gangways lay nested inside, ropes coiled and pegged, hooks wrapped in cloth.
"Hold them," Laskaris said when the first arrows began to fall short in the water.
He waited until a shaft clattered off a gunport shutter, then said, "Open." Katarina fired first. The deck kicked under his boots. Smoke burst from the sideports in a white sheet. Across the water, stone burst from the nearer Petrion tower and the parapet below it. Kyreneia fired a breath later into the gate sector. Men on the wall vanished into dust and splinters.
"Again."
The second broadside came faster. This time Laskaris saw one defender pitched clear from the parapet. The supporting galleys were in range now as well. Their pyrveloi snapped in strings whenever the dust cleared enough to show a head or shoulder. That was all he wanted from the first minutes: stun them, blind them, make them duck while the tower-ships came in.
The first two merchant hulls went straight in and struck close under the wall. The third did not. Its anchor line fouled under the bow at the last moment, and the current slewed it half broadside before the helmsman could correct. Men shouted from three decks at once. The fourth overshot its mark as arrows thickened over the water.
"Take her stern," Laskaris said.
A support galley went in at once. Her oars backed on one side and pulled on the other, and she struck the merchantman's quarter hard enough to throw men to their knees. A line went across, and the smaller galley hauled. The fouled line finally parted, and the merchantman came round again toward the wall with one of her side-frames scraping stone.
When the first hull struck and held against the Petrion line, the sound ran across the water like a mallet on a door. Men heaved on the gangway ropes. The bridge tipped out, dropped, bounced once on stone, then settled against the parapet edge just under the tower walk. The second ship got hers out a breath later. On the third, after all the shouting, the bridge fell short and had to be dragged back in for another try.
The first assault men went across in full steel. They were slow at the first stride, then quick over the bridge once they had it under them. One man went over the side at once and vanished between hull and wall. Two more reached the far end and were into the tower base before the defenders had recovered. Behind them came more, then more. Supporting galleys astern, packed with pyrveloi, fired upward to cover the mouths of the bridges, and from Katarina the guns kept firing on the adjacent parapet.
At the Mesoteichion the guns still roared, and the filled ditch was choked with broken mantlets, fascines, and men who had gone down carrying ladders. From the low wall along the edge of the filled ditch, pyrveloi were now firing up at the wall. Despite the heavy losses, Kallistos kept the assault going in waves.
At Blachernae the broken parapet had become a killing place, narrow enough that no one held it for long. One Serb file got across and pushed ten paces in before the Ottomans shoved them back into the gap. Another ladder party came up under pyrveloi smoke and took the same stretch from the other side. The wall still belonged to whoever could fill it next.
At Petrion things were going better. The tower-ships were locking in one by one. The first Romans were already off the gangways and into the first tower, securing it while a second wave moved toward the next.
Inside the city, beneath a house that smelled of damp brick, lamp smoke, and stored onions, Thomas woke to the guns at the land walls. He had been sleeping in his boots on a pallet shoved against the cellar wall. The vault above his head shook once, and dust sifted from the joints between the bricks. Then a second line of blasting rolled in from the Horn, closer and sharper, and for a moment he could not tell one from the other. This was not the day's bombardment starting again. The sound was too full, too near, and it was coming from more than one side of the siege. If they were going to move Helena, it had to be under this, while every guard in the city listened to the walls.
Helena was already stirring on the second pallet. Somewhere above them feet ran across floorboards, then a door opened and struck a wall.
Thomas got to his knees, pain tearing through the bad shoulder, and reached for her before the next gun hit and shook more dust onto the blankets.