A few women and old men returning from market spotted them and were already whispering among themselves, gesturing and, so far at least, only vaguely pointing in their direction. Boys saw them, watched silently, their faces expressionless. Dogs barked. “It better be good,” Mills said into his hand as if he were coughing.
“Trust me,” Bufesqueu said.
“Sure,” Mills said, out of sight now of the Janissaries on the battlements but still closely scrutinized by Bufesqueu.
“When I give the word,” Bufesqueu said.
“Sure,” Mills said, “the word.” (And thought: The word will be Mills. Hey, everybody, here’s George Mills that you heard so much about. Come and get it!)
“Just watch me,” Bufesqueu said. “When I give the signal.”
“When you drop the handkerchief?” Mills said.
Bufesqueu glanced at him out of the corner of his eye. “Just watch me,” he said.
They might have been strolling in the park, Bufesqueu slowing his pace and Mills slackening his own in order not to get out in front of him, when Bufesqueu suddenly began to run full out, shouting as he came. “Blitzpounce!” he shouted. “Thrustrush! Raid-grapple!” They were Janissary commands for attack and Bufesqueu was yelling them at the top of his lungs. “Flakshoot!” he screamed. “Swipeslam! Flailshove! Harrywaste!”
The people divided before them and Mills fell in beside his friend, matching him stride for stride. Bufesqueu continued to shout. “Sallystorm! Knockstrike!” he shouted.
“Chargepelt!” Mills joined in. “Lungehavoc! Siegescorch!”
Now the crowd was taking actual flight, disappearing into passageways, alleyways, niches, hiding in the bays and cubbyholes of architecture like matadors behind the barriers in bullrings.
Leaving Bufesqueu the final word. “Charge, men!” he roared so passionately even Mills looked around to see if they were not the vanguard of a full-fledged invasion.
The trouble was it was a city, that as they cleared one street their sheer noise attracted new groups in the next. The good part was the new groups saw the old ones disperse, and, when the pair was close enough for their war cries to be distinguished, they’d already gotten the message and begun to scatter. There wasn’t a soul in the streets who hadn’t himself either been beaten by a Janissary or known or heard about someone who had. Beaten or killed, beaten and killed. So what worked in their favor was history, time’s and memory’s bad press.
And they looked as they advanced like engines of destruction, like some great avenging avalanche of trouble and death, some spilled Vesuvius of molten bad news and worse intentions. Guzo Sanbanna himself was a witness that day and later admitted that it seemed to him that nothing, no one, could have stopped them. “I ran myself,” Guzo would say, “with one thought for my life and another for my profits!”
The trouble was they were only human first and Janissaries second. That the spirit was willing but the flesh was an old story. That charges like theirs, even with the adrenalin flowing like a chemical bonanza, could not be maintained. Already Mills was winded, already Bufesqueu was. The good part was traffic was already beginning to back up, that, seeing the townspeople scatter, lunging recklessly in front of the rearing nags, drivers and passengers alike called from their carriages to the fleeing crowds. Mills could hear them. And the isolated replies of brave men: “An attack,” they called back over their shoulders as they fled. “Janissaries,” they shouted, “the entire force.” “Janissaries, including that legion recalled from Africa.” “Janissaries!” they cried. “Janissaries on a rampage! They’ve overturned their soup kettles in the square!” “I heard someone say that Mills himself is leading the charge!”
So what they had going for them was rumor, rumor and panic and the prepped fear which greased them, which perspired imaginations all round — so alarmed were the Constantinopolans that out of some inspired sense of emergency the news was passed instantly from neighbor to neighbor, leaping neighborhoods, entire arrondissements and administrative quadrants of the city, flashed across the Bosporus from Europe to Asia so that they already knew at Yildiz Palace — and caused what had only been a traffic jam to become a sort of evacuation.
The trouble was they were exhausted. For two blocks now they had ceased their war cries altogether and for once they had seemed, had anyone troubled to look, more the pursued than the pursuers. For half a block — Mills had pulled up first — they had stopped running entirely. Winded, they leaned up against a shop window and vomited. The clerks and people who’d run inside to escape might have captured and killed them easily but their sudden appearance on the other side of the glass had only served to startle and frighten them further. Perhaps they thought that the vomit and spew which issued so violently from their stomachs and throats was only a sort of Janissary way of spitting. At any rate, no one thought to investigate when Mills and Bufesqueu pulled away from the window and staggered on a few steps. “What — what,” Mills panted through the foul bile that burned his throat, “do we — do we do now?” And Bufesqueu, who did not have the strength to reply, pointed vaguely toward the road.
Where doors hung ajar on abandoned carriages and the driverless horses that pulled them backed and filled or turned halfway round in the street to stare into the faces of other horses, milling about, or frozen in maneuvers — they seemed more burdened now that their drivers and passengers had quit them, hobbled by their loose reins like so many leathery trip wires and the dead weight of their vehicles — which gave them the actual appearance of loiterers.
Mills understood at once. Thinking: Here’s something I can do. Here’s something I can do if I can still do it. “All right,” he told Bufesqueu, indicating the Overland, “go on, get in.”
But Bufesqueu pulled the shades and slammed the carriage doors shut and climbed up to sit beside Mills on the driver’s bench.
“Great,” George said. “Two Janissaries. Now we make twice as big a target.”
“Someone who knows the city has to tell you where to go. I pulled the shades.”
“Fine,” George Mills said. “Now the sun won’t fade the upholstery.”
“I pulled the shades,” he repeated. “They’ll think we’re carrying God knows who. The Soup Man himself probably. Turn left,” Bufesqueu said. “Make a right at that mosque.”
No one stopped them. No one interfered. Everyone had heard of the invasion and thought that the two Janissaries topside the Overland with its tightly drawn shades drove God knew who, the Soup Man himself probably.
Bufesqueu directed Mills past the logjam of vehicles and into the broader avenues. He told him which turn-off to take in traffic circles, guided him into narrow lanes that widened into grand boulevards. Mills was actually beginning to enjoy the ride when Bufesqueu instructed him to pull up before a thick wrought-iron gate surrounded on all sides by a high stone wall. “All right,” he said. “You can stop now. We’re there.”
Mills did not yet know that it was the harem of Yildiz Palace.
Guards were there to challenge them. They stared at the Janissaries’ uniforms.
“You girls want something?” one said, leveling his rifle at them.
“Hey you,” Bufesqueu said, “watch your language. All we ever did was swear off. We never took no low shave like the rest of you capons.” Mills poked Bufesqueu with his elbow.