The fighting was brutal. Stefan and his Kurdish troopers were in the thick of the combat, slashing and parrying, slashing and parrying, the motion of their sword arms dogged and automatic, their bodies numb to any sensation save the drive to survive. Sweat streamed down their faces despite the frigid temperatures, their bodies pumping adrenaline in a frantic effort to thwart death, their minds concentrated with focused intensity only on stopping the next fatal blow… and the next… and the next.
They fought mechanically without thought, by instinct alone, their skill a fusion of courage and tactic so ingrained the question of breeding or training was moot. They fought for two hours on the parapets and parade ground and paved squares of a fortress the English and Prussians had guaranteed invincible. They fought while the sky turned a dull gray and the stars lost their brilliance.
Stefan's uniform was no longer distinguishable as white; it was bloodstained and torn from numerous wounds, the worst a saber cut on his right shoulder that had cut clear to the bone. He was fighting now with his left hand. Cleo's reins were wrapped around the saddle pommel, for his right arm was useless even for the light guidance his trained mount might need. Cleo was lathered and foaming, her black coat sleek with moisture. Haci and his men, sword and dagger in hand, marshaled around Stefan, committed to protecting him with their lives. Twice in the past hour Stefan had sent for reinforcements, but in the melee of battle there was no guarantee his dispatches had gotten through and his position was becoming untenable.
With a feeling of unease, Stefan heard the ominous drumbeats of another Turkish attack, the rapid staccato rhythm signaling another sortie. His men heard it too, and knew the sound to be a warning of disaster. Even if Stefan's call for reinforcements had reached their base camp, the ascent up the side of the glacis was so precipitous that troops couldn't be brought up with the same speed as Mukhtar Pasha's attack force, and after hours of fighting, Stefan's remaining men were exhausted, low on ammunition and grimly aware the next Turkish assault could be mortal.
Calling on his last reserves of strength, reaching down beyond his pain and fatigue to an inner strength that had carried him through countless campaigns in the past when the odds were as slim or worse, Stefan shouted to the men, his voice hoarse and raspy, and rode toward the advancing Turks pouring over the entrenchment. They had to stop this attack or all would be lost; he had to rally his men or the hours of fighting would be in vain; he couldn't allow this Turkish counteroffensive to succeed or all the lives lost would have been useless.
Raising his sword high, he spoke to Cleo, nudging her forward with his knees. With her own valiant spirit undiminished, she broke into a trot.
The Turkish rifles ripped into his first line, his bodyguard began to fall, and a moment later Stefan's forward cavalry was fully engaged, the infantry short yards behind. They fought like men with their backs against the wall, knowing there were no options short of death. Soon the ground was slippery with blood, strewn with the dead and dying.
When Haci fell, Stefan saw him go down in the extreme border of his peripheral vision and, shouting for help, jumped from Cleo to go to his aid. The remaining seven of Stefan's guard followed him, and standing back-to-back against the Turks, they protected Haci with their bodies. The waves of Turks seemed unending as Stefan and his bodyguard stood in a circle on the paving stones laid in an intricate variation of a herringbone pattern. They kept coming while daylight rimmed the horizon; they kept coming while Stefan and his Kurds stood unflinching; they kept coming as Turkish bodies piled up in heaps around the phalanx protecting Haci, Stefan's men firing their revolvers in relays like a well-choreographed ballet of death.
But their own casualties mounted, too, against the expensive modern Peabody-Martini rifles the Ottoman Empire had purchased from America, and at last only three of the phalanx remained standing, and then, ten bloody minutes later, none were left…
The battle washed over their bodies in the muted light of dawn, as though their gallant stand had never existed, as though their human lives were no more than a flicker of an eye in the cosmic universe, as though the heir to the Bariatinsky-Orbeliani fortune and honor were a grain of sand on an ocean shore and the battle for Kars a vast tidal wave.
The Tsar's soldiers came up at last as color brightened the sky in numbers sufficient to force a Turkish retreat, but the Turks fought like demons, street to street, house to house, to the very end. Kars was their most important stronghold, the Sultan had poured a fortune into its defenses, and their generals and ruler and religion offered them paradise if they died in its defense. So they died instead of surrendering; they stood and fought at each corner and barricade; the citadel was emptied of defenders, the auxiliary forts and trenches were emptied, and hour after hour the Turks fought until at last it was over.
As the autumn sun shone feebly from its midpoint, a silence began to gather, a silence of dead men and victory, a silence of exhaustion and weary triumph, a silence of Turkish defeat and hesitant Russian hope. The Russian cries began sporadically then, small rejoicing hurrahs from parched throats, exhalations of personal good fortune from men too tired to shout, smiles exchanged with adjacent comrades-in-arms. They had won, they began to realize. The Tsar's army had gained the impregnable, the unconquerable citadel of Islam and its defenders were vanquished. Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah!
But only minutes after the roars of victory rose into the chill air, the shouting triumph died away and a still and utter quiet fell over the Russian army. Rumor spread like wildfire through the ranks, the awful news greeted everywhere with breath-stopping despair. The White General, the Field Marshal's admirable son, the Tsar's favorite young general was dead. After the barricades into the city had been breached by his single-handed effort, he'd been slaughtered in an assault of superior numbers, his faithful Kurds fighting with him to the death. Before he could claim victory for having defeated the Sultan's army of the east, he'd fallen.
At first they couldn't believe it. The Prince was never even wounded in battle. It wasn't true, and soon he'd appear to discount the dreadful rumors. But then the fires broke out, set off perhaps by the artillery fire, and when the munitions' dump ignited, half the western escarpment exploded into the sky. The winds picked up the red-hot ashes and the citadel was aflame in less than an hour.
When the blazing inferno was under some control a day later, the awful truth was finally accepted. Prince Bariatinsky must be dead. He might have survived the battle, but no one could have survived the explosion and the apocalyptic fire.
The Empire had paid a grievous price for its victory over the Turks. Many said it was too great; Kars wasn't worth Prince Bariatinsky's life. The Tsar was said to have cried when news of Stefan's death was telegraphed to Saint Petersburg. He shut himself away for half a day, not allowing even his dearest Catherine to breach his solitude, and when he emerged, his courtiers thought he'd aged ten years.
An hour later the church bells began their sorrowful dirge, from Saint Petersburg to Baku, from Odessa to the emptiness of the Siberian tundra. Throughout the Empire of the Tsar, Stefan Bariatinsky's death was mourned.
Lisaveta went pale when she heard the mourning bells begin to ring, their pealing measured dirge carried on the twilight air up from the valley below, from the thirty-odd churches and bell towers, like a personal message of disaster. Without reason or thought, without need for clarification-for Stefan himself had sensed what lay ahead-she knew… before the Viceroy came. She knew for whom the bells tolled, as though their mournful clamor were directed toward the white marble palace overlooking Tiflis. He's dead…clang, clang, they rang. The Prince is dead…clang, clang. The Prince is dead and dead and dead, clang, clang.