Then the outlying ravelin over to the right was under severe attack, there was enough scaffolding in the ditch for Bektaşis to begin climbing, and more still pressed over the two bridges. With typical ruthlessness and unpredictability, half a mile behind the fray, Mustafa Pasha then sent out the order for the Turkish guns to begin pounding the unmanned south-west salient of the fort simultaneously. There were no Ottoman troops attacking there yet — and if there were, well, a few such losses would be well worth the demoralizing force of the renewed cannon fire. Let the attack come from all sides. Soon they would be exhausted. Let those crawling dogs of the Jewish Christ know there was to be no respite. Not enough for them to take a breath.
And indeed, many a knight’s head turned, with an expression of dismay, as the guns roared out and the first balls began to strike and reduce the third of Elmo’s four star points.
‘Ignore it!’ yelled Broglia. ‘Hold the cordon!’
Attacked from all sides, with the unnerving feeling that they were almost surrounded, they huddled down behind their hastily made cordons of chest-high gabions, heavyweight wickerwork baskets filled with earth, reloaded their guns and bows, and unleashed merciless volley after volley of arquebus balls and crossbow quarrels. From the remaining walls they fired down into the ditch at those who had tumbled and were trapped there, trying to scale the wall with their bare hands. It was like shooting rats in a tunnel, and there was no glory in it, except the glory of victory, and the knowledge that the Turks would count their losses heavily tonight.
From the opposite salient too, there came vicious flights of enfilading fire, and from the upper bastion in the west wall, the fort’s only commanding position, field guns began to gout flame and fire into the main body of the Turks clamouring across the ditch. Broglia had one small field gun, no higher than a man’s waist but heavy to move, dragged across to the opposite salient and loaded with grapeshot. At a single cry his men ducked down below the cordon in perfect unison, and the gun was fired across at head height.
The damage wreaked on the enemy was atrocious. Five hundred lead pellets flailed into the mass of humanity as the Bektaşis surged over the walls and packed onto the tiny rubble-strewn star point. Within half a minute, that point was so laden with the dead that others trying to come on behind were climbing over them, or shoving them back into the ditch. No need to bring up infill of wicker and bound brushwood. The ditch was already filling up with the Ottoman dead.
Nicholas kept moving, ducking, bobbing. Out in the forward trenches, the Janizary snipers were expert at picking out a man who stayed still too long, aiming in on him, and taking the killing shot in their own good time. Yet as he moved among the men of Elmo, he sensed an exhilaration of spirits. Some punched the air with their fists in between taking their shots, or shouted words of triumph. The Turks fell below like mown wheat. And the defenders were barely scathed.
They could do this. They could hold Elmo.
4
There came one more brief and testing assault, on the post of the Chevalier de Guaras, beaten back with an aggressive counter-charge by the Spanish infantrymen, packed shoulder to shoulder, pikes lowered. Then the fighting tailed off for that first day, and there looked like being no night attacks.
‘But they will come,’ said Smith. ‘For now, boys, get some food and sleep.’
With the soldiers, they squatted in the inner yard and ate quantities of bread soaked in wine, and drank as much water as they could hold down.
‘That will suffice for today,’ said one soldier. ‘But for tomorrow, I expect a fine linen tablecloth and a chair, and candlelight, and a couple of roast quail.’
‘Partridge,’ said another. ‘And dark Tempranillo.’
‘Asparagus. In butter.’
‘Ah …’
They were silent a while. Then the first said, ‘But bread and wine it is, boys. It was enough for the Saviour’s Last Supper, and it may be our Last Supper too. Good appetite.’
Prayers arose from both sides at dawn, and then the defenders hurriedly took their posts, relieving the night watch, and formed up. Where manpower permitted, they formed groups of three, with two pikemen protecting a central arquebusier while he reloaded. Broglia also positioned small squads of reserve troops to rush into any breach.
And then the very élite of the Janizaries were coming in. They wore eagle headdresses, carried bullock-hide shields decorated with verses from the Koran, saying that Paradise lay in the shade of swords, and cried out ‘Death to the Infidel!’ They howled to Allah to bring down fire and brimstone upon the unbelievers. For did not the Holy Koran say that he had prepared a place for them? A place of burning …
From the walls of Elmo, the Christians called upon Christ and the Virgin, St James, St George, St John their patron, and St Michael the warrior archangel to fight with them now.
Then the Turks made an unexpected diversion, passing by the bridges and the ditch for the rear of Elmo and the squat cavalier, which guarded the only gate of the fort. As they tried to bypass the northern walls they suffered lacerating flanking fire, and many stumbled and fell, but more ran on. Broglia sent every other man to the rear walls to destroy them.
It was a close-packed and milling confusion. Fire hoops as thick as a man’s thigh, as big as cartwheels, rolled heavily down, slow and blazing and inextinguishable, and black spouts of boiling tar. The robes of the besiegers went up well, men screaming in the midst of the crush, burning like flaring white cypress trees.
‘They burn as nicely as ashwood, these Mohammedan dogs!’ cried a soldier.
Then came volleys of grapeshot and chain shot from the guns steeply tilted on the cavalier roof, and the effect was slaughterous.
‘The more that come, the more we can kill,’ cried the soldiers.
After only a short time, the curved battle-horns of the Ottomans sounded from the heights, and the attackers fled.
A soldier whistled. The ground was strewn with the dead.
‘That,’ said Broglia, ‘was a poor decision. When they come again — unless they are being commanded by a secret sympathiser of ours — they will concentrate on crossing the ditch. A much wider front, where their numbers will tell.’
Broglia was right.
The attack on the cavalier was but a test, and results were poor. Soon the Bektaşis, not the Janizaries, were coming in again, and bring more bridging materials.
In no time at all, every man on the walls was fighting in the midst of furious incoming fire, showers of arrows, and a third bridge was waving about in the air above the Bektaşis’ heads, ready to slam down upon a central section of the wall where the attackers might dash straight across onto the unbroken parapet. Such a bridge would test them sorely, opening up a front behind them where they crammed towards the star points, so they would be truly encircled.
Then Bridier de la Gordcamp crossed himself and arose behind the parapet and turned, fully exposed to the fire of the enemy.
He walked slowly, as if in a dream. He took up a smaller fire hoop in his left hand and in his right he took tongs and he extended the hoop towards a crouched arquebusier without a word. The arquebusier held out his matchcord and Bridier touched the rim of the fire hoop to the smouldering end and the hoop sizzled and sprang into dancing flame. Then he took it in the tongs and stood high on the walls as the bridge wavered in the air before him.
Voices cried out, ‘Brother, stay down!’
But the knight was not within hearing or caring.
An arrow from a compound bow thocked into his shoulder through the chainmail with tremendous force and the fair slender knight turned a little under the force of it. Then he turned back, the arrow stuck deep there. Another clanged off his helmet. He was utterly exposed. The fire hoop burned and smoked enormously, black smoke roiling into the air around him, and through the black smoke Nicholas could still see his face, waiting patiently, his expression as serene as a painted medieval saint. The tongs themselves were heating up fast, and a few seconds later they were burning the flesh of his hand. In his dreamy determination he had not worn gauntlets or he might not have suffered, but there was no time. He waited, the bridge descending above him, and the hot metal burned into his palms as the nails had burned into the palms of Christ crucified. His brother knights watched, paralysed. It was like seeing a child stepping out before a pack of wolves.