Empire of Lies

64

They passed the cathedral, which was lit up by torches and thronged with people, more of whom were arriving from all directions—haggard, bone-thin survivors, shuffling along slowly, hanging on to each other, flinching with each new explosion that shattered the night around them.

“All the churches are full, every night. They all come to pray for salvation,” Kolschitzky told them. “So far, their prayers haven’t been answered.”

“Let’s help change that,” Kamal told him.

Kolschitzky nodded grudgingly and they kept going, staying close to the walls, moving with purpose to detract attention.

They reached a recessed doorway, where the Pole gestured for them to take a pause. Kamal scanned his surroundings to get his bearings. He drew on what he’d read about the siege and tried to visualize the maps he’d studied.

The weakest points in the city’s perimeter were the two areas where the river ran close to the walls. One was the eastern flank, the area around Vienna’s port and the Leopoldstadt island, where a small channel of the Danube ran parallel to the walls and led to quays. The other was the southwestern edge of the city, where the Wien River snaked down from the highlands of the Vienna Woods to join the Danube. Both areas had weaker, older fortifications that were also less heavily defended, since they were harder to attack given the presence of water, which made tunneling impossible and carried a risk of flash floods and entrapment.

Kolschitzky seemed to have made the right choice. They were moving east, and, given that their objective was to get to Stetteldorf Castle, which was northwest of the city, the eastern walls made sense. The bulk of the Ottoman camp and the crescent of densely forested hills of the Vienna Woods beyond it ringed the west side of the city. Going out from the east would be safer, even if it did mean a slightly longer route, but Stetteldorf wasn’t that far, anyway. Besides, having just jumped back a day, they had gained more time to get there. Avoiding the massive camp didn’t mean they would be clear of enemy troops: Ottoman irregular troops, their Hungarian allies, and hordes of Tartar raiders all roamed the forests and meadows on the north bank of the river.

Kolschitzky explained his logic to them; then he bent down and rubbed his hand in the grime that lay on the threshold of the doorway.

“What are you doing?” Kamal asked.

“Do as I do.” He smeared his face with the grime, making it unrecognizable.

Kamal and Nisreen did as he directed. Then they all set off, moving on at a fast trot through the dark, narrow canyons that made up the old city.

A plump moon hung overhead, occasionally hindered by some passing clouds. It smiled down on them when it flared up to light their way before shrinking back to turn the landscape into a desolate, dark netherworld. They crossed a few more of the city’s worn-out survivors, and their pace and air of purpose allowed them to get away with no more than a passing nod or salutary wave. As they neared the eastern edge of the city, the sound of battle and bombardment farther west receded slightly, and it wasn’t long before they saw the silhouette of the walls looming up ahead.

They sheltered in the shadows across from the walls and watched.

“Why are we hiding?” Nisreen asked. “Surely they know you?”

“Fewer people than you think. The fewer people who know what I’m doing, the better.”

That side of the city was defended by two smaller bastions, the Gonzaga and the Little Gonzaga, which was also known as the Spike. Between the two was an old fortified wall with a new palisade fronting it. Huddles of armed men, some in uniform and others in civilian clothing, were scattered around the base of the walls. Some were asleep, while others were just sitting there, waiting for the next assault. A few men were up on the ramparts, a skeleton crew of marksmen, gunnery crews, and musketeers on watch.

They needed the moon that had helped them navigate the city to cloak itself. When it was out from behind the clouds, the stairs going up to the walls were too visible to allow them to sneak up unnoticed. The light did help them locate one thing they desperately needed: rope. Kolschitzky saw a bundle of it lying on the ground in front of one of the buildings that faced the wall, dumped with a mess of crates and other rubbish. The mound would also serve as cover to get closer to the base of the stairs.

They waited until the moon slid back behind a cloud. Then they hurried across the open ground and ducked behind the crates. The moon peeked out again, and Kolschitzky checked the rope. He found a length long enough and rolled it over his shoulder, fastening it behind his belt. Then they waited again.

The moon was being stubbornly exhibitionist, but then a loud scream cut through the air, startling Kamal and Nisreen. They huddled closer to the crates and looked up at the sky, where the sound was coming from. A signal rocket streaked up into the night from the tower of the cathedral, rising high above the city before exploding in bright white flashes. Two more followed. The Viennese were firing their nightly distress signals, desperately hoping a relief army was out there, praying they’d get a signal back.

Kamal and Nisreen looked at Kolschitzky. He hadn’t been surprised—he knew the flares would be fired. Kamal and Nisreen knew that no response would be coming, but the rockets helped in another way. The men flanking the fortifications and up on the walls all stood up, waving their hats and yelling, their attention riveted on the flares.

“There’s never an answer,” Kolschitzky said, his tone and eyes heavy with suspicion.

“They’re still too far,” Kamal replied. “But we’re going to make sure they get here.”

Kolschitzky studied him for a beat; then he said, “Let’s go.”

They scurried across the open ground. Kolschitzky joined in the gestures and whoops all around him, which Kamal mimicked as they reached the stairs. A couple of men were climbing up ahead of them, rushing to get a front-row seat to the hoped-for response. The three followed them up, Nisreen making sure that she kept her hat well down to cover her face.

They reached the top of the rampart and slipped away from the others, making their way furtively along the wall-walk until they were on a stretch of wall that was unmanned. Moving fast, Kolschitzky climbed onto the firing step and peered out, then waved them over.

Through the wall of tree trunks that made up the palisade, they could see the curved contour of the Danube below, now almost completely dried out after a particularly hot summer. Beyond that was a forbidding darkness, only broken up by the faint glow of scattered campfires from the Ottoman batteries and platoons of janissaries lurking behind large earth emplacements, waiting for an order to attack.

Right now, all was calm. And the moon was about to pull another disappearing act.

Kolschitzky unfurled the rope. He tied one end to a brass spike embedded in the face of the parapet, then, making sure no one was watching, he flung the bundle over the edge of the wall.

One last check of the moon and the watch confirmed they were good to go.

“Stay close,” he told them.

He was about to clamber up onto the merlon when a sharp yell rang out from the darkness to their left, from the opposite side to where they’d come.

Kolschitzky crouched down and spun around defensively. Three men appeared out of the darkness, trotting toward them. They had their muskets leveled at them.

“Don’t say a word,” Kolschitzky said to Kamal and Nisreen in a low voice, taking a step forward to keep them behind him. “I’ll handle this.”

The men halted a few paces away from them.

The leader of the Viennese musketeers fired off a couple of questions at Kolschitzky while eyeing the three of them suspiciously and gesturing with the barrel of his musket. The Pole replied calmly, but his tone was clearly firm. Another heated exchange followed, and although Kamal and Nisreen couldn’t understand that either, it was clear from the body language all around that it wasn’t friendly.

Their tones rose; then the leader of the patrol turned his attention to Nisreen and asked more questions. Kolschitzky’s reply didn’t seem to satisfy him, and the man stepped forward for a closer look at her. Which was when Kolschitzky sprang into action, pulling out his yataghan while grabbing the man in an unexpected lightning-fast move.

He held his blade against the man’s throat and spoke in a sharp, cutting rasp, giving them what was clearly an enraged dressing-down. Kamal heard him say “Starhemberg” a couple of times; then Kolschitzky ended with some final words that sounded like a firm question, which he repeated twice.

The other two musketeers hesitated, then nodded their acceptance grudgingly.

Kolschitzky muttered a few words, then he flung his prisoner off him. The Pole tucked his blade away and shooed them off with a dismissive gesture. The men gave him a short bow, then receded back into the darkness, their leader giving Kolschitzky one last resentful glance before turning away.

“What was that all about?” Kamal asked.

“Desperation,” Kolschitzky said. “Never mind. Let’s get going.”

He looked up at the sky, made sure the moon was cooperating, and led them onto the merlon.

They used the rope to clamber down the scarp to the ditch. At the bottom, they crouched defensively, scanning their surroundings, making sure they hadn’t been spotted. Everything was calm. Kolschitzky gestured for them to follow him. Then he sprinted across the open ground, skirting the deep craters of the Austrian grenadiers’ bombs to reach the opposite wall—the counterscarp.

It looked like a forbidding climb, but two things helped. It wasn’t vertical, and it was made of brick, which gave them toeholds and handholds. At the top, they darted over the covered way to reach the palisade. Only the thick, sharpened tree trunks hammered deep into the ground now stood between them and Ottoman-controlled territory.

“I hope this isn’t a monumental mistake on my part,” Kolschitzky said, the doubt still clouding his expression.

“Let’s save Vienna first,” Kamal replied. “Then you can decide if it was a mistake or not.” He held out his hand to Kolschitzky. The Pole hesitated for a moment, then took it and shook it firmly.

Kamal turned to Nisreen. “Ready?”

“Would it change anything if I said no?” Nisreen replied.

Kolschitzky managed a smile—then he took one last look through the gap, saw nothing to cause him alarm, and moved ahead.

The palisade was no obstacle. It wasn’t a solid, continuous wall. The trunks were spaced apart widely enough to allow one person to slip through sideways, but they were tight enough to block an attacking horde from storming through. Once across, there was nothing but open ground leading to the canal, which they quickly reached.

The canal had been reduced to a stream that was probably no more than waist-deep at most.

“We’ll follow the canal bed up to the main stream of the river,” he told them.

Staying crouched, they scuttled along the bed of the canal, staying clear of the water to avoid making any splashing noise. The ground under them was muddy, which made their progress a bit slower, but they were safer there than on open ground. When the moon emerged, they hugged the bank and waited, wary of the Ottoman positions close by. Small campfires were dotted across the charred ruins of the grand villas and orchards of Leopoldstadt, the wealthy suburbs that Starhemberg had ordered destroyed before the siege to prevent the enemy from using them for cover.

It was still night when they reached the main body of the Danube. The river ran north, then it dog-legged left and ran west, toward Tulln and Stetteldorf. They would need to cross it at some point, since the castle was on its north bank. Kolschitzky felt it would be wiser to get the crossing out of the way here, since the water was low enough to wade across. Any rain far away upstream could change things unexpectedly.

And so they waded across, slowly, close to each other. The muddy water felt strangely invigorating and uplifting to Kamal and Nisreen after the ordeal of being trapped in the besieged city. Once across, they lay down on the bank, soaked, their breaths coming in short and fast as they stared up at the night sky.

After a long silence, a slow growl unfurled itself from Nisreen’s stomach.

“Someone’s hungry,” Kamal said.

“When was the last time we ate?” she asked.

“A couple hundred years ago?” he replied.

Nisreen let out a small chortle and glanced over at Kolschitzky, who looked puzzled by Kamal’s answer.

“I’m afraid it might be a while before you eat again,” he told her. “The castle is a day’s walk away.”

“I’ll manage,” Nisreen said.

Kamal turned to Kolschitzky. “How many times have you done this?”

“Too many,” the Pole replied.

Kamal took in a deep breath. “Hopefully, this will be the last time.”

He noticed Kolschitzky studying him; then the Pole said, “I think you owe me an explanation about what brought us here.”

Kamal pondered his question, debating what to say.

The Pole had led them out of the city safely. They were on their way to Stetteldorf. They did owe him an explanation. Or at least a semblance of one. And even though he was exhausted and wary of the dangers still lurking around them, Kamal had to oblige.

He gave him the answers he needed to hear, the same ones he’d given him before—or rather, the ones he gave him when he and Nisreen were tied to each other in the basement storeroom, in a different tomorrow, one that now wouldn’t happen. A short version about his being part of the sultan’s secret detachment, out for revenge over his brother’s killing. It wasn’t the whole truth, but, as before, Kamal hoped that it was enough to convince him that they were on the same side.

By the end of it, not even the pale glow of the moon could disguise the fact that Kolschitzky didn’t look entirely convinced.

“Why do I sense there’s a lot more to your story?” he asked.

“Let’s see this through,” Kamal replied in an even tone. “We’ll have more time to talk later.”

Kolschitzky studied Kamal, then nodded and stared up again.

Kamal glanced at Nisreen. She was on her back beside him, lost in her own thoughts.

He decided not to intrude.

Instead, all three of them took a moment to themselves and allowed the silence back in, even though it was a breeding ground for their fears about what lay ahead.

They knew they had to keep moving. Before daylight came, they needed to put as much distance as they could between themselves and the Ottoman camp that ringed the city.

Stetteldorf Castle, and the commanders of the army of Christendom, were only twenty miles away. And their appointment with death was ticking closer with every passing second.