Opening Skirmish
“Is it really all right to do this?”
“Shh, keep your voice down. If we’re caught, it won’t end with just a beating.”
For a mere soldier who had no choice but to follow the orders of those high above, such doubts were no different from poison, and his fellow soldier glanced around as he warned him with his eyes.
At the warning, the soldier lowered his voice even further.
“The place we’re fighting now is the Ottoman land where he is. I’m telling you, this is truly madness.”
It had not even been a year since they had participated in the war of succession as reinforcements, and everything remained vivid in his mind.
He had watched from beside him as the mere appearance of that man drove back Prince Ahmed’s advancing army, as he foretold an earthquake, and as he seized the capital.
Now, thinking that he would return as an enemy, it was only natural that the soldier’s eyes, gazing out at the heaving sea, should sink into fear.
“The noble lords above must have made the right decision. And we’re lucky. All we have to do is guard the harbor.”
“You’re right. This is better, at least. We’ve been spared sleeping in tents outside. And this place is safe, too.”
The harbor, where supplies were piled high, was the most important area, yet there were not that many soldiers guarding it.
That was because the forces of the Lazistan Sanjak or Erzurum, which were too few to support Trabzon but sufficient to attack Samtskhe, might launch an assault.
In preparation for attacks from those two regions, Samtskhe had deployed its soldiers forward, and the harbor, which had become relatively rearward, was assigned fewer troops.
The soldiers, who had been chatting lightly as they watched the harbor, tilted their heads at the shapes visible in the distance.
“Have the supply ships returned already?”
“There seem to be a bit too many for that.”
The shapes in the distance grew clearer, and when roughly twenty ships approached, their faces filled with bewilderment.
They were too large and too numerous to be supply ships.
The soldiers hesitated over whether they should sound the alarm, then first summoned their commander at once. Seeing the ships draw close enough that the soldiers lined up on their decks were visible, the commander shouted.
“Sound the alarm at once! It’s the enemy!”
Clang, clang, clang!
With the decks crowded with armed soldiers, the alarm was sounded, and a great commotion broke out in the harbor.
Soldiers rushing in with weapons in hand became entangled with civilians fleeing in confusion, and the ships that heard the alarm rowed even faster.
“Shoot! Loose your arrows!”
“Fire the arrows! Do not let the enemy fleet enter the harbor!”
There was no hope of using fire arrows, which had to be prepared in advance, and the archers who were ready immediately loosed their arrows.
As a rain of arrows poured down, the soldiers on the ships raised their shields, and the screams of those struck by arrows that slipped through the gaps rang out.
They inflicted damage on the enemy, but the commanders’ faces turned pale. It was nowhere near enough to stop the ships.
Crack!
—Aaaagh!
The ships, which had not slowed down all the way to the harbor, rammed into the fishing boats floating here and there, and the impact even sent several soldiers on board tumbling into the sea.
The soldiers who fell into the water were struck by the ships following behind and swept away by the surging waves, disappearing beneath the sea, but the ships’ advance did not falter.
Boom! Thud!
As the fleet docked, pushing the wreckage of shattered boats straight into the harbor, enemy soldiers poured out in droves, and the commander shrieked at the top of his lungs.
“S-stop them! Stop them even if it costs your lives!”
He cried out for a fight to the death, even cutting down soldiers who tried to flee, but the difference in numbers was already too great.
When the archers positioned on the ships poured down arrows, the harbor instantly turned into a scene of pandemonium.
As the enemy was driven back, the Circassian soldiers raised their voices and charged in.
“They are traitors! Kill them without hesitation!”
“They are enemies who betrayed the Saintess! Show them the wrath of Circassia!”
Ivan, who had been continuously shouting to urge on the soldiers, soon wore a fierce smile.
He had thought it would be enough as long as they seized the harbor, even if they suffered heavy losses, but the enemy’s response was poorer than expected.
“You betrayed us with only this much strength? Laughable.”
In the end, watching the rabble flee in a swarm after failing to hold the defensive line, Ivan burst into laughter.
It was the moment the flag of Circassia was planted in Samtskhe’s harbor.
∗ ∗ ∗
—Climb! Hurry up and climb!
“Drop the stones! Stop the enemy from daring to climb onto the walls!”
In Trabzon, the siege was unfolding fiercely.
The commander’s voice, which had shouted thousands and tens of thousands of times in a single day, had grown hoarse to an ugly rasp, and the hands of the soldiers shooting arrows were in tatters from pulling the bowstrings too much.
There was not a single soldier without even a minor wound, and when the blade of an enemy who had climbed up the wall pierced one soldier’s body, the soldier instead embraced his foe.
“Let’s die together, you bastard!”
Watching their comrade throw himself down from the wall together with the enemy, the soldiers who had been holding out clenched their teeth even harder.
They had already seen that sight so many times they could not count it on both hands, yet each time, they could not help but feel their rage surge.
It was not only the soldiers who played an active role in the siege.
It was obvious what kind of ravaging they would suffer if the city fell to the enemies charging at them in fury, and men and women, young and old alike, lent their hands to the defense.
They pulled stones from houses collapsed by trebuchets and hurled them outside the walls, poured down boiling water, prepared food for the soldiers, tended to the wounded, and thoroughly fulfilled their roles.
“Persistent bastards.”
Corpses were piling up outside the walls, yet the enemy’s momentum did not break.
It was to the point where one might suspect they intended to build a hill of corpses and climb up it.
As Arda watched the state of the battle, he asked Batur, who had become subashi in his place after he became Sanjak-bey.
“How many arrows do we currently have?”
“Thanks to the supplies we stockpiled for the war against the Safavids, we still have plenty to spare.”
“That is fortunate, at least.”
They were already outnumbered. If they had been short on arrows as well, things would have been even more suffocating.
Still, he was not without regrets.
“If only we had enough gunpowder.”
The power of guns, which could penetrate two or three men when fired at close range, had played an excellent role in stopping the enemy’s initial assault.
However, the amount of gunpowder they possessed was not great, so they had only been able to use them for about two days.
“Still, is it not fortunate that we had even that much? In any other castle, it would have been unthinkable.”
“True. If we start counting what we lack, there will be no end to it. If only we had cannons, those wild beasts would have pissed their trousers.”
“Hahaha, they were terrified by mere gunshots, so I doubt that is wrong.”
There had even been a ridiculous scene where they were so startled by the thunderous noise they heard for the first time in their lives that they tumbled off their ladders in droves.
Of course, since they were no ordinary elites, they quickly came to their senses and attacked again.
Arda, who had been forcing himself to shake off the burden built up by the siege with light jokes, gnashed his teeth as he watched the enemy supply ships leisurely pass across the sea.
“Those dog-like bastards. I’ll make sure to hurl them into hell.”
A force moving without supplies would not even dare attempt a siege and would have to focus solely on plundering.
Since they would have little to eat right away, they would have to procure it locally.
The troops that should have been wandering about like a pack of beggars in search of food were smoothly conducting a siege with Samtskhe’s help, so it would have been strange not to be furious.
His anger toward Samtskhe was even greater than his anger toward the Safavids who had led the attack.
As Arda ground his teeth over Samtskhe and vowed revenge, Batur called to his superior.
“Sanjak-bey, something seems strange.”
“What do you mean?”
Arda turned his gaze in the direction of Batur’s finger, and there was the small pier where the enemy supplies were being unloaded.
They should have been busy unloading supplies from the supply ships, yet only people were hurrying to and fro.
It was not something he could be certain of from a mere fragmentary scene, but.
“It seems something has gone wrong. Wouldn’t you say?”
“That is how it appears to me as well.”
Their gazes naturally fixed on the enemy command post.
As though they meant to eavesdrop on the conversation from that great distance.
∗ ∗ ∗
Ismail gazed at the fortress of Trabzon, where battle was still raging, with a coldly hardened face.
He had felt it when he first arrived as well, but the enemy’s resistance was fiercer than expected.
The sight of the Qizilbash, his subordinates and his family, dying one after another was by no means pleasant, and he forced his thoughts elsewhere.
“I will be busy when I return.”
Ismail fiddled with a long lump of metal.
Perhaps because it had taken an impact when it fell beneath the wall, a ruptured part was visible, but among the items brought back by his retreating subordinates, it was in the best condition.
Click, click.
When he pulled the trigger, the match portion moved up and down.
“So they were using something like this.”
After realizing that Yusuf used gunpowder, he had prepared to introduce it as well, but at most, that had meant cannons and hand cannons.
When he had asked the Venetian envoy who visited last time, the gunpowder weapons mentioned had amounted to no more than that, and the envoy had merely sung praises of their own cannons before leaving.
Yet now that he had actually suffered from it, he could not ignore the power of this small rod.
‘It is truly fortunate that the enemy had little gunpowder.’
Conversely, it meant that if he waged war against the Ottomans, he would have to prepare for this.
If an all-out war broke out, they would not be unable to use this weapon merely because they lacked gunpowder.
As Ismail was briefly lost in thought, his most trusted subordinate, Mohammad, ran up to him.
“Your Shah, there is grave trouble.”
Because Mohammad was not someone who usually made a fuss, Ismail frowned.
“What is it?”
“They say the harbor that was sending our supplies has been occupied by the Circassians.”
For the first time in a very long while, Ismail experienced his mind going blank.
Of course, it did not feel particularly good simply because it had been a long while.
“Bring Sargis here.”
“Yes, Padishah.”
Not long after Mohammad withdrew, Sargis came with a dark expression, knelt, and paid his respects.
“Sargis, tell me in detail what I have heard.”
“…I apologize, Your Shah.”
“What I wish to hear from you is not an apology, Sargis.”
Under those ominous eyes, as if they would tear him to death at any moment, Sargis opened his mouth.
“It is exactly as reported. The harbor had already been occupied, and the supply ships that approached the vicinity were attacked. And it is said that the occupying force claimed to be Circassians.”
“Ha, Circassians.”
Ismail laughed as if the very idea were absurd.
A region that couldn’t even unify itself properly, torn apart by clans—never in his dreams had he imagined it would pull something like this.
“Blaming you lot for failing to defend a single port like a bunch of cripples would be meaningless, I suppose. So what do you intend to do about supplies?”
“…I am deeply sorry, but all our supplies were gathered at that port, so for the time being…”
Thud!
As the blade stuck into the ground before his eyes, Sargis’s pupils trembled violently, and Ismail spoke in a seething voice.
“Consider yourself lucky. If you were my subordinate, this blade would be stuck in your throat, not the ground. Mohammad!”
“Yes, Shah.”
“How long can we last with the supplies we have now?”
Mohammad, having quickly calculated in his head, swiftly gave his answer.
“Even if we conserve them, ten days is the absolute limit.”
Even ten days was only possible by conserving every last scrap.
It meant they would have to fight a siege clutching their empty stomachs, and Ismail made a cold, calculated decision.
“There is no need to conserve. Feed the soldiers to their fill. From now on, we will strike day and night.”
“I shall obey your command.”
Mohammad bowed his head deeply in deference.
“I shall watch and see just how long they can hold out.”
Ismail, who had been watching Trebizond as it once again launched stones from its catapults, turned roughly on his heel.
∗ ∗ ∗
A massive fleet cut across the calm surface of the Black Sea.
Behind three large galleys, some forty galleys followed, and between them, two great carracks with double decks and the capacity to carry up to a thousand men boasted their majesty.
If one included the small sailing ships and supply vessels trailing behind, it was a fleet easily exceeding one hundred vessels.
Yusuf, looking out at the sea from atop a great carrack, spoke while forcibly suppressing his rage.
“It won’t be long now.”
Until he passed judgment on the bastards who had dared to set foot in his land without fear.
∗ ∗ ∗
Logistics are an extremely important matter in war.
War means experiencing every single day a comrade who was with you until yesterday becoming crippled or departing to Allah’s embrace, all while living in fear of when you yourself might die.
Even elite soldiers suffer stress that gnaws at their minds; if meals aren’t even provided properly, it can lead beyond insubordination all the way to open rebellion.
When Arda had first noticed that the enemy’s supplies were in trouble, he had been slightly hopeful.
Because he had thought that even the Qizilbash, famous for being elite troops, would have problems arise once they realized their logistics were cut off.
‘I underestimated my opponent.’
Arda bit his lip hard.
The enemy army, having held a grand feast as if enjoying a final supper, had since then waged siege warfare day and night with terrifying momentum.
As the fighting continued without a moment’s rest, fatigue piled thick and heavy on the faces of their own troops, who were relatively fewer in number.
But the real problem wasn’t the fatigue.
“Th-the walls are collapsing!”
Cement had done its job so well that it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to call it a gift from Allah.
Every time the fortress had been repaired, cement had played an enormous role.
However, cement was not omnipotent, and with battle raging day and night, there wasn’t even time given for it to set properly.
It was no wonder that improperly repaired walls were eventually pushed to their limit.
“There is no cause for alarm! It is only the port walls!”
Because the likelihood of enemy infiltration was low, the relatively low and weak walls on the harbor side had unfortunately collapsed, and Arda shouted loudly to the anxious soldiers.
It was a gap that would be difficult for nomads, who had lived lives far removed from swimming, to infiltrate, and the soldiers, relieved by Arda’s words, focused on the battle.
Arda, who had worked hard to soothe the soldiers’ anxiety, muttered softly.
“This isn’t good.”
“…I fear it will be difficult to hold. As the walls collapsed, the chains connected to the breakwater also came loose.”
As his subordinate Batur said, the breakwater surrounding the harbor had been linked with thick iron chains.
Since they could not escape through the port anyway, they had to at least block infiltration from it.
The problem was that, in this incident, part of the walls had collapsed, and in affecting the breakwater, the chains had sunk beneath the sea.
He was confident they could burn enemy ships blazing with fire arrows if they approached head-on, but the fact that they had one more thing to worry about was enough to make this precarious battle collapse.
Unfortunately, the ominous premonition proved true.
“Damn it! Tell the subjects to retreat to the inner citadel first!”
“Hurry and retreat! Retreat!”
The ships of Samtskhe had been lingering, diverting their forces, and part of the walls, which had reached their limit, finally collapsed.
After confirming enemy soldiers surging through the breach one after another, Arda made his decision, and the subjects who had held out until the end fled swiftly into the inner citadel.
They knew well that only by getting out of the way quickly could they reduce the soldiers’ casualties.
As the evacuation to the inner citadel, which hugged the hillside, proceeded smoothly, Arda gave a ruthless order.
“All soldiers except the delaying force are to retreat to the inner citadel.”
“…Understood.”
A soldier must obey in any situation. For there are times when sacrifice is needed for the sake of others.
With these words, the deaths of hundreds were decided, but Arda turned away coldly.
Among them were men who had been like brothers to him, not to mention his own third son, yet he must not be swept away by emotion.
For there was something he had to protect, even at the cost of his son’s life—or his own.
That day, the outer fortress of Trebizond fell.
∗ ∗ ∗
“Ah!”
Watching Hasna toddle along with a bright smile, Aisha gave a faint smile of her own.
Boom! Crash!
The thunderous roars that continued day after day, and the faintly audible screams.
Those sounds, once distant, had drawn closer than ever, and even the maidservants within the castle had left their posts to lend a hand.
Hasna, moving with unsteady steps before throwing herself into Aisha’s embrace, patted her mother’s face with her tiny hand.
“You should be ashamed. You’ve made such a young child worry. Have you not?”
At Hatis’s words, Aisha nodded.
“I have become a useless mother.”
“Ah!”
Embracing Hasna, who smiled even more brightly than usual, Aisha tickled her daughter’s cheek.
Though she felt guilty that Trebizond, once peaceful because of them, had turned into a battlefield, seeing the child’s laughter would always ease her heart.
That was precisely why making the decision was all the more difficult.
“Hatis, it may sound absurd, but just like Mehmet, Hasna is also my child.”
Hatis, sitting across from her, lightly stroked Hasna’s head at these words.
“You must still make the decision. In preparation for the worst. If you fall into the hands of those foreign enemies, there will be no turning back.”
For a Sultan, having his woman taken prisoner was a great humiliation, and there was a high possibility she would become a burden, as Tazlu had been.
Furthermore, becoming a prisoner meant her chastity would be doubted, and even if she were fortunate enough to return, this stigma would follow her for the rest of her life.
This could greatly harm her son, who held the right of succession.
“Before that happens, it would be better to take one’s own life.”
“It is not that I begrudge this worthless life.”
Hasna, carrying Yusuf’s bloodline, also held sufficient value as a prisoner, and were she to choose death, Hasna would have to go with her.
This was what made Aisha hesitate in her decision.
What parent could easily take their own child’s life?
Hatis spoke with somber eyes.
“You must still make the decision. It seems time is running short.”
For today, the screams sounded louder than ever.
∗ ∗ ∗
Ismail, who had conquered vast lands, had experience not only in field battles but also in many sieges.
The fearsome reputation of Ismail, who had established a kingdom at a young age and repelled large armies numerous times, had caused enemies to lock themselves tightly within their fortresses.
He had waged so many sieges they were difficult to count on both hands, but a siege as difficult as this was unprecedented.
‘Loathsome creatures.’
They had given him a headache when breaching the outer fortress, and the remaining enemy troops left behind to buy time were no pushovers either.
Despite wounds akin to being hacked to pieces, they blocked the way until the end, and if the arm wielding their weapon was cut off, they would bite instead.
Even the Qizilbash, who had experienced all manner of battles, wore sickened expressions as they respectfully gathered the corpses in one place.
They were enemies, but this meant they were acknowledged as warriors.
“However, it seems their ability to hold out is gradually reaching its limit.”
“That is correct. The end is in sight.”
Ismail and Mohammad looked toward the gate and walls of the inner citadel.
Crack!
—Push harder! It’s nearly broken!
The walls were cracked in various places by the siege weapons, the battering rams, and the gate had become tattered.
Ismail could see weapons being thrust through the gaps in the gate.
“That is fortunate. It seems they couldn’t pull any bizarre tricks with the gate this time either.”
“Surely it is because they could not afford to block their own escape route, could they?”
He had been dumbfounded to learn that the outer fortress gate had been firmly blocked with stones.
He had thought he finally broke through the gate, only to find another solid wall behind it.
So much so that he had given up on the gate and used battering rams to destroy the weaker walls, even digging tunnels.
Fortunately, they had been spared that ordeal this time, and if they could break through to the inner citadel, he was confident he could easily breach the final defensive line, the keep.
Though victory was within reach, Ismail’s expression was far from good.
“The damage has grown greater than expected because of those incompetent fools.”
At Ismail’s words, Sargis’s face hardened.
Since there was no longer any need to blockade the port after destroying the outer fortress, Samtskhe’s soldiers had also been mobilized for the siege of the inner citadel.
And at the most dangerous positions, at that.
Even as his subordinates were dying in droves, Sargis could say nothing in response to such rebukes. After all, they were now in a position where they had to cling to the Safavids.
—The gate has been breached!
—Waaaah!
Cheers erupted at the news that the gate had been breached, just as they were thinking that only the keep remained.
“Y-your Majesty! This is terrible! The Ottoman army has appeared!”
The messenger from Samtskhe, having run all the way there drenched in sweat, dropped to his knees as if collapsing and shouted. Ismail’s face hardened.
“How large is the enemy force?”
“I-I do not know. There were too many. There are an enormous number of enemy ships!”
At the soldier’s incoherent cries, Ismail turned his head toward the harbor and saw a fleet surging black over the horizon.
As if to stop the fleet’s approach, Samtskhe’s ships hurriedly moved toward the Ottoman fleet, and a tremendous roar rang out.
Boooom! Bang!
It was the sound of cannons.
∗ ∗ ∗
“Padishah! Trabzon is in sight!”
“I see it as well.”
He had spent most of his life as Yusuf in that place, so there was no way he would fail to recognize it.
Perhaps that was why the sight of black smoke rising here and there made him even angrier.
“Fortunately, it does not yet appear to have fallen.”
For unlike the outer and inner fortifications, which looked miserable even at a glance, the citadel situated on the highest part of the hill was intact.
If the citadel was intact, it meant his women and his daughter had not yet fallen into Ismail’s hands.
Even so, judging from the tattered state of the inner fortifications, had he been even a little later, he might have arrived only in time to see Ismail’s back as he fled after accomplishing his purpose.
“Enemy ships identified as Samtskhe are approaching!”
Samtskhe’s ships, having belatedly spotted the fleet, could be seen drawing closer little by little. Yusuf gave an order to Kemal Reis beside him.
“Clear them from my sight.”
“I obey, Padishah.”
Answering thus, Kemal gave instructions to the signalman, and the signalman raised his flag and relayed the order to the other ships.
The galleys that received the signal by flag increased the speed of their oars, and from the bow of the galley that surged to the front, flames and smoke billowed up.
Boooom! Bang!
Craaaack!
The cannonballs fired from the ship tore into the wooden vessels like paper, while the shots that missed sent up towering plumes of water.
With a single round of bombardment, more than half of Samtskhe’s ships were left in tatters, and the galleys that received the signalman’s command slowed down.
For two large carracks and more than ten small sailing ships had begun turning their hulls sideways.
As though they had seen the cannons lined up along the sides of the hulls, the enemy tried to flee in haste, but it was already far too late to escape.
—Fire! Open fire!
Along with the commander’s order, the carracks rocked violently amid a fierce series of explosions.
The ship shook enough that his foot nearly slipped, and Yusuf quickly pushed away the hands that reached to hold him.
“Enough. That cleaned things up nicely.”
Under the successive bombardment, only a few ships were fortunate enough to remain intact; most had become piles of firewood or were half-sunk.
Their galleys passed indifferently over enemy sailors floundering in the sea for their lives, and bullets rained down upon the enemy ships that attempted to resist.
Samtskhe’s fleet was dealt with so quickly that it was embarrassing to even call it a naval battle, and Yusuf looked up at Trabzon Castle in the distance.
It could not be so, but he felt as though his eyes had met those of the man who had summoned him all the way here.
“Ismail, I have come all this way to see you myself. Now, what will you do?”
Yusuf bared his white teeth.