Waking from Sleep
There is nothing as lacking in plausibility as life, and nothing as absurd as reality.
That was all the more true for Yusuf, who, standing at the highest point of the empire, heard all manner of news.
Yusuf had reached the point where he would not bat an eye at most things, but this particular matter struck him as rather amusing.
“Michelangelo, does this not seem like a scene from memory?”
“It is not so far in the past that I can beautify it as a memory.”
He was reasonably satisfied with his current circumstances, in which he could devote himself to sculpture without much interference, but that did not mean he could love the process that had led him there.
Recalling the days when he had been captured by pirates and made to row, Michelangelo wrinkled his crooked nose.
“And is he not merely a common slave, hardly fit to be compared to me? He does not seem to be a man of renown.”
Though Michelangelo had been captured as a slave and suffered all manner of hardships, he had been a man renowned enough to be working for the Pope.
So much so that when word spread that Michelangelo had been captured by the Ottomans, the Papal States and Florence had requested his release.
At the complaint from the proud Michelangelo, Yusuf set down the book in his hand and looked down at Machiavelli, who lay prostrate and watched his mood.
“True. He is no man of renown.”
The Prince he had written was an exceedingly important classic in political science, but it was not yet even published.
There was even a tale that, having no particular occupation and being unable to properly fulfill the role of a man, his wife had called him a house mite. For now, that was the extent of the man.
With The Prince, his greatest value, now in Yusuf’s hands, Yusuf lifted one corner of his mouth.
“As you say, he is not of much use. It would take too much effort to keep him under me and make use of him.”
Art might be a universal language, but administration was not.
To use him as a vassal, he would have to be taught all manner of things, starting with the basic language and continuing on to Ottoman administrative procedures, culture, law, and more.
It was not something that would be finished in a year or two, and Yusuf wondered if there was any need to expend such effort.
Hearing through the interpreter that he might become a tongueless galley slave, Machiavelli hurriedly opened his mouth.
“P-Padishah. I will surely be of help to Your Majesty. I served for many years as a diplomat of Florence and forged connections with many figures in Europe. How would it be to use me as a diplomat?!”
“Is there anyone who would use a man he cannot trust as a diplomat?”
“Even if not as a diplomat, the knowledge in my head will surely be of use to Your Majesty!”
After shouting so, Machiavelli swallowed dryly as he looked into those dry, green eyes.
It was not because the man before him held his fate. It was because he had seen a side more cold-blooded than that of anyone he had encountered in all his years as a diplomat.
“Niccolò Machiavelli, I shall ask you one thing. You said the ship you were aboard was seized by pirates, and you were carrying a book translated into Persian. That means you were trying to come to the empire, does it not?”
“…It does.”
“Why were you trying to come?”
“Th-that is….”
Machiavelli was eloquent and affable, but he could not brazenly tell the emperor that he had come to study him.
When Machiavelli hesitated, Yusuf nodded.
The three seconds he was willing to wait had passed.
“Throw this fellow among the rowers. He came here in comfort, and yet I can hear the sound of him scheming all the way over here.”
“P-Padishah…?!”
Machiavelli, his mouth gagged, was dragged away, and Michelangelo’s complexion worsened as unpleasant memories resurfaced.
A dark inspiration surged up, as though he could immediately create a new series of rowers.
And so, unlike usual, Michelangelo meddled.
“Do you intend to cast him aside as a rower like that?”
“I only intend to break his spirit. As long as he does not die, it will do. That man must write comedies filled with wit and satire.”
“Comedies?”
After his death, Machiavelli was famous for The Prince, but during his lifetime, he was famous for his plays.
He had earned renown for plays—the scripts of theater—and among them, comedies, a type of comic drama. His Mandragola was the most popular comedy in sixteenth-century Italy.
For that reason, Yusuf intended to make him create comedies.
“From now on, he will have to write comedies satirizing corrupt clergy for the empire.”
Whether cardinals or popes, the corruption of the clergy in this era was no ordinary matter, regardless of rank.
Even popes commonly had illegitimate children, and Mandragola, which had become popular, also contained material about the corruption of the clergy.
‘Considering the story that the papacy produced Mandragola and entertained the Pope with it, they may not have thought of it as criticism of the clergy.’
But even with the same comedy, things differed depending on what perception one instilled, did they not?
“If it will help him write a comedy, I should bring in a widow if I must.”
After all, there was a story that it was a comedy he wrote after falling in love with a neighborhood widow.
And abducting a single widow was hardly a difficult task.
Yusuf thought little of abduction.
∗ ∗ ∗
Pour, pour.
The rich aroma of wine filled the cup, and Yusuf took a sip.
As he let his body sink back, savoring the fragrance that filled his mouth, a soft voice reached Yusuf’s ears.
“What brings this on? Did you not usually keep your distance from alcohol?”
“There are days when one simply wishes to drink.”
No law stood above the sultan, and the Muslim prohibition on drinking was no exception.
Yusuf wrapped his arms around the shoulders of the two women leaning against him.
“Ayşe, Hatice. Do you resent me?”
“How could we resent the Padishah?”
Yusuf gently brushed back the two women’s hair.
Aside from the Valide Hatun, the concubine Hatuns were the noblest women in the empire, but their lives were not only happy ones.
The greatest reason was that they shared their lives with princes.
“You may not resent me, but you may grieve. You must leave this place with the children.”
The Ottoman system was thoroughly structured around eliminating elements that threatened power.
Sending princes out as sanjakbeys was also a form of education, but it was also a way of driving from the capital princes who threatened power.
This restraint could be seen from the fact that princes past puberty could not return to the capital as they pleased.
‘It is the same with concubines leaving with the princes.’
There was also the role of helping still-young princes properly stand on their own, but it was also a method of sending the women out of the harem and stripping them of power.
After all, many problems could arise, such as women carrying the sultan’s children being oppressed by concubines.
Yusuf looked at the two women, who, unable to deny it, were enveloped in silence.
“You are beautiful. More so than when we first met.”
The freshness of their youth had vanished, but the mature beauty they had cultivated, both outwardly and inwardly, was even more alluring than that had been.
They seemed more enticing than the beautiful women he could have simply by visiting the harem.
Perhaps it was because of memories, which nothing else could fill.
‘I can understand how Süleyman felt when he broke custom.’
He felt as though he could understand the heart that had ordered Hürrem Sultan not to leave the capital with her prince, but to remain by his side for life.
Because he knew of such a precedent, Yusuf also wanted to give that order.
“It would not be difficult to keep you at my side out of my own greed alone. But I will not do so. Because I know it would harm the empire.”
“Padishah….”
It would not be a problem during his own reign, but with the passage of time, some foolish descendant would surely appear who would be swayed while wrapped around a woman’s skirts.
He could not create that opening. Even if it made him seem heartless.
At Yusuf’s words, which felt almost cold, Ayşe clasped his hand, and Hatice nestled deeper into his embrace.
“We merely follow the Padishah’s will. Please do not trouble your heart too much.”
“Only, we hope you will not forget us.”
“No matter how many long years pass, how could I ever forget you?”
Yusuf lightly patted the two women as they made their anxious request.
“And the parting that will soon come will not be an eternal one. The gates of the capital will open again not only to you, but to the princes as well.”
Having seized the reins of power more firmly than anyone, Yusuf had no need to keep the princes under severe restraint, and he intended to summon them to the capital periodically.
‘As years pass, people change as well, so I will need to confirm it with my own eyes.’
He might pass the throne not to a prince, but to a grandson, but he still needed to continue evaluating them.
Because, due to the traits he possessed, the most accurate evaluation could only be made by meeting them in person.
“The places you are going from now on, needless to say, will be far more difficult to live in than the splendid harem, and even more so than Trabzon, where you stayed before.”
The region Mehmed was going to was a newly built city, one that had to be rebuilt almost from the ground up, and it faced threats from the Astrakhan Khanate and the Grand Duchy of Moscow.
Ayşe would likely stay mainly in safe Kefe, but even so, it would be lacking.
Yemen, where Murat was going, was a region where the Bedouins, Arab nomads, ran rampant on land, while Portugal threatened from the sea.
It was an extremely dangerous region, no different from the middle of a battlefield. Dangerous enough that one could lose one’s life if things went wrong.
“I will ask this of you one last time. Stay healthy. Until the moment we meet again.”
Yusuf embraced the two women.
The moment when the two princes would depart as sanjakbeys was drawing near.
∗ ∗ ∗
“That is not cargo to be loaded onto that ship. It must be sent to the ship over there.”
“Ptooey! Until just a moment ago, did you not say it was here?! Do you know how heavy that is, telling us to move it back and forth again?!”
“Does it make sense that you cannot even give proper orders for moving cargo?!”
When the rough-looking sailor set the crate down harshly and spat, the newly appointed official broke out in a cold sweat.
When he had come to the capital and taken the examination, he had believed a brilliant tomorrow awaited him, but that had plainly been a delusion.
‘I’m so sleepy I could die.’
He should have realized it from the moment he saw his seniors welcoming him with hollow, exhausted faces.
The more accustomed he grew to the work, far from decreasing, the work only increased, and because of fatigue and unfamiliar duties, he had even made a mistake.
Just as he stood helpless before the sailors’ faces, which were twisting ever more viciously, the paper in his hand was snatched away with a swish.
“Hmm, it does not matter if you simply move it. If you look down here, the same cargo had to be moved anyway. Just be careful not to load any more than that.”
The official, who had been about to thank him, thinking he was a senior colleague, widened his eyes.
“Thank y— I greet Your Highness the Prince!”
“Before putting out to sea, sailors are sharp-tempered. You should understand that.”
Even the Black Sea, calm as it was, could sink a ship if fortune turned ill.
To a sailor, the sea was a place of life, but it was also a reaper that might take him at any moment.
Mehmet patted the shoulder of the official, who might have taken offense, and looked at the ships whose preparations for departure were in their final stages.
“So I am finally leaving.”
It was not his first time leaving the capital, nor was it his first time boarding a ship, but Mehmet’s eyes trembled as he looked at the vessels.
Because the moment he sailed away on a ship, one could say his life as a true prince would begin.
As Mehmet moved on, a blunt voice reached his ears.
“Why are you acting so miserable?”
Mehmet, who had turned his head with a frown at Murat’s voice, immediately offered his respects.
“I greet the Padishah.”
Everyone gathered in the bustling harbor bowed to the master of the empire.
“Rise, and see to your duties.”
Those gathered in the harbor moved to finish their work quickly.
Because that was the Padishah’s command.
Yusuf clasped his hands behind his back and, watching the ships hasten their departure, opened his mouth.
“Mehmet, Murat.”
“Yes, Padishah.”
“When I left the capital, I was eleven years old. I was younger than you. Above me, I had elder brothers who had sons about my age.”
He was not trying to sound like an old man saying that things had been harder in his day.
“When I first left the capital, I swore that I would surely return here and take the highest seat.”
Though many long years had passed, that moment, when he had looked upon the capital receding into the distance and made that vow, remained vivid.
“But when I actually became the master of the empire and could not find my way, what made me be born anew was Trabzon, the place I had thought of as a mere stepping-stone.”
“Is that so?”
The books that had recorded Yusuf’s life had even reached the story of Tazlu, who had given birth to Mustafa, but this was something they had never heard before.
Recalling how, among the subjects of Trabzon who had silently offered him respect, he had vowed to create an empire for them, Yusuf patted the shoulders of his two sons.
“Cherish the sanjak to which you are going. It will have a greater influence on your lives than the resplendent capital.”
“We will keep it in mind.”
Not only the composed Mehmet, but even the unruly Murat pondered that advice.
Yusuf embraced his two sons.
Since they had reached adolescence, he had rarely held them like this, but as there would be even fewer chances from now on, he moved as his heart led him.
“I believe you will do well.”
That day, the ships carrying the two princes and the two Hatuns left the capital.
∗ ∗ ∗
Beneath the brightly burning candlelight, Yusuf turned the pages of The Prince by hand.
He was reading it in order to refine the parts that were lacking, that could invite misunderstanding, or that did not suit the circumstances of the Ottomans.
In the palace, where only the sound of turning pages could be heard, a commotion rang out.
—P-Padishah. T-Terrible news!
“Open the door.”
The eunuch, who bowed as though tumbling in, shouted loudly.
“They say Prince Murat’s ship, which was headed for Cairo, has been attacked by the Order!”
Yusuf’s emerald eyes opened in a vicious glare.
The monster called the empire had awakened from its sleep.
∗ ∗ ∗
The recent mood on Rhodes, a strategic point connecting Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, had not been good.
As the national power of the Ottomans grew stronger, the activities of the Knights of Rhodes in the Mediterranean were inevitably curtailed.
The capture of infidel ships, which could be called the Order’s chief duty and its very identity, had also decreased, and this brought about financial deterioration and discontent among the knights.
That was why they had permitted a sailing for the first time in a while, and yet.
“Your Excellency! Terrible news. The ships that set sail are approaching, but their condition is alarming.”
At the knight’s report, Fabrizio del Carretto, the head of the Order known as the Grand Master, sprang up from his seat.
If the problem had been noticed before they even entered port, it meant their condition was far from ordinary, and he hurriedly ran to the harbor.
Arriving at the harbor, Carretto felt dizzy as he looked at the ships just entering port.
“Oh, Lord.”
There had been five ships that set sail this time alone.
Considering that the Knights of Rhodes had seven ships under their command, it meant they had sent out every ship they could immediately operate.
But two were nowhere to be seen, and from a half-wrecked vessel listing some thirty degrees, urgent shouts rang out continuously as supplies and people were unloaded in haste.
At Carretto’s appearance, the Admiral of the Galleys, who was wrapped in bandages, lowered his head.
“What on earth happened!”
“…I have no excuse, Your Excellency.”
“That is not what I wish to hear. Tell me in detail what happened!”
At Carretto’s urging, the Admiral of the Galleys, the navy’s second-in-command, spoke with a resentful expression.
“There were three ships. As Your Excellency knows, these days, infidel ships often sail in groups, do they not?”
“Yes, I know that well. It is why five ships set sail.”
It was partly because the scale of trade had grown, and partly because the Ottomans had advised merchant ships to move together as a countermeasure against Rhodes.
It was common for two or three ships to travel together, and if there was anything slightly unusual, it was that the ships were larger than ordinary merchant vessels. But since that meant there would be more to gain if they were captured, he had thought it no bad thing.
The knights, who had approached to capture them, trusting in their numerical superiority, realized that something was amiss only after they drew close to their opponents.
“Those men were not merchants. They had many cannons firing upon us, and there were many sailors aboard their ships as well.”
“Then they were warships, not merchant ships.”
Carretto slowly closed his eyes.
It was obvious how the situation had unfolded after that. Once they had been struck by cannon fire, even if they knew those were not merchant ships, they would not have simply fled.
They were an Order hardline against infidels, and they had the advantage in numbers, so they must have fought a naval battle.
“What happened to the enemy?”
“I am sorry. One ship was sunk and one was half destroyed, but in the end, they escaped.”
He said they had escaped, but in truth, the damage on both sides had grown too great, and both had been forced to abandon the battle.
Had they fought any further, it would have ended only in mutual destruction.
In any case, faced with damage greater than he had expected, Carretto let out a frustrated sigh and asked.
“Where is the admiral? I must hear the circumstances at the time in a little more detail from him.”
“…The admiral is.”
Carretto turned his head, following the Admiral of the Galleys’ gaze, and his eyes shook violently.
It was a place where, unlike the wounded soldiers crying out in pain, there were those covered in cloth who did not move in the slightest.
As Carretto approached, the knights with gloomy faces lowered their heads, and when he reached the place where the admiral’s corpse lay, Carretto clenched his fists tightly.
“The admiral’s head. Why is the admiral’s head missing!”
“A man who appeared to be the enemy commander came over with enemy soldiers, killed the admiral, and took his head.”
“Why did you not stop him!”
At Carretto’s shout, the knights and soldiers fell into silence.
The enemy commander, who had still looked young, was a monster. He had cut down in an instant the knights who blocked his path and returned to his own ship with the admiral’s head in his grasp.
Recalling the sight of well-built soldiers being knocked away and sent sprawling as though they were nothing, one of the surviving knights spoke in a trembling voice.
“Y-Your Excellency, there is something else you must know.”
“What else is it?”
“The enemy soldiers shouted ‘Sultan’ toward the enemy commander.”
“…Sultan?”
Even the knights who did not know the infidels’ language well knew the meaning of Sultan.
Ordinarily, it was an expression used to refer to the monarch of a country, as in the Mamluk Sultanate, but in the Ottoman Empire, where the emperor was called Padishah, those called Sultan were different people.
“It seems the enemy commander is a prince of the infidel empire.”
Carretto, an old man in his sixties, nearly lost his wits for a moment and let out a hollow laugh.
“Hahaha. As if losing two ships and the admiral were not enough, the ship we attacked just had to be carrying a prince?”
“…That is so.”
Even Carretto had no idea where to begin mending this.
As Carretto struggled to work his mind, now turned blank white, a scream reached his ears.
Crrrunch!
—The ship, the ship is sinking!
As though it had burned its last strength to make it this far, the half-wrecked ship split in two with the sound of shattering wood and sank into the sea.
Watching people and objects be swept away by the waves caused by its sinking, Carretto once again called upon God.
∗ ∗ ∗
“Those fearless rabble attacked a ship carrying a prince and Hatice.”
The enraged Yusuf struck the floor with the gun in his hand, and the urgently summoned retainers held their breath.
It was a dark night in which it would have been impossible to see even an inch ahead without the blazing torches and the shining moon, but Yusuf’s fury was deeper and darker still.
For the prince’s departure had been carried out in utmost secrecy for safety, so there was no way the Knights of Rhodes had attacked knowing it was a ship carrying a prince and a concubine.
To begin with, they were people who had committed piracy and, even in the original history, had carried out abductions of a particularly unsavory sort.
The Siege of Candia fought in the seventeenth century by the Ottomans, Venice, the Knights of Malta, and the Kingdom of France had also broken out when the Knights of Malta, formerly the Knights of Rhodes, abducted women of the harem returning from a pilgrimage to Mecca.
This attack, too, was probably a coincidence.
“You must punish them. This is absolutely unforgivable!”
“Even though His Highness the Prince and the Hatun are safe, we must not let this pass!”
At the cries of his retainers, Yusuf nodded.
“I think so as well.”
As the seas they had to manage expanded, there was no surplus of ships they could operate, and he had not known that the Order, which had been quiet lately, would attack as many as three ships.
The Order surely had never imagined that an important figure of the empire was aboard that ship.
Misfortune, coincidence, reasons—none of that mattered. Only the result remained.
“Let the world know. The Empire’s wrath is just, and their guilt shall be paid for in blood.”
Yusuf, with a rifle slung over his shoulder, declared coldly.
“From this moment, the Empire declares war.”
The heralds announcing war scattered throughout the Ottoman realm.
The time had come to break four years of silence and once again steep the earth in blood.
∗ ∗ ∗
Word of what had transpired between the Ottomans and the Knights of Rhodes spread quickly throughout the world.
Partly because there were many who kept their senses keenly attuned to news of the Ottomans, who were the object of vigilance, and partly because the news itself was shocking.
The Knights of Rhodes—that is, the Knights Hospitaller—boasted a history so long that one had to go back nine hundred years, and they were an order that had distinguished itself in the Crusades.
Every one of the more than six hundred knights was from a noble house, and the fact that they had attacked a ship carrying an Ottoman prince could not help but cause an uproar in Europe.
“Say it again. What happened?”
Leo X, elected Pope after Julius II, nearly fell from atop Hanno, his pet white elephant.
He had been on the verge of parading through the streets of Rome, which he had lavishly decorated, together with leopards and jesters, but he cancelled even his usual pastimes and hurriedly dismounted the elephant.
“They ambushed an Ottoman prince? If they were going to do something, they should have taken him prisoner!”
The knight who had come to request aid hung his head at this bellowing.
“Forgive me, but the enemy’s resistance was too fierce, and we only realized he was a prince too late.”
Leo X clicked his tongue and quickly scanned the report detailing the situation.
What caught the Pope’s eye as he assessed the extent of the damage was the detail that the prince who had killed the Admiral had returned to his ship carrying the head.
“How old is this Ottoman prince?”
The infidel emperor was still in his late twenties—famous since a very young age, to be sure—but it was utterly perplexing that the Admiral had died at the hands of a prince, not even the emperor.
To this question, the Knight replied with a solemn face.
“…I heard that even the eldest is not yet fifteen years of age.”
“Are you telling me to believe that the Order’s Admiral died at the hands of some brat?! Is he some kind of Samson?!”
The Pope looked so absurd that he invoked the biblical figure said to have torn a lion apart with his bare hands and beaten a thousand men to death with a donkey’s jawbone.
On this point, even within the Order there was much talk as to whether it had truly been a prince, so the Knight could not readily answer, whereupon Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, a capable diplomat, opened his mouth.
“There are rumors that the second son of the infidel emperor has been unusually tall and sturdily built since childhood, and that his martial prowess is such that even the Janissaries cannot contend with him. It is likely that one.”
“Hahaha, very well. Let us say it is true that a boy still in puberty took the Order Admiral’s head and proudly returned to his own ship.”
It was absurd, but who exactly had killed the Admiral was not what mattered right now.
The Pope, batting away the trunk of Hanno the elephant that was wrapping around his shoulder, asked Cardinal Thomas Wolsey.
“The Crusade. Can we not launch a Crusade according to the plan established before?”
This was a Pope who had previously planned a Crusade against the Ottomans.
He had planned to use the Pope’s authority to proclaim a truce to all Christian nations, lead a united Christian army, and march on Constantinople.
He had even separately collected tithes for the Crusade, but it had ultimately ended in failure.
“I am afraid it is impossible. Though it is tragic for the Knights, there will be no nation willing to step forward to aid them.”
Spain and Portugal were busy opening sea routes, and England and France were occupied with concluding the Italian Wars and strengthening royal authority.
Venice was busy wagging its tail at the Ottomans, disgorging all the spoils gained during the Crusades.
There was effectively no nation willing to stand together and face the Ottomans, whose eyes had rolled back in fury at the fact that the Knights had attacked a prince.
“Furthermore, to gather support to aid the Knights, the justification against them is too clear-cut.”
They had touched a prince, not merely a noble, so even among fellow Christians, the response was bound to be somewhat lukewarm.
The Pope let out a long sigh.
“To be unable to do anything while the infidels run rampant is a harrowing thing.”
The face of the knight, who had come requesting aid but would now return empty-handed, darkened, and the Pope, looking at him pitifully, asked the Cardinal.
“Is there no good way to break through this situation?”
“There is a method that could help, but….”
“What is it? Please tell me!”
Thomas, who had been trailing off, spoke as if he had no choice.
“The Order must send an envoy directly to the Ottomans. They must go, clear up the misunderstanding, and ask to resolve the matter peacefully.”
“Would they listen to that? We should count ourselves fortunate if they merely do not kill him.”
With the Ottomans so venomously enraged, it would be fortunate if they did not hack the envoy to pieces and throw him to the fish.
The Cardinal nodded at the Pope’s pointed words.
“It is a path one must walk to one’s death. Though it is said he has recently shown a gentle demeanor, he is an emperor infamous for his ferocity. He will surely kill the one who comes as an envoy. However, we can lay upon him the infamy of having killed an envoy.”
Though he had severed the fingers and neck of an envoy, and had sent flying the head of the Mamluk Sultan who came to the negotiating table, the other European nations had not severed diplomatic ties with the Ottomans.
After all, since that had been a matter between infidels, they had merely clicked their tongues, called them barbaric infidels, and let it pass.
But if the Sultan killed an envoy sent by the Knights, the Ottomans could be isolated diplomatically.
“If fortune favors us, it could serve as justification for forming a Crusade. Even if not, it would be better than the current situation at the very least.”
“What will you do?”
At the Pope’s words handing him the choice, the knight lowered his head with a resolute face.
“The Order does not fear death! If we can uproot the infidels, we can gladly die with a smile!”
“It is a sight that shall please the Lord.”
With the Pope’s praise, the knight departed the Papal States, and not long after, the Knights of Rhodes sent an envoy to the Ottomans.
∗ ∗ ∗
“Barking like dogs. Do they take the Empire lightly? You swine.”
Yusuf glared at the knight who had come as an envoy, radiating fierce killing intent.
The killing intent of one who had wandered countless battlefields, piled mountains with corpses, and made rivers with blood was enough to make even a knight resolved to death tremble in his heart.
When the Silahtars’ swords were fully drawn at the Padishah’s wrath, Yusuf raised his hand.
“Sheathe your swords.”
Clang!
The swords returned to their places in unison, and Yusuf spoke in a growling voice.
“My time to spare for vermin with only their dying days left is over. Begone.”
The knight, who had never dreamed he would be allowed to live, shouted urgently.
“O Sultan! Your fine soldiers shall all have their throats cut and be thrown as dog meat, and you shall flee like a wretched cur! Do you still mean to make war with us?!”
At these openly mocking words, the corners of Yusuf’s mouth rose.
“You need not worry. I shall cut off your limbs and make you crawl like worms. Do not sully my castle; leave now.”
Having spoken thus, Yusuf turned away coldly, and the knight, unable to complete his mission, had no choice but to turn back.
The Silahtar Agha asked Yusuf.
“Do you intend to send that dog who should be torn to pieces back just like this?”
“He came prepared to die here. One cannot give him what he wants.”
Yusuf, who had clearly read the knight’s emotions through his trait, formed a cold sneer.
“And who said I would send him back as he is? Alper Pasha.”
“Yes, Your Padishah.”
“Inform the Barbary corsairs. There is a ship to capture.”
Being kidnapped by pirates through ill fortune was not exactly a rare occurrence in this era.
Outsourcing existed precisely for times like this.
“If you are so eager to die, then die without honor as a galley slave, Knight.”