The Pyre of Kirklareli

[Cyclotron]

The sun had fully set now, and only a burnished crimson glow could be seen above the dark horizon of the western sea. The palace stables, at the bottom of the massive south wing of the Sultan’s palace, were closed even to this light, and only the measured tread of the beuluks and the occasional grunt of one of the Sultan’s horses could be heard over the soft wind and the distant sounds of the city center.

A door opened, and light flooded out. The Captain, aide to his most gracious majesty, stepped out into the cool air of the stables, a torch in his hand. Closing the door behind him, he looked carefully about, and stopped his search at a tall figure by a large and stocky cavalry steed. He drew near to the figure, and the light of the torch revealed in sparkling brilliance the man’s engraved plate mail. Thick, braided tassels hung from one shoulder-guard across his chest, attached to the other shoulder. These tassels were yellow, not the standard for a Sipahi, and the steel helm he held in one hand had a great saffron plume rather than the typical blue. Clearly, noted the Captain, a salar.

The salar spoke first, smiling self-assuredly while running his free hand over the back of his steed, decked in full battle regalia of steel chanfron and poitrel, and draped in the checkered blue and gold of a salar’s horse. “From the Sultan, I suppose? I’ve been waiting quite patiently as told. I hope you haven’t come to tell me to wait any longer.”

The Sultan’s aide found the attitude irksome; should not a man of the Sultan have more respect? Besides, he could have been anyone; it would be dangerous to speak of these secret meetings to those not in the Sultan’s direct confidence. Of course, the Sultan had hand picked this one, so there must be some reason behind it all... Still, thought the Captain, I would rather he had picked a janissary than this provincial fool.

“Salar Ahmed. I have direct orders from his divine majesty the Sultan Osman the Tenth to give this to you. Its contents are for you alone, and its orders are backed with the power of the Seal of the Sultanate.” He handed the salar the small letter. The cavalryman inspected the seal, nodded, and tore it open. Reading the letter with a casual manner, than tucking into the sash at his hip, he nodded curtly to the Captain.

“Tell the Sultan… Salar Ahmed sends his humble regards; his orders will be executed tonight.”

*****************************************

The evening air carried with it the scent of the sea, though atop the Sultan’s portico it was impossible to distinguish it with the heavy scent of sweet incense in the air. The lights of the city now gave a dull illumination to the marble-screened balcony, and the incense braziers glowed even more fiercely now that the sun had vanished below the western horizon. The Sultan waited in a cushioned seat by the end of a balcony, savoring the last drafts of Murcian incense and looking out over the torch lit city.

He heard the door open behind him again, and continued to look out at the rooftops. A rough, yet highly reverent and deferential voice sounded from the door. “Divine Father, a guest has been approved for an audience with your grace.” The Sultan instantly knew the speaker had to be a beuluk; only the janissaries called him by that title. He rose slowly from his chair, and turned.

Two beuluks stood behind the guest. One of them was tall and very dark, Arab perhaps, while the other was paler, maybe from Urfala… perhaps even from the Spanish colonies there. The man they guarded wore the fashions of Antalya, and the Sultan noted how garish Antalyan clothes were. Regrettably, he thought, in the strife that was planned, that fat fool who held the position of emir over that city of spices would have to be dealt with by his forces, and soon. At any rate, unlike the guards, the guest was certainly a Turk in every way. The two beuluks bowed deeply, as did the guest.

The Sultan nodded in approval. “Tariq, let us dispense with the ceremony. Guards, you are dismissed.” The beuluks bowed deeply, and backed out of the balcony, eyeing the guest warily until they closed the doors before him.

“As you wish, my Sultan. My agents bring news from Santander, or is there something else your gracious majesty requires?”

“You know well enough of my plans, Tariq. Tell me of them.”

Tariq nodded, and answered with great meaning in his voice. “Senator Abulhamid is the only one who has not been notified of the emergency session, as you wished it. As for the Spaniards, they seem quite satisfied with their sack of Kirklareli. Santander and Murcia are building fleets, majesty, at Isabella’s command. We think perhaps they aim to drive out our colonists in the islands north of Spain, perhaps even attack Urfala to bolster their fortresses there.”

The Sultan smiled. “And what of a good man to help in our efforts? Have you found one yet.”

Tariq smiled at this. “There is, apparently, a rumor in the Spaniard cities of a fierce brute that killed many innocent men when Kirklareli fell. They call him 'Rashad the Butcher.'"

The Sultan laughed, and looked away towards the city. “Perhaps our dear emir has not outlived his usefulness yet.”

...

See you in a few weeks, I'll have more.

[Paddy]

Thanks mate, that is great.

Have a good holiday.

[Cyclotron]

Back. Happy New Year to all. I'll resume shortly, in a day or two.

[Cyclotron]

There was no longer any trace of evening light in the sky; it was certainly night, and the only illumination came from the stars above and the scattered glow of lanterns and lamps throughout the city. Long shadows hung throughout the streets, and about the great granite edifice of the Senatorial building the shadows were even thicker, only cast away by the distant lights of the upper floors and the roaming torches of the night watchmen.

A shadow slipped by the gate, unseen and unknown, a figure cloaked in black, face darkened with pitch and steps muted with black slippers. Sliding along the wall, in the darkest depths of the shadows, it made no sound at all that could be heard above the tread of the Senate guards. Two guards exchanged places before the barred oaken gate in the outer wall of the Senate compound, bearing the green and gold colors of the Ottoman Senate. They wore circular green caps upon their heads, and held muskets topped with sleek bayonets that glimmered occasionally in the torches they held with their other hand. They each peered into darkness with fixed expressions on their faces, hiding the strange mixture of frenzied anticipation and cool dread that blend so easily in the darkness, where anything imagined dwells in deep shadow.

It was in only an instant that the clutching terror of the dark became manifest. Two shapes, two figures, grew from the shadow, behind each of the guardsmen. No sound was made, and neither guardsman turned to these new shades from the depths of the night. Raising a pitch-stained blade, the first figure moved his hand in an outward circle that ended in the guardsman’s throat, and the point of his dagger sunk inward into his neck. His other hand moved just as fast over the guard’s mouth, and with only a muffled sigh the guard sank to his knees, helped slowly to the ground by his murderer. Finally sensing something, the second guard turned, only to be confronted with the dark face of his killer, veiled in black. The guard opened his mouth, but said nothing, as already a hand was over it and already the point of the assassin’s dagger sipped at the blood streaming from his neck. The assassin lowered him to the ground as well, and together each of the figures in black whisked their victims away into the deep shadows at the base of the wall.

***************************************

Salar Ahmed listened intently, not daring to breathe too loudly, not wanting to risk not hearing the signal. The murmur of horses and the distant chatter of the city was all that he heard. They did not dare to light any torches for light, but as he turned his head towards the darkened depths of the abandoned barn he could see the faint outlines of men, men on horses and on foot, as silent as he, awaiting his command.

There it was, in the air; the cooing of a dove, though louder, and with a strange lilt that betrayed its source to him. The assassins had done their work, and the servant inside the compound had done his treachery. For a pouch of gold, he had unbarred the gates of the compound, and had given the awaited signal. The salar nodded to two figures he could see clearly, janissaries with their peaked turbans by the barn door, and they swung the doors wide. The light of the moon poured in, and the salar could see all of them. Janissaries, half an orta of them, and his company of sipahi, all looking to him. He unsheathed his broadsword and held it up in the moonlight. Wordlessly, he brought it down, a silvery crescent above his head, to point at the now-opened gate that stood only a hundred feet from the abandoned barn. He wheeled his steed around and drove in his spurs, and the sipahi followed him, the sound of hooves building to a dull roar. In two columns, one on each side of the cavalrymen, janissaries ran at a quick pace. The salar glanced once behind him, seeing the horseman behind whose saddle was laden with misshapen sacks, and turned his eyes forward again. He smiled slightly beneath his helm. The blow will hit them as a hammer upon glass, he thought.

The column of sipahi held behind the salar at the gate, and waited as the janissaries rushed by in their two columns. The courtyard was not empty, and as they advanced past the gate there came scattered yells, and the crack of muskets was heard from the outer wall. From his horse, Ahmed saw one peaked turban fall, but the columns paid no heed, advancing until the front man of each column stood by the great door of the Senate building. The janissaries knelt, muskets pointed outwards. Ahmed raised his sword again, and uttered a whooping battle-cry, a cry taken up by his sipahi and held as he led them in a charge between the two janissary columns to the door. The cries accomplished what the shouting guards had started; in the wooden barracks of the Senate guardsmen, lamps were lit and the confused mustering of men was heard inside.

Ahmed reigned in his horse twenty feet from the main door, turned to the sipahi with the bags upon his saddle, and nodded. As the horseman dismounted, a bag in hand, and ran towards the door, the salar raised his sword again, looking about and grinning. He barked, “Fire!”

The muskets of the janissaries went off in a synchronized bang. The musket-balls easily pierced the thin wooden walls of the barracks, and the screaming of guards could be heard within. Packed in their sleeping quarters, taken by surprise, they would not even have a chance to fight. The sipahi, still screaming their challenges and war-cries, fired their pistols upon the few guards on the outer wall and in the courtyard.

The horseman had done his work quickly, pouring black gunpowder from the bag he carried before the great door of the Senate building. He took a long reel of match from the bag, and buried one end in the pile of gunpowder. Unreeling the match, he stood back a good distance from the door, and the men nearby drew away or ducked behind the columns of the building’s granite portico. A janissary handed him a torch, and he lit the quick-match. In an instant, the flame had raced up the match, and the door exploded in flames. Splinters filled the air, and a particularly large one hurled itself, screaming, into the back of a janissary, who himself screamed in turn and writhed upon the courtyard ground. The air was now filled with the continuous roar of muskets, as the janissaries riddled the barracks with shot. A few guardsmen struggled out of each of the wooden buildings, only to fall dead into the growing heaps of men outside.

Salar Ahmed rode, five sipahi in tow, through the smoking doorway and into the Senate building. His lieutenant had stayed behind, and now gave orders to the janissaries, who drew sabers and charged with the other sipahi across the courtyard, killing every guardsman they could find. Ahmed rode across the rich carpeting of the main foyer, and drew up alongside the great door to the Senate chambers. He pushed the heavy doors open, and before him were the astonished faces of fifty-nine Senators, standing and sitting, all of them stopped in fearful silence and staring at the golden-plumed officer who was now before them.

Ahmed said nothing, and rode down the hallway in the middle of the Senate room to the podium. It was a bizarre spectacle, a horseman riding through the ranks of astonished Senators and up to the podium while remaining mounted, but Ahmed may have been the only one to notice. He turned his horse once at the podium, and removed his helm. He took a small letter from his sash, and addressed the Senate.

“Honored Senators, it is my duty to inform you why this emergency session was called. As the signed representative of his divine majesty Sultan Osman the Tenth, I hereby order this Senate dissolved.” With that the crowd of Senators burst into angry noise, which Ahmed silenced by drawing his pistol and firing into the ceiling. “Under orders of the Sultan, I pronounce this meeting adjourned, and I furthermore prohibit further meetings between Senators indefinitely, under penalty of death. You will proceed in an orderly manner out of this building, where you will be escorted by janissaries to your homes. You will be under guard, and will not be permitted to leave until such a time as the Sultan sees fit to release you.”

There was only silence in the hall.

“Go,” Ahmed shouted. “Now!” The Senators jumped from their seats and out the door, under the watchful eye of the Sipahi. They emerged into the courtyard to see the finished slaughter; the janissaries were assembled in neat ranks in the courtyard, and the bodies of guardsmen in their green and gold littered the courtyard. They were draped from the wall-tops, scattered on the ground, and in piles before their barracks. There was now no man left to fight for the Senate.

**************************************

Across the city, the Senator Abulhamid watched from his windows as beuluks, those janissaries who formed the Sultan’s elite bodyguard, knocked at the door of his mansion. They entered, and he could hear from downstairs their questions to his servants. Surely, in only a minute, they would be upon him.

The Senator had always denied this could happen, and he shook his head in disbelief and shock. He had been the most pro-senate voice in that body, the one with bravery and wit enough to lead his faction in their quest to diminish the power of the Sultan and win it for the people. Now, it was all collapsing. There was nobody now to save him, and he knew beuluks would care nothing for his senatorial status. They owed loyalty only to the Sultan.

Shaking, Abulhamid walked to his desk. He could hear the soldiers hurrying up the stairs. His breath was heavy, his brow beaded with sweat. He wondered how it had come to this, how everything had fallen apart at this hour. He had little hope for his people anymore.

Senator Abulhamid pulled open the third drawer of his desk, where a pistol lay. It was covered in a thin layer of dust, as he had not touched it in many years. His hand shaking, he drew it out of the drawer, and examined it in the light of his oil lamp.

I hope to God it still fires. God, forgive me.

The beuluks had reached his door, and pounded upon it, the door beginning to splinter as they bashed it. Abulhamid was no longer trembling. He pulled back the hammer of the pistol, took one last look out the window of his mansion, shoved the barrel upward into his mouth, and pulled the trigger.

[vovan]

Well, I finally got some time to read some of the new stories that I missed in the past month or so...

And I must say: this one is well worth the time spent reading it. Good style, good plot, good stuff! Keep it up, cyclotron.

[ChrisiusMaximus]

Brilliant!! simply brilliant

Please keep the goods coming

I too was pleasently surprised to see you continue this piece.

[Cyclotron]

A little busy right now, I'll resume as soon as time allows. Don't worry, I will tie this up.

[Paddy]

Looking forward too it...

[ChrisiusMaximus]

I spent over a year writing my last story so its probably hypocritical of me to tell you to hurry up with yours.

So Im a hypocrite


Please

[Cyclotron]

Don't worry, I'm not dead, just very, very busy. I promise it will continue.

[Cyclotron]

Kemil could have ridden a horse, if he had wished it, but he had no desire to earn the hushed mockery of the sipahi on their Bolan horses. He was first a janissary, a foot soldier, and with his great rounded turban he was easily visible despite being on the same level as the rest of the orta. Not quite on the same level; Kemil was a small man by most standards, wiry and short, his hard face framing a long, luxurious mustache. As was so with the rest of the janissary corps, he was only a slave, but one’s status depended on who one served, not freedom itself. The most free of men who lived as a pauper was nothing; to be the slave of the Sultan himself, the Divine Father and Protector of Religion, was to be truly great. Kemil was not only a janissary; he was the agha, the commander of all the Sultan’s slave-soldiers, even the fanatical beuluks that guarded the Sultan himself.

“Tariq. Come here.” The agha spoke to a man behind him, though he looked ahead down into the valley of Antalya, where a few miles away the city itself stretched between the coastal mountains and the sea.

The captain approached him quickly, bowing his peaked turban deeply. “What is asked of me, agha?”

The agha Kemil let him stay bowed for a while, as he gazed over the field surrounding the city. They were brown fields; fields that had withered and died from lack of water. The siege of Antalya had begun with raiders loyal to the Sultan riding hard over the Iruz mountain range, and sweeping down from the north to cut the irrigation channels that fed the city of Antalya. There was little fresh water on the coast, and what was needed for irrigation had to be channeled all the way from Sinop, hundreds of miles to the north. The city was ready to fall, but what was needed was a victory that gave legitimacy, not a pointless slaughter. If done well, the reconquest of Antalya from its rebel emir would serve as an example to other cities of both the tremendous power and great forgiveness of the Sultan.

“Tariq, bring this to the salar, and give him my regards. Inform the captains that they are to prepare our forces for an attack at dawn tomorrow. And Tariq… make sure this gets to Antalya by the usual route.” Kemil handed the captain a sealed packet for the salar, and a folded, unsealed, plainly written note to be delivered into the city. Bowing again, the captain dashed away, and Kemil smiled thinly. All he had to do was hope the emir was just about as smart as he seemed; no more, no less.

********************************************

Knuckles rapped at the door of an old, ornate mansion, small in size compared to similar buildings but retaining a stately grace in its position overlooking the harbor of Edrine. The building had the look of a tired old soldier, its paint faded by the salty breezes and its roof tiles riddled with holes, like the gap-toothed grin of an ancient, leering man.

Inside, the old soldier rose, wrapped in his thick winter cloak. Though it was not close to winter, the old mansion was cold, and there was only enough good wood for a single evening fire a day. The soldier thought of better days, richer days, when silk and jewels were his and not this aged squalor. He called for the servant; only one, a family slave. The rest he had dismissed long ago, or traded to others to maintain what funds he needed for food and firewood.

The gaunt and weathered servant moved to the door as quickly as his aged frame would carry him, and opened it a crack to look out upon the visitor. The man that stood outside was quite a contrast to the residents of the mansion, and the mansion itself; though unarmored, he wore a brilliant blue military tunic with gold fringes, and braided saffron tassels hung from one shoulder to the other. He was also smiling broadly, and although he was obviously no robber the servant nonetheless eyed him with a cautious reluctance, as if his presence itself would damage the dun colored residence.

The stranger spoke, while maintaining the grossly incongruous grin. “My name is Ahmed. May I speak with the master of the estate?” The servant snapped his head back, as if shocked by the very notion that such a house could be called an estate, but after a few brief seconds opened the door to let the stranger in. The servant opened his mouth to speak, but the guest strode onward into the main room, heedless of the servant. He wrung his hands, only now noticing that the guest had at his side a long, curved saber.

Ahmed stepped confidently into the main room, and found himself faced by a middle-aged man huddled in a heavy winter coat, scowling at him from the depths of an old and torn couch. Ahmed had to stop himself from laughing: They call this man the butcher?

The master of the estate continued to frown at the young officer, and spoke in a rough and unimpressed tone. “You have some business here, officer?” The man’s gaze slipped to the officer’s tassel across his chest. “I’m an old man, salar, and I’m not interested in any kind of duty, especially not in this accursed civil war.”

Salar Ahmed’s grin never faded. “Not even duty to the Sultan, Rashad ibn Murad? Not even for your city?”

[ChrisiusMaximus]

Nice stuff, please hurry up and post the next bit

[Cyclotron]

A side note, for clarification: while there is only one agha, there are multiple salars, one for each division of sipahi. Thus, salar Ahmed is not the same person as the salar in Antalya that agha Kemil is giving orders to.

[Paddy]

thanks



more beer landlord, this story is a hoot...