Marc of Battle

Untitled Part 1

Pressed into a doomed relief mission to save the city of Constantinople, a country sheriff arrives at the besieged city to deliver the news that, other than a wagon load of the first printed Bibles, no help is coming.

MARC OF BATTLE

Volume two of Marc of Ashes

Prologue

Marc looked up at the first wall, and he could see the stone giants with their backs to them: they were finally inside the city.

Another gate creaked open and out strode a gang of men. Their leader was tall, blond, dressed like an emperor and had the demeanor of a happy tavern keep. He strode right over to Marc and extended his hand, clasped Marc hard on the shoulder: "Welcome dear friends and comrades, welcome to Constantinople. We bid you hurrah. I am Giovanni Justinian Longo. Head of the defenses here. Welcome!"

The sun had hit the top of the upper wall and began to paint it with light.

"I had thought we might be a disappointment to you in terms of reinforcements. I have only a few more than a hundred men, though supplies for many more. We at least won't be a burden."

"Burden? Nonsense!" Longo acted as if he were just told an amusing story. They were striding towards the head of the column again where Longo's few men had brought theirs, and his, horses.

"The emperor may be disappointed but he'll never show it."

He was hoping for a thousand men," offered Marc.

Longo stopped and turned. His smile steady. "Thousand? The emperor was hoping for ten thousand."

Marc was chagrined. He had forgotten the gathering storm of numbers outside the walls, which now seemed so distant.

Marc was a swirl of emotions. Never had he a welcome like this one. Never an effort to enter a city which may or may not be doomed. His heart had flow, crashed against branches of fate, thudded to the dirt and rose up again and again just to get here, and now that he was here, he felt the close of the gates cut across his life. he felt a slackening of his life line like a boat cut adrift by the jaws of the final gate. He was here. he may never leave. This may be the last place he would ever be in his life and it was all foreign to him. Everything was different. He was exhilarated and both intimidated at once. A new world to explore, but a world where he knew nothing of. He could not even find his own room and once show there, the map of corridors and passage ways spun helplessly. The place was larger than the church at Lyons and that had been the largest building he had ever entered.

Marc had to remind himself that his duties were discharge. True, he was not about to ride off from this siege, he was trapped as well as anyone and he knew it perhaps more than anyone. But he was inside a fortified citadel with more than ten centuries of success in defending itself from sieges. It fell only once, that he knew of, to crusaders themselves. These were not crusaders outside now. These were... Infidels.

He was a new man. A new man with a new life in a new city. His fate, like all men, unknown. All he had ever known had been closed off behind the gates of the city walls. All he might ever know now awaited him beyond the doorway of his room. He knew not how to even retrace his steps; his climb was that intricate and his sleep that devastating to all he knew before.

Yet his whole life now, was this simple: go through the door, see what awaits you.

He did.

Chapter One:

The Turks fired another volley of iron stones through the night air, slamming into the centuries-old walls of Constantinople. The missiles chipped and splintered into the rock, crushing round bruises on the face of the wall. Fierce cheers rose from the gathered armies outside the city as debris rained down in small clouds of broken rock dust. The cannoneers had found their range and honed their mark. They reloaded. A process which took hours, waiting for the barrels to cool from their meteoric vomiting.