Byzantine Pyrrhichios: Armageddon
For the remainder of her life, Rose would marvel in secret about how simple it all was. A couple of stage props, some modern weapons, an ancient myth, and crowd psychology.
But she would always wonder about the clouds...
Coming out of the guardroom, Jack paused to confer with Constantine. "Are your soldiers ready for battle?"
"My people are ready," was the steady, confident reply, with a hand waved in a grand gesture back towards the city. Crowding behind the wall were thousands of civilians – old men and young boys, women and girls, everyone who was not a proper soldier – stood in tense silence, whatever they could find for a weapon clutched in white-knuckled hands, for all knew that one way or another, this was the end of the siege. By nightfall the next evening they might all be dead, but none of them would live under Turkish rule.
Jack nodded, impressed in spite of himself at the courage on display. For her part, Rose felt a little faint, but repeated under her breath the words that had become her new mantra: "Step up, Rose. Just step up. You can do it."
"Any shots from the big cannon?"
"None for hours," the second-in-command replied. "We think Mehmed's holding it to announce the attack. They've been firing the other four regularly all day, as before."
"Perfect," Jack said with a grin, then gave Constantine a modern salute. "My lord, with your permission, we'll go aloft to do our part."
Startled and confused, he queried, "Aloft?"
Jack pointed to the tiny outer staircase leading to the top of the tower above the guardroom, the highest point for a mile in either direction. Constantine nodded, bemused, then turned his eyes towards his hope of Heaven's favor. "My lady... I cannot tell you what your presence means this night. Bless you. And thank you."
"Thank me after, my lord. If this works." Without waiting for a reply, Rose turned and climbed the stairs, Jack struggling behind, manhandling the crate once more on his shoulder. Rose stopped at the top and knelt to unwrap the long, slender package Jack had finally given to her below, while he swiftly unpacked the crate, piling those contents to one side of the platform. The oiled canvas of Rose's bundle seemed ancient, with cracks showing it had been recently opened, while the rope itself appeared new, its knots coming apart easily for her. Jack had told her he'd taken the contents out and polished it at night during their previous stay in the city, before her precipitous run for the future. She pulled it out and stood, holding it by her side while she joined Jack at the parapet, waiting for the enemy.
They didn't have long to wait.
Straining their eyes through the darkness towards the Turkish hordes, they listened hard for the sounds they knew would be coming. The thick cloud cover overhead had glowered down upon the city on the Golden Horn since the siege had commenced, as if to signal the end of all things, never letting a single ray of sun nor moon through, so now their ears had to do double duty.
And there it was, the cacophonous martial "music" the Turks had become famous for. A huge crash of drums and blaring of trumpets, without tune or time, rolled across the low plain towards the waiting city, and behind it, the shouting of tens of thousand of voices.
"That's our cue," Jack said. He lifted her up to stand atop the upended crate, so everyone on both sides of the wall could see her, and she at last dropped the shawl that had been covering her blouse. Taking four of his button LED torches out of his pocket, Jack turned them on and set them on the floor around her, spotlighting her slender form. Her techglow blouse which had startled him back in the treasure cave caught the light and almost instantly began soaking it in and sending it back out, its glow after being hidden so long swiftly flaring to near incandescense.
Far below them, the crowd began to gasp and cry out, pointing upwards at the vision which had appeared high above their heads. They knew who she was, from her previous visit, and from the ancient story of protection by the Mother of God in another siege, another war, so very many centuries ago. Slowly a new sound began to gather, from the throats of the citizens: "Agios Rodo! Agios Rodo!" Saint Rose, Saint Rose, the Greeks proclaimed her name.
"Now, Rose!" Jack cried.
And she unsheathed the sword.
Drawn slowly out of its scabbard and then raised high over her head with both hands, the silver blade caught the lights from the torches and her own blouse, and sent it flashing outwards, even more brilliant than those sources, blazing a signal to every eye that the city of Constantinople would be defended.
And at that moment, the clouds which had locked the heavens away for all the long duration of the siege parted, and a brilliant shaft of pure white streamed down from the full moon high overhead, hitting the tower and the Lady standing upon it with Heaven's own spotlight.
The very world seemed to pause, every voice still for an endless, aching moment of wonder.
And then, as if in response, the cannon named Bad Wolf roared.
The silence held on the city's side, as every eye strained to watch the arc of the monstrous cannonball, black tinged with fiery red, against the darker sky. Weeks before the cannon's maker had found the perfect range, so that every time it fired, another section of the wall fell. But not this time.
Whether by some chance of mismeasurement of powder, or an oddity in the size or shape of rock selected, or some unknown divine intervention, the missile fell short by a hundred yards, landing with a tremendous, noisy – but ultimately ineffectual – impact in the no-man's-land before the gate.
Rose felt a fury rise inside that she'd never felt before. The ball had been headed directly towards her position, towards the gate guarding the city she'd come to love. Without thinking, she lowered the sword until it pointed directly at the distant cannon, still glowing in the dark.
Jack grinned at the sight, and dutifully fired. The heat-seeking missile he'd brought back from the twenty-first century, packed into the crate with a half-dozen others and the shoulder rocket launcher, screamed a baleful warning towards the Turks, its own flaming flight much easier to follow. It homed in on the Bad Wolf's heat signature – the cannon had always taken three hours to cool down enough to reload – and managed by some miracle of trajectory physics to fly right down through the barrel of the beast and detonate deep inside its evil heart. The resulting explosion was possibly the largest the world had ever seen to that day – certainly the largest the Turks had ever seen – and it cut a swath through the soldiers standing within a hundred yards as if by a giant scythe.
Jack swiftly reloaded and fired again, and again, sending four more missiles out to destroy the other four cannons, still hot from being fired as fast as they could these past weeks, then he let the launcher slip from his shoulder and rested it on the floor, waiting.
The crowds behind the walls couldn't see the damage that had been done, but they saw the firedrakes being launched by Saint Rose's companion, apparently by magic, and they heard the explosions from afar. They took up the chant of her name again, and were soon screaming it out loud enough for the enemy to hear clearly.
Mehmed seemed to be having trouble with his soldiers – the ranks in the front were hesitating to charge. Finally his commanders got them whipped up again, and sent them streaming forward. And that was when his fatal mistake became clear to all. For those first ranks, in their tens of thousands, were not the elite Muslim Janissaries, nor the Serbian cavalry on loan from their king, but were squadron after squadron of Christian foot soldiers, many of them mercenaries. All of them knew the stories of that previous siege, when the Mother of God herself had come down to protect the city. And all of them could now see the vision in white atop the tower, and hear the chanted blessed name.
Nevertheless, their training (and perhaps fear of their masters) took over, and at last they were chivvied forward, taking courage from the masses behind them, the still-playing martial music, and each other. Faster and faster they trotted, then ran, giving voice to their defiance.
And then they hit the mines.
Jack "the demon" had indeed been busy. He'd never tell Rose how long he'd been gone, but it had taken most of those two previous nights to sew the field with a hundred anti-personnel mines. He hadn't liked doing it, having been on the receiving end a couple of times, but he'd seen no other way to ensure the city's safety.
Blast after blast shredded the Turks, far too quickly to count, but Jack was fairly certain afterwards that every one had been tripped. All across the field, the entire front line collapsed, and those behind halted in fear, horror and confusion at this dreadful new occurrence, when the ground itself seemed to rise up against them.
The nearly endless-seeming series of blasts had halted the chanting, as the citizens of the city strained to understand what was going on out of their view. Jack whipped around and shouted them up again, and the cries of "Agios Rodo! Agios Rodo!" streamed out with renewed vigor, rolling clearly across the field.
The remaining Christians in the Turkish army heard, and now they could see her clearer, the shining vision of an unearthly woman standing high above the city with her flashing sword (which Jack had her raise again).
And to a man, they turned and fled.
Back through the masses of the rear guards, their commanders unable to stop them, the foot soldiers ran in blind religious panic, wanting only to get as far away from this celestial battlefield as possible. Mehmed, his face purple with rage, snarled for his commanders to let them go, and then gave the order for the cavalry and elite Janissaries to advance.
Jack, watching closely from the tower, sighed heavily. He hadn't wanted to do this – it was too close to assassination – but now he had no choice. He loaded the rocket launcher with one final missile, then pulled out a small metal tube, flicked it on, placed it on the parapet's edge and sighted down it carefully. He wasn't going to ask Rose to hold it. Then he shouldered the launcher and fired. The missile locked onto the laser like it was supposed to, flew in a graceful, deadly arc, and landed in the middle of the command post. Mehmed and his commanders were instant casualties.
That did it for the Turks. Even the Janissaries threw down their weapons, turned their horses or their own feet, and streamed after the Christians. Their guaranteed victory had just turned into a route, without the loss of a single Greek.
Constantine's men let out a tremendous cheer, which spread behind the walls instantly, and the entire population of Constantinople raised their voices in mad, glorious, triumphant elation, snatched from certain death and destruction by an angel. Said angel turned slowly and gazed around, then gave an awkward wave to her wildly appreciative audience.
Jack flicked off the button torches and lifted her down off the crate, draping her shawl around her shoulders again to hide the glow, then they paused, catching their breaths and staring at each other in relief and surprise.
And at that moment, the gap in the clouds closed up again, the brilliant shaft of moonlight melting swiftly away to darkness.
Rose looked up in startled wonder, then her mouth twisted wryly as she turned back to her time-traveling companion from the far future, with an amazing variety of tricks up his sleeve. "All right, I give up. How in the world did you do that?"
Jack gazed at her, his habitual grin dribbling away, then slowly shook his head. "That wasn't me, sweetheart. I had absolutely nothing to do with it. I swear... it wasn't me."
She stared back in shocked disbelief, glanced swiftly at the now-closed, monotone night sky, and shivered.