Flanked on Both Sides

Sensing the Greeks stirring, Sudak reacted swiftly. He rallied the nearby cavalry and sent them east, swearing to wipe out the audacious army.

The ground trembled more and more violently. Vitus ordered the advance halted, drew his sword, and strode to the very front of the formation, his gaze sweeping over the faces of the matchlockmen and artillerymen.

"Anyone who fires without orders will be executed!"

The next moment, he turned around and saw hundreds of Ottoman cavalrymen thundering toward them. The heavy cavalry held lances tucked beneath their right arms, while bright turbans and pennants whipped in the wind.

The distance shrank to a hundred meters. Hooves thundered deafeningly, and Vitus heard quiet prayers behind him.

At seventy meters, the light cavalry leading the charge began to draw their bows. Vitus lowered his visor and still gave no order to fire.

In just a few seconds, the enemy reached full speed. He could even make out the savage expression on one rider's face and the vivid patterns embroidered on his robe.

"Fire!" Vitus swung his sword.

In an instant, two ranks of matchlockmen fired together, forming an unbroken wall of searing flame. The Three-Pounders belched orange-red fire as well, their dense hail of lead shot shrieking across the fan-shaped area ahead.

The Ottoman cavalry at the front seemed to crash into an invisible wall. Their horses fell with mournful cries, and the riders were flung from their saddles by the force of their momentum. They rolled across the cold ground several times before going still.

Yet deadlier than the lead shot was the thunderous roar and wall of flame, enough to make the soul shudder. The horses behind them panicked and wheeled wildly in place. Their riders pulled futilely at the reins, unable to restore order.

"Quick, change formation!"

Vitus issued his orders. The first two ranks of matchlockmen fell back into the formation, while the pikemen behind them stepped forward to fill the gaps, forming a dense bristling wall of spearpoints. Once the reloaded cannons fired a second volley of grapeshot, Vitus ordered them to go from defense to attack.

The pikemen marched forward with heavy, disciplined steps, at first slowly, then faster and faster, shifting from a walk to a run until they became a gray torrent charging straight at the Ottoman cavalry mired in chaos.

They charged over the bodies of fallen men and horses, trampled through blood-soaked mud, and drove their sharp pikes without hesitation into fallen riders trying to crawl away and into the chests of any horsemen attempting to rally resistance. The pike formation was a finely tuned killing machine, mercilessly grinding through the enemy ranks in disarray. The surviving Ottoman cavalry tried to fight back, but without their momentum, they stood no chance against the dense forest of spearpoints. Their scattered counterattacks were quickly swallowed by even more pikes.

Meanwhile, the two hundred Morean cavalrymen temporarily under Vitus's command charged the Ottoman flank, plunging the Ottoman ranks into even greater confusion.

The rout began.

Watching the advancing steel forest, the surviving Ottoman cavalry finally lost the last of their courage. They wheeled their horses around and desperately beat the frightened animals with the backs of their swords, fleeing the way they had come.

After driving off the enemy force, Vitus had a messenger sound the trumpet to reform the ranks, then headed for the Ottoman siege camp.

"Fire!"

He blasted open a section of the palisade with solid shot, then instructed the cavalry commander, "Your job is to sow chaos in the camp. Remember, operate in squads of ten. Burn tents, cut down flags, and scatter the cattle, sheep, and horses from the pens. The more chaos, the better."

Then he led the remaining infantry south, toward the first breach, where fighting was already raging.

Along the way, Sudak hastily gathered a force of infantry to block them, consisting mainly of sword-and-shield men, pikemen, and archers. The two armies stood 150 meters apart. The Ottoman troops held their ground and loosed volleys of arrows at the Eastern Roman army.

Vitus led his troops forward at a brisk pace until the two sides were less than a hundred meters apart. He ordered the pikemen back into the formation, while the matchlockmen formed a loose line two ranks deep in front and exchanged fire with the Ottoman archers.

During routine training, the matchlockmen maintained a rate of fire of two shots per minute. In battle, they grew flustered and fumbled through the process, taking forty seconds just to reload. The Ottomans fired five volleys of arrows, while the Eastern Roman musketeers managed to return fire only once.

In Vitus's eyes, that was enough.

The musketeers all wore captured iron helmets and brigandine armor, enough to protect them against arrows shot from a hundred meters away. The Ottoman archers' scale armor and mail, however, could not stop lead shot from piercing through.

In less than five minutes, the Ottoman archers were routed. The remaining infantry tried to charge, but dense fire from muskets and grapeshot cut them down halfway through, and they scattered in an instant.

After driving back two successive forces blocking his way, Vitus finally reached the first breach in the city wall. Working with the defenders, he attacked the enemy from both sides and forced them to surrender.

A rough count showed that most of the prisoners came from the Balkans and were low-ranking auxiliaries.

He left the defenders to guard the prisoners, then headed west along the city wall to the second breach, where he captured more than eight hundred low-ranking foot soldiers.

Under these repeated blows, the Ottoman army fell into uncontrollable confusion, and Sudak was forced to rally his troops and withdraw slowly. Seeing this, Theodore, at the westernmost breach, was suddenly seized by a fit of enthusiasm. Ignoring the objections of those around him, he led the militia out through the breach, only to provoke an Ottoman counterattack...

More than ten minutes later, Vitus arrived in a hurry and found Theodore beneath a corpse. Fortunately, Theodore's expensive plate armor had stopped the enemy's attacks, and he was not seriously hurt. He had only been badly shaken, staring blankly as he muttered something unintelligible.

With no time to spare, Vitus had Theodore and the other wounded men taken back to the infirmary, then instructed Psilos, "You're still in charge of defending the city wall. Don't kill the prisoners; we still have use for them."

He did not let this rare opportunity slip away. He had the army take two hundred carts and give chase, collecting weapons, armor, cannons, and food the enemy had abandoned along the way. For every hundred prisoners they captured, the Tuna Legion bound their hands with rope and assigned a squad to escort them back.

They pursued the enemy along the road until afternoon, when the Tuna Legion left the buffer zone between the two sides and officially entered the territory of the Duchy of Athens. Marcus asked, "Your Highness, shall we keep pursuing them?"

"Yes. We'll chase them all the way to Athens and give the Duke of Athens a scare."

After pursuing them for two days, Vitus still had not reached Athens. Instead, the enemy surrounded them.

"They lost the battle, yet they still have the confidence to face their pursuers. Is this what the Ottomans are like while their power is on the rise? I envy their sultan."

Enemies surged in from every direction. The Tuna Legion quickly set up five Hussite Wagon Forts, using cannons and muskets to repel Sudak's counterattack. The battle lasted only a short while before the Ottoman army's morale was spent, and its troops began withdrawing from the field one after another.

Marcus urged Vitus once more to retreat. The latter sighed. "I was hoping to ask the Duke of Athens for some payment for the construction work, but if the men can't hold out any longer, then that's that. We're withdrawing!"