Ring of Fire III

  And then there were the empty trenches. He had sent out raiding parties to try to disrupt the progress and perhaps gather in a prisoner or two to get a better feel for what faced him. They had not brought him a single prisoner. The men who returned said that, when they reached the first line of trenches, they were empty. It was only as they explored them that they ran into sudden ambushes. This experience was repeated on the next two nights. It was possible, of course, that the Ottoman commander was withdrawing his men as Arash’s men approached in order to lead them into ambushes. Certainly it seemed to be an effective tactic—only about three in ten of his men came back. But to detect all his raiding parties in time to carry out such a withdrawal (for there had been no sudden firing along the front to suggest that any of the parties were annihilated at the first line of trenches) stretched credulity to the breaking point.

  In fact, he was beginning to suspect that the force surrounding him might not really be the Ottoman army at all. Mir Arash Khan was increasingly convinced that what faced him was only the vanguard of that army. Murad was young and inexperienced. He was also supposed to be confident of his physical prowess, his skills with weapons, and his horsemanship. It wouldn’t be the first time a man had let ability in one area convince him he had ability in all. And to a young, strong, and impetuous man, the allure of the glory that could be attained by dashing ahead with his cavalry to try to seize the city could have been overwhelming.

  If he was right—if all that Murad had with him was his cavalry and a few soldiers who had run along with them—then it was possible that glory would go to Mir Arash Khan for ending the war by defeating—perhaps even killing or capturing—the Ottoman Sultan. The English had taught his men how to stand against cavalry on an open field, and he had more than enough men to mount an assault on the trenches if all the soldiers available were the mounted troops Murad could have mustered. If he acted decisively before the bulk of the enemy army could arrive, then his chances of victory were great.

  And so he had planned a counterattack. The plan was simple. He would send five thousand of his men out this largest of the three city gates against the Ottomans. Fortunately, the works he had constructed immediately outside the gates had not fallen on that first mad day, and so he still controlled enough ground to allow a substantial force to be assembled. He had put his best guns and gunners on the gun platforms that had been built flanking the gate. He had had many to choose from—if all the guns that had been brought into the city were fired, they would use up all the gunpowder in a day—and he knew that they could keep the Ottoman cavalry from interfering with his troops as they formed up. They would also be able to keep the Ottoman artillery and musket men from being effective against his men as they formed up—the few guns the Ottomans had in place might have sufficed to break up a small sortie, but against an attack of the scale he planned they would be useless even if allowed to fire unimpeded. In fact, the works the Ottomans had built opposite the gate were just strong enough to fend off the sort of small attack usual in sieges. Only one real cannon, although there were some odd-looking assemblies of what seemed to be musket barrels on high-wheeled carriages like that of the cannon—and the fireworks, of course. It seemed his opponent had decided to concentrate his men and resources in accordance with an Ottoman plan of attack. Another sign of inexperience, not thinking that one’s enemies might not act in accordance with one’s plans.

  Today was the day. He turned and gave the order, the horn was sounded, the gates swung open, and his men began running out to form up on the open space just behind the ditch while the men with ramps laid them over it. Arash felt a smile tugging at his lips as he saw signs of frantic activity in the Ottoman gun emplacement. Apparently they hadn’t even kept their cannon loaded against the chance he would send a raiding party out of the gate. His own guns began to fire—the Ottomans’ entrenchments would protect them, but only if they kept down. His men would have plenty of time to form up and move on the trenches. And the volume of matchlock fire coming from the trenches suggested that they were held by a few hundred men at most. Today would be a glorious day.

  * * *

  As he watched the Persians spill out of the gate, Kemal gritted his teeth in frustration. For eight months, ever since he had been assigned to the rockets, he had put up with the “friendly” insults of his fellow gunners. He had been told that it was a great honor that one so young had been chosen—but he knew he had been assigned to the rockets because he was junior to the others and probably also because he was from Anatolia—there was always a prejudice against Turkish gunners. Fireworks master, they called him. He had laughed, and reacted by working to truly become the master of the rockets.

  He had expected that he would have a chance to make them swallow their mockery on this campaign. But Ahmed Pasha had seemed not to understand the potential of his weapon. He had refused to allow them to be used in any of the skirmishes they had already fought and, when setting up here, he had placed insane restrictions on them. Kemal had not been allowed to fire more than one rocket at a time, and had had to wait at least half an hour before firing from the same launch rack a second time. It had taken him nearly three days to get all the racks properly ranged. It should have taken less than an hour to ready all thirty racks.

  Now, today, he had a perfect opportunity to show what they could do. It would take moments to launch the full battery, and that would surely send the redheads scurrying back into their hole. Yet the command to loose did not come. He looked back toward the commander, who sat on his horse calmly watching the Persians form up to attack and doing nothing else.

  * * *

  Ahmed Pasha, sometimes called Küçük—Little—Ahmed, watched the Persians forming up before the gate. His men were eager to get at them and he hoped he could hold them back long enough. He had allowed musket fire at them—it would have been impossible to prevent and would have made the Persian wonder if his men had done nothing. The gunners had wanted to fire too—he had had to have one of his guards knock the match from the hand of one of the gun crew—for good measure he had had the cannon tipped forward and the ball drawn out. Now the gunners were racing to reload it.

  The sultan had ordered him to fix the Persians’ attention here at Revan for at least a month. Today would decide if he could do it. He knew from captives that the Persians had more men and more guns than he had. But he also knew that he had stunned the Persian commander by the ferocity of his initial attack. Now, it looked like the Persian had gotten over his initial shock. If the Persian succeeded, even in a small way, today, Küçük Ahmed knew he would lose. The Persian would swamp him using his huge garrison, and he would have to retreat too early.

  Küçük Ahmed was not a good loser. He planned to stun the Persian again. But to do that, he knew he had to hold his men back until the perfect moment. The moment when he could do the most damage to their confidence. Which was coming up...now.

  * * *

  Kemal saw the Pasha suddenly turn his head to where the signalmen waited. Then—at last—the flags moved, signaling the time had come. He turned and slashed his hand, and his men bent to light their fuses.

  * * *

  Mir Arash Khan looked down with satisfaction. His men had formed up. The Ottoman musketeers had caused a few casualties, but not nearly enough. It looked like the gun crew he’d been watching had finished loading their cannon, but that would not be enough to stop—or even slow—his attack. He heard an odd noise, like a piece of cloth tearing, and looked back toward the Ottoman trenches. They had fired one of their rockets. Those toys wouldn’t stop the attack either. He watched it as it headed toward his troops—some moved to avoid the place it looked like it would fall.

  * * *

  Kemal cursed. There was always one fuse that burned differently than the others. This one had been fast. But at least it hadn’t misfired. And there went the rest—first the five that had been left in the rack that launched the first, and over the next seconds the others. One hundred seventy-nine
rockets followed their premature brother toward the ground he had so slowly been allowed to range. As soon as the last left its rack, he waved the men forward to begin reloading.

  * * *

  Arash looked up as the odd tearing sound was repeated and magnified. Suddenly the smoke trail left by the first rocket was obscured by what seemed to be hundreds more. His troops began to scatter.

  * * *

  Kemal spared a glance toward the Persians as the sounds of his rockets bursting reached his ears. It had been perfect. Not one rocket had veered off course, not one had stayed in the racks. Now let them joke about fireworks.

  * * *

  To Arash’s ears, the sounds of the explosions seemed quieter than he had expected, a bit muffled. A part of his mind concluded that each probably carried no more than two or three times the powder of a grenade. Under ordinary conditions, grenades were a danger the men could deal with. But so many grenades never came at once. The sound of the Ottoman cannon firing was a sharp punctuation to the rockets. Arash looked down. A cloud of smoke covered a long section of the center of his line. As he watched, a man emerged, staggering back toward the gate, seeming covered in blood.

  * * *

  “Hurry. Hurry.” Kemal knew his men were working as quickly as they could, but still he felt he had to drive them on. He took a moment to look at the Persians. His rockets had cut a hole in the center of their line, and the troops on the flanks were looking shaken. Men were falling back by ones and twos to the gate, some making a pretense of helping wounded comrades, some simply heading for safety. Fewer men were leaving the Persian left, though. A brightly clad officer was moving about, clearly steadying his men. That simplified Kemal’s next decision.

  “Shift right two turns.” He repeated the instructions a half dozen times, with variations in the degree of shift, moving down the line as his men finished reloading. He heard a curse from Mustafa—his crank had jammed. Mustafa and his loader bent down and lifted the back of the rack, manually turning it.

  * * *

  “Tell the gunners to concentrate their fire on the part of the trenches the smoke trails came from,” Mir Arash Khan instructed the runners. The launchers were completely hidden behind earthen embankments, but having cannon balls bouncing near them should at least slow them down. Given how long the rockets seemed to need between shots, with any luck his men could be on them before a second volley could be launched.

  He looked at his troops. The smoke had cleared. It wasn’t—quite—as bad as he feared. They were among his best troops, after all. There was even a small group in the center that seemed to have reformed and looked ready to step off. And the left flank, where Aryo commanded, looked as ready as though nothing had happened. He ordered the signal for the advance to be raised.

  And then he heard the sound of cloth tearing again.

  * * *

  Kemal watched his rockets fly toward the Persian lines. This launch was less perfect. Two rockets had left their racks on trajectories that were completely random, and Mustafa had shifted his rack too far—all his rockets would miss. But it would be good enough, he thought.

  A ripple of explosions covered the Persians in smoke. He started to turn back when a flicker of motion caught his eye. Impossibly, the brightly uniformed officer ran out of the enveloping smoke. He was followed closely by two of his men, then four more, then...then nothing. A ripple of musket fire kicked up the dirt around the men running toward the Ottoman lines. They did not slow. A burst from one of the volley guns cut them down. Behind them, the remaining Persians were crowding the gate.

  He felt a hand on his shoulder and whipped around. It was one of Ahmed Pasha’s runners, his red cap slightly askew on his head.

  “Ahmed Pasha commands you to put one more volley of your rockets on top of the walls.”

  “I can put a dozen more volleys there.”

  “Ahmed Pasha said to tell you one more, and only one more, if you said something like that. He also said to tell you that you have done what he needed, and done it well.”

  * * *

  Mir Arash Khan sat in his hall, occasionally touching a cloth to the cut on his head. It was small, but seemed not to want to stop oozing blood. He had returned to his residence after the gates had been closed. The Ottomans had not tried to storm them despite the confusion created by the third volley of rockets, and all his men who lived had been brought inside the walls.

  After the disaster of the morning, the day had passed quietly. The Ottomans had dug more trenches, but there had been only desultory exchanges of fire.

  His commanders had pressed him to try again. They pointed out that only one man in eight had been lost—not so many for an attack on a fortified position. They ignored the fact that the attack had not even started. They argued that the fact the bombardment had stopped after the third volley meant that the Ottomans were out of the deadly rockets. They ignored the losses among his best gun crews, and his own near death.

  Perhaps they were right. But Arash had been fooled once already. He had thought the Ottomans were weak and would fall before him. The bodies before the gate provided a refutation of that belief.

  No, his orders were to hold the city. He would follow those orders. He had been led astray by pride, by a desire for glory. Never again. He would hold his position and let the Ottomans smash themselves against his walls if they dared.

  * * *

  Arash smiled as the scribe left the room. The man had obviously been confused by his reaction. He had come to tell his Khan that they needed to ration supplies, that at the current rate they had only enough food for three more weeks. Whatever reaction he had expected, it was clear that Arash’s peal of relieved laughter had not been it. It was also clear that he had expected a much larger reduction than Arash had ordered.

  But then the man did not know what Arash did. After the disaster of yesterday, Arash had expected nothing but bad news. But it was clear that much of the food that had been planned for had been delivered and had made it inside the walls before the Ottomans had attacked. The scribe thought they had to plan for an indefinite siege, at least three months, perhaps more, before winter would force the Ottomans away. But Arash knew that Shah Safi was probably already on his way to break the siege.

  For all that he had heavily reinforced Iravan, Shah Safi had not completely trusted the words of the magicians—Shah Safi did not completely trust anything—and so he had not placed his forces in front of Iravan at places where the Ottomans could have been ambushed before even coming into sight of its walls. But he had created a mobile force that he himself led and had positioned it so that it could move toward any spot that was threatened.

  Despite the chaos of the day the Ottomans had attacked, several messengers had been sent and even if all had been caught, the failure of his usual weekly report to arrive would have caused the alarm to be sounded. In fact, by now, the shah’s army was probably marching to his relief. It was, at most, a four-week march away. If they forced their pace, they might even arrive before he would have needed to start rationing.

  Better to be safe, of course. And cutting rations would actually be good for morale—the men would expect it as part of how things were done in a siege, and if any were captured, they would tell the enemy what he expected to hear. He had ordered the rations cut by enough to make them last six weeks. If he dug into what the inhabitants of the city had hidden away for themselves, he could probably stretch it to eight weeks. But long before that became necessary, he had no doubt that he would see the Ottomans crushed between the hammer of the shah’s army and the anvil of the fortress of Iravan.

  * * *

  Ahmed looked down at the map. He wasn’t sure if he liked these new maps—to be sure, they showed the geometry of the area with great precision, and the terrain—where it was shown—was accurate as well. But the old maps, despite their inaccuracies, had given him a better idea of how long it took to go between places, even if the actual distances were sometimes off. Still, if what the messe
nger his scouts had captured had told them was true, then the Persian relief force was at least a three-week march away. He could count on at least three days warning from his deli scouts or the Tartars who had spread out from Revan. So all he had to do to accomplish his goals was keep the Persians bottled up until he was told the relief force was close by, and then he could fall back on the positions being prepared by the sekbans who had followed his strike force. With any luck the Persians would chase him and he would get a chance to bloody their noses.

  He looked at the man who had brought the report. “You are certain he said it was the shah himself who led the force?”

  “Yes. He was emphatic about the vengeance that would soon fall on us.”

  “Interesting.” He sent the man to get himself a meal while he thought about the possibilities. Shah Safi had a reputation for being...erratic. With such a man in command of the opposition, there might be opportunities.