The morning after the battle the plain was quiet but for the croak of ravens and the whinny of a stray horse. The air smelled of blood and of the horses that had lain out all night.
Constantine stood on a low rise and looked down at the Ottoman dead, who lay across the grass where the charge had fallen, limbs twisted, some faces still locked in pain and some emptied of all expression. As the light came up, the broken weapons among them began to shine.
None of the historical novels he had read about fields like this one had the smell in them.
He had seen death before, but never this much of it in one place, in the same grass where the larks were already going up.
Below him a group of his soldiers laughed while they stripped a fallen Ottoman of his armor and weapons, the metal clinking as it came off him.
"Did you see that Sipahi fly? By Hagios Demetrios, I've never seen a man go so high!" one soldier laughed, kicking aside a discarded Ottoman helmet as he bent to strip a jeweled dagger from its fallen owner.
"Those cannons, though! Like thunder from the heavens, they were," another soldier exclaimed, wiping sweat and soot from his brow as he rummaged through a saddlebag. "And those Pyrvelos! Heard the Akıncı squeal like stuck pigs when those shots rang out. They won't be forgetting the Morea anytime soon."
Looting was the custom after a battle. Constantine looked away from it, out to the hills in the east, where the sun was coming up.
When he looked back, a burial party further down the slope had begun digging graves for their own dead. One of the men with a spade was the old woman's grandson from the muster at Glarentza, working with his head down, gray in the face. So the kid had made it. Somebody else's grandson was going into that ground instead.
Captain Andreas came up the rise and stood beside him. "A decisive victory, Despot," he said.
"It was," Constantine said.
"The scouts are back," Andreas said. "No sign of the enemy on any road east."
Constantine turned to him and took a breath of the cold air, which still smelled of the field. "So they've fled?"
"Aye," Andreas said. "Likely back to the Hexamilion. Turahan Bey won't risk another encounter in the Morea. Not after this." He swept his arm toward the field.
Constantine nodded. He let himself be proud of it for a moment, since nobody could see inside his head. All of it had worked, and he wanted very much to laugh. The pikes had opened their lanes on the word, the carts had fired together, and the Pyrvelos had kept the Akıncı off the right until Turahan's horns called them off. Every hour of drill had paid for itself in a few minutes, the first time any of it had been tried. He supposed that was cheating. He found he didn't much mind. It had worked because nobody on that plain had ever seen it done, and it would never work that well again.
He had not slept since George brought him the count of their own dead in the night.
"And the prisoners, Despot?" Andreas asked.
Constantine kept his eyes on the hills. "See to it that the enemy wounded are... dealt with," he said.
Andreas did not ask him what he meant. "It'll be done." After a moment he said, "The men are ready to march. We should reach Kalavryta by nightfall."
Constantine looked down at the field one more time, where the ravens had come down onto the nearest of the dead. He'd just ordered men killed without even saying the word.
"Then let's go," he said.
* * *
By afternoon the army was winding up into the hills, with the cannon carts at the back and the drums beating the pace.
Constantine rode at the head of the column and watched every stand of trees along the road, waiting for the scouts he had sent ahead to tell Thomas they were coming.
At the tighter bends he could see down to the rear. On the march out from Glarentza the conscripts had been kept in the middle, between the regulars and the carts. Now they walked beside the guns, and on the steep stretches they put their shoulders to the wheels without being told. The crews swore at them for getting in the way and let them push. Twice somebody down there started up the chant of his name. The first time the sergeants let it run a little before they shut it up. The second time they didn't bother, and it carried up the hillside to him. He pretended not to hear it.
They were a few hours from Kalavryta when Stephanos, one of Andreas's lieutenants, came back from the vanguard on a lathered horse.
"Despot," Stephanos said, reining in his horse beside Constantine. "We've found something on the road."
"What is it?"
Stephanos hesitated, glancing at Andreas, who had ridden up beside them. "We found prisoners in an abandoned camp, chained and left to die. Turahan's doing."
"How many?" Andreas asked.
"A couple of dozen," Stephanos said. "Mostly women and children. They... they're in bad shape, Captain."
"Bring them forward," Constantine said. "We'll take them with us to Kalavryta."
Stephanos nodded and turned his horse, riding back toward the vanguard.
Andreas watched him go, then turned back to Constantine. "Are you certain that's wise, Despot? They could slow us down. And with Turahan still out there..."
"They're innocents, Andreas," Constantine said. "We can't abandon them. They've suffered enough."
When the prisoners were brought up, Constantine dismounted and walked among them while his men passed round the water skins.
Most of them sat huddled together, some crying without a sound and others only staring ahead, and several still had the marks of the chains on their wrists.
A young woman stood apart from the others, tall and slender, her dark hair loose down her back. Even filthy from the camp she was beautiful, and she kept her chin up and watched him all the way across.
She looked so much like Emily that for a moment Constantine stopped where he was. Emily used to hold her head up just like that when she was frightened. She had been the great love of his university years, more than thirty years ago, and he had not let himself think of her face in a long time.
"What's your name?" Constantine asked, his voice softer than he'd intended.
The young woman hesitated, then answered in the accent of the Morea. "Maria."
"Do you have family, Maria?" he asked.
Maria looked at the ground. "They are gone," she said, almost too quietly to hear. "Killed by the Turks. All of them."
He put a hand on her shoulder. "You're safe now," he said. "We'll take care of you." She was all bone under his hand.
Farther along, a man sat by himself on the grass, and at first Constantine took him for one of Turahan's riders, left behind because he was too sick to ride. Then he saw the robe. It was torn at the hem and black with dirt, but it had been a scholar's once. The man in it was a Tatar by the look of him, and filthy as he was, he sat very straight.
"Who is that man?" Constantine asked a nearby soldier.
"He calls himself Iskandar, Despot," the soldier said. "Says he's a scholar."
Constantine went over to him. "Iskandar, is it?"
The man inclined his head. "Yes, my lord."
"Did Turahan's men take you too?"
Iskandar nodded. "Near Corinth. I am no soldier, only a seeker of knowledge."
"What brings a scholar to the Morea?"
Iskandar looked at the soldier behind Constantine before he answered. "I was running from the Sultan's judges. My beliefs are not welcome to those in power."
"What beliefs?" Constantine asked.
"I was a follower of Sheikh Bedreddin," Iskandar said.
The name meant nothing to Constantine. All he knew of the Ottomans was a few sultans and a few major events. "Sheikh Bedreddin?"
Iskandar seemed to weigh how much a Greek prince would follow. "He taught that the land and what it yields belong to all men alike, and that Christian and Muslim are the same before God. Fifteen years ago we rose for him. The Sultan crushed us and hanged him at Serres."
Constantine had heard both ideas before, from people who'd had four hundred more years to come up with them. He hadn't expected them from a man in a torn robe in 1431, and he found he was paying very close attention.
Behind them the soldiers were lifting the children up into the wagons.
"Are there still men who follow him?" Constantine asked.
"Yes," Iskandar said. "In Anatolia and in the Dobruja there are many who keep to his teaching quietly and wait for another chance."
Murad could send an army west whenever he liked, so long as the country behind him stayed quiet. Constantine thought about what would happen if it didn't.
"What you know could be of use to me," Constantine said. "Will you tell me more of it?"
"That would depend on your intentions, my lord," Iskandar said. "I have no desire to see more bloodshed for empty promises."
It was a careful answer from a man who'd been in chains an hour before. He'd turned down a promise before Constantine had made one.
"Then I won't make you any," Constantine said. "Eat something. We'll talk again at Kalavryta."
Later, while the column formed up again, Constantine took George aside.
"One of the prisoners may be of use to us," he said. "A scholar called Iskandar. He followed Sheikh Bedreddin, and he says there are still men in Anatolia and the Dobruja waiting for another chance."
George knew the name. "Musa Çelebi's chief judge. He rose against Sultan Mehmed when I was a boy."
Behind them the first of the wagons began to roll.
"If those men rose again while Murad was looking our way..." Constantine said.
"Murad would put them down the way his father did," George said, "and then he'd want to know who had paid for it. Still, when Bayezid's sons were fighting each other, your father got Thessaloniki back without a siege."
"How long would it take to reach them?"
"Years, Despot. We'd need men we can trust on the other side, and money nobody can follow back to Glarentza."
Constantine watched the road east for a while. "Look into it anyway. Quietly."
"And Iskandar?"
"See that he's treated well. And have someone watch him."
George went off down the line of wagons to find the man for it.
The column went on more slowly now, with the wagons full of prisoners creaking along behind the cannon carts. Constantine rode near the front beside Andreas. Once he turned in the saddle and saw Maria walking beside one of the wagons with a small boy on her hip. She had given her place in it to an old woman.
"We won't make Kalavryta by dark," Andreas said.
"I know."
Andreas looked back down the column. "If Turahan had left a few hundred horse on this road, they'd have caught us strung out like this."
"He didn't."
"No," Andreas said. "He's riding to tell the Sultan about the carts. Next time it won't be raiders. It'll be Murad himself."
"Then we'll need more carts," Constantine said.
They rode on for a while before Andreas spoke again. "The scholar. Do you trust him?"
"Not yet," Constantine said. "But he knows things about Murad's lands that nobody in Glarentza does."
"Things that would set Turks against Turks."
Constantine did not answer that.
"You think differently from most," Andreas said after a moment.
"Is that a problem?"
"Not at all, Despot. Certainly not after yesterday."
Near sunset the scouts came back down the road at a canter. Thomas had watched Turahan's riders leave the town the day before, and he had the gates open for them.