Outskirts of Constantinople, South of the Lykos River.
Constantine came out of the logistics tent with damp on his sleeves. Behind him, George was still hunched over the board on the barrels, demanding another powder tally and cursing the mule trains for being late with theirs.
Outside, the camp was already at it. Men hammered stakes into the ground, carpenters wrestled planks onto trestles, and a line of oxen stood steaming while teamsters crouched by the Drakos carriages, checking wheel-pins with blackened fingers. The air smelled of cut pine and smoke.
His horse waited beside a picket rope. Andreas stood at the head of his own mount with a glove tucked under his belt and a rolled sketch of the walls under one arm. Two cavalrymen held back a cart piled with fascines to clear the way. Constantine put a hand on the saddle, felt the pull in his thigh from the previous week's riding, and swung up. Andreas mounted without speaking, then nodded toward the valley ahead, where the ground dipped toward the walls.
They rode past the first line of work parties and out into the open ground before the walls. From a distance the Theodosian line had looked flat and simple. Up close, between St. Romanos and the Charisius Gate, it broke into ditch, outer wall, towers, inner wall, and repaired scars where older stone met newer patchwork. The horses shortened their stride on the damp grass. Below them, the Lykos ran narrow and brown through the hollow, with reeds along the banks and the smell of cold mud rising from it.
Andreas lifted his hand toward the central stretch. "I did not think I would ever stand on this side of the walls," he said. "St. Romanos. I stood in that gate tower when Murad came, years back. I was younger and a worse soldier."
Constantine kept his eyes on the stone. He shifted in the saddle and looked from the ditch to the inner wall, measuring height against the gun teams in his head, against the barrels in George's ledgers, against the weeks behind them from Philippopolis and Edirne to this valley.
"Nor did I," he said. He kept his eyes on the wall a moment longer. "These walls will cost powder. A great deal of it."
The wind pushed his cloak against his leg. Down below, a pair of engineers had gone forward under shield cover and were pacing the distance from the first bank of the ditch with a rope between them. Andreas watched them a moment before he answered.
"The middle gives us one thing," he said. "The Mesoteichion sits in the dip. Look at the ground on either side. If we build platforms there, our guns bear down into it from both sides. Men on the wall will be working under our mouths." He pointed south with two fingers. "But the wall itself — not weak. From there down toward the Marmara, the face stays hard, the core thick, the ditch in front. We could spend a great deal and still fail to open it."
They rode northward, keeping the wall on their right. As the line bent toward Blachernae, the pattern changed. The ditch weakened and then fell away; the wall lost some of its mass and stood in a more awkward meeting of towers, palace works, and old additions. Rooflines showed within, and farther off, above the slope toward the Horn, the dark bulk of the palace quarter sat under the morning haze.
Andreas reined in on a shoulder of ground from which the corner could be seen clearly. "Here," he said. "Single wall in places. Towers, then the sea front. Less depth, no ditch. We take these heights first, hold them, and build for a sustained battery. The hauling will be ugly. The slope works against us."
Constantine studied the face of it. Here, the wall showed its joints more plainly than the central line. He could see where time and additions had left seams, where the masonry ran thinner, where a breach might open sooner if the guns were kept fed. "The slope is a curse," he said, "but this corner is weaker. I would rather drag guns uphill here than pound the center for weeks."
"And the Horn side?" Andreas asked after a moment. "You still think about a sea assault?"
"We look at that too," Constantine said. "I want the whole line in my head before I spend a barrel. The ships may give us a way in, or they may die under the sea wall. We will see." He turned his horse back toward camp. Andreas followed. By the river, axes were already going.
Late noon
The war tent stood south of the Lykos. Inside, the canvas smelled of wax, wet wool, and men who had been working since dawn. A broad map of the city lay pinned under stones. George stood over it with a stylus in one hand and a wax tablet in the other. Grgur Branković still had mud to the knee from his morning ride. Fruzhin's cloak was thrown back from one shoulder to dry. Aristos waited by the entrance with his gloves tucked into his belt. Kallistos had charcoal on his thumb from marking distances, and a few other officers stood farther back.
Constantine took his place at the head of the table and let the room settle. Beyond the tent wall, hammers still rang on the timber frames, and someone was calling for a fresh team at the powder wagons.
"We have driven the Turk out of every holding he kept in Europe," he said. "Now he sits inside our holy city. We end it here."
A murmur went around the table, boots shifting on the rushes, a fist striking once against a breastplate. He raised a hand and the sound dropped.
"It will take time, though. Don't anyone go in thinking otherwise. Halil has enough men in there to line every yard of those walls and still keep a reserve."
"How many do you judge them for?" Fruzhin asked. "Fifteen thousand at the least, I'd say."
"Around that. Maybe more by now, if he's pulled in extra reinforcements."
Constantine tapped two fingers on the central wall. "But the wall first. Numbers behind it don't help him if we can —" He paused, losing the line for a half-breath as he took in the Blachernae corner again. "— open a breach in front of him. Andreas."
Andreas stepped to the map and set the butt of his dagger against the northern corner. "Blachernae," he said. "That is the main effort. Single wall in most places, no ditch. We take the heights opposite, hold them, build platforms, and batter until a breach opens worth storming." He dragged the dagger down toward the center. "The Mesoteichion gets a battery as well. The dip lets our guns bear in from both sides. The wall there is far stronger, but we will use it to divide their strength and keep pressure on the center."
Constantine put two fingers on the map between St. Romanos and the Charisius Gate. "Every man Halil keeps in the center is a man he cannot send to Blachernae." His hand moved toward the Horn.
"There is more. We still need Galata. We need the sea wall counted with our own eyes. And we need the fleet on this shore if we mean to press the city properly from land and water together. Until we have those things, we build the siege and tighten it."
George stepped in before anyone else could start arguing. "We begin with what keeps this from turning into a disaster. A palisade from the Horn to the Marmara, three camps behind it, ditches where the ground will take them. If we leave gaps, the first hard sortie hits the powder park and sets the whole camp running."
"Three camps?" one of the officers at the back asked.
"Three. Main here by the Lykos. North at Blachernae. South toward Hebdomon." George pointed at the center. "Kallistos, your battery faces the Mesoteichion."
Kallistos rubbed the charcoal on his thumb against his palm and looked at the map as if he were already measuring it in timber and sweat. "Give me cutters, carts, and four days of steady labor," he said. "Three, if the ground stays dry and no one steals my oxen."
George's stylus moved north. "Fruzhin takes the north camp facing Blachernae. One tagma in support." Then south. "Grgur holds the southern camp with one tagma and his Serbian horse."
Grgur's head came up. "If there's a real breach, it'll be in the north. Put my men where the fighting will be."
Fruzhin gave a short, disgusted breath and turned on him, but George cut across both of them. "These are camp assignments, not storming honors. You hold the ground you are given or the guns do not fire at all."
Constantine spoke before the argument could gather heat. "George is right. The southern camp covers the road to Hebdomon and the coast. When the fleet comes in, that road matters. Your cavalry matters there more than on the slope under Blachernae."
Grgur looked at him for a beat, then he said, "South, then. When a breach opens, Serbs go in first."
"You will have your storming right," Constantine said. "When the breach is fit to climb."
The answer settled him enough. Fruzhin gave a short breath through the nose and looked back to the map. Constantine turned to Aristos.
"You take Hebdomon. Secure the little port, clear the ground for unloading, and hold the road between shore and camp."
Aristos nodded once. "It will be ready."
After that, George started handing out work. Second and fourth tagmata would cut timber from the groves west of the camp. Serbian wagoners would haul stone and planks to the southern line. Fruzhin's men would take the northern pickets that same night and start the first breastworks before dawn. Kallistos named rope, nails, hides for mantlets, and extra wheelwrights. Clerks wrote as fast as they could, heads bent over their boards while the canvas above them snapped in the wind and the smell of hot tallow from the sealing pot drifted across the table.
By evening, the work was underway. Stakes had been stacked along the road, and the first carts bound for Hebdomon were already leaving under escort when Nestor Gregoras arrived. A guard opened the tent flap and let him in. George looked up from the table.
Nestor bowed, then straightened with effort. "Basileus. Kyreneia lies off Hebdomon. I came as soon as I landed."
"Speak," Constantine said.
"Prince Thomas is inside the city. Has been for some time."
Constantine did not move. His hand stayed on the table edge until the knuckles went white under the lamp. "How long?"
"Since the day he reached Galata. Crossed over that night, it seems. A message came through — monks, a few loyal men, names weren't put on paper. He's hidden with your mother. Both alive. Haven't found a way out. The gates are watched harder now, Halil has tightened —"
"Stop. Both alive?"
"Both. Yes, Basileus."
The tent held for a moment on the creak of canvas and the hiss from the lamp wick. Constantine took a slow breath in through the nose and let it out. The knuckle on his little finger had started to ache where it pressed the table edge. George lowered his stylus and waited.
"I thought he'd stay in Galata," George murmured.
"So did I." Constantine wet his lips, reaching for the next question. Then he saw Nestor's face. "There's more. Say it."
Nestor's fingers went to the fold of his belt, missed it, and came away empty.
"Demetrios is dead, Basileus. Thomas killed him. In Galata, before he crossed. He found him there — under the Genoese —"
Outside, someone shouted for a fresh team at the wagons. A horse answered from the picket line. George set the stylus down very carefully on the edge of the tablet.
"Under Genoese custody."
"Yes, Basileus. Under the faith of the Commune."
"Seen by whom?"
"Guards. A servant. Men inside the lodging. Enough."
"The Podestà."
"The guards barred the lodging. They didn't hold it. He — he gave me a letter for you." From inside his cloak Nestor brought out a folded packet sealed in dark wax and set it down beside the lamp. "He was anxious when he handed it over. Very."
Constantine did not pick it up straight away. He looked at the seal for a moment. Then he broke it, scanned the page, and folded it again. His thumb pressed once along the crease until the paper bowed.
"Why did they let Thomas go?" he said, more to the folded letter than to Nestor.
"It seems — they wanted him out of their streets more than they wanted him held. No boat was sent after him."
"Demetrios is not to be mentioned outside this tent," Constantine said. "Nothing written. Nothing sent."
Nestor lowered his head. George reached across and drew the packet closer into the light. The Podestà's seal sat in the red wax, flattened by a thumb on one edge.
Before Nestor could leave the tent, Constantine stopped him. "Rest while you can. At first light, go back to the fleet. Tell Laskaris to bring it here at once."