Ismail Kadare - The Siege

The horse whinnied. It seemed to pick up the scent of the river, and rushed off towards it once more. But the fence was sturdy and forced the animal to turn back. You could see steam rising from its exhausted body, you could see its nostrils quivering. A narrow streak of blood led away from its mouth. The mare was now cantering parallel to the fence a few paces from the soldiers, staring at them with its demented eyes.

The parapet was packed with defenders. It seemed every one of them had climbed up to the top. Some were waving crosses and icons.

Suddenly the horse stopped, pivoted around, put its head down, and plunged its muzzle into the ground. Then it trampled its hooves into the same spot with furious energy, raising great clumps of earth. But this time the horse did not move on. Quite the contrary: it stamped and nuzzled the ground with ever-greater fury and desperation. It was quickly enveloped in a cloud of dust. It soon seemed that a miracle was taking place: just like in a fairy story, the mare seemed to have been seized by a whirlwind and to have vanished into the heavens in a puff of smoke. As the dust cloud settled, the horse was indeed nowhere to be seen. A groan of terror and awe rose from a thousand breasts. Then from the midst of the moaning rose shouts of “She’s back! She’s come back!” and they were all so carried away that many of them raised their eyes to the heavens, expecting to see the horse float back down. But once the dust cloud had cleared completely, the horse could be seen by all, with its legs in the air, waving its hooves ever more feebly, and rubbing its back into the ground.

“That spot is to be excavated immediately!” the Pasha called out. The sapper’s captain, who had come closer in the expectation of just such an order, rushed over to his men, standing at the ready a few paces away, with their spades and picks on their shoulders. A breach was made in the fence and the captain led his sappers at the double towards the horse. When they got to the spot where it was still lying, they pulled it out of the way and started digging.

There was much ado among the defenders at the top of the high wall. Sinister curved shapes emerged from the battlements, then arrows whistled through the scorching air. Two sappers sank to the ground without a sound. The third to be hit was the captain.

Tursun Pasha closed his eyes. He felt worn out, but happy.

“At last!” he muttered. “At last.”

“Give the sappers some cover!” the Alaybey yelled.

Someone darted forwards. Commands were bawled, the breach in the fence was reopened, and a detachment of azabs , carrying their shields high before them, ran towards the diggers who had begun to flee, leaving their tools behind.

“The pipe is definitely there,” Tursun Pasha said. “The fact that they shot at us proves we are on to their water supply. But why are the sappers running away? Get them back on the job this instant! They must dig at top speed. We mustn’t leave them time to draw water! Quickly!”

“About — turn!” the Alaybey screamed as he went to intercept the handful of runaways. “Resume digging! At the double! Go!”

Under the command of an officer the azabs turned about and led the troops at running pace back towards the horse. The sappers followed on behind. When they got within range of the enemy, the infantrymen raised their shields and advanced with caution. By the time they reached the place where digging had been started, they formed on the fortress side an almost solid wall of shields, and waited for the sappers to come up behind them. Nobody seemed to pay the slightest attention to the men who had fallen beside the horse.

There were a few more shots from the battlements, but then, strangely enough, the defenders gradually vanished.

“They’ve gone back down to fill their water tanks,” a voice suggested.

The Pasha gave an order. Another detachment of azabs instantly advanced towards the sappers and gave them a second semicircle of cover from enemy fire.

The digging went on. People waited and worried. In the midst of the excitement, anxiety and sweat that afflicted everyone, only the architect’s face remained, as ever, unmoved. Now and again the Mufti nodded his head and uttered curses.

The sappers had now dug deep enough to be quite invisible to the onlookers. All that could be seen were spadefuls of earth flying up over the edge of the hole. And the more the pile of dug earth rose, the more you could read sheer terror in the eyes of all.

“At the siege of Hapsan-Kala, we had to dig for half a day,” Old Tavxha said, looking at one and then the other of his comrades as if to seek their pardon for this delay in the discovery of the water source.

Silence reigned. The hole was now very deep and earth was being hauled up in sacks. A man ran over with a ladder on his back. Some of the onlookers grew weary of waiting and drifted off, but their places were quickly taken by others. People you never usually notice in an army came to join the throng: kitchen workers, officers’ laundrymen, water carriers, embroiderers, knife grinders, all those whose tents were pitched on the other side of the river and who had come to be called the “othersiders,” and even the dwarves who had just been sent from the capital to entertain the troops.

The Pasha slowly cracked his knuckles. His right ear had started buzzing again. He took another look at the corpses lying around the sappers and leaned towards the Alaybey to whisper something to him. But just at that moment, from the place of excavation, a savage roar of joy could be heard. “Wa-a-a-ter!” yelled ten times, a hundred times, a thousand times over by the horde of soldiers who suddenly shook themselves out of the state of lethargy into which the cruel sun had plunged them. The cry snapped them out of it in an instant, as if the water itself had suddenly refreshed their scorched limbs and faces.

Tursun Pasha began to laugh. It was the first time he had allowed himself that pleasure since the beginning of the campaign. Everyone in his entourage was taken aback, and turned to look. It was unusual, even shocking. They had never imagined their commander-in-chief was capable of laughing, and like anything that overturns a generally held opinion, the Pasha’s guffaw aroused a kind of anxiety, almost a feeling of fear. Their leader’s face suddenly seemed strange, distant, and undecipherable.

Shouts of “the water, the water!” now rose on all sides in wild excitement. Soldiers kissed and hugged, picked each other up, bawled and howled like madmen. Dervishes began to dance.

The battlements were still deserted. The defenders had vanished. Only the look-outs could be seen moving slowly at the tops of the towers, like shadows quite alien to the world of men.

“Skanderbeg!” Tursun Pasha growled, as if he was drunk on revenge. “At last, I am going to crush you!”

He ground his teeth as if he was crushing the bones of his worst enemy, whose name he had just uttered for the first time in his life. At meetings of the war council and in other discussions, the Pasha always avoided saying Skanderbeg’s name and only ever referred to him as “that man”.

“Skanderbeg!” he mumbled again with repressed glee, slowly turning each letter of the name over on his tongue.

The Pasha’s smile slowly drained from his face like water on sand, and his expression resumed its familiar look which all around him understood. They cheered up as a result and the wave of joy that had come to them with a slight delay now overtook them entirely. They began to chatter noisily about this and that and congratulated each other heartily. The Mufti, Kurdisxhi and others kept looking towards the still imperturbable architect, and put on faces to make fun of him. Old Tavxha stood stock-still. Cursing under his breath, he was proudly waiting for the others to come over and congratulate him.