Ismail Kadare - The Siege

We’re on a new campaign

In a distant land

In desolate terrain …

The rolls of all the drums had merged into a single thundering rumble which reached their ears in waves, and then swept on and was lost in the vastness of the night.

On the threshold of his tent, the Quartermaster turned round and looked for a moment at the huge camp spread out from one horizon to the other, interspersed with thousands of triangular outlines made by the dull mauve of the tents.

“What’s on your mind?” Saruxha enquired.

“I’m thinking that we’ll have to come back and pitch our tents many more times in this part of the world.”

“Inevitable. We live in a time of war.”

“Listen,” the Quartermaster said, changing the topic suddenly. “At the war council I’m going to insist on launching the second assault without delay. And you are going to support me.”

“Sure. But what’s the hurry?”

“They are many,” the Quartermaster explained with a wave of his arm towards the myriad tents. “The grain won’t feed them all.”

Saruxha blew his nose.

“So, three or four thousand fewer mouths to feed?”

“That’s right,” the Quartermaster said. “What’s more, we might even win.”

“But every day they’re without water brings our victory closer,” Saruxha objected. “Time is on our side.”

“We’ve cut their water, but don’t forget they’ve cut our food,” the Quartermaster replied.

He gestured again towards the centre of the main camp where there was feasting and uproar.

“They’re rejoicing tonight, but they’ve no idea that in a few days they’ll go on half-rations.”

“Poor men,” Saruxha sighed. “There’s so much they don’t know.”

“A soldier’s lot.”

They went inside the tent. As time passed, they spoke less and less. Eventually Saruxha stood up to take his leave, and his host walked him back part of the way to his tent. The party was still going on in the distance, but less noisily now.

“Listen!” the Quartermaster said suddenly as he was about to say farewell to his friend. “Are my ears deceiving me? Or is that not the alert sounding?”

“It’s been drumming like that for a little while already,” his orderly said.

“Yes,” Saruxha agreed. “That is the call to arms.”

They strained their ears. The great drum was beating somewhere deep inside the camp, each of its beats overriding the rattle and bang of the party drums.

“Skanderbeg!” the Quartermaster exclaimed.

They listened intently once more. From somewhere far away to their left could be heard the distant sound of uproar. From the darkness came sporadic echoes of different voices shouting “ Silah bashna ! Alarm!”

“Saruxha, come and spend the night in my tent,” the Quartermaster offered. “This part of the camp is safe.”

“I have to go and see what’s happening at the foundry,” the master caster said.

“Your foundry’s not at risk either.”

“It would still be better if I went back,” Saruxha objected.

“I advise you to stay. This night we are on alert.”

Saruxha wavered. The great drum carried on sounding the call to arms without a pause.

“Skanderbeg must have learned that we cut off the water,” the Quartermaster said thoughtfully. And, after a moment’s silence, he added: “The tiger has pounced!”

They finally cut off our water. To begin with, when the white horse started running round and round like a curse on our ramparts, we took it for irrational behaviour on their part — a magical practice or a primitive rite. Only the count, who stayed up late that night straining to decode the messages that are sent to us by means of beacons on the mountain-tops, knew what it was all about. The signals spoke of the fence, and obviously of water too. While we joked away on the battlements, he went to church to pray. Gossip spread, and though we carried on amusing ourselves, we gradually succumbed to anxiety. Although we did not yet know the whole truth, we were plagued by fear and came out in a cold sweat .

The count’s face was yellow when he came back up to see us at the top of the wall, and he looked down on the enemy camp with desolation in his eyes. He had not been afraid of their new weapon, but he seemed terrified of that horse. Later on, when it was all over, he explained that the aqueduct had been designed to follow a paradoxical path that made it undiscoverable by human minds. But once men had stepped aside and entrusted the task to an animal, he was sore afraid. In this circumstance instinct would be more effective than intelligence .

When they saw water spurt from the pit and turn it into a brackish puddle, our daughters burst into tears, then they all went to the chapel together to pray to the Holy Virgin .

The other side celebrated the water cut-off late into the night. Trumpets, drums, flutes, bagpipes and who knows what other instruments made a diabolical noise and filled the night with a hellish racket. It went on and on until we heard their alarm drum banging. Having apparently learned that they had cut our water, our Castrioti finally set upon them .

It is past midnight. Their huge camp is in convulsion, it is gasping for breath as if it were being hacked to death. George is down there among them. He is striking and harassing them as only he knows how. The night is pitch-dark and we cannot see anything. We can only feel his breath. We have all taken up our positions behind our great gate, and are ready to open it and launch a counter-attack as soon as the order comes. From the battlements a woman has started to yell: “George, George, avenge us and kill them all!”

The chronicler had only just fallen asleep when the first alarm woke him up. He had spent a gloomy evening. In a camp entirely given over to noisy merrymaking, he had tramped up and down without meeting anyone of his acquaintance. He gave up looking for a friend, went back to his tent and tried to get some sleep. But he couldn’t. He felt painfully alone, and the sounds of carousing going on outside just made it worse. Two or three times he nearly got up to go out again, but when he remembered the fruitless walk he had taken earlier on, he decided to stay in bed. Then he just waited for the noise of the festivities to abate, hoping that once things had quietened down he would be able to get to sleep. But sleep actually stole up on him before the party was over. The white horse seeking out water kept on running round the fortress in ever slowing circles, wrapping his mind in its web of dream. Then the no-man’s-land on the other side of the fence suddenly reminded him of the plain of Kosovo — except that the white horse now had a rider, and that rider was Sultan Murad. The monarch gazed with desolate eyes on the dead who lay all around when suddenly … “Good God! No!” he moaned out loud, and woke up in an instant. The noise in the camp had changed. He went outside his tent and cocked his ear. The great alarm drum was banging somewhere in the heart of the camp. One by one, the other drums were stopping. Cries of “ Hazerol !” and “ Silah-bashna !” rang out all around. Mevla Çelebi got dressed in a hurry. He felt cold sweat on his brow. He went out. The party drums had now fallen silent, and the camp was swathed in terrifying darkness. All that could still be heard was the deep boom of the drum that signalled the alert. Çelebi could make out the sounds of running feet, of weapons being readied, commands and the clatter of hooves speeding away. Soldiers came out of their tents with their weapons in their hands and ran to their units’ assembly points like fleeting shadows hastening to a meeting of conspirators. He was seized with fear. Why were they running around like that? Where were they going? He stood outside his tent, quite petrified, not knowing what to do. There was a suspicious calm in the space immediately around him. He could hear feet moving away at speed. Someone shouted “Quicker! Quicker!” Then silence again. Why was this part of the camp being evacuated? As the thought struck him like a shard of ice, he started running automatically behind the others who were fleeing. He had no idea how long he ran. He only stopped when he felt there were enough people around him. It was a veritable exodus. Janissaries, volunteers, azabs, eshkinxhis , all in arms, were trying to track down their units by torchlight. You couldn’t tell whether they were preparing to retreat or to go on the attack. Raucous shouts, calls and orders bawled out by commanders rose on all sides.