Ismail Kadare - The Siege

They were on the attack again. Contrary to usual tactics, they had launched the action on the stroke of noon, when the heat was at its peak. A great horde of assault troops drenched in blood and sweat pressed up against the entire outer wall of the fortress, gesticulating, climbing ladders, climbing back down, retreating, rushing forwards, whirling, panting, and screaming over the thunderous noise of their cannon and the hundreds of drums that went on banging without a break. A thick pall of yellowish dust obscured parts of the tableau from time to time, just as it revealed others more horrible as it slowly moved away on the wind.

The sun beat down without mercy.

Disobeying the rules of war, Tursun Pasha had decided to attack at midday for an obvious reason: the besieged would be doubly punished by thirst. In the architect’s opinion (he had noticed that the Pasha, oddly, paid more attention to his views when he was angry with him), seven days with no external supply of water should have exhausted all the cisterns, however large they may be (under torture, prisoners had given varying numbers — some said there were four, others three). As for water from the well, it could not possibly be enough to meet the needs of the besieged and allow them to care for their wounded. In weather as hot as this, the architect emphasised, wounding them is even more useful to us than killing them. Tursun Pasha had to make a great effort not to scream back at Giaour: “You’re not going to start proposing yet more ill-advised stratagems, are you? Maybe you’ll try to persuade me to order my troops to take care when they’re fighting not to slay the foe, but just to wound him?” In the event, he did say something like that to the architect, but not roughly, only as a joke. Giaour replied: “Do as you think fit, sire.”

In spite of everything, it was the architect who had given the canniest advice about the timing of the attack. Most of the council had wanted to put it off even longer so as to let thirst do part of the work of the scimitar. Delay might seem sensible, he had said, and thirst will indeed assist the task, but they should not forget that it was past the middle of August and that people who knew the region reckoned that the rains would come very soon. A sudden shower could put everything in jeopardy.

The objection was enough to convince the Pasha to act on the architect’s advice. Moreover, even if the rain should hold off, he had his own deadlines for this campaign. He had put a ring of iron around the fortress, but he was as much in its grip as the defenders were. They may lack water, but he was short of time. The campaign could go on to the middle of the autumn at the latest, but no longer. The first frost usually brought the order to withdraw, and for him that would be the end.

He kept his eyes glued to a single spot, the main gate, where the surge was fiercest. The azabs had managed to erect another scaffold which they had covered with wet animal hides. The great reed screens hovered over the attackers’ heads, like rafts on a stormy sea. Sheltered by these devices, the soldiers had started battering the heavy door with their gigantic iron rams.

“The hinges are giving way already,” the Alaybey observed. “They don’t seem to have been properly repaired.”

“Repeat the order not to enter the inner courtyard,” the Pasha said.

An officer rode off towards the ramparts.

At the council of war held the previous night, someone had put the view that, since the attempt to batter down the main gate had failed first time round, it would be wiser not to try it again. But the Pasha objected that forcing open a main gate, even if it was of no practical use, served most of all to raise the attackers’ morale. Moreover, in consultation with Saruxha, he had devised a stratagem which required the main gate to be open in any case.

“Your magnificence,” the Pasha’s aide-de-camp whispered as he leaned towards his master, “the doctor requests an audience.”

“Now?” Tursun Pasha said without taking his eyes off the castle’s main door.

“Yes, now.”

“Bring him.”

Sirri Selim introduced himself, bent his great length down low twice over, and, thinking that the Pasha had still not noticed him, bowed a third time.

“Speak,” the Pasha said when a long shadow awkwardly darkening his feet alerted him to the presence of the doctor standing behind him. Speak, and may ill befall you if what you have to say is out of place, he added silently.

“Pardon me, sire, for disturbing you at such a moment …”

“Come to the point,” the Pasha cut in.

Sirri Selim swallowed his saliva. “We must take a prisoner from among the besieged,” he said, pointing towards the ramparts. “Alive if possible, wounded or not.” Realising he might be asking for too much, he paused, and then added, “But a corpse would do, just about. I will study the man’s innards and find out whether he has drunk any water, and if so, how much.”

A prisoner … During the first attack they had tried to capture one by every means at their disposal, but the effort proved extremely costly. It was not easy for a besieger to bring back a prisoner on his own down a burning stepladder. Twice already a wounded prisoner struggling on his captor’s shoulders had made the pair of them fall to their deaths. A corpse was a different matter. You can throw a dead man down from the top of the ladder. A shattered body is much the same as one with a hole in its chest.

“An enemy corpse!” Tursun Pasha said without even a glance at Sirri Selim. “Bring me a prisoner, dead or alive, at any price!”

A few moments later he saw a handful of armed dervishes running towards the wall. They disappeared into the marauding throng. Then he caught sight of them again as they clambered up one of the innumerable ladders propped against the ramparts. But as his attention then became distracted by something else, he lost sight of the dervishes a second time. The battering rams pounding on the main gate were about to smash it open. A cloud of dust hung over the frantic scrum of soldiers ready to push through the creaking door. The cannon thundered in close sequence, and their missiles could be seen tearing down pieces of the main wall.

“That was gun number three,” the Quartermaster General said to Sirri Selim after the final blast.

The great door was about to give way.

“Have it torn off its hinges and brought to me here!” Tursun Pasha ordered.

It was a rather peculiar order. He was well aware that from a military point of view the capture of the door had no value, but symbolically it would be as important for raising the morale of his troops as it would be for casting the enemy into despair. The mayhem at the gate rose to a peak. The defenders must have guessed the attackers’ intention, because they now launched a shower of arrows on them. Without a door, nobody can sleep soundly, even in his own home, Tursun Pasha thought. He had a second messenger take the promise of a special reward to the attackers on the front line. The azabs and the mechanics, already fighting like men possessed, threw themselves even more wildly into the struggle. Many of them clung to the rungs of the ladders even in death, while others clambered furiously over them. Then, above the thousand noises of battle, there rose a great screeching that might have been a cry of joy or of alarm, and the gigantic wooden door fell on its back in a deafening clatter. Soldiers that had stepped aside as the door fell immediately rushed around it like ants. And in the end, by force of ropes, grappling hooks and dozens of bare brawny arms, it began to move slowly away from the wall. The infuriated defenders rained arrows and molten pitch on the men who were heaving the door away. The dead men whose fists were still clenched around its ironwork were dragged away along with it through the dust of the earth, but nobody took any notice of them. The captors — panting for breath, drenched in sweat, and covered in black powder-dust — hauled the ancient, heavy door out of the combat zone, shouting to the heavens as if they were carrying off a young bride.