Chapter 29: Where Are You

The Ottoman warriors, having enough of Roman bolts and arrows, now started retaliating. Hundreds of Ottoman archers, with their unique Nomadic re curve bows, started venting their fury with their heavy arrows.

The Ottoman archers took full use of their advantage of speed, they can shoot two to three arrows with their re curve bows when the Romans are still trying to reload their crossbows. They formed a barrage of arrows that is constantly pouring upon the Roman archers on the walls.

The Roman projectiles are being suppressed, archers are being shot down, crossbow men dare not to stand up and reload their weapon. Soldiers dare not raise their heads over the arrow slits and walls to fight back. The situation turned increasingly pessimistic for the Romans.

Giovanni, with his natural sense of battlefield, immediately realised that if they don't fight back, the siege will end pretty quickly for them, and their foreseen fate shall be near. He immediately ordered the Northern and Eastern gate to be sealed with logs and limestone found inside the fortress, leaving only the Southern gate facing the Bosporus open for evacuation as a last-minute resort.

He then ran up the Northern tower hoping to find a high ground that allows archers to shoot without worrying about enemy arrows. However, to his utmost horror. He saw Constantine and Loukas still standing there watching the situation of the siege through the barricade. Their armour and cloth make them distinctive from surrounding soldiers. Especially Constantine, still in his crown Spangen helm with iconography of Christianity and donned in purple royal cloak.

Giovanni pulled them away from the opening with expeditious speed, then nagged them again and again for the danger of a battlefield and asked them to stay in the courtyard to look after the gate. Then he hastily climbed back to the keep of the gate after finding out the Ottomans has already reached there with their lamb-head ram and ramming the gate non-stop.

The Roman soldiers, under Giovanni's command, gathered all the surrounding limestone boulders in the fortress and stockpiled them on the walls. The defenders then lifted the giant boulders up the walls and dropped it on the ram, dismantling it almost immediately. The Ottomans slapped themselves in the face by helping the Romans block the gate with the remnants of their ram.

However, just as Giovanni is waving his hands actively, shouting and ordering the Roman soldiers on the walls to drop the lime stones on the head of the Ottoman warriors climbing the siege ladders, an arrow, from far behind, with immense kinetic force came piercing through the thin air right in his direction.

Giovanni got shot down before the eyes of everyone.

The heavy arrow, dedicated for breaking defense, ran straight for Giovanni from the Ottoman formation. Instantaneously plunging into his armour into blood and flesh. The irresistible force brought down Giovanni, as his eyes are still filled with ignorance on what just happened, until his head fell against the ground, as he sees an arrow right on his left shoulder.

The entire battlefield turned slow motion, soldiers on the walls gaped with their jaws and eyes open as they watch their commander fall. Constantine in a distance saw this and hurriedly turned back to come to Giovanni's aid, the soldiers beside Giovanni immediately covered him with shields and started dragging him down the stairs.

However, Giovanni being Giovanni, struggled and pushed away the soldiers, stood back up with the support of the wall. Suffering from immense pain, he put his right-hand muscles into full strength and broke the shaft of the arrow biting his teeth, then yelled with his eyes like bells at all the soldiers looking at him.

"What are you dull-witted heads looking at! Get back to your post at once!"

He then picked up a claymore of a fallen Scot mercenary, and slammed it against an Ottoman warrior who just climbed up the ladder onto the walls, making him lose his balance and falling down the twenty meter wall and bringing all the others on the ladder with him. Giovanni, with all his might on one hand, then pushed the ladder down as well, stopping any further enemies from using it.

The Roman crossbow men and archers are the other hand, finally took back some grounds against the Ottoman recurve bows taking cover behind arrow-slits and towers, while the Roman soldiers scrambled into action knocking down the Ottomans who managed to climb all the way up then sending them all the way down.

The Ottomans sent waves after waves of attacks non-stop, one regiment after another regiment. They almost made a few break thoughts on certain weaker points of the fortress. The Romans fought their foes bravely with a starving stomach. They ran out of bolts and arrows, so they pick up the arrows of the Ottomans and shoot back at them. They ran out of stones and logs to throw, so they succumbed to using pens, plates and rock-hard cheese, whatever they can lay their hands on inside the fortress.

The attacks lasted all the way until the sun descended behind the horizon. The Ottomans finally began withdrawing back to their camps to replenish their stomachs, while their servants come out and clean the deadly quiet battlefield. Some Ottomans, knowing that there is a lack of food in the Roman side, deliberately threw pieces of bread and meat towards them, laughing and jeering at the Romans who are starving themselves.

Meanwhile things inside the fortress has grown even worse.

There is no running liquid inside Rumelihisarı other than blood, and the well that is planned to be built by the Ottomans haven't been dug yet. In other words, they are out of water. Giovanni laying on the ground in a make-shift tent looked after by Mauro and Constantine, he is now developing multiple early stage symptoms of an infection – fever, vigorous shaking, sweat all over his head, and a dimmed consciousness.

But they got no medicine to tend to his wounds, so they just bandaged his shoulder with the arrow still intact using a piece of cloth found on a dead soldier. Giovanni, Constantine, all of them, are all now counting on one man to come to their aid, who is also their last hope of surviving.

"Antonius, where are you…"

"Antonius, where are you…"

…

Meanwhile, in the Ottoman camp.

A Roman worker is brought to Zaganos Pasha. He said with a fawning face. "Honourable Sultan, I know a secret passage leading to the cellar inside the fortress, that the Janissary used to smuggle food…"