Chapter 99: Kerkaporta

"Shoot! Shoot! Shoot your quiver empty! Dump all fire power on the Ottomans!"

A junior Roman officer walks on the walls wielding his blades encouraging his novice recruits facing the raging Ottoman invaders.

"They are also man! They bleed! They die! Just like you! But we have the blessings of Christ! They don't have!"

"I know you are tired! But they are even more tired! Don't stop! Continue shooting…. AHHH!"

A canon shell from god knows where found its way to the officer, torn him into two pieces, ending his life instantly.

…

The Ottomans got a surprise for the defenders of Constantinople this morning. Mehmed decided to send the janissaries, mixed in between waves of levies laying siege to the walls. They are excelled in teamwork and collaborations with the artilleries, always showing up immediately right after artillery strikes giving the still dazing Roman defenders an impactful strike right on the face.

The Janissaries, yeñiçeri, is perhaps one of the most elite fighting forces in this era of time. Professional soldiers well trained in various kinds of warfare situation. They are known for their agility and reaction speed, which makes them natural predators always eyeing for breaches and weak spots in their enemy's defence. They always have special privileges on a battle field whereby all resources will concentrate towards them for just one and usually final strike on the foes, like this time.

The sekban bashi, or the leader of the Janissaries, specially requested Mehmed to give them privilege in the use of artilleries, they concentrated all the artilleries and have them all pounder one section of the wall to cause maximum damage and distress to both Roman manpower and walls, while the other troops remain their attacks on other sections of the walls non stop to stop them from reinforcing the section of wall which the Janissaries are attacking.

The janissaries and forces under Giovanni Giustiniani fought days and nights. The merciless of technology is forced upon both sides of the states. The Ottomans deployed heavy siege weapons waves after wave like goat headed ram fortified by a roof and anti-fire wet leather. They showed their superb craftsmanship by constructing seemingly like imperishable siege towers in the number of tens ramming about the around in bad shape walls, sending waves after waves of warriors hopping onto the walls engaging in close quarter combat. While most importantly, the Ottomans managed to maximise the use of artilleries and black fire powders. They almost managed to blow open a gate by stacking countless bags of explosives under it and setting all of them alight at one go.

While for the Romans, with the senate disabled to interfere any further with the war situation commands there is no one to jeopardise the soldiers guarding the walls. Giovanni can finally put his skills into full use, he ordered his men to install leather carpets on the walls in order to absorb the impact caused by artillery shells, prepared buckets after buckets of boiling hot oil to pour onto the head of the enemies laying siege, and he finally put the canons into good use by stationing the smaller calipered canons on the towers to be used to destroy heavy siege war engines. Under the leadership of Orban, the Romans manufactured and assembled multiple trebuchets to fling projectiles onto the enemy siege engines.

War raged on, and everyday it goes the balance of victory tilts a bit towards the Romans and their emperor Constantine. It seems more and more obvious to Mehmed that before the mighty antiquity engineering marvel of ancient Romans, his men seem to never be able to leap through it despite almost shattering it into rubbles.

Both sides pray for change to happen, and changes will happen, opportunity will almost emerge, then it will test the commander's ability whether he can catch and exploit the opportunity, or let it fly away like dandelion in the windy spring.

It is the sixteenth of March; the Ottomans launched another assault on the walls. In the portion of the outer walls which is not very far away from the section where the main assault is, a few janissaries rushed inside through the blasted holes and crippled bricks. As this portion of walls are poorly defended due to lack of manpower on the Roman side, no one is there overseeing the potion of the walls thus allowing the Janissaries to reach there so easily.

These lucky janissaries do not dare to directly charge towards the inner walls fearing that they might get shot into hedge hogs by the archers and crossbow men up on the tower, thus they began wandering pointlessly in the Peribolos which is between the outer walls and the inner walls.

The goddess of fortune always dons her blessings of luck upon those who pays time and effort. By the end of the day they found out that there is a tiny city gate in the inner walls, so tiny that if they are not prowling the area with caution they wound have missed the gate.

The gate that they found is the Postern of Kerkaporta, which god knows by accident or by pure human negligence, they are being left wide open in the raging siege battlefield. This is absurd and unthinkable under any circumstances using any logic, it is so absurd that the Janissary commander thought that this is not a luring treasure but a Postern of death with an ambush waiting for them inside. The Ottoman Janissaries continued to hesitate for a while outside the postern of Kerkaporta.

Normally back in the peaceful days, the Postern of Kerkaporta is used as a gate for daily commuters and pedestrians moving along in and out of the city for their daily lives, and strategically it is in an awkward position which hardly has any military importance besides it being quite near to the Palace of the Porphyrogenitus. Thus after days and nights of prolonged fighting the Roman guards, probably out of tiredness and simply negligence, forgot that there is this gate that still awaits to be locked.