Chapter 281: Interrogation

The old man worked fast burning mid night oil interrogating the prisoners arrested with candles and whips, then collated all of these in to a report delivering it to the admiral miles away describing the entire situation inside Thesaloniki from how it started, how did it escalate, who is behind this, what did these rogues do, what did he as the governor do and finally enquiring the admiral what else can be done to help to ease up the situation. 

The letter reached in to the hands of Antonius the next day by noon. 

"I seriously want to smash open these prick's head and see what is inside." Groaned Antonius as he read the content on the paper. "Why is there so many grubby ideas forming up in their head all the time? Spreading rumors in the back of the enemy, I thought that the Ottomans have their pride of always defeating their foes through a fair fight?" 

Abdullah snorted at this idea. "My brother, the rules of war have changed in to a state totally unlike the wars between those knights and nobles in Europa, wars now are filled with intrigues, plots, trickeries, if there is any thing the people can use to achieve victory, they shall use it, even if it is a sweet tube of poison." 

Antonius became speechless finding some thing to retort against Abdullah's words but failed, forcing him to change the topic. "What about the things Anjelo described on this paper? Any one has any idea what we can do about it?" 

"Judging from the current situation given in the report, these bunch of mutineers are no longer just common rioters we can settle through peaceful means. We must let them have a taste of our iron bunch! Admiral!" Yuri responded first waving his hammer sized fist above his head. "We must send the Mamluk cavalries in to the city, fast, to curb these mutineers before they evolve in to a rebellion!" 

"Send the Mamluk cavalries? What are you thinking of? Letting them ride around in the city slaughtering people causing chaos and stampedes among our own people?" Julian raised his eye brow hearing this suggestion. "Why don't you recommend your Varangian counter parts?" 

"Emm…" Of course, Yuri does not want to say that it is because he do not want to ruin the reputation of his own men, despite no longer being their commander. 

"I have an idea, admiral." Julian stopped bugging around with this brawny but ill brained man and turned back to Antonius. "Back then when I was young living as a beggar in the street of Constantinople, we had this thing called Acta Diurna, a tradition passed down from the Latin pagan autocrats last time where by they paste this large bulletin board in places with mass population informing people about the laws and policies…"

"This can be an idea! My lord!" Alexios by the side interrupted with his eyes glistening with sparks exclaiming excitedly. "Lord Julian has just provided us with a perfect plan admiral, if we adopt this idea we can directly communicate with the people about the issues in the government using words as a medium." 

"Yes, my brother, we can use the words to inform the people on the situation in the front line, soothe their mind and with them knowing about the things going on here we are able to build a better understanding." Abdullah too followed up. 

"I know this Acta Diurna thing." Antonius frowned. "But how do we carry it out? Do we follow the standards of Constantinople pasting that large bronze bulletin board at the city gate? But we have ran out of bronze month ago forging new artilleries."

"We cannot afford to learn the methods of the Rumelian." Abdullah shook his head. 'This method's efficiency is way too low, we need to let the people hear our voice as soon as possible to prevent further mistrust…. I think we need a medium that can massively transmit information to every community covering the entire city in less than a day…" 

"How about paper?" Antonius realized some thing as he took a peek on his desk and saw the piece of paper lying there. "We can compile the information by ourself first, then ask  the intellectual soldiers, officers and scribes we have in the fortifications to copy these things on to paper and transport it back to Thessaloniki and disperse it to every community of the city." 

"We can invite those scholars and mentors in the city to read the paper to the citizens who cannot read…This paper, how should we call it?" 

"Why don't we call it news paper?" Antonius thought for a while and replied. "News standing for all the events happening recently, news paper standing for the recent events written on paper."

…

Thus, two weeks in to the war a new kind of stuff began circulating in various places of Thessaloniki, a plain paper with words scribbled on top passing around people read by scholars and mentors standing on wooden crates every where in the city. This thing, called news paper, is released every three days describing exactly the situation on the battle field, some times even accompanied by illustrations on how they bravely deterred Ottoman offensives with words description, and a list attached behind with the names of all those soldiers sacrificed their lives in the war. 

The task of reading news paper soon became a popular task among the mentors with such high popularity among the listeners. Many would wait in the gate early in the morning before dusk just to grab a piece of news paper every half a week, and then instead of standing on wooden crates they now have an unique place allocated just for these news paper readers in community forums, restaurants and city gates. They became the main strength in helping Antonius transmit information from the world outside the city to the mass public, which is relatively rare in these times when information is obsolete. 

It even became a career later on where people would begin reading news paper and explaining the information to the people beneath drinking mead or having their food, and reading out the names of the deceased soldiers to the worried family members beneath. Some rejoiced not hearing their son's name, some mentally broke down hearing it and some is caught in a state of mentally blank out seating there like their souls have been drawn out. In times of war this has became a common thing, war and deaths are a cruel atrocity caused by humans are never fun on either side. 

With this new too of a single piece of paper, the after effects of the rumors and fake news spread by the Grand Vizier slowly diminished achieving an effect totally opposite to the one he has anticipated. 

The Ottomans have been waiting outside in the freezing plains for roughly now waiting for the order by their Grand Vizier to start the offensive, but all their petitions to advance forward and slaughter the infidels has been bluntly rejected by their higher ups because of the so called 'strategic reasons' which all junior officers knows it is a freaking joke, as by stagnating over here with hundred of thousands of people doing completely nothing itself is a vital loss to the ultimate blood line of the Sultanate – its agriculture system. 

So there must be another reason behind all of these, and hose people at the top does not want them to know, 

They are right, apart from the reason that the Grand Vizier is still anticipating results from his espionage system inside Thessaloniki, another reason is because the brain of the Sultanate, master of the court, manipulator of the Sultan Bezyed II, the Grand Vizier Candarli Halil Pasha has fallen ill.

It ought.to be no big surprise for a man like Candarli Halil Pasha to fall ill considering his age, marching all the way here on horse against the howling winter wind after venting all those rage, it is already fortunate for him to not have acquired himself a heart disease. 

The Grand Vizier is now hugging himself inside two layers of cotton blankets sneezing uncontrollably feeling light headed, but still he forces himself to seat up and deal with military admin affairs. But going out of the warm tent and explain his conditions to his followers? No, he do not think that he can do that. He cannot afford to show the image of his weakness to the outside world, if not his army's morale will crumble, those with rebellious intentions will take the chance to ac. The Grand Vizier even does not dare to tell his own son, who is also in his Janissaries, being a paranoid old man, he is afraid of many things, and one of it being his own son over throwing him locking him away in jail, just like those historical events in Persia. 

Power is like poison, the longer a person drinks it the more he gets addicted to it wanting to drink more. And he shall use every mean possible to protect this poison preventing other people form laying their hand on to it, in the end he shall suspect every single person around him thinking that they might take the power from him, and finally dying off alone hugging his poison until it is taken away from his arms leading to a new round of power struggle.