Chapter 450 - Ground Blowing Up

The ground has exploded.

That is what the old Sanjek felt,

When he began rolling down the stairs

He could not feel anything, except for the world revolving around him.

Finally he rolled to the bottom of the wooden stairs, blood started gushing out of his forehead but hey, at least this embarrassing event is finally end, the Sanjek tried to comfort himself, thinking that it is nothing but merely him losing his balance climbing down the stairs, and this earthquake sensation must be nothing but a hallucination of himself.

But no.

The Earth continued shaking beneath his back, and this time it became even more violent, like a hammer being constantly pounded on to his fragile aging spines.

But he could hardly get up.

He could only stay laying there, gasping for air with his eyes wide open filled with fright, clenching his hands on to the winter dirt, praying to the mighty Allah that this wooden wall would not suddenly come down and collide on to him. It is certain that he still got important things waiting to be done before ascending to the heaven and meet his God.

The Sanjek's guards difficultly tried to approach their master, holding on to the poles preventing themselves from falling down. Although hard to believe, but now there is only one explanation for this sudden trembling of the ground; the Rumelians artillery strikes.

The sound came first before the trembles, a couple of seconds earlier the Sanjek is still awaiting the arrival of the Rumelians in to his ambush spots, and just seconds later the usual pristine scenery started shaking along with his eye sockets. The Sanjek can feel the familiar whiff of black gun powder around his neck, like a serpent, kissing his skins coldly. The Sanjek stumbled over and over on the muddy winter ground, smelling the fragrance of the ground directly giving himself a bath of mud like the elephants. Time passed in slow motion, although this bombardment lasted only for a brief twenty seconds, but to the old Sanjek, he almost felt himself no longer having the ability to see the sun shine of tomorrow.

Hüseyin Çelik is lifted up by his guards instantly after the bombardment has ended, the next thing to fill his senses is the whipping of mentally fragile soldiers, roaring of anxiety by his commanders and urging questioning by his desperate guards. The old Sanjek is still feeling that his heart and organs are all about to be knocked out of his chest, but still the years of experience and instinct of battle kept on telling him that regarding what he need to do now.

The old Sanjek pushed away the guard who is trying to support him and shouted to the panicking commanders. "Do not try to use force on the men through your whips! Try to calm them down! Every one! Spread the words that this is merely nothing but a tiny earthquake! The renowned Ottoman warrior's mind shall not have their formidable minds shaken but just a tiny earthquake! My guards, go and re-establish connection with the ambush troops outside… And investigate! What trickery and witchcraft did the Rumelians use this time round to create an explosion of this size...Go! Now! I do not need your help!"

The guard beside him got nothing more to say, he made a way out of the panicking crowd with a few pals, grabbed their mounts and made a run for the ambush spots five hundred meters away. Along the way they found out that actually only one or two rounds of Rumelian shell is fired directly in to the city, while the bulk of the artillery strikes are pounded on to the ambush area the Sanjek designated a few days ago. The impact of this artillery strike is way bigger than what they have expected, the shells literally rained upon the spot of ambush which is around a hundred meter in diameter. The further the team of guards ventured in to the woods, the more their heart dipped.

There are almost not a single tree standing upright within this circle, with broken branches and fallen trunks lying around every where. The blackened spots around the patches of dried grass cries the tales of the menacing bombardment and its harm on the environment. But strangely speaking, there are not a single canon ball lying around like the usual shell bombardment of the Rumelians. Is it possible that a bunch of Rumelians sneaked here immediately after the bombardment and took all the shells with them? No, that is of course not possible. A

The fleet of guards scourged through the tall dried grasses reaching to their wrists and it did not take them much effort to come in to contact with the ambush troops. They did not get a chance to talk to the guards standing up though, they are all lying down in various positions, with some of them bleeding from their nostrils and ears, dead obviously. Some are just staring at the skies with ignorance filling their eyes, unsure what they are thinking, only when the gurds approached them then did they find out that they have already became deaf.

Not a lot of ambush troops are killed by this series of blasts, but almost none of the troops came back with a full normal functioning body. The whole area looks as if it has been scorched with head, forming a strong contrast with the seared environment of winter. The sentiment of fear ultimately started spreading among these guards, it came from the sense of unknown, no one has ever seen what kind of artillery is able to fire projectiles that are not made of black metal balls, no one knows what is the reason of these symptoms from their pals who are supposedly the best of their army, and no one knows how to deal with this mysterious threat if they come again.

"It seems like the Rumelians have used a bomb with substantial power that has the capability of vanishing in to the air after exploding, leaving only a bunch of fabric behind, and is able to cause a superb damage against a human's internal organs resulting in death." Back inside the main Ottoman camp beside the lake of Kastoria, the scribe of the aged Sanjek, who is now lying on the Hypocaust like Persian styled heatable bed with his head full of bandages, is interpreting the report sent back by the guards and medical officers after they had a thorough examination on the casualties.

The old Sanjek opened his mouth and muttered some thing that no one can possibly hear, but the forty years old plus maid by his side still managed to understand his master instantly and fed him with some breast milk in a bottle. After drinking light seems to have gotten back to the old Sanjek's eyes as he managed to get back up to wipe his mouth. "A very powerful bomb, you said." The Sanjek concluded. "But no remnants of the shells can be found, and it is equivalent of creating a shock equivalent of the strength of an earthquake?"

"Yes, honourable leader."

"Hard to believe, if I am not a victim on this shell strike myself.." The Sanjek leaned back lying down again with the support of the maid, the guard stood firm by their leader's side hesitating whether they ought to report further the loss of the ambushers when the Sanjek spoke some thing that totally blew their mind. "Do you folks think that there is a possibility… that those Rumelians have some connections with the kafelleh deities in Epirus to create a mini earth quake to destroy us?"