“I can see one of them now,” said Isaac Capsali. Abraham joined him near the prow of the gondola and looked over the side to where the pilot was pointing.
Sure enough, the huge bloated shape of another airship was passing below them—and quite safely below them, he was pleased to see.
The smoke was much thinner, too.
“I think the sultan’s plan might work,” said Isaac, sounding surprised.
It was surprising. Zarfati had never heard of “Murphy’s Law” but he was a Jew and thus automatically attuned to its wisdom. The whole history of his people could be described as the unfolding of Murphy’s Law across millennia.
The rabbis wouldn’t approve of that thesis. But Abraham Zarfati was a skeptic by nature. Which also, of course, made him doubtful that Sultan Murad’s plots and schemes wouldn’t go awry themselves, sooner or later.
Not his problem, though. Not today, at least.
* * *
“Where do we go now?” wondered Judy. She looked around the oddly-deserted courtyard outside the palace. Normally, there would be a number of guards standing around. They must have all been pressed into manning the walls once the Ottoman attack began. The only person she could see was an elderly servant, who was now starting to come toward them.
“My rooms,” said Cecilia Renata, speaking barely above a whisper. The words weren’t slurred, which was a good sign, but the archduchess was looking pretty haggard. She’d vomited again on the way; the sort of dry heaves that were worse than what Judy thought of as a run-of-the-mill upchuck.
Judy and Minnie looked at each other over the archduchess’ bowed head. For the last stretch, they’d once again had to support Cecilia Renata on their shoulders.
“Do you know where they are?” Minnie asked.
“Yes, if I remember the way,” Judy replied, sounding none too confident. “Cecilia Renata was with me both times I went there, though. I just followed her.”
Thankfully, by then the servant had arrived. Some quick questioning ascertained that the old fellow did know the way there. He headed into the palace, leading the way.
Hobbling the way, to be precise. He wasn’t moving very fast. But that didn’t matter because Judy and Minnie couldn’t move any faster than he was, not with the archduchess’ arms draped over their necks.
* * *
Getting up the stairs to the upper floor was a royal pain in the ass, but at least Judy had the satisfaction of knowing that this pain in the ass really did qualify as “royal.” And from there it wasn’t far to the archduchess’ chambers.
They lowered her onto her bed. Judy got her under the covers while Minnie gave the servant instructions to make some sort of broth for Cecilia Renata. She needed to get something back in her stomach, even if she did heave it up again.
After the servant left, Minnie and Judy looked down on their charge. The archduchess’ eyes were closed, now.
“I think we’re not supposed to let her fall asleep,” said Minnie. “Not with a concussion. She might not ever wake up.”
Judy shook her head firmly. That part of her first aid training she did remember clearly, in the way someone will remember it when a false notion is dispelled.
“Nah, that’s a myth. Pure bullshit. As my instructor said, if falling asleep with a concussion caused someone to fall into a coma then we’d always be in the middle of a coma epidemic.” She shook her head again. “As long as there aren’t any internal injuries to worry about—and she just got whacked in the head, it’s not like she was in a big car accident—then she can sleep as much as she needs. Fatigue and drowsiness are symptoms of a concussion, so it’s not surprising.”
Minnie looked relieved. “Good, because I wasn’t looking forward to having to stay awake all the time to make sure she did.”
She moved toward a partially open window. “It sounds a lot quieter out there. Maybe the attack’s over.”
When she reached the window, she swung it fully open. She was facing southwest, right toward the enemy—although Minnie couldn’t see them from here.
Judy came and joined her. “I hope you’re right. But I wouldn’t count on it.”
Minnie pointed toward the distant sky. “See that line of clouds? Looks like there might be a storm coming. Maybe that’s why they called it off.”
Judy followed her friend’s pointing finger. She had two eyes, where Minnie had only one—and her eyesight was better, to begin with.
“Those aren’t clouds, Minnie.”
“Huh?” Minnie squinted, which Judy found a bit amusing because she only squinted her good eye. All she needed was a monocle.
“Then what—? Oh, fuck.”
Judy nodded. “’Oh, fuck’ is right. As in, I think we’re about to be.”
Chapter 38
Vienna, capital of Austria-Hungary
They were close enough for the final assault to begin. But the officers ordered the janissaries to wait until the airships arrived and finished their bombardment of Vienna’s walls. Uzun Hussein was normally impatient at such moments and just wanted the fighting to start. But right now he was weary from the last struggle to get the miserable armored wagon moving again after it got stuck in another hole, so he was grateful for the rest.
If it had been up to him, the war wagon would have been left to rot in that hole. They’d begun the attack with eight of the things, and by now only three of them were still functioning. Two had gotten hopelessly stuck. Two more had suffered mechanical failures. And a fifth had destroyed itself when the steam engine that drove it exploded.
That wagon had been close enough for Hussein to see what happened. The zimmi commanding the war wagon had been perched in the cupola’s hatch when he started screaming and tried to climb out of the wagon. He hadn’t gotten far before a blast of steam hurled him completely out and down onto the ground. His pants had been blown off and the bottom half of his body was a parboiled ruin.
It took him a while to die, shrieking with agony. He’d have been better off if he’d been trapped inside the wagon with the rest of the crew. They would have all died immediately when the engine blew up. Hussein didn’t know exactly how the steam engines worked—and didn’t want to know, either—but he’d been told they needed a tank full of boiling water that had to be kept at just the right temperature. Not hot enough, the machine wouldn’t work; too hot, the tank—the “boiler,” they called it—would erupt.
Hussein didn’t care much what happened to the war wagons, especially since the crews were all Christians. Not even the commanders were Muslim. The sultan was said to adore the stupid things, but they were so ungainly and temperamental that Hussein couldn’t see that they had much use in a real battle.
Perhaps he was wrong. They’d find out soon enough, when the assault started. Those who were more familiar with the war wagons than Hussein claimed the engines were so powerful that the wagons could climb up the glacis protecting the walls. He was skeptical of the claim, after seeing how much trouble the machines had just crossing flat ground. On the other hand, the glacis probably wouldn’t have the same sort of holes and obstructions that had been causing the problems on the open terrain.
They’d find out soon enough.
* * *
Leopold stared up at the line of approaching airships. His stomach felt hollow. The Austrians had been completely fooled. They’d thought the Ottomans had only three airships—then, five, when the smoke screen was laid down. Instead, they had…
“How many are there?” he asked Montecuccoli.
The Italian officer standing next to him lowered his spyglass. “There are ten in the first line, with another five coming behind them. Add the five which laid down the smoke, and there are a total of twenty—assuming that’s actually all of them.” He shook his head. “How did they do it? There can’t possibly be enough goldbeater skins—not even in the entire Ottoman empire—to make that many huge balloons. Envelopes, whatever they call them.”
Leopold tried to remember the briefing he’d
gotten from Drugeth’s spies. “I don’t think they need to use goldbeater skins, although those are best for the purpose. Cotton covered with varnish will work, I believe. Silk would be better, if they can get it.”
Montecuccoli sighed. “It doesn’t matter. However they did it, they did it. The evidence is right in front of our eyes. The question now is: what are they planning to do, and what do we do in response?”
Leopold had been going over the same briefings in his mind, with that very goal in mind.
“They’re going to drop bombs,” he said. “They can stay right above us and we won’t be able to do much about it if they stay too high for us to shoot at them with muskets. Maybe cannon, but…”
“We don’t have enough time to figure out how to use cannons for the purpose,” said Montecuccoli. “I suspect that would require specially designed weapons to be effective. All we have is what we have now.”
Leopold was still thinking ahead. “They’ll be able to clear the troops off the walls. They can’t keep bombing for very long, but they’ll be able to keep it up long enough to hammer our men into paste.”
“What I think also,” said Montecuccoli, nodding. “We have to get the men off the walls and into shelter. When the bombing is over, they can rush back out to fight off the ground assault—which you know will be coming right on the heels of the airship attack.”
“You’re right. Give the order, Colonel.”
Montecuccoli began to move toward the cluster of couriers who had been trailing after them as he and Leopold did their inspection tour of the fortifications. He’d give them the orders and they’d begin to pass them down the line. But before he could get there, another courier came racing up the stairs leading to the bastion.
“Stand your ground! Stand your ground! General Baudissin has given the order!” the courier started shouting. He pointed toward the oncoming fleet of Ottoman airships. “Use volley fire from muskets! Don’t try to use the cannons!”
Looking a bit helpless, Montecuccoli turned back to face Leopold.
Who, for his part, spread his hands in a gesture of similar helplessness.
Montecuccoli hurried over to him. “You can relieve him of command and take it yourself, Your Grace,” he said.
Leopold had already considered that possibility, but…
He shook his head. “It’s not realistic, Colonel.” He pointed at the airships. “Even if Baudissin did not resist the command, the Ottomans will be here before the transition of leadership could be completed—before it could really even have begun. All that would result is chaos.”
Montecuccoli studied the nearing enemy vessels, stroking his beard as he did so. After perhaps three seconds, he made a face. “You’re right, I’m afraid. But this order is madness. The men will be completely unprotected from any bombs dropped upon them. And at the height those ships are sailing—flying, whatever you call it—they can hardly miss.”
“By the same token, Colonel, they’ll be low enough that we should be able to hit some of them with musket fire. That part of Baudissin’ order is sensible enough, at least.”
“Yes… although it will depend on how those hulls—whatever they’re called—are armored. Or should we fire on the big balloons that hold them up?”
Leopold tried to remember the briefing the spies had given them. The Ottoman airships were now close enough that it was clear they were using hydrogen, not hot air. The gondolas had no burners that he could see. Hydrogen was supposed to be a very flammable gas, but if Leopold remembered correctly, it was not actually that easy to set on fire with musket balls alone. And because of the curvature of the balloons, balls which stuck them might simply be deflected.
“Aim for the baskets hanging underneath,” he ordered. “As low as they’re flying, I think we can penetrate their floors and kill at least some of the crews.”
By now, the knot of couriers had spread out and passed the order along to all the soldiers in the bastion. They were beginning to assemble on the top floor of the fortification, with muskets in hand. Some of them were holding their guns in such a gingerly manner that Leopold almost laughed. Those would be artillerymen. Many of them hadn’t fired a musket in years; a few of them, perhaps never at all.
He looked back up at the sky. The Ottoman airships were only a few hundred yards away now. They looked enormous. Even though Leopold knew that most of their volume was simply empty space filled with gas, their sheer size still produced an instinctive terror. It wouldn’t take much, he knew, for the Austrian soldiers to begin panicking.
* * *
“Now! Now! Now!” shouted the çorbacı in command of Hussein’s orta. Hundreds of janissaries in the regiment-sized unit began their charge on the Austrian bastion nearest to them. All across the line on the southern side of Vienna’s walls, other ortas came forward to join them.
“Charge” was something in the way of poetic license. The janissaries had five hundred yards to cross before they reached the base of the glacis and they were carrying rifled muskets as well as kilij or yatagans, the Ottoman saber and sword. They were not wearing armor as such, but their uniforms were heavy and it was a fairly hot summer day. If they tried to run before getting much nearer, they’d just be exhausted by the time the fighting started.
In any event, the janissaries in Hussein’s orta were still under orders to accompany the war wagon. The miserable machine was slow under the best of circumstances, even when it wasn’t breaking down or getting stuck. Any man in good condition could walk faster than it could move, although he’d have to push himself a little.
The cannons on the enemy fortifications began firing almost immediately, as Hussein had expected. They were well within range. But he was struck by how light the fire was. And, for the first time, began to wonder if the sultan’s plans might actually work.
As an experienced veteran, he’d been skeptical, despite his general admiration for Murad. By rights, they should have spent at least another month extending the trenches closer to Vienna’s walls. And like all the janissaries, since they had had to protect the men doing the digging, Hussein knew that the efforts of the sappers had been desultory. The sappers he’d talked to himself even suspected that their work was mostly just for show.
But now…
The key, he understood instantly, was the fleet of airships passing overhead at that very moment. The huge war devices were bound to unsettle the enemy—Hussein found them unsettling himself. If the officers were right in their estimates, what was now happening on the walls of Vienna was that most of the enemy troops were being assembled to fire musket volleys on the approaching airships.
That might be tough on the airship crews, of course. Hussein didn’t have the experience to know, one way or the other. But he didn’t care because every Austrian soldier firing a musket at an airship was an Austrian soldier who was not firing a cannon at him. And, besides, except for some of the commanding officers, the airship crews were made up of zimmis, not good Muslims. Mostly Jews, from what he’d been told.
Hussein preferred Jews to Christians, but he did so in the way a hungry man will “prefer” a food he doesn’t much care for to one he actively dislikes. Every Jew in those airships passing overhead could get killed in this battle and Hussein would not be at all disturbed—not so long as there were more Jews to man the devilish things. He had no desire to do it himself.
But they were past them now, he saw. The airships would arrive over the walls of Vienna several minutes before the janissaries reached the base of the glacis and began the assault itself.
By then, who knew what might happen? Maybe the sultan was right.
* * *
Minnie and Judy could hear the sound of the musket fire, as the airships neared the walls of Vienna. From their vantage point in the Hofburg, they couldn’t see the fortifications themselves, but the airships were clearly visible. They could even see, on some of them, that they had banners either painted or attached to the huge envelopes. The banners were green with the trad
itional Ottoman triple crescent design. Underneath the crescents, they could see that something was written.
“What does that mean, do you know?” asked Judy. “That inscription, there.” She pointed.
It was now close enough for Minnie to make out the lettering, even with just one eye. But while her knowledge of spoken Turkish was becoming passable, she could barely understand the script at all.
She shook her head. “I have no idea. Nothing good for us, though.” She hesitated, looking back at the figure of Cecilia Renata on the bed. Minnie had thought she was asleep, but the young royal’s eyes opened and she whispered, “What’s happening?”
For whatever reason, that shaky whisper made up Minnie’s mind.
She turned back to face Judy. “We need to get out of here. Now.”
Her companion frowned, still not taking her eyes from the airships. “And go where? In the shape she’s in, we can’t possibly make it out of the city. The last group of evacuees left yesterday.”
“No, but we can get someplace a lot safer for her in the palace itself.” She stuck her head out of the window and craned it around. But she couldn’t see what she was looking for because it was hidden behind a corner of the palace.
“Those cellars we visited.” She reached her arm out of the window and pointed toward the corner. “You know, the ones beneath that other part of the palace.”
Judy grimaced. “It’s dark and musty down there. I bet it’s damp, too. Why should we—”
She still hadn’t taken her eyes off the airships, so she saw the sudden flurry of objects that began falling from them onto the fortifications below.
She took a deep, sudden breath. A moment later, the rolling thunder of explosions began. And a moment after that, the first great tongues of flame reached up high enough that she could see them. It was almost instantly joined by others—all along the fortifications obscured by the intervening buildings, except for two places where it looked as if there were gaps.