Chapter 78: The battle of Domokos, part two. (Patreon)

The morning light crept over the battlefield as acrid smoke hung low to the ground. Sultan Murad’s gilded banner was visible on a distant rise, a silent witness to the carnage he had unleashed. In the valley below, the Ottoman assault pressed forward. The Azab infantry’s wave charge had been shattered, torn apart first by the thunder of Byzantine Drakos cannons, then by volleys of Pyrvelos musket fire moments later. Their broken bodies now littered the field before the Byzantine line. But that hard-won moment of respite was fleeting. Through drifting gunpowder fog came new shouts in disciplined unison, the Janissaries surging out of the haze with fearless resolve.

They had used the precious seconds while the Byzantine guns reloaded to close the distance, advancing behind the shattered Azab waves to shield their approach.

Now, with yatağans drawn and eyes aflame with fanatic zeal, the Sultan’s elite reached the pike line. Constantine, observing from his command post near the center, felt his heart clench as he saw the Janissaries crash into his infantry. This was the moment of truth, and Murad, perched far off with a curious gaze, would soon have his answer.

Constantine stood in the stirrups of his horse on the slight rise, flanked by a handful of courtiers and cavalry. George Sphrantzes was beside him, fingers gripping the pommel of his saddle anxiously. Down below, Captain Andreas and his men braced for impact. The long pikes of the front ranks gleamed in the morning sun as they leveled them forward. The Emperor could make out Andreas’s stout figure moving down the line, shouting hoarsely: “Hold fast! Brace, lads!” His voice, roughened, cut through the clamor. In response, the Byzantine pikemen planted their feet and lowered their pikes as one, a forest of steel points awaiting the charge. A split-second later, the Janissaries were upon them.

The collision was thunderous. The front ranks of Janissaries surged forward, their approach a disciplined avalanche of steel and resolve. Some faltered under pike thrusts, collapsing mid-charge, but the relentless push behind kept the mass in motion. Pikes buckled, weapons were wrenched from hands, and the line strained under the weight of the assault.

For a few terrible seconds, the fate of the center hung in the balance. Constantine watched in taut silence as the Janissaries hacked their way into the pike line, exploiting every gap. The Byzantines’ advantage of reach was negated now; it became a brutal contest of sword, mace, and dagger. “Saints preserve us,” Sphrantzes breathed, almost inaudible, as he witnessed a wedge of Janissaries force its way through a shattered section of pikes to the Emperor’s own banner behind.

Captain Andreas fought near that very spot where the imperial double-headed eagle standard fluttered defiantly amid the chaos. He had sworn that no Ottoman would take it while he lived. Now, he found himself face-to-face with the Sultan's best. All around him swirled a frenzy of combat: men grunting and shouting, steel clashing on steel, the sickening crunch of blows finding flesh. The air reeked of blood and gunpowder.

A Janissary in a tattered crimson tunic lunged at Andreas with a curved yatağan sword. Andreas parried, sparks flying as he knocked the blade aside and riposted with a slash of his own. Another Ottoman thrust a spear from the side, and Andreas felt the iron tip tear a burning line across his left upper arm. He hissed in pain, staggering back a half-step. In that instant, the Janissary swordsman he’d just fended off seized the opening and rushed at him with a guttural yell. The man’s eyes were wild beneath his helmet as he swung for the kill.

Andreas raised his sword to block, but the angle was poor – he knew with a spike of fear that he could not entirely stop the oncoming strike. There was a blur of movement to his right. Clang! A Byzantine soldier had interposed at the last possible heartbeat, catching the Janissary’s blade on his own sword. Andreas heard the gasp of exertion as the young officer pushed back against the Janissary with all his might. For a breath, the two warriors strained, blades locked. Then, the Byzantine drove his knee into the Janissary’s groin and tore his sword free, plunging it into the enemy’s throat. Blood fountained as the Ottoman gurgled his last breath and collapsed.

Andreas, heart pounding, gave the young officer a firm nod of gratitude; there was no time for more amid the melee. The officer's timely heroism saved the captain’s life. But even as that Janissary fell, another slashed at the young officer from behind, and Andreas shouted a warning too late. The brave Byzantine cried out and crumpled to his knees, a deep gash across his back. With a furious roar, Andreas bashed the attacking Janissary with a shield, knocking the man senseless, and thrust his sword into the foe’s gut. The enemy dropped, twitching, onto a pile of corpses at Andreas’s feet.

All along the line, similar brutal hand-to-hand struggles played out. The Janissaries had broken into knots of desperate combat with the Byzantine infantry. Some Ottoman warriors ducked under pikes or even grabbed the shafts, wrestling them aside to stab at the men behind. Byzantine pikemen fell back a step, some drawing short swords to fend off the invaders now among their ranks. Officers bellowed to hold formation: “Close up! CLOSE UP!” shouted one lieutenant as he drove his blade into a Janissary’s belly, even while another Ottoman axe bit into his shoulder. The line was bending, bowing inward under the pressure, but it had not broken. Each time a gap opened, some Byzantine, be it a seasoned officer or a tagma pikeman with more courage than skill, threw himself into it, plugging the breach with his own body. The costly seconds gained by such sacrifices were paid in blood. Here, a veteran grappled a Janissary to the ground, stabbing again and again with a dagger. There, a young pikeman fell with a Turkish blade through his lung, but even as he died, he clutched the foe’s legs to trip him up, preventing a breakthrough. Desperate heroism blossomed amid the carnage, born of the knowledge that defeat here meant the destruction of all behind them.

Constantine’s hand tightened around the hilt of his sheathed sword as he surveyed the raging melee below. He could pick out Captain Andreas, bloody sword in hand, rallying a knot of men around the torn imperial banner.

Fear brushed Constantine’s heart. For a moment, a terrible vision flickered through his mind: the center collapsing, his army split in two, proud Byzantine banners trampled in the mud, and the Ottoman tide flooding through to surround his wings. If the center broke, all would be lost – the battle, his army, perhaps the last hope for reviving the Empire.

He would not let it happen. The story of Constantinople’s fall surfaced in his mind — the final stand of the man whose name he now bore, whose fate he had come to rewrite. But this was a different battlefield, a different time. And if this was to be his last stand, it would not be a repetition of history. It would be a reckoning.

He wheeled his horse around, eyes blazing with determination. “With me! Cavalry, forward, into them, now!” he roared, his voice cutting through the din like a trumpet blast. The small mounted contingent that had been stationed near him for protection, a mix of imperial guards and veteran horsemen, jerked to attention at once. Swords flashed as they formed up.

George Sphrantzes turned sharply toward him, alarm written across his ashen face. “Majesty” he began, but the Emperor was already in motion.

“Hold the center at all costs! Ieros skopos!” Constantine shouted, nodding once to Sphrantzes before spurring his horse forward. Behind him, his riders surged into motion, hoofbeats pounding as they galloped down the slope.

Steel hissed from its scabbard as Constantine drew his sword, the blade catching the rising sun and flaring like a beacon. Orders alone would not suffice; his soldiers needed to see him to know that their sovereign had shared the peril of the line.

A cheer, ragged and small at first, rose from the nearby troops as they saw the Emperor riding toward the fight, the golden icons on his breastplate catching the light. “The Emperor is with us!” a pikeman cried, slashing wildly at an enemy. Others took up the cry. Strength seemed to flow back into wavering limbs. Men who had been inches from giving ground now growled in renewed defiance.

Constantine galloped a short way closer, close enough that the whizz of stray arrows and musket balls passed near his ears. One such Ottoman arrow clanged off the armor of a bodyguard riding at his side. Sphrantzes had not remained behind; against his own instincts, the loyal aide followed with a dozen imperial guards, determined to protect his liege. Constantine raised his sword high, its point toward the heavens, and called out in a carrying voice: “Stand firm! For God and Empire!, Ieros skopos.” His words rang over the din. “Hold the line! HOLD!”

Down at the front, battered and exhausted men heard their sovereign’s cry. Some caught a glimpse of him, a solitary figure astride a white horse amid the pall of battle, sword raised like a beacon. A wounded swordman, upon hearing the Emperor’s voice, pushed himself back to his feet, ignoring the pain of his injuries. Captain Andreas, bleeding from the cut on his arm, roared to his men, “You heard him! For God and the Emperor, push them back!” With a newfound fury, the Byzantines surged as one.

Inch by bloody inch, the Janissary advance was halted. Then it was the Ottomans’ turn to give ground. A Janissary agha, his rich armor gleaming under spattered gore, bellowed for his men to reform, but he was cut off as a Byzantine pikeman, having taken up a fallen comrade’s pike, drove it clean through the agha’s torso. The Ottoman officer fell with a strangled cry. A cheer went up from the nearest Byzantines. Sensing the enemy’s momentary hesitation, Andreas did not let it pass. “Advance! Drive them back! Ieros skopos!” he shouted, swinging his sword in a wide arc to dispatch a stumbling Janissary. Around him, Byzantines pressed forward with lethal intent.

What had been a precarious shield-line just minutes before now became an unstoppable wave of grim resolve. The men of the pike squares, reinforced by a trickle of reserves and emboldened by their Emperor’s presence, stepped over heaps of dead and dying, tightening their formation again. Sword met scimitar in brutal exchanges. An imperial banner-bearer, who had earlier been knocked down, rose again and thrust the flag forward as if it were a spear, the double-headed eagle emblem now spattered in red. Behind the first ranks, a few reloaded musketeers found vantage points on slight rises and began firing into the flanks of the Janissaries engaged at the front. Each muzzle flash cracked through the morning haze, picking off an Ottoman here and there. With their comrades falling and their attack losing momentum, the Janissaries faced a terrible choice: stand and be cut down, or pull back to regroup. Discipline held for a heartbeat longer, they were the Sultan’s elite, and retreat was anathema, but it could not hold forever. At last, the line wavered and then broke. The Janissaries began to fall back in uneven waves, steps reluctant. From behind the pike line, a roar rose among the Byzantines, 'Ieros Skopos! Ieros Skopos!', a chant of defiance and divine purpose that surged like fire through the ranks, thrilling the men who had stood firm and repelled the Sultan’s best.

High on the ridge, Sultan Murad saw the retreat before he heard it. From out of the swirling smoke came a mob of figures falling back — Ottoman figures. His heart sank as he recognized Janissary soldiers limping away, some dragging wounded comrades, one clutching a blood-soaked banner torn nearly in half. They had been repulsed.

Moments later, as the haze thinned, grim confirmation emerged: the Byzantine center held, its front ranks bristling with blood-slick pikes. The ground before them was choked with Ottoman dead and dying, the terrible measure of just how close the Janissaries had come.

Murad felt a hot flush of anger and alarm. His elite troops, had just been thrown back by what looked like a peasant phalanx. He gripped the pommel of his saddle so hard his knuckles went white. All around his vantage point, messengers were rushing to and fro with reports, and his officers were shouting for reserves or offering frantic suggestions. The Sultan shut them out for a breath, surveying the broader field. He could scarcely believe what he saw. The battle had turned into a slaughterous stalemate, or worse. His forces had pressed in on three sides of the Byzantine position by now, yet instead of the enemy breaking, it was his own troops piling high on the killing ground. On the right, Turahan’s cavalry contingent had tried a charge of their own and come to ruin similar to Zaganos’s attempt, Murad saw Turahan himself rallying his horsemen into a sullen holding pattern out of range, unwilling to throw more lives away uselessly.

In the center, Janissaries and Azaps regrouped and peppered the Byzantine squares with arrows, but to little avail. Each attempt to close the distance was swiftly repelled by disciplined volleys from Byzantine musketeers, whose steady fire cut into their ranks and forced them back. The Byzantines held; their casualties were minimal compared to the carnage the Ottomans were suffering. Meanwhile, the constant pounding of enemy cannons continued to exact a toll. An entire Ottoman cannon battery lay shattered and silent off to Murad’s left, its crews dead or fleeing after counter-battery fire blew apart their guns.

Murad realized with dawning horror that he had walked into a kill zone. Constantine had carefully prepared this ground to destroy as many of Murad’s men as possible, and thus far the trap was working. The Sultan felt a sensation he had not experienced in years, doubt. For a moment, amid the cacophony, Murad’s vision tunneled. How could this be happening? He was Sultan of the Ottomans, scourge of the Greeks. Yet here on this plain, his proud army was being gutted by a force one quarter its size. He blinked away the stinging sweat from his eyes, fighting off a wave of despair. His mind flashed back to the audacious message on Domokos’s walls: Face me on the battlefield, or leave in shame. The memory felt like salt in a wound. I will not leave in shame! he snarled inwardly. But stubborn pride could not change the bloody arithmetic unfolding before him.

Halil Pasha rode up, coughing on the smoke, his face ashen. “Sultan, if we continue this…” He trailed off, unwilling to finish the thought. Both men knew what he meant, if they continued to throw men at this meatgrinder, the Ottoman army could be broken entirely. Murad’s cheeks burned as he surveyed the field again. Already, several thousands of his soldiers lay dead or wounded on the plain, a catastrophic loss​.

​And still Constantine’s contingent stood unbroken, those damned square formations bristling like porcupines, enmeshed in drifting gunsmoke but very much intact. Murad saw a group of his archers begin to waver and run, their nerves shattered by the relentless carnage. If panic spread, his army might dissolve into a rout. The Sultan straightened in the saddle, forcing steel into his spine. He could not allow that. No matter the sting to his honor, a controlled retreat now was far better than a disastrous rout.

For a fleeting moment, a mad thought seized him: to draw his sword, rally what remained, and lead one final, all-out charge, to try to break the enemy by sheer force of will. If I could reach Constantine himself… Murad’s eyes scanned the chaos, searching desperately for the imperial banner. He imagined striking down the self-proclaimed Emperor, cutting the head from the snake.

But then another vision rose, colder and far more vivid, his own head, mounted on a spike, paraded by Byzantine hands. The thought made his blood run cold. He was a general, not some berserker in a death frenzy. Grinding his teeth, Murad crushed the reckless urge and turned to Halil and the other senior commanders waiting for his word.

“Sound the retreat,” Murad ordered, the words bitter on his tongue. For a moment, a stunned silence. Zaganos Pasha, disheveled and bloodied from shrapnel, stared as if he hadn’t heard right. Halil Pasha closed his eyes in relief and immediately signaled to the nearest mehter musicians. A series of sharp drumbeats and brassy notes rang out, the prearranged signal to disengage. Officers took up the call, shouting for units to fall back in order. Across the field, Ottoman soldiers began the difficult maneuver of breaking off the fight. Piece by piece, the massive Ottoman host extricated itself from Constantine’s death trap. The Byzantines, bloodied though far less so, did not pursue beyond the range of their guns. They held position, content to watch Murad withdraw. A cheer rose from their ranks, raw and triumphant, echoing across the blood-soaked plain.

At last, Murad gave the final order to depart. The Ottoman army, battered and smoldering, pulled back northward beyond Domokos. Cartloads of injured groaned, and lines of defeated troops trudged in exhausted silence. The Sultan rode at the head, spine straight despite the weight on his shoulders. He did not allow himself to look back at the accursed plain South of Domokos where so many of his warriors lay. Instead, his gaze was fixed forward, already calculating how to recover from this failure. Constantine has won this day, Murad admitted to himself, but he has not won the war. This was a harsh lesson, a check to his pride, but not the end. He would summon fresh armies, adapt his tactics, and drown that Byzantine discipline in sheer force next time. I will not break, he thought fiercely. I will return.

Author’s Note:

We’re almost there, the next chapter will be the aftermath of the battle and the final chapter of "Book One". It’s been an incredible journey building up to this point, and I’m beyond grateful for everyone who’s come along for the ride!

But this isn’t the end, far from it. Murad’s defeat is a monumental turning point, one that will send shockwaves through the world. What comes next will reshape everything. We will head straight into Book Two with no break, starting immediately with a fresh chapter that opens the next phase of the story: new alliances, new wars, and an empire that refuses to die.

Thank you for reading, supporting, and sharing this story. The best is yet to come!

IEROS SKOPOS!