Of Destiny and Duty; A Galatian AAR
Chapter l - Shock
Constantinople, 1453 AD
Flames flickered around me. I felt suspended in time, as a spectator to the events unfolding about me. Indeed, it was some time before I could bring to recollection where I was; why I was there.
“Get up, get up you fool!” cried Godwin, my friend of many years. “Come, John, before those ravaging murderers put out your eyes!”
It all came back to me in a moment’s time. I shook myself into consciousness. I felt so weak, so drained in mind and body. But now I started to remember.
It seems like so long ago; just a few years, but it feels like decades. The Pope had called yet another crusade; the fate of Byzantium hung in the balance. Truth be told, however, this came as no surprise. The emperor in Constantinople reigned over a mere shell; a shadow of what had been. The old city had not the striking dominance that had once asserted control over the eastern half of the Mediterranean. Generations of corruption and greed had done their work; it was only a matter of time before the Turks, those heathens, came as God’s own instrument of punishment upon the unfaithful. Now we will feel His long-withheld wrath.
Despite the hopelessness of the times, it was my duty to come to the defense of the old city, if for nothing else than the preservation of the memory of better days. So we came, Godwin and I, to fulfill our sacred duty to God and country.
Yes, we came, and then our enemies, those Turks; they, too, had a mission. Their father’s fathers had fought over the Holy Land. Now they came, seeking vengeance for the blood spilt by our swords. They will not rest until Constantinople, shell that it was, kneels before them in servitude.
So we fought. We fought endless hours, countless days. It seemed that the struggle would never end. The old city had the greatest walls in all Christendom, and for all their efforts and courage in battle, the enemy could not secure them.
Instead, they waited. They surrounded our city and waited with eager dreams of the pillage and loot that would follow. But occasionally they would bombard the city with their great cannons and scale the walls yet again to test us, to see if our resolve had weakened.
And it was on such a day that I stood at the gate, ready to beat the enemy back yet again. I ran back and forth, admonishing the men to keep up the fight. And then, then it happened. I was thrown, as by the hand of the Almighty Himself, through the air. I felt that I had been lifted up and tossed as a child tosses a toy. And then everything became black, black as the night…
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