EMPIRE REWRITTEN
patreon
Book II / Chapter 25: To Ride Once More
🕑 Added 2025-07-10 22:51:19 +0000 UTCEarly Morning, South of Veles A grey mist hung low over the Vardar plain, drawn in thin skeins from the river that curled behind them. The g
Early Morning, South of Veles
A grey mist hung low over the Vardar plain, drawn in thin skeins from the river that curled behind them. The grass was slick with dew, and the air held a heavy stillness, the hush of the world inhaling before the clash.
Emperor Sigismund sat atop his destrier, still and regal beneath a wolfskin cloak. His armor, polished to a soft gleam. Beneath the visored sallet, his eyes moved restlessly over the field. Across the plain, the Ottoman army had formed in silence through the night: long ranks of Azabs with spears glinting in the dawn, Janissaries in layered red-and-white, Sipahi cavalry resting like coiled serpents behind. The Iron Gates loomed behind them, cliffs split by the river, a narrow stone mouth that marked the road south. It was a trap or a stand. And it was sprung.
“They’re not so many as rumor would have it,” Hunyadi muttered, easing his horse alongside. His mail hauberk was still damp from the night fog, the links shivering as he shifted in the saddle. “More than us, yes, but not double, not threefold.”
“Close enough for courage to matter,” Sigismund said, without turning his head.
He had expected more. Murad’s reputation, and the whispers of his army’s size, had ballooned in recent weeks. But this… this was no overwhelming horde. It was formidable, yes. But not invincible.
“They chose their ground well,” Palatine Garai said grimly, squinting toward the Ottoman left. “Any retreat goes straight through that pass. They mean to win here or bleed us trying.”
A silence followed. Then Branković spoke, his tone even. “Then we’ll see which blood counts for more.” He crossed himself. “With God’s help, we’ll prevail.”
Sigismund allowed himself a breath, not relief, but resolve. He turned in the saddle and surveyed his own ranks: pikemen in tight blocks, crossbowmen behind mantlets, cavalry posted along the flanks under banners stitched in rain-washed heraldry. The banner of Saint Stephen rippled behind him. Officers paced quietly among their men, checking straps, whispering final prayers, tightening grips on hafts and reins.
He raised his voice, not a bellow, but the steady cadence of command shaped by years of war and throne rooms. “My lords, commanders, friends” he began, letting the silence settle between each word like iron rivets. “The line holds. We strike where we must. And today, if God so wills it, we strike to remember who we are.”
Hunyadi’s knuckles whitened on his reins, leather creaking beneath his grip. “We will break them,” he said, not loudly, but with iron certainty. “They’re not ghosts or demons. Just men.”
Sigismund turned to him, meeting his eyes fully for the first time that morning. “Then let it be so,” he said. His voice had dropped now, low and intimate, as if spoken only to Hunyadi, and to memory. “For Nicopolis.”
He turned his horse with a sharp tug of the reins. Trumpets sounded from the hill. Down the slope, the Christian banners unfurled to the wind, and the men began to move.
The Christian host spread out across the Vardar’s northern flats like a great steel tide preparing to crest. In the rising light, banners were lifted into position, griffons, lions, black eagles, and the silver cross of Saint Stephen, each snapping gently in the morning breeze. The engineers moved with quiet urgency, rolling the few field guns into shallow pits hastily dug during the night. The barrels were smeared with ash to dull their shine. Powder horns were passed, tampers checked, and wicks lit.
Along the center, tight blocks of pikemen stood shoulder to shoulder, armored in brigandine and kettle helms, their weapons like a bristling hedge. Behind them, crossbowmen waited, bolts nocked and mantlets lowered. The cavalry, Hungarian on the right and Serbian on the left, were posted in two broad wings. Horses stamped the earth and chomped their bits. No one spoke above a whisper.
Sigismund rode slowly down the central line, then turned sharply toward a small knoll near the artillery post. A signal horn called the captains and nobles to him. One by one, they arrived, Garai, Branković, Hunyadi, Fruzhin, a dozen more lords and bannerets, all drawn from the disparate corners of the realm. Some wore full plate; others had come in battle-worn coats, adorned only with the sigils of their bloodlines. Mud clung to their boots and rain darkened their capes.
Sigismund waited until they were gathered. Then he spoke.
“We’ve done what we could,” he said, voice low, almost conversational. “Now comes what we must.”
No fanfare followed. No flourish of words. He let the quiet stretch a heartbeat longer before continuing.
“You know what lies behind us, the river, the road, the lands we were born to guard. And you know what stands before us: Murad’s host, proud and fierce. But they are not gods. They bleed, as all men do. And today, they will bleed before the banners of Christendom.”
He shifted in the saddle slightly, glancing toward the Iron Gate. “This pass, this field, it’s not the end of the world. But it is where the world might begin again.”
Garai gave a short nod, the corners of his mouth tight. Fruzhin looked down at his hands, then clenched them around his sword belt. Hunyadi stood utterly still, save for the twitching of his gauntlet straps, which he adjusted again and again.
Sigismund’s tone softened further. “None of us are boys. I won’t tell you God favors our banners over theirs. But I will tell you this: I remember Nicopolis. I remember the noise and the pride and the blood. And I remember how it ended because we mistook righteousness for preparation.”
He scanned their faces. “Today, we do not fight to punish the East. We fight to prevent its closing on us forever. If we hold here, if we endure, then there will still be a West to return to.”
He gave a final nod. “May God see us through.”
Branković crossed himself, quietly murmuring a prayer with his household knights clustered around him. One of them placed a worn wooden icon in the grass before them; another pressed a hand to his breastplate and whispered the names of his children.
Hunyadi turned from the group and made for his lines, calling orders crisply to his captains. Already, movement stirred among the Ottomans. Flags were lifting. Horsemen trotted into position.
Sigismund lingered just a moment longer atop the knoll, letting the wind pull at his cloak. Then he wheeled his horse, gave a curt gesture to his standard bearer, and rode to the center.
The first cannon fired from the Ottoman lines. It was not a smooth report, but a flat, thunderous cough, followed by a shriek as the cannonball tore a shallow trench in the earth well short of the Christian ranks. The sound rippled across the field, silencing murmurs, tightening grips. A few birds took flight from the treeline to the east.
Moments later, a Hungarian bombard replied, the shot slamming into a patch of grass just before the Janissary front. Dirt exploded upward, followed by a thin, nervous cheer from the crossbowmen.
Both sides had no more than a handful, primitive, small-mouthed things with thick bellies. They were there as much for terror as damage, a sign of the new age crawling into the bloodied light of war. Crews worked quickly, sometimes clumsily, re-ramming charges, lighting fuses with horn-tapers, praying the barrels held.
One did not.
A guttural cheer rose from the Christian ranks as a Ottoman piece on the far left belched fire and then shattered. The barrel burst like rotten fruit, showering its crew with shrapnel. Two men were thrown backward, limbs flailing, while a third crumpled where he stood. The smoke that billowed after was tinged with a sickly red.
Then came the skirmishers.
Light cavalry darted forward in loose waves, Ottoman Akinci riding fast and low, loosing arrows at a gallop. Hungarian light horse met them in kind, not to engage but to deny them room, matching maneuver with maneuver. From the center, crossbows loosed steady volleys into the grey. The sky grew thick with quarrels. Horses screamed. A riderless mount veered madly through the ranks before collapsing with a wet thud. Still, the main lines held.
Twice the Ottoman flanks surged forward in feigned charges, only to pull back before the pikemen could properly brace. The Janissaries advanced in a rigid pace, then halted, shields raised. They were testing, pressing, never quite committing. Sigismund saw it from his hilltop, like wolves circling a bull, not yet sure of the horns.
The Christian line moved little. Orders were relayed by trumpet and flag. Sigismund paced behind the center, his eyes constantly shifting between fronts. He did not speak unless spoken to. The weight of command rested heavily now, not as a crown but as armor: vital, trusted, and terribly hard to remove.
Then he saw it.
To the Ottoman left, a moment of laxity. A ripple in the line, one of their Azap spear units pivoting too far to counter a Hungarian probe. Their flank, though only for an instant, opened. Behind it, the Sipahi reserve had wheeled out too far and was now slow to return. A breath. A gap.
He looked once to the sky, cloudless, pitiless. The moment was now, or it would pass forever.
He turned at once. “Sound the charge.” he said.
A messenger took off like a bolt toward the Hungarian right.
Moments later, the trumpets blew. The Christian heavy cavalry surged forward. Steel clattered, hooves thundered, and banners dipped. The line of knights crested a low rise with the force of a tide.
Sigismund watched, jaw tight.
The cavalry smashed into the Ottoman flank like a hammer into glass. Lances splintered, shields crumpled, men were thrown from saddles like dolls. For a brief, blinding moment, the Ottoman left reeled, forced back, staggered. The Sipahi reserve wheeled too late, and Hungarian knights tore through the seam with brutal discipline, not a wild charge but a wedge of steel, deliberate and punishing.
From his hilltop, Sigismund saw the break and felt it, not just saw it, but sensed the sudden shift in momentum, the unraveling of the enemy’s line. A rare flicker of exhilaration lit in his chest.
“This is the moment,” he said, low and almost reverent, more to the wind than to any man beside him. “By God, we have them now.”
Without waiting for counsel, he spurred his horse forward. His personal guard followed, two dozen riders in dark-plated harness, the Imperial standard billowing behind them. Sigismund had not ridden into the press of battle in years, age had made him more ruler than warrior, more strategist than blade. But now, in this narrowing window between past shame and hoped-for glory, he felt the old hunger return. This, perhaps, would be his last charge. Not a flight from death, but a ride toward redemption. A triumph. One final moment to be the Emperor not in name but in act.
Mud sprayed as they galloped down the slope, toward the breach, toward the swelling roar of battle. Sigismund’s heart thundered in time with the hooves. His hands felt strangely light on the reins, and a tingling had begun behind his eyes, like heat rising behind a veil. But he paid it no mind. His body had ached every morning of the campaign. This was nothing new. He was moving now, free of councils and maps and memory. He could almost see it: the enemy fleeing, the Christian lines pressing forward, banners rising over the Iron Gate.
Then the light shifted.
A sharp lance of pain stabbed behind his right eye, white, searing and his fingers spasmed on the reins. The world tilted. The horse jerked beneath him, confused, then stumbled as its rider sagged. Sigismund's body swayed, stiffened, then slumped sideways like a dropped banner.
He struck the earth with brutal force. His helm clattered loose. A sickening crack followed, the unmistakable sound of bone meeting stone, and then he was still.
The horse, riderless, galloped on.
For a second, no one noticed.
The guards who turned in the saddle saw only dust where he’d been. But then one cried out. Another pulled hard on his reins, doubling back. A banner dipped. A rider dismounted in a frenzy.
The whisper spread like fire over dry thatch: The Emperor is down.
First confusion. Then disbelief.
Then panic.
Within moments, the signal horns stuttered. Formations wavered. A junior captain called for the standard to be raised higher. Another shouted for confirmation, but no reply came. Somewhere behind the line, a sergeant screamed, “Protect the Emperor!” but there was no answer to give.
And across the field, the Ottomans saw it too. They surged forward with renewed fury, pressing hard.
Ulrich of Celje reached Sigismund’s body among the first.
He leapt from the saddle, and knelt beside the fallen Emperor. One look was enough. The head lolled at a sickening angle. Blood had already darkened the grass beneath. No wound, no sword stroke, just death, sudden and absolute.
Ulrich stood, eyes wild, and waved for the guard. “Form a perimeter! We carry him back, now!”
But even as he spoke, the line began to dissolve. Riders from the vanguard galloped back in disarray, faces pale with confusion. Trumpets blew conflicting signals.
Then Janissaries struck.
They came in a disciplined wave, sabers gleaming, pushing hard. Azabs followed, yelling wildly, filling every crack in the formation.
Ulrich turned to rally the nearest men. “Hold the line! Drawback around-”
An arrow struck him in the throat.
He collapsed beside Sigismund, his body twitching once before stilling. The two men lay within arm’s reach, dead within minutes of each other.
Fruzhin tried to press forward with a small knot of cavalry, hoping to retrieve the banner. He made it no more than ten paces before a mace crushed his shoulder and he was dragged backward by his retainers, blood soaking his cloak.
On the left, Branković saw the Imperial standard drop.
He hesitated. For one heartbeat, he considered pushing forward, driving his cavalry into the advancing Ottoman flank, hoping to stem the collapse.
But then he saw the center, hollowed, breaking. The line no longer held. He cursed under his breath and wheeled his horse.
Hunyadi rode to meet him, helm off, his face spattered with mud and blood. “It’s over,” he said flatly. “Order the right to fall back. We hold the ridgeline if we can, long enough to disengage the wings.”
Branković hesitated once more, then gave a sharp nod to his standard-bearer. The man raised the horn and blew a long, wavering note. The signal for retreat.
The Serbian rear guard moved quickly, forming a crescent around the withdrawing men. On the Hungarian side, Hunyadi led a tight column uphill, pulling wounded and footmen with him. Order within disaster. He did not look back at the field.
By late evening, the Vardar plain was silent save for the cries of the wounded and the buzz of flies already gathering around the dead.
The Iron Gate still stood.
By nightfall, what remained of the crusader host had vanished into the hills. A rough trail northward had revealed itself, a game path widened by desperate retreat. The last of the sun caught on bent helms and torn banners as the column trudged upward through scrub and rock, leaving behind the lowland stench of blood. Perhaps seven thousand still marched, if one counted the wounded on makeshift litters. The rest lay below, some dead, others scattered, and many vanished into the hills, their fate unknown.
At a clearing midway up the ridge, a rough camp formed. Men stripped bloodied mail, bound wounds, fed exhausted horses by hand. Scouts were posted at every rise. Beneath the trees, among sodden cloaks and torn pennants, what remained of the command council gathered.
The firelight threw long shadows on weary faces. Hunyadi stood at the center, gauntleted hands resting on his belt, his jaw tight. Around him, a half-ring of lords, some seated, others standing stiffly, watched with suspicion.
A Hungarian baron broke the silence, voice edged with contempt.
“This was not your command. You carry no seal.”
Hunyadi didn’t move.
“The Emperor is dead. Seals don’t march. Men do.”
Another lord stepped forward, rain clinging to his mustache.
“And under whose blood-right do they march, yours?”
“Under the right of survival,” Hunyadi said. “One voice, or ten pulling them apart. Choose.”
The circle fell quiet. Some glanced at Branković.
The Serbian Despot stood a little apart, arms folded, brow furrowed in a storm of worry. He had said little since dusk.
“I should return to Serbia. If Murad turns north, I must be there. My lands are already thinly garrisoned.”
Hunyadi turned to him. “Murad won’t turn north,” he said. “He’ll push south. To Constantine. He’ll want to end the Byzantine threat quickly, before it grows. Not chase ghosts through the hills.”
Branković shook his head. “And if you’re wrong? If he comes for the ruins of our army, picks us off in retreat?”
“Then we die,” Hunyadi said simply. “But we do it striking, not hiding. We move west, toward Albania. The rebel contacts may still hold ground. If we find them, if we regroup, maybe we still have a chance.”
Comments
RENAISSANSE SI
Thank you! And yep, bad but awesome was exactly the lane for that one. Fruzhin is alive btw.
RENAISSANSE SI
Yeah, the writing was on the wall for Sigismund!
RENAISSANSE SI
Thank you!
RENAISSANSE SI
Definitely going to be tricky, morale is a fragile thing, especially after a hit like this. Can’t say too much without spoiler-ing, but yeap… this gamble’s about to get tested hard.
RENAISSANSE SI
Let’s see who’s got the backup plan!
RENAISSANSE SI
Beautifully put, that’s a good read of the situation. Can’t say much without wandering into spoiler territory, but you’re definitely circling some sharp threads.
RENAISSANSE SI
Not sure tbh. I haven’t dug too deep into the Iron Gate battle specifics, not the way I did with Constantine’s campaigns. Could be a fun one to tackle later though.
Kirra
Will we get another short wiki about the disaster at the iron gate?
Jan Mantsch
Honestly i saw it coming but the way it happened was unexpected but realistic for the period. Now it's up to the Southern coalition and whatever can be scavanged from this disaster.
Max Müller
Well interesting. The question now is how bloodied Murad is and whether he can move fast enough to catch Constantine befor ehte news reaches him.
pls don't ban me
OK. THAT WAS AWESOME. BAD BUT AWESOME. VERY WELL WRITTEN. now. the main army is broken but not exterminated. if Hunyadi, Fruzhin( not dead right?) manage to reach the Albanians they can try to reach Constantine from the longer road. Murad won't instantly turn and charge south. he'll need at least a few days to calculate his losses and how to kill the roman emperor. Skandenberg won't stand still went the surving crusader reach him.
Pearl of the Orient
Idiots. He died like Gustav Adolf. Saw it coming with all the foreshadowing in Sigismund's chapters. Sigh. I guess Constantine is about to die as well
Elaine
good chappie
Empty Crate
Hmm im starting to think taking Larissa would have been the better move. Guess we'll see if this gamble still has a chance of working I doubt this will do well in helping the morale for Constantines forces.
russell marsh
Well that happened, if anyone has a plan B now is the time say something
Hugo23
Sigismund was prone to both strokes and heart attacks at this point, not to mention just being old and very active when he probably shouldn't be. Constantinople seemed to be the stretch goal from the beginning, the more realistic people amongst the Crusaders spoke mostly of Thessaloniki.
Hugo23
requiescat in pace Emperor Sigismund the lion of Hungary. I figured if a defeat was on the way Hunyadi would end up in charge one way or another, nobles will see to themselves and their retinue, a captain see's to his men. All of them, even the ones not under his command. Hunyadi is actually reading the situation instead of letting fear rule him, this crusade was two pronged from the beginning, defeating one doesn't mean the other stops. With Constantine rushing north... Murad I think did the best he could but the Albanians are kind of a redeeming factor here. He was facing a two pronged assault, one he tried to goad into a siege the other he met and crushed in the open field. But the Albanians... ties to both courts, in open rebellion and not called to the field? Well that is something that slips your mind when confronted with a matching force after years of losses, not terrible but noticeable. Murad's plan is honestly quite brilliant but Constantine has taken every opportunity to improve his situation both strategically and materially. Murad only did so after being forced to do so.
Ben Robbins
Hmm, well I suppose the story wouldn't be particularly interesting if everything went the Crusaders' way. Did he die of a stroke or something? Wikipedia doesn't mention a cause of death, so I'm not sure whether that is realistic. Constantine really needed Sigismund to at least fight to a bloody draw. With Murad's army largely intact, he really doesn’t have the combat power to take back Constantinople or seriously hurt the Ottomans. He needs to smash Murad's army, take Constantinople and any other fortified cities or towns, and smash whatever second army the Ottomans scrape together in order to even conclude a peace treaty.
HASB
Well.... aa bad as it is for the crusaders Constantine now has the chnace to unite and lead the crusaders host if he can get to them and boost their moral and lead them against the ottoman as the first emperor of "cough" the romans "cough" Greeks to do so It will be such a great propaganda piece
Zayari
Damn there goes one emperor, but also one less challenger to Roman supremacy. Also Sigismund was the popes strong arm to keep the byzantines on side. There’s no way to pressure them into unification now
Hunter197
No!!!! ...well I won't say it immediately for spoilers but well written I loved it
