Early September 1436
Skopje announced itself by order, not scale. The fortress hill lifted cleanly from the plain. The Vardar pressed close along its left flank; the small town spread low to the right beyond the fort walls. Clay roofs dulled the red of it. Smoke moved, thin and unhurried, in the settling air.
The fortress did not shimmer. It sat on its hill like an old animal at rest, its walls biting the sky in a jagged line. Constantine had seen enough fortresses to know strength when he saw it, and this one drew his shoulders tight, as if a strap had been pulled one notch too far.
He tasted dust, grit left in his teeth and at the corners of his eyes where sweat dried to salt. Behind him, the column came up in disciplined waves, pikeheads, banners, the dull labor of wagons.
George Sphrantzes rode at his shoulder, narrow-eyed against the glare. Andreas held the other side, heavy in the saddle, his expression as blunt as an axe head. A handful of officers followed, quiet now that the object of the march stood before them.
Constantine lifted a hand and they rode forward a dozen paces, enough ground gained for the town to declare its full shape.
Toward the river, the ground fell away hard, good ground for a defender. On the town side, the slope climbed in stubborn steps, kinder ground, made for ladders and dead men.
"River guards one flank," Andreas said, not admiring, simply naming. "Town side is where they'll bleed."
George's gaze tracked along the wall line. "It won't be quick."
Constantine did not answer at once. He studied the fort's outline, looking for the error in its making. In the high sun, the stone looked solid. It always did, until it didn't.
By early evening, the army had encamped southeast of the town on open ground, tents rising in ordered rows. Guns and powder wagons came in with the slow groan of iron and muscle. Men moved like ants with purpose, not frenzy: rope teams, pick teams, water parties. He watched them long enough to feel the familiar pinch in his chest, pride that was never pure pride, because it always carried the cost inside it.
The war tent had already become the center of the camp, officers coming and going with reports. Outside, the camp moved with purpose: tools striking, animals shifting, men calling distances and loads, runners carrying instructions outward as soon as they were given.
Constantine moved along the edge of the table, answering as needed, an assent here, a correction there, pausing often enough for others to speak, lifting his cup only once the chamomile had cooled enough to drink.
At some point, the work stopped feeling like a weight. The press of it eased. He caught himself leaning in, listening for the next report, almost anticipating it. The realization came softly and surprised him: he had missed this, despite what it cost. The motion, the purpose, the clean narrowing of the world to what mattered next. He let the thought pass without dwelling on it, but it stayed.
George stood at his right with the folio open, feeding figures and names into the flow. Andreas, fresh from the outer works, leaned over the map, thick fingers spread, shifting markers as orders took shape. Thomas had just come in from the forward scouting, the smell of horse and sweat clinging to him. His eyes were bright in the lantern light, too bright, the way they always were when blood was near.
"Reports," Constantine said. "Andreas."
Andreas did not waste breath. "The town is abandoned," he said. "It's empty enough to echo. Some folk fled into the hills. The Turks and their households went into the fort."
"How many in the fort?" George said, pen paused.
"A few hundred, give or take," Andreas said. "Same order as the prisoner claimed. But they're provisioned. The town's been stripped—grain carts, animals driven uphill. That tells me they expect to stay. They're hoping for relief."
George's pen scratched once on his tablet.
Constantine glanced from him to Andreas. "And the fortifications?"
Andreas's finger moved to the hill. "Forget the riverside. Too steep. That's a killing slope. Town side is the approach." He traced an arc north of the town, east of the fort wall. "Flat ground here. Hard enough. Clear a few trees, and we can bring the guns, twenty, thirty pieces if we pack them tight."
Thomas let out a soft sound, half impatience, half approval.
"And the wall there?" Constantine asked.
Andreas's eyes narrowed. "Weaker. Not the base, the base sits on the hill's nose. Stone on rock." He tapped the upper wall. "That was raised before cannon mattered. Thinner. Lower. We hit it right, it goes. Another day after that, we make a breach with men."
He didn't withdraw his hand. "If you want speed," he said, iron in his voice, "we can throw ladders after a night of fire and take it by storm. The garrison's small. Under Pyrvelos cover, it—"
"No," Constantine said, not loudly, but at once.
Andreas stopped.
Constantine took a measured sip of chamomile, then set the cup down. "I don't want the fort taken in the dark, on ladders, with men dying fast and nameless." His gaze stayed on the map.
He looked up. "How long to set the guns?"
"A few days," Andreas said. "We need to secure the town first, control the approaches, keep our wagons from being sniped on the move. Then we drag the Drakos, build platforms, line them, sight them. It's work. But it's doable."
George's head lifted. "We also need to tighten the river." He traced the Vardar upstream with the tip of a nail. "Put a pair of Drakos where the bank pinches, above and below. Lock it down early. No boats slipping in at night, no barrels floated downstream. If they mean to sit, let them start counting mouths now."
Constantine nodded once and looked to Andreas. "See to it."
He shifted his hand along the map, already past the river. "Thomas. Your report."
Thomas stepped closer to the table. "We ranged the roads," he said. "No Ottoman riders. No campfires in the hills. Nothing that looks like an army gathering. If they mean to relieve Skopje, they're not doing it with speed."
He continued, "I find it hard to believe they'll send anything here soon, if they send anything before winter."
He tapped a finger northeast of Skopje. "The locals talk. Kumanovo, less than two days' march. Small Ottoman garrison, no walls to speak of. A town, not a fortress. If we take it, we clear our north flank."
Constantine glanced at the mark once. "Cavalry only. Move fast. If it's as thin as they say, finish it. If it isn't, you disengage."
Thomas's mouth tightened, but something held in check. "Understood."
Constantine nodded once. "Before dawn."
George's pen paused again. "And Serbia?"
Thomas shook his head once. "Nothing ahead of them. No outriders, no scouts pushed forward, no sign of an advance party. If Đurađ's on the move, he's still days out."
Constantine's finger slid north along the road. "Then we shorten the distance."
He looked at Andreas. "Send cavalry toward his line of march. Ride far enough that he hears us before he sees us."
Andreas nodded. "I'll have them out before dawn."
George looked at Constantine. "We should also discuss a potential surrender."
Thomas shook his head. "No flags. No messenger. No feelers sent down. If they wanted terms, we'd have heard something."
Andreas nodded, grimly agreeing without the need to say it. "They're set to hold. Hoping Halil sends someone. Hoping we break our teeth and go away."
Thomas leaned in, the lantern throwing sharp angles across his face. "And if they don't surrender, we kill them to the last," he said softly, as if reciting a duty. "Let them learn what 'holding' costs."
The words landed heavily. Not shock, not disagreement—weariness, the kind that comes when such sentences start to sound ordinary.
Constantine breathed once, slow, and saw his hand on the table in the lantern light: callused, ink-stained, the imperial ring a small, hard circle of metal that meant too much and protected nothing by itself.
He looked at George first, then Andreas, then Thomas.
"I also find it hard for a relief army to come here," Constantine said at last. "Not quickly. Not while their empire frays. But we do not build plans on what we hope the enemy cannot do."
Constantine continued, voice steady. "Tomorrow, we secure the town. Andreas, you proceed. Establish control, set guards." His gaze flicked to the room.
"And then," Constantine said, "we build the gun line."
Andreas nodded once, already seeing the work laid out.
Constantine held up two fingers. "But we do not spend men and powder like water if we can avoid it. So we do this in stages."
He leaned forward. "We site the Drakos, enough guns to speak with authority. We batter the upper wall for a day. Not a week. A day." He tapped the map once. "Long enough that they stop guessing."
"Then we stop," he said.
Thomas's brows rose.
"Not to give them comfort," Constantine went on. "To give them certainty. Before the guns fire, surrender looks like fear. After a day of fire, it looks like sense."
His gaze moved once around the table. "We offer terms. Safe passage if they abandon the fort and lay down arms. What they can carry."
He paused.
Thomas's smile returned, thin as a blade.
"If they refuse," Constantine finished, "we break the wall properly. And we storm the fort."
Outside, the camp murmured like a beast in its sleep. Constantine felt the decision lock into place in his bones.
"Is that understood?" he asked.
Andreas nodded once. George nodded more slowly, already seeing letters he would write. Thomas gave a short, eager tilt of his head.
"Good," Constantine said. "Now go. And sleep if you can. Tomorrow the earth begins."
A few days later, the earth began as promised—planks, rollers, and curses carving a road from soil.
Constantine stood on the flat ground north of the town, east of the fort's shoulder. Scrub had been cut back, earth leveled, soil packed until it held. Timber platforms sat like low stages. Powder wagons waited under guard, barrels hooded in canvas.
Twenty-three Drakos stood in line, black mouths aimed at the hill.
The crews worked with practiced rhythm—tamp, swab, load, sight. Sweat cut clean lines through dust. The air held hot rope, fresh sap, and beneath it the metallic tang of powder, like a storm given shape.
Once, twice, the fort answered. Small guns barked from the wall, their shots falling short, stone thudding harmlessly into earth. No one flinched. The range was wrong. The war those guns had been built for was already over.
The upper wall was close enough to show detail, thin as Andreas had said, and still distant in the way stone always was before it broke. Constantine could make out movement along the parapet—men reduced to dark shapes, heads turning, pausing. They had watched the guns come up, watched the platforms rise, watched the empire's new language assemble itself before them.
A language of iron and noise.
He turned to Andreas. "Ready?"
Andreas did not smile. He nodded.
Constantine raised his hand.
"Fire."
The first Drakos spoke with a sound that was not a sound but an event. The earth seemed to jolt under Constantine's boots. The blast slapped his face with heat; smoke punched outward and then rolled, thick and stinging, across the gun line.
Then the second gun. Then the third.
The volleys began to overlap, the rhythm settling into a brutal kind of music: boom, crack, echo. Each shot bounced off the hill and came back wrong, as if the fort itself were trying to answer.
Stone dust leapt from the wall where the balls struck. Not a collapse, but chips, bites, and scars appearing in the upper work. A section of crenellation shattered, falling in white fragments down the slope like broken teeth.
Hours passed in smoke and repetition. Men sweated and cursed and loaded again. The sun climbed, then began to slide.
When Constantine finally stepped back from the line, his ears rang as if a bell had been hung inside his skull. Powder grit clung to his lips. His throat felt raw, scraped by smoke.
The wall was damaged, pocked and cracked, a bruise spreading through stone. Not yet a breach. The hill's nose still held the base firm, just as Andreas had warned. Another day like this and the upper courses would begin to fail. The fort would stop looking like an animal and start looking like something that could be broken.
Constantine lowered his eyes. No joy, only the cold relief of seeing his calculations prove true.
He turned to Andreas. "Hold."
Andreas blinked once. Then he shouted down the line, and one by one the guns fell silent. The sudden absence of thunder was almost obscene. The wind moved again.
In the quiet, the fort seemed to listen.
Constantine looked toward the hill where the defenders hid behind their stone and their hope of rescue. He thought of Zoe's soft weight against his chest, of Katarina's hand making the sign of the cross on his brow. He thought of how quickly life could end, and how slowly stone could be convinced.
He exhaled once, tasting smoke.
"Send the offer," he said.
George was already beside him, quill and parchment ready as if he had been waiting his whole life for this moment. Constantine did not look away from the fort as he spoke again, voice low, iron under the calm.
"Tell them they can walk out alive," he said. "And make sure they understand what happens if they don't."
Author's Note:
The siege was visualised directly on the real fortress of Skopje. In the 1430s the fort had been under Ottoman control for only a few decades and still retained most of its earlier Roman and Serbian fortifications. The town below was only beginning to recover after the conquest; the larger suburbs and the Mustafa Paşa Mosque that would later anchor its growth had not yet appeared. Using period maps of the fortress alongside modern Google Maps helped immensely in visualising the terrain and the approaches, and it quickly became clear where artillery would most plausibly be placed for a siege. Sign up for free on Patreon to read this chapter with the Skopje reference map, and the full comment thread.