Rain had fallen over Şarköy for days, leaving the little coastal town damp, dark and unusually quiet.
From the third-floor window of the hotel, Gunther watched water stream down the glass. The promenade below was almost deserted. Beyond it, the empty beach faded into the black Sea of Marmara, where only a few merchant ships moved through the storm, their lights appearing and disappearing behind curtains of rain.
Far inland, occasional flashes answered the lightning.
Artillery.
The front was still fighting somewhere beyond the hills—another bombardment, perhaps another Ottoman night attack—but here the war seemed distant. Şarköy remained peaceful, almost suspiciously so.
The town had been thinning for days. Families had moved inland, sections of the beach had been closed, and the remaining defenders had quietly prepared for an attack no one knew would actually come.
Behind Gunther, the hotel room reflected that strange mixture of rest and war. Civilian clothes hung over chairs beside playing cards and half-finished drinks, while a marked map of Şarköy covered the table. Pencil lines showed firing positions, fallback routes, ammunition stores and stretches of beach now seeded with mines.
Most of those mines had arrived several days earlier aboard an Austro-Hungarian vessel pretending to sell salted fish. There had been plenty of real fish—enough for Gunther and the others to spend part of their leave eating and selling it around town—but beneath the barrels had come the cargo that mattered: ammunition, explosives and crates of modern mines.
Most had gone north to the main front. The rest remained here.
Gunther sometimes wondered how much Oskar was spending to keep the whole secret war alive. Imperial Weapon Works and Krupp had to manufacture the ammunition and explosives, trains had to move them through Austria-Hungary, and smugglers and ships had to carry them onward into Bulgaria without attracting the wrong attention.
Millions of marks, certainly. Perhaps tens of millions. Gunther doubted even Karl enjoyed adding up that particular account. But whatever the cost, some of that fortune now lay buried beneath the wet sand outside.
Roughly two hundred local defenders helped guard it: Bulgarian irregulars, policemen and volunteers, along with Greeks and other Slavs from Şarköy and the nearby villages. Their nations might have been quarrelling elsewhere, but here they shared the same coastline and the same enemy.
Some were experienced soldiers; others knew little more than how to load a rifle, keep their heads down and stay clear of the mined sections of beach.
For now, none of that mattered. There was nothing to shoot at, and Şarköy remained quiet beneath the rain.
Behind Gunther, the others passed the night as wounded soldiers often did—resting, talking and distracting themselves, each pretending in his own way that this was merely another peaceful evening indoors.
Otto and Max sat at the little table, "playing" cards without really playing. The game existed mostly to give their hands something repetitive to do and their minds a harmless rhythm to follow.
Max's left shoulder remained tightly bound beneath his shirt. Each time he reached across the table, the movement pulled a faint twitch across his face, as though something inside the joint possessed teeth.
Otto was in somewhat better condition. A broad purple bruise covered one side of his ribs, while a bandage disappeared beneath his collar where an Ottoman round had grazed him. Nothing dramatic. Nothing heroic. Merely the sort of wound that reminded a man how little distance sometimes separated living from dying.
They spoke in half-finished sentences, their attention wandering toward the windows between turns as though expecting the storm itself to announce something.
Göbels sat in an armchair like a man attending his own funeral, his bandaged right hand resting against his chest. Blood had already spotted through the white cloth, and the shape beneath remained unmistakably wrong. His ring finger was gone, along with the middle finger beside it, and the simple gold wedding band he had worn for years remained somewhere far behind them, lost in the mud and blood of the fighting near the old Çatalca positions.
He studied the bandaged absence until his jaw tightened.
"I'm not getting that ring back," he murmured. "Lost it is, my precious is lost forever."
Someone gave a dry chuckle. Then the room surrendered once more to rain and waiting.
Adolf lay half-propped against several pillows upon the bed, his shirt open and his trousers loosened enough to keep pressure away from his injuries. His skin looked wax-pale beneath the lamplight. One wound pulled painfully along his side whenever he moved; the other, deeper and considerably more humiliating, made every shift of his hips an act of resentment.
He had the expression of a man attempting to argue his own body back into obedience.
"Sea air," Adolf muttered, staring at the ceiling as another rumble travelled through the building. "They say it's good for recovery."
Max flicked a card onto the table without looking at it.
"They also say rain is good for crops. Doesn't mean I want to sleep in it."
Lightning flashed again.
For an instant the coast appeared in fragments—the wet breakwater stones, a thin white edge of foam, the dark mouth of the harbour—and then everything vanished as though someone had snuffed out a candle.
Gunther leaned closer to the glass.
Far beyond the curve of the coastline, somewhere over the rain-blinded darkness of Thrace, faint pulses continued to wink against the horizon. Small, stubborn flashes, irregular and low.
Too steady to be lightning, too many flashes to be anything else, but artillery.
The front was still breathing beneath the storm. Gunther watched until his eyes began to ache.
Then something moved where the sea should have been empty.
At first Gunther dismissed it as another trick of the storm—a darker bank of cloud shifting along the horizon, perhaps, or rain thickening where sea and sky dissolved into one another. Yet the shapes did not drift with the weather. They held their course.
Black against black, barely distinguishable from the night.
Too straight to be waves. Too heavy to be clouds. Too deliberate to be anything natural.
Then lightning flickered somewhere behind them, and for the briefest instant Gunther saw smoke trailing beneath the clouds.
Funnels.
Low silhouettes followed, dark hulls moving through the storm beyond the harbour mouth, where there should have been nothing larger than fishing boats and passing merchantmen.
A shielded lantern winked through the rain, then another.
Small, cautious points of human intent appeared and vanished among the darkness.
Gunther slowly released the breath he had been holding. It came out controlled because years of training demanded control, not because he felt anything resembling calm.
"Oh," Gunther murmured.
His expression hardened.
"No."
Otto looked up from the cards. "What is it?"
Before Gunther could answer, the horizon flashed, not lightning. Several white blooms appeared almost together along the dark line of ships. For a few seconds there was only rain.
Then the first volley arrived.
"Shit—TAKE COVER!"
"What?" Max barely managed the word before the impacts struck.
BOOM, BOOM, BOOM.
The hotel lurched beneath them. Windows rattled violently, dust spilled from the ceiling and something heavy crashed somewhere along the waterfront.
Gunther threw himself flat beneath the window. Otto and Max left their chairs at once, scattering cards across the floor as they dropped beside the table. Göbels hit the boards next to his armchair, curling around his injured hand.
Adolf responded with considerably less dignity. He dragged the bedsheet over his head and disappeared beneath it.
"THIS BETTER NOT BE THE END!"
The last concussion rolled away through the rain. Then silence returned. Not true silence—the storm remained, and somewhere outside masonry continued falling—but the guns themselves had stopped.
Gunther stayed flat for several seconds, listening.
What had shot at them were old ships, with slow guns, that were probably reloading.
"Shit," he said. "Central was right."
Otto lifted his head. "Right about what?"
Gunther pushed himself high enough to look over the sill.
"This isn't a raid."
Max frowned. "What?"
"Too many hulls. Too many transports. They're not trying to destroy the town." Gunther watched the ships through the rain. "They're softening the waterfront."
Otto's mouth tightened.
"You're saying—"
"They're preparing to land."
Nobody answered immediately.
Max glanced toward the sea. "You're serious."
"Yes."
"And we're what—the only Eternal Guards here?"
Otto looked around the room at Max's damaged shoulder, Göbels' ruined hand, Adolf's wounds and Gunther's battered ribs.
"Perfect," he muttered. "The cripple squad."
Adolf's voice came from beneath the sheet.
"I heard that. And considering the numbers out there, I'd say we're more like the suicide squad."
"Shut up."
The sheet lowered.
Another series of flashes appeared offshore.
Gunther saw them first.
"Down!"
The second volley struck.
BOOM. BOOM. BOOM.
One shell smashed into the waterfront road below, throwing stone and iron across the promenade. Another hit farther along the block, and the neighbouring building seemed to jump before part of its outer wall collapsed into the street. Glass burst somewhere below. A fragment struck the hotel hard enough to shake the floor beneath them.
Then the thunder rolled away again, as the old naval guns fell silent to reload.
Gunther pushed himself onto one knee. They had prepared for exactly this. Central had warned that the Ottomans might eventually try to bypass the land defenses by sea. That was why five wounded Eternal Guards had been sent to recover here instead of somewhere safely behind the front.
Now the possibility had become a fleet.
"You know the mission," Gunther said. "We hold. We make them bleed for every metre. When holding becomes impossible, we fall back."
He looked from one man to the next.
"Fight, retreat, fight again. That's it."
Otto reached for his equipment.
"Copy."
Max nodded. "Yeah. Copy."
Göbels hauled himself upright. "Copy that, Sarge."
Adolf threw the sheet aside. He was pale, but whatever panic had been there moments earlier was gone.
"…Copy."
Gunther drew a slow breath.
"Good. Gear up. Now."
That ended the joking.
Wounded or not, they were Eternal Guards. They had volunteered for this mission knowing what it might demand of them, and none required another speech about duty, Oskar or the possibility of dying here.
They simply went to work.
Civilian clothes came off. Military uniforms and armour went on. Reinforced vests settled across bruised chests and backs, followed by webbing, ammunition, medical kits, grenades, pistols and knives. Gloves were pulled tight, knee pads buckled down and heavy boots secured for the rain outside.
Then the ghillie camouflage went over everything.
Green-and-brown smocks, netting and strips of local vegetation broke apart the outlines of their bodies. Camouflaged helmets followed until the wounded men who had spent the evening playing cards began disappearing beneath the irregular shapes of the Moss Men.
Gunther checked his M1 carbine and slung it across his chest before hauling the radio pack onto his shoulders. His ribs protested beneath the weight, but he tightened the straps and secured the handset within reach.
Max and Otto took their carbines, pistols and knives.
Göbels collected the light machine gun, its bulky drum magazine locked beneath the receiver. His injured hand made the weapon awkward to manage, so Otto helped secure the spare drums while Göbels checked the action with the fingers he still had.
Adolf climbed carefully from the bed and began dressing more slowly than the others. Armour settled over his wounds, followed by his carbine, pistol, grenades and compact launcher.
Gunther glanced at him.
"You good?"
Adolf grimaced.
"No."
A beat passed.
"Good enough."
Gunther nodded.
That was all any of them were.
Outside, the ships flashed again. The third volley came while they were finishing. This time they were ready. Everyone dropped instinctively as the shells arrived.
BOOM, BOOM, BOOM.
A shell struck the promenade and showered the street with broken stone. Another smashed through a warehouse near the harbour, sending part of the roof collapsing inward. The third landed among buildings farther along the waterfront, and for several seconds the windows glowed orange behind the rain.
The hotel shook beneath the last impacts. Then the guns stopped, no fourth volley followed.
Gunther remained still for nearly a minute, listening beneath the fading rumble of masonry and thunder. Rain continued tapping against broken windows, but from the sea came nothing more.
The bombardment was over.
Gunther rose.
"Ready?"
Four nods answered him, then he reached for the door.
"Let's go."
They moved into the corridor and joined the local defenders already hurrying toward their prepared positions. Policemen, Bulgarian irregulars and volunteers filtered through the damaged hotel and into the surrounding buildings, rifles held close as they disappeared into windows, alleys and barricaded rooms overlooking the beach.
The town of Şarköy had been battered.
Parts of the waterfront were burning despite the rain. A warehouse near the harbour had partly collapsed, several houses had been torn open, and broken stone covered sections of the promenade. Smoke drifted through the streets, mixing with the last of the storm.
Yet from the Ottoman ships, little movement could be seen ashore. No guns answered, no rifles flashed from the buildings, nothing suggested that hundreds of defenders were quietly taking their positions among the ruins.
To the Ottoman officers watching through rain and darkness, the three volleys appeared to have done their work.
So the order was given to begin the landing.
The transports came forward behind the warships and settled into their assigned positions offshore. Anchors dropped, engines slowed, and broad wooden boats were hauled alongside their hulls.
Almost at the same time, the weather began to change.
The heavy rain that had battered the coast throughout the night weakened steadily. Sheets became showers, showers became a fine drizzle, and the wind lost some of its strength. The sea remained restless, but the worst of the storm was passing.
The timing could hardly have been better.
Ottoman planners had intended the crossing to begin in darkness and the landing itself near dawn. The night would conceal the fleet's final approach, while the first morning light would arrive before the boats reached shore, giving the soldiers enough visibility to recognize the beach, keep direction and avoid stumbling blindly into an unfamiliar town.
Now the weather appeared willing to cooperate, just as men began climbing down into the waiting boats, yet still it was not graceful.
The wooden craft rolled against the transports as soldiers descended rope ladders and gangways carrying rifles, ammunition, packs and equipment. Boots slipped on wet planks. Rifles struck gunwales. Men cursed when packs caught upon ropes or another man's equipment. Officers shouted instructions while sailors pushed boats away only to haul them alongside again when loading went wrong.
The darkness made everything slower, but gradually order emerged.
Boat after boat filled until men sat crowded shoulder to shoulder along the benches, rifles held upright between their knees while sailors took the oars.
Three small tugboats moved among them, taking several of the heavier craft in tow so the first wave might approach with something resembling cohesion.
Eventually nearly thirty boats were ready.
Orders passed from transport to transport, lines were released, and so the first wave pushed away.
Oars dipped into the dark Marmara almost together, and the little flotilla began moving toward Şarköy.
For the first few minutes, the coast remained little more than a darkness ahead of them. Then the eastern horizon began to pale. A thin grey line appeared beneath the clouds.
Dawn came, not sunlight yet, but enough to separate sea from sky.
The Ottoman timing had been almost exact. With every minute the world gained definition. The transports behind them emerged from the darkness as black silhouettes. Men could finally see neighbouring boats without relying upon lanterns. Ahead, the coastline slowly took shape beneath the dying rain.
The formation still refused to remain perfect.
Currents pulled some boats sideways. Stronger crews drew ahead while others fell behind. Towed craft advanced more quickly than those under oars, and the first wave stretched into an uneven line despite officers shouting for boats to close their gaps.
But they were no longer wandering blindly through darkness. They could see the shore, with the pale strip of beach emerging first into view, then the promenade behind it, then Şarköy itself.
Smoke hung over the waterfront. Several buildings still burned, orange flames glowing weakly against the growing grey of morning. Others stood partially collapsed, their roofs broken or walls opened by the bombardment.
From the boats, the town appeared wounded and strangely empty. No defenders showed themselves, no rifle fire came from the windows. Nothing moved openly along the beach.
The tugboats carried their tows closer before casting them loose and turning back toward the transports.
Now only muscle remained.
Hundreds of oars rose and fell as the landing boats crossed the final stretch of water.
The drizzle softened further until it was little more than mist upon helmets and shoulders. Behind the clouds, the approaching sun gradually brightened the eastern sky, throwing enough pale light across the coast for the Ottoman soldiers to distinguish individual buildings.
Most were only two storeys high, clustered close behind the waterfront. One stood above the others, while a three-storey hotel faced the sea, several of its windows broken, its dark interior giving no indication of what waited inside.
The first three boats entered the shallows almost together.
Their crews dug harder at the water, oars rising and falling as the bows lifted over the small waves and dropped again. Through the pale morning water, the soldiers could finally see sand beneath them.
One after another, the boats ground onto the beach.
Ottoman soldiers leaned forward, rifles clutched against their chests, waiting for the order to jump.
Then something thumped from the town. The sound was strangely soft—nothing like a rifle or cannon. A small dark object crossed the beach through the fading rain and dropped into the first boat just as its bow settled fully into the sand. It struck one soldier hard against the head.
He barely had time to flinch, as the grenade exploded.
Fire and splintered timber filled the boat. The man who had been struck vanished inside the blast, while fragments ripped through the tightly packed soldiers around him. Several went down immediately; others collapsed screaming as blood sprayed across the benches and gunwales.
For a heartbeat, nobody understood what had happened. Then panic took over.
The survivors scrambled over one another, throwing themselves into the knee-deep water. One man fell beneath the rush and was trampled as the others splashed toward shore, desperate simply to escape the ruined boat.
They had barely reached the shallows when the town opened fire.
Gunther, Max and Otto fired from prepared positions overlooking the beach, their carbines cracking in measured rhythm. Men stumbled in the surf or fell backward into the water before they had even raised their rifles.
One round struck an Ottoman squarely in the chest and punched through him, carrying blood and fragments into the face of the man struggling upright behind him. Both collapsed together into the shallows, the water around them turning red.
From other windows and buildings along the waterfront, Bulgarian rifles joined in.
Then Göbels opened fire.
His light machine gun hammered from the second floor of the hotel, the drum-fed weapon firing short, controlled bursts into the second landing boat just as its soldiers began climbing over the sides.
The effect was immediate.
Men folded across one another. Others were thrown backward into the boat or toppled screaming into the water. Wood splintered beneath the impacts, equipment flew loose, and those still capable of moving threw themselves flat wherever they could.
Before they could recover, another muffled thump came from the hotel.
Adolf's grenade arced through the drizzle and landed among the men spilling from the third boat.
The explosion tore through the group and scattered bodies, packs and broken equipment into the surf. Within seconds, all three leading boats had become scenes of confusion.
Bullets stitched the waterline. White spurts jumped from the shallows as rounds struck around the soldiers trying to crawl forward. Some reached the wet sand and flattened themselves against it. Others remained half-submerged behind their boats, firing blindly toward windows and rooftops.
Another grenade struck near one of the damaged craft and burst against its side, breaking planks and spraying splinters into the men crouched around it.
Whatever discipline had survived the crossing began to unravel.
Some soldiers pressed themselves against the hulls and fired toward every flash they saw. Others crawled forward in short, desperate movements, trying to make themselves small against a beach that offered almost no cover.
One man clawed frantically at the wet sand with both hands, attempting to dig himself a hollow.
A rifle shot struck him, and he stopped moving.
Nearby, another soldier crawled forward until his palm brushed against something metallic beneath the sand. For an instant he seemed almost relieved, thinking he had found something solid enough to use as cover.
He pulled at it, the mine detonated.
The explosion threw him backward and sent the men around him recoiling in terror. Those farther behind froze, staring at the beach beneath their hands and knees as though the ground itself had betrayed them.
Then someone shouted the word.
"Mines!"
The warning spread quickly.
Men who had spent the previous moments trying to reach the shore now became afraid to move across it.
Farther out, however, the second group of landing boats was already approaching.
Three tugboats had been towing several craft toward the beach, but the crews aboard them could now see what awaited them. Men lay scattered through the shallows. Boats burned or drifted damaged along the waterline. Gunfire flashed from buildings beyond the promenade.
Even the tugboat crews began to hesitate.
Then bullets struck the metal hull of one tug, ringing sharply against it and throwing sparks from the wet steel. That settled the matter. The towing lines were released early. The tugboats turned away, leaving the landing craft to row the remaining distance themselves.
The soldiers inside stared toward the beach with pale faces.
Then another thump sounded. A grenade struck the bow of the leading boat. The explosion shattered the forward planking and hurled several men backward through their comrades. Water began pouring through the damaged bow almost immediately.
The boat dipped. Someone screamed that they were sinking.
Men began jumping overboard. Those who could swim threw aside whatever they could and struck out toward shore. Others clung desperately to the gunwales until the boat settled beneath them.
Some had never learned to swim at all. Rifles, ammunition, boots, heavy packs and soaked uniforms pulled men downward. Even capable swimmers struggled beneath the weight. Several grabbed at the neighbouring landing craft as they passed, only to be beaten away with oars by terrified crews afraid of being swamped themselves.
Hands disappeared beneath the water, heads followed. Some never surfaced again. A handful abandoned everything and managed to swim ashore.
The Bulgarian defenders were waiting for them.
From a doorway overlooking the beach, a local woman in a rain-darkened dress fired alongside her grown son. Nearby, a policeman who normally spent his days settling arguments and directing carts worked the bolt of an old German Mauser supplied by the Moss Men.
Across the beach, Ottoman soldiers fell. Those who pushed farther inland encountered the mines.
Explosions rose suddenly from places that had appeared harmless moments earlier, throwing sand, smoke and fragments across the advancing men. Soon the beach seemed dangerous in every direction.
Then more rifles joined the defense.
Shots came from hotels, warehouses, upper windows, doorways and alleys—uneven and poorly coordinated compared with the Moss Men, but numerous enough that the Ottoman soldiers could no longer tell where the principal resistance actually was.
To men approaching through smoke and weakening rain, it seemed as though the entire town had begun firing at them.
More boats arrived.
Several collided in the crowded shallows as crews tried desperately to avoid wreckage and wounded men. Oars tangled. Soldiers shouted over one another. One burst from Göbels' machine gun punched through the side of a boat and continued into the men inside.
Screams immediately rose from the craft.
One young soldier dropped beside his father, who had been struck badly, clutching at the older man's uniform while the boat drifted sideways beneath the incoming fire. Nothing resembled the landing they had rehearsed.
On the transports farther offshore, officers screamed for the next wave to move.
The tugboats no longer bothered returning every empty craft first. Whatever boats remained usable were loaded again as quickly as possible and pushed toward the shore.
One tug attempted to recover a damaged landing boat drifting offshore with several frightened survivors still inside. As it took the craft in tow, rifle rounds struck the tug's cabin. One shattered a window and drove glass into the face of the helmsman.
The man screamed and clutched at one eye, yet he kept the engine running.
Slowly, painfully, the machinery of the invasion continued. Boats returned, boats filled, and more men came.
The operation that had looked clean upon maps had become an exchange measured in how much blood was required for every metre of beach.
For several agonising minutes, the Ottoman warships did nothing.
Offshore, aboard the flagship Barbaros Hayreddin, Fleet Commander Tahir Bey stood behind the bridge glass with binoculars raised, trying to understand the confusion ashore.
Even through the lingering rain, the disaster was unmistakable. Boats crowded the shallows. Men were pinned against the beach. Smoke obscured much of the waterfront, and flashes appeared from buildings before disappearing again.
Around Tahir Bey, officers bent over charts and shouted through speaking tubes while observers struggled to identify targets.
The problem was simple, and terrible. Their own soldiers now covered the beach. The enemy remained hidden inside Şarköy.
Fire too close and the fleet would kill the very men it had come to support. Wait too long and those men would be destroyed anyway.
So Tahir Bey hesitated, every second costing lives.
Another boat grounded.
Men jumped into the shallows and immediately threw themselves flat beneath incoming fire. Others found small depressions in the sand and pressed themselves into them, grateful for anything that resembled cover. Several disappeared beneath the water.
Tahir Bey watched through his binoculars. The sight sickened him, yet his expression did not change.
Inside the hotel, Göbels shifted his machine gun toward another concentration of soldiers and fired a short burst.
Then another.
Whenever a group began establishing order, he broke it apart. Yet the Ottomans continued coming. And gradually, they began adapting.
Men stopped trying to run upright across the open beach. They flattened themselves behind stranded boats, ridges of wet sand, discarded packs and whatever wreckage remained. Where nothing else existed, they used the bodies of the fallen.
Officers crawled among them, shouting themselves hoarse as they tried to form firing lines.
Soon the beach began answering.
Ottoman rifles cracked toward the buildings. Bullets struck shutters, walls and balconies. Masonry chipped away. Glass shattered. Somewhere inside one of the houses, a defender cried out and another man rushed toward him.
Some Ottoman fire was aimed. Much of it was not. But every boat brought more rifles ashore, and numbers were beginning to matter.
Farther along the beach, outside Göbels' strongest field of fire, another landing craft reached shore with comparatively little resistance.
Its soldiers spilled out, crouched low and began forming around their officer.
He was young, soaked through and furious. He saw men hesitating, so he stood. Sword in hand, he raised himself above the shallow cover and shouted over the gunfire.
"Forward! Sons of the Empire—forward! Allah is with you! Up and follow me to destiny!"
Faces turned toward him.
For men crouching helplessly beneath bullets, his command offered something fear did not, it gave them direction.
A few stood, then more. Within seconds, dozens were charging inland.
They made perhaps ten paces, then the beach answered. A tiny metallic snap sounded beneath one man's boot.
He barely looked down before the mine detonated. The explosion threw him sideways and caught several others around him.
Another erupted farther ahead, then a third. The charge faltered. These were not shells from the fleet. Nothing had been thrown from the buildings. The ground itself was killing them.
"Mines!"
The warning spread through the advancing men.
Suddenly they were staring at the sand rather than the enemy. That hesitation was enough.
Göbels swung his machine gun toward them. The weapon hammered, and the charge collapsed almost immediately. Men threw themselves flat. Others crawled backward, frightened now not only of the gunfire ahead but of every patch of sand beneath their hands.
For the first time since leaving the transports, the Ottomans understood that even empty ground could be hostile.
Yet farther down the coastline, the situation was becoming more dangerous for the defenders.
Several boats landed beyond the hotel and Adolf's strongest fields of fire. Only scattered rifle shots reached them there, allowing men to disembark in something approaching order.
Göbels saw them forming. He swung the machine gun and fired. One burst, followed by another. Then the weapon stuttered, coughed and stopped.
The drum was empty.
"Fuck."
Göbels dropped behind cover and fought to replace it with his damaged hand.
For a few precious moments, only rifles opposed the new foothold. Adolf sent a grenade toward them, dropping one man and scattering several others, while farther along the beach the mines continued doing much of the work.
But the Ottomans were gaining ground. Tahir Bey could see it, he could also see the cost, and he decided it was enough.
He lowered the binoculars.
"Prepare supporting fire."
Orders moved through the flagship. Signal flags and lamps warned the troops ashore. Turrets began turning. Gun crews adjusted elevation while officers worked desperately to place the bombardment beyond the first Ottoman positions.
The defenders noticed the movement as well.
Gunther did not need Central to explain what was coming. He looked to the defenders and roared.
"Fall back! All positions, fall back!"
Word passed through the waterfront.
Bulgarian fire began thinning almost immediately. Riflemen abandoned windows. Militia slipped from buildings through rear doors and alleys. Gunther's squad gathered whatever equipment they could carry.
By the time Ottoman officers ashore understood why the enemy fire was fading, the sea erupted.
Battleships and cruisers opened together. The first shells screamed overhead. Their fire landed dangerously close to the Ottoman troops.
One shell struck short and exploded among soldiers still clustered upon the beach. Sand, smoke and bodies vanished inside the blast. Another landed beside a grounded boat and tore it apart, wreckage striking the craft beside it. Two neighbouring boats rolled in the chaos and spilled their occupants into the water.
Then the bombardment began moving inland.
Şarköy disappeared behind explosions. Walls collapsed into streets. Roofs came apart. Entire rooms opened briefly to the dawn before smoke swallowed them.
One heavy shell punched through Gunther's hotel without detonating. It tore through stone, timber and furniture before finally exploding in the street behind it. Windows burst across the block.
The town ceased to feel like a town. It became an impact zone.
Some militia positions disappeared beneath the bombardment. Others were abandoned before the shells could find them.
Defenders flooded through the rear streets. Policemen shouted for the remaining civilians to move inland, and families who had ignored every earlier warning finally ran, carrying children and whatever possessions they could manage.
Among them rolled an overloaded handcart piled with ammunition, packs, radio equipment and camouflaged bundles.
Gunther and Göbels pushed from behind. Max and Otto ran alongside with their carbines slung and heads low.
Adolf sat awkwardly on top of the load, his wounds still making any sustained run nearly impossible.
Another naval salvo thundered behind them.
"FASTER!" Adolf shouted, gripping the cart. "I LIKE THE SEA, BUT NOT THIS MUCH!"
"We're going!" Gunther snapped, shoulders burning as he pushed. "Unless you plan on getting down and helping, shut up!"
A shell exploded somewhere behind them. The shockwave raced down the street, breaking windows and showering the retreating defenders with plaster and glass.
Nobody stopped.
Otto slipped on the rain-slick stones, caught himself and shoved against the side of the cart.
"Keep moving!"
Max glanced back once. Smoke had swallowed the waterfront entirely. That told him everything.
The beach was lost.
Behind them, the naval bombardment gradually weakened as Ottoman troops pushed beyond the immediate landing zone. Fresh boats continued coming ashore. Officers reorganised shattered companies while ammunition and equipment followed.
The defenders had inflicted a terrible price, yet it had not stopped the invasion.
By mid-day, nearly fifteen thousand Ottoman soldiers had reached the coast.
Almost a thousand were dead, wounded or missing from the opening stages of the landing. By any ordinary measure, it had been a disaster.
Strategically, it was also a success.
The Ottomans had their foothold. They had men ashore, naval guns behind them and roads leading inland. The southern flank of the Bulgarian defensive system now faced an enemy coming from a direction it had never been designed to resist.
Gunther and the defenders of Şarköy had bloodied the landing badly. They had not stopped it.
As the surviving defenders withdrew toward the interior, Ottoman banners began rising among the smoking ruins of the waterfront while still more soldiers poured from the boats.
The invasion from the sea had begun.