Das Auge Des Sturm
an excerpt

The city's streets ran red with the blood of a thousand dying men. The thudding of the war drums beat a constant tempo, counting down the city's dying heartbeats. The sky above was lit with fire. This was Constantinople, capital of the Byzantine empire, and the greatest city in the world. Tonight, it burned.

For seven long days, the Ottoman cannon had battered the vast walls of Constantinople, pounding thousands of tons of granite into the silent stone facade. The cannons were taller than the three oxen it took to drag them into position, and the barrel had the breadth of three men. Seven times a day, for a long, terrifying week, the defenders of Constantinople were fired upon relentlessly. Men ran to and fro, carrying water, supplies, weapons, tools, anything to keep the wall standing. But they couldn't keep it up indefinitely, and talk in the city began to turn to war.

It was upon that seventh day that the cannon pierced the crumbling walls. There was a deafening cascade of stone and debris that left the weary guards stunned for a moment, unable to accept what their deceiving eyes had witnessed. The chipped granite sphere hurtled onwards, carried by its own momentum, eventually terminating in a splintered mass of wooden supports. The sound this made snapped the men from their astonished reverie, and a few of them took flight, leather sandals tapping a frantic tune on the packed earth. The walls had been breached at last.