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The dust had enveloped everything, blocking out the boiling rays of the August sun.

The pounding of thousands of feet and hoops had churned it into a fine mist that swirled

through the air, blowing and roiling and twisted.

Great tufts of white smoke blasting forth from the barrels of arca buses in cannon, melded

with the dust and created eddies of choking haze.

But here and there, the clouds parted.

The dust settled just long enough to allow a glimpse of what lay inside.

The sun shone through, reflecting off thousands upon thousands of helmets, shields, armor plates,

horse harnesses, bronze cannon and gun barrels.

A pair of keen, interested eyes watched the battle unfold.

They sat above a prominent nose and a thick black mustache that split a tan, harsh, unforgiving

face.

Selim, ruler of the Ottoman Empire, known to later generations as The Grim, observed

the proceedings with satisfaction.

He registered the twanging of bowstrings and the crackle of arca buses, soft flashes

of the conical white caps of his genoceries, his personal slave soldiers.

Amid the clouds of dust, watched the charging mammals on armored horses, felled by the blasts

of cannon and gunfire.

War cries in Arabic, Turkic, Kurdish, Slavic, Greek, Circassian, and half a dozen other

languages split the air, competing for space with the howls of the wounded and the screams

...