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well. Mustafa was eager to spill the blood of any male relatives who might threaten his claim to the throne. Mahmud would never forget the terror of his narrow escape. His mother, Nakshidil, hid him in an oven as a servant distracted the Janissaries. Mahmud had trembled in fear, stifling the urge to sneeze as the ashes filled his nostrils. Outside the oven doors he heard the shouts and heavy footsteps of the Janissaries.
    Years later, soon after he became sultan, Mahmud thought hard about the power that Ahmed Kadir could one day wield over the Janissaries. He remembered his cousin’s murder and trembled at the memory of those footsteps outside the oven where he cowered in terror. By that time, Ahmed Kadir had proved himself on battlefields and campaigns far from Constantinople. Now, Mahmud’s own Grand Vizier boasted of the giant’s fearless attacks, riding his grey-dappled mare into battle as he dodged the arrows and javelins of the opposing army with breathtaking agility. And as the Horse Master had predicted, Janissary Kadir left his horse with a groom and led the infantry into the last decisive battle against the Greeks, his sword slashing through the enemy like a sharp scythe through hay.
    “Bah,” grumbled Mahmud, when the Grand Vizier came to tell him how a cavalryman had handed his reins to another man and joined the infantry. “Our Ottoman army needs reform, Vizier! A Kapikulu cavalryman joining the infantry at a whim? The man is mad! A dismounted cavalryman brings disgrace upon the Ottomans!”
    “The man is a hero, my Sultan, and it is this willingness to lead that has won him the respect of the Janissaries. The Aga of the Janissaries holds him in the highest regard.”
    The Sultan rose from his throne and paced the carpeted floors.
    “The Aga is a fool who indulges slovenly conduct on the battlefield! I shall order a complete reform of our military and their tactics,” he said. “No Topkapi-trained cavalryman shall ever again descend from his horse! We willfight in regiments, with order, not like a pack of mongrel dogs who mount and dismount capriciously.”
    The old Vizier looked aghast at the Sultan at the thought of reforming the Janissaries. The Corps was created by the first Sultan of Constantinople, Mehmed the Conqueror, and without them, there would be no Ottoman Empire. The Aga himself had a palace that rivaled the Topkapi.
    “But, my Sultan, that is exactly how your honorable cousin Selim III was murdered, instigating reform. The Janissaries will rebel and storm Topkapi, just as they have done before. You put your life in jeopardy!”
    Mahmud dismissed his remark with a wave of his hand.
    “My honorable cousin did not play his move with wisdom. He did not have the strength and will of the citizens. He tried to reform them with a timid hand—I shall crush them with my fist!” The Sultan’s fingers tightened in a ball, the knuckles white against his ruby and emerald rings.
    The Vizier bowed his head
    “You are absolutely correct, O Sultan. The Janissaries have become a barbarous lot—the merchants in the Bazaar hide their daughters from the Janissaries’ groping hands and people flee the bastinado, which they use too freely to club the innocent. But we might work within the ranks to root out corruption. If we were to infiltrate the ortas with disciplined leaders who believed in the spirit of the Corps—the tradition of honor and defenders of the Faith—we might yet stay the wave of corruption and their assault on the common people. Let us enlist those whom the men admire—this giant, for example, and lead them to more honorable ways of serving their Sultan as was the case with your ancestor Mehmed I or even Suleyman the Great!”
    “Let them lie with the Devil! The more corrupt and menacing they become, the swifter the day will arrive when the Ottoman people will stand by their Sultan to stain the Bosphorus red with janissary blood. These thugs will not suffer reform and their arrogance