The Mansur Enforcers are a company of hired guards let out for the keeping of order at more posts of the city than one. A body of twenty of them holds Yedikule Fortress, charged with its defence and with the security of all within; and a lesser pair keeps the accessible mouth of the Basilica Cistern beneath Constantinople.
At the cistern the two Turks posted there turn away those who come, warning them back and telling over the local hazards — that the nearby boats and raised boardwalks are not to be trusted, that they have themselves never ventured beyond the entrance, and that they have seen strange spirits about the place. When the company arrived at the cistern's mouth the enforcers bade them turn back and told over these dangers; but after Jean-Zera put forward a false claim of official business, they took the story for true and suffered the party to pass.
The Yedikule guard fared harder. During an assault upon Yedikule the Enforcers came to blows with Hamit the Quartz of Damascus and his crew, meeting brutal work at close quarters and at range as the crew fought their way through the ground floor and cleared Central Tower II and Central Tower III; several of the hired guards fell, and the affair worsened when a gunshot roused the rest of the fortress and chaos followed hard upon. After the assault the Padishah proclaimed the capture of Hamit the Quartz of Damascus, which ended in a public execution — one that laid the taint of foul play at the door of the Topkapi Palace.