King and Emperor

“When the galleys turned up later in the day they were towing that thing. I couldn't make it out either, so I sent Skarthi out in his Sea-snake, with a double crew of rowers. He said he could outdistance any Greek, wind or no wind. I told him to be very careful of the fire, and he said he'd make a point of it. But it wasn't the fire this time.”

Shef was staring once more at the raft, at the humps he could now see rising from it. There was something familiar about them. Very familiar.

“Skarthi got out there,” said Brand, “started rowing towards the raft. They let him get half way, and then— whack. Mule-stones all in the air at once. The Sea-snake fell apart in the water, the Greeks came rushing in in the galleys…”

“How many did we lose?” said Shef tensely.

“No-one. All Skarthi's lot come from Gotland, swim like dolphins. And they swam hard, with the fire coming down on them! But Hagbarth was awake, he put a couple of rocks into the water ahead of the galleys, they sheered off.”

Yes, even in the haze he could make out the mule-shapes, Shef realized. At least four of them. Maybe more. On a flat raft with no masts to get in the way, no ribs to fall apart from the recoil, you could put as many catapults as you liked. And he was not the inventor of the catapult, not of the mule-version anyway. Before it had been a mule it had been an onager: the work of the Rome-folk, brought back to life by the Emperor's deacon, Erkenbert. He had not forgotten them. And they had not forgotten him. And now Shef realized why he had not recognized them before, and why they were yet familiar.

They were armored. With steel plates like the ones he had put on the old Fearnought.

And there was something else familiar about what they were doing. Shef looked round the flat expanse of the mole, six feet above the water, should they just jump in the water and dignity be damned, was there a ladder to cling to…

A rushing noise in the air, a great crash of stone on stone, chips and splinters flying, Brand wiping blood from his forehead in amazement. A short, that had crashed into the far side of the stone wall. But aimed to kill, and aimed to kill them. And they had at least four in their battery.

Without ceremony Shef pushed Brand firmly off the mole and into the sheltered water of the harbor, jumped immediately after him. As they bobbed up and down in the warm sea, stones sighed over their heads, plumped among the scattered boats. Shouts from skippers, frantic attempts to man the sweeps, to come in closer under the protection of the wall.

“So we can't force our way out,” said Shef. “We can shoot our way past the galleys, but the raft is like a Fearnought to us. It can't move, but we can't sink it. Now what are they doing that for? Brand, what's going on?”

“Well,” said Brand. “I always thought you were supposed to be the clever one. But if you ask me, this looks uncommonly like what the Hel-spawn foreigners call a siege.”

In the camp of the Caliph, moving slowly but inexorably towards confrontation with the traitorous Jews and the polytheistic rabble of Northern pirates, three women talked quietly, their faces together. One was English: ash- blonde, with green eyes, a beauty in her own land, a curiosity among the tents of the faithful. She had been taken by the Danes years before and sold as a virgin for a hundred dirhams in gold. Another was a Frank, from the border country: the child of a serf, she had been sold in infancy by a master anxious to raise capital. The third was a Circassian, from the far eastern border of Islam, from a nation which survived by the export of its women, famous for their beauty and their sexual skills. The women were talking in the strange argot of their multilingual harem, Arabic studded with words from many tongues. The women had invented it to keep some matters private from the ever-watchful eunuch slaves who guarded them.

All three women were discontented, and afraid. Discontented because they had been plucked from the comfort of Cordova and brought out on campaign, with barely half a score of others, to ease the tedium of their master. True, they were carried every step of the way in litters filled with silk and down. True, fans waved over them at night, continually worked by relays of slaves. Yet the hard hot ground of the camp could not be made into the fountains and courtyards of Cordova. Their master might rejoice in the hardships—the very modified hardships —of those who trod dusty ways to fight the unbelievers, but they drew no consolation from that. One had been brought up a Christian, one converted to Islam at the age of ten, one came from a race whose beliefs were so strange that no outsider had ever troubled to learn them. Nothing creates atheism as well as a profusion of contradictory beliefs.

There were two reasons why they were afraid. One, that none of them had yet borne a child. Since it could not be the case that their master's potency was waning, their barrenness must be their own defect, unless it were the result of deliberate child-murder in the womb. The other reason they were afraid was that the walls of no pavillion could keep out the constant screaming of their master's victims, still ordered to the block, the bastinado, or the impaling-post at the least whim or setback. They feared the change of er-Rahman's moods, on which no-one alive was more expert.

“He listens still to that young fool, Mu'atiyah,” said the Englishwoman. “At his ear all the time, encouraging him. He is consumed with hate himself, and jealousy.”

“Could Mu'atiyah eat something that would disagree with him?” suggested the Circassian.

“The Caliph would know it was poison,” said the Frank. “Then who can say where his anger would fall? We have no-one who would not betray us. Not out here.”

“Maybe it is best if he achieves his ends and we can all return home.”

“Home?” said the Englishwoman. “You mean, to Cordova? Is that the best we can hope for all our lives? Waiting for him to tire of us and send the man with the strangling-cord? How many years have you got left, Berthe? Or you, Ouled? I am twenty-three already.”

“What else is there?” asked Berthe, wide-eyed.

The Englishwoman, Alfled, had taken part in many a harem plot. She did not look round or change her expression, but laughed and jingled her bracelets as if discussing some sexual exploit she had planned for the Caliph. “We are out here in the heat and the dust of the campaign. Bad news, and all we want is to return to comfort once the Caliph has won. But what if the Caliph loses? His armies and his fleets have lost before, that is why we are here. And in the confusion of a defeat…”

“We would be taken and raped by half an army if we were free.”

“Maybe. It depends on the army. You heard what the Dane-woman told us, in Cordova. One of the armies here does not take slaves, and it is led by one of my countrymen. Even the Emperor of the Romans' army is full of your countrymen, Berthe. If we made the cross sign and begged for release from the worshipers of Allah, their priests would be delighted.”

“But once you have turned your back on Allah, revoked the shahada, there is no mercy for you,” pointed out the Circassian.

“We cannot afford to fail, that is so.”

“So what must we do?”

“Press the Caliph to battle, but in such a way that he must lose.”

“And how is that to be arranged? He has generals skilled in the art of war, to advise him much better than we ever could. We do not know even enough to say what is right and what would be wrong.”

“We do not know war,” said Alfled grimly, “but we know men. Pick the biggest fool, and urge on his advice. And the biggest fool in this camp is Mu'atiyah. Let us add our voices to his. Our voices from the pillow to add to the fool's from the divan. One thing we should add. Our wish to see our master conquer: the strongest of men, the most warlike, the most manly.”

Silence greeted her sarcasm. Finally the Frankish girl spoke. “And we agree, then, if we escape, that whichever of us is in most favor among the conquerors will speak up for the others? If that is so, then I am with you. But one more thing I would counsel, and that is, delay. The spirit of the Caliph's soldiery diminishes day by day. Let him show his madness more, and the rot will spread. Among the secret eaters of pork, the Christian converts, the mustaribs, then among those who favor the house of Tulun, among the readers of Greek and those who wish to reword the Koran. All those who know in their hearts what the Dane-woman told us.”