King and Emperor

and at night were exactly the right conditions for the use of his weapon.

“What if they don't get the boom open?”

“You could pull along the stone jetty and sweep it of any resistance. That way you would have the jetty between you and the stone-throwers in the harbor. Clear the jetty and pull out to sea again in the darkness.”

Dimitrios thought carefully. There were risks in this, he could see, but perhaps no more than were justifiable. He would take his own precautions, of course, as the admiral certainly knew he would. Men standing by to fire the tanks, boats in waiting to collect himself and his crew if they had to abandon ship. No need to repeat all that.

Seeing him waver, the admiral added a final dose of flattery to win his supposed subordinate over. “Of course we know that the most important thing in our fleet is yourself. You and the skill you have developed. We dare not lose that to any barbarian. I will myself stand by in the rescue boats, to come in for you if there is any sign of mischance.”

Dimitrios smiled, a little mirthlessly. What the admiral said was true. But he had no idea how true. He himself, Dimitrios, knew the entire process of making the Greek fire from ground to nozzle, as the siphonistoi said. He had been beyond the Black Sea to far Tmutorakan, where the colored oils oozed from the ground. He had seen it in the winter, when the oil ran thin and clear, and in the stifling summer, when it came out like sludge from a foul farmyard. He knew how it was collected, he knew how it was stored. He himself had soldered the copper tanks with precious tin, to be sure there was no leak. He had built his own equipment with his own hands, lank and valves, brazier and bellows, pump and nozzle. Again and again, under the guidance of the old masters of the trade, he had fired up, pumped in the air, seen the flame flow. Three times his masters had made him pump on beyond the safe limit, using small and old devices and condemned criminals as pump-hands, so that he could hear the rising shrillness of the niglaros, the valved pressure-whistle, whose valve was opened to test the vapors within. He had looked with interest at the bodies of the condemned, to see what effect the bursting tanks had had upon them. Not one had ever survived, and Dimitrios thought they had chosen ill to take the siphonistos chance instead of sure but less painful death on the execution ground. He was acutely aware of every difficulty in the whole process, how much easier it was to have it go wrong than go right. Without him, he knew, mere knowledge would not be enough. It was his experience that was vital and precious. Good, at least, that the admiral had recognized it.

“With the proper safeguards, I consent,” he said.

The admiral sank back in his chair with relief. While he knew how much less than biddable his corps of siphonistoi were, he would not have relished explaining the fact to the Emperor of the Romans: a man who, he thought, should be given a skilled Byzantine doctor as soon as possible, to ensure that he ate something that disagreed with him.

“Have one ship ready at nightfall,” he said. “Take my own Carbonopsina.”

The Black-Eyed Beauty, thought Dimitrios. Pity that there were none such in this far land of strangers. Only thin Moorish women and the ugly descendants of Goths, with their pale skin and discolored eyes. Ugly as the revolting Germans, their allies, though these insisted that their barbarian enemies were even worse for pallor and bulk and the size of their feet. Certainly all should be swept from the sea, the Inner Sea, the Sea of the Middle of the World become once more a Greek and Christian lake. Dimitrios rose, bowed sketchily, withdrew to make his preparations.

The first sign of the sea-borne assault came only as the patrolling squad of city guardsmen marching along the longer jetty saw faint shapes crowding in out of the blackness. They stood, gaped for an instant to make sure, then began to blow the alarm on their ram's horn trumpets. By then the sixty fishing boats which Bruno had commandeered were bare yards from the stone wall, men in them already swinging their grapnels to pull the boats alongside, others raising the short boarding-ladders which were all they would need for the six-foot climb. The guardsmen bent their bows, the short breast-bows which were all they carried, shot, shot again at the targets pouring towards them. Then, as the first grapnels clinked on stone, they realized they were alone on a long stone causeway, about to be cut off. They ceased shooting and ran for the harbor end of the jetty, cut down as they fled by javelins and arrows flying out of the blackness. Bruno's first wave reached the jetty almost without resistance, divided immediately into two groups, one turning to their left and racing for the seaward end with hammers, saws and chisels, to try to cut the boom and open the entrance for the reinforcements and the fire-ship. The other turned right and poured in an armed mob for the landward end, seeking to reach and hold it till the rest came up and drove either for the open harbor, or—just as disastrously for the defense—to seize a stretch of the main wall and open it for escalade. The rams' horns had done their work, though. While only a score of men at a time marched along the jetties, open as they were to the unpredictable shooting of the catapults on the offshore fort, many more stood to arms or slept by them at the vulnerable points where jetties met shore. The attackers charging along the stone strip, carried on with excitement at their easy landing, met a sudden rain of arrows at close range, with behind them a solid wall of spears and shields. Lightly-armed levies from the South, the men Bruno habitually sent in first as most dispensable, many of them went down even before the puny arrows of the breast-bows, shot at no more than ten yards' range. Those who pressed on found themselves hacking at a disciplined line behind a barricade. Slowly those who survived realized that the pressure of comrades from behind was slackening, had gone. Unsure why, or if they too were to be taken from behind in the darkness, they drew back, at first step by step behind their shields, then as the arrows lashed at their unprotected legs and sides, turning and running back into the protective dark.

Shef had started from sleep at the first horn-blast. He slept naked in the heat, seized tunic and boots, struggled into them in seconds, started for the door. Svandis was there before him, naked also but barring his way. Even in the almost pitch-black of the shuttered room Shef could feel the scowl on her face, hear the lash in her voice.

“Don't run out like a fool! Mail, helmet, weapons! What good will you be if the first stray slingstone cuts you down?”

Shef hesitated, full of counter-arguments, but Svandis carried on. “I am the child of warriors, even if you are not. Better ready and slow than early and dead. My father could have told you that. Who won the battle where I first saw you? You, or he?”

Well, he did not, Shef thought to say. But it was no use arguing. Quicker to obey than to try to thrust her aside. He turned to the mail-shirt which hung ready from a hook, thrust his arms through the heavy sleeves. Svandis was behind him, pulling the iron round, fastening it behind with the heavy rawhide laces. It was true at any rate that she was the child of warriors. He turned and embraced her, pulling her breasts on to the hard iron rings.

“If we live, when we return home I will make you a queen,” he said.

She slapped his face sharply. “This is no time for love-whispers in the dark. Helmet. Shield. Take your Swedish sword and try to live up to it.”

Shef found himself thrust out into the courtyard, could hear her behind him rummaging for her own clothes. Wherever the fighting was, she would appear, he knew. He began to run, heavy under the weight of thirty pounds of wood and iron, towards the command post where he would find Brand. Across the water came a clangor of metal, war-cries and cries of pain. They had come by sea.

As Shef puffed up, he saw Brand towering in the midst of a squad of Vikings, his gigantic cousin Styrr standing next to him, almost his equal in size. Brand seemed in no great hurry or alarm, was busy counting his men.

“They landed on the jetty,” he remarked. “I never thought that would give them much trouble. They've got to get off it if they're going to be a nuisance, and they'll have to do it fast.”

Shef's ears had picked out different noises from the immediate ones of battle, already dying away: smithy noises, metal on metal, axe on wood.

“What's happening at the far end?”

“They're trying to cut the boom. Now that we don't want. We'll have to clear them off. All right, boys, got your boots laced up? Let's stroll along and shoo these Christians back into the water. You stay at the back,” he added to Shef. “Organize some crossbows, make sure the catapults shoot at the opposition, not us. This would be easier if we could see what was going on.”

In a solid mass the Vikings, perhaps forty of them, tramped round the harbor towards the point of contact, the hobnails on their boots crashing on the stone. A few lamps gleamed along the harbor-front, casting a dim light out over the water. In it, as his eyes adjusted, Shef could see the enemy massing for a second attack. There was