King and Emperor

what it's for.”

“Me neither. We still have to try it. Start pumping on the handle.”

The Greek edged away, watching the preparations with increasing fear. The very thought of the fire exploding made his bowels cringe within him. He had seen several demonstrations of what happened when an apparatus was overheated. They had turned the safety-valve closed, without realizing what it was for. He knew, if the barbarians did not, that they were not far enough off to be safe.

Competing with the personal fear was fear for his faith and his country. The barbarians seemed strangely sure about what they were doing. They had spent a long time observing, making simple trials, doing very little and nothing roughly—not like the barbarians of his imagination, but like skilled men. Could it be that they would solve the problem? Even if they did, a voice within him reminded him, there was one thing no ingenuity could find: the strange seepages of Tmutorakan far beyond the Black Sea, where the oil welled up out of the ground.

The fire was burning, the pump was operating, the barbarian with the squint sweating as he worked. In his bones the siphonistos could feel the pressure increasing, building up. It had to build up, it must not be allowed to grow too great, heat and pressure had to be balanced just so.

Observing carefully out of the corner of his one eye, Shef watched the signs of tension grow in the captive Greek. He feared the fire perhaps more than they did. And he knew, as they did not, when the likely moment of disaster would be. Had he the resolution to face death unmoved? Shef felt sure that he would make some sign of betrayal. If he did, he and Steffi and the others would be over the side and into the water in a moment. But the Greek did not know that.

“Keep pumping,” he ordered.

Shef felt the warmth coming now not from the burning match beneath but from the dome itself. As the heat increased the Greek writhed in fear. The barbarians had no fear because they had no understanding! In the end he could not control himself. He seized up a rag, leaped forward and turned the valve on top of the tank. A shrill whistle sounded from the slotted length of pipe.

“The valve! You must open the valve at once!” he called, in suddenly-discovered English, backing the words with a frantic gesture.

Shef shouted “Turn!”

The last of Steffi's three-man gang turned firmly on the valve that led from the bottom of the copper dome— the valve that led to the nozzle. Shef felt an instant wave of something jetting through the brass nozzle in his hand, a reek of something stinging and acrid. He drew the lit slow-match from behind his back and at arm's length held it to the nozzle.

The dragon's breath flared out, belching flame fifty feet out over the sea, landing on it and blazing with clouds of black smoke even on the water itself. For long moments the sea itself seemed to be ablaze, Shef and the valve- hand stepped back, cringing automatically from the fierce heat.

Shef collected himself, shouted “Turn!” once again. The valve closed, the flame stopped. Instantly Steffi ceased to pump, the bellows-man pulled his bellows away, the brazier-hand pulled the charcoal flame away from under the dome. All five men fell back from the dome to the very edge of the ship's tiny deck and stared tensely at it. Had they pumped it too strongly? Would the flame come back from the sea and ignite some stray spill? After a while Shef felt them all releasing their breath together.

“It's a kind of oil,” he said.

“Not olive oil,” said Steffi. “I've tried lighting that and it doesn't work at all, hardly.”

“Might be whale-oil,” ventured Shef, remembering the way Queen Ragnhild's fire-arrows had lit up the harvest of the grind in far Halogaland.

“Doesn't smell like it,” said the valve-hand, once a fisherman in Ordlaf's village of Bridlington.

“I don't know what in Hel it is,” said Steffi. “But I bet we can't get no more of it once this is used up. But at least we know now when to open the valve. That whistle on top, it sounds the warning.”

“You may know how this work,” the Greek shouted angrily, still in the broken English he had till then refused to admit. “But there is one place on earth for naphtha and you never find it. Nor I tell you, no matter how you torture me.”

Shef looked down at him coldly. “There is no need of torture, and now I have the machine I know where to get the fuel. It is found best on a winter's morning, is that not so?”

The Greek's heart sank within him. They had mastered the siphon with ease. Now it seemed they had the oil as well. After all, in the barbarian West, who could say that there was no Tmutorakan, as there was in the barbarian East? And if they had both halves of the secret, how might Byzantium stand? And he could be sure he would find no welcome in Byzantium once it was known the secret was out. Any Greek should know there was a time to change sides, and this was it.

“Listen to me, one-eye,” he mumbled, “that for a price I correct your errors.”

Shef nodded calmly, as though he had expected this response, and fumbled for a moment in the pocket of his breeches. He had had these things made by a silversmith in Septimania, made secretly and paid for from his own purse.

“Steffi,” he said, “I want you and your men here to wear these.” He produced the silver pendants from his pocket.

“What, and give up what we got already?” asked Steffi, putting a hand up to the Thor-hammer round his neck.

“Yes. You have Thor, and so does one of your mates, and the other two have a Frey-phallus and a Rig-ladder like me. But they are just the signs that took your fancy, or that you copied from others. I must stay with my own kraki, for it is the mark of my father, but you should wear the signs of your trade, now you have a trade. It is a sign of honor too, for your courage.”

“What is it?” said the valve-hand, face glowing with pride. He had been a slave most of his life. Now the One King was speaking to him as if he were a great warrior.

“It is a fire-sign, for the men who trade in fire, in flares, in the marks of war.”

The men took the pendants in silence, removed their own, put the new ones round their necks.

“What god is the patron of us fire-warriors?” asked the bellows-hand.

“It is Loki the fire-god, once chained, now free.”

Skaldfinn, coming back over the side, froze with horror as he heard the words, saw the fire-sign displayed openly for the first time. He looked back at Farman just behind him for support, saw the visionary pause, and then nod slowly in acquiescence. Steffi and his gang, all English and all former Christians with the scantiest knowledge of the holy myths of the Way, heard the name without alarm.

“Loki,” Steffi muttered, fixing the name in his mind. “Loki the fire-god. Good to have a god of our own. We will be his faithful servants.”

Chapter Thirty

The Emperor gaped at the small book put into his hands.

He could read himself, if slowly, but this time he had no need to. The substance of the booklet had already been explained to him in careful detail by his trusty comrade.

“Where in Hell did it come from?” he asked finally. The Emperor never knowingly blasphemed, took the name of the Lord in vain, or used religious words in other than their literal meaning. This time too, Erkenbert realized, he meant that the book in front of him was literally diabolic. That was good. Answering the question was not so good. Erkenbert had realized some time ago that the sniveling heretic who had betrayed the Grail and earned death for it had not told the truth when he said that there were only two copies: he should have kept him alive. No need to confess that mistake now.

“A Brother found it in a priest's house. Oh yes,” he held up a warning hand, “the priest has already been dealt with. But I have heard these things are everywhere, produced with diabolic speed. And they are being believed too. Men say that the very graduale which you carry with you and proclaim to be the true ladder on which Our Lord was carried to the Sepulchre, they say that its appearance after so many centuries is proof that what these doctrines say are true. The Lance is death, men say, the Grail is life. It proves that Jesus