A Burning Sea Theodore Brun (ebook reader that looks like a book .txt) 📖

‘You asked why I’m here. You deserve to know. . . I came to find the king of kings.’ He gave a wry snort. ‘But I only found more chains.’

‘Well, you’re free now.’

‘Thanks to you.’ He smiled. ‘So how much did I cost you?’

‘Enough.’ More than you will ever know, she thought. ‘But I’d have paid it twice over to see you free.’

He reached out and stroked her cheek. ‘I’ll pay you back.’

‘I don’t need you to,’ she said, hiding the pain behind a smile. ‘But you can help me.’

‘How?’

So she told him. Told him. . . almost everything, leaving out what she knew would only vex him. Now was not the time to stir up his wrath against Thrand. There would come a time for that, if the gods willed it. But there was nothing he could do about Thrand from here and she saw no good coming from infecting him with her fury.

On the other hand, she hid nothing of their long journey from Dunsgard to Byzantium. Erlan was entranced and bewildered in equal parts, and delighted to hear that Einar was with her.

‘Who knew the fat man had it in him?’ he laughed.

‘Certainly he didn’t,’ she replied, glad to laugh with him.

‘So you came here seeking an alliance?’ he said when she was finished.

‘An alliance. And you.’

‘A Hel of a long way to come for either.’

‘I need you,’ she said simply. ‘As I need Leo.’

‘The kings of kings,’ Erlan murmured, shaking his head. ‘It’s strange, isn’t it? That fate would have us both seek him.’

‘I suppose it is. But now we’ve found him. And I need something from you.’

‘What?’

‘I have little enough to bargain with Leo as it is. Already I’ve made too much of what the empire stands to gain if he helps me.’

‘This time next year there may be no empire.’

‘There has to be. Because if the empire dies then so does any hope we have of success. That’s why we must help him. And when the empire is safe, we will reap the emperor’s gratitude. We will return home and Thrand will pay the price of all traitors.’

‘Wait a second. By help you mean. . . me?’ His mouth fell open.

‘You. And Einar. I want to present you to him as his personal bodyguards.’

‘Bodyguards? This palace is swarming with men to protect him. What are two more to him?’

‘You don’t know your worth, Erlan. You never have. But the emperor shall.’ She nodded, as if the thing were already done. ‘At root the man’s a soldier. So I shall give him a soldier’s gift.’

Erlan frowned. ‘Even if he accepts us, what do you hope for in return?’

She looked away. ‘I don’t know exactly. . . An edge.’

‘Odin’s beard, it’ll have to be a bloody sharp one.’

Her eyes gripped his again, shining in the darkness ‘Will you do it?’

‘Do I have a choice?’

Lilla smiled and shook her head. ‘No. Your queen demands it.’

‘Does she now?’ He chuckled and rolled over on top of her, propping himself above her. She felt his manhood growing hard against the inside of her thighs. ‘And what else does my queen demand?’

‘Everything,’ she whispered, slipping her fingers around him and guiding him into her.

They could have slept till noon the next day, but for the clanging of a thousand church bells at the first grey of dawn.

Lilla’s eyes opened. She sat up from her pillow. ‘What is that?’

‘Sounds like some kind of alarm,’ he replied, drowsily.

Shaking off their sleep, they rose quickly, covering themselves with robes against the cool of the morning. Even in the quiet surroundings of that remote wing of the palace, the sound of anxious voices carried to them, of barked orders and men hurrying to their duties.

There was a knock at the door. A moment later Gerutha entered. Her eyes flicked suspiciously at Erlan, a little circumspect at first. Perhaps she felt shy, or else blamed him for all her mistress’s hardships – and by extension her own. Erlan offered some awkward word of greeting but she cut him off. ‘Yes, yes. I’m glad you’re safe, of course, but there’s something you must see. Both of you.’ She took Lilla’s hand and led her through the drapes onto the balcony. Erlan followed them out, feeling the sudden blaze of the dawn sun strike his face.

‘There!’ exclaimed Gerutha.

But his gaze was already away over the rooftops below them, over the cedar trees bending in the wind and the massive sea walls, out onto the waters of the Bosporus. Because there, filling the strait from one shore to the other, were hundreds of ships.

‘The Arab fleet,’ said Gerutha, and the bells rang out the doom of the city.

They watched for hours as more and more vessels moved north up the straits under black and red sails bulging with the warm wind blowing up from the Sea of Marmara. With every passing ship Erlan felt the hard knot of foreboding grow tighter in his stomach. He listened while Lilla and Gerutha told him what they knew of the siege and the wider war between Byzantine and Arab, feeling like a man come late to a feast.

‘We’ve walked into a hurricane,’ he muttered.

They were astonished how ignorant he was of it all, considering the length of time he had been in the city. He had no idea the city was sealed on the landward side to the west. And no inkling, until now, that it had been standing on the edge of a precipice, waiting for the Arab fleet to arrive and stopper them all up in the city like wasps in a bottle.

The vanguard of the fleet, made up of many hundred-oared war-galleys, had long since vanished out of sight to the north, presumably to drop anchor at some point on the western shore already known to them. After them came hundreds of smaller vessels. Troop-carrying ships, light attack craft, heavyladen supply ships churning through the waves. A world of war processing with stately conceit