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

and disgust. Erlan lurched past them and through the doorway out into the bright sunlight.

He saw a fountain, flung down his shield and spear and threw himself over its lip, burying his head in the cool water, his eyes wide with terror and confusion. For a few blessed seconds he saw nothing but the white stone fountain-bowl through the clear water. He stayed there staring as long as he could hold his breath. Then, hesitantly, he straightened up.

He looked around, hardly able to trust his own senses. Everything was quiet. There was the outer courtyard on the south side of the great temple – a shaded walkway, cobbled stones, pavings.

Was he mad then? Or was all of it only a fleeting bolt of madness escaped from some broken crack in his mind?

He shook the water from his hair and turned away from the fountain. Suddenly he froze, terrified that he really had lost his reason. Because there, not twenty paces from him, was Aska.

Erlan peered closer, afraid that the apparition would morph into something worse. But the dog sat calmly on his haunches in the shade. Erlan clicked his fingers. The dog didn’t move. ‘Come here, you mangy bastard,’ Erlan growled. Aska just sat there, watching, his one eye weighing on his master as heavy as a mountain.

From far away, a sound rolled down from the heights of the western hills, peals of metal thunder drawing ever closer in their race to reach the heart of the city. . . Bells.

Alarum bells.

The attack had begun.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

The Karisios Gate stood proudly atop the summit of the Sixth Hill of the city. It was one of the twin fortresses that overlooked the Lycus valley, the other being the Gate of St Romanus, standing on the Seventh Hill. The steep-sloped valley in between was reckoned to be the weakest point in the vast fortifications that protected the city’s landward flank.

Erlan and Einar stood on its high rampart, sweating under the swelter of the midsummer sun. ‘It’s hotter than a dragon’s arse-crack up here,’ grumbled Einar. ‘I could never get used to living in this damn heat.’

‘I don’t know.’ Erlan chuckled softly. ‘You’re starting to look like a Greek to me.’

‘What I look is bloody ridiculous.’ The fat man tugged miserably at the leather bindings under his chin which were squashing the cheek-guards against his face. They were both garbed in the scale armour, tall spiked helmets topped with white feathers, and the milk-white cloaks of the imperial guard. ‘You feeling better?’

Erlan nodded grimly. ‘I’ll do. Greek food, huh?’

‘Food, my arse! What about the blood, boy? There was enough there for a bath-day.’

‘Old wounds,’ grunted Erlan evasively. ‘Ain’t the first time I’ve had one open up. Bad timing.’

‘You can say that again! I thought Alexios was going to have a fit.’

The friends’ conversation was cut short when Alexios himself shot them a disapproving look from the parapet.

A few strides in front of them was gathered a select company of senators, palace officials, military worthies, and the sundry cockless attendants that seemed to trail the basíleus like flies at the back end of a horse.

‘My guess is they will try to force the Gate of St Romanus,’ Emperor Leo was declaring to his entourage. ‘That’s where I would concentrate my forces if I were Maslama. Not that it would do me any good,’ he added with a dry chuckle.

There were a few obliging smiles. But any mirth was shortlived. Erlan couldn’t help thinking most of these highborns looked damned uneasy, their rich olive skin washed pale with fear. Or at least with anticipation. All except the eunuch, Katāros, who stared out with a cool eye over the human tempest brewing to the south.

‘They may, of course, try for the Rhesios Gate, Majesty,’ worried another flabby official known as the eparch, dabbing at his face. Erlan gathered this man held some position over the running of the city. Despite the early hour he was already streaming with sweat. ‘Should they take that, the city will open up like a gutted fish.’

‘Have confidence, Lord Daniel!’ cried Leo. ‘I tell you, they’ll never break through.’

‘Rhesios, Romanus, Karisios. All these bloody gate names are giving me a headache,’ grumbled Einar in Norse.

‘Just be grateful you’re not standing on that other one,’ Erlan muttered back. The sight across the narrow valley was like nothing he’d ever seen. All along the high inner walls the ramparts were crowded with Byzantine troops, and amongst them tall wooden contraptions swayed and lurched as they were manhandled into position. ‘Onagers’, ‘mangonels’ – words he had learned that day, which signified the great timber monsters whose wooden arms could fling massive rocks and stones and other missiles a terrifying distance. Beneath them on the terrace between the two walls in the lee of the outer fortification awaited a sea of men in blue and red and green tunics, banners fluttering among them in the westerly wind, each flag with its many-coloured streamers marking a different tagmata – the war-bands the Byzantines divided their soldiers into. Running beyond the outer wall was a deep moat, only half-filled with water. Already it was a midden swamp of battle gear and bodies.

Beyond the moat, the approach to the city was teeming with the Arab host: foot soldiers, mounted horsemen, giant siege weapons and towers. The noise was appalling, the valley resounding with the battle-cries of the swarming troops, the distant whump of huge stone missiles smashing against the walls of the city, the thrum and shriek of flaming arrows looping in both directions.

Erlan watched one of the Arab siege engines release its mechanism. It moved differently to the stocky punch of the Byzantine onagers. Instead it unwound with deceptive grace, its long arm accelerating slowly, and at last sweeping up a pot of burning pitch and launching it like a comet through the sky. A few moments later the fireball smashed among the battlements not fifty paces south of where they stood. The boiling