The surface, of the telecast swirled and suddenly there was a great rushing sensation. Maxian leapt back in surprise, crying out and cracking his hand against the edge of the map table. A flashing afterimage of seas and lands and city walls hurtling toward him at an impossible speed faded. Behind him, his brothers had scattered at his sudden movement.
“Damn!” Maxian snarled, shaking the pain out of his hand. “That was unexpected.”
“What was?” came a muffled question from behind the couches.
“It shows us the city, brothers, but it is not a pretty sight,” he answered.
Galen placed a hand on his younger brother’s shoulder as he edged up, peering in the murky scene in the surface of the sphere. His face twisted in amusement.
“Ah, my brother Emperor is having an interesting day,” the Western Emperor said.
Constantinople was burning.
CONSTANTINOPLE, CAPITAL OF THE EASTERN ROMAN EMPIRE
The blow came with a ringing gong-sound and a blur of sparkling white light. Stunned, Heraclius fell heavily on his side, all vision gone in his right eye. Booted feet kicked at him and he struggled to roll upright. Nothing but instinct dragged his shield across his body to cover his face and upper torso. A second blow slammed into the leather-and-brass shield, crushing the breath from the Roman’s chest. Nerveless, his right hand scrabbled in the muck of blood and rainwater for his sword. Suddenly his fingers caught on the wirebound hilt.
Another blow smashed into the shield, but the Roman surged off of the ground, thrusting up with the short stabbing sword. The tip slid off metal rings and bit into flesh. A man gasped in pain. Heraclius shook his head to clear the blood from his eyes. When he could see again, the line of battle on the parapet had surged back, away from him. Red cloaks swarmed around him now as the Guard crowded forward against the Slavic swordsmen fighting on the walkway between the two towers. There was a high shrieking as the Guardsmen’s axes rose and fell, flashing with blood. A monstrous ringing of steel on iron drowned out all other sounds. Rain fell out of the dead gray sky in billowing sheets. Water ran down the side of Heraclius’ neck and in the hot armor, that was a blessed feeling for a moment.
Now the melee had run aground on the clutch of grapnels and ladders that the barbarians had managed to lodge on the outer wall. Towers rose up at either end of the rampart, joining the great exterior wall of the city and the lesser wall that fronted the narrow inlet called the Golden Horn. Seeing that the critical moment had passed, Heraclius strode back to the nearest tower.
Sappers in padded leather armor and open-faced helmets were crowding out of the narrow doorway, each carrying thick green-glass jars in frames of cotton batting. Heraclius stood well aside, his back against the low retaining wall that faced the inner wall of the battlement, as they passed. Behind the sappers came slaves in tunics of dirty cotton carrying long brass tubes, ornamented with curling dragon faces. They also had an odd valve slung over their shoulders and heavy leather gloves that reached up to their elbows. Moisture continued to drizzle out of the sky, making the footing difficult on the walkway.
Heraclius struggled to pull the heavy helmet off of his head, finally succeeding. Gasping, he turned his face to the heavens, feeling the hot sweat sluice away in the rain. With one broad hand, he slicked back his hair, the heavy blond curls catching at his fingers. He tucked the helmet under his left arm.
“Brother!” came a shout from the tower above. Heraclius looked up. On the fighting platform twenty feet over his head, Theodore waved at him, sun-browned face creased with a wide smile. “Come up, the Avars are taking to their boats!”
Heraclius turned and surveyed the situation on the battlement. The Guard was kicking the last of the bodies off the walkway onto a great heap in the narrow street below. None of the raiders seemed to have escaped. The grapnels and ladders that they had raised under the cover of the mists and rain had been thrown down or cut away. The sappers were fitting their hoses and pipes to the glass bottles and bronze tubing. In moments, he knew, the battlement would be hellishly hot and tremendously dangerous, particularly half flooded with rainwater as it was. He shouldered his way past a file of slaves and climbed the wooden stairs to the top of the tower.
The waters of the Golden Horn were only partially visible in the gusts of rain. The vast city that stood at his back was clouded by mists and vapors, only the nearest tenements and buildings partially visible through the murk. It seemed that the tower rode in an endless sea of gray, with only ghosts and apparitions for company. Theodore had joined a troop of archers surveying the narrow strand at the base of the walls. Theodore waved his brother over, his own light-blond beard and blue eyes obscured by his helm.
“Brother, dear, I thought that Martina had finally trained you not to wear the Red Boots out into the field.” Theodore’s pale face was creased by a particularly sly grin.
Heraclius shook his head, answering “It’s the garb of a soldier I wore today.”
“Ah, then it must be the foundation of your majesty staining them so.”
Heraclius glanced down; his riding boots, a plain brown leather pair, were caked with blood from the fight on the walkway, a dark red now fading to black. He cuffed his younger brother on the side of the helmet. “Fool.”
“I am no fool!” Theodore said, in feigned outrage. “I am a philosopher, pointing out obvious truths to those too dense to find them for themselves.”
Heraclius ignored him with the ease of long practice and stared over the edge of the tower. Fifty feet below him, the narrow beach was swarming with barbarians and hundreds of boats. The Varangians on the lower parapet were shouting insults down and following them with the heads of those of the attackers who had managed to reach the wall.
A piercing whistle cut through the din as the master sapper stood back, waving a green flag. The Guardsmen, hearing the whistle, hurried to the shelter of the far tower. The other soldiers also drew back from the crew of engineers. The leather-clad men hoisted the long bronze tubes over the edge of the wall. Behind them, the slaves hung onto the ends of long poles attached to pump bladders. A second whistle rang out and the slaves dragged down on their handles. Even from the height of the tower, Heraclius shivered in his hot armor at the faint gurgling sound that came as the hand-pumps sucked the black fluid out of the green-glass bottles. The engineers holding the brass tubes leaned out into the embrasures, a slow-match extended on an iron holder. Pitch daubed around the mouthpieces of the tubes flickered into a pale flame. The engineers handed the matchsticks back to a second set of slaves who immediately doused them in buckets of sand held close for such a purpose. The pump slaves dragged down again, and now the canvas tubes flexed as the black liquid pulsed through them.
Heraclius forced himself to look down through the falling rain and mist to the tiny shore. While the barbarians were still swarming about below, many were clambering back onto their makeshift boats. There were thousands of Avars and their Slavic allies on the beach or in the water. Their faces with pale, distant ovals-the Avars marked by a sallow cast and the Slavs by a wealth of red hair. The Emperor felt a hand on his shoulder, and he turned to see the pale face of Theodore.
“You do not have to watch, brother,” the Prince whispered. “They chose to come against the great city in arms…”
Heraclius gently brushed Theodore’s gauntlet aside, saying “I am Emperor, I should look fully upon the works that I set in motion.” He turned back.