The Gate of fire ooe-2 Read online

  "No," Mohammed said, raising his head up and looking out the window at the bougainvillea and jasmine in the garden. "This house makes my heart sick."

  – |The sound of crickets chirping echoed off broken gray rock. A boot made of tooled kid leather with small silver studs passed over the stones. A man of almost fifty climbed the side of the mountain under a blazing sun. He wore a long desert robe of tan and white, with a burnoose wrapped around his head. His features were strong-a fierce nose jutted over a thick bushy black beard. His hands, large and scarred with the artifacts of many battles, were a dark brown and grasped at the stones to pull himself up over a ledge. The man's face was bleak, for his heart was greatly troubled.

  The peak rose at the side of a deep, broad valley. The summit was bare of trees, though covered with scattered gray shrubs and thorny bushes. Great boulders littered the face of the mountain, all showing deep cracks and crevices where the merciless sun and wind had broken them down. A perfectly clear blue sky rose above the mountain, anchored by the white disk of the sun. There was little wind to break the tremendous heat of the day. Gravel crunched under the man's foot, and the still, hot air was filled with the voices of bees and crickets.

  The man passed underneath a cliff of stone, covered with small spiky plants bearing tiny white flowers. In the bare fragment of shade that the cliff endowed, a scrub bush with dark red bark was growing. Triangular waxy leaves covered the branches. The man pushed through the thicket at the base of the cliff and climbed up a narrow passage between the stones. At the top the rocks were hot with the radiance of the sun. Now he could see the summit of the mountain, a tilted pile of barren stone and cracked rock. The air was heavy and hot, like a mourning cloth.

  From the mountaintop, the whole world lay below the man in a vast sweep of desert and mountain and hills. The valley below him seemed far away, filled with a faint bluish haze from the cook fires of the villages and the city. No clouds could be seen in all that gigantic expanse of sky. The bowl of heaven shaded from a dusty bone near the horizon to a tremendously deep Chin blue overhead. The sun, standing high in the sky, was a bright flare of white. Beneath his feet, the mountain slept in the heat of the day. Here, exposed on all sides, was a breeze at last, ruffling his cloak and robes. He stood straight, his walking cane at one side, and slowly turned to survey the entire world.

  The land was a rumpled quilt of flat plateaus and deep wadi cut by summer thunderstorms. Low mountains spiked up out of barren plains of salt pan and rocky fields. No green thing intruded into the sere desolation save below, within the shelter of the valley and the walls of the city. The man turned back, away from the openness of the desert. The valley was long and narrow, with hills marching close on either side and mountains rising behind them. Here, there was green, carefully tended and watched over. At the wells and along the slash of the streambeds, small fields and orchards sprouted from the gray-and-tan soil. He looked southwest, along the length of the valley of Makkah, and could, at the edge of vision, make out the green of the oasis of Zam-Zam. There was a deep well there, surrounded by pools and temples.

  The man sat, his legs swinging off the edge of the great slab of sandstone.

  – |The man lay on the mountaintop, his eyes closed, the heat of the sun burning on his skin. The hot wind continued to whisper across him, plucking at his sleeves. His lips were badly chapped, and his skin had become cold, even in the heat of the day. The walking cane lay by his side, thrown down. Even with his eyelids closed, he could see the brilliant blue sky above him. He hid in old memories.

  Act!

  The man's head twitched a little to one side, though his mind had wandered far from his body and the sound of a voice in the air around him took a long time to register. The sound hung in the air, clear and ringing from the rocks like the chime of a great bell.

  Act!

  The man's eyes fluttered open, and then he turned his head to one side, away from the merciless sun. His lips moved, but no sound came out. For an instant, he thought that he could see himself as if looking down from above, a battered disheartened man of later middle age, lying on sunbaked stones at the top of a mountain. Then he could feel the hot wind on his arms and legs and taste dust in his mouth.

  Act!

  The man levered himself up on one elbow and, squinting, looked around. Only sky and boulders were to be seen. The mountaintop was empty. The wind died, leaving a great stillness.

  "Who is there?" The man's voice was plaintive and weak, barely a whisper.

  I am here. I am in all things. Prostrate yourself, man, and listen.

  The man tried to stand, but his legs failed him and he fell down. He bent his head, trying to use his arms to raise himself up. The rock beneath him crumbled, and his hands slipped. A sharp pain sparked on his forehead where the rock face cut it.

  "What are you?" His voice was even weaker.

  Listen, man, you whom the Lord of the World made from clots of blood, do you know His will?

  "Who are you?" the man tried to shout, but there was no breath left in his body.

  Do you make obeisance to Him, who made all that is? Do you render Him respect? Come to Him, and listen, and know His will in all things.

  The man whimpered, his hands twitching uncontrollably.

  Do you see that there is evil in the world? Evil that defies the Lord of the World, that stains His perfect creation?

  An image blossomed in the man's mind, horribly real and as fresh as the day he had first seen it. The man's body jerked with spasms.

  A dark shape moved on a plain of sandy stones. A great host of men, their spears glittering in the morning light, pressed about the walls of a strong place. The man, clad in bright armor, stood at the summit of a great tower of ashlar stone and fitted granite blocks. The dark shape raised a fist, and the air shook with the roar of unheard words. The man on the tower shouted defiance back into that tremendous sound. A whirl of stones and dust and the bones of the dead skittered across the plain before the army. It grew and grew, until it loomed over the rampart and the man in the tower knew fear. A shape blurred out of the air, enormous and given an impossible outline. The earth shook at its step. The man screamed at his soldiers to flee, to abandon the tower. It was too late. The thing in the air roared and swung down its fist. Stone blocks taller than a man shattered like porcelain under the blow. The tower toppled to one side, and the man threw himself off, out into the air. Wind rushed past, whipping his hair and then there was a stunning blow as he hit the street. The earth shook again, and the man looked up, seeing the whole tower sliding toward him.

  – |The man sobbed, his body aching with pain at the memory that had welled up in his mind.

  Act! Submit to the will of your Lord and strive against this, or all your race will be the playthings of hidden powers. Act! You know what must be done.

  The man shuddered, his entire body twitching furiously, then he lay still on the broad surface of the great boulder that crowned the mountaintop. After a moment the wind rose again, rattling the leaves of the thornbushes and blowing sand and grit across him.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The Harbor of Phospherion, Constantinople

  "To the left," the centurion's whisper drifted down the line of men. Nicholas leaned out a little, trying to see the head of the line in the pressing darkness. There was the dim glow of a shuttered lantern up ahead and the liquid gleam of its tiny light on water below his feet. White breath puffed from Nick's mouth, and he drew the heavy woolen cloak around his shoulders a little tighter. The man in front of him moved, the boards of the dock creaking under his feet, and Nicholas shuffled ahead as well. He felt awkward and heavy in the thick cork-filled armor. He was used to a shirt of close-linked mail, heavy and snug against his chest and on his shoulders. This thick padding made him feel enormous and stiff.

  Another centurion, this one with the Poseidon-blaze of the Imperial fleet on his shoulder, moved past him, along the line of men. He carried another lantern and moved quietly down
the gangway at the end of the dock. Above him the light briefly illuminated the overhanging oar galleries of the three-banked galley-a dromon to the Southerners-that they were boarding. Nicholas shivered again, feeling a chill breeze gust up off the waters of Propontis. All around him the docks of the military harbor, nestled under the walls of the great city, were filled with the muted noise of thousands of men moving quietly.

  Nicholas hurried across the gangway when his time came, nervous at the darkness, but once his feet touched the subtly tilting deck of the great oared galley, his heart calmed. Here, on the deck of a fighting ship again for the first time in nearly four years, fear and doubt faded away. He stepped to the side and looked around. The ninety-foot length of the warship was filling up with legionnaires. Great bulwarks of planks faced with hides covered a fighting deck and, below them, three rowing galleries. Nicholas looked down, seeing the white eyes of hundreds of sailors, already seated at their benches, staring back up at him. The ship trembled a little as more and more men clattered over the gangway.

  The centurions were herding men aft, toward the rise of the rear cabin, making them file in two lines on either side of the artillery towers that rose from the center of the ship. Nicholas shed his woolen cloak, the sensation of cold having dropped from him like leaves in the Scandian fall, and rolled it up. He swung out along the edge of the bulwark and hooked an arm around a stanchion. Below him the sailors were gossiping and arguing among themselves. Warm air, heated by three hundred bodies in the gallery, billowed up through the opening. Nicholas began working his way forward along the narrow walkway.

  The gangplank was hauled back to the dock, and thick hawsers were pulled back aboard and coiled. A soft tapping sound echoed through the rowing gallery, and the sailors fell quiet. There was a rustle of men finding position on the benches and a creak as they tested the oars in the locks. A soft piping note came from the flautist at the head of the rowing gallery. The oarsmen took hold of the oars, making a rattle of great wooden shafts. Nicholas reached the cross walkway of the first artillery tower, where there was a break in the outer wall of the ship.

  Creaking, the galley moved, slowly at first, as two longboats filled with oars-men began towing it away from the dock, out into the harbor basin. The shore receded, becoming a blur of faint lights at the waterline, and then a vast unseen bulk of darkness that was the seawall of the city; high above, a glittering range of lights on the upper battlements. The massive towers studded along that long line were ablaze with pitch torches and lanterns. A sulfurous glow surrounded the summit of each tower; bonfires wrapped in mist and fog rising from the cold waters of the Golden Horn. Nicholas leaned out, smelling the sea and feeling cold fresh air on his face.

  In the darkness he smiled, his heart glad to be afloat, with the quiver of a deck under his feet, preparing to speed to war. The longboats released the tow-lines and broke away from the prow of the galley. The flute player sounded two sharp notes, and the sailors ran the long ashwood oars out of the locks. The great leaf-shaped blades dipped into the water, then, in one motion, stroked slowly backward. Nicholas felt the ship come fully alive under his feet, and now a feral grin split his features. The flautist called again, marking the beat of the oars, and the three hundred-legged beast slid forward across the dark waters, quiet as some great hunting cat.

  Around the dromon, in the predawn darkness, the dim, bobbing lights of a hundred other galleys of the Imperial fleet also crept forward. The wind out of the north picked up a little, luffing the sails as the ships turned out of the mouth of the Horn and into the wider body of Propontis itself. Dawn would come soon, creeping over the rim of the world.

  – |It had been a small, mean room with only a single lantern to push back the shadows. Nicholas entered and sat down; his face half twisted into a grin. He thought it was funny that the men he worked for found it necessary to hide their doings in dolorous places. Most citizens of the Empire wouldn't have noticed if they had discussed their business in the Forum. They never appreciated the humor of it. Sergius certainly did not. The tribune was one of the efficient, vigorous ones. The Empire Is Our Duty. Our Duty Is the Empire.

  "You're better, then?"

  Nicholas nodded. He healed quickly, though he tended to scar. Parts of his back still felt like bubbled glass where lash marks had healed badly. The hold of a Dansk reaver was a poor place to convalesce. Sergius rubbed the end of his nose, considering some parchment sheets on the rickety table between them.

  "The offices here are overstaffed," said the tribune, scowling at the roster. "You've been detached from cleanup to fieldwork." He pushed a chit across the table. Nicholas picked it up and turned it over. The fired clay chip had a pair of fish painted on it with black ink.

  "The navy has some business coming up in a day or two. Report to them."

  Sergius paused, squinting at Nicholas. "You can swim, can't you?"

  Nicholas grinned, showing fine white teeth. In the Empire, to career Legion men like Sergius, duty on a fighting galley was akin to a term in prison. Why should Nicholas tell him that the flat, tepid water of the Inner Sea was like some overlarge bath to those who had earned a place at the oars of the Stormlord?

  "I'll manage. Is this a punishment detail?"

  "For what? For letting that bastard Otholarix get past you?"

  Nicholas shrugged, looking away. He had dawdled on his way to the Wall. The smell and filth of the great city might repel him, but that did not mean there were not interesting diversions within the walls. A tinge of guilt touched him, though, thinking of the equites who had been cut down in the fight at the gate.

  Sergius tapped the tabletop with a wooden stylus. "You've had some good notes, lad, from your other commanders. I've no complaints about your work until this business at the gate. Do well for the navy and we'll put you back on shore."

  Nicholas nodded, but he could not pretend he wanted "shore work" any more than a fighting berth on a ship of war. Ten years of his life, before kin-feud and jealousy had driven him from the Dansk court, had been spent on drakenships. How was murdering or kidnapping political opponents of the Empire any different from raiding the Caledonian or Hibernian shore? He felt a vague dissatisfaction.

  – |Mists parted, and the iron beak of the ship nosed out of a wall of dim gray. Nicholas hung on the rail of the fighting platform, peering forward through the murk. The fog muffled sound and made the quiet splash of the long oars in water seem faint and distant. The sun had risen at last, and the mist was beginning to burn away. The Imperial fleet barely moved, creeping forward through the fog bank. The sound of a hobnailed boot on the decking made the Scandian turn.

  Another soldier swung up onto the bulwark and pulled himself to the rail. Nicholas nodded politely at him, hiding a frown. The man was stocky and of middling height, with thick black hair hanging heavily around his head and shoulders. Unlike most of the men on the ship, he was not wearing a helmet. Bushy eyebrows crowded over his muddy brown eyes, and though his skin was fair and even pale, he seemed a dark and brooding sort. "Greetings," the fellow said, his dark eyes idly drifting over Nick's clothing, armor, weapons, hands. "I am Vladimir of Carpathos-and you?"

  Nicholas frowned openly now, and lifted his head a little, pointing with his chin at the shirt of heavy iron rings that the soldier wore under a tunic of deep green wool. Copper wire bound the rings-each the size of a solidus-to a leather backing. He was obviously no sailor.

  "You ever go swimming in that?"

  Vladimir shook his head, allowing a brief and brilliantly white smile in the shade of his neatly trimmed mustache and beard. "Hate the water, myself, try to stay away from it as much as I can. I've heard it brings disease and sickness."

  Nicholas grunted, something close to a laugh, and nodded his head over the rail. "Seems a mighty lot of it about. You volunteer for our little trip this morning?"

  "No, I try to avoid getting killed," Vladimir said, shaking his head and leaning easily on the heavy wooden planking that ran along t
he top of the bulwark. He grinned. "You?"

  "Can't say as I did," Nick muttered, turning to the rail himself. "Not beyond saying I'd put my sword to the defense of the city. You plan on walking home if something happens to this tub?"

  Vladimir looked down and fingered the weighty armor. His thumbs were thick, too, and gnarled like old roots sunk into a rocky cleft. He smiled again, an almost shy expression. "Oh, I guess it would be hard to swim in this… I'd feel naked without it, though."

  Nicholas nodded, scratching at an itch at the base of his neck. He felt naked, too, without his good chainmail-but the cork doublet was far better for this kind of work. It had been good enough for generations of Roman marines, and it was good enough for him.

  "Know the feeling-just stay in the middle of the ship. There'll be plenty of fight for everyone once the mist burns off."

  Vladimir nodded and shuffled his feet on the deck, looking for good purchase. Nicholas got a momentary impression of a stag in the deep forest, pawing at the loamy soil and snorting at the sight of a rival buck. The Scandian cocked his head a little to one side-there was something odd about the Northerner. Nicholas guessed he was Russ, or maybe Sarmatian-though he did not have Hunnic features, so maybe he hailed from the back woods someplace beyond the rule of the Great Khan. Clad in dark colors, in this dim light the man seemed solid and as natural as a stone-but something about his face seemed ephemeral.

  Nicholas shook his head in disgust; there was time for idle speculation later. The ship under him quivered suddenly, and a double note from the flute signaled for the banks of oars to lift and hang poised over the oily blue-black waters.

  "What is it?" Vladimir's voice dropped, becoming a low whisper.

  "The Persians," Nicholas guessed aloud. "I heard that some of the high priest's men learned they would try a crossing today, on the festival."

  Vladimir tested the release on his blade. From the corner of his eye, Nicholas caught a glimpse of a red leather hilt with a bone handle and the dull gleam of old worn iron. Brunhilde trembled under his own fingers, feather-light on her pommel. Above them, on the fighting tower, was a clink as thick glass jugs were carefully moved about. A windlass cranked, its gears muffled by cloths. The dromon drifted in the mist, sliding slowly on the strong current that came from the Sea of Darkness. Above, through the murk, the sun was a pale orange disk. Nicholas squinted up-yes, the fog was thinning quickly. In minutes it would be gone. "Soon," he breathed, and crouched a little behind the bulwark. "Get down a bit," he said to Vladimir. "These things always start with sharp objects flying through the air. Our turn will come, though, once we're in the thick of it."