A Burning Sea by Theodore Brun (i am reading a book txt) 📕

fire scattered among the defenders in a shower-burst of sparks and sherds of scalding clay. Their shrieks flared briefly with the flames then died away. But the walls had suffered no damage at all.

‘We should move further north, Majesty,’ advised Katāros. ‘You are too exposed here if the fighting should turn this way.’

‘Nonsense!’ Leo cried, apparently enjoying himself. ‘We’re perfectly safe. Besides, we won’t see a damned thing if we drop down the other side.’

‘We can’t afford you to suffer any harm, Majesty,’ the chamberlain insisted in his high, sober voice, just as another projectile hurtled downwards, this time exploding even closer in a cloud of white dust. ‘Quicklime,’ someone yelled. ‘Cover your mouths and eyes!’

Erlan did as everyone else, looking away from the billowing dust-cloud and keeping his mouth clamped shut. Fortunately, the wind carried most of it over the walls to the south of them. But when he looked again and the dust started to clear, he saw some defenders staggering, clawing at their eyes, wailing in pain, some even throwing themselves over the wall to get away from the noxious fog that lingered around the teeth of the rampart. The worst of it had blown away but Erlan still tasted an acrid burn in his throat.

‘Bastards,’ the emperor muttered grimly.

Erlan remembered the horror of the Byzantines’ liquid fire. It seemed to him the quicklime was no crueller than being melted alive. But he kept the thought to himself.

‘I heard they threw beehives into Pergamon,’ said the fat eparch.

‘And baskets of snakes into Abydos,’ said another, wearing the red trim of a senator.

‘Please, sire.’ Katāros again implored the emperor to retire to a less exposed position. This time Leo conceded. His retinue shifted north along the wall and Erlan, Einar and the other imperial guards with them, descending a few dozen feet down from the summit of the hill. The emperor was right: they could see far less of the Arabs’ manoeuvres from their new position, but by now Erlan couldn’t believe that the enemy were going to make any headway with their siege weapons. The walls were simply too massive; the defences too deep. He wondered whether their commander, this Prince Maslama, would order a single concerted attack of his foot soldiers against one of the gates. But even if he did, there was no way it would succeed. The Byzantine defenders had ample supplies of projectiles to break the force of their momentum: great boulders, vats of boiling oil, bales of straw waiting to be lit. Any number of painful ways to check an Arab assault.

But the surest defence was the walls themselves. The gateways piercing inner and outer walls were deliberately misaligned. Even if the attackers forced entry through one perimeter, they would struggle to maintain the propulsion to carry them onward through the inner defences.

To be sure, defenders were dying – but not enough of them to cause the emperor any real concern. And Erlan found himself wondering what he would do in the place of this Prince Maslama. Would he waste a hundred thousand men on this futility? Does a man blunt his finest blade against a rock unless it serves him some purpose?

Perhaps it was with these questions circling in his head that his gaze drifted away from the main crucible of the fighting towards the north. There, the plain climbed, breaking up into craggy folds and gullies before it tumbled away again into the headwaters of the Golden Horn. Something in one of the folds caught his eye.

‘D’you see that?’ He gave Einar a nudge.

‘What?’

‘Something moving. Up in that gully.’

The fat man swung his gaze and, shielding his eyes from the towering sun, he peered into the distance for a while. ‘Aye,’ he said at last. ‘I see it. Spearheads, ain’t it?’

‘Could be. Mmm.’

‘Plenty of the buggers too, by the looks.’

They continued watching as more spearheads processed along the fold of dead ground. The men carrying them were hidden from sight. ‘What the Hel are they up to?’

‘Maybe they’re going for the Horn,’ suggested Einar. ‘Trying to get between the city and the fleet?’

‘They’d never get past the walls, would they? They’d have to pass right under them. They’d be flattened.’ Just then a small silver shimmer appeared on the hilltop. Erlan watched as it rippled and danced in the hot air sweltering off the plain. It was a few seconds before he realized what it was. ‘Shit.’

‘What?’

‘That’s a signal flare.’

As if in answer, there was an excited cry from one of the emperor’s retinue. ‘God’s blood! Look! They’re moving forward.’

The two Northmen turned their gaze in time to see a wide sector of the Arab troops arrayed along the ridgeline close ranks and begin to advance. Horns and trumpets blew. Drums beat. Standards were hoisted high. Then, like a flood tide, the bulk of Maslama’s host moved forward. Heading straight for the Karisios Gate where the emperor was standing. There was a flurry of expletives among the patricians.

‘Something here doesn’t add up,’ Erlan muttered to Einar.

‘I find it rarely does,’ replied Einar with a weary sigh.

‘Basíleus!’ Erlan’s ringing voice stilled the patricians’ panicked chatter. Leo turned, regarding Erlan as a mule might a troublesome horsefly. ‘What is it, Northman?’

‘Is there another gate to the north?’

‘Of course there is. The Blachernae Gate. Why?’

‘We should warn them. There were troops up on that crest there.’ He pointed north.

‘I see nothing there.’

‘They were there,’ Erlan insisted. ‘Hundreds of them. We both saw them.’ He nodded at Einar.

‘It’s true, my lord,’ the fat Sveär growled.

‘I think that gate may soon come under attack.’

‘At Blachernae? How on Earth can you be sure?’

Erlan shrugged. ‘Call it instinct.’

‘Instinct!’ scoffed the eparch. ‘Pah! Good God, the thrust of their attack is right there. See, it comes!’

‘Every gate is sealed tight as a Jew’s money-box.’ This time it was the eunuch Katāros who spoke. ‘There’s no way for them to breach our defences, wherever they attack.’

‘Let me go, Majesty,’ pleaded Erlan, ignoring the eunuch’s interjection. ‘Let me warn them—’

‘And