The magistrianos wished he could see Mirrane again. Partly because he wanted to get a better feel for what was happening in the palace, and partly just because he wanted to see her. He avoided thinking about which desire was more important to him. In any case, he could not casually make an appointment with the king’s mistress. She had to arrange to come to him.
He thought from time to time about changing that, about letting Goarios get hold of her note to him. Each time he held off. Doing that was dangerous and, worse, irrevocable. Moreover, with endless chances she had not betrayed him. Yet he fretted every day at how little he really knew of what was going on. As things turned out, he found out with no help from Mirrane. He had broken a bronze buckle on one of his sandals and was in the market dickering, mostly by signs, with a Georgian coppersmith for a replacement. Another local had set out several trays of knives in the adjoining stall. Haifa dozen Kirghiz rode by. One leaned down from the saddle with the effortless ease the nomads displayed on horseback, plucked a fine blade from a tray, and stuck it in his belt. His companions snickered.
The knifesmith shouted angrily and ran after the Kirghiz. The thief, amused at his fury, waited for him to catch up, then gave his beard a hard yank. The nomads laughed louder. Then the one who had taken the knife bellowed in pain—the knifesmith had bitten his hand, hard enough to draw blood. The nomad lashed out with a booted foot. The knifesmith reeled away, clutching his belly and gasping for breath. All the Kirghiz rode on; now they were chuckling at their comrade. Had the Georgian knifesmith been made of less stern stuff, the incident would have been over. But the local staggered back to his stall. “Kirghiz!” he shouted as he snatched up a blade. The nomads looked back. The Georgian had known exactly what weapon he was grabbing. He threw the knife. It went into the thief’s chest. The nomad looked astonished, then slowly slid from the saddle. The rest of the Kirghiz stared for a moment, first at their friend and then at the knifesmith. Quickly but quite deliberately, one of the nomads strung his bow, pulled out an arrow, and shot the Georgian in the face. The man gave a great bass shriek of anguish that made heads jerk round all over the market square. He ran a few steps, his hands clutching the shaft sunk in his cheek, then fell. His feet drummed in the dirt. Argyros looked around to exchange a horrified glance with the coppersmith, but that worthy had disappeared. He was, the magistrianos decided, no fool. The locals in the square were surging toward the Kirghiz, as the sea will surge when driven by an angry wind. Argyros heard a harsh cry somewhere as a nomad on foot was mobbed. All the mounted ones near him had their bows out now. He slipped away before any of the Kirghiz chanced to look in his direction. He had not got half a block out of the square when the noise behind him doubled and doubled again. He went from a walk to a trot. He had been caught in a street riot once before, in Constantinople. Once was plenty. The tumult had not yet reached the inn where Argyros and his men were staying. All the same, Corippus was prowling around the courtyard, wary as a wolf that has taken a scent it mislikes. “How bad?” he asked when the magistrianos told him what had happened.
“With all the nomads in town? Bad,” Argyros replied. “The Georgians hate ‘em, the Alans hate ‘em, and they hate everyone. I’d say we have to look to ourselves—Goarios’s men will be too busy guarding the king and his nobles to pay attention to much else.”
“Goarios’s men will be hiding under their beds, more likely,” Corippus snorted. His cold eyes raked the wall that surrounded the courtyard. He made a disgusted noise deep in his throat. “Too low, too shabby. How are we supposed to hold this place?” He shouted to a couple of stableboys, cursed them when they began to protest. They helped him close and bar the gates.
Supsa the innkeeper came rushing out at the noise of the gate panels squealing on their hinges. “What you doing?” he cried in bad Greek.
“He is trying to save you from being killed,” Argyros snapped; the officer’s rasp he put in his voice straightened Supsa up as if it had been a cup of icy water dashed in his face. The magistrianos added, “There’s rioting in the market square, and it’s spreading.”
Supsa needed only a moment to take that in. “I have heavier bar in back,” he said. “I show you where.”
As soon as the stouter bar was in place, Argyros called all of his crew except Eustathios Rhangabe out of the inn. Like Corippus, the rest of the men were top combat troops. Some were imperial guards, others, like their leader, ex-soldiers who had joined the corps of magistrianoi. Everyone was deadly with bow, spear, and sword.
“Fetch benches,” Corippus ordered Supsa, “so they can see over the top of the wall to shoot.” This time the taverner and his staff obeyed without question. Other traders came rushing out, clutching whatever weapons they had. Corippus put them on the wall too. “Who knows how well they’ll do?” he grunted to Argyros. “The more bodies the better, though.”
That got put to the test in minutes. Even while everyone in the courtyard had been working to turn it into a fortress, the noise of strife outside came closer and closer. The white-faced stableboys were just dragging a last bench against the wall when the mob came baying round the corner. Supsa clambered onto a bench, stood on tiptoe so the rioters could recognize him. He shouted something in his native Georgian, presumably to the effect that he was just another local and so they should leave him alone.
Stones, bricks, and clods of horsedung whizzed past him. One caught him in the shoulder and sent him spinning to the ground. Argyros, less optimistic, had already ducked behind the wall. He peered over it again a moment later. A dozen rioters had hold of a thick wooden beam; the others, after much yelling, cleared a path so they could charge for the gate.
“Shoot!” the magistrianos cried at the same time as Corippus, in his excitement forgetting where he was, bellowed the identical word in Latin. Even without a command, everyone knew what to do. Argyros’s men pumped arrows into the mob with a speed and accuracy that left the genuine merchants gasping. Screams rose. The improvised ram never got within twenty feet of its intended target. The men who had carried it were down, moaning or motionless. The rest of the rioters suddenly discovered urgent business elsewhere.
“Mobs,” Corippus said scornfully. “The bravest bastards in the world, till somebody fights back.”
Argyros was nodding grateful agreement when shouts of alarm came from the rear of the inn. Men leaped down from their benches and rushed to help the few beleaguered fellows there. “No, damn you, not everyone!” Corippus howled. “The same bloody thing’ll happen here if we all go haring off like so many idiots!”
That plain good sense stopped several defenders in their tracks. By then, though, Argyros was already dashing round the inn toward the stables and other outbuildings. The rioters had found or stolen a ladder; more dropped down over the wall every minute.
Bowstrings thrummed. One of the invaders fell, screaming, while two more cursed. Others ran forward. They waved knives and clubs. But for all their ferocity, they were only townsmen, untrained in fighting. Even the merchants who ran with Argyros had better gear and knew more of what they were about. His own men went through their foes like a dose of salts.
Part of that, he suspected, was what helped some women get through childbirth so much better than others: knowing and understanding the process would hurt and carrying on regardless. He saw a rioter who took a minor knife wound in his forearm forget everything else to gawk at it. The fellow never saw the bludgeon that stretched him senseless in the dirt.