He sounded absolutely convincing. I almost believed him myself, and I knew better. The guards laughed and stood aside, letting us pass out into the night.
As a town, Phanagoria had little to recommend it, although I lived as well there as anyone was capable of living. Tomin, now\a160… if anyone who had to live in Tomin slew himself to escape, I doubt God would reckon his suicide a sin deserving damnation. It lay- and, worse luck, lies yet- about three miles east of Phanagoria: a miserable little place without a wall, without a church, and without a hostel, as I discovered on arriving. The couple of taverns the place did have were taverns only, not places where travelers might put up for the night. The publicans apparently never dreamt anyone might want to put up at Tomin for the night, an attitude for which I confess a certain amount of sympathetic understanding.
Tomin exists for one reason and one reason only: a tiny indentation in the seacoast offering ships a little shelter. "We have gold," Myakes said, as if reminding himself, when we lay down against the wall of a building to get out of a chilly breeze and try to rest before dawn. "We can hire a fishing boat to take us to Kherson."
"To somewhere near Kherson, anyway," I said. "I'm too easily recognized to go into the city, I fear, with Apsimaros and the rich men there wanting my head. But you're right, Myakes, we need to gather my followers now."
"And after we do that, Emperor?" he asked, shifting around to try to get more comfortable- or at least less uncomfortable.
"After that?" I sighed. "After that, the Bulgars. Theodora was right: with Ibouzeros Gliabanos turned against me, I have no better choice." As I tried to sleep, I also tried not to think about how bad a choice the Bulgars were likely to be.
I do not remember dozing off, but I must have, for Myakes woke me at dawn by pounding on a tavern door. When the irate proprietor opened up, a show of coins salved his wrath and got us bread and wine, which we ate and drank picking our way through Tomin's muddy alleys to the seaside.
"Look!" I pointed. A real merchant ship was beached there, dwarfing the little fishing boats to either side of it. Some considerable trade exists among the cities and towns along the northern coast of the Black Sea. The only surprise was that this ship had put in at Tomin rather than the nearby Phanagoria. Caught by darkness, perhaps. "We can get out of here faster with him than with any fisherman."
"If he's westbound, aye," Myakes answered. "Probably will be, or we'd have seen him in port yesterday."
"Only one way to find out," I answered, and strode down toward the merchantman.
Her captain, a rough-hewn fellow named Peter, dickered a fare to Symbolon, the nearest port to Kherson, asking no questions once we had paid. I had been prepared to introduce myself as John and Myakes as Myron, but he proved interested only in money, not in names.
We sailed shortly thereafter, having had little intercourse with the folk of Tomin: wh en the Khazars came after us, as I am certain they must have done on discovering both Balgitzin and Papatzun slain, they might well have concluded Myakes and I had vanished into thin air. Whatever they concluded, they did not catch up to us before we had quitted that part of the world for good.
The one bad stretch I had on the three-day voyage to Symbolon came very early, when Peter put into the port of Phanagoria to unload wine and load smoked fish. Myakes and I spent all our time at the stern of the ship, staring out to sea. But the Khazars did not send men aboard to search for us. On our sailing out of that harbor, Myakes and I finished emptying the jar of wine he had bought in Tomin.
Apsimaros had captained the last ship upon which I had traveled, the one taking me from Constantinople into exile in Kherson. No doubt mercifully, I recall next to nothing of that voyage. I could here set forth the journey to Symbolon in exacting detail, but to what purpose? Only storms make travel by sea anything but dull. We had none, not on that journey. I thanked God, not yet aware of His plan for me.
Myakes and I left the merchantman at Symbolon, a town larger than Tomin but smaller than Phanagoria lying a few miles south of Kherson. There I took a room above a tavern (the folk at Symbolon at least entertaining the possibility of someone's wishing to do such a thing), and Myakes and I divided the money we had with us.
I told him, "Go into Kherson. If we're heading for the land of the Bulgars, we'll need Moropaulos's boat again. Anyone else who wants to come is welcome." I laughed. "One thing sure: I'll know who my true friends are."
"Some of them, Emperor, anyhow," Myakes said. "I've seen that boat Foolish Paul sails. It won't hold many, and that's the truth."
I waved that away. Some who said they backed me would find more excuses than Moropaulos's boat being small to avoid accompanying me on what they reckoned a forlorn hope. "Go on," I told Myakes. "I'll see you back here tonight or tomorrow morning, I expect."
"Aye, Emperor," Myakes said, and slipped away. I had no doubt he would slip into Kherson as readily. He had spent as long in exile there as had I, but I would have drawn notice even had I not been mutilated, and he, I think, would have remained inconspicuous even with a cut nose. Regardless of the setting in which he found himself, he had a knack for making himself at home without drawing undue attention.
Waiting came hard, as it always does for me. I went down into the tavern. I drank a good deal of wine. I ate salt-fish stew. Although having the money to pay for better, I forbore. Symbolon not being Kherson, I had some chance of going unrecognized there, and meant to foster that chance as much as I could. So far as I could tell, no one paid me any particular attention. I was ugly but not hideous, and thereby ideally suited for going unnoticed.
Evening came with no sign of Myakes. After another bowl of that stew- the last, praise God, I ever tasted!- I went up to the room I had bought for the night. Though taking no woman up there with me, I did not sleep alone. I crushed all the bugs I could, but, like the Spartans at Thermopylae, was defeated at last by superior numbers. Eventually, later than I would have liked, sleep found me.
I woke before dawn, whether from nerves or bedbugs I cannot say. Going downstairs, I discovered myself the only one awake in the place, and so, less than happy with the world, returned to my room once more until I heard someone moving about below. I went down again, and breakfasted on wine and an egg cooked with cheese, that being the only choice besides fish porridge.
Sometime during the second hour of the morning, Myakes strode into the tavern. I did not rise from my stooclass="underline" I sprang from it. Had he waited any longer before arriving, I daresay I should have smashed the top of my head from leaping straight up into the ceiling.
His smile was impudent, he having known the state in which I would be. "Boat's at the wharf, Emperor," he said. "Let's go."
I left the tavern without a backward glance. When we were about halfway down to the harbor- a short journey, Symbolon hardly being any sort of metropolis- I asked, "How many companions have I?"
His face clouded. "Me and Moropaulos. Barisbakourios and Stephen. Theophilos. I thought he'd be up in Doros, but he was staying with Stephen. That's it."
"Not even Cyrus?" I said in dismay.
"Not his fault, Emperor," Myakes said. "I couldn't get word to him in the monastery- he got himself in trouble there for gallivanting off the last time without so much as a by-your-leave. Didn't want to wait around, spend any more time in Kherson than I had to."
"All right," I said. "Good enough. As for the others who would not come- a plague on them." More than a few had cheered me in Kherson when I declared I would take back the imperial throne. Cheering was easy. When it came to anything more than cheering, where were they? As if invisible. "I'll have my vengeance on them, too, by God and His Son. But first the Romans." I hurried down toward the fishing boat, Myakes half-trotting beside me.