One of the pock-faced hard men raised his empty hands. ‘No trouble here, boss,’ he said.
Derkensun smiled and nodded a polite greeting. ‘I thought you’d want to know,’ he said.
‘Know what, Guardsman?’ asked Pock Face. He was ugly. The garlic on his breath stank across ten feet which separated them.
‘This gate is closed,’ Derkensun said. ‘I cut the chain. It will take a day to get it open.’
Pock Face looked at his companions thoughtfully. ‘Reckon we ain’t wanted here,’ he said.
Derkensun nodded. ‘I’ll know you again,’ he said. His Nordik grin said, quite clearly, next time I’ll just kill you.
The sound of alarm bells spread through the great city like a fire driven by a wind. The Duke heard them, and watched the great machines that slammed the city gates in his face. He was a hundred horse lengths away. He cursed.
The Emperor sat on his beautiful Hati horse a few paces away. He shook his head in genuine sorrow.
‘You! You brought us to this, you tragic abortion of a failure to rule!’ The Duke vented twenty years of pent-up frustration on God’s anointed representative. ‘And now we’ll have civil war! I should just kill you!’ He whirled, drawing his sabre.
Ser Christos, the Duke’s best knight, caught his lord’s sword. ‘We agreed not to kill him,’ he said, his voice hushed.
The magister, Aeskepiles, had pushed the poison from his bloodstream, and now he was weak but back in the game. He cleared his throat. ‘He should die. Now. Easier for us all,’ he said.
The Emperor looked at his magister in something like shock. His pale, watery eyes met his would-be killer’s eyes with a mild look, like that of a frustrated but benevolent parent watching a child. ‘Do as you must,’ he said. ‘God has shown his will. You have failed to take the city.’ He smiled. ‘Kill me, and take on yourself the curse of God.’
‘I have the whole of the rest of the country, thank you.’ The Duke was recovering from his moment of temper. He looked back at the gates. He could see three of them from here, and all three were closed and barred, and white light had begun to reflect from mailed figures high on the walls. ‘But I’ll have the palace in an hour.’
‘You have been foolish,’ the Emperor said. ‘Even now, all I require is your submission-’
Neither the Despot nor the Emperor saw the blow coming. The Duke was wearing a steel gauntlet and his fist struck the Emperor like a hammer and knocked him unconscious in a single blow.
Every man present flinched. Behind him, the magister heard a knight mutter, ‘He struck the Emperor.’
And in the cogs and wheels of the magister’s inner mind, he thought just do it. He projected his will-
Again, Ser Christos intervened. His horse seemed to slip out of his control. The stallion’s head collided with the Emperor’s mount, and both animals shied and the Emperor was trodden under the horse’s hooves, but Duke Andronicus’s face cleared and he shook himself.
Harald Derkensun watched the Duke strike the Emperor from the walls, fifty feet above the grass. He saw the Emperor collapse. He turned to his corporal, a giant with jet-black hair from Uighr, far to the north even of Nordika.
‘Durn Blackhair, they have taken the Emperor,’ he said. ‘We are his sworn men.’
Blackhair nodded. ‘If I send for horses-’
Derkensun shrugged. ‘Someone needs to tell the palace. I’m not sure such a thing has ever happened before.’ He looked again at the Emperor’s purple-clad form lying in the dust. ‘He may be dead. Then who is Emperor?’
Blackhair shook his head. ‘I have no idea. Should we not ride to him and die at his side?’
The Emperor was being raised by many hands, and put across his horse. There were hundreds of mailed stradiotes coming in from the Field of Ares, and Easterners, and a large block of uniformed infantry carrying spears and bows.
‘At least three thousand men there,’ Derkensun said.
Blackhair tucked a thumb into his beard and pulled. ‘Care to have a go?’ he asked.
Derkensun smiled. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m no coward, but the two of us aren’t going to accomplish a fucking thing out there.’
Blackhair laughed. ‘I’m not as mad as that. Very well. Fine job at the gate. Get your arse to the palace and see if you can get to the Mayor. You say the Logothete of the Drum was with the Emperor? And both of the Spatharioi?’
‘He winked at me,’ said Derkensun. ‘And Spatharios Gurnnison nodded to me. I’d swear he knew which end was up.’
‘So now we’ll never be paid,’ Darkhair said. ‘Ja, Gurnnison put us on alert this morning, sure.’ He looked out over the wall. ‘You know I’m the senior corporal.’
Derkensun hadn’t known that. ‘So you are the new Spatharios,’ he said.
‘Fuck me,’ Blackhair said. ‘Get to the palace, now. And find someone to take rank over me. I’m too fond of wine and the song of the axe to give commands.’
Derkensun came down off the wall looking for a horse. Liviapolis was so big that a man needed a horse to cross it in a day; it was seven miles from the great gates to the gates to the palace, which was, of course, another fortress.
At the open, inner gate of the palace, the old Yahadut scholar sat, utterly disconsolate. Derkensun came to a stop by him and offered him a hand.
‘Sorry, old man. But I had to close the gate. You’d have been killed.’
‘I was almost killed anyway!’ He raised his hands. ‘Barbarian!’
Derkensun sighed. ‘You know,’ he began, and decided that the man was too shocked and too angry to argue with. He shouldered his axe and ran across the Plataea, looking for a horse.
He’d jogged across two neighbourhoods before he found a skinny mare between the poles of a knife-sharpener’s cart. He ran straight up to the knife-sharpener, who had a set of kitchen knives on his little bench and had the wheel going so that sparks flew.
‘I’m taking your horse,’ Derkensun said. He smiled. ‘In the name of the Emperor.’
The man rose from his spinning stone. ‘Wait! I pay my tax – you can’t-’
Derkensun had the horse out from between the poles in four buckles and two knots, one of which he cut through.
‘I’ll starve, you bastard!’ shouted the knife-sharpener.
Derkensun shrugged and got on the mare’s back. She was brisk enough – possibly not broken to riding. Her hooves clattered on the pavement, and the knife-sharpener was left behind, shouting imprecations.
He followed the ancient aqueducts over the hills that dominated the centre of the city – in fact, cresting the second hill, he rode past his own lodgings. The mare’s knife-sharp back squashed his manhood painfully and he wished he could stop and get his saddle, but that would take time. He had no idea whether he needed to hurry or not – the city looked absolutely normal.
But it stuck in his head that Ser Raoul had died trying to bring word of whatever had happened. And they’d captured the Emperor. And the Logothete and the Spatharios had put the Guard on high alert.
He came down the last hill, and the mare, who was really quite young, began to labour, but her hooves continued to throw sparks from the streets, and the sound of his passage proceeded him, so women flattened themselves against arched buildings, and pulled their children close; men cursed him when he was far enough away not to hear.
The palace gates were closed.
The men on guard were Scholae. The Guard’s inveterate rivals in brawls; and the household cavalry of native Moreans. He didn’t know either of the men on the gate – both young Moreans with trimmed beards, aristocratic, and worried.
Nor was he entirely sure what to say.
He settled for Archaic dignity. ‘I need to see the Mayor of the Palace. Failing that, your officer,’ he said.
The two men shifted back and forth. Like most of the aristocratic scions in the Scholae they had probably never stood guard before. He leaned forward. ‘Christos Pantokrator,’ he said quietly.