by Sean Munger
He spun, chopped the ghoul in half, and pierced its head. We could hear moaning and shambling coming from the main doorway of the Praetorium, whose heavy wooden door was ajar; the spikes on it were smeared with blood and bits of flesh. Clearly there were more ghouls inside the prison. I surmised they were finished devouring all the guards and now on the hunt for fresh victims.
“I fear for Michael Camytzes,” said Theophilus. “Shouldn’t we try to ascertain whether he managed to escape?”
“I hate to say it, but I think he’s in there.” I motioned to the doorway. “And if he’s in there, he obviously didn’t make it.”
“We should make sure. If he’s still alive, we must rescue him. His skills will be desperately needed to contain the outbreak of ghouls that will surely result from this.”
Two ghouls staggered from the doorway. Theophilus cut one down, and I the other. One of them made a disturbing gurgling sound as my sword cleaved his throat. We backed away, swords at the ready.
“If Camytzes is alive,” I said, “surely he’s been bitten and will himself transform in a matter of hours.” The groaning sounded from within the Praetorium again. “I wonder how many are left inside there.”
“We have to smite them as they come out of the doorway,” said Theophilus. “That way they can approach from only one direction.”
“No. Picking them off one by one or two by two, we’ll be here all night. Eventually we’ll get tired and they’ll overwhelm us.” A ghoul hand shot out of the doorway; I lopped it off. The ghoul it belonged to fell to the stones and a sweep of one of Theophilus’s swords decapitated it.
“We have to get out of here, Theophilus,” I said. “We must get to the palace and warn the Emperor.”
“Surely the alarm has already reached him, or will shortly.”
I looked up and saw more fire flickering on the walls. “With the siege going on, the whole city’s going to be in chaos in a matter of hours, perhaps minutes. We need heavy troops to prevent the ghouls from fanning out everywhere.”
“There may be none to spare. Almost all available men are engaged against the Saracens.”
“Well, the Emperor’s going to have to make a choice then—whether Constantinople falls to the Saracens or the ghouls.”
Theophilus slashed another ghoul. “Stables!” he cried. “We need horses.”
Cautiously we went around the side of the Praetorium toward the stables. We found there more of what we’d seen in the main courtyard—bloody bones, the skeletonized remains of guards, and a few remaining ghouls that we dispatched easily. The horses, however, were gone. Ghouls had no taste for animal flesh, so the horses must have either run away or been taken by the human survivors. At this, hope sprang in me. Somebody could have made it out. I hope Camytzes was among them.
“We’ll have to find horses out there in the city,” I said. “Isn’t there a livery stable somewhere near here?”
“Aye, a few streets over. But surely the ghouls are out there.”
“It’s a chance we’ll have to take. Come on.” I tightened my grip on the hilts of my swords, and we started back toward the main courtyard.
Theophilus and I moved west from the Praetorium, and going that direction it was clear that the ghouls had already begun their hellish rampage. From St. Stoudios we’d approached from the east and noticed nothing amiss in the streets near the prison, in the opposite direction we heard a great deal of shouting and commotion in the neighboring streets. Then we began to see bodies. There was a woman lying in the street, her body torn into several pieces. Later we saw two young men, both dead, one of them still clutching a bloody dagger. The bodies had obviously been gnawed by the ghouls, but the ghouls themselves were nowhere to be seen, perhaps having been chased into the nearby streets and alleyways by the local inhabitants. The commotion we heard came from a nearby street, accessible through an alleyway whose walls were streaked with blood.
“The ghouls are in that direction,” I said, pointing toward an alleyway.
“We’d best be careful,” Theophilus replied. “The citizens don’t know what’s going on. They’re liable to mistake us for ghouls.”
“Well, whatever their situation is, they definitely need help—and so do we.”
We proceeded boldly into the alley. What we found at the end of it was utterly shocking. Theophilus and I had emerged in a small courtyard in front of a stone church. The floor of the courtyard was littered with corpses. Some were still alive, cleaved and bitten, moaning and shrieking. In the center of the courtyard a huge throng of ghouls, at least fifty of them, shambled and shifted toward a line of Constantinopolitans, some armed with swords and fireplace tools, who were quickly falling back against the line of demons. Occasionally one of the townspeople would stab or strike with a weapon, but more often than not it was a glancing blow. The ghouls kept advancing away from us, but when several of them—ten, perhaps, maybe eleven—caught the scent of Theophilus and me, they turned away from the main group.
“Aim for their heads!” I cried at the townspeople. I leapt into the square, beheading one of the ghouls approaching us. The head with its blank waxy eyes fell to the cobblestones where I cleaved it with one of my swords.
“They can’t hear us,” Theophilus shouted back. “The ghouls will consume them!”
At that moment, a flash of orange fire seared the air between Theophilus and me. I leaped back, startled, and was astonished to see an arrow with a flaming head embed itself into the back of one of the wounded townspeople, a middle-aged man whose leg had been chewed off. The man screamed and collapsed inches from me. I had only a split second to leap out of the way of another flaming arrow headed right for my head. It impacted on the cobblestones, still smoldering.
“Archers!” cried Theophilus.
There was almost no time to react. A volley of flaming arrows zoomed through the air. Several struck the ghouls we were fighting, but it was clear that whoever was shooting at us wasn’t trying to spare us. I looked up at the church across the square. From its arched brick window I could see three flaming arrowheads poking from the darkness. A moment later they were unleashed and I dove out of the way, narrowly avoiding the snapping jaws of another ghoul who in his clumsy lurch impaled himself on one of my swords.
“Troops in the church!” I shouted, withdrawing the sword. “Get to the church, there are troops inside!” A ghoul clawed at me, causing me to drop one of my swords. I brought my other down on his neck. An instant later a flaming arrow embedded itself in the stump of his neck. The corpse immediately slumped.
We raced to the church, shouting all the way. “We’re human! We’re not ghouls! Let us in, we can help you! Please, let us in!” We pounded on the heavy wooden door, which was decorated with a bronze bas-relief of John the Baptist. It too was smeared with blood.
Six ghouls were about to corner us.
I winced, gritted my teeth and turned on them. I began slashing at them, showering the church’s doorway with more blood. A severed arm fell to the dust and continued clawing at me.
Whoever was firing arrows from the church window finally seemed to understand that we were friendly. Several more arrows were fired, these aimed precisely at the ghouls advancing upon us. “Aim for their heads!” said Theophilus. We felled three of the six, and the arrows took out the rest. As the last of the ghoul corpses collapsed, I heard the working of a heavy wooden bolt and the door to the church finally swung open.
We rushed inside. A soldier in chain mail, barely more than a boy, slammed the door shut behind us and drew the heavy bolt to secure it.
The church we found ourselves in was very small, at least by the standards of the grander cathedrals of Constantinople. Its primitive dome rose perhaps thirty feet above the floor, decorated with clumsy mosaics of the saints and the Virgin. The church was so poor and rude that it had no bell tower; its bell hung from the apex of the dome. In the center of the church huddled a crowd of townspeople, perhaps twenty or so. Most were women and children, but
there were a few men. All looked dazed and shocked. A small catwalk ringed the church on an upper level, accessible from a flight of rickety wooden stairs. On the catwalk I saw four archers in regular army dress. They were gathered around the window from which they had been firing at us.
“Who is in command here?” I called, my voice booming through the church.
“I am,” said one of the archers. The young man who presented himself at the bottom of the stairs was perhaps twenty-five, good-looking, with a neatly trimmed beard and coal-black eyes. “My name is Gregory Panteugenos. Who are you?”
“I’m Stephen Diabetenos of St. Stoudios. This is my colleague Theophilus. We came from the Praetorium.”
“You’re lucky to have made it,” said Panteugenos. “There are dozens of those things out there.”
“How did you and your men get here?”
“My commanding officer sent us out to reconnoiter the area of the Chalkē Gate to see if we could use it as an archers’ nest if the Saracens broke through the walls. We didn’t even get close to Chalkē. We came upon a group of villagers being attacked by those…things. We slaughtered a lot of them, but we had to fall back to the church when we realized how many there were.” The young archer glanced up at his colleagues on the catwalk. “We’re lucky we had our quivers with us.”
“Lucky for us too,” said Theophilus.
We heard a pounding on the door we’d just come through. I could hear the wail of the beasts and the scrabbling of their dead hands against the wood and bronze. Dear God, I thought, forgive us for bringing this pestilence upon these people! We never should have listened to the Emperor.
“More of them, Sir!” shouted the boy who’d let us in.
“How many?”
One of the archers up above, looking down through the window, answered, “Twelve, maybe fifteen.”
“We can’t stay here for long,” Panteugenos said to me. “We don’t have a lot of arrows left, and I’m afraid those monsters will break through the door eventually.”
“You’re probably right. Is there any other way out of here?”
“Not that I know of, no.”
“What kind of weapons do you have with you?”
“Just our swords and whatever arrows we have left. And the swords you two brought.”
Theophilus and I exchanged glances. I looked back at the civilians huddled in the church. A woman in plain clothes—the way she was dressed I suspect she was a washerwoman—stepped forward and called, “You must convince the soldiers, Brother, that we have to get out of here! We have to go down!”
“Mind yourself, woman!” shouted one of the troops. “I told you before, there’s no cellar here.”
I took Panteugenos aside, as I didn’t want to be overheard either by his colleagues or the civilians. “Look, Lieutenant,” I said softly, “Theophilus and I have just come from the Praetorium. That’s the source of the undead ghouls that have begun rampaging through the city. You’re right, we can’t stay here for long. The ghouls will overwhelm us eventually and we have to get those people out of here.”
Panteugenos stared at me and immediately assumed a quizzical look. “You know what these monsters are? You’ve seen them before?”
“Regrettably, yes. It takes too long to explain and I doubt I’m at liberty anyway. Suffice it to say they are what you must suspect—walking dead, impervious to pain and relentless in their approach. One thing you probably don’t know yet is that they multiply. Everyone who’s bitten by a ghoul dies, then reanimates and becomes one of them. That’s the real danger here. Right now I’d estimate there are about five hundred of them fanning out through the city. But by dawn there may be hundreds, even thousands more depending on how many others they’ve managed to infect.”
Panteugenos looked stunned. “Dear God!” he gasped.
“Theophilus and I were on our way to the Great Palace when we got diverted here. I suggest we continue on to the palace. Soon the only safe place in Constantinople will be any place surrounded by large numbers of heavy troops. That’s definitely going to be where the Emperor is too.” My voice took on a slightly chilly shade as I added, “And I for one intend to have a word with the Emperor.”
“That’s a good idea, but the palace is many leagues away. If the streets are awash in ghouls, or soon will be, how do we get there? There are mostly women and children here.”
“Well, we’d better think of something.” I glanced around. “There’s got to be another exit somewhere.”
“I don’t think there is. But I admit we haven’t checked. We’d only been here a few minutes before you arrived.”
I stepped away from the young archer and began examining the church. Theophilus did too. It didn’t take long, for there wasn’t much to see. The church was little more than a large circular room with an altar. There wasn’t even a chamber behind it for the preparation of the sacraments; obviously this was a very poor parish. The only illumination came from candles on wooden stands set on the altar. One side wall had several windows, perhaps eight feet up from the floor, all sheathed in heavy shutters that were bolted closed. As that seemed the only viable option other than the front door, mine and Theophilus’s attention naturally focused upon it.
“Do you think we could get the civilians out through one of those windows?” I asked him. “They’re elevated, so they’re above ground level. Maybe string a rope out leading to the ground, and have the archers fire downwards to take out any ghouls on the ground level long enough to get away?”
“I don’t think they have enough arrows,” Theophilus replied, shaking his head. “An escape that way would be too cumbersome.”
“Well, it’s either that or the front door. Maybe between you, me and the soldiers we can keep the ghouls away from the door long enough to get the people out one by one.”
“Yes, but then where do we go? We’d be back out there in the square with ghouls advancing on us from all directions.”
We were standing not far from the outspoken washerwoman as we had this conversation. Our voices were low, but she must have heard us, for she spoke up again. “You’re looking for a way out?” she said, stepping toward us. “We could try the cistern.”
“I beg your pardon?”
Inexplicably, the woman lifted her stained skirt and stamped on the stone floor of the church. It was loud enough to command the attention of everyone in the room. Her footfall, however, did not sound like the typical flat tone of a shoe against solid stone. Indeed there was a curious echo that seemed to reverberate throughout the entire floor of the church.
“There’s a cistern under the street. It’s what I tried to tell him earlier, but he wouldn’t listen.” She pointed a finger at the guard who had snapped at her.
“A cistern?” said Theophilus.
“Huge one. It was built in the time of Theodosius. The whole neighborhood sits on top of it. This church too. I know, I’ve lived here all my life. I was baptized in this very room.”
One of the male civilians stood up. He wore a green frock. “Don’t listen to her!” he shouted. “Pulcheria is a known whore! She’s the Devil trying to tempt you!”
“Even if I am a whore it doesn’t mean I don’t know my own neighborhood!” the woman shot back.
A cistern! This was an intriguing notion. I had heard that Constantinople was riddled with underground reservoirs, some of which had been forgotten and disused for centuries. “A cistern would have to lead to an aqueduct, wouldn’t it?” I asked Theophilus.
It was the washerwoman—Pulcheria—who answered. “Of course!” she said. “The cisterns all connect to each other. The whole city is accessible underground. Smugglers dug channels to connect them all centuries ago. Plenty of legitimate merchants use them too. It’s much better than traveling on the streets.”
I then saw one of the soldiers sidle up to Panteugenos, bow his head and whisper to him. It sounded almost like, “She’s right, Sir,” but he said it in a very surreptitious way. Given that our very surviva
l could depend on this washerwoman’s information I immediately spoke up. “What’s that?” I said loudly.
The young archer looked at me, momentarily startled. He glanced at his commander, and said timidly, “Um, she may be right.”
“How do you know?” Panteugenos asked him.
“I’d rather not say,” replied the soldier, obviously bashful to admit that he’d been to that disreputable part of the city before.
It was the man in the green frock who answered. “Wenches like this fallen woman,” he raged, pointing at her, “smuggle whores from the marketplaces to the walls using the underground cisterns! They mean to profit from the lust and vice of the soldiers defending our great city!” He pronounced this sentence as if we were all supposed to find it terribly shocking, but no one did. Perhaps it was the renewed cataract of ghoulish wailing and pounding of undead fists against the church door that rendered his judgment somewhat less than momentous.
“If you know this,” I said, stepping closer to the woman, “then you know how and where to get boats that we can use to get these people out of here?”
“I can find boats, yes.”
“Can you direct us from here to the Great Palace underground, using the cisterns and channels?”
She nodded. “I believe so.”
“It is not enough to believe!” said Theophilus sharply.
Pulcheria corrected herself. “Yes. I can get us there.”
“How are we going to break through the floor?” Theophilus asked. “And if we do succeed in that, how do we get these people into the cistern safely?”
I looked around. In the dimness my eyes seized upon the great bronze bell that was fastened in a small wooden frame just under the apex of the dome. A long thick rope, half as thick as a man’s thigh, trailed down from it toward the floor. A sudden inspiration seized me.
“You two!” I said, pointing to two of the soldiers. “Go up there and prepare to cut the ropes fastening the church bell. Don’t cut them too short—we’ll need the ropes.” I motioned toward the civilians with my arms. “Stand back! Everybody, stand back, away from the center of the floor.”