by Sean Munger
We began to hear scrabbling and ghoul moaning coming from the shuttered windows as well as the blockaded door.
“We had best make haste!” Theophilus shouted. “They’re coming!”
“Stand clear!” shouted one of the soldiers at the apex of the dome. “It’s coming down now!”
The other soldier swung his sword. It sliced through the thick taut rope with one swoop. The bell shot straight down, now a huge bronze projectile. The impact of the bell with the stone floor of the church made a BONGGGGGGGGG! so loud that it must have been audible all over Constantinople. The bell crashed through the stones of the floor as if they were paper. A moment later we all heard a tremendous splash.
The burst of air from the falling bell blew out the candles on the altar, as well as the torches that some of the archers carried to light their arrows. Plunged into inky darkness, the civilians, especially the children, emitted a great anguished wail. When it died down, we could again hear the moaning of the ghouls and then a loud splintering crack. Suddenly the ghouls were much louder.
“They’ve broken through the door!” cried Panteugenos.
“I can’t see anything!” shouted one of the other soldiers.
The extinguishment of the candles was a disaster greater than any that had befallen us before. The ghouls could smell us; we who were still living beings depended upon our sight. If we can’t see, I thought, how are we going to get out of here? There’s no time to find a torch or make a fire—those things will be on us in seconds!
My heart was pounding in my chest. I had only seconds to make a decision. “Everybody who’s not armed, drop to the floor!” I shouted. “Stay down as low as you can! Soldiers, if you hear a ghoul or run into anything higher than two feet off the floor, slash at it!”
“I don’t know where my men are!” said Panteugenos, off to my right.
“Soldiers, call out your names. Keep shouting your names so we all know where you are. Ghouls can’t talk—anything speaking Greek is a living man.” I directed my voice toward the ceiling. “You two soldiers, up there! Get the rope and follow the stairs down! We’ll start lowering these people down into the cistern. Theophilus, help the women and children crawl along the floor toward the hole.”
At once the church was a din of shouting and battle. “Panteugenos!” “Antiochos!” “Nicetas!” “Zonaras!” I heard the sound of swords cleaving flesh. The ghouls did not wail when they went down; indeed, they grew silent. Their moaning all seemed to be directed off to my left, toward the door. I could barely see a patch of bluish night beyond the splintered remnants of the door, broken by dark rounded heads of more ghouls spilling in through the opening.
“Over here!” cried Panteugenos. “They’re in this direction!”
“Where?” shouted someone else.
“Off, left there! To your left!”
“No, no, it’s me, Antiochos!” protested one of the soldiers. “Antiochos, Antiochos—” I heard a sword stabbing into something fleshy. “Aaaaaauuuughhh!”
Panteugenos: “Antiochos! Antiochos! Are you all right?” A ghoul moaned to my right, between me and Panteugenos’s voice. “I think I killed Antiochos!”
“There!” I cried. “A ghoul just came past us! Your left, my right!”
I slashed blindly in the dark, hoping to God that I wasn’t stabbing one of our own men. A moment later I heard a thud as a ghoul went down. Another soldier shouted, “Oww, he’s got me! He’s got my leg, he’s got my leg!”
“Zonaras, where are you? Where are you?”
“I’m off to your—auuuughhhh!”
“Rope!” shouted a soldier behind me. I thought it was Nicetas. “We’ve got the rope!”
“Down here!” said Theophilus. “I’m standing next to a post. Knot one end of it around the pillar—can you find it?”
I have no idea how long the battle lasted. Probably it was only a few minutes, but it seemed like an eternity. Because of the blackness the archers’ craft was useless, which resulted in us being more outnumbered effectively than we were in reality. One piece of luck with which the Lord favored us was that the ghouls did not creep silently. We could tell where they were from the moaning and the shuffling of their feet. At one point I felt the sharp shock of a cold hand grabbing me in the dark. As I’d heard none of our comrades from that direction, I whirled and slashed with my sword. I connected with something and cold blood splashed my face, but the clawing around my arm continued. Evidently a ghoul had grabbed me and I’d severed its arm, but the disembodied hand didn’t let go. Ultimately I was able to pry it loose, dash it to the floor and stomp on it. My heart was still hammering. It had been a close shave.
There was much activity off to my right, voices and the sound of shoes on stone and shouted orders, some from Theophilus, some from the archers. Somehow they managed to secure the rope and one of the brave archers, without a clue as to the depth of the hole or the perils contained in it, was the first to descend. I heard him cry out as his body struck the bell that was evidently lodged against the floor of the cistern. I also heard the splash and slosh of water.
“How deep is it?” said Theophilus.
“A few feet,” called the archer. His voice echoed in the chamber beneath the church floor. “Waist high on a man.”
“Stay there at the end of the rope!” Theophilus commanded. “We’ll start sending the children down.”
“We’ve got to get some light,” I called out. “A torch, anything.”
“Ghouls to your left!” shouted Panteugenos.
And thus the battle continued. The scrambling of the civilians down the hole seemed to take forever. Panteugenos and his two subordinates, Nicetas and Zonaras, held the line against the ghouls somewhere in front of me, stabbing and slashing indiscriminately. “They’re gaining!” Panteugenos shouted at me. “We can’t hold much longer!”
“Theophilus, how many more do you have to lower down?”
“I don’t know. Three, four.”
“Well, hurry!”
After several terrible minutes, I heard Pulcheria’s voice from the pit. “A light! Look, over there! It’s a torch! We’re saved!”
We’re pretty damned far from saved, I thought, lunging at a moaning coming from my left.
In a few moments I began to see a very dim flickering—firelight—coming from the hole. It was so black inside the church that every bit of illumination helped. The moaning of the ghouls had become much louder in the past few minutes. I glanced down at the hole, and was astonished to see my feet merely inches from its edge. When I looked back, I saw the dim outlines of Panteugenos, Nicetas and Zonaras, barely three feet away from a huge throng of ghouls shuffling toward them. The only reason they had not yet been overcome is because the pile of corpses of the ghouls we’d already dispatched—as well as poor Antiochos, who had been torn limb from limb—was an obstacle slowing the progress of the ghouls that sought to get at us by clambering over their inert comrades.
“We can’t hold any longer!” I cried. “Everybody who’s still left alive, jump into the hole and hope for the best!”
As these words died on my lips, I felt myself pitching backwards. With a sickening, dizzying lurch I fell into the hole, letting go of my sword, and I had only an instant to say a silent prayer to God that He might preserve me. But at this point I thought my luck had just about run out.
Chapter Ten
The Fiery Barricade
I awakened sometime later. My head was splitting and my back was in excruciating agony. My clothes were wet and stank like rank pond water. The light was dim and I heard sloshing all around me. I was lying somewhere but it didn’t feel very stable; I kept pitching sickeningly from side to side. By flickering torch light I could see the face of Theophilus bending over me. As I tried to sit up, I realized we were in a small boat. He was seated on a plank and I was lying at its bottom.
“Lie still,” he said. “You got quite a knock on the head.”
I looked around. The boat was perhaps
ten feet long and quite crowded. Gregory Panteugenos, who held the torch, sat on the plank next to Theophilus. Behind him sat many of the children from the church. Walking behind the boat—sloshing through the waist-deep water—were several of the archers and the adult civilians, including Pulcheria. They were hanging on to the rope that the soldiers had cut from the church bell; the rope now trailed behind the boat as a sort of guide line. Our boat was being rowed by a perfectly dreadful-looking man. He had stringy gray hair, one eye and a threadbare, moth-eaten tunic. He smiled at me and I saw he had about three teeth in his head.
“This is Basil,” said Theophilus. “It was he who came upon us in this boat when we broke through the floor. We probably owe him our lives.”
“I hope you’ll remember that when you face the Almighty,” said the almost toothless man. “I could use a good word.”
“You’re still a pimp,” said Panteugenos.
“If I hadn’t been rowing through the cistern tonight plying my trade and happened upon you,” Basil replied, “most of you would be dead now.”
I sat up and rubbed my head. There was a lump on the back of it. “How long was I out?” I asked Theophilus.
“An hour, give or take.”
“Did the ghouls follow you down through the hole?”
“Aye, some did. We managed to hold them back long enough to make our escape.”
“So I take it they’re impervious to water.”
“Sadly, yes. We don’t seem to be able to catch a break.”
I looked around at the giant cavern. Under less dire circumstances I might have marveled at it. It was a colossal passageway, perhaps fifty feet wide and many hundreds of feet long. The roof was supported by a forest of stone columns with elegant finials. Many of the pillars were chipped and crumbling, suggesting this part of the cistern had been out of repair for quite a long time. The space was so huge that the dim light of the torch could barely penetrate it and the shadows of the columns danced and leapt like giant dark dragons.
“I’m telling you, Basil,” Pulcheria called from behind the boat, “we’re going the wrong way. We’re headed toward the Aspar Cistern, not the Great Palace.”
“Damn you, woman!” shouted the pimp. “I’ve been working in these cisterns since before you were born. Right now the Mesē is directly above our heads.” The one-eyed old man glanced at me. “I know this city better underground than I do above.”
“We have to get to the palace,” I pleaded. “It’s absolutely imperative that we reach the Emperor as soon as possible.”
“Just pipe down there, young monk. There’s still a long way to go.” He kept rowing. “Know the Emperor personally, do you?”
“As a matter of fact I do.”
“Well, you can tell him for me that he’s a gutless fool. First he lets the Saracens loose upon us, and now these monsters.”
“Enough!” said Theophilus sharply.
We continued rowing for quite some time. This particular cistern was immense, far larger than I would have expected. Eventually, however, we neared its end. I saw a crumbling brick wall moving slowly toward us. The water was no longer still. There was a noticeable current drawing the boat. Basil slowed down the rowing by pulling his oars out of the water, but the boat continued to move forward. I noticed a dark shape—the entrance to a much smaller and narrower tunnel bored into the rock—looming ahead.
The almost toothless pimp looked over his shoulder and called to the party following the boat. “We’re approaching the tunnel. The water will be moving fast. Make sure everyone’s hanging on to a rope.”
“You’re sure you know where we are?” said Panteugenos.
Basil motioned to the roof. “We’re right under the eastern side of the Forum of Constantine. This tunnel leads underneath the plaza. It connects to the catacombs of the Church of St. Euphemia.”
“Right across the street from the Great Palace!” said Theophilus breathlessly.
“This passage can be quite dangerous. When we smuggle booze or women through the cisterns, we usually avoid this area because the water moves so fast.”
“Well, we don’t have a choice,” I told him. “Let’s go.”
Basil began rowing again. The current caught our boat and began to draw it like a giant magnet. Basil warned the men and women walking behind the boat that the bottom of the tunnel was treacherous and irregular. As soon as we entered it, they struggled to keep their footing and their sharp tugs on the guide rope yanked and buffeted the boat several times. I began to see bits of garbage flowing by in the current: bones of animals, frayed bits of fabric and parchment, and the bodies of dead rats. I realized there was no bright dividing line between Constantinople’s cisterns—which supplied the drinking water for its citizens—and its sewers.
“I wonder what’s happening up there,” said Theophilus, a few minutes after we entered the tunnel. His voice echoed eerily against the stone walls.
“I’m sure the ghouls are fanning out through the whole city,” I replied.
“I wish Camytzes had survived.”
“So do I.” I shuddered at the thought of how gruesome his death must have been.
Not long after I began to smell something other than the algae-sodden stink of the water. It was an acrid aroma, like oily smoke. It seemed to be coming from the tunnel ahead of us.
“Do you smell that?” I said. “Something’s burning.”
Panteugenos seemed to stiffen at the aroma. “Greek fire makes that smell when it burns. It’s very distinctive.”
“What is Greek fire?”
“It’s a weapon. Liquid flame. They squirt it through great siphons and set it alight. It sticks to everything like glue and burns forever. It was used to repel the Saracens in their last siege of the city a century ago. The recipe for it is a state secret.”
“There’s something ahead!” shouted Basil.
I strained to see. When I squinted, I could barely make out a faint orange glow far ahead of us.
“Something is on fire up there!” I said.
Panteugenos rose to his feet, causing the boat to rock. “It is Greek fire, I think.”
“How could it be burning down here?”
“It’s made of oil, so it floats on water. It’s impossible to extinguish. When we throw it on an enemy, their first impulse is to douse water on it, but that only spreads the droplets farther and makes the fire worse. Fiendish stuff.”
Suddenly a hot breeze began to blow down the tunnel. In addition to the acrid stench of the Greek fire, we were overwhelmed by another and even more awful aroma—the reek of burning human flesh.
All the soldiers in our party—together with myself and Theophilus—tensed as if we were one muscle. No one needed to say it aloud—Ghouls ahead.
“Swords!” Panteugenos cried. “Everyone with a sword, come up ahead of the boat! Keep the women and children back!” He turned to Basil. “Stop rowing, we need to slow down.”
“I’m not rowing,” the pimp replied. “The current’s drawing us.”
“Well, find a way to slow us down!”
The archers, clanking awkwardly in their chain mail, sloshed around the sides of the narrow tunnel to overtake the boat. Theophilus handed me the sword that I’d been using in the church; evidently someone had picked it up. “Move to the front of the boat,” Theophilus said. “At least this time we have the advantage of knowing what direction they’re coming from.”
As the boat continued to drift toward the fiery blockade at the end of the tunnel, Basil extended one of his oars, which scraped the rough stones of the tunnel wall. “Here, use the other oar!” he called to Theophilus. “Try to brace us against the wall.” Between the two of them they managed to wedge the oars against two angular crevasses and the boat slowly came to a halt. But holding us there required great effort. Both Basil and Theophilus were straining with all their strength, pushing the oars against the bricks, fighting the current. “You there!” I called to two of the older boys in the boat. “Help them
. Try to keep us steady.”
Zonaras, one of the archers, shouted, “Here they come!”
Standing in the prow of the boat, sword at the ready, I looked ahead at the glowing disc that marked the end of the tunnel. Against the dancing flames I saw a great mass of dark shambling figures stumbling through the water. A moment later over the rush of the current I could hear their insensate moaning.
Here we go again, I thought, and hastily crossed myself.
There were at least thirty ghouls in the throng approaching us from the far end of the tunnel. The archers, firing from their static positions ahead of the boat, managed to hit a few of them, but an arrow was an inefficient way to bring down a ghoul; unless you hit it directly in the head it will simply keep coming. Swords were the only viable weapon. Panteugenos and I leapt off the prow of the boat into the water and moved toward our attackers. With the current pushing us so powerfully, it was all we could do to keep our footing. The bottom of the tunnel was covered with what felt to me like loose piles of bricks and stone. Trying to maneuver and fight in such conditions was very difficult.
“We have the advantage!” Panteugenos called, his sword flashing in the light of the Greek fire burning in the distance. “The current is pushing the ghouls backwards.”
He and a few of the archers formed the vanguard. Panteugenos’s sword cleaved the skull of one of the ghouls, who collapsed into the water. I followed the rest of the archers in a surge toward the demons. Once again the dreadful dance repeated itself—swinging swords, the claw and clutch of dead-flesh hands, the terrible kill-or-be-killed urgency that at once sharpened my brain and deadened my senses.
A ghoul lunged at Zonaras. It had once been a man, but its head and arm were on fire. It was close enough to me that I could see its charred jawbone and crooked teeth, burned clean of flesh. Zonaras decapitated it but the body kept coming. He lopped off its arm and it fell into the drink, immediately shedding its coating of Greek fire, which now danced atop the roiling water, still aflame.