Zombies of Byzantium

by Sean Munger

  “So,” said a voice, in Arabic-accented Greek, “the treacherous lying swinish butcher who calls himself the Emperor sends two men of God, one young and one old, to tempt me with his latest trick. What makes him think this will be more successful than any of his other swindles?”

  I could not see Maslama. The moment we reached the shore another cadre of Saracen troops surrounded us. Theophilus and I had been blindfolded and our hands bound behind us. The Saracens had led us roughly along a jumbled and chaotic path that led deep into their camp. I presumed they blindfolded us so we could gain no intelligence on their defenses.

  My nose and my ears told me much, however. The smell of burning flesh was intense, and at one point we walked so close to a pit of burning corpses that I could feel the heat against my face and hear the crackling of the flames. They must be burning the ghouls they’ve killed. I heard the squeak of wooden cart wheels and the scraping of metal—definitely sword blades—on sharpening stones. They’re keeping their weapons sharp and at the ready. Distantly I could hear the clang of swords and the shout of Arabic voices. There are still battles with the ghouls going on somewhere in their camp. In several places I also heard the low hum of somber voices, which I imagined to be Saracens saying rites over their own dead. I had seen nothing but I’d be able to report to the Emperor that his surmises about the Saracens’ troubles with the ghouls seemed to be true.

  So now we were in a tent of some kind. I could sense there were several men around, and they seemed to defer to the voice that had spoken to me. I also smelled incense and some sort of food, a spicy aroma that tempted me since I’d had little to eat all day.

  “If you are Lord Maslama,” I finally spoke up, “I have a message for you from the Emperor. It’s in the front of my cassock, rolled up in a parchment.”

  “And if I do not wish to read it?” replied the Saracen commander. “My eyes have been seared one too many times with your Emperor’s insulting lies. They cannot take much more.”

  “The Emperor desperately needs your help,” said Theophilus. “We have a common enemy now. Neither of us can defeat it alone. Please, at least read the Emperor’s proposal.”

  “And what makes you think we cannot defeat the alksala on our own?” I did not know this word he used, but I guessed it must have been the Arabic word for ghouls or demons. “We have swords. We have stout warriors. The alksala will prove but to be a temporary annoyance. Once they’re vanquished, we will go on to take the city.”

  Theophilus again surprised me with his penchant for bold and blunt speaking. “I think not,” he retorted. “Last night the Emperor directed all of his soldiers to stand down and remain battened up in their defensive towers. No Byzantine sword or arrow has drawn Saracen blood for an entire night and day. If the ghouls were so minor a problem, you would have seized the chance to attack, and you could have taken the city already.”

  Maslama gave as good as he got. “Perhaps I am staying my hand because I suspect that your withdrawal was merely a trick, and the silence was intended to lure me into a Byzantine trap! I know your Emperor well. He has no honor. He hung the bodies of my emissaries of peace over the walls on ropes, and made alksala of them. One of them was the younger brother of my wife. He was like a son to me. When he became one of the alksala, I had to crush his head with the butt of my sword. A man who would do such a thing to an enemy—an honorable enemy—will stoop to any form of treachery. It was your Emperor who conceived of unleashing this evil as a means to destroy us. Like the djinn that, once released from its bottle, cannot be placed back inside, let your Emperor live with the consequences of his fiendish invention. I will offer him no assistance.”

  I thought of something to say but held my tongue. No—if I say that, they will execute me for sure. But in the next few moments of silence I realized our diplomatic mission was over unless I spoke up.

  “It was not the Emperor’s idea to do this terrible thing,” I finally said. “It was mine.”

  The next few moments were silent, and then Maslama said something in Arabic to one of his adjutants. There was a brief conversation. He gave an order. I sensed someone coming around behind me, and a moment later the blindfold was snatched off my face. The warrior took off Theophilus’s blindfold too, and we beheld our captors.

  The tent was posh. It was made of brocaded fabric and decorated with banners spangled with gilded Arabic writing, probably quotes from the Quran. Maslama sat on a pile of rugs. He was about forty with dark flinty eyes, a goatee and a very straight prominent nose. He was eating something—dates, by the look of them—from an ornate silver dish. There was something inviting about his eyes. He did not seem like a monster or even much like an infidel. I recalled what Michael had said about the Saracens as the siege began, that they were people just like us, with art and culture and love of their God equal to ours. Perhaps he was right.

  “It was your idea?” said the Saracen commander skeptically. “You are a warrior merely disguised as a monk, then?”

  “No, Sir. I really am a monk. I paint icons. My friend Theophilus and I were on our way to Constantinople from Mt. Olympus when we happened upon the ghouls just by chance. One thing led to another, and the Emperor found out about it. He ordered us to think of a way we could use the ghouls as a weapon against you. The plan to turn your peace emissaries into ghouls and hang them over the walls was my idea. It was an evil one. I should have refused to help the Emperor. Don’t blame him. He was just doing his duty to defend Byzantium. In the sight of God, the responsibility for all of this havoc is mine. If offering my life to you as payment for what your army has suffered means you’ll be more disposed to read the Emperor’s proposal, I’ll do it without hesitation. I’m not sure how I could live with myself after all this is over anyway.”

  Maslama chewed another date. He studied me up and down. His reply wasn’t what I expected. “You paint icons?”

  “Yes, Sir, I do.”

  “Are you not aware that making graven images of Allah is idolatry, a mortal sin forbidden by your own scripture?”

  “Sir, there are many Byzantines who hold that view. The Emperor, in fact, is one of them. If you were to take Constantinople, you’d find that he had begun in earnest the project of ridding the Empire of graven images. That project was interrupted when you attacked.”

  Maslama chomped two more dates and then set the silver dish on the low table in front of him. He said something to one of his aides, a tall burly man with eyes that stared in slightly different directions. The two men held a brief conversation in Arabic. Then at last Maslama rose from his sitting position and approached me. He gave an order to the guard behind me, who began to untie my hands.

  “Give me your Emperor’s message,” said Maslama. “If you’re telling the truth, I will know it from the Emperor’s words. If the vitriol of his lies burns away my eyes, you will die.”

  I reached into my cassock, took out the parchment and handed it to Maslama. His flinty eyes burned into mine. I tried to match the sincerity of his gaze, as if to tell him with my eyes, Please, know that this is the truth. He seemed a wise man, but our situation was so extreme that it was easy for the judgment of men to be clouded by emotion. I thought of the young man he’d spoken of, his wife’s younger brother. Perhaps he had been the sad-eyed fellow who I’d watched be transformed into a ghoul. I shuddered to think of it.

  Maslama unrolled the parchment and read it. He turned away from me, still reading. When he was done, he passed the note to the burly adjutant. He read it too and they conversed. Only then did Maslama turn back to me.

  “You are prepared to disclose,” he said, “the strength, armaments and exact positions of all of your troops defending the walls of Constantinople?”

  Theophilus answered, “Yes, we are.”

  “We must not merely be told of this intelligence. One of my men must see it with his own eyes. You must admit one of my commanders into your redoubts and demonstrate to him that there is no deception.”

  “I be
lieve the Emperor would be fully prepared to do that,” I replied.

  “Very well. The Emperor will have his reply.”

  Theophilus and I both nearly crumpled from relief.

  Maslama patted my shoulder. “It is a brave man who ventures into the lion’s den to offer peace to an enemy who has been grievously offended,” he told me. “We’re of different faiths, young Byzantine monk, but I admire courage, even among infidels. Perhaps you will return to your Emperor and tell him that we Saracens are not so barbarous as he may think.”

  “I believe that to be true, Sir.”

  A bare hint of a smile was visible at the corners of Maslama’s mouth. I said a silent prayer. Thank you, God, for letting wisdom carry the day. We were still very far from victory over the ghouls, but there was now at least a glimmer of its possibility, shining up at us like a gemstone on the bottom of a river of blood.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The War Room

  The preparations for the execution of the Emperor’s plan took three days, and they were three of the most hellish days in the long violent history of Constantinople.

  Our troops began fanning out into the streets the morning after Theophilus and I returned to Constantinople through the Bucoleon Gate with Maslama’s reply. All night there had been frenzied activity along the walls. The Saracens had made a large cordoned camp just off the Golden Gate in the southwest corner of the city, ringed by siege towers kept constantly illuminated with torches. The idea was that our troops would begin the cleanup operation near the Blachernae Quarter, herding the civilians down one end of the large peninsula on which Constantinople was built, then back again along the southern edge and eventually to the Golden Gate. Since we had no idea how many ghouls there were—estimates ranged anywhere from ten to fifty thousand—the number of our men who would lose their lives in this dangerous process could not be predicted. But it would certainly be frightful. Perhaps only a handful of civilians and troops might survive the attrition and eventually make it to the Saracens’ camp, in which case the whole operation would be something of a Pyrrhic victory. Nevertheless, destroying the ghouls was necessary regardless of how many Constantinopolitans died in the process. We were all committed now, Maslama’s forces just the same as ours.

  I stayed in the Great Palace for those three days, but between the prickly burns on my back and my apprehension about the operation I slept little. I spent much time in the conference room where the Emperor, Artabasdos and Eutropius pored over dispatches and tracked the progress of the battle on the model of the city. The Emperor had literally camped out in this room, retiring every few hours for a catnap on the tented bed his servants had installed in the corner. He seemed curiously cheerful and animated, almost as if he was having fun. Perhaps he’d always fancied himself as a master strategist directing a great battle such as this. The fact that he was playing with the lives of tens of thousands of real people on his little model didn’t seem to faze him.

  On Thursday morning the dispatches coming in began to take an alarming tone. Artabasdos awakened the Emperor with one, said to be from a cavalry captain near the Church of Christ Pantepoptes. The Emperor read it aloud. “Several hundred civilians trapped in the church. Force of two thousand men now surrounded by ghouls on three sides. We cannot reach the civilians without suffering casualties that would mean the decimation of our force. Please advise.” The Emperor, eating biscuits from a gilded plate, calmly set the parchment down on the table next to him. “Well?”

  “We can’t afford to lose two thousand troops,” said Artabasdos.

  “But we can’t abandon those civilians either,” I pleaded.

  The Emperor tore off a piece of bread and dipped it in olive oil. “Send a message to Maslama,” he said calmly. “See if he can spare a phalanx or two from the counterweight to relieve our men and get those civilians to safety.” He looked at me, smiled and winked. “It’s rather handy having a backup army at our disposal, isn’t it?”

  I napped for two hours in the midafternoon. When I awakened and returned to the conference room, the news had come that the troops had reached Christ Pantepoptes Church, but when they opened its doors, they found the entire population within had been transformed into ghouls. The Byzantines, and the Saracens that had come to relieve them, were now engaged in a desperate retreat to the Mesē, surrounding a throng of nearly three thousand terrified civilians.

  In the meantime there was word from the Camytzes. Gabriel, in charge of doling out reinforcements from the wall towers, reported that he was already running low on troops; Michael, in charge of transporting the vital Greek fire to the Hippodrome, said that he’d already had to detonate a few barrels of the precious stuff to stave off advances by waves of ghouls.

  “Well, I don’t know what else to tell them,” sighed the Emperor, staring at the forest of paper flags on the model. Red flags represented our troops, green Maslama’s, and gray large groups of ghouls. For hours the gray flags had been multiplying as more and more of the fiends were reported in all areas of the city. “They’re just going to have to fight to the last man. We dare not shave off more of Maslama’s troops from the counterweight. We’re stretching things thin as it is.”

  “The counterweight isn’t working,” I protested. “Look at all the ghouls down here by the Forum of Bovis. They should be gravitating toward the Blachernae Quarter, but they’re not.”

  The Emperor stroked his chin. “Why isn’t the counterweight having any effect?”

  “I don’t know.”

  We waited. In the early evening the Empress made a brief appearance. “Anna’s things are packed and she’s ready to go,” Maria reported to her husband. “Do you wish to say goodbye to her?”

  The Emperor, crunching pistachio nuts as usual, brushed her off with a casual wave of his hand. “Tell her Daddy loves her and have a good trip,” he said casually. “There’s too much to do here to leave now.”

  “It’s only the last time you may actually see your daughter alive,” gushed Maria.

  Where is he sending Anna? And how is she getting out of the city? I supposed it was now possible for people to come and go by sea, since Maslama’s ships had at least loosened the blockade; but I figured the whereabouts of Leo’s daughter was none of my business, so I kept my mouth shut.

  “Give her my love,” was all the Emperor said.

  Maria glanced at me, an annoyed expression on her face. She grunted, drew her skirts up around her and breezed out of the room.

  I remained as long as I could. I spent long hours sitting in silence, watching the Emperor and his aides move the flags around the map. Occasionally I got up and looked out the window. There wasn’t much to see besides the increasing clouds of smoke drifting over the city. I wondered what poor sap the Emperor would order to serve as the human bait, to await their fiery death in the bunker at the bottom of the Hippodrome. So much horror behind us, but so much still to come. I pray God this is over soon.

  Toward sunset I was standing at the window, looking out onto the streets below the palace. It had been a while since I’d seen anything, but this evening I peered into the street and beheld the hideous sight of two ghouls munching on the severed bottom half of a human being. I grimaced and turned away. That must be going on all over the city, I thought.

  The image gave me a sudden epiphany. “I think I know why the counterweight isn’t working,” I said, leaning over the model table.

  Leo, a green flag in his hand, looked up at me. “Do tell.”

  “The ghouls haven’t run out of food yet. They’re still consuming all the victims they’ve killed since the outbreak. I just saw two ghouls down there in the street dragging body parts behind them. If they’re still eating the people they’ve already killed, they won’t be tempted to find new sources of food until they’ve stripped everybody else to the bone. And with more and more bodies piling up in the streets from this fighting, they don’t have to move very far to find food. As long as they’re still eating, the smell of the c
ounterweight won’t tempt them.”

  For the first time in the entire venture Leo looked vexed. He grimaced, stared at the flag in his hand, and finally put it down on the edge of the model table. “I didn’t even think of that.” He thought for a moment and looked up again. “How long do you think it would take for the ghouls to strip every cadaver in the city of its flesh?”

  “I haven’t a clue, Sire. We don’t know how many casualties there really are. It could be weeks before the counterweight has the effect we want it to.”

  “Weeks? We have days at most. The truce with Maslama is very fragile, and we’d be ill-advised to leave our civilians in his care one second longer than we have to.”

  I was almost tempted to retort angrily to the Emperor, Well, what do you expect me to do about it? It’s not like I’m just making this up! But I tempered my words. “I doubt, Sire, that the ghouls will understand that rationale.”

  The Emperor was silent for a few moments. Then he got up out of his chair and paced toward the windows, chin in hand. Finally he said, “Artabasdos, we’re going to need a corpse detail. Pick some men. Not soldiers—we can’t spare any. Use workers. No, better yet—slaves. Promise them their freedom and full citizenship if they help us. Provide them with a couple of big carts. Give them orders to round up every single corpse they can find and throw it on the carts. We haven’t the time to burn or bury them, so we’ll just have to dump them in the Bosporus. And all the corpses must be beheaded or else we’ll have even more problems to deal with. Impress upon them that we need the streets as empty as possible of corpses. It’s crucial to our plan.”