by Sean Munger
“We’re fine,” the Emperor shouted up through the chimney.
“It’s cramped, but we’re making do,” I said.
“We’re finished with the bunker,” Camytzes called down. “We’re now going to lower the master fuse down to you. It’s covered in pitch. Try not to get it on your hands.”
“Aye,” said the Emperor. “We’re ready.”
A few minutes later Camytzes lowered a long snake of rope, with a thick stone block tied to its end, into the bunker. The rope was smeared with a sticky black goo. The smell of pitch was added to the already rich mixture of burning lamp oil, pigeon shit, the contents of our chamber pots and the Emperor’s farts. Leo secured the fuse on the opposite corner of the bunker from where our lamp hung. “It won’t do to have this go up accidentally,” he said.
“Do you have the fuse?” Camytzes shouted.
“We’ve got it!” I said.
There was a brief pause. Then Camytzes said, “Well, that’s it, then.”
“Pull your men out of the Hippodrome, Captain,” the Emperor ordered. “And start withdrawing all the soldiers and workmen from Constantinople. When your father assures Artabasdos that everyone is safe and all the gates of the city are securely locked, the kouropalates will give the word to Maslama to begin the retreat from the walls.”
“Aye, Sire.”
“Good luck!” I cried.
“Same to you,” said Camytzes. “God be with you both.”
“God be with us all,” said the Emperor.
We did not hear Camytzes’s voice again.
“Well,” the Emperor sighed, “I guess that’s that.”
“It’s going to be a long wait.”
“Indeed it is.”
And so it was. I was surprised that I managed to sleep a little. The Emperor did too; I heard him snoring loudly next to me. In the morning we were both awakened by a pigeon flapping its way down the chimney. A tiny spot of dawn filtered down from the long shaft and pooled on the sandy floor of the bunker next to my foot. The pigeon descended, perching on the top of the cage. There was a parchment clipped to one of its feet. Leo got up on his knees on the chair and took the parchment.
“Well!” he exclaimed after reading it. “Not such bad news.” He handed the paper to me.
All troops withdrawn from the city. Golden Gate and all other exterior wall gates firmly bolted. I have exchanged messages with Maslama and the Saracen army has begun its march. Hippodrome gates and doors left wide open. Ghouls should start converging on your position sometime in the next few hours. Please advise us periodically of your condition.
Artabasdos
The Emperor sent a reply, reporting that we were well. It was at least comforting to have some contact with the outside world. Hearing nothing from inside the bunker was quite eerie and made me feel as if we two were the only people left on earth.
The day wore on. After a while the Emperor engaged me in a debate on theology. “What’s your view on the divinity of Christ?” he said. “Do you think that the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are coequal or hierarchical?”
This debate consumed several hours, during which the Emperor showed glimpses of his rigid theology against icons. I didn’t argue with him—if we did get out of here, I had no desire to be condemned as a heretic—but it was very clear that Leo was inalterably opposed to graven images of any kind. Evidently he had gotten this idea, strangely enough, from the Saracens. “Their views on graven images are exactly the ones we should adopt,” he said firmly. “Unfortunately the association of these views with Mohammedanism is going to make it a hard sell to the people of Byzantium. Nonetheless, if we do survive and peace with the Caliph is secured, abolition of icons will become my first priority.”
Toward sunset another pigeon fluttered down the chimney. This time it was I who caught it and took the parchment from its leg. The note was in a different hand than the last one.
Bulk of Byzantine and Saracen armies now two miles from Constantinople walls and continuing to retreat. We have conducted a preliminary count—18,900 civilians currently under the protection of Saracen forces. We retain force of 9,000 infantry, 2,000 cavalry, approximately 1,500 naval personnel. Saracen army reliably counted at 70,000+. Their casualties from the ghouls fewer than ours. No ghouls have been seen outside of city walls.
G. Camytzes
“Only nineteen thousand civilians,” said the Emperor after reading the note.
“So few.”
“If we’d delayed any longer, there would have been even fewer. Those nineteen thousand will be the seed of Constantinople’s renaissance. They’re the very future of our empire.”
At long last I gave voice to a question that had been floating around in my mind. “Sire, can I ask you something about the civilians?” I said.
“Sure,” he shrugged, reaching for his bag of pistachios.
“You just said they’re vital to our future. We’ve risked all to protect them. Clearly that’s the right course, but just how is it that you can trust Maslama with them? I mean, it seems to me that Artabasdos was right. If we deliver all the people of Constantinople into the hands of the Saracens, what’s stopping Maslama from taking them hostage or even slaughtering them?”
The Emperor crunched a nut between his molars. “That’s a very good question,” he replied. “And in fact it was the very key to this entire plan. The answer has to do with my daughter.”
“Anna?”
“Yes.”
“I thought you sent her out of the city to safety.”
He nodded. “I did. I had some guards ferry her in a small boat across the Golden Horn to Galata, where the Saracen fleet had stood down. From there a small cadre of troops escorted her to the Bulgarian frontier. She reached it yesterday morning, just before they put us down here in the bunker.”
I was horrified. “Bulgaria!” I gasped. “They’re our enemies, aren’t they?”
“Indeed they are. Khan Tervel knows nothing of the ghouls, but he figures whoever is left holding Constantinople—us or the Saracens—will be so weakened by the battle for it that they’ll be easy pickings for him.”
“So why send your own daughter into the enemy’s hands?”
Leo bore a hint of a smile on his face as he answered, “Tervel doesn’t know it, but he’s unwittingly become the guarantor of the safety of Constantinople’s civilians. I told Maslama that I sent Anna to the Bulgarians. I also told him that I gave Eutropius a small vial of fast-acting poison earmarked for Maria. If the Saracens harm a hair on the head of a single one of the civilians of Constantinople, Eutropius’s poison goes into my wife’s drink. She’ll be dead in three minutes. If by some miracle you and I make it out of this bunker alive, and I find out that the civilians have been harmed, I vowed to Maslama that I would commit suicide by the same means. So I’ve got Maslama boxed in.”
“I don’t get it,” I said, shaking my head.
“Well, it has to do with the succession. I have Anna, but I have no sons. Under Byzantine law the crown can’t pass to a woman so long as there’s a man around—any man—with a viable claim on the throne. If I die in here and Maria’s still alive, the succession passes to her. She’ll almost certainly marry again and her second husband will become the next Emperor of Byzantium. But if both Maria and I are dead, the succession passes to Anna. If she’s a hostage of Khan Tervel and he finds out that Maria and I are dead, he’ll marry Anna and he becomes the next Emperor. He’ll gain the entire Empire as Anna’s dowry, which means he’ll have conquered Byzantium without unsheathing his sword. But there’s one catch. Tervel’s a pagan. In order for the marriage and his succession to be legitimate in the eyes of the Patriarch and the Pope, Tervel will have to convert to Christianity before he takes his wedding vows. Whichever way it comes out, I’ve guaranteed that the next emperor of Byzantium will be a Christian.”
I began to perceive a glimmer of the Emperor’s strategy but I still didn’t quite understand. “But how will that prevent Maslama
from harming the civilians or using them as hostages to convince the next emperor to surrender Constantinople?”
“Think of it this way. Let’s say the ghouls are destroyed and you and I survive. If Maslama keeps his word that the civilians won’t be harmed, they’ll just be repatriated back into Constantinople and the siege is over. If, on the other hand, Maslama double-crosses us and marches into Constantinople, Eutropius ices Maria with the poison and I commit suicide. Tervel converts to Christianity, marries Anna and becomes the next Emperor. Even if Maslama is in actual possession of Constantinople at that time, Tervel will undoubtedly march down here with the Bulgarian army to conquer it and place himself on the throne. If I don’t get out of here and Maslama double-crosses us, Maria again dies by poison and Tervel converts and marries Anna. If I die and Maslama keeps his word, Maria marries a fellow Christian and we carry on from there. See? I’ve fixed things so it doesn’t matter whether I survive, and the Empire continues on under the rule of a Christian emperor no matter what happens. Maslama knows this. So what are his choices? He can either keep his word on the civilians and let them go when this is all over, in which case he’ll deal with either me or Maria’s second husband, and he can withdraw and live to fight another day. Or he can break his word on the civilians and end up pissing away the entire Saracen army fighting a bloody war with Tervel over the smoking ruins of Constantinople—which is a war he knows he’d probably lose anyway. You met the guy. You know he’s not stupid. Which of those alternatives do you think he’s going to choose?”
I stared at Leo, my mind reeling. “Wow,” I finally said. “That’s really—”
“Brilliant?” The Emperor smiled. “Why, yes it is, if I say so myself.”
“You saved the Empire.”
“I would never have let Byzantium go, Stephen. If I have to swallow poison, order the death of my own wife, or sell my daughter in marriage to a barbarian heathen she doesn’t love in order to save the Empire, I’ll do it in a heartbeat. God has called upon me to save Byzantium. I mean to do it, and I have.”
I’ve underestimated Leo, I think. He’s not the mercenary I thought he was. He’s ruthless for sure, but he does care about something—the integrity of the Empire.
“So why am I here?” I asked him. “You never explained that either.”
“You remember how I said that if I don’t make it out of here, the Empress will marry again and her next husband will become Emperor?”
“Yeah.”
“No offense, but I’d rather not have her next husband be you.”
My stomach sank. Oh, God! He knows! He knows everything! Lord, forgive me! Forgive me this dreadful sin! My mouth opened and closed. Finally I said, “Sire, I—please, if you—I don’t know what you’re thinking, but—”
“Oh, come now, there’s no reason to deny it.” Leo tossed a nutmeat into his mouth. “And don’t start groveling, please. We’re way past the point where that will do any good. Frankly I’m glad somebody is boning Maria. I find the task somewhat disagreeable myself. As a matter of fact, I prefer to have sex with men, but that’s neither here nor there. No—the reason I’d rather not have you marry her is not because you ravished her, but because you’re an iconographer. If you’re out of the picture, at least there’s a chance that Maria might marry someone who can find it in their heart to carry on my campaign against idolatry. It’s a faint hope, I admit, but a valiant one. Alas, as clever as I am in guaranteeing that the next Emperor of Byzantium will be a Christian, I can’t quite ensure that the next emperor will also be an iconoclast. But if we roast in this little box together, Brother Stephen, at least the next emperor won’t be a former icon painter. It’s nothing personal!”
He munched his pistachios casually and mindlessly, sitting across from me in this tiny brick box that would soon be besieged by ghouls. As my mind reeled at Leo’s machinations, I began to realize that, even if my death was soon at hand, God was answering the prayers of the people of Byzantium. This strange, ugly, smelly, little fat man with his fetid breath and green-stained fingers was indeed the unlikely savior of all of Christendom. He had his faults, but at this moment I doubted that we could have done better.
Chapter Fifteen
The Ball of Fire
In the morning we began to hear the ghouls. I awakened in my chair, my back aching and my legs almost numb, and in the inky darkness—our little oil lamp had gone out during the night—I heard a strange sound drifting down the chimney. At first it didn’t sound like the ghouls at all, but rather the wind, and I wondered if it was a storm; then with a start I understood it was a multitude of voices, if they could be called that, warbling and groaning mindlessly in a vast and cacophonous chorus.
I shook the Emperor. “Sire! I think they’re here!”
He snorted. “Hm? Erk? Moog?” I heard him rustling in the dark. He farted again. “What say you, Brother Stephen?”
“The ghouls. I think they’re coming.”
Leo listened. “I think you’re right.” He rummaged about in the dark for the flint, which he used to relight the oil lamp. Then he reached for the parchment and quill. “We’d better send a message to Camytzes and the others. I don’t know if they have any way of telling how many ghouls are in the Hippodrome, but maybe somebody can advise us when they think we should light the fuse.”
As the Emperor scratched his message on one of the parchments, I began to hear another sound—a kind of scraping noise, very distant and muffled. I realized it was the ghouls scrabbling with their hands against the outside of the bunker. The walls were so thick that the sound was barely audible. It was eerie imagining them out there, clawing and swaying in mindless obedience to their desires for our brains, smelling us through two feet of solid masonry.
Leo showed me his note before he attached it to the leg of one of our pigeons.
We cannot hear much and can obviously see nothing, but from their moans and the scraping of their fingers we believe the ghouls have converged upon the bunker. Please let us know when you advise us to light the fuse.
Basileus Imperator of Rome and Constantinople,
God’s Vice-Regent on Earth, His Majesty Leo III.
The pigeon flapped and fluttered its way up the chimney, perhaps terrified to leave our little haven. No birds returned for many hours. In the meantime, the moaning of the ghouls increased by a factor of ten. Their wailing was eerie and unnerving. It caused the hair on the back of my neck to stand on end. “I wonder how many thousands of them are out there,” I said. It had been at least an hour since my last conversation with the Emperor.
“All of them, if God smiles upon us,” Leo replied.
“I fear that God has done precious little smiling lately, Sire.”
After what seemed like an impossibly long time a pigeon appeared at the top of the chimney and swooped down into the darkness. “Aha!” the Emperor cried. Eagerly he pried the parchment from the band around the pigeon’s foot.
We recommend you wait approximately eight hours to light the fuse. Artabasdos, Eutropius and I agree that we should allow sufficient time for all the ghouls of the city to find their way to the Hippodrome. Though we understand the waiting must be excruciating, we must maximize the chances of incinerating all the demons at once.
Michael Camytzes
“We have no way to tell how much time passes in here,” the Emperor grunted. “And with the city deserted, no one is manning the church bells anymore, so we can’t mark time by listening for them.”
“It’s daylight up above,” I said, peering up the dark chimney. “Maybe we’ll wait until sundown.”
At that moment a second pigeon appeared. “What, hey?” said the Emperor. It floated down to us and again the Emperor was the first to read the message. His expression brightened. With almost a smug look on his face he handed the parchment to me. “It seems Maslama came to precisely the calculation that I predicted he would,” he said.
Civilians now safely encamped nine miles from walls of Constantinople. Masl
ama’s men have been distributing bread and blankets, also fresh milk for the children. Many of our commanders including myself impressed with generosity and honor of the Saracens. In my presence Maslama swore upon the Quran that all civilians will be given safe conduct back into Constantinople after annihilation of ghouls.
Artabasdos
The Emperor wrote on the backside of this message—
Please give Maslama my regards, as well as my personal assurance that once ghouls are destroyed there will be no hostile actions against any Saracens so long as they retreat from Byzantine territory immediately. Brother Stephen and I will light the fuse at sundown. All people of Constantinople are to offer prayer for their own deliverance when they see the great fireball rising from the city. It shall serve as a reminder of the awesome power of God against the enemies of righteousness.
Basileus Imperator of Rome and Constantinople,
God’s Vice-Regent on Earth, His Majesty Leo III.
“Well, I suppose it’s all over,” the Emperor remarked after we had sent the pigeon on its way. “We made peace with the Saracens, the deliverance of our city is guaranteed, and Byzantium is saved. Tervel might even be persuaded to send my daughter back when he realizes he has nothing to gain by holding her. Not bad for being only a few months on the throne, wouldn’t you say?”
“There’s still the matter of the ghouls,” I replied. “Suppose the Greek fire doesn’t work? Or it does work, but we don’t manage to smite them all?”
“We may never know. Notwithstanding the younger Camytzes’s clever demonstration of the heat resistance of these stones, I have a sneaking suspicion that once we light this thing up we’ll be baked like loaves of bread in an oven.”
“I kind of think so too,” I sighed.