He slowed again at the edge of the woods to give his eyes a chance to adjust to the gloom. Silent as a shadow, Wighard stepped into the roadway. “Fine ruction you stirred up back there,” the Anglelander observed. “D’you have the spell, man?”
“The answer, yes.”
“Then we’d best not wait around, eh?” Wighard said, mounting and digging his heels into his horse’s flanks. The magistrianos followed.
As soon as the road made a sharp bend, the Anglelander rigged a trip-rope. He grinned at Argyros. “They’ll be coming hell for leather after you. With luck, this’ll take out two or three and make the rest thoughtful.”
“Splendid,” Argyros said. He took a packet of finely ground pepper from his saddlebag and scattered it behind them. “The dogs will need distracting, too.”
“Aye, so they will,” Wighard agreed. “Best take no chances with ’em.” After he and Argyros had ridden on for a few paces, he dug out an old rag and tossed it into a clump of brambles by the side of the road. Seeing Argyros’s quizzical look, he explained, “Soaked in the piss of a bitch in heat.”
The magistrianos burst out laughing. He heard the horn again, faint now in the distance. Thin as the buzz of summer insects came the monks’ cries: “Hurry there!” “Don’t let him get away!”
Too late, Argyros thought—I’ve already done it. He and Wighard rode in companionable silence until they came to an icy stream—a young river, in fact—that eventually ran north into Lake Constant. They splashed along in the shallows against the current for a couple of miles to finish confusing the hounds (they had heard yapping far behind them a while ago, first agonized, then suddenly frantic).
When they were sure they were safe, they doubled back across country for Turic. Argyros was already thinking of the trip back to the Empire. It would be easy, save perhaps for the Pennine pass; the idea of a September blizzard made the magistrianos shiver all over. The hostels in the pass bred big dogs to rescue stranded travelers, but they did not save them all.
The magistrianos thought for a moment that the chill against his throat was only a reflection of his reverie. Then he realized it was the edge of Wighard’s dagger. “The spell, man,” the Anglelander said hoarsely. “How do you summon up the demons?”
“There are no demons,” Argyros said.
The dagger dug in. “You lying kern! I could fair watch you plotting to go your merry way without keeping your promise, but you’ll not get away with that, not alive. Tell me how to raise the devils or I’ll slit your weasand on the spot.”
Getting away with the secret all to himself had always been in the back of Argyros’s mind, but the kiss of steel put an end to that scheme. His voice quivered: “Very well, then, here it is, just as I learned it.…”
The seasons spin around like wheels. By the Inner Sea, though, the turning is more gentle. Mellow autumn lay on Constantinople a month after snow had come to the Alps.
A toy fortress, its walls as high as a man’s knee and three digits thick, stood in the center of a secluded grassy courtyard between two buildings in the palace compound. Argyros and an older, stouter man walked across the lawn to the miniature fortress. The magistrianos carried a small, tightly stoppered winejug in his left hand; a bit of oily rag protruded from a hole drilled through the center of a cork. In his other hand Argyros held a lighted torch. He was careful to keep it well away from the jug.
“I think we are finally ready to demonstrate this for you, your illustriousness,” he said. “The craftsmen at the arsenal say the key to a reliable product is grinding all the ingredients to fine powder before mixing.”
“Very well, my new Kallinikos, you’ve done splendidly thus far; by all means show me,” George Lakhanodrakon said amiably. The magnitude of the compliment from the Master of Offices made Argyros flush; Kallinikos had invented the Empire’s liquid fire.
The magistrianos set the winejug at a corner inside the model fort’s walls. He stooped to touch the torch to the rag. Watching with interest, Lakhanodrakon asked, “Now what?”
The flame caught. “Now, sir, we retire in haste.” Argyros dropped the torch and loped away. The Master of Offices followed more sedately. Not only was he heavier than the magistrianos; despite descriptions, he had no real sense of what was about to happen.
Argyros turned his head to warn him to make better speed. Too late—at that moment, the flame worked down the rag into the winejug. The explosion made his ears ring. The half-bricks from which the little keep had been built flew apart as if kicked. A tiny fragment of jug or brick stung Argyros’s neck. He yelped and rubbed at the spot.
And George Lakhanodrakon shot by, running as though the blast had hurled him forward. When no further thunderclaps came, the Master of Offices warily turned back to see the results of the experiment. His strong, fleshy Armenian face had gone rather pale.
The corner of the model where Argyros had nestled the winejug was utterly thrown down; the walls that had met there leaned drunkenly. The breeze was thinning the cloud of gray smoke, letting the great shouldering bulk of Hagia Sophia dominate the northern skyline once more.
Lakhanodrakon licked dry lips. “It’s like your first woman,” he whispered. “All the telling in the world doesn’t matter a damn.”
Argyros had put the echoing silence within the halls to either side down to the blast having stunned his ears, but it was real, brought on by startled people stopping dead. After a few seconds there were screams and exclamations: “What was that?” “Help me, St. Andreas!”—Constantinople’s patron. “Earthquake!” “Mother of God, help me!” Faces appeared in a score of windows.
A squad of excubitores came dashing around the corner, gaudy in their clinging white leggings, silk surcoats, and golden torcs and belts. Each soldier’s brightly painted shield was blazoned with the sacred labarum: . Brandishing their spears, they looked wildly in all directions until they recognized Lakhanodrakon. They crowded round him, pelting him with questions.
Argyros admired the way the Master of Offices pulled himself together and calmed the imperial bodyguards without revealing anything of importance. They were scratching their heads as they went back to their post, but they went. One by one, the staring servants and officials in the palace buildings also decided the excitement was over and returned to work.
Eyeing the wrecked model, Lakhanodrakon waited until everyone was out of earshot. Then he said, “You really mean to tell me there’s no witchcraft in that, Basil?”
“None whatsoever,” Argyros said firmly.
“Astonishing to think of such destruction springing from such ordinary stuffs as charcoal, sulfur, and—” Lakhanodrakon snapped his fingers in annoyance. “I always forget the third.”
“Saltpeter,” Argyros supplied, adding, “The monks of St. Gall remember them by associating each with a Person of the Triune Godhead.”
The Master of Offices frowned. “Barbarous heretics. Why would they do that?”
“It does make a certain amount of sense, sir,” Argyros said. “From what the men at the arsenals have told me, the saltpeter gives the explosion its blasting force: thus the monks term it the Holy Spirit’s breath. The charcoal touches off the blast, and so they link it with the Father, the source of all things, while the sulfur catches fire from the kindling of the charcoal and ignites the saltpeter, just as the Son is the Father’s Word through Whom He works.”
“A blasphemous, unholy trinity if ever I heard one,” Lakhanodrakon exclaimed.
“I agree.”
After a few seconds, the Master of Offices said worriedly, “Even knowing how the hellpowder is made may serve us less well than I hoped when I sent you out, for how are we to defend against it? Why, even the walls of the city here, which have never been breached, might fall if enough of this villainous compound were set off beside them.”
“I suppose so,” Argyros said, but he did not believe it. Theodosios II’s magnificent works had survived nearly nine hundred years and looked good for as many more. The m
agistrianos pointed out, “Now that we have the secret, with catapults on the walls we can give as good as we get, and the ditch in front of the city will keep enemies from coming up to the wall, and thwart undermining as well.”
“That’s so,” the Master of Offices said, somewhat reassured. He fixed his sharp dark glance on Argyros. “Undermining, you say? I like that. One fine day we may give the Persians a surprise at Nisibis.” The border between the Roman Empire and the successive dynasties ruling Persia had swung through Syria and Mesopotamia since the days of Pompey. Neither side could win the lasting victory both dreamed of.
Argyros said, “The arsenal artificers say that placing the explosive below the works to be attacked may prove even more effective than putting it alongside. They’re thinking of mounting catapults aboard ship, too, as the Franco-Saxons are doing against the Anglelanders, to attack enemies at longer range than we can with fire and siphon.”
“Ah, yes, the Anglelanders,” Lakhanodrakon said. “True, they don’t impinge on us directly, but I confess to misgivings over your cooperation with them. Do you honestly feel such a, er, young folk should be trusted with this potent secret you learned?”
“My lord, I puzzled over that from the Ispanic border all the way to St. Gall. One minute I would reckon them only ignorant barbarians; the next they would startle me with their courage or their native lore or even their wits, untrained but keen. I tell you frankly, I was of two minds.”
“How did you decide, then?” the Master of Offices asked.
“When Wighard put a knife to my neck without warning and started growling of demons and spells, I knew they were savages after all. And since he wanted a spell, why, I gave him one. My barber swears it will grow hair; if the Anglelanders can make any military use of that, they’re welcome to it. Wighard believed me; he judged me too frightened to lie. And in any case, how could he know the difference?”
Lakhanodrakon stared, then pounded the magistrianos on the back. “Well done, Basil, and quick thinking, too! That’s one less worry for me.”
He paused, running a hand across his own bald pate. “You must give me your barber’s name.”
“Why, of course, sir,” Argyros said, carefully not smiling. “It would be a pleasure.”
V
Etos Kosmou 6825
The knock on the door was tentative, the sort any secretary learns to make when he is not sure his superior wishes to be disturbed. But to Basil Argyros the interruption came as a relief. “Come in,” he called, shoving papyrus scrolls and sheets of parchment to one side of his desk.
The magistrianos had been daydreaming anyhow, looking out from his office in the Praitorion toward the great brown stucco mass of the church of Hagia Sophia and, beyond it, softened by haze, the Asian coast across the Propontis from Constantinople.
The case he had been trying to ignore was an Egyptian land dispute, which meant it would not be settled in his lifetime no matter what he did, or probably for fifty years after that, either. The insane litigiousness of the Egyptians had angered the Emperor Julian almost a thousand years before. They had only grown worse since, Argyros thought. As a good Christian, he condemned Julian the Apostate to hell; as an official of the Roman Empire, he was convinced that dealing with Egyptians gave a foretaste of it.
And so he greeted his secretary with an effusiveness alien to his usually self-contained nature: “Good day, Anthimos! What can I do for you on this fine spring morning?”
Anthimos, a lean, stooped man whose fingers were always black with ink, eyed the magistrianos suspiciously; he wanted people to be as orderly and predictable as the numbers in his ledgers. At last he shrugged and said, “The Master of Offices is here to see you, sir.”
“What?” Argyros’s thick black eyebrows shot up in surprise. “Show him in, of course.”
The solid portliness of George Lakhanodrakon seemed all the more imposing next to Anthimos, who fluttered about nervously until Argyros dismissed him. The magistrianos bowed low to Lakhanodrakon, waved him to a chair, offered wine. “Always a pleasure to see you, your illustriousness. What brings you here today? Not this wretched mess, I hope.”
Lakhanodrakon rose, walked over to pick up one of the documents Argyros so described. He held it at arm’s length; he was about fifty, a dozen or so years older then the magistrianos, and his sight was beginning to lengthen. He read for a moment. His strong, rather heavy features showed his distaste. “Pcheris vs. Sarapion, is it? I didn’t know you were stuck with such drivel. No, it’s nothing to do with that, I promise.”
“Then you’re doubly welcome, sir,” Argyros said sincerely. “I’ve been praying to St. Mouamet for a new assignment.”
“The patron of changes, eh?” Lakhanodrakon chuckled. The amusement fell from the Master of Offices’ face. “Your prayers are about to be granted. Tell me what you make of this.” He fumbled in the silk pouch that hung from his gold belt of rank, produced a rolled-up parchment, and handed it to Argyros.
The magistrianos slid off the ribbon that bound the parchment, skimmed through it. “It’s bad Greek,” he remarked.
“Keep going.”
“Of course, sir.” When he was done, Argyros said, “I take it this came from one of the cities in the east, from Mesopotamia, or perhaps Syria?”
“Mesopotamia—from Daras, to be exact.”
The magistrianos nodded. “Yes, it has all the marks of a Persian piece: a polemic against the orthodox faith and an invitation to the Nestorians and hard-core Monophysites and other heretics to abandon their allegiance to the Empire and go over to the King of Kings. Preferably, I suppose, bringing the fortress of Daras with them.”
“No doubt,” Lakhanodrakon agreed dryly.
“Forgive me, sir,” Argyros said, “but I’ve seen a great many sheets of this sort. Why bring this particular one to my attention?”
Instead of answering directly, the Master of Offices took another parchment from his beltpouch. “When you have examined this sheet, I trust you will understand—as well as I do, at any rate, which is not a great deal.”
The magistrianos looked at Lakhanodrakon in puzzlement after reading the first few lines. “But this is just the same as the other—” His voice trailed away, and his eyes snapped back to the parchment. He picked up the other sheet Lakhanodrakon had given him, held one in each hand. His jaw fell.
“You see it, then,” the Master of Offices said. “Good. You are as quick as I thought you were.”
“Thank you,” Argyros said abstractedly. He was still staring at the two pieces of parchment. They both said the same thing—exactly the same. It was not as if a scribe had copied out a message twice. Each line on both sheets had exactly the same words on it, written exactly the same size. The same word was misspelled in the third line of each sheet. A couple of lines later, the same incorrect verb form appeared in each, then an identical dative after the preposition where a genitive belonged. Near the end, the letter pi at the beginning of a word was half effaced on both handbills. They even shared the identical small smear of ink between two words.
The magistrianos put one sheet over the other, walked to the window. He held the parchments up to the sun and worked them until the left edges of the two messages were precisely aligned. Any differences would have been instantly apparent. There were none.
“Mother of God, help me!” Argyros exclaimed.
“May She protect the entire Empire,” George Lakhanodrakon said soberly. “Not just these two, but hundreds of such sheets, have appeared in Daras, nailed to every wall big enough to hold one, it seems. They may well provoke the uprisings they seek—you know how touchy the east always is.”
Argyros knew. Despite having been a part of the Roman Empire since before Christ’s Incarnation, Syria and Mesopotamia were very different from its other regions. Latin was all but unknown there, and even Greek, the Empire’s dominant tongue, was spoken only by a minority in the towns. Most people used Syriac or Arabic, as their ancestors had before them. Heresy flour
ished there as nowhere else.
And farther east lay Persia, the Empire’s eternal rival. The two great powers had been struggling for 1,400 years, each dreaming of vanquishing the other for good. The Persians always fostered unrest in the eastern provinces of the Empire. Worshipers of the sun and fire themselves, they gave Nestorians refuge and stirred up religious strife to occupy the Romans with internal troubles. But never on such a scale as this—
“How are they doing it?” Argyros said, as much to himself as to the Master of Offices.
“That is what I charge you with: to find out,” Lakhanodrakon said. “Your success in ferreting out the secret of the Franco-Saxons’ hellpowder last year made me think of you the moment those”—he jerked a thumb at the parchments Argyros was still holding—“came to my attention.”
“You flatter me, your illustriousness.”
“No, I need you,” the Master of Offices said. Harsh lines of worry ran from his jutting nose to the corners of his mouth. “I tell you, I fear this worse than the hellpowder. That was only a threat against our borders; we have dealt with such before, a hundred times. But this could be a blow in the heart.”
Argyros frowned. “Surely you exaggerate, sir.”
“Do I? I’ve lain awake at night imagining the chaos these sheets could create. Suppose one said one thing, one another? They could fan faction against faction, heretic against orthodox—”
His wave encompassed all of Constantinople. “Suppose a Persian agent smuggled even a donkeyload of these accursed things into the city! Men from every corner of the world live here—Jews, Egyptians, Armenians, Sklavenoi from the lands by the Ister, Franco-Saxons. Set them at each other’s throats, and it could be the Nika riots come again!”
“You’ve seen further than I have,” Argyros admitted, shivering. It had been eight hundred years since Constantinople’s mob, shouting Nika—Triumph!—had almost toppled Justinian the Great from the Roman throne, but that was the standard against which all later urban uprisings were measured.
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