The Sword of Damascus

by Richard Blake

  I breathed in and out very heavily. I took off my visor and looked at the questioning face. Was the man taking the piss? Of course he was. I forced myself to relax and drank more of my lemon juice.

  ‘If you don’t wish for a public beating,’ I said coldly, ‘you’ll keep your mouth shut about that man and his equally deluded followers. According to Aristotle, none of this is even conceivable – unless you call in the “intellectual” support of magic. Now, unless you have something sensible to add, I suggest you shut up and wait.’ I took off my hat and wig and mopped my sweaty scalp. I looked again at the clock. Another two markers to go. I dropped the wig into my lap and replaced the hat.

  ‘Epicurus was wrong when he said that there are atoms of heat,’ I said, breaking the silence that had resulted from my last comments. ‘I think it more likely that heat is a kind of motion, the communication of which causes atoms to vibrate within their structures. Whatever the case, the furnace under those kettles converts their liquids to vapour. These two vapours then mix together in the bulb of the double valve and become explosive. When they are lit, it is burning vapour that shoots out. Because Greek fire is a vapour and not a liquid, these kettles can be used and reused throughout an entire battle without any need for recharging.’

  I fell silent again and watched the clock. We were almost at the fifth marker. I was now sweating heavily. I was also beginning to shake with the tension. The valve excepted, all had gone perfectly this time. I didn’t want another anticlimax. The water level had risen to the fifth marker in the bowl. It was now or never. I took up my walking stick and got slowly to my feet. I peered cautiously round the wall to the double kettle. It was beginning to shake, but I could hear none of the bright hissing that would indicate a failed joint. I turned back and smiled at the head workman. He swallowed and clutched at the silver relic case about his neck. I continued looking round the wall as he walked forward and began tapping with his long crowbar at the brass plug screwed into the exit spout of the mixing valve. I could hear Meekal groaning away behind me in some stupid prayer. Incongruously, the other workmen beside him were calling desperately on Christ and the Virgin; surely, if they had any say in the matter, we’d have a catastrophic explosion that took us and all our achievement straight to Hell. But I put the human noise out of mind. I pushed in my hearing trumpet and listened intently. Yes, I could now hear the high whistle as the plug reached the last turn of its thread. I rapped the wall smartly with my stick and called out a word of encouragement to the workman. With a last cry of fear and pleading, he brought his bar down with a firm tap on the spout, then threw himself down. I pushed sweaty palms against the wall and took a deep breath.

  Chapter 56

  With a deafening ‘whoosh!’ the combined jets of invisible vapour shot across the hundred yards of clear space in front of the kettles. I saw the wooden screen placed by the wall go back, and heard its dull clatter against the stones of the wall. I breathed out and pushed my head further round the wall to see the kettles. They hadn’t exploded, but the first charge of vapour was spent, and it was now steam and water shooting forward. As I looked, the kettles began to shake and rattle about in their housing. As I pulled myself back behind the wall, I heard the cracking of support beams within the stuttered scream of the discharged steam and water. I felt the impact of the kettles as they flew backward into the sandbags, and then the warm spattering of water that rained down on us.

  As the scream died away to a gentle hissing, I hobbled out from behind the wall as fast as my stick would push me, and looked at the result. Meekal grabbed at me and tried to pull me back. But I evaded him and stood before the upturned kettles. They’d burst several of the sandbags on their impact, and were now lodged there, spout pointing straight up. I laughed and waved my stick. I poked Meekal away and watched him vanish back behind the wall to try to force the workmen up from where they’d prostrated themselves on the packed sand. I wouldn’t bother with dragging myself over to the wall. But I could see that the wooden screen had been shattered by the blast, and that the wall behind it was dark from the soaking. I looked up. The noise of the explosion had frightened the carrion birds into flight. They flapped about overhead with tuneless calls.

  ‘But, surely, the kettles have burst?’ Meekal asked with a shaking voice.

  I walked forward and struck the largest of them with my stick. It rang like a misshapen bell. I wheeled round and faced him. ‘On the contrary, my dear,’ I said triumphantly, ‘it was a complete success.’ I went back to my inspection of the kettles. They had eventually flown back with tremendous force. But for the sandbags, they’d have smashed themselves and the wall to smithereens. ‘Oh, don’t worry about the recoil,’ I said with a dismissive wave. ‘I fully expected that. You see, every time there is motion in one direction, there is another motion in the opposite direction. And this was water we were using. The real mixture is much heavier. It doesn’t expand like water does. Instead, it seethes away within the kettles, producing vapour in a steady, controllable casting off of atoms. Mounted aboard a ship, you’ll need to reinforce the timbers. But there will be no expulsion of heavy liquids to produce that extreme opposite motion.’

  I sat down in the chair that had been placed behind me, and felt very weary. Meekal strutted about the kettles, looking at them, testing their still great heat with the tip of a finger.

  ‘Congratulations, then, my Sword of Damascus,’ he said, now in Saracen. ‘God has brought your labours to a fine conclusion.’ He dropped his voice and went back into Latin. ‘Does it not disappoint you, though?’ he crooned. ‘You spent my childhood lecturing me how the application of reason to the natural world could improve human life without limit. Yet your greatest demonstration of this reason has only been to destroy life – to create a weapon of massive destructive power. I wasn’t there to see it used outside Constantinople. But I saw the burns on some of the few who survived.’

  I looked about for my wig. It must have fallen to the ground behind the wall when I’d got up.

  ‘When I used the words “complete success”,’ I said, ‘I meant complete success this far. We still haven’t seen a demonstration of the main weapon. The mixture we’re brewing needs much more pressure. We still don’t know how the kettle joints will stand up to that. Still, I do rather think you’ll have a fine show to put on for the Commander of the Faithful.’ I paused. ‘I must ask myself, though, how he’ll take it when you tell him that you are to be the only person, outside the Imperial Palace in Constantinople, who has the secret of the Greek fire.’ I hid behind my visor and watched his face carefully. He smothered a smile and muttered something about revealing the secret when the time was right.

  I would have pushed my luck a little further. At this moment, though, the gate opened over on my left, and one of the guards came slowly towards us back first. He turned as he reached us and looked steadily at the ground. Two men on horseback had been sighted, he told Meekal. They’d been watching the monastery for some while from a little hill a quarter of a mile to the north.

  ‘They’ll see fuck all from out there!’ Meekal said, still in Latin. He laughed. ‘No action for now,’ he said to the guard in Saracen. ‘My compliments to General Hakim, though. Ask him to get his men quietly ready to face an attack.

  ‘We’re safe enough,’ he explained to me once the man had withdrawn. ‘Those Cross-Worshipping bandits aren’t up to regular fighting. Besides, I’ve left orders in Damascus that, if we aren’t back by tomorrow morning, an army of ten thousand is to be sent out to relieve us.’

  ‘It seems the Mighty Meekal thinks of everything,’ I said drily. ‘Your real grandfather might have been impressed – assuming, that is, he could have overlooked your treason. Old Priscus was capable of many things. But, if always in his own manner, he was loyal to the Empire.’ That wiped the smile from his face. Yes – dear old Priscus! If he’d lived to see it, he’d have died of envy at what I eventually did to the Persians. Given half a chance, he’d have bullied Heracliu
s into a last desperate stand against the Saracens when they took Syria, and we’d have folded like the Persians. But, if he wasn’t ultimately the second Alexander he always fancied himself to be, he never betrayed the Empire. I looked over at my own work, still embedded in the sandbags. I got up and stretched my legs.

  ‘Get that lot sorted,’ I said to the workmen. ‘I want those kettles better secured for my next visit.’ To Meekal: ‘I’ve seen enough for today.’ I glanced over at my carriers. Still blindfolded, they’d now got themselves off the ground, and were coming out of their shaking fits from the noise of the experiment. Their bodies had turned white where dust had stuck to the sweat.

  ‘Get them properly rested and fed,’ I ordered no one in particular. ‘It’s a long trek back to Damascus in this heat.’ I turned back to Meekal. ‘I need to spend much of the afternoon in the records building,’ I said. ‘As ever, I suppose, I’ll have to write up my own notes. This time, though, I want to go again over the records of the works before the big explosion. I doubt I shall copy the mistakes made then. But, if you’re now forcing the pace, I need to make sure of certain things. You’re welcome to sit in there with me. You might even be useful for reading some of the more charred records. But, if you’d rather be off and torture someone, I’ll not hold it against you.’ I dug my stick into the sand and began to move towards the gate into another of the zones.

  Karim said nothing, but looked like a man who tries not to show that he’s recently shat himself from terror. Edward was shouting away in fluent Saracen to anyone who’d listen.

  ‘They scarpered like wild pigs in the hunt,’ he said. He took out his little sword and waved it in the sun. ‘As we came closer, I thought they’d stand and fight like men.’ He paused, then spat melodramatically. ‘But, like all the other unbelievers, they were just cowardly pigs!’

  I looked at Meekal with raised eyebrows. He shrugged. I wondered if Edward wasn’t growing a little too close to his new friends. But there could be no doubt he was their young hero. The other Saracens stood round him, calling out his praises and giving him little hugs.

  ‘While he is your hostage,’ I said quietly, ‘you really should consider keeping him safer than you do.’

  Meekal scowled and said he’d speak with General Hakim about the breach of his orders.

  ‘You can tell me the whole story over dinner,’ I said in English. ‘I don’t suppose you’ll be passing up yet awhile on the wine.’

  ‘It will be as My Lord wills,’ Edward replied in Saracen. His face shone with the happiness of the fool who’s just nearly got himself killed for nothing. He helped unfold the seat of the carrying chair into a daybed before racing back within the mass of grinning, bearded faces. How long, I wondered, before even his Latin went? How long before his English? Did the boy so much as dream nowadays about the soaking mists of Northumbria? If I were his age now, though, would I be any different?

  I rested back against the cushions. I fished into the luggage compartment for my lead box of opium. I removed my teeth and sucked thoughtfully on the resin.

  Dreaming of my mother, and of my father, whose face I barely remembered, I slept right through the attack on us that left fifty men dead on the road and another hundred injured. Karim told me about it afterwards. Through chattering teeth, he described the wild rush of the mountain tribesmen as we passed a high ridge of sand. They’d swept down with a battle roar that almost knocked him off his horse. The horsemen weren’t up to making any impression on the Saracen guards. It was the hail of arrows that caused the real damage. Meekal had gone wild with alarm, and had darted about, screaming at the guards to cover me with their shields. No prisoners had been taken this time. It had been a matter of getting me and my remaining carriers as fast along that exposed road as men could run. Even so, an arrow had embedded itself in the carrying chair not a quarter-inch from my throat.

  I came to as the light was fading in my bedchamber. I’d been put into a cool bath to stabilise my temperature from the heat of the day and from the opium, and then wrapped up in bed like an infant. Before I opened my eyes, I heard Edward’s anxious voice, asking again and again if I would ever wake up again. Karim was beside him, urging that I’d surely be fine. I could tell that the hand feeling about my wrist belonged to a doctor. I opened my eyes and waited for the riot of fading colours to resolve into a picture of my surroundings. Meekal was looking out of the window, hands clasped tight behind his back. The boys sat together, looking earnestly into my face. I stared back and smiled.

  ‘Not dead yet?’ I croaked. The doctor held a cup to my lips, and I gagged at the extreme bitterness of its contents. I waved it away. I struggled to sit up, but the combination of opium and immense weariness kept me on my back. ‘Any chance of some of the local red?’ I asked feebly.

  A thoroughly nasty look on his face, Meekal turned and came to lean over me. ‘The doctor says – and I agree – that you should give up that shitty opium,’ he said. ‘And the wine too. If you carry on like this, you won’t see another spring.’

  ‘I’m a free man,’ I snarled back at him. ‘I’ll put what I like into my body and cry “fuck off!” at anyone who dares tell me otherwise. And don’t any of you ever forget that!’ I made a better effort and now did sit up. The doctor fussed about with pillows. Edward stuck a cool sponge on my forehead.

  ‘What’s that bandage doing on your arm?’ I asked. Edward opened his mouth to speak, but was nudged silent by Karim. ‘Did you come off that bleeding horse?’ I asked again.

  There was a noise in Meekal’s throat that might have been a laugh, or might just have been another of his prayers to the Almighty. He took hold of Edward’s good arm and pushed the boy closer to me.

  ‘The deal is,’ he snarled, ‘that you give me what I want, and the boy comes to no harm. Will you threaten me with a lawyer if I choose to regard your sudden death as a breach of contract?’

  ‘Fuck you!’ I snarled. I struggled out of the cushions and sat fully upright. Everyone stood back. ‘I’m hungry,’ I added in a more reasonable tone. ‘More to the point, I need a piss – I need one badly.’ I looked defiantly about the room. ‘Well, go on,’ I said loudly, ‘get out of here. Since Edward’s right arm is otherwise occupied, the doctor can stay and do me the honours.’ I reached over to get at my water cup. I overbalanced and nearly came off the bed. Meekal kept me from hitting the tiles. He lifted me as if I’d been a bag of twigs – had I lost weight in the past few months? I wondered – and sat me on the side of the bed. I scowled everyone else out of the room, and prepared myself for a consultation with the doctor.

  Chapter 57

  ‘The world must be seen as it is,’ I said, ‘not as we’d like it to be. One of these days, I shall fall down dead. Or perhaps I just shan’t wake up one morning. Until then, I plan to carry on as normal.’

  I sucked on a boiled chicken leg and washed the meat down with a cup of water into which Edward had dropped wine with all the stingy care of an apothecary. Karim muttered some piety about how God would deal justly with me. I decided against the obvious witty riposte. It would only make Edward unstopper those tears again. Meekal had gone off about his official business, and I’d told the doctor where to take his pessimistic ambiguities. Now, we were at dinner. Since the most convenient language was Saracen, I’d had the slaves all cleared out and the main door locked from our own side.

  ‘But do tell me again, Edward,’ I said brightly. ‘Do you really think you cut off that man’s nose as he came at you?’ He did. So did Karim. I lifted my cup in a toast that left plenty of room for a refill more to my taste. I was about to reach for my teeth so I could begin a long anecdote about Karim’s father after the Battle of Antioch. But Edward interrupted.

  ‘I was looking at your clothes this morning,’ he said, pulling the conversation back on his chosen track. ‘They are all too big for you.’

  ‘Listen, boy,’ I sighed, ‘I agree that I’m not getting any younger. Even so, I have, for the past few months, been work
ing like a maniac for Meekal. Have you noticed any advance of senility? Do I walk about any the less easily? I’ve lost some weight. That’s all. Now, do you recall that tomb we passed on the road to Caesarea? It was the one put up for a man who died at a hundred and ten. If you can think of one reason why I shouldn’t match that, do tell me now. Otherwise, don’t spoil dinner.’ I managed to reach the wine jug. That cheered me no end.

  ‘Did either of you hear the demonstration?’ I asked with a final change of subject. Edward hadn’t – he’d been too wrapped up in shouting at the retreating spies. Karim, though, had heard the explosion, and looked back in time to see the fountain of steam and water that, however briefly, had risen high over the walls of the monastery.

  ‘Was all the work before you came for nothing?’ he asked.

  I looked at Karim. There was a depth of knowledge behind the question. But this didn’t surprise me. Did it merit an answer? Probably not. Still, I wanted that tearful look off Edward’s face, and the wine was lifting my spirits by the moment.

  ‘Not really,’ I said. ‘Eight years of lavish funding by the richest power in the world were unlikely to get nowhere. If it might have taken another eight years of trial and error to reproduce the mixture itself, the basic problems of casting and welding had been settled. Indeed, some of the work your people did on the containment of extreme pressure was news to me. The real problem was the big explosion of two – no, three – years ago. Someone got it into his head that the mixture was a powder, not a liquid. What he then produced was highly unstable, and should never have been heated, let alone heated under pressure. The result was an explosion that killed just about everyone who’d got the project going. But for that, I’d have been more useful than critical. As it is, the research notes survived; and it really would have been another few years at most before all the lost ground was recovered. Still, I can’t deny that bringing me in to supervise them has brought things very quickly to the edge of success.’