A Burning Sea by Theodore Brun (snow like ashes series TXT) 📗

Lilla strained her eyes but could see nothing at first. Then, after a few moments, she caught a wink of gold in the blue-black gloom, then another, and another – lights shining constantly now and fanning outwards.

‘What is it?’ Anna whispered.

Leo was gripping the stones, eyes wide with wonder. ‘That, my child, is the hand of God.’

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

‘There’s the signal,’ said Arbasdos, his voice calm. The beacon fire on the promontory blazed fiercely against the hungering dark. ‘Make ready.’

Shouts of command rippled down from the sterncastle to the oarsmen amidships. The trumpeters along the rail blasted their brass horns over Erlan’s head, making his ears ring.

‘Odin’s arse!’ said Einar, wiggling an irritable finger in his ear. ‘We’ll all be deaf as deadwood before the night’s out.’ The fanfare blared on through the ranks of the fleet behind them, each vessel waiting its turn to advance.

‘Release the chain,’ said the general. An archer touched his arrow-tip to the torch in Davit’s hand, then loosed his shaft in a flaming arc towards the promontory. In answer, there was a shriek of metal as the massive chain spilled over the harbour edge into the sea.

‘Sound the advance.’

More trumpeting. Erlan felt the stir of the wooden hulk beneath him. The oarsmen reached forward, oar-tips covered in the ink-black water. He felt his heart beat faster. Ahead of them were three ranks of ‘fire-runners’ – the smaller dromons. Thirty-six in all. Their sails were ashore: there was no wind tonight. Anyway, once they closed with the enemy, all would be settled by oar.

And by fire.

Arbasdos’s command ship was the Belisarius, a dromon of middling size, powered by fifty oars. Not as nimble as the fire-runners, but like them it was armed with a syphon mounted under the elevated foredeck in the bows. The bigger galleys, the chelandions – with their lantern sails and double bank of oars – would remain in harbour. Tonight, everything would depend on the fire-runners.

The vanguard of the fleet moved forward, oars dipping and feathering in time with the drums. The Belisarius squeezed on against its own inertia, slowly gaining momentum. ‘She ain’t no sea-wolf, that’s for sure,’ grunted Einar.

‘Maybe not. But from what I’ve seen they’d make firewood of any drakkar that crossed their bows.’ Erlan drew his sword in readiness.

‘I know you’re easily excited, Northman,’ said a sneering voice behind him. ‘But you can put that thing away.’ He gave an ugly snigger. ‘Save it for your royal whore.’

‘What did you call her?’

Arbasdos snorted. ‘Don’t tell me you don’t know.’

‘Know what?’

‘Hah! I mean, I’ve sold slaves before but I’ve never had so much fun doing it.’

Erlan felt the bile rise in his gullet. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘Your barbarian queen. Didn’t she tell you? How she preferred to keep her gold and buy you like any whore. A royal whore, as I said,’ he snarled.

‘You lying, shit-eating son of a bitch!’ Erlan’s hand squeezed around Wrathling’s hilt. His arm was rising when Einar’s fist closed on his and clamped it to his side.

‘Am I?’ Arbasdos stepped close, squaring up to him. ‘Go ahead, fat man, let him strike. See how close he gets before he’s skewered five ways through his stinking guts. And one up the arse for good measure.’

Einar shoved Erlan further back, while the other spatharioi closed in front of the general. ‘Just the way your queen liked it,’ he laughed. ‘Didn’t you swear an oath to the emperor, Northman? To obey his every command? And that means protecting me. . .’ His face was an ugly sneer. ‘Back to your post, slave.’

‘Watch your step, Strategos.’ Erlan pushed Einar away and slid Wrathling back into its sheath. ‘You don’t know what Leo’s orders were.’

Arbasdos frowned uncertainly, but then turned his back on the Northmen with a scowl.

‘Leave it.’ Einar’s eyes shifted warily between the other guards arrayed around the general. ‘Now isn’t the time.’

‘Piss on him,’ Erlan spat, and thundered down the stairs to the main deck. Einar followed him, and soon after him, Davit.

‘A word of advice, Northman,’ said the spatharios in a low voice. ‘Keep a leash on that temper of yours. He’s a tricky bastard, I know, but we all need him just now.’

Erlan glared ahead, his gaze drawn to the fire-cauldrons under their wooden shelter in the bows. His mind flashed to thoughts of Lilla and Arbasdos. Together. Is that a price she would pay for him? Is that the price she did pay? The heat in his blood was hot as that oil, but. . . was that what she had been keeping from him?

He could see the main syphon and the piping that fed into the bronze figurehead mounted in the bows. A lion’s head, its mouth gaping wide in a brazen roar, hungry for the enemy’s blood. Lilla had laid down all she had, he thought. There was nothing she wouldn’t give, hadn’t already given, for him, or for her dream of winning back her kingdom. Why should he pay any less a price? What right had he to hold anything back from her when she had given all for him? Even if it was to a man like Arbasdos.

Davit saw he was staring at the fire-syphon. ‘You seen them before?’

‘Only from a distance.’

‘Best place for it,’ he chuckled. ‘Any man gets caught in the way of that thing, his friends will be sweeping him up with a brush.’

‘How secure are those other things?’ asked Einar. ‘The little pots.’ There were several baskets of these stowed in the bows as well, each pot the size of a man’s fist and filled with the fire-makers’ deadly concoction.

‘Feeling nervous, Northman?’ grinned Davit.

‘Of you clumsy Greek bastards, aye.’

‘Relax,’ he said, with a friendly pat on the shoulder-plate of his scale armour. ‘No one handles fire better than those men.’

The fleet was clear of the promontory now and wheeled south. Across the straits, Erlan saw the silhouettes of the hills of Asia Minor, saw lights glimmering on their