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

the blade slash her forearm then her shoulder but his cuts were wild. Her double grip got a hold on the hand with the knife. His other was pulling back her hair, exposing her throat. Pain shrieked through her skull, the blade pressed closer and closer his breath blowing like bellows past her ear. With a final surge of defiance, she jerked her head forward, feeling a clump of hair tear from her skull. She twisted, the knife stabbed and with the sudden shift in weight the point went past her and drove into the eunuch’s side. His scream was a blast of savage, shrill air into her eyes. Seizing her chance, she raked his face until his grip broke and he fell backwards. She had a hand on the gunwale, she pulled, lurched forward, slipped, glimpsed a whirl of dark sky above her for an instant, then her head clunked against wood, then cold water enveloped her. . .

The Arab struggled out of the water and before Erlan could get to him he’d cut the rope. The boat started drifting away while Erlan tried to bring his sword to bear, but the depth of the water made it impossible.

There was another splash, another body floundering in the water. The Arab turned and lunged for the sternpost. Erlan wrenched his sword clear of the water at last and slashed down at the limit of his reach. Battal’s left hand flew off, severed at the wrist even as his right had caught the gunwale. He screamed in agony, his legs churning the water madly to drive himself up into the boat. He got an elbow over and kicked again, too far now for Erlan to reach him. But suddenly there was Aska, calmly paddling out to the boat. Without breaking stroke, the hound sank his teeth into the Arab’s flailing calf. Battal roared in protest, but Aska held on with savage tenacity. Katāros’s face appeared like the moon above them, clutching at his side. He reached over to drag Battal into the boat, but Aska still gripped him. A blade glinted in the dark, the hound yelped and at last fell away.

The boat was drifting further, the swirling currents of the Marmara now catching it and carrying it out of reach. Aska wasn’t moving. The woman thrashing in the shallows had reached the steps and was on her feet, coughing out seawater, her hair a smear across her face. It wasn’t Lilla’s hair. It wasn’t Lilla’s face.

Erlan waded out to the clump of grey fur floating on the surface, his heart breaking. He pulled the body towards him, seeing the ugly gash across Aska’s chest, feeling the warmth leaching out of his faithful hound into the cold water. He moaned in despair.

There was a splash to his left. The water’s surface broke, just for a moment. It was like a lightning bolt to his brain. Dropping the sword, he plunged under the water, eyes searching in the darkness. His fingers touched a swirl of cloth, then a fistful and a limb inside it. He grasped about in a frenzy for the rest of the body and then dragged it upwards, bursting through the surface in a snarl of hair and silk and wool.

Pale hair. Lilla’s hair.

She was unconscious, her wrists still bound together. He pulled her towards the steps until he could feel solid ground underfoot. At the steps, he lifted her head clear of the water and tipped it back. Her eyes were closed as if in sleep – or death. Desperate, he pressed down hard on her chest, once, twice. . . and suddenly her eyes opened, her mouth opened, and she vomited a fountain of water between them.

He brushed the strands of hair out of her face. She was breathing again, staring up at him, struggling to focus. ‘Erlan?’ she murmured. ‘Erlan? Is that you?’

‘No, my love,’ he whispered over her. ‘My name is Hakan. And it’s time to go home.’

HISTORICAL NOTE

A note about names, first of all.

The term ‘Byzantine’ was not coined until the sixteenth century. In fact, those we have come to know as the Byzantines called themselves Romans, or ‘Rhōmaioi’ to use the Greek. The Eastern Roman Empire centred on Constantinople was the direct successor to the empire centred on Rome and survived for over a thousand years: from the last centuries of antiquity well into the High Medieval Period, at last falling in AD 1453. Complicating matters, the Romans ceased to use Latin as their primary language (particularly of law and administration) in the late sixth century, so by the early eighth century – the setting of this novel – both the common tongue and the official language of the empire was Greek. It seemed to me that to use the term ‘Roman’ risked evoking the wrong epoch and could be confusing for any reader not already familiar with this period of history. Hence my use of ‘Byzantine’.

Coupled with this, I felt it was clearer to refer to the Imperial City as Byzantium and not Constantinople throughout. Byzantium is easier to read (and to write!) and created the link with the name I was using for its inhabitants. Thus, although my pedant nerve was twitching violently all the way, this is the choice I made. In any case, Constantinople has had many names: the City, the Great City, the Queen of Cities, the Imperial City, the Mother of Cities, New Rome, Second Rome, Miklagard (the Norse name for it, which translates simply as ‘Big City’), in time Stambul; and finally Istanbul.

The Arabs, too, might have been called several other names: Saracens, Muslims, Syrians, Ishmaelites, Mohammedans, and more. I went with ‘Arabs’ simply because as a collective noun it seemed to best encompass the actual people involved.

Unusual though Erlan and his friends’ presence in Constantinople was at this date, by around a hundred and fifty years later Norsemen and women would become commonplace there. In particular, those Scandinavians serving as the