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

pieces began to take, he tipped the parchment towards the growing flames.

‘Well, don’t get it too close or you’ll set the stupid thing alight.’ Einar pulled Erlan’s hand back. ‘What’s it say?’

‘How should I know?’

‘Get Alexios over here. He’ll tell you.’

The captain was crouched beside the eparch’s campfire, tending to the flames. With a low whistle, Einar caught his attention. He rose and came over. ‘What do you make of this?’ Erlan asked him.

Alexios dropped to his haunches and took the piece of parchment. Erlan watched his steady gaze scan over it. Then his eyes suddenly snapped up. ‘Where did you get this?’

So Erlan explained, turning out the whole story – of the attempt on the emperor’s life and their pursuit of Lucia over the sea wall.

‘Is the girl still alive?’

‘Who knows? She was certainly wounded.’

Alexios shook his head. ‘Do you have any idea what this is?’

The two Northmen exchanged glances. ‘Barbarians can’t read,’ said Erlan. ‘Everyone knows that.’

‘They’re plans for the manufacture of liquid fire. Every detail. Not even I should be reading this,’ Alexios muttered. ‘If these ever fell into enemy hands—’

‘Well, thanks to us they didn’t,’ grinned Einar.

‘Thanks to you,’ Erlan corrected him. The fat man shrugged. Erlan was eyeing the unfurled parchment and the tiny scribblings all over its face, thinking of what Lilla would do for it. Thinking what she would want him to do. But Alexios was already rolling up the scroll and shoving it inside the folds of his tunic. ‘I ought to destroy this.’ He glanced at the other fires. ‘But the emperor should see it. It’s proof that the Arabs have spies within the city walls.’

‘One fewer now,’ observed Erlan.

‘Mmm. Get some sleep. It’s a long ride to Pliska.’

They were mounted again long before dawn broke, dirty, grey and cold. The ground beneath them was sodden; the snow had melted at last leaving the gullies muddy and the rocks slick. The snows had covered the land for a hundred days, they said. Longer than even the oldest memory in Byzantium could remember. The priests said it was a sure sign of God’s wrath on the infidel. But that was more than Erlan knew.

From the ridge they descended through the gloom, past swaying shadows of alder trees and whitebeams as they picked their way down to the plain below. Alexios bid everyone ride in silence, a command the fat eparch seemed to find impossible to obey. Perhaps he was nervous and was trying to pass off his disquiet as good fellowship with the other men. He wanted to know how every one of them had slept, how far they thought they would reach today, and so on. When the captain hissed him to silence, the eparch only laughed at him.

‘Oh, loosen up, man! What are you so afraid of? The nearest Arab is miles to the south and asleep, half-starved, or more likely dead!’

‘Excellency,’ countered Alexios, his voice cold as a north wind. ‘You are envoy. I command this party until we reach Pliska, so I’ll say this only once – if you don’t shut your mouth, I’ll ram this sword so far up your arse you’ll be spitting iron.’

Lord Daniel’s sleek red cheeks flushed white with fury. His chest puffed like a bullfrog and he was about to unleash fresh invective when an arrow came whistling out of the grey, and took him straight through the throat. Blood spewed from his mouth in great gouts of scarlet. His horse reared up. ‘To arms!’ yelled Alexios. ‘To arms!’ Erlan freed Wrathling from its sheath. ‘Stay on your horse!’ he snarled at Einar who had started to dismount.

‘I can’t wield an axe on top of a blasted horse, can I?’

‘This is no time to make a stand, fat man. Ride like fury!’ The image hardly fitted with the great sack of turnips Einar resembled on horseback. But he took the point and dug his heels into his horse’s flank.

Alexios was beside the eparch, trying to haul him across his horse’s withers. Arab horsemen were appearing out of the broken ground below them. Another arrow fizzed between Erlan and the commander.

‘Leave him! He’s finished,’ cried Erlan.

Alexios gave one more desperate haul at the envoy but his mount shied away and the eparch’s obese corpse crashed to the ground. The fastest of the Arab horsemen were kicking on across the contour of the slope to head them off.

‘Ride north-west,’ screamed Alexios, drawing his sword. ‘All of you – get clear, for God’s sake!’

Erlan squeezed his knees and his mare took off down the rocks. Beside him, Aska barked and bounded on. Davit and the other guard – a man named Bringas – were weighed down with saddlebags stuffed with gold and other treasures for the Bulgar khan. They had a head start down the slope but Erlan and the Fat-Belly were gaining on them quickly.

Seeing the two front riders of the Arab patrol bearing in from the left, Erlan turned to come between them and the gold. As the gap closed he saw they were dressed in scale armour and billowing green breeches with long lances lowering for the kill. He bent close over his horse’s ears, half-praying the riders were too intent on the easier prey to see him slanting in at their flank.

The lance-tip of the closest was only yards from catching Davit when Erlan bellowed a war cry. The Arab turned and twisted his body; seeing the danger, his spear-tip swung to meet Erlan. He lifted his shield and took the blow on its boss, which nearly vaulted him from the saddle, but grinding his knees tighter into the horse’s flesh he kept his seat. He was inside the point now, his horse barrelling along beside the Arab, shoulder to shoulder down the narrow path. Erlan held his shield out, twisted in his saddle and swung his sword arm like an axe. He had a split second to see the horror in the Arab’s eyes and then his head was gone, bumping