Byzantium's Crown (7 page)

"Help me with this thing!" he shouted at Nicephorus. They both tore at it. At the next try the bolt pulled free. Marric dangled a length of chain. If he could once get on deck, what a fine, lethal weapon it would make.

The ship settled as more water poured into it. Soon the entire hold would be awash. Taking ships was always a two-part contest. First came the race: who could sail faster and more skillfully to make the other ship stand and fight. After the ship had been rammed came the second part of the contest. Could the pirates seize its cargo before it sank? If so, the slaves might be permitted to live out their wretched lives for at least a little longer."

Marric eyed the slaves.

"Think they're worth our help?" he asked Nicephorus. "Yes, yes!" His companion nodded.

"Listen!" Marric screamed. "You can't do it like that, you whoresons. I want every one of you to pull at once, damn you. Ready, pull!"

Nicephorus gave them the light to see what they were doing. Then Marric was up the ladder and hurling his shoulder against the hatch. He emerged into what looked like the rape of a smithy by a slaughterhouse. Ships blazed in the blue sea, and men shouted as they fought. A sailor cloaked in flame reeled shrieking by Marric and pitched overboard. All the water of the Middle Sea would not douse that fire. Marric fell flat on the deck and crawled over to a dead marine whose sword and helmet were fouled with blood. Nicephorus came up behind him and he tossed him the dead man's dagger.

"Guard my back," Marric ordered, and leapt into the fight.

Which side to join? The slavers? In all probability they were Irene's creatures: he owed them nothing. The pirates, then? His family's hatred of the raiders that challenged the empire blazed up in him. A target for Greeks and Arabs alike, Marric fought only to survive.

His freedom had been stolen, his throne usurped, his sister slain, he himself tortured. His rage erupted into the pure fury that the Varangians called berserkergang. It felt wonderful! He was free, at least for as long as the battle and his life lasted. Wounds reddened his body—he watched a curved dagger bite along one arm—but miraculously he felt nothing except a determination to kill the man who had pierced his guard. He did. He swung his chain around and brought it crashing down onto a man who slashed at him from below. The chain ripped half the pirate's face away.

But step by step the pirates were backing him up toward the ship's forecastle.

"Look out!" Nicephorus shouted. A light exploded about him, blinding several fighters. Four more jumped Marric. He brought up his sword in time to impale one. The dying man's weight tore the sword from his hand. He swore as he had the night Alexa fell, longing for her magic—regardless of its consequences—to aid him. To his battle-maddened senses it felt like forever until the remaining Arabs brought him down. He feared a blow to heart or throat, but forced himself not to flinch.

I die in battle. That is more grace than I expected.

Marric lifted his chin to look about him before death. Sunset and burning ships Cast a bloody glow over the sea and the sweaty, intent faces of his captors. Screams and splashes told him that others were disposing of slaves and sailors too badly wounded to be worth healing for the block.

He pressed his fists against the deck. "Get on with it," he muttered. A gleaming blade hissed back over one man's head in a fast, deadly arc, then swept forward—

"Hold!" a voice ordered from the forecastle. "Bring him here."

Marric's captors hauled him unceremoniously to the pirate captain's feet and let him fall.

Marric shut his eyes, then opened them again. He tried to study the lateen rigging of the pirate dromonds as calmly as if the ships performed naval maneuvers in his honor. He would try anything to cover his fear that he might beg to be allowed to go on living. The sinking ship's deck had dropped almost to the water line. The pirates were busy transferring cargo onto their own vessels. Slaves, among them Nicephorus, were being herded over the side. One man fell into the water and was fished out with curses and blows: he was too valuable to be allowed to drown.

When he had himself firmly in control, he permitted himself to look at the pirate leader. Ironically the man saluted him. Marric touched his hand to lips and heart with equal irony and added greetings in Arabic.

"You fought well," the captain observed, one hand on the nephrite handle of his scimitar.

Marric folded his arms on his chest. He did not want to provoke the Arabs who eyed him so suspiciously, too close to their leader for their liking. The evening wind chilled Marric's bare body, but he mastered his shivers as his sweat cooled. A cut he had not noticed before dripped down his side. The rest of his wounds began to ache.

"How does such a fighter become goods for market?" asked the captain.

"I was unlucky." Now that the sun was down, the water looked dark and cold. Most of the burning spars had already sunk.

"Unlucky!" The Arab roared with laughter.

Marric stood motionless. Imperial Cleopatra's first husband, he remembered, had been captured by pirates, but he had managed to turn them into his own private bodyguard until he was ransomed. Of course, he had vowed to hang them all. They had laughed at him too. But the next year he had led a fleet against them and hanged as many as he caught.

"Is there someone to ransom you?"

Irene would give gold to know that her plans for Marric had miscarried, and more gold to have him back in her grasp. At least this attack had enabled Marric to escape her.

"No one," said Marric. "Unless, of course, you appeal to the Consort. But I fear the fleet might burn your ships to the water line before you reached the Horn." He braced himself for the blow that might repay his insolence. It never came.

"Then, fighting man, I offer you a choice. A warrior's choice. Swear loyalty to me—and to the jihad!—and you will share with us, rise in the ranks," he offered. "Or, you can rejoin . . . your fellow slaves." The contempt in his voice lashed Marric as he made this suggestion. "Or return home free."

His gesture showed Marric what that meant: over the side and into the water to drown.

So honorable death still lay within his reach? He had only to dive overboard and swim until he sank. No one would stop him. Or he could live as a slave. If he took oath to demons, he could join the pirates. But how? Even if the empire were ruled by a usurper, Marric could not ally with its enemies. And if it were beneath Horus-on-Earth to ally with pirates, then the honorable death they offered was no honor at all. This very dawn Marric had prayed for freedom to his gods and to his father Alexander who ruled as Osiris beyond the Horizon. Never had he dreamed that the path of honor lay in renouncing it.

The ship wallowed heavily now. "Will you wait until the ship sinks?" risked the Arab. He made no move to leave, either, unwilling to be bested by a wounded slave. Letting himself sink with the ship was only suicide by default, Marric thought.

"I will take my place again among the slaves."

"The other slaves." The pirate stressed the word.

"Yes. I will rejoin the other slaves." Marric felt only a great weariness.

"That is your loss. Akbar, Auda, take him and bind him!"

The two men hustled Marric off the ship. He clung to whatever dignity he had left and to a fragile hope that as long as he lived, he could hope to escape and, at least, take vengeance for himself and his sister. But the blood was flowing from his wounds, and he felt as heartsick as if he had fought a losing battle, and then knelt beneath the yoke of his worst enemy.

Sea water stung in Marric's wounds. His skin felt too tight from fever. Despite the heat below decks, the water on his skin made him start to shiver again. Nicephorus tried to steady him and offered him drink.

"Easy, Mor. Come back to us." Marric heard chanting, thought he saw soft lights. He slept fitfully after that. In his dreams he fled from black clouds, from an accusing figure who wore a crown and stood in judgment above a dead girl. Then he saw a face that drew him—and opened his eyes.

The gloom of the hold hurt to look at. A face, pale and fine-featured, but not the face he dreamt of, hovered over him.

"Nico . . .  ."

"Quiet, Mor." The scholar eased Marric's head against his shoulder. To Marric's surprise, when he smoothed his hair back, none of the slaves hooted.

"How long . . . "

"Two days, I think. Fine scholar I am, losing track of the time."

"On board the . . . other ship, there . . . that man had fever . . . and they flung him over." Marric's tongue was thick.

"Yes. The Greeks drowned him. But these pirates have decided that you will fetch a good price, should you live. So they have given you the chance to try—and all the water you need." The arm steadying Marric tightened. Not for a moment did he believe Nicephorus about the water.

"No . . . need now."

"You are still weak. But at least, praise Isis, you no longer rave."

"What . . . ?" Oh gods, what had he betrayed?

"Mor, you enlivened our days and our nights here by claiming all kinds of outrageous things." Nicephorus laughed tolerantly. "Even after your voice gave out, you still whispered! Be at peace: who ever listens to a wounded man's ravings? And among these, who has the will to care?"

Marric looked at Nicephorus, then at the other slaves. Most were apathetic or asleep. A few watched him with the rough-and-ready sympathy unfortunates sometimes have for people in even worse plights. Nicephorus was right. Truly, none of them cared. He could have claimed to be Osiris in Glory (and perhaps he had), and no one would have listened. That was a humbling development. Just as well: the Arabs would have murdered a prince of Byzantium. Marric sighed and sank back into Nicephorus' arms.

"I . . . my thanks," he began. "And anything I can ever—"

"Be well," said Nicephorus. "Just be well. The rest is in the hands of the gods. If you do not pay me, you will pay another. And if not in this life, then in some other. Now, Mor, rest quiet."

But Marric had one last question before he surrendered to the true, healing sleep which his body craved. "Where are we bound?"

"Still Alexandria."

Marric bit back the laughter that might have hurled him into madness. Bound for the city of Alexander, first Horus-on-Earth of Marric's line, and he would arrive in chains.

* * *

The waters of the Delta cast the ferocious sunlight back at the slaves. They squinted and shuffled unsteadily off the dromond onto the dock toward the holding pens.

No one asked in this part of Alexandria whether a ship were Arab or imperial. What mattered were goods to sell and the gold to buy them.

Marric tried to shield his eyes. His upraised arms tightened the other slaves' chains and they swore at him. The slash of a whip distracted him from the pain of the glare. His feet shrank from the wharf's heat, then scuffed in hot, soft dust.

Tears ran down Nicephorus' contorted face as he grimaced at the light. It was doubly painful to his weakened eyes after the darkness of the slave hold. Nevertheless, he gazed eagerly about.

"So much gone," he mourned. "I'd hoped to see the Pharos, but of course, we were below decks. And the library—a sad day for Empire when the pirates sacked the city. Oh, Antony Philadelphus could rebuild the lighthouse and the causeway, but all that learning gone. I would have given my eyes to have it untouched."

"And how should you study then?" Marric asked. "The last emperor promised to have it restored but—"

"Like all else. Libraries are not as important as better ships, faster horses for the Hippodrome, flashier trappings and finer weapons for the Tagmata regiments . . . and for Irene herself—"

"Silence!"

The lash curled about Nicephorus' shoulders but did not cut too deeply. The Arabs clearly wanted their wares undamaged to attract better prices. But Marric's healing scars would only give him a character for fierce strength: useful should someone want a bodyguard or a fighter, an interesting challenge for a master who wanted to try his hand at slave breaking.

Alexandria's harbor was almost bare of grain barges. The water level was low, and beggars hunching against the old warehouses looked even thinner and more ragged than normal.

Alexandria had been tossed from allegiance to allegiance so many times that it seemed to be neither Arab nor Byzantine. Had it any loyalties at all? Marric sensed in Alexander's city the same aura of loss, corruption, and sinister pleasures that had disquieted him the night of his disastrous return to Byzantium. Languorous Alexandria might be, but it sheltered a secret excitement. Marric felt his blood begin to stir, but be marched forward, eyes on the whip.

Several times he nearly felt it on his back for turning to stare at the harbor. His ancestress Cleopatra might have stopped right there, he imagined, when she came to Antony dressed as the Goddess.

Nicephorus too kept turning to look at the city. Finally they were shoved along twisted streets shadowed by overhanging houses, their plaster cracking and their narrow windows barred. From time to time the file of slaves had to give place to a troop of cataphracts who thundered down the crowded streets with total unconcern for the dust their horses kicked up—or the people the horses kicked.

In the Apostases, the warehouses where pottery, wine, and cheeses were stored, Arabs jostled Hellenes. No one thought it strange, least of all the native Egyptians, poorest of the city dwellers. They had outlasted pharaohs, caliphs, and emperors already. Imperial Alexandria had sunk to the level of a thieves' market.

"The Temple of Osiris." Nicephorus jerked his chin at a huge and imposing building. "A great one, they say, though a greater yet lies down the Nile at Heliopolis."

The City of the Sun! So long ago Heliopholis' priests had taught his ancestors to revere Horus, Isis, and Osiris in the undying lands and to use their powers well. What powers? Marric thought bitterly. He had none—or had he?

Chains, fall from me, he commanded silently. Then he chuckled. Power might exist . . . did. He had had stern proof of it. It was a pity he didn't possess it, or was it? He might abuse it, too.