The Golden Horn (23 page)

Morning crawled over Asia. Slowly the shadow ships took shape,
and after a long while, color. Every ship bore on its sides the shields of its
men; from every masthead flew a banner or a pennon. The new sun struck fire on
their blazons.

“They’re moving,” muttered a voice among
the Varangians.

Slowly, weighing anchor, raising sail, striving with oars against
the current of the Horn.

A young Guardsman glanced over his shoulder. His eyes were
bronze-gold; two minds gazed out of them, Alf’s enfolded in Thea’s.
Within the walls across the half-cleared ruins of the fire rose the Hill of
Christ the All-seer. A monastery crowned its summit; on the hill before the
gates spread the vermilion tents of the Emperor.

Silver flashed beneath the imperial banner. Trumpets rang; timbrels
sent their clamor up to heaven. The Emperor’s cry went up, a deep roar: “Christ
conquers!”

And from the ships thundered the reply: “Holy
Sepulcher!”

The air thickened with stones and arrows. Near Thea, a man bellowed
in pain; his fellow nocked arrow to string and let fly. She swept up a heavy
stone and hurled it with all her inhuman strength, well-nigh as far and as true
as a catapult; another followed it, and another, and another. On the ships, shields
bent and shattered; men toppled to the decks.

But the fleet advanced, all the power of the West gathered together,
half a league from end to end. The first prow ground to a halt on the shingle.
Armed figures swarmed from it.

Ladders swung up against the wall. A galley ran aground full
in front of Thea. From the tower on its broad deck a bridge unfolded, crashing
down over the parapet, bending under the weight of a dozen men.

On either side of Thea, Varangians gripped their axes. With a
roar they sprang forward. Half hewed flesh and steel; half struck at the
bridge, battling the Franks who would have bound it to the wall.

Thea turned her axe against the bridge. As she smote, she laughed.
“The wind fights with us!” she cried. “Ho! There it blows!”

Southward, driving against the ships, thrusting them back. Of
them all, but five had reached the walls; and those wavered, losing their
precarious grip.

A sword glittered before her eyes. She parried it with a vicious,
curving blow that whirled the swordsman about. He staggered on the bridge and
fell.

Thea’s axe crashed down where he had been. The bridge
rocked. Two more axes struck it; three; half a dozen. With a groan of parting
timbers it collapsed.

For an instant no one moved. One Latin only had set foot on
the tower. He lay dead, sprawled over the parapet.

With a swift contemptuous gesture a Guardsman thrust him
off. His body plunged to earth in the midst of a company of his fellows, a missile
more deadly than any stone.

The Guardsman turned back to the rest, a feral grin on his face.
“That for the cursed Normans,” he said.

o0o

“But he was a Fleming.”

“Eh?”

Alf stared blankly up at Thomas’ round puzzled face.
He looked down. His body seemed thin and frail after Thea’s robust
Varangian-shape. It lay on a pallet in a small bare room, the air sharp-scented
with herbs, the air of Saint Basil’s. Nikki slept beside him, Anna and
Irene guarded by Corinna across the small space. From the angle of the sun, it
was full morning.

He rose, careful not to wake Nikki, smoothing his rumpled
tunic.

Thomas managed a creditable smile. “Isn’t that
like a child? Up all night, determined not to miss an instant of the adventure;
and sound asleep by sunup.”

Alf followed him out and eased the door shut. “It’s
an adventure,” he conceded, “but it frightens them, too.”

“Of course it does. That’s half the pleasure.”
Thomas looked hard at him. “Were you having a nightmare when I came in?”

“No,” Alf said, “not precisely a
nightmare. Why did you wake me? Is something wrong?”

“That depends on what you call wrong.” Thomas
was as grave as he could ever be. “The Franks have attacked.”

“I know.”

“Know everything, don’t you?” Thomas shook
his head. “You and the Almighty. And of course, Master Dionysios. He
wants you up and working. Just because you have a bed here, I’m to tell
you, doesn’t mean you’re ill.”

“Or privileged.” Alf shook back his tangled
hair. “May I have a bath first?”

“I’ll pretend you didn’t ask.”
Thomas grinned up at him. “Don’t take too long about it.”

o0o

From the walls, empty now of enemies, Thea could see the sweep
of the battle. Most of the fleet had retreated out of catapult range, driven by
the brisk south wind. The shore was thick still with Franks, most afoot, a few
mounted on horses that slipped and shied upon the shingle. But she had marked
the companies that struggled back to their grounded ships, straining to thrust
them out into the open water.

More now as the sun sank. Those who fought on, fought
against a solid wall of Greeks.

Up on his hill the Emperor sounded his trumpets. Below the wall,
the Greeks gathered and charged. The army above them hurled a new volley into
the sea, mingled with that horror of the East, the dragon-lasts of Greek fire.

And the Latins crumpled. Some few strove to hold fast; but their
strength had broken. All at once and all as one they gave way. One ship and
then another clawed away from the deadly shore.

The enemy had fled. The City had held against them.

“Victory! roared the Guard. They laughed and whooped and
threw their axes up flashing in the sun. “Victory! Victory!”

o0o

Jehan stood in the stern of the last ship, leaning on his
sword, paying no heed to the few missiles that fell spent about him. All along
that lofty and impregnable wall, the ranks of Greeks had turned their backs and
bared their buttocks to the fleet.

Beside him Henry laughed, a tired, bitter sound. “Now
we know what they really think of us.”

“Didn’t we always know it?” Jehan wiped
his blade on his cloak and sheathed it. “I can’t believe it’s
ending this way. After all that’s been said and done and
promised…”

“You put too much faith in soothsayers.”

Henry was jesting. Perhaps. Jehan pushed back his mail-coif and
let the wind cool his burning brow. “So,” he said, “we lost. What
now?”

“A council,” Henry answered him.

o0o

They held it on the northern shore of the Horn beyond the camp,
in the empty shell of a church; their table was the broken altar.

Count Baudouin struck it with his fist. “Are we
knights or women? We’ve lost a battle, true enough. We won the last one. Who’s
to say we won’t win the third?”

One of the Frankish lords swept his hand in the direction of
the City. “Against that? There are a hundred thousand Greeks inside those
walls, and an empire full of them all around us. We lost a hundred men today;
they lost none that we know of. How can we hope to face them?”

“How not?” Baudouin’s eyes flashed around
the assembly. “It’s more than our hides we’re fighting for.
It’s our honor. Are we going to let a herd of traitorous Greeks boast
that they had the better of us?”

A young lord nodded eagerly. “They tricked us into
setting up an emperor. Then they murdered him and told us all our treaties were
worthless. Now they want to trample on our prowess in war. No man will ever be
able to say that Thibaut de Langliers was bested by any coward of a Greek.”

The younger men murmured, assenting; their elders sat silent.
Baudouin faced the latter. “My lords! Does honor mean nothing to you?”

“Not,” said a grim greybeard, “when it’s
so obvious that God is punishing us for our sins. We’ve pursued this
unholy war against Christians, under Christ’s cross; we’ll die for
it in God’s wrath.”

From among the bishops and the abbots, a man in Benedictine
black leaped to his feet. “Not so!” he cried in a voice honed and
trained at the pulpit. “God tests us; God tries us to find us strong
enough to fight His battle. Have not the Greeks rebelled against our Church?
Have they not denied the Lord Pope and twisted the words of our Creed and
turned the Mass into a celebration of pagan magnificence? God cries out against
them. Woe, woe to my people, that have become even as the Infidel!”

Jehan, seated behind the Cardinal Legate, bit back the words
that crowded to his lips. His Eminence sat like a graven image, making no move
to suppress such idiocy. They were all in it now, priests and knights,
disgustingly eager to set the seal of divine approval on their folly. A just
war, a holy war, a Crusade—God willed it; they had only to obey.

It was a lie. But it gave them strength. Their cheeks lost
the pallor of fear; their eyes glittered with newborn courage. Someone began to
chant a hymn: “
Vexilla Regis prodeunt’
—-‘Forth
advance the banners of Heaven’s King.’”

He would not sing it. He would not.

“Another attack!” a baron called out as the
Amen
died away. “We failed on the Golden
Horn. Why not try the other side? The Bosporus, maybe, or the Sea of Marmora.
All the Greek defenses face us here. We can take them from the other side and be
in the City before anyone can stop us.”

The council had waked to life and to hope. The Doge cut into
the excited babble with a quiet word. “No,” he said. “We
cannot venture on the Bosporus. Well before we could mount an assault, wind and
current together would sweep us away from the walls into the open sea.”

“That,” someone muttered, “might be all to
the good, if only we can be away from here.”

Dandolo glowered in the direction of the dissenter. “Our
loss today is a disappointment, but far from the disaster it appears to be. We
need only to rest, restore ourselves and our ships, and prepare a new and
stronger assault. Two days, my lords. Only two, and we can return in force to
take the City.”

“Two days’ rest,” said Baudouin, “and
a new plan of attack. Aye, my lords. I swore I’d hear Mass at Easter in
Holy Wisdom; that, I swear anew by God and all His saints, I shall do.”

“So shall we all.” Thibaut de Langliers sprang
up with a cry. “
Deus lo volt
! God
wills it!”

They echoed him, all of them, even the grimly smiling Doge.

But Jehan set his lips together and said not a word.

“It’s
not
a
just war!”

The Cardinal Legate regarded his secretary with lifted brow.
He was, perhaps, amused. He was certainly not afraid, although Jehan’s
white fury would have given most men pause.

“Certainly,” he agreed, “it is far from just.”

Jehan struggled to master himself. “Out there,”
he said in a voice that was almost steady, “priests are saying Mass. They’re
preaching sermons. They’re telling the men that God is with them. The
Greeks are traitors, oathbreakers, worse than Infidels.”

“I know. I can hear them.”

“And you sit here? You read your breviary, say a
prayer, meditate on the Infinite? You’re the ambassador of the Holy See!”

“So I am.” Pietro di Capua brushed a speck of
dust from his scarlet sleeve. He was always immaculate, this prince of the Church;
his fine white hands had never known greater labor than the raising of the
chalice in the Mass. But the eyes that he fixed on the other were clear and
sharp. “I know my rank and my station.”

“Then use it!” cried Jehan, unabashed by the
open rebuke.

“You know what His Holiness thinks of all this. He
excommunicated the Doge and all his followers with full and formal ritual after
they took Zara. But those madmen from Francia have called them back to the
sacraments and told them they’re forgiven. Is the Pope’s will worth
nothing at all?”

The Cardinal shook his head slightly. “Have you been
preaching that gospel to the army?”

Jehan drew in his breath with a sharp hiss. “I’m
outraged, but I’m not insane. One of the bishops tried to get me to
preach his lies, flattering me with foolishness about my famous way with words.
I escaped before I said anything we’d all regret.”

“So,” His Eminence said. “As you have so
bluntly reminded me, I am the vicar of the Vicar of Christ. Unfortunately I dwell
in the midst of Gehenna. The army can escape this trap only by fighting; the
priests are in like case. Should they preach what you would have them preach,
and die for it, and drive the army in turn to its death?”

“I fight because I swore an oath, and because I can’t
bear not to. That doesn’t mean I have to proclaim a lie from the very altar.”
Jehan leaned across the Cardinal’s worktable. “My lord! Are you
going to allow it?”

“I have no choice.”

Jehan spun on his heel and stood with his back to the Cardinal,
fists clenched at his sides.

“The Pope has no choice,” His Eminence continued
quietly. “The Church has a head, but that head is far away. The members
are here, and strong, and accept no guidance. They will do what they will do,
whether His Holiness wills it or no.”

“He could condemn them from every pulpit in
Christendom.”

“Could he? Would you, Father Jehan?”

The title stiffened his shoulders and brought his head up.
He swallowed hard. Slowly he turned to face the Cardinal. “My lord, I... forgive
me. I presumed far too much.”

The other did not quite smile. He was a small man, dark and inclined
to plumpness, but in that instant he made Jehan think of Alf. “My son,
you are forgiven.” He made a quick sign of the cross over the bent head. “Go
now. I need to meditate.” His eyes glinted. “Upon, of course, the Infinite.”

o0o

Jehan prowled the camp, restless and ill-tempered. It did
his mood no good to see the men, knight and common soldier alike, laboring with
new and firm purpose, preparing for the morrow. There were no idlers; the few
who were not at work gathered around the priests, deeply and devoutly absorbed
in prayer.

A commotion drew him toward the shore. Women’s voices,
shrieks and sobs, and the occasional sharp cry of a child. Under the hard eyes
of a troop of monks, all the whores and camp followers crowded aboard a waiting
ship. The army would sail to battle with all stain of sin washed away, all
temptation banished as far as wind and oar would carry it.