Harry Turtledove - Krispos of Videssos

The Halogai roared back, crying defiance to the sky. "Come on, little men, try us!" one shouted. "We make you littler still!" He threw his axe high in the air and caught it with a flourish.

Siege engines bucked and snapped. Stones and great darts flew toward Pliskavos. Engineers returned the machines' throwing arms to their proper positions, checked ropes, reloaded, then hauled on windlasses to tighten the cordage to the point where the engines could cast again. Meanwhile archers skipped forward to add their missiles to those of the catapults.

Not many Halogai were bowmen; the fighting they reveled in was hand to hand. Those who had bows shot back. A couple of Videssians fell; more northerners tumbled from the wall. The main body of imperial troops shouted and made as if to surge toward the wall. The Halogai roared back.

Krispos watched all that from the riverbank west of Pliskavos. It was a fine warlike display, with banners flying and polished armor gleaming under the morning sun. He hoped Harvas found it as riveting as he did himself. If all the wizard's attention focused there, he would pay no heed to the pair of dromons now gliding up the Astris toward his town.

With their twin banks of oars, thirty oars to a bank, the war galleys reminded Krispos of centipedes striding over the water. Such smooth motion seemed impossible. As with anything else, it came by dint of endless practice. .

Closer and closer to the quays at the bottom of the wall came the two dromons. Krispos watched the marines who were busy at their bows. A few Halogai watched, too, watched and jeered. A whole fleet of dromons might have carried enough warriors to attack Pliskavos from the river. Two were no threat.

Aboard each vessel, an officer raised his hand, then let it fall. The marines at the hand pumps swing their handles up and down, up and down. Twin sheets of flame belched from the wood-and-bronze siphon tubes. The quays caught at once. Black smoke shot skyward. Then the flames splashed against the wall.

For most of a minute, as the marines aboard the dromons kept pumping out their incendiary mixture, Krispos could not tell whether Tanilis had stolen the truth from Harvas' mind, whether his own scheme could disrupt the wizard's plan. Then the tubs of firemix went dry. The fiery streams stopped pouring from the siphons. The wall still burned.

Slowly at first, then quicker and quicker, the flames spread. The dromons backed oars to get away from a conflagration greater than any they were intended to confront. The Halogai atop the river wall poured buckets of water down onto the fire. It kept burning, kept spreading. The Halogai poured again, with no better luck. Krispos saw them stare down, the images of their bodies wavering through heat-haze. Then they gave up and ran away.

The flames were already running as fast as a man could. They burned a brilliant yellow, brighter and hotter than the orange-red fire that had spawned them. They reached the top of the wall and threw themselves high into the air, as if in play.

"By the good god," Krispos whispered. He sketched Phos' sun-sign. At the same time, he narrowed his eyes against the growing glare from Pliskavos. His face heated, as if he were standing in front of a fireplace. So he was, but several hundred yards away.

Halogai ran all along the wail now, even where the flames had not yet reached. Their terrified shouts rose above the crackle and hiss of the fire. Then the flames that had gone one way around Pliskavos met those that had gone the other, and there was nowhere to run anymore. Harvas' city was a perfect ring of fire.

The wall itself burned with a clean, almost smokeless flame. Before long, though, smoke did start rising up from inside Pliskavos—and no wonder, Krispos thought. By then he had already moved back from the fire twice. Houses and other buildings could not move back. So close to so much heat, they had to ignite, too.

Kanaris came up to Krispos. The grand drungarios of the fleet pursed his lips in a soundless whistle as he watched Pliskavos burn. "There's a grim sight," he said. As a lifelong sailing man, he feared fire worse than any foe.

Krispos remembered the fright fire had given him the winter before, when wind whipped Midwinter's Day blazes out of control. All the same he said, "It's winning our war for us. Would you sooner have watched our soldiers burn as they tried to storm those walls? Harvas intended the flames for us, you know."

"Oh, aye, he and his deserve them," Kanaris answered at once, "and the ice they'll meet in the world to come, as well. But there are easier ways of dying." He pointed toward the base of the wall.

Some Halogai had chosen to leap to their deaths rather than burn. As is the way of such things, not all had killed themselves cleanly. They burned anyway, most of them, and had the added torment of splintered bones and crushed organs to accompany the anguish of the fire that ate their flesh. The strongest and luckiest tried to crawl away from the flames toward the Videssian line. Forgetting for a moment that they were deadly enemies, imperial troopers darted out to drag two or three of them to safety. Healer-priests hurried up to do what they could for the Halogai.

The fire burned on and on. Krispos ordered his men out of their battle line. Until the flames subsided, they screened Pliskavos better than the wall from which they sprang. The soldiers watched the fire with something approaching awe. They cheered Krispos almost frantically, whether for having raised the fire or for having saved them from it he could not tell.

He wondered what Harvas was doing, was thinking, there inside his burning wall. After three hundred years of unnatural life, did the evil wizard have teeth left to gnash? Whether or no, his hopes were burning with the wall. A sudden savage grin twisted Krispos' mouth. Maybe Harvas had even been on the wall when it went up. That would be justice indeed!

Afternoon came, and evening. Pliskavos kept burning. The sky grew dark; the evening star appeared. It might still have been noon in the Videssian camp, so brilliant was the firelight. Only its occasional flicker said that light was born of flames rather than the sun.

Krispos made himself go into his tent. Sooner or later the flames would die. When they did, the army would need orders.

He wanted to be fresh, to be sure he gave the right ones. But how was he to sleep when the glow that came through the silk fabric of his tent testified to the fearful marvel outside?

And outside one of the guards said, "Aye, my lady, he's within." The Haloga looked into the tent. "The lady Tanilis would see you, Majesty. Ah, good, you're up and about." Krispos hadn't been, but hearing my lady had bounced him from his cot fester than anything short of a sally out of Pliskavos.

When Tanilis came in, Krispos pointed to the bright light that played on the silk. "That victory is yours, Tanilis," he said. Then he gave her the salute properly reserved for the Emperor alone: "Thou conquerest!" He took her in his arms and kissed her.

He'd intended nothing more than that, but she returned the kiss with a desperate intensity unlike anything he'd known from her before. She clung to him so tightly that he could feel her heartbeat through her robe and his. She would not let him go. Before long, all his continent intentions, all his promises to control himself and his body, were swept away in a tide of furious excitement that seemed as hot and fiery as Pliskavos' flaming wall. Still clutching each other, he and Tanilis tumbled to the cot, careless of whether it broke beneath them, as it nearly did.

"Quickly, oh, quickly," she urged him, not that he needed much urging. The cool, practiced competence she usually brought to bed was gone now, leaving only desire. When she arched her back beneath him and quivered at the final instant, she cried out his name again and again. He scarcely heard her. A moment later, he, too, cried out, wordlessly, as he spent himself.