Thomas Harlan - The Gate of fire

"What is it?" Vladimir's voice dropped, becoming a low whisper.

"The Persians," Nicholas guessed aloud. "I heard that some of the high priest's men learned they would try a crossing today, on the festival."

Vladimir tested the release on his blade. From the corner of his eye, Nicholas caught a glimpse of a red leather hilt with a bone handle and the dull gleam of old worn iron. Brunhilde trembled under his own fingers, feather-light on her pommel. Above them, on the fighting tower, was a clink as thick glass jugs were carefully moved about. A windlass cranked, its gears muffled by cloths. The dromon drifted in the mist, sliding slowly on the strong current that came from the Sea of Darkness. Above, through the murk, the sun was a pale orange disk. Nicholas squinted up-yes, the fog was thinning quickly. In minutes it would be gone. "Soon," he breathed, and crouched a little behind the bulwark. "Get down a bit," he said to Vladimir. "These things always start with sharp objects flying through the air. Our turn will come, though, once we're in the thick of it."

"Oh," Vladimir said agreeably, squatting down behind the wooden planks. "You've done this before, I suppose. I thought you looked like a sailor."

Nicholas glared at him out of the corner of his eye. The fog was almost gone. He bent to untie the leather straps that bound the boots to his feet. Sea work called for bare feet on the decking. He began humming a little tune.

– |"Ramming speed!"

The shout echoed from the fore fighting tower of the dromon. Nicholas leaned out, oblivious to the whistle of Persian arrows filling the air over his head. The sea was bright, the wave tops brilliant with the noon sun, and a crisp wind blew past. Oars flashed into the dark water, and with each stroke the great ship surged forward. Spray from the bow wave blew back over the marines crowded into the foredeck. Nicholas squinted forward, seeing the bulk of another Persian ship swell before them. The nine-foot-long iron beak that jutted from the front of the Roman warship cut above the water, spilling back bright foam. The dromon charged down into a swale between the long, slow waves and the beak disappeared again in the blue-black depths.

The Persian, its sail full of the northern wind, began swinging away from the oncoming Roman ship. Nicholas hissed, silently urging the ship on, on toward its victim. The trill of the row master's flute altered, and the oars on the right side of the ship rippled like snakes and rose up for half a beat. The left bank cut to double time, and the dromon danced to the right, a hurtling spearhead tipped with hungry iron. The Persians, crowding the rails of their captured merchantman, began screaming. The flurry of arrows from their ship faltered, then stopped. The crewmen, in dirty wool breechcloths, began leaping over the side. Nicholas grinned again, and kicked Vladimir in the leg.

The Northerner rose up, gripping the railing to steady himself.

"Here it comes," shouted Nicholas over the roar of the waters and the thunder of oars in the locks. The Persian soldiers were scrambling away from the side of their ship closest to the great ram. The sea dipped, and the merchantman slid down into a trough. The beak of the dromon broke out of the waters, dripping foam, and then arrowed down with the tilting sea, to stab into the foredeck of the sailing ship.

Nicholas flexed his knees in automatic reaction to the shock that shuddered through the length of the ship. The decking under his feet jumped a little, and Vladimir swore as the side of his head cracked against the bulwark. The iron ram punched through the pine planking of the Persian ship with a tremendous screech. The booming roar from the dying ship drowned the screams of Persians hurled into the sea by the shock of the collision. The heavy decking shattered, sending yard-long splinters scything across the deck; then the dromon plunged through the wreck like an axe head into a rotten log.

Nicholas cursed violently and threw himself down. The sudden wave had thrown the dromon into the enemy ship too quickly-the front ranks of oars were still sliding back into the body of the Roman ship. Thirty or more oars on the right-hand side crashed into the Persian ship as it was brushed aside, shattering and snapping like an overbent bow. In an instant the forward gallery was filled with hideous screams. The thirty-foot oars ground through the benches of seated men, smashing bone and crushing flesh. A spray of blood filled the compartment, and bench after bench was torn to splinters. Sixty men died in an instant. The dromon staggered, seemingly stunned by the blow.

Nicholas staggered up off the deck, oblivious to the wailing cries of the men trapped below. The Persian ship had fouled on the starboard side of the Roman dromon, the remaining oars tangled with the rigging of the merchantman's mast. The enemy ship, its fore torn away, was filling with water at an alarming rate. Those Persian soldiers still alive crawled among the wreckage. Some, weighted down by their heavy scaled armor, had already disappeared under the dark waters.

Nicholas felt Vladimir pick himself up off of the deck and stand at his side. "Watch for boarders," Nicholas snapped and he slid Brunhilde back over his back into her sheath with a click.

"What?" Vladimir was still dizzy from the blow to his head. "Where are…"

Nicholas vaulted the rail and swung down the side of the ship. The dromon was beginning to list to starboard as the Persian ship's hold flooded. Behind him, distantly, like the cawing of black ravens in the low hills of the Dannmark, he heard sailors shouting. He stepped out onto a top-bank oar. It was almost a foot across at this point, though it tapered toward the leaf-shaped blade. A grim smile flickered across his face-here, at least, he could miss an oar and escape being beaten.

Behind him, he heard Vladimir shouting in dismay.

He ran forward, springing lightly from oar to oar, his toes gripping the oar-shafts on each step. The oars were jammed up against the Persian ship, offering him a far more stable platform than in the old days. He reached the last intact oar and sidestepped down its length. The deck of the Persian ship, turned almost sideways, was only a dozen feet away. He slid a herring knife out of the sheath strapped to his leg and crouched, his legs balanced on two broken oars. The curving blade-honed to mirror sharpness-cut into the tangled ropes and guy-lines that bound the two ships together. The ropes, even heavy with seawater, yielded to the knife. The sea rose and fell around him, grinding the broken oars into the decking.

Under the cork armor, Nicholas dripped with sweat. Someone was shouting at him from the dromon, but he refused to listen. A wave came up, and for a moment he was up to his shoulders in the cold, dark waters of Propontis. It slid away, and it took all his strength to cling to the oar. Something heavy slammed into him from the side, and he blinked seawater away to see the crushed face of a man swing past him. He pushed the corpse off with one arm. The ropes were free on this oar.

He dragged himself up, feeling water sluicing out of his armor. The oar trembled and he jumped to the next-a tangled mass of ropes, broken oars, and part of the Persian mast. Behind him the freed oars slid away, pulled back into the Roman ship by the sailors still alive in the forward compartment. The rigging was greasy under his feet, slick with blood and long ribbons of gray intestine. He knelt, one knee pressed into the stomach of a corpse caught in the ropes. The herring knife bit at the hawsers. A groaning sound seemed to come from out of the water itself. Nicholas cut faster, his hand and the knife a blur. He could feel the dromon tipping farther, the dark water rising higher and higher toward the open oar ports as the merchantman's hold flooded.