Thomas Harlan - The Gate of fire

Reluctantly, Nicholas followed, pushing the redhead in front of him, though he kept his hands on her stomach. Leg in leg, they squeezed forward through the crowd.

Flowers and a blizzard of cut colored paper rained down from the balconies above, along with the ringing of bells and gongs and the stentorian wail of trumpets and bucinas. Constantinople would not sleep tonight.

– |"Please, my lord, you must come out and greet the crowds-you must make the sacrifice of the bull. The gods are watching!"

Heraclius flinched, seeing the round face of priest Bonus peering in at him. The Emperor slid back to the other side of the litter, even that simple movement bringing tears of pain to his eyes. Outside the wicker-and-gold conveyance, he could hear the rolling shouts of a mighty assembly. He knew, even though he had passed into the city closed in the darkness of the litter, borne by twenty of his guardsmen on a great platform, that a vast throng crowded the Forum. The thought of stepping out, of feeling the terrible pain in his legs, of feeling the dreadful weakness shoot through his body, unmanned him. The Emperor of the East bit at his hand, trying to keep from crying out in rage and fear at his helplessness. The knuckles were scarred already.

"Avtokrator." Rufio's blunt, scarred face replaced the worried visage of the priest. The centurion was well used to this by now, having carried the Emperor by force of will from Cilicia and the high pass of the gates. "I will be at your side, as will the faithful guard. We will see that you do not fall."

The centurion's black eyes were fierce. Heraclius grimaced, seeing the challenge there. He almost wept, feeling the fear of pain clawing at his will. This should have been the greatest of days, his redemption for the long years of struggle and disaster that had followed his overthrow of the madman Phocas. Instead, he cowered in a litter, afraid to step out into the sunlight. Afraid, though he did not admit it, to be seen by Bonus or any other man. His lower body was distended, swollen with this malignant edema. He could barely walk and could no longer suffer anything but the softest fabric upon his skin. His legs were a gruesome parody of the firm, muscular shape of his youth. Gray and stretched, ballooned out like overstuffed sausages.

But this was the day of days, he railed at his mind, at the fear. This is my triumph, as no emperor of Rome has ever held! Persia is thrown down, after centuries of struggle! This is my day, my blessed day!

Rufio, snarling under his breath, half climbed into the litter and wedged a thick muscled arm behind the Emperor. Heraclius cried out, whimpering, and the centurion, his face a mask, bodily lifted him out of the litter. The sun was westering, and the slanting light fell on the face of the Emperor as he emerged, here in the great open space of the temple atrium. Marble pillars faced with gold towered around them, a forest of majesty. They stood on the steps of the Temple of Sol Invictus, that which had once been-in the youth of the city-the abode of Zeus Pankrator. It stretched before them, arcades of marble a hundred feet on a side. Within, in the rectangular apse of the temple, the brilliant disc of the god shone in the late afternoon sun. Thousands of noblemen, their wives, the priests, embassies from the tribes beyond the Empire stood waiting, crowded behind ranks of iron-chested guardsmen. All were silent.

Heraclius put down his feet, swallowing a gasp of pain. From the litter at the entrance to the temple to the gleaming marble altar below the sun disc was a distance of 120 feet. A thick purple carpet, edged with golden thread, lay before him. He took a step, the guardsmen close behind him, Rufio's left hand under his arm, unobtrusive and strong as a bar of steel. He leaned into it, trying to take the weight off of his legs. Even so, the pain was blinding. He took another step, unable to even feel the rich luxurious pile of the carpet. His eyes watered, and a thin trail of tears seeped down his cheek. This is my day! he shouted in his mind, trying to override the pain. My day.

He took another step.

– |Her face shrouded in a dark veil of silk, a woman stood at the peak of the little Temple of Hecate Victrix, looking down upon the murmuring crowd below. Though the rays of the sun fell upon her, gilding the dark rich fabrics that she wore, painting golden stripes on the black and gray and charcoal of her raiment, she felt wry amusement. The a'ha-tri'tsu children thronged the precincts of the old Acropolis and the grounds of the temples of the young gods, but none marked her, high above them. They were often a blind people. Statues of the goddess lined the roof of the Temple of Hecate, affording the woman cover as she stood quietly, watching their ceremonies.

The roar of noise from the crowds that had surged out into the city streets had woken her, called her forth to this place, the one remnant of her youth that still stood within the confines of the city. She looked down, seeing the pain and agony of this king of the day-people as he staggered to the altar. She smiled, smelling the poison and disease that was upon him. She wondered, shading her eyes from the burning rays of the sun, which of his servants had turned against him. Who had put the golden droplets in his wine or the shining white crystals in his meat? His fear was rank in her fine white nostrils, even at this distance.

A doomed man, she thought, finding a small pleasure in his agony. Another soon to pass from this way station on the Wheel.

The dark lady turned, fading into the shadows behind the lithe statues of the goddesses. Her pale blue-white eyes blinked, and she smiled. With so many out of their homes thronging the streets, there would be good hunting once darkness fell. She smiled, and the tip of a pink tongue appeared between her sharp white teeth. The pain curdled in her blood, but soon she would have surcease from it, respite in the panting fear of a dying day-man. Like a ghost, she passed among the statues and descended a stair that led down into the nave of Hecate's Temple and thence to the cellars below.

– |Nicholas staggered down the hallway of the apartment, his head spinning with excess. Behind him, in the room with the balcony, the redhead was sprawled amid the tangled sheets and blankets of her too-comfortable bed. She was snoring, overcome by exhaustion. For a moment, as he groped in the darkness, trying to find the edge of the door, he remembered. Then his fingers found it, rough and poorly planed, and he made his way into the stairwell. The insula was a three-story building of cheap brick and half-cured wood quite close to the western end of the Hippodrome. It was not an elegant district-where else could two attractive young seamstresses find lodgings for themselves without undue comment?

Weaving down the stairs, Nicholas felt pleasantly exhausted, the memory of the woman, her skin gleaming with a sheen of sweat, her mouth hot on his, playing back in his memory. He smelled the common privy on the ground floor and managed to keep-by blind luck-from braining himself on the low doorway. He pushed aside a heavy curtain, hung on copper rings from a crossbar, and stepped into the common area between the washroom on his left and the toilets on his right.

There was a sound, an odd moan, and he turned, one hand fumbling for the hilt of his sword.

He had no sword; Brunhilde was upstairs, hanging in her leather and cloth sheath on the head of the big carved bed. Not good, his mind started to say, and then he stopped, eyes widening.

Vladimir was in the washroom, his lean, muscled form naked but for a loincloth, bent over the still body of the blonde. In the flickering light of a night lantern in the hallway between the two rooms, her flesh had turned a pasty white. Nicholas hissed in surprise and backed up. Vladimir turned, his dark eyes enormous and gleaming like the moon with the reflection of the lantern. There was blood streaking his chest and his hands. Behind him, the girl lay half in and half out of the big stone washtub, her hair drifting in the water, the side of her throat a bloody mass of skin.