Harry Turtledove - Justinian

In the excitement of the moment, none of the guards asked any questions past that. They did what they usually did: told off a couple from their number to accompany me wherever I was going. One of them carried a torch, adding its light to that from the one Myakes carried.

We hurried through the streets of Phanagoria to Balgitzin's residence, where, arriving, we pounded on the door. One of Balgitzin's servitors answering, we told him the same tale we had given the guards.

Balgitzin came out a few minutes later. "What's wrong with Papatzun?" he asked as we started back to the house he had assigned me.

"His belly pains him," I answered. "He has been vomiting, and fears he might die. He says he needs to tell you something. I do not know what it is."

He sent me a hooded glance, wondering, no doubt, if the message pertained to me. Then we pressed on. As far as he knew, I was ignorant of the orders concerning me Papatzun had brought from Ibouzeros Gliabanos. I hid a smile, not that the torchlight was likely to betray it in any case. Soon enough, I would show him what I knew.

We passed the black mouth of an alley opening out onto the street along which we traveled. I stopped and recoiled. "What's that?" I exclaimed, pointing down the alley. "Something- someone- moved in there."

Balgitzin turned toward the alley. The Khazar guard held his torch higher, the better to see down the narrow, stinking lane. Out came Myakes' sword, as if to defend us from footpads.

While Balgitzin stood distracted, I undid my braided belt and whipped it around his neck without giving him the chance to cry out. Strangling is the best way to kill a man when one must be silent doing it. Balgitzin got out no more than one startled, almost inaudible grunt.

Myakes, being without a strangling cord, did the best he could with his blade. Using point rather than edge, he thrust deep into the guard's throat, blood thereby drowning whatever outcry the man might have made. The Khazar dropped the torch and tried to draw his own sword, but toppled into unconsciousness and death with a hand still on the hilt.

I choked the life out of Balgitzin. When his bowels voided their contents as Papatzun's had done, I let his corpse lie in the street along with the rest of the offal there.

Ever practical, Myakes slit his purse and the guard's. "Heh," he said, his whisper loud in the quiet night. "Even a little gold here. And they may think- for a few minutes they may think- somebody else killed these two and kidnapped us. The more time we can buy to get away, the better off we're going to be."

"No arguments," I said. We hurried off toward the eastern gate of Phanagoria- the direction opposite that in which we would have been expected to flee, our friends dwelling in Kherson to the west- and I put my head down to make my features harder to recognize, reeling along as if drunk.

"Here, what's this?" a guard called on our approach.

"Got to get my cousin here back to Tomin," Myakes answered, sounding drunk himself. "Tavern there weren't good enough for him, no, sir- had to come taste the big city, the damn fool. Well, he's still got to go out fishing tomorrow morning, yes he does, no matter how much he had tonight." His chuckle was full of malicious pleasure at my fate.

He sounded absolutely convincing. I almost believed him myself, and I knew better. The guards laughed and stood aside, letting us pass out into the night.

As a town, Phanagoria had little to recommend it, although I lived as well there as anyone was capable of living. Tomin, now\a160… if anyone who had to live in Tomin slew himself to escape, I doubt God would reckon his suicide a sin deserving damnation. It lay- and, worse luck, lies yet- about three miles east of Phanagoria: a miserable little place without a wall, without a church, and without a hostel, as I discovered on arriving. The couple of taverns the place did have were taverns only, not places where travelers might put up for the night. The publicans apparently never dreamt anyone might want to put up at Tomin for the night, an attitude for which I confess a certain amount of sympathetic understanding.

Tomin exists for one reason and one reason only: a tiny indentation in the seacoast offering ships a little shelter. "We have gold," Myakes said, as if reminding himself, when we lay down against the wall of a building to get out of a chilly breeze and try to rest before dawn. "We can hire a fishing boat to take us to Kherson."

"To somewhere near Kherson, anyway," I said. "I'm too easily recognized to go into the city, I fear, with Apsimaros and the rich men there wanting my head. But you're right, Myakes, we need to gather my followers now."

"And after we do that, Emperor?" he asked, shifting around to try to get more comfortable- or at least less uncomfortable.

"After that?" I sighed. "After that, the Bulgars. Theodora was right: with Ibouzeros Gliabanos turned against me, I have no better choice." As I tried to sleep, I also tried not to think about how bad a choice the Bulgars were likely to be.

I do not remember dozing off, but I must have, for Myakes woke me at dawn by pounding on a tavern door. When the irate proprietor opened up, a show of coins salved his wrath and got us bread and wine, which we ate and drank picking our way through Tomin's muddy alleys to the seaside.

"Look!" I pointed. A real merchant ship was beached there, dwarfing the little fishing boats to either side of it. Some considerable trade exists among the cities and towns along the northern coast of the Black Sea. The only surprise was that this ship had put in at Tomin rather than the nearby Phanagoria. Caught by darkness, perhaps. "We can get out of here faster with him than with any fisherman."

"If he's westbound, aye," Myakes answered. "Probably will be, or we'd have seen him in port yesterday."

"Only one way to find out," I answered, and strode down toward the merchantman.

Her captain, a rough-hewn fellow named Peter, dickered a fare to Symbolon, the nearest port to Kherson, asking no questions once we had paid. I had been prepared to introduce myself as John and Myakes as Myron, but he proved interested only in money, not in names.

We sailed shortly thereafter, having had little intercourse with the folk of Tomin: wh en the Khazars came after us, as I am certain they must have done on discovering both Balgitzin and Papatzun slain, they might well have concluded Myakes and I had vanished into thin air. Whatever they concluded, they did not catch up to us before we had quitted that part of the world for good.

The one bad stretch I had on the three-day voyage to Symbolon came very early, when Peter put into the port of Phanagoria to unload wine and load smoked fish. Myakes and I spent all our time at the stern of the ship, staring out to sea. But the Khazars did not send men aboard to search for us. On our sailing out of that harbor, Myakes and I finished emptying the jar of wine he had bought in Tomin.

Apsimaros had captained the last ship upon which I had traveled, the one taking me from Constantinople into exile in Kherson. No doubt mercifully, I recall next to nothing of that voyage. I could here set forth the journey to Symbolon in exacting detail, but to what purpose? Only storms make travel by sea anything but dull. We had none, not on that journey. I thanked God, not yet aware of His plan for me.

Myakes and I left the merchantman at Symbolon, a town larger than Tomin but smaller than Phanagoria lying a few miles south of Kherson. There I took a room above a tavern (the folk at Symbolon at least entertaining the possibility of someone's wishing to do such a thing), and Myakes and I divided the money we had with us.

I told him, "Go into Kherson. If we're heading for the land of the Bulgars, we'll need Moropaulos's boat again. Anyone else who wants to come is welcome." I laughed. "One thing sure: I'll know who my true friends are."