Harry Turtledove - Justinian

Leo shook his head. "I'm sorry, Emperor," he said. "They seem very stupid and stubborn."

"Justinian, how are we going to get into the city?" Tervel said. "By my sword, everything I had heard of these walls is only a piece of the truth. I would be mad to throw my army at them."

"I did not ask you to do that," I answered. I had not asked because I did not think he would do it, and I did not think an attack would succeed if he did do it. I had not adequately considered the walls from outside until then. When I was a child, the Arabs had assailed the Queen of Cities with siege engines of the sort the Bulgars lacked, and to no avail. They had also challenged us Romans on the sea, where the Bulgars had no ships whatever.

Tervel had that same thought in a different context, saying, "We cannot make this city starve, either, not when boats bring in food in spite of everything we are able to do on land." In truth, we could not do that much on land, either, lacking as we did the manpower to extend a tight siege line along the whole length of the wall. I had counted on the soldiers' renouncing Apsimaros at my return. To find that hope mistaken was a bitter blow.

"Can't hardly quit now," Myakes declared. "We've come too far for that."

"Yes," Tervel said, but I liked neither his tone of voice nor the look on his face. He could quit our venture without a qualm, return to the lands north of the Haimos Mountains, and, by means of booty and slaves taken, reckon the raid a success. He could take me with him, to use as pretext whenever he cared to attack Romania again. Only gaining the city now would keep me from that fate, but how to gain it?

"We'll try again tomorrow," I said, with luck sounding more confident than I felt.

I went to different parts of the wall that next day, traveling past the Golden Gate down toward the Sea of Marmara in my effort to persuade the soldiery with in the Queen of Cities to abandon the usurper and return to their rightful and proper affiliation. I had no more success, however, than I had enjoyed, or rather not enjoyed, on previous days. Some soldiers continued to revile me on the grounds that I was noseless, despite the refutation of that argument being there before their eyes. More cursed me for having come with a host of Bulgars at my back.

To that charge, I found myself hard-pressed to respond. Perhaps I should have been received more favorably had I come straight down to Constantinople in Moropaulos's fishing boat. At the time I began the journey, I had thought it more likely I would be seized and beheaded.

That still struck me as having been highly likely. In any case, I had no choice. The die, as Julius Caesar said, was cast. I harangued the soldiers on the walls from first light of dawn till dusk deepened into night. They would not open the gates for me. More dejected than I had ever been in all my life, even in the black days shortly after my mutilation, I rode back toward Tervel's encampment, back past the Golden Gate, back past the Kharisian Gate, back past the ruins of the aqueduct of Valens.

My supporters seemed as downhearted as I was. The men from Kherson had marveled no less than Tervel at seeing Constantinople. Now, though, its splendor took on a sinister meaning for them. "How are you going to get in there, Emperor, if they won't open up?" Barisbakourios asked gloomily.

"Whatever you do, Emperor, it's going to take something special," Leo agreed. He had again been unable to persuade the garrison to renounce the usurper.

Tervel stood listening quietly to our conversation. Eventually, the khagan of the Bulgars would suggest withdrawing to the lands he ruled, the lands north of the mountains. I saw no choice ahead but to go with him, to pursue my dream even as it receded before me, to become the glove inside which rested his hand. Part of me would die every day, but the breathing husk that remained would be enough for him and to spare.

Moropaulos, in his earnest, dull way, ticked off points on his fingers: "We can't go over the walls- we're not hawks. We can't go under the walls- we're not moles." He knew nothing of mining, but the Bulgars knew nothing of mining, either, which made him correct. He went on, "We can't go through the walls- we're not woodpeckers." He laughed, but only for a moment. Then his heavy face curdled to sadness. "That doesn't leave anything."

The rest of my followers looked similarly dejected. So did Tervel, although art might have substituted for emotion on his features. For one moment, downheartedness threatened to overwhelm me, too. Then, ever so slowly, I straightened, where before I had slumped. "We are not hawks," I said in a voice that made my comrades turn toward me and pay my words close heed. "We are not moles. But perhaps, by God and His Mother, we can be woodpeckers."

"Only person a wood pecker'd do any good is a eunuch," Myakes said.

I glared at him so fiercely that he subsided, mumbling apologies. Pointing south toward the aqueduct of Valens, I said, "The channel there does not bring water into the imperial city these days, nor has it for eighty years or so. But it still goes into Constantinople. God willing, so shall we."

"What if they have guards in there, Emperor?" Stephen exclaimed.

"Then we'll fight them," I replied. Then they'll kill us, I thought. "But I never remember guards being posted in the aqueduct. Do you, Myakes?"

Where a moment before he had been good for nothing but making crude jokes, now he sounded surprisingly thoughtful. "No, Emperor, I don't, not ever. Nobody thinks about the aqueduct, not these days."

I was thinking about it, thinking about the prospect of making my way through several hundred yards of pitch-black pipe. I wondered how big around the pipe was. Would I be able to stand upright in it, or would I have to crawl all that way? If I did have to crawl, finding guards there was less likely. But who could guess what might have denned there in the many years since water had stopped flowing?

"Who's with me?" I asked, deliberately not thinking of any of these things.

Faithful Myakes spoke first, I think, but he beat out my followers from Kherson- and also Leo- by only a fragment of a heartbeat. None of the other Romans who had joined me since I came down with the Bulgars said a word. Neither did Tervel. I tried to make out his expression in the fading light, tried and failed. Was he discomfited at seeing what he had reckoned certain failure suddenly sparked with another chance at success?

If he was, he was not so discomfited as to keep me from making the effort. On the other hand, he did not offer any aid, either. He simply stood aside and let me and my backers do as we would- washed his hands of us, so to speak, as Pilate had done with our Lord. All the risks were ours, and all the planning was ours, too.

Not, I must say, that much planning was involved. We had to get up into the opening, go through the pipe, and get down into the city. It would be simple- or it would be impossible.

"Torches," Stephen said, "so we can see what-"

"No." I cut him off. Pointing toward the aqueduct once more, I continued, "We have no way to tell whether bricks have fallen out or mortar come loose, or whether the pipe itself has cracked. If the usurper's soldiers see light in the aqueduct, whether everything has been dark and quiet since my great-great-grandfather's day, they'll be waiting for us inside the city, and that will be the end of everything."

"All that way in the dark?" Theophilos shuddered.

Though dreading that myself, I told him, "Stay here, then." My voice, I daresay, had a lash to it. Having seen what might be a way into the city, I was wild to try it.

"A pry bar," Myakes exclaimed. "No telling what we'll have to move."

"I know where to get one," Leo said. That, I confess, made me raise my eyebrows. This was only the third day on which he had been in the neighborhood of the imperial city. But he hurried away with every sign of confidence. My new spatharios was proving a man of no small resourcefulness.