Harry Turtledove - Justinian

The argument threatened to engulf us as thoroughly as darkness had done. "Wait," I said again. "Let us assume we've come about a bowshot, say, two hundred fifty cubits." That was in the middle range of the guesses they had put forth. "From now on, I will keep track of how many times my right leg advances. For each of those times, I will add one cubit. It will not be a perfect reckoning, but better than the nothing we have now."

No one argued with me. I was in the lead. I had a plan, where the rest had none. And I was the Emperor. Muttering under my breath to keep the count straight, I moved on once more. They followed.

If my beginning guess was right, we should have been approaching the outer wall. Setting my ear against the rough side of the pipe, I tried to find out whether I could hear the Romans who were resisting the Bulgars' onslaught. All I could make out was my own blood pounding. Sighing, I went on.

At the count of, I believe, three hundred seventeen, my hand came up against an obstruction. A moment later, my head ran into it, too. "Hold up," I said to Myakes and the rest behind me. I felt of the obstruction. It was an iron grate, rough and scaly with rust under my fingers. At some time after the Avars had worked their destruction, then, Roman engineers had done their best to make sure no one could do as I was doing. By the feel of the iron, though, it had been a long time ago, and forgotten since. Explaining what I had found, I ordered, "Pass the pry bar up to me."

Leo, who was still carrying it, handed it to Stephen, from whom it went to Barisbakourios, Myakes, and me. The artisans who had installed the grating had cut holes into the channel, in which they inserted the ends of the bars of the grill. Working as they had been doing under cramped, difficult circumstances, they had not made the fit perfect, as they otherwise might have done. That carelessness, and perhaps the feeling that they were taking needless precautions, caused them to leave space into which I could set the pointed beak of the pry bar.

Using it was not easy, even after having set it in place. If I could have stood on my knees, I would have been in excellent position to exert full leverage. The pipe was too low and narrow to permit that, however. I had to lie at full length, as both my arms, which otherwise would have supported me, were engaged in prying.

With a sharp snapping sound, a piece of the grate flew off. It hit me in the back, and then hit Myakes in the head. We both cursed, there in the cramped blackness. I tugged at the grate. It still refusing to come free, I used the pry bar once more. When the next chunk of rusted iron broke away, it hit me in the head; I felt blood trickling through my scalp.

I tugged again. The grate shifted under my hands, but remained in place. I had to break off two more pieces of iron before I could wrestle it out of its position. Even then, it being essentially as wide as the channel in which it was set, I could not simply put it to one side. I and my followers had to scramble over or under it to advance. Moropaulos, the bulkiest of us, had a dreadful time. I feared he might prove a cork in the bottle for Theophilos, but at last he made it past the grate.

Then I had to remember the count of cubits. In my exertions, I had for the moment lost the exact number, but I did not admit that to Myakes and the rest of them. On we went, one obstacle overcome. Forty-seven cubits, or rather, forty-seven advances of my right leg, later, I ran headlong into another grate. I hissed in pain, it having struck close by the place where the chunk from the first grate had hit me.

This new grate was as scabrous with rust as the first had been. Since I now carried the pry bar, I went straight to work. I needed to break the grate at only three places before becoming able to shift it. Once we had all struggled past, I said, "If my reckoning is true, we've passed beyond the inner wall and are now inside the city."

Theophilos started to raise a cheer. Myakes hissed, "Shut up, curse you, or we're all dead inside the city."

We crawled on. Having come so far, I began to wonder how I would be able to leave the aqueduct. Dropping down into a cistern half full of water from other sources, although it might clean us of the filth through which we had been traveling, struck me as being less than ideal.

But God, Who had heard my pledge and saved me from the storm, provided for me once more. Looking ahead, I spied on the inside of the pipe a short strip of light in what had been darkness absolute and impenetrable. Hurrying to it, as best I could hurry in that cramped place, I discovered a door had been set into the roof of the channel, no doubt for the convenience of workmen who might have to enter to clear obstructions. Like everything else pertaining to the aqueduct, the door had not been cared for since my great-great-grandfather's day. Its timbers had shrunk and split, allowing a little moonlight to pierce the darkness. I wondered if we had crawled past other doors in better repair, but then decided I did not wish to know.

Crawling past this door, I rolled over onto my back, using my legs to push up against the boards. Had it been latched, I would have attacked it with the pry bar. But it swung back easily. I stood upright, savoring that position, and looked around to get my bearings. Considering how far we had come in the blackness, my reckoning proved quite good. We were about a bowshot inside the inner wall, and considerably less than that distance from a large cistern. As well I had found the doorway, I thought.

"Anyone trying to find out what that noise was?" Myakes hissed from inside the pipe.

"I can't see anyone," I answered. "Pass me the rope. I'll make it fast to one of the hinges here, and we can all climb down."

"No. I have a better idea," Myakes said. "Moropaulos is a big, strong fellow. Let him hold the rope while the rest of us go down. Then he can tie it to a hinge and climb down himself. That way, we only have to trust the old iron once, not seven times."

His plan indeed being better than mine, we adopted it forthwith. The rest of us crawled up onto the top of the aqueduct. Moropaulos stood in the doorway, the better to brace himself. I had intended to be first man down, but Myakes again took the lead from me. I do not know to this day whether he was testing Foolish Paul's strength or making sure no opposition waited below.

Whichever it was, he soon called, "All's well, Emperor. Your city's here waiting for you."

I went down hand over hand, having first wrapped the rope around my leg and over the top of my instep to give myself some additional purchase should a hand slip. A minute later, I stood in an unpaved alleyway in Constantinople, a stone's throw north of the Mese. "I've returned," I whispered, as if saying it was what made it true.

Leo descended next, then Stephen, Barisbakourios, and Theophilos. Foolish Paul's feet were a man's height above the ground when the iron hinge to which he'd tied the rope tore free of the cement and bricks under his weight. He landed with a thud and a shout, the rope streaming down after him. He scraped one knee- through all our knees were already raw from a longer crawl than ever we had done as infants- but, praise God, was otherwise unhurt.

I looked at all my companions in the moonlight. The pale radiance sufficed to show how filthy and tattered they were, which doubtless meant I was filthy and tattered as well. Seven men to overthrow the greatest city in the civilized world! One of the pagan dramatists of Athens wrote a play about seven men against a city, but I recall neither the playwright nor the city the seven men opposed.

"We'll go to the Mese," I said. "We'll find a fountain on a street corner and clean ourselves as best we can. Then we'll go to the grand palace. We'll get inside any way we can, and then we'll slay Apsimaros." With my rival dead, I reasoned, no one would oppose my reassuming the throne rightfully mine.