Harry Turtledove: Justinian

With my father and my uncles, I watched from the seawall as their fleet drew near. I had never seen so many ships in all my short life; they seemed to cover all the water of the Propontis. I pointed out to them. "See how the oars move back and forth like a centipede's legs," I said. I had smashed a couple of centipedes in the past few days; good weather brought them out, as it did the Arabs.

"They're like centipedes in another way, too," my father answered: "If they bite us, we will die."

Out ahead of their fleet rowed dromons much like ours, save only that they lacked wooden towers amidships. Faint over the water, I heard for the first time the chant their oarsmen and soldiers repeated endlessly: "Allahu akbar! Allahu akbar!"

"What does that mean?" I asked my father.

'God is great," he answered absently. He was paying more heed to those oncoming warships than to me.

Our own dromons put out from the Proklianesian harbor and the harbor of Theodosios to meet them. A great cry rose from the men and women watching on the seawall: "God with us! Christ with us! The Virgin with us!" They drowned out the chant of the Arabs. The patriarch John held up a holy icon of the Mother of God, one made by divine hands, not those of men.

And now this Leo, the one who's been ruling us these past fourteen years, he calls icons graven images, and says we should smash all of them? You ask me, only a man with the mind of a Jew or a Saracen would say such stupid things. No doubt you reckon me a foolish old man, Brother Elpidios, but I doubt you'll argue with me there.

Come to that, Justinian and I met this Leo before he was so much of a much. I wonder what my master will have to say of him. I know, Brother: each thing in its own place. Read on.

The sea breeze played with the patriarch's robes- gorgeous with cloth of gold and pearls and jewels- and fluffed out his great white beard.

After my encounter with Kallinikos, I looked for our dromons to breathe out fire like dragons and send all the ships of the misbelieving Arabs to the bottom at once. That did not happen, of course. Life is more difficult than it looks to little boy s.

The Arabs' dromons sprinted toward ours, their oars churning the water to a frothy wake. Behind them, the other ships of the deniers of Christ made for the Thracian coast south and west of Constantinople.

Some Roman war galleys broke through the screen the followers of the false prophet tried to set between them and the transports carrying Arab soldiers. My father, my uncles, I, John the patriarch- everyone on the seawall- screamed in delight when a dromon rammed a fat merchantman right amidships. The dromon backed oars after striking. The hole it punched in the other ship's side must have been huge; you could watch the merchantman wallow and start to sink. Heads bobbed in the water: sailors and soldiers, trying to swim for their lives. The archers aboard our dromons must have had fine sport with them, and sent many souls on to eternal torment.

But my father's exultation did not last. "It is not enough," he said. "They will gain the shore, in spite of all we can do."

He was right. From the suburb of Kyklobion less than a mile from the Golden Gate at the southern end of Constantinople's double land wall to the town of Hebdomon four or five miles farther west, the Arabs beached their ships and swarmed ashore, onto the soil of Thrace. Peering west and a little south, I could make out some of the nearer landings. At that distance, the deniers of Christ in their white robes reminded me of nothing so much as termites scattering when the piece of rotten wood they infest is disturbed.

Out on the sea, the fight between the Arabs' dromons and our own went on. From their towers amidships, our bowmen could shoot down onto the decks of the enemy war galleys, and the Arabs could not reply in kind. Little by little, we seemed to gain the advantage.

But that was not what I wanted to see. "Where is the liquid fire?" I demanded, and then, louder: "Where is the liquid fire?"

Tiberius and Herakleios looked at each other. I suppose they were hoping my father would slap me across the face and make me be quiet. If he tried, I vowed to myself I would grab his hand and bite it. I had done that before, and drawn blood. Mostly, though, he indulged me, which never stopped irking my uncles. And why should he not have indulged me? I was then his only son. I indulge my little son Tiberius the same way.

Someone told me what happened to Tiberius, there at the end. He was just like his father at the same age, only more so. Do you know that story, Brother Elpidios? You do? All right. Take no notice of an old man's maunderings, then.

"Where is the-" I was screeching now, like a cat when somebody steps on its tail. But a rising cry of wonder and delight from all along the seawall made my voice sound small and lost.

My father pointed out onto the Sea of Marmara. My eyes followed his outthrust finger. There in the water, not far out of catapult range from the wall, a dromon full of the deniers of Christ was burning, flames licking along the deck and smoke billowing up from them. Oh, Mother of Christ, it was beautiful!

The Arabs on the dromon ran about like men possessed, trying to put out the fire. They were not chanting their accursed "Allahu akbar!" anymore; they were screaming in terrified earnest. And as I watched them do their best to douse the flames, I understood why, for water helped them not at all.

One of those who followed the false prophet, lent strength, no doubt, by fear, picked up a great hogshead and poured it down onto the fire. It did not quench the flames. Instead, still burning merrily, they floated atop the barrelful of water and, where it stopped, they stopped, too, starting new blazes in those places. When the Arabs perceived that, their screams redoubled.

They might have learned as much merely by looking down to the slightly choppy surface of the sea, where more fire floated. Indeed, our dromon, the one that had projected the liquid fire onto the Arab warship, had to back oars quickly, lest the flames on the seawater cling to it and make of it a pyre to match its foe.

My father cried out in a great voice, "Fifty pounds of gold to Kallinikos, to whom God granted the vision of this wonderful fire!" All the people on the seawall cheered like men possessed. Danger was not banished from the Queen of Cities; far from it. But we took new heart from having a weapon our enemies could not match.

A few minutes later, my uncle Tiberius shouted in a voice that cracked with excitement: "Look! Another galley burns!" And, sure enough, the liquid fire was consuming a second Arab dromon. That victory was not complete, however, for our galley did not escape the liquid fire on the water and also burned. Some of its sailors swam to the base of the seawall, where the soldiers and people of the city let down ropes to rescue them. Others, poor souls, drowned.

Perhaps the deniers of Christ had intended landing marines at the base of the seawall. Along with the darts the catapults on their dromons could have hurled, such an assault would have stretched our defenses thin. They might have been able to make and then to take advantage of a breach in the land walls.

But if that idea had been in their minds, the liquid fire put paid to it. Their war galleys drew back from our fleet, and from the walls of the imperial city, protected by God. They made for the Thracian coast, there to guard the Arabs' great flotilla of transports from our dromons.

Seeing the Arabs' galleys withdraw, the men on the walls burst into cheers. "We've beaten them!" some cried. Others shouted out a Latin acclamation still used in the city: "Tu vincas, Constantine!"

I looked to my father, proud like any son to hear him praised. I expected him to show he was proud, too, and to show delight in the victory the Romans had won over the barbarians. But his long, thin face remained somber. "We've not won the war," he said, perhaps more to himself than to anyone else. "We've survived the first blow, nothing more."