Harry Turtledove - Justinian

"God bless you, Emperor," he called to me. One of the brigands walking alongside hit him in the face. Forgetting I was also bound, I tried to break free of my captors and come to his aid. That got me nothing but another buffet of my own. My ears rang.

Into the hippodrome we came. They hauled me to the stretch of track near the finish line, between the main grandstand- which was already black with people- and the Kathisma, the Emperor's seat, from which I had so often watched the pounding chariots come down to the line.

"Leontios!" the people shouted. "Tu vincas, Leontios! Leontios, Emperor of the Romans! Many years to the Emperor Leontios!" Listening to their fickle faithlessness, I felt like a husband coming home early one day to discover the wife he had trusted sucking on his best friend's prong.

The men who had charge of Myakes dumped him down on the ground. That made the mob bay louder, many of them, no doubt, believing him to be me. Then the cries grew louder still: an executioner, his features hidden by a black hood, came striding up the track toward me.

"Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me," I murmured, wishing I could make the holy sign of the cross. Turning to Kallinikos, I said, "If you give me unction before he slays me, God might make the pangs you will suffer in hell for betraying me a trifle less agonizing."

Instead of answering, Kallinikos turned to Leontios for permission: sure enough, the dog had a new master. Leontios had also heard my words. He walked up to me, a b road false smile on his face. When he held up both his hands, silence dropped over the hippodrome like a cloak. Into it, he cried, "I, Leo, am now Emperor of the Romans!"

More acclamations rose, those rather discordant, some men hailing him as Leo, others who listened but did not hear persisting in calling him Leontios. How he styled himself mattered not in the least to me. I knew who he was. I knew what he was. So long as I had breath in me, even if it should be but for the next moment, I would not forget.

He held up his hands once more. Silence fell again. He said, "Out of the love and comradeship I feel yet for the Emperor Constantine, I shall not slay his worthless son Justinian, however much he deserves it."

Now the buzz from the crowd was surprised, confused. I felt surprised and confused myself: did he think he could leave me alive without my seeking to avenge myself and regain the throne rightfully mine? I had known he was a fool. I had not known he was such a fool.

But he was. He went on, "Let Justinian's nose be cut off, as Constantine cut off the noses of his brothers Herakleios and Tiberius. And for good measure, let his tongue be slit, too, that you may never more hear him order the ministers you rightly killed today to steal from you your money, your property, your freedom. Then off he goes to Kherson, and you'll never hear of him or from him again at all."

Once more, the cheers from the grandstand redoubled. True, the mob would not have the pleasure of seeing a head leap from a body and bump along the track while blood fountained from the stump of the neck. But they would have their blood, albeit not so much. And, instead of a quick end to their sport, they could enjoy my screams and moans for as long as Leontios chose to indulge them.

Now he beckoned to the executioner, who advanced upon me. Behind the hood, his eyes were thoughtful: the eyes of any good craftsman measuring the task ahead of him. "Emp- uh, Justinian- it will be easier for you if you hold very still and let me do what I have to do here," he said.

"May you die of the plague," I told him. "May your prick drip pus and wither. May your daughter couple with a dog on the Mese. May the demons of hell tear your flesh from your bones with pitchforks and throw it in the fire to burn forever."

I thought I might as well have been cursing a stone. Everything I said rolled off him, leaving him untouched. I suppose he already bore the weight of so many curses from so many men that one more mattered not at all. He turned to my captors. "Hold him tight, if you please. I'm going to do his tongue first." Maybe my words had got through to him after all. It was cold, cold comfort.

I clenched my teeth so hard, one of them broke. That, at the moment, was the least of my concerns. Matter-of-factly, the executioner went through his bag of tools, finally selecting a small, sharp blade, more a scalpel than a knife. I twisted my head back and forth until someone behind me seized me by the hair and prevented it.

The executioner stood before me. I spat in his face. The spittle soaked into the black hood and was gone. I vowed he would not force my jaws open. Some vows are wasted. He grabbed my beard in his left hand and pulled down. All at once, to my helpless horror, I understood why Alexander the Great had required his men to shave their chins. Despite all I could do, my mouth came open.

Fast as a striking serpent, the executioner slashed me with that little knife. At the same moment, though, I was trying once more to jerk my head to the side. I could not move much, but I did shift a little. And so, instead of slitting my tongue from root to tip, he gashed the side of it, also cutting my gum and the inside of my cheek.

I shrieked, both because the pain was bad and to make it seem worse so he would not inspect the wound to see what sort of job he had made of it. My mouth filled with blood, faster than I can write this. I spat in his face again, a great spurt of red. Some went in through the eyehole of the hood and made him rub at himself to restore his vision: a tiny measure of revenge, but I could take no large ones.

If I could not, he remained professional about the whole business between us. Wadding up a cloth, he stuffed it into my mouth. "Press it against the wound, hard as you can," he told me. "It will help slow the bleeding."

In spite of the rag, blood dripped down my chin. More ran down my throat, tasting of rust. But, with the rag in my mouth, I could not curse the executioner again, as I very much wanted to do. That worked to my advantage, he assuming I did not speak because I could not, and that the mutilation had been successfully accomplished.

As if the executioner were likely to forget, Leontios prodded him: "Now the nose. Remember the nose."

"Yes, Emperor," the fellow answered, which made me try to break free of my captors all over again: that anyone could presume to call this bumbling fool Emperor of the Romans infuriated every fiber of my being.

The executioner rummaged through his tools. This time he drew forth a larger blade than he had used before. He tested the edge with his thumb, shook his head, and stropped the knife against the leather sole of his shoe, standing on one leg like a stork to do so. After another test, he was satisfied and walked up to me once more. The early morning sun glittered off the newly touched-up edge.

"You have to hold him still again," he told the men who had charge of me. "Otherwise, the job won't be as fast and neat as it ought to be." He never spoke of mutilation. I suppose that by thinking of what he did as the job, he saved himself the trouble of thinking about what sort of job it was.

I think of this now, looking back at the moment across a gap of a decade and a half. Perhaps I should summon one of my executioners, to find out if I am right. I wonder if they would answer me honestly. I wonder if they have even considered the matter. Every trade has its secrets, and every trade has its blind spots, too.

Looking at these latest sentences, I see that I wish to avoid the narration of what came next, as if, by speaking of something else, I could will that bit of time into nonexistence. The executioner set the edge of the knife against my nose, just below the point where bone gives way to cartilage, and sliced down. The end of my nose, with the nostrils, fell into the dirt at my feet, and that is the last I ever saw of it.