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ordered the warriors to shift position. Alexios missed military trumpets, but not
enough copper had been found in New Constantinople to make even one.
The front ranks of the army opened out, allowing the engineering detachment
that had traveled in the middle of the hollow diamond to advance. They pushed
their carts (quite different from those of the foragers) up toward the wall.
Shieldmen moved forward with them, protecting them from the storm of missiles
the Bornu loosed.
A man at the rear of each cart worked a kiltcloth bellows. Kiltcloth also lined the
interior of the long bamboo tubes other engineers aimed toward the top of the
wall. When the men at the bellows cried a warning, the shieldmen, as they'd
practiced, skipped nimbly out of the way.
A golden liquid burst from the ends of the bamboo tubes. The aimers ignited it
with carefully hoarded firestarters. Half a dozen streams of flowing fire rose to
drip from the wall and the Bornu atop it.
Alexios watched in cold satisfaction as shrieking infidels dashed every which way
in their agony, spreading
the flames as they ran. The liquid fire dripped between lengths of kiltcloth. In
moments, the wall itself began to burn.
Some of the black men had the courage and wit to stick to their posts. They
poured buckets of water onto the burgeoning flames. The Basileus smiled at their
cries of dismay, for the fire refused to go out. It was not the precise recipe the
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Rhomaioi had used in Constantinople; no one on this strange new world had yet
found petroleum oozing up from between the rocks. But dragonfish oil made a
good enough substitute. Mixed with naphtha, sulfur, and a few other ingredients
so secret the engineer who knew them refused to name them even for Alexios, the
oil made a hellbrew that burned until it consumed itself or until it was smothered
with sand.
The Bornu, though, were ignorant of that trick and had no time to learn it. More
and more of them scrambled or jumped off the wall as the flames spread. The
Rhomaioi cheered the thick black smoke mounting to the sky.
Alexios gave new orders to the musicians. Their sharp notes pierced the din. The
men of New Constantinople obediently formed themselves into a wedge-shaped
formation. Here were soldiers you could do something with, Alexios thought
they were brave and obedient at the same time.
A section of the wall fell over with a rending crash. Sparks flew upward. The
flutes screamed. Crying Alexios's name and "Christ with us," the Rhomaioi
surged into the town.
Fighting raged fierce for a few minutes. Then the Bornu began to break and to
stream toward the citadel. Alexios caught Isaac's eye. They both grinned. If the
town wall, draped with kiltcloth, had burned, what a
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Harry Tlirtledove
TWO THIEVES
197
merry bonfire Musa ar-Rahman's palace would make. The Bornu capital was as
good as theirs.
Some of the black men saw that, too. A detachment of perhaps fifty smashed
headlong into Alexios's army, struggling desperately to force the men from New
Constantinople outside the walls once more. At the head of the detachment was a
hook-nosed man with full kiltcloth armor and gleaming copper rings in both ears
and one nostril. Such a display of wealth could belong only to Musa.
The Sultan spied Alexios at the same instant Alexios recognized him. "To the
death between us!" he shouted in Arabic. "Let the winner rule both folk!"
Alexios advanced on him. But when Musa ar-Rahman charged into what he
thought was single combat, Isaac Komnenos and three other Rhomaioi also
assailed him. Alexios crushed the Sultan's skull with his club, but was never sure
afterward if that was the mortal blow.
The Bornu wailed in horror at the treachery. Alexios remained unfazed. Like the
Prankish barbarians whose crusade he'd had to deflect, they were foolish enough
to think war was about honor. War was about winning, nothing more.
Their ruler's death took the heart out of the black men. Soon screaming women
impeded the army of New Constantinople more than the soldiery of Bornu. Men
raised their hands and gave up their grails in token of surrender. "Keep as many
alive as you can!" Alexios shouted. "If they die, we lose the food and other good
things controlling them would give us."
Musa had been an exception to that rule. He was too cunning, too dangerous to
keep around as a grail slave better that he be reborn somewhere far from New
Constantinople and make trouble there. Mutilating him every few months was
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another alternative, but Alexios didn't care for it. He had his own notions of
honor, and cruelty without cause was not part of them.
Before long, only the Sultan's palace still held out against the Rhomaioi. Alexios
sent an Arabic-speaking herald forward with a message: "Yield your weapons and
your grails and you will not be badly treated. Otherwise, we will use liquid fire
against you. You may be born again afterward, but your deaths will be slow and
hideous. Decide quickly, or we will use it anyhow."
He waited. Just as he was about to order the engineers forward, the palace
doorway opened. Dejected black men began filing out. They threw their bows and
spears and clubs in a pile to the right of the doorway. The pile became
mountainously high. The weapons were as good as anything the Rhomaioi used.
Alexios decided to store them against future need.
The foraging detail took charge of the black men's grails. The Muslims gave them
up even more reluctantly than their arms. Without grails, they were at their
conquerors' mercy. If they did not obey henceforward, they would not eat. Oh, a
few might slip off and survive on River fish and fruits and tubers from the plants
that grew from the riverbank back into the foothills. But a stretch of land that
would support a thousand people with grails might only let a double handful live
on it without them.
After the last of the weapons and grails were surrendered, Alexios's record-
keepers began taking the names of the Bornu men, women, and adolescents alike.
Bamboo pulp replaced the parchment and papyrus the scribes had used at their
desks in Constantinople. The Franks, Alexios remembered, had been amazed at
the minutiae his offi-
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Harry TUrtledove
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cials recorded. But how were you supposed to run a state if you didn't keep track
of the people it contained?
The sun began to set over the mountains to the west. As the town's now his
town's grailstone roared and flamed, he let himself feel how tired he was. Then
he had to force himself back to abrupt alertness, for one of the scouts who had
gone downstream from the former Bornu capital came pelting back, shouting,
"An army's heading our way!"
One of the black men must have learned some Greek since being reborn along the
River, for he made a dash for the piled weapons. Rhomaioi sprang after him,
speared him down. He lay writhing in agony. "Finish him," Alexios said. One of
his warriors smashed in the Bornu's skull. Let some other king far away deal with
a troublemaker, the Basileus thought.
Another scout panted into town. "It's the men of Shy town," he said. The
Rhomaioi cheered as if to make their cries echo from the distant mountains.
Alexios instantly ordered the news translated into Arabic. The Bornu sank even
deeper into despair.
With a well-armed bodyguard around him, Alexios went out to greet his allies. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]