The Gate of Fire (2 page)

He's not been wrong so far, he thought. But if there is ever a first time...

A sandy-haired centurion was standing at the base of the tower, leaning one thick arm on the top of the fighting wall. His helmet hung at his side, secured by a loop of cloth to his belt. A longsword, thicker and heavier than that usually favored by Imperial troops, was slung at his side. He was staring out over the snowy fields, watching the smoke curl up from the cookfires of the enemy.

"A cold day to be fighting," Nicholas said as he came up to the narrow door.

The centurion turned, watery blue eyes looking the stranger up and down with a patient, steady manner. A little cloud of breath puffed from his chapped lips.

"'Tis cold," the soldier said. "There will be fighting soon, though. Mayhap not here, but at least down there." The centurion turned a little and pointed off down the line of the massive walls toward the sea. "There, at the Golden Gate. The barbs have ten or twelve engines moving—do you hear the squeak of their wheels? They should use black grease instead of that pig fat—it burns off the axles too quickly."

"I hear it. I'm Nicholas of Roskilde. Things are quiet here?"

"Aye." The centurion gazed at Nicholas steadily. "You've business on the Wall?"

Nicholas looked out over the field, rubbing his chin with his right hand. "Faction business," he said. "I'm owing a favor to a kindly man. I was thinking there might be some work afoot up here, what with your friends yonder."

The centurion raised an eyebrow and made a clucking sound with his teeth. "You come looking for some fighting, go down to the Golden Gate. This section is well quiet. You must owe this fellow more than a little to risk your neck on the Wall."

Nicholas shrugged, looking back at the soldier with a guileless expression. "Three squares a day, plus wine or mead if there is any."

Suspicion flickered across the centurion's face, then it cleared. "You, ah, find yourself without an emperor or two to rub together, then?"

Nicholas nodded, summoning up a shamed look. "I was on a ship—there was a game of chance—I found myself on the docks of this city, wondering at its awesome size and greatness. More than one night I spent sleeping in the alleys of the Racing District."

"And someone took you in?" The disbelief on the centurion's face was almost comical. "This is not a
burg
noted for civility and hospitality to strangers—particularly to
fyrdmen
down on their luck. It seems a poor way of living."

Nicholas shrugged, tilting his left hand a little to the side. "A tavern keeper found me and said his faction would feed me if I'd fight on the Wall in the place of one of their own. So, here I am."

The centurion grimaced. The racing factions of the Hippodrome—the Greens and the Blues—had lost much of their old political power, but their ward bosses remained as canny as ever. They might not be able to make or break an emperor, but they surely knew all the tricks of keeping their clients away from the Imperial levies and drafts.

"Well," said the centurion, turning away to go into the tower, "find a place out of the wind."

Nicholas grimaced and looked out over the Wall again. The land was still and quiet, showing dirty snow, distant leafless trees, and a cold gray sky thick with fat clouds. It would start snowing again soon: he could smell it in the air.

Nicholas swung himself up to sit in the embrasure next to the side of the tower. It made a fine seat, though the wind out of the north slid across his face like
freyasdottir
kiss. He leaned back into the stones, waiting for events to unfold. Though by nature an impatient man, his business had taught him many virtues. Patience was even one of them. Thin fingers pulled the hood of his cloak over his head and he worked himself out of the direct strength of the wind.

He wondered if the men in the camps beyond the Wall were drinking deep of half-frozen mead, crouched in hide tents around their smoky fires. He wondered if slaves, barely clad in tunics of raw wool and graced with thick iron rings welded around their necks, scurried to bring the fighting men more of the heavy drink and thick slabs of meat, dripping with blood and steaming from the fire. His fingers twitched, touching the hilt of the longsword that leaned against the Wall at his side. There had been a rusting iron ring on his neck once. That was the sort of thing that you did not forget.

Once he had carried heavy jugs of mead from the storage house to the feasting hall, his bare feet bloody in the snow. The sky had been gray then, too, for the Storm Lord loved the Dannmark as no other place. Hail had slashed down out of bitter clouds, raising welts on his back. It had been a cruel life for an outland boy with odd-colored eyes, sold into slavery far beyond the frontier of the Empire. The
jarls
of Dannmark were not easy masters.

But without them?
Nicholas raised the sword up, still sheathed, and smiled, showing his teeth. His hand moved gently on the sheath.
I would not have met the
niebelungen,
or gained your love.

The sun was swallowed by cloud, and the sky darkened. Heavy gray overcast pressed against the earth. Snowflakes drifted down, melting on the stones of the Wall. His breath white in the air, Nicholas made his way down the wooden staircase behind the gate. He had waited on the Wall for three hours, slowly getting colder and colder, watching the distant line of trees. It had been quiet, and then the falling snow had obscured the Avar camps. The noise of the fighting down the Wall, at the great Golden Gate, had slowly risen in intensity as the day progressed. The tower at the Number Two Gate blocked a direct view of the looming redoubt that anchored the southern end of the city wall, but the sound of crashing metal on metal and the high-pitched snap of siege engines firing filtered through the cold air. At the bottom of the stairs a band of knights—no, he reminded himself, an
alae
of
equites
—were gathering in the space behind the gatehouse.

Nicholas jumped down from the next to last landing on the wooden scaffold, landing lightly in a space just off the gate. Horsemen armored in silvery bands of iron were preparing to go out into the snowy fields. Steam rose from the horses' flanks, and the high arch of the gate rang with voices and the rattle of metal. The knights were checking the straps of their low-cantled saddles, and long straight swords hung to their knees. Many had wooden bowcases strapped behind them, the tops thick with gray goose feathers. Nicholas scratched the back of his head and turned toward the gate. A grinding sound echoing off the barrel vault of the passage drew his attention upward. The long iron bars that secured the gate were being drawn, slowly, up into the ceiling of the passage. The rumble of great hidden wheels echoed through the stout brick walls. Each iron bar was a foot wide, and the width of man's hand thick. Nicholas counted heads: there were thirty or forty men in the entryway—most of them the lead horsemen. He began scanning their faces, comparing them to a half-heard description.

A thin man, half Slav and half Greek, with a pleasant and smiling face. A spy and a traitor to the city.

"A sortie," a voice said from behind him. Nicholas turned, his face casual. It was the blond centurion from the tower. "Going out to burn a tower or two. Teach the barbs not to get sloppy about their flanks."

"You want to teach them to win?" Nicholas regretted opening his mouth as soon as the words had escaped. The centurion glared at him for a moment, then pushed past him through the throng of horses. Nicholas bit his lip in regret and considered going after the man, but there was little time left. The legionnaires by the gate itself were preparing to push it open. The
equites
in the first rank were trying to form a double line with something like proper spacing. The horses jostled in the confined space, and Nicholas was forced back against the Wall. Bricks ground into his back. Without conscious thought, his right hand reached up and tugged the wire loop that secured his sword in its sheath off the hilt. Behind him, out in the military street behind the Wall, a trumpet pealed and there was shouting.

The gate swung open. Nicholas cursed and pushed forward along the Wall toward the edge of the opening hinge. Five men were there, putting their shoulders into the rough planks of the gate. It was heavy, and the hinges squealed in protest at the movement. As Nicholas tried to make his way though the throng of horses and other men standing by the Wall, a dim gray light spilled in. Cold air followed, and the horses whinnied and milled a little before their riders stilled them. The snowy field was revealed, a foot at a time, as the soldiers continued to push the gate open.

Nicholas jumped up, trying to see over the bulk of the horsemen. Legionnaires pushed at his back, trying to move up to the gate. He turned back and began trying to swim against their flow. There was a shout, and the horsemen began to move out of the gate passage. A flash of something catching the light caught Nick's eye and he stared through a forest of horse legs at the other side of the passage. A bared sword blade flickered in the light from outside.

Nicholas snarled a curse and swung up on a man's shoulder, planting his boot against the courses of bricks on the Wall.

The soldier, startled, shouted at him. "Bastard! Get off me!"

The extra two feet of height was enough. Nicholas cursed aloud himself. The man he was hunting was across the passage, only fifteen feet away, screened by the knights who were filing through the gateway. He dropped down and absently blocked the legionnaire's halfhearted punch with a raised hand. The slithering sound of his sword coming into his hand stilled the soldier's protest. Nicholas glanced right, seeing the gate come fully open, then left, counting the remaining numbers of horsemen waiting to ride out. The column was halfway out the gate. He tensed, preparing to dash through the horses cantering past.

A tremendous, high-pitched, wailing scream suddenly filled the world. Nicholas ducked down, hearing the hissing passage of hundreds of arrows fill the air. Men started shouting and screaming. There was a rippling sound of heavy blows striking meat. Nicholas scrambled away to the Wall, under the falling body of the soldier. A black-feathered bow shaft had transfixed the man, spilling bright blood out of his back and mouth. Nicholas grabbed the man's arm and hauled the body over his own as a shield. A horse hoof, driven by pain-maddened rage, smashed into the soldier's breastplate, cracking the metal, and Nicholas grimaced, turning his head away as the body jerked in his hands. More blood spattered on the side of his face. He wedged himself into the corner of the Wall. Now there was a wailing war cry from beyond the gate.

Nicholas could hear the company of knights, caught half in and half out of the gate, being slaughtered by arrow fire. Shafts continued to whip through the open gate, into the mass of dying men and horses in the passage. Behind the gate was loud confusion as men milled about—some trying to get into the passage, others to get away. The bull-voiced shouts of centurions rallying their men and raising the alarm rang in the air. Too, there was fighting outside, in the space before the Wall. The war cries of Avars echoed off the high vault of the gate. A horse, rearing, was struck down by two black arrows and fell across the body of the man that partially covered Nick. He twisted away from the impact, but felt it like a titan's slap against his back.

Outside, horses galloped away, neighing in fear. The whistling of arrows faltered and then stopped. There was a rush of running feet and Nicholas grimaced, pushing the leaden body away from him with all his strength. The dead legionnaire, his eyes still round with surprise, fell away, and Nicholas scrambled up. His right hand, slimy with sticky red mud, dragged the length of his longsword out of the gore covering the floor of the passage. Dark figures filled the gateway, rushing forward with axes and long spears in hand. Nicholas sprang up onto the unsteady welter of corpses—both man and horse—and bright sparks rang from his sword as he parried the first stroke of an Avar axe.

The Avar noble was broad in the shoulder and clad in heavy capes of ermine and fox. Scale mail glinted under the fur and rose up to his neck, circled by a thick torc of gold, and down to his biceps. His eyes were slanted over high cheekbones, and his nose was broad and flat. The axe whipped around again, driven by dark-skinned arms thick with matted hair, muscle, and a thin sheen of sweat. Nicholas stumbled aside, his foot slipping on the flank of a fallen horse. The iron wedge carved air where his arm had been. Nicholas dropped his shoulder and bulled into the Avar, crashing iron rings against scale. A hand with long dirty nails clawed at his face, cutting his cheek. He grappled, pinning the nomad's free hand between their bodies. Stiff fingers stabbed at the barbarian's eye. The Avar fell backward, clouting Nicholas on the side of the head. Nicholas pushed into the fall and drove his left knee into the inside of the Avar's thigh. The man gasped in pain, feeling his leg go numb. Nicholas lashed down with his right elbow, catching the man on the neck. The torc deformed—soft gold twisting under the blow—but it prevented the barbarian's larynx from being crushed.

More Avars swarmed past through the gateway. As they ran forward they fired short but heavy bows with an odd, long, top stave into the milling crowd of legionnaires who had fallen back into the street. Men staggered and fell as the heavy arrows punched through their leather and chain-mail armor. Behind the Avar veterans, a great crowd of Slavs was pushing forward, their red and blond hair standing stiff with grease, their shields bright with geometric patterns in black and red and blue. A forest of spear points danced over their heads. They were running forward, raising their voices in a great shout when they saw the gate standing wide.

The noble squirmed under Nicholas like a Danube eel and threw him to one side. Nicholas slipped and skidded away on the gore-smeared floor. Another Roman corpse stopped him. His sword was gone, lost among the still-dying horses. The Avar sprang up, his right hand already filled with the mirror brightness of a long knife. Nicholas felt a chill, seeing that he was cut off from the rest of the defenders. He rolled backward and then came up, stripping the remains of his shirtsleeve from his left arm. The Avar dodged in, making short, controlled stabs with the knife. Nicholas skipped back again, over the body of a bay horse, and flexed his left fist outward from his arm, pulling the exposed wire-ring with his thumb.