Balefires

by David Drake

  There was a faint odor that the soldier didn't much like, now that he'd settled down enough to notice it.

  He looked up at the serpent, Glaukon. Lamplight broke the creature's coils into bronze highlights that swept from pools of shadow like great fish surfacing. Pyrrhus might have hidden a papyrus scroll in the creature's hollow interior, but Vettius walked through the internal doorway, stepping carefully so that the click of his hobnails wouldn't alarm the attendants outside. He'd check the other room before dealing with Glaukon.

  He didn't much like snakes.

  The anteroom had a more comfortable feel than the sanctum, perhaps because the goods stored around the walls gave it the look of a large household's pantry. Vettius swept the lamp close to the top of each amphora, checking the tags scratched on the clay seals. Thasian wine from the shipowner Glirius. Lucanian wine from the Lady Antonilla. Dates from-Vettius chuckled grimly: my, a Senator. Gaius Cornelius Metellus Libo.

  A brace of rabbits; a wicker basket of thrushes sent live, warbling hopefully when Vettius brought the lamp close.

  In the corner where the stacks of figured bowls had been, Vettius found the large chest he'd watched the porters stagger in with that evening. The label read: A gift of P. Severius Auctus, purveyor of fine woolens.

  A small pot of dormice preserved in honey. Bunches and baskets of fresh vegetables.

  The same sort of goods as had been here the night before. No strongbox, no sign of a cubbyhole hidden in the walls.

  Which left Vettius with no better choice than to try that damned bronze serpent after Outside the front doors, the pins of a key scraped the lock's faceplate.

  Bloody buggering Zeus! Pyrrhus should've been gone for hours yet!

  Vettius set down the lamp with reflexive care and ran for the sanctum. Behind him, the key squealed as it levered the iron dead-bolts from their sockets in both doorframes.

  He'd be able to get out of the building safely enough, though a few of the attendants would probably fling their cudgels at him while he squirmed through the window. The narrow alley would be suicide, though. They'd've blocked both ends by the time he got to the ground, and there wasn't room enough to swing his spatha. He'd go up instead, over the triple-vaulted roof of the warehouse and down The door opened. "Wait here," called the penetrating, echoless voice of Pyrrhus to his attendants.

  Vettius's silken rope lay on the floor in a tangle of loose coils. It couldn't have slipped from the window by itself, but…

  The door closed; the bolts screeched home again.

  Vettius spun, drawing his sword.

  "Beware, Pyrrhus!" cried the bronze serpent. "Intruder! Intruder!"

  Vettius shifted his weight like a dancer. Faint lamplight shimmered on the blade of his spatha arcing upward. Glaukon squirmed higher on the cross. Its somewhat-human face waved at the tip of the bar, inches from where the rope had hung. The creature's teeth glittered in wicked glee.

  A chip of wood flew from the cross as Vettius's sword bit as high as he could reach; a hand's breadth beneath Glaukon's quivering tail.

  "Come to me, Decurion Lucius Vettius," Pyrrhus commanded from the anteroom.

  He couldn't know.

  The flickering lamplight in the other room was scarcely enough to illuminate the Prophet's toga and the soft sheen of his beard. Vettius was a figure in shadow, only a dim threat with a sword even when he spun again to confront Pyrrhus.

  Pyrrhus couldn't know. But he knew.

  "Put your sword down, Lucius Vettius," the Prophet said. For a moment, neither man moved; then Pyrrhus stepped forward No, that wasn't what happened. Pyrrhus steppedaway from himself, one Pyrrhus walking and the other standing rigid at the door. There was something wrong about the motionless figure; but the light was dim, the closer form hid the further…

  And Vettius couldn't focus on anything but the eyes of the man walking toward him. They were red, glowing brighter with every step, and they were drawing Vettius's soul from his trembling body.

  "You are the perfect catch, Lucius Vettius," Pyrrhus said. His lips didn't move. "Better than you can imagine. In ten years, in twenty… there will be no one in this empire whom you will not know if you wish to, whom you cannot sway if you wish to. On behalf of Pyrrhus the Prophet. Or whatever I call myself then.

  "Put your sword down, Lucius Vettius."

  The hilt of Vettius's sword was hot, as hot and glowing as the eyes of the approaching Pyrrhus. He couldn't hold the blade steady; light trembled along its sharp double edges like raindrops on a willow leaf.

  But it didn't fall from his hand.

  Pyrrhus stepped through the doorway between the rooms. His shoulder brushed the jamb, brushed through it-form and stuccoed brickwork merging, separating; the figure stepping onward.

  "I will have this empire," Pyrrhus said. "And I will have this world."

  Vettius stared down a black tunnel. At the end of the tunnel glared Pyrrhus's eyes, orange-hot and the size of the universe. They came nearer yet.

  "And when I return to those who drove me out, when I return to those who would haveslain me, Lucius Vettius," said the voice that echoed within the soldier's skull, "they will bow! For mine will be the power of a whole world forged to my design…

  "Put down your sword!"

  Vettius screamed and swung his blade in a jerky, autonomic motion with nothing of his skill or years of practice to guide it. Steel cut the glowing eyes like lightning blasting the white heart of a sword-smith's forge The eyes gripped Vettius's eyes again. The Prophet's laughter hissed and bubbled through the soldier's mind.

  "You are mine, Lucius Vettius," the voice said caressingly. "You have been mine since you met my gaze last night. Did you think you could hide your heart from me?"

  Vettius's legs took a wooden, stumbling step forward; another step, following the eyes as they retreated toward the figure standing by the outer door. The figure of Pyrrhusalso, or perhaps the only figure that was really Pyrrhus. The soldier now understood how the Prophet had appeared and vanished on the church porch the night before, but that no longer mattered.

  Nothing mattered but the eyes.

  "I brought you here tonight," said the voice.

  "No…" Vettius whispered, but he wasn't sure either that he spoke the word or that it was true. He had no power over his thoughts or his movements.

  "You will be my emperor," the voice said. "In time. In no time at all, for me. With my knowledge, and with the weapons I teach you to build, you will conquer your world for me."

  The glowing eyes shrank to normal size in the sockets of the thing that called itself Pyrrhus. The bearded phantasm moved backward one step more and merged with the figure that had not moved since entering the church.

  "And then…" said the figure as all semblance of Pyrrhus drained away like frost in the sunshine, "… I will return home."

  The toga was gone; the beard, the pudgy human cheeks. What remained was naked, bone-thin, and scaly. Membranes flickered across the slit-pupiled eyes, cleaning their surfaces; then the reptilian eyes began to carve their path into Vettius's mind with surgical precision.

  He heard the creak of hinges, a lid rising, but the sound was as feint and meaningless as a seagull's cry against the thunder of surf.

  "Pyrrhus!" shrieked the bronze serpent. "Intruder! Guards! Guards! Guards!"

  Vettius awakened, gasping and shaking himself. He felt as though he'd been buried in sand, a weight that burned and crushed every fiber of his body.

  But it hadn't been his body that was being squeezed out of existence.

  The chest-A gift of P. Severius Auctus, purveyor of fine woolens-was open. Dama was climbing out of it, as stiff as was to be expected when even a small man closed himself in so strait a compass. He'd shrugged aside the bolt of cloth that covered him within the chest, and he held the scabbard of an infantry sword in his left hand.

  His right drew the short, heavy blade with a musicalsring!

  "Guards!" Glaukon shouted again.

  The s
erpent had left its perch. It was slithering in long curves toward Dama.

  Pyrrhus reached for the door-latch with one reptilian hand; Vettius swung at him off-balance. He missed, but the spatha's tip struck just above the lock plate and splintered its way deep into the age-cracked wood.

  Pyrrhus hissed like tallow on a grill. He leaped toward the center of the room as the soldier tugged his weapon free and turned to finish the matter.

  Glaukon struck like a cobra at Dama. The merchant, moving with a reflexive skill that would have impressed Vettius if he'd had time to think, blocked the bronze fangs with the scabbard in his left hand. Instead of a clack as the teeth met, light crackled like miniature lightning.

  Dama swore in Greek and thrust with his sword at the creature's head. Glaukon recoiled in a smooth curve. The serpent's teeth had burned deep gouges into the scabbard's iron chape.

  Vettius pivoted on the ball of his left foot, bringing his blade around in a whistling arc that would Pyrrhus's eyes blazed into the soldier's. "Put down your sword, Lucius Vettius," rang the voice in his mind. Vettius held as rigid as a gnat in amber.

  There were shouts from outside. Someone knocked, then hammered the butt of his baton on the weakened panel. Splinters of gray wood began to crack off the inside.

  Glaukon was twenty feet of shimmering coils, with death in its humanoid jaws. Dama feinted. Glaukon quivered, then struck in earnest as the merchant shifted in the direction of Pyrrhus who was poising in the center of the anteroom as his eyes gripped Vettius.

  Dama jumped back, almost stumbling over the chest in which he'd hidden. He was safe, but the hem of his tunic smoldered where the teeth had caught it.

  Put Several batons were pounding together on the door. The upper half of a board flew into the room. An attendant reached through the leather facing and fumbled with the lock mechanism.

  – down your sword, Lucius Vettius.

  Dama's sword dipped, snagged the bolt of cloth that had covered him, and flipped it over the head of the bronze serpent. Wool screamed and humped as Glaukon tried to withdraw from it.

  Dama smiled with cold assurance and stabbed where the cloth peaked, extending his whole body in line with the blow. The sharp wedge of steel sheared cloth, bronze, and whatever filled the space within Glaukon's metal skull.

  The door burst inward. Pyrrhus sprang toward the opening like a chariot when the bars come down at the Circus. Vettius, freed by the eyes and all deadly instinct, slashed the splay-limbed figure as it leaped past.

  The spatha slicedin above the chin, shattering pointed, reptilian teeth. Down through the sinuous neck. Out, breaking the collar bone on the way.

  The blood that sprayed from the screaming monster was green in the lamp-light.

  Attendants hurled themselves out of the doorway with bawls of fear as the creature that had ruled them bolted through. Pyrrhus's domination drained with every spurt from his/its severed arteries. Men-men once more, not the Prophet's automatons-hurled away their cudgels and lanterns in their haste to flee. Some of the running forms were stripping off splattered tunics.

  The point of Dama's sword was warped and blackened. The merchant flung his ruined weapon away as he and Vettius slipped past the splintered remnants of the door. Behind them, in the center of a mat of charred wool, the serpent Glaukon vomited green flames and gobbets of bronze.

  Pyrrhus lay sprawled in a green pool at the bottom of the steps. The thin, scaly limbs twitched until Vettius, running past, drove his spatha through the base of the creature's domed skull.

  The soldier was panting, more from relief than exertion. "Where did he come from?" he muttered.

  "Doesn't matter." Dama was panting also."He didn't expect more of his kind to show up."

  "I thought he was a phony. The tablets-"

  They swung past the bollards where they'd talked the previous evening. Dama slowed to a walk, since they were clear of the immediate incident. "He was a charlatan where it was easier to be a charlatan. That's all."

  Vettius put his hand on the smaller man's shoulder and guided him to the shadow of a shuttered booth. "Why didn't you tell me you were coming back tonight?" the soldier demanded.

  Dama looked at him."It was personal," he said. Their faces were expressionless blurs. "I didn't think somebody in the Prefect's office ought to be involved."

  Vettius sheathed his blade and slid the scabbard parallel to his left leg. If the gods were good, the weapon might pass unnoticed on his way home in the cloud-swept moonlight. "I was already involved," he said.

  The merchant turned and met Vettius's eyes. "Menelaus was my friend," he replied, almost too softly to be heard. "Lucius Vettius, I didn't come here with a sword tonight totalk to my friend's killer."

  In the near distance, the night rang with cries of horror. The Watch had discovered the corpse of Pyrrhus the Prophet.

  Black Iron

  Ammianus Marcellinus was the last great Latin historian and in fact the only great Latin historian to follow Tacitus, his predecessor by some three hundred years. (There were major historians of the second and third centuries AD-and after-but they wrote in Greek.) He had an enormous impact on me, and one small aspect of his influence is "Black Iron."

  Ammianus was an officer in the imperial bodyguard during the middle of the fourth century AD, the period covered by the surviving books of his history. Emperors used their bodyguards as couriers and for other special missions. Ammianus was not only in a position to talk to virtually anyone in the empire, he was personally present at some of the most important events of his time. Though Ammianus isn't as good a writer as Tacitus (who's one of the finest prose stylists in Latin or any other language), he paints a vivid picture of his world.

  That world was sliding into blood and chaos. It would not emerge from darkness for centuries.

  The timing may be important here. I read Ammianus while I was in Vietnamese language school and during interrogation training afterwards. The future I saw before me was one of blood, chaos, and darkness, so I could identify-indeed had to identify-with the ancient soldier and historian as I read his work.

  I come back to the World, reentered law school, and resumed writing fiction. "Black Iron" is the first story I wrote after my return. It's also the first story I wrote after getting to know two Chapel Hill fantasy writers, Manly Wade Wellman and Karl Edward Wagner.

  Karl had just dropped out of UNC medical school to write full time (he later completed his schooling and got his MD). Manly was a giant of SF and fantasy; he'd been making virtually his whole living from freelance writing since the late '30s. Neither Karl nor I was ever a student of Manly's, but we were his junior colleagues and friends. We got together regularly for family meals and to read to one another the fiction we were working on.

  This was the first thing I read to Manly and Karl. There would be many other stories over the years.

  Ammianus was in Amida when the Persians besieged and captured that city. It wasn't a critically important event in the millennia-long struggle between Mesopotamia and the Mediterranean Basin, but Ammianus produced a bleak, brilliant piece of first-hand reporting. When I visited Turkey many years later, I stood on the enormous walls of Amida (modern Diyarbakir) and thought of Ammianus.

  One further thing about "Black Iron" is worth mentioning. I sent the story to Mr. Derleth, who'd bought three previous stories from me. He wrote me a letter of acceptance in June 1971, and followed it with an Arkham House check dated July 3.

  The next morning Mr. Derleth died of a heart attack. This was not only the last story I was to sell him, it was the last story he bought from anyone.

  Vettius' markers were of green tourmaline that glinted cruelly in the lamplight. The pieces had been carven by a Persian. Though as smoothly finished as anything Dama had seen in the West, the heads had a rudeness, a fierceness of line that he disliked. Living near the frontier had shaken him, he thought with a sigh.

  The soldier moved, taking one of Dama's pieces. The slim Cappadocian countered w
ith a neat double capture.

  "God rot your eyes!"Vettius exploded, banging his big hand down on the game board."I should know better than to play robbers with a merchant. By the Bull's blood, you're all thieves anyway. Doris, bring us some cups!"

  The little slave pattered in with a pair of chalices. As she left the room Vettius slapped her on the flank and said, "Don't come back till you're called for."

  The girl smiled without turning around.

  "Little slut," the soldier said affectionately. Then, to Dama, "How do you want your wine?"

  "One to three, as always," the blond merchant replied.

  "I thought maybe your balls had come down since I saw you last," Vettius said, shaking his head. "Well, here's your wine; water it yourself."

  He filled his own cup with the resin-thickened wine and slurped half of it. "You know," he said reflectively, "when I was on Naxos three years ago I made a special trip to a vineyard to get a drink of this before they added the pitch to preserve it in transport."

  Vettius paused. "Well," Dama pressed him, "how was it?"

  "Thin," the soldier admitted. "I'd rather drink Egyptian beer."

  He began to laugh and Dama joined him halfheartedly. At last Vettius wiped the tears from his eyes and gulped the rest of his wine. When he had refilled his cup he rocked back on his stool and gazed shrewdly at his friend. "You brought a bolt of cloth with you tonight," he said.

  "That's right," Dama agreed with a thin smile. "It's a piece of silk brocade, much heavier than what we usually see here."

  Vettius smiled back at him, showing his teeth like a bear snarling."So I'm a silk fancier now?" he asked."Come on, nobody will come until I call them. What do you have under the silk that you didn't want my servants to see?"

  Dama unrolled the silk without answering. The lustrous cloth had been wound around a sword whose hilt gleamed richly above a pair of laths bound over the blade. He tugged at the hilt and the laths fell away to reveal a slim blade, longer than that of a military sword. The gray steel was marked like wind-rippled water.

  "Do you believe that metal can be enchanted?" Dama asked.