In the Heart of Darkness

by Eric Flint

  The assassin winced. "Nanda Lal's going to be furious."

  "So?" demanded Narses. "You weren't in charge—Balban was. You warned him that Antonina was deceiving us. I'll swear to it. But Balban wouldn't listen."

  Ajatasutra glanced at Pompeius. The nobleman was leaning against the far wall. His face was pale, his eyes unfocussed. He seemed completely oblivious to everything except his own terror.

  The assassin's eyes moved to the Empress. Theodora glared back at him.

  Black, black eyes. Hating eyes.

  "Her?" he asked.

  The old eunuch's face was truly that of a serpent, now. For a moment, Ajatasutra almost drew his dagger again. But, instead, he simply murmured:

  "Who would have ever thought Narses would commit an act of personal grace?"

  Smiling, the assassin strode over to Pompeius, seized the nobleman by the arm, and dragged him to the door. There, he stopped, waiting for Narses.

  The eunuch and the Empress stared at each other.

  The eunuch's was a gaze of sorrow. Theodora's—

  "I will never forgive you. You are a dead man."

  Narses nodded. "I know." A rueful little smile came to his face. "But I might still win. And I'm an old man, anyway. Even if I lose, I may well be dead before you kill me."

  The smile faded. Sorrow remained.

  The eunuch turned away, and began walking toward the door. Theodora's voice halted him.

  "Why, Narses?"

  For the first time, there was anguish as well as hatred in her voice. Narses, without turning, simply shrugged.

  "Ambition," he said.

  "No. Not that. Why this?"

  Narses turned his head. His eyes met those of Theodora's. There was a hint of tears in her eyes. Just a hint.

  Narses fought back his own tears.

  "There was no need. And—"

  He could not face those eyes. He looked away. Harshly: "I did not stop loving you, child, simply because I planned to murder you."

  Anguish fled the Empress. Only the hell-voice remained:

  "You should have killed me, traitor. You will regret it, coward."

  Narses shook his head.

  "No, Theodora, I won't. Not ever."

  A moment later, he was gone. Theodora gazed down at her husband. Justinian's moans were growing louder. Soon, he would regain consciousness and begin to scream.

  The Empress lifted his head off her lap and set it gently on the carpet.

  She had something to attend to.

  Crawling on her hands and knees, Theodora made her way to the body of the nearest soldier. She drew a dagger from the corpse's sword-belt.

  Then, still crawling, she began making her way toward John of Cappadocia.

  The Empress did not crawl because she was unable to stand, or because she was injured, or because she was in a state of shock.

  No. She crawled simply because she wanted the Cappadocian to see her coming.

  He did. And then, despite the agony which held him paralyzed, tried to scream.

  But he couldn't. He couldn't make a sound; couldn't move a muscle. He could only watch.

  Theodora crawled toward him, the dagger in her hand. Her eyes were fixed on those of the praetorian prefect.

  She wanted those eyes.

  Hell-gaze. Hell-crawl.

  It was the last thing John of Cappadocia would ever see, and he knew it.

  Three minutes later, Belisarius burst into the room. Behind him came his cataphracts and Irene.

  All of them skidded to a halt.

  Irene clapped her hand over her mouth, gasping. Menander turned pale. Anastasius tightened his jaws. Valentinian grinned.

  Belisarius simply stared. But he too, for a moment, was transfixed by the sight.

  Transfixed, not by the sight of the bodies littering the chamber. Not by the sight of Justinian, moaning, blinded. Not even by the sight of the praetorian prefect, prostrate, screaming in a silent rictus, his back arched with agony.

  No, it was the sight of the Empress. Squatting over the dying traitor, a bloody knife in one hand, her imperial robes held up by the other. Urinating into the empty eyesockets of John of Cappadocia.

  Chapter 28

  The rocket soared up into the sky and exploded high above the walls of the Hippodrome. A thundering cry followed, from the assembled mob within.

  "NIKA! NIKA!"

  " `Victory,' is it?" hissed Antonina. She leaned over her saddle and whispered to Maurice:

  "Tell me what to do."

  Maurice smiled. "You already know what to do." He pointed forward. They were approaching the looming structure from the southwest. Ahead of them, fifty yards away, began a broad stone staircase which swept up to a wide entrance. The entrance was thirty yards across, and supported by several columns.

  "Once we get in there, it'll be like a knife fight in a kitchen. There won't be any room for maneuver. Just kill or be killed."

  Antonina grimaced. The entrance they were approaching was called the Gate of Death.

  "How appropriate," she murmured.

  Next to her, Maurice snorted contempt. "Can you believe it?" he demanded. "They didn't post a guard. Not even a single sentinel."

  They were now twenty yards from the beginning of the staircase. Antonina halted her horse and began to dismount.

  "There won't be any room for horses in there," she said. Maurice nodded and ordered the cataphracts to dismount. The bucellarii grumbled, but obeyed without hesitation. Much as they hated fighting afoot, they were veterans. They knew full well that cavalry tactics would be impossible inside the Hippodrome.

  Antonina drew her cleaver and held it over her head.

  "Nothing! Nothing!" she cried, and began marching up the steps.

  Her whole army surged after her. But, before she had gone halfway up the staircase, Maurice was holding her back.

  "You stay in the rear."

  Antonina obeyed. Her army swept around her. After they had all gone by, she and Maurice followed.

  By the time they passed through the Gate of Death, some of the grenadiers were already launching their first grenades. Antonina could hear the explosions, as well as the battle cry of her own soldiers.

  "NOTHING! NOTHING!"

  She and Maurice entered the Hippodrome. They were standing on a broad, flat platform. Below them, the wide stone tiers of the Hippodrome—which served as seats and stairway combined—sloped down to the racetrack below.

  The three hundred cataphracts were spreading out, filing down the first ten tiers, setting a perimeter. All of them had drawn their bows. In the center, just below her, the grenadiers and their wives had taken their own compact formation. Some of the grenadiers were slinging grenades, but most of them were still occupied in setting up their grenade baskets.

  Antonina stared at the enemy, massed on the other side of the Hippodrome. After a quick glance, she ignored the huge mob of faction thugs. Her attention was drawn to the wooden bulwarks positioned on the far curve of the racetrack. She could see the kshatriya muscling around some wooden troughs. She did not recognize the odd wooden devices, but she had no difficulty recognizing the nature of the tubes which the kshatriya were placing in them.

  "Rockets," she muttered. She turned to Maurice, standing next to her.

  "Tell the army to spread out further. I don't want to give those rockets a concentrated target."

  Maurice winced. "That'll make it harder to defend against a mass charge."

  Antonina shook her head.

  "If all forty thousand of those thugs charge us at once, they'll overwhelm us regardless of how compact we are. But I know that crowd, Maurice. I grew up with them. Forty thousand Hippodrome thugs can swamp less than a thousand soldiers—but not without suffering heavy casualties. Especially in the front ranks."

  She pointing toward the mob.

  "I guarantee you, Maurice, they know it as well as we do. And every single one of that crowd, right this very moment, is making the same vow."

&nb
sp; She laughed, harshly. " `Victory!' is just their official battle cry. The real one—the private, silent one—is: you first! Anybody but me!"

  Maurice chuckled. Then, nodded.

  "I do believe you're right." A moment later, the hecatontarch was bellowing orders. The cataphracts immediately began spreading out further. Within a minute, they had established a perimeter which encompassed the entire southwestern arc of the Hippodrome. The grenadiers spread out to fill that guarded space. Soon, the grenadiers were scattered into separate small squads, instead of packed into a tight formation.

  Not a moment too soon. The Malwa fired their first rockets at the Romans. One of the rockets plowed into the dirt track below them, sending up a cloud of dust. Another soared completely out of the Hippodrome. But the next slammed into a nearby tier.

  For all the impressive sound and fury of the explosion, the heavy stone suffered no worse than scorching. And, because the space was vacated, there were no casualties beyond a few grenadiers injured by flying wooden splinters. Minor wounds, no worse.

  The grenadiers roared their fury. For the first time since entering the Hippodrome, the grenadiers launched a full volley.

  Hundreds of grenades, their fuses sputtering, flew across the Hippodrome. The volley was not concentrated on any particular target. Each grenadier had simply decided to smite the foe. Any foe.

  The volley erupted throughout the huge mob of faction thugs. A few landed in the vicinity of the wooden bulwarks sheltering the kshatriya. The Malwa soldiers, accustomed to gunpowder weapons, took shelter long before the grenades arrived. Few of them were even injured.

  The mob—

  A man of the future, had he been watching, would have called that volley a gigantic shotgun blast.

  A sawed-off shotgun, at short range.

  "Beautiful!" shouted Maurice, raising his fist in triumph. Below, the cataphracts and the grenadiers added their own cries of elation.

  "The hell it was," snarled Antonina. "Sloppy."

  Scowling, the little woman stalked forward and began yelling orders at her grenadiers. Her clear, soprano voice—trained by an actress mother—projected right through the shrieking din of the Hippodrome.

  Now steadied, the grenadiers began following her commands. Their volleys became concentrated, targeted salvoes.

  Antonina aimed the first volley at the kshatriya. All of the rocket troughs were shattered or upended. Again, most of the Malwa soldiers escaped harm by sheltering behind the bulwarks. The bulwarks were solidly built—heavy timbers fastened with bolts. The grenades did no more than score the wood.

  But Antonina didn't care. She simply wanted to cow the Malwa, put them out of action. She was quite confident in her ability to deal with a few hundred kshatriya. Her grenadiers, with their slings, easily outranged the Malwa grenades. And the rocket troughs were too fragile and cumbersome to be much of a threat in this kind of battle.

  What she was really worried about—despite her confident proclamation to Maurice—was that the huge mob of faction thugs would swarm her with their numbers. There were forty thousand of them, against less than a thousand grenadiers and cataphracts—and the grenadiers would be of little use in a hand-to-hand melee.

  So, while the Malwa soldiers coughed dust out of their lungs, crouching from the fury, Antonina began dismembering the mob.

  Chop. Chop. Chop.

  The next three volleys landed—in series, north to south—on the nearest fringes of the crowd. When the dust settled, and the bodies stopped flying, hundreds of faction thugs were scattered in heaps over the stone tiers. Dead, dying, wounded, stunned.

  The crowd, shrieking, began piling away. More thugs died, trampled to death.

  The nearest members of the mob were on the northern tiers of the Hippodrome. Antonina sent two volleys that way. The packed mass shredded, disintegrated. The survivors packed even tighter, pushing their fellows back, back. Back toward the far exits. Dozens more were trampled to death.

  The kshatriya were stirring again. Small groups of Malwa soldiers were raising the two rocket troughs which had only been upended instead of destroyed. The rest were hurling their own grenades. But, without slings, those grenades fell harmlessly in the center of the Hippodrome.

  Still—

  Keep them cowed.

  Antonina sent another volley at the kshatriyas. The Malwa soldiers, again, suffered relatively few casualties. But, as before, they were forced to retreat behind their bulwarks, out of action.

  Back to the mob.

  Chop. Chop. Chop.

  Maurice, standing a few feet behind Antonina, smiled grimly. He said nothing. There was no need.

  A knife fight in a kitchen.

  The first members of the mob who fled from the Hippodrome escaped. Perhaps two thousand of them, less the hundred or so who were trampled to death squeezing through the northeastern gates.

  The rest ran into Belisarius.

  Marching up with his army, and seeing the Blue and Green thugs pouring out of the Hippodrome, Belisarius ordered half of the infantrymen to form lines on either side of the gates.

  "Make them run the gauntlet, Hermogenes," he commanded. "Kill as many as you can—without breaking your lines."

  "Most of them will escape," protested Hermogenes. "We should box them in. Kill all the stinking traitors."

  Belisarius shook his head.

  "We don't need that kind of bloodbath. Just enough to terrorize the factions for the next twenty years."

  He turned to Irene, who was riding next to him. The spymaster had wanted to stay with Theodora, but Belisarius had insisted she accompany him to the Hippodrome. Theodora was safe, now. She and Justinian were being guarded in the Gynaeceum by Theodora's surviving excubitores, five hundred infantrymen, and most of Sittas' cataphracts. Irene could do nothing for Theodora, at the moment, whereas Belisarius had wanted her expertise.

  "Can you identify the faction leaders?" he asked.

  Irene nodded.

  Belisarius whistled and waved to Sittas. The general trotted over, along with the hundred or so cataphracts he still had with him.

  Belisarius pointed to the infantrymen lining up on either side of the gates. Already, the soldiers were cutting down those faction members who stumbled against their lines. The thugs who managed to stay out of sword range were in no danger from the soldiers. But, pushing away from the threatening infantrymen, the crowd was squeezing itself into a packed torrent of hurtling bodies. Within seconds, another dozen were trampled to death.

  "Let them through, Sittas, those of them that survive the gauntlet. Except the faction leaders. I want them dead or captured. Irene will point them out for you."

  Sittas began to protest the orders. Like Hermogenes, he was filled with a furious determination to massacre the entire crowd.

  "Do as I command!" bellowed Belisarius. He matched Sittas glare for glare.

  "Don't be an idiot, Sittas!" He pointed to the southwest. "Antonina has less than a thousand men. Most of them are grenadiers, who won't be worth much in a hand-to-hand battle. If that huge mob attacks them head on, they'll be slaughtered."

  Sittas was still glaring. Belisarius snarled.

  "Think, Sittas. If we trap that mob from this end, they'll have no choice but to pour out the other. So let them out here. Hermogenes and his men will savage them on the way out, and you make sure to get the leaders. That's good enough."

  "He's right, Sittas," hissed Irene.

  Sittas blew out his cheeks.

  "I know," he grumbled. "I just—damn all traitors, anyway."

  But he reined his horse around without further argument. Within a minute, his cataphracts were forming a mounted line a hundred and fifty yards away. By now, Hermogenes had his five hundred infantrymen lined up on either side of the gates, half on each side. His men stood three feet apart, in three ranks. As the faction thugs poured out of the Hippodrome, they would have to run a gauntlet almost a hundred yards long. Then, they would break against the heavily armored, mounted
cataphracts—like a torrent against a boulder. The thugs who survived the gauntlet would be able to escape, by fleeing to either side through the fifty-yard gaps between the last infantrymen and Sittas' line. But during that time they would be exposed to Irene's searching eyes—and cataphract archery.

  Satisfied, Belisarius turned away. Some of the faction leaders would escape. Not many.

  He began trotting his horse to the southwest, below the looming wall of the Hippodrome. Valentinian, Anastasius and Menander rode next to him. Behind them came the remaining thousand infantrymen of Hermogenes' army.

  Belisarius turned in his saddle. He saw that the infantry were maintaining a good columnar formation—well-ordered and ready to spread into a line as soon as he gave the command.

  Ashot was right, he thought. The best Roman infantry since the days of the Principate.

  He stepped up the pace.

  Thank you, Hermogenes. You may have saved my wife's life.

  "Forget the rockets!" shouted Balban. The cluster of kshatriya who were trying to erect a rocket trough behind the bulwarks immediately ceased their effort.

  Balban turned back to his three chief lieutenants. The four Malwa officers, along with six top leaders of the Blue and Green factions, were crowded into a corner formed by the heavy wooden beams. The three-sided shelter formed by the bulwarks was almost suffocating. Into that small space—not more than fifty feet square—were jammed a hundred kshatriya and perhaps another dozen faction leaders. The remaining kshatriya—those who still survived, which was well over three hundred—were crouched as close to the bulwarks as they could get. Fortunately for them, the cursed Roman grenadiers were still concentrating their volleys on the mob.

  Balban stared up at the tiers of the Hippodrome. Those tiers were full of men. Thousands and thousands of men—armed men—all of whom were milling around uselessly. At least half of them, he estimated, were simply intent on escaping the Hippodrome through the northeast gates. Many of them had already dropped their weapons.