Free The Gate of Fire by Thomas Harlan Page B

rickety table between them.
    "The offices here are overstaffed," said the tribune, scowling at the roster. "You've been detached from cleanup to fieldwork." He pushed a chit across the table. Nicholas picked it up and turned it over. The fired clay chip had a pair of fish painted on it with black ink.
    "The navy has some business coming up in a day or two. Report to them."
    Sergius paused, squinting at Nicholas. "You can swim, can't you?"
    Nicholas grinned, showing fine white teeth. In the Empire, to career Legion men like Sergius, duty on a fighting galley was akin to a term in prison. Why should Nicholas tell him that the flat, tepid water of the Inner Sea was like some overlarge bath to those who had earned a place at the oars of the Stormlord?
    "I'll manage. Is this a punishment detail?"
    "For what? For letting that bastard Otholarix get past you?"
    Nicholas shrugged, looking away. He had dawdled on his way to the Wall. The smell and filth of the great city might repel him, but that did not mean there were not interesting diversions within the walls. A tinge of guilt touched him, though, thinking of the equites who had been cut down in the fight at the gate.
    Sergius tapped the tabletop with a wooden stylus. "You've had some good notes, lad, from your other commanders. I've no complaints about your work until this business at the gate. Do well for the navy and we'll put you back on shore."
    Nicholas nodded, but he could not pretend he wanted "shore work" any more than a fighting berth on a ship of war. Ten years of his life, before kin-feud and jealousy had driven him from the Dansk court, had been spent on drakenships . How was murdering or kidnapping political opponents of the Empire any different from raiding the Caledonian or Hibernian shore? He felt a vague dissatisfaction.
—|—
    Mists parted, and the iron beak of the ship nosed out of a wall of dim gray. Nicholas hung on the rail of the fighting platform, peering forward through the murk. The fog muffled sound and made the quiet splash of the long oars in water seem faint and distant. The sun had risen at last, and the mist was beginning to burn away. The Imperial fleet barely moved, creeping forward through the fog bank. The sound of a hobnailed boot on the decking made the Scandian turn.
    Another soldier swung up onto the bulwark and pulled himself to the rail. Nicholas nodded politely at him, hiding a frown. The man was stocky and of middling height, with thick black hair hanging heavily around his head and shoulders. Unlike most of the men on the ship, he was not wearing a helmet. Bushy eyebrows crowded over his muddy brown eyes, and though his skin was fair and even pale, he seemed a dark and brooding sort. "Greetings," the fellow said, his dark eyes idly drifting over Nick's clothing, armor, weapons, hands. "I am Vladimir of Carpathos—and you?"
    Nicholas frowned openly now, and lifted his head a little, pointing with his chin at the shirt of heavy iron rings that the soldier wore under a tunic of deep green wool. Copper wire bound the rings—each the size of a solidus —to a leather backing. He was obviously no sailor.
    "You ever go swimming in that?"
    Vladimir shook his head, allowing a brief and brilliantly white smile in the shade of his neatly trimmed mustache and beard. "Hate the water, myself, try to stay away from it as much as I can. I've heard it brings disease and sickness."
    Nicholas grunted, something close to a laugh, and nodded his head over the rail. "Seems a mighty lot of it about. You volunteer for our little trip this morning?"
    "No, I try to avoid getting killed," Vladimir said, shaking his head and leaning easily on the heavy wooden planking that ran along the top of the bulwark. He grinned. "You?"
    "Can't say as I did," Nick muttered, turning to the rail himself. "Not beyond saying I'd put my sword to the defense of the city. You plan on walking home if something happens to this tub?"
    Vladimir looked down and fingered the weighty