Free The Sword of Damascus by Richard Blake

wizard of great power. They really believe you can help them. And I also want you to go ashore. If we must die together now, I am prepared to watch your own ascent to Heaven. But you might be able to save us both. All else aside, why should both of us die when one of us has the chance of escape?’
    ‘Don’t be stupid, boy!’ I snapped. Evidently, he’d been too impressed by stories of my past life to realise how long ago all that had been. ‘Give me another moment, and I’m sure I can think of something else to offer these animals. Perhaps they could deliver us to one of the bishops in France before negotiating our ransom with Theodore . . .’
    But if they were still sufficiently collected not to commit any actual violence, nothing I offered was enough to stand them down. I did think of putting the eminently reasonable argument that if I had magical powers sufficient to get their men back, I’d hardly have been their helpless prisoner since Christmas. But there’s no reasoning with the barbarian mind. You’ll get more sense out of women or idiot children. One way or another, at least one of us was going over that side. I took off my hat and scratched my scalp. My thoughts raced as, like a failing litigant in court, I tried to think of some other argument that would turn things in my favour. But nothing came.
    ‘Wilfred,’ I asked, ‘can you tell me what is going on ashore?’
    ‘There is a boatload of armed men setting out,’ he said.
    Interesting, I thought, and potentially useful. I’d said that something always turned up. Perhaps it just had. Without being able to see more than a blur at this distance, I couldn’t tell how many armed men there were. From the manner of the crew, however, I could guess they weren’t enough to raise any alarm here. I thought hard again. I shrugged. I turned and pointed at the more presently alarming crew members.
    ‘I want you all below,’ I said firmly. ‘I want just three of you on deck when that thing comes in hailing distance. You will treat me with exaggerated respect.’
    ‘The boy stays with us,’ the man at the front said. ‘We give you until dusk.’
     
    ‘You are under arrest,’ the senior official rasped at me in Latin as the little boat docked. ‘You will order your crew to surrender.’
    ‘On the contrary,’ I replied in Greek, as smoothly as my remaining teeth would allow, ‘you will send news to His Excellency the Prefect that I should be received with all respect due to the Emperor’s servant.’
    He looked down at the shrivelled creature swathed in dirty rags who’d addressed him from the boat. His mouth fell open.
    ‘You will also provide me with a covered carrying chair. I don’t at all fancy those stairs up to the main square.’
    As I’d half expected, Cartenna was largely derelict. With the decline of population, it’s much the same everywhere in Africa. All the buildings on the west side of the main square were already in ruins. On the other three sides, they were, so far as I could tell, mostly empty. There were a few stalls set out to sell food, and there was a weak apology for a slave market in progress. I could see a couple of naked, half-dead blacks prodded into dancing by the Berbers who’d brought them in for sale. No one was bidding for them. No one seemed to notice they were for sale. About a dozen children played in the dust. There were a few looks in my direction as I was carried past. No doubt, the big and decidedly odd ship moored outside the harbour had been the main talking point in town. There didn’t seem to be enough people for a mob of the curious to gather round me. But there were curious looks. I sat in my chair, trying to pretend I looked other than an old beggar. The smells were comforting, though – the familiar mix of early flowering shrubs and of broken sewers.
     
    ‘Who are you, that you presume to dirty our waters with your presence?’ the Prefect asked in laboured Greek. ‘This is a peaceful place.