Free The Golden Horn by Judith Tarr

how narrow the streets are, my lady,”
said Katya, almost calm now. “And all the houses are of wood and half of them
are falling down. They’re burning like logs on a hearth.”
    Suddenly Sophia was very tired. The servants would be in an uproar;
the children would be terrified. And Bardas—if he was in his chamber in
the Prefecture, she could lure him home; if not…
    The hiss of metal on metal brought her eyes to Jehan. He had
sheathed his sword; his brows were knit. His face, pleasant and rather foolish
in repose, was suddenly hard and Stern. “My lady,” he said, “you’d
best do as Alf told you, and soon. I’m going after him.”
    “He told you to go back to camp.”
    “He should have known better, and he should never have
left like that before he’d packed me off.”
    “You know where he’s gone?”
    “To the fire.” Jehan took up the hooded mantle
with which he had concealed his foreignness, and threw it on. “I’ll
come back for my things. Leading Alf, or carrying him.”

10.
    The City was deceptively quiet, basking in the respite from the
relentless heat. But beneath the surface, terror had begun to stir. Jehan won
passage through the midday crowds with his size and his determination,
searching with desperate hope for a familiar white-fair head.
    He had hoped for it, but he did not credit his eyes when he saw
it under the arch of a portico. For an instant he feared some calamity, illness
or violence or perhaps true madness. But Alf met Jehan with clear eyes and a
forbidding frown. “Why are you following me?”
    “Why are you waiting for me?” Jehan countered.
    Alf’s frown darkened. “You’re an utter fool.”
He gripped Jehan’s arm with that startling strength of his and drew him forward.
“Stay with me and keep your head covered.”
    They heard and scented it before they saw it, screams and cries
and an acrid tang of smoke that caught at the throat. As they rounded a corner,
fierce heat struck them like a blow. Flames leaped to the sky, dimmed and
thinned by the sun’s brightness.
    All the strong current of the crowd rushed away from the fire,
carrying everything in its wake. Alf breasted it like a swimmer, battling it,
borne backward one for every two steps he advanced. Once he stopped; Jehan
braced himself, expecting them both to be hurled down and trampled. Yet,
although the panic-scrambling was as wild as ever, Alf made his way forward again
all but unimpeded.
    The roaring in their ears, Jehan realized, was not simply
the clamor of many voices raised in terror, but the fire itself as it devoured
everything in its path. He saw it leap from roof to roof across the narrow
street, take hold on dry timbers and flare upward like a torch. Black
demon-figures leaped and danced within it, casting themselves forth, shrieking
as they fell.
    Here and there amid the inferno were islands: lines of
people struggling to hold back the flames, beating at them with cloaks and
blankets and rugs, running from the cisterns with basins and buckets and jars;
winning small victories, but losing ground steadily as wind and fire conspired
to overrun them.
    Alf passed them. The air shimmered in the fire-heat; as if
by a miracle the crowd had thinned to nothing. Figures staggered about: a man
bent under a heavy chest; a small child clutching at one still smaller and
crying; a charred scarecrow with a terrible seared face, that wheeled about
even as Jehan stared, and plunged into the flames.
    Alf halted so suddenly that Jehan collided with him. “God
in heaven,” he said softly but distinctly in Latin. Jehan, peering at his
face through eyes smarting with smoke, saw there neither fear nor pity but a
white, terrible anger. He swept the children into his arms, murmuring words of
comfort, and passed them to Jehan. “Take them to safety,” he said.
    The children were limp, passive, worn out with terror. Jehan
settled them one on each arm, with the absent ease of one who had had numerous
small siblings. “And