Free King's Man by Tim Severin

asks one more thing. He requests that we send him an engineer and materials for the Fire.'
    Beside me the kentarchos almost choked with astonishment. John noted his reaction.
    'Don't worry,' he said soothingly. 'I have no intention of allowing the Fire to be made available to barbarian vessels. At the same time I don't want to snub Araltes. He is evidently someone who takes offence easily. He says nothing about requiring a siphon to dispense the Fire. So I'll send him the engineer and the materials, but no siphon. It will be a genuine mistake.'
    It took three weeks to prepare the plan. First the bureau of the logothete of the domestikos, the army's secretariat, had to draw up two sets of orders: the official one for the false shipment and a second, secret set of instructions for the genuine consignment. Then their colleagues in the office of the logothete of the dromos, responsible for the imperial highways, had to make their preparations for an escorted convoy to go overland from Constantinople to Dyrrachium. The managers of the way stations were warned to be ready with changes of pack mules for carrying the payment, as well as horses for the mounted troopers. The eparch of the palace treasury received his instructions direct from the Orphanotrophus: he was to cast eight hundred bars of lead to the same weight as the thousands of gold nomisma, the imperial coins with which the troops were paid. Last, but not least, the navy had to find a suitable merchant ship to carry the genuine shipment around the coast.
    When I went to the Golden Horn to view the chosen vessel, I had to admit that the kentarchos, who had been given this responsibility, knew his job. He had picked a vessel known locally as a dorkon or 'gazelle'. Twenty paces in length, the vessel was light and fast for a cargo carrier. She had two masts for her triangular sails, a draught shallow enough to allow her to work close inshore, and extra oar benches for sixteen men so she could make progress in a calm as well as manoeuvre her way safely in and out of harbour. Her captain also inspired me with confidence. A short, sinewy Greek by the name of Theodore, he came from the island of Lemnos, and he kept his ship in good order. Once he had made it clear to me that he was in charge and I was to be only a supercargo, he was polite and friendly. He had been told only that he was to sail to Italy by the direct route and expect a rendezvous at sea with auxiliary ships of the imperial navy. He had not been told the nature of his cargo. Nor did he ask.
    I next saw Theodore on the night we left harbour. In keeping with the secrecy of our mission, we sailed within hours of the chests of bullion being carried aboard. The water guard were expecting us. They patrolled the great iron chain strung across the entrance to the Golden Horn at dusk to hinder smugglers or enemy attack, and they opened a gap so that the dorkon could slip out and catch the favourable current to take us down towards the Propontis or inner sea. As I looked towards the towering black mass of Constantinople spread across its seven hills, I recalled the day when I had first arrived. Then I had been awed by the sheer scale and splendour of Miklagard. Now the city was defined by the pinprick lights of the apartment blocks where thousands upon thousands of ordinary working citizens were still awake. Closer to hand, the steady beam of Constantinople's lighthouse shone out across the water, its array of lanterns fuelled by olive oil and burning in great glass jars to protect the flames from the wind.
    The dorkon performed even better than I had anticipated. We set course directly across the Propontis, and this in itself was a measure of our captain's competence. Greek mariners normally stopped each evening and anchored at some regular shelter or pulled into a local port, so they hugged the coast and were seldom out of sight of land. But Theodore headed directly for the lower straits which led into what he called the