“It should be,” Alexios answered. “Mayor Daley promised the men of Shytown would burn the palisade the Bornu built to keep them out. The aftermen seem clever with incendiaries, and to be acquainted with more of them than our liquid fire.” Yet another thing to worry about, he thought. But not until later. Worry about Musa ar-Rahman came first.
Alexios detached a company of troops to fill grails on the grailstone of the captured town. Some of those grails belong to his own soldiers; others were seized from captured blacks. The Basileus pushed on with the main
body of his force. The supply company had carts to carry the loaded grails (minus liquor, smoking hemp, and dreamgum) up to the rest of the army. The Bornu in the wake of the imperial forces would go hungry, but that was their hard luck.
“Do you think they’ll try to attack us again, this side of their capital?” Isaac asked.
“I wouldn’t, if I’d got myself into a mess like this,” Alexios said. “But who can read Musa’s mind with certainty? He might split his forces against us and Shytown, or he might try to beat one foe first and then turn back and quickly smite the other. But if it were me, I’d await attack where the works of the town favor defense. It’s not as if we can starve him out in a hurry, worse luck.”
Isaac chuckled. “Grails do make this whole business of sieges more complicated than it used to be.”
Here and there, Bornu archers sniped from ambush at the advancing Rhomaioi. They did little damage. Alexios’s scouts captured and hamstrung a couple of them and confiscated their grails. If the skirmishers were trying to slow off the Basileus’s army, they failed.
Musa did as Alexios had guessed. After the first repulse, no sizable Bornu force appeared to challenge the men from New Constantinople. The second Bornu grailtown along the riverbank was all but deserted when the Rhomaioi reached it. The townsfolk had fled downstream with their grails. The same was true of the third town, where Alexios stopped to fill grails for the noon meal.
The fourth grailtown downstream from the border with New Constantinople was the capital of Bomu. Its grailstone was no bigger than any of the rest, so its normal population was like those of the other little cities, but Musa ar-Rahman had lavished far more care on it than on
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Harry TUrtledove
TWO THIEVES
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them. Its tall wall was built of stout timber and bamboo, and draped with kiltcloth to ward against torches. The second story of the Sultan’s palace overtopped even the wall. That would be Musa’s citadel if he lost the rest of the town, Alexios thought.
The wall was packed tight with black men who bellowed defiance at the Rhomaioi. Isaac Komnenos scowled up at them. “This place would be no joy to besiege even if they weren’t able to feed themselves with their grails.”
“I won’t argue, brother of mine. However—” Alexios nodded to the musicians who accompanied the army. Shrill squeals from the flute, deep notes from the drum ordered the warriors to shift position. Alexios missed military trumpets, but not enough copper had been found in New Constantinople to make even one.
The front ranks of the army opened out, allowing the engineering detachment that had traveled in the middle of the hollow diamond to advance. They pushed their carts (quite different from those of the foragers) up toward the wall. Shieldmen moved forward with them, protecting them from the storm of missiles the Bornu loosed.
A man at the rear of each cart worked a kiltcloth bellows. Kiltcloth also lined the interior of the long bamboo tubes other engineers aimed toward the top of the wall. When the men at the bellows cried a warning, the shieldmen, as they’d practiced, skipped nimbly out of the way.
A golden liquid burst from the ends of the bamboo tubes. The aimers ignited it with carefully hoarded firestarters. Half a dozen streams of flowing fire rose to drip from the wall and the Bornu atop it.
Alexios watched in cold satisfaction as shrieking infidels dashed every which way in their agony, spreading