King and Emperor by Harry Harrison. Chapter 1, 2

In the end, and after days of exhausting ceremonial, the two military leaders had lost patience and dismissed all their retinues of advisers and translators and chiefs of protocol. They sat now on a balcony overlooking the sea, a pitcher of resined wine between them. All serious issues were settled, the agreements at this moment being embodied by relays of scribes writing a massive treaty in multiple copies in gold and purple ink. The only possible check now could come from the religious leaders, who had retired to talk between themselves. And each had been given the strictest and grimmest of warnings by his earthly colleague and paymaster, to cause no trouble. For there were worse things that could happen to the Church, as the Imperator Bruno had said to his creature Pope John, than a misunderstanding over the exact nature of the Nicene Creed.

The emperors sat quietly, then, each with an ear cocked for the return of the churchmen, discussing their personal problems, as one ultimate ruler to another. It was perhaps the first time either had talked freely and frankly of such matters. They spoke in Latin, native to neither of them, but at least allowing them to communicate without intermediaries.

“We are alike in several ways, then,” mused the Emperor of the Greeks, the Basileus. The imperial name he had chosen, Basil I, showed a certain lack of imagination unsurprising in one with his history.

“Hoc ille,” agreed the Imperator of the West, Bruno Emperor of the Romans as he claimed, but in reality of the Franks, the Italians and most of all of the Germans. “That’s it. We are new men. Of course my family is old and distinguished. But I am not of the blood of Charlemagne.”

“Nor I of the house of Leo,” agreed the Basileus. “Tell me if I am wrong, but as I understand it there is none of the blood of Charlemagne left.”

Bruno nodded. “None in the male line. Some were killed by their own vassals, like King Charles the Bald, on account of their failures in battle. I had to take measures against others myself.”

“How many?” probed Basil.

“About ten. It was made easier for me in that they all seemed to have the same names. Lewis the Stammerer, Lewis the German. Three sons for each of them, and still with the same names, Charles and Lewis and Carloman. And some others of course. But it is not quite true that there is none of the blood of Charlemagne left. He has great-great-granddaughters left. One day, when all my tasks are done, I may ally myself with one.”

“So your position will be stronger.”

A yet fiercer look crossed Bruno’s craggy, rock-hewn face. He straightened up in his chair, reached behind him for the thing that never left him, that no negotiators could persuade him to abandon. The lance with the leaf-shaped blade, its plain head now shining once more with inlaid gold crosses, set on a shaft of ash-wood barely visible beneath gold and silver wire. His ape-like shoulders stretched as he swung it before him, thumped its shaft on the marble floor.

“No! My position could not be stronger in any way. For I am the holder of the Holy Lance, the lance with which the German centurion Longinus split the heart of our blessed Savior. He who holds it, he is the heir of Charlemagne, by more than blood. I took it in battle with the heathen, brought it back to Christendom.”

Reverently Bruno kissed the blade, laid the weapon down with tender care beside him. The bodyguards who had stiffened into readiness yards distant relaxed, smiled warily at each other.

The Basileus nodded, reflecting. He had learnt two things. That this strange count from the furthest extremity of the Franks believed his own fable. And that the stories they told of him were true. This man did not need a bodyguard, he was his own. How like the Franks to elect as their king the one the most formidable in single combat, not a strategos but a mere champion. And yet he might be a strategist too.

“And you,” probed Bruno in his turn. “You… put from his throne your predecessor, Michael the Drunkard, as he was called. I take it he has left no seed behind to grow rebellion.”

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