Abkhazia, Georgia
The train station bustled around Michael Doukas. One more middle-aged man disembarking with his servants juggling the luggage behind was nothing to remark. The Emperor who walked next to him, with four well-paid and extremely careful Varangians about him, decidedly was. So was his anxious care for the emperor's safety.
He looked about. Passengers were flooding off the train through the connecting corridor, meeting their personal attendants, and those were hailing uniformed porters as luggage was brought in and placed on long tables. Fur hats and head scarves and hats in a hundred different colors waved against the rows of ticket offices along the walls, and swirled through the doorways to waiting cabs or restaurants or shops. Families and friends greeted each other with cool reserve, or glad cries and embraces—his lip curled a little in scorn at that until they all bowed in respect to him and the emperor and cleared a path for him. Some of the servants were holding up signs with names on them, to guide arriving guests to the carriages of their hosts, or in a few cases to their motorcars.
Voices and unintelligible clunks and clanks from the machinery elsewhere filled the air along with the scent of incense in the man-high stone jars that stood here and there on the marble of the floor. The last light of sunset speared down from the high clerestory windows, off the bright gilding that covered the arched ceiling; then the floods came on with a pop and flare of brightness that turned it to a shimmering haze of gold.
Interesting, he thought, looking up as he always did here. The building was five years old, and the spiderweb complexity of gilt, groined vaulting above him was all laminated wood, the latest thing—everything from teak to bamboo, in precisely calculated gradients. And the mathematics had been done here at Tblisi, at the local university.
The rest was not much different from a European railway station, even to the murals of Unity, Romanitas, and Strength and other uplifting sentiments lining the upper walls. Bronzed Indian engineers in dusty turbans laying out irrigation canals, with grateful peasants invoking Christ in the background; missionaries in some godsforsaken ruin (probably Africa) reclaiming hairy savages who crouched in awe at their feet; noble kataphraktoi heroic on rearing steeds, trampling cringing enemies beneath their hooves.
He snorted slightly; they'd left out the traders with crates of gin and beads and cheap rifles, and the prospectors. Whenever he saw official military art, he tended to laugh. Or curse, if he'd had a gin and tonic or two, and swear at how many young subalterns got killed trying to act out nonsense like that before they learned better.
"Your Imperial Highness! Senator Doukas!" a voice called.
He craned his neck, then saw him. "Strategos Dalassenos!" he replied happily.
His old friend beamed at him, a wide white smile across his face, which was darkened by years of service in the tropics; he was a tall man in his early forties, in formal military uniform, black waistcoat and canoe-shaped hat. He gave a nod and a word to Doukas's two Varangians; Strategos Ioannes Dalassenos was a kindly man as well as one of the Empire's foremost military leaders on the verge of promotion to Megas Domestikos.
Although it didn't hurt that his family had become fabulously wealthy with jute mills and shares in Balkan coal mines; he could have dropped the purchase price of Michael's own estates across a gaming table with a laugh. Not that a general of the Roman legions would go in for high-stakes gambling.
A half dozen others followed, mostly Varangians, except for an Italian who was with the Ministry of Intelligence, and male. They all crowded around the emperor, looking at him with awed reverence before snapping to attention and forming a loose defensive perimeter around him.
"It is an honor to meet you, your Highness," said Dalassenos
Michael nodded. "Indeed." he said.
"Oh, my, yes indeed," Dalassenos crooned. "Very much so, yes."
The emperor snorted and rubbed his hands together. "We would appreciate it if we could get moving very soon. We have a schedule to keep to and audiences to meet."
"Yes, Your Highness," said Michael Doukas.
To the Varangians, he said, "Let's move!"
He paused to wave the Varangians forward again. There was a commotion a little way off, but he ignored it until someone shouted.
Then he did look up, frowning. Men were pushing their way in, against the flow of the crowd. Several of them, young men; Russians by their looks and dress.
One of them shouted again: "для России-матушки!" (dlya Rossii-matushki)
For Mother Russia, he translated automatically. Why, that's—
Then he saw the pistols, and for a moment simply gaped. Revolvers, big and heavy and clumsy-looking, with long barrels. Why, that's illegal! he thought. The pistols were violently illegal for anyone but the military and police; private licenses were extremely rare even among nobility.
He had time for one thought before the first weapon boomed. Cultists—
Time slowed. The men came toward the knot of Varangians, generals, and nobles, shouldering the crowd aside amid shouts and gasps of surprise and indignation. The pistols barked, deep and loud, with long spurts of smoke and flame. Michael saw the Emperor turning, astonishment on his plain middle-aged face, a suitcase in either hand. Then he spun, catching at himself and crying out.
That brought the former Lancer out of his daze. He had been a Doukas and Minister of Security, with all the responsibilities toward dependents that involved. Without another thought he dived, catching the emperor and throwing them to the ground, his own body over him and sicken-ingly conscious of blood soaking through the fabric of his clothes, wet and warm over the hands he clamped down to stop its spurting.
That gave he a view of what happened afterward. A third man carried something besides a pistol, a cloth bundle that trailed a hissing and plume of smoke...
Ioannes Dalassenos recognized it as a bomb almost as soon as him. It was pitched to fall in the middle of the group; the explosion would shatter the metal and wood into lethal shrapnel and kill everyone within a dozen yards. Michael grabbed the parcel out of the air with the skill of the fast-bowling tzykanion player he'd been, and curled himself around it. He squeezed his eyes tight, and then he felt nothing more.
---
Ioannes Dalassenos could not shut out the horribly muffled thudump of the explosion, or the feel of what spattered him, or the smell.
He forced his eyes open; there were still the men with revolvers—and men willing to set off bombs under their own feet would be horribly dangerous with firearms as well. There was one more shot, and something crashed and tinkled in the middle distance. Half the crowd was stampeding in terror, some trampling those ahead of them.
The emperor drew his ceremonial blade and began a lunge, staggered as two lead slugs struck him square in the chest, lunged again with his sword, a murderously sharp length of fine Damascus steel. It rammed through coat and ribs to emerge dripping red from a Cultist's back. The emperor withdrew the sword and stepped back, finding a dagger rammed into his chest, right below his heart. He collapsed just seconds later.
Then the four young men disappeared beneath a wave of men wielding swords, knives, walking sticks, fists and feet and a wrought-brass cuspidor stained with betel juice. Despite the nausea that clogged his throat, despite screams and cries and horror, Ioannes thought he saw brief bewilderment on the faces of the Cultists; and that puzzled him itself. Why would Cultists be afraid when they were basically a death cult?
After the explosion and the brief deadly scrimmage things moved by in a blur; imperial doctors, one putting a pressure bandage on the emperor's wound, stretchers carrying away the wounded. Police came running up, men in red and yellow uniforms with long clubs. Hands helped him to the rim of a fountain, where he sat staring. A loud wail emerged from where other survivors had gathered around the emperor's still body; the doctors could not save the Basileus.
"Strategos."
The voice was firm; he looked up. A thirtyish man in plain crimson-and-green civilian clothes, but with two uniformed policemen behind him, a notebook in his hand and a pistol in a shoulder holster under his red jacket.
"Captain John al-Mustansir," he said gently—in good Greek but with an Arab accent. "My apologies, sir, but we must take statements before memories fade and change. Now—"
During the questions someone thrust a mug of hot sweet tea into his hand. He lifted it and drank without worrying about the blood on his hands; he had gone through a lot worse. A little strength returned, enough for him to ask in his turn:
"Why? Captain al-Mustansir, why? Is it the Cult?"
"Subversives—yes, Cultists—enemies of the Empire. We think it's them, but they have never operated this far east before. One may live long enough to answer questions, if we are lucky. Very strange."
"Senator Doukas was a very brave man," the captain said, looking down at his notebook. "Without him, several others might have died."
Ioannes shivered again, barely conscious of the detective muttering to himself as he made quick shorthand notes: "Very strange... the pistols were foreign. Russian armory cap-and-ball make; but the Tsar's men are not so foolish, are they?"
He burst out: "Why would the Russians come all the way from Moscow to attack us at this point? Why not sooner?"
"I do not know, sir," the policeman said, tucking his notes away. "But I would very much like to know."
?))
