Justinian

"Lift me up!" I repeated. "I want to see what's going on out there."

Myakes frowned but did nothing else. To me, then, he was a man grown: he was man-tall, with a peasant's broad shoulders and broad face. He carried a spear taller than he was and a shield with Christ's holy labarum painted on it: x p. I could make up my mind in an instant. Why could he not?

I did not realize two things, being but a boy myself. For one, though my father and uncles, like me, decided and acted all at once, not all men matched my kin in that; and, for another, Myakes was scarcely more than a boy himself, despite height, despite shoulders. When the sun shone on his face, you could see his cheeks and the outline of his jaw through the beard that sprouted there, a sure proof he had not long been able to raise it. Thus inexperience and uncertainty also made him hesitate.

At last, after what seemed a very long time but probably was not, he laughed and said, "Well, why not? Not much to see, but what there is, you can."

He leaned the spear and shield against the forewall and picked me up. I could tell at once how he had got to be an excubitor, for he was strong as a bull. He might have been lifting a mouse, not a boy. I felt I was flying as he set my feet on the forewall. He kept a grip on my waist, but only to steady me, not to hold me tight.

I had counted on that. I twirled away from him and ran along the forewall, saying as I went, "Promise you'll take me to the outer wall, Myakes, or I'll cast myself down between them right now!" I looked down at the outer wall, there perhaps a hundred feet in front of me. It was quite handsome, bands of stone alternating with brick, the same scheme the inner wall used. I have always had a good head for heights; I was not frightened or giddy. But I remember thinking, How far down the ground looks!

Myakes stared at me. "Come back here, little Goldentop," he said. "Don't make foolish jokes." He spoke the same kind of clipped, elided Greek the sailors in the Proklianesian harbor had used. I understood it better now, from more exposure.

"I am not joking," I told him, and I was not. Had he said no, I would have jumped. I suppose they would have taken whatever was left of my body and buried it in the cemetery of Pelagios with the other suicides.

Myakes did not say anything. He took a step toward me. I could not back away from him, for I was up against a crenellation. I bent my knees, readying myself to leap out as far as I could from the wall. But I had forgotten how much faster than a child an adult can move. Myakes sprang forward, grabbed me, and pulled me back onto the walkway of the inner wall even as I was trying to leap to my death.

"Now," he said, breathing hard (and, looking back, I cannot blame him, for what would he have told my father- and what would have happened to him?- had I jumped?), "I am going to give you a choice. I will take you back to your father the Emperor and we will both tell him our stories, or I will give you a beating here and now for what you just did. You decide."

I tried to kick him in the shins. He jerked his leg out of the way. I tried to bite him. He would not let me. I cursed him, using all the words I had learned from the excubitores. He let them roll off him like water from oil-soaked cloth. "You do it," I said then. "Whatever you do to me, my father would do worse." My father was not so mild with me as he had been before the Arabs came; he had worse worries now. He still would not often strike me, but when he did, it was as if a demon seized his arm, for he would not stop.

"Come, then," Myakes said. Recovering his spear and shield, he slung the shield over his back, took the spear in his left hand, and seized firm hold of my arm with his right. We walked along to the nearest fortified tower, for all the world as if he were taking me to piddle at a latrine there, nothing more.

The latrine was empty when we walked into it. It stank of endless years of stale piss, which offended me: in the palace, sewer pipes swept waste away before it grew so ripely odorous. Myakes did not turn loose of me for a moment. No doubt he thought I would try to run off if he did. No doubt he was right.

"Remember our bargain," he said, and set down the shield and spear. He must have had a kindly father for, while the chastisement he gave me left my buttocks hot and tingling, it was all with the open hand, never once with fist or foot or the metal-studded belt he wore. At last he said, "Maybe you will think twice before you play such games with me again."

"I will think twice," I said, but I knew I had made the right choice. Almost I told him how mild he had been, but I refrained. He might, after all, have decided to make amends. Instead, I went on, "Now that the bargain is sealed, take me back out to watch some more of the fighting."

"From the inner wall here," he said. "Not from the outer one."

"Not from the outer one," I agreed.

"Come, then," he repeated, and we went out together.