Rhode didn’t know at which moment exactly the city fell to the Normans. The last days of the siege blurred into a single whole for her. She, her aunt and her cousins, waited behind locked doors of their small apartment in the citadel and had no news from the outside world. They didn’t eat or drink much. It wasn’t just because they were saving rations. The nerves had made eating hard. At least they did for Rhode, Martina and Sophia. The twins, Kale and Sybil seemed to have preserved their appetites. The two servants, John and Porphyry stayed with them. They took care of some of the menial tasks, cleaning the two rooms, emptying the chamber pots and bringing water. Apart from those occasional cleaning jobs however, the servants were as bored as Rhode and her family. There was really nothing to do but wait and hope.

Rhode found this mixture of boredom and fear a very strange combination. It made the whole situation feel so unreal. She had trouble believing that there really WAS a siege. She knew it was happening, of course. After all, every day they could hear the noise of the trebuchets, the heavy missiles crashing into the walls, the distant shouting. Through their small window, they could see the glow from the campfires in the enemy camps, and the smoke rising from the burned suburbs. And yet, for all that, it did not feel real. It was more like watching a bad dream. A very, very unpleasant dream, where you were aware that terrible things were happening even if you did not see them happen yourself.

Suddenly, Kale’s sharp voice interrupted Rhode’s musings.

“Did you notice?” the brisk young woman said loudly.

“What?” asked Martina.

“The noise of the catapults died down!”

They listened intently for a few moments. Kale was right, the sound of the heavy stones hurled at the city walls by the trebuchets could no longer be heard. Which probably meant the city must have fallen. The intensifying smell of fire and smoke, and the faint sounds of screaming coming from the lower city, confirmed this quickly.

Sophia ordered them all to start blocking the door with the beds and tables. The heavy doors had been locked hours before. But Sophia felt that additional precautions would definitely be useful. John and Porphyry hurled the heaviest objects they could find onto a pile against the door. Their beds, the table, a large wooden shelf that stood in the corner of the room. Kale and Sybil rushed to help.

Rhode felt more useless than ever. Unlike Sophia’s daughters, she was always very frail and weak. Moving beds and tables wasn’t something that she would have much success at. Frustrated, she chewed her lower lip nervously and looked at Martina. Instead of helping the younger two, her cousin was praying vehemently in a quiet, breathy sort of voice. Rhode didn’t how to pray either. The problem was that she had trouble envisioning God actually listening to human prayers and answering them. It was not that she did not believe in God. She did. But to her God was the Cause. That which made being possible. That which made time begin. And thus had to be beyond being and time. The prayers of individuals, immediate and fleeting, particular and stuck in time, were simply not the sort of thing that God would listen to. Or so, at least, she always feared.

When Rhode felt something was pointless, she was could not bring herself to do it. Whether it was prayer or pushing tables against doors. Neither of these things would do any help, after all. She had enough sense not to mention this particular thought to anyone though.

*

By the afternoon the smoke had become much thicker. It was streaming in through the narrow gaps between the window panes and through the cracks in the door. It made their eyes water. When they started to hear running and shouting in the corridors beyond their rooms in the citadel Martina began to pray more vehemently than ever. Porphyry joined her. The rest of them sat pale and shaking. Luckily their rooms, located in the servants quarter of the citadel, had not yet caught the attention of the enemy soldiers. There were better, more expensive things to loot in the other parts of the citadel. And more important people to be captured.

By dusk however, the corridors of the servants’ quarter began to fill with the sounds of running, of people dragging things, and of people being dragged. Of weeping and of begging. Of laughing and of boasting. In their room, Sophia was holding hands with the twins. Martina and Porphyry still prayed. John, pale and nervous, was shaking.

Rhode was shaking too. Suddenly, she felt her jaws stiffen. Her teeth hurt. She was shivering more and more. A wave of nausea came over her and her head was pounding. Then tiny black spots began to appear before her eyes. There were more and more of them. And they started to move. At first slowly, then suddenly they were spinning quickly. Or maybe it was Rhode herself who was spinning? The spots now stretched into thin strings, a bit like those on a lyra, but finer. Rhode could no longer see the room or her family. All she saw was those strings all around her. She tried to follow them and realized they were not strings at all. They were words. Words written in an alphabet she did not recognize. Or maybe she did? She wasn’t sure anymore. The pain in her head was making her sick and she couldn’t focus on the letters. A loud thudding noise grew louder and louder. The words moved before her eyes so quickly that they now blended together and began engulfing her in inky blackness. And still the pounding sounds grew louder.

“Rhode!”

The shout woke her. She saw Martina and Sophia bending over her. They both looked scared.

“Are you alright?” Martina whispered. Rhode noticed Martina’s hand gripping her shoulder so hard that the knuckles on her hand shone white. Her grip hurt. Rhode looked around, trying to focus. She saw that she was lying on the ground, and that she had a piece of cloth between her teeth. This confused her. She wasn’t sure what had happened, nor even, where she actually was. All she could think of were those strings, or words, or whatever they were.

Clumsily, she sat up and pulled the rolled piece of cloth from her mouth.

“The writing? Where is the writing?” she mumbled confused. As she did, she noticed that her jaw hurt a lot.

Martina let go of Rhode’s shoulders and passed her a cup of water instead.

“Drink this,” she said softly, ignoring the question.

Rhode drank the water obediently. She was beginning to remember more clearly where she was. The siege. Of course. She realized now that the awful, pounding noise which she was hearing was coming from the door. Someone was hitting it hard and it shook in its frame. As did the furniture stacked against it.

Seeing that Rhode was fully awake now, Sophia stood up. She looked at the shaking door. They were all looking at it in powerless expectation. They heard some shouts just beyond it. Loud voices were calling for them to ‘open up’. Then there was a loud crashing noise. The pounding stopped. Someone was running. They distinctly heard the sound of quick, heavy footsteps and of something falling to the ground. More shouting and some screams of pain. Then silence fell.

The five women and two servants looked at each other, then at the door.

“Maybe they’re gone?” whispered Sybil. 

No sooner were these words out of her mouth, someone outside tried to open the door again. They all backed away from it. A clear, loud voice on the other side said angrily:

“Open up! We’re here to save you!”

Sophia bit her lip. They had no way of knowing who was on the other side of the door. Help sounded wonderful. But unlikely. Sophia swallowed.

“Don’t move, any of you!” she whispered sternly to her family. None of them moved.

The person on the other side knocked again. Then, apparently angry that no one was answering, the person kicked the door savagely.

“Open. This cursed. Door!”

The shouts hardly made an impression on Sophia. She wasn’t going to rush into something stupid. Before she had time to think about it more however, she heard a new voice, lower than the one before, and much calmer, say:

“Move over.”

They all stared confused. Then, with a loud bang, the heavy doors flew open, pushing aside the furniture which had been stacked against it. It clattered to the floor, right before Sophia. In the doorway stood a tall man, armed from head to toe, his face and chest splattered with blood. Behind him stood another soldier, shorter and dark-haired.

The tall man stepped inside, his gaze on Sophia. He opened his mouth to say something. Whatever he had meant to say however, was interrupted by Kale. Sophia’s youngest daughter, her face was set into a determined grimace, sank the short blade of her dagger into the soldier’s side with all her might. The blade landed exactly in the wide cut along the man’s side, where the maille was torn. Kale smiled triumphantly. Her triumph was short-lived however. The man turned without so much as a wince. He caught her arm, swung her aside and pulled the dagger out of his side.

“Don’t! Don’t hurt her!” Sophia screamed with panic in her eyes. Rhode had never heard her aunt sound so out of control. So afraid. This scared Rhode more than the soldier breaking the door down so easily.

The tall soldier quickly let go of Kale and took a step backward. He raised his large hands, palms open. The bloodied dagger clattered onto the floor.

“I wasn’t going to,” he said, keeping his voice even. His eyes met Sophia’s who had pulled Kale back to her. He then scanned the rest of her family. The young women and the servants stood huddled together, staring at him with varying degrees of fear and hostility. He cleared his throat. “No one is going to hurt anyone. We’re here to help you.”

With his hands still in the air, he moved slowly aside, letting the second soldier enter the room.

“This is Eirene, my second in command. Perhaps you will prefer to talk to her?” he asked cautiously. Apparently he thought they would feel more comfortable talking to a woman. The soldier named Eirene however looked only slightly more reassuring than he did. Her face was grimy and sweaty. She had a large cut across the lower part of her face and her lower lip was swollen and bleeding. Her hair was wet with blood and sweat. Her scale armor had a large tear on her stomach. She was just cleaning a curved sword with a piece of cloth. Hearing his words, she threw a dirty look at her commander, then tried to smile charmingly at Sophia Kataphorena and her family.

“Lady Kataphlorena?” she said in a polite tone, “we are mercenaries sent by Alexander Vranas. We will get you out of the city. Would you please tell your people to get ready to leave quickly?”

Somehow this did the trick. Everyone relaxed visibly. Perhaps it was Eirene’s polite and elegant Greek. Or maybe the name of Alexander Vranas. Or perhaps the calm way in which both mercenaries behaved. Now that Kale was out of danger, Sophia was back to her usual, business-like tone.

“I see! We are grateful to you for your help. We will be ready in no time. Girls? Put on your veils and cloaks. Porphyry, John? Please get the bags!”

Sophia turned back to the two mercenaries. She hesitated a little, then asked quietly:

“What about my husband?”

“My men are escorting him out of the city right now. He is injured but his life is not in danger,” the mercenary’s voice was flat and matter-of-fact. Sophia found that reassuring. He sounded like a person who wouldn’t be bothered to lie. She sighed with relief.

“I apologize for my daughter…um…stabbing you!” she said, feeling just a little ridiculous. At first he didn’t seem to hear. But then he acknowledged her words with a vague shrug. Eirene laughed.

“Please do not worry yourself, Mistress!” she said cheerfully, “it would take much more than that to hurt him!” Then she smiled widely at Kale. “It was a really good thrust though!”

The girl grinned. She seemed rather pleased with herself.