Chapter fifteen
Firebrands“Water! Water!” The yells bounced into the sky, which, luridly lit by the falling firebrands, pressed down darker than it should. Dawn was not too far off. But the habits of order in the citizenry saw to it that the men appointed by the city fathers to stand their watch at the dawn hour should be awake. Trumpets blew. Men ran with buckets of water. The pandemonium racketed on. People were tumbling out of bed and, half-dressed, rushing to join in the long human chains of bucket-passers and precariously leaning over the parapets to haul that sweet and treacherous water from the canals.
The firechiefs swiftly had the situation under control, for many of the barbarians’ brands puffed out in their swift passage, many merely spluttered and died on tiled roofs. Some bu
