“Oh, shit!” she exclaimed. A part of her was horrified, but that was mostly due to how unpredictable the mechanics of lobbing the balls looked. The rest of her reacted to the impressive explosion of fire. It was pretty nice, burning her targets to a cinder and then some.

If the Byzantines made weapons of war like these… well, they’d be just as dangerous to both sides, she decided, unless you were a total expert. Eventually, someone with a dangerous ranged weapon that was reliable was bound to get the upper hand, and as Devon had pointed out, the Turks had cannons that did fire in a more or less straight line.

It was going to take her some time to get used to this kind of toss, and to dodge the damn thing being thrown at you? It was going to be damn hard to predict anything like that at all.

Once the fire died down, Tina glanced over to Devon, an uncertain grin on her face. The throw has been kind of a muffin, a floater, but had kind of worked anyway. He didn’t have another ball in his hand though, and instead was glancing around apprehensively as though something was wrong, something else. From all around she started to hear something, the sound of distant shouting. It was getting louder.

“What’s that?” she wanted to know. “Is there another game going on somewhere?”

She hadn’t seen another arena when they’d arrived, but with building’s set so close to one another and several stories high it was possible this place was some kind of sports complex or whatever they called it in this place and this time.

“I think we need to cut this practice session short,” Devon said, glancing up at her and then towards the nearest archway off the arena floor. He then started heading towards it, waving urgently for her to follow.

“Why?” she asked. The sounds grew louder, was as much a wave as a noise. “What’s happening?”

He turned around, hustled up as fast as a his short legs could move him and grabbed her still sort of oven mittened hand.

“Because there’s a riot going on out there. And the arena is kind of a gathering point for the two sides to duke it out. It’s a thing that happens here, from time to time. Pretty soon that riot out there is going to be a riot in here.”

“A riot?!”

“Yes,” he told her. “Don’t you remember what you’ve read? Constantinople was-is rather famous for its riots.”

He pulled her along haltingly. She wasn’t exactly mobile in this armored outfit meant to protect her from flying balls of fire.

“What are they rioting about?” she asked trying to recall.

Horse races? Food shortages?

“Who knows?” he asked. “Who cares? Let’s go! There are usually hundreds involved and it gets very violent.”

That wasn’t good. And worse, even before they got to the edge of the arena floor, people, mostly men, had started streaming in through the other arches and onto the stands above them.

Tina wanted to move fast, but her clunky armor wasn’t helping at all. They barely got to the athlete’s entrance archway before the crowd and a big one started surging down the walls to meet the ones who were already down with them.

“Shed it!” he told her. “We’re not going to make it if you don’t get a move on. We’ll get something better. It’s not the best fit anyways.”

That was a fact Tina could agree with him on.