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    He was on the side of the pier away from the Corsair ships, though he could see their dark bulk on the other side of the pier he was climbing on.  He climbed up a piling, getting a painful splinter in his finger from the rough wood, and getting smeared with waterproof pitch that was intended to protect the wood from the seawater.  When he was just below the level of the pier he stopped.  Overhead he could see a light yellow dome.  It was high overhead, perhaps fifty or sixty feet above the surface of the pier.  He heard no sounds of anyone walking or moving in the vicinity of where he had arisen, so he stuck his head up cautiously, and looked around.
    There were three viscous-looking ships moored to the pier he clung to, and he saw a fourth ship tied to the next pier.   The ships had a clearly war-like appearance, with shields raised along parts of their sides, and weapons visibly stacked on their decks.  But Marco took little real notice of the ships as his eyes focused on a score of men who loitered on the pier, just yards away from him, towards the city end of the pier.  The men were all dressed in dark clothes, many wearing chainmail, some wearing helmets; neither item was customarily seen in The Lion City.  They men all held weapons – swords, pikes and axes, and they stood together in a circle.  Their deep voices rumbled in the unknown language, and Marco crouched down slightly as he studied the situation.
    Nearly all the rest of the people Marco had heard walking overhead were gone.  There were a few fleet shadows moving on the land adjacent to the piers, but apparently most of the invaders had entered the city already.  There were distant sounds of shouts and screams, just a few, and Marco would have presumed they were part of the festivities taking place had it not been for what he was witnessing, which made him suspect there was a more sinister cause to the noise.  The drunkedness and festive activity would help the Corsairs in their assault though, Marco realized.  Few people would be alert and ready to fight back – the emptiness of the docks and the lack of guards were testament to that; and many people would take shouts and noise for granted at first, until disaster suddenly sprang upon them.
    Marco stood and watched for several minutes, as the group of Corsairs on the pier held a long conversation, one in which most of them seemed to listen to a speech by a man dressed in a gown, one who stood out from the others in that regard.  He pointed upward from time to time, and made gestures, as Marco watched without understanding.
    Marco ducked his head back below the surface of the pier, and sat down on the crossbeam he had stood upon, trying to comprehend what he should do next. It was implausible to imagine that he could do anything in such circumstances, he realized. The only thing he could do was go back to his room and hide; wait for the few hours it would take for the terrible raid to end, then return to the city and find out what had happened.
    Just as he reached his logical conclusion, he heard a scream, a much louder, closer scream than he had heard previously. The scream was not from some distant part of the city – it sounded so close that Marco believed it came from the end of the pier. He cautiously raised his head again to examine the scene.
    All but one member of the group of men on the pier had migrated down to the end of the pier, down where it met the docks. They remained on the inside of the extraordinary yellow dome, as did Marco and the ships and a portion of the harbor’s waters. The city was outside the dome, and a group of Corsairs in the city mingled on the outside of the dome. The solitary Corsair who remained in the middle of the pier – the one who had been speaking to the earlier group – raised his arms, and spoke words that were harsh, different from the sibilant sounds of the language the Corsairs had used to that point.
    The man’s voices grew shriller,