Lord of Slaughter

34

Loys entered the great church. The night was dark and candles had been lit, intensifying the gold of the altar, turning the air to umber and the pillars to the shining trunks of magical trees.

A carpet of dead — men, women and even some children — sprawled on the floor. Monks moved among them, intoning prayers.

‘Any alive?’ he called.

‘None,’ said a monk.

Loys drew in a breath and touched the hand of a merchant who lay facing the altar, gaudy in his yellow silks. Freezing. Loys sat down on a bench. His mind was utterly blank before this scene of devastation.

‘Your explanation?’

It was the messenger service captain, a thin man with the face of an angry rat.

‘You’re the security service; let’s have yours.’ He responded by reflex rather than thought, his long inquisition having made aggression a habit when dealing with Byzantine officials.

‘You are charged with the protection of the empire from magical attack. Doesn’t look like you’re doing a very good job from where I’m standing.’

‘You’re charged with the protection of the empire from everything. Don’t make this my fault.’

Loys was ashamed to be squabbling in such a way in front of so many dead but he wasn’t going to let this bastard stick the blame on him. His mind was full of strategies about how he could claim to have warned this might happen. He crossed himself. What was he becoming? Think of the dead, Loys, and how this happened, not of watching your own back.

His hand felt the outline of someting inside the little bag he wore at his neck. He realised he hadn’t discarded that pagan stone.

‘Well, it’s your job to have an idea,’ said the captain. ‘The chamberlain will be on his way in a minute so I’d start thinking of something if I were you, because I think he’s going to want to hear it. Personally, I’d also like to know what you were doing at the Varangian camp last week.’

‘I will consider all possibilities,’ said Loys, giving the man a hard look that implied he might be the first to be investigated, ‘but first let’s attend to the matter in hand.’

Styliane’s accusations, what he had heard on the hill, even the chamberlain’s own words when he had commissioned him, telling him his mission was to safeguard ‘great men’, all pointed in one dizzying direction. Some sort of sorcery had taken place and the chamberlain — or someone very close to him — had lost control of it.

Loys walked through the bodies. So many gone at a stroke. Could it be some natural phenomenon? It had happened in God’s house so the worshippers must have provoked his wrath. No diabolic power could hold sway here.

Dead faces stared back at him, like an accusing mob. He had failed to find out what was happening, failed even to make an inroad, and this was the price. Loys felt entirely inadequate to the task. Surely there were greater powers at work here than could be faced down with questions and study. He had to try to explain this, but how?

Trumpets sounded, a drum beat and a voice cried out, ‘Stand back in the name of the emperor for the chamberlain Karas.’

Loys crossed himself and instinctively knelt to pray. ‘God deliver me. God deliver me an answer. Deliver Beatrice and deliver the people of the city.’

Three files of soldiers dressed in the chamberlain’s blue cloaks marched into the great church, fanning out before the corpses, followed by the huge eunuchs he had seen on his first day with their golden whips. Finally the chamberlain appeared, dressed in his ceremonial array of breastplate, short blue cloak, skirt of leather straps and sapphire diadem on his head. At his belt he wore a fine sword and in his hand he carried a black cane inlaid with ivory. The message to the people was clear. A threat was in the city and the authorities were responding.

Loys prostrated himself, his eyes fixed on the flagstones. He heard the reedy voice questioning the messenger captain.

‘When?’

‘We were alerted an hour ago, Parakoimememos.’

‘Answer my question.’

‘We think perhaps two hours ago.’

‘Any survivors?’

‘One. He has been taken to the hospital.’

‘Do you not think you should be interviewing him?’

‘He is still unconscious, lord.’

‘Tell the doctors to wake him. If they can’t they’ll answer to me.’

Loys was aware he was shaking.

‘Scholar.’

Loys looked up. The chamberlain gestured towards him with his cane.

‘Lord?’

‘Stand up.’

Loys did as he was told. The chamberlain was thinner than he recalled, and his face was white with powder. The ranks of soldiers stood at attention. These were disciplined troops but they fidgeted and shifted on their feet, fear and bewilderment in their eyes.

‘Your verdict on this?’

Loys didn’t know what to say. He had no idea. He couldn’t accuse the second most powerful man in the empire to his face, but he had to give the chamberlain something.

‘My investigations,’ he said, ‘have uncovered devil work going on here in the city, which we must eliminate as quickly as possible. The northerners worship demons. They are causing the problems here.’

‘The northerners? We should have them eliminated,’ said the chamberlain. The eunuch seemed deeply shaken. He kept wetting his lips with his tongue and his eyes roamed the church.

‘I don’t think it can be the Varangians,’ said Loys, ‘but other northerners.’ The Varangians were pagans, true enough, but Loys wanted no blood on his hands if he could help it.

‘Which others?’

‘I have yet to identify them,’ said Loys, ‘I have yet-’

The chamberlain jabbed a finger at him. ‘This is no time for trifling. I read men and I read you like a psalter on a chain. I am not your dog, scholar, so do not think to throw me a scrap and dismiss me.’

Loys bowed again. It was time to show he had advanced his studies in some way, that he was to be taken seriously.

‘I need to speak to the wolfman,’ said Loys.

The chamberlain was impassive. ‘I would have thought he would have been the first person you sought to interview.’ He gave no sign he had concealed the wolfman’s existence and Loys knew better than to mention it.

‘He had escaped before I came to do so.’

‘What do you think an interview with him will reveal?’

‘There is a story his people hold to be true — that of the coming of the end of their gods. They think it is happening here. There is a well in which their god gave his eye for wisdom. The well offers insight but asks a great price for its gifts. The god is coming here in the form of a man to die.’

‘The Arabs too say a one-eyed man will herald the end of the world.’ The chamberlain seemed lost in thought for a second. ‘There is so much lore, so much…’

‘I have checked the events against the text of Revelation and there is a…’ Loys searched for the right word ‘… a correspondence.’

The chamberlain crossed himself.

‘This northern demon, how is it coming here to die?’

‘At the teeth of a wolf.’

‘What? What wolf?’ The chamberlain took a pace towards Loys and for a heartbeat the scholar thought he might strike him with his cane.

‘I don’t know. The wolfman? The sky? They have a myth about a wolf who eats the sun.’

The chamberlain scanned the bodies. Sweat cut dark lines in the powder on his face.

‘You are telling me the lies they believe are true?’

‘No. I am saying they open themselves up as a channel for demons. Their gods are clearly demons in disguise. We need to find the sorcerer who has summoned them and eliminate him.’

‘Go and find the survivor of this,’ said the chamberlain, ‘and ask him what happened here. I have had enough of keeping you and your northern slut in finery for no result. An explanation and an end to this in a week’s time or you will be going to the Numera and she will be going back to her father.’

Loys bowed.

‘I have your authority to search the Numera for the wolfman? My evidence indicates he is the key to this.’

‘You do not. You have bungled this matter so far and I was right to think I couldn’t trust such an important task to you.’

‘We should purge the soothsayers to be sure,’ said the messenger captain.

‘No!’ said Loys.

‘The time for half-measures is over,’ said the chamberlain. ‘Do it, and quickly. Do not chide me with your eyes, scholar. This is your doing. If you worked more efficiently none of this would need to be done.’

The messenger captain bowed. ‘We will begin immediately, lord. Allow my men to search the Numera for the wolfman. I can have forty troops in there before the next night bell.’

‘Leave him,’ said the chamberlain. ‘You’ve wasted enough time already. Now, scholar, do as I tell you and find this survivor. The rest of you, clear up this mess. All bodies to be buried or put into the sea before tomorrow at dusk. If you can call it dusk.’

Loys bowed and the chamberlain swept from the great church, his troops clattering out behind him.