Lord of Slaughter

36

Guards bearing torches and swords marched under the black sky down the broad avenue. Loys tore ahead of them with his lamp down the Middle Way to warn the soothsayers of the purge. He shook them awake from their places in porches and alleys, screaming at them to get up and run. The wild women and fortune tellers, the casters of bones and the penny wizards cursed him and told him to leave them alone until they saw the soldiers coming. Then they fled for the city gates.

Next Loys ran to the hospital, the chamberlain’s words haunting him: We’re running out of time.

The chamberlain clearly believed the strange happenings had a purpose and, more than that, that they were building towards something. Loys thought too of those words that had come to him when he had spoken to Snake in the Eye. Thou believest that there is one God; thou doest well: the devils also believe, and tremble.

God’s protection had not worked in the church. Loys shivered. What if this was not a visitation from the devil but from God, chiding his flock for their sins? What did the Bible say — the Book of Revelation? First would come a rider on a white horse. He would come as a king and a conqueror. Well, Basileios fitted that description, though so did many warrior kings throughout history. Then would come War on a red horse. There had been plenty of war. Next Famine on his black horse. Such cold could not be good for the crops. Finally Death would ride in on his pale horse. The souls of the martyrs would cry out for vengeance beneath the altar. The faces of the corpses in Hagia Sophia loomed in his mind.

Loys told himself to calm down. Such imaginings swept the common people occasionally, when a storm or a flood would have them crying that the time of tribulation had started, that Christ was coming back to his kingdom. The abbot had always counselled folk not to read too much into natural things. Every famine, pestilence or drought could not presage the end of the world. Loys had to stick to the task at hand. If Christ was returning, what better way for the Lord to find him than engaged in the pursuit of demons?

The same clear head needed to be applied to his assessment of the chamberlain. Could he really suspect him? Yes, he had seemed flustered, desperate almost but very likely the emperor would want answers as to why his people were collapsing in the aisles of his greatest church, and if the chamberlain couldn’t provide them, he was as vulnerable as anyone. And then there was Styliane. She opposed her brother and she had told Loys quite clearly the chamberlain had employed diabolical forces to secure his position. But could she be trusted?

Loys reached the hospital and went inside. It was busy as a marketplace, full to bursting. The patients had heard what had happened at the church and they wept and wailed. He found a doctor and enquired about the survivor. The man didn’t know what Loys was talking about but directed him to the admissions clerk, who found the doctor he needed.

‘What did he look like?’

‘A Varangian. He was a boy,’ said the doctor.

Loys recalled the boy who had come to see him. Not him, surely? He had told him to go to the church to seek baptism. Hagia Sophia was the nearest church to the palace.

‘Did he say anything to you?’

‘Just that he wanted his sword and he wanted to be baptised,’ said the doctor.

That did sound like the youth.

‘Did he speak to anyone else?’

‘We put him in a separate room. There were only two other patients in it.’

‘I need to speak to them.’

‘It’s the middle of the night.’

‘I need to speak to them.’

The doctor shrugged and led Loys through the hospital, stepping around whole families who were huddled together as if sheltering from a storm. They went down a corridor to a closed door. The doctor knocked and, receiving no reply, went in.

A young man lay across a bed, an older man face up on his, a towel over his head.

‘Rouse them,’ said Loys.

‘I-’

‘I am the chamberlain’s man and we are on business vital to the state. Rouse them.’

The doctor bent and shook the young man by the shoulder. ‘Sir, could you…’ He stopped, wet his finger and put it beneath the young man’s nose. He crossed himself. ‘He’s dead!’

Loys crouched to examine the body. He touched its hand. Freezing cold, like the corpses in the church.

The doctor went to the older man. ‘Dead too! My God, that boy’s of a very powerful family, they’ll have my blood, oh my God!’

‘The boy who was here,’ said Loys, ‘what did he look like? I need more detail.’

The doctor paced back and forth. ‘I don’t know, a Varangian. Still a child, though dressed in war gear. We have a hospital full of sick and those who imagine themselves sick under this sky. I have my doctors trying to establish what killed the people in Hagia Sophia. I cannot recall what one child among hundreds who come here looks like! What are we going to do about these two bodies? I’m not taking the blame, that’s for sure.’ A commotion sounded in the corridor, cries for help, people urging others to hurry.

‘What?’ The doctor went out of the room to see what was happening. When he returned he looked very troubled.

‘More trouble on the Middle Way. More dead,’ he said.

‘The soothsayers?’ said Loys.

‘Yes, but Hetaerian guards too. There are a hundred dead down there.’

Loys ran out of the hospital and hard back down the hill, almost tumbling he ran so fast. He needed to find the strange boy. The boy had been going to the church; he had been at the hospital; he could tell him what had happened.

Panic gripped the streets. Lamps cut bright lines across the dark. Families on carts pulled by donkeys rolled by, wailing and screaming. Some ran, others carried the weak and the sick. The Middle Way was strewn with corpses. Dogs had caught the people’s fear and bayed into the black night.

Loys saw soldiers joining the rout to the gates. He ran back towards the palace, breathless, shoving through the fleeing crowds. In the unnatural night, carrying their lamps or torches, they reminded Loys of that smaller procession that had climbed the hill outside the walls to sacrifice its lambs to the city’s old goddess. Was this her doing? Was this the light-hating demon who had been worshipped here for years, come to reap its payment of blood? Hecate, burst from hell to torment the people for their sins?

Loys needed to speak to the wolfman, whatever the chamberlain said. The emperor himself had wanted him interviewed. The wolfman had said his death could end the trouble and the emperor had not believed him. Loys had to get down into the tunnels beneath the Numera but he couldn’t go alone. The Varangians had helped him before; he could seek their help again. He couldn’t reach their camp by the main gate along the Middle Way — too many people were pressing to get out that way.

The military gates, though, would be easier — they were habitually barred and not open to the public. He could bluff his way through. Loys strode up the hill towards the great Theodesian Wall. Away from the Middle Way the city was quieter. Not everyone had decided to flee — perhaps only those who had seen the horror or who had been frightened by the attack on the soothsayers. Others remained inside, doors bolted, some houses quite dark, others lit — people not knowing which to fear the most, the dark or the attention a lamp might bring. The light was very dim and Loys realised he would need a lamp of his own before long.

Reaching the wall, he ran alongside it until he arrived at the gatehouse. The inner gates were closed — strong wooden doors confronting him as he approached. A few frightened-looking poor families huddled by the gate, waiting for their chance to get out. Loys guessed the rich had too much to lose to flee, demon or no demon.

‘Chamberlain’s man! Chamberlain’s man!’ he shouted up at the towers.

A man appeared at the battlements. ‘What do you want?’

‘I need to get outside the walls.’

‘No one leaves tonight. Orders. Not until the sorcery has been defeated.’

‘That’s what I’m trying to do. Mark my robes and shoes. I am Quaestor Loys and I demand you open this gate.’

There was silence for a while and then the little door set into the gates opened.

Three men came through, spears levelled. ‘No one but the quaestor!’ shouted a burly soldier, and Loys went inside. The people begged and pleaded but no one pushed forward to test the soldiers’ resolve.

A soldier led Loys by lamplight to the outer gates, which had no small door and were locked.

‘Is all this security necessary?’ said Loys.

‘With the Varangians camped where they are we’re taking no chances,’ said the soldier. Still, the gates were secured with only one relatively small bar of wood — the great trunks that would hold them shut in a siege lay to one side, ropes around them ready to be swung into position should they be needed. The gates were immensely thick, and Loys knew no enemy had managed to breach the city’s walls for years. Some of the watchtowers had supplies for three years and their own water sources. The city would not fall easily, if at all.

The soldier pulled the heavy gate back a fraction and gestured to Loys to go through.

‘Your lamp,’ said Loys.

‘Well bring it back; we’ve only got a few,’ said the soldier.

‘I will.’

The gate let him out at the top of the Varangian camp. He could afford to waste no time and he plunged straight in, calling out as he did in Norse, ‘The emperor Basileios seeks good men to help his servant! The emperor Basileios seeks good men to help his servant!’

He approached a fire and men stood to greet him.

‘I am the scholar Michael and I seek help from the Varangians as I did some nights ago.’ Loys thought it best to stick to his disguise, to avoid needless explanations.

‘I don’t know you, friend,’ said a voice, ‘but any employment we can find we will take.’

Loys brought the lamp up to the man’s face.

‘I’m looking for a tracker,’ he said. ‘Do you know where I can find a man called Ragnar, who fought for the boy Snake in the Eye?’

‘I do,’ said the man at the fire. ‘That is a fellow whose fame is great among us. Wait until morning and I will lead you to him.’

‘I need him now.’

‘What will you give?’

Loys caught the threat in the man’s voice. Suddenly the realisation of just how vulnerable he was came over him. It was one thing to travel as a poor scholar seeming to offer more reward as an employer than a victim, another to come as an imperial bureaucrat. The silks the chamberlain had given him alone would be enough to spur many men to murder.

‘My thanks and that of my friends. Vandrad is one of them,’ said Loys.

The man laughed. ‘No need to be afraid, scholar. We need all the friends we can get in your city. Come, share our fire. I’ll send my boy for Vandrad and for Ragnar. They are warlike men you seek, and no mistake.’

‘Have you seen Snake in the Eye?’

The man glanced down momentarily. ‘I have not.’

Loys sat down by the fire, arranging his cloak under him to stop his robes getting wet. He was among wild people but they were potentially friendlier than those in the palace. The Norsemen didn’t conspire and plot behind a man’s back. If they disliked him, they’d just cut his throat openly and honestly.

‘You sent for me.’

Loys had drifted off, numb with the shock of the day’s events and with tiredness.

A man was at his side, his white hair cut short in the brutal Norman style, though he was no Norman. This man addressed him in Norse, had tattoos of dragons and wolves curling around his arms and neck and bore himself like a Viking. There was no courtesy in his demeanour, no hint of courtly manners. Loys had seen his sort enough in Rouen to know their rough ways should not always be mistaken for unfriendliness. His father had been such a man until, by effort and practice, he had shaped himself into a Norman merchant rather than a Norse pirate.

Vandrad and the three others approached through the firelight.

‘Michael!’ said Vandrad. ‘Michael who is soft-spoken but can act like a man when he chooses.’

‘Too long to be a nickname,’ said another.

‘Give me time — I’m working on it,’ said Vandrad.

Loys acknowledged the men, feeling safer for their presence.

‘I have heard of you, Ragnar,’ said Loys in his slow and careful Norse, ‘and I hear you are a hunter.’

‘I am.’

‘I need you to find someone for me.’

‘I have work already,’ said Mauger.

‘I can pay you.’

‘My pay is honour,’ said Mauger, ‘and the service of my lord.’

‘I am an official of the chamberlain of Constantinople, a quaestor charged with investigating the cause of this black sky and the deaths that grip this city.’

‘A title means nothing. How do they measure your worth?’

‘Look at my fine robes. Know I have the ear of the chamberlain himself. Know I dwell in fine rooms in the palace. In there I live better than barbarian kings. I have a scroll of office and the gates of the city open at my command. Men fear me.’

Loys was aware he was speaking to a barbarian so he couched his worth in ways the man could understand — gold, accommodation, the right to move freely.

Mauger looked hard at Loys. ‘You could get me into the palace?’

‘Yes. Why would you want to go?’

The big Viking thought for a couple of seconds.

‘They say they have metal trees there and that golden birds sit in their branches.’

‘This is true.’

‘I would see the marvels of the inmost palace,’ said Mauger.

‘I could arrange it if you help me find the man I seek.’ Loys couldn’t believe this man’s simplicity. However, hadn’t he himself thrilled to see the fountains and the singing trees? He had to remind himself he was only separated by a generation from men exactly like Ragnar.

‘Where shall I seek him?’

‘He is in the dungeons of the city. He has gone to the caves beneath.’

‘He is an escaped prisoner?’

‘Of a sort.’

Mauger tapped the hilt of his sword. ‘And your Greeks cannot find him?’

‘Or don’t want to.’ Loys was surprised at the words that came out of his mouth. Had the chamberlain really sought the wolfman? Or had he sent his men in there to die?

‘Is the mission dangerous?’ said Vandrad.

‘Yes. The man has killed several Greeks.’

‘Then fame could come of it,’ said Vandrad.

‘I believe the emperor would be grateful,’ said Loys.

‘We need to impress him,’ said Vandrad. ‘He’s kept us sat here freezing our arses to the mud for too long. He needs a reminder of our worth.’

‘I can find your man,’ said Mauger, ‘if you can get me into the palace safely. They may not welcome a northern man there.’

‘No one will dare move against you under my protection,’ said Loys.

Mauger said that was good enough for him. ‘But one thing, friend. How do you know of my fame? And how do you know our tongue?’

‘I am a scholar and know many languages. As for you, the emperor’s translator Snake in the Eye mentioned you,’ said Loys. ‘He said you were a useful man.’

‘I am that,’ said Mauger. ‘Give me a second to collect a water skin and some food and I will be with you.’

‘Be quick,’ said Loys. ‘Strange things are happening in the city, and the longer we wait the worse they will be. And here,’ he gave him a coin, ‘buy some food for me.’

At least Beatrice was in the palace, though he knew she would be worried for him. He would send a message with a boy when he got into the city, he decided. If the messenger wasn’t allowed in, that would be a good sign. She would be safe behind the spears of the Hetaereia. There was no indication the deaths were going to come to the palace. What could he do to protect her anyway? Press on, on his present course, try to find the answers the chamberlain — or the emperor — demanded.

The walls of the city were almost invisible in the wet air. Lamps hung on them, and it would have been easy to imagine them floating spirits or avenging angels. He would find the wolfman and stop the madness. If anyone was up to the job, these hardy northerners were. He would take whatever reward was going and retire to live among the olive groves on the rich earth of an island, where he and Beatrice would be safe from the predations of the world. He imagined the bright blue light on the ocean, the dark soil of the land. But before light, darkness. He squeezed the hilt of his knife and readied himself for the caves of the Numera.