The Golden Horn

by Judith Tarr

  He sank to his knees beside Irene. She was dead, her neck broken, her eyes staring up at him in innocent surprise. Tenderly he closed them.

  Sophia sagged against him. “They didn’t touch her,” she whispered. “They tried, but she fought; one of them struck too hard. That—that one came then.” Her eyes found Thea, whom she did not know in that shape. “He fought well. So well, and for nothing. You... both of you. Oh, you were wonderful in your power!”

  Alf’s arm circled her shoulders. She felt thin and cold, trembling in spasms. His mind brushed hers; he gasped.

  “Yes,” she said, “I offered to trade myself for her. Perfidious, they call us Greeks. And what are they? They... accepted…and thought to have both of us. And Corinna after. It took three of them to hold her back, till the stranger came and she broke free. But she died. She... died. Who will nurse the children now?”

  Alf moved as if to lift her. “You will,” he answered her, “after I’ve healed you.”

  She shook her head. “No. It’s too late even for a miracle. I’m all torn. I’ve lost too much blood already. And there’s this.”

  Her hands had been clasped tightly to her belly. She opened her fingers. Blood oozed between them. “One of them had a dagger in his hand. It won’t be much longer now.”

  Alf covered her hands with his own, summoning the last of his power.

  She smiled and shook her head, as a mother will whose child persists in some endearing folly. Her lips were white, but her will was indomitable. By it alone she clung to her body. “My beloved enchanter. Tend my children well for me.”

  He nodded mutely. Her smile softened. She laid her head on his shoulder; closed her eyes and sighed.

  Gently Alf laid her down. Her hands, loosening, bared what she had hidden. He swallowed bile. Behind him he heard Thea’s catch of breath.

  From the heap of plunder he freed an armful of richness, the carpet that had lain in his room. He spread it over them all, mother and daughter and the body of the servant who had died for them, and knelt for a long while, head bowed. At last he rose.

  The courtyard was like a charnel house. All beyond was stripped bare, stained with the blood of its defenders. Even the stable lay open and plundered, the old mare slaughtered in her stall, the mules and the pony gone.

  Yet one creature remained alive. Nikki’s kitten wove among the bodies, mewing plaintively. Alf gathered it up. It clung to him with needle claws and cried, until he stroked it into calmness.

  His eyes met Thea’s. They were as bleak as his own, and as implacable. Minutely she nodded.

  For a little while the street was quiet, littered with flotsam. In the center of it, Alf turned. House Akestas loomed before him, brooding over its dead.

  He called the lightnings down upon it.

  30.

  “They’re gone.”

  The defenders of Saint Basil’s stared dully at one another, blinking in the torchlight. The hospital stood intact, its defenses unbreached.

  “They’re gone,” Edmund repeated. “They’ve given up. We’re safe.”

  “For the night.” Thea leaned on her axe and mopped her brow. “Why should they wear themselves out in the dark, and on our territory at that? We should follow their example. Short watches for all of us, and plenty of sleep.”

  One of Dionysios’ men frowned. “There are a thousand easier prizes in the City. Maybe they won’t come back.”

  ”Don’t lay wagers on it,” she said. “Edmund, you look lively enough. Relieve the men in the garden and send them to bed. I’ll take the first watch on the roof.”

  In the unwonted quiet, even Master Dionysios succumbed to sleep. Thea walked the dim ways on soft feet, her watch over, her man-shape laid aside.

  Alf lay on his pallet with open eyes. Nikki clung to him even in sleep, cheeks damp, eyes swollen with weeping; the kitten crouched like a tiny lion in the curve of his arm, wide-eyed and watchful. In the far corner of her own bed Anna huddled awake, oblivious to all save her own terrible grief.

  Softly Thea lay on Alf’s free side, stroking his hair away from his face. He shivered under her hand; his wide eyes closed. I can’t weep, he said silently. I try and I try, but no tears come. Thea, if I don’t weep I’ll go mad.

  She kissed his eyelids, his lips, the hollow of his throat. You grieve. I feel it in you.

  It goes too deep. Irene—I let her go. When I could have fetched her back again, I tarried to play avenging angel before the Emperor; and after, I let myself forget. I could have forced them both to my will, Irene and her mother. Her mother... oh, dear God, the agony I let her suffer!

  You, Alf? Thea raised her head from his breast. No. It was God. As well you know.

  Anna hates Him, he said.

  But not you. You, she loves.

  Alf’s breath caught as he drew it in, almost a sob. I’m all she has left. Her mother is dead. I burned down her house. It was dead and it was a horror, but it was hers. I never asked her what she wanted to do with it.

  You did the only thing you could have done.

  He was silent, mind and voice. When at length she slept, he was still awake. Even she could not follow where his mind had gone.

  o0o

  Morning dawned damp and grey: the third day of the sack of Constantinople. As the light grew sluggishly, the guardians of Saint Basil’s looked about them and swallowed cries of despair.

  Around the walls on all sides massed an army of Franks, knights and men-at-arms in full array. And each company bore a ladder cut to the height of the hospital.

  A horn sounded, short and sharp. The ladders swung up.

  Varangian axes met them. But there were only nine of the old Guard, and a dozen ladders, and sixscore men swarming up them; and on the roof across the way, a company of bowmen rising from concealment behind a parapet.

  Edmund thrust back a laden ladder with the haft of his axe, and laughed as it fell. “Ha! Here’s a fight at last!” He wheeled, struck aside a Flemish sword, clove helm and head together with a single sweeping blow.

  In the garden below, Dionysios’ guards fought hand to hand with men who had scaled the wall and strove now to throw open the postern.

  Edmund began to sing.

  o0o

  All the sick in Saint Basil’s lay in the centermost of its wards, the women set apart from the men by a curtain. Of the healers who had labored there when the City was whole, only Master Dionysios remained, and Thomas, and Alf; and two frightened but loyal students. All the rest had fled.

  “This is ridiculous, you know,” said the woman Alf was tending. She had been a tavern keeper until a Frankish sergeant beat her senseless for refusing to serve him in the cup he proffered, a chalice from Holy Apostles. “The devils will set fire to us, and here we’ll be like rats in a trap.”

  A man’s voice called through the curtain, as calm as hers. “It won’t happen. They must think we’ve got real treasure here, with the Emperor’s axemen guarding us. We’re a nut they’ll crack before they try to light any fires.”

  “Maybe they’ll take pity on us,” said a boy’s breaking voice.

  “Them?” The man laughed until his breath caught and he choked.

  “They don’t pity anything,” the woman said for him. “They’re devils, I say. Devils straight out of Hell.”

  Another of the women stirred on her cot. “We should surrender. Why are we fighting them? We’ll only make them angrier.”

  “Would you rather be alive now or dead two days since?” Master Dionysios examined the last speaker with a hard eye and gentle hands. “Well, mistress, you’ll walk out of here if I have anything to do with it.”

  “They do admire courage,” Alf said softly, as if to himself. He rose from the tavern keeper’s side and passed on to her neighbor.

  o0o

  Slowly the Varangians gave way before the enemy. There were but six now, Grettir fallen with Sigurd and Eirik before the Latin swords; and Halldor had dropped his axe to wield his sword awkwardly left-hande
d, with an arrow in his right shoulder. Edmund sang no longer. He had no breath to spare for it.

  A bolt caught Ulf in the throat. He toppled, taking a Latin with him, gripped in a death-embrace. Wulfmaer howled in grief and rage and flung himself forward.

  Thea hauled Edmund back by the belt. The three who remained, with Edmund, held the door into Saint Basil’s.

  Halldor reeled and fell. Thea’s arm was leaden; she breathed in gasps. Her body ached and burned under the Varangian armor. Before her she saw not human forms but a thicket of blades.

  Haakon loosed a gurgling cry; and her left side, her sword side, was empty. On her right, young Edmund hacked and cursed and wept without knowing what he did.

  In the garden, a shout went up. The enemy had broken through.

  Thea kicked open the door she guarded and flung Edmund through it. He tumbled headlong down the steep stair. She whirled her axe and sent it flying, mowing down the startled Franks; slammed the door upon them and shot the bolt. It was a full second before the first body crashed against it.

  She was already at the stair’s foot, dragging Edmund to his feet. He swore and struck at her with his fist, bruised and winded but unharmed. She cuffed him into submission. “The hellhounds have got into the garden. Move, or they’ll find the wards before we do!”

  Without a word Edmund bolted down the passage. Thea ran fast upon his heels.

  Behind them, the enemy hurtled through the door.

  Both forces met in the wide passage outside of the innermost ward. No gate or door stood in their way there; but a pair of Varangians held the entry, one armed with his axe, the other with a sword. Beyond them the attackers could see what precious hoard they guarded: a roomful of the maimed and the dying, a child or two, and three weary men in blue.

  The Latins gaped. For this, they had forsaken the rich plunder of Byzantium?

  With a howl of frustrated rage, one of the captains charged. His pike pierced through Edmund’s guard and clove his mail, striking him to the heart.

  He fell against Thea, staggering her with his dead weight. Her eyes flared green in the Varangian face; her lips drew back from sharp witch-teeth.

  Alf saw the crossbow raised, the finger tensing on its trigger. “Thea!” he cried sharply.

  She turned, startled. The quarrel, aimed for her heart, plunged deep into her side, piercing the mail, driving her back, sprawling, shifting and changing under the shock of the blow. It was Thea whose body Alf caught, the helm falling from her head, her hair tumbling over his hands to mingle with her blood.

  Very gently he laid her down. No one had moved, save by instinct, to shape the sign of the cross.

  Deep within him something broke. He took up the sword that had fallen from Thea’s hand.

  In silence more terrible than any cry, he sprang upon the bowman. The man fell with his head half severed from his shoulders; Alf drove deep into the ranks, crowded as they were, and hampered by the narrowness of the passage. They closed in about him. He backed to the wall, holding them off with a circle of steel.

  Alf. Thea’s mind-voice was feeble. Alf, don’t!

  He faltered. A pikestaff swung around and struck him hard on the side of the head. He staggered, but kept his feet and his sword. With a panther-snarl he slipped beneath the pike and hewed its wielder down.

  Stop! Thea cried through the haze of her pain. Stop, you fool! They’ll kill you!

  “I want them to,” he said aloud, fiercely.

  A scarlet figure wavered in his vision, with a host of shadows before and behind it. Thea beat her way through the massed Franks, armed only with her fists and the dying flare of her power on which no weapon could bite, and threw herself upon him.

  The sword dropped from his numbed hand. He saw her face, white as death, and her wild eyes. The ring of steel drew in upon them both.

  “That,” said Master Dionysios, “will be quite enough.”

  The Latins could not understand his Greek, but his tone was clear. He made his way through them by the path Thea had opened, and glared at them all impartially.

  One or two men raised their weapons. But a helmed knight struck the blades down. “No. Enough. He can’t fight; he hasn’t even a knife.”

  Alf crouched at the knight’s feet, holding Thea close, eyes burning with wrath thwarted but far from quenched. “Murderer,” he hissed in the langue d’oeil.

  The knight’s blank helm betrayed no emotion at all. He seemed to be scrutinizing the upturned and hating face, pondering it. “You speak Frankish, do you? Tell the old man we’re claiming this house in the name of the Crusade.”

  Alf bent over Thea’s body, probing her side. Mail and the fading remnants of her power had slowed the quarrel, but it had gone deep, nearly to her back. The black bolt stirred slightly with an indrawn breath; the point of it grazed the farther side of her lung.

  A mailed foot drove into his hip. He surged upward.

  Dionysios seized his arm and clung grimly. “Kill yourself if you like, you young lunatic, but don’t drag us into it. Tell the beast he can have what he pleases if he leaves the sick and the medicines alone.”

  There was a long pause. All shuddered and looked about as if he could not remember where he was. Slowly he repeated the Master’s words in Frankish.

  The knight unfastened his helm and handed it to a man-at-arms, baring a lined ageless face, tired and sweating and somewhat pale. “You’ll look after our wounded, then. These” —He indicated Alf, and Thea whom he had gathered into his arms— “we take.”

  “The woman is mortally hurt,” the Master snapped.

  “The boy is a doctor. Is he not?” The knight turned away as Alf choked on the Greek, beckoning to one of his men. “Bind them.”

  Dionysios stood his ground. “The woman will die. I will not have it. Get out of my hospital!”

  “Bind them,” the knight repeated implacably.

  31.

  House Akestas was a smoking ruin, black and hideous in the rain. It stank of burning and of charred flesh.

  Jehan stood in the half-burned garden, cowled against the drizzle. His face was as bleak as the sky. “Sometimes,” he said to it, “it’s perilously easy to hate my own people.”

  His escort of Flemings prowled through the rubble, pausing now and then to take up something of interest, skirting the occasional beds of coals. Even in the rain the embers smoldered unabated, as if they disdained to die.

  A shout brought him about. Part of the stable stood intact, set apart from the house as it had been. His squire struggled with someone there, a scarecrow figure, very small and very black. Jehan strode toward them.

  Odo’s captive was a boy, ragged and covered with soot, who struggled and bit and cursed in half a dozen languages. Even the squire’s hard blow neither stilled nor silenced him; but when he saw Jehan he froze. To his wide eyes, the priest seemed a giant.

  Odo shook him roughly, nursing a bitten hand. “The little beast was rooting in the straw.”

  “Wet, probably, and cold,” Jehan said, speaking Greek—it would not hurt Odo to exercise his brain a little. “Look; his teeth are chattering. He’s thin as a lath, too. He was on short commons well before we closed down the markets.”

  “Please,” the child whined. “Please, noble sirs. You don’t want me. I’m too thin, no meat on my bones, see. Just skin.”

  Jehan laughed without mirth. “So we eat little children, do we, lad? What else do we do?”

  “Kill,” the boy answered with sudden venom. His voice slid back into its whine; he cringed in Odo’s hands. “Please, great lord, holy Patriarch, I’m worth nothing, I never was. Don’t kill me.”

  “Why should I want to?”

  That, the boy seemed to think, was unanswerable.

  Jehan freed him from Odo’s grasp and held him lightly but firmly. His arms were no bigger than sticks. “If you can tell me something, I’ll let you go. I’ll even give you money.”

  The black eyes narrowed. “Show me.”

 
Jehan took a bit of silver from his pouch. The boy swallowed. It was more money than he had ever dreamed of. His fingers itched to snatch at it. But Jehan’s grip was too strong.

  “Here. This for the truth.” He held the coin up in front of the child’s eyes. They fixed on it, fascinated. “Did you see what happened to this house?”

  The urchin’s eyes flickered. Fear, or the effort of inventing a lie?

  Fear, Jehan decided. The emaciated body shook with it; the dark cheeks greyed. He tried in vain to break away.

  Jehan turned the coin until it glittered. “Tell me.”

  It took a long while, for the boy was truly terrified, more of the memory than of the man who held him. But greed in the end was stronger than fear. With his gaze riveted on the coin, he said, “It was an angel.” Pressed, he went on in fits and starts. “I was hiding. I peeped out. The dev— Your people were all over, killing and stealing and doing things to people. Some were in the house. Then there was nobody in the street, or nobody much. And he came out. He was an angel, like in church.”

  Have you ever been in one? Jehan wondered. But he said, “Go on. What was he like?”

  “An angel. All white. He—I think he had people with him. I didn’t notice them much. He came out of the house. He stood and he shone. And the fire came down.”

  Jehan gripped the boy till he yelled, then let go. The urchin snatched the coin and bolted. Jehan hardly noticed him. “Fire,” he said slowly. “Fire came down.”

  “A patent lie,” Odo declared. “The looters must have torched the place.”

  “What?” Jehan had forgotten the squire was there. “What? Set fire to it? No. Not they. There are bodies in those ruins. Several bodies, if my nose is any guide. And an... angel. He would look like that when his power was on him. He lives, then. Thank God. But why destroy House Akestas?”

  “Divine vengeance?” Odo suggested, not quite flippantly.

  “I hope not,” Jehan said. “For his sake and for all our sakes, I hope not.”

  o0o

  Jehan almost wept when he saw Saint Basil’s. It was beautifully, blessedly intact, save for the splintered outer gate; although Latin guards stood there, the courtyard was whole, untouched.