Byzantium - A Novel

by Michael Ennis

  The little creek was muddied by the rain, not diamond-faceted as Maria had seen it in her dream, and the water was blood-russet. Haraldr waded in, prayed to Odin to accept these innocent animals as sacrifice, and buried his axe blade into a horse’s quilted chest; the scream of the poor dumb beast sickened him. The horse toppled and Haraldr pushed forward to yet another slaughter; as he killed his second horse he realized that his feet were no longer in water. And the men behind him were now able to start coming across the creek.

  Their masters brought the horses to what seemed unending slaughter; for a time the sky almost seemed to rain equine blood. Soon the shallow slope rising from the creek was littered with dead beasts and their riders. But Haraldr knew that the torturous ascent was rapidly draining his reserves; the axe was a weapon for short bursts, not this sustained butchery. Haraldr prayed to all the gods that this cavalry was the Khan’s last line of defence.

  The head-flinging frantic horses retreated. Haraldr looked back and saw most of his men advancing well up the slope. When he looked ahead, he saw the Khan’s last defence and knew that he would never see the king beyond the creek. At the top of the rise waited another wall, not terrified animals but huge, fierce-eyed, red-faced men in long mail coats, armed with Hunland steel: the Khan’s elite guard. And they were so many, they blocked the horizon.

  Haraldr knew that there was nothing left but to take as many of these souls as possible with him to the Valhol. They came forward eagerly, grunting, thrusting spears, hammering at Emma’s silky invulnerability; his ribs ached with the blows that had yet to break the links but were breaking him up inside. His men were dying all around him, and in some strange, reflexive requiem he silently tolled their names as they fell: Joli Stefnirson, Kolskeg Helgison; Thorvald Kodranson. A javelin glanced off his neck and he could feel the blood immediately. That was what her dream had promised him, that was the destiny he had seen in her eyes the first night she had drawn him into them.

  He was isolated; it seemed that even the final desperate shield-fort had collapsed. His arm seared with every stroke, and yet the furiously cursing metal demons still could not overwhelm him. He had no idea where his men were - Ulfr, Halldor, the Emperor. Was he tolling their names because they, too, had fallen? A blow from behind almost knocked his helm off, a light flashed before his eyes. He shook his head to clear it but the light still glared. The sun. The sun had burst through the clouds and driven a slender, brilliant shaft into the Bulgar horde just ahead of him. He knew that he must reach it. He hurled himself forward in one last, desperate assault before that light, like Odin’s voice, faded beneath the black wings of the last dragon. He sent a jaw flying in a crimson spray. His sword crunched a byrnnie so hard, he could feel the bones shatter beneath the steel skin. He went forward on faith and courage, not knowing why he had to reach the light, and he realized that other men had joined him, the men he had thought lost: first the Emperor, and then Ulfr, and Halldor, and Joli’s brother, Hord. He could look back now and see hundreds of his men still with him, still advancing, questing with him for the light. The push from behind was now the blood lust of the Middle Hetairia.

  Something fractured in the great body of the Bulgar army. For a moment the Khan’s guard hesitated, stunned at the resilience of the bloodied yet still furious beast that had penetrated to the living heart of their great horde, to the last human redoubt of their Khan. And then they gave in to some collective, primal fear. Many dropped their weapons and ran towards the encircling skeins of the Roman cavalry, preferring capture to a less certain fate on the tusks of the beast they could never kill. Some of those too close to the boar to think they could outrun it had simply dropped to their knees to beg for mercy. Among those terrified petitioners was the Bulgar Khan.

  Haraldr looked around, wondering. He stood within the shaft of sunlight now, a light reflected off the helms and byrnnies of the Bulgars as they humbled themselves in sun-glazed mud. All around them was a litter of discarded weapons, as if a ghost army had vanished, leaving behind only artefacts borrowed from the living. Far to the left and right, the horsemen of the Scholae, Hyknatoi and Excubitores could be seen, standards proudly aloft as they herded huge, ragged groups of Bulgar prisoners. Behind the bloody, horribly diminished ranks of the Middle Hetairia were nothing but corpses.

  The Emperor stepped in among the kneeling Bulgars. ‘Alounsianus!’ he commanded: the name of the Bulgar Khan. A desperate-looking, medium-sized man, whatever cleverness or courage he had employed to gain his throne utterly blanched from his face, rose up from the mud and clasped his trembling hands in supplication. The tossing clouds closed on the sun and the dimming light flickered over the defeated Khan. Then the clouds rolled aside, the sun exploded in its full radiance, and as he swooned from loss of blood, Haraldr was certain that he was floating up towards a golden dome.

  VI

  The Prefect of the City and the Logothete of the Symponus waited for the Parakoimomenos of the Imperial Palace beneath the arch of the Golden Gate. The Great Land Wall loomed above them, the invincible ashlar expanse glazed with the morning sun. Attended by his retinue of Imperial cubiculari, gleaming like antimony in his white silk and crowned with his pure silver hair, the Parakoimomenos exchanged nods with the Prefect and the Logothete. ‘Exquisitely done,’ said the Parakoimomenos as he looked down the avenue before them. Freshly swept and watered, almost bone-white, the Mese extended east towards the distant Imperial Palace, and as far as one could see, the entire route was a multihued corridor of brilliant hanging carpets and tapestries. A human tide, held back by cursores and Khazars, crushed in on either side of the avenue.

  The Parakoimomenos blinked into the ascending sun and gauged that it was time for the long day to begin. ‘Komes of the walls,’ he directed, ‘open the gates.’ The komes’s ceremonially armoured assistants cranked open the massive bronze gates and the dignitaries stood aside to let the procession enter the city.

  The first rider was seated on a dull-eyed, decrepit donkey. He wore tattered rags, and garlands of pig intestines, swarming with flies, were draped over his shoulders. The rider could not see the spectacle before him because he was seated backwards on his transport; he could not see behind, either, because his eyes, crusted with scabs and ooze, had been put out with hot irons. The sightless man raised his head in response to the fantastic gale of obscenities and jeers that greeted him, and the Empress City could now see the hideous, noseless face of the man who had dared to assault her. Alounsianus, Khan of Bulgaria, had finally breeched the walls of Rome.

  The Bulgar generals followed on foot, then their officers and men, an unending procession of haggard, confused, sullen faces and filthy brown tunics; as the Pantocrator is merciful, most had been spared their eyes and noses. The army of the vanquished, flanked by steel-trimmed Khazars, became a strange, dirt-coloured serpent of misery slowly crawling through the brilliant polychrome of the triumphant city.

  The Parakoimomenos again computed the time as the last of the Bulgars disappeared down the Mese. Incredible. He had had no expectation that so many barbaroi wretches had been taken prisoner. He signalled the Logothete of the Symponus, at whose order hundreds of street sweepers descended on the avenue. The newly swept streets were washed again, this time with rose water. Hundreds of labourers spread thick, richly patterned carpets over the perfumed pavement. Dozens more workers hung polycandelons and even ornate candelabra in the street-level arcades. Residents suspended oil lamps and pungently smoking censers from their balconies. Jewelled icons were placed on balustrades or cradled in the arms of their proud owners. The surging crowd of onlookers sprouted ceremonial branches and sprigs of laurel and olive. Then all the lamps were lit, completing the transformation of the entire city-long length of the Mese into a glittering cathedral nave.

  Outside the walls, a band blared and the crowd answered with ringing cheers. The Parakoimomenos nodded to the designated cubicularius to bring forward the victory crowns - two simple yet precisely woven laurel wreaths - an
d the gold-and-pearl bracelet that would also be presented to the Emperor. Extraordinary, thought the Parakoimomenos. The Varangian Haraldr Nordbrikt would receive the second wreath of victory and walk directly behind the Emperor. Of course the Bulgar-Slayer would have approved, but nonetheless it was extraordinary. And the other changes! The Middle Hetairia would march directly behind their Emperor and Manglavite, and the Grand Hetairia would not march at all; they were apparently mopping up remnants of the Bulgar army near Nicopolis. And the rumours that the Grand Domestic would soon be ‘promoted’ to Strategus of Cilicia, and the Domestic of the Excubitores named to replace him. Already the Imperial Chrysobulls appointing the heroes to their new dignities had become a virtual purple-ink deluge in the offices of the Parakoimomenos! Well, the Parakoimomenos reflected, such is the nature of war, to endlessly shuffle the offices and dignities of Imperial Rome.

  The Parakoimomenos watched as the voukaloi took their positions by the gate; the ceremonial chorallers wore black robes, velvet bonnets and necklaces of fresh roses. He nodded to their leader to prepare himself. Then he walked through the Golden Gate into the shadows of the Great Land Wall and threw himself on his face in the street for the prescribed three prostrations. When he rose, he did not permit himself even to look upon the face of the Pantocrator’s glorious Vice-Regent on earth. With a trembling hand he gestured that the city awaited its god.

  ‘Glory to God, who has magnified the light of the Emperor of the Romans!’ choralled the voukaloi. ‘Glory to the Holy Trinity for returning our glorious master victorious!’ The bell-clear chants echoed as the voukaloi repeated them again and again, interweaving the choruses into an intricate, continuous tapestry of sound. As he had been instructed, Haraldr made certain that he remained five paces behind the Emperor. He could already see the multicoloured incandescence of the Mese through the shadowed arch of the Golden Gate, and the sight made his knees weak. He remained beneath the arch while the Emperor received the gold arm ring and then stooped slightly to allow the Prefect to place the laurel wreath upon his head. The acclamation of the crowd swept through the arch like a gale. Then the Emperor turned to Haraldr and beckoned him into the light. For a moment Haraldr had to shut his eyes against the glare, and with the thunderous clamour blocking all his other senses, he felt as if he no longer walked the earth but had been swept away by a rushing cyclone.

  Haraldr bowed and the Emperor took the second laurel wreath and placed it gently on his head. His hands brought Haraldr erect; his weary eyes - the campaign and its final brutal assault had certainly taken their toll - glowed with profound gratitude. Then the Emperor stepped forward and led Haraldr into a whirlwind of glory such as only Rome could bestow.

  The storm raged for hours, from the Forum of Arcadius to the Forum Bovis to the Forae of Taurus and Constantine, then the Augustaion, and into the Hagia Sophia for a reception by the Patriarch. Neither the tempest of acclaim nor the blizzard of strewn petals ever abated. Behind the Emperor and Haraldr, the Middle Hetairia and the Imperial Taghmata received the same joyous reception.

  After leaving the Hagia Sophia the procession stopped in front of the Chalke Gate and the Emperor ascended to a golden throne that had been set up in the open square. The voukaloi were now accompanied by the pulsing notes of a golden organ; the ponderous sound machine rose like a small building beside the throne. When the music stopped, the crowd hushed magically leaving a ringing silence in the ears. The Emperor described the campaign in great detail and enumerated the spoils of victory. At prescribed intervals the crowd burst out in ritual acclamations. Then the Emperor turned to Haraldr and began to emphasize the valour of the Varangians of the Middle Hetairia and their Manglavite. ‘This man saved Rome,’ concluded the Emperor, eliciting a whooshing, wave-like oath from the crowd. Haraldr looked out at the glittering avenue filled with rapt faces and saw the funeral pyres of the one hundred and forty-three pledge-men of the Middle Hetairia who now wassailed at the benches in the Valhol. He prayed to Odin to give them this vision of the victory they had earned. And he promised them that when Mar returned to the Empress City, they would be avenged.

  The final act of the extended drama was played in the Hippodrome. The Emperor was allowed to refresh himself in his apartments beforehand, and then he joined Haraldr and his retinue to climb the marble staircase to the Imperial Box. While the dignitaries prepared for his entrance the Emperor took Haraldr aside. It was not the first time they had talked privately; after the battle they had discussed the engagement as one warrior to another, and they had relived the fragile, immortal instant when the conjoined wills of just two men had somehow broken the collective wall of the Bulgar army. In spite of, or perhaps because of, this day’s apotheosis, the Emperor seemed even more human than he had in that earlier interview. ‘It is often said that it is less fatiguing to win victory on the field than it is to celebrate that victory in Constantinople,’ he told Haraldr softly, with a wistful little smile. Then two Patricians appeared, to escort him into the Imperial Box.

  Haraldr followed and looked out on the scores of thousands of people who filled the stadium. The elongated oval race path was completely obscured by the Bulgar prisoners, who stood mute and motionless within the ring of the Khazars. Amid this beaten mob emerged the ancient columns and obelisks and statues set upon the stadium’s central spina: a great bronze bull; a beautiful woman said to be the Helen of the Iliad; a naked Aphrodite and an armoured Ares; grotesque demons and a soaring bronze column formed of three twined serpents.

  The Hippodrome was silent. The Emperor made the sign of the cross three times. He nodded at the request of the Parakoimomenos, and the voukaloi stood and chanted the Roman hymn of victory: ‘Let us sing to the Eternal God most high, for Pharaoh’s chariots he hath cast in the sea . . .’When the singing had been concluded, the stadium fell silent again. The Bulgar Khan Alounsianus was brought into the box and the swarthy Logothete of the Dromus threw the vanquished ruler down on the Imperial Dais and pressed his mutilated face against the gold-embroidered purple Imperial boots. The Emperor stood, his face to the crowd, and placed first one boot and then the gilded tip of a ceremonial spear against the Khan’s neck. Down on the floor of the Hippodrome, the Khazars shoved the rest of the Bulgars into the sand, forcing them to emulate their Khan. The crowd reacted with manic, earsplitting glee. Haraldr saw in the sad eyes of the Emperor little taste for this ritual humiliation, demanded by ages-old protocol and the psychic needs of a frightened populace.

  Haraldr thought again of how only a single step had separated these two men, the triumphant victor and the mutilated vanquished. He realized that if he had halted at that moment, when it had seemed that all that was left was to die well, then the Khan would be standing here now, displaying to the captive populace of Rome the head of their Emperor. What had pushed him on when even Odin had wearied of his fate? Perhaps Maria, and yet perhaps she had only been an agent of some greater fate, a destiny so profound that even Norway was only a part of it, a destiny that now encompassed all Rome, perhaps the entire world-orb. But even as he saw the huge dimensions of that fate and felt himself drawn towards its whirling vortex, his soul was chilled with an equally profound foreboding.

  Haraldr looked across the stadium, oblivious to the leaping, chorusing mob in the seats, and watched the setting sun spill over the roofs of the great city like a golden lacquer. The dust stirred by the grovelling Bulgars rose in a faint fog to cast an eerie, apocalyptic dusk over the proceedings. Destiny whispered to him in that haunted twilight, an ineffable confusion of riddles and replies. The gods commanded me to save Rome that day, thought Haraldr. Will they perhaps one day ask me to destroy Rome? Today I vow to serve this Emperor well. Yet why does my soul tell me that there will come a day when I will throw the sightless face of a Roman Emperor into the dust?

  Giorgios Maleinus considered himself quite gifted at his profession. A tall man who suffered from a rheumatism of the joints that was making him progressively shorter as he neared his sixth decade,
he drank too much and had few illusions about his social standing in the city; he knew he’d never even be permitted to buy an exarch’s diploma, and for that matter he didn’t give a phoney saint’s splinter whether he ever got to stand in the same room as the Emperor or not. The fact that he was, at this moment, in a room face to face with the Emperor’s brother proved how much all those cooked-up titles were worth. Yes, the swollen-heads at court came and went, but Giorgios Maleinus was always in business: the business of buying cheap and selling dear.

  ‘Eminence,’ said Maleinus, his inflection deceptively rustic, ‘I would like to invite you as my guest to see the property. Make your own judgement of the facilities. When you compare what you see to the price I am asking, you will consider yourself Fortune’s favourite.’

  Fortune’s favourite, thought Constantine bitterly. The Emperor’s miraculous recovery was Fortune’s boot in the ass. His poor nephew the Caesar was in virtual exile, denied even the privilege of entering the palace. It wasn’t fair, either; perhaps the Caesar hadn’t been a hero in the Bulgarian campaign, but no one had given him the chance to be.

  ‘Excuse me, Eminence,’ said Maleinus, rubbing at his swollen red nose with his stiff fingers, ‘but would you like to see the property?’

  ‘Ah, quite. Tell me why this superlative establishment is offered at the price one might expect to pay for a rocky hillside and a wooden chapel?’

  ‘Well, Eminence, you’re not a man to toy with, that is certain, so I will give you the truth in the sight of the Pantocrator. The monastery on the Isle of Prote once enjoyed a generous typicon drafted under the Bulgar-Slayer, may the Pantocrator keep his soul, and it grew surpassingly wealthy, some say under the patronage of someone in the Bulgar-Slayer’s family; they don’t say who. Apparently the patron died and the typicon was not renewed. Now, just so you can’t say Giorgios Maleinus concealed the entire truth from you, the reason the typicon wasn’t renewed is because there was a bit of a scandal out there.’