Lord of Slaughter c-3

by M. D. Lachlan

  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 a
rses 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.

  37

  The Uses of Love

  The city was falling to anarchy. The chamberlain looked out from a high tower of the palace. To the north-west, high up on the seventh hill, some buildings flared with flame, bright against the night. A gatehouse too was burning.

  Were his own men in revolt? Or had the Varangians tricked their way in? He feared the Varangians because he knew they were keen to displace his own Hetaereians. He called in a messenger and dispatched a Hetaereiarch with a squadron of city guard up to the burning gate. The man was white with fear. How many of them would obey? The messenger said the dead lay in piles on Middle Way and there was news of more strange happenings across the city.

  The runes that moaned and hissed inside the chamberalin seemed in tumult, unquiet and fretful like sheep in a pen at the howl of a wolf. He was to blame for this chaos, he was sure.

  He gestured to his servant to bring him a bowl of water from the stand. The chamberlain lifted it to his lips and tried to take a drink but he couldn’t. His stomach was tight, his throat too. He put the water down, feeling sick, leaning against the wall for support. A bright berry of blood burst onto the tiles at his feet. He put his hand to his nose. More blood.

  ‘A cloth, a cloth!’

  The servant quickly found one and the chamberlain dabbed at his nose.

  Still more blood.

  He called up a magical symbol in his mind, allowed it to shape his thoughts. The symbol had many names, he knew. Today it seemed to murmur to him in the language of the northerners. Mannaz had always brought him insight before, shaped his decisions, allowed him to second-guess his enemies. Now, though, the symbol was trying to leave him. It was almost as if it was preoccupied with something else. It reminded him of a difficult horse, the sort convinced predators lurk behind every unfamiliar feature and which pays greater attention to its fears than it does to its rider. It seemed much more a living thing than an idea or a vision; he could feel its shape coiling through his mind like a serpent, pulling and tugging to be free.

  In the aftermath of his murders it had seemed so easy to command the runes. Symbols was too weak a word for these beings. They were more than just the scribbles of the Norsemen. Were they truly demons in a strange form?

  He tried a further symbol, willing it to obey. Othala — again the name in Norse. Were the runes trying to tell him something? He put his hand out, as if to touch the symbol, to use it as he had once used it to secure influence for his family and friends, to bring Styliane to the court and have her adopted by a rich family, to blind people to his sorceries and love of the old religion. It seemed to shy away from him.

  He finally stopped the blood from his nose. More shouting, more sounds of torment out in the city. More deaths. He could not see what was causing them. He had performed the rite of divination, mixed dead man’s blood with myrrh and bay leaves to spread as a tincture on his eyes. He had said the words to command the goddess:

  ‘By the sound of the barking dog, I call on you.

  By the hanged who are holy to you,

  By those who have died in war,

  By this blood, violently taken,

  I call on you to grant me revelation.’

  The runes inside him had moaned and shifted but nothing had come, no insight into the terrible events. Was this the end of the world? Was this Hecate’s victory over the realms of light?

  The chamberlain called on one more rune, the one that burned like a single torch. It was shrouded now, as if seen through mist or the gritty black drizzle that had fallen since the comet had been seen. He tried to concentrate, to make it clearer, but he knew the symbols would not be commanded. They were things that appeared in dreams, in the moment between waking and sleeping, things of the threshold between the physical and the supernatural world. Or rather, they would be commanded, depending on the sacrifices he was willing to make. He remembered his mother’s words: Nothing is won without effort.

  ‘No.’

  It was as if he spoke to the rune, answering a suggestion it had made. But the rune had made no suggestion, given no insight. The chamberlain spoke to himself.

  He had thought he had raised Styliane up out of a sense of guilt, as a sign he was not entirely without pity or decent feeling. She was his sister and he felt guilty he had robbed her of any family but himself, and in the days when the magic in him had been easier to use, he had worked to help her.

  He saw more. The magic had known what it needed. Shock. He was a man, a poor vessel for such powers. His castration had helped tie the magic to him, but the bonds that had been formed between him and the symbols in the blood light of the well needed renewing. He had let them wither, preferring the comfortable life to sacrifice.

  He had sacrificed, of course — the black lambs and the goats and sheep his goddess demanded — but the magic could not be sustained by such meagre offerings. He knew what it wanted — pain, revulsion, a horror to shake the sanity from its everyday existence, to jettison the mind’s clutter and leave it free to understand the fundamental relations of the universe as expressed in the runes he had taken from the waters to plant in his head.

  Something moved at the edge of his vision. He wheeled about, searching for it, but there was nothing there. He sensed a presence, though — bitter and angry. His dead sister. Was her spirit doing this? Could her anger enable her to break the bonds of death? She was a priestess of Hecate, goddess of the dead. She had died at the most holy place, where the three waters met. Had the goddess granted her the right to return? Was she sending the symbols mad inside him, loosening his control, letting them pull from him to kill and cause chaos in the city?

  He sensed this to be true. He had gained control and insight once, power even. If he was to regain it, he needed a sacrifice equivalent to his first.

  Styliane. He had kept her there, his one connection to a life of love, of tenderness and familial feeling. He had bound himself to the runes in the well once and done great things. He needed to be bound again.

  Across the city lights flickered, buildings burned, people screamed. What had he unleashed? He mo
uthed the words of the dedication to Hecate.

  Goddess of depths eternal,

  Goddess of darkness,

  Come to my sacrifices.

  I am burning for you some dreadful incense -

  Goat’s fat dappled, filth and blood,

  The heart of one untimely dead.

  Your greatest mystery, goddess

  Who opens the bars to the lands of the dead,

  Who makes light useless and plunges the world

  Into premature night.

  He’d thought the words were just an acknowledgement of the goddess’s power, not a description of something that might actually happen.

  Again, a movement, a thickening of the air in his lungs.

  ‘You’re here, aren’t you, Elai? Sister?’ said the chamberlain out loud.

  A dog howled in the distance.

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘you need disturb yourself no more on my account.’ He dabbed the cloth against his nose.

  ‘I shall come to visit you,’ he said.

  Far off on the walls, someone cried out in anguish. He heard distant voices, the screams of battle. Just visible, a mass of torches streamed through one of the lower gates — not the one that burned. Norsemen.

  He guessed what had happened. Death in the streets, civil disorder, the incident with the wolfman. It had all become too much for the emperor. Reports had reached him in the east. He had sent his seal and ordered a gate opened to allow the Varangians to do as they had requested — replace the Hetaereian guard. That would not be accomplished without a fight.

  It was a move against him. Basileios had trusted the chamberlain with everything, freeing himself up for his campaigns, but if the chamberlain could not keep order or subdue the magic assaulting the city then he would destroy his power by removing his loyal Hetaereia and replacing them with foreigners. It would have been obvious to the chamberlain had he not been so preoccupied with magic. The threat spurred him to action.

  ‘Get me messengers here now,’ he said to his servant, ‘and send in the new master of post.’ The servant left the room, leaving the chamberlain alone. He put his head into his hands and said, into nothing, ‘This is not the end time. I will endure. Whatever it takes, I will endure.’