Lord of Slaughter (25 page)

The bond with his sister had severed on her thirteenth birthday. The full moon had risen in the sky and in her mind, and she had begun to suspect him. He let her talk and plot against him, for the sake of the guilt he felt, for the thread that connected him to human feelings of duty and love.

All those years, clinging to sanity, clinging to position and to power. Fighting the pull of the runes inside him; thankful for what they had brought him, fearful of what they would bring. When the rebel had risen up the runes had told him Basileios would fall to the usurper. That would have been the end of everything. So he had sweated and starved for a month and allowed the symbols inside him to travel forth to the rebel and strike him down as he rode forward. Such magic, once released, is not easily contained. The comet had come and now the black skies and the wolf.

Karas sat down on a couch and wiped his face again. The cloth came away with blood on it. A nosebleed. He felt disordered and vulnerable. There had to be a way out. There had to be a means, other than death, by which he could avert the fate that stalked him. He had run from the wolf for too long. Perhaps now it was time to seek it.

He would need a ritual.

‘Fetch Isais.’

The runes stirred inside him. He needed to establish some sort of control, to at least sacrifice to the goddess who had set the symbols in his mind. The streets were dark enough and the moon – though invisible – was in the right position. He had to go to the hillside, to be among the people he had come from and to make the observances he hoped would buy him a little peace.

After a while there was a whisper at the door. The chamberlain opened it to the commander of the messengers, plainly dressed in dark soldier’s attire.

‘Tonight?’

‘Yes. Immediately.’

‘I will arrange it.’

Isais left.

The chamberlain went to a side room where he kept his clothes, including his campaign gear. It was plain and worn, and no one would think that odd. In the field he emulated the emperor in dressing like a common soldier. He took his sword and checked the folds of his padded jacket. Stuffed into a pocket in the interior was a mask of black cloth – like the Arabs wore in the desert – with no more than slits for eyes. He picked up a tight-fitting desert hood, white to reflect the sun and proof against grit and sand. He pulled his horse cloak around him.

The door opened; there was no knock.

Two men accompanied Isais, again dressed plainly as guards.

‘The way is clear,’ Isais said.

The chamberlain lowered his eyes in acknowledgement and walked out of his chamber, down to a room where there was a secret staircase that led to the bowels of the palace and from there out through the kitchens to a back door to the outside. They encountered no one, Isais as good as his word. The chamberlain put on the desert hood and stepped out into the street. From here it was two hours to the hillside, so they would have to move fast.

25
A Sacrifice

Galti got Loys what he wanted by the second day of waiting – four good Varangians who were not giants and so didn’t stand out among the Greeks. They would never pass for natives of the city close up but, at a distance and in dim light, they’d invite no attention. The deal was done on a promise and an oath in Norse – the Vikings said Loys spoke their tongue so he would know the value of a vow. The Vikings wore their sea cloaks, stained and eaten by salt, and covered their heads against the rain with close-fitting caps or cowls. It was dark and the weather miserable. They would pass well enough, thought Loys.

‘Chance of a scrap?’ said one – a stocky youth, nearly a man, handsome but for his missing teeth. His name was Vandrad.

‘Yes, but we need to be careful,’ said Loys. ‘We’re going to watch one of the Greeks’ rituals. I want to kidnap one of them and we may have to follow him back into his camp to do it.’

He quickly made his way up the hill, the men following him. All the black lambs had gone from the camp. Up on the hillside torches floated in the murk – nine or ten ascending in the distance.

‘There,’ he said.

The men trudged on over the sucking ground. The torches were very faint and Loys had no certainty they belonged to the people he sought. But he recalled what he had read – that the ceremonies of the goddess were often conducted by torchlight. They were planned with strict attention to detail, for fear of invoking the goddess’s anger.

The night was black. All perspective was gone: the fires and lamps of the camp seemed to hang in space, glowing like odd moons. One of the Varangians took a torch as he passed a tent and no one came out to complain that he had. Ahead the lights they followed were will-o’-the-wisps. Loys almost laughed to himself. He’d been worried about being recognised; they would be practically invisible in the gloom.

From ahead he heard a keyless grumble: dogs howling and moaning on the hill – a lot of dogs.

Loys lost sight of the torches and began to think they had taken a wrong turn, but a track was under their feet and they stuck to that. It was impossible to judge how far they had gone. Only the ground beneath his feet told Loys he was not moving through a murky ocean and he almost imagined sea serpents looming from the mist, the blind grey monsters of childish nightmares.

The going became steep. They still saw no lights ahead but, denied another reference, they headed towards the sound of the dogs. Then they crested a ridge. Lights, lots of lights. Other torches joined those they had followed, coming up a track from another side of the city, while others still descended out of the night.

‘On,’ said Loys.

The Varangian nearest smiled at him. ‘Nair,’ he said.

‘What?’

‘The world of the dead,’ said a voice at his shoulder.

Now they climbed over rocks – big boulders. It took all Loys’ concentration not to slip and break an ankle. The howling and grumbling of the dogs became louder, and under it they heard a murmur of conversation. People were assembling.

Loys kept going, the Varangians at his back. Something moved by his side. A small dog was leaping from rock to rock and, in doing so, brushed his hand.

‘One torch extinguished. We need twenty-seven; there are twenty-eight,’ said a voice. Loys took the Varangian’s torch and threw it down into a cleft between the rocks.

‘Start!’ Another voice, from Loys’ right.

‘Why are you here?’ The voice was strong and commanding and Loys almost felt inclined to answer it.

‘To stand at the gateway of death,’ forty or fifty unseen speakers replied.

‘Why do you stand at the gateway of death?’

‘To offer homage to the lady of the gateway.’

‘What do you seek for this homage?’

‘Blessing and protection from evil.’

‘She that is Propulaia.’

‘Standing before the gate.’

‘She that is Chthonia.’

‘Lady of the earth, the lower earth and the dark places of the earth.’

‘She that is Apotropaia.’

‘Protector and guardian.’

‘Accept our sacrifice and hear our prayer.’

A lamb’s bleat turned to a shriek. The dogs went wild, barking, baying and howling. Still Loys saw very little beyond the soft glow of the torches.

A chant pulsed through the mist. Loys gripped his knife. The voices surrounded him.

‘Up out of darkness and subvert all things

With aimless plans, I will call and you may hear

My holy words since terrible destiny

Is ever subject to you. Thrice bound goddess,

Set free yourself, come raging

Plunged in darkness with sorrows fresh,

Grim-eyed, shrill-screaming.

Come.’

Loys shivered. The chant broke into many separate choruses, gabbling on all sides.

‘In my power I hold you.’

‘Your thrice-locked door.’

‘Her burning hearth, her shadow.’

‘One morsel of flesh.’

‘Blood of a turtledove.’

‘Hair of a virgin cow.’

‘The bond of all necessity is sundered

And the sun’s light is hidden.’

It was a cacophony. Torches flashed; people stamped and dogs howled.

‘We need to capture one of them,’ said Loys to the Varangian nearest to him. He needed to ask some questions.

‘Our sort of work. Wait until they separate. If one goes off on his own we’ll have him.’

‘And if he doesn’t?’

‘We’ll have him anyway.’

The ceremony continued, with singing and chanting and invocations to the lady of the moon, she that is three, the lady of the cypress, warden of graves, lady of the yew, filler of graves, lady of the mandrake whose birthplace is the grave.

More flames flared. Loys guessed they were burning branches held up high.

Then there was shouting and moaning and a voice cried out loudly, ‘Do not drive these demons on to us, we who have evoked your displeasure. Three black lambs have been sacrificed, as you require, three times nine torches, as you require; the invocations have been observed, the three directions faced and the three names called. Do not abandon us.’

A word came from all around that sounded very much like ‘Amen’ and the torches began to move away.

‘We’ll take the last to leave,’ said Loys.

‘If only to get their light,’ said Vandrad. The fog was truly freakish – Loys could see no more than five paces ahead.

The torches filed away, dark figures passing them clambering over the rocks. As careful to conceal their own identity as to demonstrate their lack of curiosity in that of others, none paused to look at the Varangians.

Only one or two torches remained, up near where the ceremony been conducted.

Loys heard voices through the still air.

‘We need to open the gate again.’

‘Not yet. I stepped through it years ago. That way is a hard one and I will not walk it while there are alternatives.’

‘But the comet, the sky, these deaths. You need to look for an answer.’

‘I can scarcely hold what I have inside me. You don’t know how it costs me – what might be asked.’

‘If you went within you might rid yourself of the magic. It is that which causes these abominations to afflict us.’

‘I do not know. I do not know.’

‘Could the Christians be right? Could this be the end of the world?’

‘Or the Norsemen or the Arabs. They both seem to agree a one-eyed god must emerge, and we haven’t seen him yet.’

‘I’m glad you can joke about it, sir.’

‘I don’t joke. Who knows what is happening?’

‘You have taken from the goddess; now she wants something back.’

‘I don’t know. The wolfman. What about him?’

Loys edged closer with the Norsemen. One of the voices was high-pitched – a eunuch.
The chamberlain?
He told himself not to be ridiculous. The chamberlain grubbing in the dirt with heathens?
Impossible
. The other voice was familiar to him, he thought. But who? He stumbled on a rock.

‘Is there someone there?’

Silence.

‘We need to go.’

The torches moved off, but the Varangians had clearly decided they were in striking distance of their prey. They ran forward. Confusion, shouts.

‘Hey! Let me go!’

‘Run!’

A torch fell and someone cried out in pain, but the other torch went bobbing across the rocks, down and away. Loys crawled forward. Someone jumped at the limit of his vision – a shadow across the torchlight, no more. Then, leaping from rock to rock through the mist, came a figure. It crashed straight into Loys, knocking him down.

‘Who the—’

The man had hold of Loys by the tunic. He wore a desert hood but Loys saw clearly who it was.

‘Isias!’

The spymaster said nothing, just drew a knife.

Loys could not say if it was the instant before or the instant after that he thought of the spymaster’s threat to Beatrice, thought of the impossible task he had been set and the creeping anxiety about what would happen if he failed, thought of the peril in which he had been forced to put his soul, of the tensions he had felt even before coming to Constantinople as he cast aside his life as a monk to take up one of poverty with his lover, the lady of Rouen.

His life seemed to revolve around that moment on the rocks. Everything he had ever done divided into before and after he took his little knife from his belt and stabbed Isais in the neck. He did it without thought, but when it was done, thought came in on Loys like a wave into a headland.