Lord of Slaughter (42 page)

Snake in the Eye smiled at the girl. ‘I have no need for entertainment today,’ he said. Then he scraped his hand across the wall in his mind, knocking all the little candles to the floor.

41
Captured

Beatrice waddled in to Styliane’s chambers. The baby was terribly heavy, like trying to carry a sack of coal, but she could not let that concern her. The guards had abandoned the doors and no one stopped to question her or demand she indulge in some exhausting formality. As she passed the little chapel, she saw two guards dead on the floor. Had the Varangians got in this far already? On to Styliane’s rooms. More dead men – four of them in the scarlet livery of Styliane’s personal bodyguards.

She stepped over the bodies and into the splendid chambers. Styliane’s bedroom was empty but a fight had clearly taken place in it. Three dead guards of Styliane’s retinue and two in the chamberlain’s blue. Three ladies-in-waiting were hiding behind a bed.

‘What happened?’ Beatrice was almost breathless from running.

‘The chamberlain took her.’

‘Where?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t know.’

Beatrice hurried out. Men rushed everywhere and she kept a grip on her little knife in case one should attack her. The Varangians were outside, screaming and howling threats to burn down the palace.

She ran to the chamberlain’s rooms. No guard tried to stop her as she threw open the door to his chambers. The first room contained four big chests, one with a lock. He had his secrets, that man, and she was determined not to pass up the chance to discover some of them. She took a heavy candlestick and smashed off the lock. It came away at the hasp, the rivets pulling free of the wood. Inside was a bullroarer on a chain, five books, some soldiers’ clothes and a desert hood.

She picked up one of the books. It was written in Greek, full of charts and tables –
A True and Faithful Record of the Magical Practices of the Ancients – The Key of Solomon
. She picked up another.
Night Works
. This was written in Latin and the vellum was relatively new – scored by crossings out and corrections, clearly some sort of notebook. She turned a page – a chapter heading: ‘On Sacrifice’. There were sketches and drawings of the positions of the stars, a list of items offered ‘at the crossroads’ and a comment on their efficacy.

Beatrice was under no illusions about what she was reading. This was as damning a document as could be imagined. But the chamberlain had left it behind. How desperate was he? What did he intend to do?

‘Oh God!’ A man screamed in the passage outside, metal scraped on metal. A fight. She looked around the chamber. A door on the opposite side. She took the book and headed towards it, but as she put out her hand to open the door it crashed open and she leaped back.

A Varangian stood in the doorway – a tall bloody man with wild eyes. She turned to run but one was behind her.
They were everywhere!
She was sure she was going to die. She thought of Loys, of the future they would never have, of the children they would never raise and the peace they would never know. She was a Christian woman and would not let these pagans defile her without a fight. She raised her knife but a big hand grabbed her wrist and twisted it up behind her back. She gave a cry and dropped the weapon. The man siezed her hair with his other hand, jerking her head back.

The Varangian in front of her pointed at her with his sword. He was gaudy in appearance, as so many of the northern men were – dressed from head to foot in bright red, as if soaked in blood. ‘This one?’

‘This one.’

She couldn’t see who spoke but it was a female voice.

‘Is she going to make it where we need to go? She looks ready to drop.’

‘She will make it. It’s foreseen.’

‘Now?’

‘Have you taken the Numera?’

‘It can’t be long before we do.’

‘Then get her over there. We have no time. Put everything into capturing it.’

‘The entrance is very narrow. One man can defend it for a week.’

‘If one can defend it, one can attack it. You wanted your time to die for me, Bolli – this could be it. Take the prison. You are a hero to men. If you can’t do it no one can.’

‘We will take it.’

The man holding Beatrice’s hair released his grip a little and the big red Viking stepped aside. In front of her now was a small red-haired woman, old but quite beautiful. Her face, though, bore a terrible scar on one side.

The woman spoke to her in Norse: ‘I’m sorry.’ Then she addressed the Viking holding Beatrice. ‘Bring her with us. Don’t let her go.’

‘Yes, Vala.’ And Beatrice was shoved through the door.

42
The Old Way

Five men waded ashore from a boat beached behind the Varangian camp – three in the green uniform of messengers, one in the purple robes of a minor court official and one – a tall pale fellow with a shock of red hair – in the orange of a palace servant. Two carried a stretcher to which was tied the body of a woman. To anyone watching – had anyone been watching – they would have looked like a funeral party. One of the stretcher bearers also had a shovel on his back and a small pick at his belt, and the red-haired servant carried a length of rope. But the woman was not dead: once they were ashore, the red-haired man poured water from a flask onto a cloth and wet her lips with it, squeezing a little of the moisture into her mouth.

The weak sun was dying, and the moon, a faint gleaming disc behind the smoky clouds, had risen, full but pale, like a penny seen through murky water.

The men said nothing but pressed on up the hill. Two ran slightly ahead with spears before them. The spearmen were large and frightening in appearance – one a huge Greek with a shiny beard, the other a black man with a fearful glare and a big sword at his belt.

The Varangian camp was almost deserted. The northerners’ women and children had gone with the warriors into the city, even taking their livestock and their dogs.

The chamberlain hurried through the darkening air, a torch in his hand, a bag at his side. They went up the hill into the shanty town. It was sparsely populated – its inhabitants had followed the Varangians in, looking to pick up what spoils they could – so the men hurried through what was effectively a huge rubbish tip.

The steeper climb up into the hills was harder on those carrying Styliane, and at points the men swapped duties on the stretcher. Only the chamberlain didn’t take a turn – it wouldn’t have occurred to him to offer and the men would have only held him in contempt if he had. Nobles handed out the orders; they didn’t fetch or carry.

Down in the city they could see, even through the mist, that a substantial fire had started. No one commented; they just made their way up onto the first hill and into the boulder field. Here flies were thick in the air and the odour of rot drifted in. The chamberlain guessed Isais was among the rocks somewhere, causing as much of a stink in death as he had in life.

Progress was slow. The chamberlain went ahead. Once he would have hopped over those rocks, now he had to tread more carefully, picking his way and at points supporting himself on his hands. He was getting old, he felt it. The symbols, the bright living shapes that burned in his head, which coiled like ivy around his heart, which seemed to prick at his skin like thorns or chill him like ice, they were pulling away from him. He could not reach out to take one down, like a fruit from a tree, and send it to kill a rebel charging at the head of an army, to banish a black sky or remove the curse of death from his streets. Not yet, until steps were taken to regain control.

‘Here?’ The man with the shovel – a Greek, thin, tough and small – pointed to a gap between the rocks.

‘It’ll take time to find,’ said the chamberlain. ‘Wait.’

He picked about among the rocks for a while. The chamberlain knew exactly what he was looking for – three rocks leaning into each other, a hole beneath. He’d drawn it to the attention of the Church as soon as he’d entered Constantinople and they had ordered the hole stopped up to prevent heathen practices. The chamberlain found Isais first, a pennant of flies rising up from the corpse as he approached. He didn’t bother to look at him – the body wasn’t where the hole had been. Eventually he spotted the three goddesses, the three big stones.

‘Here,’ he said.

The little Greek squeezed into the space with his spade. He dug for a while. ‘The pick.’ It was passed down, and the man chipped and levered at the rock barring the hole. ‘We’re in luck,’ he said. ‘They’ve used earth and not cement. Small rocks too. If they’d used a big one we’d have been here ten times as long.’

‘Did none of the priestesses think to open it?’ It was the big black man who spoke.

‘No. My mother did not emerge, and it was taken as a sign of the goddess’s displeasure. I had it blocked as a precaution.’

‘If the goddess is angry it is wise to be cautious,’ said the black man.

‘All caution is gone,’ said the red-haired servant. For the first time the chamberlain considered him. He had simply ordered him to help when he had found him in the palace, the other servants having fled or hidden from the assault of the Varangians. He was the servant he had placed to spy on Loys and Beatrice – the one who never seemed to give a report but whom he had never thought to question. He was an odd-looking fellow. Very likely a northerner himself but smooth and polished as his countrymen were rough.
Never mind. Concentrate on the task at hand
.

He had remembered the servant as a tall man, but now he seemed quite small. That was a good thing – he would be able to help underground with Styliane.

The little man was throwing out rocks now and the others stood back.

‘Aha!’ The sound of a kick, then falling earth and ‘We’re through!’

‘Is it big enough to get her down there?’

‘Only one way to find out.’

The chamberlain turned to the big men, his bodyguards. ‘You can’t follow in here,’ he said. ‘Go back to the city and kill some Varangians.’

‘Will we meet you at the palace?’

‘Perhaps,’ said the chamberlain. ‘It’s dangerous work I’m undertaking.’

‘How will we know if you’re successful?’

‘You will know. The Varangians will fall, the sky will clear and death will leave our streets.’

‘If you fail?’

‘Then look for other employment.’

The big men stepped back and watched as the red-haired northerner and the Greek manoeuvred Styliane down. She had to be brought back out and the entrance dug out further before they could get her through. Eventually, though, she disappeared into the earth. The chamberlain lit a lamp and passed it down. Then he went in himself. He had worried he wouldn’t remember the route, but it was as if a door had opened to a cellar in his mind and all its contents were there for him to examine.

Even if he hadn’t recalled, the runes, those symbols of his ancestors the Lucari, would have guided him. The chamberlain couldn’t use them, couldn’t touch them, but he could feel them pulling him into the depths like a tugging on his skin. Styliane was not as difficult to move as he’d feared. In fact, she went through the quickest, her stretcher dragged by the rope through the low sections, carried where it was easier to stand. The damp reassured him he was on the right track, stonebound faces looming from the rock, shadows like the tongues of hungry wolves lapping at his ankles, snapping at his hands. It was all as he recalled.

They took no rest. He was possessed with the need to get to the well and the two servants were hardier than his sister and mother had been. When the northerner took a handful of water from a stream, the chamberlain knew he was near.

‘A good sign,’ he said. ‘These streams feed the well.’

‘And all the worlds besides,’ said the pale northerner. He let the water fall through his fingers without drinking it.

‘You’re not thirsty?’ said the Greek, who scooped up a big handful himself.

‘Not for these waters,’ said the northerner. ‘These are the waters of wisdom and knowledge. I would prefer those of your Lethe, Ameles Potamos, whose taste makes all men lose their memories. The power of forgetting seems a higher gift than that of knowing,’ he said.

‘Those waters are not here,’ said the chamberlain.

‘How do you know? If you had drunk from them you would not remember.’

‘I have been here before.’ Why was he, the chamberlain, arguing with a servant?

‘You are right: it was not the forgetful waters of Lethe, the daughter of strife, sister of toil and murder, from which you drank, but of deeper and more dangerous streams.’

‘What do you know of this place?’

‘Only the price it asks to drink its waters.’

‘What price?’

‘Not gold nor silver nor jewels nor cattle,

Just lovers’ bones and the old death rattle.’

This man disconcerted the chamberlain greatly. He had seen him before, he was sure. Not in the palace but in some other place. He recalled him like he recalled the wolf of his dreams, like he recalled Elai. He couldn’t quite focus on what the man said. He understood his words when he heard them but their meaning would not stick in his mind.