Lord of Slaughter (46 page)

Nothing. The water was extremely cold; colder than he remembered. Three women in the water, two dead. Three aspects of the goddess, three ways to look, three streams trickling in. He pushed Styliane’s head under the water. He wept. Even though Styliane hated him, she was a connection to what he had been before. A rubbish-tip-crawling boy, a street child, hungry and poor. But Elai and his mother, they had loved him. Now they were dead. A light shone in the darkness, giving shape to the gloom, his shape – his shadow.

He pulled Styliane’s head up out of the water. He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t finally sever his connection to his family, to mundanity, to a world governed not by demented symbols but by thirst and hunger, love and death.

He repeated the incantation, the cold numbing his mind. Again and again he chanted until he couldn’t tell if he spoke the words any more or if they had a life of their own – bird words flapping against the walls of the cavern, rat words scuttling around the rocks, star words burning like comets, the cave like the vault of heaven.
Eight runes. No, not eight. More. Sixteen
. Two orbits of eight, shining and revolving like little planets about the chamber. He feared them. They were in a dance with themselves, oblivious to him. What would it take to control them? Styliane was his key. All it required was courage. So many runes. He had only ever seen eight. Who else was there?

A voice, as much in his head as in his ears:
The lord of corpses. The lady of corpses. He who, a corpse, lies among corpses. She who, a corpse, lies among corpses
.

‘Elai? Sister?’

It is me, Karas
.

‘Elai, forgive me.’

The chamberlain wept, holding Styliane, pale and cold, in the water.

The voice spoke again:

Luckless women, confined in this place
,

May bring success to him who is beset

With torments. You who have left the light
,

Unlucky ones, bring success to him

Who is distressed at heart because of her
.

Unholy and ungodly, bring the sacrifice
,

The woman racked with torments. Bring her
.

He recognised it as a spell – he’d read it, he was sure, or someone had revealed it to him. One of the old goddesses’ spells. For what, though?

‘Elai, I am sorry.’

You must give again
.

‘I will give.’

Not her
.

‘What?’

You must give what I gave
.

‘I took your life.’

You were my instrument. I had the will to give my death to the waters. Do you?

‘I cannot. I lack that strength.’

Strength to kill but not to die. The well sets its price very high for such as you, Karas
.

‘I have brought her. The only one I love and cherish. She is all that connects me to the world.’

You have brought yourself. You cannot walk forward to lore looking back to life
.

The chamberlain’s thoughts spilled from his mouth like grain from a split sack: ‘I have only ever wanted the glittering palaces, the silk and the satin, to command men and be a lord of earthly powers. Magic was for me just a means to an end.’

He saw the treasure room at the palace, the ships of the navy arrayed and awaiting his word to sail, the towers of the great city shining in the bright morning, the order of battle at Abydos, spears that seemed to gleam for him, swords drawn to do his will, even the emperor beneath his sway. What tents there had been, blood-crimson and royal purple like brilliant flowers under the morning light. What slaughter he had made. For glory, for achievement’s sake – so when men spoke of him they would marvel at the reach of his hand.

He had not wanted to be a god. He had wanted to be a king. And to be a king he had taken a little of a god’s power and thought to shape it to his own.

You are a means to the ends of magic. The old god tried to put his runes in me, but I hid them in you. I went to cross the bridge of light but he barred me entrance. I brought you back, Karas. I saw the scholar’s worth. Now all the needed are coming. I have sent for them, Karas. Prepare to receive them properly as the dead man you will surely be
.

‘I will not die!’

You took the dead god’s runes and became part of a god yourself. Now you must unite with him in death. Your pain can end the story of agony. We can destroy the god, Karas; we can cease to exist. How sweet will that be
?

‘I am a man, not a god.’

He pushed Styliane towards the shelf of rock, brushing against something he could not bear to look at. He lifted her out of the water and set her on the shelf.

‘I am capable of kindness and compassion. I am not cruel like a god.’

You have been cruel
.

‘You made me cruel! Your magic, your runes.’

It was only a spark to the tinder of your soul. Join me in death, Karas, join me in death because one is coming who is greater than death. Walk across the bridge of light
.

‘I will not die. I will not die! Elai! Elai!’

His sister’s voice faded. In its place, coming from the tunnel, was the sound of someone splashing towards him through the stream.

A voice spoke, almost sang, in Norse, though he didn’t understand a word.

The runes around him shivered and moaned. There were no longer sixteen; there were twenty-four. He didn’t know what to do. He wanted to run from this cold awful place with its corpses, its ghosts that whispered inducements to suicide.

The chamberlain tried to lever himself out of the water, but he was frozen and his arms shook in great spasms as they took his weight.

Someone spoke to him in Norse – a boy. He thought he recognised him. Yes, he had brought the emperor’s instruction to begin the investigation.

‘I don’t understand you,’ said the chamberlain in Greek.

‘Well, you’re a fine fellow to be taking a bath down here, my lord,’ said Snake in the Eye in Greek. ‘Let me lend you a scrubbing brush.’ He threw something into the pool. The chamberlain caught a glimpse as it splashed into the water. It was the head of the little Greek who had helped him down. The red-haired man had gone.

‘Help me out!’

Snake in the Eye put his hand to the glowing rock, captivated

‘Oh, I don’t think I shall,’ he said. ‘These waters are singing a song, can’t you hear it?’

‘I hear the runes.’

‘Yes, and do you know what they want?’

The chamberlain swallowed. His teeth chattered with the cold.

‘Death.’

‘Yes, they do,’ said Snake in the Eye, ‘which is lucky, because here I am.’

The runes in the cavern began to hum and shake, and what seemed like a wave of excitement rushed from them like, thought the chamberlain, the roar of a crowd greeting a favourite charioteer.

48
No Way Back

I am on my way to death. Loys, where are you? I cannot die without saying goodbye. Where are you? Come to me. Don’t come to me – these people are killers. Run, Loys. I’ve brought you to this. If I’d never smiled at you I would never have been here and you would be in the monastery, safe and warm
.

Beatrice was dragged, bound at the hands, through the dark of the Numera. The effort was excruciating, and she cried out for them to go more slowly, that if she fell and killed her baby it would be her death too. Her legs were so weak, she was so heavy, so ungainly with the burden of her belly among these hateful men. The northerners pressed on. They were grim-faced dirty savages, she thought. She’d seen their like at her father’s court, but there they had been out of place, hesitant, fearful of offending a lord whose customs and ways were unfamiliar to them. Here they were at home, marching through the darkness, torches blazing, swords drawn and spears before them.

So much slaughter, so many dead. Corpses everywhere, from the burned and blackened men at the entrance to the prison, to the prisoners dead in their irons, to butchered and beaten guards. Beatrice had been heavily sick on the way in and even some of the Vikings retched. The street level of the prison held no one alive. Bodies lay torn by ragged wounds, hands severed, heads smashed in. One man had a broken spear through his chest – someone had clearly tried and failed to get it out of his body. Stranger though were the men who sat dead but unmarked in their irons, the dancing girl who clung to a fat old pimp, both wide-eyed, pale and dead, as if killed by fear.

Beatrice did not wonder people died that way here. Her father had said of all the tools he had at his disposal to govern, nothing worked as well as terror – King Fear, he called it. If there was such a ruler, this was his palace.

They came to a door. That too had been burned away – the invaders clearly improvising to make up for their lack of siege equipment. Down, through more silent galleries of the dead, the torchlight bright on harsh faces, the terrible woman who had ordered Beatrice taken at her side. Somehow the men, full of grim purpose, hostile and rough, were easier to bear than her. Beatrice glanced at the scar on the woman’s face – no worse a deformity than on any beggar on the church steps on a Sunday, but something about it frightened her. It seemed like the expression of an internal agony, like a blister that had bubbled to the surface from some heart-deep fire.

‘Where, Vala?’

‘Down, down. He is here. Look around you. He is here.’

Beatrice was pulled on, through doorways, down stairs. She retched and staggered. Against herself, she wept. ‘My baby. My baby!’ Screams and shouts from below. A Viking walked towards them out of the gloom.

‘You’re late to the fight, lads. We’ve had some slaughter here tonight.’

‘How do we get below?’ The big one, the one in the red tunic and trousers, was curt, ill-tempered.

‘Along there and down. They’re all dead. The Greeks must have killed them all rather than let us collect their ransoms, though how I can’t see.’

They pushed on through another doorway and Beatrice saw steps descending into a huge room. As she was pulled down she cried out – the torches of the Vikings revealed a slaughterhouse. Hundreds of men lay dead on the floor, their bodies copper in the torchlight, like the fallen leaves of a hideous autumn.

‘This is hell,’ she said. Clad only in rags, the corpses were in various states of emaciation. Some were little more than skeletons, bones showing through the skin, others were merely thin; some were decomposing, others newly dead. Even the warriors with her murmured at the sight.

‘Down again.’ It was the woman who spoke.

Beatrice now had to be carried by one of the Vikings. Her strength had gone. He picked her up in his arms as if she was a baby herself and walked her across that terrible floor. She tried to blank her mind, closed her eyes and breathed through her mouth to avoid the stench.

‘Here, it is as was revealed.’ The woman’s voice again.

Beatrice felt herself lowered to the floor and opened her eyes. A darkness gaped at the foot of the wall.

‘Not in there. Not in there!’ said Beatrice.

What were they doing with her? Did they plan to entomb her? She was quite convinced they were all mad.

‘Lady!’ The big red Viking shook her and stared into her face, speaking Norse slowly so she understood. ‘I will go first. We will not leave you alone in this place.’

‘Am I to die?’

‘We’re all to die one day.’

He lay flat on the floor and crawled within. One of his men followed him in. Another gestured to her that it was her turn. She had no choice, and whatever was in that hole could not be as bad as the charnel house she was standing in. But how to get in? She had to lie on her side, holding her belly. The man behind her pushed and the one already in the tunnel pulled at her arms. ‘Be careful, be careful!’ It was agony, as if they’d tear her arms from their sockets and crush the child inside her. The woman came in after her, then the other men.

They were in a long tunnel stretching away into darkness.

‘Why am I here?’ Beatrice wanted to weep but she wouldn’t give the savages the satisfaction. Her legs cramped and her vision blurred. She needed to lie down but there was nowhere to lie. She had to go on, so she went on.

No one replied to her question; they just pressed on, sometimes carrying her, sometimes making her walk, sometimes making her crawl.
Loys. Loys, where are you?
She thought of her happy times with him – the woods near Rouen, kissing him in the wet dawn, the cold of his cheek against hers, watching the sun rise and pull the mist from the grass, the smell of the earth and the feel of his body next to hers as they walked in the morning light.

‘Why am I here?’

‘You have dreams?’ It was the woman.