The following day I again wanted to take the boy Thomas to the forest, but again Anna refused. Likewise the next day, and if there was one consolation to the delay, it was that I made steady progress through Krysaphios’ list of nobles. As I had expected, I learned nothing from them, but at least my obedience muted the eunuch’s criticisms when I reported to him. I contemplated travelling to the forest without the boy, trying to find the place where the monk had trained him by description alone, but the answers the boy gave my questions were so vague I doubt I could have found my own feet by them. And on the third day Anna sent word — grudging, even in the mouth of the novice who bore her message — that the boy was sufficiently healed to travel.
We left before dawn. Sigurd and his company of Varangians met me outside my house, their horses’ flanks steaming in the cold air. Father Gregorias accompanied them, for it appeared the little priest spoke Frankish as well as Bulgar, and had been co-opted into accompanying us as our translator. On the empty street corners the Watch still prowled, enforcing the curfew, but they stepped back respectfully as our cavalcade cantered past, offering hurried salutes to these barbarians riding out of the dawn mist.
We stopped at the monastery. A dozen Varangians fanned out in a half-circle around its gate as Sigurd and I dismounted to fetch the boy. A handful of monks straggled across the courtyard, perhaps collecting the night soil from the cells, but otherwise no-one moved. I was tense, scanning every rooftop and architrave for unexpected movement, for I had grave misgivings about taking the boy out of his seclusion and into the public thoroughfares beyond. It would be many months before I forgot the sight of the gash across the Bulgar’s throat, and whether it had been the work of the elusive monk, his agents, or some higher power, I did not think they would rest while their failed assassin lived in captivity. But I had spent three days fruitlessly antagonising merchants and nobles: if the boy could lead me to the house where he and the monk had trained, then perhaps there I would find something to guide my search. And I did not want to cause Anna undue risk.
Anna was already awake, wrapped in a heavy, woollen palla and bustling about purposefully with a small chest of medicines.
‘This is the salve to rub on the wounds,’ she told me, pointing to a small clay pot. ‘And in this bag are clean bandages. You should replace them after each day’s riding. There’s some bark in there as well for him to chew on if the pain is too great. If you find fresh water in the forest, you can rinse his leg with it.’
I scowled; the early hour, a lack of food, and the tension of the moment had soured my stomach. ‘I have fought in a dozen battles,’ I reminded her, ‘and seen men march twenty miles after them with worse wounds than the boy’s. I do not need lessons in field medicine.’
She ignored my petulance. ‘Sigurd knows my instructions; he can see to Thomas. And keep him well fed. He needs to regain his strength.’
‘Indeed.’ Although I did not wish the boy ill, the last thing I wanted was for him to be restored to full health while we travelled. If he escaped, I doubted either of us would long survive it.
All this time the boy had stood mutely in a corner. Anna had found him a monk’s coarse tunic, which sat high on his tall frame, and a thick cloak; now she kissed him on the cheek, pulled up a fold of the cloak to mask his face, and pushed him gently towards me.
‘You’ll want to hurry,’ she said, peering out of the open door. ‘The sun will be risen soon.’
That thought had been uppermost in my mind too, yet I delayed a moment further in the unlikely half-hope that I too would merit a kiss. I shook my head in wry reproval. I was thinking like an adolescent, I chided myself, not like a grown man, a father and a widower.
I led the boy outside. He did not resist as I slipped rope manacles over his wrists and tied them fast, leaving enough slack between them that he could steady himself in the saddle. My horse was nervous, perhaps absorbing my mood, and I patted her neck to try and calm her fidgeting as Sigurd effortlessly hoisted the boy up so that he sat before me. I glanced about, ever wary of danger, for now shutters were beginning to be thrown back, and figures could be seen moving behind the windows. I looked at the boy in front of me and imagined him squinting down the stock of the tzangra from the ivory-carver’s rooftop as the Emperor’s retinue processed past. Was there another man, even now, taking the same sighting?
I kicked my horse over to where Sigurd conferred with Aelric.
‘We’ll make for the gate of Charisios,’ he announced. ‘It’s the fastest way.’
‘Too obvious,’ I argued. ‘They may be watching it. We should take the gate of Saint Romanos, and cross the river further upstream.’
Sigurd glared at me. He had a leather sling for his axe, I noticed, hanging from his saddle just before his knee. ‘They? Who are your they? Do you think we face an army of darkness with spies on every corner? A lone monk and a handful of Bulgar mercenaries cannot be everywhere.’
‘If we delay any longer they will find us without trying. Krysaphios agreed that in matters of practicality, my decision would prevail. We go to Saint Romanos.’
Sigurd pulled back on his reins, and rapped a fist against his bronze greave. ‘This is what prevails, Demetrios: the power of a man’s arm. If our enemies await us, let them come.’
‘Your arm will be as feeble as your armour against the weapons these men wield, unless we meet them at a time of our choosing. Have you spent so long tramping the corridors of the palace, Sigurd, that you’ve forgotten the importance of reconnoitring your adversary?’ I spurred my horse forward, before he could retaliate. To my relief, I heard the clatter of hooves following on behind me.
We rode as swiftly as I dared with the invalid boy on my horse, through the dirty light and waking streets of the morning, until we reached the gate of Saint Romanos. At the sight of Sigurd the guards waved us through, and soon we were out in the broad fields which stretched away from the walls. The harvest was long since gathered in, but teams of men and boys were there with their oxen, ploughing under the old year’s stumps and chaff. The rising sun was wan through the grey clouds, but the unaccustomed effort of riding soon had me pulling my cloak back off my arms, and then bundling it into a saddlebag altogether. We had slowed our pace to avoid aggravating Thomas’s wounds, and I could enjoy the freshness of the morning as I tried to ignore Sigurd’s lowering bulk ahead of me. He had not spoken to me since we left the monastery.
The jangling of iron to my left turned my head, and I saw that Aelric had come up beside me. Despite his fading hair and his lengthening years, he sat comfortably in the saddle, humming something I did not recognise.
‘You’ve upset the captain,’ he said, breaking off his tune. ‘He’s a warrior — he doesn’t care to be reminded that he’s as much the Emperor’s ornament as his huscarl. Parading to impress ambassadors and nobles sits uncomfortably on him when he’d rather be killing Normans.’
I glanced nervously forward, but either Sigurd could not hear or would not show it. ‘I’ve heard he has no love for the Normans. He told me they stole your kingdom — as they stole the island of Sicily from us, and would perhaps have taken Attica if the Emperor had not defied them.’
Aelric nodded. ‘Thirty years ago, they came, and even the mightiest king that ever ruled our island could not resist them. Sigurd was only a child then, but I was a man, and I took my place in the king’s battle-line.’
‘You fought the Normans?’ Though there was yet a wiry strength in Aelric’s arms, it was hard to imagine this genial grandfather hammering foes with his axe in the mountains of Thule.
‘I fought their allies,’ Aelric corrected me. ‘The Normans conspired to invite a Norse army into the north, while they skulked in the southern sea which divides our island from their country. We fought two great battles by the rivers of the Danelaw; we lost the first but won the second. As the Norse king discovered, it’s only the last battle that matters.’
I was already lost, for he seemed to make as many fine distinctions between Norsemen and Normans and the Northmen of Thule as the ancients once made between their feuding cities. But they must have been distinct in his own mind, for he continued without hesitation.
‘That second battle, that was a warrior’s day. I killed seventeen of them myself, yet while a single man stood they would not leave the field. Even Sigurd remembers it.’
I craned my head back in my saddle. Sigurd was riding in silence immediately behind us, an ill humour still written across his face.
‘You were there?’ I asked, braving his antagonism. ‘But if it was thirty years ago, you must have been too small even to lift an axe.’
Sigurd lifted his chin contemptuously. ‘I carried an axe at an age when you probably slept in a crib,’ he informed me. Then, too proud to resist the story: ‘But I was there at the battle. I was only six, but my father, who fought for our King Harold, brought me there and left me under a tree behind our line.’
‘Sigurd saw more of it than most,’ Aelric interrupted. ‘More than us who couldn’t even see our elbows for all the death about us.’
‘I remember I saw the banner of their king, Harald the Land Waster, held aloft when all his army was routed.’ Sigurd’s rough voice was strangely wistful now. ‘His bodyguard hacked and parried all who came, marooned in a sea of English warriors. When he fell they fought on, and when at last the fighting was done and our men came to retrieve his body, they first had to pull away seven corpses who had fallen protecting him. Later I discovered that they learned their war craft here, in Byzantium, serving as Varangians.’
Normans and Norsemen, and now two King Harolds: was it just that the barbarian words all sounded alike to my unfamiliar ear, or were they all named identically?
‘I thought you said the Normans stole your kingdom. Yet now you say you eventually defeated them.’
‘We defeated Harald and the Norsemen in the north,’ said Aelric. ‘But a week later William, bastard duke of the Normans, landed on our southern shore. We marched the length of the country and brought him to battle, but we were too weary and they fought with the desperation of men without retreat. They killed our king, and took his throne. As I said, the last battle is the only one that matters.’
‘So you fled their victory, and came here?’
‘Not immediately.’ Aelric paused a moment to scratch his grey beard. ‘For three years the Bastard contented himself despoiling the south, gorging his accomplices with morsels of our land and fastening his grip on power. Then he came north. Some of our lords who had pledged themselves to him rebelled, but too late: they could not withstand the army he led, and one by one they were destroyed, or surrendered. The Bastard turned the fertile country along that coast into a wasteland: bodies lay in the streets by their thousands, and some of the living grew so hungry they gnawed on the bones of the dead. There was not one village or field that he did not raze to the ground, not one ounce of food he did not tear up and burn before our eyes. Then he invited the Danes to come and ravage our shores, so that those few shoots of life which had survived the first devastation were uprooted and consumed. After that there was no life left in the north: a man could ride through the wilderness for days, and never hear a single voice but his own. That was when I came to Byzantium.’
‘And I too.’ Sigurd’s face was pale under his bronze helmet, and his eyes twitched as if beyond his sway. ‘The Normans came to our village one evening; they killed my father and entered his house. All through the night I could hear my mother and my sisters screaming, and at dawn they were dead. I could not even bury them, for the Normans turned our home into their pyre. I was taken away by my uncle, first to Caledonia, then across the sea to Denmark, and at last, by way of many roads and rivers, to this city.’
He wiped a gauntleted hand over his cheek, then grasped his axe just below the head and pulled it from its sheath.
‘You see these notches, Demetrios? These are the number of the Normans I have killed since then.’ He snorted. ‘Or at least, the number I have killed since the last haft snapped from all the wood I carved out of it.’
‘It could still be worse,’ Aelric observed. ‘Look at the eunuch.’
‘Which eunuch?’ I asked, failing to understand his meaning.
‘The chamberlain, Krysaphios.’
‘What of him?’ In his dress, his manners, his language, he seemed as pure a Roman as I had met. ‘He did not come from Thule, did he?’
It was an innocent question, but Aelric and Sigurd laughed so loudly in response that their horses bucked and shied in alarm. ‘From England,’ Sigurd repeated. ‘Why, Demetrios, do you see a resemblance to us?’
I thought of the eunuch with his smooth, olive skin and hairless face, next to these blistered, shaggy, blue-eyed giants. ‘Not much.’
‘Krysaphios had his own encounter with the Normans,’ Aelric explained, subduing his merriment. ‘When he was a young man, he lived in Nicomedia.’
‘It was Malagina,’ Sigurd interrupted.
‘I heard Nicomedia, but it does not matter. It was in the reign of Michael Ducas, more than twenty years ago. One of the Emperor’s Norman mercenaries named Urselius proved treacherous, as is their habit, and turned against the man who paid him. He took many of the Asian provinces before he was finally captured, and during his rising there was much looting and barbarity. The rumour I have heard is that one night some of Urselius’ Norman army captured Krysaphios, then just a boy, and took him to their camp.’ There was no humour in Aelric’s face now. ‘When they released him in the morning, he had become a eunuch.’
It was not the first time I had heard such a story, for I knew that the western barbarians found the third sex at once fascinating and repellent; that many derided us for our reliance on them, and believed our whole race to be tainted by their manlessness. It needed little imagination to think what torment a gang of mercenaries, filled with drink and such beliefs, might effect on a hapless prisoner. If that had been the ordeal Krysaphios suffered, I could only admire the will he must have had to turn it to his advantage, to attain the rank he now enjoyed.
Sigurd’s voice broke into my thoughts. ‘You know that the Emperor relies on the Varangians because of the hatred we bear the Normans. You may guess how he relies on the eunuch.’
Such tales of horror dampened further conversation, and we rode on in silence, save for Father Gregorias grumbling at the back of our column: that his horse was lame, that his saddle chafed, that the water in his flask was brackish. It seemed he did not number horsemanship among his accomplishments. After a time, we splashed through a ford in the shallow river and joined the main northerly road. A high-arched aqueduct rose about half a mile away on our right, mimicking the line of the road, and we followed it as the land grew wilder. The sporadic clusters of trees we passed became more frequent, then began to reach into each other, and finally merged into a forest which pressed constantly against our path, stretching away deep into the hills. The sound of running water was never far off, and sometimes we could see the moss-covered brickwork of a cistern or channel through the branches. A few hardy wood birds whistled their song, and occasionally we would meet a lone pilgrim or merchant, but otherwise the forest seemed deserted. Pines and oaks and beech trees towered over us, and it did not take long for my fears to begin preying on me. Every snapping twig or falling branch or rustling animal had me jerking awkwardly around, scanning the underbrush for the first signs of attack. As generations of careless travellers had found to their cost, it was the perfect place for an ambush, remote and hemmed in.
Sigurd must have shared my apprehension, for at lunchtime he posted four of his men as pickets on the edge of the glade where we halted. Our horses chewed contentedly on the grass, but even the sight of open sky above us did not lift my oppressed mood, and we ate our bread in haste.
‘I’ll be glad of Christmas,’ muttered Sigurd, eyeing his meagre meal with disdain. ‘The feast of the Nativity, as you call it. If man doesn’t live by bread alone, a soldier certainly can’t.’
‘Ten days,’ agreed Aelric. ‘Then we’ll have feasting.’
‘If we’re out of this forsaken wood by then.’ Sigurd spat an olive stone into the bushes. ‘If the boy can lead us to this house we’re told of, and doesn’t run off into the trees when we’re not looking.’
Thomas, oblivious to our words, sucked on the dried dates I’d brought him. The dressing that Anna had wrapped around his leg seemed to be holding up under the strain of riding — I could see no new blood seeping through it — and I fancied that the clean air and fresh surroundings had brought a new vigour to his cheeks. It was the first time I had seen him not poised on the brink of death, and it struck me how he seemed now both younger and older. Younger in his limbs, which all seemed a half-inch too long for him, though clearly they were strong enough to wield the arbalest; younger also in his beardless cheeks, which in a year or two might be ruggedly handsome, and in his fair, uncombed hair which blew wild in the wind. But there was a hurt in his blue eyes which, even in our pastoral surroundings, was never truly gone; a heaviness in the way he carried his broad shoulders. He had known pain, I guessed, and not merely the physical kind of a Bulgar’s sword. Though he seemed placid enough for now.
‘Well?’
I looked up from my thoughts. Sigurd had been speaking all the while, his words drifting past me, and now he was staring expectantly at Father Gregorias.
The priest turned on the boy and uttered a string of incomprehensible syllables, to which the reply came in more abbreviated kind.
‘He confirms that he will find where the house was,’ said Father Gregorias sulkily. ‘He will remember the way.’
‘Did he unwind a ball of string behind him then, like your Theseus in his maze?’ Sigurd was scornful. ‘Or can he speak with the birds?’
Gregorias put the question to the boy. Without the sarcasm, I assumed.
‘He says he did not survive in the slums of the megapolis by daydreaming. He watched the path closely, in the hope that he might escape.’
‘Then we’d best get on. Dusk never lingers in the woods.’ Sigurd hoisted himself back onto his horse. ‘Even a boy with memories painted like icons might not find this house in the dark.’
We rode on another two hours, meeting ever less traffic on our lonely road. Our beasts began to tire, and even Father Gregorias eventually lost the energy to complain; so much, indeed, that twice I had to turn back to be sure his horse had not thrown him into a thicket. Light was fading from the sky, and although most of the trees were leafless, their canopy still brought on premature darkness.
A sharp elbow against my ribs interrupted my thoughts; I pulled back on the reins, alive to the possibility that Thomas intended to use the gloom to escape. But he had jostled me intentionally, and now had an arm stretched out — as much as the rope would allow — towards an oak tree. Its massive girth was swathed in ivy, and wrinkled roots had begun to tear the roadstead beneath us, but otherwise it seemed unremarkable.
I called a halt, and beckoned Father Gregorias forward.
‘Ask him what he wants.’
I’endured the usual frustrating pause.
‘He recognises the tree. He says that the path to the house is around the next corner, on the left.’
‘Is it?’ Sigurd swayed in the saddle as his horse pawed at the ground. ‘Does he also recognise the shape of the pine-needles?’
But his suspicion was misplaced; we rounded a curve on the murky road and there, just as Thomas had said, a path forked away. We had passed many like it that day, some little more than animal tracks, some so broad we had struggled to discern the true road. This one was wider than most, but rutted and broken by rain. Whoever owned it clearly cared little for its upkeep. Perhaps, in this wild place, he hoped to avoid the attentions of brigands.
Nonetheless, it had clearly been used recently. As we rode up it I could see small heaps of stale dung, and the traces of hooves imprinted in the mud. The forest was silent here, and more ominous for it. Sigurd, I saw, had his axe in his hand, and several others of the Varangian company had followed his lead. I felt a chill of fear as I realised that the boy in front of me would be wholly defenceless and an obvious target, the sort I would have relished in my days as a bounty hunter. And any blow aimed at him would be as likely to strike me.
But no-one assailed us. We passed between a pair of stone columns, surmounted with carved basilisks, and the path began to rise steeply up a hill whose summit was lost in the trees. I touched Thomas on the shoulder, gesturing at the pillars, and he nodded recognition. The foliage around us thinned, and looking through it I could see the sky drawing steadily nearer the ground. For a good quarter hour I could have sworn that the brow of the ridge was just ahead of us, but every crick and twist in the path yielded nothing but a further climb.
And then, without preamble, we came between an opening in a wall and into a broad clearing, shaved off the crown of the hill like a monk’s tonsure. It had the feel of a high place, but the tall trees growing close against the encircling wall blocked out any view we might have had beyond. The wall ran around the entire perimeter, save where we had entered, and within the enclosure there stood half a dozen outbuildings, including a stable block and, on the far side, a large, two-storied house. We rode towards it.
‘It’s quiet.’ We were all glad to have clear space around us, but the lonely solitude was still unnerving. Even to Sigurd. ‘Wulfric, Helm — see if anyone will fodder our horses.’
Two of the Varangians broke away and crossed to the stables. One dismounted, unsheathed his axe, and pushed through the unlocked door. Weeds grew around it, I saw — as indeed across much of the open ground.
I motioned Father Gregorias forward. ‘Is this the place? The place where the monk and the Bulgars brought Thomas?’
I hardly needed the answer. The way that the boy’s shoulders hunched forward as we saw the house, that his knuckles whitened around the rim of the saddle, told me everything.
‘Empty, Captain.’ The two Varangians were walking back from the stables. ‘It’s been completely swept out.’
We continued towards the house. It must have taken a Heraklean effort to erect it in this remote place, and you might have thought that whoever did so would have troubled himself to maintain it. But the closer we came, the more derelict it appeared. Ivy and creepers grew up its walls, and the glass in its windows was broken. The plaster was mottled and cracked; in some places it had peeled away completely to reveal the dull brickwork underneath. A short flight of steps led up to the arch of the main doorway, but there too the marble was chipped away, uneven.
Sigurd slid off his horse and threw the reins to one of his men.
‘Was this the place where you came?’ he asked the boy.
Thomas nodded.
‘Were any others here?’
‘Only those he came with,’ translated the priest. ‘The monk, and the four Bulgars. Otherwise the house was as abandoned as it is now.’
‘We’ll judge how empty that is when we’ve seen it.’ Sigurd lifted his axe and thumped the butt against the wooden door. It resounded with a low rumbling, ominous in those lonely surroundings, but did not open.
Sigurd tried the handle, a brass knob shaped like a howling boar. It gave readily.
‘Did you see the monk lock the door when he left?’ I asked, alive to any clue that it might have been occupied since. But the boy did not remember.
‘We’ll see if anyone’s here soon enough.’ Sigurd pushed open the door, and ducked under the low, fractured lintel. ‘Wulfric stay with the horses. The rest — follow me.’
We crossed the threshold, glancing nervously about as we entered a narrow hallway, which almost immediately gave out into a square peristyle. This too bore a dilapidated air: the tiled images on the floor — bare-chested warriors sticking bears and lions — were faded and uneven. Rainwater had collected in pools in the depressions, and in one corner a small shrub had forced its way up through the stone. Doorways in each wall led on to further dark rooms.
‘Search it,’ Sigurd ordered. ‘Four men each way. Demetrios and Aelric can stay here with the boy and the priest. If anyone finds trouble, regroup here at once.’
Thomas and I seated ourselves on a marble bench, while Aelric paced around the courtyard and Father Gregorias looked worriedly at the mosaics. The slapping of the Varangians’ boots faded away, and we were alone. From somewhere within, I heard the steady dripping of water.
I turned to Thomas. He rested his chin on his knuckles, and stared mournfully at the floor.
‘Where did you stay?’
He looked up, listened to the priest’s translation, then pointed to our left.
‘Did you all stay there?’
‘Yes.’
‘And did the monk leave anything when you departed?’
The boy shook his head. I could have guessed, of course: a monk who tried to leave no living witnesses to his plot was unlikely to have left anything to identify him in this ruin.
‘Demetrios!’
I looked up. Sigurd had appeared in the gallery above me, flanked by two of his men.
‘There’s nobody here. A few beds, a table, some stools — all of them rotting, by the smell of them. Nothing else.’
‘Nor here.’ One of Sigurd’s lieutenants had appeared on the balcony opposite. ‘House is as quiet as the tomb. Nice view though.’
Indeed there was. The third corridor led from the peristyle onto a wide terrace at the back of the house, projecting out over the steep hillside. We stood there in silence and gazed onto the furrowed landscape of hills and wooded valleys before us. On the western horizon was an orange smear where the sun was setting, while to the south-east I fancied we could just see the glittering domes of Constantinople. It was a magnificent vantage point, ingeniously constructed so that the trees would block any sight of it from below, while leaving the view from above unconstrained.
A cold breeze played over our faces, and we were turning to go indoors when Thomas surprised us all by speaking unprompted, and at such length that Father Gregorias was pressed to remember it all.
‘He says the monk often came here,’ he said. ‘He would stare out at the queen of cities, and beseech God to annihilate her, as He did Sodom and Jericho.’
‘He said all this in Frankish?’ It seemed strange that a monk would address his God in a foreign tongue.
Gregorias conferred with Thomas. ‘In the language of Old Rome, Latin. Thomas knew the words because the Franks and Normans use it in their worship.’
This was more curious still, and I shook my head in defeat. At every turn I found a dozen new questions, but never a single answer.
Sigurd looked up at the sky. ‘We’ll spend the night in the stables,’ he announced. ‘With the beasts. I don’t want to find myself stranded here by some poacher turning his hand to horseflesh. And there’s only one door to guard.’
A peal of thunder rippled through the valley.
‘And,’ he added moodily, ‘the roof’s intact.’
I spent another half hour exploring that mournful house, but found no answers among the crumbling fabric and mouldering furniture. The thunder was moving slowly nearer, and every time it sounded I would snap my head around, unsettled by the surroundings. I was glad at last to escape the building, to return to the company of the Varangians, who had tethered our horses in the stable and made a small fire in a ring of stones outside. On it they roasted salt fish and vegetables which we gulped down in haste: there was little of the usual banter of soldiers on a march that night.
We settled down on the hard floor, cursing whoever had swept out all the straw before abandoning it. As I closed my eyes, I heard the first drops of rain beginning to strike on the lead tiles above us.
It was still raining when I awoke, and still dark. A horse was snuffling somewhere on my right, but otherwise nothing moved. I lay there a second reminding myself where I was, allaying the natural fears of night with the knowledge that I was surrounded by a dozen of the stoutest warriors in the empire. That was comforting. I put my hand under the balled-up cloak I used as a pillow and felt the haft of my knife still there; then, almost from superstition, I reached out to touch Thomas on the shoulder.
My hand felt cold air, then cold stone. I stretched further, my heart whipping itself into a panic, but again felt only the slap of my hand on the hard floor. Where was he? I threw off my blanket and stood, picking my way between the sleeping Varangians to the doorway. Warriors they might have been, but none of them, I noticed, stirred as I stole like a thief between them.
None, at least, save Aelric: but he could not help it. He was sitting in the doorway, his back against the frame, and as I reached it to look outside I fell sprawling over him. He cursed, and staggered to his feet, his hand fastening around the axe at his side.
‘It’s me, Demetrios,’ I hissed. Old though he was for his calling, I suspected I would not survive more than a single blow of his axe. ‘The boy’s missing.’
‘Christ.’ Aelric rubbed his eyes. ‘Oh Christ.’
A clap of thunder exploded over our heads, and almost simultaneously a shaft of lightning cracked through the clouds.
‘There!’ I had been peering out into the rain, searching in vain desperation for any sign of the boy; by the white glare of the lightning, I thought I had seen something. ‘Someone moving, over by the house.’
‘And what’s to say it’s the boy?’ demanded Aelric. ‘Are you armed?’
‘I have my knife.’ His words struck a fresh wave of dread into me, as all my fears of brigands and bandits and the monk’s adepts in this desolate place came flooding back, but there was no time. I launched myself out into the rain, flinching under the barrage of the water, and began running across the open ground to the house, with Aelric’s footsteps close behind me. My feet dragged in the mud and puddles, and my clinging tunic hobbled me. Rain ran off my sodden hair into my eyes, which I had to keep squeezed close together, but another flash of lightning guided me on towards the house. The door, I saw, was open.
‘Follow me in,’ I shouted, looking back over my shoulder. Aelric was invisible, and any sound he made was now drowned out by the torrent of winds around us.
The gale stopped as I pushed through the door, and for a second my squelching tread seemed terribly loud in the small hallway. Then there was rain pelting my face again, and I realised I had come into the peristyle. The water rattled on the stone tiles, but I thought that somewhere in the surrounding darkness I could hear a more animate sound, as of someone scraping at something.
I stepped forward, trying to gain a sense of where the noise was strongest. My effort was thwarted, though, as thunder boomed out over me, resounding off the walls and galleries in a dizzying, deafening roll. I tried to steady myself against a pillar but found none; then, for an instant, lightning burst across the square of sky overhead. The entire courtyard was held in its cold brilliance, and by the light I saw the boy, Thomas, crouched in the far corner by the bush which grew through the mosaics.
The light vanished; I stepped towards him, but in that moment something blunt and heavy cannoned into my back between the shoulder blades. Instinct took over; the months of training I had endured in the legions flooded into my blood, and as my shoulder hit the ground I rolled away across the floor. If my assailant aimed a second blow at where I had fallen, he would meet only stone.
‘Aelric?’ I yelled, wondering if he had blundered into me in the dark.
There was no answer, and I sprang away again just as I heard something crash into the space where I had been. Someone else is here, I thought in disbelief. Some murderer intent on killing me. Did Thomas purpose to lead me here as a trap?
My knife was still in my hand, for instinct and discipline had tightened my grip when another man might have dropped it. I raised it before my face, straining every sense for a sign of my enemy. Someone was moving in the blackness before me, but where I could not tell. He did not seem to be so very near, but with the uproar of the weather that could yet be near enough.
And what of Thomas? He had been in front of me when I was struck from behind: where was he now? Perhaps my invisible assailant was not hunting me at all. Perhaps he had come to slaughter the child.
Another sheet of light from the sky broke off my frenzied speculation. Thunder and lightning seemed now to have joined themselves immediately overhead, and by the spark of their union the courtyard was again illuminated. And there, standing in the shadowy doorway directly opposite me, a huge figure with a weapon raised in his arms.
The light vanished and I launched myself forward, charging across those slippery tiles heedless of the rain and the chance of other, unseen enemies. As I came near I lowered my shoulder — as the dekarch had demonstrated on so many parade grounds — drew back my knife, and tensed my neck for the impact.
He had not moved in those few seconds; I struck him in the belly and drove my knife hard into him. He grunted and fell backwards, bringing me tumbling down over him, but it was I who shouted the louder, for his stomach seemed to be lined with steel, and my knife had bounced harmlessly off him. He was in armour, I realised with horror, while I lay there defenceless. I tried to pull away but he had wrapped an arm about me and was holding me down, scrabbling on the floor for the weapon he had dropped.
‘Shit,’ he swore.
My heart stopped. ‘Aelric?’ I gasped. ‘Aelric? It’s Demetrios.’
A sharp blade hovered against the hair on my neck.
‘Demetrios?’ he growled. ‘Then why in Satan’s hell did you try to rip my guts out?’
He loosened his grip, and I drew myself up. ‘There was a man in here, attacking me.’ I shook my sodden head. ‘Was that you too?’
‘What do you think?’ Aelric’s voice was surly — perhaps I had hurt him through the armour. ‘I followed you in. I was only just here when you rammed me.’
‘But I’ve been here. .’
A flickering light by the entrance silenced us both; we drew apart, tensing our weapons in our arms as it drew nearer.
‘Aelric? Demetrios?’
‘Sigurd?’
The Varangian captain stepped into the room, his axe in one hand and a torch in the other. God alone knew how he managed to get it lit in the midst of that pelting storm. He held it under the colonnade, but its burning glow pierced the night to reveal the entire courtyard, frozen into a tableau where even the rain seemed to stand still.
Aelric and I were standing in the door to Sigurd’s left, by the passage which led into the western arm of the house. Sigurd, flanked by two of his men, was at the main entrance, staring angrily at Thomas, who cowered in the corner where the lightning had last revealed him, his hands still loosely bound. Of whomever else I might have battled in the darkness, there was no sign.
‘I suppose,’ said Sigurd, ‘that there is a reason for this.’
Aelric answered first. ‘The boy managed to escape the stables. Demetrios and I chased after him, but in the storm I lost my bearings. By the lightning I saw him entering by the west door and I followed. As I came in here, he rammed me like a trireme and we both went down. Fortunately I recognised his voice before I took his head off.’
‘But I didn’t come in the west door,’ I objected. ‘I came by the main entrance, which was open. Where Sigurd is. And I was here several minutes before I attacked you. Mistakenly,’ I added. ‘But I grappled with someone well before that.’
‘Perhaps it was the boy.’ Sigurd had no patience for this; I guessed he would be furious that the boy had come so close to escaping. ‘We’ll get his explanation in the morning. Until then we double the guard and tether the boy in the stables.’
‘What about the other man? He may still be in the house — or at least in the grounds. Supposing he is an assassin sent by the monk — or indeed the monk himself?’
Sigurd snorted. ‘Even if this man exists, and if he is not some phantom of your dreams, I will not waste my night chasing over rubble and through mud to find him. If you want to stay in this house and seek him alone, then do it. I will not risk a sprained ankle or a knife in the dark.’
Nor, on reflection, would I.