John Proteuon looked at his neighbour Stephan and threw his arms up helplessly. ‘Oxen stray,’ he said, not without sympathy, but trying not to be too encouraging. ‘Look,’ he explained as he wiped his hands on his coarse, rain-soaked tunic, ‘I have to help my brother with the ploughing. Because I am a soldier doesn’t mean I must go looking for stray animals. The next time some Emperor wants to attack them’ - John pointed north to the Bulgarian border at the Danube River, a ride of two days - ‘I will go riding off and you will stay, and you will not be helping me fight the Bulgars any more than you are right now helping me to help my brother plough.’ John gestured out in the field where his brother trudged along behind oxen yoked to the awkward, top-heavy, curved ploughshare.
Stephan stood in the heavy mist, his brown hair beaded with moisture and his dull grey eyes swimming above gaunt cheek-bones. He looked as if he hadn’t been eating well, thought John, which he probably hadn’t. With the increase in the window tax and the addition of the hearth tax and the constant work-levies taking men away from their farms to build these roads to nowhere, honest farmers like Stephan often looked like stray dogs. John began to feel guilty; as a military freeholder he was exempt from these additional taxes, and in truth he hadn’t had to spend much time fighting. In fact, he had once been mobilized to go to Asia Minor, but that campaign had been called off or ended or something, and other than that, he just had to show his topoteretes that he still had a spear and helmet and a horse. And since he hadn’t seen his topoteretes in two years, he hadn’t worried much about that lately. And the rain would soften the soil so that it would go easier tomorrow, so what would be the harm in just looking for the animal for a while? After all, if Stephan had lost his ox, he would have to pull the ploughshare himself, and it was clear he wouldn’t last long at that.
John saddled his horse, decided his spear would be an annoyance, and helped Stephan up behind him. They rode away from the cluster of small brick-walled cottages and passed through the broad fan of tilled acreage that surrounded the village. The common pasture was just a rock-strewn expanse of green scrub bordered by a wood that greyed into the mist. It was empty. ‘Didn’t Marosupous have his goats here?’ asked John, referring to another village neighbour. ‘They are gone too,’ said Stephan in his thick, slow, slightly Slavic accent; his mother had been a Bulgar who had been born here before the Bulgar-Slayer brought this area south of the Danube back into the Empire.
‘They are gone too!’ exclaimed John, leaning back so he could bat Stephan on top of his idiot skull. ‘Why didn’t you say! Someone has stolen all the animals! It’s clear!’
‘I told you,’ said Stephan.
‘You told me your ox had been stolen, ox-head, not your ox and Marosupous’ goats!’ John pondered the situation. He could go back for his spear, collect his brother, Marosupous, Gregory and his brother. But then he’d be leading that clumsy band all over creation with no idea where the animals had gone. ‘Stephan,’ he said, ‘run back to the village and tell everybody what has happened. I am riding over the ridge to see what I can see.’ Without a word Stephan slipped off the horse and ran, ankles flapping in battered knee boots.
John rode through the cold, wet woods and out onto a rocky slope that climbed to a little promontory marked by a pile of large, crumbling stones. A fine idea, he admonished himself sarcastically when he reached the look-out; he could only see about two stades into the mist, enough to make out a fragment of the narrow cart path that wound through the shallow hills before intersecting the big paved road to Nicopolis. John was about to pick through the scrub and take the path when he heard something strange out in the mist, coming from the direction of the Nicopolis road. He reined his horse still and listened for a while. How strange. A sound he had never heard before, gradually but steadily rising. A sound like some kind of heavy rain, perhaps, rain and hail, or a freak wind. But no, the sky wasn’t right; in fact, a steady west wind was beginning to push the mist back from the Nicopolis road. Animals. Yes. But more than one ox and a few goats. A herd. That was it. These thieves had made off with every animal in Paristron theme, it sounded like, and were driving them down the road.
The first man to come up the cart path did not see John. He wore a steel breastplate and helm and was armed with a bow and quiver and small round shield. John didn’t recognize the uniform, but he could well guess that the man was Imperial Taghmata - out here for what purpose, God only knew. John felt like riding up and telling this lout what he thought about the Taghmata stealing peasants’ animals even during peacetime. But as he wasn’t armed - and who knew what kind of renegade this man was or how many accomplices he had with him? - he’d wait. Maybe he would see a centurion or topoteretes he could complain to. John rode back up to the promontory and concealed himself behind the rough natural cairn on top. The wind continued to sweep the mist off towards the Nicopolis road, and five more men joined the first, all armoured alike; one, however, had no bow. An officer; just the man to hear about this crime. John nudged his horse back down the cart path.
The men called to him in some vulgar tongue. John pulled back on the reins and looked down at them; they were still distant but he could see their flushed, smooth cheeks. Eunuch soldiers? Is that what they have serving in the Taghmata now? They called again and this time he recognized the dialect and realized that these men weren’t eunuchs. He decided he had best return the way he had come and pretend he was just a frightened peasant. Which he was. He reached the rocks and looked back to see if they were following.
Below him, the mist had fled from a section of the Nicopolis road. Out of the opalescent fog marched greyish rows of spearmen in steel helms and hide jerkins flanked by horsemen armoured like the six he had already encountered. How many? wondered John, his alarm building with every row that materialized out of the mist. He waited and counted. By the time he had reached one hundred ranks, he decided enough was enough and charged down the slope as fast as his horse could negotiate the rock outcrops. His horse was in full gallop and wheezing when he passed Stephan on the outskirts of his village. ‘Bulgars!’ John shrieked so loud that the word burned his throat. ‘The whole Christ-forsaken Bulgar army!’
The woman had perhaps recently entered her fourth decade of life; she had a face that a passerby on this spring night would have found plain, certainly unalluring, but solid and well cared for. A face of the middle class, tending to lower, the wife of a guild tradesman more plodding than prosperous - perhaps her husband was a leather cutter or raw-silk processor who contracted work for more ambitious tradesmen who owned their own businesses. She wore a long wool tunic with a wool cloak over that, for there was a chill in the air, a crisp post-rain freshness, and she was returning from the public baths near her home in the Platea district next to the Golden Horn; she carried her pail and towel in her right hand. Fear was a dim reflection in her dull brown eyes, because although she was reasonably confident that the cursores were never far in her middle-class, tending to lower, neighbourhood, there were some unsavoury tenements in the area - one on her block - and there had been thefts and assaults. But this fear was a minor nuisance of life; what tormented her was the anxiety of what she was about this night.
He was waiting for her at the usual place, his black cloak a shadow that seemed to take life as it emerged from the darkness of the alley next to an arcaded fruit market. He quickly took her next door, into the graveyard of the small monastery at the end of the street. She placed her pail down on the grass next to the toothlike rows of grave markers, hating as always this business amid the screaming souls of the dead, and waited for him to begin.
‘How many times did they meet this week?’ asked Joannes, looking down on the woman’s plain, pained face.
‘Three times,’ she said, her voice muffled by shame.
‘So they are busy, are they.’ She did not answer the rhetorical question but looked at her sandalled feet; dainty and smooth, they were her most attractive feature. ‘What did your husband tell you they discu
ssed?’ asked Joannes.
Her eyes roamed as if she suspected the dead of eavesdropping. The monastery chapel, shrouded by trees, was a dark, forbidding presence behind the rows of gravestones. ‘H-he said they are against . . . y-you, Orphanotrophus. They are . . . planning something. He would not say what.’
Joannes nodded. ‘Has he ever talked of any association between his group and certain malefactors in the Studion?’
‘I heard him talk to a ... friend . . .’ She paused, aware that ambiguities annoyed the Orphanotrophus. ‘The . . . friend was the baker I already told you about.’ Joannes nodded that she could continue. ‘They said that this group in the Studion was . . . well organized and would be a ... good ally. They said that the middle class and the poor would have to unite against y-you, Orphanotrophus.’
Joannes bent over the woman as if he were about to grab her and shake the truth out of her, but he merely leered. ‘The name of this group in the Studion. Did they mention the name of this group?’ The woman shook her head and stifled a sob. ‘But you will find out the name for me, will you not? I should think that when we meet next week, you will know.’
The woman nodded affirmatively, her hands clutching at the borders of her cloak as if she were suddenly cold. She looked up with tears on her cheeks. ‘Have you brought a message from my boy? Is he well? Oh, please . . .’ The desperation in her voice would have broken the heart of a statue.
‘He is well,’ rumbled Joannes. ‘He is one of the Neorion’s pets already. I will have a message from him for you next time, when you bring the name.’
The woman looked up at Joannes with the curious gratitude that victims of the rack often displayed to their torturers. She sniffled and waited.
‘Has your husband touched you this week?’ asked Joannes.
She did not think to lie. ‘No,’ she said numbly. Joannes nodded. She mechanically pulled her cloak aside and then slowly pulled her tunic up to her armpits, leaving everything beneath that line of demarcation exposed. Joannes’s eyes never left her flat, low breasts. Her veined nipples were puckered from the cold, certainly not desire. Her eyes were closed. Joannes’s huge, deformed fingers reached out and spread over her breasts, and the spatulate tips pressed against her sallow flesh like the suction cups of a squid. There was no movement in his face, no expression in his shadowed sockets. After a brief moment he removed his hands and the woman slowly pulled her tunic down. She quickly picked up her pail and ran out of the graveyard and disappeared down the street. Joannes looked around the graveyard for a moment, as if he wished to frighten even the dead with his terrible visage. Then he, too, walked beneath the stone portal and disappeared.
The dead rose from behind a large, square-sided fountain in the middle of the haphazard rows of slabs. One was an enormous spirit, the other a small man who moved with the quick, furtive, utterly silent spurts of a creature used to going where it was not wanted. The two spirits huddled their heads for a moment and spoke to one another.
‘You see. Once a week. This night, always the same time and the same thing.’ The little man smiled, showing crooked, partially rotted teeth. ‘The only thing that ever changes is, sometimes he feels her breasts and sometimes he doesn’t.’
Haraldr smiled grimly and placed five silver nomismata in the little man’s hands. ‘My thanks to you, friend. And to our mutual friend, the Blue Star, my gratitude and greetings.’
The little man scurried off behind the monastery, leaving Haraldr alone with the dead. He doubted that any of the souls buried in this hallowed ground were damned, but if any were, he had a message for them to take to the Prince of Hell: ‘At this time a week hence, I will deliver to you the soul of the Orphanotrophus Joannes.’
There were tiny black clouds high in the otherwise perfect, porcelain-blue sky, and the sun was hot and his hair was golden with the heat. She could not touch him any more, but somehow her mind was inside his and she could see through his eyes, though she knew she was so distant from him. For a long time she did not notice the little black clouds become ravens flocking ever lower, until she saw the glittering ice on top of the hill and felt the cold wind rip through his heart. But beyond the ice was a creek, gentle, a surface of many-faceted diamonds. She whispered to him, ‘The king is on the other side,’ and she knew when he reached the king beyond the creek, he would be safe. Then a single raven came from the zenith of the black sky, arrow-swift, its obsidian beak as sharp as death. She felt it hit his neck, and then she saw the blood pump out horribly, and she reached for him desperately. . . .
Maria awakened shivering, her tears like ice crystals on her face. She sat up and listened to the stillness of the night and felt eternity round her like a black, weightless shroud. What does it mean? she asked herself, feeling as if her soul were a tiny flame fleeing ahead of her in the darkness. What does it mean?
‘Nephew. You look so well this morning. Have you refreshed yourself with one of your sluts? Perhaps, being young and foolish, and this the season of renewal, you have dedicated your earnest heart to one in particular.’ Joannes nodded to his secretary, who closed the door to his plain, immaculately cluttered office in the basement of the Magnara. Michael Kalaphates sat without greeting his uncle.
‘So you have renewed your liaison with the queen of sluts. What morsels has the lovely woman given you to share with me?’
‘Uncle, she has engineered another plot.’ Michael looked at Joannes as if this were one of the most painful utterances of his life. His dark lashes blinked furiously.
‘Indeed. How is she to accomplish this assassination?’
‘I do not know the details, Uncle.’
Joannes picked up his pen, dipped it in an ugly little porcelain inkwell, and made a note on a document before him. He looked up at Michael once and wrote a few more words before placing his pen carefully in a small clay tray. Suddenly he rose like an eruption of black smoke, his huge arms flying, one deformed finger pointing to Michael’s nose like the sword of the Archangel. ‘The slut has always had some plot against me, you snivelling moron!’ he thundered. ‘I do not need warnings! I have the resources to deflect any of the blows that are directed at me!’ Joannes lowered his voice abruptly. ‘I need to find a way of luring her into drinking her own poison. That is why I need details, you witless harlot-monger. Can you remember anything?’
‘Yes.’ Michael’s eyes were wide with terror. ‘Her confederate in this enterprise is the Manglavite Haraldr Nordbrikt.’
‘Thank you, Nephew. You may see yourself out.’ Joannes did not look up. ‘Next time we talk, I hope you will have a more persuasive and thorough argument against your return to Neorion.’
When Michael had left, Joannes leaned back in his chair and rubbed the deep sockets of his eyes. So the Manglavite Haraldr Nordbrikt would come against him. Excellent. That made the decision so much easier. Yes, one of the two Tauro-Scythian swell-heads had to go; their connivance was too dangerous, particularly at this time, but then the preservation of one was just as certainly necessary. And since the Manglavite Haraldr Nordbrikt was clearly the more foolish of the two and would soon offer the same allegiance to the Orphanotrophus as had the pathetic Caesar, the choice simply had to be the Hetairarch Mar Hunrodarson. It was time for Mar Hundrodarson to conclude his lengthy stay among the Romans with a final, exquisite night in Neorion.
‘I cannot tell you.’
Mar slapped his powerful hands to his vast chest with a resounding thump, as if ascertaining for himself that he was indeed the person to whom Haraldr was speaking. ‘I do not believe what I just heard. I have spent months trying to goad you into taking some action, and now you have this insane plan that I can only assume has been inspired by your woman, and I am informed that you are going to strike directly at Joannes tomorrow evening, but you cannot tell me where this assault will take place, or who has convinced you that this scheme will not get every Varangian in the Roman Empire killed. Why do I see the hand of Maria in this?’
‘Maria is not involved
. I am withholding the details for your own protection. If I fail, the less you know the better. I simply want you to be prepared when it happens.’ Haraldr knew this wasn’t entirely the truth; he didn’t trust Mar enough to name the Empress. But the safety of his pledge-men depended on Mar knowing that the attempt would be made.
‘Prepared? We are not prepared. If we move now without pledges from the Scholae, Excubitores and Hyknatoi, everything will be lost. I don’t think you are aware of the considerable effort I have made to convert several topoteretes to our cause. I am moving forward. You are about to rush off a precipice and you are going to take the rest of us with you.’
‘I have . . . pledges that assure much more than a few topoteretes of the Taghmata can offer us.’
Mar walked over and kicked at a stack of canvas tents; he had agreed to meet Haraldr in the storeroom beneath the barracks of the Middle Hetairia. He looked about at the bags of field equipment, battle armour, and rows of ceremonial banners resting against the wall. For the first time he realized how dangerous the Prince of Norway really was. He turned back to Haraldr. ‘The lives of one thousand men are at stake. You had better name your confederates.’ Mar’s face reddened ominously.
‘Do you think I would take any action that would recklessly jeopardize the life of any Norseman? First of all, I am not going to have any trouble dealing with Joannes in the place where I am planning to do this. And when I succeed, I have guarantees that the Taghmata will be neutralized. I am virtually certain that when they see what they are up against, they will not even fight. If they do, we will crush them.’
‘And I am supposed to take your word for this?’ Mar propped his hands on his hips. ‘Maybe you have forgotten the lesson I taught you the night we met.’
Haraldr hadn’t; he clearly remembered how easily Mar had overpowered him. ‘Do you intend to beat this information out of me?’
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