Lord of Slaughter (Claw Trilogy 3)

by M. D. Lachlan

  ‘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 g
ood 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.

  ‘What’s that ahead?’ The Greek spoke.

  The chamberlain lifted the lamp and peered through the darkness.

  ‘It’s where we’re going,’ he said. ‘Where everything is won or lost.’

  Ahead of him, away down the tunnel, was a blood-red glow.

  43 A Necessary Rage

  Mauger drew his sword as he stood up from the water.

  ‘No need for that,’ said Loys. ‘We have spoken.’

  Vandrad’s head popped up from the flooded passage behind Mauger. The first northerner didn’t pause in his advance, just strode towards Loys. Only at the last instant did Loys realise Mauger wasn’t coming for the wolfman but for him.

  ‘Ragnar! What? Have I offended you?’ He leaped back.

  Mauger was in no hurry, walking after him slowly but determinedly.

  ‘There is no way out of here,’ he said. ‘Bow down, thief. Bow down, oathbreaker, and accept the justice of your lord.’

  ‘What are you on about? Get away from me.’

  ‘Ragnar, the scholar’s paying our wages, have you forgotten?’ said Vandrad, now climbing out of the water.

  Loys ducked behind the wolfman and Mauger paused, assessing the situation.

  ‘I have no fight with you, friend,’ he said. ‘It’s the man behind you I seek.’

  ‘What’s got into you, Ragnar?’ said Loys.

  ‘I am not Ragnar and you are not Michael. I am Mauger, sworn vassal of Duke Richard, who was Bengeirr, of the lands of Neustria called Norman. You are the scholar Loys who has stolen away the lord’s daughter and whose head I am charged to fetch.’

  ‘Can’t let you do that, old chum,’ said Vandrad. He had his sword free. The head of another Viking emerged from the pool. ‘This man owes me money, money I’ll never get if you give him a trim.’

  ‘I’ll give you double what he pays.’

  ‘No. I swore.’ He pointed with his sword to the Viking emerging from the pool. ‘He swore. There can be no debate.’

  The third Viking came up in the water.

  Mauger said nothing, just leaped at Vandrad. The Viking got his sword up to block but it snapped clean in two.

  ‘Shit,’ said Vandrad and went for his knife, but Mauger brought his sword around again and cut deep into his neck. Vandrad dropped, his fingers clutching at a big wound.

  ‘Whoa!’ The other Viking had his seax free – a big, long sturdy knife. The next one, emerging from the water, pulled out an axe.

  The man with the seax aimed a cut at Mauger but was too slow. Mauger took a step back, the swipe missed and he smashed a backhanded blow into the side of his opponent’s head, caving in the skull at the temple with a noise like an axe chopping wood and dropping him flat.

  Loys drew his knife. He was determined to defend himself but he was a scholar not a warrior. He felt as if his legs had turned to stalagmites like those coming up from the floor. He could not make himself move. The wolfman, however, could.

  It was all so quick.

  Mauger hit the floor, the wolfman on top of him. The axeman hacked at them both, swiping at the men as they writhed and rolled. Once he connected with Mauger’s back, but the axehead bounced off the mail and a sword flashed out of the melee to cut him down at the knee.

  The two men broke and stood facing each other. Mauger’s arm was wet with blood and his cheek was torn half away.

  ‘Give me the scholar,’ said Mauger. ‘In fact, I don’t even want all of him, just give me his head.’

  Loys backed towards the pool. The wolfman raved, hissed and spat, his lips wet with blood, his hands too.

  He gave an terrible scream and jumped – not towards Mauger but at Loys, driving him into the water, pushing him down into the freezing darkness.

  Loys was helpless against the wolfman’s strength, pulled through the water like a frog taken by a pike. He tried to cry out, but his mouth filled with water. The wolfman forced him down – down and forward. He was being pushed under a great bulge in the rock, shoved on into darkness. Loys heard nothing, could see nothing. He tried not to breathe in, but he was choking.

  Mauger advanced into the water up to his neck. The Norseman was not an impetuous man and he knew it was time for cold thinking. He couldn’t risk going any further. It was one thing to negotiate a short waterlogged passage in mail, sure someone had been through before you, quite another to plunge headlong into unknown darkness. He would need to take a flint, dry tinder, a lamp and a rope to pull himself back. He’d also need to be prepared for instant attack, should he make it through to the other side. It was not the work of a moment to prepare for all that. He considered the situation. Had the wolfman drowned the scholar? Had they gone through to another chamber? The wolfman and the scholar had seemed to be talking as reasonable men when he’d come through. He had to assume they had become allies.

  The axeman screamed and writhed on the shore, his leg nearly severed at the knee.

  Mauger waded back. He killed the Viking with the man’s own axe. He didn’t want to risk damage to his sword if he didn’t have to and he didn’t want to kill an honest warrior but the last man had to die. It would have brought a blood feud if he’d survived to tell the tale of what had happened. Down in the caves he was just one more victim of the dark. Mauger touched his cheek. The wound was bad but he’d had worse. He could feel the cut was only to the skin, the muscle beneath was intact. It was bleeding badly so he took the lamp and poured some hot oil over it. It was agony but the bleeding stopped. He sat and recovered for a little while. Then he climbed out of his mail. He glanced at the black water. He was going in to find them.

  44 A Thinking Beast

  The Varangians had got into the palace. Its doors had not been built to withstand a siege – if an enemy had got over the Theodosian Wall, then over the remains of the Walls of Constantine inside the city, a reinforced door wouldn’t have held them back. The doors were designed to keep out the common people, not invading armies, and the Varangians had eventually broken them in with their axes and hammers.

  Azémar finished feeding and stood. He was torpid, gorged and wanted to sleep. The blood tide that had risen to engulf his thoughts when he had killed the guards began to recede. The realisation came to him that the bodies on the floor, the human wreckage of ripped torsos and flesh-stripped limbs, had belonged to people. He knew he should have wept to see such a mess, but he didn’t. He wasn’t interested in it any more but then he was not hungry.

  The
Lady Beatrice. He needed to go to her.

  He went out of the room. All the lamps had been removed in the passageway as a precaution against the attackers using them to burn down the palace and it was very dark. It didn’t matter to Azémar.

  The fighting was somewhere close. He smelled the sweat of fear, the stress leaking out of the men in the smell of their saliva, their piss and their shit. It meant little to him. He had fed.

  He breathed in again and he could smell Beatrice, her distinct scent in its many registers, rosewater, sweat, silk. Memories burst in his mind. Beeswax for the candles unlit in the church when he had first met her, mint her mother had showed her how to grind in the kitchen when he had first met her, the smell of the hot wheat as he’d worked his scythe to bring in the harvest when he’d first met her. The ridiculousness of the thought struck him. He couldn’t have first met her three times.

  He followed her scent through the corridors of the palace. More shouting ahead.

  Two Varangians. They eyed the fine robe Loys had lent him.

  ‘Hand that over, friend. We don’t want to risk damaging it by killing you.’

  ‘It’s covered in blood, Kolli.’

  ‘We can wash that out easy enough.’

  Azémar didn’t understand them at all. Or rather he understood them in a new way. He felt their animosity, sensed their complacency. He knew, in a way words could not describe, that the living processes of their bodies had relaxed when they had seen him.

  ‘I am looking for a lady.’ Azémar found the Norse of his forefathers.

  ‘We’re all looking for one of those.’

  ‘I’ve been without her for a very long time.’

  ‘And we’ve been without one for a very long time.’

  ‘You were with a whore this afternoon,’ the other Viking spoke to his friend.

  ‘That’s a long time by my reckoning. The robe. We’re not here to gabble.’

  What were they saying?