Siege of Heaven

by Tom Harper

  I obeyed, though I doubt she saw anything but a mouthful of dust. She peered closely at my face, then walked around behind me as if examining a horse at auction. At last she was satisfied.

  ‘Did you eat at the funeral feast?’

  ‘I said I was fasting.’

  ‘Good.’ She took a cloth she had draped over her shoulder and tossed it to me. ‘A new tunic. I’ll wash the other in vinegar.’

  ‘As if I didn’t stink enough already.’

  Barefoot, I followed her onto the wall, into the next tower and up to its summit. A troop of long-haired, pale-skinned barbarians lounged by the battlements. Some still wore their armour, though there had been no fighting in weeks, and most had long-hafted axes lying near them, the precious blades wrapped in fur coverings. They were the Varangians, the emperor’s elite barbarian guardsmen, my companions.

  One of the men was standing with a cup of wine in his hand. In a pack of wolves you would have known he was the leader by his size; in this pack of barbarians you could tell it by the easy arrogance of his face, the commanding set of his mighty shoulders and the thick gold band around his left forearm. He had taken it from a Turkish corpse at the battle of Antioch, though I was surprised he had found one that fitted the girth of his arms. He was called Sigurd – named, he had once told me, for a legendary dragonslayer of his ancestors. Looking at him now, his beard the colour of fire, it was easy to imagine.

  ‘Demetrios. Late, naked and stinking of old wine.’

  ‘I’d rather be naked than dead.’ I pulled on the new tunic and sat back against the wall. One of the barbarians passed me a flask of wine and I drank it eagerly.

  ‘How was the funeral?’ asked Anna, sitting beside me and squeezing herself into the crook of my arm. ‘Did many go?’

  ‘Thousands.’ I wondered how many would die regretting it.

  ‘And the princes?’

  ‘They were all there. The one thing they feared more than the plague was failing to parade their piety before the masses. I doubt a single one is left in the city now.’

  ‘We should follow them quickly,’ said Anna. ‘The plague clouds are already gathering over this city. With no one to govern them, the mob will run riot.’

  ‘The clergy will stay to minister to them.’

  ‘Much good they will do. Those pilgrims and peasants have been too far from home too long. They are losing all restraint and reason. You can see it in their faces.’

  I stretched out my tired legs. ‘We’ve all been too far from home too long. Did any ships arrive today?’

  ‘Three from Venice docked in Saint Simeon, I heard. They brought no one but pilgrims.’

  I swore softly. Every day it was the same, waiting for the ship from Constantinople that would bring the emperor’s new emissary and free me to go home with Anna. Every day that it did not come, my spirits grew more brittle.

  ‘The patriarch spoke to me at the funeral feast. He has an errand for me.’ Briefly, I repeated what he had told me. When I mentioned the relic, Sigurd snorted.

  ‘The hand he used to wipe his shit. If the patriarch thinks that’ll win the Franks’ affection, he’ll be disappointed.’

  I had known Sigurd long enough that I should not have been shocked by his irreverence, but it still made me uneasy. ‘It’s a sacred object.’

  ‘It’s another week before we can go home.’

  ‘But only a week.’ Besides, in my heart, I knew that Sigurd and I had not distinguished ourselves as guardians of the emperor’s interests at Antioch. The Turks were gone, but to have Bohemond controlling the city in their place was hardly an improvement in the emperor’s eyes. At least if we found the saint’s hand for the patriarch we might salvage something from the campaign.

  I looked to Anna, hoping for support. Her face offered nothing.

  ‘If you die in some folly in the mountains, when you should both be sailing home to your families . . .’ She stood. ‘Anyway, while you go digging out old bones, I have living flesh and blood to attend to.’

  I held her sleeve. ‘In Antioch? What about the plague?’

  She shook free of me. ‘Even I know better than to imagine I can cure the plague. But there is a woman whose child is two weeks past due, and I promised I would see her.’

  ‘Be careful.’

  ‘You too. There are more than dead saints and ruined monasteries in the mountains.’

  ‘We’ll be back soon.’

  ‘And gone sooner.’ Sigurd rose. ‘If we leave now, we’ll have the cool of the evening to speed us on. Aelfric!’ He beckoned to a sergeant playing dice on a board he had scratched into the stone rampart. ‘Find a dozen men and have them ready to march in half an hour.’

  He turned back to us. ‘The sooner we go, the sooner we come back. And the sooner we leave this cursed city for ever.’

  γ

  The Varangians could be entertaining travelling companions, but that evening they marched in single file and said little. Perhaps, after all the months spent waiting at Antioch, even they struggled to be on the march again. Perhaps it was the high rampart of the Anti-Taurus mountains looming ahead that dispirited them. Each hour that we marched, the mountains seemed to grow higher, but never closer. As for Brother Pakrad, he struck out ahead of us and stayed there, always fifty yards or so in front, his head bowed and his hands wrapped in his cowl. All I heard from him were occasional snatches of mumbled prayers when the breeze blew them back to us.

  On the third day from Antioch, we reached the mountains. The air was cooler now, though the sun was no kinder, and jagged peaks towered over us. Crude terraces embanked some of the lower slopes, and a few hardy goats grazed the grass that pushed through the broken stones, but otherwise there were few signs of life.

  ‘Are these your monastery’s lands?’ I asked Pakrad, when a particularly steep stretch of road momentarily closed the gap between us.

  He nodded. ‘Not rich, as you see. But we are simple men, and like the goats we find our living where we can.’

  After a couple of miles, the valley opened out and forked into two still-higher valleys with a ridge of peaks between them. The road divided as well, and a ramshackle village had grown up at the junction. There was no inn, but we found the baker and persuaded him to sell us some bread and cheese for our lunch. We ate it in an empty field, just next to the place where the road forked. I noticed Sigurd looking at it unhappily.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘We’re not the first men to have come this way today.’ He swallowed the last hunk of bread and pointed to the road. A thin stream dribbled across it, and in the surrounding dark earth I could see the churned impressions of many hooves.

  I was too far away to see them clearly. ‘Perhaps they were cattle.’

  ‘Have you seen any cows since we came into the mountains?’ Sigurd gestured a little further up the road, where low mounds rose like molehills in its course. ‘I know you’ve lived in the city for twenty years, but even you must be able to recognise horse shit when you see it.’

  I twisted around to look at Brother Pakrad, who was, as ever, sitting a little way apart. ‘Which way to your monastery?’

  He pointed right, to the north-eastern fork. ‘At the head of that valley.’

  ‘The horsemen went the other way.’ I explained what Sigurd had noticed.

  ‘Probably Franks. Perhaps they have heard of the relic and come for it themselves. We should hurry.’ He looked up. It was only a little past noon, but a haze had clouded the blue sky and our shadows were fainter. ‘It is not far now.’

  Perhaps it was not, but it needed several more hours of painful drudgery to reach the monastery. The valley walls grew higher and steeper, funnelling us forward, while the hazy sky thickened into fat, dangerous clouds. We must have been very high, yet the air had not thinned. Instead, it felt heavy, pressing close around us. Pakrad was in a skittish mood, forever dancing ahead to spy out our path, while the rest of us trudged after him without enthusiasm.

  Afte
r a time, Sigurd dropped back beside me and nodded at our sunken path. ‘The road ended two miles back. We’re walking on a river bed.’

  ‘So?’

  He nodded up to the clouds. ‘So, if the storm breaks, where do you think all the water will go?’

  I shouted ahead to Pakrad, ‘How much further?’

  In answer, he stopped where he stood and pointed forward. Just ahead, the two sides of the valley curved together to close it off, like a vast natural hippodrome. A sheer buttress protruded where they met, as though the seams of the mountains had been pinched together. Perched on its summit I could see the remains of jagged walls and towers.

  ‘How do we get up there?’

  ‘We climb.’ Pakrad laughed, the first time I had ever heard a glimmer of humour from him. ‘It is not as steep as it looks.’

  That was true: it was not completely sheer, as it had seemed from the distance, but only immensely steep. A thin path threaded its way back and forth across the mountain face: in many places steps had been carved out of the rock.

  ‘We’ll never get the donkeys up there,’ said Sigurd. ‘Make them fast to those trees. Everybody else, get your armour on.’ Pakrad made to protest but Sigurd silenced him with a glare. ‘I don’t want anyone losing his balance because he’s got a load on his back. And who’s to say what we’ll find in the monastery.’

  The men threw down their sacks and pulled out their armour. High above us, I could see eagles wheeling against the darkening sky. I wriggled into my mail shirt and drew it snug over my shoulders, then helped Sigurd lace his arm greaves. I buckled my sword belt around my waist and slung my shield over my back. Finally, I pulled on my helmet. Suddenly, the world was a confined and muted place – and even more stultifying than it had been before.

  Sigurd scowled at the path. ‘Up we go.’

  As so often, the last part of the journey was the hardest. Despite the clammy heat inside the helmet, it at least trained my gaze straight ahead, always on the feet of the Varangian in front of me, preventing me from seeing the precipice by my side. The few times I did look out, I did not know whether to be terrified by the drop or dismayed by how far I still had to go. The shield on my back was forever unbalancing me, especially on the steps, which were worn smooth with age. Once the man behind me had to thrust out a palm to stop me toppling backwards.

  At last, just when I feared my legs would give out completely and pitch me into oblivion, we halted. I had stopped even hoping for the path to end, and almost collided with the Varangian in front of me. At the head of the line, at the top of a last flight of stairs, Pakrad was standing in front of a door that seemed to lead into the cliff face itself. Only when I looked up did I see that, just above me, the rough rock of the cliff resolved itself into a sheer wall of square-chiselled stone. The masonry was so precise that I could hardly tell where nature’s work ended and man’s began.

  ‘Is this the monastery’s front gate?’ asked Sigurd sceptically.

  ‘Sometimes it is wiser to come in by the back door,’ said Pakrad.

  With the mordant creak of long-unused hinges, the door in the cliff swung open. Just before I passed inside, I felt the first drops of rain begin to fall.

  The Turks might have sacked the monastery but it would be many centuries – perhaps even to the great day of judgement – before the ruins were razed entirely. The foundations had not been erected by men: they had been carved out of the solid rock of the hilltop, so high that they towered over us as we walked through them. Together with the foundations they made a vast stone cauldron, crisscrossed with snatches of walls and strewn with megalithic rubble. They seemed even more mammoth in the wet gloom, while the walls stood stark against the leaden sky.

  But someone must have been here since the Turks, for I gradually began to notice signs of repairs clumsily patched onto the mighty foundations. Cracks had been filled with bricks and mortar, while elsewhere wooden stockades had been erected in place of the old walls. A few of the chambers had even been re-roofed, with reed thatch instead of the shattered tiles that lay everywhere. I wandered through the ruins, frightening up a flock of nesting birds, but saw no one.

  ‘Where is this relic hidden?’ I called. The wind was stronger here on the summit, and colder, whistling through the glassless windows. My tentative words were snatched away almost before they passed my lips.

  ‘Here.’ Brother Pakrad’s face appeared in a doorway, beneath a broken arch whose two stumps reached towards each other like claws. ‘In here.’

  I looked around. The rest of our company had scattered to search the ruins, not trusting our solitude, and I was alone. The rain was drumming harder now. Brother Pakrad beckoned me forward. ‘Come. The relic is in here.’ I ducked under the broken arch, though I did not need to, into a rounded apse where the monastery church had once stood. A part of its domed roof still arced overhead, fractured like an eggshell, but otherwise it was open. Weeds had driven cracks through the tiled floor and the icons on the walls had crumbled, so that they represented not whole men but a dismembered host, the army of the saints as they might have appeared in the aftermath of a terrible battle.

  ‘Over here.’

  At least the remaining portion of the roof sheltered me from the rain. I followed where Pakrad led me, to a pedestal at the back of the church near where an altar must once have stood. It seemed far removed from God now.

  ‘Pull that stone,’ he ordered.

  I knelt. It was easy to see the stone the monk meant. It had been cut to fit its niche, but not so perfectly as to hide the gaps where mortar should have held it in place. It rose slightly higher than the adjoining blocks as well, giving a purchase for my fingertips to press against. A small cross, weathered almost to invisibility, was carved in its centre.

  It slid away easily when I pulled, revealing a small hollow behind. I reached in my hand and felt around in the darkness. The chamber was not large, no deeper than my elbow, and it took little time for me to establish its contents.

  There was nothing there. The hole was empty.

  Before I could wonder at it, a ticklish sensation under my chin caused me to raise my head. I suddenly went very still. Brother Pakrad had approached and was standing over me. He held a curved sword, pressing its blade so hard against my throat that I scarcely dared breathe.

  My eyes locked on his. He carried the sword far more naturally than the cross: the blade barely trembled in his grip. In the distance, I heard sudden shouts of alarm, followed quickly by the ring of clashing steel, and the bellow of Sigurd shouting my name.

  Pakrad moved the blade against my throat. It cut close as a razor – though thankfully no closer. ‘Answer him.’

  I had no time to obey – or defy him. Before I could speak, a barrage of heavy footsteps ran up the passage outside the church, paused, and rushed in. Kneeling with my back to the door I could not see anything, but I heard the commotion that accompanied them, then an abrupt halt and Sigurd’s bewildered voice calling, ‘Demetrios?’

  ‘Put down your weapons,’ Pakrad shouted. ‘Put them down, or your friend will be the first to die.’

  I could not hear if they obeyed, for suddenly the room became a pit of noise. Twisting back my head as far as I dared, I saw a small knot of Varangians surrounded on all sides by a press of armed men. More enemies were perched on top of the walls with bows in their hands, black as crows. Rain poured into the roofless church, plastering men’s hair to their heads and making their weapons slick in their hands. Those bows would be almost useless, but that would not turn the odds in our favour. Above me, the rain drummed on the fractured roof so hard I thought it might crack and bury me.

  Sigurd, standing at the head of the Varangians, caught my eye. He gave a resigned shrug, though I saw he had not put down his axe. A nudge on my throat from Pakrad’s sword forced my head back around.

  ‘Put down your weapons,’ Pakrad repeated. The men who surrounded the Varangians were becoming agitated. ‘Put them down now.’

  O
ver the pelting rain, I heard the defeated clatter of a heavy axe falling on stone. And then, very suddenly, a rushing of air and a sound like damp wood being chopped. The sword that had been against my neck fell to the ground as Pakrad reeled back. Blood cascaded down his cowl, pouring from the gash where a small throwing axe had almost severed his arm from his shoulder.

  Instincts learned in the imperial armies and honed fine in the last year took over. I lunged for the fallen sword, snatched it up and swung it at Pakrad. But he had stumbled back, clutching his wound, and the blade swept wide. I had no time to chase him. Every man in that room had been poised a hair’s breadth from violence; now, the battle erupted. I charged back to the centre of the church, ducking away from the blades that stabbed at me, and threw myself into the besieged knot of Varangians.

  ‘We have to get out,’ I shouted in Sigurd’s ear. I shrugged the shield off my back and slung my arm through its straps. From the corner of my eye I saw a spear-point driving towards me and I rolled my wrists so that my blade knocked it wide. One of the Varangians behind me caught hold of the shaft and pulled it forward, unbalancing the man who held it: as he stumbled forward his head went down and exposed his neck. My sword flashed in the rain and he was gone.

  A cold and bloody rage overtook me: rage that I had ignored my misgivings and walked into this trap; rage that I might never see Anna again; rage that Pakrad had betrayed us. I could see him across the room now, whitefaced and bleeding but still shouting orders at his men. They must have outnumbered us at least threefold, but they did not have the discipline of the imperial armies. A wall of shields held them at bay, and the Varangians took savage delight in battering aside the spear-thrusts and chopping off the arms that held them.

  ‘We have to get out of here,’ Sigurd shouted from somewhere beside me.

  ‘How?’

  ‘Back to the gate. We’ll—’

  Sigurd broke off as our enemies pressed home another attack. I could hear their spears smashing and splintering on the shield rim that cased us.

  Suddenly, a bright chink appeared in the dark world of our defensive circle. One of the Varangians must have dropped his guard, for a spear had transfixed his throat and blood was pouring out of it like a spigot. He dropped to his knees but could not fall, for the spear held him upright like a man at prayer. The men beside him were desperately trying to close ranks but, even in death, he blocked them. It was all the opening our enemies needed: a wedge of men and spears drove in, prising us apart, and suddenly we were in a crazed mêlée of open combat. On my left, two of the Varangians dived towards the door but were stabbed back. I knocked aside a spear-thrust with my shield but did not have the strength to counter-attack; instead, inexorably, I gave ground, my eyes flitting over the battlefield in search of allies. Where was Sigurd?