The Ghosts of Athens (Aelric)

by Richard Blake

  I pulled him straight into the middle depths of the pool. I breathed out a stream of shining bubbles and got him briefly about the waist. I pulled myself further up his body and took hold of both his wrists, pulling his arms wide apart. He struggled with feeble desperation, and I felt his wrist flex as he tried to do something with his sword. But he had all my size and weight against him. So long as I kept that grip on him, the sword was useless. I shut my eyes and twisted down to head-butt him in his upper belly. I hit him again and again until I felt him sinking deeper, now under his own weight. I opened my eyes and looked at the stream of bubbles coming from all about the mask. I dug my fingernails into the gap between the bones in his sword wrist. I tightened and tightened my grip until I felt his hand open. I heard the sword land with a dull clatter eight feet or so below us. Still holding both his wrists, I pulled away from the man and curled into a ball. With all the force I could manage, I kicked him in the chest and let go of him.

  I swam down and picked up the sword. I paid him no further attention as I passed him on the way back to the surface, and he continued his slow and silent descent.

  I broke the surface with a great gasp and then a shout of joy. The other two men were now running up and down the sides. I reared up and waved my sword with another shout of triumph. I stopped myself from going under again, and swam towards Martin. Now standing with my upper chest out of the water, I shouted more obscenities and tested the weight and balance of this decidedly trashy sword.

  It was one down. But, if I now had a weapon, and there’d be no other straightforward attack, we were still trapped in the pool. Even if it was just two left, was I supposed to stand up to my neck with Martin as the sky turned first red and then to darkness?

  But I now heard a familiar laugh behind me. ‘Oh, dear – oh dear, dear me!’ Priscus chortled. ‘If it isn’t Cupid and fucking Silenus!’

  I turned. He was standing just by the entrance to the courtyard, with nothing on but a folded sheet about his waist. I looked at him briefly. If Martin was troubling me, it seemed that Priscus was growing smaller by the day. He’d padded himself out when clothed with layer after layer of black. But, now he’d decided on an evening dip, I could see the bony chest and the shrivelled folds of his belly. He’d taken his left arm out of its sling, and removed the dressing. If his wound was no longer bleeding, I couldn’t see what good he was planning to do himself by getting it wet.

  But, even as I looked, the two surviving attackers lifted their weapons and moved to close in on him. I pointed at my clothes heaped up on the stone bench. ‘My sword’s over there,’ I shouted.

  Priscus looked at the bench and smiled at the two killers. Before they could join each other at the end of the pool and turn on him, he’d already walked easily over and unsheathed my sword. He shook it and laughed again.

  ‘Well, come on, then, my lovelies,’ he called cheerfully. He walked round to the easiest point of escape from the courtyard and took up a fighting pose. I’d not have held out much chance for him. Without his clothes, he really was just a collection of bones, held in with wasted flesh and joined by a few sinews and scraps of muscle. His left arm hung useless. But he laughed again and stepped forward at the first of the killers to reach him.

  I’ll admit that my own advantage in any fight – at least until I’d reached extreme old age – lay always in superior size and weight. I only made it to extreme old age because I never had to face anyone bigger or heavier who possessed an ounce of intelligence or luck. I can’t say that I recall any movement at all from Priscus. One moment, he was still testing the balance of my sword. The next, six inches of shining steel were projecting from the man’s back.

  Without any change from his easy tone, Priscus laughed again and pulled my sword out of the dead body. He raised it again and stepped forward. Then he stopped and went rigid. He sat down in a coughing fit that didn’t look as if it would have an end.

  But I’d now reached the side of the pool. Still holding the sword, I pulled myself out with my left arm and jumped to my feet. His own sword raised over his head, the one surviving killer was hurrying forward to go at Priscus. I swung with all my strength and got him just below the wrist. My own sword would have sliced the hand off as if it had been the end of a celery stick. This one might have been an iron bar for all its cutting force. Even so, you don’t hit out with my strength and not feel at least the smashing of bones. The man screamed and dropped his sword. Nursing his ruined hand under his left arm, he darted back from me. I bent and recovered my own sword and stood in his path. To get away, he’d have to get past me. Or he’d have to run all round the pool. If he tried that, however, it was a matter for me of stepping back four or five yards, and I’d still be blocking his escape.

  When attacked on the Piraeus road, I’d barely had time to draw breath and put every effort into fighting for my life. Here, I’d had plenty of time to gather my wits, and was still pleased with a very easy kill. I grinned and stepped forward a few paces. I swung at the man with an easy motion and crippled his left arm at the elbow. There’d be no stabbing now, of himself or anyone else. I stepped back and kept my sword outstretched. ‘We’ll start with a few easy questions,’ I said lightly. ‘If I don’t like the answers, we’ll see what the Lord Priscus can do to loosen that tongue of yours.’

  Still coughing, Priscus was back on his feet. Holding one of the other swords, he moved forward and stood beside me. ‘Get him on his back, dear boy,’ he wheezed in Latin. ‘I’ll show you what miracles of pain can be achieved with just one good hand.’

  But the man jumped back from me. He raised his face to the sky and laughed. He paid no attention as I jabbed him in the side. Instead, he let out something too rapid for me to catch, but that might have been a prayer. He turned his back to me, and put his head down. Like an enraged bull, he charged at the wall that divided pool from main courtyard. I heard the bright smack of bone on marble plating as he threw himself forward. I saw the dark patch that he left in the fading light, and the faint smear that followed his descent to a still, black huddle at the foot of the wall.

  I looked at Martin, who’d managed to heave himself out of the pool, and had now covered his face with horror. Feeling less jaunty than I had, I took a step forward.

  Priscus got there first. ‘Not dead,’ he said as he kicked the body over again. ‘But he might as well be for all we’ll get out of him.’ He bent happily down and fiddled with the lower clothing. ‘We really aren’t having much luck in our interrogations are we?’ he asked. If he was about to add another gold ring to his collection, he didn’t get it. Instead, he gasped as another spasm of pain took hold, and he clutched at his side.

  I just managed, before he pulled his sheet higher, to see the lump on his right hip. It had about the bigness of a bowl the doctors use for cupping blood. I saw it for barely an instant. But the tight and dappled skin told me all I needed.

  Priscus laughed to draw off my attention. ‘But what have we here?’ he gloated with a finger pointed at the remains of my stiffy. ‘If I’d known your real feelings for our tub of Celtic lard, I’d not have gone to such extremes to trick you into Egypt to get him back.’ He laughed again and coughed. He did look set for another laugh, but had to stop and clutch at the right side of his chest.

  I hadn’t seen him in pain there before, I noted as I went through the motions of glaring at him. And, if its purpose hadn’t been so clear, I’d have had excellent reason for sneering back at him. Anyone who can’t tell the difference between lust and the excitement of a good kill has no right to call himself a man.

  But Priscus now got proper control of himself. ‘Get dressed,’ he said with quiet urgency. ‘If there’re three of them, there might be more.’

  I shivered slightly in the decided cool of an autumn evening as I hurried over to where I’d left my clothes. Without bothering to dab off the water that hadn’t already dried, I pulled on my under tunic and my shoes.

  ‘Bring a sword with you,’ I said to
Martin when I’d finished nagging him into his own clothes. ‘Be ready to expect the worst.’

  He nodded and swallowed. Without any actual protest, he picked up one of the fallen swords.

  I looked back at the black shape that lay in the deepest part of the pool. If a few drops of the blood shed by Priscus had found their way into the water, that was something I could overlook. The filthy body drifting gently across the bottom of the pool was a pollution that another day of cleaning and refilling might not efface.

  Chapter 49

  I can’t say often enough that the residency was a big place. Over by the pool, there had been a longish and thoroughly desperate struggle. I burst into the nursery, sword in hand, and nearly skewered Theodore as he wandered past me with a pan of milk. He only just avoided dropping it on the floor. I dodged the jug that Sveta threw at my head when I asked if all was well, and left Martin to deal with her screams of outrage and the wailing of two frightened children.

  It was different where Euphemia had her rooms. For the first time since I’d met her, she was out in the light of a rapidly fading day. She sobbed and rocked back and forth as she held the dead Irene in her arms. One glance told me she’d been killed by a single stab to the throat. Two bodies dressed in black told me she’d only been got after a struggle that would have impressed even if she’d been a man. Throats cut, all three maidservants I’d given Euphemia lay in the dust.

  ‘Are you hurt?’ I asked Euphemia.

  She looked up, blank misery on her face.

  ‘Are you hurt?’ I repeated.

  She shook her head and went back to crying over the body of Irene.

  I’d come back to her later. Five dead intruders didn’t mean the residency was clear.

  Priscus had already crossed to the other side of the main courtyard and was pulling at the locked door to the slave quarters. The door had been locked from the outside. So too the shutters. Using the apology for a sword Priscus had carried away from the pool, I smashed the lock and stood back for the scared and angry slaves to hurry out. Two of them had drunk poisoned beer, and might not get through the night. The others had their own swords at the ready, and were sent off, in groups of three, for a systematic hunt through every room in the residency.

  Now recovered, Priscus rattled the lock on the main gate. ‘I don’t see how they could have got through this,’ he said. ‘Do you know of any other way in?’

  I hadn’t found one. Nor had anyone else. But it was unlikely the attackers had managed to creep in during the day – not with the kind of security Irene had now set up. ‘Some hidden entrance?’ I suggested weakly. As I thought of something more useful, one of the slaves hurried into the darkness of the arched gateway.

  ‘Come and look at this, Master!’ he barked like an excited dog.

  Even before stepping into the dark cupboard, I could feel from the cool breeze that I’d no longer be reaching out to set hands on a sheet of rock. I stepped back out and took a wax candle from the slave. Cupping this in my hand against the breeze, I went in again. It was as if there never had been any rock there. I looked through the doorway into perfect blackness.

  ‘Who or what is within?’ I called in Latin to test the echo. Except for a slight deadness of the echo, it was like shouting into a deep well. I moved closer to the doorway. After a momentary pause, I stepped through.

  As in my dream of four nights earlier, I found myself on a flight of steps. But these weren’t straight or neatly cut. I held my candle up. Before it went out, I counted five crumbled and irregular steps down. After that, the shaft veered steadily to the left, and I saw no further.

  ‘Many thanks,’ I said to the slave who now handed me a lamp with a horn windshield. I stepped fully into the shaft and looked about. Again in my dream, the roof had been high enough for me not to notice it. Here, it was low enough for me to have to bend my head forward. Further evidence, I told myself, that dreams can suggest new trains of thought, but don’t provide new information about the world. ‘Here it is!’ I said, again in Latin, pointing at – though making sure not to touch – a bronze lever that projected about a yard from one of the walls of roughly cut rock. ‘There’s some kind of balancing mechanism that allows a plug of apparently solid rock to slide in and out of place.’

  I stepped out again and turned to look at the pale and frightened faces. Behind them, I could see Priscus. He’d gone back to his rooms and had returned with a small box. He somehow managed to combine a knowing smile with sniffing the entire contents of the box up his nose.

  I fixed my attention on the nearest slave, and went into his own language. ‘I want the top of that big table from down the corridor pushed into this gap,’ I said. ‘I don’t want anyone to go through for any reason. But I want this cupboard, and all about it, searched for whatever can be used to open and close this entrance from our side.’

  The slave bowed.

  I gave him a curt nod and walked past him into the corridor. ‘You will, of course, keep up your guard,’ I added. ‘You never know who might still be down there. You never know who might still be waiting to get back in there.’

  We’d had one evening of proper lighting. Now, the corridors were back in darkness. This time, however, they were clean. Without looking round to see if Priscus was following, I hurried, shielded lamp still in hand, up to the library, and sat down in the most comfortable chair. I reached out for the wine jug that had been left on the nearest table. I had a sudden thought and sniffed doubtfully at the contents.

  ‘It’s all right, My Lord,’ I heard Euphemia say behind me. ‘I’ve just brought it in myself.’

  I got up and turned. Though still looking scared and oddly aged, she’d managed to dry her eyes, and she was talking with reasonable firmness.

  I pushed her into where I’d been sitting and pulled up another chair. ‘Do tell me everything you can,’ I said with gentle urgency. ‘I need to know everything.’

  Even down to her reticence about what she’d just finished doing with Irene when those dark figures had burst into the room, there was an inherent probability in all that she said. It didn’t take me an inch, though, beyond what I’d already guessed. Irene had picked up a sword and forced the men down into the courtyard. Then they’d regrouped and gone on the attack. It explained all that I’d found and no more.

  I offered her a cup of wine, then recalled that she had no taste for it. I put her cup on the tray and drained mine.

  I heard Martin behind me. ‘The big slave with the scar on his face begs to inform you that they can’t find another lever,’ he said.

  I shrugged without turning. Doubtless, there had been a thorough search. That didn’t mean there was nothing to be found. I’d go back down myself in a while and see what I could find. Unlike a few barbarian slaves, fresh from their first sale at market, I’d had plenty of experience of how cunning engineers could be. The Imperial Palace in Constantinople was riddled with secret passages, and some of the machinery that worked the doors was concealed with astonishing skill.

  I heard a knowing and unpleasant laugh as Priscus came into the library. ‘Any chance of sharing some of that wine?’ he asked. Face flushed very dark from his drug, he hurried over to the window and threw himself into one of the chairs that had been placed there in the great reordering. He waited for Martin to go over, cup in hand, and settled himself to look out into the darkness. I watched as his body began to shake with silent laughter. I thought at first – no, I hoped at first – this was some reaction to all the killing and general excitement. But this was Priscus. He might double up every so often with the agony of whatever was consuming his flesh. But anything approaching normal human shock was as much beyond him as normal human pity or fear. He finished his wine and twisted round, a happy sneer on his face.

  ‘I suppose, Euphemia, dearest, you’ve definitely found your means of exit from this God-forsaken hole,’ he said, ending with a faint chuckle. ‘You’ll adore Constantinople,’ he went on once his voice was steady again. ‘
I must say, though, that our young friend would really be better off if he stuck to boys.’

  Euphemia’s answer was to get up and go towards the far door that led to her own quarters. I did think to follow her out. But Priscus was now turned fully round to face me.

  ‘It may be for the first time ever,’ he said as the door closed, ‘but do you suppose we should try to be honest with each other?’

  I got up and pulled my under tunic into place. It was still slightly wet, and this had left a stain on the old leather of the chair. I went over to look at the mural of Athens. One of the more enthusiastic slaves had tried cleaning a few centuries of dirt off this. In places, he’d rubbed far too hard, and patches of bright freshness now contrasted with others of dull smudging.

  ‘When I was a boy,’ I began without bothering to turn, ‘I was told how a fox gets rid of fleas. He hunts about until he finds a lock of wool, and then he takes it to the river, and holds it in his mouth. He now goes slowly into the water, and the fleas climb higher and higher up his body. At last they all run over the creature’s nose into the wool, and then he dips his nose under and lets the wool go off with the stream.’

  I did now turn round. My first sight was of a very puzzled Martin. I would have smiled at him, but Priscus put his head back and laughed.

  ‘You really aren’t as stupid as you look, dear boy,’ he said. ‘But would you forgive me if I said that I did see you in here the other night?’ He pointed to the now cleared area of floor where I’d been crouching with Martin. Then he put both hands together and cracked his knuckles. ‘You didn’t get that pretty golden hair of yours sufficiently out of sight.’ He sniggered softly and looked into what I hoped was a blank face. ‘I do say this, dear boy, to demonstrate that whatever I may have said to Nicephorus was just my own little joke.’