by James Wilde
The Mercian knew what value Alric’s fellow monks would have placed upon such a relic. His friend must have gone to great lengths to secure it, perhaps even risking his own life. ‘Why do you bring this to me?’
The monk searched for the right words. ‘You have a devil inside you, one that drives you to slaughter like some beast, that puts at risk friend as well as foe when the rage eats your heart. We both know this is true.’
Hereward nodded. That devil had been with him for as long as he could remember. ‘Aye. And with your prayers … your help … I have all but shackled it.’
‘But I will not always be at your side, my friend. Now that you fight in the army beyond these walls, I cannot help keep it in check. You must do it yourself.’ Alric pressed the relic into Hereward’s hand. ‘When you are on your own, when the night is dark, and you feel the devil’s presence, take this in your fingers and ask for God’s help, and he will give you the strength you need.’
Peering down at the fragment of wood, Hereward felt touched by his friend’s concern. But as he murmured his thanks and slipped the thong round his neck, he felt a sudden movement at his side. Furtive fingers were closing about his purse. A blade flashed, cutting the strap.
‘Hold!’ he bellowed. ‘Thief!’ He lashed out, but his own fingers closed on thin air. He caught a glimpse of a young man darting away, his hair matted and his tunic filthy and threadbare. No doubt one of the rogues who preyed upon the rich men and women wandering through the streets.
Hereward barged a path through the stream of bodies. He would get no help from the fine folk of Constantinople, he knew that. They looked after their own business, and be damned to the rest.
The thief weaved through the throng like a rat. When he plunged into one of the narrow tracks that ran between the grand houses in the shade of the emperor’s palace the darkness swallowed him up, but the Mercian’s eyes were used to the fenland nights and he did not slow his pace. Rats fled from his feet. His nose wrinkled at the stink of middens. As the din of the crowd fell away, he fixed his attention on the pounding of feet ahead.
The track led into a maze of silent streets leading towards the Genoese quarter along the north wall, and Hereward began to close upon the fleeing youth. Finally, he found himself close enough to snarl a hand in the rogue’s long hair and with a sharp yank brought him to the ground. His prey snarled and spat and thrashed. Hereward cuffed him once and pinned a hand across his throat. When his fingers flexed, the youth’s furious resistance ceased.
‘My coin,’ the Mercian snarled. ‘Now.’
Before the thief could respond, the night sang with the familiar clash of steel upon steel. An angry cry echoed. A curse. A threat. Hereward glimpsed rapid movement flashing in a street to his right: caught in a shaft of moonlight, a young man of some seventeen summers was surrounded by a gang of four cut-throats. The Mercian could see that the victim was of some standing. His tunic was well cut, and embroidered with gold or silver that glinted as he moved. Long black hair fell in ringlets around a serious face, dark eyes glimmering with sharp intelligence.
Short swords stabbed towards him. The victim whisked his own blade back and forth to hold them at bay, with some skill, Hereward could see. A robbery, no more. The young man had strayed too far from the crowds and now he would pay the price. And yet, as he watched, the Mercian saw that the rogues were hacking with concentrated fury. They seemed intent on ending the young man’s days.
‘Help me,’ the victim called in the Roman tongue, breathless. ‘I will make it worth your while.’
Seizing his moment, the cutpurse squirmed like an eel and broke free of the Mercian’s grip. In an instant, he was up and running once again. Hereward knew that if he delayed for even a moment he would lose him.
In the next street, the rogues slashed with renewed vigour. The victim was outnumbered; not even his skill with a blade could save him. With a curse, Hereward spun away from the disappearing thief. He could not leave a brave man to be cut down.
Unsheathing Brainbiter, he barked, ‘Leave him. Save your own necks.’
From somewhere nearby, another Roman voice said, ‘Kill him too.’
The shadows were too deep for Hereward to see the source of that command, but now he knew one thing for certain. This was no mere robbery. It was murder.
Two of the rogues turned towards him. Their faces were hard, their eyes cold. These were not warriors, but men used to slitting throats in dirty alleys. They would fight like rats to the last.
Gripping his sword tight, Hereward braced himself. ‘Come, then,’ he snarled. ‘You have picked the wrong man this night. My blade is thirsty for your blood.’
CHAPTER THREE
MOONLIGHT GLINTED OFF steel. As Hereward stepped beside him, the young man hissed, ‘Hesitate and you are lost. There is a high price on my head. These snakes will not let it go easily.’
Slow-witted they might be, but Hereward’s two foes were cunning enough to strike as one. When they stabbed their blades towards his chest, he was ready, clashing their weapons aside with his own sword. Sparks glittered. Again they stabbed, one high, one low, growing more confident now they had the measure of him. Or so they thought.
The Mercian feinted left and lunged. His blade ripped into the stomach of the nearest rogue. As the man stumbled back with a shriek, his life-blood pumping between his fingers, the other rogue blanched. Hearing the cut-throat’s dying cries, the one who had been the prey called out, ‘First blood. Now we have a fight upon our hands.’
From the corner of his eye, Hereward glimpsed the youth slash and thrust with the poise of a seasoned warrior. No weakling there. A moment later one of his foes was falling back, trailing a ruby stream.
With a full-throated roar, Hereward’s second enemy overcame his fear and threw himself at the Mercian in a frenzy of hacking and slashing. Within moments, the man lay twitching in a spreading pool. Gold or no, the final rogue had wits enough to see he was outnumbered and outclassed. Turning on his heels, he fled.
Hereward sheathed Brainbiter, pleased that he had managed to keep his devil in check. Perhaps Alric’s relic did indeed work wonders.
His companion’s face had been grim during the battle, but now a wry smile flickered on his lips. Prowling round the bodies, the young swordsman peered into the night in search of the one who had barked the order to end Hereward’s life. His attention fell upon a pool of gloom on a narrow track between two houses. Levelling his sword, he called, ‘Out, now, and answer for yourself.’
On the edge of Hereward’s vision, movement flashed on the other side of the street. A sallow-faced man with hair streaked with silver separated from the shadows. Steel shimmered; a knife swept high.
Distracted by whatever he thought he had seen in the dark, the young man was oblivious of the enemy at his back. Snatching out his blade, Hereward lunged, impaling the silent assailant.
The young man whirled, cursing through clenched teeth when he saw the body tumbling to the ground. ‘You have my thanks,’ he said, clapping a hand on Hereward’s shoulder. ‘I let my guard down like a boy fighting his first battle.’
‘These were not thieves.’
‘No, they wanted me dead.’
Hereward eyed the younger man. He showed the confidence of someone twice his age. ‘You owed them coin?’
The stranger grinned. ‘I do not need to walk far to stumble across an enemy in Constantinople. There are many who do not like my name.’ Crouching beside the fallen man, he turned the face up to the moonlight so he could study it. His smile drained away. ‘Sabas Apion.’
‘I should know of him?’
The young man pushed himself up. His thoughts could be read in his expression as he weighed his discovery. ‘Only if you spend your days at court. Sabas Apion is a powerful man, an ally of the eunuch Nikephoritzes. The emperor has leaned heavily on his counsel in recent times.’
‘Why would such a man want you dead?’ Hereward thought for a moment and added, ‘Why would such
a man be here, in the streets, wielding the blade himself? Powerful men do not dirty their own hands with killing. They pay others to spill blood while they are looking the other way.’
If he knew the answers to these questions, the younger man was not saying anything. He looked up and down the street and seemed to reach a decision. ‘We must be away from here, and fast. The rogue who fled may be raising the alarm, and if we are found here, over the body of Sabas Apion, our heads will not stay on our shoulders much longer.’
‘This cur attacked you—’
‘That matters little. No one will believe our claims.’ He gave a bitter smile. ‘There are already many at court who are keen to judge me. And a man like Sabas Apion, a wise man, a friend of the emperor …’ He shook his head. ‘This will be enough to do for me, finally.’
‘Perhaps that was the true reason for this attack.’ Hereward sensed movement behind him and whirled, his sword flashing up. The younger man frowned, seeing nothing, but the Mercian knew better. ‘Step out where I can see you.’
A figure separated from the shadows. Robes swirled, as black as a moonless sky, and a cloth of the same colour was wrapped around the head. The man’s skin was dark, his eyes like coals, and his shaped beard, too, was the colour of pitch.
‘Salih?’ Hereward said. The other man gave a slight bow of greeting, but his mouth remained a grim slash in a face of granite. His hand rested on the curved silver dagger that hung at his hip.
Salih ibn Ziyad was as cold and unknowable as the ocean, a wise man who studied the movements of the stars, and the ways of animals, and the plants that could be used for healing. But his heart – that remained unknown even to those, like Hereward, who had travelled at his side. Yet the Mercian had seen enough to trust this earth-walker. Brave, he was, certainly, and fierce in battle. But it was the loyalty Salih had shown to his mistress, Meghigda, the queen of the desert tribe called the Imazighen, that Hereward would never forget. When Salih had encountered her as a girl he had helped her cope with the murder of her mother and father, and thereafter he had dedicated his days to guiding and shaping her into the great warrior-queen she had become in that harsh, hot land in Afrique. Her followers had believed her to be imbued with the powers of the gods, a trick that Salih had crafted to ensure the fealty of every Imazighen man and woman, and a part that Meghigda had played as if born to it.
But then Meghigda had been caught up in the great games of power played by the aristocratic families of Constantinople. The Nepotes and the Verini, between them, had brought her low. Maximos Nepos had professed love for the queen and then betrayed her for his own gain. That betrayal had seen her fall into the hands of the cruel Victor Verinus, where her life had finally been snuffed out.
In the end, it was for Maximos and the Nepotes that Salih reserved his deepest hatred, the Mercian knew. Maximos was the one who had lured Meghigda from her home, and from Salih’s side. Maximos was the begetter of the ultimate misery. And so Salih slipped through the shadows of Constantinople, biding his time until he could gain his vengeance by using that knife on the throat of any of the Nepotes clan who rose before him. In his grief, he had become Death himself. He had no other purpose.
‘Is it fate that our paths cross here, after so long apart?’ Hereward asked.
‘God guides us all, according to his plan. But this night …’ Salih looked first into the face of the younger man, searching for the truth of him. Satisfied, he glanced down at the bodies. ‘This city seethes with lies and deceit and plots. I walk a path among them, and they led me here.’
There was movement behind the wise man. A young girl of no more than eighteen summers hovered on the edge of the shadows. She was a ragged thing, so thin her cheeks were like the edge of his sword. Her eyes were dark-ringed, her red hair lank and greasy. Hereward frowned. Her name was Ariadne Verina, a girl who had been whipped like a cur by her own father, and, no doubt, had suffered even worse things at his hands. Bending women to submit to his monstrous desires was the inhuman hunger that had consumed Victor Verinus. But in the end it had proved the curse that had destroyed him. At the moment when all his plots seemed to be coming together, the women of the Nepotes, Juliana and Simonis, who had been victims of Victor’s lusts, had risen up and unmanned him. How the Devil must have laughed at that ending!
Hereward narrowed his eyes at the girl. Did she feel any joy that her tormentor-father was now gone? And why, he wondered, was she now travelling with Salih ibn Ziyad?
Taking a step forward, Ariadne reached out a trembling hand. Her eyes rolled up to white, the muscles of her face growing taut so that her features subtly altered, and she shuddered before speaking. ‘I am al-Kahina, slayer of devils.’ Her voice was low and rasping, like a woman more than twice her age.
Hereward stiffened. Al-Kahina was the name that Meghigda had taken among her people. ‘What is this?’ he growled.
‘I live on, as I will always live, for all time,’ Ariadne continued in that voice that was not her own.
The Mercian glanced at Salih, but the wise man said nothing. Only the faintest smile danced at the corners of his lips. Hereward had seen that look before. Salih was playing with him. The wise man wanted him to believe that this wild girl was now the vessel that contained the spirit of Meghigda, a warrior-queen who would continue her fight for justice even beyond the gates of death. Perhaps that were so. Alric had told him how the power of God’s spirit could fill a man, and how angels came down to earth to guide the needy. And yet Ariadne had faced agonies beyond measure at her father’s hands, and Hereward had seen time and again on the battlefield how the madness of suffering could drive the wits to flights of wonder.
‘What do you say?’ he asked, playing along.
Ariadne pointed a wavering finger at him. ‘You are in grave danger. Enemies rise up on every side who would see your doom.’
Hereward smiled. This was not news.
But then Salih nodded in agreement and cautioned, ‘You must leave this place, now. The alarm will have been raised by the one who fled. The Varangian Guard will soon be here. There are some who would profit from seeing an English barbarian blamed for this night.’
‘What do you know, Salih?’
‘When I move through the city, unseen, I hear whispers; I divine the arc of plots that others can never see until too late. Constantinople is not a safe place for you, Hereward of the English.’
‘You have my thanks, as always,’ the Mercian said, bowing his head.
The words had barely left his lips when cries cracked the night. The thunder of running feet echoed closer. Hereward glanced in the direction of the tumult, and when he looked back, Salih and the girl were gone.
With a nod, the young swordsman darted along one of the tracks between the houses. Choosing another path at random, Hereward raced away just as the clamour reached the end of the street. He silently cursed his misfortune. The English had fought hard to gain a foothold in the city, with its strange rules and near-contempt for any who did not have gold to buy their place. He would not see it all destroyed for one good deed gone amiss.
The baked mud whisked by under his feet. The cries rose in pitch when the body of Sabas Apion was discovered, but the pounding of feet at his back did not seem to slow, and he could only guess his escape had been spotted. He ducked into another track where the gloom was so thick he could barely see a spear’s length ahead of him and ran as fast as he could. At the far end, one of the broader streets glowed in the moonlight. With luck on his side, he would be able to lose his pursuers in the maze and find his way back to his spear-brothers before his face was known.
But as Hereward threw himself out of the path, he glimpsed rapid movement to his right. Something hard smashed into his face. Down he went, barbs of fire burning through his skull, and when he came round a moment later he could taste blood in his mouth. A figure hovered over him. A cloak of a colour turned grey by the night, but which he knew was blood-red. A leather breastplate, oiled and scented with sandalwood
. A circular shield with a dragon sigil. And a familiar face framed by the steel helm, eyes incisive and filled with a cold humour. It was Ricbert, the right hand of the Varangian Guard commander, Wulfrun.
‘Hereward of the English,’ he said, weighting each word with a sardonic tone. ‘Out dancing with the Devil again. This time there is a price to pay. The murder of Sabas Apion cannot be ignored. The emperor will demand your head on the morrow.’
CHAPTER FOUR
THE SHADOW SWOOPED along the stone wall, in constant flight from the man who pursued it. Ragged breathing and rattling footsteps rushed in its wake. Along the line of sizzling torches in the monastery corridor Alric raced, his heart pounding to the beat of his leather soles. Muttering prayers, he tried to smother the pang of fear that God no longer listened to him, a guilty man. Would they never escape the doom that had pursued them for so long? Perhaps all of the English were cursed for taking up arms against a king, as some said.
He skidded to a halt, his feverish hands fumbling for the door to the church. He took a deep breath to compose himself in the Lord’s presence and then pushed his way inside. Fat candles guttered in the draught. In the golden glow, Alric breathed deeply of the incense and felt a hint of peace.
An enormous shape crouched in front of the altar, surrounded by a halo of flickering candlelight. The eunuch Neophytos was at prayer. Alric gritted his teeth. The snakes of that hated, power-hungry clan, the Nepotes, were everywhere. Even here, in God’s house. Neophytos was their spy in the Church, as Maximos Nepos now skulked through the emperor’s court. Wherever power lay, there you would find one of the Nepotes sharpening a blade and plotting. Alric crossed himself. Sometimes he wondered if the entire bloodline was the Devil’s own. The father, Kalamdios, had fought like a cornered dog during his family’s long rivalry with the Verini, so the stories that circulated in the monastery told. His savagery had only been contained when his wounds trapped his mind in his frozen body. Now he was little more than a straw man with naught but a flicker of life in his eyes. Only the youngest, Leo, seemed to still have some good in him.
