Behind the table were three men. Two of them were standing, arms folded and grim. They both wore helmets which curved up to a point, with eyepieces that masked their identities. They had dark moustaches and broad necks. A red sash sloped from their left shoulders, above bright baggy trousers. Between them, Tyler recognised the bristly head, beaked nose and deep frown of the older man who had intercepted him on Fleshmarket steps.
‘Welcome,’ the man spoke. ‘I apologise for the blindfolds, but I’m sure you understand.’ He peered at the faces. ‘You are twelve. We called eighteen. We found three amulets beneath the yew tree and we have three no-shows tonight. It is of no consequence. Twelve is enough.’
Tyler took a glance to his right. There was a woman in the front row next to the tall man. She was petite, with curling blonde hair tied in a ponytail. She wore a good quality coat and heeled ankle boots. The candlelight played on a pearl earring and a soft touch of make-up. Tyler had the impression she had come straight from work, perhaps even beautified herself in the staff bathroom before she departed. The image seemed at odds with this grim basement.
‘I can see the question burning in your eyes,’ the man said, gazing shrewdly at the newcomers. ‘The question that has been tearing you up since you each encountered our Venarii parties. The one that has put you off your food, loosened your bowels, drenched your bedding with night sweats and laid siege to your minds. And I can confirm that the answer to this question is, aye. This is indeed the Pantheon. You have found us. Or, rather, we have found you, because no one ever finds the Pantheon. I am Radspakr, of the Horde of Valhalla. Thane of the Palatinate. Paymaster. Custodian of the Day Books. Counsellor of War. Lord Adjutant to High King Sveinn the Red. These gentlemen behind me are Vigiles. Keepers of the Rules. And you would do well to abide by any that we give you.’
Radspakr studied his audience, shifting his eyes from one face to another. ‘And I ask myself, what else have you been feeling since you were handed your amulets? Elation? Terror? Animosity? Resolution? Why have you allowed yourselves to be blindfolded and herded into this basement? Is it because you wonder where this trip might take you? Where it could end? Whether it just might be so much more than what you hold in your lives already?’
He let the questions hang, then smiled humourlessly. ‘Twenty years ago, I was present at the very start of this venture. When the first sums were invested, when the Palatinates were created and when the rules were being thrashed out over days of debate. It was a crazy, exciting time and I marvelled at the confidence of the seven Founders, their determination to see their grand project given life. But I always assumed it would be a project fated to be played out in the haunts of the underworld, constantly harassed by the forces of law and order, and loathed by the rest of humanity. I was wrong on both counts.’
Radspakr rose and stalked around the table. ‘Firstly, I underestimated the power of money. You can do anything with enough wealth, it’s just a question of quantity. Money buys acceptance. It averts scrutiny. It smooths feathers. It permits everything without interference, as long as the right palms are greased.
‘And secondly, I never foresaw that this mad game of ours would actually enthral people. No matter the blood and violence, nor how hard we might try to keep our activities concealed, the world became obsessed with the Pantheon. If I could weave together all the conjecture – all the so-called opinion pieces, the wafer-thin facts, the grandiose assessments – I have no doubt it would stretch to the moon. Many condemn us. Still more fear us. But what I never saw for a moment was that so many would value us, even love us. It seems we all live in a soulless world. A place of routine and debt. Where every week is the same as the next. Where aspirations crumble. Where a person grows old just trying to find the keys to life. And so – perhaps inevitably – the Pantheon became a beacon amidst this grey, meaningless anonymity. We offer the glamour of the unknown. The thrill of the enigma. The blank canvas on which everyone can paint their dreams. People hear stories of danger and exploits and they are drawn by the romance.’
He pointed a bony finger at the high window. ‘They’re out there now, thinking about the Pantheon. The office workers. The school kids. The teenagers. The penniless. The homeless. The forgotten masses. All contemplating us. All asking if it’s true there are adventures and fortunes to be won in the Pantheon. All wondering how to find us. So you should count yourselves very lucky that you are the chosen… the Electi. You are here because I have been given your names. You are here because every detail of your lives has been researched and passed to me. You are here because you have been selected. You each have certain… aptitudes… which may or may not prove to be of value to us.’
He paused to let his words sink in. The room was still, save for the sound of the traffic, and he let the silence linger, then cleared his throat and continued more expeditiously.
‘The summer Interregnum is drawing to a close. The city is quietening and we can once again go about our business more freely. September marks the first days of the Armatura Season, when each Palatinate – each team – is awarded the funds it has earned during the last Blood Season and may use them to recruit fresh troops. Edinburgh is blessed with two Palatinates and our foes, the Titan Hoplites, have fared miserably and hold barely a silver denarius to strengthen their numbers. We of the Horde, on the other hand, have won great victories and have been rewarded accordingly. We have filled our ranks with new blood from our training house – the Valhalla Schola – but we have also decided to seek a few select individuals from outside. You may be those individuals.
‘The Pantheon uses Latin for its main terminology. Armatura means “to arm” – and that is the purpose of this season. Pass the tests, prove your worth and we may deem you Weapons Worthy and welcome you into our number. You will have read the drivel about the riches to be won in the Pantheon. Much of it is nonsense, but there are indeed great opportunities to gain reward. For those who enter the Pantheon, it is life-changing and the world out there,’ he waved again at the window above them, ‘will seem crass and meaningless by comparison. But the Pantheon is no place for the faint-hearted, nor for the uncommitted, and you would be wise to ponder this.’
He returned to his seat. ‘You speak of this to no one outside this room, nor do you attempt to find out the identities of any of your companions here tonight. Believe me when I say that it’s not through mere chance that we know everything about you that is worth knowing. The Pantheon has eyes and ears everywhere. We will be watching.’ He gestured to the men behind him. ‘And my Vigiles friends here don’t want to learn of anything that displeases them.
‘You are not yet under oath. You may step away from this process if you so wish. Each of your amulets has a number on the back. If we find it beneath the yew tree, we will forget we ever met you, just as we will expect you to forget you ever met us. Do you understand?’ No one spoke. ‘Do you understand?’ he demanded.
Ludicrously, Tyler found himself shouting yes along with the others, as though they were an assembly of schoolchildren.
‘Good. The cars will return you. If you still want to be a part of this by the end of the week, then you will gather at Bull’s Close on Canongate next Saturday, again at 10 p.m. As a symbol of intent, you will wear your amulets around your necks like true warriors of Valhalla.’ He glanced at both the Vigiles. Neither had moved, nor even changed expression. They were implacable behind their helmets and they scared Tyler more than anything else.
‘You are dismissed.’
‘Blindfolds on!’ called the female voice and there was sudden bustle. As he brought the material up to his face, Tyler looked across to the girl with the ponytail. She had turned and she caught his eye before bending her face into her blindfold.
Soon they were squashed in the cars, hammering hard around corners. When they were told to remove their blindfolds and deposited on the pavement of the Mile, Tyler looked around at the others, trying to catch faces, but each dropped their eyes and walked away in separate direc
tions. He waited and then cut through the alley and back across the square towards Waverley, stopping only once to shout exultantly at the moon.
IV
Lana Cameron had been in her final year reading for an MA in Linguistics in the School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences at Edinburgh University when she was raped at a student party on St Leonard’s Street on the south-western fringes of Holyrood Park.
Until that night in early May – only weeks before her Finals – she had rejoiced in university life. It was a long-held ambition of hers to live in Edinburgh, a city that she first found intoxicating during teenage visits from Dumfries with her mother. She became a model student, immersing herself in lectures and tutorials, reading hungrily in her room in Hall. An already fine distance runner who had represented Scotland at the European Youth Games, she joined the University Athletics Club and pounded out laps of the cinder track in the sharp air of countless dawns.
In her third year she was awarded a place on the Erasmus Exchange Scheme to spend twelve months at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. She fell in love with Greece, and the golden light that touched everything. She became fluent in the language. She trained under the Mediterranean sun and spent endless balmy evenings feasting on fruit and wine. She met a man named Andreas who was reading Ancient History and he shared with her the Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman remains around the upper town. They strolled in the harbour, hiked in Seich Sou forest, swam in the Thermaic Gulf at Peraia, ate bougatsa for breakfast and dwelt over meze in the tavernas of Ladadika.
She could have lost herself in Thessaloniki, but from the other side of the continent, she felt Edinburgh clawing her back. Her fourth year was spent focusing on her dissertation, becoming Secretary of LangSoc by popular demand, and researching a career as a translator. Andreas had inspired in her an appreciation of history and architecture, so she reconnected with Edinburgh through a new love of its twisted dark past.
Now, as Lana walked down the Mount towards the Scottish Academy and Princes Street, her ponytail swinging and her boots clicking on the paving, she struggled to analyse everything Radspakr had said and to understand how her life had taken such a calamitous turn and washed her up in that room beneath the road, listening fearfully to the Lord Adjutant of the Valhalla Horde.
She could remember the night five years earlier only in vague generalisations, but the attack itself she could recall in every sharp detail as though it were yesterday. The party was one of those usual student affairs. No rules of attendance. Friends of friends turned up, acquaintances of acquaintances. Anyone was admitted as long as they brought a bottle. Lana had gone with friends after an evening in a bar in nearby Newington. The downstairs rooms of the house were barely lit, stinking like a brewery and packed. A bass line throbbed somewhere beneath the conversation.
She remembered leaning against the doorframe of the living room, sipping from a bottled beer and talking to a man with smart jeans and hair so pale, it was almost white. Icelandic, she had thought, or perhaps Norwegian. Something about him called up the pristine sparkle of glaciers. The beat was loud and they had to tilt in to each other and shout. She was telling him about Thessaloniki, and he would nod and yell responses in her ear, but neither of them could really hear what the other was saying. Instead, they just kept speaking aimlessly and using the noise as an excuse to get closer. She could feel his breath on her cheek and he held his own beer against his chest in a way that caused his hand to brush hers. She could sense a lean physique beneath his shirt and when he looked at her, his eyes were ice blue and cocksure. At some point he raised his eyebrows in a question and she didn’t need words to agree they should find somewhere more private.
She recalled that he was decisive and she found it attractive. He led her upstairs by the hand. He tried various doors, escorted her into an empty room and pushed the door closed. Even then, she always remembered, she was keen to be there. She wanted to kiss him and her arms came around his neck. She enjoyed the moment. His mouth tasted of hops and his body was strong against her. She broke the kiss with a laugh.
And that was when it changed. The pressure of his arm around her didn’t ease and he began to walk her backwards. She stumbled and started to say something in protest. Her calves came up against a bed and she tried to twist around him, but he had her wrapped into him and, with a grunt, his momentum bore her over and his full weight was on her. She swore at him to get off, but he was hard against her. She worked her hands onto his shoulders and managed to push his head back. For a moment they looked at each other. His eyes retained their mesmeric blue glint even in the half-light. He was waiting for her to speak and she mustered every ounce of firm calm into her voice to state, No. He tilted his head at this, like a dog, then grinned and lunged back onto her. Brutally, he kneed her in the thighs and forced himself between. She punched him, but her cries were drowned by the music below and her resistance only aggravated his violence. He pawed expertly up her dress and she knew then that nothing would stop him.
Perhaps it didn’t last long, for she had no real sense of time. Suddenly he was done and he pushed up to adjust his clothing. He ran his hands through his hair and sat still for several seconds, letting his eyes rove over her in the dark. Then he bent his face close to hers and nuzzled against her throat, as though smelling her fear. ‘You know what you did wrong, girl?’ He wound a finger in her hair and then jerked it. ‘You gave up too soon. It’s the fight that’s so damn sexy.’ He sat up, blew out his cheeks dismissively and left the room.
She lay on the bed for an age, getting cold, feeling a stickiness on the tops of her thighs. Traffic went by outside. The hubbub of voices continued. The Black Eyed Peas were pulsing from the music system. Even if someone had come in, she couldn’t have moved or covered herself.
That night was the start of her collapse, yet also the beginning of something so truly incredible, so untouchably precious, that it would take her through a whirlwind of the greatest highs and lows that a woman could experience, and deliver her five years later into the arms of the Valhalla Horde.
As Lana reached Princes Street, her mobile rang.
‘I’m in the Voodoo Rooms,’ said the caller. ‘Tom’s pleaded fatigue and left. Want a nightcap?’
Her body cried out for a stiff drink, so she accepted, but she was soon regretting the decision. She wanted the alcohol, yes, but in the warm solitude of her bath at home, not with Justin in the fading hours of the night.
‘Rum and coke?’ he asked from one of the semi-circular booths when she arrived. ‘Or, then again, you look pretty worn out. Maybe something a bit more special?’
He handed her the cocktail menu and she flipped through, avoiding his eyes. ‘A Gin Palace Blush.’
‘Crispy and elegant,’ he said as he took back the menu and read the drink notes. ‘Naturally!’ He looked up at her and winked, thinking her fatigue sculpted her features and her eyes were pools of dark green mystery.
Then he walked away to begin a cheerful dialogue with the bartender and Lana was thankful that cocktails took time to make. She caught her reflection in giant mirrors above the bar and grimaced. Twenty minutes earlier she was being bundled unseeing out of a cellar and crammed into vehicles with strangers.
He was coming back, a champagne flute in one hand and a whisky tumbler in the other. She smiled her thanks and toyed with the glass, watching the blueberries bounce in the bubbles.
‘You look beautiful,’ he said, suddenly serious.
‘You just told me I looked worn out.’
‘Worn out and beautiful. You have eyes like no one I’ve ever met.’
She smiled limply and gave a slight shrug.
‘So what did you get up to with Helen?’ he asked.
‘Oh, we had a couple of glasses in… Brodies.’
‘Brodies? I wouldn’t have thought that was your type of place.’
‘It was fine.’
‘And Helen?’
‘She was fine. It was all fine.’ She li
ed and glugged her drink. ‘I’m sorry, I’m just tired. It’s pretty late.’
Justin was replying, changing the subject, but all she could picture was Radspakr as he strode across the platform, and the expressionless men behind, and the thin man in the hat who had glanced at her just before she replaced her blindfold. What the hell had they all been doing?
She could sense her amulet in her pocket, the one with the Roman numerals VIII engraved on the reverse. It seemed to be throbbing and she thought that Justin must know it was there. Surely he would pull it from her any moment. She dropped a hand and touched it. She was a fool. She would take it to Greyfriars, bury it under the bloody yew tree and be shot of the lot of them.
She forced herself to focus on Justin, sipping from her glass and allowing it to hide her expression. He was handsome in a clean-cut way. The sort of man her mother in Dumfries would adore. A good job in a law firm not many blocks distant and a sense of style that was all well-fitting tweed and fashionably styled brogues. He could have his choice of women, but he seemed to want her. He would make someone a wonderful husband, but she knew indisputably that it wouldn’t be her.
V
‘The Three Pillars employed to bring the physical body to peak readiness are as relevant today, as they were in ancient times. Speed. Strength. Violence.’
Once more they were underground, but this time it was no ordinary cellar. The space was larger and the walls rose to meet an arched roof. The stones spoke of great age and Tyler wondered if they stood in one of the many vaults that had been abandoned, bricked up and forgotten either side of the spine of rock that formed the Royal Mile. He had studied what was written about Edinburgh’s secret places. He had borrowed books and knew the basic facts. In the 1700s space on the bridges running up to the Mile was at a premium and so tenements were built into the great arches. They filled with artisans of every description, crammed into the tight confines: cutlers, milliners, victuallers, smelters, cobblers, and the other industries that flourished unofficially around them – distillers, smugglers, whores. More floors and ceilings were constructed and the sunlight was lost. They became damp and claustrophobic places.
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