King's Man

'No,' Trdat replied. 'As far as I know, he was born lame, and he was ugly enough as well. But he was a magnificent metalworker, the finest ever known. He could make anything. He even fashioned a metal net, which he hung over his bed when he suspected his wife of adultery with another God. He pretended to leave home, then crept back, and when his wife and her lover were in action, Hephestus dropped the net on them as they lay stark naked. Then he called the other Gods to visit him and have a laugh at their embarrassment. It's said to have happened over on that island, inside a burning mountain.'

'Strange,' I said. 'We also have the story of a lame metalworker who took his revenge on his enemy. Though it was by murdering his sons and making drinking cups of their skulls and jewels from their eyes and teeth, which he presented to their unknowing parents.'

Trdat grimaced. 'Bloodthirsty lot, your Gods,' he said.

'I suppose so,' I replied. 'They could be cruel, but only when it was deserved. Like Loki, whom they punished for his endless deceit by tying him to a rock with the entrails of his own son. The earth shakes when Loki struggles to free himself. I saw Loki's statue in the Basilike.'

Trdat laughed out loud. 'That wasn't Loki or whatever you call him. I remember that statue. It used to be in the Forum of Constantine until someone needed the space and it was taken away and dumped in the Basilike. It's one of the earlier Gods — well, he was the son of what they called a Titan — by the name of Prometheus. He was a trickster who angered Zeus, the chief of the Gods, once too often. Zeus punished him by telling Hephestus to nail him to a rock. Then Zeus sent an eagle each day to eat Prometheus's liver, which grew again during the night. So he was in endless torment.'

'Sounds as if your old Gods were just as cruel as mine,' I said.

'Equally human, I would say,' was Trdat's response. 'Or perhaps inhuman, if you want to put it that way. Depends how you look at it.'

'Was I also mistaken in thinking that there's a marble panel in the Basilike which shows the Norns?' 'Never heard of them. Who are they?'

'The women who decide our destiny when we are born,' I said. 'They know the past, present and future, and they weave the pattern of our lives.'

'I can't remember seeing that panel, but you must be talking about the three Fates,' Trdat answered after a moment's thought. 'One spins the thread of a man's life, another measures it and the third cuts it. Norns or Fates, the message is the same.'

We reached our destination, the port of Joppa on the coast of Palestine, to find that the local governor knew nothing about our mission. For three days we sweltered in the summer heat, confined aboard the dromon while the governor checked with his superiors in the capital at Ramla if we could be allowed to land.

Finally Harald, rather than the easy-going Trdat, took command of the situation. He stormed ashore and I went with him to the governor's residence, where the anger of the towering northerner with his long moustaches and strange lopsided eyebrows cowed the governor into agreeing that a small advance party could go ahead to inspect the Anastasis while the majority of Trdat's technicians and workmen stayed behind. As we left the governor's office, we were surrounded by a clamouring crowd of elderly men, each offering to act as our guide. For years they had made their living by taking devout Christians up to see their holy places, but the prohibitions of Murad the Mad had destroyed their trade. Now they offered to hire us carts, tents, donkeys, and all at a special price. Brusquely Harald told me to inform them that he did not ride on carts and certainly not donkeys. The first person to come to the dockside with two dozen horses would be employed.

The horses that were brought were so small and scrawny that I thought for a moment Harald would take it as an insult. But their owner, as lean and malnourished-looking as his animals, assured me that the creatures were adequate to the task, and it was only two days' easy ride to our destination. Yet when Harald got into the saddle, his feet almost touched the ground on either side, and the other Varangians looked equally out of proportion to their mounts. So it was an undignified cavalcade that rode out of the town, crossed a narrow, waterless, coastal plain, and began to climb into the rocky hills of what our guide enthusiastically called the Promised Land.

I have to admit that I had expected something better. The landscape was bleached and bare with an occasional small field scratched out of the hillside. The few settlements were meagre clusters of small, square, mud-walled houses, and the inn where we stayed that night was crumbling and badly run-down. It offered only a dirty courtyard where we could stable the horses, a dreary meal of pea soup and flat bread, and flea-infested bed mats. Yet if we were to believe our guide, who was very garrulous and spoke Latin and Greek with equal ease, the sere brown land we were crossing was fortunate beyond all others. He reeled off lists of the holy men or miraculous events associated with each spot we passed, beginning with Joppa, on whose beach, he claimed, a great fish had vomited up a prophet.

When I translated this yarn to Harald and the Varangians they looked utterly incredulous.

'And the Christians revile us for believing that the Midgard serpent lies at the bottom of the World Ocean,' was Halldor's comment. 'Thorgils, don't waste your breath translating that old fool's prattle unless he says something believable.'

In mid-afternoon on the second day we rode across a ridge and there, spreading up the slope of the next hill, was our goal: the holy city of the Christians, known to them as Jerusalem. No larger than a single suburb of Constantinople, the place was totally enclosed within a high city wall studded with at least a dozen watchtowers. What caught our attention was a huge dome. It dominated the skyline of the city. Built on rising ground, it dwarfed the buildings all around it. Most astonishing of all, it appeared to be of solid gold.

'Is that the Anastasis, the place where the White Christ was buried?' I asked our guide.

He was taken aback at my ignorance. 'No,' he said. 'It is the Holy of Holies, sacred to the followers of Muhammad and those of the Jewish faith. The Anastasis is over there,' and he pointed to the right. I looked in that direction, but saw nothing except a nondescript jumble of roofs.

We rode through the city gate, crossed a large open forum with a tall column in its centre and proceeded along a colonnaded avenue which led to the area the guide had indicated. Our exotic appearance drew curious and sometimes hostile glances from the crowds. They were an amazing mix — Saracen officials in loose white gowns and turbans, merchants dressed in black cloaks and brick-coloured sandals, veiled women, half-naked urchins.

Midway along the avenue we came to a great gap in the line of buildings, and the guide announced, 'Here is the place.'

Trdat looked aghast. The space ahead of us was a scene of utter devastation. Massive building blocks, broken and dislodged, marked the lines of former walls. Heaps of smashed tiles were all that remained of roofs. Charred beams showed where the destruction had been hastened by fire. Everywhere was rubble and filth. Without a word, Trdat leaned down and picked up a small stone from among the weeds that were growing over the rubbish. Sadly he turned it over in his fingers. It was a single tessera, dark blue. It must once have graced a mosaic in the basilica that had sheltered worshippers who came to this spot. Of the church itself, nothing remained.

Our guide hitched up his loose gown and scrambled over the heaps of rubbish, beckoning us to follow. Harald and the others stayed behind. Even the hardened Norsemen were silenced by the sight of so much destruction.

I joined Trdat and the guide, just as the latter was saying, 'It was here,' as he pointed downward towards marks on the bare rock. To me it looked like the ragged scars left on Prokonnesos when the marbleworkers had prised away what they needed, only the marks of the chisels and pickaxes were random, and the spoil — the stone they had broken — was tossed to one side in a haphazard pile.

"What was here?' asked Trdat in a hushed voice.

'The tomb, the sepulchre itself. Murad's people hacked it to pieces.'

Trdat seemed numb with shock as the guide led us back through the lanes to find an inn where we could stay. The protomaistor said nothing for several hours, except to ask me to send word back to Joppa that the craftsmen waiting on the dromon should stay where they were. There was no point in them coming inland. The splendid buildings which had once stood around the Anastasis were utterly beyond repair.

'Thorgils, I never thought that I would face a challenge like this,' the architect confessed to me. 'The task is even more daunting than when my grandfather had to repair the Church of Holy Wisdom after the earthquake. At least he had something to work with. Here I have to start from scratch. I'm going to need your help.'

So it was that I, Thorgils, the devotee of Odinn, came to assist in the recreation of what our guide called the Holy Sepulchre. Partly my work was practical: I held the end of the tape as Trdat took the measurements of the area he had to work in, and I took down notes of the angles he measured. I helped him uncover the lines of the damaged walls, so that he could trace the ground plan of the earlier buildings and compare them with the architectural plans he had brought from the archives in Constantinople. I also made lists of the materials on site that might be reused — the surviving sections of columns, the larger building stones and so forth. But by far my most important contribution was assisting him in interviewing all those who had known the holy place before it was razed on the orders of Murad the Mad.

Our talkative guide was our primary source, but rumours of our enquiries spread throughout the city, and furtive figures appeared, followers of the White Christ, who were able to tell us what the shrine had looked like before its demolition. In the light of what those Christians told us, we cleared away some of the rubble and chalked out on the ground the dimensions of the tomb as they indicated. It had been a small, free-standing building, chiselled from the living rock, sheathed in marble and surmounted by a golden cross. The cave inside had been large enough for nine men to stand inside as they prayed, and at the back was the shelf on which the White Christ's body had been laid.

Trdat wanted measurements and practical details. He was told that the cave had been high enough for there to be a space of one and a half feet between the top of a man's head and the roof; the shelf was seven feet long; the entrance to the cave had faced east according to some, south according to others. Our informants told us that it had taken seven men to move the large rock rolled in front of the cave at the time of the Christ's burial, but that it had broken in half. Its two parts had been squared off and turned into altars, which had been set up within the great circular church that once covered the entire site. The man who told us that particular detail took us on a search through the rubble to see if we could find either altar, but without success.

Trdat was unperturbed. He drew a quick sketch of a squared-off stone, and showed it to the Christian. 'Is that how it looked?' he asked.

The man looked at the drawing. 'Yes, just like that,' he agreed readily.

Trdat gave me a quizzical glance and drew another altar stone, a slightly different shape this time. 'And the other one. Was it like this?'

'Oh yes, you have it perfectly,' his informant replied, so eager to please that he barely glanced at the drawing.

In our inn later that evening I asked Trdat if he really believed our informants.

He shrugged. 'It's not important if I do. People will believe what they want to. Of course I will do my best and try to reproduce the original details when I do the designs for a restoration. But as the years pass, I'm sure that those who are devout will come to believe that what they are seeing is the original, not my copy.'

All this time Harald and the other Varangians had been remarkably patient. They spent most of their hours in the inn, playing at dice, or they came to where Trdat and I were at work. The presence of these bearded warriors was useful as it kept onlookers at bay and discouraged those Saracens who shouted curses at us or threw stones. In the evenings Trdat sat at a table, ceaselessly drawing his plans or scratching out diagrams and calculations. Occasionally a Varangian might saunter over and peer over his shoulder at the work, then return to his place. But I was aware that their patience would not last for ever. I felt that without some sort of distraction, Harald and his men would want to leave.

It was our guide who proposed an excursion. He offered to show us the Christian sights in and around the city, then take us on a short trip to the nearby river, where, he said, the White Christ had undergone a ceremony of immersion. Trdat was at the stage when he was working on perspective drawings and wanted to be left alone in the inn in peace and quiet, so he readily agreed that Harald, Halldor and the others should take up the guide's suggestion, and that I should go as their interpreter.

To me that tour of the Holy Places was astonishing. There was hardly an item, a building or street corner that was not in some way associated with the White Christ or his followers. Here was Golgotha, where the White Christ was crucified, and our guide pointed to a bloodstain on the rock, which, if you were to believe him, had never been washed away. Nearby was a crack in the stone, and he assured us that if anyone put his ear to it he

would hear running water, and that if an apple was dropped into the crack it would reappear in a pool outside the city wall a mile away. Eighty paces in that direction, so he claimed, was the very centre of the world. At that point rose four great underground rivers.

Next, with many backward glances to see that we were not being followed, he took us to a storeroom where he showed us a cup that the White Christ had blessed at his final meal, as well as a reed that apparently had been used to offer up a sponge of water to the Christ as he hung on the Cross, and the sponge itself, all withered and dry. The item of most interest to me was a rusty spear propped in a corner. According to our guide, it was the very lance that had been used to stab the Christ in the side as he hung on the Cross, and had been rescued from the Anastasis before Murad's men smashed up the place. I handled the spear — it seemed very well preserved to be so ancient - and I thought it strange that the followers of the White Christ would claim to find such relics, while we, the followers of the Elder Faith, never imagined we could possess the spear which pierced Odinn as he hung upon the tree of knowledge. For us, what belonged to the Gods was their own.

The catalogue of marvels outside the city walls was just as wide ranging. Here were the marks of the White Christ's knees as he knelt to pray, the stone receiving the impression as if it had been molten wax. There was the same fig tree from which a traitor by the name of Judas had hanged himself; earlier the guide had showed us the iron chain he had used for the suicide. On the Mount of Olives were more marks in the rock. This time they were footprints left behind when the White Christ was taken up to the place which was the equivalent of Valholl for his followers. Remembering my conversation with Pelagia back in Constantinople, I asked if I could see the cave where her namesake had lived, disguised as a eunuch. Without hesitation I was led to a small, dank grotto on the side of the mountain. I peered inside, but not for long. Someone had been using it as an animal pen. It smelled of goat.

The more I saw, the more baffled I became that the faith of the White Christ was so successful. Everything associated with it seemed so ordinary. I asked myself how people could believe in such obvious fictions as the suicide's fig tree, and I put the question to Harald, picking a moment when he seemed to be in good humour, because I wanted to know if he was susceptible to the White Christ's teaching.

He turned that great predatory look upon me, the sea eagle's stare, and said, 'Thorgils, you miss the point. It is not the physical things that matter: not the lance nor the sponge nor any of the other things we have been shown. The strength lies in the ideas the Christians preach. They offer hope to the ordinary people. That is their reward.'

'And for someone who is above the ordinary, my lord?' I ventured to ask.

Harald thought for a moment and then said, 'There is something there, too. Have you not noticed how obedient the Christians are to their one God. They talk about following him, and no other. That is what any ruler would want of his subjects.'

I was still thinking about Harold's reply as we collected our horses from the inn's stable and rode out of the city behind Cosmas, our guide. We left through the eastern gate, and Cosmas asked me to warn Harald and the others that some of the people we would meet along our road could prove unfriendly. The most hostile were Samaritans. They had a horror of unbelievers, whether Christian or Jew. If we wished to buy anything from a Samaritan we would have to place the coins in a bowl of water because they would receive nothing direct from our hands, considering us unclean. And after we left, they would burn straw over the hoof prints left by our horses to purify all traces of us.

I suspect that our guide was secretly pleased when, close to the river, we did encounter a group of them. The Samaritans behaved exactly as predicted, blocking our path, spitting and cursing, shaking their fists arid working themselves into a frenzy of hatred. Then they searched the roadside for stones which they began to hurl at us, very accurately. At that stage Harald and the Varangians were provoked into action. They spurred their small horses into a canter and charged at their tormentors, smacking them with the flat of their swords and scattering the shrieking zealots, who fled up the hillside, surprised at such brisk treatment.

The countryside became even more desolate than before. After crossing the plateau, our road descended through a steep-sided gorge where the only building was a distant monastery clinging to the rock face like a swallow's nest. A few monks still lived there, our guide told us, because the semi-derelict building was so difficult to access that the Saracens left it alone. Emerging from the gorge we found ourselves riding through a wilderness of sand and scrub completely devoid of people, except for a single party of nomads who had set up iJieir brown tents among the dunes. They were burning thorn bushes for their campfire, and had tethered their animals. I had previously seen such creatures in the imperial menagerie — camels — and I wondered that these beasts, which attracted so much attention in Constantinople, were regarded here as no more unusual than an ass or donkey.

We camped on the outskirts of a ruined town. The place had been completely levelled four years earlier by a great earthquake, and the sight of the tumbled ruins prompted Cosmas to claim that, long ago, its defences had similarly collapsed when an army of besiegers had played trumpets and marched around the walls, calling on their God to aid them.

'The din probably woke up Loki, and he squirmed in his bonds,' muttered Halldor sarcastically. He was finding the guide's stories more and more outrageous.

It was another disappointment when we reached the river which we had been promised would be a marvel to behold. It was no larger than the streams beside which I had played as a child in Greenland. A muddy creek, it ran through reed beds, and the water when we tasted it was gritty and unpleasant. Yet this was the river, the guide assured us, in which the White Christ had been immersed, affirming his faith. The guide showed us a set of stone steps leading down from the bank. Several of the steps were missing, others were unstable, and there was a half-rotten rope to serve as a handhold. The steps, he said, were where the faithful had come in former times to imitate the example of the White Christ.

As if on cue — indeed I suspected that Cosmas may have arranged it — a ragged priest of the White Christ appeared from a small shelter of reeds nearby. He offered to conduct just such a ceremony for a small fee, promising that anyone who did so would store up 'riches in heaven'. I translated his offer, and to my consternation Harald accepted. He removed his clothes, piled them on the river bank and, wearing only a loose gown, descended the steps and waded in. There Harald allowed the priest to splash water over him and chant a prayer. I was dismayed. Until that moment I was sure that I could sway Harald towards the Elder Faith.

Halldor saw my expression. 'Don't take it too seriously, Thorgils,' he said, 'When you've known Harald as long as I have, you'll understand that the only riches he is interested in are those on this earth. He will do anything that will help him gain them, even if it means taking a dip in a muddy river. Right now, he's probably thinking that the White Christ is fortunate to have him as a recruit'

My consternation lasted all the way back to Aelia, as the Greeks called the Holy City, and it took Trdat's air of suppressed excitement to dispel my disappointment. The architect was positively quivering with happy anticipation.

'You can't guess what occurred in your absence, ' he said as he welcomed me. 'It's unheard of, at least since my grandfather's time.'

'What's unheard of? You look as though you've found a fortune,' I said.

'Better than that. While you were away, I went back to the site of the Anastasis to check some details on my drawings, and an elderly Saracen came over to see what I was doing. He was very distinguished looking and well dressed. Of course I showed him my work, made gestures trying to explain what I was doing, and so forth. It turned out that he spoke a few words of Armenian and enough Greek to tell me that he is one of the dignitaries responsible for the upkeep of the Holy of Holies, the Golden Dome. He has invited me to visit the place if I promise to be discreet. Can you imagine! No Christian has been allowed to look inside the Dome and see its wonders for years.'

'Don't talk to me about the wonders of local religion,' I said. 'I've been disappointed enough in the last few days.'

'Come on, Thorgils. This is an opportunity that won't come again. Of course you must accompany me to visit the Dome. My visit is scheduled for tomorrow.'

A servant collected us when the last echoes of the Saracens' prayer call had died away, and I had to admit a sense of excitement as Trdat and I, both wearing Saracen gowns, set off. Ahead of us the great shining Dome glowed in the early morning sunshine, seeming to float above the rooftops of the city. At an outer gate to the sacred area the servant asked us to change our footwear, providing us with slippers, then brought us across a broad platform paved with granite slabs to where Trdat's acquaintance was already waiting. Trdat introduced me as his architectural assistant and then, even before our host could speak, the protomaistor had grabbed my arm and was blurting out 'the Tower of the Winds!' To my surprise he was not staring at the magnificent building soaring up ahead of us, but at a much smaller structure built beside it.

'That is the Dome of the Chain,' explained our host, whose name I gathered was Nasir. 'It's the model of the main building, made by the original architects. They produced it so that the caliph Abd-al-Malik, who ordered the construction, could approve the design before building began. Nowadays we use it for storing valuables.'

But Trdat was already out of earshot, hurrying towards the smaller structure.

'Thorgils, that eight-sided base on which the Dome rests,' he called over his shoulder, 'there was one in ancient Athens just like that. That's why my grandfather made me study the classic buildings, to learn from their skills. Just as the men who designed the Dome must have done. How I wish my grandfather could have seen this.'

Trdat circled the small building excitedly. 'Do you mind if I take some rough measurements?' he asked Nasir.

The Saracen hesitated for a moment, then said, 'I suppose it can't do any harm. It will not be allowed inside the Kubbat as-Sakhra, the Dome itself. There you can only take a quick look.'

Trdat walked around the Dome of the Chain, counting his paces. Then he measured its diameter by reckoning the number of paving slabs across its width.

'Brilliant,' he breathed admiringly as he stood back to judge its height. 'It's the geometry, Thorgils. The height of the eight-sided base is the same as its width, and the height of the Dome is the same again. The result: perfect proportion and harmony. Whoever designed the structure was a genius.'

'Two of them,' said Nasir. 'A local man from the city by the name of Yazid-ibn-Sallam, and a great scholar called Abdul-ibn-Hayah.'

Trdat was squatting down and drawing with his finger across a paving slab, attempting make an outline in the dust. 'I wish I had brought wax and stylus,' he said, 'but I think I know what we will find inside the main building.'

Nasir looked at the Armenian as if he was touched in the head. 'We should not be loitering here. Just a quick glance inside is all that is permitted,' he warned, escorting us to the Golden Dome.

To me it was like a triumph of the jeweller's art, a diadem. Swathes of glittering mosaics covered the outer sides of the octagon, while the cupola above it gleamed as if solid bullion.

'How do you keep the Dome so clean?' I asked.

'In winter, when there is snow or rain, we cover it with animal skins and felt.' Nasir replied. 'The caliph had not intended that the Dome should be gilded, but the work went so well and so swiftly — it took just four years to build - that a hundred thousand gold dinars were left over from the money allocated to the architects. It was decided to melt down the coins and use them to cover the Dome in gold leaf.'

We had reached the entrance to the building, and he held up his arm to prevent us going any further, but we were close enough to see inside. At the centre, right beneath the Dome, was a honey-coloured area of bare rock which, Nasir explained, was the spot from which their prophet ascended to a Seventh Heaven. This Holy of Holies was surrounded by a circuit of marble columns which supported the great vault soaring overhead. Looking upward into the bowl of the Dome, I gasped in astonishment. Its interior was covered with gold mosaic work, and from the very centre dangled a chain on which was suspended a gigantic chandelier. The light from hundreds upon hundreds of lamps reflected and glittered off the golden surface.

'Now breathe deeply,' Nasir advised us. The air was heavy with the smell of saffron, ambergris and attar of roses. 'That's my task,' said our host proudly. 'I supervise the preparation of the perfumes which the attendants sprinkle on the sacred rock and burn in the censers. But it is time we left.'

'Double squares,' mused Trdat thoughtfully as we walked back to the inn. 'Just as I thought. That is what I was trying to work out when I was scratching in the dust. The interior of the building is based on a design of two sets of squares interlocking. The inner ones determine the circumference of the Dome itself, the outer ones provide the dimensions for the octagon. Best of all, I now know the size and shape of the dome which I will propose for the shape of the new basilica at Golgotha. I will model it on what I saw today, placing twelve pillars below, one for each of the apostles. I have all the information I need to work up my designs for the restoration of the Anastasis and the buildings around it. It is time we returned to Constantinople.'

Harald and the Varangians, when I told them the news, looked very pleased.

'Is the great Dome really solid gold?' Halldor asked. 'No, it's a hundred thousand dinars turned into gold leaf,' I answered.

'Who would have so much money to spare?' he marvelled.

'Saracen rulers are prepared to pay enormous sums for what they hold most dear,' I said casually, not realising that my comment would help Harald achieve his life's ambition — the throne of Norway.

FIVE

THE DROMON PICKED up her moorings in Bucephalon harbour after a frustrating homeward voyage. Headwinds meant that our passage back to Constantinople took much longer than anticipated, and already there was a wintry feel to the city when I said goodbye to Trdat, then accompanied Harald, Halldor and the others to the barracks of the Varangians-without-the-Walls.

We arrived in time to intervene in an angry confrontation between the Norsemen of Harald's war band and a senior Greek staff officer. The professional army, the tagmata, was soon to deploy to Italy for a campaign in the west, and the Armamenton, the imperial arsenal, had been working at full stretch to prepare weapons and supplies. Now the clerks who issued horses and weapons to the soldiers had drawn up a timetable for the troops to collect their requirements. Harald's five hundred Varangians were flatly refusing to re-equip with standard weaponry, preferring to retain their own axes and shields. Harald curtly informed the Greek staff officer that his men were a special force, recruited under his personal command, and he took instructions only from the palace or direct from the army commander, the strategos. The Greek glared at the Norwegian and snapped, 'So be it. You will find that the new strategos expects instant obedience, especially from barbarians.' Then he stalked off, seething with indignation.

'Why all this fuss about our weapons?' Halldor asked me. 'Why wouldn't they be good enough for the Greeks?'

'They are fiercely proud of their history,' I told him, 'They've been running an empire for seven hundred years and so feel they've learned how to organise things properly, whether a tax system or a military campaign. They like to do everything by the book - quite literally. During my time in the Palace Guard, our young Greek officers would arrive with their heads stuffed full of military information. They'd learned it by reading army manuals written by retired generals. Much of the advice was very helpful

— how to load pack mules or scout an enemy position, for instance - but the trouble was that it was all book-learned, not practical.'

'Fighting is fighting,' grumbled Halldor. 'You don't have to read books to learn how to do it. Practising how to form up in a battle line or how to use a battle axe left-handed, that sort of thing helps. But in the end it is valour and strength that win the day.'

'Not as far as the imperial army is concerned,' I countered. 'They call themselves "Rhomai", the Romans, because their military tradition goes back to the Caesars and they've been fighting on the frontiers of empire for centuries, often against huge odds. They've won most of their battles through superior generalship or because they are better equipped or better organised or . . .' and here I thought about the scheming Orphanotrophus . . . 'because they've been able to bribe the opposing generals or create some sort of disarray in the enemy ranks with rumours and plots.'

'Too clever by half,' muttered Halldor. 'No wonder they have to hire foreigners to protect the emperor himself. They're so busy scheming that it's become a habit and they forget who their real enemies are. They finish up by stabbing one another in the back, and no longer trust their own people.'

Harald, who had been listening to us, said nothing. Maybe he already knew what I was talking about, though years later I was to remember that conversation with Halldor and wonder if, once again, I had helped to shape the course of Harald's life. If so, then I was an unwitting agent, if not of Odinn, then of the Norns, or — as Trdat would have said — the Fates.

Leaving Harald and his men at the barracks, I lost no time in going to visit Pelagia, for I had been missing her while I was away in the Holy Land. Until now we had been friends, not lovers, but I was coming to sense that if our relationship continued to develop she might soon mean more to me than agreeable companionship and wise advice. Hoping to find her at home, I felt a pang of disappointment to discover that she was no longer living at her old address. I was redirected to a luxurious apartment in a more fashionable part of the city. When I complimented her on the move as well as the expensive furnishings of her new home, she was typically down-to-earth in her response.

'I have the coming war to thank,' she said. 'It's amazing how much money can be made from army contracts. It's such a relief not having to chase creditors in private commerce. The government always pays up, provided you grease a few palms in the commissariat.'

'Surely the army can't be buying its bread already,' I said. 'I know that army bread is rock hard and stale, but the campaign is several months away. Nothing's going to happen until spring, and by then the army will be in Italy and will be able to obtain bread locally.'

'I'm not selling them bread,' said Pelagia. 'I've got the contract to supply them with emergency rations, the sort you use on a forced march. The department of the new strategos asked for tenders, and I located someone who could supply sea onions at a good price. It was simple enough for me to assemble the other ingredients.'

'What on earth's a sea onion?' I asked.

'A plant like a giant onion. The bulb can be the size of a man's head. It's boiled, washed in water, dried and then sliced very thin. The army contract stipulated that one part of sesame was to be added to five parts onion, and one part poppy seed to fifteen parts onion, the whole lot crushed and kneaded together with honey. Nothing that a competent baker can't organise easily.' 'What's it taste like?' I asked.

Pelagia grimaced. 'Pretty foul. But then it is only eaten in emergencies. The soldiers are issued with two olive-sized pills of it per day. The stuff is claimed to be sweet and filling, and doesn't make a man thirsty. Just the sort of thing which the new strategos would want for his troops. He's a stickler for detail.'

'That's the second time I've heard about this new strategos,' I said. 'Everyone seems to be in awe of him.'

'So they should be. Comes from somewhere on the eastern frontier where he used to be just a local town commander. He made a reputation for himself by wiping out a raiding column of Saracens when the imperial army was very low on morale. The Saracens laid siege to his town and demanded its surrender. He pretended to be scared and promised to hand over the place next morning without a fight, even sent supplies to the Saracens to show his good intentions. But he deliberately included plenty of wine in the shipment and the Saracens got themselves drunk. That night the city defenders rushed the Saracen camp and killed every one of them. He presented himself in front of the Basileus with a sack out of which he tipped a torrent of Saracen ears and noses. The emperor promoted him to corps commander on the spot. Since then he's never lost a battle. He's a brilliant tactician, and his troops would follow him anywhere.'

'He sounds very like Harald.' I said, 'Is this military paragon going to command the campaign in Italy?'

'Only the land forces,' said Pelagia. 'My sister, who's still got her job in the women's quarters at the palace, tells me that the naval contingent will be commanded by John's brother-in-law, Stephen. It's the usual set-up. The palace doesn't trust anyone enough to give them sole command, so they divide the leadership.'

'And what's the name of this general who'll command the land forces?

'George Maniakes,' she told me.

RATHER TO MY surprise I heard nothing from the Orphanotrophus directly. I had been expecting a summons to his office to report on Harald's conduct in the Holy Land, but as my guardsman's salary continued to be paid - and I arranged for Pelagia to receive and hold the money — I presumed that I was to carry on the duties the Orphanotrophus had given me. Doubtless he had more important matters to occupy him, because the Basileus's health was showing no signs of improvement despite a frenzy of pious work. More and more of the civil administration had passed into the hands of the man the public referred to as John the Eunuch.

'You want to be even more cautious than before if you are called to his office,' Pelagia warned. 'The strain is telling on John. To relax, he organises debauches at which he and his friends get blind drunk and conduct bestial acts. But next morning his friends regret what they have done and said. The Orphanotrophus calls them in to explain any loose talk they have uttered the previous night. It's yet another of his methods of exercising control.'

'What does his brother, the Basileus, think of this behaviour?' I asked. 'I thought he was very religious.'

'More and more so. Besides sending Trdat to the Holy Sepulchre, Michael is lavishing money on monasteries and nunneries all over Constantinople. He's spending a huge sum on a church dedicated to St Cosmas and St Damian over on the east side of the city. The place is being remodelled. It's being given new chapels, an adjacent monastery, finest marble for the floors, walls covered with frescoes. You should go and see it some time. The Basileus hopes that his donations will result in his own cure because Cosmas and Damian were both physicians before they were martyred. They're known as the Anargyroi, "the Unpaid", because they never accepted any money for what they did, unlike some physicians in this city that I could think of. That's not all. The Basileus is paying for a new city hospice for beggars, and he's come up with a scheme to save all the prostitutes in the capital. He's having a splendid new nunnery built, and the public criers are circulating in the streets announcing that when the building is ready, any harlot who agrees to go and live there as a nun will be accepted. Doubtless the place will be dedicated to St Pelagia.'

The exodus of the tagmata began the week after we, the Old Believers in Harald's war band, celebrated our Jol feast, and the Christians observed the Nativity of their God. Watching the orderly departure of the troops, I had to admit that I was impressed by the efficiency of the army's organisation. First to leave the capital were the heavy weapons units, because they would move the slowest. Their petrobolla for firing rocks, the long-range arrow launchers and the cheiroballistra shaped like giant crossbows were dismantled and then loaded on to carts which ground their way out of the western gate of the city. From there they began the long overland plod to Dyrrachium, where they would be put on transports and ferried to Italy. When the column was halfway along the road, the army signallers flashed back the news along a chain of signal stations and the army despatchers released the light infantry battalions, the slingers and the archers to follow. Everything was tidy and methodical. The regiments of archers were accompanied by squads of sagittopoio, experts in repairing their bows, while the infantry had platoons of armourers who could mend or replace iron weapons. The squadron of Fire operators marched with a dedicated cavalry troop whose task was to protect the munitions wagons loaded with the mysterious ingredients for their secret weapon. Naturally each brigade also had its own field kitchen, and somewhere in the middle of the column was a team of army doctors with chests of surgical instruments and drugs.

The heavy infantry and the armoured cavalry were the last to leave. For their departure the Basileus himself attended the ceremony. It was a brilliant spectacle. The four palace regiments collected their battle standards from the church of St Stephen and the church of the Lord after the flags had been blessed by the priests, then formed up to march along the Triumphal Way. In front of them rode the heavy cavalry, coloured pennants fluttering from the tips of their lances. Each trooper wore a padded surcoat of heavy felt over his armour, and his horse was similarly protected with a jacket of stiffened leather and a mail breastplate. They looked formidable. Finally came my old regiment, the Palace Guard, on foot and surrounding the Basileus on his charger. They would proceed only as far as the Golden Gate, where the emperor would say farewell to his troops, then the Palace Guard would return with the Basileus to the Palace to carry on their duties.

Michael himself looked sickly, his face grey with fatigue and strangely bloated. I was reminded of the appearance of his predecessor, the murdered Romanus, at his funeral, which was the last occasion on which the Guard had marched along the Triumphal Way. Then there had been near silence. Now, as the imperial army set out for war, there was music. For the only time in my life I heard an orchestra on the march — drums, pipes and lyres — even as I wondered if I was seeing history repeat itself, and Basileus Michael was being slowly poisoned in some sort of labyrinthine court intrigue.

I left for Italy by sea a week later with Harald and his war band. Once again Harald's Norsemen had been assigned to serve as marines, perhaps because they had won fame for their actions against the pirates, but also as a reprimand for their Norse obstinacy about conforming to the army rule book. The result was that for the next two years we were given only a peripheral role in the campaign to regain a former jewel of the empire — the great island of Sicily.

Our enemy were Saracens from North Africa. For more than a century they had ruled the island after overrunning the Greek garrison. They had established a thriving capital at Palermo, and from their Sicilian bases they raided the empire's province of southern Italy and, of course, their ships menaced the sea lanes. Now the Basileus was determined to drive back the Saracens and restore Sicily to his dominions. George Maniakes, promoted to the rank of autokrator, was the man to do it.

He began with an invasion across the straits at Messina. Harald's war band was there to protect the southern flank of the landing, so I was a witness to the expertise of the imperial troops. The light cavalry had been rehearsing for weeks, and the attack went flawlessly. They arrived off the landing beach soon after dawn in specially built barges. Ahead of them three shallow-draught dromons, packed with archers, cruised up and down the shallows, forcing back the Saracen cavalry which had assembled to deny the landing. When the imperial landing craft touched land, the sailors lowered the sides of their barges, and the light cavalry, already mounted, clattered down the ramps. They splashed through the shallows, formed up and charged up the beach. The Saracens turned and fled. For the next ten days a steady stream of transports, barges and warships shuttled back and forth across the straits, bringing more troops and supplies, and very soon an imperial army of ten thousand men stood on Sicilian soil.

Maniakes himself crossed over on the fourth day. It was a measure of his professionalism that he saw no need to indulge in heroics by leading the attack. He and his general staff went ashore only when his command headquarters had been set up, ready to receive him. It was there, when he called a war council of his senior officers, that I first laid eyes on him.

There are times, I believe, when the Gods play tricks on us. For their amusement they create situations which otherwise would seem to be impossible. Trdat had told me that the ancient Gods of the Greeks did the same, and relished the results. The meeting between Harald of Norway and George Maniakes was one of those moments which we ordinary humans describe as coincidences, but I believe are mischievously arranged by the Gods.

How else, I ask myself, could two men so similar have been brought together, yet each man be so unusual that he was unique. Harald, as I have described, was a giant, half a head taller than his colleagues, arrogant, fierce and predatory. He struck fear into those who aroused his anger, and was a natural leader. George Maniakes was identical. He too was enormously tall, almost an ogre with his massive frame, a huge voice, and a scowl that made men tremble. He also radiated absolute authority and dominated his surroundings. When the two men came face to face for the first time in the imperial command tent, it was as if no one else was in the room. They loomed over everyone else. Neither man could have imagined he would ever meet someone so like himself, though one was blond and the other dark. There was a long moment of surprise, followed by a pause of calculation as the two men took the measure of one another. Everyone saw it. We sensed that they made a temporary truce. It was like watching two great stags who encounter one another in the forest, stop and stare, and then cautiously pass one another by, neither challenging the other, yet neither giving ground.

Harald's war band, it was confirmed at the council, was to patrol the Sicilian coast and make diversionary attacks on Saracen settlements. Our task was to discourage the local Saracen commanders from sending reinforcements to their emir, who could be expected to mass his forces near Palermo and come westward, hoping to drive the imperial army back into the sea. To meet that attack, Maniakes and the tagmata would march inland and seize the highway which linked Palermo with the wealthy cities of the east coast. Once the highway was under imperial control, Maniakes would turn south and march on Catania, Augusta and the greatest prize: Syracuse.

The Gods arranged another coincidence that day which, in its way, was a foretaste of what was to come for me and for Harald. Harald, Halldor and I were leaving the council tent when we saw four or five men coming towards us on foot. From a distance they looked like Norsemen. Indeed at first we thought they must be

Varangians; they certainly seemed to be Varangian in size and manner. We took them to be volunteers who had recently arrived from Kiev or from the lands of the Rus. It was as they drew closer that we saw differences. For one thing they were clean-shaven, which was unusual. For another their weapons and armour were not quite what we ourselves would have chosen. They carried long swords rather than axes, and though their conical helmets were very like our own, their chain-mail shirts were longer, and the skirt of the mail was split in the middle. It took a moment to understand that these warriors were dressed for fighting from horseback, not from ships. Our two groups stared at one another in puzzlement.

'Greetings! To which company do you belong?' Halldor called out in Norse.

The strangers stopped and eyed us. Clearly they had not understood Halldor's question. One of them answered in a language which, by its tone and inflection, I recognised. Yet the accent was so strong that I had difficulty in understanding. Several words were familiar, though the meaning of the sentence was confused. I summoned up the Latin that I had learned as a lad in an Irish monastery and repeated Halldor's question. This time one of the strangers understood.

'We ride with Herve,' he said in slow Latin. 'And you?'

'Our commander is Harald of Norway. We have taken service in the army of the Basileus.'

'We also serve the Basileus,' the warrior replied. 'They call us Frankoi.'

Then I knew. The men were mercenaries from Francia, but not from the central kingdom. They were speaking the Frankish tongue with the accent of the north. They were descendants of Vikings who had settled the lands of Normannia generations earlier, and that was why they looked so familiar to us. I had heard rumours about their prowess as horse warriors, and how they sold their swords to the highest bidder. While we Varangians arrived by sea and along the rivers, the Frankoi came overland, also seeking their fortunes in the service of the emperor. There was, however, a major difference between us: Varangians wanted to return home once we were rich; the men of Normannia — or Normandy, as they themselves called it — preferred to settle in the lands they conquered.

Maniakes took the Frankoi mercenaries with him when he marched inland, and they lived up to their warlike reputation when Maniakes rebuffed the emir's forces in their counter-attack. Then the autokrator began his long, grinding campaign to regain the east Sicilian cities. The tagmata steadily advanced along the coast, laying siege to one city after another, patiently waiting for them to fall before moving on. Maniakes took no risks, and Harald and his war band grew more and more frustrated. His Norsemen had enrolled in the army of the Basileus hoping for more than their annual pay of nine nomisma: they wanted plunder. But there was little to be had, and, worse, Harald's men received a lesser share when the army's accountants divided up the booty because the Norsemen were regarded as belonging to the fleet under Stephen, the brother-in-law of the Orphantrophus, and not part of Maniakes's main force. By the second spring of the campaign, Harald and his Varangians were very restless.

By then we were besieging Syracuse. The city fortifications were immensely strong, and the garrison was numerous and ably led. Harald's squadron of a dozen light galleys had the task of occupying the great harbour so that no more supplies reached the defenders from the sea, nor could messengers slip out to summon help. From the decks of our vessels we heard the clamour of the war trumpets as Maniakes manoeuvred his battalions on the landward side, and we saw boulders and fire arrows lobbed over the defences and into the city. We even glimpsed the top of a siege tower as it was inched forward. But the walls of Syracuse had withstood attacks for more than a thousand years, and we doubted that Maniakes would succeed in capturing such a powerful except after many months of siege.

An engineer visited our flotilla. He was rowed out in a small

boat and came aboard Harald's vessel. As usual I was summoned to act as interpreter, and when the engineer scrambled up the side of our ship, I thought there was something familiar about the man.

'May I introduce myself,' he said. 'My name is Nikephorus, and I am with the army technites, the engineers. I'm a siege specialist and, with your permission, I would like to investigate the possibility of building a floating siege tower.'

"What does that involve?' I asked.

'I'd like to see if we could perhaps tie up two, or maybe three, of your galleys side by side to make a raft. We would then use the raft as a base on which to build a tower which could then be floated up against the city wall.'

I translated his request to Harald, and he gave his agreement. The engineer produced a wax tablet and began making his drawings and calculations, and then I knew whom he reminded me of.

'Do you know Trdat, the protomaistor, by any chance?'

The engineer gave a broad smile and nodded. 'All my life,' he said. 'In fact we are first cousins, and both of us were students together. He studied how to build things up, I learned how to knock them down.'

'I went with Trdat to the Holy Land,' I said.

'Ah, you must be Thorgils. Trdat called you "the educated Varangian". He spoke to me about you several times. I'm delighted to make your acquaintance. We should talk some more after I've finished my arithmetic'

In the end Nikephorus calculated that the width and stability of the makeshift raft would not be sufficient for a floating siege tower. He feared the structure would capsize.

'A pity,' he said, 'I would love to have designed something novel and to have followed in the footsteps of the great Syracusan master.'

'Who's that?' I asked.

'Archimedes the great engineer and technician, of course. He created machines and devices to protect Syracuse when the Romans were attacking. Cranes lifted their ships out of the water and dashed them to pieces, weights plunged on to their decks and sank them, and even some sort of focusing mirror, like our signal mirrors, set them ablaze. To no avail, for he lost his life when the city fell. But Archimedes is a hero to anyone who studies siege craft and the application of science to fortifications, their assault and defence.'

'I had no idea that there was so much theory to your work.'

'If you've got time,' Nikephorus suggested, 'I'll show you just how much theory there is. If your commander can spare you for a few days, you could join me on the landward side of the city, and see how the army engineers function.'

Harald agreed to let me go, and for the next few days I was privileged to see Nikephorus in action. It turned out that he had been very modest about his qualifications. He was in fact the army's chief engineer and responsible for the creation and employment of all the heavy equipment against the walls of Syracuse.

'Note how those drills are angled slightly upward. It improves the final result,' he said as he showed me around a device like a very strong wooden shed on wheels. Inside were various cogs and pulleys connected to the sort of tool that ship carpenters use for drilling holes, only the instrument was far larger. 'The shed is pushed up against the base of the city wall, where the roof protects the operators from whatever missiles and unpleasantness the defenders drop down on them. The drill opens up holes in the city wall which are then stuffed with inflammable matter and set on fire. By quenching the hot rock - urine is the most effective liquid — the stone can be made to crack. If enough holes are drilled and enough fissures result, the wall will eventually collapse.'

'Wouldn't it be safer and easier to dig a tunnel under the wall foundations so it comes down?' I asked.

Nikephorus nodded. 'Trdat was right. You should have been an engineer. Yes, if the army technites were to have a motto, it should be "Dig, prop and burn". Excavate the tunnel under the wall, put in wooden props to hold everything in place, and just before you pull out, set fire to the props and then wait for the wall to tumble down. The trouble is that tunnelling takes time, and often the enemy digs counter-tunnels to ambush your miners, then kills them like rats in a drain.'

'Is that why you preferred to build a siege tower?' I asked. 'We saw the top of it from our ships. And heard the war trumpets.'

Nikephorus shook his head. 'That was just a ruse. That particular tower was a flimsy contraption, only for show. At the start of a siege, it's a good idea to create as much commotion as you can. Make it appear that you have more troops than is the case, launch fake attacks, allow the enemy as little rest as possible. That way you dishearten the defenders and, more important, you get to see how they respond to each feint, how well organised they are, which are the strong points in their defences, and which are the gaps.'

He then took me to see the proper siege tower he was building. The structure was already massive. Eventually it would be higher than the city walls, Nikephorus explained, and when the dropbridge on the topmost level was released, it would provide a gangway for the shock troops to rush across directly on to the battlements. 'Just the job for your axe-wielding Varangians,' he added with a grin, 'but it will be several weeks before the tower is ready. As you can see, we've only got as far as putting together the main framework of the structure. We still have to install the intermediate floor, where I intend to place a platoon of Fire throwers, and the exterior will need cladding with fresh ox hides. The Saracens are accomplished in countermeasures, and I expect they will try to set the tower alight with missiles of burning pitch or oil as we approach the wall. I'm designing a system of pipes and ducts to be fitted to the tower, so that if any portion catches alight, my men stationed on the topmost level with tubs of water will be able to direct the flow of water to extinguish the flames.'

'Won't that make the tower very heavy to move?' I objected.

'Yes, that's always a problem,' Nikephorus admitted. 'But with levers and enough manpower we should be able to roll the tower slowly forward. My main concern is that the Saracens will already have prepared the ground so that the tower topples before it is in place.'

We had clambered up a series of builders' ladders and were now standing precariously on the siege tower's highest crossbeam.

'See over there?' said Nikephorus pointing. 'That smooth, level approach to the city wall? It looks like the perfect spot for the tower when we launch our attack. But I am suspicious. It's too inviting. I think the defence has buried large clay pots deep in the soil at that point. The ground is firm enough to carry foot soldiers and cavalry, but if the tower rolls over them, the amphorae will collapse and the ground cave in. Then the tower will tilt and fall, and, in addition to the loss of life, we will have wasted weeks of work.'

But the Saracens did not wait for the operation of their sunken trap, if there ever was one. Even as Nikephorus and I stood on the half-built siege tower looking down on the suspect ground, a trumpet sounded the alarm. A sharp-eyed sentry had noticed the bronze gates of Syracuse were beginning to swing open. Moments later the gap was wide enough for a troop of Saracen cavalry to ride out. There were at least forty of them, and they must have hoped to catch the imperial troops by surprise with their sudden sortie. As they charged, they nearly succeeded.

There were more trumpet calls, each one more urgent, from the tagmata's lines. We heard shouts and orders from below us, and a squad of Greek heavy infantry came running towards the base of the tower. They were menaulatos, pikemen with long weapons specially designed to fend off a cavalry attack, and they must have been on standby for just such an emergency. They formed up around the base of the tower and lowered their pikes to make a defensive hedge, for it was now clear that the siege tower was the target of the Saracen sortie.

The raiders were led by a flamboyant figure. He wore a cloak of green and white patterns over his chain mail, and a scarf of the same colour wrapped around his helmet streamed out behind him as he galloped forward. The quality of his horse, a bay stallion, carried him well clear of his men, and he was shouting encouragement at them to follow him. Even the disciplined pikemen wavered in the face of such confidence. The rider swerved into a gap between the pikes. With a deft double swing of his scimitar, first forehand and then with a backward stroke, he hacked down two of our men before his horse spun round nimbly and carried him clear.

Seeing that the siege tower was now protected, the main raiding party changed the direction of their attack and rode towards the infantry lines, where lightly armoured troops were emerging from their tents, hastily pulling on their corselets and caps. The Saracens managed to get in among their victims long enough for them to cut down a dozen or so men before wheeling about and beginning to fall back towards the city gates.

Their entire sortie had been very quick. There had been no time for the imperial cavalry to respond, with the exception of just one man. As the Saracens were about to slip back through the city gates, a lone rider came out from the tagmata's lines. He was wearing mail and a helmet, and was mounted on a very ordinary horse which, even at a full gallop, would never have caught up with the retreating Saracens. He yelled defiance, and the green-clad leader must have heard his shout, for just as he was about to ride back in through the city gates, he glanced over his shoulder and turned his stallion. The Saracen then waited, motionless, facing his challenger. When he judged the distance to be right, he spurred his mount and the animal sprang forward.

Horse and rider were superb. The Saracen wore a small round shield on his left arm, and held his scimitar in his right hand.

Scorning the use of reins, he guided his mount with his knees and raced towards his opponent. At the last moment he bent forward in his saddle and leaned his body slightly to one side. The stallion responded by changing stride and flashed past the other horse, surprising the animal so that it checked and almost unseated its rider. At the same moment the Saracen slashed out with his scimitar at his enemy. Only by chance was the blow blocked by the long shield his opponent carried.

Belatedly I had made out that the Saracen's challenger was one of the Frankoi mercenaries. He appeared cumbersome and ungainly on his horse, and his weapon was a long iron sword instead of the heavy mace that an imperial cavalryman would have carried. Hardly had the Saracen ridden past his opponent than his agile stallion turned tightly and a moment later was galloping past the Frank, this time on the opposite side. Again the scimitar swept through the air, and it was all the Frank could do to raise his sword in time to deflect the blow.

By now the walls of Syracuse were lined with cheering spectators observing the unequal contest, while below them the troops of the tagmata stood watching and waiting for its inevitable outcome. The Saracen relished the audience. He played with the Frankish rider, galloping in, swerving, feinting with his scimitar, racing past, turning and coming again at a gallop. The heavily built Frank no longer attempted to urge his horse into action. All he could do was tug on the reins and try to turn his horse so that he faced the next attack.

Finally, it seemed that the Saracen had had enough of his amusement, and, riding a little further off than normal, he wheeled about and with a halloo of triumph came racing down on his victim. The scimitar was poised, ready to slice, when the Frank abruptly leaned back over the crupper of his horse. The Saracen's blow whipped through empty air, and at that moment the Frank swung his heavy sword. It was an ugly, inelegant blow. Delivered flat, and from a man almost lying on his horse's rump, it was an awkward scything motion requiring enormous strength of the arm. The long blade swept over the ears of the racing stallion and struck its rider full in the midriff, almost chopping the Saracen in half. The green and white striped cloak wrapped around the blade, the Saracen doubled forward even as he was swept out of the saddle by the force of the blow, and his corpse crashed to the ground and lay still. The helmet with its green and white scarf rolled off across the level ground.

For one moment there was a stunned silence, and then a great shout rose from the imperial lines. The stallion, puzzled by the sudden disappearance of his rider, whickered and turned to where his master's corpse lay, nuzzled the body for a moment, then trotted quietly back to the city gate, which was opened to let the creature in. The Frank ponderously rode back to the tagmata without a word or gesture.

He earned the name Iron Arm, Fer de Bras in his Frankish tongue, for his achievement. His adversary, we later learned, was a caid or nobleman of Syracuse. His defeat in single combat severely affected the morale of the city's defenders, while, on our side, the rank and file of the Greek army regarded the burly and taciturn mercenaries from Normannia with increased respect.

MANIAKES'S TROOPS HAD little time to celebrate. Word reached us that the Saracens were massing in the interior of Sicily, ready to march on Syracuse and relieve the siege. Their new army was commanded by another emir, and he was dangerous. Abdallah, son of the ruler of Kairouan on the Libyan coast, had brought several thousand seasoned warriors across the Great Sea, and our spies estimated that his force would soon increase to more than twenty thousand men, as more recruits were arriving every day.

Maniakes reacted with typical decisiveness. He ordered the tagmata to prepare to march, but not strike camp. Each unit was to leave behind a few men who would give the impression that the siege was still in place. They were to remain as visible as possible, keep the cooking fires burning, mount patrols and follow the normal routines. At the same time the engineers and heavy weapons units were to discourage further sorties from the city by keeping up a regular discharge of missiles, and the Frankish mercenaries from Normannia were to stay behind in case of emergencies. Our harbour flotilla was stripped of men. Skeleton crews, changing from one vessel to the next, would make it look as if the blockade was still operative. Harald gave command of this minimal force to Halldor, and then he and I, with about two hundred fellow Varangians, joined the flying column that Maniakes led inland, leaving quietly by night.

A week of forced marches across a dry and dusty landscape brought us to the west of a mountain whose subterranean fires reminded me of my days in Iceland, where the Gods in anger similarly cause hot rock to flow. Here the emir had established and fortified his base camp. He must have had warning of our approach, because when the tagmata arrived, the Saracens had already withdrawn within their defences and shut the gates.

Abdallah had chosen his position well. Behind the emir's camp, and on both sides, was broken terrain unsuitable for any direct assault against the fortifications. In front, open ground led down to a small stream shallow enough to be crossed on foot. On the opposite bank the land rose gently upward again to the low ridge where Maniakes set up his own headquarters, facing across to the Saracens. And here I watched how Maniakes's military genius turned Abdallah's apparent advantage against him.

Nikephorus explained to me what was going on. I had been perplexed to find the engineer included in the flying column because his heavy equipment was much too ponderous to be brought along. When I said as much, Nikephorus had grinned at me and said cheerfully, 'We'll find something on the spot to make up what is needed.' Now, as I waited near Maniakes's command post, I saw the engineer busy by a table and went over to see what he was doing. He had prepared a model of Abdallah's camp and its surrounding terrain set in a bed of soft clay.

'Hello, Thorgils,' he greeted me. 'As you can see, I don't always knock things down. I can also build them, but usually in miniature. This is where the strategos will fight his battle.'

'You and Trdat are just the same,' I said. 'In the Holy Land Trdat spent more time examining a model of the Golden Dome than looking at the real thing.'

'No, no, I mean it. Victory on the battlefield often depends on observation and timing, particularly when the enemy is so obliging as to shut himself up and let us take the initiative. See these little coloured markers? They represent the tagmata's forces. The grey markers are light infantry, orange for the archers and slingers, yellow for the heavy infantry, and red for the kataphractos, our armoured cavalry. Note that I've placed half of the red markers in that dip behind this ridge where they're out of sight of the Saracen lookouts. Later I'll add markers for the Saracen forces when I know more about them.'

'How's that possible? The Saracen forces are hidden behind their defences.'

Nikephorus winked at me. 'Not for long. That's just a wooden palisade, not a high city wall. Look behind you.'

I turned round to see an extraordinary structure rising from the ground. It was like the mast of a ship, but far, far taller than any I could have imagined. It was being hauled upright by a complex web of ropes and angled poles. 'It's a bit makeshift,' admitted Nikephorus, 'You can see the joints where my men have had to lash the sections together. But it will do. Think of it as a giant fishing rod, and that we're fishing for information.'

'What do you call it?' I asked.

'A spy pole,' he said, 'and that's only the lower section. We'll hoist an upper section later, and then steady it with guy ropes of twisted horsehair. There'll be a pulley at the top, and we'll use it to haul our observer into position. He'll not be the heaviest man in the army, of course. But he'll know his signal book, and after he's had a good look over into the Saracen camp, he'll signal down the information. Our scouts have already told us that Abdallah is expecting a frontal attack. His men have sewn the ground in front of their main gate with spikes, intending to lame our cavalry. They know that the kataphract is our main weapon.'

We spent the next four days waiting in front of the Saracen camp while Nikephorus and his assistants added to the coloured markers on the sand table according to the information from the lookouts. Each time they did so, Maniakes and his staff would come across to review their own tactics. They shifted the markers back and forth, discussed various possible manoeuvres, and heard additional reports from the scouts. Twice a day the officers of the tagmata were told the latest assessment of the enemy strength, and as I watched them cluster around the table I soon differentiated between them. Infantry men wore knee-length quilted cotton coats and greaves of iron to protect their shins, while the cavalry dressed in chain-mail body armour or the jacket they called a thorax, which was made of small iron plates stitched to a leather backing. Rank was denoted by a metal band of gold, silver or copper worn on each arm. The imperial troops were recruited from a dozen different countries and spoke at least as many languages, but all had been trained to the same army standard. They observed closely the little counters as they were moved about, and it was clear that every officer was learning precisely what was expected of him. I realised how chaotic and ill disciplined our Norse contingent must have seemed by comparison, and I understood why Harald and his men had been assigned a position where we would be directly under the eye of our general.

Abdallah brought us to batde on the fifth day. Perhaps he thought his advantage in numbers was overwhelming, or maybe he was still relying on the crippling effect of the iron spikes sewn on the battlefield. He did not know that our scouts had been picking up the iron spikes under cover of darkness, and that half of Maniakes's heavy cavalry had always remained hidden behind the ridge, where the army farriers had reshod all the cavalry horses with flat iron plates to protect their hooves. Nor had the emir any benefit of surprise. Hours before the Saracen army began to emerge from its defences, our observer on the spy pole had flagged a warning, and the imperial light cavalry were poised to disrupt the Saracens from forming ranks.

Standing next to Maniakes's command post, waiting to relay his orders to Harald and the Varangians, I watched as our scorpions, as Nikephorus called them, began to fling small rocks and iron bolts into the enemy ranks. These scorpions were the army's portable artillery — long-range crossbows mounted on tripods and light enough to be carried on the march. Between their salvoes the light cavalry unleashed wave upon wave of attack. One squadron after another they cantered deliberately forward to within range, then released a first and a second flight of arrows. Then each squadron wheeled about, and as it rode away the riders turned in their saddles and released a third volley.

'Our army learned that technique generations ago, on the eastern frontier, against the Persians. It triples their effective firepower,' Nikephorus commented.

Their assault looked to me more like a war game than a serious battle, yet men were falling in the Saracen ranks when each flight of arrows rained down, and I could see the disorder which resulted.

'If you watch carefully, Thorgils,' Nikephorus added, 'you'll note that one-third of the light cavalry is engaging the enemy, one-third is preparing the next attack, and one-third is regrouping, attending to their wounded, or resting.'

Fifty paces to the rear of each cavalry squadron rode eight men. They carried no offensive weapons apart from short swords. The moment they saw a cavalryman unhorsed, one of them came dashing forward at full gallop to retrieve the downed man who, reaching up, grabbed the rider's forearm, and at the same time placed his foot in a third stirrup dangling behind the rescuer's saddle. In one smooth movement the unhorsed cavalryman was plucked off the ground, and the two men were speeding away to the rear, where the cavalryman was provided with a remount. I estimated that for every five cavalry horses struck down by Saracen arrows, four riders were back in action by the time their squadron next moved forward. The exceptions, of course, were those men who were wounded. But they were not abandoned. They were taken to where Maniakes's medical teams had set up their field hospital behind the ridge and out of sight of the enemy.

All this time Maniakes never stirred from his position on the crest of the ridge, but stood watching the conflict. The tagmata was extended in a line along the slope of the hill, facing across the shallow valley towards Abdallah's forces. The Saracens were still clumped together in a disorganised mass as they flinched from the repeated attacks of the imperial cavalry. More and more of the Saracen troops were emerging from the gates of the camp, and now they filled the space in front of the palisade until they were too closely packed to be effective. Most of them were foot soldiers, as presumably Abdallah had not been able to ship much cavalry with him from North Africa, and many seemed to be peasant levies, for they were armed with only small swords and shields, and wore leather caps instead of helmets. I saw Saracen officers trying to cajole their men into orderly lines, pushing and shoving at the troops, hoping for some formation. Meanwhile the tagmata stood calmly, regiment by regiment, scarcely moving as their company commanders watched Maniakes's signallers for their orders. I had no idea of their battle plan, and counting the superior numbers of Saracen troops I wondered what Maniakes had in mind.

I never found out, because the Gods intervened. I have mentioned that our march to the battleground was across dry and dusty ground baked under the summer sun. The soil was very loose, almost sandy. As we waited for Maniakes's instructions, I felt a puff of wind, which stirred the dust around my feet. Looking behind me I saw that a windstorm was gathering, rolling down from the distant slopes of the fiery mountain and sweeping across the dry countryside. It drove before it a cloud of fine dust. In almost the same instant Maniakes must have noticed the approaching dust storm, because he said something to a staff officer who produced a wax tablet and scribbled a note on it. Then he handed the tablet to a rider, who galloped away to the rear towards the hidden heavy cavalry. Moments later Maniakes's signallers were flapping their flags and sending orders down the infantry line. Two regiments of the heavy infantry who had been facing the centre of the enemy position moved fifty paces farther apart, leaving a clear path between them.

Glancing back towards the Saracen forces I saw that Abdallah himself had now come out from the camp. A cluster of green and yellow banners rose above what seemed to be a group of his senior officers. They were positioned directly opposite the path that the infantry regiments had now left clear.

The wind ruffled the hair on the back of my neck. I heard the sudden slatting sound of the flap of the command tent. Small twigs and dry leaves tumbled past me, and the wind brought a strange noise to my ears: it was the metallic clatter of the horseshoes of the kataphract riding up the hill behind us, still out of sight of the enemy, but heading directly for the path that led to the heart of Abdallah's army.

Moments later the dust storm was over us. Grains of sand were falling down my collar, and the hot breath of the wind pressed my leggings against the backs of my legs. The enemy vanished from sight, obscured in a brown-grey cloud- A bugle sounded, and was answered by another, then a third. Through the gloom, over to my right, I could make out the shapes of heavy cavalry riding past in a dense mass.

Then, as suddenly as it arrived, the dust cloud swept on and the air cleared. Ahead of me on the far side of the shallow valley, the Saracens were still half blinded by the trailing edge of the swirling sand; many of them had turned away to shield their eyes, or stood with heads bowed, arms raised across their faces. Those with turbans had wrapped the cloth over their mouths and eyes. All of them must have heard the triple trumpet call of the imperial heavy cavalry as they sounded the charge, and looked up to see the kataphract descending down the slope towards them like those sand devils they fear, an evil spectre spawned by the dust.

The kataphract was the cutting edge of the tagamata. As a cavalry force it was unique. Hand-picked and rigorously trained, it was the ultimate shock weapon of the imperial army. Palace regiments could be relied to fight with great bravery, but they were comparatively unwieldy on the battlefield because they were on foot. Only the heavy cavalry of the kataphract could be rapidly directed with devastating effect at a weak point in the enemy lines. Maniakes was doing just this, ignoring the military manuals which advised a field commander to be cautious about committing the kataphract. Maniakes had seen his chance, and now sent it into action very early in the battle.

Five hundred troopers, Nikephorus later told me, made up the kataphract that day. Three hundred of them were heavy cavalry, the remainder were archers. They rode in a close-packed arrowhead formation, the troopers on the outer edges protecting the bowmen in the centre as they laid down a devastating rain of arrows directly ahead of them. The advancing horses moved at a deliberate trot for they were too heavily burdened to gallop or canter. Long padded blankets hung down on each horse's sides, shielding the animal's flanks and legs. Steel plates were strapped to the horses' faces, and across each charger's chest hung a guard of chain-mail. Their riders were equally well protected. They wore steel helmets and thick body armour. Heavy gauntlets covered hands and forearms, and their legs were encased in chain mail leggings under aprons of leather reaching to their heels. The lances they had carried on parade in Constantinople had been for show. Now they held the kataphract's weapon of choice: the heavy mace. Four feet long and made of iron with a six-sided head, it was an ideal instrument to smash any enemy.

The kataphract split the Saracen forces just as a butcher's chopper cleaves a chicken carcass on the block. They rode down the slope, splashed across the shallow stream, and drove their way into the enemy ranks. I saw the leading troopers wielding their maces as though beating on anvils. The kataphract's arrowhead formation thrust deeper and deeper into the mass of their opponents, and those Saracens who did not fall under the rain of blows were thrust aside by the armoured horses. They were too far away for me to hear their cries. Many slipped and were trampled under the hooves. A platoon of disciplined pikemen might have stopped the charge of the kataphract, but the Saracens had no such defence, and their foot soldiers were too lightly armed. The only real resistance came from the Saracen cavalry, who defended their emir. There was a confused struggle as their riders fought back with swords and lances against the remorseless advance of the mace-wielding shock troops. But the impetus of the kataphract was too great. Their charge thrust far into the Saracen position, and I saw the clump of battle standards around the emir begin to waver.

Maniakes saw it, too. He growled an order, and the signallers sounded the general advance. Drums began to beat, a war cymbal clashed, its sound ringing clearly across the valley. To my right I noticed the battle standards of the four palace regiments hoisted in the air. Behind them the icons of the White Christ and his saints were lifted up on poles to encourage the men. To the steady clash of the cymbals, Maniakes's entire force, some seven thousand men, swept down the slope towards the disorganised and leaderless Saracens. They broke and ran. Within moments the battle became a rout. A Greek staff officer shouted to me to tell Harald and his Varangians that they too should join the fighting, but the Norsemen did not need me to translate. Yelling, they ran down the hill towards the combat. I was about to join them when Nikephorus held me by the arm and advised calmly, 'Stay back. Your place is here. In case the situation changes.' I looked across towards Maniakes. He still stood carefully watching the confusion and, surprisingly, I could not detect any look of satisfaction on his face. He seemed to be thinking, not of the battle just won, but of what would happen next.

Four hours later the exhausted officers of the tagmata trudged back up the slope to report total victory. In front of the palisade, the emir's army had been crushed. The majority of the Saracens had run away, throwing down their arms and fleeing into the scrubland. The rest of them were either dead or sat meekly on the ground, knowing that soon they would be sold as slaves. The tagmata had lost less than a hundred men killed, and four times that number wounded. Yet Maniakes scowled as he surveyed his officers.

'Where is the emir?' he demanded sourly. 'The kataphract's duty is to decapitate the enemy by killing or capturing their commander. Otherwise victory is nothing. The Saracens will regroup around their leader, and we will face another battle.'

Abruptly Maniakes swung round and faced me. I quailed in front of his bad temper.

'You there,' he shouted at me, 'tell your northern colleagues that now they are going to earn their pay. As soon as we get back to Syracuse, I want every galley to put to sea and blockade the coasts. Abdallah must not be allowed to escape back to Libya. I want him taken.'

He turned again towards the officers.

'The palace regiments and the kataphract will return to Syracuse. Light infantry and cavalry are to go in pursuit of the emir. Track him down. He must be somewhere. I want this matter settled for good.'

Behind me I heard someone mutter in Norse, 'What about our loot?'

Maniakes must have heard and guessed the meaning of the remark, for he stared icily over my shoulder at the Norsemen, and said, 'All loot taken from the dead bodies or found in the enemy camp is to be brought to the quartermasters. They will assess its value, and it will not be shared out until the tagmata is back in Syracuse.'

Syracuse knew of our victory long before the tagmata reached the city walls. With no hope of relief from Abdallah, the citizens opened the city gates. The Greeks in the population greeted us ecstatically, the Saracens with resignation. Naturally Harald's Norsemen were eager to know just how much reward they would receive after the great battle of Traina, and we contrived to delay our departure for the coastal patrol until Maniakes's quartermasters had made their calculations. In the end each man in Harald's war band received a bonus of thirty nomisma, more than three years' pay. Certain items, however, were kept back for distribution to the senior officers, and this led to an open quarrel between Maniakes and Herve, the leader of the Frankish mercenaries. The object of their dispute was the same bay stallion which had carried the nobleman that Iron Arm had killed in spectacular single combat, a superlative example of that breed of horse for which the Saracens were famous. When the stallion was led forward by a groom and shown off to Maniakes, there was not a man in the watching crowd who would not have wanted to own the creature.

Unwisely, Herve, who spoke some Greek, ventured a suggestion. 'Autokrator,' he proposed, 'the horse should given to Iron Arm in recognition of his victory over the Saracen champion.'

Maniakes took this remark as an affront and an encroachment on his absolute authority. 'No,' he said harshly. 'That horse will be placed in my stables. I keep the animal for myself.'

Herve blundered on, compounding his error. 'Surely that is unjust,' he said. 'Iron Arm defeated his opponent in fair combat, and by custom he should receive the weapons and horse of the vanquished.'

Maniakes glared at him, his scowl of anger deepening. The two men were facing one another in the main city square. With Maniakes were a few Greek staff officers, while Herve was accompanied by half a dozen of his mercenaries. This was a very public squabble.

'The horse is mine,' Maniakes repeated. He was now so angry that his voice had deepened to an ugly growl.

Herve opened his mouth as if to speak, and at that moment Maniakes stepped forward and struck the mercenary full in the face. Maniakes, as I have said, was a huge man, a giant. The force of the blow knocked Herve off his feet, though he was tall and strong enough to be capable of standing up to a normal assault. As the mercenary started to get up from the ground, his mouth bloody from a cut lip, the Greek general unleashed a kick that sent Herve sprawling once again. Maniakes was breathing heavily, his eyes filled with rage as he watched the humiliated mercenary slowly stand upright with the help of two of his men, who hurried forward to support him. Maniakes's staff officers stayed rooted to the spot, terrified by the fury of their leader. I remembered the warning of the Greek officer back in Constantinople that the new commander-in-chief demanded instant obedience, 'particularly from northern barbarians'.

No one said anything, and the stallion and his groom stood there until into this fraught moment entered one of Herve's mercenaries, Iron Arm himself. He detached himself from the group of onlookers and strolled across to the horse. As he walked, Iron Arm was pulling on to his right hand his heavy metal-plated gauntlet. Coming up to the stallion, the mercenary began to pet the animal, stroking the magnificent head and neck, patting his flanks and fondling his ears. The stallion responded with pleasure, turning his fine head to nuzzle the man. Then Iron Arm moved to stand directly in front of the animal, put his left hand behind his back, and clicked his fingers. The stallion's head came up, the ears pricked in curiosity, the eyes bright and questioning, wondering at the sound. In that instant Iron Arm raised his gauntleted right hand and delivered a terrific blow with his clenched right fist, right between the stallion's eyes. The stallion collapsed, his legs folding up, killed outright. Iron Arm calmly turned and walked back to join his comrades.

Next day Herve and his entire band of mercenaries left Syracuse and returned to Italy, refusing to serve under Maniakes again.

'WHAT A PUNCH that man has got!' commented Halldor. 'The Greek general is going to regret getting on the wrong side of the Frankish mercenaries.'

We were taking our galleys out of harbour to begin our patrol, and the death of the stallion was the sole topic of conversation.

'Maniakes has been in an evil temper ever since Abdallah escaped him. I doubt that the emir will be caught now. Abdallah has had plenty of time to make his escape back to Libya. Still, if we are cruising the coast, maybe we can make a few shore raids on our own account and pick up a little booty on the side.'

Halldor's Viking instincts were to be rewarded beyond his wildest dreams. Of the five galleys in our flotilla, Harald despatched two northwards to cruise towards Palermo in case the emir was still there. Two more galleys were sent to patrol the coast, facing across to Libya and the emir's most likely escape route. The fifth galley, Harald's own, had a more free-ranging task. We would search along the south-eastern coast, examining the bays and harbours for any trace of Saracen shipping capable of carrying the emir off the island. Now that Abdallah was on the run, we knew we could rely on receiving intelligence from the Greek-speaking population who lived along the coast.

For nearly a week, we made our way slowly along the rock-bound coast, looking into creeks and harbours, interrogating fishermen and finding nothing suspicious. It seemed that Sicily was quiet again now the emir was defeated, and the populace had returned to their normal peacetime lives. We were about halfway along the coast when we came to a long beach of white sand backed with low dunes covered with tussock grass. This itself was unusual, for most of the shore that we had seen was cliff and reef. I asked the Greek fisherman who was our pilot along this stretch of coast if this beach was ever used as a landing place, and he shook his head. Apparently the nearest village was far inland, and the fishermen had no reason to come there because the fishing in the area was bad. I translated his reply to Harald, and immediately the Norwegian's predatory instinct was aroused. He scanned the beach for several moments. We could see nothing. The beach looked quiet.

'Turn for shore,' Harald ordered the helmsman. 'This needs a closer look.'

Gently we ran the galley's bows on land, and a dozen of us jumped ashore. I could hear only the slight lap of the waves on the beach. Squinting against the glare of the white sand, for the sun was blazing down, we began to walk up along the beach.

'You four,' Harald ordered a group of men next to him,

'Search in that direction as far as those low bushes in the distance. The others come with me.'

He began to walk towards the dunes. I followed him, my feet sinking in the soft sand as I tried to keep up with his massive stride. We had gone perhaps fifty paces when, suddenly, four Saracens sprang up in front of us. They had been crouched down, hiding behind a dune, and now they sprinted away inland, feet flying so I could see the soles of their bare feet. They reminded me of hares who wait until the last moment before the hunter treads on them, then start away in panic. And they were as quick, for there was no hope of catching them. We stopped and watched them growing smaller in the distance. When they were out of range of even the most ambitious archer, one of the fugitives stopped and turned, then waited there, watching us.

Harald narrowed his eyes as he looked at the distant figure. 'What does that remind you of, Thorgils?' he asked.

'My lord? I was just thinking to myself that they ran as fast as hares.'

'Not hares,' he said. 'Think of nesting birds. What do they do?'

Immediately I understood. 'Leave the nest, run off as a distraction, hoping to divert the hunter.' 'So now we look for the nest.'

But for the boy's eyes we would never have found him. He had been buried in the sand beneath the overhang of a bush. The only part of him left on the surface was his face, and even that had been covered in a light cotton rag whose colour matched the sand around him. But in breathing the boy had caused the rag to slip slightly to one side. I was walking past the bush when I saw the glint of an eyeball. I beckoned quietly to Harald, who was searching the bushes a few paces from me, and he came over to look where I pointed. The boy knew he had been found. Harald reached down, brushed away the sand and seized him by the shoulder, pulling him from his hiding place. The boy was no more than six or seven years old, slim, with a skin that was fair for a Saracen, and fine features. He was trembling with fright.

'By all the saints!' exclaimed the Greek fisherman. He had come across to see what we had found. 'That's Abdallah's son!'

'How can you be sure?' I asked.

'He rode on his father's horse the day that the emir came to visit our village. Abdallah held him up to show him off to our people and present to us our future ruler. There's no mistaking the lad. Besides, look at those clothes he's wearing. That's no peasant brat.'

I translated the fisherman's words to Harald, and, as if he was picking up a doll, the Norwegian suddenly swung the boy up in the air and held him high over his head. Then he turned to face the distant watcher, and stood there, showing off our find. After a few moments, the Saracen began to walk towards us.

'I am his tutor,' he explained, speaking good Greek with the high, quick intonation of the Saracens. He was an older man, thin, grey-bearded and clearly anguished. 'Do not harm him, I beg you.'

'Where is Abdallah, the emir?' demanded Harald.

'I do not know,' the man answered miserably. 'I was only told to bring the boy to this beach and wait for us to be picked up. But when a ship would come I had no idea. At first we thought it was your vessel. And when we realised our mistake it was too late to get away, so we tried to conceal the boy, hoping you would go away.'

'Thorgils, a word with you in private,' said Harald. 'Halldor, here, you take a hold of the lad.' Then he led me a few paces to one side and said bluntly, 'What's the boy worth?'

I was searching for an answer when Harald went on fiercely, 'Come on, think! Abdallah cannot be too far away to receive our message. What's the boy worth?'

I was so taken aback by the fierceness of his questioning that I began to stammer. 'M-m-my lord, I have no idea.'

Harald cut across me. 'What was it you said when we saw that golden dome in the Holy Land? That the Saracens pay huge sums for those things which are most dear to them?' 'But that was a holy shrine,'

'And is not a son and heir equally precious, to a father? We don't have any time to waste, Thorgils. How much was it that the caliph or whatever he was called set aside for the gilding of the dome?'

'The sum was a hundred thousand dinars, our guide said.'

'Right. Tell the boy's tutor that if the emir pays a hundred thousand dinars, he'll see his son again, unharmed. Otherwise we hand the boy over to Maniakes. That's my message.'

'But how can the emir raise that amount of money now?' I said. 'He's a fugitive.'

'I've never heard of a ruler who doesn't take his treasure with him when he flees, provided he has the transport. And you can add a second message as a sweetener. If the hundred thousand is paid, not only will the emir get his son back, but I will make sure that my flotilla does not hinder his escape to Libya.'

I suppose I should have been shocked by Harald's double-dealing, but I was not. Perhaps the years I had spent in Constantinople had hardened me to intrigue and treachery. Certainly every Norseman in Harald's war band would have expected him to exact a price for the boy, and not one of them would want to share the ransom with the autokrator if Harald could somehow arrange it. But, even as Harald spoke, his blatant perfidy made me acknowledge to myself that my ultimate loyalty had never been to the palace in Constantinople or its appointees, but to my own people. Faced with the stark choice of serving either the Basileus or Harald, I did not hesitate.

'I will see what I can arrange, my lord,' I answered, even as I remembered just how hard-headed Pelagia could be in matters of business profit. She would certainly have advised me to extract the greatest advantage from our lucky catch.

'Good, Thorgils, do that. And be quick. If this is to succeed it must be done quickly. Three days at the most.'

The boy's tutor winced slightly when I mentioned the enormous sum, but, like a good negotiator, he avoided direct haggling. 'And how is such a large quantity of money to be delivered and the boy's well-being guaranteed?' he enquired, his eyes flicking nervously to Halldor, who still had the youngster in his grip.

'As regards the boy's safety, you will have to trust us on that,' I said. 'It's in our interest to keep him safe and well. He's not our enemy, nor is his father if he accepts this proposal. We'll keep the boy aboard ship until the ransom is paid.'

'And the payment itself? How is that transaction to be made? When so much gold is on view, men tend to lose their heads and seek more. They break their word.'

For a moment I was silent. I had never organised the paying of a ransom, and did not know how it was done so that the interests of both sides were protected. Then, perhaps with Odinn's help, I recalled my time among the ski-runners of Permia. They were a fur-trading people who mistrusted all outsiders, so they conducted any barter at arm's length. They left their furs for inspection in a deserted open place, and their customers left a similar value in payment at the same spot. Perhaps I could modify that arrangement for Harald's purposes.

'The ransom is to be brought to this end of the beach at noon on the third day from now,' I said. 'Our vessel will be in the bay close enough to watch your men place the ransom on the sand and withdraw a safe distance to a point on the dunes where they can still be seen. The only people on the beach will be the boy and myself, waiting for you at the opposite end of the beach. You will be able to see for yourselves that he is alive and well. But you are not to come any nearer. If you do so, the galley will immediately come and retrieve the boy. I will walk along the beach to inspect the ransom, and if everything is satisfactory, I will signal the galley to come and pick up the money. At that moment your people can advance and collect the boy. Neither side will be close enough to the trade to be able to take both the boy and the ransom.'

The old man looked at me and said softly, 'You I trust. But not that tall pirate who is your leader. It will be up to you to make him respect these rules. Otherwise there will be a tragedy.'

When the Saracens had left to take our message to the emir, I explained the ransom arrangement to Harald. I had never seen him so deep in thought. He chewed on his moustache as he reflected on my device, and scowled at me.

'Thorgils,' he said, 'you've lived too long among these people. You are beginning to scheme like them. Of course, if anything goes wrong, it will be you left sitting on the beach, not us.'

'I think the handover will work,' I reassured him with a confidence that I did not feel, 'though whether the emir will find so much money is another matter.'

As it turned out, the handover of the ransom went exactly as I had hoped, except for one flaw which, if I had foreseen it, might have prevented me from setting up the plan.

Shortly before noon on the third day, as our galley lay out in the bay, a file of fifteen mules approached over the sand dunes. I was seated on the far end of the beach with the young Saracen boy, who had not said a word all the time he had been with us. He was still in a state of shock. When he saw the approaching mules, his face lit up with hope, for he must have known what was going on. If I had been sensible, I should have tied his arms and legs so he could not run away when I went to examine the panniers that the muleteers dumped on the beach before they withdrew, but I did not have the heart to do so. Instead, after he had stood up and waved to his tutor, who was watching from a distance, I gestured for the boy to sit down and wait quietly, which he did. Then I walked along the sand to the pile of mule bags, unfastened the thongs that tied one or two of them, and lifted up the flaps. I had never seen so much gold coin in one place in all my life. Certainly not when I had worked for the king's moneyer in London, for he had minted silver coin, nor even when the Basileus had flung gold bounty to his courtiers in the audience hall of the Great Palace. Here were riches that were beyond my comprehension. Surprisingly, the entire payment was in coin, mostly Arab dinars, but also nomisma from the imperial mint. I could not see a single item like a gold necklace or a jewelled band whose value would have to be assessed. I had no idea what a hundred thousand dinars looked like, and there was no time to count, so I turned round and waved to the boy, gesturing for him to go. The last I saw of him he was racing up across the sand dunes to join his father's deputation.

'Thorgils, you are a genius!' exulted Harald as he came ashore, opened one of the panniers and scooped up a handful of coins. I had never seen him look so pleased. His normally harsh expression was replaced with a look of utter pleasure.

'You have the Gods to thank,' I said, seizing my chance. 'They clearly favour you.'

'Yes, the Gods,' he said. 'Freya must have wept for many nights and days.'

For a moment I did not know what he was talking about, as I had been away from my homeland for so long that my Old Beliefs were growing dim. Then I remembered that Freya, goddess of wealth, had cried tears of gold when she lost her husband.

'There's only one detail you have overlooked,' said Harald. His cautionary tone brought a sudden chill to our conversation. 'The Greek sailor who identified the emir's son for us. My own men will keep their mouths shut about this treasure when we get back to Syracuse, because they will get their share. But Greeks never hold their tongues. Even if the fisherman were handsomely rewarded, he would boast if he got back home, and Maniakes would get to hear what happened. Thorgils, I tidied up your plan a little. The Greek is dead.'

SEVEN

MANIAKES NEVER LEARNED the truth. As our vessel entered Syracuse harbour, we passed an imperial dromon beating out to sea. Twenty-four hours earlier she had arrived with an order signed in purple ink, stripping Maniakes of his command. Now the dromon was carrying the former autokrator to Constantinople to face the Basileus and his eunuch brother John. Maniakes had made the error of shaming their brother-in-law, Stephen, commander of the imperial fleet, by accusing him of allowing the emir to escape by sea. The rebuke had been made in public, Maniakes once again losing his temper and shouting at Stephen that he was useless and effeminate while he beat him about the head with a whip. Stephen had reacted like the true palace politician he was: he secretly sent word to the Orphanotrophus that Maniakes had grown overbearing with his military success and was plotting to seize the throne. Nothing was calculated to arouse the Orphanotrophus's hostility more, because John the Eunuch would do anything to maintain his family's grip on power.

We could scarcely believe our good fortune. With Stephen censured for allowing the emir's escape, our own treason was unlikely to be discovered, and Maniakes's disgrace gave Harald his excuse to declare that he too was withdrawing from the Sicilian expedition. Our flotilla, as soon as it reassembled, also set sail for

Constantinople, and from there three of our vessels continued onward for the Pontic Sea, and eventually for Kiev. In their bilges lay hidden the bulk of the emir's ransom: their crews were returning home as rich as they had dreamed of. Their departure suited Harald, as it left fewer men to let slip the truth about our faithlessness. Only a hundred of his original war band remained, and the army secretariat in Constantinople judged the number insufficient for an independent unit. So, in recognition of our contribution to the Sicilian campaign, they removed us from the Varangians-without-the-walls and attached us directly to the imperial Life Guard. To add to the irony, Harald was decorated for his services to the empire, and elevated to the rank of spatharokandidatos. This entitled him to wear a cloak of white silk and carry a jewelled court sword at ceremonials. I, of course, found myself once again an imperial guardsman.

Pelagia was dismissive of my military career. I returned to find her just as energetic and self-confident, and even more successful. She now had commercial interests in shipping and olive production as well as owning an entire chain of bakeries and bread stalls. With her newly acquired wealth she had bought a brand new substantial villa in a pleasant suburb on the Galata side of the Golden Horn, with its own garden and overlooking the straits. It was there that I found her in the main reception room, reading through bills and documents relating to her business.

'Thorgils, you come back from Sicily with a suntan but little else,' she said after I had briefly sketched in the details of my time on campaign. 'You're looking thinner, and you've got several grey hairs, but no promotion. Fortunately I've been investing your salary for you, and you'll find that you've returned to a nest ^egg-'

I decided it would be wiser not to tell Pelagia that I would eventually be receiving a portion of the emir's ransom money, nor that I had placed my share from the salvage from the pirate ship with Halldor to look after.

'You'll find little changed in the palace when you get back to the guardroom,' Pelagia went on. 'John is still running the government, and Michael has less and less to do with affairs of state. He's become more pious than ever. A couple of soothsayers — charlatans the pair of them — managed to convince him that he sold his soul to the devil before he married the empress Zoe in return for a glorious future, and now he punishes himself for this lapse. I'm beginning to feel sorry for the poor man. His suffering comes in waves. When it is at its worst the pain nearly drives him out of his mind, and he makes matters worse by humiliating himself.'

My colleagues in the guardroom confirmed Pelagia's sombre description.

'You'll need a strong stomach for guard duty outside the royal apartment nowadays,' I was warned by my company commander, the same Halfdan who had taken charge of the detail when the Basileus Romanus drowned. 'You should see the diseased creatures who are brought up to the imperial bedchamber — tramps picked up from the street by the nightwatch, or invalids from the hospitals. It's said Michael washes their clothes, cleans their wounds, even kisses their open sores, in emulation of his own God. He insists that they sleep in the royal bed while he lies down on the cold marble floor with a stone as a pillow so he suffers mortification. I looked in the bedchamber one morning when the Basileus and his attendants had left, and there was a stinking pile of old rags by the bed. Looked like a beggars' nest.'

My summons to the office of John the Orphanotrophus was not long in arriving, and as usual the eunuch came straight to the point.

'What's your impression of Araltes now?' he demanded. 'After two years in his company, I trust that you have won his confidence as I required.'

'I believe so, your excellency,' I replied. I was as wary of the Orphanotrophus as on the first day he had sent me to spy on Harald, but I was bold enough to add, 'He has served the Basileus well. He has been created spatharokandidatos.'

'I know, I know. But the administration of the empire rests on two pillars: honours and cash,' retorted the Orphanotrophus irritably. 'Your Araltes benefits from the honours, but what about the cash? I've been told he is gold-hungry.'

'I know nothing about that, your excellency,' I answered evasively.

'Strange that he hasn't complained about the division of booty after the fall of Syracuse, like those Frankoi mercenaries who made such an issue of it. Over a horse, I believe.'

I began to wonder if there was any limit to the eunuch's network of spies. Careful to avoid an outright lie, I told him, 'Araltes gives the impression of being content with his booty from Sicily.'

The Orphanotrophus's next words made me feel as if I had fallen through the ice of a frozen lake.

'I'm hearing that certain bullion transactions are going unreported to the city archon. One of the money changers seems to be making unusually high profits. What's his name . . .' and the eunuch made a pretence of looking down at the note on his desk, though I was sure he had no need to refresh his memory. 'A certain argyroprates named Simeon. Mention has been made that he is dealing with Varangians.'

'It could be any of the Varangian units, your excellency,' I said, trying to keep panic out of my voice, 'not necessarily those who serve Araltes.'

'Guardsman,' said the eunuch slowly and deliberately, 'if anything is going on, I want to know it.'

HARALD HAD BEEN living in his own quarters away from the Life Guard's barracks, and after the interview with John I had to restrain myself from going straight there to warn him. I suspected that I was being watched by the Orphanotrophus's agents, so I went instead to seek Pelagia's advice, and she was not reassuring. 'Simeon has been looking particularly smug these past few months. He dresses in the latest fashions, wears expensive jewellery, and generally likes to show off how well he's doing.'

'Can't he be persuaded to be less conspicuous? If he keeps this up, sooner or later John's people will call him in for questioning.'

'I doubt it. Simeon thinks too highly of himself.'

'Couldn't Harald switch to using someone else on the Mese, a more discreet money changer, to handle the booty?'

'Simeon's the only man who would take the risk of Harald's monetary affairs.'

'What about those shifty-looking characters I sometimes see walking up and down the Mese in the financial zone, offering better rates for foreign exchange.'

Pelagia snorted with derision. 'I wouldn't advise Harald to deal with them. They're unlicensed traders. They're likely to run off with any valuables entrusted to them, or give back dud coins. And they don't have the resources to deal in the amounts that Harald brings in. Their working capital is in those grubby bags they carry about. At least Simeon has the iron table. That's what it symbolises: a metal surface on which you can bang suspect coins to hear whether they ring true. You had better tell your tall friend with the lopsided eyebrows to be very, very discreet whenever he brings any valuables to Simeon for exchanging into cash.'

My daily life, now that I was back with the Hetaira, reverted to its former pattern. There were the familiar drills and kit inspections, the regular rotation of guard duty — one week inside the Great Palace, the next week in barracks — and of course the endless parades. I found it truly tedious to spend hour after hour solemnly marching out from the palace to some great church, waiting outside for the service to finish, going back along the same route, and then having to clean up my equipment and prepare for the next ceremonial outing, which could be the next day.

Harald avoided most of this mind-numbing routine because he, Halldor and a few of his immediate followers were assigned to assist the exaktors. These were, as their name implies, the tax gatherers. How Harald got in with them is something I never learned, but later I came to realise that it was part of his own grand plan. There was certainly nothing unusual about a detachment of guards accompanying the exaktors. In fact it was a necessity. When the tax collectors set out from the capital to visit some area in the countryside that had been assessed, naturally the local inhabitants would be reluctant to pay up, so the exaktors took along an armed escort to bully the taxpayers into compliance. Few things were more terrifying to a local farmer than the menacing sight of foreign barbarians who were prepared to smash up his property if he did not pay his dues to the emperor — the arrival of a squad of Varangians was usually sufficient to loosen the purse strings. Harald, with his ferocious appearance, must have been particularly daunting, nor was he reluctant to resort to force, and that may be why he and his men were picked for the work.

Thus Harald and the others missed the bizarre event which surprised even someone as well informed as Pelagia: the proclamation that the Basileus and Empress Zoe were to have a son. Physically, of course, this was impossible. Zoe was now at least sixty years old, though as vain as ever, and Michael the Basileus was much too ill to procreate. Their son was to be by adoption. But what really stunned everyone was his identity. His only previous official role had been as commander of the Palace Guard, a purely nominal post for which he did nothing more than wear a gaudy uniform at palace ceremonials. Named Michael, just like the emperor, his father was that same Stephen who had plotted to have Maniakes recalled in disgrace, and his mother was the Basileus's sister. He was to be known by the title of Caesar, to signify that he was the heir to the imperial throne, and naturally John the Eunuch had made the choice. The Orphanotrophus knew that the sickly Basileus could die at any moment, and he was determined that the succession should stay within the family.

The actual ceremony of adoption was even more grotesque than when the youthful Basileus had married Zoe, who was old enough to be his mother. This time the ritual took place in the church of the Blachernae Palace and culminated with the new Caesar symbolically sitting down on the ageing Zoe's lap, so he could be acclaimed by the congregation of dignitaries and high officials as her 'son'.

A few days later I was crossing a courtyard on my way to the guardroom when I passed a middle-ranking official of the chancellery. His face seemed familiar, but I would have walked right past him if he had not stopped suddenly and said, 'Excuse me, aren't you the Greek-speaking Varangian who told me how Romanus drowned?'

'That's right,' I answered, recognising the young man who had interviewed me on the day of the funeral parade. 'You're Constantine Psellus. You seem to have come a long way since you were a young student watching a funeral parade. I congratulate you.'

'You're beginning to sound like a courtier yourself. This time you must tell me your name.' 'Thorgils Leifsson.'

'Obviously you're still with the Palace Guard.'

'Back with the guard, more correctly, after service in Sicily.'

'So you know what this new Caesar is like? After all, he is, or was, your commanding officer.'

I hesitated, and Psellus said softly, 'You may speak freely. This is an opinion for posterity. I'm still compiling notes for my history of the rulers of the empire.'

Once again his frank approach won my confidence. 'Well,' I admitted, 'from the little I've seen of him, the Caesar is vindictive and shallow. His one true talent is that he is superlative at hiding his true feelings.'

'Sounds as though he was an excellent choice for the throne,' said Psellus with irony. 'I'll make a bargain with you, Thorgils. As a guardsman you sometimes see things which we outsiders never get to witness. If you'll be so kind as to keep me informed about what is going on behind the scenes, I won't forget you when the time comes - as it surely will - that you need a friend within the bureaucracy.' And he hurried on his way.

Over the next few months, there was little I could tell Psellus that he would not have observed for himself. Michael's health was in rapid decline. His limbs swelled, bloating so that his fingers became as thick as sausages. To hide his physical deterioration from public gaze, the Basileus spent less time in the city, and withdrew to his country residence. He left behind the usual intrigues inside the palace, which grew more viperish as it became evident that he did not have long to live. John the Eunuch still held the real power, but some courtiers began to pander to the young Caesar, preparing for the day when he mounted the throne. Other sycophants coalesced around his favourite uncle, Constantine, another of the Orphanotrophus's brothers. A few diehards again paid attention to the empress Zoe, though she was still confined to the gynaeceum, the women's quarters, and the Basileus had cut off her allowance so she was living in near poverty. No one trusted anyone else, and there was a growing sense that the whole structure of government was on the verge of collapse.

I came to appreciate how far the decay had spread when an official arrived in the guardroom late one December evening. He was out of breath and flustered.

'I'm looking for the guardsman Thorgils,' he announced.

"What can I do for you?' I asked.

The man looked nervously at the other off-duty guardsmen,who were watching him with open curiosity.

'You are to select one reliable colleague,' he said. 'Bring heavy cloaks, and accompany me.'

I glanced at Halfdan. 'Take Lars with you,' he ordered.

Lars was a stolid guardsman who had been with the Hetaira almost as long as Halfdan himself. Lars and I gathered up our weapons, and the official took us, half running, to the office of John the Eunuch. We found him dressed in his monk's clothes and ready to leave the palace.

'You are to accompany me as an escort in case of trouble,' said John. 'Be discreet, conceal your uniforms, and you may leave your axes behind. Swords hidden under your cloaks will be sufficient.'

We slipped out of the palace through one of the minor gates, where the doorkeepers were clearly expecting us, and hurried through the streets of the city. We kept to alleys and side streets, but I recognised the direction we were taking. It was towards the area known as the Venetian quarter because of the number of foreign merchants, mostly Italians, residing there. It was also the district of several of Constantinople's most important monasteries, and when we stopped and knocked on the wooden doors to one of them, I knew that we stood before the gate of the monastery known locally as the Kosmidion. It was the same monastery which the Basileus had funded so generously because it was dedicated to the doctor saints, Cosmas and Damian.

A grim-looking monk let us in without a word and ushered us along several stone-flagged corridors. In the background I heard chanting, and, as we turned a corner, I detected the hurried withdrawal of some cowled figures who had been waiting in the shadows, curious to see who the visitors were at such a late hour. Finally we came to the door of an ordinary monk's cell. The door stood open. Inside, on a simple cot, lay the Basileus.

I recognised him by his gross and swollen hands, for he was wearing not the clothes of an emperor, but the simple black tunic of a monk. Also, his head had been shaved in a tonsure: I could still see the nicks and cuts where the work had been done hurriedly and very recently. The Basileus looked truly ghastly, and I had no doubt that he had only a few hours left to live.

'Watch the door and passage,' snapped the Orphanotrophus. 'Let no one in.'

He appeared genuinely distressed at the sight of his sickly brother. He stepped into the room, and I had a glimpse of him dropping to his knees beside the bed and embracing the invalid before I turned my back and stared down the passageway. Behind me I heard John croon comforting words to the man whom he had manoeuvred on to the throne of the empire. I found it difficult to believe that the young and handsome courtier who had married Zoe was now the bloated and sweating wreck who lay on the cot behind me.

Nothing could be kept secret in the palace, least of all the disappearance of the emperor. At dawn we had our first visitors: the new Caesar Michael and his uncle Constantine arrived. By then the Basileus was in great pain, and the Orphanotrophus allowed them to stay only for a short time before ordering them to leave. Two physicans, one from the monastery infirmary, the other from the palace, came and attempted to relieve the patient's suffering with pain-killing drugs. Then I heard the Basileus shout aloud that he wanted to die like his Lord, in agony, and the Orphanotrophus ordered me to no longer let the physicians pass. One monk at a time was to be allowed into the cell, where he could pray tor the invalid's soul. The rest of the brethren were to say their prayers for him in their chapel.

Lars and I guarded the dreary corridor for twenty hours without a break, cooped up in the heart of the monastery complex, hearing only the shuffle of feet, the moaning of the Basileus, and the muttered prayers for the sick and dying. The strangest interlude was when the empress herself appeared in the passageway, demanding to see her husband. The doorkeepers of the monastery had let Zoe in — she was, after all, the emperor's wife - but Lars and I obeyed orders and blocked her path until John the Eunuch heard her protests and came out to see what was going on.

'Tell my husband that I want to see him,' begged Zoe.

The Orphanotrophus went back inside for a few moments, then reappeared.

'He does not wish to see you,' he said to Zoe in a flat tone. 'He asks that you go away.'

Zoe clenched her hands and looked miserable.

'Go away,' John repeated, 'otherwise I'll have the guards throw you out.'

Fortunately, for I would not have relished bundling the old woman down the corridor, Zoe turned and left. As I watched her walk away, the smell of the aged empress's musk perfume lingered in the still air of the passageway, and I remembered how she had looked upon the corpse of her first husband as he lay cold on the marble bench by the swimming pool, and wondered if she could have known that events would come to this gruesome conclusion.

At about noon the Basileus must have recovered his strength, for I heard him ask whether it was time for the midday service. He announced that, as a monk, it was his duty to attend. Then came an outburst of petulance. Trying to get up from the cot, he found that no one had provided him with the suitable monk's sandals; beside his cot were the purple boots that only the reigning emperor might wear, and he refused to put them on. Two of the monks came to fetch him, and physically carried him to the chapel, barefoot. When they brought him back an hour later, hanging between them, Michael was scarcely breathing. They took him into the cell, laid him on the bed, then left. After that there was a long silence, and then I heard nothing more. Basileus Michael had died.

John the Eunuch stayed in that cell for two more days, sitting beside his brother's corpse, mourning. It was the one truly human act I remember of a man whom, until then, I had thought of as the most cold-hearted, calculating person I had ever met. Monks came and went, washed and put new clothes on the dead emperor, and mounted a vigil in relays. The Orphanotrophus barely stirred. Officials arrived from the palace seeking instructions, and he told them that he would return to his office only when he was ready; until then they should consult the Caesar.

Finally, on the third day after his brother's death, John came out of the cell. He looked haggard.

'Guardsman,' he said as he looked straight into my eyes, 'for the second time, you've been present at the passing of a Basileus. On the last occasion you showed great discretion. That is why I chose you. These are matters of state, and the personal details are rarely dignified. They must be kept from public knowledge. A seamless transfer of power is needed; appearance is all.'

He brushed past me, and as I followed him along the passageway I promised myself that the next time I saw Psellus, I would make him swear never to reveal the source of his information.

In fact, Psellus was among the cluster of officials waiting anxiously in the outer courtyard of the palace as we came back from the monastery. Standing at the back of the group, he caught my eye. I kept my face expressionless. Now, I was just another member of the guard.

Halfdan had been hovering at the palace gate with a squad of men waiting to escort the returning Orphanotrophus to a meeting in the grand audience chamber.

'Thank the Gods you brought him back,' Halfdan hissed at me. 'The place is all in a heap. Nobody knows what's going on, or who's in charge. Everyone was waiting for the Eunuch to make decisions. What kept you?'

Before I could reply, Michael the Caesar approached. With him was his uncle, Constantine. The two men began to fawn over the Orphantrophus as we headed towards the audience chamber. They commented how tired he looked, and asked repeatedly how they might assist. It occurred to me that the two men were frightened out of their wits. They wanted to know what the Eunuch had decided for their futures, and were relying on him to guide them through the next few days until the succession of power was established. As we entered the packed Trikilinium it was evident that everyone, including the palace officials, was on edge and overwrought. Even the empress Zoe had appeared from the women's quarters. She stood there, looking at the Orphanotrophus. She too was waiting for his decision. The atmosphere was thick with fear, ambition and duplicity.

'Now is the time to stand together, to assist one another. We should carry out the wishes of the deceased,' announced the Orphanotrophus, raising his voice so he could be heard by everyone in the waiting audience. He had recovered his composure, and his words had their usual quality of slight menace. 'We proceed with the arrangements envisaged at the time when our dear nephew, Michael - ' here he gave a thin, insincere smile — 'became Caesar. It is appropriate that he is acclaimed as Basileus at the earliest opportunity. He will, I know, value and accept the advice and support of his family.'

There was a general easing of tension in the chamber at this. The Orphanotrophus's statement was interpreted as meaning that the various factions were to share the power between them. The young Caesar would occupy the throne, but his family — John himself, his brother Constantine, and the empress Zoe — would be his silent partners. It was to be a web of alliances.

The spider at the centre of the web now stepped forward. The Caesar was a slender, sallow-complexioned young man going prematurely bald. Turning to the assembled officials, he announced that he would only accept the imperial mantle if he could share its burden and privilege with his 'revered guide and mentor the Orphanotrophus'. Here he kissed his uncle's hand. Then he walked across to his elderly adoptive mother and embraced her theatrically. 'I want all of you to bear witness,' he called out to the assembly. 'When I am crowned, there will be a second throne beside mine, occupied by my mother and mistress. I will be her slave-emperor, obedient to her commands.'

'This makes you want to puke,' muttered Halfdan near me. 'I wonder just how long that little shit will keep his word.'

Michael was crowned as Basileus by the Patriarch in a glittering ceremony the very next day. As promised, there was a second throne for the aged empress. Psellus, who watched the coronation, came away with the same opinion of the new Basileus as my company commander.

'That man reeks of hypocrisy,' he said. 'I was at a meeting of the family council taking notes, and you should have heard the way he speaks to her. Always asking her opinion, saying that he defers to her judgement, that he "is hers to command" and on and on in similar vein. He's got her quite addled. She seems to believe him.'

'It does seem odd that he should crawl to her so blatantly,' I commented. 'He's the emperor, not her.'

'Thorgils, the citizens of Constantinople are calling their new ruler "Michael the Caulker" or "The Little Twister". You may not be aware that at one time his father Stephen worked in the shipyards as a humble labourer. His job was to caulk the seams of planks with spun yarn and slop pine tar on the hulls. His family are base born, not from the sort of background that the mob respects or forgets. To the ordinary people, Zoe is the only one who has a genuine claim to wear the purple. She and her sister Theodora are true aristocrats. There's a dangerous feeling in the city that the antics of John the Eunuch and his jumped-up family have soiled the status of the Basileus, that they've gone too far with their ambitions.'

'I didn't know Zoe' has a sister.'

'Hardly surprising. The two women hate one another. Zoe arranged for her sibling to be shut away in a nunnery years ago. What a pair,' the bureaucrat sighed. 'Sometimes I think the palace is like a large rock. When you roll it aside you find all sorts of unpleasant creatures creeping and crawling around underneath. At least Zoe is open in her dislike of her sister, whereas with John the Eunuch and his brother Constantine, I get the feeling that they are a pair of scorpions, tails up and circling one another warily, each always ready to deliver a fatal sting. God help us when that happens.'

Pelagia was equally alert to the impending clash. The Orphanotrophus owned a large estate very close to her villa in Galata, and he often came there to relax. Pelagia was worried that the more vicious aspects of palace politics might accompany him.

'John the Eunuch always brings an escort with him, at least twenty soldiers. He must be expecting trouble. You couldn't arrange for some private security guards for me, Thorgils, could you? Perhaps half a dozen of your colleagues might like to spend their free days here in Galata. I would pay them well, and they would have as much wine to drink as they liked.'

'Nothing could be easier,' I replied. 'The new Basileus appointed an entirely new batch of bodyguards just last week. They are loyal only to him. We Varangians are kept on, but we don't have much to do. Besides, the Basileus's new Life Guards are an odd lot, and clannish. They're Pechenegs from the north. Michael purchased them, and every one of them is a eunuch. I'm sure that many of my colleagues would like to get away from the atmosphere in the palace. It's becoming more and more freakish.'

IN FEBRUARY MY world came crashing down around my ears. Harald and Halldor were arrested, as were Simeon the money changer and three of the exaktors. All of them were accused of swindling the state treasury. It was a simple enough fraud: they had terrorised their victims into paying more than the official tax assessment and pocketed the difference. One of their victims had complained to the chancellery, and when a clerk checked the ledgers it was clear that the tax collectors had been underreporting their receipts.

'What idiots,' said Pelagia when I told her. 'It's no good stealing from the state unless you can cover your tracks properly. All those files and written reports pile up in the archives. They may seem a waste of effort, but if someone has the motivation they can be used to bring down even the most powerful person.'

'What's going to happen to them?'

'The tax collectors will be dismissed from their posts, all their private property will be seized to pay the massive fines levied on them, and they will be lucky not to be sent to jail. As for your Varangian friends, I don't know. They might be able to bribe their way out of trouble and flee the country, or they might be made an example of. Depends who their friends are. I'm sure you remember that Bulgarian who was paraded through the streets last autumn.'

Indeed I did. Like Harald, the unfortunate man had been a foreigner at court. He had decided to raise a rebellion in his native country, slipped out of the capital and gathered an army. The tagmata had crushed him, and he had been brought back to Constantinople, where he was paraded through the streets on a leading chain, his nose cut off, then strangled.

'My best guess,' Pelagia continued, 'is that the authorities will hold Harald and his associates in jail and interrogate them until they reveal where they've put the stolen money so that the treasury can try to recover it. The interrogation will be a nasty business. The interrogators pride themselves on being able to extract information without spilling blood. It's not that they're squeamish — it's a matter of having pride in their work.'

Pelagia and I were standing in her garden, overlooking the straits. The moment I had heard about Harald's arrest I had fled the city, crossing the Golden Horn on one of the public ferries to Galata. I knew very well that the Orphanotrophus would want to question me. He would ask why I had not alerted his office to Harald's conspiracy, and I was sure that Simeon would soon reveal that Harald had extorted a ransom for the emir's son. Then my failure to report truthfully to John the Eunuch would concern not theft from the state, but an act of treason.

'I can hide you here in Galata for a few days,' Pelagia offered. 'Long enough for you to find some way of escaping from the reach of the Orphanotrophus, though that will be difficult. Luckily the Eunuch has troubles of his own, and may be distracted from your case. Matters are coming to a head between him and his nephew. The Basileus has been scheming — he's fed up with doing whatever John says — and he's been playing John off against his other uncle, Constantine. No one knows who's going to win. My guess is that it will be the Orphanotrophus.'

Pelagia was wrong, and spectacularly so. The young Basileus delivered his masterstroke right before our eyes. Several days had passed, and we were once again in the garden, overlooking the straits, when we saw a state barge about to put out from our side of the harbour and return to the city. We recognised the vessel at once: it was the boat reserved for the personal use of the Orphanotrophus, and the pennant showed that John himself was aboard.

'I wonder why he's going back so soon?' Pelagia mused. 'My servants tell me that the Eunuch only came here last night, and in a towering rage. The Basileus had publicly snubbed him at court, refused to grant him an audience, and went to consult with Constantine instead. If the Orphanotrophus is being summoned back to the Great Palace, it must be to arrange some sort of truce between the family factions.'

We watched the barge cast off from the landing stage below us. A small cluster of brilliantly dressed officials stood amidships, among them the soberly dressed figure of the Eunuch himself. It was a bright sunny day, with a gentle breeze, and the personal standard of the Orphanotrophus rippled prettily. Everything seemed peaceful and normal. A few fishing boats had their nets down in the bay, a couple of merchant ships were on passage down the straits, and an imperial dromon was heading into the Golden Horn. I guessed she was on her way to the naval arsenal to pick up stores.

We saw the gap widening between the dock and the departing barge. Down on the quayside the bodyguard of Varangians which had accompanied the Orphanotrophus to his embarkation turned and began to march back up the hill to his residence.

'I wonder what the Basileus has got to say to him, and whether he'll manage to patch up his quarrel with his brother Constantine,' Pelagia mused.

Even as she spoke, a bright flash came from high up on the walls of the Great Palace. At first I thought it was the sunlight reflecting off a polished metal shield or a pane of glass in one of the palace rooms, but then the flash was repeated, and I knew it was a signal mirror. Someone in the palace was sending a message across the water. Even as the mirror stopped flickering I saw the dromon, inbound to the arsenal, suddenly change course. Her oars began to thrash the water as her rowers were urged into action, and their blades left a line of small whirlpools in her wake as the warship accelerated. Her target was the Orphanotrophus's barge which was making its way sedately across the harbour. Capture was inevitable. Within moments, the dromon had laid alongside the slow-moving barge and grappled with her. A boarding party from the dromon — I guessed it must be a squad of the Basileus's Pechenegs — rushed across the barge's deck. In a few strides they had surrounded the Orphantrophus and his entourage, who were so astonished that they offered no resistance. For ten years no one had dared challenge the Eunuch's authority, let alone lay hands on him.

I could just make out that the Pechenegs had seized the Orphanotrophus and were carrying him back aboard the dromon, then saw that the warship cast off her lines. She pulled away rapidly from her victim and set course out of the bay, southwards towards the horizon, carrying John with her. The entire operation had lasted less time than the Orphanotrophus's bodyguards took to return back up the hill to his house. The most powerful man in the empire until now had been kidnapped.

'His eyes have almost certainly been put out,' said Psellus with a grimace when I managed to get an appointment with him at his office in the chancellery a week later. 'He may even have been executed. The rumour in the palace is that the Basileus himself stood on the battlements and gave the signal for the Orphanotrophus to be carried off.'

His remark made me realise how lucky I was. I could have been similarly maimed if the Eunuch had set his interrogators on me.

'I've come to ask for your assistance,' I told Psellus. 'Can anything be done to extricate the spatharokandidatos Harald and his colleagues from jail, now that the Orphanotrophus is out of the way? They were put there on his orders.'

To my disappointment, Psellus shook his head. 'I can't risk anything at this time. Not until I know who really holds the reins of power now. Is it the Basileus or is it his uncle Constantine? And what's going to happen to Zoe? Is she still going to be treated as the Empress Mother, as her "son" promised? It's better to wait for things to settle down. There's no need to be distressed about the prison conditions for your friends. I've heard that Araltes has been very generous, spreading his money around, so that he and his companions are living very comfortably. No dark dungeons, heavy chains and that sort of thing. They're being held in the Prandiara prison, and have their own suite of rooms. He has even hired his own staff. Your Araltes lives like a prince.'

'That's what he is, in his own country.'

'My advice to you is to act normally, as if nothing has happened. Carry on with whatever duties are allocated to the Varangians, and not to those Pecheneg ruffians whom Michael brought in as his enforcers. I'll contact you as soon as I see an opportunity to get Araltes's case reviewed by the officials in the Treasury. However, I must warn you that there's no way of knowing when that will be. The civil administration is in paralysis. Everyone believes that the arrest of the Orphanotrophus heralds the start of the power struggle. It has shown that our new Basileus Michael is capable of lashing out suddenly. Who the next victim will be is anyone's guess. Yet as fast as he cuts down his rivals, he makes enemies for himself, not least among the priests. Our religion tells us that the Basileus is Christ's divine appointment, so the Church thinks that it should have a say in how the emperor conducts himself. If Michael alienates the Patriarch, he will have a dangerous foe.'

I did as Psellus recommended and spent the next month as a dutiful member of the Hetaira. Apart from the usual round of ceremonies, there was really very little work to do now that the Pechenegs were responsible for the emperor's personal safety. Former Life Guards gave a wide berth to the Pechenegs, whom we judged to be little more than professional cut-throats unworthy of the tradition of the Hetaira. Their loyalty was only to Michael himself, while our Varangian tradition had been to serve whoever was the legally recognised emperor. In consequence I had ample time to spend with Pelagia, and I must admit that I was finding her style of life increasingly agreeable. Like many people who have worked their way from humble beginnings, she knew how to run an efficient household. As a former baker's wife, she had clear ideas about what should be served at her table, whether it was the quality of the ingredients or the way the food should be cooked. Never in all my life had I eaten so well. Her kitchen staff prepared poultry marinated in wine and stuffed with almonds, served caviar followed by fresh cuts of sturgeon, wild game cooked in olive and garlic, and rich casseroles of pigeon. Most meals concluded with something sweet flavoured with cinnamon, Pelagia's particular favourite. After such banquets I found it necessary to stroll in the garden to aid my digestion, as my stomach was protesting so noisily. One afternoon Pelagia made a joke of it.

'You should make a living in the market. Set up your pitch among the snake charmers and the showmen with their performing dogs, and tell fortunes as a stomach talker. They claim that their rumbling guts speak of the future in the same way the brontolo-gists say that they can interpret the meaning of the thunder claps. Mind you, with the din your stomach makes, I'm not sure to which group you should belong.'

'Where I come from,' I answered huffily, 'we believe that thunder is nothing more than the sound of one of our Gods driving his chariot through the sky. It doesn't signify anything.' I belched as discreetly as possible. 'But we do believe it is possible to read the future in dreams or by reading signs in the sky, the movements of birds and smoke, or by casting certain sticks carved with mystic signs.'

'Civilised or barbarian, everyone believes in the significance of dreams,' observed Pelagia, trying to placate me. 'Entire books have been written about how to do it, though I've never read any of them.'

'There was a time when I used to dream a lot,' I told her. 'And I had the occasional vision which foretold the future, though this was difficult to interpret. Yet since I arrived in Constantinople, I've not had a single prophetic vision, and it's only after a particularly rich meal like that roast peacock with pistachio sauce we had yesterday that I have even dreamed.'

'And what was in that peacock dream?' Pelagia enquired, grinning.

'More a nightmare, really,' I said. 'The Varangians were back on duty as the Life Guard, instead of the Pechenegs, and we were escorting Michael to the throne room. They were all there — the empress Zoe, his uncle Constantine, even the Orphanotrophus. They all stood around and stared at us. They were looking at the state of the Basileus's robes. I remember thinking to myself that the vestitores who dressed him were playing a joke. They had given him to wear a chlamys, the imperial cloak, which was in rags. It also needed a good wash—'

I stopped in mid-sentence because Pelagia had laid her hand on my arm. 'Don't go on,' she said quietly but firmly, 'I don't want to hear any more.'

'Nothing much happened after that in my dream.'

'I know next to nothing about oneirokritika, the science of interpreting dreams,' Pelagia murmured, 'but I do know that the appearance of the Basileus wearing a dirty or threadbare chlamys means the end of his reign is at hand.' She paused. 'Perhaps even the collapse of his dynasty.'

EIGHT

FIVE WEEKS AFTER the elimination of the Orphanotrophus, Michael lashed out once more. A platoon of his eunuch guards burst into the gynaeceum, sheared off Zoe's hair, and forced the empress to put on a nun's black habit. Then they bustled the old lady out of the palace and hurried her down to the Bucephalon harbour where a ship was waiting to carry her to the Prinkipio Islands, half a day's sail away and a traditional place of exile for unwanted members of the royal family. There the Pechenegs handed Zoe over to a nunnery.

The kidnap would have been successful if Michael had not over-reached himself. Alexis the Patriarch had long dabbled in politics and was known to be a supporter of Zoe, whose marriage to the previous emperor he had solemnised. Michael, intending to remove any potential source of dissent, sent four Pechenegs to lure Alexis from the monastery of the Studius. They took a gift of gold and an invitation for Alexis to attend a meeting with the Basileus. The intention was that the gold would lull the Patriarch's suspicions that he might be the next victim of Michael's megalomania, but it had the opposite effect. Alexis fled the monastery, and instead of going to the rendezvous, where Michael had an assassination squad of eunuchs waiting, he went to the church of Hagia Sophia, summoned the senior officials of

the administration, and denounced the Basileus as unworthy of the throne.

The first that I and the other Varangians idling in our guardroom knew of these events was when we heard the bells. It began with the great bell of Hagia Sophia sounding out an urgent alarm. Then, as the news spread across the capital, dozens of monasteries and churches joined in. The noise was extraordinary, a massive, constant tolling that reverberated through the city, rolled out across the suburbs, and grew louder and more insistent. The walls of the guardroom seemed to vibrate with the noise. Such a signal was given only when Constantinople was under dire threat, and the citizens poured out into the streets to demand what was happening. The Basileus, they were told by their priests, had tried to kill the Patriarch, and had banished Zoe, representative of the true line of emperors. The Basileus was wickedness personified, and unless he was curbed, he would bring ruin on the city.

The citizenry were puzzled and anxious, not knowing whether to believe the priests or stay loyal to Michael. Some went to the churches to enquire further and to pray; others flocked towards the Great Palace to demand an explanation from the emperor. He sent his most senior representative, the sebastokrator, to address them in the Forum of Constantine and, because the Pechenegs were held back to protect the emperor himself, the sebastokrator took with him a Varangian escort. Halfdan, myself and twenty others marched along the Mese to the Forum with the sebastokrator in our midst and the clamour of the bells pounding in our ears.

The great square of Constantine was packed when we arrived. I saw shopkeepers, ironworkers, beggars, cutlers, carpenters, tilers, masons, stevedores and fishermen. There were also a surprisingly large number of women and children.

The sebastokrator stood on a mounting block and began to address the crowd, shouting to make himself heard over the noise of the bells. His listeners were attentive, though sullen. Zoe the empress had been banished, he shouted, because she was a poisoner. It was better that she was placed where she could do no further harm. Listening, I thought to myself that it was possible that Zoe had poisoned poor bloated Romanus, whom I had seen drown, and that she had done away with her second husband, Michael, whom I had also witnessed dying agonised in the monastery. But claiming that Zoe was involved in a plot to poison the present Basileus seemed highly unlikely.

The sebastokrator ended his announcement and was met with silence. This was more worrying than if the crowd had jeered or scoffed. Only the clanging of the bells sounded.

Beside me Halfdan said quietly, 'Tell him to get down from the mounting block and begin walking back to the palace. He must move calmly and without haste and make it seem as if he has completed his assignment. If he does that, we can protect him. But if he shows any panic, the crowd may turn nasty. There are not enough of us to hold them off.'

I translated Halfdan's instructions and the sebastokrator followed them scrupulously. It was only a short distance back to the palace, but at any moment I expected to feel the thud of thrown stones on our unprotected backs. For the first time I regretted that the Varangians did not carry shields, and I began to appreciate just how menacing a crowd can be. The main gate of the palace, the Bronze Gate, opened a fraction to allow us in, and Halfdan let out a sigh of relief as we slipped inside.

'The Basileus had better do something, and quickly or we'll have a full-scale riot on our hands,' he said.

Michael's response was to reverse his policy towards Zoe. No sooner had the sebastokrator reported the crowd's mood than a squad of Varangians was detailed to accompany a high official of the chancellery to the Bucephalon harbour. A guard boat rushed them to the Prinkipio Islands, where the grovelling official explained to Zoe that her 'son' desired her to return to the city as he needed her advice.

As we waited for Zoe's return, we became aware of increasing disturbances in the city. Frightened messengers arrived with reports of gangs of looters on the prowl: the marauders were selecting the town houses of those who were most closely associated with the Basileus. The largest mob had laid siege to the palace of the emperor's uncle and confidant, Constantine, who had been elevated to the rank of nobelissimus, second in seniority only to the Basileus himself. This worried us because a detachment of Varangians had been assigned to guard Constantine, and we wondered what was happening to our comrades. In mid-morning they joined us, several with cuts and bruises. Constantine had decided to abandon his palace, they said, and had asked his Varangians to escort him through the streets to the Grand Palace where he could join his nephew.

'What's it like out there?' asked one of my colleagues.

A weary-looking guardsman, with a deep gash over one eye where a stone had hit, shrugged. 'No one seems to know what's going on. The crowds are still disorganised. The only thing they do agree on is that the Basileus should not have mistreated Zoe. They're shouting that she is the true imperial line, and that Michael and his family are upstarts. The women in the mob are the worst. They scream and yell abuse. Apparently the staff from the gynaeceum has been spreading rumours that Zoe was beaten up by the Pechenegs. The crowd can't tell the difference between Pechenegs and Varangians. It was a woman who flung the stone that caught me in the face.'

'Is Zoe really the true imperial line?' someone asked. 'What should we do now? Seems to me that we don't owe any loyalty to the new emperor. He ditched us in favour of those beardless Pechenegs. Let them look after him.'

'Enough of that!' snapped Halfdan. 'The guard is always loyal to the emperor. As long as Michael is Basileus, we serve him. That is our oath.'

'And what happens if the mob decides someone else is the emperor? Whom do we follow then?'

'You follow orders,' said Halfdan. But I could see that many of my colleagues were uneasy.

That night we mounted double patrols on the ramparts and gates of the palace. It was an awkward place to protect because, having been expanded and altered over the centuries, it lacked a single defensive perimeter. The best defence, according to the Basileus's councillors, who hurriedly convened, was somehow to deflect the anger of the citizenry and prevent the mob from attacking. So when Zoe arrived back in the palace the following morning, Michael apologised to her for his earlier behaviour and then took her to show her to the crowd.

Crossing the footbridge which joined the palace to the hippodrome, Michael made his entrance in the imperial box with Zoe at his side. But if he thought this display would reassure the mob, he was mistaken.

The hippodrome could hold forty thousand people to watch the parades and spectacles held there. That day not a single seat was empty, and even the sandy arena where the chariots normally raced was packed. The crowd had waited since dawn for Michael to show himself, and the long delay had increased their discontent. When he finally appeared on the balcony, many in the crowd were too far away to recognise that it was Zoe at his side. Others, suspicious of the duplicity of the palace, believed that the old woman beside the Basileus was not the empress at all, but an impostor dressed up in the imperial regalia. Listening from the parapet above the Bronze Gate where Halfdan's company was stationed - the Pechenegs were on Life Guard duty and the bells were silent at last — I heard something which previously I had associated with a bungled circus act in the hippodrome: the sound of jeering interspersed with insults and cries of anger.

As the heckling continued, a movement in the courtyard below me caught my eye. A small group of gatekeepers, the manglabites, was heading towards the palace entrance. Something about their furtive manner told me that they were about to desert their posts. Halfdan noticed it too.

There was a confused shouting in the distance. The Basileus must have left the hippodrome and returned across the footbridge.

'Here they come,' warned Halfdan. 'Lars, take ten men and get down to the gate, make sure it is bolted and barred. Thorgils, you stay close by me. I may need a Greek speaker.'

When I next peered over the parapet, the front ranks of the mob were already milling about in the open space before the Bronze Gate. Most of them were armed with rocks and stones, crowbars and torches. Several, however, carried swords and pikes. These were soldiers, not civilians. The palace was facing a military mutiny as well as a popular uprising of the citizenry.

'We need archers, slingers and javelin men up here, not a squad of axemen,' muttered Halfdan. Once again, the veteran guardsman seemed to be taking charge in a palace crisis. 'Thorgils, go and find me someone in authority who can explain to us the overall plan of defence. Not a tablet scribbler, but a trained soldier.'

I hurried through the corridors and hallways of the palace. All around me there were signs of panic. Officials, still dressed in their formal costumes, were scurrying about, some of them carrying their personal possessions as they anxiously sought to find some way of leaving the building. Once or twice I passed a detachment of Excubitors, the Greek household regiment, and I was relieved that at least some of the local garrison were still loyal to the throne. Eventually I caught up with one of their Greek officers. Saluting him, I asked if he could send archers to the parapet above the Bronze Gate as the mob was getting dangerously close to breaking in.

'Of course,' he snapped. 'I'll send bowmen. Anything else you need?'

'Two or three scorpions would be helpful. If they could be positioned high up on the wall, they would have a good field of fire and prevent the crowd from massing in front of the gate.'

'Can't help you there,' answered the officer. 'There are no ballistae operators in the Palace Guard. Nobody ever thought they would be needed. Try the Armamenton. Maybe someone there can assist. I know they've got some scorpions stored there.'

I had forgotten about the armoury. The rambling Great Palace was like a city in miniature. It had its royal apartments, formal state rooms, chancellery, treasury, tax office, kitchens, silk-weaving workshops, and of course a major arms store. I raced back to the Bronze Gate, where Halfdan was now standing cautiously behind a battlement, looking down at the mob, which had doubled in size and grown much more belligerent

'Stand well back, Thorgils,' he warned. 'They've got archers down there, and some slingers.' An arrow clattered against the stone buttress.

'Can you let me have a dozen men?' I asked. 'I want to get to the armoury and see if I can bring up a scorpion or two.'

Halfdan looked at me quizzically. 'Since when did you become an artillery man?'

'I had a few lessons in Sicily,' I said.

'Well then, take as many men as you need. The mob has not yet got itself sufficiently worked up to launch a concerted attack.'

With a squad of a dozen Varangians at my heels, I headed towards the armoury. I hammered on the heavy double doors until a storekeeper pulled one of them open cautiously. He looked decidedly peevish. Doubtless he had hoped that he was in a safe retreat, well away from any trouble.

'I need weapons,' I blurted, out of breath.

'Where's your written order? You must have a signed authority from the archon strategos before I can issue any weapons.'

'Where can I find him?'

'Can't tell you. Haven't seen him all day,' said the storekeeper with an air of smug finality.

'This is an emergency,' I insisted.

'No paperwork, no weapons. That's my orders,' was the short answer I got.

I put my hand on his chest and pushed him aside.

'Here, you can't do that,' he objected, but I was already inside and looking around.

The armoury was generously equipped. I could see everything from parade equipment with gilded hilts and coloured silk tassels to workaday swords and pikes. Against one wall was a stack of the small round shields used by light infantry.