Lord of Slaughter

31

Snake in the Eye left the palace, picking up his sword at the Room of Nineteen Couches. He walked down the steps and around the Numera towards the towering church of Hagia Sophia.

His debt to Mauger could wait. He felt very odd, half drunk, and had the great desire to test his sword arm. Figures moved through the gloom ahead of him. This was the time to see if the scholar had truly removed his curse. He felt no different. His aggression was still like a lump stuck in his throat, something he needed to vomit forth.

He would try, he thought. An alley curled through some houses at the end of the Middle Way. It seemed a good place to wait for a discreet kill — dark as a cellar. His victim would provide the light. He had no lamp to guide him so he went in trailing one hand on the wall, the other in front of his face in case he walked into something. Nothing. Then a light.

Someone came down the alley carrying a lamp. Two boys, around ten years old, slaves of some sort by their dress.

‘Foul night,’ said one, nodding as he came by.

Snake in the Eye nodded back. When the boys had their backs to him he put his hand to his sword. No, he couldn’t draw it. The light they carried shrank. Snake in the Eye was at the rear of some warehouses which supplied the markets. There were no doors and the place stank of piss, shit and rubbish blown in from the Bull Market. Four paces to his right was an even tighter alley between two buildings — not even an alley. The warehouses leaned and sagged so much even a relatively small person like Snake in the Eye had to wriggle his way in. He did so.

After ten minutes another lamp. This time a soldier. He set the lamp on the ground not six paces from where Snake in the Eye was hiding and took a heavy piss. Snake in the Eye’s hand tightened on the sword. Relax, relax. He remembered what the warriors at Birka had told him when he asked for tips.

He loosened his grip on the weapon and reapplied his hand. He brought the sword free.

‘Who’s there?’

The Greek let down his soldier’s skirt and wheeled around.

This was what Snake in the Eye had dreamed of.

‘Only me.’

He stepped forward, his sword catching the glow of the lamp.

‘You’ve picked the wrong man to rob, kid,’ said the Greek. His speech was slurred and it was clear he was slightly drunk. ‘You’ve-’

Snake in the Eye was on him, swinging his sword high and hard towards the soldier’s head.

The man caught Snake in the Eye’s sword arm at the wrist and drove a kick into his guts. The boy crashed back into a wall, his sword flying from his hand. The man drew his own sword and smacked Snake in the Eye hard on the head with the flat of his blade.

‘You’re lucky you find me in a good mood, you little shit,’ he said. ‘If you were a man I’d have put this through you by now.’ He sank another heavy kick into Snake in the Eye’s balls. The boy rolled forward into the dirt, coughing and retching. ‘Take that as a lesson,’ the soldier said, ‘and I’ll take your weapon as a forfeit.’ He walked across to pick up Snake in the Eye’s sword.

The boy lay on the ground feeling very peculiar. His agony seemed to take him to a very strange place. He saw himself by a river, walking. He had walked by the river before, he thought, though he could not recall exactly when. A penny moon hung in the branches of the trees and made the water a shining path.

He said a name under his breath.

‘Bifrost.’ Was he there — in front of the shimmering bridge that led the way to Asgard, the home of the gods?

The remains of a wall were by the river, a broken-down overgrown thing, almost hidden by ivy. There was a niche in the wall and inside it something glowed. What was it? A candle or a tiny lamp? A flame of some sort. He couldn’t quite see it clearly. He had a powerful urge to extinguish it. In his vision he spat on his fingers and put his hand forward to snuff it out. He seemed to fall into darkness, his eyes closing, consciousness fading.

Another lamp was by him. He sat upright to inspect it. It was the same lamp the soldier in the alley had carried. Ten paces from Snake in the Eye lay the body of the man, still holding Snake in the Eye’s sword. No one else was nearby, no one at all. Snake in the Eye remembered the flame in the garden of his mind and laughed. The scholar had been as good as his word. Snake in the Eye had accepted Christ and the snake in his heart was free. He went to the body and touched it. It was freezing cold.

Snake in the Eye giggled. He was cured, more than cured. He had killed his opponent without touching him. He took up his sword. It would have been preferable to kill him with a weapon. He hacked at the body a couple of times. Then he had an idea. He rolled the man onto his front and straightened his neck, took a pace back and leaped at him, swinging the sword down at his neck. He missed his aim slightly, catching the back of the skull. He was fascinated to see how the sword stuck. He put his foot on the head and levered the sword free. Then he tried again. Another miss, this time hacking into the flesh of the shoulder. The third time Snake in the Eye was more accurate. He made a good wound in the neck. Two or three more cuts and the head would come away. He hacked and hacked again. Finally the head fell from the shoulders.

Snake in the Eye sheathed his weapon and picked the head up by the hair.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘not so sure of yourself now. Am I still a boy to be laughed at and scorned? Wag your little tongue.’

He put his fingers into the mouth and padded at the tongue. He did not throw the head aside but carried it with him proudly, a trophy that proved his battle prowess. He had done as the scholar said and surrendered the stone and reaped a marvellous reward. He must follow through on the rest of the advice.

He headed up the alley to Hagia Sophia, which rose above him like one of the monsters of the Greeks, gazing down with its many fiery eyes. Around him the people of the city sped with their lamps through the cold wet streets. No one paid him any notice, and even if they had, they could scarcely have seen him in the gloom. He sensed their living souls. He inhabited two realities, one in the black Byzantine night, the other somewhere stranger, where he moved on a river past a broken-down wall, watching lights flicker and gutter in the moonlight, knowing he only had to snuff out a flame to snuff out a life.

He reached the entrance to the church, and ran up under its great arch. The door was open for prayer. Snake in the Eye went within. The night church burned to the light of a thousand tiny candles, hummed to the muttered prayers of worshippers. His thoughts seemed things of light, mingling with light, the candles of the church’s interior and the candles of his mind almost indistinguishable. So many people in the church, so many candles. And he, what was he? A wind to them.

The priest in his great beard sang out a prayer.

‘What night falls on me, what dark and moonless madness of wild desire, this lust for sin?

Take my spring of tears thou who drawest water from the clouds, bend to me, to the sighing of my heart,

Thou who bendest down the heavens in thy secret incarnation…’

‘I am a killer,’ said Snake in the Eye. He spoke in his own tongue, in Norse.

No one turned.

‘I am a killer!’

He shouted it as loudly as he could. The priest didn’t pause in his recitation.

‘… dawned the light of knowledge upon the earth.

For by your birth those who adored stars were taught by a star to worship you.’

The rhythm of the man’s voice was intoxicating to Snake in the Eye. The light of the candles was like the water of a beautiful sunlit lake on which he floated. A hand was on his arm. A soldier.

‘What in the name of God are you doing with that?’ he said, pointing to the bloody head Snake in the Eye held in his left hand.

Snake in the Eye’s heart pounded, the rhythm exciting him so much he did a little dance. The light was taking shape, or rather shapes. Glittering and shining symbols hung in the air, floated, light suspended by light. He sang out,

‘Alone I sat when the old one sought me,

The terror of gods that gazed in my eyes:

“What have you to ask? Why come you hither?

Odin, I know where your eye is hidden.”’

The soldier put his hand on Snake in the Eye’s shoulder.

‘You’ve got some questions to answer, son.’

‘Am I not battle bold?’ said Snake in the Eye.

Another soldier had him by the other arm but still Snake in the Eye did not let go of the head. He saw the soldiers by his side but he sensed their truer selves too, little lights burning in a garden, an offering to fate. What offering? The same offering fate always demands. Death. They must die so the gods would live. The gods had not given life to humanity. They had given death, to save themselves. The Norns, the strange women who sit weaving out the fates of men by the roots of the world tree, demand death. So the gods had created men to die in their place.

‘Get out!’

‘He’s a Varangian, and he’s killed a Greek! Cut him down here.’

‘Not in the house of God; drag him outside to do it.’

One of the men drew a sword.

‘Is this God’s house?’ said Snake in the Eye in Greek.

‘Yes, barbarian!’

‘Then it is my house.’

They pulled him towards the door but he was somewhere else too — a garden by a river where candles were lodged in niches in the wall, so many that the wall seemed made of fire. In his vision he put forward his hand and snuffed two out — he knew just which ones to choose. The guards at his side fell dead.

‘This is my house!’ shouted Snake in the Eye. ‘And it is a house of the dead!’

His mind was a vortex: he felt the ice winds of the north, the hot breath of the Caspian desert, the summer storms of Birka, their raindrops warm and full.

He released them in the garden of his mind, sending them as a gale against the wall of candles.

In Hagia Sophia, the Church of Holy Wisdom, centre of the faith of the great Roman empire, dedicated to Logos — Jesus as the revealer of the invisible God — the song of the priest stopped and the congregation fell as one to the floor. Snake in the Eye stooped and took a beaded cross from around a dead man’s neck. Then he walked forward over the ranks of corpses, towards the altar, under the light of its glowing gold. He put the head of the Greek upon it and spoke to it.

‘How shall I have my baptism now?’ said the boy. Then the light swamped his thoughts and he collapsed too.

M. D. Lachlan

Lord of Slaughter

32 A Face From the Past

‘I am fettered, I am pinioned and I am bound. My mouth is propped open with a cruel spar and the voices of my tormentors mock me.’

Azemar felt the thin cords binding him to the rock, heard the keening and wailing of his own voice, writhed with the agony of his mouth. He strained against his bonds but they would not break, would not come free. His mind was full of murder, to tear and kill those who had tricked him, tied him and humiliated him.

‘My friend.’

Azemar opened his eyes. The sensation of being tied was gone, the terrible pain in his mouth too. Above him was a face he recognised. Loys.

He tried to speak but found himself coughing.

‘Relax, my friend, you’ve undergone a terrible ordeal.’

‘You rescued me.’

Loys put his hand on Azemar’s arm. ‘Yes.’

Azemar opened his arms and Loys leaned forward to hug him. ‘You were always my protector, Azemar, and it’s good to repay the favour. Do you need water?’

‘Yes.’

Loys brought a bowl up to his lips and Azemar sipped at it.

‘We have food here.’

A plate of cold meat and bread was on the table next to him.

‘I’m not hungry, Loys.’

‘Well, perhaps you will be later.’

Loys smiled at his friend and then said, ‘I am bound to ask, Azemar. Why are you here?’

‘I…’

As he began to speak Beatrice came into the room. Azemar watched her.

‘You’re up,’ she said.

‘Yes.’

‘Has he been looking after you?’

‘Very well.’

Azemar’s heart kicked. It was her, he knew, the lady he had seen all those years ago, going past on her little grey horse, her hair brighter than the corn in the sunlight.

He had steeled himself to meet her because his whole upbringing and education had taught him to regard her as a temptress and a whore. It was her fault Loys had abandoned his vows, her fault an assassin had been sent to kill him. But he could not bring himself to blame her.

Neither could he look at her for long, she conjured such odd emotions in him. It was not lust, nor anything like it. She was beautiful but beauty was a snare he had learned to avoid. This was a deeper longing. He saw all the possibilities that had been denied to him as a monk: home, hearth, children. The longing went beyond the comforts a wife would have brought. He could not name the feeling, nor fully summon it to the front of his mind. He just knew when he looked at her he thought of those empty hills that rose above his monastery, of the wide featureless blue ocean on which he had travelled to Constantinople, of the call of the wolf in the night. Loneliness? Perhaps. Or something like it.

‘You came a long way to suffer so,’ said Beatrice.

Azemar lay back, dizzy. He’d caught the suspicion in her voice.

‘I came to warn you,’ he said. ‘Your father has dispatched assassins. He intends to kill Loys and bring you home.’

‘How does he know we are here?’

‘Your sister.’

‘She betrayed me?’

‘Your father was going to burn the monastery unless someone told him where you had gone.’

‘She could have lied.’

‘She’s a young girl,’ said Azemar. ‘She thinks it a sin to lie.’

‘We have enough problems here without worrying about that,’ said Loys. ‘Anyway the palace is well defended. He’ll send one of his clottish northerners.’

‘What makes you so sure?’

‘The duke looks to the future in many things, but when it comes to war, he likes the men of the old country, isn’t that so?’

‘Yes,’ said Beatrice. She squeezed his hand. ‘Do you know how many come for us?’

Azemar took another sip of water. The sensation of it made him remember its lack in the Numera. Memories spumed — the thing that had tried to kill him, the pale figure who had stood beside him, comforting and caressing him, the meat, the meat he had eaten in a place even God didn’t see. He shuddered and said, ‘No.’ He didn’t want to have to explain how he had come to Constantinople to Loys. A flush came over him, like he’d drunk too much the night before. The lie seemed to dry Azemar’s mouth and he drank some more.

‘So you came alone?’

‘I sailed as soon as I heard your father was looking for you.’

Azemar put down the bowl and leaned back on the bed. Why had he lied? This was the opportunity he had waited for, to alert his friend. He could have given Mauger’s name, described him, put the palace guards on alert, but he had not. Why?

Because the man had very likely been captured and put in the Numera or even killed. Such a warrior would not be taken without a fight, and perhaps the only way to subdue him was to kill him. He didn’t want to alarm his friend or raise pointless questions.

Beatrice came to the side of the bed.

‘Were you ever at the duke’s court?’ she said.

‘Never, lady. I have spent most of my life in the monastery and its fields.’

Azemar spoke the truth, though his thoughts terrified him. He knew her. Yes, he knew her, but not from the world — from his dreams and from the nightmares of the Numera.

‘I’m sure I know you,’ she said.

‘I have seen you riding by,’ he said, ‘but from a distance. You would not recognise my face.’ He couldn’t meet her eyes.

‘Do you recognise me?’

‘I know you only from afar.’

Loys put his hand on Beatrice’s arm. ‘Let’s not trouble Azemar too much. He’s come a long way and suffered a lot for us.’

Azemar closed his eyes. He didn’t want to see the girl any more. He knew who she was — the one from his dreams who had told him she loved him, had always loved him. She was the girl in the fields, the one who had haunted his sleep in his monk’s cell, the one he remembered, though not like any other memory. It was a memory he had been born with, something he had carried with him all his life.

He needed to wait until his thoughts cleared, until he worked out what had happened to him in the Numera. He had killed, he had eaten things no Christian man should eat and now he had a wildfire in his head.

There was a knock at the door.

‘The quaestor is engaged in the service of the chamberlain,’ said the servant, giving the official reply to indicate visitors were not welcome.

The door opened anyway. It was a captain of the messenger service, with three men.

Loys’ fingers closed on the little knife on the plate of cold meats.

‘Quaestor,’ said the officer, ‘you need to come now.’

‘For what?’

‘Sorcery in the most holy place. A demon has come to the Church of Holy Wisdom.’

‘What sort of demon?’

‘The sort that leaves five hundred dead,’ said the officer. ‘It seems your mission to protect the people of this city has had the opposite of its intended effect. You have some explaining to do, Quaestor, so I’d get yourself down to the church now if I was you.’

‘Look after Azemar,’ said Loys to Beatrice. ‘You have the eunuch as your chaperone.’ He picked up the little knife with his back turned to the messengers and put it into his belt. Then he took up his cloak and strode from the room.