Lord of Slaughter

33

Snake in the Eye opened his eyes and wondered where he was. He was in a room with five other beds in it — two of them occupied. One contained a fat man who lay motionless with a cloth across his forehead, the other a youth of around sixteen with a splinted leg propped up by cushions. The youth wrote on some parchment which rested on a small table he’d positioned over his thighs. On it was a candle, the only light in the room.

The young man smiled at him. ‘You’re awake at last. Thank goodness, I could do with the company.’

Snake in the Eye felt for the pebble at his neck. Only the cross. The strange sensations he’d experienced in the church were quieter now but their resonance was still in his mind.

Memories came back to him. He’d been in a garden with a girl. There had been lights and then the lights had gone out. What had happened? He was alive. Was he a hero? He had killed many people — yes now he recalled it — and that meant he really was a hero.

‘Where am I?’

‘In the hospital of the Church of Holy Wisdom. You are the only survivor of the evil that happened tonight. Well, the only well-dressed survivor, anyway. They wouldn’t want to risk picking up someone who couldn’t pay.’

A story ran through Snake in the Eye’s mind. It was the one the traveller who had visited him in his camp had asked for — and given a fine pelt for. He couldn’t remember all of it now, only the end.

He was giggling as if drunk. ‘The old gods, those ancient savages will die.’ The story began again inside his head: There are three women — the Norns…

He tried to stop the pitter-patter of the words, to concentrate on finding out where he was and what he was doing there, but the words blustered through his mind loud as rain tearing against a tent. And — whoa! — there were the runes, forming of candlelight, symbols that rattled like carts, that blew like the wind and shone like the sun, bellowed like bulls and sprouted like seeds.

‘Where is my sword?’

‘I don’t know. I should have thought you’d have had enough of-’

‘I want my sword!’

‘Well, really. I don’t know. I suggest you ask the nurses. Please speak to me no more as you’re obviously well below my rank.’

‘Please be quiet,’ said the man with the cloth over his forehead. ‘I am dying of a nervous fever brought on by these strange skies and I must not be frightened or alarmed.’

Snake in the Eye smirked and grinned as the runes shimmered and chimed. They led him to the wall in the dark crevices of his mind. The men’s lives seemed like little flickering candles. He almost saw them, so strongly did he picture them. He let them take his attention, their cosy little flames filling up his thoughts. And then he no longer wished them to burn. He wanted them to go out. They did and the men spoke no more.

The gods in their schemes… There was more of the story to tell, scraping away in his head like a trapped rat.

He got up, light-headed, though he wasn’t hungry. He looked at his clothes. He was in a long tunic in plain brown cloth, in the Byzantine style. His boots were at the side of the bed. He put them on and walked out of the room, leaving the corpses behind him.

He came into a larger space beneath a dome where people lay all around on beds and matressess. These were of a lower station to the men he had just left in the room.

At his feet was a mosaic — a depiction of a woman drawing a bow, a crescent moon above her head.

He offers the sacrifice to the fates.

A doctor — a short man with a Greek beard — came wandering towards him. He wore a robe similar to Snake in the Eye’s but in dark blue.

‘You’re awake.’

‘Where is my sword?’

‘We have good care of it.’

‘I’d like it now.’

‘I think you need to rest a little. How long have you been awake?’

‘Where is my sword?’

Snake in the Eye grabbed a hank of the man’s tunic at the chest.

‘You’re not in a fit state to leave,’ said the doctor.

Eternally reborn, eternally sacrificed.

‘I am a warrior of the north, no soft southern man am I. Get me my sword.’

His tone was insistent enough for the doctor to give in. ‘Follow me.’

Snake in the Eye was led through a series of arches, through ranks of sick people. The place seemed ready to overflow. Few bore signs of injury but many sat weeping on the floor, some calling out that the final day was upon them and Christ was returning to his kingdom.

‘You’ll excuse the crush,’ said the doctor. ‘The sky has convinced men they are sick.’

Snake in the Eye followed him to a door.

‘Wait.’

The doctor went inside and after a few minutes returned with Snake in the Eye’s purse and sword. Snake in the Eye snatched them up.

‘We’ve deducted your bill from your purse,’ said the doctor but Snake in the Eye was already on his way outside.

He emerged onto a high hill overlooking the city. Was it night or day? He couldn’t tell. The sky was dark but with a strange metalled glow, not night or day but something between. Below him like a huge pale serpent was the long arched bridge, the water road. To his left was the massive dome of the great church.

The gods in their schemes…

The tale seemed like a fly buzzing through his head, and to sit and tell it seemed to be the best way of getting it out. He would wander the streets and find an audience for his story. Perhaps he would kill the audience when he’d finished it. It would be a fine tale to hear as your last. If only he could recall it. The story was annoyingly incomplete in his mind, the words he remembered like the top of a mountain glimpsed through mist. In moments the mist would clear, revealing glimpses of the bulk beneath.

‘And Loki loved her, and knew death in one lifetime was a small price to pay…’

Death in one lifetime. Such a small price. Behind him he heard someone wailing, calling on God to take them and spare them such misery. He looked back at the hospital. If he let his thoughts drift, the building became insubstantial, unreal. More solid by far seemed the runes, bright like floating light, that turned in the air around him. He could feel them, one like an ice wind, another like a bristle of thorns, a third like a drowning current enticing him to unseen depths. They had always been in him, he knew, and the curse had kept them from him. He put out his hand as if to touch them and he saw the garden by the riverbank, the wall full of candles.

He thought to blow them out. But not everyone who asked for the gift of death would receive it. He would not kill cowards, only brave and worthy opponents like the faith-strong worshippers in the church. Yes, he wanted more like that. He took out his sword. First he would test himself in the old way. He longed to feel his enemy’s life blood spurting over his sword hand, to look closely into the man’s face as he died. There would be time enough to blow out candles. He needed a more feeling murder first, a death of blood, of hot, expiring breath, of terrified eyes and grasping hands. After that he would begin to get even with the Roman soldiers — Greeks as they truly were. He’d seen the look the Hetaereian guard had given him when he’d left the emperor’s tent. The man would pay for his scorn, him and all his friends. He would leave them dead in piles.

Snake in the Eye walked down the hill towards the city. He sensed the lives of its inhabitants spread out before him like twenty thousand fireflies flickering in the dark, the wavering lights of their mortal existence as real to him as those of home and hearth.