‘You have just raised our fee by ten solidi a man and twenty per cent,’ growled Haraldr. The terrified Marmot-Man meekly repeated the figures.
Nicephorus Argyrus’s eyes revealed more surprise than terror; he had clearly seen death before. After a moment the coal-coloured irises brightened, and he grinned slyly before beginning his response.
‘He asks you to put away your weapon. He says a man with your special skills is certainly worth the extra pay, though it will probably cost him his profit and then some. He’s doing this as a service to the Empire.’
Of course, thought Haraldr. He’s probably already extorted the entire cost of the expedition - as well as a good profit -from the other merchants who ship in those waters.
‘He says that now that our business is concluded, he wants you to eat well. You’ll need your strength out there.’ Nicephorus Argyrus reached up and put his arm around Haraldr and began walking him out of the room. Marmot-Man followed with a running translation. ‘Yes, the risks are great but I have every expectation of a successful venture. After all, you Varangians grow up fighting on the sea. Why, I might even gain some profit in the end. Why not? Of course you’ll be a rich man. And when you return we’ll talk about making you wealthier still, and by that I don’t mean chasing more Saracens around Italia. There are still some superlative properties for the taking out there, particularly Thrace and Thessalonica, where the Bulgars will never touch them;, they’re undervalued simply because the Dhynatoi have this prejudice about setting foot west of the land wall. Of course, if you really want to ruin the value of even an eastern estate, send the son of a Magister out there to manage it. Yes, my friend, I’m the one to talk to if land is your business. It’s not enough to know what to buy, it’s the “when” that makes the difference between profit and penury. I always buy after a raid, and sell when everyone says the frontier has never been quieter. . . .’
Nicephorus Argyrus’s guests dined on silver plates embossed with scenes of legendary heroes and sipped wine from carved agate goblets rimmed with silver and pearls. It was an excruciating experience for Haraldr; he did not know which foods should be eaten with the hands - such as the tiny berries and fish roe and other curious morsels that were served before the meal - or which should be picked to bits with the curious little silver ladles and prongs each guest had been provided. And even when Haraldr cued himself by watching the other guests, the effort in managing the delicate implements was maddening.
When not struggling with the dining protocol, Haraldr was surreptitiously studying Maria. Her nose alone was a fascinating work of art; it was narrow, with an erotic, slight flare of the nostrils, and somewhat long, very subtly curving inward along the bridge and then rising to a sharp, chiselled tip. She was a goddess to whom Elisevett and Serah were only handmaidens, and yet she sat between her Scholae companions as if she were their whore, touching their hands and nuzzling their shoulders.
Eventually Maria caught Haraldr staring at her. Impelled by a force that seemed to gather him up like a huge surf, he did not turn from her blazing cobalt-blue eyes. She made no expression or gesture whatever, and yet her unwavering gaze drew him within the ice-tinted fires. Haraldr felt the same sort of convulsive shudder that he had when he’d touched Serah, yet this sensation penetrated to his soul. The voice in his head spoke so clearly that he wondered if the others had heard. Thoroughly spooked, he closed his eyes for an instant and a fantastic vision composed of images so fleeting that he could not discern them flashed before him. He felt something strike his neck quite perceptibly, and he could not breathe. His eyes shot open and his hand jerked up to his neck and he was surprised to find nothing there. Maria was still looking at him. Her lips softened into the barest hint of satisfaction, as if she acknowledged the vision to which her powers had drawn him. The voice spoke again, this time as softly as a woman’s silken touch.
The shouts broke the frighteningly irresistible connection.
Disappointed and relieved, Haraldr turned towards the commotion at the entrance to the dining hall. A giant figure in a black frock and high black hat - a ‘monk’, Haraldr reminded himself - lurched forward as if he would topple, yet slapped his gangly, curiously shaped arms at the distraught, silk-clad eunuchs who were trying to prop him up. The black-frock took several unsteady steps towards the table, and then, his shoulders wavering in an almost constant rotation, leered over the guests.
Like the other monks Haraldr had seen, this man had cropped his beard and hair, apparently just recently; his skin was as smooth as a woman’s. But his features were huge, distorted, almost monstrous: a nose like a great, swollen eagle’s beak; an upper lip as thin as an engraved line; a thick, almost purple lower lip; and a grotesquely heavy, bestial jaw. His tangled dark eyebrows seemed to merge with his small dark irises, and his eyes rolled about with a manic, piercing fury. After a moment Haraldr realized that this baleful monster-monk was not freshly shaven. He was a eunuch.
The monk’s strident voice rumbled over the table, the slurring of the words only adding to the inherent menace in his discourse. A swarthy, sumptuously dressed man seated across the table from Haraldr inclined his head towards the painted cheek of his lady and mumbled some commentary on the monk’s discourse. Haraldr strained for some recognizable words or names and was startled to hear ‘Joannes’. The same Joannes whose name he had heard invoked so often?
The monk heard his name as well, and his already angry features shadowed with rage. His explosive response was entirely verbal, but the resounding sentences seemed to assault the swarthy man physically; the man’s head snapped back and his dusky complexion ashened. He rose, his entire body trembling, bowed to Nicephorous Argyrus, and hurriedly led his obviously terrified wife from the room.
The monk went back to his wavering vigil. Someone tipped over a goblet of wine and a few guests tittered nervously. Maria tilted up her exquisite nose and dabbed her lips with a linen napkin. She spoke very slowly to the monk, using the name Joannes quite clearly, and there was no mistaking the timbre of annoyed sarcasm in her musical tones.
Joannes replied precisely and gravely, almost as if he had suddenly been released by the herons of the ale-benches. His tongue was a thick reptilian pad that slid over his lower teeth as he talked.
Maria followed his words with a quick glaring retort. When it seemed that the goddess and the monk would remain locked in this exchange of hard looks and words, Nicephorus Argyrus rose, said something to the guests, and clapped his hands. In a flash of brilliant hues and dazzling flesh, several acrobats in colourful jackets and brief loincloths flipped over the table. The guests laughed and clapped. His audience lost, Joannes stalked from the room. Haraldr noticed with considerable curiosity that the monk moved much more steadily than he had when he entered. Had he only been feigning drunkenness? And why? And who was he? Kristr’s chief wizard?
The acrobats bounded into the main hall and the guests rose and followed. Dancers and more acrobats on stilts gambolled about to the whirling rhythms of cymbals, pipes and stringed instruments. Eunuchs brought fresh goblets of wine, but many of the guests were already making their farewells to Nicephorus Argyrus. Maria’s entourage of pretty young women had returned to her side, and the two officers of the Scholae and the Hetairarch were strapping on their swords.
Maria turned, and the stunning blue eyes glanced in Haraldr’s direction. His heart hammered at the thought that she might be thinking of him, as he was of her. She reached out to the Hetairarch, again placing that infuriating, familiar hand on his arm, and spoke to him for a moment. Then she turned amid her train of lovely young ladies and vanished like an achingly beautiful dream.
The Hetairarch walked straight for Haraldr, his step graceful, the heavy, jewelled sword and scabbard riding his brocaded hip.
‘The lady has a message for you,’ the Hetairarch said pleasantly, with a touch of genial man-to-man ribaldry. Haraldr thought his heart would thunder out of his chest.
The Hetairarch slapped Haraldr’s shoulder and said, ‘Follow me, I’ll give it to you away from prying ears.’ He led Haraldr to a small clerk’s room with cases for files and a few parchments piled on a plain wooden table; it was lit by a single ram-shaped iron oil lamp. The Hetairarch turned and faced Haraldr, his features flickering in the light.
‘She says she hopes your fair hair will not bring about your own doom before she has a chance to see it again.’
Haraldr was confused. Was she warning him as well, or just teasing? And was this the extent of her message? Why this secrecy? His skin began to crawl.
The Hetairarch seemed to sense Haraldr’s unease. ‘Well,’ he said affably, ‘I wanted to give you advice as well.’ He smiled and stepped closer. His eyes were rimmed with a touch of black paint. Haraldr’s instincts warred; he desperately needed this alliance, yet he was becoming acutely uncomfortable.
The Hetairarch came half a step closer, still smiling. ‘You don’t know what the Hetairarch does, do you?’ His inflection was curiously lilting. He reached out and lightly touched the ends of Haraldr’s silky blond hair.
Haraldr cringed, rocked by revulsion. Kristr damn all! A crooked! Pervert! Boy lover!
‘You still don’t know who I am,’ the Hetairarch said, still smiling, but there was a strange metal-edge to his lilting voice that made the hair at Haraldr’s neck rise. No ...
no!
It all happened at once. The handsome, slightly feminine features darkened as if a great storm cloud had passed over them, and in an instant the Hetairarch had the face of the beast: nostrils flared murderously, mouth blackened and snarling, eyes veined and bulging with rage. Odin’s Rage. Haraldr already felt cold steel at his throat. The Hetairarch slammed him against the table as if he were a puny child.
The voice roared and howled like the last dragon. ‘The Hetairarch,’ the demon spat in terrifying, barking convulsions, ‘commands the Imperial Guard!’ The syllables, each a separate explosion of rage followed by a thundering gasp, jolted Haraldr like the blows of a broad-axe. ‘
I! Am! Mar! Hun! Ro! Dar! Son!’
The sword slid against Haraldr’s neck and he could immediately feel the tickling flow of blood. He could do nothing; it was as if a crate loaded with anvils had rolled upon his chest.
Odin!
The beast fled from the face of Mar Hunrodarson. Haraldr now merely faced the most terrible, intimidating human visage he had ever imagined. The great force relaxed slightly but the sword stayed at his neck.
‘Just so you know that the Rage is no weapon against me,’ Mar said, his voice still metallic and his teeth clenched. With a lightning-quick movement he thrust the bloodied sword back in his scabbard. Most of the deep crimson hue of the Rage receded from his face. He pulled Haraldr up by his bloody collar.
Haraldr’s head spun and he sat meekly on the edge of the table. He was the new boy at court who had taken a profound thrashing from the reigning tough. And that was all he was; no son of the gods, no king from kings, not even leader of five hundred Varangians.
‘I hope this proves to you that I am not the one who wants you dead,’ said Mar, his voice even if not genial. ‘It was I who made certain that no one meddled with the investigation into Hakon’s death. A fair ruling was all I sought, and I helped to see that you got it.’
Mar confidently turned his back on Haraldr. ‘Hakon was a buffoon. I had reason for encouraging his rise at court. But he had become a liability, even an affront to the Imperial dignity. And I was appalled when I learned that he was going to sacrifice five hundred good men in another of his foolish cheats. If you hadn’t killed him, I would have.’
Mar turned and placed both hands firmly on Haraldr’s shoulders. There was nothing remotely suggestive in the gesture.
‘Yes, your life is in danger here, but not by my hand. It would hardly be in my interest to kill you.’ Mar grinned tightly. ‘I have use for you.’
Mar threw back his head. The grin spread over his entire darkly flickering countenance before he lowered his gaze and fixed his glacial eyes on Haraldr again. ‘Yes, Haraldr Sigurdarson, Prince of Norway. I have use for you.’
The building had been an old Roman inn, and it stood between crumbling, centuries-old brick tenements. The street in front had stone kerbs, but the ancient pavestones were invisible beneath a thick layer of silt and rubbish. A sailor in a ragged fustian tunic sat against the building’s soiled marble facade, his head ducked between his knees. A prostitute paced before him, her face painted as garishly as a wooden puppet; she seemed at least fifty years old. The music of some kind of stringed instrument came from inside.
Alexandros and Giorgios had consumed enough courage at Argyrus’s to cast aside boldly the filthy sheet that served as the inn’s front door; Maria followed. There was but a single large table, and no one was having sex on it; half a dozen Venetians howled as they gathered around a furiously attentive young man rapidly and deftly pounding a huge knife blade between his spread fingers. Less interested in the game were four or five prostitutes and another dozen sailors who milled beside the row of marble basins that had, in better days, dispensed food to the establishment’s patrons. The current habitues scarcely acknowledged the new arrivals; they discreetly gestured to one another while taking furtive glances. One man plucked tentatively at a lute.
Maria watched a sailor slip his hand inside the coarse linen tunic of one of the whores and knead a sagging breast. ‘I am so disappointed,’ Maria said. ‘Perhaps we have come on one of their Saints’ days.’
‘We have seen enough,’ said Giorgios, slurring slightly. At that moment the sheet over the door swept aside and at least two dozen people and assorted creatures burst through the arched doorway so convulsively, it seemed that the little inn had somehow ingested them in a single gulp: sailors in coarse tunics; more affluent traders in relatively cheap export-grade silks; some young, not unattractive, prostitutes; several musicians with lutes and pipes; yapping dogs, screaming monkeys and a small spotted panther on a leash. The music shrilled in frantic circular rhythms, and almost immediately a woman whirled on the table; after a very short performance one of the silk-clad Venetians wrestled her to the floor and began removing her robe.