Haraldr evaded two more cursores on a six-block, zigzagging journey down side-streets and narrow alleys. His route ended in front of a long two-storey building. Towering beyond the building, perhaps three bow-shots away, was an enormous dark column vaguely silhouetted against the snow-flecked night. On top of the column stood a solitary figure, a huge, heroic ghost gesturing into the darkness. Constantine the Great, the first Christian Emperor of old Rome, who long ago, in the twilight of Rome’s old gods, had built the Great City that bore his name; thus had begun the glory of New Rome.
Haraldr decided not to risk further exposure to the cursores by looking for a more suitable route into the Forum, which seemed to be completely hemmed in by two- or three-storey buildings; he crossed the street and quickly climbed the two-storey facade, using the vines that had overgrown the featureless first-storey wall and wreathed the rusticated stone windows on the second storey. He pulled himself over the jutting cornice of the tile roof, scrambled to the peak, and crawled along the spine of the building.
He paused where the roof pitched down again. The Forum of Constantine was a large oval plaza denned by its darkness. For a moment Haraldr lingered over the view of the city, now softly sprinkled in light and surrounded by black water. He moved to the edge of the roof and looked down, startled for a moment by the figures waiting for him. The roof of the Forum’s encircling arcade was a repository for dozens, perhaps hundreds, of statues, their gestures and poses so lifelike that they seemed to have arrested their motion only because they had sensed his intrusion. Haraldr lowered himself from the cornice, let go, and fell a few ells before his feet resounded against the arcade’s wooden canopy.
Haraldr stopped to examine one of the marble figures, a woman almost as tall as himself; she was cloaked in a gauzy robe that swirled around her legs and clung to her full breasts; the sculptor had been so skilled that Haraldr could see her nipples pressed against the fabric. He reached out and touched the robe; it was smooth, almost without texture, as if it were made of real silk. He drew back. Her mouth was so delicate, so subtly nuanced at the corners that it seemed she might at a moment part her lips and breathe life into her breast. He waited, poised on some great needle of fate. With terrifying sharpness he remembered Maria at Daphne, how she had touched a statue’s lips and drawn her fingers back, as if she had come too close to the life locked in that ancient stone. Or had it been death she had touched?
Haraldr dropped quietly into the Forum and immediately ran towards the huge, pyramidal ashlar base of the column. He crouched beside the great marble plinth and looked up. The statue wore a strange crown, a fan of rays that projected about his head like shafts of frozen sunlight. He made his decision. If he opposed Mar, he would certainly die, no matter whom Mar was serving or what end he was pursuing. But if Haraldr dealt with him, he might at least save his pledge-men. He removed his cloak and placed it on the ground a few ells away from him, then took his knife from his boot and removed his short sword from his belt and placed both weapons on the cloak. He sat on his haunches and curled his arms around his knees, the posture of a defenceless captive. He waited.
The arm around his neck compressed his windpipe with paralysing effectiveness, and his shout of alarm was strangled in his throat. He was jerked to his feet, and another arm wrapped his torso like a steel band. No man has such a grip, thought Haraldr with dull recognition. Only Odin.
‘I swear our lives are worthless if you call out,’ whispered Mar Hunrodarson in a convincingly urgent cadence. Haraldr was released from the supernatural embrace and he rasped in cold air. Mar quickly scooped up Haraldr’s weapons and cloak and shoved them back to him. ‘Not a sound,’ he hissed. For several moments Mar searched the emptiness of the Forum. His temple pulsed. ‘Follow me!’ he barked as he dashed out into the darkness. Too stunned even to question his reprieve, Haraldr tried to maintain contact with Mar’s fleeing back. The arcade loomed out of the darkness forty ells away, and Mar stopped. In a smooth motion he flung his briefly phosphorescing knife into the almost opaque passageway. A cry like a soughing wind drifted through the columns. Mar sprinted into the arcade.
When Haraldr arrived, Mar had already flipped the body over. The man had dropped his outer garment in his flight and wore only a good woollen tunic and long, dark woollen hose. His spiky, dark beard glistened with bloody sputum. ‘Do you know him?’ asked Mar.
Haraldr shook his head. He had never seen this man before.
‘He belongs to Joannes,’ said Mar. He stood up and fixed Haraldr with his fiercely intelligent blue eyes. ‘That house the Orphanotrophus Joannes so gratefully gave you is a nest of spies and informants.’
Haraldr considered this twist with detached interest, as if he were now a spectator of his own life. ‘Perhaps Joannes merely assigned this man to protect me,’ he said, automatically reciting the questions of a mind too brutalized for guile.
Mar narrowed his eyes. ‘If you live long enough to become a king, they will call you Haraldr Ox-Wit. You saw how well this man protected you when it appeared that I had attacked you.’
Mar’s scorn was a reviving lash. The fates were giving him another toss, the Valkyrja hovered and waited. Deal with the demon. Had Joannes learned of the Empress’s plot, and Haraldr’s witless involvement, and for that reason had him followed? And if so, why would Mar have killed Joannes’s informant, assuming they served the same master? Haraldr fought a retching shudder. Was Mar also part of the plot against the Emperor? Deal, fate told him. Deal as madly as you have ever gamed with me. ‘Perhaps Joannes suspects me of plotting against the Emperor.’
Mar grabbed Haraldr’s collar and jerked him forward. ‘Those are a dead man’s words, little prince. If I had reason to believe you were capable of plotting against our Father the Emperor, I would leave you with this garbage tonight.’ He pushed Haraldr away. ‘Why would Joannes suspect you of such a plot?’
‘He has reason.’ Haraldr’s heart was a drum.
Mar’s eyes were cold blue lights. ‘What plot do you know of?’
‘I have information,’ said Haraldr. His chest ached from the effort of controlling his breathing. ‘It carries a price.’
‘What do you want?’
‘We both share the gift from Odin,’ said Haraldr grimly. ‘I want you to swear to Odin the All-Father that my pledge-men will not be punished for anything I have done. Promise Odin this oath, that if you betray it he will draw back his favour.’ Haraldr knew that no man who had entered the spirit world and confronted his beast could ever break such an oath. The Christ might forgive those who broke his oaths, as He had Judas, but Odin’s gifts carried the obligation to honour them.
Mar kicked over the corpse and pulled his knife out of the man’s back. His glazed eyes reflected the seriousness with which he took this step. ‘Odin,’ he intoned with a voice unlike his own, ‘I offer you this foeman.’ Then he took the knife and slashed it across his forearm. ‘Odin, I offer you my blood if I forsake this oath.’ Mar lowered his arm and the blood trickled into his palm. His eyes now demanded as fiercely as his voice. ‘What do you know?’
‘The Empress has asked me to murder her husband.’ The words came out like blood-vomit, the release cathartic, the taste as bitter as death.
Mar turned away from Haraldr and focused all his will so that he would not laugh out loud.
‘You have exhausted me with pleasure.’
‘You are insatiable.’
‘It is true. Come up here where I can see you. No, no ... I warn you, I can stand no more of . . .’ Zoe reached behind her head and pulled her wet hair up and mopped it over her brow. She touched her fingers to her own engorged nipples and shuddered. ‘You ... are ... excessive . . . you . . . are . . .’ Zoe ran her hands down her torso and then placed them under her surging buttocks, digging her nails into her own rich, smooth flesh. ‘Wicked . . . wicked . . . you . . . are!’ She caressed her lover’s cheeks and then pressed her hands to her loins, stroking her drenched pubic hair. ‘You are a sinner!’ she suddenly shrieked, bucking madly and clenching her teeth. Her rigid body collapsed and she exhaled lyrically, explicitly, then lay with her head to the side for a moment before turning back to her lover. ‘Oh, delight, have I wounded you? Oh, no ... is your nose broken? Come here and let me see it.’
‘To paraphrase a military maxim, it was not the force of the attack but the surprise.’
Zoe laughed huskily. ‘Will you counter with a thrust of your own?’ She rubbed her hand under his scrotum and along his erect shaft. ‘You are armed.’
‘I thought you found my attentions wearisome.’
‘So I do.’ Zoe closed her legs. ‘Do you worship me?’
‘Yes.’
‘If I decreed that you should not?’
‘I would disobey.’ He slipped his hand between her thighs.
‘Beg me.’
He licked her nipples; still erect, they tightened into hard knots.
‘Beg me. Beg to worship me. Beg for my naked flesh.’
‘Lover, adoration, morning star . . .’
Zoe grabbed her lover’s pulsing member and squeezed hard. ‘I will take your essence this time, little slave. But you must ask for permission. How will you ask for it?’ She spread her legs suddenly. ‘Here, let me bring you in first.’
Her lover moaned. ‘Oh, light, adoration . . . ohhh, take my soul’s nectar . . . oh, perfection . . .’
Zoe ran her nails along his flank. ‘When it happens this time, will you swear to die for me?’
‘I will,’ said Michael Kalaphates drunkenly. ‘My love, I will.’
‘Oh . . . you . . . wicked!’
‘Here is my understanding of what is afoot,’ said Mar when Haraldr had finished his rambling, frantic exposition. They stood in what appeared to be a large park just south and west of the Forum of Constantine; cypresses towered in orderly rows and a pool shone dully a hundred ells away. ‘First of all, you must remember that the Empress herself did not importune you to murder anyone. I know the woman, Maria, though to my regret not as well as you do, and I believe I do no slander to the lady when I say that her beauty is matched by her volatility, her impetuousness, her wantonness. Forgive me, comrade, but she is reputed to be a woman of great passions and little discretion. I hope I am not wounding you, but when she was only a girl - this was eight years ago, when I was only a Decurion of the Guard - when she was only a bud, she took a lover, a distinguished Senator and military commander. I cannot say with certainty who murdered this man, but she was known to have visited him in his apartments shortly before he was found stabbed to death. Of course, the Empress protected the child and the scandal was suppressed, but I have always suspected that Maria killed the man. I suspect that now she thinks she is acting in Her Imperial Majesty’s interests, as I do not question her love for our Mother the Empress. But I do not think she is acting at her Imperial Majesty’s request.’
Haraldr’s head ached from the metallic buzzing and his body seemed weightless. ‘The Empress said that Maria would ask me a question in her name. And the rumours. You know how it is imputed that the Empress had a hand in ... in the death of her husband.’
Mar’s face hardened. ‘How do you know that Maria asked you the question the Empress intended? And forget the libel of the streets and the theatres. I can tell you for certain that the Empress had no part in the death of Romanus, because I pulled his body from the bath in which he had drowned. May the Mother of Heaven forgive me, but the Emperor was under the care of his physicians, and besotted in spite of that. He must have fallen and hit his head. Perhaps he never should have been allowed to bathe alone, but that was no treason.’
Doubts still flocked like quarrelling ravens. Was Mar performing his own drama? And yet what he said about Romanus could well be true.
‘I think there is something else you don’t understand. That was why I had to see you tonight.’ Mar held his hands up and examined his huge yet elegant fingers as if he were himself impressed by the marvel. ‘If I had known what I do of you now, I would have behaved differently when we first met. Then I saw you as some sort of renegade, a man who did not understand our devotion to our Father and his Imperial dignity, a royal whelp who thought he could plunder the wealth of Rome merely to serve his own ends. I thought to teach you a lesson, intimidate you, use my knowledge of your background to frighten you into obedience. I didn’t know then that you were a man of honour. Tonight I am certain that your devotion to our Father is as great as my own. I no longer mistrust you. But I hope, for your sake as well as mine, that you will begin to trust me.’
This was not a Norseman speaking; this was the oiled tongue of a eunuch. But why was Mar wagging a praise-tongue if he held the sword over Haraldr’s neck?
He needs me,
Haraldr realized.
He needs my friendship more than he needs my fear. You have dealt once and won your pledge-men’s lives. Deal with the demon again.
‘I trust that you will not break your oath to Odin. What would I gain by trusting you further? I have satisfied my honour. And you can only kill me once.’
Haraldr had expected at best the fury of Mar’s anger; perhaps a final mortal struggle. But Mar surprised him with an intense yet even stare. ‘What you would gain, Manglavite Haraldr, is the honour of defending a worthy Emperor against a malignancy so foul that it threatens every life in the Roman Empire, our own included.’
Haraldr could agree that the Emperor was worthy of defending. ‘I have told you of the plot I suspected,’ he invited.
‘You say that Maria’s words were “Sever the head of the Imperial Eagle”. Perhaps she meant Joannes, not the Emperor. It is often said that the Orphanotrophus Joannes is the grotesque head atop the body of Rome. There are many who love our Father who would like to see his brother out of the way.’ Mar paused ominously. ‘The Orphanotrophus Joannes is evil. He does not serve our Father, despite his lavish protestations. He serves himself. Joannes has already designated you a plaything in his evil game.’