Mar was placated enough by the explosion of wood and ivory to think clearly for a moment. Of course Haraldr Sigurdarson was no longer worth the trouble, of course he had to die; the decision he had made in haste once before had been right then, and it was the correct decision now. But, Mar now wondered, had he selected the proper instrument for Haraldr Sigurdarson’s execution?
The enclosed atrium of the Grand Domestic Bardas Dalassena’s hilltop palace featured a central fountain lined with gold tiles; a lion reared up from amid the water. Mar studied the reflection of the candlelight in the still pool; the fountain had been turned off. Five officers of the Imperial Taghmata stood guard a discreet distance across the vaulted marble chamber. Mar sneered inwardly.
He thinks that if I wanted to kill him, I would send my centurion to him in the middle of the night to ask for an interview? And does the fool imagine he is manifesting his strength by making me wait?
The ninth hour of the night passed before a topoteretes assigned to the offices of the Grand Domestic descended the spiral staircase. ‘He will see you now,’ said the topoteretes. The Grand Domestic did not greet Mar when the Hetairarch stepped into his quiet office. Mar studied the massive polished bronze water clock beside the writing table. The whore flaunting her cheap jewellery, thought Mar with disgust.
Dalassena riffled through the dispatches on his writing table. A book on military strategy, opened to drawings of stockade configurations, rested on the lectern. He looked up as if momentarily distracted from issues of momentous gravity. The image of the military man, thought Mar; the thick chest and powerful forearms, the leathery, chiselled brow and clipped, wiry, dark beard. The image, like everything in Rome, merely an image. Dalassena finally nodded for his topoteretes to leave; conspicuously the aide did not close the door behind him and after a moment coughed in the hall so that Mar would know he was still there. Mar could scarcely keep the glee off his face.
Does Dalassena fear me this much?
‘I am busy, Hetairarch.’ Dalassena’s voice had a rich, innate command.
Mar decided he had politely suffered enough of this display. He kicked the door shut and barred it with his back. ‘Turd worm! Do you think those six boys outside can prevent me from breaking your neck like a twig!’ To Dalassena’s credit, his dark eyes flared with his own anger and hatred; Mar surmised that the Grand Domestic would retreat from death as long as he could, but when he was finally trapped, he would turn and face the Valkyrja.
‘Very well, Hetairarch.’ Dalassena shrugged; apparently he had decided he still had a few more avenues for retreat. ‘I have offered you an opportunity to deal once before. There is no reason why I should not offer conciliation simply because this time you are the supplicant. I have negotiated with the devil many times in my career.’
Indeed you have, thought Mar, and fair enough warning. Mar moved away from the door; the topoteretes, backed by all five guards, lurched into the room and was quickly dismissed by Dalassena and told to close the door again. ‘Let me arrive directly at my point,’ said Mar briskly. ‘You were correct in your initial warnings about the danger of the Manglavite - then ordinary pirate - Haraldr Nordbrikt. He is a threat to all of us.’
Dalassena’s eyes were startlingly quick and alert. ‘And you, who can break necks like twigs - which I do not doubt - wish me to perform the execution. Why?’
‘Because if I am the executioner, I will be unable to gain the loyalty of his men when he has left them bereft of his leadership.’
Dalassena jutted his chin out. ‘But I do not wish you to gain the loyalty of his men. I consider them, and you, a scourge, and would hope to see them march leaderless back to the snows of Thule. Or perhaps the Middle Hetairia might fall upon the Grand Hetairia in a fratricidal orgy. How suited that would be to my ends.’
‘Just when I think an ass has learned to talk with his rear end, he turns around and brays at me,’ said Mar. Dalassena leapt to his feet, his face livid. With one hand Mar slammed him back down into his chair. ‘Listen to me, fool who has bartered away his wits to the devil. The deal you negotiated was with the Dhynatoi, not Joannes. Now Joannes is your master. We both know that. So far Joannes has confined his attentions to the details of civil administration and left military matters to the Emperor. When his brother dies, and we both know that is imminent, Joannes’s malignant hands will seize the military establishment; surely you do not see the pathetic Caesar leading the armies of Rome? And many are likely to be strangled in that grip.’
Dalassena’s eyes said everything. He had already heard rumours of the campaigns planned by Joannes. Suicidal. And yet not to obey? Suicidal. Dalassena thrust his chest out and exhaled through his nostrils. ‘So. I bring you the head of Haraldr Nordbrikt, and you bring the head of Joannes.’
Mar nodded. There was a pounding at the door. Dalassena shouted for the topoteretes to go away, but the pounding continued. Dalassena stepped to the door, his face reddening. When the door was opened, Mar observed the face of the topoteretes. Something was wrong. ‘Sir, there is a state courier downstairs.’ The topoteretes’s voice was dulled by shock. ‘You will want to hear his dispatch.’
Dalassena followed the topoteretes downstairs. Mar studied a carved ivory plaque on Dalassena’s wall; it depicted St Demetrius, the ‘warrior saint’, armoured in the fashion of an officer of the Taghmata. Mar’s heart pounded. Has it happened? If so, then his haste had been more than prudent. There would still be time; Joannes would be distracted by the massive obligations of a state funeral and the anointing of the Caesar as the new Emperor. And perhaps by genuine grief. Yes, there was still time. Mar thought his heart would leap from his breast when he heard Dalassena’s boots click on the marble again.
Dalassena’s face was not merely ashen but had a sickly, vaguely greenish cast. Mar wondered if the man would swoon; his eyes were stunned and impotent. Mar helped him to his chair. Dalassena rolled his eyes to Mar like a dying man, his voice already from the crypt. ‘Bulgars,’ he said. ‘The Bulgars have already claimed Paristron and Macedonia and have blockaded Thessalonica. We have lost the Western Empire. And they are ten days’ march from the walls of Constantinople.’
Mar reached down, clutched Dalassena’s collar, and jerked the Grand Domestic’s deathly face up into the light. ‘That changes nothing we have settled tonight,’ Mar hissed. ‘We will throw the Bulgars back. And there are many perils that can befall a warrior as courageous as the Manglavite Haraldr Nordbrikt in the heat of the battle.’ Mar let Dalassena sag back into his chair. ‘Don’t you see it? The Emperor cannot lead his troops into battle. You will have supreme command of the armies of Imperial Rome. And you will have no more loyal colleague at your side than the Commander of the Imperial Grand Hetairia.’
‘It’s madness!’ Haraldr shouted over the din inside the Magnana Arsenal. The smoke from the torches of the Optimatoi -Imperial baggage handlers - fogged the light from the discshaped polycandelons blazing high above in the vaults. At the far end of the enormous warehouse, huge siege machines loomed through the haze like strange mechanical monsters. The quantity and variety of military equipment being carted out and loaded on the pack mules and wagons was staggering: strings of caltrops, siege ladders, bridge pontoons, tents, various sizes of portable liquid fire-throwers, as well as clay shells filled with liquid fire, tents, arrow containers, leather field baths; one Optimatoi rushed by with a stack of bound tactical treatises. ‘Why are they moving the siege engines out? They are simply going to slow us down!’
Mar shook his head quizzically. ‘They think that Thessalonica may fall!’
‘It probably will,’ shouted Haraldr, ‘if we slow down to protect all this equipment!’
Mar nodded his agreement. ‘What are you looking for!’
‘These!’ Haraldr reached in the canvas bag he carried and pulled out a soft leather ankle boot from which dangled long leather straps. ‘You wrap the straps around and they can’t come off even if you step in pitch. We’re going to run into mud, and these’ - he slapped his heavy leather knee boots -’are going to be trouble!’
‘Is the middle Hetairia ready to march?’ shouted Mar, just as an Optimatoi carrying a basketful of horseshoes ran into him.
‘Yes!’ The decision had been easy, Haraldr realized. First the body of Rome had to be saved; then he could deal with the head, and the body could be healed. Then he could go home. Haraldr hefted several of the bags of footwear and shouted at a dozen of his men to start carrying off the rest.
‘Are you returning to your barracks?’ screamed Mar. Metalworkers had started hammering on one of the siege engines.
‘Yes! Then I’m going to my home in the city to get Gregory! My interpreter! I don’t want any chance of misunderstanding a battle order!’
Mar looked around the huge, steaming, clamouring, sweat-and flame-smelling warehouse, his eyes jittering with excitement. He clenched his steel-hard fists and bellowed in the din: ‘I can already taste the raven’s wine!’
Haraldr rode alone up the hill to his palace. Despite a steady rain, the city was alive with speculation, perhaps incipient hysteria. A huge crowd had gathered in the Forum of Constantine to listen to the simultaneous harangues of various speakers with widely divergent views; one long-haired youth, probably a Bogomil, attributed the attack to the sinfulness of the city, while a grizzled one-legged old man, probably a veteran of the Bulgar-Slayer’s campaigns, recited a lurid litany of the atrocities the Bulgars were even now perpetrating on the people of Rome. Even in Haraldr’s fashionable neighbourhood, people clustered on the street corners in small, restive assemblies; their concern was an imminent invasion of the city. And it seemed as if every servant in the district was running to and fro on the street, arms laden with bags of grain and clay jars of wine and oil, as households stockpiled provisions for a siege. Some servants had even carted out large ivory triptychs or bronze sculptures to sell for ready cash.
Haraldr’s own street was no different; the chambermaid from his neighbour’s house leaned over a balcony and asked him if he had seen the Bulgar horde yet and was it true that they tortured women after they had raped them? A cart groaned up the cobbled hill, two eunuchs lashing the mule; the vehicle was loaded with three fat, snorting stoats, no doubt illegally obtained from a pork wholesaler. A woman in an expensive fur rain cape waited by the entrance portal of his palace.
No, I haven’t seen the Bulgars yet,
Haraldr rehearsed mentally.
They are ten days’ march at least and we will certainly throw them back before they ever see Rhegium, much less the walls of the city. Go back to your husband and worry about the taxes that will be needed to pay for this campaign.
The woman walked over to Haraldr before he could dismount; her drenched cape cowled her head. She put her hand on his boot and turned her face up. Haraldr’s head snapped erect with the jolt of her hot sapphire eyes. Maria quickly took her hand away, as if she had touched a glowing brazier. She stared at him for a moment before she spoke. ‘I have no right. But I must talk to you before you leave. I must. I have been waiting.’
‘I have no time for your particular game, Mistress,’ snapped Haraldr. ‘I must play the game of war, which as you say is no less trivial than a child’s but one in which the wagers are paid in blood.’ Haraldr dismounted and stood over her. Her face was unpainted and her pale skin was beaded by the rain. ‘Perhaps you can tell me how to kill a Bulgar if he tries to make love to me.’
‘I did not come to mock you,’ she said softly, her voice like crystal drops falling from the grey, ugly sky. ‘I know I have . . .’ She inhaled and stood erect. ‘I did not come to explain myself. I can offer no apology. What is done is done. What can yet be undone, I wish to undo. What I have to say concerns your life.’
Haraldr shook his head wearily. ‘I should think I would be beyond your intrigues where I am going.’
‘Please. You know I am not . . .’ She paused, and her lips, tinted more purple than usual, trembled. ‘You know the emptiness inside me. I know you have tried to reach out to me. I am not happy in my being.’ Her face had a desperate look he had never seen before. ‘I beg you to pity me.’
Haraldr remembered something she had once said, and he wondered which eccentric star now prompted him to indeed pity her. ‘Come inside.’
Haraldr’s servants were in a frenzy, rushing about with jars and granary sacks and taking the silver plates to the basement for storage. His chamberlain, Nicetas Gabras, stood in the middle of the ante-chamber like a general directing an invasion. Haraldr just glanced at Gabras in annoyance; he had kept Joannes’ lackey on because it seemed that in Rome a confirmed spy was almost as valuable as a trusted friend. Every now and again, however, he had to resist the urge to stroll downstairs and literally tear Gabras in two in front of his entire staff of cringing eunuchs and maidservants. ‘Gregory,’ shouted Haraldr to the corners of the huge palace, ‘are you ready to go a-viking with your Norse comrades?’ Gregory shouted back, a muffled response, and after a few moments the little eunuch appeared at the far end of the ante-chamber; he wore a linen cape and dragged a Norse-style hide gear bag. ‘In battle storm we fear no lee!’ he exhorted with a self-deprecating flourish.
Haraldr grinned at Gregory’s kenning. ‘You are the first Roman Norseman,’ he told Gregory affectionately. Haraldr looked at Gabras, who was still directing his own campaign, and had an inspiration. ‘Chamberlain,’ he barked, ‘leave this! You are going to war!’ Gabras looked as if he had just had a knife plunged into his ribs. ‘Yes. You could be useful. My interpreter and brave comrade here, a veteran of much combat, needs a batman to carry his bag to the front. You are appointed to this position. Any delay in obeying this order will be punished by regulations governing the conduct of the Middle Hetairia.’ The astonished Gabras quickly capitulated to Haraldr’s icy eyes and attached himself to Gregory’s gear bag as if he had been born to the position.