Hereward 05 - The Immortals (14 page)

‘You are dogs, all of you.’ Heads wrenched round as a figure stepped from the shadows among the tents. Hereward recognized the squat form of Isaac Balsamon, the Boar. Contempt glimmered in his staring eyes. ‘You should thank God that you have been allowed to ride alongside us. The Viking, he was little more than a beast, not fit to be among civilized men. He was a drunk. He reeked of sweat and vinegar. He would shit in the street if we let him.’

Hereward saw his men bristle. Fists bunched. Hands snapped to the hafts of axes and spears. ‘Stay,’ he commanded. The spear-brothers obeyed, but they remained rigid. The Boar only laughed.

But then Alexios stood up, his face flushed by the heat of the fire, or so Hereward thought. ‘Still your tongue,’ the youth spat. ‘Speak no ill of the dead, and not one who has shown only courage on the field of battle.’

Isaac eyed the other man, hesitating to speak. After a moment, he growled, ‘Why would you defend him?’

‘All who have been baptized in blood on the field of battle are brothers.’

‘And there is your error.’ Grinning, Maximos stepped beside the Boar and slapped an arm across his shoulders. ‘My good friend Isaac is still a virgin. No blood has yet been spilled. And he would not know a field of battle from a field of barley. What say you, Isaac?’ Maximos’ grip on the other man’s shoulders grew tighter, too tight for a display of friendship, and he shook him like a dog with a stick. The Boar grimaced and tried to wrench himself away. With his free hand, Maximos reached over to ruffle the other man’s hair, a playful gesture that reeked of mockery. He gripped the Boar’s scalp, shook his head roughly and then thrust hard. Isaac tumbled on to his back.

While the English laughed and jeered, Maximos held out both hands and grinned, playing to the crowd. The Boar jumped to his feet, but Maximos was bigger, stronger, and a warrior who was never afraid of a fight. Thinking better of a confrontation, Isaac brushed himself down and walked away with as much nonchalance as he could muster. But when he glanced back, Hereward saw the glint of murder in his eyes. Humiliation had made a bitter enemy.

Maximos walked over to stand beside Alexios, flashing his broad grin at the spear-brothers as he passed. He was telling them he was one of them, Hereward knew. But was this more of his cunning? Hereward studied Maximos’ face, remembering when they had travelled across Afrique together and he had thought the Roman could have been a brother. They had seemed so alike, men of honour in a grim world. But then the scales had fallen from his eyes. The Mercian frowned. Maximos defied easy measure.

‘We must take care.’ Tiberius had come up quietly behind him. When Hereward turned, he saw that the commander’s face was drawn, his mood flat. What he had discovered from the scout lay heavily upon him. ‘Lines are being drawn,’ the Roman continued. ‘We must not fight among ourselves. It will be our undoing. We have had our differences, Roman and English, but we need every good warrior to trust the man beside him if we are to survive the battle ahead.’

‘Easy words,’ Hereward replied. ‘These divisions run deep.’
And you have only made them deeper
, he thought, but there was no gain in giving voice to those words. ‘My brothers will do what is demanded of them, do not doubt it. Look to your own. If weakness lies anywhere, it is there.’

Turning, he walked away into the night before his simmering anger got the better of him. Kraki’s death had been a blow too far. It threatened to release the man he once had been, the wanton killer. And if that happened all would truly be lost.

THE RAT SCURRIED
down the centre of the street, a knob of bread clutched between its needle teeth. The hot morning reeked of sweat and fish sauce as the rodent weaved among the jumble of wooden stalls laden with amphorae of olive oil, game birds and fruit. But the crowds that throbbed past the bellowing merchants were oblivious of the life speeding by their feet.

From the shade beneath the colonnade, Deda watched the creature pass by. Rats scrambled everywhere in that city; he sometimes wondered if there were more there than men. They were not starved, of that he could be sure.

The stalls tumbled out into the thoroughfare from the entrances to the shops that lined the way. Scraps of food fell everywhere. The rats danced with delight. With a lopsided smile of bafflement, Deda remembered the times his stomach had growled with hunger when he had trudged with Hereward and the rebels through the snowbound forest in England. And now, here, in the suffocating heat of the east with an abundance of victuals on all sides, still it growled. But he would not complain. He had suffered worse in his life than an empty belly.

With glistening brows, men and women bustled past the knight without even the slightest acknowledgement. Perhaps they saw in him nothing more than a filthy beggar. Perhaps they recognized the bearing of a swordsman, but did not care.

Shrugging, Deda looked past them for his wife. Rowena was buying some of the flatbread the Romans liked, and some olives, if what little coin they could spare would go that far. He nodded. Life, after all, was good.

A hand fell on his arm. A voice rustled at his side, the words laced with ironic humour. ‘Do not look round. Keep your fingers from your sword.’

‘If you have plans to rob me, you could have not made a worse choice.’

‘We do not trust Normans here. Sometimes we pay them to fight for us, but we do not really like them.’ A snicker. ‘And I am English, so I have even less reason to trust you than these Romans.’ The speaker edged forward until Deda could see it was the Varangian guardsman, Ricbert, the small, sly, thin-faced warrior who was Wulfrun’s eyes and ears in the streets of Constantinople. ‘And yet now I find myself the guardian of your miserable life. God makes strange plans for us poor mortals.’

Deda raised one eyebrow. ‘I have never seen much need for a guardian before. Nor have all the men who have died on the end of my blade.’

‘Perhaps it is time to think anew,’ the guardsman said, pointing along the street.

Men with helms and shields and axes were pushing their way through the throng around the stalls. Cold eyes searched faces and peered into shadows. Soldiers, by the look of it, Deda thought, but not of any kind he recognized. Every man wore a brown tunic, and a brown cloak too.

‘We call them Shit-dogs,’ Ricbert said, lowering his voice as he stepped back out of sight, ‘and they have come for you.’

‘I have done no wrong,’ the knight said, frowning.

‘Falkon Cephalas believes you, your wife, some of the other English here, to be a threat. He has heard rumours that you scheme against the emperor, and, as we have found, Falkon Cephalas will do anything within his power to crush even the whisper of a plot. Even build his own army of bastards, rogues and cut-throats because he no longer has faith in the Varangian Guard.’ Ricbert gripped the knight’s arm. ‘Your life is no longer safe. You must come with me, now, or you will be taken.’

‘My wife—’

‘There is no time.’

Deda wrenched his arm free and pushed his way into the crowd. He kept his head down, his eyes flickering under his brow. Ahead, he glimpsed Rowena emerging from one of the merchants’ residences with a loaf wrapped in a white cloth hugged against her chest as if it were made of gold. He thought how weary she looked. But then she saw him and her face lit up with a smile.

Nearby, the soldiers filtered among the stalls. Axes twitched in their hands.

When Rowena opened her mouth to hail him, Deda pressed a finger to his lips. Her smile fell away as she read his dark expression. Words were rarely necessary; they were like one mind. Her white headdress covering her brown hair, she lowered her head and walked towards him. Once she had reached him, he slipped a hand under her arm to urge her back to Ricbert.

Behind him, Deda heard a harsh voice crack through the drone of conversation and the barks of the merchants trying to sell their wares. He did not look round. Gripping Rowena’s arm tighter, he forced her on, feeling proud that she showed no fear, and asked no questions. She trusted him implicitly, as she had through every peril they had encountered on the long road from England.

One of the soldiers snarled an order to stop. When they did not obey, a tumult of angry cries rang out and Deda heard the crash of an overturned stall. In the confusion, he barged through the men and women who had stopped to puzzle over this display. But when he reached the shadows beneath the colonnade where he had been standing he could not see Ricbert anywhere.

‘We cannot tarry,’ Rowena breathed under the furious sounds of pursuit.

Deda felt his chest tighten. The crowd was too dense, their routes for escape too few. A whistle rang out, and when he jerked round he saw Ricbert standing in a side street, barely more than a rat-run, with the towering buildings on either side throwing it into deep shadow. He pulled his wife into the alley.

‘You have scant regard for your life,’ Ricbert spat when they reached him, ‘and for mine too.’ He glanced past Deda’s shoulder towards the milling crowd at the end of the alley. ‘I must not be seen here.’

With rough hands, he thrust the other two through an archway into a cool courtyard fragrant with the scent of herbs. Darting past them, he beckoned without looking back and raced ahead, leading them on a meandering path through the ringing chambers of a deserted house, into another courtyard, another alley, past a stinking midden, through a shady garden and into a third alley. There he paused briefly before ushering them through a door into a house that reeked of sweat and sour wine. When the door slammed shut, Deda heard moans of passion coming from all corners. A brothel.

Rowena crumpled her face. ‘These poor souls.’

‘The girls are well rewarded,’ the guardsman muttered as he strode on.

‘You would not say that if you endured the same!’ Rowena’s voice cracked. Ricbert only snickered.

Deda rested a comforting hand on his wife’s shoulder, remembering her suffering at the hands of the Normans in England. No words would ever suffice. She bit her lip, and with the back of her hand she brushed away a stray tear.

Once out of the brothel they walked quickly, keeping away from the marketplaces. Finally they arrived at a grand house in the east of the city, not far from the emperor’s palace. Ricbert ushered them inside, first glancing up and down the street to make sure they had not been observed.

Within, Deda breathed in perfumed air. Gold plate gleamed, jewel-encrusted caskets shimmered. There was wealth here, and lots of it.

In a chamber at the rear, Alric sat hunched on a bench, fretting as he plucked at his tunic. When he saw them he leapt to his feet, beaming.

‘You are safe,’ he exclaimed. Deda saw that the monk still reached out with his missing hand. Sensing his error, Alric switched to the other hand to give his friend’s arm a squeeze.

‘I would have thought there was no one in Constantinople who cared if we lived or died,’ Deda mused, looking around.

‘You have friends here.’ Deda turned to see a tall, slender woman. Her chin jutted in the manner of someone used to commanding those who stood before her and, though she smiled, her eyes were dark and unknowable. ‘My name is Anna Dalassene,’ she said. ‘You are now under the protection of the Comnenoi.’

Ricbert, who must have slipped out of the chamber to fetch the woman, eased back in with Wulfrun. The commander of the Guard glowered from beneath his helm. There was still no love lost between him and any friend of Hereward, Deda noted.

‘I have never known such a gathering,’ the knight said with a wry smile. ‘The Varangian Guard, a noblewoman, a monk, and two wanderers without a land to call their own.’

‘War makes for strange allies,’ Wulfrun growled.

Rowena frowned. ‘War?’

The commander hesitated, then removed his helm and tucked it under his arm. ‘We must await the return of the Athanatoi before we know if there will be war in the east. But there is a war brewing here at home, of that there can be no doubt. Falkon Cephalas has taken to his work with the drive of a virgin boy given free run at a brothel. He has brought in his own men, some soldiers, axes-for-hire, cut-throats, Romans all. Men he can trust.’

‘Because he cannot trust the oath-sworn guardians of the emperor,’ Ricbert interjected in a sour voice.

‘We are all under suspicion,’ Anna said. She poured herself a goblet of ruby wine and touched it to the edges of her smiling lips as she surveyed her guests above the rim. Weighing them, judging them. Rowena raised her chin, refusing to submit to such scrutiny.

‘Falkon sees plotters everywhere,’ Wulfrun continued, adding with a shrug, ‘and oft-times he is right. But this cure may well be worse than the sickness that has afflicted Constantinople for too long. Men and women are dragged from their beds to face his questions in the blood-rooms beneath the Boukoleon palace. Eyes have been put out. Hands and feet lost. Aye, and lives lost too. It is said they have set aside a new quarter in the cemetery at Petrion for Falkon’s victims.’

‘Falkon Cephalas believes the only way forward for Constantinople lies with pure Roman blood, but even Romans can be dangerous,’ Anna murmured.

Ricbert wrinkled his nose in disgust. ‘Never have there been men more loyal to the emperor than the Varangian Guard. We have all sworn an oath to defend the crown with our lives, if necessary, but that dog thinks we are all liars or traitors.’ His knuckles grew white on the haft of his Dane-axe. ‘But he has the protection of Nikephoritzes, and through him the emperor himself. So we must skulk like rats, staying beyond the reach of his cold eyes.’

‘For now,’ Anna added in a cool voice. ‘We wait silently in the shadows, unnoticed by Falkon Cephalas, and we watch. The hour will come when we act.’

Deda sensed a presence at his back. Even as he was turning, he saw Wulfrun grimace and swing up his axe.

‘You dare come here?’ the guardsman snarled.

Wreathed in black, Salih ibn Ziyad stood in the doorway to the next chamber, one hand resting on the hilt of the silver knife at his waist. Beside him, the girl Ariadne watched the other occupants with uneasy, darting eyes, her gaze somehow older than her years.