A Burning Sea Read online

  The other warrior above her spun around to peer blindly into the gloom. He’d hardly turned when a streak of steel struck him in the face.

  ‘In more damn trouble, I see.’ Valrik pulled his blade free. ‘Where’s the Hel’s Bayan?’

  ‘There.’ She pointed up the track. ‘He’s dead.’

  ‘We will be too if we don’t make the ship. We’re out of time.’ There was a thrum. He suddenly grunted and arched his back, clutching at his side. She gasped, seeing the arrow buried there, expecting him to fall, but he only sucked a breath and snapped off the shaft. ‘Go! Go!’

  ‘Aren’t you hurt?’

  ‘Move, damn you!’

  In a hundred paces they were at the river. She saw others there, crewmen desperately heaving bales of furs and other cargo onto the ship. ‘Leave the rest, you fools! Cut her loose – now! NOW!’

  Some of the crew were already aboard. Three or four were waist deep in the river, shoving and shunting the hull which was moving but too slowly. Lilla threw herself over the sheerstrake, landing on a ruptured bale of pelts. The Varkonni were hanging back, content to hurl spears and loose arrows from a distance. Valrik was still yelling for someone to cut loose the stern, then he was there himself, his sword falling, and at last the ship lurched free.

  ‘Einar! Einar!’ That was Gerutha’s voice. Thank the gods, she’s here, thought Lilla. She looked over and saw Gerutha was leaning over the steer-board side trying to reach something in the water. ‘Help me! A rope! I need a rope!’

  There was something coiled on the deck in front of her. She snatched it and flung it to Gerutha. Somehow her servant caught one end and tossed the rest over the edge.

  Lilla felt the ship stir as the current caught the hull. Exhaustion suddenly hit her like a wall. She collapsed to her knees and crawled over to Gerutha and peered over the side. At first all she could discern were two meaty fists gripped tight to the rope which Gerutha desperately clung to, then she saw Einar’s ruddy face streaming through the water. ‘Help him,’ Gerutha wheezed through gritted teeth.

  Lilla reached over and grabbed one of his big hands. He shifted his weight to her and nearly pulled her over with him, and would have, but for her knees locking against the strakes. He heaved, she resisted, and at last his face appeared over the gunwale. She braced her knees again and pulled, and all of a sudden he flopped onto the deck like a landed seal.

  Einar the Fat-Bellied was flat on his face, puffing like a winded horse into his wet whiskers. ‘Much obliged to you, lassie,’ he gasped. ‘Always knew I should’ve learned to swim.’

  But Lilla couldn’t answer. She lay on her back, her heart hammering, looking up at the cold indifference of the stars. . .

  The night was warm. She lay there a long time. Long after the last of the screams from the bank had dwindled to silence. There was only the rush of the river, the creak and yaw of the boat, a few words exchanged between the survivors.

  Twenty-six men had become twelve, she heard someone say.

  Twelve. And two women.

  She shuddered. The wound across her shoulders ached and felt hot. It seemed to be growing worse the longer she lay there, listening to the others breathing while they drifted into sleep and the current carried them onward.

  The deck creaked. ‘Can’t sleep?’ Valrik’s voice, hoarse now from all his shouting. He sounded suddenly very old.

  ‘No,’ she answered softly.

  He squatted down beside her. ‘Conscience.’ It wasn’t a question.

  Lilla bit at her lip. ‘All those men. It’s my fault. They wouldn’t even be here if it wasn’t for me.’

  He snorted softly. ‘So it goes. . . Just tell me one thing, Lady. Is there any world in which you could have sat by and watched that girl die?’

  ‘No.’

  He nodded. ‘Then you did what you had to do.’

  Was it that simple? Then why did her hands feel soaked with other men’s blood? ‘You saved my life,’ she said.

  ‘I suppose I did.’

  ‘Your debt is repaid.’

  ‘I guess it is. . .’

  ‘Your wound,’ she blurted suddenly, she hadn’t thought of it before. ‘Is it—’

  ‘It’s taken care of.’ He gestured at the crude bandaging around his midriff.

  She reached out. ‘I can look at it—’

  ‘No.’ He pushed her hand away, a little too forcefully. ‘It’s done.’ She noticed the trace of a frown cross his brow. He flicked his gaze out over the water, as if that could shake away whatever thought was in his mind. ‘The river will take you where you need to go.’

  ‘Take us,’ she corrected him.

  He nodded slowly. ‘Us.’ He rose to his feet. ‘Get your wench to look at your wound. And get some sleep.’ Then he left her. She listened to his footsteps pick their way to the stern. She closed her eyes. . .

  She drifted into a time of dreaming. But she knew something was wrong, knew that she was falling into a deep darkness from which she might never escape. The fever must have taken hold of her that first night. Einar and Gerutha wasted much time arguing whether the arrow-tip had been poisoned or merely dirty. It made little difference. They did all they could for her as the river carried them further and further south. She drifted in and out of consciousness, sometimes seeming responsive to Gerutha’s healing arts and others only a breath away from death.

  Her blood burned hot as lava. Her skin grew cold as a corpse. She sweated rivers and murmured ceaselessly in her delirium until Gerutha almost wished her torment would reach its inexorable end. And all the while, Lilla was trapped inside the caverns of her mind. She saw pale horrors there, lands of fire and ice, awesome skies the colour of blood and scalded wastelands that stretched to every horizon. All of which seemed to presage some great day of doom, some awful rending in the skein of existence, as if all the wrongs ever done must be paid for and that some great god would one day demand blood for all the evil of mankind. Phantom gales blew in her mind. She dreamed of flying vast distances on the wings of eagles. She heard the crash of thunderous torrents so wild they could wash away the world, then the grind of wood and crack of timber. Once she heard her baby sister’s voice and was drawn by its sweetness to her ash tree in the Kingswood where little Katla sat singing, singing and twisting the horrible rope that hung from her neck as if it were a plaything. Once she saw Valrik. He came to her bed. He bent to her ear and whispered, ‘What’s mine is yours. What’s mine is yours now,’ and she didn’t understand. Another time she walked the paths of the dead, far beneath the ground in darkness, where souls were nothing but murmurs and footsteps. She heard Ringast’s voice, he called her onward into the darkness, called her to trust him when all around her hissed their sibilant lies. And then his steady footsteps faltered. She heard Thrand’s insidious laughter behind her and tasted iron in her throat. Whatever you have, I will take from you, he said. The footsteps changed. They became laboured, slowing into a lurching rhythm leading her into a black so thick she felt it brush her cheek. There was a sudden, shocking blaze of green fire, a lightning crack, and in it, for an instant, she saw his face. . .

  Saw Erlan’s face.

  It was the taste of salt that brought her round. She ran her tongue across her lips and heard the call of gulls high on the wind. She opened her eyes. Above her was an orange awning, rustling and ruffling in the breeze. She watched shadows ripple over its surface for a long time, mesmerized. They were beautiful. Her body felt hollow as a reed but her mind was clear. She lay listening to the soft whistle of the wind and the sigh of the waves turning over and over.

  ‘I’m thirsty,’ she said. It didn’t sound like her voice, more like an old crone’s fractured croak. There was a movement nearby and then a face loomed over her. She hardly recognized it till she saw the streak of white hair and a smile she loved.

  ‘Lilla! You’re awake.’

  ‘Grusha,’ she mumbled.

  She felt herself gathered up in Gerutha’s arms and pressed against her w
armth until, as if remembering her place, Gerutha gently laid her back down. ‘Drink this.’ She tipped Lilla’s head and coaxed a little liquid past her lips. It tasted like wine.

  Lilla pushed away the cup. ‘Where are we?’

  ‘At sea. We have been for three days.’

  ‘The Black Sea?’

  ‘Yes.’ She squeezed Lilla’s hand. ‘We reached it, Lilla. And you’re alive.’ Gerutha couldn’t stop the tears welling in her eyes. ‘Oh, gods, I must tell Einar. He’s been worried sick about you. . .’ She wiped her tears and turned to call him but Lilla caught her elbow.

  ‘And Valrik? I want to speak with him.’

  ‘Oh.’ Gerutha stopped. Frowned. ‘Of course. Why would you know?’

  ‘Know what?’

  She shook her head. ‘Valrik is dead.’

  PART TWO

  STONE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  If it had been a feast for a thousand, the preparations could not have been more frantic.

  Katāros had heard that Silanos had spent the last week running around like a man with his tunic on fire, shouting orders, inspecting deliveries, scolding slaves, bullying cooks. The thought of it warmed his heart. He always enjoyed seeing a miser put to great expense. God only knew what the actual cost came to, but he imagined something staggering. And all this for not even ten guests.

  That wasn’t to say Katāros underestimated the importance of this dinner; the integrity of the entire empire rested upon it. The Emperor Leo had asked him personally to arrange it in his capacity as parakoimōmenos – Grand Chamberlain of the Great Palace – which some said was the most powerful office in the city.

  On its face, the occasion was a celebration of the marriage union to come between General Arbasdos – Strategos of the Armeniac Theme and commander of the second-most powerful provincial army in the Byzantine Empire – and Princess Anna, only daughter of Emperor Leo the Isaurian, the third of his name. One man honouring his friend. But behind it lay the deal that had placed Leo on the throne. This marriage was the price of Arbasdos’s loyalty, and Anna was the coin.

  Katāros had taken his time readying himself before crossing the city with the emperor and his family. In the privacy of his rooms in the Daphne wing of the Great Palace, he had combed out his long black hair and brushed it until it shone, before arranging it in a style once popular under the reign of the first Justinian, and fastening it with a golden pin. He had donned the white silk robes of his office, applied rouge to his lips, kohl to his eyes – a scarcity in the city now during these days of war – then adorned himself with gold earrings, gold necklace, gold rings. Last of all, he scented himself with a perfume of sandalwood and amber, subtle but unmistakably expensive.

  Regarding himself in the mirror, he observed, as a matter of fact, that he was beautiful. His fine straight nose, his brown eyes full of dark mystery, his pale northern complexion something refined and desirable, a face to seduce the most chaste woman in the city. Or man. And yet all he was and all he ever would be was an adornment to the emperor. Background decoration, like a mosaic or a gilded vase.

  It was a warm summer’s evening. A pleasant hour for the greatest personages in the city to forget for a time the coming crisis, which rose ever higher like a black tide. Here they were, arrayed around a table of red marble cut into the shape of a crescent moon, the centrepiece of the airy dining hall in which Arbasdos had chosen to receive his old ally.

  Emperor Leo lay on a plump couch, drinking wine flavoured with storax from a long-stemmed goblet, exchanging pleasantries with his wife, the Basílissa Maria, and private jokes with his host.

  The scent of a dozen lamps filled Katāros’s nostrils. Cinnamon, aloeswood and ambergris mingled with the aroma of pine chips crushed with myrtle leaves. In large stone vases around the room were expansive arrangements of white lilies and narcissus flowers. Silanos had arranged everything to appeal to the senses: the young musician hidden behind a screen strumming at a lyre and humming a meandering melody; the heat from the braziers in each corner balanced the cool air stirring off the waters of the Golden Horn through silk veils as fine as spider’s webs. As the sun sank below the western hills, dusk came like a murmur.

  Katāros himself hovered like another scent, in attendance should he be called upon for counsel. He did his best to avoid catching the eye of Silanos who was similarly concealed in the shadows and likely to come over and bore him in whispers if he thought Katāros was looking for conversation.

  Instead his gaze returned to Leo, this Isaurian general who had risen so high in so short a time that he was said now to be the very vessel of God. Yet he was not prepossessing in any obvious way. He was not particularly handsome in looks, nor noble in demeanour, nor severe in aspect. His nose was broad-bridged and ended bluntly, his eyes were steady, his beard and moustache dark and oiled, his hair fell to his shoulders and was circled by a ruby-encrusted crown. He was altogether ordinary, yet something in him held a man’s gaze. Maybe the power of the imperial crown had a sort of enchantment all of its own. Or maybe it was his air of self-assurance, which seemed to surround him like a cloak. He knew himself and his capabilities exactly. He was a man without doubt.

  Both emperor and empress were arrayed in rich, heavy silks of purple. Leo’s wife, Maria, was handsome enough but too thin in the face to be called beautiful, although she had grace about her. Her jet-black hair, common to all Cilicians, was interwoven with golden threads and fashioned in a style not unlike Katāros’s own. Eunuchs and empresses, he thought ruefully. More alike than either would care to admit.

  Their daughter the basílopoúla, Princess Anna, was hardly more than a girl – sixteen at most – and she spent most of the evening blushing behind her veil and looking away whenever her future husband’s gaze ventured anywhere near her. Katāros wondered what Arbasdos would make of that, especially if what he had heard of the general was true. But then this marriage was to seal a friendship, not to serve the general’s notoriously insatiable appetites. Doubtless he would look elsewhere for that.

  Still, whatever awkwardness existed between the future bride and her high-ranking betrothed, the rest of the company seemed at ease and spoke freely together.

  Daniel the eparch was the senior official overseeing the administration of the city. His gluttony was something astonishing to behold but Silanos had made ample provision for it. The eparch greeted every course with a great sigh of pleasure and was always first to whichever new dish was laid before them – something that put his wife into paroxysms of shame since the emperor was supposed to be served first. Leo, apparently, didn’t care.

  As for the patriarch Germanus, Katāros held a special loathing for him, despite what they had in common. Or rather, lacked in common. A wizened old stick, he possessed a long thin nose like a heron’s beak, down which he had made a lifelong habit of peering at his inferiors. He even picked at his food like a bird, with sudden snatching movements of his silver-plate fork, and when the talk moved around the table he would squint at the next speaker, struggling to identify who it was. His opinions were a good deal stronger than his eyes.

  Katāros watched wave after wave of food served and taken away. Even he would have struggled to name half of what he saw. There was a spiny-headed gurnard, a sweet-and-sour dish swimming in a sauce of saffron and spikenard and vinegared mushrooms; an entire sucking pig slathered in honey vinegar; fried steaks of sea bass; loins of wild Anatolian gazelles served with celery root and fennel; a foamy dish called aphraton made from chicken and egg whites; sweetmeats and frittered fruit pieces; mountains of figs and peaches. And of course wines by the dozen: rose wine, violet wine, chamomile wine, twelve-spice wine, wormwood wine. Katāros felt nauseous just watching, and the guests touched barely half of it, except for the eparch who manfully rose to the challenge. Katāros had counted seven courses when Emperor Leo rapped on the marble table.

  ‘Dear friends,’ he began, as the small company fell silent. ‘How fortunate we are to call each other that.
Don’t you agree, Arbasdos?’

  ‘With all my heart, Majesty.’

  ‘You’ve honoured us here tonight. No, spoiled us, damn it! Where’s that genius Silanos?’

  The steward emerged from his niche. ‘Majesty.’

  ‘I salute you, my friend.’ The emperor raised his cup.

  ‘You flatter, Majesty.’ Silanos scraped out an obsequious bow, then retreated into obscurity.

  Leo’s smile faded and he gazed into his cup. ‘We are fortunate, yes. And happy, too. The empire is vulnerable. You and I, dear friend, we knew we had to act and God has seen fit to bless what we have done.’ He smiled down at Arbasdos. ‘That’s why it gives me joy to entrust into your hands what is most precious to me in all the world.’ His eyes fell now to Princess Anna, who sat gazing lovingly up at her father. ‘My heart’s blood. I could not give you up to any man but this one. My prayer is that your happiness together will be a rock in these troubled times. And I will do all in my power to defend it.’

  She nodded. If her heart was bursting with joy at her happy prospects, she hid it well.

  ‘I raise my cup to this marriage. To this seal of our friendship. Brother to brother.’

  ‘You flatter to call me brother, Majesty.’

  ‘Does any other man stand closer than you? Come now, all of you, drink! Raise your glasses, my friends. To my daughter, my jewel. And to my brother. May this be the most blessed of unions. Please God,’ he cast a nod at the old patriarch.

  They all drank, exchanging solemn glances with the emperor and with each other. The empress beamed and the princess demurred. As for Arbasdos, he looked like a man caught on the knife-edge between high honour and extreme discomfort. Katāros chuckled inwardly. Arbasdos wasn’t a man to enjoy having his freedom curtailed.