A Burning Sea Read online

After the toast, glasses were replenished, but Leo still stood. ‘It’s like a riddle of the ancients. . . How does a brother become a son? Well, soon, you will be both to me. And fathers are supposed to give sons gifts, are they not? I have one for you.’

  ‘This is too much, Majesty,’ laughed Arbasdos.

  ‘You may not thank me for it. But we have a time of testing ahead of us. I trust you above all others, and there is no man in all the empire more skilful in the arts of war.’

  ‘Except for yourself.’

  ‘Hm!’ Leo smiled. Katāros noted that he did not deny it. ‘I’m appointing you commander of the imperial fleet.’

  ‘Fleet?’ exclaimed Arbasdos. ‘You are joking.’

  ‘No joke, my friend. There will be no office more vital to the city’s survival.’

  ‘But I’m a soldier. Blisters and broken boot-straps are what I know. What do I know of the sea?’

  ‘Well, you have time to learn something. . . Though not much time, true,’ he added.

  ‘What? Have you heard news?’

  ‘Word came from Aeolis this morning. Pergamon has fallen.’ There was a gasp around the table.

  ‘Christ’s blood,’ exclaimed the eparch. ‘That’s less than three hundred miles from here.’

  Leo waved down the general consternation. ‘I told you it would be like this. The caliph’s army is on the march. This time they will not turn back.’

  Several of the guests spoke at once, but it was the shrill words of the Patriarch Germanus that cut through the babble. ‘Judgement is coming on this city!’ There was something about the astringent tone of his sexless voice that sent a shiver down Katāros’s spine. ‘Judgement!’

  ‘Nonsense!’ protested the fat eparch. ‘We are ready for them. The walls of Theodosius have stood for two hundred and fifty years. They are impregnable against all comers.’

  ‘Those walls will serve us nothing if the Almighty’s favour has left us,’ Germanus replied ominously. ‘You may look to our military defences, my lord. But God has granted me charge of our spiritual walls.’

  ‘Are those not intact then, old man?’ Arbasdos’s disdain for the patriarch was widely known.

  Germanus gave him a cold look. ‘Who can ignore the signs of His displeasure? Think of what has already befallen the empire since the coming of the False Prophet. The Holy City overrun, the richest provinces of the empire snatched from us. And now our very heartlands are threatened with devastation. I ask you, when will we listen?’

  ‘Then what, Holiness, is the message?’ said the emperor, his voice steady.

  ‘Turn back to God! Flush out all sin and rebellion against the Holy One from among us. The Great God can have no charge against us if the city is to be delivered from the hands of the infidel.’

  ‘I’m no expert in these matters, Your Holiness,’ said Arbasdos. ‘But I doubt there was no sin to be found in the days of Constantine Augustus, when last the caliph’s armies came. Don’t tell me every man, woman and child in the city was found white as a newborn lamb. . .? And yet the walls stood.’

  ‘You forget, my lord, how Constantine called for a day of repentance each year they came.’ The patriarch swung his gaze back to Leo. ‘Do the same, Your Majesty. I implore you. And soon.’

  ‘It has not yet come to that, I think.’

  ‘Has it not? How much worse must it get, Majesty? If this city falls, the empire cannot survive. It is written, you shall not put the Lord your God to the test.’ Germanus stabbed the scented air with his bony finger. ‘He will not be provoked. Fall to your knees willingly now, rather than be forced to them later.’

  ‘An emperor does not grovel, old man,’ drawled Arbasdos impatiently.

  ‘I will think on this,’ said Leo.

  ‘Fear God, o Solomon!’ The old priest had riled himself into a fine lather.

  ‘I said, I will think on it.’ The weight of Leo’s gaze seemed to bring Germanus to his senses. The old man sank back onto his couch. ‘Come,’ continued the emperor. ‘Enough of this talk. It was not my intention to spoil our evening.’

  Arbasdos took this as his cue. ‘Friends. Take more wine and we can enjoy a little entertainment. Silanos!’

  As if conjured from the shadows, Silanos reappeared and clapped his hands. A curtain drew aside and in ran two musicians, each clutching a pair of small drums. Taking their places either side of the veils billowing off the balcony, they began to play.

  They were easterners, darker of skin than Greeks or Armenians, probably from the spice lands in the far south. Slight men with sinuous fingers that moved so fast over the surface of the drums they were nothing but a blur. One of them began to sing. A single high note at first, hovering in the air, waiting for the guests’ ears to bite, and only then plunging into a juddering, stuttering song, without words, without meaning – as far as Katāros knew – yet weaving a strange spell all the same.

  The dancer appeared like a shadow, an outline against the flimsy screen of veils, so subtle that for a second Katāros thought she was a trick of the imagination, a pulsing incarnation of the rhythm of the drums. Her silhouette swayed and shifted, her curves lithe as a serpent. Katāros chuckled to himself. Silanos had had this marvellous creature concealed out there on the balcony all evening, awaiting her entry. She wasn’t about to waste it now.

  All at once she padded in through the curtain, as light on her feet as if she’d been blown in by a zephyr. There were flashes of skin gleaming with scented oil. The impression of nakedness, although Katāros saw her bosom was discreetly obscured with small silk coverings, and a pair of black silk breeches hung low off her hips and clung to her thighs. Her feet were bare and her hair coiled behind her head, black as the night; and wrapped around her midriff was a string of little bells that jangled with every movement.

  But the centrepiece of her dance was the object in her hand. The long, curved sword was oiled and glinted orange and white in the flame-flicker. She moved with the song, slowly at first, hips rising and falling, her naked stomach undulating like a beckoning hand, calling to a man’s eyes as the little man’s song called to his ears.

  But I am no man, thought Katāros. It was a bitter truth still, after all these years.

  Her movements were exact. The tinkle of her little bells, the gleam of the shifting metal, mingled in his mind with the strains of the musician’s song, the cadence building and building till she was whirling around, trance-like, the sword indistinguishable from her body. With a sudden flick of her head her hair shook loose, whipping around her shoulders as the drums built to a maddening frenzy until, suddenly, she fell as though struck dead to the floor, her hair fanned over her outstretched arms. Only the sword was visible, a sweep of bright metal pointing straight at the emperor.

  There was a long moment of quiet.

  The only sound in the room was the girl’s panting, the only movement the heave of her back as she lay flat against the marble. Slowly, she drew herself up until she stood, poised on her toes, then bowed low to her emperor and her master. The guests broke into limp applause until a brittle voice silenced them.

  ‘Behold, Salome!’ The eyes were bulging out of the old patriarch’s skull. ‘My lord, did you bring us here to make Herods of us all?’

  ‘Herods?’ snorted Arbasdos. ‘What are you talking about, old man?’

  ‘The enemies of God are on the march this very moment. The destiny of our city rests on the Almighty’s favour – yet you would allow such a thing! And before your emperor, before Christ’s envoy on Earth!’ He cast a mottled hand at the dancing girl who, Katāros noted, retained her poise despite the old man’s tirade. ‘I should not have come.’ Germanus struggled to his feet. ‘I am insulted. God is mocked.’

  ‘Calm yourself, old friend. Sit. Please!’ insisted the emperor. ‘The woman is beautiful, to be sure. But is her beauty not a gift of God? What harm is a little dancing?’

  ‘It is an abomination, Majesty. It stirs up lust. Her dance is worship to other gods.’

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nbsp; ‘I’m sorry my hospitality is not to your liking,’ said Arbasdos, his face dark with suppressed rage. ‘Or to that of our Lord.’

  ‘You know I only speak the truth, even if you do not wish to hear it.’

  The company fell silent, soured by this exchange. Katāros noticed a look between Arbasdos and the girl. She stood composed, her breathing calm now, but in that look he’d seen an understanding that went far beyond that of master and slave. Silanos clapped his hands. At once the girl tipped the sword onto her shoulder and ran out, her footsteps a soft patter under the sound of her jangling bells.

  At the doorway, she glanced up at Katāros for an instant and in her kohl-ringed eyes he saw mirth, pride, mischief, and then she was gone, leaving only her scent to linger in their senses.

  ‘What think you of our Lucia?’ Silanos said in a murmur when the conversation had begun to pick up.

  ‘Impressive. Although not to everyone’s taste, it seems.’

  ‘Indeed. Her mother was a Jewess. Her father, God only knows,’ the steward chuckled.

  ‘I see Arbasdos takes a proprietorial interest in her.’

  ‘Mmm. I suppose he shall have to give her up. With all this.’ Silanos gave Katāros a knowing smile.

  ‘Yes. . . But will he?’

  Not that it mattered much to Katāros. This alliance, these great men, these pampered patricians. Their voices were like echoes from beyond the grave. They were about to be cut away like rancid flesh from a diseased wound. The hurricane had risen in the deserts of the south. And he, for one, intended to be on the right side of history’s unforgiving blade. If that also meant avenging the wrongs done to him against the Queen of Cities. . . well, so much the better.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Erlan was lucky to be alive. His act of defiance had not gone down well with his new master. Arbasdos had railed like a fire-worm with a spear in his guts and, looking back, Erlan was surprised the general had not had him butchered right there while Georgios’s blood was still filling the paving cracks. In the heat of that moment, Erlan would have had few regrets if he had.

  But Silanos’s calming counsel had prevailed. Erlan had been bought, the steward reminded his master, for a considerable sum of gold. If the Northman were now despatched to the afterlife, this sum would be a lamentably wasted cost. And that was something Arbasdos was loath to suffer even more than the demise of his favourite spatharios. Silanos’s second ground for sparing the Northman’s life was that, regrettable though the outcome had been, it did seem to prove the point which he himself had been trying to make. Namely, that the cripple could fight. No other spatharios had ever been able to best Georgios in the training circle, but this lame Northman had made of him – well – dog food.

  All the same, too many of the general’s household had witnessed this upstart slave’s insubordination and Silanos had conceded that the godless barbarian should be taught a lesson. So it was agreed that he should be slung into the ‘hole’ and, according to the general’s wishes, he would remain there until he had learned that he was indeed a slave and would remain a slave, probably for the rest of his days.

  So Erlan was led down into the cellars where he was lowered into a pitch-black hole which must once have served as a well but had long since fallen into disuse.

  There, Erlan languished for four days, soaked in mud and slime and his own filth. All the while small creatures slithered around him and over him unseen in the ooze and the stink. He heard them though, and felt them, sitting alone in darkness as black as a raven’s wing, waiting. Enduring.

  If they thought they could break him with an empty stomach and a few days’ discomfort, they were wrong. He was steel tempered over fire. That had been Vargalf’s gift to him. He would not break.

  Day and night passed but he knew not the hour of their coming and going. Now and then a sound reached him from above. The first time he heard it, he had looked up and the shock of cold water hit him full in the face. Thirstily he licked up what droplets he could, off his filthy hands and face, sucking greedily at the thread of his stinking breeks, although he baulked at licking the slimy stones. For now.

  He wasted no time on thoughts of regret or self-pity. Vargalf’s fire had burned all that out of him. If you still have breath in your lungs, you’re alive, he told himself. That was something. Better to wait in the shit and the silence and see what the morrow would bring.

  Even so, while he waited, his mind would pick at the words Vassili had spoken like a raven picking at the bones of the slain. Unless you drink the blood of the king of kings, you shall be a slave to that other. . . Only the blood of the king of kings will set you free. It remained obscure, an image in a muddied mirror. He had found the city of the king of kings, had he not? But what had that profited him? Here he was, a slave, imprisoned in this dank hole. And what strange charge was this? ‘Drink his blood.’ He knew not what to make of it, and the thought troubled him. Though many times the answer to the riddle seemed plain. So plain it came like a voice in his head. ‘Kill him.’ How else could he drink another man’s blood, after all?

  ‘You still with us, Northman?’ The words startled him. He recognized Silanos’s voice, and peering up he saw a flame flicker high above him.

  ‘Still with you, Greek,’ he muttered back.

  ‘The general says you’re to stay down there another week.’ Erlan’s heart sank at this. ‘He thinks by then you’ll accept your position. . . I told him you never would.’

  ‘What is it then?’ growled Erlan. ‘Another month?’

  ‘Not exactly. I have other plans for you.’ Then the steward addressed someone else up there. ‘Go ahead then. Pull him up.’

  It was the dead of night. The air outside the hole tasted fresh as falling snow. Erlan gulped it down hungrily.

  At first Silanos offered no other explanation. Instead he had his servants sluice Erlan down, the grimy foulness running off him in rivers into the little gullies in the cellar floor. Then they marched him through the palace, while all the household still slept, to another kind of bathhouse made of big blocks of white stone. There, he was steamed and scrubbed red-raw. Afterwards Silanos summoned a slave-boy and sat Erlan on a stool while the lad shaved him. The boy would have been better employed in a butcher’s yard, but Silanos stood by, overseeing all with an approving eye. Then they cut his hair and it fell to the ground in thick, tangled knots. As for his breeks, they burned them. In their place he was given a long tunic that came to his knees, and nothing else. They let him keep his belt, now the last object that connected him with that other life in the north.

  Satisfied, Silanos led him through the shadowy courtyards, then up and up, floor after floor, to a winding staircase which ended in a metal grille gate. Erlan was surprised to recognize Marcellos there. ‘What is this place?’

  Silanos pushed him through the gate. ‘This is where we keep slaves who need a little. . . shall we say, encouragement?’

  ‘Encouragement. For what?’

  ‘Loyalty, of course!’ The steward grinned. ‘Some slaves do have a habit of wandering off. But I think you’ll find this arrangement more to your liking.’

  Marcellos led them to the end of a cramped landing, past the doors of half a dozen cells. At the last, he pulled open the door and shoved Erlan inside. Awaiting him was a length of chain bolted to the wall and two manacles which Marcellos took great pleasure in snapping over his wrists and securing.

  ‘I’ll send a physician tomorrow,’ said Silanos, when his clumsy minion had finished. ‘He’ll look you over.’

  ‘Why are you doing this for me?’

  ‘For you?’ Silanos laughed, and shook his head. ‘It’s not for you, fool. Lord Arbasdos engages me to oversee his investments. Unless I miss my guess, you’re one investment worth looking after. Sleep well. Slave.’

  The door closed, a bolt snapped, a key turned. A faint glimmer of moonlight had somehow inveigled its way through a high grilled window into this dingy little nook under the roof. Erlan shifted
, feeling the weight of his new chain, testing its strength in the wall. Solid as rock. He sat on the narrow shelf, built into the side of the cell, and was surprised to find a blanket in the shadows there. He lay down and spread it over him, and was fast asleep within moments.

  The next day, the physician had to shake him awake. When he sat up, he saw from the bright glow through the high grille that the day was already well on.

  The physician was a small man, whose speech was as terse as his movements. Who knew whether his healing lore was effective, but Erlan sat passively as he went about his business, examining cuts and sores and applying balms where he saw fit.

  ‘You must be a man of unusually strong health,’ the physician concluded, packing away his things.

  ‘Am I?’ Healthy was certainly not how he was feeling.

  ‘I’ve seen men come out of that hole wasted with wound-rot. Your body seems. . . well. . . unscathed.’

  ‘I guess I’m lucky.’

  The physician gave a brusque snort. ‘It’s a lucky day.’ He nodded up at the grille. ‘You hear that?’

  Erlan listened to the echoes rising from the courtyard. ‘What is it?’

  ‘The sound of celebration. Today the general marries the emperor’s daughter.’ The physician snapped his box of ointments shut. ‘If that isn’t lucky, I don’t know what is.’

  The light from the window became softer as the day stretched on towards dusk. Erlan listened to the servants’ hectoring voices mellow into laughter and levity, and eventually, as night fell, into raucous revelry. It seemed the whole household was overflowing with the celebration – and not a little wine – all but his lonely corridor high above the rest of the palace.

  He drifted in and out of sleep. Later on Marcellos brought him bread and gruel which Erlan wolfed down hungrily. The man stank of wine fumes; Erlan guessed he was lucky his gaoler hadn’t forgotten him entirely.

  But as night deepened and his strength returned, anger started growing inside him. What was he doing sitting here, waiting? Was there nothing he could do to change his miserable predicament? Kai sprang into his memory. Kai, ever resourceful; Kai, who never waited for anything in his life; Kai, who always had an idea. A wave of sadness suddenly overtook him – he missed his friend – and when it had passed he felt ashamed. Kai wouldn’t have sat on his arse waiting for some other man to determine his fate. He would have found a way.