Hereward 04 - Wolves of New Rome (30 page)

‘It is not yet your time.’ His lips never moved, but the words rolled out, somehow cutting through the roar of the wings. Unblinking, the man watched, and waited.

From the darkness of his dream, if dream it were, the monk surfaced. Light hurt his eyes, and he screwed up his face until he was used to the glare.

He must have jerked in the tremor of waking, for he felt the weight of a hand on his arm and a soothing voice saying, ‘All is well.’ A man, it was, though the voice was somehow too reedy.

Opening his eyes, Alric looked into the plump, smiling face of a fellow monk, by the look of his tunic. He was huge, layers of fat straining at the cloth that covered it, and he was hairless. Letting his gaze flicker around, the Englishman realized he was lying on a cold slab looking up at a vaulted stone roof. ‘Where am I?’ he croaked.

‘You are in the monastery of St George,’ the bald monk said. ‘At the behest of my cousin, Maximos, your friends, the desert man and the one who has been touched by God … Hengist … brought you here so I can care for your wounds and help you recover.’

‘Then I am free of the sea wolf? Hereward saved me.’ Alric allowed himself a smile of relief until he realized the pain in his arm was burning hotter than it ever had before. Could Ragener have taken yet another finger? Raising his arm, he stared at the cloth wrapped around it. But his wits were failing him, even as he tried to make sense of this thing before them. After a moment, realization, and horror, raced up to him.

‘Look!’ Alric cried, holding his stump high. ‘Look!’

‘Oh,’ the Roman monk said, ‘you have lost your hand.’ His light tone sounded to Alric’s ears like mockery.

‘Have you no pity?’ the Englishman demanded, incredulous. His head was spinning and he thought he might faint.

‘Pity?’ The fat man lifted his tunic. He was naked beneath it. Alric gaped at the ragged mass of scar tissue where his balls should have been. ‘Ah, if only I had lost a hand.’ Dropping his tunic, he added, ‘’Twas not my choice, but there it is. It is God’s way, and we shoulder our burden as we walk his road.’

Alric felt no comfort at the words. He blinked away hot tears. But gradually he felt the rush ebb away and a desperate calmness settle on him. ‘Who did this?’ he whispered.

‘Your friend.’

‘Friend?’ he snapped. He wanted to cry out that no friend would wound him in such a way. ‘Hereward?’

‘Yes. He is a good friend. He took your hand to save your life. The black rot was creeping into your arm. When it reached your heart, and your brain, your days would have ended.’ The monk leaned in until his smiling moon face filled Alric’s whole vision. ‘Now you will feel grief for your loss, and then anger. But you must trust me: what is gone is gone, and you will learn to live without it. Be grateful you still have your life, English.’

Alric wondered if he would ever learn to live with this loss. But Neophytos brought him salted fish and wine infused with some aromatic herbs that made his head sing and doused the fire in his wrist. In no time his thoughts were already drifting elsewhere.

When the door to the leech-chamber creaked open, he was pleased to see Salih ibn Ziyad and Hengist there. Neophytos was long since gone.

‘See,’ the madman cried as he gambolled around the slab on which the monk lay, ‘I said he would return to us from the shores of the great black ocean! What tales do you have to tell us of the Land of the Dead, monk?’

Alric thought back to the figure standing amid the swirling flock of ravens and shivered. ‘I will say this, my friend. For all its hardships, I prefer this world.’

Salih pressed his fingertips against the throb of blood in his neck and after a while he nodded, pleased. ‘It will take time until you feel whole again, but you will, even without this.’ He pointed at the stump. ‘You are strong. You have already survived the worst. And you are doing better than any man who has lost a hand should be. Are you sure you are a monk and not a warrior?’ he added with a smile.

Alric felt warmed by the kindness. ‘When Kraki next shows off his wounds as he boasts of his prowess, he will be forced to bow before a meek man of God,’ he said, trying to make light, though he felt the world was shifting beneath him. ‘There is much I need to know,’ he added through the dreamy haze. ‘Of Sabta, and how we survived … and Drogo Vavasour and Ragener … of the journey across the whale road …’

A cry rang out from somewhere deep in the monastery. Hengist jerked to a halt, cocking his head to one side as if he were listening to someone no one else could hear. ‘Death,’ he muttered. ‘Death.’

When the sound of running feet echoed, Alric waved aside Salih’s protests that he should rest and insisted that they investigate. With the wise man supporting him, they followed the sound of the tumult along ringing stone corridors.

A small crowd of monks had gathered in that part of the monastery that held the monks’ cells. The doors to the tiny rooms hung open. Alric glimpsed low, rough beds, straw-covered floors and small, rickety tables and stools. As they neared the hubbub, he caught sight of Neophytos standing in the shadows at the end of the corridor. The eunuch’s face was drawn with worry.

When a tall, bony monk with sallow skin and thin lips pushed his way through the churchmen, Alric urged Salih to follow in his footsteps. A strange reek hung in the air, vinegar-sour. The tall man entered another small chamber and halted abruptly. Bowing his head, he muttered a prayer.

By the far wall, a monk with lank grey hair and a bald pate was slumped across his table. His dead eyes were wide with horror and his lips were black and foaming. Alric crossed himself.

‘Nathaniel,’ one of the others called, and then asked some question in the Roman tongue. The tall man replied in a grave tone, but the English monk did not need to understand the words to know the meaning. ‘Poison!’ he murmured. ‘What den of devils have we entered?’

THE BULL AND
the Lion stared out across the white-tipped waves of the Marmara Sea. As Hereward led his men along the shore and through the harbour towards the great palace of Boukoleon, he glanced up at the stone sentinels. He could not help but be impressed by the majesty of this city, but a part of him still yearned for the peace of the fenlands where often the only voice was that of the wind in the trees.

Once they had passed the guardian statues, a quiet fell upon the men. The palace rose up before them, larger even than King William’s new home in Wincestre. White stone reflected the sun as if the place were afire. Every traveller crossing the whale road to Constantinople could not help but marvel as they saw this glory awaiting them. The vast bulk sprawled along the shoreline, with rows of arched windows along a covered walkway, and colonnades, and a tower with views far to the south. Its grandeur whispered of ancient days.

‘Heads high, brothers,’ Hereward called, prodding his men not to be awed by this sight. They had earned their right to be here. They must never forget that.

As they made their way past shady trees and reflecting pools along the sweeping approach to the palace, they saw groups of women waiting for something. Their cheeks were flushed, their eyes bright, and they clasped their hands in front of them, clutching coloured ribbons.

Sighard hailed them. ‘Why do you wait?’

‘For the Varangian Guard!’ one of the women called back in perfect English, waving the ribbon she wanted to offer as a token. But as she looked along the line of warriors, her eyes widened and she gulped a mouthful of air. ‘You are to join them? New recruits?’

‘Aye, we are,’ Sighard said with a grin. ‘We will take your tokens.’

Picking up their skirts, the women flocked around the spear-brothers, gushing their praise for the English and Viking fighting men who made up the ranks of the feared guard. Kraki and the others gaped in amazement. Never had they received such a reception as this.

‘Can this be?’ Sighard gasped. ‘They treat the Guard as heroes. No, as noblemen.’

‘Hold tight to your spear,’ Guthrinc urged with a wry smile, ‘or you will be swept away into a marriage while your back is turned.’

‘A good axe can lift skirts and open legs, it seems,’ Kraki said with a shake of his weapon. ‘This city was built for us.’

Hereward could see that his men were overwhelmed by the adulation. The women gushed accounts of the Varangian Guard’s exploits as if they had been standing alongside them in battle. These warriors were braver than any Roman man, and stronger, and more handsome – aye, and wealthier than many too, so Hereward had heard. The fighting men of the Varangian Guard were well rewarded for their service to the emperor. Though their lives might be short, they would have riches beyond measure and, by the looks of it, any woman in the city that they desired. For all its glory, Constantinople was short of heroes of its own. Few Romans chose to join the army, preferring to earn their coin as merchants where they could grow fat while keeping their heads upon their shoulders, so Maximos had said.

‘Keep your heads high, and keep your heads,’ the Mercian growled once more as he urged his men on. ‘When the Guard throws its doors open to us, we want their commanders to see the finest warriors in all the west, not lovesick children led by the nose.’

The spear-brothers eased their way through the crowd up to the palace gates. The palace was the Varangian Guard’s home while they were on duty, Hereward had learned from the street-sellers outside the hippodrome. But all of them had been given fine houses in a part of the city called the Vlanga, so highly were they held in esteem.

At the gates, he called up to the guards who peered from the windows on either side. ‘Open up. We are here to join the Varangian Guard.’

He heard the sound of muttering inside and then the echo of feet running down stone steps. The gates swung open. He was surprised to see a large group on the other side. Several were warriors – members of the Guard, he guessed – with shields upon their arms and axes in hand. One he took to be their commander stood at their head, a Viking with a long brown beard. His helm was tucked under his right arm and he wore a crimson cape. But around these were other men, Romans by the look of it, perhaps workers in the palace.

‘You are here to join the Varangian Guard,’ the commander repeated with a broad grin. Laughter rippled through the watching crowd.

Hereward felt his ears burn. He could see no humour in the situation. ‘We are called the last of the English. We fought the Norman bastards at Ely …’

The commander nodded. ‘And lost.’

The Mercian felt his men shift at his back. ‘Betrayed at the last,’ he snapped, angry that he was having to explain himself. ‘But you will find no braver warriors than these.’

‘Be that as it may,’ the Viking said, looking around at the bedraggled English men, ‘where is your gold?’

‘Gold?’

The commander laughed, and those around him joined in with his mockery. ‘Do you think we let any ceorl with a stick into the Varangian Guard? Not a day passes without some piss-leaking dog rolling up at these gates, boasting that he was the greatest warrior in whatever mud-soaked village spawned him. Most would cry like babes on the first day of proving themselves here, or faint dead away. And if we let them all in, we would not be so feared, eh?’

Hereward showed a cold face. ‘We will prove ourselves, gladly.’

More laughter rang out. ‘Be scared, Haeming,’ someone jeered. ‘They have scars! And axes! And shields!’

‘There are rules here,’ the commander continued, still grinning. ‘You buy your way into the Guard with gold, and lots of it. And then you prove yourselves. That way we see how serious you are, and how much you believe in your strong right arm. And if, as many are, you are broken within two days, we piss on your corpse and keep your gold.’

‘How do we get gold?’ Sighard’s voice was edged with dismay.

And yet more laughter. Hereward flinched at the younger warrior’s naivety. ‘You work,’ the Viking called. ‘Or you steal. Or you find a patron. Come back when your purses are full. And waste no more of our time, or we will run you off with your spears shoved up your arses.’

The crowd disappeared into the palace grounds as the gates creaked shut.

For a long moment, Hereward glowered at the barred way. When he turned he saw that his spear-brothers’ shoulders had sagged, the weariness that had eaten into them since they had fled England now carving lines into their faces. After all they had suffered, this had been a blow too far. They deserved better.

The rejection had struck Sighard the hardest. His eyes were hollow and he swayed as though he could barely stand.

‘We are not done here.’ Hereward’s voice carried over the heads of his warriors. ‘We will get our gold, and then we will return to show these bastards what we can do.’

Yet this time his words barely stirred a response. And as they trudged back the way they had come, more insult was heaped on their heads. The women no longer paid them any heed. Aloof now, they averted their gaze as if some filthy, reeking farmers strode by too near.

Hereward gritted his teeth. Though their dreams had been dashed, and they had nowhere to go, he would find a way to lead them to victory, he vowed.

Kraki and Guthrinc flanked him as they tramped back towards the fine houses in the shadow of the hippodrome. ‘There is no greater city than this on earth,’ Kraki grunted. ‘It is filled with riches beyond my wildest dreams, and wise men and beautiful women, great buildings and statues and wonders. But the folk …’ He spat. ‘They look down on us as if we were dogs. Worse than dogs. Because we have no gold. Or no learning. Because we are nothing more than earth-walking axes-for-hire with no home. I have had a belly full of them. And if one more speaks to me as if I am the dirt under his shoe I will snap him over my knee like a rotten branch.’

‘You will not be alone there,’ Guthrinc put in. The Mercian rarely saw the strong man without a smile playing on his lips, but now he was as grim as his Viking friend.