A puzzled look passed over Vassos’ face, but before he could act the door came crashing open and two giant bodies burst in. They moved like lions in the arena, bounding beyond me in a single stride and hurling Vassos into the stone wall behind. The back of an axe drove mercilessly into the fat of his stomach and he howled in agony; the skirt he wore slipped from his haunches and fell to the floor, exposing his shrivelled loins. Then he found the shaft of another axe pressed hard against his neck, almost crushing his throat in, and the wailing stopped.
A third figure stepped in through the shattered door. He was little more than a shadow against the daylight, but already the vast trunk and menacing arms were familiar to me: Sigurd, the Varangian captain. He leaned his axe against a chair and unstrapped the mace from his belt, hefting it in his broad hands as he approached the pimp cowering by the wall. The girl who had brought Vassos’ cup screamed at the sight of him, and fled behind a curtain into the next room, while the girl on the bed sat up dazed, heedless of her nakedness.
Sigurd looked at her, at the bony ribs and breasts scarcely plumper than a boy’s. He picked up the cloth that Vassos had worn and threw it over to her.
‘Cover yourself,’ he told her shortly. I doubt she understood him, for I guessed it would have been Vassos’ custom to use foreigners and immigrants for his vile purposes, but she clutched it to her chest and wrapped her bare arms over it. That seemed to satisfy Sigurd.
‘Now,’ he said angrily, turning to Vassos. ‘You have an ugly face, but I can make it uglier if I try. Who hired the men who tried to kill the Emperor?’
I winced; it was not the tack I would have taken. But I did not have a fearsome mace in my hands, and two of my lieutenants pinning Vassos to the wall. I kept silent and watched.
‘I never hired men to kill the Emperor,’ gasped Vassos, his voice now curiously high-pitched. ‘I love the Emperor. I. .’
Sigurd cut him short with an open-handed slap across his left cheek. The Varangian wore many rings, and his hand came away smeared with blood.
‘You do not love the Emperor,’ he told Vassos. ‘I love the Emperor. You would have killed him for a fistful of silver.’
Vassos glared at him with undisguised hatred, and tried to spit in his face. But the axe-haft was too tight against his throat, and he succeeded only in leaving a gob of spittle and blood hanging from his chin.
Sigurd eyed him with contempt. ‘You should never do that,’ he warned dangerously. ‘If your slime had reached me, I might have seen to it that nothing ever came out of your mouth again.’ He held out his mace with a rigid arm, and pushed its spiked ball so close to Vassos’ lips that he was forced to suckle it like a baby.
The girl on the bed stirred. ‘There was a monk.’
So unexpected was her contribution that Sigurd jerked the mace away, tearing the corner of Vassos’ mouth. The girl was shivering — from fear, I guessed, for she had pulled a blanket over her and was no longer shameful to look at — but her voice carried the ring of certainty.
‘A monk?’ said Sigurd. ‘What of him? A Roman monk?’
The girl shrugged, the blanket sliding from her shoulder. ‘A monk. I was here. Vassos let him use me for free because he paid so much money.’ Her voice was desolate. ‘He took me like a boy. Like an animal.’
Sigurd took this news in silence, and — to judge from the tinge in his cheeks — embarrassment at hearing her degradations. In the ensuing silence, I spoke gently.
‘What is your name?’
‘Ephrosene.’ She seemed surprised to be asked.
‘Where are you from, Ephrosene?’
‘From Dacia.’
‘How long have you been in the city?’
She shrugged again, but this time caught the sliding blanket. ‘Six months? Eight?’
‘And you say there was a monk. How long ago?’
‘Three weeks. Maybe four. He came several times. After the first time I tried to hide when he came, but sometimes he came unwarned. Sometimes Vassos dragged me out for him.’
‘And did he come just for you?’
A tear ran down her face; I crossed to the bed and sat beside her, putting an arm around her thin waist.
‘It’s all right, Ephrosene,’ I told her. ‘You’re safe from him now. From the monk, from Vassos, from everyone. Look at Sigurd,’ I added, pointing to the Varangian, whose mace never wavered before the pimp’s mouth. ‘If he protects you, who can harm you?’
The girl wiped her cheek, and smoothed her hair back off her face.
‘The monk came for soldiers. I was his entertainment. He wanted four men to travel with him — and a child.’ She bit her lip, while the three Varangians and I looked on, disgusted; we could all of us imagine why he would have wanted the child.
‘Did he explain his purpose with the soldiers?’
She shook her head. ‘“A dangerous task,” was all he said. He paid much gold. Vassos was pleased. He bought me a silver ring.’ She shuddered.
‘And when was the last time you saw him?’
She thought for a moment. ‘The monk, two weeks ago, I think. He came to meet the Bulgars, to take them away with him.’
‘And did you know these Bulgars?’
‘No.’
‘You had never seen them before?’
‘No.’
Her tears had stopped now; I pulled my arm from around her and made to stand up. But Ephrosene had not finished.
‘I saw one of them afterwards, though. Vassos called him in. He had another task for him.’
I froze. ‘Recently?’ I did not hide the urgency in my voice. ‘Did you see this Bulgar recently?’
To the surprise of every man in that room, the girl actually laughed. ‘Of course,’ she said simply. ‘He was here this morning. I saw him as he left. Just before you came.’
There was an instant of dumbstruck silence in the room; then, before I could move, Sigurd had whipped the mace out of Vassos’ mouth and put his face very close to the pimp’s head; so close that his beard must have tickled Vassos’ neck.
‘What did you tell the Bulgar to do, you shit?’ he demanded. His voice rasped on Vassos’ ear like a lathe. ‘Where can we find him?’ He looked down at Vassos’ sagging belly, and further down below his waist, caressing the flesh like a lover with the end of his mace. ‘Where?’
Vassos seemed to have lost much of his will to speak, but once Sigurd had grudgingly allowed him to don a tunic he was willing to lead us to a place where we might find the Bulgar. As we emerged from the house I saw Aelric, standing watch over the three youths who were — with several more gashes and bruises to their bodies — lying bound in the street. Sigurd ignored them, and sent Aelric with Ephrosene to find a convent where the nuns could tend her; the rest of us accompanied Vassos ever deeper into the tangled alleys of the slum quarter. The three Varangians marched as one, crunching out their tread in perfectly measured time and keeping the prisoner always between them; I hurried along behind.
‘Are you armed, Askiates?’ asked Sigurd, looking back. ‘You do not want to reach God’s kingdom too soon. There are some mysteries you may not want revealed to you yet.’
‘I have my knife,’ I answered, breathing hard.
‘You need a man’s weapon in these parts.’ Slowing his stride, Sigurd took the mace from where it swung at his belt and passed it back to me. I took it in both hands, almost overbalancing with the weight of it.
‘Can you use that?’
‘I can use it.’ Or at least, I could have once in my past. Those days were long ago, though, and it had been many years since I swung such a weapon in anger. Now my arms ached simply to carry it.
‘We need to capture this Bulgar alive,’ I reminded Sigurd. ‘We must discover what he knows.’
‘If he knows anything. There are ten thousand mercenaries in this city, and the word of a weeping whore is a poor guarantee that this Bulgar is the one we want.’
‘Indeed.’ But a monk who hired foreign mercenaries from a man like Vassos was unlikely to purpose any good with them: that alone made him worth finding. And as Vassos swore — despite Sigurd’s encouragement — that he
