‘These are for you,’ he muttered. There was something about the night which hushed all our talk. ‘I dug them out of the armoury.’
I strapped the shield onto my arm, and buckled the sword around my waist. The distance ahead of us seemed immediately longer.
‘They’ve made these heavier since I was in the legions,’ I complained. ‘How can any man fight with this?’
‘They’ve made you heavier since you were in the legions, I think.’
‘Who is this?’ The Patzinak captain, the same who had led the expedition to the monk’s brother’s house, jabbed a finger at Sigurd. ‘We’ve no need of Varangians.’
‘Sigurd is my bodyguard,’ I explained tersely. ‘He must accompany me.’
The Patzinak looked unimpressed, but shrugged and moved away to the head of his men.
Sigurd glared at me. ‘Two months ago I was bodyguard to the Emperor. Now it seems I protect only those whom no-one could possibly want to kill.’
‘Maybe.’ I hitched the shield further up my arm. ‘Let’s hope that you can still say that in the afternoon.’
A shout from the front of the line ordered us forward. Two columns of Patzinaks began marching, followed by the squealing rumble of the lumbering grain carts. The oxen pulling them lowed their displeasure; their coats were glossy with the moisture in the air, and breath steamed from their snub-ended noses. Sigurd and I joined the after- guard at the tail of the column. High above us tiny squares of yellow glowed in the windows of the new palace, where perhaps even now the Emperor dreamed of conquests, but they vanished as we passed through the arch and onto the plain ahead. The moon was gone, and clouds had covered the stars, so we travelled almost blind, with only the huffing and squeaking of the ox-carts to break our solitude.
Those carts might have been a wise idea as a disguise, but they were nothing but a hindrance on that dark journey. One got stuck in a rutted stretch of road, and had to be heaved out by Patzinaks; then their weight forced us to pass by all the bridges, and travel to the very tip of the Horn. The shield dragged on my arm, and when I tried lashing it to my back, as I had in the legions, the straps almost strangled me.
‘To think it is Great Thursday,’ I murmured, as much to myself as to Sigurd. ‘We should be at prayer, not warring with our fellow Christians.’
‘If they feel likewise, then you can be at your church by noon.’ Sigurd’s strides were, as ever, a foot longer than my own, and I hurried to stay with him. ‘If not, then you might yet find time to talk with God today.’
We straggled on, and I grew glad of the oxen for they were the only ones of our group whose pace was slower than mine. Now we were heading back along the northern shore of the Horn, following where it curved in to form the harbour. I could see lights across the water here, small fires rising on the crests of the hills, though the greater part of the city still lay in darkness. We should be close to Galata now.
As if to confirm my thought I heard a call from ahead, and the sound of two Patzinaks conversing in their fractured language. We must have reached the picket line surrounding the camp, must be little more than a few hundred yards away. The night was falling away, receding into a grey half-light which opened our surroundings to my eyes, and in the distance I could see the dark shadows of the walls of Galata. We had timed our arrival well: their sentries would be rubbing their eyes and thinking of sleep, thanking their God for another night unharmed, while the rest of the camp would be in their beds. Including, I prayed, the monk, in the small house by the far wall, on the street behind the warehouses.
I threaded my way to the front of the column, with Sigurd close behind. ‘Do you remember the plan?’ I asked the Patzinak captain. ‘As soon as the gates are open we leave the wagons and make straight through the camp along the main street.’
The captain gave an unpleasant smile. ‘If the monk is in there, we will find him.’
‘Alive,’ I reminded him.
We were within twenty paces of the gate before the challenge came, a thin shout from a boy who sounded little older than Thomas.
‘Food from the Emperor,’ I called back. ‘Five wagons of grain. Open the gates.’
‘Why does the grain come before dawn?’ There was doubt in the boy’s voice, but whether from nerves or suspicion I could not tell. ‘And why is it surrounded by men in arms?’
‘So that you can enjoy your breakfast, and so that brigands on the road do not empty the wagons before they reach you. The Emperor does not wish you to be hungry.’
That drew derision, followed by a long wait, perhaps while the boy conferred with his superior. I began to doubt Krysaphios’ plan, to wonder whether we would be left standing at the gate while the Franks took the carts. What would we do then? We could not invest Galata with two hundred men, and we could do nothing which might spark a war unless we were sure of getting the monk.
Without warning, the gates swung open.
Even the Patzinaks, barbarians who would charge the walls of Hell itself if ordered, seemed to shrink as we marched into the camp. As we had hoped, there were few Franks about at that hour, but all those we passed stood by the roadside and watched us in hungry silence. Their arms were folded across their chests, and hate was plain on their gaunt faces. Even the sight of the grain carts rolling in behind us did not soften them, though a few of the children scurried away from their parents’ sides into the alleys behind, doubtless spreading word of our arrival.
‘You have to wonder why the Emperor allowed them to set their camp within a well-fortified colony,’ I said to Sigurd, breaking the hostile silence which surrounded us. ‘They might have been more co-operative with nothing stronger than canvas to protect them.’
‘Perhaps he wanted to prove he trusted them. Or perhaps he wanted them trapped, easily surrounded and watched. Walls make prisons, as well as forts.’
‘Whom do they imprison now?’
We reached a square, the main forum of Galata. There were more Franks here, many of them women and children with baskets for carrying home the grain. They surged forward as the ox-carts halted, but our column of Patzinaks never dropped a step. From somewhere behind us a man shouted that we should halt; we ignored him, and kept marching. I had to credit Krysaphios’ cunning, for the grain served its purpose: with the choice between stopping a company of Patzinaks or eating for the first time in days, every one of the Franks chose to serve his stomach.
Unhindered, we crossed over the square and entered the twisting road which the Sebastokrator’s spy had described. It followed the line of the coast a few dozen yards away, but so thick were the buildings against it we caught only the merest glimpses of water. It seemed almost deserted, perhaps because of the hour or perhaps because all its occupants were gorging themselves in the forum. Whichever: the fewer people who saw us capture the monk, the safer we would be.
As we progressed deeper into the town, the shops and taverns which had lined the road gave way to warehouses, taller and heavier buildings which pressed against the sides of the street. They had few windows and fewer doors, and none of the wondrous smells that surrounded their counterparts on the far side of the Horn. I had heard that the business of trade had almost died since the barbarians arrived, and since the Emperor began his blockade. Certainly there was none of the industry of stevedores, factors and merchants I remembered from my last visit.
We had now come clear across the town of Galata; ahead of us I could see the bulwark of the western walls barricading the end of the street. And just before it, tucked into a crevice between two warehouses, in what must once have been an alley, a thin house.
I tapped the Patzinak captain on his armoured shoulder, and started at the speed with which he spun about. He was broad and squat, almost like a boar, and the links of his scale armour strained against each other, but there was a worry in his grizzled eyes which unsettled me.
‘That is the house,’ I told him, pointing to the thin building. ‘We should get some men behind it, but there seems little point garrisoning the roofs of the warehouses.’ They towered over it on either side, and it would have taken the leap of Herakles to escape that way.
The captain jerked his head, and I heard the rattle of armour as two dozen men turned down an alley behind us to guard any retreat the monk might attempt.
‘Do we knock on the door?’ he asked slyly.
‘We knock it down.’
He shouted an order and six men ran forward. Instead of swords they carried axes — not great battle-axes,
