Byzantium

‘Maria is not involved. I am withholding the details for your own protection. If I fail, the less you know the better. I simply want you to be prepared when it happens.’ Haraldr knew this wasn’t entirely the truth; he didn’t trust Mar enough to name the Empress. But the safety of his pledge-men depended on Mar knowing that the attempt would be made.

‘Prepared? We are not prepared. If we move now without pledges from the Scholae, Excubitores and Hyknatoi, everything will be lost. I don’t think you are aware of the considerable effort I have made to convert several topoteretes to our cause. I am moving forward. You are about to rush off a precipice and you are going to take the rest of us with you.’

‘I have . . . pledges that assure much more than a few topoteretes of the Taghmata can offer us.’

Mar walked over and kicked at a stack of canvas tents; he had agreed to meet Haraldr in the storeroom beneath the barracks of the Middle Hetairia. He looked about at the bags of field equipment, battle armour, and rows of ceremonial banners resting against the wall. For the first time he realized how dangerous the Prince of Norway really was. He turned back to Haraldr. ‘The lives of one thousand men are at stake. You had better name your confederates.’ Mar’s face reddened ominously.

‘Do you think I would take any action that would recklessly jeopardize the life of any Norseman? First of all, I am not going to have any trouble dealing with Joannes in the place where I am planning to do this. And when I succeed, I have guarantees that the Taghmata will be neutralized. I am virtually certain that when they see what they are up against, they will not even fight. If they do, we will crush them.’

‘And I am supposed to take your word for this?’ Mar propped his hands on his hips. ‘Maybe you have forgotten the lesson I taught you the night we met.’

Haraldr hadn’t; he clearly remembered how easily Mar had overpowered him. ‘Do you intend to beat this information out of me?’

Mar walked towards him. ‘That depends on you, little Prince.’

Haraldr had almost decided to reveal everything, reasoning that he had already trusted Mar with the lives of his pledge-men. But Mar’s physical intimidation galled him. ‘Perhaps it does.’

This time Haraldr was ready. He caught Mar’s serpent-quick arm and threw him against a row of standards. Mar flailed at the clattering shafts and rebounded against the wall; in an instant he had lunged into Haraldr’s knees and sent him sprawling. They grappled and rolled, pummelling limbs thudding violently into the stone floor. Haraldr could not believe how powerful Mar was; he remembered wrestling with Olaf when he was a little boy. And yet Mar was unable to pin him down.

They were on their feet. Mar glared; perhaps not the Rage but an inhuman fury. Haraldr put his shoulder down and bulled him into a pile of canvas bags. Mar was slapping him frantically at the ears. A bag slipped away beneath Haraldr and he pitched to the floor. Somehow Mar was at his back. Mar’s arm was across his windwipe, shutting it off, and the knife was at his cheek.

‘This is madness!’ shouted Mar, breathing furiously. ‘This is doing nothing to stop Joannes.’ He let go of Haraldr’s throat and put his knife away.

Haraldr angrily shoved the canvas gear bags aside and got up on his knees. It was madness. He told Mar where the assassination would take place, and how the Empress had guaranteed to exhort the city against the Taghmata.

When Haraldr had finished, Mar looked off to the side and rocked slightly on his heels for a pregnant interval. Finally he said, quietly, ‘I think it will work.’

Haraldr rubbed his throat. Yes, it will work, he told himself. And the next time we fight, Mar, if I am lucky and you are not, I might be able to kill you.

Mar stormed through the halls of the Numera to the wing containing the private rooms of his centurions. He pounded on Thorvald Ostenson’s door, and when it was opened a crack, he burst in. He ignored the young boy who cowered in Ostenson’s bed and thrust his bronze oil lamp in his subordinate’s face. ‘I want you to go into the city and arrange an interview for me tonight. Without fail. Immediately.’

Ostenson gulped for words. ‘W-who is the concerned party, Hetairarch?’

‘The Grand Domestic Bardas Dalassena.’

Mar watched Ostenson dress, as if he were afraid his centurion might climb back into bed. When Ostenson had left, Mar slammed the door on the bewildered boy and walked quickly to his own third-floor apartments. He flung open doors and went out on his balcony, wishing he could vent his rage for the entire palace to hear. Incredible. Who did he hate most? Himself, Haraldr Sigurdarson, or the conniving, unbelievably clever slut? Sigurdarson! Incredible! Mar had spent months forging an alliance with Alexius and Theodora, and in one evening with the purple-born whore, the boy Prince had arrived at a plan that would probably leave the bitch Zoe in power for the rest of her life. Had she also promised to make Haraldr Sigurdarson Hetairarch? Or worse, would she allow him to return to Norway before he had begun to be useful? This is what he had hated most about Sigurdarson all along, his extravagant good fortune, simply to be alive, and then his preposterous string of successes on top of that. Mar walked back inside his bedchamber, picked up the enormous armoire opposite his bed, flung it into the wall. The massive piece of furniture shattered with a noise like a ship breaking up on the rocks.

Mar was placated enough by the explosion of wood and ivory to think clearly for a moment. Of course Haraldr Sigurdarson was no longer worth the trouble, of course he had to die; the decision he had made in haste once before had been right then, and it was the correct decision now. But, Mar now wondered, had he selected the proper instrument for Haraldr Sigurdarson’s execution?

The enclosed atrium of the Grand Domestic Bardas Dalassena’s hilltop palace featured a central fountain lined with gold tiles; a lion reared up from amid the water. Mar studied the reflection of the candlelight in the still pool; the fountain had been turned off. Five officers of the Imperial Taghmata stood guard a discreet distance across the vaulted marble chamber. Mar sneered inwardly. He thinks that if I wanted to kill him, I would send my centurion to him in the middle of the night to ask for an interview? And does the fool imagine he is manifesting his strength by making me wait?

The ninth hour of the night passed before a topoteretes assigned to the offices of the Grand Domestic descended the spiral staircase. ‘He will see you now,’ said the topoteretes. The Grand Domestic did not greet Mar when the Hetairarch stepped into his quiet office. Mar studied the massive polished bronze water clock beside the writing table. The whore flaunting her cheap jewellery, thought Mar with disgust.

Dalassena riffled through the dispatches on his writing table. A book on military strategy, opened to drawings of stockade configurations, rested on the lectern. He looked up as if momentarily distracted from issues of momentous gravity. The image of the military man, thought Mar; the thick chest and powerful forearms, the leathery, chiselled brow and clipped, wiry, dark beard. The image, like everything in Rome, merely an image. Dalassena finally nodded for his topoteretes to leave; conspicuously the aide did not close the door behind him and after a moment coughed in the hall so that Mar would know he was still there. Mar could scarcely keep the glee off his face. Does Dalassena fear me this much?

‘I am busy, Hetairarch.’ Dalassena’s voice had a rich, innate command.

Mar decided he had politely suffered enough of this display. He kicked the door shut and barred it with his back. ‘Turd worm! Do you think those six boys outside can prevent me from breaking your neck like a twig!’ To Dalassena’s credit, his dark eyes flared with his own anger and hatred; Mar surmised that the Grand Domestic would retreat from death as long as he could, but when he was finally trapped, he would turn and face the Valkyrja.

‘Very well, Hetairarch.’ Dalassena shrugged; apparently he had decided he still had a few more avenues for retreat. ‘I have offered you an opportunity to deal once before. There is no reason why I should not offer conciliation simply because this time you are the supplicant. I have negotiated with the devil many times in my career.’

Indeed you have, thought Mar, and fair enough warning. Mar moved away from the door; the topoteretes, backed by all five guards, lurched into the room and was quickly dismissed by Dalassena and told to close the door again. ‘Let me arrive directly at my point,’ said Mar briskly. ‘You were correct in your initial warnings about the danger of the Manglavite – then ordinary pirate – Haraldr Nordbrikt. He is a threat to all of us.’

Dalassena’s eyes were startlingly quick and alert. ‘And you, who can break necks like twigs – which I do not doubt – wish me to perform the execution. Why?’

‘Because if I am the executioner, I will be unable to gain the loyalty of his men when he has left them bereft