The quiet seemed supernatural, a thick, soundless ether that lay over the great city, disturbed only by an occasional haunting animal sound, a distant cock-crow, or dog’s bark quickly muted by the grey pre-dawn haze. It was as if the human inhabitants of the city obeyed a single collective fear, that in speaking or moving they would set in motion the terrible day that lay ahead.
In the Imperial Gynaeceum, Michael, Emperor, Autocrator and Basileus of Rome, clutched the hands of the Empress Zoe, a communion as silent as the city. He could not confront her haggard, black-rimmed eyes and shorn hair, and so his bare head slumped in apology. The darkness of Zoe’s bedchamber hid his tear-coursed face. Finally Zoe separated her fingers from his. She reached out and stroked his dark curls. ‘I forgive you, my little boy,’ she whispered. And with those words the huge engines of destiny began the new day.
Mar Hunrodarson stood on the catwalk atop the roof of the Imperial Box, a living titan among the immortal statues that ringed the highest level of the Hippodrome. Mar’s Varangians were a dull grey shield wall surrounding the Imperial Box. Archers and javelin throwers of the Imperial Taghmata, also a wall of faint pewter in their steel breastplates and helmets, had crept over the highest tiers on the north side of the Imperial Box and waited for the slaughter that would fill the scores of rows of empty seats below. On the track directly beneath them, the ragtag army of the Studion had assembled; they wore almost uniform brown tunics and were armed with wicker shields and an assortment of clubs, tools, spears and knives. The women among them could be identified by the coarse linen veils that concealed their hair. Haraldr’s Varangians stood in full armoured formation in front of the stadium’s central
Haraldr knew that the question between himself and Mar would be settled before this day was ended, and yet the imminence of death did not concern him. Where was Maria? Had she and Symeon been caught, and was she even now undergoing the tortures she had spared him? That excruciating doubt made him consider the certain death or re-entering the palace alone, and yet what if she was safe now, only unable to come to him? How would his death then reward her courage? Destiny commanded the day, he realized. Whoever would leave the middle realm before this day was over, the fates had already condemned.
The clearly audible chorus of shouts from the vicinity of the Bucoleon ripped the batting of silence off the vast stadium.
A chant rose from the ranks of the Studion army. ‘Michael, Michael, upside down! We’ll hang you from a column and crown your arse!’ High above, Mar’s Varangians answered with the chilling pounding of axes on shields. Haraldr strode through the ranks of his men and stepped up onto the stadium seats to face them. ‘Varangians! What you hear is the breast-beating of the men who cowered in their own slime while our comrades died in the fight against the Bulgars. For our comrades who now wassail in the Valhol, let us bring them those’ – he thrust his hand upwards towards the Imperial Box – ‘to bow before their courage tonight!’ The Varangians erupted into shouts of ‘Haraldr, Haraldr!’ and began a drumbeat on their own shields.
An arrow clattered on the stone at Haraldr’s feet. He turned and defied the archers, waiting for the signal that the diversion at the Chalke Gate had begun. Another arrow clattered. Haraldr watched the backdrop of brightening sky behind the archers at the top of the stadium. A moment later the dragon-shaped red kite wriggled up into the lightly pinked sky. Even before Haraldr turned to give the command to his own forces, he could see that archers of the Imperial Taghmata were being taken off the stadium wall to counter what seemed to be the much more imminent threat of the well-armed guildsmen at the Chalke Gate. Haraldr signalled the Blue Star to begin her assault. Then he pointed his sword upward. ‘Vengeance!’
Ducked beneath his shield, his men grunting at his back, Haraldr quickly climbed the tiers of seats; the ends of the siege ladders jutted out ahead of him. ‘Set the ladders!’ he shouted as he neared the top of the stadium. Javelins thudded against shields and sparked against the stone benches; Mar’s men hurled down obscenities along with their spears. Haraldr looked at the red, bawling faces on the balcony above and marked the men who would precede him to the Valhol.
The five heavy wooden ladders rose almost in unison and then tilted towards the marble balustrade of the Imperial Box. As soon as the ends of the ladders made contact. Haraldr’s men leapt on the lower rungs, their weight resisting attempts to throw the ladders off. The boldest began the climb. Mar’s men waited, swords poised, red-rimmed eyes glaring, teeth bared; some of them beckoned with bearish, pawing motions. They had every reason to expect a slaughter; Haraldr’s men advanced in curious echelons, each climbing file led by a man with a spear followed by an archer – both virtually useless in the close combat in which they would engage at the top. The spears prodded forward and Mar’s men swiped at them playfully; one of them actually captured a shaft, jerked it violently, and sent the man who had wielded it plunging to the steps. Almost as if by that signal, Haraldr’s archers rose and fired. Mar’s men had been too distracted by their game to guard their faces with their shields. Virtually every shot struck home, and the entire rank at the balustrade toppled or flailed wildly at the feathered shafts sprouting from jaws and eyes.
The momentary advantage was quickly seized. Haraldr and his men spilled over the marble balustrade and hammered back the surprisingly thin second line of defence. As he clambered over the corpses Haraldr wondered with profound apprehension why Mar had posted so few men at the most critical point of defence. He pushed Mar’s token resistance back towards the terrace behind the Imperial seating pavilion. He wheeled to his right, looked down the long, narrow terrace, and saw what Mar had held in reserve. Mar’s men barred the narrow platform, five men wide, almost a hundred men deep, a plug of seemingly solid steel. The infrangible steel seal to the Imperial Palace.
For the moment the two Varangian forces hesitated and the metal music stilled. Haraldr looked into the fierce blue eyes of Mar’s men and for a moment wished he could offer them something less bitter than the ferric draught of blood and steel. But the Bulgar war had settled that. He studied the man with a thin blond moustache opposite him; he had seen him in the palace but did not know his name. With a lightning-quick motion he raised his sword and brought it down; the man’s clavicle collapsed, his mouth contorted, and he pitched to his knees.
Time ended. The sun rose and iced steel byrnnies and helms and blades, but no man could register the length of its silvery ascent. The fighting was unrelenting in its brutality, a confrontation of seasoned warriors who had determined to abandon all the artifices of their trade and exchange blows of pure, desperate hate. There were no battle cries, no false courage, only the endless, harsh chorale of steel on steel, and the regular, sickening thuds of swords and axes into flesh. The only thing that separated their motions from the deft, mechanistic slaughter of a butcher was their voiceless rage.
At first Haraldr, Halldor, Ulfr and Hord Stefnirson took the snout of a slender boar, exchanging places at the front every few moments, a relay passing on the terrible hammer of Thor. Gradually they expanded their front to the entire width of the terrace. Haraldr’s arms still ached from his ordeal in Neorion, and he noticed that Halldor and Hord – fired by vengeance for his brother, Joli – were his champions now, pushing forward where even he could not go. And over the course of what might have been an hour, what for many was eternity, Halldor and Hord prevailed; it seemed as if Mar was now losing four men for every one of Haraldr’s.
Soon the resistance perceptibly sagged, and the bloody stalemate quickened to a steady shuffling advance. Haraldr glanced off to his left and could see the ringed silver domes of the Chrysotriklinos glitter in the morning sun, and he realised that if he could live another few hours, he could settle with the man enthroned beneath those domes. But first he had to settle with the man who waited ahead. And the gods were telling him that even they feared that moment.
Mar’s men fell back suddenly and the din of conflict abruptly subsided. A voice barked from behind the bloodied, disastrously thinned ranks of Mar’s Varangians. ‘Haraldr Sigurdarson! We must deal!’
Halldor simply charged forward to finish the fight, and Haraldr had to pull him back. ‘I am Haraldr Sigurdarson,’ said Haraldr. Halldor’s jaw slackened and he stared in shock. The Varangian ranks on both sides became absolutely silent. The vague shouting from the fighting in the stadium only added to the sense that they all stood in an eerie, soundless vortex. Haraldr walked forward to confront Mar Hunrodarson.
There is no reason for our men to continue to settle the quarrel between us, Prince of Norway.’ Mar’s byrnnie glistened with fresh, unmarred lacquer. His eyes were like diamonds and his nostrils flared. ‘You knew this time would come,’ he said with a sneer. ‘I have always despised you. You are weak and stupid.’
Haraldr now understood Mar’s strategy. He had sacrificed his best men, and his honour, to exhaust Haraldr and save himself for their reckoning.
Halldor shouldered past Haraldr and pounded Mar in the chest with his flat hand. ‘I will settle with you, Hunrodarson! I am not afraid of your vaunted arm! Coward!’
