loincloths flipped over the table. The guests laughed and clapped. His audience lost, Joannes stalked from the room. Haraldr noticed with considerable curiosity that the monk moved much more steadily than he had when he entered. Had he only been feigning drunkenness? And why? And who was he? Kristr’s chief wizard?
The acrobats bounded into the main hall and the guests rose and followed. Dancers and more acrobats on stilts gambolled about to the whirling rhythms of cymbals, pipes and stringed instruments. Eunuchs brought fresh goblets of wine, but many of the guests were already making their farewells to Nicephorus Argyrus. Maria’s entourage of pretty young women had returned to her side, and the two officers of the Scholae and the Hetairarch were strapping on their swords.
Maria turned, and the stunning blue eyes glanced in Haraldr’s direction. His heart hammered at the thought that she might be thinking of him, as he was of her. She reached out to the Hetairarch, again placing that infuriating, familiar hand on his arm, and spoke to him for a moment. Then she turned amid her train of lovely young ladies and vanished like an achingly beautiful dream.
The Hetairarch walked straight for Haraldr, his step graceful, the heavy, jewelled sword and scabbard riding his brocaded hip.
‘The lady has a message for you,’ the Hetairarch said pleasantly, with a touch of genial man-to-man ribaldry. Haraldr thought his heart would thunder out of his chest.
The Hetairarch slapped Haraldr’s shoulder and said, ‘Follow me, I’ll give it to you away from prying ears.’ He led Haraldr to a small clerk’s room with cases for files and a few parchments piled on a plain wooden table; it was lit by a single ram-shaped iron oil lamp. The Hetairarch turned and faced Haraldr, his features flickering in the light.
‘She says she hopes your fair hair will not bring about your own doom before she has a chance to see it again.’
Haraldr was confused. Was she warning him as well, or just teasing? And was this the extent of her message? Why this secrecy? His skin began to crawl.
The Hetairarch seemed to sense Haraldr’s unease. ‘Well,’ he said affably, ‘I wanted to give you advice as well.’ He smiled and stepped closer. His eyes were rimmed with a touch of black paint. Haraldr’s instincts warred; he desperately needed this alliance, yet he was becoming acutely uncomfortable.
The Hetairarch came half a step closer, still smiling. ‘You don’t know what the Hetairarch does, do you?’ His inflection was curiously lilting. He reached out and lightly touched the ends of Haraldr’s silky blond hair.
Haraldr cringed, rocked by revulsion. Kristr damn all! A crooked! Pervert! Boy lover!
‘You still don’t know who I am,’ the Hetairarch said, still smiling, but there was a strange metal-edge to his lilting voice that made the hair at Haraldr’s neck rise. No …
It all happened at once. The handsome, slightly feminine features darkened as if a great storm cloud had passed over them, and in an instant the Hetairarch had the face of the beast: nostrils flared murderously, mouth blackened and snarling, eyes veined and bulging with rage. Odin’s Rage. Haraldr already felt cold steel at his throat. The Hetairarch slammed him against the table as if he were a puny child.
The voice roared and howled like the last dragon. ‘The Hetairarch,’ the demon spat in terrifying, barking convulsions, ‘commands the Imperial Guard!’ The syllables, each a separate explosion of rage followed by a thundering gasp, jolted Haraldr like the blows of a broad-axe. ‘
The sword slid against Haraldr’s neck and he could immediately feel the tickling flow of blood. He could do nothing; it was as if a crate loaded with anvils had rolled upon his chest.
The beast fled from the face of Mar Hunrodarson. Haraldr now merely faced the most terrible, intimidating human visage he had ever imagined. The great force relaxed slightly but the sword stayed at his neck.
‘Just so you know that the Rage is no weapon against me,’ Mar said, his voice still metallic and his teeth clenched. With a lightning-quick movement he thrust the bloodied sword back in his scabbard. Most of the deep crimson hue of the Rage receded from his face. He pulled Haraldr up by his bloody collar.
Haraldr’s head spun and he sat meekly on the edge of the table. He was the new boy at court who had taken a profound thrashing from the reigning tough. And that was all he was; no son of the gods, no king from kings, not even leader of five hundred Varangians.
‘I hope this proves to you that I am not the one who wants you dead,’ said Mar, his voice even if not genial. ‘It was I who made certain that no one meddled with the investigation into Hakon’s death. A fair ruling was all I sought, and I helped to see that you got it.’
Mar confidently turned his back on Haraldr. ‘Hakon was a buffoon. I had reason for encouraging his rise at court. But he had become a liability, even an affront to the Imperial dignity. And I was appalled when I learned that he was going to sacrifice five hundred good men in another of his foolish cheats. If you hadn’t killed him, I would have.’
Mar turned and placed both hands firmly on Haraldr’s shoulders. There was nothing remotely suggestive in the gesture.
‘Yes, your life is in danger here, but not by my hand. It would hardly be in my interest to kill you.’ Mar grinned tightly. ‘I have use for you.’
Mar threw back his head. The grin spread over his entire darkly flickering countenance before he lowered his gaze and fixed his glacial eyes on Haraldr again. ‘Yes, Haraldr Sigurdarson, Prince of Norway. I have use for you.’
The building had been an old Roman inn, and it stood between crumbling, centuries-old brick tenements. The street in front had stone kerbs, but the ancient pavestones were invisible beneath a thick layer of silt and rubbish. A sailor in a ragged fustian tunic sat against the building’s soiled marble facade, his head ducked between his knees. A prostitute paced before him, her face painted as garishly as a wooden puppet; she seemed at least fifty years old. The music of some kind of stringed instrument came from inside.
Alexandros and Giorgios had consumed enough courage at Argyrus’s to cast aside boldly the filthy sheet that served as the inn’s front door; Maria followed. There was but a single large table, and no one was having sex on it; half a dozen Venetians howled as they gathered around a furiously attentive young man rapidly and deftly pounding a huge knife blade between his spread fingers. Less interested in the game were four or five prostitutes and another dozen sailors who milled beside the row of marble basins that had, in better days, dispensed food to the establishment’s patrons. The current habitues scarcely acknowledged the new arrivals; they discreetly gestured to one another while taking furtive glances. One man plucked tentatively at a lute.
Maria watched a sailor slip his hand inside the coarse linen tunic of one of the whores and knead a sagging breast. ‘I am so disappointed,’ Maria said. ‘Perhaps we have come on one of their Saints’ days.’
‘We have seen enough,’ said Giorgios, slurring slightly. At that moment the sheet over the door swept aside and at least two dozen people and assorted creatures burst through the arched doorway so convulsively, it seemed that the little inn had somehow ingested them in a single gulp: sailors in coarse tunics; more affluent traders in relatively cheap export-grade silks; some young, not unattractive, prostitutes; several musicians with lutes and pipes; yapping dogs, screaming monkeys and a small spotted panther on a leash. The music shrilled in frantic circular rhythms, and almost immediately a woman whirled on the table; after a very short performance one of the silk-clad Venetians wrestled her to the floor and began removing her robe.
Maria’s eyes ignited. Several of the newly arrived traders noticed her, shouted curiously among themselves for a moment, then gestured for her to dance. Alexandros took her arm and urged her towards the door but she pulled away. She unwrapped the long, scarf-like, jewelled pallium that covered her sheer tunic at both front and back, and threw it at Giorgios. She leapt onto the table.
The Venetians backed away slightly, thunderstruck by this vision faintly cloaked in almost transparent white silk. Maria began to dance slowly, with the sinuous control of a professional. The tunic restricted the movement of her legs, so she pulled it high on her hips and knotted it. As she spun more rapidly the truncated garment hiked up farther, and her black pubic triangle teased her audience. Two traders began to close in on the table. Alexandros swept his cloak aside and slowly drew his short sword. A hand reached out and Maria kicked at it. A dozen hands grasped for her,
Alexandros and Giorgios savagely hacked the Venetians with their swords. Somehow Maria kicked herself free and leapt from the table onto Giorgio’s back. They were able to retreat behind Alexandros’s whirring blade, but only because Maria’s gem-studded pallium had been dropped in the melee and most of the Venetians considered it an equally valuable and far less fiercely contested prize. Three of them lay bleeding on the floor
