Byzantium

certain that Thule is actually a collection of separate nations, some of them islands, some of them large peninsulas, linked by a common language. My offices have also had conversations with Frankish traders and diplomats who know and deal with these northern barbaroi, whom they call, with their characteristic simplicity of expression, Northmen.’ The Logothete paused to sip, then placed his goblet on a small ivory-surfaced cabinet. ‘The facts are thus. The level of military organization among the northern barbaroi is much higher than the Strategus of Kherson, our putative expert in these matters, has led us to believe. Land battles involving tens of thousands of men have been reported, and fleets of hundreds of fast craft manned by heavily armed marines regularly launch lightning attacks on their neighbours. Because these northern nations are not dominated by a single great power, there is considerable political flux among them, and the northern barbaroi kings regularly depose one another. Bands of warriors – often considerable in number – disenfranchised by these conflicts are almost always available for hire, or simply for the promise of booty, to the next usurper.’

Joannes thought for a moment before speaking in his sepulchral baritone. ‘So. The military resources for an invasion by the northern barbaroi certainly exist. This is one of those rare instances in which popular hysteria has a basis in fact. It is quite coincidental, of course. If a blind man spends enough time grovelling in the street, eventually he might chance across a gold coin someone has dropped.’

Joannes signalled the servant to fill his cup, settled back, and looked steadily upwards, as if he had just located some hovering phantom he wished to address. ‘Of course, the military capability of these northern barbaroi is in itself hardly alarming, merely another name added to the litany of antagonists who ceaselessly harass our borders. But alone among our multitudinous adversaries, the northern barbaroi have the seafaring abilities to threaten the Queen of Cities herself. If they did mount such a naval belligerency, and had the good fortune to find their assault coincident with, let us say, an incursion by the Bulgars across the Danube estuaries, then we would find the northern barbaroi a serious menace.’ Joannes snapped his gaze back to the Logothete. ‘However, you mention this political flux in the northern nations. As long as thieves quarrel among themselves, the gatekeeper has little to worry about. Without strong leadership any northern barbaroi incursions would be little more than ill-fated acts of piracy, even with half the Imperial Navy dispatched elsewhere.’

‘You discount the notion that a barbaroi prince arrived incognito with the last Rus trade flotilla?’

‘You found nothing. It smacked of the usual Dhynatoi rumourmongering.’

‘I am not entirely satisfied with what I found. The rumour may have started among the Rus.’

‘Continue to work on it, then. As much as I would like to build the Rus trade, if this Prince is produced, I would have no choice but to make cause with the Dhynatoi in urging the extermination of all the northern barbaroi who arrived with that fleet.’

‘Would that be enough? Suppose one of these barbaroi thieves, to follow your metaphor, was already the gatekeeper?’

Joannes’s dark, oily eyebrows descended towards his stormy irises, and for an awful moment the Logothete wondered how he could have so miscalculated his ally’s loyalties. But Joannes then nodded appreciatively at the extrapolation of his metaphor. The Hetairarch, the northern barbaros Mar Hunrodarson, opened the gates to the Imperial Palace each morning. And the Hetairarch was perhaps a servant who had begun to imagine himself a master. ‘Develop your theory,’ rumbled Joannes.

‘The Hetairarch Mar Hunrodarson has long openly petitioned for greatly increased recruiting of Varangian mercenaries. Lately he has focused on my office, almost daily providing me with intelligence – some legitimate, some highly exaggerated – regarding suspected civil uprisings in the City, and suggesting that a new, lesser Varangian guard be created and posted in the city, though outside the palace, for riot control. Interesting, isn’t it? The champions of the common folk petitioning to become their oppressors.’

Joannes nodded and gulped another draught of wine. ‘Mar Hunrodarson is clearly an exceptional barbaros. He has learned to thrust and cut with Roman paper almost as well as he can with Frankish steel.’ Joannes drank again and reflected silently. If things were going well in the Imperial Palace, this would be the time to eliminate the barbaros upstart Hunrodarson. But things were not going well at all, and the wily Hetairarch would have his role in the drama that surely would be enacted over the next few years.

‘Yes,’ said the Logothete, his eyes keen and fiery as he responded to his guest’s twitching brow. ‘The Hetairarch Mar Hunrodarson is extraordinarily patient for a man capable of such ill-tempered eruptions. I believe he will wait, strengthen his hand with the increasing insinuation of his fellow barbaroi in the military affairs of the Roman Empire, and when the time comes’ – here the Logothete trod warily, knowing the relationship between the Emperor and Joannes – ‘position himself to broker the succession. With a sufficient force of Varangians in or even near the City, it would be possible.’

‘Then we must either make Mar Hunrodarson our broker, or find someone who will break his sword when that time comes,’ said Joannes, as much to himself as to his host. He covered his deeply set eyes with his long, misshapen fingers, pressed in, then moved the spatulate fingertips to cradle his chin. ‘Perhaps we can do both.’

The Logothete showed decay-rimmed, ragged teeth. Most officials of the Imperial Administration exerted their power like porters hefting heavy crates. Joannes was a juggler, capable of keeping several contradictory goals in the air at once. ‘I suppose you have this Janus already in mind? The information you wanted from Italia?’

Now Joannes raised his thin upper lip in what appeared to be a snarl, though the Logothete knew it as a rare expression of genuine, if sinister, mirth. ‘Yes. I believe this man, Haraldr Nordbrikt -I presume that is the correct pronunciation of yet another ludicrous barbaroi name – that this Haraldr Nordbrikt and Mar Hunrodarson have a relationship that is rather, one would say, pregnant. As you know, when the Grand Domestic wanted this Haraldr Nordbrikt and his men butchered in Neorion, Hunrodarson interceded and provided information that justified the murder of the Manglavite.’

‘Yet consider their only meeting,’ said the Logothete, contributing the presumed antithesis. ‘My man in the house told me that they closeted, argued, and perhaps struggled. And Hunrodarson made no attempt to get Haraldr Nordbrikt a posting anywhere near the city; it was he who insisted that the Imperial pardon banish Nordbrikt and his men for a period of months.’

‘A deception? Perhaps Hunrodarson wishes to allay any suspicion of his barbaros accomplice.’

‘Or he thinks that Haraldr Nordbrikt will fail in his mission for the merchant Argyrus, leaving a powerful force of Varangians looking for a more effective leader. Better than martyring their hero, is it not?’

‘A possibility that certainly would have occurred to me, were I standing in Hunrodarson’s boots. Well, right now all we have are possibilities, but possibilities that we can quite likely turn to our advantage. What word do you have of Haraldr Nordbrikt?’

‘The last landfall was Brindisi, almost two months ago. They had been at sea for several months without sighting the Saracen fleet. They provisioned very quickly, and there was a detail you might find interesting. Unlike most barbaroi wine bags, who prefer to drink barrels of that piss they call ale, Nordbrikt loaded his ships, almost until the rails were awash, with barrels of plain spring water. I would suspect he was heading south towards Libya and intended to remain at sea for some time. He may be a resourceful man.’

Joannes grunted. Monkeys in the Hippodrome could also perform tricks. Still, something about this Haraldr Nordbrikt interested him. He had possibilities, but better still, he was entirely expendable. There was absolutely nothing to lose in using him, and possibly the Roman Empire to be gained.

Joannes gulped a full cup, belched deeply, rose, and motioned the servant to let him out without even gesturing to the Logothete. At the door, however, he turned. ‘If this Haraldr Nordbrikt makes a return landfall, see that I know at once.’

‘Giorgios?’ Her voice was visible in fine silver bubbles, and she knew that it was not Giorgios who was there. The sea around her was a vast azure platter with a pure gilded rim. She was cold and he was like the sun, his hair a golden halo high above her. ‘Mar?’ Again the silver bubbles. He was not Mar. The other one. The silk, the wicked scar. He was like a sun. But the sun was gone, and the sea, fiery as opal, lit them from below.

The ships flew over the dimming horizon, and the blue glow from the sea candled the faces, hundreds of