At last, one of them got up to do the rounds. On the first and second evenings, they’d taken care to go about in pairs, one standing outside the doorway, torch in hand, while the other came in with drawn sword to count us. But keeping watch over these Greeks really was less trouble than herding sheep. Tonight, they’d given up on what they’d found to be unnecessary precautions. The inspections were still frequent, and still armed and watchful. But they came now only one man at a time, and relied on the moonlight.
It was now or never.
‘Oh, sir, do please come over,’ I cried softly and pathetically in Latin.
A massive barbarian stood over me. He blotted out what little light still came from the moon.
‘Well?’ he said in a rough yet ominous voice. From the voice, I realised he was the one I’d heard earlier calling for our deaths.
‘I think the fat eunuch has died, sir,’ I replied. ‘He made a funny noise a little while back, and jerked around. He hasn’t moved since. I don’t think he’s breathing. It might have been a stroke.’
‘So, what the fuck is that to me if he’s dead?’ came the reply. ‘For all I care, it just saves a bit of time.’
He turned to go back out to the fire.
‘But, please, kind sir,’ I said, now speaking urgently, ‘I can tell you something about him that I promise you’ll want to hear.’
The barbarian turned back to me. ‘And what might that be?’
‘If I tell you, sir, will you promise not to kill me tomorrow?’
I could hear a smile spreading over his face. ‘Well, my pretty young Greekling, that depends on what you tell me, doesn’t it?’
He was evidently enjoying the power, taking every ounce of pleasure from the terrified grovelling of his betters.
I counted silently to five, then continued. ‘I saw him stuff a purse filled with gold up his arse when we were taken. After every shit, he was putting it up again. I tell you, it’s a big purse. He said to me you people would be too thick to look there. He did say that, didn’t he?’ I said, turning round to face Martin.
‘Oh, yes!’ said Martin, playing along. ‘He told me he’d give the gold to the Church of the Double God to use against what he called the damnable heresy of Arius.’
‘And’, I added, ‘he’s still got huge nipple rings with sapphires on them – sapphires the size of grapes. They were making his dugs hang down like an old woman’s.’
It was the nipple rings that tipped the balance. The gold coins up the arse would simply have led to my being made to do a necrophiliac fisting job on Theophanes. The nipple rings might have worked by themselves. But together, they worked a treat.
The barbarian was half cut. In any event, experience had given him no reason to be scared of us. With a predatory grunt, he stooped over the motionless body of Theophanes. He pulled at the robe. But it was wound too tightly about the lower parts. He had to get down on his knees.
‘Get over there where I can see you together,’ he snarled softly. With a quick look over his shoulder to make sure the others hadn’t heard anything, he set to work. He rammed his sword into the ground on the side of Theophanes farthest from us and knelt to get a better purchase on the robe.
With both hands, he tried ripping the robe open. But it was cut from the heaviest weave of silk, stitched with a double hem. That sort of tailoring doesn’t rend easily. He tried pulling the robe loose. But three hundred pounds of still flesh don’t move easily either.
‘Fat fucking bastard!’ the barbarian grunted in his own language. He reached clumsily for the knife at his belt.
Crack!
Theophanes had got him straight on the head with that stone.
The creature went down like a stunned ox.
Straightaway, Theophanes was on top of him, drowning any cries he might still be able to make under a mountain of blubber. I saw his legs jerking wildly, and could hear the muffled gasps. But strong as he was, he was wounded and sprawled in the wrong position to be able to lift even half that immense weight of eunuch off his chest.
Theophanes raised his elephantine arm for a moment, exposing the barbarian’s head. With another stone, I finished the work.
I struck hard, and then again and again. On the fourth blow, the skull caved in like ice over a winter’s river, and I felt the slime of blood and brains splashing on my hand. The legs stopped their jerking. It was over.
‘Dear me!’ said Theophanes, puffing as he rolled into a sitting position. ‘I thought the beast would never die. For a moment, I thought he might even lift me off him.’
But the man was dead. Our first efforts had gone to plan.
‘Hey, Ratburger,’ came a cry from over by the fire, ‘where in fuck’s name have you got to? Come back over and lose some more.’
‘I need a good shit first,’ I replied, mimicking as best I could the voice of the late Ratburger. ‘I’ll be back, and then it’s double or quits.’
As I’d hoped, they were too dazzled by the fire to see anything outside its pool of light. From where they sat, the entrance to the guardhouse must have been a patch of blackness.
‘Ooh, isn’t he a bold one!’ came the cracked voice of an old man.
Another added: ‘Double or quits? You won’t have double nothing after that!’
There was a chorus of laughter, and attention returned to the game.
That gave us a while, but nothing more. Martin wrapped a cloth round the dead man’s head to stop blood getting on to the clothes he was wearing. Then Theophanes and I stripped the body. The man’s clothes stank beyond belief. I hadn’t washed in days, and had been rolling in stale shit and piss, but nothing had prepared me for that awful rankness. My flesh crawled as I pulled the clothes on. For a moment I thought I’d vomit at the greasy touch of the things, but it had to be done.
Alaric, the golden ‘light from the north’, had become what, but for a stroke of good fortune in Kent, he might always have been – Aelric the filthy, bloodstained desperado.
When he’d finished turning up the trousers and pulling the upper garments tight by tucking the extra into my waistband, Theophanes stood back to admire me.
‘Most fetching,’ he said drily. ‘You’d surely turn the head of every barbarian lass back in those forests.’
He tugged the sword free and passed it over. He took the knife for himself. We left the body where it lay, covering it with my own clothing and an outer garment of Theophanes so that it would easily pass in darkness for a sleeping captive. So long as the dogs didn’t find it too soon, it would stay hidden as long as we needed.
We waited until a great shout of laughter and argument showed that all around the fire were more than usually intent on the game they were playing. Then we slipped quickly out of the guardhouse and dodged round the back of the place.
Keeping the remains of the guardhouse between us and the fire, we moved as fast as we could without making any sound until the ruins became denser and we could vanish into the still silence of the old suburbs.
25
The plan now was to get back to the road leading to the city. The Germanics were all hard at play. The Yellows, if they were still about, probably wouldn’t know one Germanic from another, especially in the darkness. I was sure I could bluff my way past them.
Well before dawn, we’d be banging on the gates of the City. And these would surely open for someone like Theophanes.
The problem was, the moon had clouded over, and a light mist had fallen. We weren’t in total blackness – there was a break in the clouds now and then – but it was darker than I had expected. More importantly, with the moon out of sight, we had nothing by which to guide our movements.
We’d struck out along a narrow street, guessing from our last sighting of the moon it would eventually lead to the main road. But after the first few dozen yards, we found it so choked with rubble that we couldn’t tell road from
