heart,
Thou who bendest down the heavens in thy secret incarnation…’
‘I am a killer,’ said Snake in the Eye. He spoke in his own tongue, in Norse.
No one turned.
‘I am a killer!’
He shouted it as loudly as he could. The priest didn’t pause in his recitation.
‘… dawned the light of knowledge upon the earth.
For by your birth those who adored stars were taught by a star to worship you.’
The rhythm of the man’s voice was intoxicating to Snake in the Eye. The light of the candles was like the water of a beautiful sunlit lake on which he floated. A hand was on his arm. A soldier.
‘What in the name of God are you doing with that?’ he said, pointing to the bloody head Snake in the Eye held in his left hand.
Snake in the Eye’s heart pounded, the rhythm exciting him so much he did a little dance. The light was taking shape, or rather shapes. Glittering and shining symbols hung in the air, floated, light suspended by light. He sang out,
‘Alone I sat when the old one sought me,
The terror of gods that gazed in my eyes:
“What have you to ask? Why come you hither?
Odin, I know where your eye is hidden.”’
The soldier put his hand on Snake in the Eye’s shoulder.
‘You’ve got some questions to answer, son.’
‘Am I not battle bold?’ said Snake in the Eye.
Another soldier had him by the other arm but still Snake in the Eye did not let go of the head. He saw the soldiers by his side but he sensed their truer selves too, little lights burning in a garden, an offering to fate. What offering? The same offering fate always demands. Death. They must die so the gods would live. The gods had not given life to humanity. They had given death, to save themselves. The Norns, the strange women who sit weaving out the fates of men by the roots of the world tree, demand death. So the gods had created men to die in their place.
‘Get out!’
‘He’s a Varangian, and he’s killed a Greek! Cut him down here.’
‘Not in the house of God; drag him outside to do it.’
One of the men drew a sword.
‘Is this God’s house?’ said Snake in the Eye in Greek.
‘Yes, barbarian!’
‘Then it is my house.’
They pulled him towards the door but he was somewhere else too — a garden by a river where candles were lodged in niches in the wall, so many that the wall seemed made of fire. In his vision he put forward his hand and snuffed two out — he knew just which ones to choose. The guards at his side fell dead.
‘This is my house!’ shouted Snake in the Eye. ‘And it is a house of the dead!’
His mind was a vortex: he felt the ice winds of the north, the hot breath of the Caspian desert, the summer storms of Birka, their raindrops warm and full.
He released them in the garden of his mind, sending them as a gale against the wall of candles.
In Hagia Sophia, the Church of Holy Wisdom, centre of the faith of the great Roman empire, dedicated to Logos — Jesus as the revealer of the invisible God — the song of the priest stopped and the congregation fell as one to the floor. Snake in the Eye stooped and took a beaded cross from around a dead man’s neck. Then he walked forward over the ranks of corpses, towards the altar, under the light of its glowing gold. He put the head of the Greek upon it and spoke to it.
‘How shall I have my baptism now?’ said the boy. Then the light swamped his thoughts and he collapsed too.
M. D. Lachlan
Lord of Slaughter
32 A Face From the Past
‘I am fettered, I am pinioned and I am bound. My mouth is propped open with a cruel spar and the voices of my tormentors mock me.’
Azemar felt the thin cords binding him to the rock, heard the keening and wailing of his own voice, writhed with the agony of his mouth. He strained against his bonds but they would not break, would not come free. His mind was full of murder, to tear and kill those who had tricked him, tied him and humiliated him.
‘My friend.’
Azemar opened his eyes. The sensation of being tied was gone, the terrible pain in his mouth too. Above him was a face he recognised. Loys.
He tried to speak but found himself coughing.
‘Relax, my friend, you’ve undergone a terrible ordeal.’
‘You rescued me.’
Loys put his hand on Azemar’s arm. ‘Yes.’
Azemar opened his arms and Loys leaned forward to hug him. ‘You were always my protector, Azemar, and it’s good to repay the favour. Do you need water?’
‘Yes.’
Loys brought a bowl up to his lips and Azemar sipped at it.
‘We have food here.’
A plate of cold meat and bread was on the table next to him.
‘I’m not hungry, Loys.’
‘Well, perhaps you will be later.’
Loys smiled at his friend and then said, ‘I am bound to ask, Azemar. Why are you here?’
‘I…’
As he began to speak Beatrice came into the room. Azemar watched her.
‘You’re up,’ she said.
‘Yes.’
‘Has he been looking after you?’
‘Very well.’
Azemar’s heart kicked. It was her, he knew, the lady he had seen all those years ago, going past on her little grey horse, her hair brighter than the corn in the sunlight.
He had steeled himself to meet her because his whole upbringing and education had taught him to regard her as a temptress and a whore. It was her fault Loys had abandoned his vows, her fault an assassin had been sent to kill him. But he could not bring himself to blame her.
Neither could he look at her for long, she conjured such odd emotions in him. It was not lust, nor anything like it. She was beautiful but beauty was a snare he had learned to avoid. This was a deeper longing. He saw all the possibilities that had been denied to him as a monk: home, hearth, children. The longing went beyond the comforts a wife would have brought. He could not name the feeling, nor fully summon it to the front of his mind. He just knew when he looked at her he thought of those empty hills that rose above his monastery, of the wide featureless blue ocean on which he had travelled to Constantinople, of the call of the wolf in the night. Loneliness? Perhaps. Or something like it.
‘You came a long way to suffer so,’ said Beatrice.
Azemar lay back, dizzy. He’d caught the suspicion in her voice.
‘I came to warn you,’ he said. ‘Your father has dispatched assassins. He intends to kill Loys and bring you home.’
‘How does he know we are here?’
‘Your sister.’
‘She betrayed me?’
‘Your father was going to burn the monastery unless someone told him where you had gone.’
