‘What’s that ahead?’ The Greek spoke.
The chamberlain lifted the lamp and peered through the darkness.
‘It’s where we’re going,’ he said. ‘Where everything is won or lost.’
Ahead of him, away down the tunnel, was a blood-red glow.
43
Mauger drew his sword as he stood up from the water.
‘No need for that,’ said Loys. ‘We have spoken.’
Vandrad’s head popped up from the flooded passage behind Mauger. The first northerner didn’t pause in his advance, just strode towards Loys. Only at the last instant did Loys realise Mauger wasn’t coming for the wolfman but for him.
‘Ragnar! What? Have I offended you?’ He leaped back.
Mauger was in no hurry, walking after him slowly but determinedly.
‘There is no way out of here,’ he said. ‘Bow down, thief. Bow down, oathbreaker, and accept the justice of your lord.’
‘What are you on about? Get away from me.’
‘Ragnar, the scholar’s paying our wages, have you forgotten?’ said Vandrad, now climbing out of the water.
Loys ducked behind the wolfman and Mauger paused, assessing the situation.
‘I have no fight with you, friend,’ he said. ‘It’s the man behind you I seek.’
‘What’s got into you, Ragnar?’ said Loys.
‘I am not Ragnar and you are not Michael. I am Mauger, sworn vassal of Duke Richard, who was Bengeirr, of the lands of Neustria called Norman. You are the scholar Loys who has stolen away the lord’s daughter and whose head I am charged to fetch.’
‘Can’t let you do that, old chum,’ said Vandrad. He had his sword free. The head of another Viking emerged from the pool. ‘This man owes me money, money I’ll never get if you give him a trim.’
‘I’ll give you double what he pays.’
‘No. I swore.’ He pointed with his sword to the Viking emerging from the pool. ‘He swore. There can be no debate.’
The third Viking came up in the water.
Mauger said nothing, just leaped at Vandrad. The Viking got his sword up to block but it snapped clean in two.
‘Shit,’ said Vandrad and went for his knife, but Mauger brought his sword around again and cut deep into his neck. Vandrad dropped, his fingers clutching at a big wound.
‘Whoa!’ The other Viking had his seax free — a big, long sturdy knife. The next one, emerging from the water, pulled out an axe.
The man with the seax aimed a cut at Mauger but was too slow. Mauger took a step back, the swipe missed and he smashed a backhanded blow into the side of his opponent’s head, caving in the skull at the temple with a noise like an axe chopping wood and dropping him flat.
Loys drew his knife. He was determined to defend himself but he was a scholar not a warrior. He felt as if his legs had turned to stalagmites like those coming up from the floor. He could not make himself move. The wolfman, however, could.
It was all so quick.
Mauger hit the floor, the wolfman on top of him. The axeman hacked at them both, swiping at the men as they writhed and rolled. Once he connected with Mauger’s back, but the axehead bounced off the mail and a sword flashed out of the melee to cut him down at the knee.
The two men broke and stood facing each other. Mauger’s arm was wet with blood and his cheek was torn half away.
‘Give me the scholar,’ said Mauger. ‘In fact, I don’t even want all of him, just give me his head.’
Loys backed towards the pool. The wolfman raved, hissed and spat, his lips wet with blood, his hands too.
He gave an terrible scream and jumped — not towards Mauger but at Loys, driving him into the water, pushing him down into the freezing darkness.
Loys was helpless against the wolfman’s strength, pulled through the water like a frog taken by a pike. He tried to cry out, but his mouth filled with water. The wolfman forced him down — down and forward. He was being pushed under a great bulge in the rock, shoved on into darkness. Loys heard nothing, could see nothing. He tried not to breathe in, but he was choking.
Mauger advanced into the water up to his neck. The Norseman was not an impetuous man and he knew it was time for cold thinking. He couldn’t risk going any further. It was one thing to negotiate a short waterlogged passage in mail, sure someone had been through before you, quite another to plunge headlong into unknown darkness. He would need to take a flint, dry tinder, a lamp and a rope to pull himself back. He’d also need to be prepared for instant attack, should he make it through to the other side. It was not the work of a moment to prepare for all that. He considered the situation. Had the wolfman drowned the scholar? Had they gone through to another chamber? The wolfman and the scholar had seemed to be talking as reasonable men when he’d come through. He had to assume they had become allies.
The axeman screamed and writhed on the shore, his leg nearly severed at the knee.
Mauger waded back. He killed the Viking with the man’s own axe. He didn’t want to risk damage to his sword if he didn’t have to and he didn’t want to kill an honest warrior but the last man had to die. It would have brought a blood feud if he’d survived to tell the tale of what had happened. Down in the caves he was just one more victim of the dark. Mauger touched his cheek. The wound was bad but he’d had worse. He could feel the cut was only to the skin, the muscle beneath was intact. It was bleeding badly so he took the lamp and poured some hot oil over it. It was agony but the bleeding stopped. He sat and recovered for a little while. Then he climbed out of his mail. He glanced at the black water. He was going in to find them.
44
The Varangians had got into the palace. Its doors had not been built to withstand a siege — if an enemy had got over the Theodosian Wall, then over the remains of the Walls of Constantine inside the city, a reinforced door wouldn’t have held them back. The doors were designed to keep out the common people, not invading armies, and the Varangians had eventually broken them in with their axes and hammers.
Azemar finished feeding and stood. He was torpid, gorged and wanted to sleep. The blood tide that had risen to engulf his thoughts when he had killed the guards began to recede. The realisation came to him that the bodies on the floor, the human wreckage of ripped torsos and flesh-stripped limbs, had belonged to people. He knew he should have wept to see such a mess, but he didn’t. He wasn’t interested in it any more but then he was not hungry.
The Lady Beatrice. He needed to go to her.
He went out of the room. All the lamps had been removed in the passageway as a precaution against the attackers using them to burn down the palace and it was very dark. It didn’t matter to Azemar.
The fighting was somewhere close. He smelled the sweat of fear, the stress leaking out of the men in the smell of their saliva, their piss and their shit. It meant little to him. He had fed.
