Tom Harper: The mosaic of shadows

I found myself on my knees, my skin burning where the liquid had splashed it. The priest was beneath me, wailing piteously, but the monk still stood and still held his spear. One half of his face was seared with a crimson welt where the censer had struck him, and his eyes were clenched with pain, but it seemed he might yet find the strength for a single, final blow.

Then his mouth opened wide and the spear fell from his hand; blood dribbled down his chin and his eyes bulged open. His thin body convulsed as his soul broke free, and his empty corpse sank to the ground.

Behind him, Sigurd looked distastefully at the short sword he held, its blade bloodied almost to the hilt. He dropped it silently onto the monk’s body, then pulled me to my feet as we ran to the Emperor. The monk’s spell was broken and there was uproar in the room, shouting and recrimination, but it seemed Alexios was almost forgotten. Was he dead? Would all he had worked for, all I had sworn to protect, be undone? Krysaphios was kneeling at his side, one hand on his blood-smeared neck, and he looked up urgently as we approached.

‘He lives,’ he said. ‘But barely. I will have the guards carry him to his physician.’

‘We will go with him.’ Sigurd made to follow the guards who had answered Krysaphios’ command, but the eunuch stopped him abruptly.

‘Not you,’ he said. ‘You are needed for greater matters. Look.’ He pointed to the window, where I could see the cataphract remnants being pressed back by the barbarian host. ‘Soon they will be at the walls, and if we do not have a force to hold the gates then our cavalry will be massacred in full view of the mob. You know what would happen then.’

The blood and battle and noise and confusion had left my mind dangerously brittle, scarce able to register the words he spoke, but his mention of gates sparked a vital memory which I dragged into my thoughts. ‘The gates,’ I mumbled.

Krysaphios regarded me like a fool. ‘The gates, yes. We must protect them.’

‘But that was their plan. The Emperor guessed it. When the monk killed him, the mob would open the gates in fury and the barbarians would pour in. Now that the monk has failed, they too have failed.’

Sigurd glanced outside. ‘It seems they do not know they have failed.’

‘Then we should prove it to them.’ The demands of the moment overpowered my daze, and pulled together my thoughts. ‘We must show the barbarian leaders, Baldwin and Godfrey and their captains, that their effort is futile, that the gates will never open except to unleash the full power of our armies.’

‘There is a simpler way,’ said Sigurd. ‘Unleash the full power of our armies now. Then they will not doubt their defeat.’

‘No! That is what the Emperor almost died to prevent. He will not thank us if we now squander that hope without a final effort at peace.’

Krysaphios and Sigurd looked at each other, and then at me, and for a moment we were a single trio of silence in the tumult of the room.

‘Very well,’ said Krysaphios. ‘But how do you propose to reach the barbarians?’

There was no question of our leaving by the palace gates with the enemy so near, and we lost precious minutes riding along the walls to the Adrianople gate. This quarter of the city had become an armed camp, and the waiting legions were arrayed in long, unblinking rows behind us — as much to keep the mob from the gatehouses as to strike at the enemy, I think, but they kept a path free for us to pass. We were seven in all: Sigurd and I, three Varangians, an interpreter we had seized from the chancellery, and the dead monk tied over my horse’s back. He slowed me considerably, for these were steeds of the imperial post whose strength was all in their speed, not cataphracts’ beasts, and I had to shout after the others not to leave me behind.

The crowds were thicker by the Adrianople gate, for there were fewer guards to restrain them, and I feared lest our exit give them the opportunity to push through. Their faces were contorted with hate and fury, while the rocks and clay vessels they threw upset our beasts and impeded our progress. If they had known what the man I carried had attempted, I did not doubt they would have torn his dead limbs apart and danced on the bones. I probably would have fared little better.

Thankfully, the gatekeeper was a man equal to his task. He left his gate closed until we were almost upon it — so close that I could barely have pulled up my horse in time — then heaved it open just wide enough to admit a single rider. Sigurd, in the lead, never hesitated, and my horse followed his true course through the gap with mere inches between my legs and the wood. There was a thud as the monk’s head caught the edge of the gate, but the rope held him in place and we were out of the city, galloping down the Adrianople road towards the right flank of the barbarian army. Though they had seemed so many from the throne-room, they were some distance from us now, in the hollow between our ridge and the shore of the Horn. They appeared to have concentrated all their might on the gates by the palace, where the walls were nearest and where, I supposed, the news of the Emperor’s death might be expected to reach them first. Their foot soldiers were at the base of the outer walls, some wielding siege rams against the gates, others trying to shore burning pieces of timber against the masonry, perhaps trying to collapse it. Their mounted knights were drawn up further back out of bowshot, waiting for a breach to be made, while archers tried to keep our defenders pinned behind the ramparts. On the slope which rose behind them, a sheaf of banners were planted amid a cluster of men on horseback.

Sigurd slowed his horse so that I came up beside him. ‘I should be sallying out of those gates at the head of my company,’ he muttered. ‘Not skulking around the enemy’s flanks.’

‘A glorious battle is what we hope to prevent,’ I reminded him. ‘And in any case, the flanks are where the enemy are always weakest.’

‘Not so weak that six men and a corpse can turn them. Look.’ Sigurd pointed his axe to our right, and a wave of apprehension coursed through me as I saw a score of the barbarian cavalry galloping towards us. Sparks flew where their horses’ hooves struck rocks, and their spears were couched low.

‘We can outpace them,’ I said, glancing towards the hill where the barbarian captains stood. ‘These beasts were bred for speed.’

‘We can outpace them,’ Sigurd agreed, ‘but we would only spur ourselves into the end of the sack. There is a company of spearmen on that hill, and it will take more than half a dozen post-horses to break their line.’

I looked back to the approaching horsemen, who were now fanning out to envelop us. Battle would be futile, for they outnumbered us four to a man: even the Varangians would succumb against those odds. Reaching under the ill-fitting mail hauberk I had hurriedly pulled on at the palace, I felt for the hem of my tunic and tore at it. A thin strip came away; I knotted it about the end of my sword and waved it desperately over my head, shouting the one Frankish word I had learned. ‘Parley! Parley!’

Thankfully they did not carry bows, or they might have brought us down before ever coming into earshot. But the brevity of their weapons, and the unlikely threat that our gaggle of Varangians posed, drew them close enough to hear our vital pleas. I saw their leader slow his steed, and cock an ear to what we said, while his men spread into a loose cordon about us.

I looked to the interpreter, who seemed struck dumb by our situation. I doubted he had ever expected to be plying his trade in the midst of a battlefield.

‘Tell them that we ask for a parley,’ I shouted to him. ‘Tell him that we come from the Emperor, that we must see Baldwin or Duke Godfrey.’