Dalassena riffled through the dispatches on his writing table. A book on military strategy, opened to drawings of stockade configurations, rested on the lectern. He looked up as if momentarily distracted from issues of momentous gravity. The image of the military man, thought Mar; the thick chest and powerful forearms, the leathery, chiselled brow and clipped, wiry, dark beard. The image, like everything in Rome, merely an image. Dalassena finally nodded for his topoteretes to leave; conspicuously the aide did not close the door behind him and after a moment coughed in the hall so that Mar would know he was still there. Mar could scarcely keep the glee off his face. Does Dalassena fear me this much?
‘I am busy, Hetairarch.’ Dalassena’s voice had a rich, innate command.
Mar decided he had politely suffered enough of this display. He kicked the door shut and barred it with his back. ‘Turd worm! Do you think those six boys outside can prevent me from breaking your neck like a twig!’ To Dalassena’s credit, his dark eyes flared with his own anger and hatred; Mar surmised that the Grand Domestic would retreat from death as long as he could, but when he was finally trapped, he would turn and face the Valkyrja.
‘Very well, Hetairarch.’ Dalassena shrugged; apparently he had decided he still had a few more avenues for retreat. ‘I have offered you an opportunity to deal once before. There is no reason why I should not offer conciliation simply because this time you are the supplicant. I have negotiated with the devil many times in my career.’
Indeed you have, thought Mar, and fair enough warning. Mar moved away from the door; the topoteretes, backed by all five guards, lurched into the room and was quickly dismissed by Dalassena and told to close the door again. ‘Let me arrive directly at my point,’ said Mar briskly. ‘You were correct in your initial warnings about the danger of the Manglavite – then ordinary pirate – Haraldr Nordbrikt. He is a threat to all of us.’
Dalassena’s eyes were startlingly quick and alert. ‘And you, who can break necks like twigs – which I do not doubt – wish me to perform the execution. Why?’
‘Because if I am the executioner, I will be unable to gain the loyalty of his men when he has left them bereft of his leadership.’
Dalassena jutted his chin out. ‘But I do not wish you to gain the loyalty of his men. I consider them, and you, a scourge, and would hope to see them march leaderless back to the snows of Thule. Or perhaps the Middle Hetairia might fall upon the Grand Hetairia in a fratricidal orgy. How suited that would be to my ends.’
‘Just when I think an ass has learned to talk with his rear end, he turns around and brays at me,’ said Mar. Dalassena leapt to his feet, his face livid. With one hand Mar slammed him back down into his chair. ‘Listen to me, fool who has bartered away his wits to the devil. The deal you negotiated was with the Dhynatoi, not Joannes. Now Joannes is your master. We both know that. So far Joannes has confined his attentions to the details of civil administration and left military matters to the Emperor. When his brother dies, and we both know that is imminent, Joannes’s malignant hands will seize the military establishment; surely you do not see the pathetic Caesar leading the armies of Rome? And many are likely to be strangled in that grip.’
Dalassena’s eyes said everything. He had already heard rumours of the campaigns planned by Joannes. Suicidal. And yet not to obey? Suicidal. Dalassena thrust his chest out and exhaled through his nostrils. ‘So. I bring you the head of Haraldr Nordbrikt, and you bring the head of Joannes.’
Mar nodded. There was a pounding at the door. Dalassena shouted for the topoteretes to go away, but the pounding continued. Dalassena stepped to the door, his face reddening. When the door was opened, Mar observed the face of the topoteretes. Something was wrong. ‘Sir, there is a state courier downstairs.’ The topoteretes’s voice was dulled by shock. ‘You will want to hear his dispatch.’
Dalassena followed the topoteretes downstairs. Mar studied a carved ivory plaque on Dalassena’s wall; it depicted St Demetrius, the ‘warrior saint’, armoured in the fashion of an officer of the Taghmata. Mar’s heart pounded. Has it happened? If so, then his haste had been more than prudent. There would still be time; Joannes would be distracted by the massive obligations of a state funeral and the anointing of the Caesar as the new Emperor. And perhaps by genuine grief. Yes, there was still time. Mar thought his heart would leap from his breast when he heard Dalassena’s boots click on the marble again.
Dalassena’s face was not merely ashen but had a sickly, vaguely greenish cast. Mar wondered if the man would swoon; his eyes were stunned and impotent. Mar helped him to his chair. Dalassena rolled his eyes to Mar like a dying man, his voice already from the crypt. ‘Bulgars,’ he said. ‘The Bulgars have already claimed Paristron and Macedonia and have blockaded Thessalonica. We have lost the Western Empire. And they are ten days’ march from the walls of Constantinople.’
Mar reached down, clutched Dalassena’s collar, and jerked the Grand Domestic’s deathly face up into the light. ‘That changes nothing we have settled tonight,’ Mar hissed. ‘We will throw the Bulgars back. And there are many perils that can befall a warrior as courageous as the Manglavite Haraldr Nordbrikt in the heat of the battle.’ Mar let Dalassena sag back into his chair. ‘Don’t you see it? The Emperor cannot lead his troops into battle. You will have supreme command of the armies of Imperial Rome. And you will have no more loyal colleague at your side than the Commander of the Imperial Grand Hetairia.’
‘It’s madness!’ Haraldr shouted over the din inside the Magnana Arsenal. The smoke from the torches of the Optimatoi -Imperial baggage handlers – fogged the light from the discshaped polycandelons blazing high above in the vaults. At the far end of the enormous warehouse, huge siege machines loomed through the haze like strange mechanical monsters. The quantity and variety of military equipment being carted out and loaded on the pack mules and wagons was staggering: strings of caltrops, siege ladders, bridge pontoons, tents, various sizes of portable liquid fire-throwers, as well as clay shells filled with liquid fire, tents, arrow containers, leather field baths; one Optimatoi rushed by with a stack of bound tactical treatises. ‘Why are they moving the siege engines out? They are simply going to slow us down!’
Mar shook his head quizzically. ‘They think that Thessalonica may fall!’
‘It probably will,’ shouted Haraldr, ‘if we slow down to protect all this equipment!’
Mar nodded his agreement. ‘What are you looking for!’
‘These!’ Haraldr reached in the canvas bag he carried and pulled out a soft leather ankle boot from which dangled long leather straps. ‘You wrap the straps around and they can’t come off even if you step in pitch. We’re going to run into mud, and these’ – he slapped his heavy leather knee boots -’are going to be trouble!’
‘Is the middle Hetairia ready to march?’ shouted Mar, just as an Optimatoi carrying a basketful of horseshoes ran into him.
‘Yes!’ The decision had been easy, Haraldr realized. First the body of Rome had to be saved; then he could deal with the head, and the body could be healed. Then he could go home. Haraldr hefted several of the bags of footwear and shouted at a dozen of his men to start carrying off the rest.
‘Are you returning to your barracks?’ screamed Mar. Metalworkers had started hammering on one of the siege engines.
‘Yes! Then I’m going to my home in the city to get Gregory! My interpreter! I don’t want any chance of misunderstanding a battle order!’