The Emperor stepped in among the kneeling Bulgars. ‘Alounsianus!’ he commanded: the name of the Bulgar Khan. A desperate-looking, medium-sized man, whatever cleverness or courage he had employed to gain his throne utterly blanched from his face, rose up from the mud and clasped his trembling hands in supplication. The tossing clouds closed on the sun and the dimming light flickered over the defeated Khan. Then the clouds rolled aside, the sun exploded in its full radiance, and as he swooned from loss of blood, Haraldr was certain that he was floating up towards a golden dome.
VI
The Prefect of the City and the Logothete of the Symponus waited for the Parakoimomenos of the Imperial Palace beneath the arch of the Golden Gate. The Great Land Wall loomed above them, the invincible ashlar expanse glazed with the morning sun. Attended by his retinue of Imperial cubiculari, gleaming like antimony in his white silk and crowned with his pure silver hair, the Parakoimomenos exchanged nods with the Prefect and the Logothete. ‘Exquisitely done,’ said the Parakoimomenos as he looked down the avenue before them. Freshly swept and watered, almost bone-white, the Mese extended east towards the distant Imperial Palace, and as far as one could see, the entire route was a multihued corridor of brilliant hanging carpets and tapestries. A human tide, held back by cursores and Khazars, crushed in on either side of the avenue.
The Parakoimomenos blinked into the ascending sun and gauged that it was time for the long day to begin. ‘Komes of the walls,’ he directed, ‘open the gates.’ The komes’s ceremonially armoured assistants cranked open the massive bronze gates and the dignitaries stood aside to let the procession enter the city.
The first rider was seated on a dull-eyed, decrepit donkey. He wore tattered rags, and garlands of pig intestines, swarming with flies, were draped over his shoulders. The rider could not see the spectacle before him because he was seated backwards on his transport; he could not see behind, either, because his eyes, crusted with scabs and ooze, had been put out with hot irons. The sightless man raised his head in response to the fantastic gale of obscenities and jeers that greeted him, and the Empress City could now see the hideous, noseless face of the man who had dared to assault her. Alounsianus, Khan of Bulgaria, had finally breeched the walls of Rome.
The Bulgar generals followed on foot, then their officers and men, an unending procession of haggard, confused, sullen faces and filthy brown tunics; as the Pantocrator is merciful, most had been spared their eyes and noses. The army of the vanquished, flanked by steel-trimmed Khazars, became a strange, dirt-coloured serpent of misery slowly crawling through the brilliant polychrome of the triumphant city.
The Parakoimomenos again computed the time as the last of the Bulgars disappeared down the Mese. Incredible. He had had no expectation that so many barbaroi wretches had been taken prisoner. He signalled the Logothete of the Symponus, at whose order hundreds of street sweepers descended on the avenue. The newly swept streets were washed again, this time with rose water. Hundreds of labourers spread thick, richly patterned carpets over the perfumed pavement. Dozens more workers hung polycandelons and even ornate candelabra in the street-level arcades. Residents suspended oil lamps and pungently smoking censers from their balconies. Jewelled icons were placed on balustrades or cradled in the arms of their proud owners. The surging crowd of onlookers sprouted ceremonial branches and sprigs of laurel and olive. Then all the lamps were lit, completing the transformation of the entire city-long length of the Mese into a glittering cathedral nave.
Outside the walls, a band blared and the crowd answered with ringing cheers. The Parakoimomenos nodded to the designated cubicularius to bring forward the victory crowns – two simple yet precisely woven laurel wreaths – and the gold-and-pearl bracelet that would also be presented to the Emperor. Extraordinary, thought the Parakoimomenos. The Varangian Haraldr Nordbrikt would receive the second wreath of victory and walk directly behind the Emperor. Of course the Bulgar-Slayer would have approved, but nonetheless it was extraordinary. And the other changes! The Middle Hetairia would march directly behind their Emperor and Manglavite, and the Grand Hetairia would not march at all; they were apparently mopping up remnants of the Bulgar army near Nicopolis. And the rumours that the Grand Domestic would soon be ‘promoted’ to Strategus of Cilicia, and the Domestic of the Excubitores named to replace him. Already the Imperial Chrysobulls appointing the heroes to their new dignities had become a virtual purple-ink deluge in the offices of the Parakoimomenos! Well, the Parakoimomenos reflected, such is the nature of war, to endlessly shuffle the offices and dignities of Imperial Rome.
The Parakoimomenos watched as the voukaloi took their positions by the gate; the ceremonial chorallers wore black robes, velvet bonnets and necklaces of fresh roses. He nodded to their leader to prepare himself. Then he walked through the Golden Gate into the shadows of the Great Land Wall and threw himself on his face in the street for the prescribed three prostrations. When he rose, he did not permit himself even to look upon the face of the Pantocrator’s glorious Vice-Regent on earth. With a trembling hand he gestured that the city awaited its god.
‘Glory to God, who has magnified the light of the Emperor of the Romans!’ choralled the voukaloi. ‘Glory to the Holy Trinity for returning our glorious master victorious!’ The bell-clear chants echoed as the voukaloi repeated them again and again, interweaving the choruses into an intricate, continuous tapestry of sound. As he had been instructed, Haraldr made certain that he remained five paces behind the Emperor. He could already see the multicoloured incandescence of the Mese through the shadowed arch of the Golden Gate, and the sight made his knees weak. He remained beneath the arch while the Emperor received the gold arm ring and then stooped slightly to allow the Prefect to place the laurel wreath upon his head. The acclamation of the crowd swept through the arch like a gale. Then the Emperor turned to Haraldr and beckoned him into the light. For a moment Haraldr had to shut his eyes against the glare, and with the thunderous clamour blocking all his other senses, he felt as if he no longer walked the earth but had been swept away by a rushing cyclone.
Haraldr bowed and the Emperor took the second laurel wreath and placed it gently on his head. His hands brought Haraldr erect; his weary eyes – the campaign and its final brutal assault had certainly taken their toll – glowed with profound gratitude. Then the Emperor stepped forward and led Haraldr into a whirlwind of glory such as only Rome could bestow.
The storm raged for hours, from the Forum of Arcadius to the Forum Bovis to the Forae of Taurus and Constantine, then the Augustaion, and into the Hagia Sophia for a reception by the Patriarch. Neither the tempest of acclaim nor the blizzard of strewn petals ever abated. Behind the Emperor and Haraldr, the Middle Hetairia and the Imperial Taghmata received the same joyous reception.
After leaving the Hagia Sophia the procession stopped in front of the Chalke Gate and the Emperor ascended to a golden throne that had been set up in the open square. The voukaloi were now accompanied by the pulsing notes of a golden organ; the ponderous sound machine rose like a small building beside the throne. When the music stopped, the crowd hushed magically leaving a ringing silence in the ears. The Emperor described the campaign in great detail and enumerated the spoils of victory. At prescribed intervals the crowd burst out in ritual acclamations. Then the Emperor turned to Haraldr and began to emphasize the valour of the Varangians of the Middle Hetairia and their Manglavite. ‘This man saved Rome,’ concluded the Emperor, eliciting a whooshing, wave-like oath from the crowd. Haraldr looked out at the glittering avenue filled with rapt faces and saw the funeral pyres of the one hundred and forty-three pledge-men of the Middle Hetairia who now wassailed at the benches in the Valhol. He prayed to Odin to give them this vision of the victory they had earned. And he promised them that when Mar returned to the Empress City, they would be avenged.