Haraldr stood over the Seljuk like an ancient Titan. ‘The first question saves his eyes.’
After a few minutes of verbal interrogation the Seljuk had gratefully saved everything except his previously forfeit right ear. It was an ominous tale. The Seljuks had been in the pay of the Emir of Aleppo but now planned to keep the Empress as their own property. They intended to rendezvous with a larger Seljuk force riding from the east, then retreat with their prize to a series of mountain redoubts in northern Persia, beyond the reach of any power, even the Romans. The ransom they extorted would finance their westward ambitions. For this reason they saw no need to deliver the Empress once their demands had been met; for if their demands were met, they would soon enough be at war with the Romans.
Blymmedes asked Haraldr and Gregory to accompany him. They climbed a rocky path that snaked to the summit of a sheer outcropping. The kastron, now four or five bowshots away, was a sinister apparition in the moonlight, a dungeon rather than a town. The dark walls were only about two bowshots on a side, but they were a good twenty-five ells high and were rooted in a roughly faceted summit that scarcely allowed purchase to a few scrubby trees. Toothlike merloned battlements ran along the top of the wall; in the crenellated openings the robes of the Seljuk sentries were visible as a pale luminescence.
‘I don’t like sieges,’ said Blymmedes. It is work for engineers, not soldiers. Towers, tortoises, fire blowers, mangonels. Of course it would take weeks to bring the equipment up here, dig the tunnels and entrenchments, and erect the engines. And there are too many Seljuks inside such a small place, so they would first slaughter the inhabitants to preserve food. A disagreeable business altogether.’ Blymmedes paused and frowned even more deeply; the lines were like slits in his leathery forehead. ‘Of course that is the simple problem, and now its solution offers us nothing. My akrites have already encountered the reconnaissance elements of the Seljuk force and have interrogated – though not as eloquently as you, Komes Haraldr – one of their scouts. The relief is quite a large force and only a day away. Even if my infantry arrives tomorrow evening to help us initiate the siege, we would not be able to withstand both the relief force and the force inside. And of course we do not know when Constantine will return with his thematic forces, though with such assistance as he will offer we might hope he is delayed indefinitely. I do not see any way we can prevent the Empress’s abductors from escaping into the Plain of Aleppo, and from there to wherever they may wish to go.’ Blymmedes folded his arms, looked up at the brooding kastron, and shook his head.
Haraldr studied the walls. At the back of the kastron the crenellations were almost crested by a twenty-ell-wide lip of tortured rock that fell away to a sheer drop of almost two hundred ells. ‘How wide are those walls on top?’ asked Haraldr.
‘Three men abreast,’ answered Blymmedes, his brow slightly unfurrowing.
‘So despite the considerable number of these Seljuks inside, were I to gain access to those walls I would only have to worry about three men. At a time, that is.’
‘True,’ said Blymmedes. ‘But how would you get on the walls, and what objective could you accomplish on the walls alone, for you could never survive a descent into the town.’
‘My comrade,’ said Haraldr with renewed vigour, ‘the Seljuk who leads this army impresses me as a bold, ambitious leader who can count on the fanatical loyalty of his men; why else would they have joined him in this daring escapade? Up on those walls, my objective will be to meet face to face with this noble warrior. But before I can achieve this intercourse, I will need you to help me with a diversion.’
The drums broke the dawn. The kastron was a blocky silhouette against a radiant sunrise still hidden by the summit. Five light cavalry vanda of the Imperial Excubitores and four hundred Varangians advanced in stately formation to within a bowshot of the walls. The Mandator of the Imperial Excubitores, Domestic Nicon Blymmedes at his side, formally called upon the walled town to surrender to his Majesty Michael, Emperor, Basileus and Autocrator of the Romans. For several minutes the only sounds were the snorting of horses in the Roman ranks and the faint crowing of roosters from inside the Citadel. The scream began inside the walls. For a very long minute the sound left the kastron and was amplified among the surrounding crags, finally assaulting the Roman forces like a dry, biting, nerve-scraping wind. Then the scream lifted into the sky and became pure and clear: sheer human terror. The body flew against the lightening sky, arms and legs milling madly. For a moment it seemed to succeed in gaining desperate flight. Then it plunged sickeningly, the scream lowering in pitch and ending with the sound of a bag of wet sand smashing into a wooden wall. Naked, arms akimbo like a huge, pitiful, plucked bird, the body lay on the rocks in front of the Roman formation. The head was cocked perpendicular to the spine; Blymmedes walked forward and gently lifted it. Haraldr did not know the man at first because the facial skin had been slit at the forehead and peeled off like a rabbit’s pelt. Then he saw the eyes, terror still intact. Leo, the Empress’s eunuch.
Blymmedes faced the Citadel. A figure stood framed in a crenellation just above the thick wooden main gate. The Seljuk’s white silk seemed to have a phosphorescent corona. He called down in a powerful voice that bounded stridently off the rocks. The mandator translated.
‘His name is Kilij. He is the leader of these Seljuks. He says withdraw or he will see if the woman can fly any better than the eunuch.’ Cold hands knotted Haraldr’s intestines. He struggled with a maddening urge to run forward and settle with Kilij. But no. The plan. He must meet this Kilij.
Blymmedes and Haraldr discussed Kilij’s ultimatum with animated gestures, just the type of argument among commanders one might expect before a cowardly retreat. After a few minutes Haraldr stomped angrily to the rear. Blymmedes gave the order to withdraw. Within minutes the cavalry and the Varangians were winding down the narrow, dusty road to Harim. Haraldr could hear the Seljuks jeering from the walls, and the cold hands made the knots ever tighter.
Grettir squinted. The sun was now a golden globe just resting on the kastron’s east wall, preparing to break loose and float into the sky. The mist had contracted into purplish streaks in the shadowed ravines. Grettir stepped forward proudly and gratefully. Odin had favoured him by sparing his leader, Haraldr Si--no, Nordbrikt, if he so wished, and by giving his tongue Grettir this chance to atone for his stupid treachery. The eagle-feeding Saracen-Slayer had asked for the most amusing man among them, and Grettir had been a virtually unanimous choice. Well, it was true; a skald who skinned onions for half a year had to become a prankster or he would drown in his own tears. Besides, as Odin’s din hastener had told him, today his humour would be worth a thousand swords. Judging that he was just outside bowshot, Grettir cocked his big knife-edged hat and stepped onto his stage, a patch of fairly even ground illuminated by a sun that had now been freed to the pond-blue sky. This morning I’ll teach even mischief-making Loki a thing or two, Grettir told himself, hoping to calm his quaking hands.
Haraldr waited at the base of the sheer drop beneath the east walls of the kastron. When he heard the dim but clearly perceptible sound of a human imitating, with comic hyperbole, the crow of a cock, he turned to Halldor. ‘Good. Grettir has begun.’ Haraldr looked two hundred ells up the crusty face of the cliff. Wafting slightly in the breeze, the rope ladders hung like glorious braids in the dazzling sun. Haraldr clapped Joli Stefnirson and his brother, Hord, on the back and winked at Ulfr. ‘I told you that any man from Geiranger can climb like a goat. But Joli and Hord can fly. They are Norway’s eagles, and today they will bring us Seljuk meat.’ Next Haraldr checked an apparatus the Domestic had called a ‘fire blower’. This was a long brass tube attached to a leather bladder worn on the back. The infantryman carried the hollow tube in his hands and had a wood-and-leather bellows strapped under his left arm; tapers tipped with some incendiary substance used to ignite the liquid fire were stuck in his belt. ‘Let’s give Grettir enough time to win his audience,’ Haraldr told the clustered, eager-eyed Varangians.