The Comnenos men-at-arms drew together and took their lances from the leather sockets by their stirrups.
Mortirmir knocked on the gates again. His leather-clad knuckles made little noise against bronze-clad oak gates that were fifteen feet tall. Finally he drew his dagger and used the hilt to rap on the gate.
‘Who goes there?’ answered the sentry.
‘Food!’ Mortirmir replied.
The hoof beats were coming closer in the darkness, and sounded like thunder.
Above his head, Harald Derkensun leaned out. ‘Morgan!’ he called.
‘Here!’ Mortirmir called back.
‘I can’t open up. There’s armed men in the streets – hundreds of them. If they caught the gates open-’ Derkensun sounded unhappy.
‘Christ on the cross!’ Mortirmir shouted. ‘We have two carts and twenty men. Open the gates, for the love of God. We’ll be in before you can say “Ave Maria”.’
Derkensun sighed audibly. ‘I can’t take the risk. I’m sorry, Morgan. I take my oath to the Emperor very seriously.’
From the lead cart, a voice called, ‘Jesus and all the saints! Open the gate, Harald!’
The sound of horse’s hooves was filling the night.
‘Anna!’ Derkensun said. He sounded utterly wretched.
There was a low thump, and the Nordikan landed on his feet by Mortirmir. ‘I cannot open the gate,’ he said. ‘So I’ll die by you, here.’
The Great Square of the city was itself larger than many Alban towns. It stood between the ancient arena, where chariot races were still held, and the palace, and the entire square was lined in oak trees and paved in marble slabs cunningly worked with deep grooves to run rainwater off into gutters. Seen from above, the grooves spelled out whole chapters of the gospels. In the centre of the Great Square stood a mixed group of statuary, much of it impossibly ancient; there was the great Empress Livia, in brightly gilt bronze, driving her war-chariot against the western irks; there was Saint Aetius, standing like a young David, with his sword against his thigh, apparently contemplating his conquests – the Emperor Justinian and his wife Theodora; and even more ancient men and women. Mortirmir knew them all. They had been part of one of the entrance exams.
The horsemen entered the darkened square from the south-east. They were at least three hundred strong, and as they came on the stradiotes prepared themselves like brave men. Derkensun kissed Anna.
She slapped him lightly. ‘You could have just opened the gate,’ she said. ‘You great oaf. And I came all this way for you.’
Derkensun grinned. It was visible because Mortirmir had just cast his second ever successful phantasm – the first working any student ever learned. He made light, and set it on the peak of his borrowed helmet, so that it illuminated the group by him with a reddish light.
He was grinning uncontrollably.
‘Perhaps you should not have made us quite so obvious?’ Derkensun murmured. The professional soldiers seemed to agree.
In a rustle of hooves and harness, the house guards rode away, and the guild crossbowman cursed them.
Across the square, the horsemen came on. Mortirmir’s light glinted redly off horses and harness studded in gold or brass, and their tunics were scarlet – surely that couldn’t just be the light-
‘Vardariotes!’ said Derkensun.
They didn’t form for battle. They were moving at a fast trot, and they crossed the square in a column of fours, with a small pennon at their head made of silk, with a horse’s tail attached to it. The leader held a mace of what appeared to be solid gold, and he used it to salute the palace gate. The men – and a few women – were barbarians, Easterners, with black hair and slanted eyes and scraggly beards or clean-shaven, and every one of them wore a heavy horn bow in a scabbard at their waists, and a long, curved sword.
They entered the main road to the Gate of Ares, and the long column vanished into the arched gate of the Great Square as if it were being devoured by a dragon. In two hundred heartbeats, only the sound of their passage remained, echoing around the square, and floating on the night air from their new route.
When they were gone, voices inside ordered the Outer Court’s gate opened, and the wagons went into the yard. Mortirmir was too fatigued to be afraid, but he could see relief on every face.
An older woman in court clothes came into the yard from the palace end – the courtyard was fully illuminated with cressets and torches – and called softly for Blackhair. The Nordikan turned the carts over to Ordinaries – he’d inspected them personally – and Mortirmir was standing to hand.
‘My lady,’ he said, with a bow.
The older woman nodded. ‘Who were they?’ she asked. Her voice betrayed nothing.
‘My lady, they were the Vardariotes. They passed away to the Gate of Ares.’ He spat. ‘The traitors.’
‘Judge them not until they are proved,’ said Lady Maria.
The Court of Galle – The King, his Horse and Lady Clarissa
‘My lord,’ breathed Lady Clarissa de Sartres. She was leaning forward, her lute clutched against her. The King had risen from his stool in his private receiving room – and put his hand on her shoulder.
He leaned down and ran his lips across the exposed nape of her neck and she stiffened. She scrambled away, her hand straying to the amulet that her great-uncle Abblemont had given her, and her thumb touched the disc at the base of the crucifix.
The King was small but he was strong and very quick, and he had both of her hands, and then he pushed her against the fruitwood side table and pulled her veil off her head and put his mouth on hers. She stumbled, and used the stumble to cover a kick to his knee – and he threw her roughly to floor.
She screamed.
Abblemont came into the private solar without undue haste a few of her terrified heartbeats later. Clarissa was under the King, and he had her skirts above her knees and she was weeping. Abblemont left the door open.
‘People are coming, Your Grace,’ the Horse said. ‘Let Clarissa up, please.’
The girl had enough spirit to slap the King as soon as he released her hands, and he slammed the heel of his hand into her chin.
Abblemont dragged him off her. He was a head taller, much heavier, and he trained constantly. He managed to lift the King clear of the ground and set him on his stool without doing him much harm.
‘Get up and go – before the Queen comes,’ Abblemont said over his shoulder to his niece.
The King sucked in a deep breath, as if he had just awakened. ‘She made me!’ he said.
Abblemont turned on his niece. ‘I told you never to be alone with him,’ he said.
She clutched her ruined dress to herself and sobbed – and reached for her instrument. But when she attempted to lift it, it became clear that it had been shattered in the struggle, and a litter of discordant strings cut her sobs.
She ran from the room.
‘She seduced me,’ said the King, his eyes steady. ‘That strumpet.’
Abblemont contemplated regicide, and let the moment pass. ‘Your Grace, there is a letter from the Captal, and the Queen is on her way to this room. Are you prepared to receive her? She has some notion that Clarissa was present.’ His words were clipped and careful. He was, at some remove, quite fond of his niece – but he was altogether fonder of the peace and prosperity of Galle.
The King sat up.
His wife came in, as if summoned. ‘Ah,’ she said. She was ten years older than the King, and the daughter of the man reputed to be the richest in Christendom. Her clothes and her jewels were the finest in the world, and her grace and deportment were the toast of poets in three countries. When she was fifteen, the Lady of Flowers, as she had been called then, had danced alone, accompanied only by her own voice, in front of a crowd composed of her father’s friends, a thousand knights and their ladies, to open a great tournament, and the fame of that great feat remained her cloak and her armour.