Free Lord of Slaughter by M. D. Lachlan Page A

had got through. There was no excuse. Many among the Hetaeriean ranks thought Basileios was being lenient. Other emperors might have ordered the regiment decimated – every tenth man killed.
    Now the army had outrun the bad weather and the day was bright under a sharp sun. The wolfman, though, scented something on the horizon. Smoke. A sooty rain had fallen on the battle and the wolfman tasted it here, even under the heat of the Greek autumn sun.
    The front of the column burst into clamour as the army passed through the shanty town that spilled from the city walls like litter from the back of a house. Already hostile eyes were on him; a crowd jeered and a couple of bystanders threw mud and stones. The guards barked at them to stop and, dazzled by the exotic sight of the emperor and his new northern army, they forgot the wolfman as they poured forward to acclaim the victors.
    The army arrived at the city gates. The wolfman looked to the head of the procession, where the emperor rode his white horse. On the journey home the emperor had put on plain soldier’s clothes but now he wore a sparkling crown and a great collar flashing with emeralds and rubies.
    The emperor addressed the Varangians. The wolfman couldn’t understand what he said. He knew only a handful of words in Greek and he’d used all of them when he’d asked the emperor to kill him. The boy who had been in the tent translated into Norse. The Vikings would be guests outside the city walls for a while. When proper accommodation had been arranged for them they would enter. In the meantime, their every need would be met and all services provided. The northerners grumbled and moaned – some saying they had been tricked – but then a big Viking dressed all in red spoke.
    He said the emperor honoured his promises and the Vikings would be well rewarded. As a gesture of goodwill, the Varangians would be paid within a week for the work they had done for Vladimir even though they had fought for Constantinople for less than a month. And tents would be delivered to them.
    This assuaged their anger and the men pulled off the road and down the slope towards the sea, dragging their baggage with them, women, children, dogs and flocks of goats and sheep all trailing alongside. The Norsemen travelled light, used to sleeping on their ships, stretching the sail across as a canopy. Few had tents. Much of their treasure was in their ships, under guard down the coast, and so there were few carts or horses to move – just their personal possessions and weapons, their families and their livestock.
    The Hetaereia advanced to the gate and the wolfman found himself near the front of the army behind the standard bearers, one carrying an image of St Helena, the other the sickle and star banner of Constantinople.
    Past him came two riders, one in blue and one in green. They went up to the gates and hammered on them with gold-tipped staves.
    ‘Open in the name of the emperor!’
    ‘There is only one emperor, that is Basileios, born in the purple, king of all the world! The gates open for none but he!’ It wasn’t one man who spoke but hundreds, it seemed to the wolfman.
    ‘It is the king of all the world who is here!’ shouted both riders together. ‘Basileios Porphyrogenitus, autokrator, ordained by God on high. Bow down before him.’
    ‘We bow down!’
    The gates swung open, and it was as if some great weight of waters swept down on the wolfman. He had been on the Ever-Violent Rapids on the Dneiper on his way from Kiev and been awed by their force. Here it was similar, a great roar sweeping out of the city and over him. He could suppress his fear, tell himself that his fate did not matter and that not one twist in the skein of his destiny would be different for worrying about it, but he could not control his wonder. This place was like nothing he had seen and, though he sat bound on an open cart, he forgot his discomfort, forgot the menace that faced him and just gaped at the