understand his meaning. She nodded.
Hereward bowed his head. ‘You need have no worry here,’ he said. ‘We shall protect you with our lives.’
Her brow knitted for a moment and she flashed him a curious look. But then she lowered her eyes, pulled the hood of the cloak over her black hair and strode over the ridge and into the baked landscape. With his eyes, Hereward urged Hengist and Sighard to accompany her. Dropping to his haunches, he snatched up three small slivers of driftwood that he had ordered his men to bring up from the tideline. He embedded them in the sand in an N shape and nodded. It was the sign they had used in the dense, intractable fenlands to mark the secret paths that wound among the treacherous bogs out of sight of the king’s men. ‘If Kraki or Herrig or any of the others yet live, they will see this and know we have gone on ahead,’ he said, hoping against hope.
But when he looked up, he saw that Alric was frowning, distracted. He looked from the wall of colourful sails to the knot of men trudging into the arid land.
‘What ails you, monk?’
‘Ragener’s words,’ the churchman muttered. ‘That the woman is cursed. The Hawk said she would bring a host of enemies upon our heads. What if this army will pursue us to the ends of the earth to get her?’
C HAPTER S EVEN
CONSTANTINOPLE BOILED UNDER the merciless sun. The narrow streets throbbed with life, too many people pressed into too small a space, red-faced, sweating, tempers fraying. Forges and abattoirs, steaming dyeworks and cesspits, all pumped their reek into the haze that hovered over the cluttered buildings. From every corner, the din boomed up to the heavens: the thunder of hammers, the rattle of looms, the voices roaring to be heard, whether slavers at the blocks, merchants and market traders, guildmasters and apprentices, or sailors unloading the ships at the quaysides. In Constantinople a man could find anything, so they said, except peace.
And yet, even then, Wulfrun could not help but think it was the greatest city on earth. He had been to Eoferwic, and to Wincestre, but they were like villages compared to this heaving, ceaseless mass. Here, on the high west wall above the Kharisios Gate, he could look down upon the grandeur, far removed from the grit of life.
Shielding his eyes against the glare, the captain of the Varangian Guard peered into the distance. Even then he could not see the far side of the sprawling city. Everywhere he looked, great stone buildings reached up towards the sun, the likes of which he had never seen in England. The monasteries and palaces, the great monuments to great men whose names were unknown to him, the hippodrome, the bath-houses, the zoo with its strange beasts that screeched and yowled and roared. And above it all, the magnificent dome of the Hagia Sophia floating against the blue sky. When he had first arrived from the west, he had knelt in that church to give thanks to God and had been almost blinded by the glittering of the gold which covered every surface like pebbles on a beach.
He felt his chest swell with pride. His father would have cried tears of joy to see his boy serving in the defence of such a place. ‘All who are lost will find a place here in Constantinople,’ he had been told when he sought a position in the Varangian Guard, and that surely was true.
‘Use those things with points on the end!’ The voice rang out along the top of the wall. The captain turned and saw his aide, Ricbert, leaning over the edge. He was shouting down to the guards who massed by the gate, watching the new arrivals streaming along the road that crossed the moat and the smaller walls into the city proper.
Ricbert came to meet him. ‘These days they hire children, not men,’ the smaller man sighed. ‘Old women could beat them with sharpened sticks and rotting fruit.’
‘There was a time when a toothless old hag could have laid you on your back with one blow.’ A smile flickered on
Hereward bowed his head. ‘You need have no worry here,’ he said. ‘We shall protect you with our lives.’
Her brow knitted for a moment and she flashed him a curious look. But then she lowered her eyes, pulled the hood of the cloak over her black hair and strode over the ridge and into the baked landscape. With his eyes, Hereward urged Hengist and Sighard to accompany her. Dropping to his haunches, he snatched up three small slivers of driftwood that he had ordered his men to bring up from the tideline. He embedded them in the sand in an N shape and nodded. It was the sign they had used in the dense, intractable fenlands to mark the secret paths that wound among the treacherous bogs out of sight of the king’s men. ‘If Kraki or Herrig or any of the others yet live, they will see this and know we have gone on ahead,’ he said, hoping against hope.
But when he looked up, he saw that Alric was frowning, distracted. He looked from the wall of colourful sails to the knot of men trudging into the arid land.
‘What ails you, monk?’
‘Ragener’s words,’ the churchman muttered. ‘That the woman is cursed. The Hawk said she would bring a host of enemies upon our heads. What if this army will pursue us to the ends of the earth to get her?’
C HAPTER S EVEN
CONSTANTINOPLE BOILED UNDER the merciless sun. The narrow streets throbbed with life, too many people pressed into too small a space, red-faced, sweating, tempers fraying. Forges and abattoirs, steaming dyeworks and cesspits, all pumped their reek into the haze that hovered over the cluttered buildings. From every corner, the din boomed up to the heavens: the thunder of hammers, the rattle of looms, the voices roaring to be heard, whether slavers at the blocks, merchants and market traders, guildmasters and apprentices, or sailors unloading the ships at the quaysides. In Constantinople a man could find anything, so they said, except peace.
And yet, even then, Wulfrun could not help but think it was the greatest city on earth. He had been to Eoferwic, and to Wincestre, but they were like villages compared to this heaving, ceaseless mass. Here, on the high west wall above the Kharisios Gate, he could look down upon the grandeur, far removed from the grit of life.
Shielding his eyes against the glare, the captain of the Varangian Guard peered into the distance. Even then he could not see the far side of the sprawling city. Everywhere he looked, great stone buildings reached up towards the sun, the likes of which he had never seen in England. The monasteries and palaces, the great monuments to great men whose names were unknown to him, the hippodrome, the bath-houses, the zoo with its strange beasts that screeched and yowled and roared. And above it all, the magnificent dome of the Hagia Sophia floating against the blue sky. When he had first arrived from the west, he had knelt in that church to give thanks to God and had been almost blinded by the glittering of the gold which covered every surface like pebbles on a beach.
He felt his chest swell with pride. His father would have cried tears of joy to see his boy serving in the defence of such a place. ‘All who are lost will find a place here in Constantinople,’ he had been told when he sought a position in the Varangian Guard, and that surely was true.
‘Use those things with points on the end!’ The voice rang out along the top of the wall. The captain turned and saw his aide, Ricbert, leaning over the edge. He was shouting down to the guards who massed by the gate, watching the new arrivals streaming along the road that crossed the moat and the smaller walls into the city proper.
Ricbert came to meet him. ‘These days they hire children, not men,’ the smaller man sighed. ‘Old women could beat them with sharpened sticks and rotting fruit.’
‘There was a time when a toothless old hag could have laid you on your back with one blow.’ A smile flickered on
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