The giant Imperial Eagles embossed on the Chalke Gate loomed ahead. Constantine and Metanoites struggled with terrified urgency through clusters of well-armed tradesmen arguing about how to assault the palace. Close to the gate, the crush was so oppressive that Constantine was lifted off his feet from time to time. His chest ached and at one point it seemed that the pressure of the crowd would suffocate him. Somehow Metanoites got him close enough that he could have spat on the huge bronze doors. But that was as close as they could get. Metanoites was also blocked by the surging mass, and he looked back at Constantine desperately.
‘I know one of the guards!’ shouted Constantine to a beefy-faced man next to him. ‘Let me up there and I will get him to open the gate!’ The beefy-faced man shouted to someone next to him, and soon a group of five or six pushed Constantine towards the small, man-sized door set within the colossal gates. The security grate, set at eye level, had been battered away. Constantine removed his seal ring and dropped it through the opening. A face flickered at the grate. ‘Let me in!’ screamed Constantine.
‘Let us in!’ bellowed the tradesmen who had pushed Constantine forward. ‘Let us at the swine who have taken our Mother!’ Suddenly the small door cracked open and arms thrust out and yanked Constantine inside. Metanoites tried to follow, but he was not recognized by the Khazars. Their swords ripped open his belly. The beefy-faced man also charged. His neck was hacked to the bone, and he slumped, blood gushing. The door slammed shut.
Constantine’s chest burned like the fires of Hell and his head whirled. He was alive. He wished he had gold to give the Khazars; he promised them gifts as they returned his ring. He requested an escort to the Chrysotriklinos. As he headed past the Hall of Nineteen Couches, Constantine was shocked to observe business as usual in the palace precinct. The silk-clad eunuchs and bureaucrats glided along the colonnaded avenue; only once did Constantine see two officials – lower-level secretaries to the Sacellarius – stop and discuss the furious din beyond the walls, a sound as clearly audible as an approaching cyclone.
Michael sat on his throne beneath the gold dome of the Chrysotriklinos, listening to a report on the virtually defunct tax-collection apparatus in Theodosiopolis theme. His eyebrows shot up when he saw Constantine approach in his soiled servant’s tunic. Michael nodded at his eunuchs, and the vast chamber was quickly cleared except for the Grand Eunuch and the Pecheneg guards in their gilded breastplates and plumed helmets. ‘Whatever are you doing, Uncle?’ asked Michael, as if he were merely concerned about some prank. ‘I am so disappointed that you could not attend my presentation to the Senate. They were quite taken with it.’
‘Majesty, I have scarcely escaped with my life from my own house. The captain of my guard is dead. The entire city is up in arms.’
Michael fanned his hand languidly. ‘Then I shall announce an event in the Hippodrome and put an end to it.’
Constantine approached the throne. ‘Nephew,’ he whispered, ‘would you please walk outside with me?’
Michael’s face contorted with boyish displeasure, but he nodded for his guard to surround him and followed Constantine out to the porch of the Chrysotriklinos. The vast dirge from the city came like a gale from the west; it was perceptibly louder than when Constantine had gone inside only moments before. Michael listened for a moment, then studied his purple boots for a long while, apparently carrying on some inner conversation. He looked up and smiled. ‘How incredible,’ he said effusively, his dark eyes glowing. ‘The Pantocrator has already sent the means of our deliverance from this rabble.’ Constantine looked at his nephew with concern. ‘Yes, Uncle. It is true. The former Hetairarch Mar Hunrodarson has returned to save us.’
The interior of the Hippodrome was already in twilight. Halldor was the first into the vast, empty stadium and his boots crunched in the neatly graded sand. He and Ulfr walked to the spina and stood beneath the bronze pylons at the south end of the stadium. Behind him followed the Blue Star, a short, plump figure firmly mounted on a donkey. The Varangians came next and clustered about the south end of the spina. And then the army of the city began to enter. Rank after rank after rank marched through the gates. They wore coarse wool and burlap tunics; some were in beggar’s rags, some in fine Greek wool. The men with spears entered first, then men with swords, hoes, rakes, scythes, hatchets, bows, butcher’s knives. And the women came in their own contingents, armed with stones and clubs. The track was quickly covered with these unlikely soldiers, and then even the seats began to fill up.
Halldor pointed to the Imperial Box, high up on the east side of the stadium. It was an enormous oblong structure that projected vertiginously over the tiers of seats below, its weight supported by thick marble columns. The Emperor’s seating pavilion resembled the portico of an ancient Greek temple, and this was flanked on both sides by balustraded balconies where dignitaries were usually seated; directly behind the Imperial seating pavilion was a long, flat terrace that bridged over to the adjoining Triclinium in the palace complex; the entire ponderous marble platform allowed no direct access from the seats below, unless one could shimmy up the marble pilings. And even if one could, armoured units of the Imperial Hyknatoi already waited on the balconies.
Those balconies are where the battle will be won or lost,’ he explained to the Blue Star. ‘They are an excellent platform for the defenders, but if we can take them, they will be the platform for our attack on the entire Palace. This is clearly our best opportunity to breach the palace defences. Elsewhere the walls are sheer, but here the seats give us a natural incline. It is never wise to attack up a hill if it can be avoided, but attacking up a hill is better than attacking straight up the sheer face of a mountain.’
The Blue Star nodded. ‘This is very different from what we expected last night, isn’t it, boy?’
Halldor looked around at the still-filling stadium. ‘Very different. But that is the nature of conflict. It always presents us with the unexpected.’
‘It is as if God sprinkled the earth with stars,’ said Bianca Maria. She stood at the railing as Mar’s dhromon glided past the city to the south. ‘What are the fires for?’
Mar looked at the conflagrations along the city’s affluent spine. From the vantage of the Marmara coast, the huge tongues of flames seemed painted in eerie, brightly enamelled miniature against the darkness. The palaces of the Dhynatoi were coming down. ‘There is some trouble in the city tonight, precious,’ said Mar. ‘But it will be over tomorrow, and then you will be able to see everything.’
The massive galley turned larboard to head into the Bucoleon Harbour. The lights of the palace burned with their usual brilliance. ‘That is where the Emperor lives,’ said Bianca Maria with rapt self-confidence.
‘Yes. Remember what I told you about the proper way to greet him.’
Khazar guards waited at the jetty when the dhromon docked. Only Mar, Gris Knutson and Bianca Maria disembarked. They were escorted up the statue-lined terraces, around the soaring apses of the Imperial Baths, and then into the Chrysotriklinos. The trio performed the prescribed prostrations and then stood before the Emperor Michael.
‘What a lovely child,’ said Michael. ‘What is your name?’ He leaned towards Mar’s adolescent companion.
‘Bianca Maria, Majesty.’
‘Well, Hetairarch, if I may reinstate you with your former title,’ said Michael quickly, ‘your return is so provident that I quite believe you are moved by the Holy Spirit.’
‘I am moved by a desire to preserve the office of Emperor, Autocrator and Basileus of the Romans,’ said Mar.