Haraldr came back into the interrogation chamber and methodically slit the throats of the men he had left unconscious. He looked at Maria, who had retrieved her bloody knife, and with some removed consciousness contemplated the terrible spectacle of their reunion. Then he embraced her. ‘Father, I am glad I did not die before this moment,’ he told her.
‘Oh, Mother of God!’ she gasped cathartically. She broke down at last and tried to rub the blood off his face.
Haraldr turned gratefully to the determined-looking eunuch Symeon and wondered how courage had ever come to be associated with a man’s testicles. ‘Symeon, you and Maria must go down now, before someone discovers this.’
Maria looked up at him and sobbed. ‘How will you . . . escape?’
‘I cannot go down with you,’ said Haraldr. ‘There will be too many guards. They still think you are a priest and a nun. They know I am not supposed to be leaving.’ He looked around the room, studying the ropes and various paraphernalia of torture. ‘I have to go up.’ He let go of Maria and began gathering supplies. As he worked, Maria and Symeon told him of the incredible events that had ensued in his absence: the banishment of Zoe and the charges against the Patriarch; the rising of the city; the encampment of his Varangians and a citizen army in the Hippodrome.
When Haraldr had assembled his gear, he bagged it in one of the Pecheneg’s tunics. Then he led Maria and Symeon back into the stairwell. ‘Go now,’ he whispered. Maria hesitated. She threw her arms around him and clung fiercely. ‘We are taunting destiny with these farewells,’ she whispered harshly. ‘Fate will not always give you back to me; it cannot be that generous.’ Haraldr took her arms from him and looked into her blazing eyes. ‘The gods serve those who obey their summons. You have proved that by giving me back my life.’ His voice rose in the dismal shaft. ‘Go. Go.’ She turned, looked back at him again, and then Symeon gently urged her down the stairs. She was gone before the gods whispered that he might never see her again.
Haraldr ascended the last flight. As he had expected, the stairwell ended at a steel trapdoor. He crushed the padlock with the steel mallet he had found in the interrogation chamber. He climbed out onto the roof. The wind whistled and he immediately saw the conflagrations along the spine of the city. He paused for a moment, rapt with the spectacle. The palaces of the Dhynatoi were crumbling into gutted hulks. To the south, thousands of torchlights moved in and around the Hippodrome.
Haraldr looked over the low parapet that ringed the roof. The pavement was twelve storeys below; the intervening walls of Neorion were sheer grey rock articulated with only a single band of small windows on the lowest level. Haraldr used the mallet to drive a steel spike – one of the brands intended for his eyes – into the stone. He looped a length of rope over the spike and fastened the other end under his arms. He slung his gear over his back and crawled over the wall. Odin, Christ, he prayed. He let go of the parapet and allowed the rope to take all his weight. Iron and stone screeched faintly, like an insect dying.
Driving spikes as needed and reusing his short lengths of rope, Haraldr rappelled to within a dozen ells of the pavement before his spikes ran out. He jumped the rest of the way, landing hard. He heard shouts from the road to the west: Khazars, about a dozen. He did not wait to satisfy their curiosity. To his left was a small wooded area that ran south towards the Church of St Irene. The cool fragrance of the trees engulfed him. He heard shouts and realized that the Khazars had followed. He thrashed through several rows of shrubs and saw the huge, brightly lit apse windows at the eastern end of St Irene. He crossed the lawn that bordered the church; off to his left, the windows of the neighbouring Hagia Sophia glowed like golden studs set into the night. Shouts came from the walled courtyard on the south side of the church. He looked back; Khazars had followed him across the lawn. He heard more of them coming around the apse from the north. They seemed to be everywhere.
Haraldr leapt to the ledge beneath the towering apse windows. He kicked out glass panes and wooden lattice and jumped. He landed in the midst of a group of exclaiming, fervently praying priests; they had been seated, as was customary, in tiers just behind the altar. Haraldr clutched the robe of the first priest he could get his hands on. ‘Where is your underground!’ he bellowed at the dazed cleric; the entire palace complex was linked by a network of subterranean passageways.
‘If it is sanctuary--’ began a white-haired old priest.
‘Show me the passage!’ shouted Haraldr. A young priest rushed forward and pulled him to a small door set into the wall behind the altar. They ducked into the dark storeroom as the Khazars climbed through the shattered window. The priest threw open a wooden hatch set into the floor. ‘Bless you, Father!’ shouted Haraldr as he descended the steps into the darkness.
Haraldr navigated the abrupt turns of the damp-smelling passageway; he had to duck his head to keep from hitting it on the low ceiling. After a while he could see the slight illumination of his pursuers’ torches. The passage forked. Which way? He was uncertain now if he was pointed south or east. Or west? One fork led to the Hagia Sophia, he reasoned; the priests there, no doubt still led by their besieged Patriarch, would surely conceal him and show him a way out into the city. Fate instructed him and he took the left fork.
The passageway lowered and he had to crouch. He could hear the Khazars shout to one another. He scuttled along desperately through the claustrophobic tunnel. And on and on. He realized that the Mother Church was not this far from St Irene, but he was beyond turning back. He remembered the cul-de-sac in the Bulgar-Slayer’s galleries and wondered when he would encounter a similar dead end and have to turn and face the Khazars.
The floor became slick and he could smell the water. Not just seepage, but oppressive, cold, dank, a wetness that thickened the air like a wind off an icy lake. The passageway ended beneath an arcade. Flares a good bowshot away rippled in golden rivulets across an onyx-black underground lake, illuminating the hundreds of columns and brick vaults of the Cisterna Basilica. Haraldr gasped with involuntary wonder; he had heard of the great ‘sunken palace’ but had never before seen it. He could not appreciate the beauty of the intricately carved floral capitals that thrust up the honeycomb of groined vaults; the cistern seemed only like a vast stone forest rising from a Stygian swamp.
Haraldr sheathed his blade in his burlap loincloth and lowered himself into the icy water. The submersion of his chest left him gasping for breath. He stroked furiously. A third of the way across, he heard the shouts roll through the vaults and looked back to see the Khazar torches in the arcade from which he had embarked. As he approached the far end of the cistern he paused and treaded water while he studied the guards on the small landing ahead of him. Khazars. Four of them; they were obviously standing guard over an entry point from the city. A rowing-boat was tied up at one end of the wooden landing; Haraldr hoped that the Khazars would be foolish enough to paddle out after him. But the Khazars simply unsheathed their swords and waited for the inevitable finish of his swim.
Haraldr paddled to within fifty ells of the landing. He continued to tread water and taunted the Khazars in Greek. They responded with curses in their own language. One of them sheathed his sword, swung his bow off his back, pulled an arrow from his quiver, and took aim. Haraldr ducked under the water and swam forward. When he came up for air, he was only twenty ells away. Another Khazar aimed at him and he took two quick breaths and ducked under again.