I nodded and stood up. There was a loud crack as I stepped on a dead branch of something. Priscus muttered something contemptuous and pulled me further away from the road. His own eyes had been useless underground. Now, he seemed able to see everything about us. We set off across the sea of bushes and jagged stones that stretched far away on each side of the road.
Perhaps I’d trusted too much in Priscus and his night vision. Perhaps the path he’d charted through the wilderness was more circuitous than I’d thought it was. But long after we should, in my view, have stood calling softly up at the sleeping guards, we were still picking our way over broken ground. We hadn’t even come to the ruined bathhouse that had been taken over by the barbarians as a covered position close by the tower Priscus had mentioned. I looked up at the clouded sky. Far over in the east, there was the slightest glow of the light before dawn. Not long now, and we’d be able to see where we were going. If anyone out here was up early, he’d be too busy shaking life back into his stiff and chilly limbs to bother looking at a couple of dark figures flitting about. We’d get ourselves back into Athens, and shock everyone in the residency by our loud banging on its gate. .
There was a low and bitter laugh about a dozen feet behind me. ‘Did you really think you could evade the gift of sight the Goddess has made me?’ Balthazar asked. He grunted an order, and I heard the rasp of a drawn sword somewhere on my left.
I spun round and saw the movement of a darker blackness against the dark of the night. Almost without thinking, I’d got my own sword out and had lunged with it. There was a gasp of pain, and I felt my victim drop to the ground. I stood back and looked hurriedly about. Whoever else was out there had gone very still, and I could see no movement. But there was a faint sound of someone breathing, and it wasn’t Priscus. Trying not to make any sound of boot leather on stone, I moved slowly in the direction of the breathing. At the very last moment, there was another flash of darkness within the dark, and Balthazar was laughing again.
‘Don’t think there is any escape,’ he said, now conversational. ‘Those who have done evil must themselves suffer evil.’ I heard him breathe in and then cry out in a loud voice, ‘Come, come, good beasts of the frozen north,’ he shrilled in Greek. ‘Come and see what golden prize I bestow upon your thrice-accursed souls.’
‘Fuck you!’ I snarled. Sword raised to strike him down, I rushed at where he must be standing. I crashed straight into Priscus, who was trying for the same. We fell down together in a heap. As we swore at each other and got up, Balthazar skipped out of reach and began more of his shouting. I grabbed at Priscus. There was still no light worth mentioning. But the great darkness of Athens was assuredly before us. ‘Let’s get out of here,’ I hissed. But I now felt a hand brush against my face. I dropped Priscus and struck out hard with my right fist into nothingness.
‘O Goddess, Goddess,’ Balthazar cried in the great voice he used for impressing the gullible, ‘now is the time to serve thy servant.’ There was a response from a few yards away in a drowsy Slavic, then an angry grunting from somewhere else. Balthazar was far behind me again, and was setting up an old invocation that might have woken the dead.
O come with rosy fingers, Dawn,
And gods and mortals show the morn.
Yes, hither, hither come: reveal
What evils might the night conceal. .
It would have been more dramatic if there had been some gradual fading in of light. But it was enough that just about everyone in hearing distance was coming out of his slumbers and beginning to feel about. I took hold of Priscus by his cloak and began pulling him forward. I stepped straight on to a hand. I silenced the shout of pain with a quick downward stab and carried on forward. I saw the big dark shape before it could see me, and rammed my sword into its middle with all my strength. The man went down without any sound. But there was now blood spurting all over me, and my hand slipped as I tried to pull my sword back out. As I tightened my grip and pulled hard, someone who’d been lying down put his arms about my legs, and I went straight down. I was up in a moment, but my sword was gone. I struck out with both fists at another lumbering shape and felt a giving way of jawbone beneath a great beard.
All this time, Balthazar hadn’t let up his maniac invocation of a dawn that still hadn’t come. I think I got someone on the nose with my elbow. Not caring how and where I landed, I jumped away from the arms that were trying again to lock about my legs. I did land on my feet. I bounded forward, but now tripped over a stone and fell into a pair of massive arms that tightened about my chest as if I’d been a child. I tried wildly for a head but I only found myself buried in the lower half of a large and stinking beard. Someone else had now thrown himself on to my back, and I was held fast.
There was a long and blundering shuffle, as the man beneath me got himself free and joined in holding me face down on the rough ground. I heard a shout of triumph and then the hard crack of one stone on another just above my head. I held my breath and went very still.
‘Right, let’s be looking at this fucker,’ someone growled in Slavic. There was a tired laugh beside him.
I waited till there was no one on top of me, then jumped up with all my strength, ready to make a dash for it. But, if I’d been down for what had seemed the tiniest instant, there now was enough light for anyone to see round. I’d broken out of the main huddle. I was picking up speed — when a single massive hand took hold of me by the scruff of the neck and held me without any hope of escape. I was thrown down with force. Even now, I might have got up again. But my cloak was caught in more of those brambles, and I struggled just a moment too long. Before I could get clear, someone new had got me from behind, and was holding a knife hard against my throat.
‘One move, you thieving shit, and you’re dead,’ he croaked with ill-natured menace.
‘Please, please, good sir,’ I called feebly in Slavic tinged with a Germanic accent, ‘give food for the starving. You can do what you like with me after.’ I stroked his leg with my one free hand. But the light was coming up fast. The time was already gone when I could try playing along with the most obvious suspicions. There was a great shout of rage from another man, and someone ripped the cloak straight off me. I rolled back in the brambles, showing a tunic of torn but very blue silk.
‘We’ve got ourselves a fucking Greek!’ came a voice from my right. There was a shouted laughter of three or four big men. I saw a hand reach over and press a knife back to my throat.
‘Correction, my dear fellows,’ I heard Priscus laugh from somewhere behind me. ‘You have caught yourselves the top man of King Heraclius himself!’
All hands were suddenly taken off my body, and I was able to sit up and look about me. The three or four men I’d guessed were in fact over a dozen. They sat, grinning uncertainly at me, knives still at the ready. One man holding a spear at him, Priscus was sitting on a large stone. He rubbed his head and smiled. He looked easily round and raised both hands.
‘And I, who have brought him to you, am Priscus — the only general who has ever driven off your Great Chief in open battle.’ He smiled again and nodded encouragement at the man who’d now stood back from him. He got up unsteadily and walked over to where I was still sitting in the brambles. ‘One of us,’ he said to me in Greek, ‘had to shit on the other. The only reason I waited so long was that I was sure it wouldn’t be you.’
He pointed at the man nearest to me and frowned. ‘Get him bound and gagged,’ he said. ‘You really don’t want to take any further chances with the little squirt.’
Chapter 52