“They’re gone.”
The defenders of Saint Basil’s stared dully at one another, blinking in the torchlight. The hospital stood intact, its defenses unbreached.
“They’re gone,” Edmund repeated. “They’ve given up. We’re safe.”
“For the night.” Thea leaned on her axe and mopped her brow. “Why should they wear themselves out in the dark, and on our territory at that? We should follow their example. Short watches for all of us, and plenty of sleep.”
One of Dionysios’ men frowned. “There are a thousand easier prizes in the City. Maybe they won’t come back.”
”Don’t lay wagers on it,” she said. “Edmund, you look lively enough. Relieve the men in the garden and send them to bed. I’ll take the first watch on the roof.”
In the unwonted quiet, even Master Dionysios succumbed to sleep. Thea walked the dim ways on soft feet, her watch over, her man-shape laid aside.
Alf lay on his pallet with open eyes. Nikki clung to him even in sleep, cheeks damp, eyes swollen with weeping; the kitten crouched like a tiny lion in the curve of his arm, wide-eyed and watchful. In the far corner of her own bed Anna huddled awake, oblivious to all save her own terrible grief.
Softly Thea lay on Alf’s free side, stroking his hair away from his face. He shivered under her hand; his wide eyes closed. I can’t weep, he said silently. I try and I try, but no tears come. Thea, if I don’t weep I’ll go mad.
She kissed his eyelids, his lips, the hollow of his throat. You grieve. I feel it in you.
It goes too deep. Irene—I let her go. When I could have fetched her back again, I tarried to play avenging angel before the Emperor; and after, I let myself forget. I could have forced them both to my will, Irene and her mother. Her mother... oh, dear God, the agony I let her suffer!
You, Alf? Thea raised her head from his breast. No. It was God. As well you know.
Anna hates Him, he said.
But not you. You, she loves.
Alf’s breath caught as he drew it in, almost a sob. I’m all she has left. Her mother is dead. I burned down her house. It was dead and it was a horror, but it was hers. I never asked her what she wanted to do with it.
You did the only thing you could have done.
He was silent, mind and voice. When at length she slept, he was still awake. Even she could not follow where his mind had gone.
o0o
Morning dawned damp and grey: the third day of the sack of Constantinople. As the light grew sluggishly, the guardians of Saint Basil’s looked about them and swallowed cries of despair.
Around the walls on all sides massed an army of Franks, knights and men-at-arms in full array. And each company bore a ladder cut to the height of the hospital.
A horn sounded, short and sharp. The ladders swung up.
Varangian axes met them. But there were only nine of the old Guard, and a dozen ladders, and sixscore men swarming up them; and on the roof across the way, a company of bowmen rising from concealment behind a parapet.
Edmund thrust back a laden ladder with the haft of his axe, and laughed as it fell. “Ha! Here’s a fight at last!” He wheeled, struck aside a Flemish sword, clove helm and head together with a single sweeping blow.
In the garden below, Dionysios’ guards fought hand to hand with men who had scaled the wall and strove now to throw open the postern.
Edmund began to sing.
o0o
All the sick in Saint Basil’s lay in the centermost of its wards, the women set apart from the men by a curtain. Of the healers who had labored there when the City was whole, only Master Dionysios remained, and Thomas, and Alf; and two frightened but loyal students. All the rest had fled.
“This is ridiculous, you know,” said the woman Alf was tending. She had been a tavern keeper until a Frankish sergeant beat her senseless for refusing to serve him in the cup he proffered, a chalice from Holy Apostles. “The devils will set fire to us, and here we’ll be like rats in a trap.”
A man’s voice called through the curtain, as calm as hers. “It won’t happen. They must think we’ve got real treasure here, with the Emperor’s axemen guarding us. We’re a nut they’ll crack before they try to light any fires.”
“Maybe they’ll take pity on us,” said a boy’s breaking voice.
“Them?” The man laughed until his breath caught and he choked.
“They don’t pity anything,” the woman said for him. “They’re devils, I say. Devils straight out of Hell.”
Another of the women stirred on her cot. “We should surrender. Why are we fighting them? We’ll only make them angrier.”
“Would you rather be alive now or dead two days since?” Master Dionysios examined the last speaker with a hard eye and gentle hands. “Well, mistress, you’ll walk out of here if I have anything to do with it.”
“They do admire courage,” Alf said softly, as if to himself. He rose from the tavern keeper’s side and passed on to her neighbor.
o0o
Slowly the Varangians gave way before the enemy. There were but six now, Grettir fallen with Sigurd and Eirik before the Latin swords; and Halldor had dropped his axe to wield his sword awkwardly left-handed, with an arrow in his right shoulder. Edmund sang no longer. He had no breath to spare for it.
A bolt caught Ulf in the throat. He toppled, taking a Latin with him, gripped in a death-embrace. Wulfmaer howled in grief and rage and flung himself forward.
Thea hauled Edmund back by the belt. The three who remained, with Edmund, held the door into Saint Basil’s.
Halldor reeled and fell. Thea’s arm was leaden; she breathed in gasps. Her body ached and burned under the Varangian armor. Before her she saw not human forms but a thicket of blades.
Haakon loosed a gurgling cry; and her left side, her sword side, was empty. On her right, young Edmund hacked and cursed and wept without knowing what he did.
In the garden, a shout went up. The enemy had broken through.
Thea kicked open the door she guarded and flung Edmund through it. He tumbled headlong down the steep stair. She whirled her axe and sent it flying, mowing down the startled Franks; slammed the door upon them and shot the bolt. It was a full second before the first body crashed against it.
She was already at the stair’s foot, dragging Edmund to his feet. He swore and struck at her with his fist, bruised and winded but unharmed. She cuffed him into submission. “The hellhounds have got into the garden. Move, or they’ll find the wards before we do!”
Without a word Edmund bolted down the passage. Thea ran fast upon his heels.
Behind them, the enemy hurtled through the door.
Both forces met in the wide passage outside of the innermost ward. No gate or door stood in their way there; but a pair of Varangians held the entry, one armed with his axe, the other with a sword. Beyond them the attackers could see what precious hoard they guarded: a roomful of the maimed and the dying, a child or two, and three weary men in blue.
The Latins gaped. For this, they had forsaken the rich plunder of Byzantium?
With a howl of frustrated rage, one of the captains charged. His pike pierced through Edmund’s guard and clove his mail, striking him to the heart.
He fell against Thea, staggering her with his dead weight. Her eyes flared green in the Varangian face; her lips drew back from sharp witch-teeth.
Alf saw the crossbow raised, the finger tensing on its trigger. “Thea!” he cried sharply.
She turned, startled. The quarrel, aimed for her heart, plunged deep into her side, piercing the mail, driving her back, sprawling, shifting and changing under the shock of the blow. It was Thea whose body Alf caught, the helm falling from her head, her hair tumbling over his hands to mingle with her blood.
Very gently he laid her down. No one had moved, save by instinct, to shape the sign of the cross.
Deep within him something broke. He took up the sword that had fallen from Thea’s hand.
In silence more terrible than any cry, he sprang upon the bowman. The man fell with his head half severed from his shoulders; Alf drove deep into the ranks, crowded as they were, and hampered by the narrowness of the passage. They closed in about him. He backed to the wall, holding them off with a circle of steel.
Alf. Thea’s mind-voice was feeble. Alf, don’t!
He faltered. A pikestaff swung around and struck him hard on the side of the head. He staggered, but kept his feet and his sword. With a panther-snarl he slipped beneath the pike and hewed its wielder down.
Stop! Thea cried through the haze of her pain. Stop, you fool! They’ll kill you!
“I want them to,” he said aloud, fiercely.
A scarlet figure wavered in his vision, with a host of shadows before and behind it. Thea beat her way through the massed Franks, armed only with her fists and the dying flare of her power on which no weapon could bite, and threw herself upon him.
The sword dropped from his numbed hand. He saw her face, white as death, and her wild eyes. The ring of steel drew in upon them both.
“That,” said Master Dionysios, “will be quite enough.”
The Latins could not understand his Greek, but his tone was clear. He made his way through them by the path Thea had opened, and glared at them all impartially.
One or two men raised their weapons. But a helmed knight struck the blades down. “No. Enough. He can’t fight; he hasn’t even a knife.”
Alf crouched at the knight’s feet, holding Thea close, eyes burning with wrath thwarted but far from quenched. “Murderer,” he hissed in the langue d’oeil.
The knight’s blank helm betrayed no emotion at all. He seemed to be scrutinizing the upturned and hating face, pondering it. “You speak Frankish, do you? Tell the old man we’re claiming this house in the name of the Crusade.”
Alf bent over Thea’s body, probing her side. Mail and the fading remnants of her power had slowed the quarrel, but it had gone deep, nearly to her back. The black bolt stirred slightly with an indrawn breath; the point of it grazed the farther side of her lung.
A mailed foot drove into his hip. He surged upward.
Dionysios seized his arm and clung grimly. “Kill yourself if you like, you young lunatic, but don’t drag us into it. Tell the beast he can have what he pleases if he leaves the sick and the medicines alone.”
There was a long pause. All shuddered and looked about as if he could not remember where he was. Slowly he repeated the Master’s words in Frankish.
The knight unfastened his helm and handed it to a man-at-arms, baring a lined ageless face, tired and sweating and somewhat pale. “You’ll look after our wounded, then. These” —He indicated Alf, and Thea whom he had gathered into his arms— “we take.”
“The woman is mortally hurt,” the Master snapped.
“The boy is a doctor. Is he not?” The knight turned away as Alf choked on the Greek, beckoning to one of his men. “Bind them.”
Dionysios stood his ground. “The woman will die. I will not have it. Get out of my hospital!”
“Bind them,” the knight repeated implacably.