The Blood of Alexandria (14 page)

‘Wait!’ a voice called in Greek. ‘Do not depart this place.’ It was a loud, strangely impersonal voice – for all the world as if someone were speaking at a thin sheet of metal hung up before his face. It silenced the low buzz of conversation and clatter of dice. Even the druggies left off their bobbing and moaning.

Chapter 13

‘Wait if you would find the answer to your question,’ the voice cried again, still in Greek. The flow of conversation started again, though for just a moment. It was now part angry and part scared. Then it died away. All was silent again.

‘Time to get out of here,’ I muttered to Priscus. I heard Macarius breathing hard behind me. But I turned back. I wanted to see who was speaking. Wouldn’t you have done the same?

It was that girl. She’d left off her demonstration of whatever and had followed us halfway across the room. Now, she stood just before one of the gaming tables. A look of utter blankness on her face, it was as if the cunning imposter I’d seen by the brazier had suffered some kind of seizure while remaining on her feet. She was turned in my direction, though her eyes showed only the whites. She raised her arm in a stiff motion and pointed at me. I stepped over another of the fallen druggies to stand before her.

‘If you would find your heart’s desire,’ she said, ‘and all and more needed to save your world, seek it by the place on the map between the dead palms and the monument to human folly. Seek and you shall find.

‘Beware, however, those who hate you, but trust in your friends and in those who cannot choose but to be your friends.’

She repeated the words ‘
but trust in your friends and in those who cannot choose but to be your friends
’. Her voice had reached every corner of that large room. She’d spoken a correct Greek – more correct than usually heard even from the Greeks of Alexandria. But it had been absolutely without emphasis. Imagine someone slowly and accurately reading out a text in a language he didn’t understand, and you have some idea of the effect that girl had produced.

I looked at her. Everyone else in the room looked. All stood or sat or lay in frigid silence. Priscus shoved past me. He took hold of the girl and shook her.

‘What the fuck is all this about?’ he said softly yet intensely in Greek. ‘What’s this about maps and palm trees?’

Before I could get him from the room, someone darted behind me and pulled at my hood. As it came off and showed my golden hair, there was a shout of horror in the room. Someone else was yelling the Egyptian word for ‘Greeks’. It seemed Macarius had been right about the effect Greek had on the natives.

Priscus was now shouting at the girl. But she’d passed out. She flopped loose in his arms. With a spluttered obscenity, he dropped her and wiped his hands in his cloak. The Ancient One had been up a while from his brazier and was shambling about. As he called something out, someone gave him a push from behind that got him sprawling over the girl. He ran shaking hands over her face and began to cry.

I thought Priscus would set about them both with a kicking. Instead, he twisted suddenly round to floor someone who’d dared lay hands on him. He threw his cloak back to get at his sword.

‘My Lords, we must leave,’ Macarius cried from the corridor. He looked ghastly in the dim light. I’d seen men look more composed at their own executions.

‘I’ll get Priscus,’ I answered. I moved forward again. The room had dissolved into a chaos of shouting and movement. Everyone who could stand was on his feet, and holding a weapon or looking round for something to use as one.

A man swung at me with a broken chair leg. Straight away, I had my own sword out and gave him a shallow stab in the shoulder. He went down screaming.

‘Keep beside me,’ Priscus said in my ear. Now controlling himself, his voice was loud but calm. ‘We back out of here together. Kill anyone who steps too close.’

Getting out of the building was easy. We were defending a narrow front in that corridor. No one could get behind us. The problem, I knew, would come once we were back in the streets. A shame we’d not been able to bar the door from outside the room. That would have contained the danger until we were well away. As it was, we were in trouble.

‘You must run, My Lords,’ Macarius shouted.

The cloud had passed by, and now the moon shone faintly on all about us. I looked at Macarius. That look of terror was now set on his face as if he’d put on a mask. I opened my mouth to speak.

He cut me off. ‘Run for your lives,’ he said. ‘I’ll try to hold them here.’ He turned back to the doorway and shouted something in Egyptian. His sword glinted in the moonlight as he waved it at the men who were crowding the doorway. The doorman stood behind him, just into the street. He was calling out something that might have been a plea for calm or a prayer.

‘Go, for God’s sake!’ Macarius shouted again, his eyes glittering blankly. ‘There’s nothing you can do here.’

I ran. Where to run was another matter. I heard a clatter of arms as I reached a street corner. Then there was a wild shouting and the padding of feet. I turned the corner and ran into the semi-darkness. It wasn’t dark enough. They were after me. With every new twist in those streets, the mob grew larger. I’d left the building with perhaps half a dozen after me. Now, there were dozens. Roaring and howling, lit torches showing their way, they raced behind me through the labyrinth of the Egyptian quarter, not more than a dozen yards behind.

As I reached another corner, a few men jumped in front of me. I hit at one of them with the pommel of my drawn sword. He went down. I felt the other clutch at me, but I was too heavy and moving too fast for him to stop me. I ran blindly along those low, twisting streets, gauging my position less by what I thought was in front than by those terrifying sounds behind.

I took a corner. My foot landed on something unstable. I skidded. I grabbed out at nothing in particular as I tried to right myself. I fell on one side and rolled on to my back. I wasn’t injured, and I was up at once. But those shouting voices were almost on me. They must have been just a few feet round the corner. Which way to run? I cast desperately round, and started a dash forward.

‘Not so fast, my pretty,’ said Priscus out of the shadows on my left. He had my arm in that iron grip of his, and pulled me roughly against the wall. Another moment, and we were squeezed into a doorway, our faces pressed hard against the wood, in our black cloaks invisible to anyone from behind.

The mob went straight past us. I felt bodies brush against my back. But no one in that stampede could have stopped even had he thought there was reason. We waited until the shouting had lost its immediacy and until the slow and the lame had sloped past us in pursuit of the main action. Then we stepped back into the street.

The moon shone down thin but bright. I looked at Priscus. He’d shaken his hood off and was checking that he had his sword in the right way. His face shone with the sort of exaltation you normally saw in church – or in Priscus when he was especially pleased with himself.

‘You saved me?’ I said. There was no doubt he had. But for him, I didn’t care to think what I’d now be having done to me.

‘But of course I did, my darling Alaric,’ he whispered close in my face. He stood back as if to savour the confusion the moon must have shown on my face. ‘Oh, we may have our little differences from time to time,’ he said with a careless wave upwards. ‘But we are both members of the Imperial Council. We don’t leave each other to be torn apart by the wogs.

‘Now, talking of wogs, where is that man of yours? That was a most shoddy holding action back there. If he were one of my soldiers, I’d have him flayed alive on the field of battle.’

‘I’m sure Macarius did his best,’ I said, feeling guilty again I hadn’t stayed to kill a few of the trash. ‘But I’m not sure how we can get back without him.’

‘Don’t you worry your little head about that one, my darling,’ said Priscus with a chuckle. ‘We simply go back the way we came. Dear me, isn’t it just plain you have no military experience? Lost, and in a shitty little dump like this? You should have been with me in the street battle I won in Amida.
That
was confusing!’

He paused and gestured at a shadowy dungheap we were walking towards. It looked like any other, and I had no recollection of having seen it on our way out. In any event, I’d seen very little, and couldn’t imagine how Priscus had seen any more.

‘The real question I’d like answered, though,’ he went on, ‘is where is the map that slut mentioned? What do you think of those dead palms and the monument? I’m not sure if the Oracle at Delphi used to give more crooked answers.’

‘You’ll surely remember,’ I said, putting on a confidence I didn’t yet feel, ‘that she was speaking to me.’

‘You were the nearest when she spoke,’ Priscus said dismissively. ‘I was the one there with a valid question. Your heart’s content – assuming you have one – is not something it needs supernatural intervention to find.’

I didn’t bother with a reply to that. I was beginning to wonder where the girl had learned her Greek, and why she’d brought on a riot. Had she been punishing us for making the Ancient One look stupid?

My thoughts broke off. As we rounded another corner – Priscus assured me this was the way – we came face to face with the mob. Perhaps someone had guessed which way we’d be going. We looked into a deep mass of menacing humanity, their torches still burning bright.

‘Oh, shit!’ I said. As I turned to run, Priscus had hold of me again. He already had his sword out.

‘We stand together,’ he said, still calm and now deadly. ‘We go forward a step at a time, and we cut our way through.’ He pulled a knife from his belt. I swallowed and drew my sword. I’d never yet come seriously to grief in street fighting. But I’d never been against these odds. There must have been dozens of these people. They didn’t seem very well armed. But numbers like theirs must always count. Relying on Priscus was not something I’d ever expected. I found myself now hoping his own estimate of his military abilities was remotely close to the truth.

I remember the flash of steel in the moonlight as we stepped into the crowd. I remember the recoil in my sword arm and screams of the men we struck. I remember feeling the wave of panic that swept through the crowd as those at the front found themselves trapped against men who were still pressing forward. I remember the shrieks of fear and sudden pain. I felt the impact of something hard on my left shoulder. I had a moment of panic as I found it hard to move my sword properly in that packed mass.

But it was only a moment. We’d cut our way straight through. Priscus swung round and slashed at someone who hadn’t pressed back as far as the others. With a crunch of sword on flesh and bone, the top of his head was cut as cleanly away as if it had been the shell of a soft-boiled egg. I lunged forward and stabbed at another. I think I got him in the side. He went down with a bubbling scream.

And that was the end of the attack. As quickly as it had formed, the mob now melted away. We were alone in the dim street. It was now just the two of us and perhaps half a dozen of the dead and dying. Priscus bent down to wipe his sword on the clothing of one of the bodies.

‘Not a bad evening at all, my dearest Alaric,’ he said lightly. He took my arm and led me along the street. ‘After this, I’m sure you’ll agree it’s time to discuss how to end our rather sterile dispute and let young Maximin understand that he is blessed with two fathers. I suggest I should call again at the nursery—’

There was another pattering of feet ahead of us. I hadn’t bothered sheathing my own sword. I held it up weakly, hoping Priscus wouldn’t notice how it shook.

‘Since the Legate of the Great Augustus is unharmed’ – Priscus nodded again in my direction – ‘I propose on this occasion to overlook your negligence in leaving us to shift for ourselves.’

His face impassive, Macarius bowed. The police officer drew his men into single file as they passed through the doorway back into the Greek centre of Alexandria. I looked at the bright streets and at the well-dressed men who moved easily around as they passed to or from pleasure or some late business, and breathed a quiet sigh of relief. Whatever else I had to do during the time I had left in Alexandria, it would not involve being again on the other side of the Wall.

‘What is that chanting?’ I asked in an effort to change the subject. My voice wasn’t as steady as I’d hoped it would be.

The police officer looked back at the now closed and barred door. Beyond it, the mob had reassembled and was back at its favourite slogan.

‘It’s all about some wog prophecy, sir,’ he answered. ‘They’ve been told that Greek rule over the world will end when the mummy of the Great Alexander sheds tears.’