Zombies of Byzantium Read online

  Dedication

  To Cody, with all my love.

  It is the Byzantine year 6225 A.M. (Anno Mundi), on our calendar the year 717 A.D.

  Byzantium—the Eastern Roman Empire—is in peril.

  On one side of the Empire, the Islamic Caliph, Suleiman ibn Abd al-Malik, prepares to conquer the last Christian kingdom standing between the armies of Islam and the European continent. On the other, the Bulgarian Khan Tervel lies in wait to pick the carcass of the Empire clean.

  In just four years, three Byzantine Emperors have been deposed violently. Barely five centuries after the Christianization of Rome by Constantine the Great, the Empire is on its last legs.

  Chapter One

  In the Village of Demons

  The Monastery of Chenolakkos (Asia Minor, central Turkey)

  Spring, 717 A.D.

  I had just started painting a new icon when the summons came. One of the rich merchants in Nicaea had wanted to show off to his dinner guests how pious he was, so he commissioned the monastery for a nice triptych he could display in his dining room. It was going to be one of my better pictures—Christ hanging on the cross in the center, the Virgin Mary on the right panel and a couple of saints being hideously burned, mutilated and tortured on the left panel. I had the whole thing sketched out on parchment and I thought I could polish it off in a week or so. It was a beautiful spring day in late May and the sun was shining brightly on the snowy slopes of Mt. Olympus visible through the studio windows. I’d mixed my colors and I’d just cracked the egg for the tempera when Brother Asidenos hurried into the studio. He was a mousy little man with squinty eyes and a twitchy little nose. “Brother Stephen?” he said. “The hegoumenos wants to see you in his chambers.”

  I grunted. “Brother Asidenos, I just started this.”

  “The hegoumenos said it was urgent.”

  I wondered what I was being punished for now. I’d been in the monastic life long enough to curb my habit of cursing—one of the lingering sins of country folk like me—so I bit my tongue, put down the tempera bowl and drew my cowl up over my head. Asidenos led me down the steps and through the colonnade. In the chapel, the other monks were just coming back from prayers at matins. Asidenos showed me into the hegoumenos’s office. It was a dingy stone-walled chamber lit only by a tiny window up near the ceiling. A big blackened fireplace held a crackling blaze no matter the season. The place was mounded with thick books and parchments. A dim candle smoldered on a spike. A rat, carrying a piece of gnawed chicken bone, scurried across my path into the dusty corner as I approached. Old Father Eunomios was busy writing something on a parchment with a reed pen. I wasn’t sure he saw me—the old fool was mostly blind—so I cleared my throat. When he still didn’t answer, I said softly, “Father Hegoumenos, you wanted to see me?”

  “Yes, Brother Stephen.” Eunomios didn’t look up from his parchment. “Your services have been called for. You’ll be leaving Chenolakkos within the fortnight.”

  From his stony expression it was obvious this prospect didn’t trouble the old coot, nor did it me. In the six years, since I first took my vows after the untimely deaths of my parents from fever, I’d come to regard joining the cloth in general, and the Monastery of Chenolakkos in particular, as a colossal misfortune. The food was dreadful, the discipline harsh, the endless hours of prayer boring to the point of stupefaction. The closest I’d ever gotten to a woman was seeing a peasant girl bathing in a stream three years ago, and she wasn’t even fully naked. I didn’t want to let on that I was elated by the thought of getting out of prison after all this time, so my face remained as immovable as Eunomios’s when I replied, “Oh really? Where am I going?”

  “The capital. I’ve had a dispatch from Father Rhetorios at the Monastery of St. Stoudios. It seems that one of their venerable old iconographers has died, and as they have several urgent commissions they’re seeking a replacement wherever one can be found. Naturally, I thought of you.”

  On the one hand I didn’t want to look a gift horse in the mouth, but on the other I smelled a rat, more than just the little beastie in the corner chowing down on the remnants of last night’s dinner. “St. Stoudios?” I said, drawing in my breath. “In Constantinople?”

  “Do I speak with a stutter, Brother Stephen?”

  “Uh—no. No, Sir. I just wondered if you thought—I mean, I’ve only been out of apprenticeship for a year and a half, since old Rhangabé died—”

  The head monk finally looked up from his parchment. Squinting to see me past the cataracts in his ghostly eyes, he said, “You think your work is not up to the standards of the most important monastery in the Byzantine Empire, is that it?”

  Damn the old guy. He had a passion for tempting me to say something that would get me in trouble. It was one of the few pleasures Eunomios had left in life, given that he could barely walk and had about two teeth left in his head. “Er, no,” I replied. “That’s not exactly what I meant. But I’ve heard about St. Stoudios. They supply icons for the Emperor and his family. Don’t you have to apprentice for many years to even get in the door there?”

  “Aye. You do.” With a hint of a smile—which, given the rarity of such an event, almost cracked the old buzzard’s plaster-like face—he finished writing and set the pen in its holder. “Let us speak plainly, Brother Stephen.”

  “Okay, let’s.”

  “You’re a bad monk. Of that, no one who lives in this cloister has any doubt. You’ve not given up your affinity for earthly things, for sinful things. I trust you believe in God as deeply as any of us, but in your habits, your language and your general demeanor you’re an embarrassment to the entire monastery.” Eunomios gripped the arms of his wooden chair, drew a deep breath and began to hoist his ancient black-robed frame out of it. For a moment I thought his spindly legs would give out and he’d crash to the floor. I didn’t particularly relish the prospect of trying to pick him up, considering he bathed even less often than most of the stinking mounds of sweaty flesh that passed for monks around here. But, astoundingly, he remained on his feet.

  He continued. “You are, however, an excellent artist. Your lines are strong, your colors bold. You still have much learning to do, but there is potential. It occurs to me that perhaps you can serve the Lord in a greater capacity outside the walls of this monastery.”

  “I see.”

  With a wizened clawlike hand, Eunomios groped for his gnarled walking stick, leaning up against the desk. “Father Rhetorios is desperate. The new Emperor has been on the throne barely two months. He’s purging the palace of all trace of his predecessor, including the very icons that the prior Emperor Theodosius and his family venerated in their porphyry chambers. The unfortunate death of one of St. Stoudios’s younger iconographers couldn’t have come at a worse time for them. Iconographers are very important these days. With an attack on Constantinople by the Saracens expected daily, icons over which to pray for the deliverance of the city are at a premium. Rhetorios also owes me a favor. He’ll accept anyone I send so long as I vouch for them. Since I now have this unique opportunity to be rid of you once and for all, I figured I shouldn’t question the Lord’s clear direction in this matter.” Having secured his stick, Eunomios began hobbling right past me. “Please complete your present commission as quickly as possible. Then pack up your paints and your personal effects and be gone within the fortnight. I’ve dispatched a letter to St. Stoudios promising you by Midsummer’s Day.”

  I could tell the interview was over. “Thank you, Hegoumenos.”

  Eunomios was almost to the doorway but he turned back, smiling for the second time in forty years. “Oh, one other thing. Don’t think I’m fool enough to release a twenty-one-year-old whelp on the open road to indulge his sinful desire
s with impunity. I’m sending Brother Theophilus with you. He’ll make sure you stay in line.”

  For the first time my joy at getting sprung from this hellhole dampened. “Brother Theophilus?” I gasped. “He’s what, eighty? Can he even make the trip from here to Constantinople?”

  “That is what you, Brother Stephen, will be tasked with ensuring. We can spare no horses, so you’ll have to go on foot.” Eunomios looked quite pleased with himself. Pausing at the doorway, he said, “Well, hop to it! Don’t you have an icon to finish?”

  So that was that. I was being transferred to Constantinople to slave away in an Imperial icon studio, my chaperone would be Chenolakkos’s oldest, frailest, most silent and most disagreeable monk, and we wouldn’t even have the luxury of riding a horse. Fine prospect! But there was nothing I could say. Once such a thing was decided, nothing short of the personal intercession of God Himself could change Eunomios’s mind.

  I’ll skip over the details of my last weeks at Chenolakkos. I finished the icon, it was delivered to the fat old rich man in Nicaea, I packed up my stuff and Theophilus made ready to accompany me on the road to Constantinople. We left on a warm morning in mid-June. Our path would take us down out of the mountains, past Nicaea and northward toward Kios, where (I hoped) we could catch a boat to Constantinople. We traveled light. I brought only a small leather shoulder bag containing my paints and a Bible. Theophilus brought an extra cassock and one blanket. We had no food other than a few scraps of bread. Between us we had only a few gold solidi in a leather drawstring purse that Theophilus insisted on carrying. It would probably be a four-day journey to Kios and who knew how long after that. We’d be depending on the Christian kindness of strangers and innkeepers to sustain us along the way.

  Theophilus was a perfectly humorless man. Dressed winter or summer in a long thick black cloak and hood, he had long snow-white hair and a scraggly beard reaching down to his chest. In the six years I’d been at Chenolakkos, I’d heard the old guy say three words, and “Amen” was two of them. Even that morning as we set off from the monastery he said nothing. At the start of the old cobbled road leading down from the hills we paused, looking up at the blocky building with its bell tower and single gnarled turret, and I remarked, “You’ll probably be back, Theophilus, but I doubt I’ll see the place ever again. Makes you think, you know?”

  He looked back at the monastery, but then turned his head, planted his walking stick (which was a foot taller than he was) and moved past me toward the road. Theophilus didn’t strike me as the sentimental type, and surely he’d return after dropping me off at Constantinople, but I doubt he’d been outside the walls of the monastery in years and you’d think he’d have something to say about it. When he remained impassively silent, I realized that I was going to have to entertain myself on this trip.

  The day grew stifling hot. It’s a weird thing to be roasting to death in a woolen cowl on a rocky sun-drenched road and to see the desolate snows of the mountain off in the distance at the same time. There weren’t even many trees along the route so there was no shelter from the beating sun. There were no other travelers going our direction or the opposite on the road, which was a little strange, considering the profusion of monasteries in the area and the many monks and pilgrims who made the rounds among them. I did my best to get Theophilus to talk. “So, when was the last time you were in Constantinople?” was greeted with a shrug of the shoulders that suggested he was damned if he knew. “Anything in particular you want to do there?” met with a one-word answer, “Pray.”

  I shook my head. “Real life of the party, aren’t you, Theophilus?”

  Despite the heat and the taciturn company, I was excited. I’d never seen the capital before. Being a monk, it probably wasn’t realistic to expect I’d get a chance to take in a show or even a chariot race at the Hippodrome, but I thought a nice bath and a tour of St. Sofia weren’t out of the question—that was, if Rhetorios of St. Stoudios didn’t chain me to a desk in the icon studio the moment I set foot in the monastery.

  In the late afternoon we spotted a faint smudge on the horizon. After another turn or three on the stone road, we saw it was a plume of smoke. Theophilus stopped, planted his stick and shaded his eyes with his hand. “Village,” he said.

  “Ah, good.” I wiped sweat off my forehead with the sleeve of my robe. “Maybe we can get some fresh water there. I’m parched.”

  “Strange,” Theophilus remarked. “So many chimney smokes for such a hot day.”

  “Hopefully that means they’re cooking up a feast for us.”

  As we drew closer, it became obvious from the amount of smoke and its black color that these were no chimney fires. A couple of miles away Theophilus paused again. “I think something’s wrong,” he said. You had to know something unusual was up; Theophilus had said more words to me today already than he probably had to anyone in the last ten years at the monastery.

  “Do you think it could be a raid?” I said. “By the Saracens, maybe?”

  Theophilus shook his head. “If the Saracen army was in these parts, we would have heard. There would have been a mass exodus.” He planted his stick for another pace and continued walking.

  The village nestled in a little valley near a small stream. The fields surrounding it were strangely deserted; there were no farmers or workmen in sight. From a ridge above the town we could see a cluster of shabby peasants’ houses and a larger building that looked like a storehouse or granary of some kind. That building wasn’t on fire, which told me this wasn’t a raid because Saracens or other brigands seeking loot would have cleaned it out and burned it behind them the first thing. Several of the houses were aflame, however. We could see no activity in the town itself. I looked at Theophilus. “Should we go down there?”

  “Do we have a choice?” he replied. “There may be people in need of help.”

  “It could be dangerous. We have no idea how this happened. If it was bandits or outlaws, they might still be down there waiting to pick off anyone who comes to investigate.”

  His cold gray eyes stared at me with an almost sarcastic look. “You are the young one, and I’m old,” he said, “and yet you’re the one shrinking from danger?” He shook his head. Starting down the road, he muttered, “The youth of Byzantium is not as hardy as it once was.”

  Down in the valley, closer to the smoldering village, the mystery deepened. The deserted fields were filled with ripening crops. We passed a plow abandoned in a field of rye. The horse who had pulled it grazed lazily some distance away. That was telling. Anyone who had come to sack this village would surely have taken the horses, oxen and any donkeys with them to carry off their loot, and they probably would have burned the crops too. Then we started to see bodies. Theophilus noticed them before I did. He suddenly stopped, crossed himself and murmured a little prayer. Peering through the smoke of one of the nearby farmhouses, reduced to a cluster of charred timbers, I could see three human figures lying motionless in the dust. Buzzards were already circling. A mangy dog with bloody whiskers barked at our approach. Theophilus paused, and then ran (as best he could on his thin wobbly legs) toward the victims. As he neared them, he suddenly recoiled. “Dear God, preserve us!” he gasped.

  Two women and a man were lying on the ground before us. Their clothes—the plain rough garb of country peasants—were covered in blood. The man’s arm had been torn brutally from its socket, the arm itself missing. The corpses looked as if they had been feasted upon by ravenous wolves. One woman’s stomach was torn open, her guts oozing into the dust, already attracting flies. I could see what looked like teeth marks in the neck of the other woman. I’ve seen death before, but I’d never seen anything like this. I backed away from the corpses, crossing myself. The stench of death in the village was like the breath of the Devil himself.

  “Who could have done such a thing?” said Theophilus.

  “Somebody with some very serious issues,” I replied. I looked ahead through the village at the smoldering houses. “C
ome on, let’s see if there’s anyone left alive.”

  In our search, we found several more corpses. They, like the three at the entrance to the village, were also violently torn. One, heartbreakingly, was a little girl. “Could it have been wolves or some other wild beast?” I asked Theophilus.

  “I don’t think so,” he said. “The horses and oxen haven’t been touched. Only the people.”

  “But why? Who would want to attack this village? Doesn’t look like these people would have anything of value. If it wasn’t raiders—”

  Theophilus silenced me with a wave of his hand. He looked off to his left, hearing something. I heard it too. Above the crackle of burning wood there was a low moaning sound, the lowing of indeterminate voices. With his walking stick, Theophilus motioned toward the church at the end of the dusty village street. It had been set on fire, its thatch roof already burned away. The thick packed-mud walls were charred and scorched. The strange moaning seemed to be coming from there.

  Hesitantly we approached. There were many bloody footprints in the dust before the doors of the church, and carnage, including a severed human hand. We paused perhaps fifteen feet from the doors. They were partially burned, but I could see, charred and blackened, the links of a great chain that had been drawn across the portal.

  “Dear Lord!” I gasped. “They herded the villagers inside the church and set fire to it!” I sprang toward the doors, but Theophilus held me back with an outstretched hand.

  “No,” he cautioned. “Don’t touch it. The fire is too hot.”

  We then saw the most curious—and the most horrible—of the sights upon which we’d laid eyes that day. The church had been burning for a while and a section of its exterior wall had collapsed. Through an aperture in the ruined wall a shambling figure emerged. It was impossible to tell whether it was a man or woman, for all the clothes had long since been burned off its frame. Indeed the person’s skin itself was on fire. The figure, stumbling over the wreckage of the wall and lurching awkwardly toward us, was but one vast human-shaped torch. The figure did not scream in pain nor thrash about in utter panic as one would expect if he (or she) were engulfed in flame from head to toe. Instead it emitted a low mindless moan, very much like the other strange sounds emanating from inside the church. Shocked, horrified, Theophilus and I both sprang backwards. The flaming figure did not move quickly. It shambled, as if unsure of its steps. Flailing its arms, one of them, burnt through at the shoulder, crumbled into chunks of flaming flesh, but the figure did not stop. It continued its approach toward us.