A Burning Sea

by Theodore Brun

  When they had taken the fork up the Kaspja river, the weather had improved. The wet, gloomy end of winter had warmed into a mellow spring. The air filled with willow blossom and dandelion seeds. The floodplain meadows spilled like green ale-froth over the pale muddy banks, wafting the scent of blooming flowers across the water. Those were good days, breaking with golden dawns and burning away under blazing sunsets.

  Valrik had named his ship Fasolt after one of the jötnar twins said to have built Valhalla, the great Hall of the Slain. It was long and sleek and shallow-bottomed – his own design, he said, made for just such a river voyage. And as they had pushed upstream, many times the keel scraped the river bed and Lilla thought they could go no further. But somehow Valrik had coaxed Fasolt onward for a few more leagues.

  To Einar’s disgruntlement, he found himself pressed into service at the row-bench. After many days of hard toil, his fat belly was melting away, revealing the first traces of hard muscle beneath.

  ‘I’ll have to change my name if this damn river goes on much longer,’ he complained one day.

  ‘No river is that long, my friend,’ Gerutha had laughed in reply.

  And she was right. Because at last, after four weeks, Fasolt could go no further.

  Valrik’s men emptied the ship of every object that wasn’t nailed down – every bale of skins, every sea-chest, every oar, every pot, every rope, every yard of sail. Even the mast came down. Lilla watched as the pile of goods and gear on the floodplain grew, until only the bare hull remained, dragged halfway out of the water onto a silty bar and flopped on its side. She wondered whether Erlan really had passed this way. Perhaps he was a thousand leagues away, to the west or the north or. . . anywhere. After all, they only had the word of a ten-year-old to go on. . . Perhaps he was dead.

  Besides these gloomy doubts, the more immediate problem was how to shift a fifty-foot longship dozens of leagues overland to the Dnipar.

  ‘I don’t see how it can be done,’ she told Valrik when the ship was finally empty.

  ‘There ain’t much in this world can’t be done if you’ve a mind to do it,’ was his reply.

  He was as good as his word, and was soon stripped to the waist in the water, heaving away and bellowing orders in all directions until his men had dragged the ship onto the floodplain. This done, he ordered half his men to fell the straightest trunks they could find in a nearby pine wood and fashion them into rollers and levers.

  Meanwhile, he and another man named Bayan – who apparently knew something of the native tongue spoken in those forests – together with three others, packed knapsacks, slung axes and shields, and went looking for help. The rest stayed behind to guard the ship and their gear. And wait.

  ‘He likes to give an order, that one,’ said Einar, flopping down on a bale of pelts as they watched Valrik’s little party hiking up the hill.

  ‘He knows what he’s doing,’ Lilla replied.

  ‘Maybe. But do you trust him?’

  ‘It’s a bit late if she don’t,’ said Gerutha.

  Lilla sighed, wiping away the sweat on her brow. ‘He has stakes in this game. He wants to find his sons. So yes. I do.’

  It was three days before the shout went up. Lilla recognized Valrik’s white crop of hair at once, bowling down the slope towards the encampment at the head of his band of scouts, and with them there were a dozen more. A few had the look of warriors; the rest looked like bondsmen or thralls. They were leading four pairs of oxen, each pair drawing a cart.

  ‘Did you miss me, girl?’ he grinned rakishly, as the other crew members greeted each other.

  ‘I was worried you were dead, if that’s what you mean.’

  ‘Not yet,’ he chuckled.

  ‘You’ve made some new friends, I see.’

  ‘Maybe.’ A flicker of uncertainty crossed his face. ‘We made a deal anyhow.’

  ‘They’re a funny-looking bunch, aren’t they?’ hissed Gerutha in a low voice. Certainly they looked nothing like the people of the north. Their faces were dished and clean-shaven, with sharp, high cheekbones. Their hair was dark and long and woven into a single braid at the back. The thralls among them stood in a huddle to one side, muttering to each other, while the warriors strutted like stags in rut, perhaps for her benefit, perhaps for the other Northmen.

  ‘So. . . do you know where we are?’ she asked.

  ‘Aye. In the right place,’ he grunted, tossing his knapsack to one of his men who had already started loading up the carts with their cargo. ‘More or less.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘We’re a day and half’s march from the Dnipar valley. This lot live in a village on its northern bank.’

  ‘You’ve seen the river?’ exclaimed Lilla, suddenly excited.

  ‘Aye,’ he replied. ‘I’ve seen it.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And she’s as beautiful as ever she was.’

  Lilla felt her heart lift with hope. ‘A day and a half’s march. Why, that’s not far at all!’

  ‘Huh! You can walk it in a day and a half. It’ll take us closer to five hauling that big beast.’ He shot her his rakish smile. ‘Well, Lady. I hope you’re ready for a nightmare.’

  A nightmare was what they got. Four days of physical toil and exhaustion as they hacked a swathe through the land. All the while, the scent of pine sap mingled with the stink of sweat and animal grease, and the woods echoed with the whine and gnaw of straining ropes as Fasolt bucked and yawed like a monster of the deep over its wooden rollers. Axes thumped, timber fell, whips snapped, oxen bellowed.

  Meanwhile their warrior escort – from a tribe calling themselves the Varkonni, according to Bayan – rode along, sullen and suspicious, observing the Northmen’s struggles with disdain. As if such work was far beneath them. Lilla didn’t much care for their sidelong glances at her or Gerutha either.

  At last the land descended out of the hills into what Lilla hoped was the Dnipar valley. And around noon on the fifth day, with the sun ablaze in a cloudless sky, they crested the final ridge line and there below them was the sweep of a broad, green river. The mighty Dnipar. The crew let out an exultant cheer.

  ‘How’s that for a sight?’ said Valrik, coming up beside her.

  Lilla smiled. ‘It’ll do. But I’ll be happier when we see the halls of Miklagard.’

  Valrik laughed. ‘Gods, didn’t I always say a woman is never satisfied?’

  ‘I wouldn’t admit to that if I were you,’ she murmured, already shielding her eyes and looking east.

  ‘Hah! And there was me thinking a lady like you was too lofty to be interested in such things.’

  ‘I’m a woman, aren’t I? Like any other,’ replied Lilla, still gazing out over the landscape. Below them, she could see smoke rising from a settlement nestled beside the river.

  ‘Not like any woman I’ve known,’ Valrik said, his voice growing even deeper. But when she gave no answer, he cleared his throat. ‘Anyhow, that’s their village.’

  She turned and grinned up at him. ‘So what now, skipper?’

  Valrik glanced back at Fasolt’s prow, its fierce figurehead glaring over the horizon like a silent watchman. ‘We put this grumpy bitch back in the water. And then. . .’ He shrugged. ‘With a bit of luck, we feast.’

  There was no mead-hall, no barns, no temple. The village was nothing but a perimeter of felled tree trunks piled to the height of a man’s chest, enclosing a jumbled collection of wattle-anddaub roundhouses and sheep pens.

  The headman turned out with all his clan for their arrival. Dogs barked, children raced about shrieking, the menfolk – in sheepskin jerkins and deer-hide trews – crowded around them grinning. Their womenfolk waved, dressed in simple homespun that barely concealed their modesty.

  That night, with Fasolt safely refitted and ready for their onward voyage the following day, they feasted under an open sky. Slaves laboured through the evening, ferrying out platters piled high with roasted venison and honeyed horse flesh, accompanied by h
ard, ripe cheeses and black barley-bread. They drank spiced ale as dark as the earth in that land and bread-beer flavoured with mint and berries. There was music and dancing long into the night.

  The headman was a whale of a man, whose slavering and gulping were enough to put Lilla off her food, despite her hunger. But he was a jolly soul too, and through Bayan’s efforts they were able to communicate with their host a little. Mostly banalities and it wasn’t long before the headman was taking more interested in the next platter of food than his guests.

  In a quiet moment, Lilla turned to Valrik. ‘It’s no small thing they’ve done,’ she said, gesturing at his crewmen scattered ruddy-faced and smiling about the tables. ‘That you’ve done.’

  Valrik grunted and took a swig of his ale. ‘Yep. And my reward is this horse piss.’

  ‘You should be proud. You found a way.’

  Valrik smiled. ‘Didn’t I say it could be done?’

  ‘You were right.’ Lilla traced a circle on the table with the heel of her cup. ‘Do you think I was right? To choose this?’

  He looked at her, considering her for a moment. ‘It ain’t for me to judge a queen.’

  ‘Do it anyway.’

  ‘Hm! Very well. . . I think you’re just like the rest of us. Trying to find a way home. Only sometimes the surest way home is to set your course away from it.’

  ‘Then why did you agree to take me? For the gold? For your boys? You were home already.’

  ‘Ah, gold’s a wonderful thing,’ he sighed contentedly. ‘But a man’s wealth comes and goes. As for my boys. . . If they want to forge their way in the world, I can’t fault ’em that. Sure, I’d like to see ’em again.’ He shrugged. ‘But maybe I won’t.’

  ‘I don’t understand you then. Why did you come?’

  ‘I guess fate gave me another chance.’ He took a draw on his cup. ‘I told you I served your grandfather. I didn’t tell you how I failed him.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘The Estland Wars were ended by your grandsire’s death. He drowned in the Visla estuary, did you know that? Fell overboard when he was so drunk he couldn’t see the end of his nose.’

  ‘I heard he drowned, at least.’

  ‘I was the guard on deck that night. Not twenty winters old, I was. Tired, probably drunk as a stoat too. I often was. I should have seen him. Should have stopped him going over.’

  She saw the sincerity in his eyes. ‘It was a long time ago. You can’t have borne that guilt all this time.’

  He stared into his cup. ‘Why not? Where else can a man lay down his guilt? It’s been on my conscience a long, long while. He was a hard man, old Ívar. But a good king. And I failed him.’ His eyes snapped up. ‘It’s you. You’re the reason I’m here. You’re my chance to set things right.’

  It was strange to think of the threads of such different lives woven together into this moment. Valrik was still looking at her, waiting for some answer. Some affirmation. Instead all she said was, ‘Urðr. Verðandi—’

  ‘Skuld,’ he replied, finishing her thought. What Was, What Is, and What Must Be. The names of the three Norns who weave a man’s fate. He tapped his cup against hers and they both smiled and drank.

  The cup was still at her lips when there was a sharp scream that silenced the revelry in an instant. Lilla turned with everyone else, and suddenly the night was filled with the shouts of angry men, the sound of a scuffle beyond the feasting circle and a moment later a group of Varkonni warriors appeared, dragging two others between them. They flung them down in front of the chieftain’s table. One of them was a Varkonni woman. The other was a Northman.

  ‘Hel,’ murmured Valrik.

  The lead warrior yanked back the Northman’s head and put his knife to the man’s throat. Lilla recognized his face. He was one of Valrik’s crew, a youngish lad from the north of Estland called Jarpr. The Varkonni was railing angrily at his headman.

  ‘What’s he saying?’ Valrik hissed to Bayan.

  ‘He says this man dishonoured him and shamed his people. I think that’s his daughter. . .’

  Valrik swore again. The headman shoved away his enormous platter and glared down at the pair.

  ‘He caught them together,’ said Bayan.

  ‘Jarpr couldn’t be that stupid, could he?’ growled Valrik. His orders had been hard but simple. No plunder. No women.

  ‘The others are saying he attacked her.’

  Lilla saw now how young the girl was. She was babbling in her terror, pleading with the headman. Seeing the fear in her eyes stirred up old anger in Lilla. Why should she be begging for mercy? The fat headman still had grease smeared across his chin, but his friendly features were now dark as thunder. ‘She says she’s innocent.’

  ‘It was only a bit of sport,’ wailed Jarpr in Norse, but even if they could have understood him they were deaf to his pleas. ‘Skipper, I swear – help me!’

  A fist smashed into his jaw. He buckled over, whimpering into the dust. The wronged father’s voice was a rapid rattle, fervid for justice.

  ‘He’s invoking Tengri the Sky God to avenge this wrong,’ said Bayan in a murmur. But all at once the headman silenced him with the raising of his finger. The whole company fell silent with him. The only sounds were the crackle of the huge fire and the whimpers of Jarpr and the girl.

  The headman spoke. ‘He’s saying Tengri sees all and judges with the eye of the sun,’ relayed Bayan. The headman barked an abrupt command. Four men came forward and seized hold of Jarpr who started writhing on the floor, bleating helplessly. The lad was drunk out of his skull. The men tied ropes around his wrists and ankles and shoved him down on the ground. From somewhere two oxen appeared and were led into the feast-circle.

  ‘What are they going to do to him?’ asked Lilla, cold horror filling her veins. But no one answered. She watched, disbelieving, as Jarpr’s limbs were fastened to the harnesses. The headman pulled himself to his feet – no small achievement given his immense size – then he murmured a single, soft word. Whips cracked down on the white rumps. The oxen started forward, pulling in opposite directions, each uttering a bellow of protest that was answered by Jarpr’s bone-chilling scream.

  ‘Plead for him,’ Lilla implored Valrik in a whisper. ‘Plead for his life! For Frigg’s sake – they’re going to tear him apart!’

  ‘And what in black Hel do you think I can do about it?’ he snarled.

  ‘Offer silver! Offer anything. Now – before it’s—’

  But it was too late. There was a final shriek, a crack of bone and a sickening ripping sound. Lilla looked away, but still heard the oxen stumble forwards as resistance to their brute strength ceased. A rank smell filled the air.

  Valrik half-stood. ‘No one say a word,’ he called to his men around the circle. ‘Not one word! The lad brought it on himself.’ Even so, some of the Northmen were muttering darkly. Lilla found Einar’s face in the crowd. He gave her a shake of the head. But no one moved. It was over. And now all she wanted was to get away from this place, as far as she possibly could.

  But now the girl was pulled forward to the same spot, where Jarpr’s blood was still soaking into the earth.

  ‘What are they doing?’

  ‘She gets the same penalty,’ said Bayan.

  ‘But he attacked her.’

  Bayan grunted. ‘The way they see it, she’s guilty too. She shamed her father and her clan.’

  The father was looking grim, maybe even with the glint of a tear in his eye, but he did nothing to intervene.

  ‘This is wrong,’ Lilla said, her voice rising. ‘So wrong!’

  ‘Stay calm.’ It was Valrik’s turn to check her arm. ‘It’s their law. Their judgement.’

  ‘Damn their accursed law!’ She was on her feet. ‘It’s this girl who has been wronged! She is innocent!’ The headman turned. ‘Please,’ she begged him, but his fat features showed nothing but dull indifference. And with a flick of his hand he signalled the ox-handlers to continue.

  Lilla
felt giddy, adrift on a sea of rage. She heard Valrik struggling to his feet behind her. She was beside the headman, reaching for him; his guards moved in, hard fingers dug into her flesh, twisting her arm. She screamed. There was a rasp of steel. Valrik was there. Metal flashed bright in the firelight, she heard a gasp and something warm splattered her face.

  The next moment all Hel erupted.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  By the time they reached the towering black gates that marked the entrance into his new home, Erlan was in a state of complete bewilderment. Byzantium – the Great City, the City of Constantine, the Queen of Cities – was beyond belief. The scale, the intensity, the noise. Everything was stone – white blocks blinding in the sun, black polished pillars, tall blood-red columns. Giant houses that defied gravity, vast bulbous vaults of wood and stone, images splintered into ten thousand pieces, scattering the light that fell on them in silver and gold.

  The market streets of Uppsala and Sigtuna were mere pimples on the landscape against the broad thoroughfares of paved stone, each lined with shaded colonnades under which craft-shops hid from the beating sun, selling everything from oils to tableware to spices bright with every colour of the rainbow. Copper-workers, tinkers, smiths, cloth merchants, wine merchants, silk merchants, carpenters, stonemasons, bakers, butchers, and on and on and on.

  It was far beyond any dream. But the smells and noise and strange voices and oddly dressed bodies jostling past were real enough. His mind was too stupefied by it all to think of escape or of his own sorry predicament. It was a sponge so dry all it could do was soak up what his senses fed it.

  ‘Ramedios tells me you speak Greek,’ the man who bought him suddenly said.

  ‘Some,’ Erlan answered.

  ‘Well then – what’s your name?’

  ‘Erlan.’

  His owner tried it out for size. He made it sound strange.

  ‘Who are you?’ Erlan asked.

  ‘Me?’ the man laughed. ‘My name is Silanos. A humble steward, no more. But my master – your master – is a great man. General Arbasdos. He is second only to the Basíleus in this city.’