Raven

by Giles Kristian

  Sigurd, Bardanes and Nikephoros stood at the mast step talking in low voices and Bardanes was unhappy by the looks. The general was shaking his head and pleading with Nikephoros, when Sigurd stepped up and backhanded the emperor across the face, sending him staggering. Wide-eyed, his balance recovered, Nikephoros put a hand to his mouth and examined the blood on it. Bardanes was glaring at Sigurd, his hands balled into white fists by his side. Then Sigurd took another step and smashed his own fist into the emperor’s right eye and this time Nikephoros fell to his knees, clutching his face, and Bardanes spat rage at Sigurd as he bent to help his lord and master. But Nikephoros pushed his general away and climbed to his feet and his blood-smeared lips were clenched in a tight smile. He nodded at Sigurd and the jarl nodded back and we pulled our oars, hoping that the weaves of our lives stretched beyond this warm, gut-twisting night.

  ‘Back oars!’ Olaf called and I twisted my neck to see that we were fast approaching the Bucoleon’s small berth and would have to slip in between two tall-sided dromons. In that glance I had also seen warriors lining the quayside, their shields, helms and spear blades glinting in the brazier light.

  ‘Looks like a good turn-out,’ I muttered.

  ‘Fifty or five hundred we’re screwed either way,’ Halfdan said as we churned the water, killing Serpent’s momentum. We pulled our oars in for fear of them hitting the Greek ships, then Olaf and Sigurd threw our bow mooring ropes to the men on the quayside, who tied us up before any words were spoken.

  ‘Stow oars then back to your benches,’ Olaf barked and men repeated the order throughout the tightly packed ship. We took longer than usual putting our staves up in the oar trees because we were busy getting an eyeful of the soldiers and the Bucoleon and the lie of the land, but when we had done it those of us who could sat on our sea chests facing the palace. The Greek spearmen lining the wharf were silent, as were the archers who suddenly appeared along the sides of the dromons, their bows drawn and their arrow points aimed down at us. That is not good, I thought to myself with a shudder.

  ‘Jarl Sigurd! Welcome to Constantinople!’ The Greek shield line – you couldn’t call it a shieldwall, not with two foot of space between each soldier – parted so that a gaudy cockerel of a man could make the scene he’d so obviously played out in his thoughts before now. He was sheathed in fish-scale armour and his helmet sported a great plume the same purple as his cloak which was fastened with a gold, jewel-encrusted brooch. At his right shoulder stood another man dressed in the same armour except that his plume and cloak were red. His face was all sharp angles in the firelight and bore a warrior’s scars.

  Sigurd stepped on to the bow fighting platform and greeted the cock, who, in snot-slick English, introduced himself as Patrikios Arsaber. ‘I hope you have honoured our agreement and come unarmed,’ Arsaber said, directing some of his torch-bearing men forward to hold their flames over our bow as their eyes scoured us for weapons.

  ‘Get those flames away from my ship,’ Sigurd growled, but Arsaber ignored him until his men nodded at him that we were bladeless.

  ‘I thought only the Roman emperors could wear purple,’ Sigurd baited the man, for the moment ignoring Nikephoros who stood bound and shoulder-slumped behind him.

  By the light of the hissing brazier flames Arsaber’s smile was thin as air. ‘I am emperor, Sigurd, in all but name. We shall make it official soon enough.’

  Sigurd nodded and gestured at Olaf, who shoved Nikephoros forward on to the platform. ‘Here is the emperor,’ Sigurd announced, which brought a twist to Arsaber’s lips. Then Nikephoros lifted his head proudly, so that Arsaber and his men must have seen the blood-oozing split in his lip that had soaked his dishevelled beard. Perhaps they even saw the purple-black bruise blooming around the man’s right eye, though they kept their own faces stony.

  ‘You have done well, General Bardanes,’ Arsaber said, at which Bardanes stepped out of the press of Norsemen behind Sigurd.

  ‘My lord,’ he said simply, bowing his head, then turning it away from Nikephoros’s red-hot withering glower.

  ‘I will have use for a man with your enterprise, though I will have to keep one eye on you, it seems.’ The big man to Arsaber’s right grinned at that. Then Arsaber glared at Sigurd. ‘Well, heathen? Hand the prisoner over. I am a busy man.’

  ‘The silver first,’ Sigurd demanded.

  Arsaber stepped up to the wharf’s edge, close enough to reach out and touch Serpent’s stem post. ‘Look around, Sigurd,’ he said in a voice only just loud enough for the rest of us to hear. ‘Even a barbarian like you can weigh up this situation.’ There was that piss-thin smile again. ‘You are in no position to make demands of me.’ Sigurd made a show of looking up at the archers in the dromons either side of us.

  ‘Olaf, hand the goat bladder over,’ he gnarred, at which Arsaber turned and nodded at his companion. The planks were laid from sheer strake to quayside and, reluctantly, Nikephoros stepped ashore, dark-browed as any man would be who knows he walks towards his death.

  ‘Now the silver,’ Sigurd said, at which Arsaber waved forward two men hefting an ivory-mounted chest. They set the thing down and lifted the lid and four spearmen closed in as Sigurd stepped ashore.

  ‘Where is the rest of it?’ Sigurd demanded, eyeballing Arsaber.

  Arsaber held out his hands and shook his head so that the purple plume on his helm swayed stiffly. ‘It is more than enough,’ he said, ‘for giving me one man.’

  ‘For giving you the emperor,’ Sigurd pointed out.

  ‘He is not the emperor now, Sigurd, any more than you are.’ Arsaber made himself chuckle with that. ‘Take the money and go,’ he said, flicking a few ringed fingers towards us.

  ‘Pay me what you owe me, Greek,’ Sigurd boomed. Arsaber winced at that. We did too.

  ‘Or what?’ Arsaber said. ‘You’ll hurl your stinking shoes at us?’ The man had a point, for we had not so much as a crooked spear between us. ‘What will you do, Jarl Sigurd?’ Arsaber had that slimy look about him that made you think he had been raised by snakes and killed them all before leaving the nest. The man had a face you just wanted to hit.

  Sigurd scratched his chin and seemed to ponder what he had heard.

  ‘Come on, Sigurd, we are all eager to know what you will do to us if we do not give you what you think we owe.’ Arsaber’s eyes slithered over his spearmen but they had no smiles for him, which made me wonder if some of them would be loyal to Nikephoros given half a chance.

  ‘My men who have the other emperor will take him wherever he wishes to go,’ Sigurd said, laying the words ‘other emperor’ thick as a winter pelt. ‘Maybe the pope or the Frank King Karolus will help him raise men to lever your arse off his mead bench.’

  Arsaber blanched at this, though his narrowed eyes showed that most of him thought Sigurd was bluffing.

  ‘You do not have Staurakios,’ he challenged. ‘That witless fool is likely wearing the habit by now. Hiding in some monastery and knee-sore from prayer.’

  Sigurd fished inside his tunic and pulled out something small and shiny, which he threw at Arsaber. Arsaber flailed for it but missed, so that one of his spearmen bent and picked the thing up, passing it to his lord reverently. It was Staurakios’s ring, the one I had seen him wearing in the Hagia Sophia, and from the looks of it Arsaber recognized the thing, though he fought to keep the surprise off his face.

  ‘I have no need of greasy-bearded Greek emperors,’ Sigurd said, showing Arsaber his palms. ‘Give me the rest of the silver and you can have Staurakios, too. I know nothing of your snake dealings, but it seems to me it will be easier to become Miklagard’s emperor if there is not already an emperor somewhere out there raising spears against you.’

  Arsaber squirmed like a hooked eel. He turned and spoke in Greek to his scarred companion and we waited, barely breathing and half expecting Arsaber to give the order for his bowmen to loose their arrows. Then, after a while, Arsaber turned back to Sigurd.

  ‘Agreed, Sigurd
,’ he said loud enough for all to hear. ‘Tomorrow you will have the rest of the silver and then you will take us to where you have Staurakios.’

  ‘We have to stay here overnight?’ Sigurd asked as though that idea stank like pig dung.

  ‘If any man steps ashore he will get a spear in his belly,’ Arsaber said. ‘But you will find me a generous host, Sigurd,’ he added, smearing a grin across his face. ‘I will have wine and food brought to you, the likes of which you have never tasted. You will find it manna of Heaven compared with the horse blood or sheep’s piss or whatever it is you barbarians drink.’

  Sigurd mumbled a curse and nodded, playing the wine-bag barbarian perfectly.

  ‘Now you will excuse us.’ Arsaber’s smile grew teeth. ‘We have much to talk about with Nikephoros,’ he said, spitting the basileus’s name. ‘Stay with your heathen friends tonight, Bardanes,’ he added, looking at the general. ‘I have not yet decided what to do with you.’ Bardanes inclined his head obediently. Then, with a swirl of purple and a scuff of boots, Arsaber turned his back and strode towards the Bucoleon. And Nikephoros followed like a faithful hound.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  ARSABER’S SCAR-FACED BODYGUARD AND WAR ADVISER WAS A MAN called Karbeas. No sooner had Arsaber turned his back on us than this Karbeas came aboard Serpent with five soldiers and searched the ship properly for weapons. We had emptied our hold of the richest booty, leaving it at Elaea with Fjord-Elk and a mere handful of men under Bragi to guard it, for we wanted to appear silver-poor so that Arsaber believed that for all our bellyaching and bluster we would do whatever he asked in return for a hoard. Karbeas had looked less than impressed by the few skins and pieces of amber and antler he found, though he did seem satisfied that we were unarmed. We had treated them to a few growls and curses when they began lifting the lids of our sea chests, but to give the man his credit he did not so much as flinch. Yet for all that he was soon ashore again where it seemed he was more at ease, leaving us like dogs waiting for scraps and wondering whether a man like Arsaber, who had betrayed his own lord, would keep his word about the food and wine.

  ‘The last I knew he was a captain in the Palace Guard,’ Bardanes told us, nodding sourly towards Karbeas, who was barking orders at the captain of the dromon on our steerboard side. ‘Now it seems he holds the reins to the imperial army.’

  ‘He’s risen faster than a hard-on, then,’ Olaf mumbled into his beard. Some strained grins at that. ‘But can he fight?’

  Bardanes nodded.

  ‘Will the Red-Cloaks follow him?’ Sigurd asked, which was the more important question.

  Bardanes pulled his slick beard through his fist and shrugged. ‘Perhaps. We will see,’ he said.

  ‘They’re moving, Sigurd,’ Bothvar called from the bow.

  ‘Óðin’s arse so they are,’ Olaf said, a grin nestled in the briar-tangle of his beard as we watched the dromon on our steerboard side prepare to cast off, her crew slotting oars amidst a torrent of yelled commands. And it was not long before the ship on our port side moved off too, so that by the time the first wine jars arrived at the quayside both dromons were anchored an arrow-shot off our stern, two grim shadow shapes guarding us like hounds. Sigurd said this proved that Karbeas was no fool.

  ‘He knows that without weapons we cannot threaten him,’ he said when Svein asked why the Greek ships had moved, ‘but he has no intention of letting us leave, either, until they have what they want from us.’ And what they wanted was Staurakios.

  ‘It seems Arsaber is a man of his word after all,’ Sigurd said now as Greeks carried several tall wine jars aboard. But Sigurd’s grin was not cut by the sight of the wine, nor even by the brass bowls of steaming food that began to appear, which got our mouths watering with their delicious smells. Sigurd was grinning because, standing on the wharf in a knot of flowing gowns and veils every colour of Bifröst, were women. There were perhaps twenty of them, all slender as willow shoots, dark-haired and made to turn men’s heads and they smelt even better than the food as they waited to be invited aboard, their scent wafting over us on a warm night breeze.

  ‘Get a tjalda up, lads,’ the jarl said, pointing at the spare sail that was folded in half across Serpent’s hold aft of the mast. ‘And run a comb through those beards, you ugly trolls.’ He winked at Olaf, who was well aware what a stroke of luck it was to have whores coming aboard. The men got to work, singing an old drinking song as they pulled and poled Serpent’s spare sail into a passable deck awning, and I began to think our gods really were watching. For that humping shelter meant that those spearmen lining the quayside could not see what we were up to.

  It took Svein, Bothvar, Beiner, Gytha and me to haul the sodden, green-haired anchor rope up from the black water off our stern, our grunts adding to those now coming from the humping tent.

  ‘No reason to waste good whores,’ Byrnjolf had suggested, which had stirred a chorus of ayes and not a few sad-hound faces from men appealing to their jarl for one last screw before the blood starts flying. So while we hauled, other men were at it, swiving as though their lives depended on it, which in a strange twist they did. The flamelit spearmen before the Bucoleon could see men drinking in the thwarts, could hear them singing and humping and enjoying themselves, but they could not see us at the stern.

  But there was no anchor on the end of this rope. Sigurd gave the word and together we hoisted the great burden out of the water, where it hung dripping for a long heartbeat before we heaved it over the sheer strake and on to the deck.

  ‘Strange fishing this,’ Olaf muttered, staring at the catch. There were eight bundles of skins, all tightly lashed so that their fat-smeared treasures could not fall out. Now we dragged each of them under the flap into the humping tent and those men who were busy either finished quickly or else discarded their women like half-eaten apples and watched us instead, grinning like fiends by the dim glow of horn lanterns and grunting and growling now and then as though they were still swiving, which would have been funny at any other time.

  We were on our knees, working at the sopping knots and desperate to get the bundles open. Then Floki had one undone and we shared a wolf look as men threatened the Greek whores and guarded the tent’s edges so that they could not leave. There, wet and cold and sharp, were our swords. The other bundles were opened, each revealing more war gear – axes, helmets, long knives – all dragged through the depths on a rope lashed to Serpent’s stern. It had been a dark and desperate plan putting good blades into salt water, even if they were greased up to protect them at least a little. But it had worked. We were no longer defenceless. And the war gods were watching.

  Only eleven of us had brynjas because they had taken up so much room in the bundles and made them so heavy. I did not know if that made me one of the lucky ones or not, for the mailed men would be first into the fray, hacking a way through for the others to follow. The basileus’s sixteen Long Shields would by now, we hoped, be lying in wait somewhere on the northern side of the palace. They were the spike pit towards which we would drive our prey so that there would be no escape for Arsaber should he try to flee rather than fight. That was the plan, anyway, but we all knew there were still too few of us, which was why we had to keep General Bardanes alive at least until we had killed Arsaber and found Nikephoros, assuming the basileus was still breathing. For only Bardanes could lead us if we managed to fight our way into the sprawling Bucoleon.

  My brynja was cold and stiff and I shrugged my shoulders to loosen the rings, grimacing because I knew the iron rot was already doing its work. But standing there in the gloom of that tent, the air thick with the sweet musky scent of beautiful women, I welled with pride. Only the mailed men stood around me now and they were the ones Sigurd had chosen to lead the attack. Svein the Red was there, pulling his belt tight, his granite face clenched and his helmet touching the tent’s roof. Big Beiner was there and Bothvar, Bjarni and Aslak, all bone and muscle. Olaf was wiping the grease off his sword’s hilt, purring in the back
of his throat. Penda was tying his helmet’s chinstrap, the long scar down his face glistening in the candlelight and violence coming off him like a stink. Black Floki was strapping his scabbarded long knife across his lower belly so that he could draw it as fast as a wolf’s bite and Sigurd was doing what Sigurd did, becoming a battle god. The last of us in mail was Bardanes, in his fish-scale armour that glinted and winked like a jarl’s hoard and was worth as much.

  ‘You stay near the back, General,’ Sigurd reminded him, glancing at the dark-haired whores whose eyes, wide with fear, gleamed white as they sat huddled in the dark, bound and gagged now because we could take no chances. Bardanes nodded, discarding his scabbard like the rest of us because the wool inside was sopping and might suck the blade and ruin the draw. We had no need of scabbards anyway, for something told me our swords would be in our hands until this was over, one way or another.

  Eyes met in the darkness then and the sail cloth rippled around us which was strange because the breeze had dropped some time ago it was a still night. The hairs on my neck stiffened and a shudder went through me like a trickle of icemelt, because I knew that it was no breeze but rather the Valkyries riding amongst us – drawn by the scent of coming death – that was making a furrowed sea of the tent cloth. The Choosers of the Slain had come.

  ‘You are my brothers,’ Sigurd said, wolf-eyed in the sweet dark. ‘We are oath-tied. Bound by chains no man can break. This night may be your last, but the hero that enters Óðin’s dwelling place does not bemoan his death.’ His voice was low but powerful like distant thunder before a storm. ‘Our ancestors wait for us in the shield-roofed hall, their mead horns full and their welcome as warm as a good hearthfire.’ The jarl showed his teeth then, the scars of old fights etched in his face like runes on a stone. ‘But they will have to wait a little longer for me,’ he said, eyes glinting like blades. ‘I have come to feed the wolf and the raven. My sword is thirsty and I will let it drink. I will fight for you, my brothers, and they will have to drain every drop of my blood to stop me.’