by Paul Watkins
With Cabal’s help, I gathered together every twisted, sun-bleached fragment of wood, every broken spear-shaft I could find and made a bed of them on which I laid Halfdan’s body. We tore the clothes off the bodies of men we had killed, plugging them into empty spaces in the tangled wood. The sun thumped on our heads while we worked, and the heated blood pulsed in our temples like the beating of a drum.
Of Halfdan’s belongings, I kept his red-painted shield which had grown so hot from lying in the sun that its iron rim branded my skin when I picked it up. I also kept the bronze-tipped spear and his sword, which had a fine double-edged blade made by the Saxon Ulfbert. On the blade, engraved in runes was ‘Halfdan’ and ‘Varangian’. I kept his chain mail shirt, whose maker had built into the links over his heart one gold ring stamped with a crescent moon. Lastly, from around his neck, I pulled the black stone hammer, which Halfdan had kept all these years.
Cabal set the fire and soon the bed on which Halfdan lay was a climbing pillar of flames and black smoke. The last I saw of him, his skull was glowing red among the embers, smiling more in death than his fleshed face had ever done, as if the secret of his restless life had at last been revealed to him.
We threw the bodies of other dead Varangians into the blaze and they vanished in geysers of sparks.
Afterwards, we rested in the shade of the crumbling rocks. Our enemies we left out in the sun to rot and used their ornate lances for roasting the meat of our dead horse.
*
Later that same day, as a token of his thanks, the Emperor granted me my freedom. At the same time, he offered me Halfdan’s place in the Varangian. By now, he had regained his composure. He sat straight-backed on his horse, which shifted uneasily from foot to foot as I knelt before both man and beast. When he made his offer, he looked hard at me, as if our deal would silence the memory of him cowering on that slope.
I had barely gathered his words into my mind, before the knowledge of my freedom spun me around and sent me running. I had no idea what I was doing. I only wanted to get away. The only constants in my life had been service to Halfdan and the thought that one day it would end. Now that I was free, my jumbled mind convinced me that if I did not start immediately for home, something might come along to take that freedom back again. I got ten paces before the laughter of the Varangian brought me to a halt. I had been running back into the valley, back to where dead men lay bloated by the sun and where Halfdan’s bones still smouldered in the ashes of his funeral pyre.
Slowly, I turned back to face the Emperor.
He was smiling at me. The Varangian were smiling too, strong white teeth behind their sunburnt lips. They were not mocking smiles. Rather, they seemed sympathetic, as if any one of them, in my place, would have made the same mad dash to get away.
But it was hopeless. I saw that now. Being free meant only that I was at liberty to go off and get myself killed. Lacking the money to buy myself safe passage with some north-bound trading caravan, I stood no chance of reaching home again.
‘What I offer you is an honour,’ said the Emperor, tapping the air with one pointed finger. ‘You should take it. Your time for leaving is not now. That day comes to all Varangian, and for each one the sign is different. You will know it when it comes.’
It was not until the Varangian asked me to carry on Halfdan’s role as their priest, that I accepted the Emperor’s offer. There was no time to mull over the decision. The Varangian didn’t like the idea of being without a priest, even for a day. They would have given the place to someone else if I had not agreed at once.
I remained in the service of the Emperor another five years, slowly gathering the wealth that I would need to bring me home. Coin by coin by coin, I marked the days. In the meantime, there was nothing to do but be patient. While my body remained stranded down in Miklagard, I trained the spirit to rise from my body and to race out across the rooftops of the city, faster and faster, twisting beyond the clutches of the world into a realm where all familiar boundaries of time and space and distance disappeared. Out there, on the other side, I was surrounded by that same shuddering energy, whose faint echo I could feel back in the world. But here, it roared around me like an ocean, deafening me without sound, shaking apart that memory of my flesh and blood into fragments small as dust. I lingered there, oblivious to the passing of time. Then I felt myself begin to fall, the ashes of my thought-cremated body whirling together, spiralling down, taking shape and hurtling like a jagged spear of lightning back into the framework of my bones.
I would wake to see the frightened, staring faces of the Varangian who had come to pray. There were times when they ran from the underground chamber, telling stories of fire appearing around my body, of shadows unattached to solid forms which slithered up and down the walls, of inhuman voices which came from their own mouths.
It was no surprise that, because of these things, I had few close friends. Even though the Varangian valued my presence, the job of priest was a solitary one. The stronger a priest’s abilities, the more lonely his life. I had seen it happen to Halfdan. Now it was happening to me.
Only Cabal and I remained close.
He became my sparring partner, as I had once been Halfdan’s. It was an important bond in the Varangian society and required a sharing of trust so intense that this loyalty became almost a tangible thing, like a separate living presence which accompanied us each morning into the training yard of the Varangian compound. Just after sunrise, the yard would be filled with pairs of men, each performing the intricate dance of sword practice. We would begin slowly, sword blades making barely any sound as they connected. Then we would move faster, until sparks jumped from the crashing iron and a single wrong move would have killed us both.
In the early afternoons, when most people slept through the heat of the day, Cabal and I would sit at the edge of a well from which the Varangians drew their water. A roof had been built over the well, shielding us from the sun, while cool air from the water drifted up its damp and mossy walls. Often, Cabal brought with him bundles of dried camomile flowers, which he carefully wrapped up in mint leaves and then chewed with the same absent-minded expression as a bull eating grass in a field, pausing only to spit green juice down into the blackness of the well.
Sometimes we just stared into space, lost in our own thinking.
Other times, I would wonder aloud whether my family were alive or dead. I had dwelt on these thoughts so often that they no longer overwhelmed me with sadness, as they did in the beginning. I always returned to that moment on the raider’s boat and to the promise I had made to Tostig.
The more time passed, the more urgent my departure became, but even though I saved almost every coin, it was still not enough to guarantee safe passage home.
To shake me from these wanderings in the labyrinth of my brain, Cabal told me about his life before joining the Varangian, when he had been apprenticed to a Christian monk, from whom he ran away, for reasons he kept to himself. The result of those experiences was that he had even less patience than Halfdan for the Christians and their ways. Cabal was forced to make an uneasy peace with himself, as a man with no love for the people he was paid to protect, but knowing that his place in life, at least for now, was to live among his enemies.
Now and then, he would tell stories of his own people; of Pwyll, Prince of Dyfed, and his meeting with Arawn, King of the Underworld, and his pack of white-furred, red-eyed hunting dogs. When he spoke of Lucan, God of Light, and Tiran, God of Thunder, I was surprised to find the faces of my gods in the descriptions of his own.
Despite the similarities, Cabal never took part in the Norse rituals. Neither did he seem to follow any outward signs of devotion to his gods. ‘I do my praying in here,’ he told me, and tapped a finger against his broad forehead.
In the evenings, we would walk down to the port, where fishermen grilled sardines over olive-wood fires. We sat cross-legged around the coals, eating the fish with our bare hands and throwing the remains in the air, where
seagulls were always waiting to snatch them away. When we were finished, we clapped our hands, and a boy would come with a bucket of water mixed with lemon juice. We stirred our hands among the floating lemon rinds, breathing in the sharp, clean smell. It was expected that the boy be given some reward for his trouble, so Cabal would pull off one of the beads he had tied to his chain mail vest, like a tree picking some of its own fruit, and would hand it to the boy as a gift.
Once, as we walked back up the hill to the Varangian barracks, I asked him if he would tell me how to summon Ail Gysgod, the terrible Second Shadow.
‘It is done with the pounding of shields,’ he said vaguely.
‘But how exactly?’
Cabal seemed reluctant to continue. ‘With a certain rhythm of striking the hilt of the sword against the boss of the shield.’
‘Will you not teach it to me?’ I asked.
He turned his head slowly until he was facing me. ‘If there was someone who could tell you the exact time and place that you were going to die, would you really want to know?’
I thought about this as we weaved our way along the narrow streets crowded with tiny market stalls that had spilled out into the passageways. Round, flat loaves of bread were stacked in precarious towers. Black olives in red earthenware pots glinted by the light of fish-oil lamps. Pots and pans, suspended from ropes in front of shops, clanged like prayer bells as people brushed by them. ‘No,’ I said at last. ‘I would not want to know.’
‘For the same reason, and because you are my friend, I will not teach it to you. Once you have seen that far inside yourself, you can never be the same again.’
We spoke no more about it, but I often wondered what that rhythm was. Sometimes, I would catch myself tapping the hilt of my sword against my shield, but nothing ever came of it except the denting of the metal.
*
As time went by, and the Emperor’s wars against the Bulgars and Tsar Samuel of Ochrid seemed as if they might go on forever, he began to accept into our ranks Norsemen who had converted to Christianity. More and more these days, the Norsemen who arrived in Miklagard had abandoned their old gods. Christianity was spreading north, and these Christian Norsemen swore that soon the old ways would be gone for good.
I thought of the great source, whatever it was, tombed in the earth below the Altvik temple. The secret lingered in me for so long that it became like a stone lodged in my chest, a sharp-edged twin of the one which hung around my neck.
‘It does seem strange,’ said Cabal, ‘that we are here defending the Christians against their enemies when, back in our homelands, the Christians are the enemy. I have seen what they did to the old ways in my country, and I know what they can do to yours.’
Cabal’s words reached me like a call for help from my own people, travelling on a cold wind from the north.
I could wait no longer. Even though I had not saved up enough to make the journey safely, the time had come for leaving.
That same day, I went to the Emperor and told him I was going.
‘Going where?’ he asked, as he twirled a finger in his long sideburns. He was ashamed of his delicate hands. There were rumours that he wore silk gloves when he slept, and that he soaked twice a day in a bath of olive oil.
‘I am going home,’ I said.
‘To the north?’ The Emperor leaned forward and spoke in a low voice. ‘I once sent a man to your country. Actually I sent three, but only one came back. I sent them because I wanted to know what kind of land produced people like you. When one of them at last returned, the first thing he told me was that he would never go back there again, no matter how wealthy I made him. He said that the air became so cold in winter that his breath would turn into ice as it left his mouth and that it would fall at his feet like grains of sand. He said that in the coldest weather, a thick fog settles on the ground and, when you walk through it, you leave a path that someone else can follow, just as one might follow a trail of muddy footprints.’
‘All that is true.’ I recalled the precise rustling sound of the ice crystals as they fell.
He shook his head in resignation. ‘And you want to go back and live in a world where you must remain embalmed in furs or die from the cold?’ He did not wait for my reply. ‘How can you go back after all you have learned among us? You speak several languages. You can write both Rune and Arabic. I know all these things because, you see, I have been watching you. You are valued here, by me as well as by your own people. Your place among us is assured. Why leave now?’
‘Before I promised to serve you, I made another promise which I now intend to fulfil.’
‘That must have been a long time ago. You are probably the only one who remembers making it.’
‘The man I promised is dead, but the oath was made all the same.’
‘Then you are free to break it, if there is no punishment for failing to keep your word.’
‘The promise I made was also to myself. Excellency, it is time for me to return home.’
He sighed, exasperated. ‘Here is your home. Here among us. It takes many years to train a useful member of the Varangian. And it’s often a long time before I know who is fit to be one and who is not.’ He levelled a finger at me. ‘How long have you been with us?’
‘Most of my life.’
‘And how long have you been away from this place you are calling your home?’
‘Most of my life.’
He bounced the heels of his palms off the padded leather armrests of his chair. ‘There is my point. What do you even remember about that place? What life do you truly know except the one that you have here? You have been away too long. They will not need you any more.’
I had thought about that almost as often as I had thought about going home. ‘I will not know until I get there,’ I replied.
‘It does not matter,’ snapped the Emperor, ‘because the home you think you have does not exist. It is only a dream and you would do as well to dream it here down in the sun instead of in your land of ice.’
‘And how do you know it is only a dream?’
He was laughing at me now. ‘Because we all have the same dream. Even I do. It is a picture preserved, like an insect trapped in amber. As long as you remember that it is only a dream, you can live with it. But you don’t ask yourself what you will do when you get there. How you will survive? What a stranger you will be to them because of the things you have seen. My friend, listen to me. You will find yourself one day at the end of the world, far from your Varangian brothers and from me who understands you. You will wake from your honey-coloured dream and find it is too late. What you do not see is that you are now, at this very moment, living the life you were meant to live. Look out there!’ He pointed through a window and out across the city. ‘That is your life!’
The vast city of Miklagard lay cradled in the hazy evening light. I watched the sleepy flight of seagulls riding up into the sky until they disappeared into the sun. I wanted to tell him that it was not the dream of a place which called me back. It was a dream of myself. It was as if, somewhere far to the north, time stood still. It waited for me to pick up where I had left off, in that very moment when I saw the Grimsvoss mountains disappear into the sea. In my mind, I had already departed. A shadow of myself had long since gone ahead, walking the dusty roads north. The rest of me had to catch up, before the two halves became separated forever.
‘Go, then,’ said the Emperor, screwing up his full-moon face. ‘Throw yourself away. Perhaps I was wrong. You never did learn to fit in. Look at you now in all your heavy clothes. That leather vest you wear in this heat. I am surprised you can even stand up.’
‘In the north, this leather vest will not be nearly enough to keep me warm.’
He touched his fingers to his lips, as if to pull some congestion of words from his mouth. ‘Once you leave you can never come back.’
He did not need to tell me. That was the law of the Varangians. Those people who had left we called ‘ghosts’. Now and then ove
r the years, men had returned, having squandered their fortunes or found it impossible to adjust to life outside. They returned as if to look for some possession they had left behind and always seemed surprised to find their old beds filled by those who had taken their places. Some asked, quietly and desperately, if we could bend the rules for old time’s sake, and let them slip back in among our ranks. The answer would always be no, and they would smile and laugh and pretend that it was a joke or that it hadn’t mattered much, or even that they had only been testing us. They would go on to tell us of their freedom and good fortune, to convince themselves more than to convince us. Then, when their stay was over, they would walk out through the gates. We would never see them again after that.
‘You have held on to your own religion, with its beetle-eyed pillars and circles in the sand, when all around you are the glorious monuments to Christianity. This should have told me your mind was closed.’ Then he sighed. ‘But I suppose I did not pay you for your faith in Thor and Odin. I paid you for your faith in me.’
I smiled at him, which was not allowed.
He smiled back, and with that smile my service to him ended.
I climbed off my knees, picked up my sword and the leather bag which held all that I owned. As I straightened up, I felt a line of sweat run down the ridge of my spine. I turned and walked down the long hall from his chamber, rustling in my chain-mail shirt with its one gold ring at the heart, the hole still unrepaired where the arrow had punched out Halfdan’s life.
‘Take off that leather vest!’ he commanded. ‘It makes me sweat even to see you wearing it.’
But I was no longer his to command, and he knew it. What he did not know was that the vest was even heavier than it looked. I kept more than a hundred coins sewn into its lining, each one held in place by a spiderweb of red silk threads. The coins came from al-Andalus in the Emperorate of Cordoba, from Misr on the Nile, from Basra and Baghdad and from Bulgar on the banks of the Volga. There were coins from places I could not even name, but the names did not matter. Only the gold itself mattered. It was all that I had managed to save.