She touched her breast delicately again. ‘Princess.’
The word seemed to strike Haraldr’s heart. Yes. She had the air. She probably had learned to heal by binding her brothers’ wounds. She’d certainly not been raised as a servant. His breast pained for her as it had that night in Kiev. I already love you, he silently confessed. But I can see that you have another love, and because of it, you could never be happy with mine.
With one trembling finger he touched her chin. She did not flinch. ‘When we get to the Rus Sea, twenty of our ships will leave to dock at Kherson. I’ll send you with them and see that from there a ship takes you east. Home to your people.’
She understood. ‘Home,’ she said. Her eyes shifted focus, as if she could see some glorious vista far beyond the silk walls of the pavilion.
When she had finished with the small wounds, she began to rummage through the gear scattered about the pavilion; she finally located a half-full wine bag. As she moved about, the lamplight shone through her linen petticoat and Haraldr could see the outline of her slender flanks and the contour of her breasts. She took a small silver goblet from the chest and mixed an ochre powder with the wine. She drank some first to show Haraldr that it was not poison.
‘Not hurt,’ she said as she began to pull the blood-caked linen from Haraldr’s forearm. The wound was deep but clean. She daubed ointment from a jar into it. Haraldr began to feel drowsy and very comfortable. His head nodded.
‘Lie.’ She gestured at Hakon’s bed. It was an enormous, intricately carved wooden frame covered with thick, down-padded silk covers. Disgusting, Haraldr had thought when he had first seen it that morning. Just another reason why Hakon’s Varangians, who would sleep tonight on hard ground beneath coarse blankets, had so willingly endorsed the usurpation of their leader.
Haraldr shook his head and looked for his own gear bag. He couldn’t find it amid Hakon’s splendid clutter. He did want to lie down.
The healer guessed at Haraldr’s reservations and dragged the down covers off the bed and spread them on the floor beside him. Haraldr wondered briefly if she had been forced to sleep beneath them. He felt very good. He slid off the camp stool and lay down on the covers.
The healer knelt beside Haraldr and began to wrap clean linen around his forearm. The light behind her gave her raven hair a golden aura. He reached up and grazed her arm with the very tip of his fingers. He did not feel her soft skin so much as a curious shock, like the sparking when one touched a kettle or a knife on a cold, dry day.
She shuddered at some similar sensation. She studied the cup of medicine for a moment, and then drank the rest of the narcotic draught. The wine slicked her lips with a brilliant sheen.
‘Swaa . . . swaan?’ she asked.
Haraldr’s groin tingled. She remembered his words in Kiev. ‘A swan is a white bird,’ he answered, drawing the curve of the neck in the air. ‘Noble and white. And soft.’ He touched her again.
Her erect torso swayed slightly. ‘Serah,’ she said, touching her breast.
Her name was unlike any Norse sound, and it made a beautiful and mysterious music. He thought momentarily of Elisevett, but she was a distant thing of cold beauty, a glacier diminishing into a sliver of icy light beyond the horizon. Serah.
Serah’s hand burned and chilled his chest. His body lost weight, as when he had flown above the river today. But now there was no fear.
Wizard-quick, Serah rustled, white revealing white. She threw the linen petticoat aside. Dark hair fell around Haraldr’s face. Serah tugged at his breeches. The still air felt like a summer sea-wind over his nakedness. He was as hard as an axe staff. Serah’s body settled over him like a silk drape.
This was different from the two times before. The first, a whore, had been a meaningless lesson in the art-skills a king must know. Elisevett had been a passion that had rushed along like a torrent before exploding in a moment of aching, ungraspable ecstasy. Tonight was a deep pool, dark and warm, and in it Serah slid against his tingling flesh, drawing him deeper into the iridescent blackness. There is another place, Haraldr whispered to himself. Not the cold, dark place where the dragon lurks. A place he had never sensed before, a place where only a woman could take him. He plunged deeper into these depths, his pleasure more liquid and languid, only a single steel core left to his body. For an instant he wondered if there was danger in this place as well, but Serah gripped him and whispered, and the thought drifted away on the warm current.
Long after they had finished, they held each other and listened to the sigh and hiss of the Dnieper. Finally Serah tilted her head to look into his eyes and said, ‘Serah. Princess. Khazar.’ Her finger gently pressed against his chest. ‘Har-- Haraldr . . . ?’
Haraldr held her close again. ‘Haraldr. Prince,’ he whispered distinctly, realising she was no threat, wanting her to share with him the secret that he held as dearly as life. ‘Like you, I am far from my people.’
She understood, and this new bond brought desire to another pitch. Her hands began to brand his chest. Her lips devoured his face and neck. ‘Haraldr, Prince,’ she said next to his ear, her voice urgent with passion. Her lips moved down his chest.
Neither of them heard the slight stirring of the silk curtain, or the lithe footsteps in the night.
‘I will see him, Nicetas.’
The eunuch bowed and the doors slid shut behind him. Maria turned to Ata, her palmist. ‘This is Giorgios. The one I like.’ Ata grinned; his teeth were very bad, though he could not have been much older than thirty. He stood up, smoothed the wrinkles out of his robe, touched his hand to his forehead, bowed, and also left the room. Giorgios was shown in a moment later. He wore the uniform of the Imperial Scholae: an embossed gold breastplate over a short-sleeved crimson tunic, and a short leather kilt. His tanned face was flushed with exertion; he probably had been riding.
Maria kissed him on the forehead and brushed his blond curls back. ‘Why did you come? Is Alexandros with you?’
Giogios eyes were wild, like a pursued stag’s. He stammered. ‘I ... I love you. My every thought is of you. You consume me. I can’t bear to watch you.’ His neck corded. ‘I can’t eat any more. Do you . . . love Alex?’
‘Alexandros disgusts me. He is a boor.’ There was no expression on Maria’s face. She was as serene as a marble Aphrodite but more beautiful.
Giorgios blinked rapidly, as if he had been slapped. ‘Then why . . . why . . . ?’
‘I want to inflict upon you the pain you will cause me to suffer.’
Giorgios blinked again.
‘Ata says that for me fate and love have crossed once before. Though he could not know it, he is right. Now he says that my next crossing will bring together fate, love and death. He says that a man will destroy me with his love. A fair-hair. Perhaps you are that man.’ She paused. ‘I am almost certain that I love you.’
Giorgios wavered as if he would topple. It was a moment before he could speak. ‘I would never ... I adore you, I worship you, I would die before--’
Maria put her fingers to her lips. Her eyes were like blue flames. ‘I know,’ she whispered. ‘Now go. I won’t see you for several days. But know that when you are thinking of me, I am thinking of you. Now go.’
Giorgios made his way to the vestibule with intoxicated steps. As the eunuchs slid the ivory-inlaid doors open, he turned and looked at Maria pleadingly. ‘I am sleeping with Alexandras tonight,’ she told him.
‘That hole is no deeper than a man’s member, said Halldor. His words were whipped by the stinging, salted gust. ‘But many a man has fallen to his death within it.’ He nodded at Haraldr, staring morosely out over the deep blue swells of the Rus Sea. ‘It’s a good thing that Khazar girl went off for Kherson. She only had him for five days, but by the end of that time I feared for him more than I did when he was in the death-square with Hakon.’
Ulfr smiled fondly. Three weeks ago they had sailed out of the broad estuary of the Dnieper into the Rus Sea, and they had dispatched the
contingent of twenty boats bound for Kherson. Haraldr had arranged transport for the Khazar girl, and when he had bid her farewell, he had kissed her all over her face and hair, and then tears had visibly streaked his face as he watched her ship disappear into the eastern horizon. Many of the men present had been shocked by this weakness in their new hero; a warrior was supposed to bid his woman farewell with a smile and a wise remark. Let her do the pining. But Ulfr himself knew how a poet’s heart was, and he had gone among the men to explain that the same passion that had crushed Hakon’s chest like a bird’s made Haraldr’s own breast tender to a woman’s touch. Within a few days it became the fashion among the Varangians to lament lost loves they had hardly thought about for months.
Haraldr remained statue-still in the prow. Gleb looked at him, then at Ulfr and Halldor, and spat. ‘Well,’ he growled, ‘he is about to meet a woman who will make him forget all the rest.’ He paused for effect. ‘The Empress City.’ He gestured south, where the coastline was just a dark, greenish line on the horizon. To the west the ascending sun punched a brilliant hole in a seamless sheet of smoked blue. ‘By mid-morning we’ll reach an opening on that coast. It’s a strait the Greeks call Bosporus. At the end of it, half a day’s sail south, is the Empress City. I’ll never forget my first sight of her.’
‘Look. Another one,’ said Halldor. He faced the stern and pointed into the steel-hued sky. A messenger pigeon made one last spiralling turn before heading off to the southwest. ‘That’s the fifth bird the Grik ambassador has sent out since yesterday morning.’
‘He’s telling them to prepare our welcome,’ said Gleb.
‘What nature of welcome?’ asked Haraldr. He had left his lonely perch while Ulfr, Halldor and Gleb had been distracted by the pigeon. ‘That’s what troubles me.’
‘Well, I’m glad something besides that girl troubles you,’ said Gleb. He spat and smiled like a father forgiving a foolish son. Then his malleable face puckered with concern. ‘I’d say we’re in danger. If only because there’s no knowing the mind of these Greeks. They’re a nervous people, they’ve never trusted the Rus, and this business with their Manglavite, which they surely know of by now, has got to alarm them. It’s obvious from the way their ambassador has acted.’
Indeed, thought Haraldr. For the past three and a half weeks the Byzantine trade ambassador had rebuffed every attempt at communication with the curt message ‘maintain course’. In fact, they had seen neither the ambassador nor the interpreter, Gregory, since leaving St Gregory’s Island.
‘Can we fight them?’ asked Ulfr.
Gleb tugged at his doughy jowls. ‘Long before I made my first trip down the Dnieper, a Rus fleet attacked the Greek navy right in front of the Empress City. But these were swift warships manned by thousands of Varangians; Swedes, I believe they were. Even then the Greeks were able to call on their lightning from heaven and set the water on fire. They say you could walk across the shores of the Bosporus for a rowing-spell and your feet would never touch anything but the bodies of sailors, both Greek and Rus. Ten ships returned to Kiev. That’s when the Emperor and the Great Prince decided a treaty was preferable to such slaughter.’
‘Then that treaty will protect us,’ said Ulfr hopefully.
‘Unless they view the death of their Manglavite as a breach of that treaty; indeed, an act of aggression against the very Emperor whom Hakon served,’ added Haraldr.
‘We don’t even know who the Emperor is now,’ said Halldor. ‘It’s fairly certain that Basil Bulgar-Slayer is dead.’ The Bulgar-Slayer had ruled Byzantium for so long that he had become a legend, even in the far north, long before Haraldr had been born. ‘All we know beyond that are reports of mutterings made by Hakon when he was drunk, of a second and even third Emperor after Basil Bulgar-Slayer, and something about a “bitch-whore” who has had a very great hand in this succession of Emperors.’ Halldor looked around at the group and gave his usual insouciant shrug. ‘There are times when a man finds himself far from shelter on a moonless night, with his tinder wet. There’s nothing he can do but wait for the sun.’
Haraldr envied Halldor his innate calm as much as he hated his own gut-churning helplessness. He was no Halldor, but he knew that Halldor was right. They could only wait. And watch. ‘Who’s got the sharpest eyes?’ he asked Gleb. ‘Send him up the mast.’
Gleb snapped an order, and Blud, a young Slav oarsman, clambered up the mast like a monkey and stood atop the single cross-spar from which the billowing square sail was suspended. Blud waved happily at his comrades below and then intently began to study the empty Rus Sea.
‘Bosporus.’ Gleb pointed to the now clearly visible fissure in the green band of headland. He called out for the following ships - at last count there were one hundred and fifty-four vessels remaining of the close to five hundred that had left Kiev - to make a broad starboard turn and close up formation. The sun was rising to its zenith and the water glittered. The sky was an immaculate cerulean. Soon it became apparent that the Bosporus was a good fourth or even third of a rowing-spell in width. Dozens of small boats with square and triangular white sails cruised along the coastline. Scattered clusters of white buildings gleamed on the high, grassy, tree-spotted escarpments of the nearest shore; some of these apparent suburbs of the Great City were more extensive than any town Haraldr had ever seen, save Kiev. After an hour or so the Bosporus narrowed to several thousand ells. The immense buildings scattered on the headlands became clearly visible; domes like those of Yaroslav’s cathedral, though much larger, rose from yew-coloured woods.
‘A-heaaad! A-heaaad! Off the prow!’ Blud looked like a mad seabird leaping up and down on the cross-spar, flapping his free arm and screaming himself purple. Haraldr dashed to the mast, grabbed a rope, and pulled himself up the timber spire.
At first it seemed like a necklace on the water, flashing in the sun. Within a few minutes the jewels could be distinguished as gilded, swoop-necked prows. Dragons, like the ships of Norse kings. But there had been only a handful of such ships in the entire north. Now there were hundreds out there, spread across the entire width of the Bosporus.
Gleb came scrambling spryly up the mast, his limp no handicap in the rigging. He frowned as he appraised the dancing gold on the water.
The fleet was approaching rapidly. Haraldr counted perhaps a hundred large ships, surrounded by several hundred smaller supporting vessels. Though still too distant for an accurate gauge of length, the biggest ships were clearly of enormous size, with double banks of oars, twin masts, and what looked like huge gold beasts - perhaps panthers or bears - looming at both bow and stern.
‘Dhromons of the Imperial Fleet.’ Gleb spoke as if he were describing a huge wave rolling towards them, a natural phenomenon that a man could only curse helplessly in his last instant of life. ‘Fire-ships.’
‘In what formation?’
Gleb cleared his throat with an angry growl. ‘Battle formation.’
If we are to die, Haraldr told himself, we will not make it easy for them. He shouted down to Halldor: ‘We must give no provocation! Reef sails but don’t furl them. Oars and weapons ready but out of sight. Keep men in place to furl sails quickly at my command. We’ll wait for them, but if they come closer than two thousand ells, we’ll furl sails and row for the shore. Those big ships may have trouble manoeuvring up against the headlands!’
‘So will these Rus washtubs!’ answered Halldor. Then he shouted the orders down the line. Within minutes the entire Rus trade flotilla had stopped and sat bobbing like a great flock of waterfowl resting on the water. The Imperial ships continued to advance, their formation perfect, oars slitting the water in precise rhythm. Haraldr could see metal scintillating on the decks, and distinct figures clambering about. The range was down to three thousand ells. A fearsome, oxlike bellowing echoed across the water.
Two thousand five hundred ells. Haraldr looked at Gleb. Gleb just shook his head and worked his jaws. Perun be praised that he had exacted enough gold from Yaroslav to ensu
re that his grandchildren would never have to look down the angry snout of an Imperial dhromon. If his death could buy that, then death take him.
Two thousand two hundred. The dhromons bellowed again, louder, as if the leering golden spouts had been transformed into the creatures they resembled. Two thousand one hundred. At two thousand ells Haraldr hesitated and decided to wait a moment longer. He was no exact judge of distance. A few hundred more ells would still give them time to break for shore.
Eighteen hundred. Haraldr could see that the men on the decks of the giant Byzantine ships wore armour. Kristr, my fate is in your hands. Odin’s gift is of no use here.
Seventeen hundred. The command could no longer be delayed. ‘Hal--no, wait!’ Signal flags wriggled up the barren first mast of the lead dhromon. The double rows of oars lifted glistening from the water, bristled in the air like the spines of strange sea monsters, and vanished almost simultaneously into the hulls of the dhromons. The Byzantine ships slowed and then stopped. They were about fifteen hundred ells away.
Gleb looked at Haraldr. ‘Don’t assume anything when you deal with the Greeks. They love a ruse.’
The motion at the periphery of Haraldr’s vision sent his pulse hammering. What fool had broken rank? Then he saw the crimson sail puffed out like a fat silk cushion: the trade ambassador’s ship furiously rejoining its own. The ambassador stood in the prow like a victorious admiral. A few paces behind him a little bald figure turned, looked up to the mast of Haraldr’s ship, and waved. Gregory. He looked lonely and wistful, as if he were bidding his Norse friends a permanent farewell.
A single small warship slipped out from between the monstrous dhromons and came very rapidly towards the ambassador’s vessel. The two ships drew even, halted, and bobbed in unison. Haraldr could see the flash of armour as several men leapt from the warship onto the deck of the ambassador’s stubby vessel. An animated discussion seemed to commence. On and on it went; arms raised on one side and then the other in a distant, mimed debate. The wind flapped the reefed sail of Haraldr’s ship and he imagined that it was the sound of the Griks quarrelling among themselves. Good, he told himself, clearly there is a lack of resolution here. But remember what Gleb said about Grik ruses.
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