The Varangian

by Bruce Macbain

  Just then the lookout atop the foremast shouted, “Sail off the starboard quarter.” We ran to the railing to look. Coming out of the blood-red setting sun, five—eight—twelve galleys sped toward us over the water. In another moment we could hear the rumble of their war drums and the cries of their warriors.

  “Coming from the Liparis,” Maniakes growled. “Their rowers are fresh. They knew exactly where we’d be.”

  Harald frowned and said nothing.

  Our little fleet was strung out in a long line behind us. Maniakes sent up colored smoke signals ordering the ships to close up fast, but this would take time—more time than we had. Three Saracen ships in the lead recognized the admiral’s purple flag flying from our mast and headed straight for us. If they could cut us off and surround us, they would decapitate our army at a single blow.

  “Clear for action, strike the sails, every hand to his post, serve out pikes and swords!” Officers barking orders, men swarming everywhere, oars run out. Harald shouting at his men, “On with your armor, be quick!” Moses running back to where Maniakes stood beside the helmsman to hold his shield over him. Saracen arrows and sling stones already humming through the air, searching for his big carcass, the Khazars returning fire with their little, powerful bows. Atop the castle and in the prow, the gunners unlimbering their fire tubes, the pump-men below deck stroking the pumps to build up pressure, waiting for the command to fire, the enemy not near enough yet for the flaming jets to reach them. Rocks from Saracen catapults striking, bouncing along our deck, sending wicked splinters flying. One ricocheted off the mast and struck me on the thigh. Men dropping, heads bleeding. Rowers on the upper tier, with little to protect them, rolling off the benches—shoulders, throats transfixed with arrows. An arrow buried itself in the deck an inch from my foot, another glanced off my helmet. One enemy ship almost abreast of us now, its fighters leaping up and down, waving their sabers, their archers marking us. Three others not far behind. Maniakes shouting, “Hard right rudder,” and the helmsman working his twin tillers so that we swung sharply around to face them prow to prow. Harald bawling at us, “Into the foc’sle, prepare to board.”

  “Siphons ready—fire!” cried the gunnery officer. But three of the gunners atop the castle were already struck down by missiles. There was one siphon in the prow where we huddled with our shields over our heads. The gunner, right beside me, screamed and rolled away, the feathered end of an arrow protruding from his leather mask. I tossed down my shield and took his place—no thought, no act of will, only instinct. “Pump, pump!” I shouted to the men crouching below the half-deck at my feet. I squeezed the firing lever, as I’d seen it done. Again and again, as I swiveled the tube. With a roar, jets of orange flame, brighter than the sun and hotter than Hel, arced from the muzzle, raking the enemy’s deck. The sulfurous stench was like the volcano of my homeland, the fiery mouth of Hekla. Along the deck men shrieked and cowered, tore at their flaming clothes, threw themselves into the sea, where they kept burning until they were only blackened cinders. Then, with a shudder and groan our two hulls ran together.

  “Varangians up!” cried Harald. He leapt onto their smoking deck, whirling his ax over his head, and we went screaming after him. Thrusting, hacking, slipping on the scorched and bloody planks, kicking bodies out of our way. I took a saber cut on my right arm but hardly felt it. I ran one man through the body, smashed my shield into another’s face and lopped off his leg with a backhanded slash of my blade.

  We cleared their deck. Saracen warriors flung themselves over the side to escape us. Their captain and helmsman lay dead. We’d taken a fine prize. Where puddles of Greek fire still burned on the deck, we threw cloaks over them and stamped them out. Below decks, the rowers chained to their benches, were shrieking with fear, pleading for their lives. Unlike our oarsmen, these were slaves, most of them Italians, judging from the few intelligible words I could catch. They’d row for us with a will. But we had no time to congratulate ourselves; two other ships were bearing down on us, and there were more behind them. And only two of our ships, with another bandon of Varangians and some of the Normans aboard, were close enough now to engage them.

  Maniakes hailed us, “Harald, break off, get to Messina, bring help.”

  But Harald looked about him, puzzled. “In this? How do we steer this great beast?” Like the Greek ships, it had twin steering oars lashed together; no Norseman had ever handled a ship like this.

  “I can try.” I ran back to the stern and grasped the two tillers in my hands. “Tell the rowers to back water.”

  Harald shouted the command down into the hold—in Norse, of course—but they knew what they had to do.

  Though blood ran down my wounded arm, I worked the tillers carefully, one forward and one back with hardly any effort, feeling the great ship respond like a spirited horse to the tug of the reins. We rowed away, leaving behind us the stink of sulfur hanging over the water.

  Our oarsmen were pulling for their lives, for freedom from their masters, and we soon left our pursuers behind. Night fell, leaving us all alone in the sea with only a quarter moon and a handful of stars to show us the black outline of the land. I steered as close to shore as I thought was safe. We fought the wind all the way and made slow headway. At last, with dawn lightening in the eastern sky, we saw the roofs of Reggio and then, across the strait, Messina.

  Harald marched straight to Stephen’s tent, shouldered his guards aside, and hauled him out of bed. “Make ready to sail,” he ordered.

  But no, Stephen wailed. It was too dangerous. Who knew how big an enemy fleet was lurking out there, waiting to pounce?

  Harald shook the man like a terrier shaking a rat. And this was, remember, the brother-in-law of his patron, John, the most powerful man in the empire (assuming he was still alive). To Harald’s credit, at that moment, he didn’t care.

  We roused one of the camp doctors to patch up my sword cut and, an hour later, twenty dromons sailed out of Messina. We found our ships scattered up and down the coast, wherever they had gone aground. We had lost a dromon and three transports sunk or captured by the Saracens before darkness forced them to break off the fight. We had suffered many wounded, one of them Moses, who took an arrow in the arm. The bodies of the dead, or the nearly dead, were already drifting toward shore. Of the enemy, we shackled the ones who looked like they might be worth ransoming and left the rest for the crows. Our Lombard allies were threatening to go home until Maniakes hit one of them in the head with his fist and laid him out cold. The Normans, who kept to themselves, looked thoughtful, but said nothing.

  Varangians crowded around me, many of them men I hardly knew but suddenly they all seemed to know me. They had either seen or heard the story of what I’d done. Where did I learn to steer a galley like that, they asked, and how did it feel to fire that devilish weapon?

  How did it feel? In the heat of battle I’d felt powerful, like a god, like Zeus hurling thunderbolts. But afterwards I felt differently. I’ve seen people burn before—my mother, my brother—I decided that I never wanted to touch that weapon again. It’s the way Greeks fight, not the way a man fights. But I kept these thoughts to myself. Maniakes came up and gripped my hand in his huge paw—as eloquent a gesture of praise as a mouthful or words might have been from any other man.

  But I saw Harald looking at me sideways. I knew that look. I murmured something inconsequential and turned away. I was a skald. My job was to praise, not to be praised. I was already composing in my head an ode for Harald—wolf-crammer, feeder of ravens—in fine, thumping Norse, with every kenning for battle and slaughter I could devise. This was my job, what Harald wanted and needed from me, and he would have it.

  Since we were forbidden by Maniakes to go into the city except in small numbers, an impromptu market soon sprang up outside our camp, where baskets of olives and almonds, grapes, apricots, and lemons filled the stalls and the merchants hawked silk scarves and brass bowls. On the second morning after our return from Salerno I was wan
dering among their tents and awnings, sampling the wares and wondering what to spend my money on, when an old woman approached me. She was a Greek, short and stout, olive-skinned, with a black mole on her forehead.

  “You are the one called Odd?”

  “How do you know me?”

  “There is a present for you from a friend.”

  “What friend?”

  “Just come.” She pulled me under the flap of her little tent. Inside was a table heaped with ornate wooden chests. She held one out to me, a shallow box, about a foot square, with a carved walnut lid. She lifted the lid, then closed it again quickly. “Bring it back tomorrow, say you want to change it for a different one.”

  The Logothete! The box contained sheets of papyrus, a reed pen, a small bottle of ink. I was stunned. I’d only half believed Psellus when he said that their agents would find me in Sicily. The webs these Greeks wove astonished me.

  With the box under my arm, I walked away until I found a quiet spot in a grove of fig trees, a quarter mile from the camp. I sat with my back against the rough bark, the box on my lap for a writing desk, and dipped my pen in the ink. My first secret report to the Logothete could be completed in a few lines: Stephen a coward, the Lombards unwilling allies, Maniakes and Harald in a shouting match: all the things that our general might not care to include in his official dispatches. Quickly done.

  But Selene? My hand hesitated. The Greeks know how to express themselves in flowery language, but we Icelanders are not brought up that way; we’re a close-mouthed race who keep our feelings to ourselves. I missed her terribly. I tried to imagine her, sitting in her chair with Gunnar at her breast, reading my letter—with what feelings? What could I say to my angry wife? She already hated that I was here; what could I say that would make her hate it less? I wrote a word, scratched it out, wrote another. My heart failed me. I sat for a long time, writing nothing.

  19

  Selene’s Tale

  July, 1038

  Selene lays down the sheet of papyrus, covered with Odd’s crabbed, slanted handwriting. She shifts little Gunnar to the other breast, and erases a tear with the back of her hand. Her face is white. “He says he’s been in a battle,” she says to her father. “Has he been hurt? He wouldn’t tell me if he were. I have dreams, they frighten me.”

  Melampus reaches out a palsied hand to stroke her hair. She has moved back to her father’s house to look after the old man—he has grown suddenly so weak—and because she can’t bear to stay alone in the house that she and Odd shared. “Dreams often go by opposites, my dear, you know that. If anything were wrong we would know. I would know, I would see it.” She looks pleadingly at Psellus, who has brought the letter and stayed to take the midday meal with them. “He’s all right, then?”

  He gives her a cheerful smile. “You have my word on it. Not only that, Odd’s the hero of the day. We’ve had a dispatch from Maniakes, praising him. Fought off the Infidels practically singlehanded, rescued the fleet. It seems he’s made quite an impression, your husband. So you’re not to worry.”

  “But that was weeks ago. Where are they now?”

  Patience. We’ll have more news soon, I’m sure. Now, then, I must be on my way. You’ll want to write him, won’t you? I’ll come back for your letter tomorrow.”

  “My friend, we’re putting you to too much trouble.”

  “Not a bit, Melampus, it’s my pleasure. The information Odd’s sent us—well, one mustn’t talk, but it’s of use, believe me. Now, one of these days when I have more time I want to talk with you about your alchemical experiments. Fascinating stuff.”

  “I hardly do any—” Melampus starts to answer, but falls silent and looks away. Lately, he seems to lack the strength for the all night vigils, watching the red cinnabar steam and bubble, exuding beads of precious mercury. And when he tries to pour in the acids, his hands shake so that he spills them. Someone will make gold one day, of that he has never doubted, but it won’t be him. He knows that now.

  Psellus lets himself out. They hear him mount his horse and ride away.

  “May I, my dear?” Melampus takes up the letter and scans it quickly. He loves you, he misses you and the baby. He regrets the hard words. And so do you—you’ll tell him so. He needs to hear that.” He takes her chin in his hand.

  Selene nods and weeps. Her tears fall on Gunnar’s curls, as black and tangled now as Odd’s. If only she could hold that head to her breast. Then the two of them, father and daughter, sit silent for a time, wrapped in their own thoughts.

  The sound of horse’s hooves on the cobbles outside, the jingle of harness. A rap at the door. Is it Psellus coming back for something? Selene wipes her face while Melampus goes to the door and opens it. It is a stranger, a man in his forties, with blond hair and beard, expensively dressed in a brown silk robe shot with silver threads, on his finger a ring with a sapphire the size of a pigeon’s egg. Behind him, an open carriage, a servant holding the horses’ heads. In the carriage the figure of a young girl swaddled in a blanket so that only her small pale face peeks out. “You are Doctor Melampus?” The voice is deep, the accent educated. “My name is Alypius. A friend sent me, I hope you can help us.”

  20

  Nearly Caught

  [Odd resumes his narrative]

  Nearly two months went by before I received more letters or had another chance to write. It was now late summer of 1038 and I was in Catania, which we had just liberated four days earlier after a long siege. This time, as I was poking around the marketplace, an elderly priest sidled up to me with elaborate stealth, glancing this way and that, and introduced himself in a loud whisper as Father Macarius. I was beginning to feel like a marked man, the way these agents of the Logothete were able to spot me. With much rolling of his eyes, he motioned me toward his little church. It was dark and cool inside, a relief from the noonday sun.

  The Christmen of Sicily have fallen on hard times since the Saracen conquest. Most of their priests fled to southern Italy, taking with them anything of value that the Infidels didn’t steal first. This church had only wooden candlesticks in place of silver ones, its icon screen was broken, its altar cloth replaced by a piece of sacking. But Father Macarius did what he could to fight back—sending information to the Logothete whenever he could. His son owned a boat, he said, and that was but the first in a tenuous chain of links, some by sea, some by land, that stretched from Catania to Constantinople.

  Before he would hand over my letters, though, he made me light a candle and pray with him. I knew all about these rituals from the daily devotions of the army. I did my best to contain my impatience as he droned through the liturgy. At last, he handed me a big book with a worn leather cover—again with many nervous glances, although we were quite alone in the church. I opened it to find that a hole had been carved in the pages and in it was a travel-stained packet of letters. One letter, a single sheet of fine parchment, was folded in half and fastened with the gold seal of the Office of Barbarians. The other letter, written on three pages of tattered papyrus, was sealed with wax and the imprint of a crescent moon. Selene’s stamp. My heart beat fast. Father Macarius offered to read them to me and was astonished when I told him I could read and write. Taking the letters, a sheaf of blank papyrus, and pen and ink, I went out into the little churchyard, where the light was better, and sat down on the low stone wall that encircled the grounds. I should have had more sense. I tore open Selene’s letter. Out of it fell a curl of black hair. My son’s! I read through it hastily, then set it aside. I would deal with the Logothete first; he didn’t rouse the turmoil of emotion in me that my wife did.

  We—your friend Psellus and I—hope this finds you well [I read]…your last letter very interesting… spend more time with Maniakes if you can … how well do you know him? What is his plan? He tells us almost nothing… How are he and Harald getting along now?

  Sir [I wrote], Maniakes must have written to you about our great victory at Rometta, so I needn’t go into detail about that…
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  After the sea battle, our army had marched up to Rometta, which is the fortress that commands the pass linking Messina with the road to Palermo. There we won a great victory over the Emir. The Saracen army made a spectacular sight, with its huge green banners and masses of roaring kettle drums, and ululating priests whipping their men into a frenzy. Still, it was our cavalry that swept the field—rank after rank of steel-clad lancers, charging knee to knee. Nothing could withstand them. And at their head rode Maniakes himself, mounted on a huge black stallion, carrying aloft the banner of Saint George. The Varangians and other infantry were held in reserve and never got into the fight—which made Harald furious.

  After the battle, [I continued] the army cheered the general. But then, he spoiled everything. He was not happy with the way one lancer regiment, the Athanatoi, had conducted themselves; they had nearly let their flank be turned. So he called their commander out, a well-born and popular officer, and beat him nearly to death with his fists. The men watched this in deep silence. A general who can’t control himself is a danger to everyone. He’ll lay hands on the wrong man one day. The Varangians are angry, the Lombards were never enthusiastic, the Normans are unhappy about not getting enough of the spoils—it’s all they care about. And now he attacks his own officers.

  Following our victory, we headed south down the coast (although Harald again argued against this strategy), captured Taormina and now Catania, and we will soon march on Syracuse. How long that city will hold out I have no idea. We are already suffering greatly from short supplies and from the heat.

  Pounding heat, blinding heat, crushing heat.

  There is a wind they call the sirocco that blows day and night like the blast from a potter’s kiln, spinning the dust up in whirlwinds. It had followed us all the way from Messina. It was especially hard on us Northerners. Mile after weary mile I trudged under a molten sun with my shield slung on my back and my helmet as hot as a cooking pot, the haft of my ax slick in my hand and my eyes fixed on the shimmering horizon. Heat rose from the road in waves. The dust choked us even though we wore kerchiefs over our faces. Varangians fainted dead away, keeled over in mid-step, and had to be carried to the side of the road and dashed with water. Stragglers were picked off by marauding gangs of peasants and stripped of their arms, their shirts, their trousers, their boots.