by John Dalmas
I'd never thought of Arno weeping, even as a kid. He wasn't chuckling now; he wasn't even smiling.
"They said he'd regained both his French and his full wits on his last day, and, calling for the priest, had been absolved of all his sins, which I doubt not were less numerous and fulsome than those of many men who'd been Christian from the womb."
Arno shook his head as if throwing off a sense of loss. "I had not heard the Norse language again until today, and indeed could speak it only with difficulty at first."
"What did you talk about?" I asked.
"The leader's name is Gunnlag Snorrason, and he has accepted my oath. I am now one of his men. He was a Varangian himself once, and had fought against Normans in Apulia. Others of his men had fought Normans in Greece, or fought beside Norman mercenaries against the Patzinaks. The Varangians know the strength of Norman arms, and when they found that I could speak their tongue, albeit haltingly, they were pleased to have me. In fact, it clearly amused them to have a Norman in their ranks. To them I am a sport, like a Saracen bishop in God's church."
He chuckled, grinning ruefully. "Gunnlag Snorrason is no son of Tancred-no Roger de Hauteville, no Robert Guiscard or William Fer de Bras-and this vessel is all there is of his domain. But it is far far better than the cinnabar mines of Spain, where it is told the slaves live short and sickly lives and there is always a demand for more to replace the dying. And I can like these Varangians, for if they have learned to admire Normans in battle, Normans have learned that Varangian strength and valor is hardly second to our own. Were it not for Varangians, Guiscard might well rule not from Palermo but from Byzantium itself, and not a dukedom but an empire."
Later, Arno's cheerful mood turned somber, and that evening before we slept, he let me see what was bothering him.
"Larn," he said.
"Yes?"
"Why didn't your sister drive the Varangians away?
With her mighty weapons, she could have sent them to the bottom."
I lied to him. "I don't know why. She has other things to do than hang around taking care of me. And until today, you've had my speaking amulet. I haven't been able to keep in touch with her."
"Can you call her now?"
"I tried. She didn't answer." I took my communicator off my belt, switched it on, and murmured into it. "Deneen, this is Larn. Deneen, this is Larn. Come in, please. Over."
As I spoke, I had this feeling that she was going to surprise me and answer, but she didn't. Shrugging, I switched it off and put it back on my belt. "It seems to be working," I told him.
"I just don't get an answer. But it only works over a few hundred miles. She's probably farther away than that."
He pursed his lips thoughtfully. I wished I was like Bubba and could read thoughts.
TWENTY-ONE
Late that night I woke up. I'd been dreaming of Jenoor, and in my dream she'd been alive, talking to me. I couldn't remember much about it, except she'd been telling me she was all right. I also remembered that in the dream it seemed as if she'd come to me in dreams before.
It had been such a joyous dream; now it was gone. I lay there for a minute, trying to remember more of it, but couldn't. Even what I did remember was slipping away, and a slow wave of despair washed through me. Getting up, I looked around. To the right of the long ship I could see a low coastline not many miles away beneath a fall moon.
One of the Varangians had wakened at my movement and was watching me. I ignored him and went aft to where the water casks were lashed, for a drink, being careful not to step on anyone. I thought about talking to the steersman, getting into the Norse language the way I had Provencal, by gestures and pointing. I decided that wouldn't work too well with him handling the steering oar, so I went back and lay down again, where I dreamed some more about Jenoor.
But the next time I woke up, the sun was rising behind us, which told me we'd changed direction from south to westerly. The wind had shifted, too, coming out of the northeast. The square sail billowed roundly, and we were moving right along.
The most surprising change was that we were towing the horse ship now! Its own sail was full like ours, but the line was taut; we were adding to her speed, though it slowed us down. I called to the Greek-his name was Michael-and asked if he knew what that was about.
"We are entering waters where Saracen pirates and warships are more likely to be met," he said. "Our captain"-he meant the Varangian captain now-"wants to pass through them as swiftly as possible without separating from the other." He gestured toward the horse ship some hundred feet behind us.
And he really did want to get through fast. First we ate breakfast, which was the same as supper had been the day before: dates, smoked meat, and a hard, flat, crusty thing that the Norse called flatbraud, all washed down with watered wine. As soon as we'd finished, men were assigned to the rowing stools. Sliding the oars through the oar holes, they began to row in rhythm. It had to be in rhythm, or they'd have been banging oars together. An overweight Varangian with a hand missing set the rhythm of their stroke by striking a drum.
No question about it-we were going faster now.
I began to see a long, hard day ahead. Not all the oars were in use; only about half the Varangians were rowing. It didn't take too much imagination to see what would happen after they'd rowed a while: The rest of us would replace them. I looked at my hands. There wasn't a callus on either of them. Then I looked around for something I could make a sun visor with. I wasn't nearly as tanned as the Varangians, and I didn't want my face to slough off at the end of a day on a rowing stool.
Sure enough, row I did. One shift would row for an hour-the one-handed bosun had an hourglass-then the other would take over. At midday we all quit rowing to eat lunch, which was the same as breakfast, followed by a longish rest, during which most of us slept. Then the rowing began again. Before my first shift I cut cloth pads from my cape to protect my hands, and I'm sure it helped, but even so, before the day was done, my palms were raw and oozing. The only good thing I could say about it, if you could call it good, was that I'd sort of gotten used to the pain. At the end of the first shift, I leaned over the gunwale and scooped up a bucket of salt water from the sea. After each shift I soaked my hands in it, though it stung. I wasn't sure the immunoserum would keep my blisters from getting infected, and a saltwater soak was the only treatment I could think of.
To start with, I told the captain I'd never rowed before, and asked for some coaching. Instead of a coach, he gave me the rearmost starboard oar, with no one on the next two stools in front of me. I saw why quickly enough. The long ship was rolling more than a little, and for the first couple of minutes I kept missing the water every few strokes, fanning the air. Then I got grooved in and it went pretty decently. After a while, I was even digging the water about the same each stroke.
My hands weren't my only problem. By the end of my first shift, my legs and back and arms were really tired. I kind of semi-recovered on the off-shifts, but by the end of the day I was more exhausted than I'd ever been before. When Michael gave me the good word that the captain wasn't going to make us row at night, I was too tired to be ecstatic, just awfully grateful.
On our first off-shift, Arno came over to me. "I've heard what you did to Jon Eriksson," he said. "Apparently it was you who took my weapons of power."
I resisted the impulse to remind him who "the weapons of power" actually belonged to, "Just the stunner," I said. "And I'm keeping it. The blaster went flying when the ax hit you. It's probably on the other ship with your horses."
He gestured at his belt, with its sword, dagger, and recharge magazine attached, "These were returned to me," he said, "and even my purse of gold. But this"-he indicated the magazine-"is empty. Who would have taken its contents except you? And why would you have taken them if you did not have the blaster?"
"Arno," I told him wearily, "I may have lied to you a time or two, but not this time." With an effort, I got to my feet. "Come on," I said, and headed for the ste
m. Arno followed, puzzled. I beckoned to Michael to come along too, and went to where Gunnlag stood with the steering oar under one brawny arm. "Gunnlag," I said, "when you attacked our ship, Amo had a marvelous device from India which I had given him. I saw it fly from his hand when he was struck by the ax, but it did not go into the sea. It was of metal, and about this long"-I showed him with my hands-"with a short handle at one end. Would you find out if any of your men have it? It would have been just lying there, and they could not have known that it was his. I'd like him to have it again if possible."
I said all that in short sentences, Michael interpreting. When I was done, Gunnlag nodded. "I will ask at midday, when we stop rowing to eat."
"And there was something else," I added. "Some small objects that were kept in this." I touched the magazine on Arno's belt. "He thought I had taken them for safekeeping, but I had not. Perhaps someone else has them."
In response, Gunnlag bellowed a name, and one of the Varangians came over. They talked briefly in Norse.
"It was Torkil here who took the strange objects from Arno's purse," Gunnlag said to me through the Greek. "They seemed useless to him, so he threw them aside, but not into the sea, he thinks. Perhaps they are on the other craft."
I thanked him then and returned to the bow. Arno followed, looking at least as unhappy as before. "You have humiliated me," he said grimly when we'd sat down,
"How did I do that?"
"By taking up my cause with Gunnlag. It was mine to do."
I stared at him. "Is that how things are done among the Varangians? Or is that a Norman way? Or perhaps only your own feeling about it? Gunnlag didn't seem to think there was anything wrong
with what I did."
That stopped him. "Besides," I went on, "you didn't believe me when I told you I didn't have them. I thought if they turned up from someone else, that would settle it. As far as that's concerned, you'd practically accused me of stealing them from you, when actually you'd stolen them from me. Now Gunnlag is your witness that I said I gave them to you. It seems to me you don't have much to complain about."
He sat frowning, not really looking at me. I guess he was thinking. Then he nodded curtly and moved a few feet away where he sat facing aft. I lay back and closed my eyes until our shift went on again.
He felt a lot better at midday break, when one of the Varangians came up with the blast pistol I was glad it had a so-called "shelf safety"-the second safety that Arno hadn't known about. Otherwise the Varangian, poking around in curiosity, might easily have shot a hole in the bottom of the ship, or killed some shipmate. I showed Arno how to disengage it, and advised him to leave it on when he was just wearing it around.
In turn, Arno was halfway friendly toward me again.
During our other off-shifts, with Michael's help, I talked with a few of the Norsemen, including Gunnlag Snorrason. The captain was from a Norse kingdom called Sweden, and at sixteen had gone to the Rhos land, where the warrior band he belonged to took service with a great prince named Jarisleif from time to time. Apparently the Rhos princes fought one another a lot. Jarisleif himself was descended from a Swede, as were most of the princes there.
Between hostilities, the Varangians occasionally raided Slav villages, selling their captives as slaves to the Greeks. Gunnlag laughed after he told me that. It had seemed, he said, as if the Greeks had all the gold in the world. So when his chief had a falling out with Jarisleif, their band had gone south in boats, down a great river to the Black Sea.
It had been a dangerous trip. The southernmost end of the river flowed through grasslands held by the Patzinaks-dark fierce horse barbarians who grazed their herds there. Reaching the Black Sea, the Varangians had rowed to Miklagard to take service with the Greek Emperor. Miklagard had proved everything men said of it.
Gunnlag cocked an eye at me then. "Surely you have been to Miklagard. How could one come here from India and not visit Miklagard?"
"Through the sky," I told him. "Through the sky." And he believed me, or that's how it looked, anyway, because after probing me with his eyes for a moment, he nodded.
He'd fought for the Emperor for eight years, Gunnlag told me, then had shipped home to Sweden. With the gold he took with him, he'd had this ship built on a great lake called Vanern, then rode it down the river Gota to the Northern Sea. In his youth, the old man who'd built it had built ships for the last of the Vikings. This one was built much like them, for ease of rowing, but a bit broader and deeper of keel for long sea voyages. By having his passengers row when the winds were not favorable, the trips went faster and there was less quarreling on board.
This had been Gunnlag's third voyage carrying pilgrims to the Holy Land. But when they had stopped at Crete, they'd been told by an admiral of the Byzantine Emperor that pilgrims landing in the Holy Land recently had been sold into slavery there. The Emperor was gathering a new army to punish the Saracens for it, and surely those who took part would be rewarded not only with gold in this life but with Heaven afterward.
Most of the Swedes had planned to go to Miklagard anyway, after first visiting the holy city of Jorsala where the Christ had died. Instead, following this bad news, they went directly to Miklagard, where most of them entered service in a Varangian regiment. Gunnlag had recrewed his ship with Varangian veterans wishing to return to the lands of their birth. Now, aboard ship, there were not only men from Sweden, but from Denmark, Norway, and even distant Iceland, all speaking dialects of Norse. There were even two who'd been born in the Rhos land and had never seen the home of their fathers, though they could speak their tongue.
That night, lying chilled in the bottom of the long ship, I couldn't help wondering if the Fanglithans would ever become civilized. But then I remembered Brother Oliver and the monks, and Isaac ben Abraham. And back in Normandy, Father Drogo and Pierre the tanner, each of them a man of peace. Maybe dominance by warlike cultures was just a phase, one that Fanglith would have to live through.
Then what phase was the Federation-turned-Empire in? Was tyranny just a phase? If it was, it had been recurring for a long time. And meanwhile, I told myself, what I needed was warriors. The Glondis Empire made slaves of peaceful people.
TWENTY-TWO
The next morning I was so stiff and sore I couldn't believe it. Me, who'd always been so good at athletics, who'd been one of the stronger kids in school! I could hardly close my hands or pick up food with them. About my only consolation was that I wasn't the only one. Michael and Arno weren't moving around too well either. I don't suppose Arno's sword-callused right hand was peeled raw like mine, but I wasn't so sure about his left.
One of the Varangians grinned at us and said something in Norse. Arno had been practicing the
language, and seemed to be doing pretty well, so I asked him what the man had said.
"He said the oar does that to you, when you're not used to it. And that the best cure for the oar is the oar. Yesterday one of them told me they were all sore the second day out of Miklagard."
I examined my hands-an oozing mess. I got another bucket of salt water to soak them, then just sort of flexed and unflexed them to limber them up before using the oar again.
The first minute was the worst, as far as pain was concerned.
As I rowed, I thought of the young slave oarsman that Deneen and Tarel had rescued. He must be pretty tough, I decided. I hoped he didn't cause any problems on their wilderness island. In Deneen's description, though, Moise had sounded all right. And Bubba had approved of him; that was the best assurance I could ask for.
By mid-morning my muscles weren't nearly as sore, although I was tired again, and even my hands felt better. As I had the day before, I soaked them in salt water for a while after each shift. We were finishing off our lunch when one of the Varangians saw sails to the southwest. They were triangular-two at first, and quickly two more. If we kept our present course, we'd just about run into them.
Gunnlag began shouting orders. Then, pulling on his steering oar, he put u
s into a long turn toward the north. The other rowing shift moved quickly to their oars. Of my shift, some began lowering the spar and sail, while others hauled furiously on the tow rope, taking in the slack that formed before the horse ship's steersman could match our turn. Arno ran to the stern of the long ship, his expression a mixture of chagrin and determination.
I saw Michael questioning a Varangian, and went over to him. "What is it?" I asked.
"The captain believes the sails are a Saracen fleet, and I think he is right. If that is so, we will have to abandon the prize ship and flee, else we will be taken."
Abandon the horse ship, and Arno's herd! Meanwhile, Gunnlag was determined to pick up his men aboard her. By that time I could see seven or eight sails, and surely they had seen ours. I grabbed the braided leather rope and helped pull; under the circumstances, I almost forgot how sore my hands were.
When we'd completed our turn, the oarsmen slowed until we'd pulled the prize ship's bow against our stern. As soon as they bumped, Arno vaulted across, and I thought I knew why: He wanted to find the spare charge cylinders for the blast pistol. Meanwhile the Varangian prize crew was scrambling aboard the long ship, but not the Greek crew; they were staying! Whether by choice or Varangian order, I didn't know. When the last Varangian was aboard, one of them raised his sword to cut the rope-and Arno wasn't back aboard yet! I grabbed the Varangian's sword arm and began yelling.
"Arno!" I yelled. "For God's sake, get back here! They're going to cut the rope!"
The Varangian stared, bug-eyed and indignant, for just a second, then aimed a punch at my head with his free hand, but I ducked it. Gunnlag shouted at him, then across at Arno in Norse, and the man I had hold of stopped trying to shake me loose. A moment later Arno came out of the hold and leaped aboard. Another Varangian cleft the rope.
"They were not there!" he said. "Someone must have thrown them overboard, else I'd have found them." His eyes were blazing. "If I had them, I could drive back the entire Saracen fleet. Then I'd take over this ship and make them row us to Palermo as my prize!"