I had never hunted much (there being no large game in Iceland) and was an indifferent rider. Harald, too, was a novice—he sat his mount awkwardly, and the animal seemed absurdly small for him though it was the biggest in the stable. The Rus, on the other hand, all of them, even Putscha on his pony, rode as if they were sewn to the saddle.
The forest around Novgorod is full of marshes, shallow lakes, and myriad little streams, but an early frost had hardened the ground so that we could gallop where we pleased. We struck down by the river and held our course that way, riding south towards Lake Ilmen through stands of pine, dark with the shade of overhanging boughs, and oak trees, covered trunk and twig with a glittering sheath of ice.
“My dear, you’re not too cold?” Yaroslav inquired of his wife, who rode beside him, just ahead of me. “Your mittens—where are they? In God’s name put them on, your little hands will soon be frozen! And pull up the collar of your coat, never mind that it hides your pretty neck. That’s better. You women, ha, ha! You women!” He chuckled and shook his head. After a pause, he resumed. “I wonder, shall we find the lake frozen clear across? No, of course not; no, you’re quite right. I was thinking, my dear, we should stop tonight at the country house of Dyuk Osipovich—yes, yes, I know, My Love, but he has offered and I can’t very well refuse him, now really, can I? And we’ll finish up at your estate on the lake, does that please you? I thought it would—one’s own familiar things around one, there’s nothing to compare with it! Ah, if only God sends herds of animals across our path—enough to satisfy even Mstislav—then we shall soon be home again, soon home again with our dear little ones around us. I’m praying for it, believe me.”
With such conversation did fond Yaroslav beguile his Lady. While she favored him at intervals with a nod.
When the woods gave way again to open land where we could ride several abreast, Dag, Harald, and I rode alongside the couple, and the conversation became general and quite merry.
Dag was at his wittiest and Ingigerd laughed at every sally. Even Harald managed a few awkward pleasantries, muttering them into his bosom so that he would not seem to be addressing her in case she chose to ignore him. But, on the contrary, she answered him very pleasantly.
I suggested to Harald that we play the game of kennings, challenging her and Yaroslav to guess the meanings of the knotty phrases that skaldic poets employ: ‘Fjord elk’ for ship; ‘wound dew’ for blood, and the like. Her delight and wonder at our cleverness knew no bounds.
What a number of faces this woman wears! I thought to myself. With her daughter, severe; with her husband, aloof; with me, at first, charming, but afterwards, cool; with Harald, until now, not even that. Yet here, dressed in men’s breeches and a coat too large in the shoulders, she seems, strangely enough, most girlish and gay. And which of all these faces is truly hers—or, have we even seen the true one yet?
The prince’s forest teemed with game of every kind and it was decided to hunt a different sort of beast each day. And so it went: on the first day, boar; on the second, wolf; and on the third day, bison. This is an animal I had not seen nor even heard of before. It is like a bull but shaggy, with its head covered by a mass of wool, and a woolly beard hanging from its chin. The Rus hunt it on horseback with the bow, which they have learned to do from the steppe dwellers.
Mstislav’s Pecheneg bodyguard—a silent, watchful man named Kuchug—brought down one, galloping alongside it with the reins in his teeth and shooting it until it bristled with arrows. Mstislav wounded one, but his horse stumbled and it got away. And Yaroslav actually killed one, though he gave the credit to Saint George to whom he had prayed as he loosed his arrow. Bishop Yefrem killed one too and was quite happy to take the credit for himself.
That evening we lodged at Gorodische, an estate of Ingigerd’s about three miles from Novgorod by the shore of Lake Ilmen where the Volkhov leaves it.
Our three day excursion had taken us round the lake and we were nearing our starting place. Harald, out of his element, with no opportunity to shine and nothing to show for his pains, had gotten more irritable every day until now he was sunk in a very black mood. After picking at his dinner, he wrapped himself in his furs and went quickly to sleep, or pretended to.
The rest of us stayed up, stretching our legs to the oven, while Mstislav, as he worked the burrs out of his wolfhound’s coat, entertained us with stories of hunts gone by and dwelt lovingly on each of his narrow escapes from death.
The next morning Ingigerd went out of her way to be charming to Harald, asking him how he had slept and refusing to be put off by his mumbled replies. She declared her intention to go hawking that day, for Lake Ilmen, she said, was home to thousands of birds. “That is the quarry I prefer, gospodin,” she said. “Am I right in guessing that you’re as bored as I am with all this chasing after bison, wolves, and pigs? Let the others go their own way—what is it to be today, husband, elk? Wild horse? Well, never mind, but please do me the favor to come with me, gospodin Harald. Dag and Odd too, unless they would find a woman’s company tedious. I keep a well-stocked mews. Come choose whatever bird you like.”
Harald could not very well refuse her pretty invitation, and Dag and I, after an exchange of wary looks, agreed also. Yaroslav, I thought, looked as though he would much rather be coming with us than keeping his brother’s company for another day. But Ingigerd had quite pointedly not invited him.
The mews was a long, dimly lit shed that smelt of feathers and droppings.
“Speak softly,” she whispered. “Make no sudden movements. Their nerves are as taut as bowstrings.”
On perches along both walls they sat—perfectly still until they sensed us. Then a current of excitement ran through them, audible in shrill cries, in the fanning of wings, in the tinkling of the bells on their jesses. Pairs of glittering eyes followed us in jerky movements. It was a thrilling feeling to be in the dark, unprotected, amongst these sensitive killers.
“You may choose among eagles, gyrfalcons, goshawks, sparrow hawks,” Ingigerd said in a low voice, “but the best are my little peregrines.”
I recalled how Harald had bought gifts for the royal couple in Aldeigjuborg: a falcon for him, a reliquary for her. Funny that he had got their tastes exactly backwards.
Pulling on a horsehide gauntlet, she took a small brown bird on her fist.
“My favorite. She has the courage of an eagle, this one. I fly only females, they are the great killers—larger, stronger, braver—oh, much braver—than their mates. See the thighs, how muscular they are. It’s not strength of wing alone that counts in a falcon. Come, now, and choose.”
Dag and I followed her advice and chose peregrines. Harald chose an enormous eagle.
Outside, the morning light was dazzling—the weather having improved over night. We mounted our horses (Putscha, as always, performing the office of footstool for his mistress) and the grooms handed up our hooded birds onto our gauntleted fists.
“Hold the jesses between your fingers, so,” Ingigerd said, indicating the strips of leather that hung from each leg. “That way you won’t lose her.”
We left Gorodische and cantered over the stony ground by the lakeside, followed at a discrete distance by three mounted servants, leading a pack horse with food and drink for the day’s excursion.
Ilmen is a big lake. Ice had formed already round its edges. In a few weeks more you could drive a sledge and team straight across it.
As we slowed to a foot pace, the princess instructed us how to let the right arm ‘float’ so as to cushion the jolting of the horse’s gait, which falcons dislike. Meantime Sirko ranged ahead of us, sniffing out quarry. That dog, I reckoned, with its delicately shaped head and body so lean you could count its ribs, had a keener intelligence than all of Mstislav’s brawny mastiffs put together.
We rode four abreast, talking of this and that. Somewhat to my surprise the name of Olaf was never mentioned, not even when the subject touched on religion, as it did when we passed by the ancient cul
t center of the Slavic thunder god, Perun.
This was a close, thick, shadowy grove by the lakeside, full of gnarled trunks and twisted boughs. Dead fowls hung from the branches there and, dimly seen among the trunks, stood a wooden post carved in the rough likeness of a man. Sirko bounded into the trees, barking excitedly. She had found an unexpected quarry.
Men shouted and unseen bodies plunged away through the underbrush. Harald and I dismounted and went in a little way with our swords drawn, but we found nothing except a maggoty goat’s carcass several days old lying at the foot of the idol.
Harald shoved against this idol with all his might, straining until he was purple-faced, but he couldn’t budge it. It was easy to read his thoughts: Olaf, by the grace of God, had thrown down idols by the score, just by touching them, by merely commanding them. And could he not throw down even one? In the end, he had to be content with hacking up its face with his sword, and we made our way back to the others.
“Perun,” said Ingigerd, as we resumed our ride, “was their name for Thor and this was his place. The original statue was huge, so I’m told; its face made of beaten silver with a moustache of gold. But that was fifty years ago, before Saint Vladimir abolished the old religion and broke up the idols. Even so, the country folk here have made a new one which they sacrifice to in secret. Dvoeverie we call it: ‘double faith’. It persists not only in the countryside but even in our cities. Last year my husband hanged a dozen sorcerers in the town of Suzdal alone; we could hang many dozens more and still not root them all out.”
Here, I thought, was the obvious place to unite the praises of Olaf to those of Vladimir—the two champions of the new religion in their respective countries. Oddly, though, no one did. Perhaps Harald, Dag, and the princess felt reluctant to shatter this momentary truce by mentioning that man’s name, whose legacy set them at each other’s throats.
To fill the silence, I remarked that the old gods seemed to be everywhere in retreat.
“True,” said Ingigerd, “and yet, the heathen devils do not give way easily, do they?”
“I am of the opinion, Princess, that we ought to be free to choose the devils we prefer.”
“Are you? What an extraordinary idea,” she laughed. “But I suppose we must make allowances for a skald—poetry and deviltry being much the same thing.”
Dag was doing frantic things with his eyebrows to get my attention; Harald was giving me puzzled looks.
“Gospodin Odd,”—she regarded me now quite seriously—“for some reason it amuses you to play at being a heathen, but I doubt whether you have seen very much of heathenism, really. I have. Despite my father’s sternest efforts to forbid it, the old religion still flourishes in Sweden. To this very day the blood sacrifice is performed every ninth year at the great temple of Odin in Uppsala—not a mile from our hall.”
“I’ve heard of it,” I replied. “I once knew a Swedish berserker who was initiated there as a boy.” (Poor Glum—I hadn’t thought of him in a while. Blasted by Thor’s hammer while he stood on the pitching deck of my ship. Was he in Valhalla now, matching his frenzy with One-Eyed Odin? I mightily wanted to believe it.)
“Do you know what happens there?” Ingigerd pressed on. “They hang nine men by their necks from the trees that grow in the sacred grove. Nine men and nine males of every other sort of animal—much as was done here in Perun’s grove once upon a time—and they let the carcasses hang there till they rot. This is no idle rumor. I and my brothers were taken there as children to see this wickedness with our own eyes. I will never get the smell of the place out of my nostrils. Now, Odd Tangle-Hair, think carefully, for I know you are a young man who thinks about things. Are these really the devils you would have us be free to choose?”
“Princess, I would not willingly hang anyone. But were you not boasting only a moment ago of the twelve that your husband hanged in Suzdal?”
“But, in God’s name—!”
“Precisely.”
“Heigh ho!” cried Dag, breaking in upon us with a desperate laugh. “Can’t we talk of something less gloomy on this fine morning?”
Our conversation was ended more effectively by Sirko at that moment dashing into the midst of a flock of cranes that were hidden among the tall reeds by the side of the lake. Red-headed and dagger-beaked, they rose up with a great clatter of wings.
Instantly all else was forgotten in the excitement of the chase. Ingigerd, unhooded her falcon and made three swings with her arm, letting go the jesses on the third and launching the huntress into the air.
The little peregrine soared upwards on knife-blade wings until she was only a speck in the sky. Then, choosing her target, she dove, falling like an arrow, while below we earth-bound creatures held our breath. But at the last moment she missed the mark, while the cranes continued to gain altitude.
“Now,” breathed Ingigerd, “now show us your heart, little one.”
To strike a second time she must get above her prey again, at the cost of enormous effort, for even one steep climb is enough to tire a falcon. The cranes were moving out of our view now in a direction away from the lake. Ingigerd, laying her head on her horse’s neck, spurred it into the trees, heedless of branches and pitfalls, shouting encouragements to the bird. We raced madly after.
Again the falcon climbed and dove, and high above us there was a silent explosion of feathers. The dead crane, all legs and neck, fell to ground, the falcon descending after her.
Reining in our horses, we found her perched on the crane’s body, which was easily six times her size, beginning to pluck at it with her beak. Sirko stood guard beside her in case the other cranes returned, seeking vengeance, for catching her on the ground, they would kill her.
Ingigerd, with careful movements, stroked the peregrine’s back with one hand while she deftly hooded it with the other. Then, opening the crane with her knife, she cut off a bit of the flesh and fed it to the bird.
“I won’t fly her again today, she’s exhausted. You’ve done an eagle’s work this day, pretty one.”
After that, Harald, Dag, and I each flew our birds with good success at grouse and wild goose. As the afternoon light began to fade, we handed over our falcons to the servants.
“Let’s go back again by the shore,” said Ingigerd, “though it is not the straightest way to Novgorod. The lake is very beautiful at sunset. The loons call to their mates and, if we’re lucky, we may hear a nightingale sing. The Rus grow sad and weep whenever they hear one,” she smiled.
The setting sun splashed fire on the clouds, while we rode, not talking much, but listening to the conversation of the birds, and the lapping of the water, and the scrunch of our horses’ hoofs on the pebbly shore.
We were skirting Perun’s grove again and Harald turned to me and said he wasn’t sure what a nightingale sounded like but he thought he heard—
What he heard was the whistle of a sling bullet. The first one flew wide but the second hit his right shoulder. He slid to the ground, writhing in pain while his horse reared and plunged away. Out of the shadowy grove figures leapt at us, their faces hidden behind grinning leather masks such as mummers wear, and shouting, “Perun! Perun!”
One seized my horse’s bridle, another dragged me from the saddle and struck me a blow with a cudgel at the base of my skull that laid me out senseless. When I came to, the clangor of steel on steel rang all around me. I struggled to my feet, drew my sword, leapt into the melee.
“The princess!” shouted Dag to me. “Find her, watch her!”
But I had no chance to obey. One of our attackers came at me with a spear. I dodged his thrust and drove my blade into his side, then skewered another between the shoulder blades. Dag took his place beside me—leaping, whirling and striking everywhere.
But Harald was having the worst of it. It was like the bloody field of Stiklestad all over again. Just as on that day, he stood with his feet planted wide apart and wielded his long sword with two hands. But he had more assailants to contend with tha
n either Dag or I, and as fast as one fell another took his place.
We cut our way to him and the three of us fought back to back. Soon seven or eight of the enemy, about half their number, lay dead or dying on the ground, their masked faces smiling as though death were a pleasure to them. The cries of “Perun!” grew thinner.
Finally, they’d had enough.
Three of them kept us in play until the others could drag their fallen friends out of sight; then those three broke off and dashed after their comrades into the trees.
We sagged against each other, gasping for breath. I felt my skull where I’d been clubbed, and hoped it wasn’t cracked. It hurt like anything. From the ground nearby came a moan; Ingigerd raised herself on an elbow and called to us. Sirko, quivering in every muscle, stood guard over her. Helping the princess to stand, we saw on her forehead a red swelling and a smear of blood.
“A stone,” she said, touching the place and wincing.
“You’re very lucky,” replied Dag, “it only grazed you. And none of them came near you to finish the job with steel?”
“I suppose they shrank from killing a woman.”
“But Princess, you are dressed as a man.”
“Well, then, God has been merciful! Would you rather I’d died?”
“Oh, on the contrary, Princess, your death, alone in our company, would be most awkward for us.”
“Filthy heathen animals!” she shifted ground abruptly. “Obviously, the ones we surprised this morning, waiting in ambush for us. When my husband catches them he’ll nail their heads to these trees, I swear it by Christ’s Body!”
“Villagers of the neighborhood, you think?” Dag asked.
“What else?”
“Why were they masked?”
She shrugged. “Part of their devilish cult.”
“Aha. But still, rather too well armed for peasants, wouldn’t you say?
“Well then who, pray?” she rounded on him sharply.
“I’m sure I don’t know.”
The Ice Queen Page 7