“Dag, I know I haven’t pleased you, I’m sorry for that. But I only came to this filthy country because of you and I’ll gladly leave it for the same reason.”
“Don’t talk like a fool.”
“No, I mean it, I can’t bear him any longer, the brutal bastard!”
“You can and will. Stay the course, Odd, the prize is worth it.”
“I don’t believe that any more. And you—where will you go now?”
“Oh, the world’s full of kings. My talents won’t go a-begging.”
“I don’t know what to say.”
“Don’t say anything. Go along with you now, I’m best left to myself when I drink.”
“We’ll meet again one day?”
“Of course we will.” He put out his hand and gripped mine.
I went to my bed angry that night.
At dawn the druzhina mustered at the riverside: the Swedes, Rus, and Slavs in one group; the Norwegians in another. Even though in theory Harald and Eilif now jointly commanded the whole force, each preferred to surround himself with his own men. There were still, in reality, two druzhinas.
Einar and I stood with the Norwegians, watching slaves trundle our provisions in fifty-pound sacks up the gangway. Fully laden, the Saint Olaf’s deck was nearly awash. In a moderate sea she would have shipped water and gone straight to the bottom. Even a sudden squall on Lake Ilmen would be too much for her.
While things were being readied, Harald strode along our front, inspecting us. If the men even noticed Dag’s absence they gave no sign of it; it was Harald alone they had eyes for. He knew every one of them by name; knew everything worth knowing about them for praise or blame. Striding along the ranks, a giant among pygmies, his long hair streaming and his moustaches hanging like walrus tusks below his chin, he was beginning to take on that form which one day all the world would recognize: Harald Hardrada—Harald the Ruthless—the Thunderbolt of the North.
“We’re on Prince Yaroslav’s business,” he told them sternly. “Let us give him no cause to regret it.”
Touching his thumb to the ax blade of one man, he scowled, “Kolbein Foul-Breath, you couldn’t cut your toenails with that. Don’t show me your face again until it’s sharp.” One handsome fellow, whom we called Orm Peacock because of the care he lavished on his person, had a big bundle of clothes on his back that included a sable coat, two pair of soft leather boots and similar stuff. Harald took the whole bundle from him and tossed it in the river. “We’ve no room for that costly trash, Peacock. The girls of Kiev must love you in plain soldier’s dress or not at all.”
Another was doing his best to conceal a small keg under his cloak. That, too, went into the river. “I tell you now, Kolbein Hakonsson—and this goes for the rest of you—we’ve no room to spare aboard this ship for casks of ale, nor for drunkards either. You’ll drink river water and like it until Yaroslav’s banner flies from Kiev’s wall and if any man disobeys in this there’ll be no trial for him, though he be the bravest in my crew, but I will nail his head to the mast and give him no Christian burial.”
Other jugs and flasks appeared from under cloaks and inside bedrolls and were quietly laid aside. They knew he was as good as his word. Over the winter he had hanged seven of their mates for rape and four for murder.
“That’s better. Now, my boys, attend to this. If ours is the first ship to come in sight of Kiev there’ll be a grivna of silver for every man of you out of my own pocket and you may drink yourselves stupid on it once the fighting’s over!”
They cheered themselves hoarse.
While this was going on, Eilif was pretending to inspect his men, who joked among themselves and all but ignored him.
Now Yaroslav emerged from the courtyard of his palace, accompanied by Inge, Thordis, and the children. The ‘sucking pigs’ stood in a row and their father kissed them each on both cheeks and patted their heads, not omitting to kiss Yelisaveta’s red-headed dwarf, Nenilushka, too, for luck.
“Fear not my little ones,” he said with an attempt at cheerfulness, “we shall bring your brother back to you safe and sound—with God’s help. But you must pray for him every night and light a candle to the Virgin every day, you won’t forget now, will you? There, there, I know you won’t.”
Ingigerd stood slightly apart from her brood with only Magnus, as ever, half hidden behind her skirt. Yaroslav kissed her last of all, with great ceremony and tenderness, on her cheeks and lips. He might as well have kissed the door post.
“Yaroslav Vladimirovich,” called Harald, “will you do us the honor to use the Saint Olaf as your flagship?”
“Well, ah, yes, why not? Happy to … fine-looking ship … stout crew,” the Prince blathered, limping toward us.
Our boys whooped and banged their weapons on their shields as the prince had his banner carried before him up the gang-plank. Eilif’s men watched in ominous silence.
Harald, continuing his inspection of our weapons and kit, approached Einar and me. Tree-Foot had been up long before dawn sharpening his sword and getting his few possessions together. He needed to get up earlier than the rest of us because his movements lately had become halting and feeble. I’d tried as kindly as I could to dissuade him from coming with us, only to be answered with a bitter stare.
Over the winter he had aged greatly. One day I came upon him sitting on the barracks floor in a daze, not knowing how he got there, and ever since then his words were slurred like a drunken man’s and the corner of his mouth drooped. His bright eye had lost its luster. I saw fear and bewilderment in it now. His body was betraying him at last, and he knew it. He showed it by being more prickly than ever.
Stopping before us, Harald frowned. “The old man—,” he began, but I cut him off:
“—was formerly one of a brotherhood of warriors the like of which is seen no more, and was standard bearer to Sigvalt, their Jarl. He has forgotten more of war-craft than the rest of us will ever know.”
We stared each other down. I was prepared to leave Harald on the spot if he humiliated Einar. He read it in my eyes, I know, and was mindful that he could have no fame without his skald to give it voice. I still had that over him.
“As I was going to say, Tangle-Hair,” he replied softly, “the old man is your friend, I know it well. Never fear, old codger,”—he clapped Einar on the shoulder with false good humor—“I expect you don’t eat much. We’ll squeeze you in somewhere.” With these words he passed on, while Einar continued to look straight ahead of him, motionless except for a twitching of his cheek.
That, of course, wasn’t what Harald had been going to say. What he did say was cruel enough, though not intentionally so—this was Harald in a good mood, you understand. Having just unburdened himself of Dag, he was feeling generous. Still and all, I had made him back down. With Harald you never knew what that might cost you some day.
Then we raced to man the oars while Bishop Yefrem and his priests held aloft the icons and golden crosses on long staffs and blessed us with perfumed smoke.
We sailed out of Novgorod under two banners, both flying from the Saint Olaf’s masthead: one, the trident emblem of the house of Rurik; the other, Harald’s own banner. This, like his armor, was a novelty. He’d had it made just lately and boasted (truthfully or not, I don’t know) that Yelisaveta had stitched it with her own hands. It showed a black raven on a red ground, and when the wind made it flutter the raven moved its wings. Harald called his banner Land-Waster; it would be well known and much feared throughout our northern land one day.
Along the bank, women waved a last farewell to their men: Ingigerd to Yaroslav (not to me, thank the gods, though I half expected it of her); old Thordis to Einar, touching her apron to her watery eyes (he affected not to notice); and Yelisaveta brazenly to Harald, who returned it with a bold grin. The girl’s marriage to Eilif, I should add, which was to have taken place by now—she having just turned fourteen—was indefinitely postponed because she absolutely refused to go through with it.
> Our way lay across Lake Ilmen and up the river Lovat which flows into its southern end. This river has a swift current against which we had to battle. Harald, shucking his mail coat and stripping to the waist, pulled an oar with the rest of us and set a pace that we could hardly keep up with. Behind us we could hear Eilif’s angry voice cursing his rowers for their sluggishness—the rivalry between the two captains now being reduced to a simple boat race. But we took the lead and never lost it.
It’s discouraging how fast your rowing muscles can go soft on you. Though we worked with a will, we still made only about five and thirty versts that first day and by the next morning we could barely straighten our backs. (I should explain that verst is the Rus word for what I reckon is a little less than one of our miles.) We faced two hundred and seventy versts more of this torture before we would cross the watershed to the headwaters of the Dnieper—and we would have to quicken our pace or risk running out of rations short of our goal.
Somehow we did it.
All the ships carried more men than they had oarlocks, so that rowers were able to change off frequently in rotation. Even Yaroslav, not to be outshone by Harald, took his turn on the bench, just as his grandfather Svyatoslav, that fierce heathen warrior-prince, is said to have done. In this way we rowed steadily each day from dawn until pitch darkness overtook us.
For those not rowing there was other work for blistered hands to do—namely, working the grindstones to produce oatmeal for our porridge and rye flour for our bread. Warriors, their arms white with flour up to the elbows, swore that they hadn’t joined the druzhina to be housewives!
At night when we camped, our first task was to start a fire and boil the water for the oatmeal and dried beans; next, to heat flat stones in the fire to bake our bread on. Our loaves were often burnt on the outside and half raw within, but we were too tired and hungry to mind.
You might expect that men as tired as we would have no strength left for fighting among ourselves, but so bitter had grown the hatred between Eilif’s men and ours that on the very first night a brawl erupted over the choice of a campsite. One man of ours and one of theirs was killed and quite a few on both sides bloodied. From then on curses, taunts, shoving matches, and stone throwing between us were daily occurrences.
If feelings between Harald and Eilif grew more embittered, those between Harald and myself improved. I have already said that he was at his best when he was leading men into battle, and this was even truer (I was forced to admit) now that Dag was out of the picture. Harald did breathe easier. The day’s labor was never so grueling that he couldn’t joke with us at the end of it, ask me for a bit of a story, get the men talking or singing to take their minds off their blisters and aching bones. Ours was the only part of the camp where laughter was ever heard.
Yaroslav generally took his meals with us and I found to my surprise that there were sides to the prince I hadn’t seen before. He could curse—although nothing stronger than ‘damn your eyes’; he could laugh at a dirty story; he could even be persuaded to do a bit of a sailors’ jig despite his game leg. As the distance lengthened between Ingigerd and him, I saw him undergo a subtle change, becoming less the timid, weak, and foolish man that she believed him to be, and, in some fashion, made of him.
Ah, Ingigerd, what have you done to us men! Whenever she drifted into my thoughts I drove her out with every ounce of will that was in me. How much simpler life was without her.
Once on the Dnieper we were borne along on the swift current that sweeps down to the great sea which the Rus call ‘Black,’ two thousand versts to the south. Picking up a steady breeze as well, we flew along at three times the speed we had made before.
As we neared our journey’s end, we first smelt and then began to see the signs of pillage and destruction. Charred fields, smoldering orchards, whole villages, as well as the dvors of many a rich boyar, burned to the ground; and scattered everywhere the bones of men and beasts, already picked clean by vultures. It appeared from a hasty reconnaissance that many, including even babies, had been burnt, strangled with nooses, or impaled on stakes where they hung until their corpses fell to pieces.
I heard plenty of talk about our enemy. “They’re demons from Hell, not men”, said one old warrior. “They have the faces of animals,” said another. “They eat, sleep, even fuck their women on horseback.” Others chimed in: “They neither plow nor sow and their only houses are black tents on wheels. Their dinner is rats and lice, which they wash down with horse’s blood. They have no religion except the worship of animals. They dress in sheepskins and their chief weapon is the bow. With these little bows they can drive an arrow through your shield, your ring mail, your leather jerkin, and the shaft will still come half-way out your back.”
A little past noon on the thirteenth day of our voyage, we came in sight of the fortified hamlet of Vyshgorod, perched on a height about eight versts above the city. We would use it as a base from which to launch a counter-attack. There was no other suitable stronghold this side of Kiev.
To announce ourselves and give heart to the garrison there, we struck up a rowing chant, which the ships behind us took up also. The chant died in our throats as we drew nearer and saw how the log walls encircling the hamlet bristled with arrows and were in many places black and smoking. Here, too, vultures circled overhead and crows strutted on the ramparts. Save for the cries of carrion birds there was no sound.
16
Devils of the Steppe
Harald, wanting to have a look round, grounded the Saint Olaf where a steep stairway, carved into the face of the bluff, led up to the citadel. While the rest of the fleet stayed safely out in mid-channel, we leapt down warily onto the narrow beach with our swords drawn.
As we stood at the foot of the steps uncertain what to do, a raven, roosting on the parapet above, gave out a sudden squawk and flapped away. Where it had strutted a solitary face peered cautiously down. Next moment there were shouts from within and the postern gate swung out. Haggard men in battle-stained clothes ran down to meet us.
With Harald in the lead, we climbed the steps and entered the village. Inside, a jumble of tiny cottages crowded right up to the wall. Most were blackened by fire and open to the sky where their thatched roofs had been burnt away. In the lane leading from the postern a raggedy mob of women and children, and even some men of fighting age, reached out bony hands to us. They were as sad a lot of human beings as ever I’d seen. Along every path and in every doorway lay wounded men with hollow, haunted eyes. Such few farm animals as could be seen were skeletons, hardly worth the boiling, though even they would go into the pot soon enough.
Yaroslav, followed by Eilif and the senior druzhiniks, came up behind us. Amid a babble of voices, we were all conducted to Vyshgorod’s church—the only building that still had a roof over it. After the sweet, clean air of river and woods the stench here of sweat, piss, and gangrenous flesh was stomach-turning. Among the rows of sick and wounded that stretched the whole length of the darkened nave, lay one figure a little apart from the others, his head pillowed on his saddle and a blood-streaked robe spread over him.
“Eustaxi Mstislavich, is it you?” asked Yaroslav, bending over the body of his nephew.
Though at first sight his face resembled an old man’s, so pinched and pale it was, I reckoned his age at no more than thirty. Raising himself on an elbow, he whispered, “Uncle Yaroslav? Thank God.”
Any other man than Yaroslav might have answered, “No thanks to you, you wretch!” But not our prince. “Tell me, in God’s name, what has happened here,” was all he said.
Gritting his teeth against pain, Eustaxi answered, “We men of Smolensk and Chernigov, five hundred horsemen, came here—five? six weeks ago?
We swam our horses across the river and, without stopping to rest or eat, my father led us in a charge straight up to the walls of Kiev.”
Yaroslav shook his head sadly. “‘Charge!’ is the only command Mstislav knows.”
“When the enemy caug
ht sight of us they jumped on their horses and galloped away. ‘See how they run!’ cried my father. ‘After them!’ They pretended to retreat, drew us on until our horses were exhausted and our column strung out and then suddenly turned on us. In an instant they were all around us, pouring in arrows. One pierced my lung, another pinned my thigh to my saddle. We didn’t have a chance.” Eustaxi clutched his uncle’s arm as a spasm of pain shook him. He and a handful of others, he said between clenched teeth, had escaped and sheltered here—only to starve to death. Foraging parties sent out at night never came back. And every day a heathen band would ride over from their camp to scream insults at them and dare them to come out and fight. “Sometimes”—his voice sank to a whisper—“sometimes they ride up to the walls and spit.”
“And you permit this, you dog!” cried Harald, shouldering Yaroslav out of the way. “One skirmish a month ago and since then you’ve done nothing but skulk in this hole and lick your wounds? No wonder they spit at you. I join them!”
Every head in the place swiveled toward us. Eustaxi groped for his sword; the effort was too great, he rolled back, gasping. “Who the devil are you that talks so brave? If I could stand, damn you …” A fit of coughing interrupted his words and he spit some blood into a cloth.
“Now, now, my boy,” Yaroslav stroked his head. “But your father? Not dead—?”
“I wish to Christ he were! The Wild Bison of Chernigov was taken alive. They brought him here, right under the walls, to show him to us: stripped naked, a wooden yoke across his neck with his arms strapped to the ends of it; his body cut and bleeding from the lash. He cried out, begging us to kill him with an arrow. I ordered it done, but they dragged him out of range at the end of a lasso. He ran, he stumbled, and still they dragged him with his face in the dirt. That was weeks ago. Maybe he is dead by now—I pray he is. But Tyrakh Khan knows his worth in ransom; they’ll keep him alive just for that.”
The Ice Queen Page 15