The Ice Queen

by Bruce Macbain

  A storm demolished all our ships as they lay exposed on the beach. When we appealed to our erstwhile ally for shelter, we were answered with arrows. There was nothing to do but march back along the coast to Semender, carrying on our backs as much of our plunder as we had been able to salvage.

  Our route took us around the eastern spur of an enormous mountain range whose snow-capped peaks touched the clouds. On the lower slopes, sheep grazed and villages clung to jutting crags of rock. Between these mountains and the sea was only a narrow pass, rocky and rough, and affording many places for ambush.

  Day after day we pushed on over the sun-scorched ground, leaving a trail of jewelry, coin, and other costly trash behind us. We were meat for the eagles. Some were picked off by the arrows of marauding Albani mountaineers, others succumbed to a bloody flux in the bowels. Yngvar died of this one night, calling on Christ to save his soul.

  Not long after that, near a pestilential Saracen town called al-Bab, the Emir of that place, one Mansur bin Maymun, invited the leaders of our band to parlay with him. After Yngvar’s death I was chosen as one of several leaders by the men. While he entertained us, his warriors fell upon the main body of our men, hemmed in between the mountains and the sea, and cut down every last one. We survivors were thrown into chains. And that is how, for the second time in my life, I became a slave.

  It was Mansur’s idea to give us away as gifts to the neighboring emirs and chieftains with whom he wanted to have good relations. Tall yellow-haired men were prized by these rather short, rather dark people. I, however, being short and dark myself, was not considered worth giving away. And so, one by one, I saw my comrades disappear.

  Slavery was more galling to me now than my experience of it in Finland had ever been. There, I was the captain of a crew who looked to me to lead them. Here, I was alone, with no one to be brave for. I dreamt of escape at first, but by degrees I sank into a state of hopelessness from which there was no brave and beautiful Ainikki to rouse me.

  The only profit I derived from the endless drudgery of hauling water and wood to the Emir’s kitchen, was that I learned somewhat of the Greek tongue. Among the slaves of Mansur’s household was a Greek sea captain—a leather-skinned man by the name of Leonidas. His ship had been seized by pirates on the Black Sea, and for years he had been traded from pillar to post until finally washing up here.

  For three years he and I were chained together in the slave barracks each night. Since we had no language in common and he absolutely refused to learn mine, I was forced to learn his. Along with his language I learned, too, that I was a ‘barbarian’: a lower form of life than himself, though, he grudgingly admitted, cleverer than others he had known. What he loved to talk about most were the great seaports that he had spent his life sailing amongst: Sinope, Trebizond, Cherson, but, above all, the great, the incomparable City of Constantine. In a tone of awe he would describe its miles of soaring battlements, its church whose dome was like the vault of heaven, its hoard of priceless relics among which were the Virgin’s robe, Moses’ staff, the head of John the Baptist, the foot of Saint Paul—the list went on and on.

  Leonidas and I became close despite our contrary natures. To my mind he was a braggart and a liar—telling things about this Constantinople so fantastic that none but a fool would believe them. From his point of view, I was a most unsatisfying partner in the ‘Greek wrestling’ that he urged upon me night after night and to which, from sheer loneliness, I sometimes gave way.

  He was a quarrelsome man, too, and often we would argue about the most trifling things, only to make up again later. We had quarreled one night about something or other, I forget what, and kept up a row until the other slaves pelted us with their shoes. Leonidas turned his back to me and I to him and so we lay angrily until we fell asleep.

  In the morning when Mansur’s overseer banged on his brass pot to awaken us, Leonidas lay dead beside me, without a mark on his body. He had complained the previous day of a gripping pain in his jaw and arm; it had made him worse-tempered than usual. But how could a man die of that?

  And it seems to me that I went mad for a time, though I don’t remember clearly; that I began to weep and to beat on his chest with my fists, and wouldn’t leave off until the steward drove me away with blows and curses. I speak of it now only to show how just a single Greek can corrupt a Northman’s spirit. Imagine, then, the effect of a city full of them! After Leonidas’s death, I sank into such a state of melancholy that the Emir lost patience with me and sold me for a few coppers to a leather tanner in the town. The tanner passed me on to a wool dyer, who traded me to a butcher, who sold me to a quarryman. The quarryman used me to pay off a gambling debt that he owed to an itinerant merchant, a Turk by the name of Murad.

  The very devil of a man.

  Murad’s business consisted in selling cheap goods made in the coastal towns to the tribesman who dwelt deep in those mighty mountains that hung above us. He used me as a beast of burden, to carry his tinker’s pack up mountain paths so steep that even the mules could not manage them. And how he loved to use the rod on me!

  Once, and still near the beginning of my time with him, I felt that I could not stand one more beating and decided to kill myself by falling off a high rock ledge. But the pack on my back broke my fall and all I got were bruises. For punishment, Murad branded me with an X on my chest.

  As savagely as he was accustomed to beat his mules, so he beat me. And after a time I became, like the mules, stupid, stolid, and mean.

  29

  Returned from the Dead

  The Rus have a saying: ‘Day after day as the rain falls, week after week as the grass grows, year after year as the river flows’.

  Sluggish and bitter on the tongue, the waters of my life crept by for four long years.

  It was now the spring of the year 1037 (as Catholics count the years; Greeks and Rus would call it the six thousand-five hundred-and-forty-sixth year from the Creation of the world, and the Mohammedans, the four hundred-and-fifteenth from the flight of their Prophet). I was twenty-five years old and felt a hundred. I had long ago ceased to hope.

  But my master’s business prospered. So much so, in fact, that he was able to purchase some quite beautiful girls, captives in a raid of one mountain tribe upon another, and with this valuable cargo and several camels to carry his other goods, he joined the great caravan that came each spring up the western shore of our sea. The caravan brought horses and spices from Arabia, steel from Damascus, pistachio nuts and dried fruits from Persia, and every sort of beautiful and costly trifle from the workshops of Kwarizm. I could scarcely picture to myself the country from which it had started. As to its destination, my fellow slaves were as ignorant as I, and our masters did not see fit to enlighten us.

  With the soaring mountains on our left, we headed west, gradually turning to the north until the tallest peaks were lost to view. Our way was across the open steppe. Crossing that endless expanse of grass and stony barrens was, to me, exactly like being adrift at sea. The sun told me we were making westward, but how far we were to the north or south I had no clear idea.

  Still, as day followed day, I began to suspect that I knew our destination. I tried not to hope, for fear I was mistaken, but the closer we approached the more unbearable was my anticipation.

  As we approached the city wall, acres of young fruit trees bloomed and green ears of grain bowed in the wind, where I remembered only charred stubble, corpses, and vultures. But it was still the same citadel that looked down from its heights upon the wide Dnieper. Kiev! My unsuspecting master had brought me to within an inch of freedom.

  We halted at a caravanserai on the left bank. As the hour was already late, the Saracens faced east to say their evening prayers while we slaves, released from the long coffle-chain, saw to watering the camels and performing all the other business of setting up camp.

  Later, after chewing my few scraps of dinner, I was manacled, as always, and my slave collar was attached by a short chain to a c
amel’s hind leg—an arrangement which the camel resented as much as I. That night I could not close my eyes. My brain was in a fever. Somehow, somehow I would find a way to escape. If I didn’t, then I deserved to die a dog’s death.

  The next morning, our masters mounted their horses and camels, loaded us slaves with bundles of trade-goods, and drove us through the waist-high water at the ford, where the mid-channel island lies.

  Once beyond this wooded island, I could see the podol sprawled along the river bank: risen from its ashes, and once again a noisy, lively jumble of shop-houses, tents, stalls, and pens for animals and slaves. The river bank, moreover, was thick with strugi—fifty hulls at least, with workmen crawling over them like ants, hammering, scraping, tarring, to make them ship-shape. The time was early June and this was a part of the great trading convoy making ready for its yearly voyage to Golden Miklagard—New Rome, New Jerusalem, Constantine’s great city.

  A space had been reserved in the busiest part of the market for our caravan. Scarcely were we installed than hordes of customers crowded round us. My master’s string of girls were set out for inspection on a low platform built of planks. I, too, mounted the platform—not as merchandise, but to carry my master’s stool, fan, and parasol, for the day was a hot one.

  A stream of buyers passed before us while Murad and his fellows kept up a constant sing-song chant, advertising the quality and price of this girl and that one. I was standing by his stool, fanning him listlessly while my eyes drank in every detail of the scene before me, when I saw a face I knew! Five years had not changed it: the same pushed-up nose, the same bulging eyes, the same greasy braids weighted at the tips with lead balls. He was examining a young girl of my master’s string, pinching her jaw between thumb and forefinger and peering into her mouth while tears ran down her cheeks.

  “Stavko!” I hissed.

  He gave a start and looked up to see who spoke.

  In Norse I said, “Stavko, it’s me!” I was nearly close enough to touch him; I stretched out my hand. “In God’s name, buy me!”

  “Strong back, sir, good legs.” Murad, smelling a sale, sprang from his stool and propelled me forward, going into his pitch in the Arabic-Turkic-Slavonic pidgin that all the merchants spoke. “Simple-minded, but I’ve taught him to fear the rod. Give you a good day’s work.” He thumped my chest with his fist. “Good health, last you for years.”

  Stavko’s eyes looked straight into mine. He seemed to hesitate a moment, then frowned. “No. I buy only females; how much for girl?”

  They bargained over her while I watched in despair. Stavko knew me. He knew me, damn his eyes!

  “Get back, you!” Murad noticed how I stared at them and shoved me away.

  I cannot describe the torment that racked me for the rest of that day. Truly, I was abandoned—By Odin All-Father, by the White Christ, even by Stavko Ulanovich, the slaver. Might they all rot! I would make one more try for freedom and if I died, so be it.

  I had a plan.

  At dusk, Murad and his friends covered their stalls and drove their slaves back into the river, loaded down with the unsold goods which they would guard over-night in the caravanserai. I was lucky in that I had only the stool, umbrella, and fan to carry.

  We were at the island now, midstream; Murad, on his camel riding ahead of me, not looking back; the leafy branch of a tree between us. I let go the umbrella and other things, sank under water and swam until my lungs were ready to burst. Ten or a dozen breaths would bring me opposite the cave’s mouth, high up on the bank, where Kuchug and I had climbed up the rope that night long ago; the entrance to the Monastery of the Caves. Father Feodosy and his monks—they would remember me, and would surely redeem a Christian from slavery to the Infidel. How thankful I was at that moment to be a Christman!

  But as I came up gasping for air, the men of the caravan were already upon me, the long legs of the camels churning the water all around. Murad, with a guttural curse, leaned low from his saddle and slashed at me with his long rod. I covered my face with my arms and howled.

  The next day he woke me with a kick and told me that I was to be sold; furthermore, if he could find no one to offer even one copper penny for me he would kill me and throw my body to the dogs.

  This time, when we forded the river, he attached a chain to my iron collar and dragged me behind him. I was half drowned, half throttled, by the time we reached the bank.

  All that day I stood in my rags beneath the blistering sun. A few customers paused to thumb my muscles or look at my teeth. Each time this happened I screamed and rattled my chains like a madman to frighten them away; and the more Murad cursed me the louder I screamed and flung myself about. If only he were true to his word I need not see another sunrise!

  But nearly at the day’s end a man with the costume and bearing of a boyar, put a silver coin in Murad’s palm and instructed his servant to lead me away by my chain. I screamed, I gibbered, I dug my heels in the ground. No use. The servant was stronger than I was. My new owner never looked back, never slowed his pace. We mounted Borichev Slope and went in through the citadel gate. My little store of strength exhausted, I gave up struggling, and trotted at the end of my leash, my arms hanging loose and my head jerking up and down.

  Everywhere we passed, building sites swarmed with workmen where fine houses and churches were rising. We stopped, at last, before a single-storied log house that lay off a narrow lane. The door opened to my owner’s knock and I was dragged inside. The room had only one occupant. Resting his elbows on a table and with a toothsome smile lighting up his face, sat Stavko Ulanovich.

  “Well done, gospodin Boris,” he said to the man who had bought me. “You will have your house back again by evening with many thanks.”

  With a doubtful look at me, Boris and his servant left us alone.

  “Odd Tangle-Hair, let me embrace you!” Like an affectionate dog on its hind legs he pawed me, eyes brilliant with happiness, spittle flying. “How you do look!” he cried in his wretched Norse. “Ribs sticking out, body black as Ethiopian’s, hair and beard filthy, everywhere sores, flea bites, lash marks on shoulders—” he appraised all my defects with the thoroughness of his trade. “Dear friend, what has happened to you?”

  I shook him off, my throat aching with tears and anger. “Why not yesterday, you bastard?”

  “Please, do not spoil joyous moment. Yesterday was not safe to know you; today is. That’s all.”

  “Why this man’s house?”

  “Because my shop too well known, I do business always in Kiev these days. All will be clear in time, ha, ha.”

  “All of what?”

  “What do you think of city now? Big changes, eh? Hustle and bustle!” It seemed he had no intention of answering my questions. “Grand Prince has such plans for new capital! Stone cathedral, can you believe? And triumphal gate to rival Miklagard itself. What times these are! Only last year, those devils of Pechenegs attack city again. Again Yaroslav rushes to defense, but this time is Vladimir, the young eagle, who commands druzhina under his father’s proud eyes. Since then, Grand Prince and Princess make Kiev their capital while son rules Novgorod—”

  “Shut up, man! Give me food and drink, before I faint.”

  “Ach! Stupid of me! You are starving, is plain to see. Only, damned inconvenient—servants all let go for today.”

  He began an aimless search of the room which produced nothing in the way of food. Three doors gave access to other rooms. Two of these he opened; one he did not. Disappearing through the second one, he soon returned, wreathed with smiles and holding out a pail of beer and a round of cheese.

  “Slowly, my friend, slowly, you make yourself sick.”

  “More!”

  He watched me in silence for a time; then began again in a hesitant manner:

  “Odd Thorvaldsson, please to pay attention. I am speaking now as agent, once again, of Grand Princess Ingigerd. She, ah, has favor to ask of you.” He watched me closely to gauge the effect of his words.


  “Ingigerd? Who owns me, you or she?”

  “Owns you?” He rolled his eyes—incredulous, astonished. “Owns? Good God, what a thing to say! No one owns you, my poor friend; we are simply delighted to see you returned, so to speak, from dead.”

  “Then get this off me.”

  I hooked a finger in my iron collar from which the chain hung down my back.

  He cursed himself for a heartless wretch—he had not seen it under my beard; could I forgive him?

  It was a common type of lock; he tried two or three of his own keys and found one that fit it. Removing the collar, he lightly touched my skin where it was rubbed raw. Gravely, with none of his customary foolishness, he said in a low voice, “You are much changed, my friend.”

  “Bath and a haircut, I’ll be all right.”

  “Not just that, something else. Your eyes: they were never so cold. Last time I saw you, there was still—excuse me for saying—some little bit of boy in you. I don’t see now. Where has gone that boy?”

  “He died, Stavko Ulanovich. Beatings killed him; hunger.”

  “So? And what remains?”

  “What you see, nothing more.”

  “Here, sit down, tell me your story.”

  “My story? I hardly remember it. I slipped out of Novgorod aboard Yngvar Eymundsson’s ship—”

  “Princess’s nephew helped you escape!”

  “He knew nothing about it, though that can’t matter to anyone now. He fattened the crows long ago. They all did. They were brave men. Be sure and tell that to the slandering bitch when you see her.”

  Stavko seemed to cringe and fell into a fit of coughing. “Perhaps God has spared you for reason, Odd Tangle-Hair.”

  “If it’s to tear out the throats of the ones who betrayed me I’ll thank him for it.”

  This time he couldn’t restrain a desperate glance at the one door that he had not opened.