The Ice Queen

by Bruce Macbain

  “I know where you’d be.”

  “Now, now, now, such talk between comrades.” He shot me a reproachful look.

  “Follow me again and I’ll kill you.”

  “Really, Odd Tangle-Hair. I only keep friendly eye on you—these are my orders. Luckily for us all, convoy sails tomorrow. Up on citadel they have just sighted smoke-signal from Vyshgorod: Novgorod fleet is passing it now. So! What shall we do, last night in Kiev? For Rus, only way to begin long journey is in state of drunkenness, is not so with you? Come along home now, we finish cask of mead together, there’s good fellow.”

  But I soon found Stavko’s company tiresome and went early to sleep. A sleep in which I plunged my knife again and again into a heart which sometimes was Murad’s, and sometimes was Harald’s, and sometimes Inge’s.

  30

  Stavko Supposes

  The trading fleet from Novgorod had doubled the number of strugi to nearly one hundred and the podol now presented a scene of even more bustling activity as merchants, sailors, and porters jostled each other along the crowded riverfront. Human chains stretched from the warehouses to the water’s edge as, from hand to hand, were passed the precious furs of Gardariki, the kegs of honey, and the great wheels of wax, enough for all the candles in Christendom.

  And slaves. Miklagard devoured slaves. The best-looking of the women were destined for the city’s brothels, of which it had as many as it had churches. The strongest of the men were fated to sweat out their short lives in the furnace rooms beneath the great bath-houses, where the lowliest citizen of Miklagard could waste his day in princely splendor.

  And then there were the little boys—the luckiest of the lot, really. First, of course, there was the terror of the knife, the pain, the mortifying wound. But for those who survived the removal of their manhood, and were ambitious besides, there lay open boundless opportunities to exercise their subtle talents. The imperial eunuchs—as I would one day learn to my sorrow—were among the most powerful men in the state, and most were ‘barbarians’ by birth.

  Among all this human cattle were Stavko’s recent purchases: twenty-six good-looking females, some of them purchased from my late master, the rest picked up here and there. He licked his lips anticipating the day when they would stand on the auction block in Miklagard.

  Besides making money for himself though, Stavko had another mission: to keep an eye on me

  From my belt hung a purse heavy with gold; in it, too, was a letter naming me gospodin Churillo Igorevich, boyar and envoy of Yaroslav the Wise, Grand Prince of Rus. It asked the favor of an imperial audience for the purpose of contracting a marriage between the eldest of Yaroslav’s daughters—a marvel of beauty, prudence, and affability—and some lucky Greek princeling.

  Needless to say, all this had been concocted by Ingigerd without ‘Wise’ Yaroslav being any the wiser. She counted on rumor of my business reaching Harald, wherever he might be, and bringing him out in the open. Then all I had to do was kill him.

  Simple.

  The strug that Stavko and I had bought places in was a vessel of about fifty feet in length and nine or ten in the beam, carved, as all the Rus ships are, from a single enormous tree trunk, without deck or keel. The only additional timber she carried were a mast and rudder, rowing benches, and strakes added to the sides to give her more freeboard. Twenty rowers sat on the benches and an equal number wedged themselves in amongst the cargo to wait their turn at the oars. No room here for passengers who didn’t like to work. Or to fight. Every man aboard carried arms and looked as though they could use them.

  From up and down the line came cries of “Ready to cast off!” Ingigerd’s new archbishop, resplendent in robes of white and gold, blessed our fleet while colored smoke from the censers drifted over the water and a deep-voiced chorus chanted hymns.

  “Cast off!” cried one hundred steersmen, and the shore rang with answering cries of “God keep you!” as two thousand oars churned the water. If all went well, we would sight the walls of Miklagard in six weeks’ time.

  In the late afternoon I took two hours at the oar, then, drowsy in the heat, propped myself against a pile of furs and lay my head on my folded arms. Stavko, beside me, plucked at the strings of a gusli and tried to make me join him in a sailors’ song. He gave up after a while and turned to better-humored shipmates.

  A younger, a different, Odd would have sung, would have felt his heart lift at the surge of the boat when the oars dipped, would have turned his smiling face to the sun’s warmth and the gusting wind.

  That Odd was gone; a stone lay in the place where his heart had been. And I neither could nor even wished to be the old Odd again. The old Odd was too full of hopes, too fond of life. If I was to face Harald and kill him, cold hate must fill me up like water filling a skin bag, flowing into every fold and wrinkle, pressing out fear.

  We ended our journey that day at the little hilltop fort of Vitichev, here to join the boats from Pereyeslavl and the other down-river towns. Vitichev had been a smoldering heap of sticks when Harald and I had ridden down to inspect it after the raising of the Pecheneg siege. Rebuilt now and defended by miles of wooden ramparts that snaked across the landscape, it stood guard once again over the line that divides forest and farm from steppe: the tilth of Christmen from the grassy haunt of the heathen. All beyond this point was new to me.

  The steppe-grass stands as high as your head and, when the wind blows through it, it stirs in long ripples that sweep from horizon to horizon. In all this wide expanse the only thing made by man is the occasional tumulus—a brown hillock against the sky—of some proud Pecheneg chieftain, who sleeps in death with his women and his horses. Here herds of bison, and antelope graze. They are food for the wolves, who play the part of sharks in this grassy sea.

  Ten uneventful days slid by. But on the last of them, as it drew toward evening, a murmur of sound reached our ears, beginning like the distant echo of the sea in a conch shell, then growing steadily until it became the groaning of a giant.

  “The cataracts,” said Stavko, with a weary shake of his head. “We anchor close as possible tonight and tomorrow run all in single day. Go early to sleep. Tomorrow will be hardest day of your life.”

  The Dnieper cataracts are seven sets of granite ledges that rise out of the river like whales’ backs, spanning a length of seventy miles from beginning to end. The short June night passed quickly and the sun was scarcely up as we approached the first of them. The Rus call it Essupi, which means ‘Do Not Sleep’. With a sudden, sickening jolt the current caught us and flung us at a wall of solid stone around which the water boiled in foaming eddies, throwing up a mist as dense as fog.

  “Into the river, the starboard side!” our steersman shouted, his words barely audible above the roar.

  Standing waist deep in the foaming water, we formed a human barrier between the rocky ledge and our hull, clinging to the low gunwale while we planted our heels in the sandy bottom until our legs were numb with cold and quaking with exhaustion. As we struggled on the starboard side, the men opposite steadied the strug with long poles to prevent her swinging out into the middle of the river where more jagged rocks waited to break her in splinters.

  We were nearly around the ledge when Stavko, who was straining beside me, lost his footing. In an instant the suck of the water tumbled him over and pulled him down head first between the hull and the bottom. One foot kicked in the air.

  What a simple thing to let him die, I thought, this creature of Ingigerd’s. I’m sure to regret it if I don’t. But with this idea barely formed in my mind, I reached down and hauled him up choking and gasping, and, with the help of a shipmate, boosted him over the gunwale.

  The second and third cataracts were passed in the same way as the first. Stavko, soon recovered from his dunking, again fought the crashing waters with the rest of us. The noise made speech impossible but he shot me a questioning look and nodded his head in thanks. I think we were both wondering the same thing.

  Just
when I thought my arms and legs could do no more, the terrible thunder of Nenasytets,’The Insatiable’, assailed our ears. This, the fourth cataract, was the biggest and most fearsome of them all, consisting of twelve high ridges with murderous whirlpools between them.

  Ships and men were no match for The Insatiable; here we must portage. With the strugi hauled up on shore and unloaded, we partly dragged, partly carried both ships and cargo over a distance of about nine versts under a relentless sun. Naturally, we put the slaves to work but there were not enough of them to do it alone. The air shimmered, the grass snared our feet, and dust filled our throats. Thanks to my years of slavery, I was more accustomed than most to toiling in fierce heat, but many a strong man fainted dead away before we were through.

  “Over there!” shouted someone, pointing. On the horizon a thin column of smoke stood out against the vast white sky. A Pecheneg band had seen us and were signaling to their comrades. Although the common opinion among the Rus was that the savages were too cowed to try anything so soon after their latest defeat at the hands of Yaroslav and his son, nonetheless we posted flankers until all the boats were safely back in the water.

  Cataracts five and six were passed with relative ease. At the seventh and last, which the Rus call Strukun, or ‘Rusher’, the river narrows and takes a sharp bend to the right. Here the banks rise up to a height of fifty feet, forming a narrow gorge, where the current is very fast and likely to dash you against the side if you aren’t careful. The Rus boatmen, even as skillful as they are, never get through it without loss. The strug just ahead of us careened into the wall and capsized, spilling out cargo and crew. And we, swept along willy-nilly, could do nothing to help them.

  Beyond the gorge the current slows as the river widens into a broad and shallow ford.

  We raced out of the chute into a storm of arrows. Two strugi ahead of us were stopped dead in the water, their crews battling to throw back the Pecheneg cavalry that swarmed about them, shooting arrows and leaping from their saddles right into the ships.

  Besides those in the water, other bowmen lined the banks, catching us in a deadly crossfire. Men toppled, clawing at shafts in their chests. I was out of the fight before I could even draw my sword. An arrow pierced my right shoulder with a tremendous smack and knocked me to the deck.

  Looking dazedly about me, I saw Stavko fighting in the bow. A Pecheneg thrust at him with his lance. Dodging sideways and seizing it in one hand, he yanked the man from his saddle and hewed off his arm. At the same moment another savage took a cut at him with his saber. He parried the blow and drove his sword into the fellow’s side. This slave dealer, I realized, was no shirker in a fight. If it ever came to blows between us he would not be an easy man to deal with.

  Meanwhile more strugi came hurtling out of the gorge until our attackers, seeing the advantage in numbers turn against them, broke off suddenly and galloped away.

  It wasn’t much of a battle, really; there hadn’t been above two hundred of the savages. In years gone by, said the old hands, we might have met twice or three times that number. Something was happening on the steppe, some obscure movement of tribes, some shift of power that we aliens could scarcely guess at.

  My wound was attended to by an elderly Rus who had healing-wit the equal of a woman’s. He drew the arrow and bound up my shoulder while Stavko held me down, and remarked cheerily that he thought it would heal up nicely unless, of course, the arrow was poisoned, in which case the wound would turn black and he would have to do me the favor of taking off my whole arm in order to save my life. With those encouraging words he turned his attention to another, who was spouting blood all over the deck.

  I ground my teeth and cursed my evil luck.

  As that day’s fiery sun went down, we approached a long wooded island that split the broad river like a ship’s prow. The Rus call it Khortitsa, and when it comes in view they cheer and break into rowdy song, because danger is all behind them now.

  Upon this island there stands an ancient oak tree, many feet in girth. And here the Rus, though all of them profess the Christian faith, perform an ancient ceremony in which they peg arrows in the ground in a large circle around the tree and, within this circle, sacrifice cocks and sprinkle the blood on the roots. It is their way of giving thanks for having survived the double perils of the rapids and the steppe warriors. When the ceremony was done, we threw ourselves down wherever there was a patch of grass and slept for many hours.

  Altogether we spent three days on the island, given over to burying our dead, re-packing loosened cargo, and hunting the deer, which are plentiful here. One evening, Stavko tore himself away from the company of his girls long enough to discover me sitting alone in the shade of a tree by the water’s edge.

  Dark thoughts troubled my mind. Thoughts of foolish choices made, of wrong paths taken, of years squandered in futility, while at home my enemies slept peacefully in their beds and my dead kin waited un-avenged in their tombs. Ingigerd’s promise had wakened these slumbering memories to life. The thousands of miles that separated me from my home weighed on me as though I were tethered to the end of some immense chain, too long, too heavy to drag any farther.

  I wanted no company, not his anyway, and gave him no sign of welcome.

  “How is wound today, Churillo Igorevich?”

  He always accompanied the use of my false name with such great winks of his eye as might have aroused the suspicions of a tree stump.

  “It’s all right. There was no poison.”

  “I rejoice to hear!”

  He went on for a time, smiling inanely, while he inquired as to my appetite, my digestion, my sleep, and my limp prick. I was close to laying hands on him.

  “And now just one more question, my friend. Why you saved me from drowning?”

  I turned away with a shrug.

  “No, answer, please. For I understand quite well that you detest my manners, my occupation, and my regard for princess, whom you consider enemy. You suspect I am here to spy on you, no? Or maybe worse?”

  “It’s crossed my mind.”

  “Then why save my life?”

  “I often do things I live to regret.”

  “Tch, tch. Even generous act must be rounded off with insult. From you, Odd Tangle-Hair, always insults. Still, deeds speak for themselves, no? So I thank you—and I confess now to playing little trick on you: I slip in the river on purpose.”

  “On purpose! What in Hel’s Hall did you do that for?”

  “Just to see where we stand with each other, my friend. To see if anything at all remains of that young Odd that you say is dead. Someday I might need to know that, who can tell?”

  “It was a fool’s trick.”

  “Maybe. But I slip in that very spot once, years ago, and survive without anyone’s help. Of course, I am not such a young man anymore!” Chuckling, he slapped his stomach.

  “Don’t think you’ve learned anything by it. Next time I’ll be sure to let you drown.”

  “Ah, well, we shall see. Now, my friend, can we talk about your mission?”

  “You’re here. Talk away.”

  “Yes, well …” He settled himself beside me and leaned his back against my tree. “Princess is optimist, I am not. Friend Odd, you were willing to save my life—no, no, too late to deny it—maybe now I return favor, eh? Give up this mission, my friend, while you still can.”

  “I thought you were Ingigerd’s man.”

  “Is only because I like you, Odd Thorvaldsson, I really do, though God alone knows why.”

  “You think I won’t find Harald?”

  “On contrary, I fear opposite: that you will find him in very strong position with plenty protection around him.”

  Suddenly he had my full attention. “Stavko Ulanovich, what do you know that you haven’t told Ingigerd?”

  “Me? I know nothing. Only speculate on certain observations I have made. For instance, that merchant that Harald sent to Kiev with gift for Grand Prince. Did you ever hear the lik
e of it? Send a fellow off with fortune in jewels in his hands and expect him to deliver as ordered and come back with note of receipt? That would require very strong bond between these men—stronger even than greed, and few things, my friend, are stronger than greed. Now, I ask myself, what could that bond be: blood-brotherhood? Or maybe code of warrior band to which both men belong? For that fellow did deliver jewels and he is returning to Harald.”

  “How d’you know so?”

  “Follow my eye, he’s just over there.”

  “What!”

  “Ssh! Just look.”

  I looked to my left and saw, some twenty paces distant, the solitary figure of a well-dressed young man seated upon a mossy rock. His mouth was set in a frown as he honed the edge of a long-handled ax with careful strokes of a whetstone.

  “Well, let’s just have a little talk with him—” I tried to rise but Stavko squeezed my bandaged shoulder.

  “Ach! Careful!”

  “You see. Not ready for a fight, my friend, which is likely to be what you’ll get if you accost him in your bad humor. Besides, I have talked to him already. You are interested?”

  I nodded.

  “Then sit still and listen. Very mysterious fellow, this one. Not Novgorod merchant as he claimed to be; I take my oath on that, I know every one of them. This man’s face I never saw before last autumn when he came to Kiev with strugi returning from Miklagard. He would say only that he had been approached by someone who asked him to deliver this small fortune in jewels on way home as favor for man he had never met. This was his ridiculous story.”

  “That much I know already, Stavko.”

  “Be patient, friend Odd. Princess smells a lie and, wishing opinion of myself, arranges for dinner where I may observe him. I can tell her only that he is impostor.”

  “What kept her from seizing the fellow then and there and flogging the truth out of him? It couldn’t have been her tender heart?”

  “Please!” He held up his hand as if to say, No more jibes, thank you, at the woman I admire with all my hard heart and greedy soul. “Maybe foolish, but we decide to watch him instead. Few days later, when Novgorod ships set out for home, this man goes with them. Plainly, he does not realize what a mistake he has made, giving to mother letters intended for daughter. Princess sends a druzhinik to follow him, but he goes quickly from Novgorod to Aldeigjuborg, takes ship for Sweden, and there we lose him. Yet now is here again! Stranger and stranger.”