Stavko drew his knife from his boot and began to clean his nails.
“Well, don’t stop there, man. If he’s not what he claims to be, what is he?”
“You have heard, perhaps, of Varangian Guard? It is elite regiment in emperor’s army, created over fifty years ago when Vladimir the Great gave thousands of his mercenaries—Swedes and Norwegians mostly—as gift to Emperor Basil. Ever since that time, only Northmen can join it. These Varangians, they are pampered, well-paid, loyal; stand day and night with long-handled axes on shoulder, ready to obey emperor’s command, and his alone. And that man is one of them.”
“How d’you know so?”
“I recognize him yesterday, make myself agreeable to him—you know my nature—offer him good price on girl, pour him some wine. I say nothing about meeting him in Kiev. We spoke only few words at that dinner and he was too drunk to remember. So this time, when I ask, just casually, who he is, he tells truth. Strangely enough, he is Icelander like you. Name is Ulf Ospaksson. Perhaps you know the name?”
I shook my head.
“Anyway, he has been home on leave to settle some family business and now is returning to regiment of Guards. Of course, I do not ask about Harald, not to rouse suspicion, but I bet you anything that where we find this fellow we will find also Harald. Who else but fellow Guardsman could be trusted to deliver that valuable present and those private letters?”
“Interesting, Stavko. I see a flaw in your argument, though. If the reputation of these Guardsmen is as great as you say it is, and Harald, as we know, is not bashful—well, why all the secrecy, then? According to the princess, he signed himself merely ‘Harald of Miklagard’. I should think he’d want his emissary to make much of it, not conceal it.”
“Is puzzling, I admit. But look now—when was Harald ever content to take orders from another? Wherever he is, he must command, no? Now what if he has not quite reached that rank yet; some other Northman is higher than he. But he feels it, feels it almost in grasp. So. Now he only teases us with just little peeks, makes us wonder and worry: where is he? What is he up to? Until, finally, moment comes when he is ready to step from shadows, show himself to us, Harald the Magnificent! Eh? What d’you think of that?”
“I suppose it could be.”
“I would rather be wrong, believe me. Maybe Harald is willing to fight you man to man, but maybe not. Maybe his Varangian comrades are willing to let you leave city after you kill him—but maybe not. This mission already foolish, in my opinion. Now is plain suicide. Is Harald’s life worth so much to you?”
“I’ll know that when I stand face to face with him, Stavko.
Four days rowing from Khortitsa brought us to the Dnieper delta, where we spent a day putting up masts and rigging and attaching rudders in order to transform these river boats into sea-faring vessels. Three or four weeks of sailing still lay ahead of us. For the first time now, we were beyond the sight of land—never a comfortable feeling at best, and made less so by the way these clumsy ships rolled and yawed in the waves. Twenty-two days later (and most of them stormy) we made landfall at the mouth of the Bosporus. This is a strait more than twenty-five versts long, through which the Black Sea (or Pontus as the Greeks call it) empties itself into the little Sea of Marmora. At the far end of it stands the City of Constantine—Golden Miklagard.
That night no one slept.
Sitting round our campfires, the old hands nudged each other and winked, savoring beforehand the delights that tomorrow promised.
We would take steam-baths, said one to me, in a vaulted palace of stone. “And not such stone as you’ve ever seen, mate, but smooth, with a sheen to it like polished steel, and glowing with every color of the rainbow!”
We would have our pick of beautiful women, said another, and would eat rare dishes and drink the finest wines until our bellies burst—and all at the emperor’s expense! “For I’ll have you to know,” said he, “that this Emperor Michael, or Romanos, or whoever he is—for they come and go so fast lately that it taxes a man’s mind just to keep up with ’em—but this emperor anyway, just like his ancestors, treats the Rus with respect, and so he should, by God! Three times—in our grandfathers’ day, and their fathers’, and their fathers’—we Rus sailed against the City and though we never breached her walls (those God-built walls, impossible!), still, we scared those old emperors into giving us fairer conditions of trade than any other folk can boast of, be they Bulgar, Saracen, or Venetian!”
“Aye,” struck in the first man, “they’re cowards at heart, these Greeks, not proper men like us. It’s plain they fear the Rus. Just see how they make us live outside the walls, across the bay, and can’t go over into the City proper except in batches of fifty, without our arms, and always with some poncy little Greek from the palace dancing round us.”
“Basil was no coward, though,” said Stavko; “he that blinded ten thousand Bulgars and made them find their own way home!”
“Well, but where’s his like today?” replied the other. “They’re ruled by weaklings and women now, or worse—men without balls! Don’t tell me!”
He brought his hand down, thwack! on his knee, and that seemed to close the debate. There was a chorus of aye’s all around and then the talk went back to the excellence of the wine and the women. About that there was no disagreement at all.
31
Golden Miklagard
Morning comes dark, wet, and blustery. We weigh anchor at dawn and row, five ships abreast, along the European shore, letting the swift current do most of the work. As the channel narrows, low wooded hills come into view on either hand, thickly grown with oak, pine and black cypress. The current sweeps us past fishermen’s’ cottages, white-washed and thatched, each one perched on its own little cove along this snaggle-toothed coast. As we draw nearer to the city, scattered houses collect in drowsy villages and these grow into bustling towns. And now grander buildings appear at intervals: princely villas and silent monasteries, lifting up their red-tiled heads above strong, encircling walls. Soon the strait is thick with vessels of every size and description, darting this way and that on their various errands.
But we are not the lads to make way for anyone. We are the Rus!
On we sweep, rank after rank, still five abreast and holding to our course, with oars rising and dipping in perfect time to the booming notes of the oarsmen’s song.
Boats that are not quick enough to yield the right of way are swamped in our wake. Their passengers shout curses—from a safe distance. We ignore them.
We are the Rus.
And it must seem doubtful to those gazing at us from shore whether we have come to trade or to fight.
My shoulder being still too painful for rowing, I stand in the prow with Stavko. Only one rank of strugi precedes ours. Of these, the middle one is captained by Vyshata Ostromirovich, a crusty old boyar who is the commodore of our fleet, and responsible for dealing with the Greek authorities. We are not yet in sight of the city when three warships appear, beating up the channel towards us.
“Imperial dromons,” says Stavko with a hint of borrowed pride. “How would feel to have ship like that under your feet, eh, Churillo?”
They are more than twice the length of the biggest of our strugi and broader in the beam. Two hundred oars in double banks propel them and each ship has also a pair of masts rigged with sloping three-cornered sails. Emblazoned on the sails in black and gold is the eagle of New Rome. And something else I have never seen before: their prows end in massive bronze beaks that cut the water like plowshares, flinging up sheets of white spray as they come on.
“Will there be trouble?”
“No, no, no. Is only escort. Every year same thing. They must look us over, count us, tally up value of cargo, write it all down—not once, but three, four times, this copy here, that copy there.”
“Why?”
“Why? Because they’re Greeks, that’s why.”
The two flanking ships swing out to right and left, athwart the cu
rrent and drop anchors, barring our way. The middle ship draws alongside Vyshata’s and throws out grappling lines. The strug backs water furiously and passes the order down the line—which still does not save us from collisions and tangled oars as our fleet slows to a halt.
The dromon towers over the strug. Her gunwales are crowded with archers and javelin men, all in conical helmets and hauberks of iron scales. Her deck bristles with catapults and with slender, bronze tubes mounted on swivels, whose open mouths are fashioned to resemble the heads of roaring lions. I take them at first sight for trumpets and wonder aloud why no one sounds them.
“Pray you never hear their music,” Stavko says, crossing himself, “is roar of hell-fire.”
The lion-headed ‘trumpets’ direct their glittering eyes at Vyshata’s deck. A rope ladder is let down, by which the boyar mounts. The dromon’s captain, reclining on a couch before his cabin, rises and permits his orderly to drape a plum-colored cloak around his gilded corselet. And Vyshata, that proud old warrior, kneels before this man!
“Stavko, how many ships like that do they have?” I whisper without taking my eyes from the scene before us.
“You’re asking me? Maybe two hundred, maybe twenty, maybe not that many. No one gets close enough to military harbor to see. Is only one of many well-kept secrets here: secret of silk, secret of throne that floats in air, secret of those accursed fire-tubes—secret of their power. Is it still as great as in Basil Bulgar-Slayer’s reign? Or is only mummers’ show now, all masks and pretending? Who can say? Miklagard is city built on secrets, Churillo Igorevich. Mystery is her strength.”
It is late afternoon before we begin to move again. The dromons come about (despite their enormous size they handle smartly) and lead us the last few miles to the harbor of Saint Mamas, where our quarters await us. Stavko leaves me to go aft and look after his human cargo.
Alone, I sink again into that mood of doubt and discontent that never leaves me for long. My thoughts circle uselessly round and round the same few questions: have I done right to come here? Am I fated to die here, far from my home with my vengeance still unsatisfied? If only I might have a dream or a sign to guide me, but my father’s ghost has been silent for a very long time. Is he angry with me?
Then, as I stand lost in gloomy thought, the starboard shore falls away sharply to form a deep bay and, at the same moment, the setting sun breaks through the clouds in a blaze of molten orange. Spread out before me across the sparkling water is a sight dazzling to the eyes: a series of rising terraces clothed in marble, acres of it—walls, columns, arches, steps, piled one atop the other and everywhere crowned with golden domes, touched to sudden life by the fire from above.
It is all true, those boasts of Leonidas’s, that sneer of Ingigerd’s. But no one’s words could have prepared me for this, just as no words of mine are big enough for it now. The sight of it comes like rain to my barren spirit. Curiosity and wonder—feelings I have forgotten I possessed—stir in me again like seeds in the damp earth. To walk those avenues, to enter those cool marble towers and hear the whisper of silk along their secret corridors …
“Aye, Tangle-Hair,” says a voice within, “but, for all that, don’t forget what you must do here. In one of these gleaming piles you will find Harald—or he’ll find you. Make no plans to outlive that day.”
Post-Scriptum
I vowed I would not spend two nights under the old man’s roof. In fact, three whole weeks passed by and the beginning of the fourth found me still at work—cramped, inky, and sore-eyed.
During these weeks, a change had gradually come over me. It began, I think, when I learned to my astonishment that Odd was baptized; it progressed as he described to me the expedition against the Pechenegs, where he hit on that ingenious alliance with the monks; and, after that, when he told of all the wrongs done him by Ingigerd and Harald.
I was scarcely aware of this transformation, however, until my brother Gizur, acting as bishop in our father’s absence, made an unexpected appearance, accompanied by our mother.
Odd and I had been working since sun-up. The sun was now at his highest when the door flew open with a bang and Gizur stormed in, his face as dark as a thundercloud.
“Found you at last! God’s belly, what a day! We’ve ridden round the district for hours hunting for this godforsaken little cranny. Mother is exhausted; she would come along, although I need no help for what I mean to do. Collect your things, Teit, you’re coming home.”
I was like someone deep in a dream who is suddenly startled awake; I clung to the shreds of it.
“No, Gizur, not yet. He’s just now sailing into the harbor of Golden Miklagard to search out his enemy, Harald. And, Odd, you stayed in Miklagard, didn’t you, and rose to fame and fortune.”
“Miklagard?” sneered Gizur. “Then he’s the only Icelander who ever went there and came back poor. What, no silk-lined cloak, fellow, no jeweled scabbard, no belt of silver links? Perhaps you’d like to tell us why you choose to live in squalor.”
I had asked Odd the same question once, with the same sneer in my voice. He had frowned and turned his head away then, but not before I saw the pain in his eyes. And after all these many weeks with him, I still did not know the answer.
“Speak up fellow,” said Gizur, “or has your flood of words suddenly run dry?”
“I have my reasons, priest, they don’t concern you.” Odd spoke quietly, but his black brows drew together.
Gizur, as he often does, began to fume and sputter.
Meanwhile my mother, with a pained expression on her face, had gone poking all about the room, blackening her fingertip on a sooty wall, sniffing at the pantry. “When was the last time you had a proper meal, Teit?”
“I don’t know; yesterday there was some porridge, I think.”
“When was the last time you had a wash, for that matter?” said Gizur, returning to the attack. You smell like a goat. And so does your friend here—his customary condition, no doubt, living no better than an animal.”
“Gizur, have a care,” I warned. “Don’t judge him by what he is now. In his time he was a great skald, a brave warrior, the secret lover of the Grand Princess of Novgorod. You must address him as gospodin Odd.”
“Gospo—what? My ears must be deceiving me; did I just hear you praise a man for being an adulterer? You, who are so much purer in heart than all the rest of us put together!”
“Not praise him—but you must understand that he was ensnared by a sensuous and vengeful woman. The first time he lay with her she—”
“Enough! Stop at once before you pollute our mother’s ears! What have you been learning in this pagan hell-hole?”
“You’re too hasty, brother. He’s not quite a pagan, as we all thought, not really. He was baptized—admittedly by the Greek rite, but still, that counts for something.”
“Not with me it doesn’t. Listen, Teit, you have a responsibility to the family; you aren’t just anyone’s son. What would our flock think of us if it should ever get about where you’ve been and what you’ve been doing? Or does the family’s position mean nothing to you anymore?”
“Ask that of our father, Gizur, this was his idea. He ordered me to record Odd’s story.”
“Well, his eccentricities must be borne with, but not yours. He told you to spend two or three weeks? Very well, you’ve had the three. But not a day more. Now, for the last time, Teit, are you ready to leave?”
“No, Gizur, I’m not!” I was astonished at these words of mine. Where did they come from? “Gizur, rant as much as you please, I’ll leave when my task is done and not a minute sooner. What I’m recording now is exactly the part of Odd’s saga that concerns King Harald of Norway. Alas, we were sadly deceived about that man. Granted he was a brave warrior, but in every other way detestable. I know that won’t please father but it’s the truth.”
“I don’t care if it’s the truth or not!” shouted my brother. He turned on Odd: “Now, look you, you’ve done some mischief to Teit
. I can hardly believe I’m speaking to the same boy. If there’s magic in this, you had better watch out, my friend. I’m warning you, there’s the drowning pool for people like you. Or, you might just find your house burned down around your ears one fine day!”
“Gizur, in the name of God,” I cried, “don’t you be a house-burner! Yes, Odd’s a blasphemer, but he’s shown me something of life that I can never learn at home, things I ought to know. I think father understood that when he brought me here. I’ll be a better priest for it—if I decide to be one.”
“If?” said Gizur with a stunned expression. “If, he says! I’ve had enough! Give me that book and all the loose sheets; these, at least, I will burn, and then, brother of mine, I will drag you home by your ears!”
But at that point our mother said firmly, “No, Gizur, I forbid it. Your father gave his blessing to this enterprise, for whatever reason, and you shall burn nothing before he returns from Rome.”
He glared at her, but backed down a step. “All right, but Teit is leaving with us now and that’s flat.” He took me by the arm but I shook him off. Again he laid hands on me and in a sudden flash of anger—it shames me to say it—I hit him on the chin with all my strength and knocked him down. He sprawled on the floor with his cassock up around his knees.
There was shocked silence.
Odd was half out of his seat, with his hand on the hilt of his dagger. His eyes searched me from top to toe as though seeing me for the first time—or so it felt—and the hint of a smile touched his lips. I can scarcely describe my own feelings: horror and thrilling excitement all at once.
The Ice Queen Page 31