Varanger

by Cecelia Holland

  C H A P T E R S I X

  Every day Thorfinn sat at his place in the market, and from the outlands there came wild men with sacks of fur to sell him. Magnus also bought pelts, and the other Varanger in Holmgard, but the trappers came mostly to Thorfinn.

  This was why Magnus had tried to force him out of Holmgard, Conn realized. Through Thorfinn’s hands now was flowing the treasure of the north.

  The trappers brought the long slim pelts of winter ermine and sable, thick and sleek, prized of kings, and fox and bear and wolf, heaping them up on the table until Thorfinn himself was almost hidden from sight. The only skins he would not buy were hares. “They shed,” he told Conn. “You wind up with a piece of rotten leather.” He did not pay in coin, but in cloth, the ells and ells of it that his women had woven all through the winter, and in salt and iron, amber, pottery, wotka. The skins were stacked neatly by their kind, and then bound together in bales, and carried off to the pelt house in Dobrynya’s stockade, where Pavo himself stood guard over them, almost night and day.

  The days hurried on into spring, each one longer, warmer, more thriving with life. Open water appeared in the great shallow lake just south of the city. Plates and sheets of ice rode up over the frozen surface of the river and made ridges taller than a man. The ice thundered and cracked and water gushed through the gaps, sometimes erupting up into the air in spangles of rainbows like the spouts of whales. Every day the sun stood higher, sometimes so warm they stripped off their shirts when they worked outside. The river rose along the bank, carrying up the sodden corrupted ice, drowning the shore, and Thorfinn had them haul his ship to higher ground.

  Magnus, though, left his two ships there. Conn noticed this and thought he was a fool.

  Then one morning, down the center of the river, a stream of open water flowed, dark and sleek as blood, and around it the sunrotted ice cracked and floated and was carried off on the sudden torrent. Just down the river where the banks pinched down on either side, all the chunks of ice jammed together and held the water back and everybody gathered on the shore and talked about a flood, as the water climbed steadily up the edge of the bank, but at sundown the clog broke with a crash and a thunder and the hollow roar of water going fast, and the river sank swiftly back down where it belonged. By the next afternoon, the last of the ice was gone.

  That evening, when Conn came into Thorfinn’s alcove and sat down across the chessboard from him, Thorfinn said, “You know the girl Alla, here? Stay away from her.”

  Conn shut his lips tight. His belly burned with his anger and he looked up at his chieftain with a hot temper. Thorfinn was staring at him.

  “You’ve done good work for me, ever since I first offered you my penny. And you’ve been loyal against Magnus, for which I’m very grateful. But stay away from the girl.”

  With an effort Conn lowered his eyes to the chessboard between them, stifling the beast in him, his arms already aching from the clench of his muscles. The black and white squares of the board swam before his eyes. He put out his hand and moved his pawn, and Thorfinn moved, and neither of them spoke for a while. Conn let the game take over his mind and his mood steadied.

  He thought again that if he beat Thorfinn at chess, somehow he would make him give the girl to him as the prize. He remembered what she had said to him, and knew suddenly that she herself had spoken to Thorfinn. He began to wonder if he really wanted her. He liked Thorfinn. His eyes aimed at the board, he saw how Thorfinn had left him a little opening on the left, keeping two pawns side by side, and thought that over, looking for a way to turn it without doing what Thorfinn expected of him.

  Then Einar came up to them, and said, “You know, Thorfinn—Magnus wants to talk to you.”

  Thorfinn stirred on the bench, his shoulders moving back, and his gaze rose to meet Conn’s, his eyebrows rising. He said, slowly, “Well, then, send him in.” He gave Conn a weighty, confidential nod. “See?” He turned toward the hall.

  Conn kept his mouth shut. He turned away from the game, his hand on the table next to the board, but his body twisted around square with Thorfinn’s. He cast a quick glance around the hall for Raef, who was not there. Magnus was strutting across the way from the door. On his arms and in his ears, he wore numbers of gold rings, and in the little clearing between his hair and beard where he kept his face, a fat false smile.

  He held out his hand to Thorfinn, who shook it, and then to Conn, who shook it, and mouthed some words about the weather, and the spring, and the great number of pelts. Thorfinn put the cup down before him, and Magnus took his place at the table.

  “Aha,” he said, looking at the chessboard. “You play the master of this game, youngster. Learn well.”

  Conn still said nothing. Since he had cut his beard everybody had been calling him a boy. Magnus fussed awhile on the bench, settling himself, and drank wotka, smacking his lips after. Then he planted his elbows on the table and stared at Thorfinn.

  “I’ll get down to it, Thorfinn. You know me, I’m a man who goes to the heart of things.”

  Thorfinn said, mildly, “I know you.”

  Magnus wiped his mouth. “Well, we’ve been around together a long time, you and me. We know each other.” He huffed a little more, and then abruptly, he said, “You know, they’re planning something. The Sclava.”

  Thorfinn’s smile spread across his face, his eyes crinkling. “You’re talking about Dobrynya, now. He’s always planning something

  “This—” Magnus hunched himself a little closer to Thorfinn, and his gaze poked at Conn as if he could push him out of earshot with a look. His voice dropped to a murmur. “This is different. I’ve heard he means to throw down the old gods and take a new one.”

  Conn folded his arms over his chest. Talk of gods always bored him. His father had ranted sometimes about god but his mother’s drawings and stories got more of a grip on his mind. Now with what Magnus had told him Thorfinn wasn’t amused anymore, and his voice had a new sharp edge.

  “I don’t think so. They just put up all the new images of the Thunderer here, when Volodymyr took power. He said the Thunderer gave him the crown.”

  “You know that black man from the south? The Mahmet?” Magnus nodded portentuously. Conn had to think a while before he realized he meant the stranger Raef talked to now and then, who was dark-skinned but not black. “He has a new god. Very powerful.”

  “I don’t believe it,” Thorfinn said. “Dobrynya made sacrifices to the Thunderer just last summer.” He formed the sign for Thor with thumb and forefinger. In a less certain voice, he said, “All our pledges here are so sworn.”

  Magnus said, “They mean to have us all out of here, and give Holmgard to the Jews and the Mahmettans. That’s why the black man is here.”

  Thorfinn said nothing. Magnus was watching him fixedly, and now his voice sank to a whisper. “You and I, Thorfinn, between us, we can bring all the Varanger together. We could throw the Sclava out. Dobrynya, Pavo, the lot. Take over the city. Make it our city only.” His eyes winked toward Conn. “Your boy there would like that, wouldn’t he. Make him Tishats. And then we’d have Holmgard forever, and damn them.”

  Conn watched Thorfinn, whose face seemed to shrink and harden, beneath the shining dome of his head, his eyes narrow and his mouth thin. He said, between his teeth, “Get out.”

  Magnus grimaced in the thicket of his rusty-red beard. His eyes glittered. “You’re a coward.”

  “I’m a man of honor,” Thorfinn said. “Get out, before I have my boy here show you where the door is.”

  Magnus was already shifting sideways, off the bench. He said, “If you go to Dobrynya with this, I’ll say you lie.”

  “Get out!”

  Magnus slid off the bench and went to the door. Conn sat back, watching him go; as he went out, Raef was coming in, and he turned, curious, to watch Magnus tramp past him. Conn faced Thorfinn again, who was staring down at the chessboard, his lower lip outthrust, and his eyebrows knotted.

  Finally, the
chieftain said, “What do you think of that?”

  Conn shrugged. He didn’t like Magnus and everything he did seemed tainted to him. He thought Thorfinn had spoken like a free man, and he liked him even better than before. He was sure now he had been right to give up Alla. He said, “Ask Raef. He’s interested in such things. And he’s friends with the Mahmettan.” He lowered his eyes to the pieces on the board, trying to get back into the game. “It’s your turn, isn’t it?”

  Thorfinn said, “I guess so.” He bowed his head over the board, still frowning, and his voice grated. “It’s all a chess game, Conn. Everything.”

  “Then I’m glad I’m getting better at it,” Conn said.

  “Now that the river’s open, we can get out of here,” Conn said.

  He was still brooding over Alla. He lay on his back on the sleeping bench, his head cushioned on a fold of fur; somewhere in this hall lay a beautiful girl he could not have, and his heart was sore. He knew also, like a voice inside his head, that he could not have her because she was Thorfinn’s, and Thorfinn was an honorable man who had dealt justly with him.

  In the dark beside him, Raef said, “Rashid is looking to go back wherever he came from, I’ll ask him if he’s found a ship.” He laughed. “If he talks to me, dirty pagan that I am. When is Thorfinn making another voyage?”

  Conn turned toward him, to keep the talk between them; the whole hall was quiet, the fires banked, the door barred, everybody else sleeping. “Thorfinn will go west again. I want to go on south.” He pulled the bearskin up over his shoulder against the night chill.

  Raef’s voice came softly out of the close darkness. “They say it’s rich, down there—rich and warm and fat. Big cities, a lot of people. A lot of kinds of people.”

  “If they’re all like that black man we could rule the place in a month.”

  Raef laughed again. “I think you misunderstand him. But he is a very odd man.”

  Conn laid his head down on his folded arm, thinking of beautiful Alla. Imagining her in the chieftain’s arms made him sick. He struggled against his temptations. Honor was just a chain to bind him. Thorfinn was a horrible old man, who would not move out of the way. Yet he remembered how Thorfinn had spoken to Magnus, and his admiration for the older man flared again.

  Nothing else held him. He could forswear his pledge, that was easy enough. He could steal her. He imagined how he would carry her away, how she would love him for doing it. In spite of what she had said to him he knew she wanted him. Drowsy now, he thought of a new chess opening, and played it out in his mind. This passed into dreams, where he fought against half-seen monsters, and arrows pierced him. Then, from far off, he heard a horn blowing.

  He struggled up out of sleep and opened his eyes, and the horn was still blowing, somewhere outside, short shrill panicky whoops. Every hair on his head stood up, and he flung off the bearskins and slid off the sleeping bench, shouting, “Fire!”

  Out in the muffled darkness of the hall someone bellowed, and several voices rose, high-pitched with fear. Something fell over with a crash. People were rushing back and forth, calling, and cursing, and somebody gave a scream of pain. Raef bounded off the bench beside him and they charged toward the bolted door, which already ahead of them somebody, he saw it was Helgi, was struggling to open. He lunged to help. Before they could pull the door wide the whole household crushed up behind them, screaming and clawing at their backs, and jammed the door shut again. Raef wheeled, shouting, and Conn shouted, their voices lost in the uproar, and then Helgi wrenched the door inward and they all rushed up the steps into the clear black night.

  The fire was not in Thorfinn’s hall. That rooftop was a cold black ridge behind him. But the air smelled of new smoke. As the household streamed up past him, Conn looked all around, and then yelled, “There!”

  He flung his arm out, pointing. Off across the city, above the scatter of eaves newly stripped of their snow cover, a fountain of flames was rumbling up into the air, giving off sparks in gusts.

  He ran that way, Raef at his heels, dashing across the open ground and in between the two other Varanger halls, into a space of flickering yellow firelight. It was Magnus’s place that burned, he saw. A crowd had already gathered to watch, everybody’s face bathed in the glow of the crackling, leaping flames, and he stopped at the edge of it, staring up at the towering blaze. Glowing embers drifted by him, and the smoke rolled off thick and black into the predawn sky.

  The fire was enormous, eating up the whole thatch of the hall at once, so that no one could get near the door. Nearby, somebody turned toward Conn and said, “Didn’t you have some feud with him?”

  “We had a fight on,” Conn said. “That doesn’t mean I’d burn him up. Did they get out?” On the far side of the blaze he saw Pavo, painted in the firelight, riding up and down, his horse skittish and snorting. He was directing a line of slaves with buckets, trying to bring up water from the river, but they had no chance against the fire.

  “Nobody’s seen any of them,” someone else said. “They must all still be in there.”

  Conn’s gut tightened. He could think of no worse death. He said, “I don’t hear screaming.” He glanced at Raef, beside him, frowning.

  “Maybe the smoke got them all already.”

  So low that Conn could hardly hear him over the roar of the fire, Raef said, “Nobody is dead, here. Nobody is here.” His face twitched, he looked rattled, the way he did at his odd times. Conn tensed, trying to cast his mind more widely around this. A Sclava ran up into the light of the fire, his head turning, looking for somebody, and went panting over toward Pavo, waving his arms. The Tishats veered his horse toward him and bent down from the saddle to listen.

  Several people in the crowd of onlookers were giving Conn sharp looks, and he turned and glared at them all again. “It wasn’t me! I was in Thorfinn’s hall asleep—”

  A bellow from Pavo interrupted him. The Tishats’s horse spun on its hocks and galloped away from the fire so fast its hoofs threw back chunks of dirt. The onlookers scattered out of his way, and a stream of the city guardsmen raced after. Everybody left behind slewed around to watch them, and one of the men who had just been eying Conn with such suspicion said, “What was that about the pelt house?”

  “The pelt house,” Raef said, loud, and Conn suddenly understood what was happening. The crowd was pushing off to follow Pavo. “Come on!” he cried, and turned and ran the other way, toward the river, with Raef on his heels.

  The sun was just coming up, its first long rays shining into their faces, sliding its sheer pale light along the surface of the river. On either side the land was still dark and featureless. By the time Conn reached the shore, Magnus’s two ships were already out in the middle of the river, in the ripples of the current, and past the northern edge of the earthworks. The oars rose and fell like wings, pushing them on. Conn gave a furious, wordless yell, and back from the longships came a derisive chorus of jeers.

  “Damn him,” Conn said. “Damn him. Can we catch him?”

  Raef stood watching the ships glide away. His head jerked around, looking north, using whatever the crazy feeling was he had for water, and flung his arm out to the north. “Around the bend, there—maybe. Come on.”

  They ran north along the bank of the river; Conn was thinking, now, at last, Pavo would not step in no matter where he fought Magnus, and his muscles sang. They slopped through the shallow mucky water at the foot of the earthworks and up again onto the bank, out onto the pasturage there, where Thorfinn’s horses were. The river curved away from them, trending northeasterly, its surface gleaming in the strengthening daylight. Far ahead, already nearly into the great bend to the west, Magnus’s ships crept along like beetles over the water.

  There was no time to catch horses. With Raef beside him he ran straight north, cutting across the open meadow, to meet the river beyond its broad loop back to the west. The flood had swept this flat ground clean; he could run full-striding, straight ahead, and he leaned into ea
ch step. Looking off to his right, he could not see Magnus’s ships anymore, nor anything of the river, and he shouted, “Are they beating us?”

  “Keep running,” Raef cried. He tossed his head back, indicating behind them. “Look!”

  Conn twisted to see behind him. Back there, a pack of horsemen was galloping out of Holmgard and following on their trail.

  He faced forward again, his breath coming shorter; the ground here was slippery under the crust of dried mud, spiky with dead grass, and he skidded and caught his balance again and raced on. They had nearly crossed the open meadow. Ahead of him there rose a long heap of drifted brush and branches, marking the edge of the water. To the east he could just make out the river sweeping in broad and glittering from the right. It coursed past from east to west some way, and then swung north again, and he could see a good way of its length and there was no sign of Magnus.

  He reached the wall of river drift and stood a moment, his chest heaving, catching his breath again, while Raef loped up after him. The horsemen were still far behind them. He scrambled up onto the heap of branches and trunks to look around.

  What he saw made him bellow, exultant.

  The great mass of the flood drift covered this bank all the way back to the bend in the river, and there, stretched out into the shallow water, was formed a tangled dam of branches and trunks and brush. Behind it the flooded river had piled up a shoal of gravelly sand that stretched in a pale angled curve almost to the eastern bank. Magnus’s ships had run aground on this bar, and Conn could see them now desperately trying to work the hulls free.

  He made his way along the top of the driftwood, slipping and sliding on the unsteady mass, jumping from trunk to trunk. Up there, Magnus’s crews were throwing out their baggage, lightening their ships, and yet still they would not float.

  Now, in the first ship, all the men ran back to the stern, so that the bow raised up; Conn heard a faint yell, and they all dashed forward again.