Varanger

by Cecelia Holland

  The horses had shied back away from him, as he circled them, and the whole little herd was pushed into the center of the rope pen, but now at their back Raef bounded over the rope and charged at them, shouting and waving his arms. They needed nothing more. With another single shrill neigh, and then a whinnying chorus, the horses plunged forward toward the opening in the fence.

  Conn shrank back out of their way. Their hoofs tore at the beaten grassy ground, hurling up chunks of sod; their bodies rushed past him in a solid stream of bay and chestnut and dun. He could feel the pounding of their hoofs through the earth under his feet. At the very end of the herd galloped a little brown horse, a foal at her heels, and as she pattered past, he ran out, caught her thick black mane with both hands, and swung himself up onto her back.

  He gave a whoop of triumph. He wrapped his naked legs around the mare’s barrel, gripped her mane with one hand, and waved the other over his head, howling the stampeding horses along ahead of him. The herd swerved away from the wagons; they cast up a great pall of dust as they galloped. The mare was small enough that he could shift her course with his weight and his hands and he swung her out away from the others, out of the dust, where he could see.

  He glanced quickly behind him; the foal was hurrying along behind, long stick legs in a furious blur, but he saw no sign of Raef. He leaned back, to slow the mare down, to go back and look for him. Then he saw, ahead of him, someone running down toward the herd, arms waving, trying to turn the horses back.

  It was a woman, her long black hair streaming out behind her, her legs flashing bare as she ran. He veered toward her, pressing his hand on the mare’s neck to keep her straight. The woman saw him coming and whirled to flee, and he caught up with her at a full gallop, leaned down, and scooped her up over the withers of the horse.

  He nearly went off; the mare stumbled to her knees under the sudden weight. The woman screamed, facedown across the horse’s shoulders, and Conn grabbed hold of her to keep her there and dragged himself back where he belonged. The horse herd had veered off to the west, out onto the broad open plain. His horse slowed, snorting, laboring under the weight, and he felt her shift her gait, trying to swerve to follow the herd. He kicked her hard in the gut to keep her galloping and pushed her head round straight with his free hand. The other hand had the woman by the back of her clothes. She squirmed around, trying to hit him with her fist. He let the weary mare slow down; now he could see Raef back there, running after him. The horse stopped. The foal raced up and immediately pushed its head up under the mare’s flank to nurse. One hand on the woman’s back, Conn held her fast, head down, and waited for Raef to catch up.

  Raef said, “What are you going to do with her?”

  Conn glanced toward the woman, trudging after him on foot with her hands tied together before her, and her hair all in her face. She was crying now. She had tried twice more to run away and he thought maybe he should have let her. She was not pretty, not even very young, a round brown face, narrow little eyes like Janka’s, tangled dirty black hair. He said, “I don’t know.”

  “Let her go, then,” Raef said.

  Conn said, not thinking much, “No.” She was his, he had won her, and he meant to keep her. He knew what this touched on with Raef, but he put that aside to work out later.

  The sun was lowering, and he was very tired. Ahead, glad, he saw the first signs of Dobrynya’s camp, two men gathering wood, and beyond them, under the trees, the smoke of a campfire. He kicked the little mare, which groaned, and plodded on, her head bobbing, the foal going along close against her flank. Then ahead of him one of the wood gatherers yelled.

  It was Janka. Leaping and flinging his arms up, the hun slave dashed toward him, his face joyous. Behind him, the other man let out a shout. The horse stopped, and Conn slid down to his feet, and Janka rushed up to him.

  “You go! You make!” Janka hopped up and down; with his hands he made great waving motions, illustrating the river. The other wood gatherer was staring at them, and behind him, a few more men appeared—Sclava, all of them.

  “I think you die!” Janka was shouting. He saw the woman, frowned an instant, and then turned with a bright face back to Conn. “I think you dead!”

  “We aren’t,” Conn asked. “Where’s everybody else?” They were coming up to the camp, toward the Sclava, all standing there watching them approach.

  “You men still—” Janka pointed down. “With logs.” He wheeled around and shouted, in Sclava, “Look! Raven and Goose! Raven and Goose!”

  The other Sclava burst into cheers. Conn waved absently at them. He felt a lot better for thinking about the other Varanger, stuck now with the long slow hauling of the monochs. Ahead, he saw the camp, a wide circle flattened out in the grass, the fires already laid out and the hobbled horses scattered over the pasture beyond the clearing. By the fire in the center, Pavo stood watching them, head and shoulders above the rest.

  Conn lifted a hand in cheerful salute. Among the watching Sclava, now, somebody let out a whistle, and a general yell went up. “Raven! Raven and Goose!” Pavo turned away, putting his back to them. Conn gave a whoop at that, triumphant, slid down off the exhausted horse, slung his arm over Raef’s shoulder, an strutted on into camp.

  “Raef, look!”

  Raef had been gawking up at the bluffs along the river, at the rooflines and fences and towers showing through the heavyheaded trees that cloaked the slopes and heights. They passed a ravine like a yellow notch cut down to the river’s edge, white water spilling from its foot. When Conn shouted, he jerked his gaze toward the bow of the monoch, past Dobrynya, who was sitting grandly in the middle, past Rashid in front of him.

  Conn was leaning out from the bow, pointing toward the riverbank. Ahead of them, the tree-covered bluffs drew back a little, and a many-leveled bench opened out above the bank of the river, a set of old shorelines. These level lands were packed with people and buildings, colors and smoke, moving and shouting, such a confusion that it all rushed at Raef like an overwhelming wave. For a moment he could sort nothing out, the shops, the markets, the to-and-fro of so many people. Then he began to see the rows of rooftops, the open common at the center, and there, what Conn had seen first, standing along the top of the bank in their wooden cradles, six dragonships.

  Warships. Raef gave a yell, and shot up onto his feet, almost tipping the monoch over. Conn hooted at him and Dobrynya grabbed with both hands for the gunwales. Raef ignored them. With the clumsy monoch rolling under his feet he looked at the dragons and felt a surge of lust.

  He had not seen such ships since he left Hjorunga Bay. Low and lean, probably fifteen oars to a side, their long sweet lines looked as light as a bird’s wingbone. Their bows and sterns swept up into swan necks. Even the trim lines of their strakes were elegant. Now they wore no dragon heads, carried no shields, raised no painted sails, but when they were dressed for war, they would be magnificent.

  They were old, he realized, they had been sitting there on the cradles for a long while, weeds grown up around them, and the canvas covers green with mold. It would take work to make them seaworthy again. The monoch had steadied under him; Conn in the bow was pushing them in toward the landing, just before the first of the great dragons. Raef stood where he was, his gaze feeding on the ships.

  In the middle of the stupid monoch, Dobrynya twisted around to speak to him.

  “These are Sviatoslav’s ships. We have kept them, as well as we can, since he died. Once a year, they sail along the river here, to honor him.”

  Sviatoslav was Volodymyr’s father; this was most of what Raef knew of him. The rest he gleaned from the voices of those who spoke of him. Dobrynya was still watching him, perhaps to see if he understood all this. In fact all Dobrynya’s interest in their sailing on the salt was making a lot more sense. He remembered the sea at the end of this river, the sea that led to the Greeks, and for an instant a wave rose high and blue in his mind, broke into a white crest, and flowed on.

  If they sa
iled them only once a year, they could not sail them very well.

  Dobrynya said, “He was the greatest of the House of Rurik. Pavo wears his hair so in honor of him. The style has gone out of use among our Varanger.” He said this with a kind of sneer in his voice.

  He was staring in toward the shore, where a little crowd was gathered to watch the monoch come in to the shallows. Most of this crowd were ragged children, and a few women, and as he observed this Dobrynya in his place was turning dark with bad temper. His golden beard bristled, and he put his fists on his hips.

  Raef and Conn jumped out of the monoch and led it in through knee-deep water to the shore beside the wooden landing, so that Dobrynya and Rashid could climb out dry-shod. The narrow wooden dock was empty. It ran out from the next higher level of the stepped shoreline, and a ladder of several rungs led from the water up to the landing. Dobrynya climbed up this ladder and Rashid followed him, and on the landing Dobrynya turned and glared around him.

  “This is the welcome Kiev gives the posadnik of Novgorod!”

  Rashid put a hand on his shoulder and spoke quietly to him. Raef glanced at Conn, who shrugged. They dragged the monoch on to the shore and made it fast to the first pier of the landing, and Conn went up on the bank a little and began to wave in the other boats as they came along toward them. Raef went up beside him, but looking the other way, at the city.

  There were far more people here than at Novgorod, and the houses crowded thick together on the level ground. Above, on the hilltops, he saw other buildings, bigger, with heavy rooftops. The buildings were whitewashed, and many of them were painted. The people crowding through the market carried baskets of vegetables, drove pigs ahead of them, or out of their way, shouted and yelled and strode along at a city’s pace; women with their hair bound in scarves, like the women in Novgorod, men in groups talking, here someone led along a string of horses, and there already came a gang of slaves, bound together at the neck, to unload Dobrynya’s goods from the monochs.

  There also Raef saw, pushing in through the bustle of the crowds in the market, a man in a blue coat with gold clasps, some kind of helmet on his head, on a horse, heading for Dobrynya. Behind him came a disorderly line of other blue-coated horsemen.

  The leader drew up at the foot of the landing, where Dobrynya still stood, his hands on his hips, complaining loudly to Rashid about how he was being treated.

  “Dobrynya!”

  The blue-coated rider swept off his horse at the end of the landing and striding up to Dobrynya went down on one knee. He was with long swooping mustaches. “Uncle Dobrynya,” he said. “I apologize over and over at this greeting. No one told us you were coming until just now.”

  Dobrynya had his arms folded over his chest. He said, “Oleg Ivorsson, isn’t it? I remember you. I sent my Tishats on ahead to tell the Knyaz I was coming. Pavo Borislavovich should have been here and given you ample forewarning.”

  “Yes, Uncle Dobrynya,” said the kneeling man. “He finally got in to see the Knyaz, only just now. It was one of the boyars, Blud Sveneldsson, sir, Blud of Rodno. He held your man up at the gate. I came as soon as I was told—even before the Knyaz heard. I apologize over and over for this.”

  Raef glanced at Conn, to see what he made of the whole matter, but Conn was staring away into the city, looking bored. He turned and murmured, “Let’s get out of here.”

  Dobrynya was saying, “I demand then that you take me to my nephew the Knyaz immediately.” Rashid, beside him, had a hand on his arm, and was whispering in his ear. Dobrynya said, “Bring horses for my followers. Him—” With a gesture toward Rashid. “And them.” He turned, and pointed to Raef and Conn.

  Conn said, “I have my whole crew to tend to. I have to settle my camp.” He turned his wide gray eyes on Raef. “Raef will go. He speaks for all of us.” A wide grin split his short curly black beard, his amused gaze resting on Raef, and before Dobrynya said anything, he was turning away, calling out to Leif and Harald, giving orders. Dobrynya stared after him, frowning.

  “I don’t ride horses,” Raef said. Rashid was already mounted, sitting neatly on a big crate of a saddle. Dobrynya turned to the mount led up for him and got on board, and they went off into the city.

  The crowd knew now who had just landed, and they gathered on either side of the little train that Oleg Ivorsson the chief guardsman led across the marketplace. “Dobryna! Uncle Dobrynya!” They called to him in Sclava, and he turned and waved and smiled with every step. Raef walked along at his stirrup. He stretched his legs and rolled his arms around him, getting used to being on land. The crowd pressed around so thick he could not see much of the market, which filled the open ground all the way to the foot of the bluffs.

  They climbed an angling, rutted path to the top of the bluff, where they came out on flat ground large enough to hold a dozen or more houses. None of these was built down into the ground, like the houses in Holmgard, but stood square and proud in plots of gardens, little orchards, goats tethered in the dooryard and on the thatch. Their thick walls were covered white with plaster. Above the doorways were painted birds and flowers.

  As they rode along, the crowd trailed along with them as well as they could, noisy and welcoming. On the bluff top, several women with their heads wrapped in scarves and their arms full of baskets rushed over toward Dobrynya, all talking at once. The guardsman Oleg tried to fend them off but Dobrynya called out sharply.

  He stopped his horse and saluted them in Sclava, in his round. merry voice, and each one snatched something from her basket and offered it to him, fighting the others to reach him. He laughed. He took a bit of bread from one, and a piece of cheese from another, and a fish from a third, and shooed them all away. The bread woman, the cheese woman, the fish woman went away glowing, all of them in a close babble of excitement.

  “Dobrynya!”

  They climbed a shorter, easier slope to another flat hilltop, girdled with trees, where a sprawling stockade, a wooden palisade, contained a dozen rooftops. But now blocking their way was another mounted man, with half a dozen riders behind him, and his voice rang out again with Dobrynya’s name, not welcoming.

  Dobrynya reined in his horse. The blue-coated guardsmen gathered up close around him; Raef drifted out of their midst to watch. Dobryna said, in a silky voice, “I am glad to be again in Kiev, Blud. Better still, to have your greeting.”

  The other man, Blud, nodded his head downward. The harness of his horse glittered with gold. A gold spur twinkled at the heel of his boot. “The Knyaz awaits you.” He glanced past them. “Is this your whole army?” His lip curled.

  “They are coming by land,” Dobrynya said. “Probably they have already reached Kiev, and are exchanging greetings with your men at the great gate.”

  Blud smiled, showing peg teeth in his pale beard. “Perhaps this is so. I shall allow you to pass on to the Knyaz.”

  “You will allow me,” Dobrynya said, violently, and kicked his horse into a sudden gallop straight down the path. Blud dodged out of his way. The blue-coated guards hurried after. Raef walked along behind them, watching Blud gather up his men and ride away.

  The stockade of Volodymyr the Knyaz of Rus’ covered nearly the whole top of the river bluff between two ravines. Inside the fortress wall, among the scattered towering trees, there rose the heavy thatched roofs of a dozen buildings, green with the summer grass. A double gate opened through the wall, and when Dobrynya rode up, the area just outside the gate was packed with horsemen, Pavo towering above them all in his red cap and long scalplock.

  He saw Dobrynya coming; with a shout, he brought his Sclava into order, and they spread out in a line on either side of the entry. Dobrynya raised his hand in greeting to them. Through their lanes he rode toward the gate, paused a moment, and greeted Pavo. Raef looked around him. The gateposts were oak trunks, carved with lightning bolts, and the crosspiece was plated with gold. Blud was coming after them, at a little distance.

  The courtyard inside, where Dobrynya and Rashid
left their horses, was of beaten dust, but the wide-fronted building that faced them had doors with gold handles, and golden images of eagles on the peak of its thatched roof. Raef was looking all around, amazed at the number of people. Many of them wore the blue coats with gold clasps and clips of the guards.

  They went up two steps into a hall, dark after the dazzle of the sunshine, where lanterns hung from the roofbeams and the floor rang underfoot. Gradually Raef’s eyes grew used to the dim light. He followed Dobrynya into the center of the room. A lamp suddenly glowed ahead of him. He looked up, and saw a man high above him, watching him from the center of a hazy nimbus of light.

  He stood still, startled. All around him, a great thunder of voices called out, “All hail Volodymyr Sviatoslavich, Knyaz of all Rus’!” And everybody bowed.

  Raef saw no reason to bow; he kept his head up, so that he could look around, and he saw the black curtains there at either side, that had veiled the light and hidden the man until at some signal he was suddenly revealed. Everybody straightened, and the man up there in the center of the light came down the black-shrouded steps toward them; hanging by a chain, the lamp above his head descended also, so that he was always in the center of the light.

  Raef glanced over his shoulder and saw Rashid standing there, smiling, not, for once, making notes. He stuck his hand into his wallet and fingered the gold basileus, wondering if they had gotten this idea from Rashid. He thought if Sweyn Tjugas had tried something like this, he would have been met with a shower of stones.

  Dobrynya said, “My lord and Knyaz, son of my soul, Volodymyr Sviatoslavich, let me greet you as an uncle and a subject and an officer, laying my love and honor at your feet.” He went on like this a little while longer. Volodymyr had stopped, in his descent, where he was still several feet higher than the rest of them. Raef studied him curiously. He was straight and slim, and dressed, to Raef’s surprise, not in pounds of gold and jewels but in a plain black coat, only a little fur around the cuffs to show his rank. His lean, angular face was grave as if he never smiled; not handsome, but full of purpose. He had Dobrynya’s piercing blue eyes.