“The gods give power to those who respect them, Volodymyr. Well is it known you seek another god, that when you were a boy your grandmother Olga the Christian whispered in your ear of another god, a greater god than ours—”
“She spoke openly, to me, to my father. She was a holy woman, very deep-minded?’
“But Sviatoslav knew if he abandoned the old gods, his men would not follow him. I heard this with my own ears! How can you do what your father dared not do? Do you think you are as great a man as Sviatoslav?” Blud gave a sneer, and tossed one hand up. “When have you even sailed beyond the rapids?”
Volodymyr’s whole face twisted, dark, his teeth showing. “Would you follow me if I did? Do you follow me now? When I have put images of Perun in every village under my sway, and overcome the northern tribes?”
Dobrynya said sharply, “You use the gods for your own ends, Blud. And Sviatoslav himself did not sail on the sea.”
Conn glanced at Raef, beside him. “Is this what happened this morning?”
Raef nodded. Conn turned his eyes toward the screen again; now for a moment a light shone behind it, as if a door opened. Then it was gone: the door shutting.
Dobrynya and Blud were shouting at each other again. Raef seemed somehow deeply interested in this. Finally, when it seemed the two might begin to hit each other, Volodymyr ordered Blud out, and the redheaded lordling flung himself away through the door. Volodymyr went back to his chair.
“Uncle. Blud is a boyar, he is my kinsman; someway, half the great men in the kingdom are related to him.”
“I’ll cut his tongue out,” Dobrynya said, raging.
“Yet his tongue betrays him with the truth,” Volodymyr said. “My grandmother told me when I was a child that to be a great king I must follow the god who can give me power above all other men, and every word from Blud’s, mouth, every deed of his, proves her true, that great old woman. As long as they can call on their own gods I am only one of them.”
He nodded at Dobrynya. “And as you know, Uncle, I have been seeking for that god. I sent to the Khazars, and one of their rebbis came and told me about their Yahweh, and I sent to the Germans and they told me much, much about their Pope, and I sent to the Mahmettans and they told me about their Lah.” He gave a little bow to Rashid, sitting beside the throne, who bowed stiffly back, his face gone rigid.
Conn remembered Magnus Redbeard in Holmgard saying something about this. But he was much more interested now in the screen, where he thought he saw an eye peeking out, and a little white hand, just for a moment, showing through the lattice. He nudged Raef, beside him, but Raef was intent on what Volodymyr was saying.
The prince was declaiming in a full round voice, proving something. “And as I look at the world I see what’s there in front of me. There is only one man above all others in the world, and he is the Emperor, in Constantinople. All men know this. So it is his god I must seek, if I am to be supreme here. But I can’t get him even to send me a messenger.”
Conn nudged Raef a little harder, until his cousin’s shaggy fair head swiveled toward him, and he nodded at him to look at the screen. Raef looked, and his eyes widened out like windows popping open.
He shot Conn a single, fierce, warning look, and turned back to Volodymyr, who was saying, “All others court me. Him only, whom I seek alone of them all, pays me no heed.”
Dobrynya said, “My prince, you must capture his attention.- He glanced at Rashid, sitting quietly on a cushion by the wall.
“My lord,” Rashid said quietly, “I shall take my leave, as I see these are secret matters of the Rus’.” His cheeks were red, and he went out the door. All around the room, the blue-coated guards stood motionless. Conn thought, briefly, that if Volodymyr and Dobrynya truly wanted this kept secret, sending the guards out would be a good idea too, but they stayed where they were. He glanced through the corner of his eye at the man by the door, whose name he thought he remembered—Ivor, or Oleg. The guard stood there utterly still, expressionless. Volodymyr was up out of his chair and pacing around. He went by the cold hearth and threw a twig on it, and came back toward Dobrynya.
“Capture his attention. How do you propose we do that?”
“I have an idea to force the Emperor to give you what you want,” Dobrynya said. “I have brought here the men to make this idea work.”
Conn turned toward the screen again, and Raef trod hard on his foot. Dobrynya stood in the midst of them all, saying, “This is what Sviatoslav realized, anyway—you cannot go humbly to this new god like a beggar. You must have signs from the Emperor that you are favored over all others.” His hands came together, palm against palm. “The Emperor’s own priest must baptise you, not some wandering monk.”
“Yes,” Volodymyr said. “But how?”
“And to show that you are above all others, the Emperor must give you his sister, a princess born to the purple, to be your bride, so you are brother to the Emperor himself.”
“Yes!” Volodymyr stepped toward him, his face sharp, and his eyes glinting. “But how?” He gripped Dobrynya’s hands.
His uncle smiled, as if he saw everything clearly as in daylight while everybody else fumbled through the dark. “My Knyaz, my nephew, if you want this baptism, and this bride, and all that comes with them, you must offer him something in return.”
Volodymyr was watching Dobrynya steadily. “What can I offer him?”
Dobrynya said, “You will give him Chersonese, the heart of the Greek Sea.”
Volodymyr’s face fell a little, creases appearing like cracks between his eyes. “Chersonese! I don’t have Chersonese!”
“But you will,” Dobrynya said, and he swung out his arm, his hand aiming at Raef and Conn. “These men, and the rest of the Varanger, can get it for you.”
“A walled city.” Volodymyr’s voice trembled a little. “A Greek city! My father never took a Greek city. But—” He glanced once at Raef and Conn and back at Dobrynya. “How do you propose we attack Chersonese? Not even the Khazars have ever taken it.”
“Not by land,” Dobrynya said. “Their wall is well fabled, high enough to hold out giants. But from the sea.” His fist pounded into his open palm. “These men, here, can sail Sviatoslav’s ships, and we can sweep into Chersonese harbor and storm the city from the water.”
“Sviatoslav’s ships,” Volodymyr said, and raised his head, looking not at the men around him, but over their heads. “I will take my father’s ships to war. I will sail on the Greek Sea, and force the Emperor to his knees.” His voice was quiet, almost reverent. “I will make Kiev a new Constantinople!”
Dobrynya flexed at the waist into a bow. Raef did not move, nor Conn. Volodymyr wheeled around. His face was vivid with excitement. To Raef, he said, “Tomorrow, we will go down to the ships, and you can tell me what must be done to make them—”
He fumbled for a word, and Raef said, flat-voiced, “Seaworthy.”
“Ah, yes. And you will have to teach us to use them again. But we are all river boatmen here from birth. It will not be hard.” He swung toward Dobrynya. “We must talk.”
Dobrynya rose from his bow as if on strings. Conn thought it was not he who was on strings. The posadnik said, “We will see you later, at the welcoming feast, all of you Varanger.” He was shooing them out. Conn glanced once again at the screen and turned toward the door, Raef on his heels. For an instant as he went to the door he looked into the face of the blue-coated guard, Oleg, but the man stared straight ahead, no muscle moving. Conn went out.
C H A P T E R T W E L V E
Conn said, “I say we steal the ships. Why wait for them to convince all the rest of their men? Especially that one, that Blud, he’s never going along with this. What was the name of that place— Kersony?”
“Chersonese,” Raef said.
“Have you heard of it before?”
“No.”
They went through the courtyard, now empty of everybody but a few servants hurrying around; one carried a platter of coo
ked meat that left a mouthwatering trail in the air behind it. Conn looked back at the building they had just left.
“There’s your little black friend.”
Raef glanced around. Rashid was at the far end of the building, talking to a blue-coated guard.
“I’ll bet he knows all about Chersonese,” Raef said. “I’ll bet he knows a lot more about all this than we do.”
Conn followed him around the side of the great hall, looking around; he thought of the screen in the Knyaz’s palace, and the murmurs and giggles behind it. The glimpse of a bright eye looking through it. They had to wait, at the gate, for a pack train of goods coming in, three horses neck-roped together. Another crowd waited just beyond for the chance to enter. Conn got into the gate ahead of them and led the way out.
“Blud Sveneldsson. What kind of a name is that? They speak dansker but they don’t act like free men.” Conn glanced around to make sure nobody was listening. “They can’t sail anymore. If you ask me they’re all Sclava.”
Raef said, “They’ve been here awhile.”
They went across the flat ground by the row of Sclava gods and down the trail to their holding. The sun was midway down the western sky, shining into the ravine, gilding every leaf and flower. At the holding the rest of the Varanger were all crowded around the fire, passing a cup, and patting their stomachs. The food was gone. Janka sat in the doorway of the hut, and the hun woman was nowhere.
Leif was sitting alone on the big rock by the fire and Conn nudged him with his foot until he got up complaining and moved around to the ground. Conn took his place and moved over so that Raef could sit next to him; Raef craned his neck around toward Leif. “You said you’d been around here awhile. Who are these men in the blue coats?”
The cup came to Leif, who drank from it, wiped his mouth, and handed it up to Conn. “The Faithful Band. Volodymyr’s guards. Their fathers all rode with Sviatoslav against the Khazars and the Bulgars and anybody else stupid enough not to run when they saw them coming. They were a tough bunch:” Leif grinned. “What’s it like, up there? Pretty fancy, I’m guessing. See am women? Volodymyr has lots of women.”
“Sviatoslav followed Thor’s way.”
Leif grunted. “Who else? He was a viking, that one.” He made the sign for Thor with his thumb and forefinger. “A lot of good men came down the river to join him.”
“You knew him?”
“No, I came later, but I’ve heard the stories. Always at war. Always at the front of his men.”
“Do you know somebody named Blud Sveneldsson?”
“I recognize the name. One of the boyars. From Rodno, west of here. He thought for a while maybe he could be Knyaz, until Volodymyr took it to him. Did you find out where we’re sailing?”
“The Greeks,” Raef said. “On the Greek Sea somewhere. What’s a boyar?”
“They hold most of the land. Something like that. They all claim they came in with Rurik, the first Varangian prince. There’s some council where they all sit and try to tell the Knyaz what to do.”
Conn noticed Raef hadn’t mentioned the name of the city on the Greek Sea, which he himself had once more forgotten. Something red moved out on the hillside, and he looked off toward the trail up from the ravine.
“Here comes Pavo.”
The Varanger all slewed around. Pavo was riding up the trail straight toward them, alone. His red shirt was dirty and scuffed at the hem and the cuffs. His scalplock was bound with a long strip of red cloth. He had his gaze pinned on Conn, and Conn sat where he was, his legs stretched out in front of him, and waited.
Pavo reined in on the trail at the end of the path down to the holding.
“Raven. You and me talk.”
“Talk,” Conn said. He did not stand up. Pavo’s horse ducked its head and scratched its nose on its knee. The whip hung from its saddle pommel. It always burned Conn to remember that whip touching him.
Pavo said, “Someplace quiet.”
“No,” Conn said. “Here. They can hear anything I want to say.”
Across the fire, Helgi grunted; he, Leif, Harald, and the rest sat there motionless, watching intently. Pavo swung down out of his saddle, let his reins trail, and paced along the path to them.
Conn still did not stand up. Pavo towered over him, his hands on his hips, and stared down at him. He said, “I no like you. You no like me.”
“That’s right,” Conn said.
“Here, in Kiev, now—” Pavo shook his hands back and forth in front of him, flat. “No fight. Here, we like. Understand?”
Conn frowned at him; beside him, Raef was rigid, his arms folded over his chest and his long legs crossed at the ankles, as if he had tied himself in a knot, and his eyes looking anywhere but at Pavo. Conn said, “Truce, then. Is that what you mean?”
“Truce,” Pavo said. He held out his hand.
Conn looked at him a moment, and then stood up and took it and shook it. “Truce. Why?”
Pavo lowered his hand to his side. “Blud,” he said. He turned and walked back up the path toward his horse.
“Blud Sveneldsson,” Leif said, and turned to give Raef a knowing look.
Helgi said, “What was that about?” The other Varanger began to murmur and talk among themselves. Conn sat down again, staring after Pavo, and lifted the cup to his mouth, but it was empty, and he put it down again.
Vagn said, “Don’t trust him.”
Raef gave a shake of his head. “What?” Conn said.
“He trusts us,” Raef said. “I wish I knew what was going on here.” His head swiveled toward Leif. “Somebody ruled here between Sviatoslav and Volodymyr. Another Knyaz. Some—” He struggled for the name. “Yaro.”
“Yaropolk,” Leif said. “I remember him. Volodymyr’s older brother. Half brother.”
“They threw him out?”
“Dobrynya and Volodymyr and a pack of Swedes Dobrynya brought in.” Leif’s forehead wrinkled. “Blud had something to do with it, too. They killed him. Yaropolk. Not in a battle—by treachery.”
“Why?”
“He wanted to turn Christian.”
“Hunh.” Raef turned around and stared at Conn.
Conn said, “This gets more interesting all the time, doesn’t it.” He stood up. “I’m going to look around, I’ll be back later.”
Raef understood this, and scowled at him. He knew better than to say anything in front of all the other men, and Conn smiled at him and went on out to the main trail and back toward the palace.
The sprawling stockade with its heavy wooden wall covered most of the top of the bluff. He did not go through the gate, but made his way around the outside of the fence, trying to get somewhere that would be behind that latticework screen in Volodymyr’s room. A long building blocked him, maybe a shambles since it stank of old blood, and he turned another way, and that pushed him off almost to the edge of the bluff, which ran here sheer down to the river.
He thought his own holding was well behind him, up the ravine to his left, maybe as much as a mile. The whole palace compound lay on his right. The wall came down here to the bluff and then turned right to follow the bluff’s crumbling edge. Between that drop-off and the log wall were thickets of dusty brush. He made a way through them, following a path made by something much smaller than he was.
Finally the path ended at the wall, overgrown with vines. There was nowhere else to go, and he climbed up, pulling himself on the vines and finding toeholes on the logs, to the top.
The ends of the logs were hewn into sharp spikes. Directly below him anyway was a woodlot, with a gate opening inward, where anybody could walk through at any time; there was no one in sight now but an axe stuck up from a great stump in the middle and there were logs waiting to be split. He stayed down between two notches of the spiked wall to keep out of sight and looked as much as he could into the compound beyond the woodlot fence.
There was the long thatch of the hall, the largest one, and beside it the two smaller rooflines, one the room
where he had seen Volodymyr, the other the room from which the door had opened and closed, somebody had come in, not alone, and laid a little white hand on the lattice as she listened.
The sun was setting, but the summer twilight was almost like daylight. He crept along the outside the wall, staying below the top except every twenty feet or so, when he peeked over to get his bearings again. The bluff ran tight against the wall below him. If he fell he would fall all the way to the river hundreds of feet down. He moved carefully, feeling for each foothold, and sticking his knife into the wood sometimes for a handhold; the log wall was old, with knots and knotholes and chinks. Finally he came to a place behind that room, with Volodymyr’s house beyond, and he peered between two logs, and saw a garden down there, with its own fence, nearly as high as this one, which met the fence he was climbing only a little way on from here.
Tall trees shaded it, and bushes made copses in it, among carefully tended patches of flowers. On the far side of the garden from him rose a white plastered wall, painted, like its side, with birds and deer.
He crept on a little way, to get past the garden fence, to where a huge tree grew up almost against the stockade wall. He climbed this tree much faster than the wall, and got up high above the garden, in among the leaf-shrouded branches.
One branch stretched out over the garden. He crawled out on it, and laid his head on his arm, smiling, because all around this sunny, secluded space, there were women.
Near the doorway through the Knyaz’s wall, on a wooden platform, there was a fat woman in a glittering robe, surrounded by girls sitting below her, looking up at her, submissive. They were doing handwork, holding it up for the fat woman to admire, or poking through baskets for more thread. One of them was playing a kind of lute and singing.
Nearer to him three girls with long golden hair were throwing a ball back and forth. They wore only shifts of some thin stuff and he could see the curve of their breasts and their ripe sweet behinds when they moved. One stooped to pick up the ball, her back to him, and he murmured to himself, catching just a glimpse of fur beneath the hem of her shift. A baby cried somewhere, and up on the platform, some of the other girls began to sing along with the first. Two older women strolled by almost directly beneath him, talking; they too wore almost no clothes, and he looked down into the soft crevices between their breasts and longed to slide his hands in there, into that warm, motherly darkness.
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