Varanger

by Cecelia Holland

  Rashid did not; he snorted, disdainful, and looked down his nose. “God erred when he made women.” He looked up finally into Raef’s face and said, “Heed me, my young friend, there’s trouble. Blud is talking to the other pagans. Nobody wants the Greek Christ,”

  Raef said, “Really,” as if he hadn’t already known this. “What do you think will happen?”

  “At the very least they will try to overthrow him.” Rashid was looking around him again, not at Raef.

  “When?” Raef said, wondering if he knew anything exactly.

  The Baghdad man shrugged. “I hear only rumors. I am leaving soon, I have come also to say good-bye.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “I am taking a ship down to the sea, and then to Baghdad.”

  Raef said the usual farewells, wishing him a safe journey, and the favor of his king. He said, “On the way, will you go to Chersonese?”

  Rashid stiffened, resisting, as if he had something to protect, and his head tilted to one side, his eyes elsewhere. “Probably. I shall have to stop various places, surely.” He swallowed. “Chersonese is a good place to stop, you see, being where it is.”

  “Where is it?” Raef asked.

  He was watching Rashid intently; he saw how the Baghdad man wanted to say nothing, but it was not in him to say nothing. He said, “I am sure you have seen the chart that Volodymyr has. There is an island, a sort of island, Taurica, at the north edge of the sea, east of where the river here runs into the sea. And Chersonese is there, on the bottom edge of Taurica. The heart of the sea.” He licked his lips. “I am telling you too much.”

  Raef laughed. “Why? Can there be too much knowledge? You could make me a little picture, like that other one.”

  Rashid said, abruptly, “Never mind. I shall say good-bye!’ He got to his feet to leave.

  Raef thought of something. “Wait. I want to give you something.” He fingered into his belt pouch for the gold basileus. Holding it to the sunlight, he spat on it, and rubbed it with his thumb, as if to make it shinier. Then he held it out to Rashid.

  Rashid’s face softened, seeing this as a gift. “Then I will give you something also.” He pursed his lips, his cheeks drawn, and then took a ring from the little finger of his left hand, and offered it.

  Raef accepted it with a smile, a gold circlet, cut with runes, like wearable money. Rashid said, “I know you are suspicious of my intentions, my young friend, but I think very kindly of you. I wish the best for you.” They said good-bye again, not shaking hands, and Rashid went on up the trail toward the palace, white as a lily among the dusty green.

  Janka came up. “You friend him?”

  Raef shook his head. “Once. Not really. I thought he was. But he’s a spy.”

  Janka frowned, puzzled. Finally, he went back to the start. “You not friend? Why give him that?”

  “I’ll get it back,” Raef said. “When I find him again.” He took the ring and studied it, wondering if it had some power. His mother would have known. He thought it was just a ring: for all Rashid’s talk about his god, it was his king he served, in Baghdad.

  He wondered if there was a god, anywhere, who was not someone’s imagined thing.

  “Find him again,” Janka said, tentatively.

  “Yes. In Chersonese.” Raef held up the ring at arm’s length, and looked through it up the hill; within the circle of the ring, the path, a few trees, some grass and sky seemed like a tiny world. He turned, saw Merike coming out of the hut, and put her face into the center of the ring.

  He said, “Come,” and beckoned to her, and she came to him, sturdy, brown, trusting. He took her hand and put the ring on her palm. “Here. Take. Yours.”

  She gave a little chirp of amazement. He got up and went up past Janka, onto the path up the slope, to find Conn.

  In the cool of the morning, Conn went by his secret way into the garden. The woman Rachel was there by the pool, and he went to her without a word and kissed her.

  She let him taste the sweetness of her mouth, her eyes shut, her body pliant in his arms, but when he tried to put his hands inside her clothes, she pushed away.

  She said, “I will give you what you want, but only if you help me escape from here.”

  He sat back on his heels, disappointed. What had seemed easy and free vanished into the clutter of some bargain. He ran his gaze over her face, the perfect skin, the ripeness of her lips. Her black eyes were steady on his. Her hands rested on the thighs of her red trousers.

  All she had to do was scream, and this was over; he could not force her. He said, “What do you mean?”

  “Take me away,” she said. “Take me back to Khazaria, to my own city there, and I will make you a prince among my people, and marry you forever. As I love Yahweh I promise this.”

  “I can’t do that,” he said.

  She leaned toward him, showing him the round honey-colored tops of her breasts. “Please. I promise you, I can do everything say. You will be rich. The Khagan is my uncle.”

  “I gave Dobrynya my pledge, that I would follow him,” Conn said. He looked down the front of her clothes, and licked his lips. but then he raised his gaze to her face. “I can’t, Rachel.”

  “He is betraying you!” she cried. “He is giving you to a brass-bellied idol of a god, that will burn up even your soul!”

  “That doesn’t matter,” Conn said. “I gave him my pledge.”

  From behind the hedges, a girl called, “Rachel?”

  He got quickly to his feet. Rachel rose also, her hands out, and her face suddenly softer, no longer bargaining. “Please—come back—”

  “Someone’s coming,” he said, and went over the fence like a lizard up a rock.

  He stood on the other side, his heart pounding, clinging to the wood with fingers and toes. He heard, in there, the brush rustling, and then a breathless unknown girl’s voice said, “Were you talking to someone?”

  “No,” Rachel said, flatly.

  “I thought I heard you say something.”

  “No. There’s a sprite in the fountain. I talk to it sometimes.”

  “Ah. You silly.” The unknown girl laughed. “There’s no sprite.” Rachel gave a muffled sob, or maybe a growl. Conn crept away along the wall and left.

  With Dobrynya and the Knyaz Volodymyr, all nine of the Varanger went down to the marketplace by the river, to look over the new ships. It was a bright, windy day, and the market was full of sellers and buyers, a great bustle of a crowd going from stall to stall and basket to basket, trotting horses up and down, and looking over the slaves in their pen. When Volodymyr rode through on his prancing black horse, the whole crowd let up a whoosh of excitement, and bowed down to him.

  He raised his hand and said some words to them. Conn kept his eyes away from the prince; he followed Raef around the ships. Someone had been keeping them well. They were caulked and scraped, every strake perfect against its neighbor, the keels broad and straight, their dragon heads and tails inside the stems. Raef could not keep his hands off them. There were no masts, although the ships were fitted for them. He doubted finding masts would be a problem here.

  Conn was not thinking of the ships. He was watching Volodymyr, whose wife he longed to take in his arms. He had no such love for Volodymyr as he had for Thorfinn. And Rachel was not Alla.

  He brought himself back to where he was standing, next to a dragon, with Vagn beside him, and Raef farther down the row. “We made a ship like this once,” Conn said to Vagn. “My father’s ship. But that was an oceangoing ship.”

  Vagn scratched in his scraggly beard. “You made a ship?” He put out his hand to the steerboard in front of them. The broad blade, slightly curved at the outer edge, was mounted on a pivot on the ship’s side, part of the third rib; the old wood was weathered silver-gray. The crutch for the mast stood up like a little idol in the middle.

  A great cheer went up from the crowd; Volodymyr rode over closer to the ships and dismounted. One of his crowd of bluecoated guard
s came up to lead away his horse. Conn leaned on the dragon’s hull, watching the Knyaz, thinking about Rachel again. A great mass of the blue coats stood around him, and Dobrynya beside him, the prince slender and straight as a mast in their midst.

  He and Dobrynya stepped forward and climbed up the cradle into the first ship and walked toward the bow, talking. The blue coats moved to form a ring around the ships, standing with their backs to them, watching the crowds; many people had come over to gawk at the prince.

  The Varanger wandered around the ships, inside the circle of the guards. Conn kept his eyes away from the Knyaz, whose wife he wanted so much it burned a hole through his mind and would not let him think of anything else. Volodymyr would likely kill him, if he found out, or try to. He played with the idea of letting him find out. Maybe then Dobrynya would release him, somehow, from his pledge.

  Raef had gotten up onto one ship, going into the stern, an Conn followed him. The ship was a little tender in the cradle and rocked under his step. The floor looked like new wood. The oars were shipped in neat lines against the inside of the hull. Conn cast a glance over his shoulder. Volodymyr and Dobrynya stood in the forecastle, and Volodymyr thrust his arm out straight ahead of him. The wind blew his yellow hair out like a flag.

  “What do you think?” Conn turned back to Raef.

  “This ship feels good,” Raef said. His face was bright, and he had his hand on the steerboard, as if he could sail through the air. Underfoot the hull of the ship trembled a little. Dobrynya was coming toward them, veiled in his usual smile. Behind him, Volodymyr turned and waved, and in the marketplace people cheered him. He came down through the waist of the ship, his long hair and his black coat whipping in the wind. Conn pushed into the very stern, and looked at Dobrynya, to avoid Volodymyr.

  Dobrynya said, “You will be glad to know this. Volodymyr has said we will sail within the month. You shall each command a ship. I—”

  Raef gave a bellow, and flung himself forward, throwing Dobrynya to one side; he crashed into Volodymyr, in the stem of the ship, and bore him down like a wolf on a deer. The crowd let up a many-voiced shriek of tenor, and then a flight of arrows pelted into the ship.

  Conn shouted, “Varanger! Varanger!” He had no sword; he turned to the steerboard and wrenched the tiller bar out of its socket just as blue-coated men swarmed up over both sides of the ship and leapt at him.

  Dobrynya flung his arms up. “Hold!” he cried, and one of the blue-coated guards smashed him down.

  Conn laid around him with the wooden handle of the steerboard, knocked one man flying over the side, and drove two more after. But they were coming too fast. Six feet from him, Raef had gotten up, looking around wildly for a weapon. Volodymyr lay at his feet. All around them, the blue coats were scrambling up over the gunwales, knives and swords in their hands, going for the Knyaz. Lashing out from side to side with the club, Conn bounded toward Raef.

  “Goose! Goose!”

  The crowd was shrieking and churning around him, many trying to get away, and others rushing toward the ship. Raef wheeled toward the sound of his name; Vagn hurled a sword hilt-first toward him, and he caught it out of the air.

  Conn reached him in another step and they swung back-to-back. A helmeted head surged up over the gunwale directly in front of Conn, and he smashed it with his club. A wild ecstasy rushed through him and came out as a scream. With Raef behind him he could fight anybody. The ship rolled suddenly, so that he stumbled to one knee. Down the length of the ship he saw that Vagn and Helgi were fighting their way up onto the hull. Over his shoulder he saw Raef’s long sword flash.

  “Watch up!” Raef yelled.

  Conn threw himself down flat, and another cascade of arrows rattled past him. Down in the stern Dobrynya still lay motionless. Beside Conn, Raef crouched, the sword low across his body; Volodymyr was at his feet, trying to get up, and Raef thrust him down hard with his free hand. Beyond him Vagn and Helgi together hurled a blue-coated guard over the gunwale.

  The ship rocked violently back and forth, at each swing about to tip over.

  Conn roared up onto his feet again, and leaned over the higher side as it swayed down again, and smashed with his club at the men around the cradle. He knocked one flying, but the others got their shoulders to the ship again and heaved, and Conn felt the hull rear up and then roll with a crash off the cradle. He fell backward into a mass of bodies. He twisted around out onto the ground and got up with Helgi on one side and Raef on the other and a solid mass of blue coats charging them.

  The ship was behind him, standing on its side now like an incurved wall. Before him the guards came in a single lunge. He swung the club around him, aiming for knees, and the first rush faltered.

  Volodymyr reared up beside him, a little belt knife in his hand, and his face dark with rage. “Come get me, you pig-hearted traitors!”

  Someone was shouting in Sclava, over and over, the same words. Two men in blue, with dusty helmets, rushed straight for the prince, and Conn swung his club around and laid the nearer one down like a chopped tree, but the other cried, “No—no--I’m with you—” He knelt before the Knyaz, offering up his sword. Before Volodymyr could take it, another blue coat, coming after, chopped an axe down into the kneeling man’s back.

  Conn bellowed, bounded forward, and drove the blunt end of the club into the axeman’s chest. Blood spurted into his face. For an instant he could see nothing but the swarming blue, the helmets, swords slicing at him, everything through a mist of red. He staggered back into the shelter of the tipped-over ship.

  Beside him, Volodymyr shouted, “Pavo! To me!”

  Under Conn’s feet the wooden hull rocked, and he wheeled around and saw a helmeted man scrambling up over the wooden wall above his head. One hand gripped the gunwale and the other hand held an axe. Conn swatted the axe away and laid the club against the side of the helmet so hard it flew off into the air. The body slumped down over the gunwale, arms loose.

  “Pavo!” A dozen voices were yelling, all at once. “Pavo!”

  A horn blew. Around either side of the fallen ship a torrent of horsemen galloped. Abruptly the mass of fighters before Conn was churning in the opposite direction. Half of them were running and the other half were chasing them. Conn straightened, panting. Volodymyr strode out from the shelter of the ship, raised the sword in his hand, and shouted something triumphant.

  Raef knelt down next to Dobrynya. There was nobody left to fight. The broad marketplace before them was rapidly emptying. Pavo with his whip coiling out before him was galloping across it, sending his horsemen after anybody who lagged. In among the stalls, the shops and pens, people crowded tight as chicks, trying to hide. The whip cracked like a clap of thunder.

  Volodymyr shouted, “Get them! Get them all!” Then he wheeled around, crying, “Uncle Dobry.” He fell to his knees next to the Sclava lord. “Dobry!”

  Dobrynya was rousing. He pushed himself up onto hands and knees inside the curve of the fallen ship, and heaved himself out over the gunwale. Still on all fours he vomited onto the ground. Raef stood back, his chest pumping, the sword hanging in his hand. Blood dripped down off the tip into the dust. He turned to Conn, and put his free hand out, and Conn reached out and gripped his hand, one strong hard clench of fists.

  Pavo jogged up toward them and flung himself out of the saddle. “Lord.” Volodymyr had gone to stand beside Dobrynya, who was slowly climbing to his feet, his face green, and not smiling. Pavo knelt down before them.

  Dobrynya put one hand on the Tishats’s head, and spoke into his ear. Beside him, Volodymyr suddenly thrust his sword up into the air.

  “I have triumphed,” he shouted. “I have won, here, again! Let no one doubt me!” He turned in a circle, as if he spoke in the midst of a great solemn crowd. Around him were only the battered, breathless Varanger, the bodies of his guards, the terrified people hiding in the crevices. “I am lord!”

  A few of them knew to give up an answering cheer, no louder than the wind
. Some began to creep bravely out into the open.

  Conn climbed out of the fallen ship, braced on its side against the cradle behind it. At his feet lay the body of the blue-coated guard who had given his life to offer a weapon to Volodymyr. He stood there a moment, wanting to honor this, too tired to know how. Among the growing crowd cheering Volodymyr he thought were likely some of the men who had just tried to kill him. He took another step forward, and, startled, realized he had an arrow through his calf.

  The other Varanger surrounded him, gripping each other’s hands, and nodding and looking each other deeply in the eye. Raef draped his arm over Conn’s shoulder; he struck Vagn in the chest with his other fist. “Thanks.”

  Vagn scratched at his beard, ducking his head down, ied around the ears, and muttered something. Helgi was staring up at Volodymyr, who had climbed up onto the fallen ship to shout and cheer with his people.

  “We got them before Pavo got here; look, he’s going to get all the shine for this.”

  Conn sat down in the dirt. He wasn’t sure they would have won without Pavo. “Help me,” he said, and took hold of the arrow. Leif squatted beside him with a knife, and cut his boot apart; Raef was still looking all around them, watching out for another attack. Conn gasped at the sharp bite of the knife, and Leif pulled the arrow out.

  Volodymyr rode off in a swarm of Sclava horsemen. The wailing, restless crowd followed them, going up toward the palace. Bodies lay on the marketplace. Blood puddled on the ground. Raef bent on one side of Conn, and Helgi on the other, and they lifted him up between them on the chair of their arms and carried him away to their holding.

  C H A P T E R F I F T E E N

  Raef’s hun woman sewed up the slice in Conn’s leg with an awl and some hairs from the mare’s mane; he sat by the fire in front of the holding breathing evenly through his nostrils while she pushed the needle in and out of his skin. Every few moments Raef or Helgi or somebody else in the cluster of men standing around came over and poured wotka over the wound. The other Varanger had come through the fight with nothing but bangs and bruises.