At last, he lifted a hand abstractedly and gestured me away. Willing strength to my legs, I turned to leave the hall, but had not walked more than three paces when he called me back.
“Shaven One!” he shouted suddenly, as if in afterthought. “You will come with me to Miklagård.”
23
The wind was high and the day fair as we rounded the dark brooding headland of the Geats and sailed onto a grey, windscoured sea. I did not know where we were, less yet where we were bound. I had no idea at all where Miklagård might be, nor did I care. I might have been sailing into hell with the devil himself on my back—and it would have made not the whisker of a difference to me.
I stood on the deck of King Harald’s ship as a man determined. Having pondered long over it, I had decided that I could not stand aside and allow the sacred cumtach to be defiled by the barbarians. Come what may, I would risk all to preserve the treasure for which my brothers had given their lives.
Alas and woe! Preserving the holy object meant abetting the wickedness of King Harald. Christ have mercy!
Still, man can only do what is given him; this had been given me and this I could do. Harald, I decided, would receive my help so long as it meant I could keep the sacred cumtach within reach. And if by helping him I furthered his hateful schemes, so be it. I would pay for my sins as all men must, but though I forfeit my soul’s eternal peace and endure the flames of torment everlasting, I would save the silver cover of Colum Cille’s book.
Sadly, the priceless book itself was gone—evil the waste of that fair creation!—but the cumtach remained. What is more, it remained close at hand: Harald had brought the silver book cover with him; he kept it in the peaked box in his shipboard dwelling along with two other caskets full of gold and silver he thought the journey would require.
I cared nothing for the caskets and their treasures, but I meant to watch over that peaked box with the very eyes of an avenging eagle.
Oh, my determination had grown fierce in the harsh certainty of my predicament. All else—my life before, and, yes, ever after—was as nothing beside the hard grit of my new-found fortitude. If the decrees of happenchance required firmness, I would be a rock, a very fortress of resolve.
On the day the four longships sailed from Bjorvika, I hardened my heart to my new vocation: advisor to a marauding Sea Wolf whose gold-lust would consume the lives of many. Harald Bull-Roar meant to seize all he could set hand to, and his grasp was great indeed.
Whether King Harald’s plan was madness itself, or pure cunning, could not, with any lasting satisfaction, be decided. Opinion swung all too readily both ways, and often vacillated from one extreme to the other depending on the day and the direction of the wind. When the wind howled cold and raw from the north, everyone grumbled that it was insane to leave the warmth and safety of the hearth so late in the season. When the sun shone fair and the breeze blew brisk from the west or south, they all agreed that no one would expect a raid so late in the season and that this fact alone would win them much plunder from the unsuspecting inhabitants of Miklagård.
Rain or sun, it was all the same to me. I maintained my place in the king’s company, anticipating his next command, but keeping my distance. I did my duty, performing my service as a slave, but extending myself no further. If Harald’s evil ambition was to be restrained, it would have to be by God’s hand, not mine. I was that vessel made for destruction—that jar of promise, perfect from the master potter’s hand, but marred in the kiln, and now deserving only to be crushed beneath his heel and cast away.
But God is good. He took pity on me and sent me friends to comfort me. Gunnar and Tolar, anxious to be forgiven five years’ tribute, had decided to go to Miklagård after all; as their own lord, Rägnar Yellow Hair, refused to support the king’s raiding scheme with either men or ships, they were given places aboard Harald’s. This cheered me immensely, for I had missed them more than I knew. And since I was no longer Gunnar’s slave, they treated me as one of their own.
We were but two days at sea and I was sitting near the stern with my back to the rail, soaking up a brief ray of sunshine near the end of a rain-riven day, when I heard a voice say, “You are looking sad, Aeddan.”
“Am I?” I opened my eyes to see Gunnar, Tolar and another man standing before me. The stranger was tall and fair-haired, his ruddy face well-creased and his pale eyes cast into a permanent squint from gazing at the horizon in every kind of weather.
“You look as if you have lost your only friend,” Gunnar said, pursuing his observation.
“I suppose it is because I am missing my nice dry bed in your barn. It is difficult to sleep on the bare board of a bouncing ship.”
Gunnar turned to the stranger. “You see? I told you he was Irish.”
“He is Irish all right,” the man observed placidly. “My cousin Sven once had an Irish woman. He got her in Birka for six bits of silver and a copper armband. She was a good wife, but had a very bad temper and would not allow him any other women. Always she said that she would gut him like a fish if he even thought of bringing another woman home. This vexed him sorely, I believe. She died after only five years—I think it was a wolf got her, or a wildcat. That was unfortunate for him. Sven could not easily afford another wife like that.”
“Unfortunate indeed,” I agreed. “You are the king’s helmsman. I have seen you with him. I am Aidan.”
“And you are the king’s new slave,” said the stranger. “I have seen you also. Greetings to you, Aeddan. I am Thorkel.”
“We have sailed together before—Thorkel, Tolar, and me,” Gunnar said. “This is the third time for us, and everyone knows the third time brings very good luck.”
Tolar nodded sagely.
“They are saying you are a Christian,” the pilot informed me. “They are saying it is bad luck for the king to trust a Christian; they fear it will prove poor raiding once we get to Miklagård.” Thorkel paused, distancing himself from the rumour-mongers. “Well, people say many things; most of it is foolishness, of course.”
“Aeddan is a priest,” Gunnar declared blithely, raising a hand to my overgrown tonsure. “He speaks very well for his god. You should hear him sometime.”
“So?” wondered Thorkel. “A Christian priest? I have never seen one before.”
“It is true,” I affirmed, and resolved to find a razor somewhere and restore my tonsure.
The seaman passed a speculative eye over me, and made up his mind at once. “Well, even so, I cannot think trusting a Christian is any worse than trusting one’s luck to the moon and stars, and men do that readily enough. I think you are harmless though.”
From this moment, Thorkel and I became friends. As I had no particular duties, I often spent the better part of every day in his company—sometimes sitting on his bench at the tiller, other times standing with him at the rail as he scanned the sea with his keen blue eyes. The tall helmsman undertook to tell me whatever he could about our progress, not that there was always much to tell. Aside from a few vague landmarks—hills, rocks, rivers, farms, and suchlike—there was little to be seen or mentioned.
We plied the wave-worried seas. Autumn storms were gathering and the days were growing cool and short in the northern realms. Thorkel steered a steady course along unfamiliar shores, and the king resolutely resisted any forays into unprotected settlements—not that many opportunities presented themselves; signs of human habitation were few along the darkly forested coast, for we were pursuing the little-known, and less trusted, northern route to our destination. More difficult than the southern route, the northerly course had the singular advantage of shortening the journey; by how much the journey might be reduced was anyone’s guess. Some wagered that we would be drinking öl in Harald’s hall for the Jul, or mid-winter feast. The pessimists among us tended to think it would be high summer once more before we tasted any of the king’s beer.
Thus, coursing from headland to islet to promontory, we made our way along the misty coastline, pus
hing ever eastward. Truly, the Eastern Sea is a friendless expanse of cold black brine traversed only by solitary whales and other monsters of the foam-flecked deeps. I saw no other ships save the three following in our wake.
Twelve days after setting sail, we came to the place Thorkel had begun searching for three days previously: the mouth of the River Dvina. Pausing only long enough for the ships behind to catch us up, we then turned into the deep channel of the river and began the southern course of our voyage.
A peculiar voyage it was, too; for we left sea travel behind and sailed the inland waterways: south down the Dvina and Dnieper, passing through the lands of Gårdarike and Curled and other trackless places, the barbarian realms of the Polotjans and Poljans, Dregovites, Severians, Patzinaks, and Kazars. Twice we were attacked—once in daylight while under sail. Our adversaries rose up out of the reed-beds, yelling shrilly and throwing stones and sticks; when we did not stop, they gave chase along the river, bouncing over the rocky banks on shaggy little ponies—a sight which made the Sea Wolves laugh, and occasioned great mirth for many days after.
The second attack came during the night four days into the great portage over the hills between the Dvina and the deep, long Dnieper. The fight was savage and brutal and lasted until midday. At King Harald’s command, Thorkel and I and five others retreated to the longship to guard the sails and stores. I took no part in the fighting, but watched it all from the rail, praying Michael Militant’s shielding for Gunnar and Tolar, whom I could see from time to time, toiling amidst the smoke and blood and shouting.
What a peculiar creature is a man, wayward as the wind and just as fickle. Many of these same Sea Wolves had attacked my own dear brothers, killed how many I do not know, ruined our pilgrimage, and stolen our chief treasure—and in similar circumstances. Yet, and yet!—here was I, hands clenched in fervent prayer, pouring out my heart for them, praying with all my might that they should overcome the marauders. It was, I suppose, God’s way of showing how far I had fallen. Sure, no additional proof was needed.
Harald lost seventeen men altogether: eleven dead, and the rest carried off for slaves. The foemen lost far more—scores, I think—but we did not stop to count them, nor did we take slaves. As soon as the battle broke the Sea Wolves hastened to the ships and, taking up the ropes, we moved on until we came to a more sheltered place in an oak grove. There we stayed the day, resting and tending the wounded. At dawn the next morning we continued the portage as if nothing had happened, the previous day’s clash all but forgotten.
Few settlements were of any size to warrant attention. One of the few, however, was a timber fortress called Kiev—a trading settlement in the possession of a tribe of Danefolk called Rhus, I think. Here we were to exchange some of King Harald’s silver for fresh meat and other supplies.
“This Kiev is perhaps a day or two past the shallows,” Thorkel informed us a few days after the attack. We had spent the day poling the ships through muddy shoals—a tedious and oppressively tiresome labour. Thorkel, Gunnar, Tolar, and I were sitting at a small campfire on the riverbank beside the ship; we had begun taking our evening meal together, breaking bread with one another and dipping it into the same pot.
Why Harald tolerated this odd communion between his slave and his men, I cannot say. But then, neither had I worked out why he wanted me in the first place. The whole business was inscrutable to me. Still, I took comfort in the familiar companionship of Gunnar and the others; I am not ashamed to say they were my friends.
Although he had never been so far south, Thorkel seemed to know the region well; Gunnar remarked on this, whereupon the pilot smiled and leaned forward confidentially. “I have a skin, you see,” he confided, tapping the side of his nose meaningfully. What he meant by this, I soon discovered, was that he had an oiled sheepskin on which was drawn a crude map.
“Here is Kiev,” he said, unrolling the skin which he kept inside his shirt. The rivers were black scratches and the settlements brown spots. He placed his finger on one of the spots, and then, moving further down, stabbed at another brown spot. “And here is Miklagård. You see? We are almost there.”
“But we have a very long way to go yet,” I pointed out.
“Nay,” he replied, shaking his head and frowning at my ignorance. “All this,” he indicated a blank expanse above Miklagård, “here and here—all this is calm water. We can easily cross that in three or four days if the wind favours us.”
He passed the skin to me and I held it to the fire and bent my head low over it. Much worried and wrinkled, the skin was dirty and faded, but there were yet legible a few letters and fragments of Latin words. “How did you come by this map?”
“My father was Thorolf, helmsman to Jarl Knut of the Straying Eye; he bought it from a helmsman in Jomsborg,” Thorkel declared proudly. “This fellow got it from a merchant in Frencland—or was it Wenland?—I do not remember which. It is very valuable.”
Thorkel’s map soon proved its worth. Two days later we arrived at the trading settlement known as Kiev.
24
Set on the broad bank of the Dnieper, Kiev had grown from a small Danish trading outpost into a large market town carved out of a forest of birch, beech, and oak, surmounted by a hill on which was erected a large timber fortress where, it was said, the masters of Kiev stowed all the silver they took in trade. Furs of mink, marten, beaver, and black fox, silk cloth from the east, swords and knives, glassware and beads, leather, amber, ivory in walrus tusks and horn of elk and reindeer—all this and more passed up and down the river, and the trading lords of Kiev took their toll in silver denarii and gold solidi.
There were seven ships moored along the riverbank when we arrived, and two more joined us soon after; these had come up from the south where their crews had spent the summer trading with the Slavs and Bulghars. They were Danemen—some of them were from Sjálland, and others were from Jutland—keen traders all. Indeed, it was Danes from Skania who had settled Kiev to begin with, and most still spoke the Danish tongue, albeit with a strange embellishment.
King Harald ordered his four ships to be roped together and ten men to stay behind to guard each one, as he did not trust the other Danes to leave his boats in peace. Not until he was satisfied with these precautions did he allow anyone to go ashore, and then not until everyone had sworn a solemn blood oath not to breathe a word of our destination, lest any of the other Sea Wolves took it into their heads to raid the City of Gold and ruin our chance of taking the citizens by surprise.
Then the king gathered his karlar around him and made his way into the market. The first thing he did was buy a goat, a sheep, and four chickens, which he took directly to a place in the centre of the market surrounded by a half-circle of tall poles. The ground underfoot was damp, and the place stank of blood and rot; the skulls of various animals lay scattered about the open ring of posts.
Harald advanced to the centre of the ring. There, before an upright post carved with the likeness of a man, the king threw himself down upon his face. “Jarl Odin,” he cried aloud to make certain everyone heard him, “I have come from afar with four longships and many good men. We have come seeking good trade and much plunder. And now I have brought you this fine offering!”
So saying, he raised himself up, drew his knife and promptly slit the throats of the animals which his karlar held for him. Beginning with the goat and the sheep, he slaughtered the poor beasts and collected some of the blood in a wooden bowl as it gushed onto the ground; this blood he smeared on the post and flung onto the surrounding poles. The chickens he beheaded and threw into the air so that the blood could spatter all around, on the post and also the poles, which were Lord Odin’s wives and children. When the animals were dead, the king divided up the carcasses, leaving choice pieces for the god and sending the rest back to the ship for his supper.
This commotion was, I think, performed more for the purpose of impressing the Kievan merchants than any desire on Harald’s part to honour Odin, Thor, and Freya. But
despite the bawling and thrashing of the animals and the king’s loud proclamations, the bloody sacrifice failed to elicit even fleeting interest from Kiev’s populace. No doubt the tired spectacle bored them.
The rite observed, King Harald strode confidently into the marketplace and arranged for water, grain, and salt pork to be supplied to his ships. The men, meanwhile, took it in hand to discover the other, less overt—but by no means less prominent—trade of Kiev. There were large dwellings at one end of the market square below the fortress before which were long benches, and on these benches were assembled a number of young women who, like everything else in Kiev, were for sale. One could purchase them outright for a price, and many men found suitable wives this way. For a lesser price, however, one might purchase a small measure of wifely companionship.
It was this companionship which appealed most to the Sea Wolves. Harald had forbidden anyone to bring a woman aboard his ships, and anyway most of the men had wives at home. The king had less prurient concerns on his mind, however.
He was not seeking trade or companionship, but information. Thorkel had heard it said—and so his map seemed to indicate—that south of Kiev lay enormous whirlpools and cataracts which could smash even the strongest ships. Harald wished to know how these dangers might best be avoided; he hoped, if possible, to find a guide, or at least to learn what other traders knew of the river further south.
To this end, Harald wandered the marketplace, pretending to admire the wares and engaging the various traders in conversation. At the king’s behest, Thorkel and I accompanied him on his sojourn among the merchants in the event our skills were required. Most of the merchants, as I say, spoke Danish, or could at least make themselves understood in that tongue. Even so, we learned little for our efforts, as the merchants were interested only in dealing and trade and kept steering any inquiries towards the value and quality of their particular wares. On all other subjects they were reticent to the point of rudeness.
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