‘The Hetairarch Mar Hunrodarson has long openly petitioned for greatly increased recruiting of Varangian mercenaries. Lately he has focused on my office, almost daily providing me with intelligence - some legitimate, some highly exaggerated - regarding suspected civil uprisings in the City, and suggesting that a new, lesser Varangian guard be created and posted in the city, though outside the palace, for riot control. Interesting, isn’t it? The champions of the common folk petitioning to become their oppressors.’
Joannes nodded and gulped another draught of wine. ‘Mar Hunrodarson is clearly an exceptional
barbaros.
He has learned to thrust and cut with Roman paper almost as well as he can with Frankish steel.’ Joannes drank again and reflected silently. If things were going well in the Imperial Palace, this would be the time to eliminate the
barbaros
upstart Hunrodarson. But things were not going well at all, and the wily Hetairarch would have his role in the drama that surely would be enacted over the next few years.
‘Yes,’ said the Logothete, his eyes keen and fiery as he responded to his guest’s twitching brow. ‘The Hetairarch Mar Hunrodarson is extraordinarily patient for a man capable of such ill-tempered eruptions. I believe he will wait, strengthen his hand with the increasing insinuation of his fellow
barbaroi
in the military affairs of the Roman Empire, and when the time comes’ - here the Logothete trod warily, knowing the relationship between the Emperor and Joannes - ‘position himself to broker the succession. With a sufficient force of Varangians in or even near the City, it would be possible.’
‘Then we must either make Mar Hunrodarson our broker, or find someone who will break his sword when that time comes,’ said Joannes, as much to himself as to his host. He covered his deeply set eyes with his long, misshapen fingers, pressed in, then moved the spatulate fingertips to cradle his chin. ‘Perhaps we can do both.’
The Logothete showed decay-rimmed, ragged teeth. Most officials of the Imperial Administration exerted their power like porters hefting heavy crates. Joannes was a juggler, capable of keeping several contradictory goals in the air at once. ‘I suppose you have this Janus already in mind? The information you wanted from Italia?’
Now Joannes raised his thin upper lip in what appeared to be a snarl, though the Logothete knew it as a rare expression of genuine, if sinister, mirth. ‘Yes. I believe this man, Haraldr Nordbrikt -I presume that is the correct pronunciation of yet another ludicrous
barbaroi
name - that this Haraldr Nordbrikt and Mar Hunrodarson have a relationship that is rather, one would say, pregnant. As you know, when the Grand Domestic wanted this Haraldr Nordbrikt and his men butchered in Neorion, Hunrodarson interceded and provided information that justified the murder of the Manglavite.’
‘Yet consider their only meeting,’ said the Logothete, contributing the presumed antithesis. ‘My man in the house told me that they closeted, argued, and perhaps struggled. And Hunrodarson made no attempt to get Haraldr Nordbrikt a posting anywhere near the city; it was he who insisted that the Imperial pardon banish Nordbrikt and his men for a period of months.’
‘A deception? Perhaps Hunrodarson wishes to allay any suspicion of his
barbaros
accomplice.’
‘Or he thinks that Haraldr Nordbrikt will fail in his mission for the merchant Argyrus, leaving a powerful force of Varangians looking for a more effective leader. Better than martyring their hero, is it not?’
‘A possibility that certainly would have occurred to me, were I standing in Hunrodarson’s boots. Well, right now all we have are possibilities, but possibilities that we can quite likely turn to our advantage. What word do you have of Haraldr Nordbrikt?’
‘The last landfall was Brindisi, almost two months ago. They had been at sea for several months without sighting the Saracen fleet. They provisioned very quickly, and there was a detail you might find interesting. Unlike most
barbaroi
wine bags, who prefer to drink barrels of that piss they call ale, Nordbrikt loaded his ships, almost until the rails were awash, with barrels of plain spring water. I would suspect he was heading south towards Libya and intended to remain at sea for some time. He may be a resourceful man.’
Joannes grunted. Monkeys in the Hippodrome could also perform tricks. Still, something about this Haraldr Nordbrikt interested him. He had possibilities, but better still, he was entirely expendable. There was absolutely nothing to lose in using him, and possibly the Roman Empire to be gained.
Joannes gulped a full cup, belched deeply, rose, and motioned the servant to let him out without even gesturing to the Logothete. At the door, however, he turned. ‘If this Haraldr Nordbrikt makes a return landfall, see that I know at once.’
‘Giorgios?’ Her voice was visible in fine silver bubbles, and she knew that it was not Giorgios who was there. The sea around her was a vast azure platter with a pure gilded rim. She was cold and he was like the sun, his hair a golden halo high above her. ‘Mar?’ Again the silver bubbles. He was not Mar. The other one. The silk, the wicked scar. He was like a sun. But the sun was gone, and the sea, fiery as opal, lit them from below.
The ships flew over the dimming horizon, and the blue glow from the sea candled the faces, hundreds of them, hollow and ghostly, their dead teeth chattering obscenities. But the fair-haired sun made them shrivel and they floated away like dry leaves in the soft breeze. The fair-hair climbed aboard and he was gone, and her heart tore with a pain so real. Then he stood before her again, and in the wooden chest he held the sun. With his hands he scattered light, and she could feel the hot incandescence when his arms took her up.
‘He tells you to behold the Pillars of Heracles, Haraldr Nordbrikt. The ends of the Earth.’ Marmot-Man, Haraldr and the Byzantine pilot stood in the prow of Nicephorus Argyrus’s galley. The deck pitched in a south wind with the same harsh, steamy rasp as a harlot’s love cries. Marmot-Man had been forced to join this mortifying pirate-hunting expedition as interpreter for the pilot, who otherwise could not have warned these reckless
barbaroi
that they were rapidly approaching uncharted waters.
‘There is a sea beyond these Pillars,’ said Haraldr. He pointed to the west. A molten sun hovered above a watery horizon the colour of steel. Haraldr shielded his eyes to discern the slight shift of hue that marked a spit of headland jutting into the sea.
‘A sea indeed, but it would not be wise to venture into it for any great distance, Haraldr Nordbrikt. It is the moat that separates the world of men from the walls that thrust up the vault of the firmament.’ With his hands Marmot-Man drew the shape of a box. ‘So that living men cannot attain these walls and climb into paradise, Lord God has furnished this sea with every imaginable ferocious creature of enormous size, and some so frightening to behold that their gaze alone will shatter a ship to timbers.’
Haraldr continued to study the sun-hammered horizon. ‘As a boy, I spoke with a man who sailed this great western sea with Bjarni Herjolfsson. They ventured as far as Vinland and saw no walls. Another man sailed with Leif the Lucky and went ashore on Vinland. There was no paradise, only miserable
skraelings
- savages.’ Haraldr rotated his palms to sculpt a sphere in the air. ‘The world-orb has no walls.’
Marmot-Man sighed. ‘Well, Haraldr Nordbrikt, that is also the opinion of certain overly learned heretics at court who read the words of ancient Greek pagans.’ Marmot-Man rose on his toes to approach Haraldr’s ear more closely. ‘Haraldr Nordbrikt, believe me, you do not want these heretics as your friend or their enemies as yours,’ hissed Marmot-Man. ‘Haraldr Nordbrikt, say no more of this earth shaped like a Persian melon.’
Haraldr looked away, weary of Marmot-Man’s pointless, often conflicting confidences. Almost four months at sea, and Marmot-Man had furnished nothing more than incidental glimpses of the vast structure of Grik - no, Roman, he reminded himself - power. It was as if, even at the limits of the Roman world, Marmot-Man were reminded of a sword over his neck.
The ravens took wing in Haraldr’s gut as he remembered the blade that threatened his own head. Each day for the last four months he had ached with the shame that he could not reveal to Halldor, Ulfr and the rest of his pledge-men all that had transpired in his meeting with Mar Hunrodarson. Yet how could he admit to his physical fear of Mar, and, far worse, tell them that Mar held knowledge that could prevent all of them from ever seeing their homes again? What fate was Mar, even at this moment, divining? Haraldr had heard nothing from the terrifying Hetairarch during the week they had remained in St Mama’s Quarter, preparing to sail; but now, alone at night on this distant sea, it was as if Mar’s mighty grip was an ever-tightening noose about his neck. Lately he would awaken hardly able to breathe. And what of these other enemies Mar had alluded to, perhaps even more deadly than the Rage-filled Hetairarch?
Yet when Haraldr thought of sailing right through the Pillars of Heracles to the sanctuary of the cold green sea that Norsemen alone commanded, he was pulled irresistibly back. The Empress City. He wanted her embrace, her scent, her heat, her . . . Maria. With some strange clarity undiminished by time and distance he could still see the brilliance of her lips and eyes, hear her speak, watch her hips sway. In his endless rocking fantasies each night upon these fevered southern seas, Maria and the city had become the same imaginary lover, and when he finally held Maria against his breast, loving her so deeply and limitlessly that he would melt within her, he would know then that the Empress City had trothed herself in return. They had already loved a hundred nights in as many different places within the Empress City, the night before on a marbled terrace, lying upon silk, naked to the whispering breeze, her swan-white skin iridescent like the lights of Halogoland writhing against an arctic horizon. He had been away from her, both of her, so long.
Haraldr struggled against the torpid seduction. It was this unearthly heat. The heat attacked reason. The heat was death, and death waited out on this flaming sapphire brine. He could consider what awaited him in the Empress City, when, or if, he returned to her. ‘Count no day until the sun has set,’ he reminded himself as he squinted into the boiling copper disc looming over the western horizon. This day was far from ended. He called for Ulfr and Halldor to join him forward.
‘We come in with the sun at our backs.’
Ulfr nodded.
‘Ja,
my friend, if the men don’t fight these Saracens soon, I think they’ll begin to set their sword upon the wind. They’ve given you a name now. Hardraada. Hard-ruler.’
‘If they are still full-strong enough to praise me with such curses, then I have served them well.’ At least about this Haraldr could be pleased. At their last landfall, now almost two months ago along the coast of Langobard-land, Haraldr had provisioned his ships with water rather than the local wine, to which the men had greatly taken. The men had complained bitterly then, and the hard-mouthing had continued for the next month while they had searched for the Saracen pirate fleet at open sea. Then they had sighted the Saracen masts rising against the bleached horizon like a seagoing forest and for another month had dogged the huge Saracen fleet along the endless coast of Blaland, the vast landmass sometimes called Afrikka. Haraldr had enforced strict water rationing among his own men while staying at sea to block the Saracens from turning into the Afrikkan ports. Yes, his men were as testy as penned stallions scenting a mare in heat. But consider what entreaties the crews aboard the Saracen ships now would be issuing to their Devil-God, Maumet. If indeed they had the spit to speak.
Haraldr studied the Saracen mast-forest, sails unfurled on the eastern horizon like enormous white leaves. He squinted to discern the formation of the bobbing dark hulls, wondering if he had found his answer. He could not be sure.
Odin,
he prayed, as much to himself as to the god,
I lay it all in your hands.
Then he turned to Ulfr and Halldor and sucked in a parching breath. ‘There will be no battle cry,’ he said. ‘We’re going in by ourselves, just this ship. I alone will board.’
‘Halldor’s blackened, sun-split lips slackened in shock. Ulfr’s jaw dropped.
‘Yes. I have invited the ravens to join me.’ Haraldr looked hard at Ulfr and Halldor. ‘But the men are nearly mutinous. In this hot blue sea they have long ago forgotten that day beside the white waters of the Dnieper. Yet if my strategy has been successful, I will have both saved a good half of my force and given them as their leader a true favourite of Odin. When we return to Constantinople, they will cleave to me as if I were their Emperor. And when we return to the city, surely I will need nothing less than fanatics to guard my back.’
Ulfr conveyed the order down the line of ten fully rigged galleys; soon Haraldr could see arms, swords and spears gesturing with confusion atop the decks. He ordered his own crew to furl sails and take their places at the oars. As his ship moved swiftly out of line, the crews left behind stilled and hushed. Soon the only sounds on all nine ships were creaking tackle and flapping canvas, the splash of waves on hulls, and the invisible abrasion of the wind. A man was about to show them that he was a god.
Haraldr caught the spray at the foredeck as the fast galley charged; the droplets stung his sun-tormented face like flung sand. Here the sun rises so high that it does not offer a shadow for much of the day, he thought, vaguely considering what mechanism of Kristr’s doing had created this phenomenon, so different from the long shadows of the northern lands. He focused on the mast forest, trying to discern if he would win this wager or lose everything.
It was confusing, so many masts - three to a ship - so many sails, all crowded together. Then the formation began to make sense, and he whispered his thanks to Odin. It was as he had expected; the Saracen vessels were clustered in groups of from three to a dozen, and they bobbed and yawed curiously; the hulls often bumped together.