Hakon’s ship drifted closer to shore. ‘Bring me the instruments on which I’ll play my ditty!’ hollered the gilded giant. Five dark little men, roped at hands and feet, were brought to the prow of the ship; the Varangians had captured some Pechenegs just outside Kiev and intended to sell them as slaves in Constantinople, if they did not find more expedient uses for them.
Hakon began to speak again, but his words were lost against the screeching gale from the shore. There was a flurry of movement round one of the pairs of tree trunks. The two towering shafts were bowed towards each other until their tips crossed, forming a crude arch.
The Rus boats buzzed with speculation. Gleb spat angrily and his jaws clenched. A struggling, flailing man, his naked white skin clearly visible, was hoisted up and tied between the tree trunks, his arms and legs spread wide so that he looked like a huge white spider amid a rope web. The Pechenegs howls ascended and then abruptly drifted away until only a single sound floated across the water: the sound of one man screaming.
A Pecheneg sword flashed like a silver spark at the base of the nearest tree trunk. The crossed tops of the trees twitched almost imperceptibly. Then, with a terrifying suddenness, the shafts snapped apart and the white spider exploded in a burst of crimson. A torso seemed to spin slowly through the air. The trees snapped upright, each dangling one arm and one leg.
Hakon’s face was sunset-purple amid the ashen complexions of his Varangians. Without speaking, he selected his instrument; the dark little man let out an unworldly shriek until Hakon clamped one huge hand around his windpipe. In his other hand Hakon held a broad-axe polished to an antimony gleam. He turned the Pecheneg’s back towards the river-bank and laid it open with two lightning-quick strokes along either side of the spine. Before the blood could really flow, Hakon had dropped his axe and cracked open the ribs and peeled them back. With both hands he scooped into the body cavity and drew out the foaming pink lungs. He held the Pecheneg by the hair and spread the lungs like wings over writhing shoulders. The little man’s mouth spewed pink froth, and Hakon let him slump to his knees, then tore away his loincloth. He grabbed a spear and carefully probed the Pecheneg’s rectum. After several deft shoves the gory tip sprouted between the spread lungs.
Hakon seized the spear shaft with both hands and held his creation aloft like a winged battle standard. ‘The blood eagle, marmot-fuckers!’ he screamed. ‘The blood eagle, wives of dogs!’ He shook his macabre standard in fury. The blood eagle! We’ll strangle you with the cunts of your women!’
The Pechenegs on the shore had prepared another victim. The trees snapped and limbs dangled again. Hakon raised another gory standard in response. The ritual exchange continued until five Varangians held the purpling blood eagles aloft and the Pechenegs had run out of trees.
An almost palpable silence descended, as if the air had become thick with some sound-absorbing ether. One of the blood eagles twitched like a fish on a pike. Finally a group of silk-robed Pechenegs moved to the water’s edge. The vividly coloured chieftains held pinkish, hemispherical bowls in their hands. They raised the vessels and chanted a salute to the wallowing Rus ships before emptying greedy draughts into their upturned mouths.
They’re wassailing us?’ asked Haraldr numbly.
Gleb spat. ‘No. They are showing us their new drinking vessels. Cut from the skulls of our men.’
Hakon shifted his grim, fire-flecked gaze to the remaining Pecheneg. He yanked the wide-eyed little man in front of the first of the blood eagles. His dagger flashed and severed the impaled Pecheneg’s testicles. ‘We’ll fatten him with belly-oysters!’ crowed Hakon as he popped the surviving Pecheneg’s mouth open with one hand and shoved the bloody morsel down his throat with the other.
Hakon went down the row of blood eagles, harvesting each man until his dinner guest, stuffed mouth clamped shut by Hakon’s massive hand, writhed and gagged, his throat gurgling obscenely. Finally the Pecheneg’s bulging eyes mercifully closed, and he slumped, black-faced with asphyxiation, to the deck.
‘No one speaks!’ Gleb raised his hand to command silence. The ships had strung out down the river again, and the crew lolled in the late-afternoon heat. ‘Listen.’
Drugged by the torpor, Haraldr at first allowed himself the thought that they had already reached the sea. The barely audible noise, like the muffled crashing of distant waves, entranced him, and for a sharp moment his breast longed for Norway.
‘Do not sleep!’ barked Gleb.
Haraldr started, along with most of the crew.
‘That’s the name of the first of the river’s seven cataracts,’ explained Gleb. “Do not sleep.” Now we begin to game with the Dnieper.’ He eyed the descending but still white-hot sun. ‘No use starting now. The last ships wouldn’t make it through the first cataract before dark. If we set out at dawn tomorrow, we can all pass the first four cataracts before the sun sets.’ Then Gleb spat and rasped so softly that he must have been addressing only himself. ‘Of course we will be a much shorter file by then.’
The river was ice-smooth and raven-dark. Haraldr held the night watch. Occasionally a scream lifted from Hakon’s boat and pealed into the night; apparently the day’s blood had whetted Hakon’s appetites. The boat rocked in the current, a reminder of the relentless force that Haraldr knew carried him towards an inevitable reckoning.
‘Haraldr.’
Haraldr started and turned. He was relieved to see Jarl Rognvald.
The Jarl looked out over the black-onyx surface of the Dnieper for several minutes. He knew that there was little time to say what he must. ‘Haraldr, you know I have never lost my faith in the old gods.’ Haraldr nodded. ‘That does not mean that I do not believe in Kristr. I think that all the gods exist, and the only difference between them is the gifts they present to the men they favour. Now this Kristr, grant you, is probably the greater god. He is a builder. In Norway He has built roads and bridges for his priests, and a
kirke
in every town. You can also see what Kristr has enabled Yaroslav, no very great man, to do in Kiev. And of course Kristr has helped the Griks build Miklagardr. By that measure alone Kristr’s power is superior to any other. But sometimes I think that Kristr loves buildings more than He does men.’
Jarl Rognvald theatrically spread his hands out over the water. ‘Odin,’ he said expansively, ‘is the more generous god. The tale is told that Kristr hung from a cross for one day, in order to show men the way to Paradise. But Odin hung himself upside down from the rootless tree for nine days, waiting to snatch the mead of poetry from the depths of the Underworld. He has shared that drink with men, with those who dare to accept his gift.’ Jarl Rognvald looked intently at Haraldr, his eyes glaring in the blackness like winter ice. ‘That verse you recited on our last night in Kiev ... so sharp and true, and it came as quick as a thunderbolt. It is a madness, a madness given by Odin. Just like the Battle-Rage.’
Haraldr said nothing, his thoughts smothered in fear. He had witnessed the Battle-Rage of the Berserks at Stiklestad: the Hound, the sucking nose, the red eyes. He had even worn the skin armour told of in all the tales. Yes, Haraldr reminded himself, the Rage is more than a pagan fable. It exists. And it is indeed a madness.
‘The other night in Kiev I watched you. Something held you back from striking Hakon, which took a greater valour than foolishly spilling the wine-bag courage in your veins. Perhaps even Odin himself held your arm. Well, I know it was not my hand. I think the wounds of Stiklestad have finally healed. I think that you are ready to accept a second gift from Odin, the gift of the Battle-Rage.’
‘You were with me in my last battle, Jarl.’ Haraldr’s tone was self-accusatory. ‘Would you want me beside you in your next?’
‘I could wish for no better comrade. Haven’t I taught you all I know?’
Indeed, the Jarl had. Endless hours of drills with sword, axe and spear, and swimming and wrestling and riding as well. If kingdoms were won in mock combats, Haraldr would own more subjects than the Greek Emperor. But Jarl Rognvald could not teach him the inner defences a man needed in real fights. ‘Green-wood.’ A strong arm but a weak breast.
‘The fault isn’t with your teaching, Jarl. You know that that has meant more than anything to me. But I have a battle-fetter that no skill of yours or mine has been able to remove. If I thought Odin could release me, then I would ask his help. But I know that the strength to break that bond has to come from within. The gods cannot answer every question in a man’s mind.’
Jarl Rognvald looked over the river for a long time. A feathery insect flew against his face and he brushed it away. Finally he spoke. ‘Haraldr, I have been a warrior all my life, and that is most of what I know of life. I am not a poet like you, and I can only tell you what I know.’ The Jarl paused and examined his hands. ‘I have been to the spirit world. Believe me. It is an inner landscape inhabited by anything the imagination can provide, and yet it is no less real for that. Each man conjures his own inner beauty, his own hidden demons, and the gods only guide him to them. Men think that when possessed by the Rage, a man becomes a beast. That is wrong. The Berserk, in fact, is a beast-slayer. He enters the spirit world and confronts the demon-beast that has held his soul captive. That beast is his fear, and when he has faced it or even slain it, when he has put his faith in his own force, his own will, then all things are possible - even miracles of the sort that are ascribed to the gods.’
Haraldr knew then that he and the Jarl had looked out on the same desolate landscape of mind and memory, and that his own spirit-journey over that strange and terrible terrain could no longer be postponed. ‘Yes. I know that a beast waits for me there, a fear as terrible as the world-devouring dragon itself. And when I awaken in the middle of the night, I am certain that if I ever face it, I will die.’
‘You are ready to face it. Even the last dragon itself. You are a poet and a warrior. You showed that the other night in the Podol. And you have learned, far earlier than most men, how bitter is the outer world when a man seals off his inner world, thinking that the demons he never confronted will no longer trouble him. You know that that is no life to be clung to, not at the cost of a pure and honest soul.’
The Jarl turned away from Haraldr and faced north, thinking of the cool emerald and azure summer in a land he would never see again. ‘Haraldr, even when you were a boy, I knew you had a mind that someday no man, perhaps even no god, could ever command. I choose to believe that Odin will guide you to your beast and help you confront it, but your own will is equally capable of leading you through the spirit world. Chosen by Odin, chosen by your own will, what does it matter? I only know that you are ready to stand before the dragon.’
Jarl Rognvald said nothing more. He left Haraldr to his thoughts and the death-dark, murmuring Dnieper.
Maria, Mistress of the Robes, fanned the eunuch away; her milky hand moved like a ghost through the thick steam. Despite her utilitarian-sounding title, she was the second ranking lady at court; only the Empress Zoe and the Augusta Theodora, who no longer resided in the palace precincts, were accorded more prestige. Maria studied a rivulet of perspiration as it descended from her cleavage to her navel. She pressed her finger into her navel and drew a liquid line to her glossy black pubic triangle. She pulled her legs up and thrust her arms between them, a curiously simian posture for a disturbingly beautiful woman. Her blue eyes were like tiny, miraculously illuminated grottoes in the heated mist. ‘Your husband’s brother has sent Irene away, she said languidly. Her voice chimed against the marble walls of the bath.
The Empress Zoe towelled her moisture-beaded breasts. ‘We are already surrounded by spies.’ She sounded drowsy. ‘And our companions are no doubt happier elsewhere. But I will miss Irene. Remind me to have Symeon send her something.’
Maria turned to the Empress, who sat next to her on the marble bench; their shoulders touched lightly. She decided not to ask the question she had considered; Zoe would speak of it when she wished. But it had been two weeks now since the Emperor had spent the night in his wife’s bedchamber. ‘Ata came to see me yesterday,’ said Maria. ‘He advises that I have neglected the amorous component of my nature.’
Zoe’s eyes opened; they had a lovely amethyst cast. ‘Ata? Oh, yes, the palmist who came to us out of the Orient, in the company of that rather charming yet woefully disenfranchised emir.’ She paused to recall the name. ‘Salah. We haven’t seen much of Emir Salah since my husband’s brother extended the generosity of our treasury. I believe he has taken his pension and has bought some estates near Nicaea. I presume this Ata still finds our court rewarding. Darling, wasn’t the Emir one of your . . .
amusements?’
‘I will never allow a dark-skinned creature to crawl into my bed again. He wanted to impale me from behind like one of his goats, and when I insisted otherwise, he was finished before I could draw three breaths. He then remarked that his wives were more submissive. I told him that if he was at all representative of his race, the appropriate custom would be to have one wife for twenty emirs, instead of the other way around. I could not understand what he said next. I arranged to have him ejected from my chambers as quickly as he had spewed his dubious manhood into me. The next time I saw him, I spat in his face and told him I now presumed to have given him as much pleasure as he had given me.’
‘Little daughter! You know I worry when you are so ...
vehement.’
The Empress spoke gaily, but her eyes winced, showing fine wrinkles at the corners.
‘My next lover will be entirely Western in concept. Golden skin and hair. There are some Athenian types in the Scholae who so closely resemble the ancient statues that one wonders if they were hewn from stone.’ The Scholae was the elite Imperial household cavalry.
Zoe’s eyes had forgotten the moment of melancholy; her vividly red lips curled salaciously. ‘Darling, I can only assume that you have already been . . .
reconnoitring.
Can I also assume that my use of military terminology is rather apt? I have heard that you were a spectator at the pentathlon last week. I was intrigued at your sudden interest in athletic contests, until I learned that this was an intramural event for officers of the Scholae. All those oiled young gallants, and all of them lodged here in the palace precincts.’