The Ice Queen (42 page)

“That much I know already, Stavko.”

“Be patient, friend Odd. Princess smells a lie and, wishing opinion of myself, arranges for dinner where I may observe him. I can tell her only that he is impostor.”

“What kept her from seizing the fellow then and there and flogging the truth out of him? It couldn't have been her tender heart?”

“Please!” He held up his hand as if to say, No more jibes, thank you, at the woman I admire with all my hard heart and greedy soul. “Maybe foolish, but we decide to watch him instead. Few days later, when Novgorod ships set out for home, this man goes with them. Plainly, he does not realize what a mistake he has made, giving to mother letters intended for daughter. Princess sends a druzhinik to follow him, but he goes quickly from Novgorod to Aldeigjuborg, takes ship for Sweden, and there we lose him. Yet now is here again! Stranger and stranger.”

Stavko drew his knife from his boot and began to clean his nails.

“Well, don't stop there, man. If he's not what he claims to be, what is he?”

“You have heard, perhaps, of Varangian Guard? It is elite regiment in emperor's army, created over fifty years ago when Vladimir the Great gave thousands of his mercenaries—Swedes and Norwegians mostly—as gift to Emperor Basil. Ever since that time, only Northmen can join it. These Varangians, they are pampered, well-paid, loyal; stand day and night with long-handled axes on shoulder, ready to obey emperor's command, and his alone. And that man is one of them.”

“How d'you know so?”

“I recognize him yesterday, make myself agreeable to him—you know my nature—offer him good price on girl, pour him some wine. I say nothing about meeting him in Kiev. We spoke only few words at that dinner and he was too drunk to remember. So this time, when I ask, just casually, who he is, he tells truth. Strangely enough, he is Icelander like you. Name is Ulf Ospaksson. Perhaps you know the name?”

I shook my head.

“Anyway, he has been home on leave to settle some family business and now is returning to regiment of Guards. Of course, I do not ask about Harald, not to rouse suspicion, but I bet you anything that where we find
this fellow we will find also Harald. Who else but fellow Guardsman could be trusted to deliver that valuable present and those private letters?”

“Interesting, Stavko. I see a flaw in your argument, though. If the reputation of these Guardsmen is as great as you say it is, and Harald, as we know, is not bashful—well, why all the secrecy, then? According to the princess, he signed himself merely ‘Harald of Miklagard'. I should think he'd want his emissary to make much of it, not conceal it.”

“Is puzzling, I admit. But look now—when was Harald ever content to take orders from another? Wherever he is, he must command, no? Now what if he has not quite reached that rank yet; some other Northman is higher than he. But he feels it, feels it almost in grasp. So. Now he only teases us with just little peeks, makes us wonder and worry: where is he? What is he up to? Until, finally, moment comes when he is ready to step from shadows, show himself to us, Harald the Magnificent! Eh? What d'you think of that?”

“I suppose it could be.”

“I would rather be wrong, believe me. Maybe Harald is willing to fight you man to man, but maybe not. Maybe his Varangian comrades are willing to let you leave city after you kill him—but maybe not. This mission already foolish, in my opinion. Now is plain suicide. Is Harald's life worth so much to you?”

“I'll know that when I stand face to face with him, Stavko.

Four days rowing from Khortitsa brought us to the Dnieper delta, where we spent a day putting up masts and rigging and attaching rudders in order to transform these river boats into sea-faring vessels. Three or four weeks of sailing still lay ahead of us. For the first time now, we were beyond the sight of land—never a comfortable feeling at best, and made less so by the way these clumsy ships rolled and yawed in the waves. Twenty-two days later (and most of them stormy) we made landfall at the mouth of the Bosporus. This is a strait more than twenty-five versts long, through which the Black Sea (or Pontus as the Greeks call it) empties itself into the little Sea of Marmora. At the far end of it stands the City of Constantine—Golden Miklagard.

That night no one slept.

Sitting round our campfires, the old hands nudged each other and winked, savoring beforehand the delights that tomorrow promised.

We would take steam-baths, said one to me, in a vaulted palace of stone. “And not such stone as you've ever seen, mate, but smooth, with a sheen to it like polished steel, and glowing with every color of the rainbow!”

We would have our pick of beautiful women, said another, and would eat rare dishes and drink the finest wines until our bellies burst—and all at the emperor's expense! “For I'll have you to know,” said he, “that this Emperor Michael, or Romanos, or whoever he is—for they come and go so fast lately that it taxes a man's mind just to keep up with 'em—but this emperor anyway, just like his ancestors, treats the Rus with respect, and so he should, by God! Three times—in our grandfathers' day, and their fathers', and their fathers'—we Rus sailed against the City and though we never breached her walls (those God-built walls, impossible!), still, we scared those old emperors into giving us fairer conditions of trade than any other folk can boast of, be they Bulgar, Saracen, or Venetian!”

“Aye,” struck in the first man, “they're cowards at heart, these Greeks, not proper men like us. It's plain they fear the Rus. Just see how they make us live outside the walls, across the bay, and can't go over into the City proper except in batches of fifty, without our arms, and always with some poncy little Greek from the palace dancing round us.”

“Basil was no coward, though,” said Stavko; “he that blinded ten thousand Bulgars and made them find their own way home!”

“Well, but where's his like today?” replied the other. “They're ruled by weaklings and women now, or worse—men without balls! Don't tell me!”

He brought his hand down,
thwack!
on his knee, and that seemed to close the debate. There was a chorus of aye's all around and then the talk went back to the excellence of the wine and the women. About that there was no disagreement at all.

Morning comes dark, wet, and blustery. We weigh anchor at dawn and row, five ships abreast, along the European shore, letting the swift current do most of the work. As the channel narrows, low wooded hills come into view on either hand, thickly grown with oak, pine and black cypress. The current sweeps us past fishermen's' cottages, white-washed and thatched, each one perched on its own little cove along this snaggle-toothed coast. As we draw nearer to the city, scattered houses collect in drowsy villages and these grow into bustling towns. And now grander buildings appear at intervals: princely villas and silent monasteries, lifting up their red-tiled heads above strong, encircling walls. Soon the strait is thick with vessels of every size and description, darting this way and that on their various errands.

But we are not the lads to make way for anyone. We are the Rus!

On we sweep, rank after rank, still five abreast and holding to our course, with oars rising and dipping in perfect time to the booming notes of the oarsmen's song.

Boats that are not quick enough to yield the right of way are swamped in our wake. Their passengers shout curses—from a safe distance. We ignore them.

We are the Rus.

And it must seem doubtful to those gazing at us from shore whether we have come to trade or to fight.

My shoulder being still too painful for rowing, I stand in the prow with Stavko. Only one rank of strugi precedes ours. Of these, the middle one is captained by Vyshata Ostromirovich, a crusty old boyar who is the commodore of our fleet, and responsible for dealing with the Greek authorities. We are not yet in sight of the city when three warships appear, beating up the channel towards us.

“Imperial dromons,” says Stavko with a hint of borrowed pride. “How would feel to have ship like that under your feet, eh, Churillo?”

They are more than twice the length of the biggest of our strugi and broader in the beam. Two hundred oars in double banks propel them and each ship has also a pair of masts rigged with sloping three-cornered sails. Emblazoned on the sails in black and gold is the eagle of New Rome. And something else I have never seen before: their prows end in massive bronze beaks that cut the water like plowshares, flinging up sheets of white spray as they come on.

“Will there be trouble?”

“No, no, no. Is only escort. Every year same thing. They must look us over, count us, tally up value of cargo, write it all down—not once, but three, four times, this copy here, that copy there.”

“Why?”

“Why? Because they're Greeks, that's why.”

The two flanking ships swing out to right and left, athwart the current and drop anchors, barring our way. The middle ship draws alongside Vyshata's and throws out grappling lines. The strug backs water furiously and passes the order down the line—which still does not save us from collisions and tangled oars as our fleet slows to a halt.

The dromon towers over the strug. Her gunwales are crowded with archers and javelin men, all in conical helmets and hauberks of iron scales. Her deck bristles with catapults and with slender, bronze tubes mounted on swivels, whose open mouths are fashioned to resemble the heads of roaring lions. I take them at first sight for trumpets and wonder aloud why no one sounds them.

“Pray you never hear their music,” Stavko says, crossing himself, “is roar of hell-fire.”

The lion-headed ‘trumpets' direct their glittering eyes at Vyshata's deck. A rope ladder is let down, by which the boyar mounts. The dromon's captain, reclining on a couch before his cabin, rises and permits his orderly
to drape a plum-colored cloak around his gilded corselet. And Vyshata, that proud old warrior, kneels before this man!

“Stavko, how many ships like that do they have?” I whisper without taking my eyes from the scene before us.

“You're asking me? Maybe two hundred, maybe twenty, maybe not that many. No one gets close enough to military harbor to see. Is only one of many well-kept secrets here: secret of silk, secret of throne that floats in air, secret of those accursed fire-tubes—secret of their power. Is it still as great as in Basil Bulgar-Slayer's reign? Or is only mummers' show now, all masks and pretending? Who can say? Miklagard is city built on secrets, Churillo Igorevich. Mystery is her strength.”

It is late afternoon before we begin to move again. The dromons come about (despite their enormous size they handle smartly) and lead us the last few miles to the harbor of Saint Mamas, where our quarters await us. Stavko leaves me to go aft and look after his human cargo.

Alone, I sink again into that mood of doubt and discontent that never leaves me for long. My thoughts circle uselessly round and round the same few questions: have I done right to come here? Am I fated to die here, far from my home with my vengeance still unsatisfied? If only I might have a dream or a sign to guide me, but my father's ghost has been silent for a very long time. Is he angry with me?

Then, as I stand lost in gloomy thought, the starboard shore falls away sharply to form a deep bay and, at the same moment, the setting sun breaks through the clouds in a blaze of molten orange. Spread out before me across the sparkling water is a sight dazzling to the eyes: a series of rising terraces clothed in marble, acres of it—walls, columns, arches, steps, piled one atop the other and everywhere crowned with golden domes, touched to sudden life by the fire from above.

It is all true, those boasts of Leonidas's, that sneer of Ingigerd's. But no one's words could have prepared me for this, just as no words of mine are big enough for it now. The sight of it comes like rain to my barren spirit. Curiosity and wonder—feelings I have forgotten I possessed—stir in me again like seeds in the damp earth. To walk those avenues, to enter those cool marble towers and hear the whisper of silk along their secret corridors …

“Aye, Tangle-Hair,” says a voice within, “but, for all that, don't forget what you must do here. In one of these gleaming piles you will find Harald—or he'll find you. Make no plans to outlive that day.”

I vowed I would not spend two nights under the old man's roof. In fact, three whole weeks passed by and the beginning of the fourth found me still at work—cramped, inky, and sore-eyed.

During these weeks, a change had gradually come over me. It began, I think, when I learned to my astonishment that Odd was baptized; it progressed as he described to me the expedition against the Pechenegs, where he hit on that ingenious alliance with the monks; and, after that, when he told of all the wrongs done him by Ingigerd and Harald.

I was scarcely aware of this transformation, however, until my brother Gizur, acting as bishop in our father's absence, made an unexpected appearance, accompanied by our mother.