TLV - 01 - The Golden Horn (7 page)

* * *

Harald might have been left to cool his heels for weeks if he had been a lesser person; but the Byzantine had news from many corners, knew well enough who he was and what his errand. The summons to an audience came already on the second day.

The horses here were larger than in the North, but he had still not been provided with a big enough one and felt laughable on it. His first ride was not one to forget. The guardsmen who led him and his men wished to impress their visitors, and took him over the bridge at Blachernae and in that gate, so that he entered the city from the north and went through most of it to reach the Imperial palace. Through a maelstrom of crowds, avenues, soaring churches, prideful houses, workaday buildings finer than a king's hall at home, the leaping sparkle of fountains and the white ancient loveliness of statues, he held stiffly to the knowledge that he was also royal and a warrior.

Across from the mighty walls of the Hippodrome rose the outer gates of the palace. Here, for the first time, Harald saw the Varangians he had come to join, big fair men, his own sort, in mail and livery of the South but with good honest double-edged axes to hand; they stood unmoving, but their eyes followed him as he dismounted.

Hall and courtyard, sculptured columns, mosaics glowing from marble walls, corridors, gardens, fountains, roofs and domes of many separate buildings went past as his striding feet spurned the paths and the rare Persian carpets. At the end of it all, curtains of crimson silk were drawn aside, and there was music which thundered in his bones—organ music—as he entered with a courtier on either elbow. Across the vaulted hall, he spied robed officials and armored guards, deathly still, and at the middle of them a golden throne like the seat of God. There were golden trees with leaves and birds that were jeweled, two golden lions that rose up and roared—and inside his wall of gold-stiffened robes, under his roof of crown, was a handsome young man with sharp swarthy features, flesh and bone nearly lost in all that splendor. This was Michael IV, Emperor of the Romans.

He did not move or speak as Harald made the obeisance he had been taught, nor as slaves brought in Harald's gifts of ermine, sable, and other slaves. Not a word was spoken when Harald prostrated himself again and backed out.

"There, now!" said his guide when they were safely away. He was a plump jolly fellow with white hair fringing an egglike head. "Now you've seen the Emperor, despotes."

"But I wanted to speak with him!" said Harald resentfully.

"There is a rule in these matters, despotes. You will find that all our lives here are governed by law and custom going back many centuries. . . ." The courtier paused, rubbing a smooth double chin. He looked almost womanish in the embroidered cope and dalmatic; it was only later that Harald found he was a clever, hardworking man and that the paper which went through his bejeweled hands held the lives of many thousands of peasant families. "Nor can you expect His Sacred Majesty to consider every detail of the world's greatest empire, the more so when he has borne the crown so short a time, only since Easter this year."

"No," said Harald thoughtfully, "I suppose not. : . . He must be lonely."

There was a banquet that evening, with golden tableware, actors, dancers, a choir to sing the praises of the Emperor as he sat high above the rest. Harald felt clumsy, unsure what to do with himself, prickling with the idea that a hundred eyes were watching him through secret laughter. He hardly tasted the delicate foods, he sat lumpishly silent while conversation buzzed around him.

But the next day he went to the Brazen House, the immense building in which the Varangians were barracked, and at once felt himself home. These long-legged boys swarmed around him, shouting in the dear rough tongue of his mother, breathlessly asking the news and listening wide-eyed. Their mirth was enormous when they were off duty. He felt a sureness rising in his breast.

"We'll have wars again ere
long," said one. "The Saracens
are getting above themselves in Syria, raiding the Greek ships and coasts. It's time we hammered some manners back into them. Come be our chief!"

"That must needs be later," laughed Harald. "You have your own officers." But he had no intention of going under any other man.

"I think it'll begin this summer with another sea voyage to hound out the corsairs," he was told. "You brought men with you, a force of your own, they'll be useful; and some of us can get leave to come along."

Harald nodded. It would do for now to be a sea king, if that led to the captaincy of the Varangians.

He spoke with the Byzantine officials in charge and made the arrangements; on the advice of his new friends, he gave lavish gifts and the business went smoothly. When he had taken the oath of service to the Emperor, he sprang happily into the work of readying his fleet.

III

Of Kings in Miklagardh

1

Varangian was the Byzantine word for all Northern barbarians: Russian, Northman, Englander, German, Fleming—the young folk spilling down from pine and birch forest, gray seas and whistling winters, south to the sun. In recent generations, many of them had been taken as mercenaries. They were in the Imperial bodyguards, the city police, the fleets and armies which stood like a wall between eastern Christendom and the Saracen fury. At this time most of them were from the viking countries.

There were two men of Iceland in the Varangian Guard, both a little older than Harald, bold warriors and good leaders. One was Halldor Snorrason and the other Ulf Uspaksson. They, with others, got leave to accompany him on his ships, and were soon his close friends. Halldor was a tall fair-skinned man with drooping yellow mustache under a handsome hollow-cheeked face; it was odd that so much strength should lie in his gaunt frame. He was mostly of a calm and thoughtful temper. Of him there is less to be said than of Ulf, who was short for a Northman but very broad and powerful, with black hair, green
eyes and looks somewhat marred by pockmarks. He was merry and open-handed, though sometimes he would fall into gloom and always he spoke with a rasp.

Long had the Saracens been harrying the Greeks at sea from their bases in Africa and Sicily. In this year Lycia and the Aegean islands suffered cruelly from their raids. It was against these that Harald sailed. He was in charge of several dromonds and chelands manned by his own folk with a scattering of Greeks; the whole fleet, adding up to some twenty craft, was under a Thracian whom Harald grudgingly admitted was an able sailor.

They went down the Sea of Marmora and out the Dardanelles, to find themselves in water which sparkled a lighter and happier blue than the Black Sea. Islands dotted it, rising steep and rocky to a little green and a few huts on top; humble fishing and trading boats cruised by, to be hailed and asked if they knew aught of the enemy's whereabouts. It was a stain of smoke on a cloudless sky which told that.

The fleet rowed into a harbor in the Cyclades where a town was burning. It was not a large town, a huddle of cottages near the shore, nets still staked on the beach and boats drawn up. Harald rowed in with some others to make inquiry.

He saw a woman sitting on a charred beam. The house behind her was a sour, stinking ash heap, blackened walls gaping to a careless heaven. She was fat and middle-aged, dressed in worn clothes, and she held a man's head in her lap. The man was dead with a spear thrust between his ribs, and the blood had clotted on the woman's skirts.

Harald loomed over her, the sunlight savage off his mail. She looked up, blindly, her eyes red but dry as if she had wept out all her tears long ago. "Who are you?" he asked.

"I am no one," she said. "No one at all."

"Was that your husband?"

She shifted the gray head on her knees. "They killed the priest," she said in a thin frightened voice. "How shall he get Christian burial?"

"I want to know which way they sailed," said Harald patiently.

Something like hope flickered in the dimmed eyes. "If you can catch them
...
my son is aboard," she whispered. "They took him for a slave. They'll geld him and
...
He was a good boy, he was a good boy, wasn't he, Georgios?" She stroked the dead man's cheek.

"They didn't take the baby," she said after a moment. "They dashed his brains out against a wall. Then the house fell down and he is under the ashes. My baby is cooked like a pig.
...
I heard the flesh sizzle on his small bones, I swear I did." She shook her disordered head, vaguely. "North. Their ships were black."

Harald laid a gold coin in her lap. She didn't seem to see it, and he wondered what she could buy with it anyhow. But
...
as he turned away, she began singing her husband to sleep.

"Northward, eh?" The Byzantine captain frowned. "I think I know the way they are headed, then. Perhaps we can overtake them. They haven't much of a start, but we'd best move fast."

"You have some evil foes," said Harald.

"These were not men of the Saracen host who did this. They must be stateless pirates, using the war for their own good. The infidels fight honorably, if only because we may be the victors, but corsairs have nothing to await save impalement."

With a clash of armor and rattle of anchors, the galleys got under weigh. It was a hot, windless day, tar bubbled between the deck planks and the creak of oars was loud and weary. Impatient, Harald went below to see if more speed could be gotten out of the rowers.

They were free men, rather well paid for their brawn, but this was not a Northern vessel, open to the clean sea winds. Here was a narrow foulness lit only through the ports by shifting streaks of sunlight that gleamed off sweat runneling down nearly naked bodies. The beat of the coxswain's drum would soon have maddened him. Almost as loud as the drum and the creak of shafts in tholes was the sound of harsh breathing. He returned topside, for it was plain to see that nothing indeed could be done to hasten the ship . . . and that was a refined torture by itself.

But in the late afternoon, the Imperialists did raise the corsairs, whose smaller and doubtless foul-bottomed craft had less speed, though they looked rakish enough. A roar went up among the Varangians. Harald climbed the mast and peered ahead, sensing a thrill run through his body. These would be the first Moslems he had seen, other than slaves or traders in Constantinople. Their force was somewhat less than that of the pursuit.

The chelands darted forward like unslipped hounds. Harald heard faintly a clamor of trumpets as the pirates readied for battle, saw their galleys go into formation and spit stones from engines mounted on the decks. Then fire sprang from the chelands, the blue Greek fire which burned on water, pumped from nozzles by men sworn to keep the secret of its making. A gout of flame ran up the rigging of one enemy craft, smoke lifted thick, then red and yellow burst free. As Harald's dromond wallowed up, he saw men run screaming, ablaze. Most leaped overboard in search of a better death.

"Damnation," Harald grumbled, "will we get no fight at all?"

"Oh, we will that," Halldor told him. "Only wait and see."

Fire took out just three vessels; otherwise it missed, or hit but was quenched. Meanwhile the Greeks closed, and it became a strife of ship against ship. The Thracian shouted orders. His steersmen sent the dromond against a chosen galley. That one veered to avoid the ram, but the beak sheared through oars and Saracen rowers shrieked as shafts recoiled on them and broke bones. The Byzantines had drawn their own oars in on that side. Hulls grated together, grapnels bit fast, the linked craft became a battlefield.

Harald had already marshaled his Northerners. Now he led them in boarding the enem
y. Dark, tur
baned faces glared at him from behind shields, spears, uplifted blades. The king's son attacked a man in the line who was almost black of skin. The westering sun flared off eyeballs, teeth, curved swords that whistled about and downward:

He caught that blow on his shield. It had taken him weary, often bruising hours of practice with wooden weapons, to master the Southern war gear. A shield here was metal-rimmed, meant to deflect rather than catch a hostile edge; it was held by loops through which the forearm passed. A fighter moved it only slightly, yet it was in its own way a tool of attack, letting him strike past top and sides while he pressed close or withdrew to gain room for a swing.

Steel dinned. Harald hewed with care, seeking an opening. His was the greater reach, weight, strength, but strugglers were still crowded together; he almost had to elbow men aside to get at his chosen prey. Then suddenly he saw his chance. His straight blade whirred, struck the wrist behind the scimitar, made blood spout. The pirate wailed and stumbled backward. Harald followed.

Defensive line breached, the fray spilled widely across the deck. Harald finished off his first opponent. Hardly could he turn to see what was happening elsewhere, but three more were upon him. Metal banged on his helmet, rattled along his byrnie. He sought a corner where he could make a stand, but the three kept him surrounded as wolves might harry an elk.