Blood Feud (12 page)

And for our part in the day’s fighting, he ordered that we, the Northmen of Kiev, should furnish his guard for the night.

And how it came about, I’d not be knowing – maybe it was because Erland Silkbeard was the closest and most powerful of Khan Vladimir’s Hearth-Companions and Hakon One-Eye and old friend of Erland’s – the crew of the
Red Witch
were among the chosen Northmen. Which is how I, who seemed born to spend my life herding cattle in the west of England, stood my guard over the Emperor of Byzantium on the night that he was made safe on his throne.

Every detail of that night stands clear in my mind. Did I not say that I was very young? So young, even for my nineteen years, that it seemed to me a great and glorious thing to stand guard over an Emperor. I remember the sounds of the camp; passing footsteps, a voice upraised in a snatch of song. And beyond the camp sounds, I was aware of a great silence that was the silence of the spent battlefield, pricked now and again by the cry of some night-prowling beast that had smelt blood and come to the feasting. There were torches everywhere, down at the picket lines, before the tents of the generals; distant cressets flowering small and red above the ramparts of Abydos; and scattered through the camp, the
watch-fires, and the darkness between, full of the shifting shadows of men lost and found and lost again as they came and went their ways. I was standing beside the entrance to the Royal Tent, leaning on my sword, and staring into the glow of the watch-fire where those of us not yet standing sentry sat or sprawled, talking low-voiced or already asleep.

Someone came crosswise out of the dark into the firelight, and glanced down in passing at the sleepers huddled in their cloaks. He checked the merest breath of time, his gaze caught by one in particular, and then was gone again into the dark, on his way to wherever it was that he was going. But it seemed to me that I could still see his face: Anders Herulfson’s face, firelit against the night; and I looked where he had looked in that brief, passing moment, knowing what – who – I should see.

Thormod was sleeping on his back with his face tipped to the sky, his cloak pulled close about him; and suddenly, piercingly, I remembered the one time that I had seen his father lying so, with the brown bearskin pulled to his chin, and the torches burning at his head and feet. And the hair rose on the back of my neck.

Last night. I had wondered how long it would be before the War Host was disbanded. But tonight, with the Emperor safe on his throne, the thought leapt out at me with more of urgency, more of cold menace, making my heart race and the palms of my hands grow wet. For one moment it was even in my mind that when they changed the guard I might slip away instead of lying down by the fire, and go hunting . . . My knife-blade under his ribs in some dark corner of the camp, and the long-drawn feud would be over, and Thormod safe from it. That would make me an oath-breaker, a faith-breaker, and among the Northmen, nothing that lives is quite so low as the man who breaks faith with his own people. But I do not think it was that that held me back; it was the cold
hard certainty that the thing was not mine to do, that if I were Thormod, and someone, even my blood-brother, took it into his hands to finish my feud, keeping me safe from it as though I were a child, I would not forgive him, nor count him ever again as my shoulder-to-shoulder man.

So the hideous moment passed.

All the while, I had been aware of the rise and fall of voices from the tent behind me; and suddenly the entrance curtain was thrust aside, and squinting out of the tail of my eye, I saw the Emperor himself come out, and with him the huge square bulk of Khan Vladimir.

Basil stood in his usual position, his hands on his hips and his feet planted well apart, with the air of a man who has come out for a breath of fresh air before he lies down to sleep. And the light of the watch-fire made a russet glow on his round face and magnificent ram’s-horn moustache, as he stood rocking a little on his heels and gazing up at the stars.

‘This is a good night,’ he said, ‘a good night after a great day! God delivered the rebels into our hands, striking down their leader in the moment of his impious advance against us. The prisoners who were questioned said that he was dead when he hit the ground.’

After a winter spent in and around Constantinople, I had picked up quite a bit of ‘Soldiers’ Greek’ and could understand most of what they said.

Vladimir nodded. ‘Aye; but that was the second time. I’m thinking he must have come down on his head and broken something when yon quail startled his horse.’

‘And can you not see the hand of God in that? You do not yet think truly as a Christian, my friend. Why should the Almighty trouble to send a thunderbolt out of a clear sky, when a quail sitting tight on her eggs until the last moment will serve His purpose just as well?’ The Emperor was always a practical man as well as a devout one.

‘A quail sitting tight on her eggs. And six thousand Northmen also,’ said Khan Vladimir.

The Emperor gave a short sharp bellow of laughter, and brought his hand up to grip on the Khan’s shoulder, and his gaze down from the stars to look round at the camp fires and the men sleeping or on guard about him. ‘Nay, I do not forget your six thousand barbarians! That is why they furnish my guard tonight. A Barbarian Guard.’ (But of course he used the Greek form – Varangian. A Varangian Guard. It is a name that has won some fame for itself in the years since then.)

He was silent a while, gazing out over the camp, thoughtfully twiddling the ends of his moustache in the way that he had, then turned to look up at our savage old Northern Bear standing beside him. He said abruptly, ‘Brother, I am minded to have a Varangian Guard indeed! When the time comes that you fly north with the wild geese, will you leave me, say, a thousand of your young men, to carry their swords in my service?’

‘My young men are free, as the wild geese are free.’ I could catch the flash of the Khan’s strong yellow teeth in the firelight. ‘They would not be the first of the Viking breed to sell their swords for gold and a little glory. If you want them, ask; but ask of themselves, not me.’

‘So, I will surely ask. And I will ask of themselves.’ His hand still on Vladimir’s shoulder, the Emperor turned back into the smoky torch-lit tent, and the entrance curtain fell across behind him.

And almost in the same moment, the trumpets sounded for the second watch of the night, and the whole camp stirred into quiet movement, as one watch took over from the other. All round our fire, men were scrambling to their feet, stretching and making sure that sword sat loose in sheath, stirring with a friendly toe a comrade who had not roused at the
trumpet call. There were many who slept like the dead that night, for the fighting had been hot while it lasted; and I have noticed often that after battle, men sleep like the dead, or do not sleep at all.

Orm was suddenly before me, grinning. ‘Wake up, Cub, you’re asleep on your feet.’

I was not; but I lurched on my stiffened legs when I tried to move, suddenly so weary that everything seemed unreal. ‘Drunk again,’ said Orm, cheerfully. I stumbled over to where Thormod, whose turn would not come till the third watch, still lay. He had scarcely woken for the trumpets; but I mind that as I pitched down beside him, he muttered something and turned a little towards me, pillowing his head on his arm.

Lying like that, he no longer had the look of his father. The light of the fire was warm on his face, and the little sea wind ruffled his hair like tawny feathers. And he slept now as a living man sleeps. And obscurely, I was comforted, and could not remember quite what my fear had been about.

BARDAS SCHLERUS, HE
that had been Commander of Asia, was out of his rock-hewn prison within a few days of Bardas Phocas’s defeat, and collecting troops from the Eastern frontiers, to make his own bid for the Imperial Diadem. So we spent the rest of that spring and summer, while the hills turned tawny as a hound’s coat, and the watercourses dried up, hunting him up and down Anatolia, sweating our guts out to bring him to battle before he was strong enough to stand a chance against us. No, hunting is the wrong word, unless men can hunt a marshlight . . .

And then at summer’s end, he sent to the Emperor, asking for terms. The reason was simple enough: he had taken some sickness of the eyes while he was in prison, and was going blind. Assuredly, God was on the side of the Emperor.

Basil was generous. He could be generous in his young days. Sometimes he can, even now. There were no executions; troops who returned to their old loyalties were pardoned and received back, even the leaders. At the time, most men thought that crazy. But the Emperor knew what he was about; for some of his best officers were among them. And to Bardas Schlerus, besides a pardon, he gave one of the smaller of the royal estates in Bithynia to live on, and his old title of Commander of Asia back again – empty, to be sure, like a cup after the wine has been poured away.

He received his old enemy’s submission at a banquet in the house that he had just given him. One of the Guard, who was there, told me that he should never forget seeing the old man brought in, stooping a little, but not humbled, his hand on the shoulder of the officer who acted as his guide; and how the Emperor sat in a golden chair of state at the head of the hall, to watch him come, and laughed, and said, ‘To think
this is the fellow I feared might grab my throne! Now he has to be led to my feet!’

Well, as I say, he had been generous. I suppose even an Emperor’s generosity has its limits.

So the summer’s campaigning was over. It had not been at all what I had expected when we ran the keels down the Kiev ship-strand and headed south to carry our swords in the Emperor’s service; and I’m thinking I was not alone in that. By early autumn we were back in camp below the great walls of Miklagard; and the Viking War Host was paying off and disbanding and scattering to the four winds of the seas. Some of us were following Khan Vladimir north again. There would be just time to make Kiev and the lands round about, before the ice closed in. Some were pushing on into the Mediterranean for a winter of trading with maybe a flourish of piracy thrown in, before heading for the Baltic again in the spring.

And a thousand of us were biding where we were, to carry our swords in the Emperor’s service still; for Basil had meant what he said to Khan Vladimir that night outside Abydos, concerning his new Varangian Guard.

And this was the way of it.

Only a few days after we returned to camp, his heralds came. Three men riding into the camp on fine Thessalian stallions, the dust curling up behind them, and talked long with Khan Vladimir in his great tent, while the grooms walked their horses up and down outside. We had an idea what it might be about, and those of us who were most interested looked at each other and began to drift in towards the open space in front of the Khan’s lodgement, even before the Horn-of-Gathering sounded.

‘So, so, it seems the Emperor has some word to say that concerns all of us,’ said Hakon One-Eye.

The heralds came out from the Khan’s tent, and remounted
their horses; but not, as yet, to ride away. One of them heeled his horse out a little from the other two, as we thrust forward about them, and sat looking us over. He was a smallish thickset man perched up on a raking horse, and so closely muffled in his dark hooded cloak that even the upper part of his face was hidden. He flung up his hand for silence, and began to speak in the Soldiers’ Greek that most of us understood well enough by that time, and in a voice that reached clear through the War Host –

‘These are the words of the Emperor Basil and the Emperor Constantine, who sit secure on their throne now that this fighting summer is ended, and who know the worth of good fighting men. To those of you who wish now to go about your own business, they add their thanks to the gold that has already been paid, and wish fair winds and sharp swords. To any among you who wish to remain in their service, they have this to say – that they are minded to form a new personal bodyguard of a thousand men, drawn from those who followed the Prince Vladimir from the north, last year.’

There was a ragged splurge of voices, for the men of the north are not used to listening to their betters in respectful silence – which is maybe because they do not think any man their better.

‘A Varangian Guard,’ I said to Thormod. ‘Did I not tell you?’

And someone shouted, ‘Would the pay be worth the pouching?’

The herald laughed – a short sharp bellow of laughter that seemed to me oddly familiar. ‘One and a half gold bezants a month, the same as the rest of the Guard’s pouch. Richer loot in time of war, for I doubt if any Byzantine soldier can hold his own with the Viking Kind in the art of looting.’

There was a roar of answering laughter, and shouts of ‘We’re your men!’

‘The Emperor’s Men,’ shouted the herald, when the hubbub died down. He gestured to one of his fellows, who brought a bag from under his cloak and untied the neck. ‘A shield here!’ the herald called, and when one was brought, and held up like a great dish, the man poured whatever was in the bag into it, pale and rattling like giant hailstones.

‘Those aren’t golden bezants,’ someone shouted.

‘They are one thousand knucklebones,’ returned the hooded herald. ‘They will bide here before your Prince’s tent, and any man who would carry a sword in the Emperor’s new Guard, let him come up and take his knucklebone, as he would do in his own land when taking service with a new ship. Tomorrow in the Hippodrome at noon, the Varangian Guard will swear allegiance to their Emperor.’

‘Shall we have a man of our own to Captain us?’ someone shouted from the back of the crowd. ‘Or take our orders from a southerner?’

‘A man of your own to Captain you. Above and beyond him you will take no orders from any General of the Army, but only from the Emperor himself.’

‘And who then for our Captain?’

The question was caught up and echoed through the War Host.

Erland Silkbeard strolled out from among the nobles and stood beside the heralds. He had flung on a loose gown of striped silk like the slim wild tulips of these parts, and his hair and beard shone barley fair in the sunlight, made all the paler by the darkness of his face and the slim hands resting on his sword hilt. ‘Erland Silkbeard, if you will so have it.’