Blood Feud Read online

  ‘Lord,’ Thormod seemed to have become the spokesman for the three of us, ‘we deny your right –’

  Vladimir made a sound at the back of his throat; a kind of coughing snarl like a mountain lion. ‘My right! Was it not told to you two nights since, that I make my own right? Even to the number of my wives before the throne of the White Kristni?’ His eye was on me at that moment, and I kept my head up to meet it, but my stomach knotted with fear. I saw the laughter in his pale bright glance, but it might be the laughter of the God behind the thunderbolt, and I was not reassured.

  It was then that I remembered how Erland Silkbeard had looked at me, two nights since, and it seemed to me that it had been an enemy’s look. But like enough it saved all our lives, for that time.

  ‘So,’ said Khan Vladimir. ‘Will you swear? Or will you pass the winter chained like hounds in the palace forecourt?’

  The three of us looked at each other. And I heard the little wind through the marsh grasses, and the stir and rustle of the crowd, and a horse ruckling down its nose. Then Anders quoted softly, ‘“Keep a stone in your pocket seven years for your enemy, take it out and turn it and keep it seven more, then take it out and throw.” There is no hurry; and I am thinking that none of us three will forget, if we live to see the end of the fighting in the south.’

  Thormod had turned back to the Khan. ‘Since it seems that in one way or another way, the thing must wait, whether we swear or no, and since we would spend the winter out of chains – on what shall we swear?’ Suddenly and unexpectedly, his level voice had that glint of laughter. ‘On Thor’s Ring?’

  The Khan’s mouth widened at the corners, over the strong yellow teeth. ‘That is a question, to be sure. Not on Thor’s Ring, no. You and you, on your father’s graves.’ His gaze flickered between Thormod and Anders, then passed on to me, consideringly. ‘You, on this –’ And he thrust a hand into the breast of his jerkin and pulled out a heavy cross of rough gold set with turquoise that blazed in the morning sun.

  So the three of us swore; and the Blood Feud was laid by until the fighting in the south should be over; and we turned ourselves to the coming winter.

  And Herulf Herulfson, his part in it played out and finished for all time, was howe-laid in the rich black earth of the Kiev marshes.

  11 Viking Wind

  THE FIRES OF the maples burned themselves out, and the Dnieper froze over, and soon the Kiev marshes were deep in snow that drifted before the blizzard winds. It was warm within doors, where the fires of wood and cattle-dung were kept blazing day and night. And from outside, you could see the patches of melted snow round the smoke-holes in the roofs. But out of doors the cold, striking through hide breeks and jerkin and thick wadmal cloak from the slop kist in Erland’s hall (we of the Red Witch counted as Erland’s men now, his food in our bellies, his clothes for our backs), was like no cold that I had ever felt before.

  Autumn, and the more open days of winter, was a time of tree-felling in the forest land north of the city; and the trunks were roped and dragged down by oxen, and stacked above the keel strand to weather as much as might be before the ship-building that would come with the first days of spring.

  And speaking for myself, I got to seeing the steam rising from the nostrils of the straining oxen and hearing the crack of the long whips in my sleep.

  ‘A green fleet,’ said Hakon One-eye. ‘But if it holds together as far as Miklagard, we can have vessels of gold and cedar to carry us home again.’

  All winter long we worked in the boat-sheds. Thormod and Anders and I, with the rest, re-fitting vessels already there, renewing blocks and tackle, pitching sides and re-caulking seams. All winter the rope-walk was busy, and from the town above came the ding of hammer on anvil, where the armourer smiths were at work mending old weapons and forging new; while, in the Khan’s palace and the fire-halls of his nobles, the women gathered to stitch the wadmal sails and work the spread-winged raven banners as women have done in the north whenever the Viking Kind gather for war.

  So the winter passed; longer and colder than any winter of our old world; dragging on and on, the cold seeming to grow more bitter as the days lengthened, until it was hard to believe that spring would ever come again to the frozen white wastes that stretched from the world’s end to the world’s end.

  But at last a day came when the wind went round to the south and there was a different smell in it, and the cattle grew restive in their yards, under the cloud of their steaming breath. By next morning it had gone round to the north again, and there was a blizzard, and spring seemed as far away as ever. But in a few days more, the icicles began to lengthen under the eaves; and one night in the sleeping-lodge behind Erland’s Hall, I woke to a sound like the cracking of a bull-whip. I rolled over and kicked Thormod, but Thormod was already awake. ‘It will be the ice going,’ he said.

  And a Kievan on the other side of the lodge added, ‘There’ll be clear water from here down to the Inland Sea in a few days’ time.’

  Spring in the land of the Rus proved to be a wet and muddy time. The blocks of broken ice piled up and dammed the Dnieper, so that soon there were floods all across the marshes; and for a while, the world that had been frozen under white snow seemed foundering in black mud. But it was spring! Pipits flittered among the alders along the river-bank that were suddenly frithy with dark catkins. The long-ships were run out from the high-crested keel-sheds down on to the slipways. And the ship-building that had begun with timber felling in the autumn got into full swing, so that all day long the waterside of Kiev rang with shipyard sounds: adze on timber, hammer on anvil, the shovelling of great fires that steamed the light planks into shape for the sides of the new vessels. And everywhere was the smell of pitch and new timber and the sharp tang of burning cattle-dung, and the green freshness of the spring.

  And spring passed into summer: a dry hot summer of dust blowing in from the steppes, and quick-piling thunderstorms; and for a little while there were nightingales, and brief bright dusty flowers, cornflowers and crimson poppies along the edges of the barley.

  Back in the early spring the messengers had begun to come and go, riding the small sturdy tarpan, the half-wild ponies of the Steppes, carrying the Khan’s summons the length and breadth of the Rus country. And soon, from all directions, by boat down the waterways that fed into the Dnieper, and on horseback raising the summer dust behind them, the fighting men began to gather; while long-ship after long-ship came sweeping down-river from the north, bringing fresh Viking crews from the Baltic shores, eager for the fighting and the promise of gold that our northbound friends of the Great Portage must have shouted broadcast.

  While it was still early summer, another Embassy came up from Miklagard; two of the great red-painted naval galleys of Byzantium; one of them clearly the escort, while on board the other, a little group of men in rich light cloaks as gaily coloured as flower petals, held themselves proudly aloof on the afterdeck.

  I mind looking up from a rope that I was splicing, to see them come, and asking of the world in general, ‘Could it be that they are bringing the Princess?’

  Orm, who was working beside me, laughed. ‘They’re businessmen, the Byzantines, they don’t pay until the payment has been earned.’

  ‘They’ll be here to see why we haven’t come yet,’ said someone else.

  ‘Na, na, they’ll know that it takes time to raise six thousand fighting men and the ships to carry them. Just to see how the thing goes.’

  And watching them come up-river at racing speed, the rowers tossing up their oars at the last instant, so that they slid alongside the jetty under their own way. Thormod said, ‘Yon was well done! These men of Miklagard are seamen in their own fashion.’

  Orm nodded, his eyes screwed up against the sun-dazzle off the water. ‘Though I’m thinking ’twould be interesting to see how they would handle a keel in Sumburgh Roost at ebbtide.’

  As summer went by, the low ground around Kiev became an armed camp; and ship after ship went
down the slipways; and all along the strand up and down-river of the city the long keels lay like basking sea-beasts, old and flank-scarred by many voyages, young and green-timbered with their first seafaring yet ahead of them. And still the weapon smiths worked on, forging the great two-handed swords and the war axes of the Viking Kind.

  At last, with the late summer drying out in grey dust and the first sparks of another autumn already showing here and there among the maples, close on a year after the Red Witch came down-river into Kiev, close on a year after the unfinished Holm Ganging, all was ready, men trained and armed, ships fitted for sailing.

  On the last day, there was a great service held in the church of the White Kristni, long since finished, to pray for the victory of the Viking fleet – and for the victory of Byzantium over the rebels, but that was an afterthought.

  In the old dark God-House above the boat-strand, men gathered also, the men who had come down that summer from the north, the crews of the ships that did not belong to Kiev and therefore were not bound to the Khan’s new faith.

  I went to the God-House with the crew of the Red Witch.

  It was not easy for me, the choice; and I lay awake most of the night before, pulled now this way and now that, between two loyalties. But when the great bronze bell that we had hauled up the hill through rejoicing crowds to the new church in the spring, sounded its call to Christian Kiev, I did not answer it.

  Many of those who went with Khan Vladimir to fill the church and crowd the open space around it, would be down at the God-House later, I knew; as Erland Silkbeard had said, one need not desert the old gods because one occasionally prayed to a new one; the Viking Kind can always make room for another god, having several of their own to start with. But I could not do that, having only one to start with. So I went away and sat on the shore where the wild birds were calling, and prayed, all the same, with my face in my hands. ‘Dear God. I do not ask you to forgive me, only to believe that there isn’t any other way.’

  And when the day faded into the dusk, and the Viking Kind came down with their torches. I got up and went and joined them.

  The Leaders and the Ship-Chiefs went inside; the rest of us, for whom there was no room, crowded before the door, in the russet light of the torches and the white light of a waning moon. We heard the dying bleat of the goat, and saw the priest come out to daub the blood on the dragon-carved door-posts, and took the oath on Thor’s Ring that he held up for us to see, to maintain the War-Brotherhood until the Host should be disbanded. And standing there beside Thormod. I looked across and saw Anders in the crowd, and met his gaze, as if it were waiting for mine. We had kept the vow for almost a year already, letting the feud lie fallow. But now? How much longer? A few weeks? A few months? I wished again that I could feel this long-drawn quarrel as my own; that I could have the anger in my belly to warm the waiting. And now I had prayed to strange gods, and so in all likelihood I was damned. But I wasn’t wasting time regretting that, it was just a fact. I was Thormod’s shoulder-to-shoulder man, Thormod’s follower wherever he went; and I supposed I could face damnation with Thormod if I had to; assuredly I could not leave him to face it alone. It was simply, as I had explained to my own God, that there wasn’t any other way.

  The torches shifted, and I lost Anders among the crowding shadows.

  Next day we ran the ships down the keel-strand and the southward voyage began. Squadron after squadron, we went, each following our own Raven – Erland’s, it was said, had golden hairs from his own beard stitched into its eyes and beak and talons – all following the great black-winged banner of Khan Vladimir. And so we headed down the Dnieper; close on two hundred long-ships in all; six thousand men of the Rus and the north, sweeping down the Viking wind, to the aid of the Golden Emperor in his golden city.

  Orm, who had a knack with such things, made a song about it, and we sang it as we swung to the oars.

  Here we come with the wind behind us,

  Lift her! Lift her!

  A long pull for Miklagard.

  The wind in our sails and the oar-thresh flying,

  A strong pull for Miklagard.

  Emperor in your Golden City,

  Lift her! Lift her!

  A long pull for Miklagard.

  Look to the north and see us coming,

  A strong pull for Miklagard.

  You shouted for help, and help we are bringing,

  Lift her! Lift her!

  A long pull for Miklagard.

  Our arms are strong and our sword-blades singing,

  A strong pull for Miklagard.

  First the fighting and then the pay,

  Lift her! Lift her!

  A long pull for Miklagard.

  Gift-gold you promised at close of the day,

  A strong pull for Miklagard.

  Here on the wind we come, Northman and Rus,

  Lift her! Lift her!

  A long pull for Miklagard.

  Nothing to fear now, Little Emperor,

  A strong pull for Miklagard,

  Nothing to fear now, excepting us!

  It was really a very bad song, I suppose, it did not even rhyme properly, and after a while as we got further south, it seemed better to change it here and there; but it pleased us well enough at the time.

  12 Battle for Abydos

  I SUPPOSE NO man who has once seen Constantinople ever forgets that first sight. For me – for us – it came in the honey-coloured light of an early autumn evening, as we swarmed ashore from the Golden Horn, with half the city, as it seemed, turned out to greet us. I remember city walls that seemed to have been built for a fortress of giants, tall buildings set about with cypress trees and roofed with russet and purple, gold and green, vast arches upheld on marble columns that twisted as fantastically as bindweed stems, towers that seemed straining up to touch the sky and great aqueducts that strode across the city on legs of white stone. I remember little fretted balconies that clung like swallows’ nests high overhead to the walls of tall narrow houses; and wide streets that opened into gardens and open spaces where statues of marble heroes and golden saints and bronze horsemen stood tall and proud among shade-trees; and everywhere the domes of Christian churches catching the last of the run-honey light. I, who thought that I knew cities because I had seen Dublin and Kiev, had never imagined that there could be such a city in the world of men.

  Later, it became a city in which real people lived and died, where one could buy melons or have one’s boots re-soled, with barracks and wine-shops as well as palaces, and children playing on doorsteps, and evil smells, and dark alleys where it was not wise to go without a friend so that you could cover each other’s backs if need be. But to this day, the city that I saw on that first evening remains in my memory a city in a crowded dream.

  The camp outside the great walls of Theodosius, where we slept under tents of striped ship’s canvas in the months that followed, was much closer to the world I knew.

  We had expected to be unleashed at once against the Emperor’s enemies, whose watch-fires flowered in the darkness every night, clear across the narrow waters of the Bosphorus; but instead, we spent the autumn months training with the Imperial Guards.

  ‘Patience, children,’ said Erland Silkbeard, when some of us grew restive, ‘no War Host can fight its best when its two halves have not learned to fight together and know nothing of each other’s ways of warfare.’

  ‘But meanwhile, time goes by,’ grumbled Hakon Ship-Chief.

  ‘Surely. But that’s no matter. The Emperor has one advantage – besides that he has our swords behind him – his Red Ships hold the seas, and so long as they do that, he can afford to wait, and choose his own fighting-time. Also’ – he was playing gently with his beard, much as a man gentling the neck-feathers of his falcon – ‘the Byzantines know that the men of the north seldom make war in the winter; so when the last leaves are off the almond trees, these rebel Byzantines will lower their guards, at least a little. That is when we strike.’

&n
bsp; Aye, and on a winter’s night, with snow to aid us, we struck.

  Led by Basil himself, the whole War Host – us, that is, and the Guards; the rest of the Emperor’s troops were still in Thrace – were ferried across the Bosphorus under cover of flurrying snow. And in the dark just before dawn we descended on Chrysopolis while the rebels were still asleep.

  I had looked ahead to that fight, while it still lay in the future, with an odd mingling of feelings, with little cold queazes in the pit of my stomach when I woke in the night, but also with an eagerness that I had caught from Thormod and the rest; for to the Northmen, fighting is almost like love, a kind of flowering of life. But when it came, there was no true fight, only a messy and undignified slaughter of half-awakened men before they could reach for their weapons. Oh, I played my part with the rest, my sword drank its share of blood and filth . . . Hardly a man escaped us. Bardas Phocas himself was some otherwhere, gathering more troops, but his leaders were crucified on the spot. The whole night’s work left a foul taste in the mouth . . .

  After Chrysopolis was lost to him, Bardas Phocas took his newly-gathered troops and headed south for Abydos, the Customs port, where the Emperor’s dues were exacted from the Corn Fleet passing up and down the long narrows that men call the Hellespont. He laid siege to the fort; I suppose he had some thought of using the corn-ships to get his troops across to link up with the Bulgars in Thrace; and some such plan might have worked, if the Red Ships had not held command of the sea. As it was, they relieved Abydos almost at once, while we of the War Host followed our little square-set Emperor down the coast, to raise the siege.