Byzantium - A Novel

by Michael Ennis

  Haraldr knew that the question between himself and Mar would be settled before this day was ended, and yet the imminence of death did not concern him. Where was Maria? Had she and Symeon been caught, and was she even now undergoing the tortures she had spared him? That excruciating doubt made him consider the certain death or re-entering the palace alone, and yet what if she was safe now, only unable to come to him? How would his death then reward her courage? Destiny commanded the day, he realized. Whoever would leave the middle realm before this day was over, the fates had already condemned.

  The clearly audible chorus of shouts from the vicinity of the Bucoleon ripped the batting of silence off the vast stadium.

  A chant rose from the ranks of the Studion army. ‘Michael, Michael, upside down! We’ll hang you from a column and crown your arse!’ High above, Mar’s Varangians answered with the chilling pounding of axes on shields. Haraldr strode through the ranks of his men and stepped up onto the stadium seats to face them. ‘Varangians! What you hear is the breast-beating of the men who cowered in their own slime while our comrades died in the fight against the Bulgars. For our comrades who now wassail in the Valhol, let us bring them those’ - he thrust his hand upwards towards the Imperial Box - ‘to bow before their courage tonight!’ The Varangians erupted into shouts of ‘Haraldr, Haraldr!’ and began a drumbeat on their own shields.

  An arrow clattered on the stone at Haraldr’s feet. He turned and defied the archers, waiting for the signal that the diversion at the Chalke Gate had begun. Another arrow clattered. Haraldr watched the backdrop of brightening sky behind the archers at the top of the stadium. A moment later the dragon-shaped red kite wriggled up into the lightly pinked sky. Even before Haraldr turned to give the command to his own forces, he could see that archers of the Imperial Taghmata were being taken off the stadium wall to counter what seemed to be the much more imminent threat of the well-armed guildsmen at the Chalke Gate. Haraldr signalled the Blue Star to begin her assault. Then he pointed his sword upward. ‘Vengeance!’

  Ducked beneath his shield, his men grunting at his back, Haraldr quickly climbed the tiers of seats; the ends of the siege ladders jutted out ahead of him. ‘Set the ladders!’ he shouted as he neared the top of the stadium. Javelins thudded against shields and sparked against the stone benches; Mar’s men hurled down obscenities along with their spears. Haraldr looked at the red, bawling faces on the balcony above and marked the men who would precede him to the Valhol.

  The five heavy wooden ladders rose almost in unison and then tilted towards the marble balustrade of the Imperial Box. As soon as the ends of the ladders made contact. Haraldr’s men leapt on the lower rungs, their weight resisting attempts to throw the ladders off. The boldest began the climb. Mar’s men waited, swords poised, red-rimmed eyes glaring, teeth bared; some of them beckoned with bearish, pawing motions. They had every reason to expect a slaughter; Haraldr’s men advanced in curious echelons, each climbing file led by a man with a spear followed by an archer - both virtually useless in the close combat in which they would engage at the top. The spears prodded forward and Mar’s men swiped at them playfully; one of them actually captured a shaft, jerked it violently, and sent the man who had wielded it plunging to the steps. Almost as if by that signal, Haraldr’s archers rose and fired. Mar’s men had been too distracted by their game to guard their faces with their shields. Virtually every shot struck home, and the entire rank at the balustrade toppled or flailed wildly at the feathered shafts sprouting from jaws and eyes.

  The momentary advantage was quickly seized. Haraldr and his men spilled over the marble balustrade and hammered back the surprisingly thin second line of defence. As he clambered over the corpses Haraldr wondered with profound apprehension why Mar had posted so few men at the most critical point of defence. He pushed Mar’s token resistance back towards the terrace behind the Imperial seating pavilion. He wheeled to his right, looked down the long, narrow terrace, and saw what Mar had held in reserve. Mar’s men barred the narrow platform, five men wide, almost a hundred men deep, a plug of seemingly solid steel. The infrangible steel seal to the Imperial Palace.

  For the moment the two Varangian forces hesitated and the metal music stilled. Haraldr looked into the fierce blue eyes of Mar’s men and for a moment wished he could offer them something less bitter than the ferric draught of blood and steel. But the Bulgar war had settled that. He studied the man with a thin blond moustache opposite him; he had seen him in the palace but did not know his name. With a lightning-quick motion he raised his sword and brought it down; the man’s clavicle collapsed, his mouth contorted, and he pitched to his knees.

  Time ended. The sun rose and iced steel byrnnies and helms and blades, but no man could register the length of its silvery ascent. The fighting was unrelenting in its brutality, a confrontation of seasoned warriors who had determined to abandon all the artifices of their trade and exchange blows of pure, desperate hate. There were no battle cries, no false courage, only the endless, harsh chorale of steel on steel, and the regular, sickening thuds of swords and axes into flesh. The only thing that separated their motions from the deft, mechanistic slaughter of a butcher was their voiceless rage.

  At first Haraldr, Halldor, Ulfr and Hord Stefnirson took the snout of a slender boar, exchanging places at the front every few moments, a relay passing on the terrible hammer of Thor. Gradually they expanded their front to the entire width of the terrace. Haraldr’s arms still ached from his ordeal in Neorion, and he noticed that Halldor and Hord - fired by vengeance for his brother, Joli - were his champions now, pushing forward where even he could not go. And over the course of what might have been an hour, what for many was eternity, Halldor and Hord prevailed; it seemed as if Mar was now losing four men for every one of Haraldr’s.

  Soon the resistance perceptibly sagged, and the bloody stalemate quickened to a steady shuffling advance. Haraldr glanced off to his left and could see the ringed silver domes of the Chrysotriklinos glitter in the morning sun, and he realised that if he could live another few hours, he could settle with the man enthroned beneath those domes. But first he had to settle with the man who waited ahead. And the gods were telling him that even they feared that moment.

  Mar’s men fell back suddenly and the din of conflict abruptly subsided. A voice barked from behind the bloodied, disastrously thinned ranks of Mar’s Varangians. ‘Haraldr Sigurdarson! We must deal!’

  Halldor simply charged forward to finish the fight, and Haraldr had to pull him back. ‘I am Haraldr Sigurdarson,’ said Haraldr. Halldor’s jaw slackened and he stared in shock. The Varangian ranks on both sides became absolutely silent. The vague shouting from the fighting in the stadium only added to the sense that they all stood in an eerie, soundless vortex. Haraldr walked forward to confront Mar Hunrodarson.

  There is no reason for our men to continue to settle the quarrel between us, Prince of Norway.’ Mar’s byrnnie glistened with fresh, unmarred lacquer. His eyes were like diamonds and his nostrils flared. ‘You knew this time would come,’ he said with a sneer. ‘I have always despised you. You are weak and stupid.’

  Haraldr now understood Mar’s strategy. He had sacrificed his best men, and his honour, to exhaust Haraldr and save himself for their reckoning.

  Halldor shouldered past Haraldr and pounded Mar in the chest with his flat hand. ‘I will settle with you, Hunrodarson! I am not afraid of your vaunted arm! Coward!’

  Mar simply grinned at the provocation. ‘It seems that your Prince Haraldr is the coward.’

  ‘He has been poisoned and bound and beaten in Neorion!’ shouted Halldor, so that everyone would hear. ‘And he has fought this morning, slime crawler! There is no shame in my appearing as his champion!’ Halldor shoved Mar again. ‘I do not need Odin’s favour to meet you, Hunrodarson.’

  Mar shook his head and laughed. ‘He will want to fight me when he learns that I fucked his woman.’ Haraldr’s head snapped and the blood drained from his face. ‘You don’t believe me?’
said Mar. ‘Let me describe the bite I took from her soft breast. She begged me, little Prince. Ask her how she begged me.’ Mar pointed to Haraldr and snorted derisively. ‘He wants to make his woman Queen of Norway. But she is just my whore.’

  Haraldr refused to lower his eyes. If he could see Maria again, he would forgive her a thousand men. But he could not forgive himself if he yielded to Mar’s challenge. Were he only Haraldr Nordbrikt, yes. But Haraldr Sigurdarson, King of Norway, could not turn away from this any more than Olaf could have walked away from Stiklestad. And for the first time in all his years of dreaming and yearning, he knew what it was to be a king: always to be in front; always to be the first to accept the consequence of decision, especially when he blundered, even when the men who served him blundered. A king had to be the one man in the world who could say to his people: ‘I hold myself accountable, for my honour and for yours. Always. Not merely when it is easy to do so.’

  ‘You are a small man, Mar,’ said Haraldr softly. ‘The weapons I choose are one sword, one shield, no replacements.’

  Halldor turned to Haraldr. ‘No! We don’t need to do this. You have already won. Let us begin again until we have slaughtered them to a man.’

  Haraldr shook his head. ‘I must do this. I fear running again more than any death. I owe the men who have been brave enough to follow Haraldr Nordbrikt at least this much.’ Ulfr stepped forward and nodded at Halldor. Halldor would not yield. Haraldr seized Halldor’s shoulders and looked between him and Ulfr. ‘The last time you seconded me I fought for the right to lead five hundred men. Today I must fight for the right to lead Norway.’

  Halldor finally stepped away, his eyes wet. Then he turned and addressed all the Varangians with a flat, implacable statement. ‘The tale that Haraldr Sigurdarson was a coward is a lie.’

  Mar unsheathed his magnificent engraved blade and examined it in the sun. Then he slammed his sword against his shield and Haraldr turned to meet him. Haraldr knew he would be able to make but one savage assault with all his remaining strength. He closed with no preliminaries and pounded Mar’s shield to kindling amid a gale of cheers. Mar countered deftly, and moments later Haraldr tossed aside the useless, rattling frame of his own shield. The energy-sapping, screeching quarrel of blade on blade quickly drained his exhausted shoulders, and yet Mar still could not overpower him. Haraldr had expected no reprieve from Odin, but he thanked the one-eyed god for today withholding his favour from the craven Mar.

  Haraldr allowed Mar to drive him in a continuous, circling retreat; he hoped to tire him. Finally Haraldr broke and turned and leapt to the ell-wide wooden catwalk that ran along the ridge of the peaked roof of the Imperial seating pavilion. He walked steadily backwards, to the very end of the precarious walkway. The tiled roof sloped away to the stone seats fifty ells below. Mar looked down and hesitated. Then he advanced carefully. Haraldr swayed and looked over his shoulder at the drop. He was certain he was losing his balance and he deliberately lunged forward so that he would not topple backward to his death. His chest slapped to the catwalk and he clutched for his life. He realized he had lost both his nerve and his sword.

  Haraldr’s sword distantly rang against the steps. Mar walked steadily forward, to the accompaniment of a gentle, evil laugh. He came close enough to sever the neck so neatly presented on this lofty scaffold. ‘Norway,’ said Mar, ‘this is a fitting end to you. Nose to the ground.’ He lifted his sword. ‘Odin spits on you, little coward. . . .’

  Haraldr’s arm swiped out and caught Mar’s boot, and Mar’s blade whirred past his face. Mar lifted a leg and milled his arms in a desperate effort to adjust his balance. He pitched sideways and Haraldr was able to raise himself to a crouch.

  He had time to nod knowingly to the astonished blue eyes before Mar fell on his back, onto the tiles, and began sliding to the cornice of the roof. Now Mar’s sword chinged against the stone below. His legs were already over the cornice before he was able to turn onto his stomach. His momentum continued to pull him down. His icy eyes glimmered as his head disappeared. His huge hands clutched for the cornice. His hands did not disappear. Mar clung to the lip of the cornice like a strange human banner, arms outstretched, his entire body suspended in the void.

  Haraldr knelt on the catwalk and waited. He glanced to the north and saw that the Blue Star’s army had captured the highest tiers of the stadium; the seats beneath held an audience of corpses. Down on the track the guildsmen, in neat ranks, spear shafts held high, began entering to reinforce the push into the palace. They shouted their improvised oaths for a while and then grew silent as they turned their attention to the curious drama high above them. Haraldr could hear his own steady exhalations. Eventually every head in the stadium was directed to the roof of the Imperial seating pavilion. And still Mar’s hands did not move from the cornice.

  The sound was like no human sound: the last dragon, its black entrails ripped out so that the corpses it had devoured could bellow their dying rage. Mar’s hands flexed and his knuckles surged. Haraldr watched as the head, no longer Mar’s but the wolf’s, the dragon’s, his complexion as dark as a dead man’s blood, rose slowly above the cornice. Mar’s mighty arms propelled his entire torso above the roof-line. He swung his leg over the cornice. The demon had climbed back from the abyss, and the favour of Odin was on his face.

  Haraldr was beyond terror. Mar’s eyes had turned red, as if washed in blood. Haraldr was drawn to them with dreadful fascination, lured as he had been by Abelas. Mar was a destiny that could not be killed.

  ‘Jump!’ growled Mar in the spitting voice of the beast. ‘Jump before I tear out your throat with my teeth. Jump.’ Mar crawled slowly up the perilous tiled incline, as if now even gravity was subject to his Rage. He was almost able to reach out and grab the catwalk when he began to slip back again.

  ‘No! No!’ bellowed Halldor. He watched in horror as Haraldr extended his hand to Mar. Fighting broke out as Mar’s men blocked Halldor and Ulfr from reaching the catwalk.

  Mar’s grip was like a thunderbolt, and Haraldr knew that Odin had sent Mar back to settle the question he could not live, or die, without answering. He pulled Mar up to the catwalk. They both rose from their crouch. Mar stood an ell away and his breath was as foul as the slime of a carrion eater. His entire face twitched, as if hundreds of strings had been attached to his skin by some demonic puppet master. His trembling hands reached for Haraldr’s neck.

  At the coldest, infinite core of his being, Haraldr acknowledged the bargain he had long ago made with fate. He lunged for Mar, clutched his arms around his byrnnied girth, and lifted him off his feet. Mar’s hands clamped Haraldr’s throat and his windpipe collapsed, and he knew that he would not breathe again in the middle realm until he and Mar had settled what lay between them deep in the spirit world.

  For an immeasurable heartbeat there was a profound-stillness as the two Berserks’ flesh met on a plane where flesh did not exist. Haraldr was in the darkness entirely; he could not even see the black flame blasting him to numbness. He only knew that he at last held the dragon in his arms, could feel the huge, scaled beast throttling the last surge of life from his desperate, pumping neck. Embrace that death, the voice whispered.

  The Varangians watched in awe as the two giant Berserks danced death, their faces purple, their eyes blooded with Odin’s insane favour. Mar’s head arched back with the mad force of his grip, and Haraldr’s knees sagged. And then a crack, a hideous, muffled, mortal crack, the sound of will and bone breaking in concert. Mar’s face instantly blanched and his hands fell from Haraldr’s neck. His head lolled and he went limp. His back had been snapped like a twig.

  Haraldr felt the dragon burst into pure light. He held that light for a moment, as if embracing a dead comrade, and then flung Mar out into the void. He watched the body fall away like some fading vision in a dream. Mar hit the stone seats far below with a wet, melon-splitting sound.

  Haraldr walked off the catwalk. The faces of Halldor and Ulfr were as chalky and wond
ering as Mar’s dying visage. ‘Who is in command now?’ shouted Haraldr to Mar’s men. Gris Knutson came forward, his eyes frightened, vacant.

  Haraldr jerked Knutson up by the collar of his byrnnie; Knutson’s feet barely grazed the pavement, and his legs fluttered like a hanged man’s. ‘This is over,’ growled Haraldr, his voice still from the spirit world. ‘Disarm your survivors and take them north on the next tide. And tell the Northlands that the King of Norway is coming home, and that he will sate the ravens with his vengeance.’

  Haraldr parted the silent, reverent ranks of his Varangians and descended the siege ladders to the stadium. Mar’s body lay on the steps beneath the Imperial Box. His fingers twitched and blood gushed from his mouth and pooled behind his head. His eyes were almost ice-white, a uniform colour to the delicate pale blue of his skin. He still lived. Haraldr bent and whispered, ‘You did not die a coward. In the Valhol tonight, tell the Kings of Norway the name of the champion who sent you as a sacrifice to them.’ Haraldr touched Mar’s forehead gently, almost as if consoling a child. ‘It was you who had my pledge-man Asbjorn Ingvarson killed, wasn’t it?’

  Mar’s gory head tilted slightly forward. ‘Yes.’

  Haraldr took his hand away. ‘Then we have settled between us.’

  The blood gurgled in Mar’s throat, almost as if he were laughing. His words were whispered through pale red froth. ‘I left . . . you ... a legacy . . . King . . . Haraldr.’ His purpled lips moved without speaking, and his feet twitched. Haraldr stood, descended to the track, and left Mar Hunrodar-son to die alone, his last words, if any, heard only by the ears of immortal stone.