Vladimir waited by the mast. He wore a bronze breastplate and was surrounded by several wispy-bearded, heavily armoured Rus Boyer whelps no more impressive than himself. Vladimir, observed Haraldr, had his father’s unimpressive height and extensive girth, his mother’s fair skin, and his sister’s delicate hands; his blotchy, adolescent face had at last been overgrown by thin blond whiskers. In addition to his armoured retainers, Vladimir also employed several hulking Norse bodyguards who lounged in the darkness at the stern of the vessel.
‘So,’ said Vladimir with a smirk and a nonchalant flip of his head. ‘Haraldr Nordbrikt Sigurdarson. The coward of Stiklestad. Running errands for the Greeks, I see.’
‘How is your Mother, Vladimir?’ asked Haraldr genially. He had nothing to prove to this pathetic lot.
‘She misses your cock-hound brother.’
Haraldr struggled for control. ‘And is Elisevett well?’
‘She is still sitting on her little twat and waiting for you to come back and marry her, even when she heard that you are the famous coward. You must have fucked the wits out of her.’
Haraldr stepped forward and jammed his fingers under the lower lip of Vladimir’s breastplate and lifted him off the ground with one hand. ‘Your sister was very dear to me. If you speak about her again in such a fashion, I will make you swim back to Kiev to apologize to her. Now, I can help you gain entry to Byzantium if you promise to watch your manners.’ He set Vladimir down slowly. ‘The Droungarios of the Imperial Fleet--’
‘I didn’t come to beg my way in,’ interrupted Vladimir, apparently undeterred by his humiliation. ‘I came to ask the city to surrender.’ Halldor burst into laughter.
Haraldr was less amused. ‘You little fool. Have some of your Norse bodyguards blown you up with dreams of conquest, or is this a self-invented folly? Whatever the source, I suggest you reconsider. There are enough fire-ships waiting for you out there in the night to turn the Bosporus into a river of flame.’
Another voice responded from the darkness. ‘And there are enough Norsemen here to bring down the walls of the Great City.’ The shrouded Norseman came forward along the catwalk and drew back the hood that concealed his steel helm. Haraldr immediately recognized him.
Thorvald Ostenson,’ said Haraldr, greeting the former Centurion of the Grand Hetairia. ‘I should have known that the hand of Mar Hunrodarson was in this.’ Haraldr recalled Mar’s cryptic words upon dying.
Ostenson bowed. ‘We have three thousand Norsemen and five thousand Rus. This morning Mar will attack the walls from within the city and open the gates for us. Apparently he has spared you to flee from our triumph. So go. And leave the pillage of Rome to true warriors.’
Halldor looked at Haraldr with a rare expression of uncontainable mirth. He laughed again and looked at Ostenson. ‘The last time I saw your Mar Hunrodarson, he was trying to imitate a pigeon taking wing. Unsuccessfully.’
Ostenson drew his sword. ‘You crow-shit eater! I’ll take you back to Mar and let you share your jest with him.’
Halldor stepped forward and sent Ostenson plunging into the hold with a single shove. ‘I’ll wait to jest with your Mar when the Valkyrja take me to him, boy-lover,’ Halldor called down to Ostenson. ‘Your Mar is drinking with Odin tonight.’
‘Liar!’ shouted Ostenson. He struggled to his feet and his head emerged above the catwalk. ‘No man could have vanquished Odin’s champion!’
Halldor pointed to Haraldr. ‘This man did. He hugged him to death. Broke his back with one squeeze.’
This time the laughter, a soft, quiet chuckle, came from the vicinity of the cowed young Rus nobles. Haraldr wondered which of these hapless whelps could possibly find their situation amusing. Then he saw the second Norseman. The bear-like giant wore a hide cape. He came round in front of Vladimir and his retainers. Haraldr knew the face at once and felt the sudden lightness and liquid knees of terror. The hacked-away eyebrows, the white-streaked beard, the horrible truncated nose and huge, sucking nostrils. ‘I am Thorir, called the Hound,’ said the Berserk in his curious, quiet voice. ‘The Haraldr Sigurdarson I remember soiled his breeches when I killed his brother. He was then a coward, he is now a coward. And a liar. Mar Hunrodarson is one of us.’
Haraldr and Halldor stood transfixed by the fearsome Hound. Ostenson seized the opportunity and pulled Halldor’s legs out from under him, pitching him into the hold; he cracked Halldor on the head with a loaded bucket and stunned him and drew his knife to finish him off. Haraldr jumped down into the hold and grabbed Ostenson’s arm with both hands and snapped it; the crack was like an old, dry tree trunk snapping. He dragged the astonished Ostenson to the catwalk and clamped his hands on either side of his face and picked him up. ‘Ostenson!’ he demanded, ‘were you privy to Mar’s plan to abandon the Middle Hetairia to the Bulgars? If you were not, I give you this chance to beg for your life!’ Ostenson’s face reddened and he glared with defiance. Haraldr roared from the blackest pit of the spirit world and snapped Ostenson’s neck instantly. He seized the suddenly limp body and, almost unseeing from inside some red-hued haze, flung the huge, fresh corpse into the mast; the vehemence of the throw was so great that the sturdy wooden trunk fractured with yet another crack and began to tilt towards starboard. The mast cracked again, came down with a huge boom, and fell over the starboard side of the boat. Ostenson’s mangled body lay beneath a web of toppled rigging.
The utterly dumbfounded Rus nobles leapt for the sanctuary of the hold. Haraldr turned to the Hound with a blood-red glow in his eyes. He whipped his sword out of his scabbard with a terrifying screech and stepped forward, within reach of the Hound’s own murderous blade. ‘I am one of you as well,’ he said in a fierce, rapt voice. ‘But I am not a cowardly Berserk who needed two of his comrades to kill Norway’s king. I am Haraldr Sigurdarson, King of Norway.’ He remembered as clearly as yesterday the Hound’s own words at Stiklestad. ‘When we begin, I will kill you.’
The Hound’s brutal jaw was as slack as an old dotard’s. His huge sloping shoulders sagged. His eyes were burned-out coals. He slumped to his knees like a figure of melting wax. Haraldr looked down on him with pitiless eyes. ‘You have told the world for years how you slew a king in single combat and then fouled a prince’s breeches. Half of that is true. I was a coward then. But you were a coward then, and you are a coward now. And you will die a coward.’ Haraldr brought his blade screaming down on the thick, brutish neck. The head jerked and then slumped to the chest, held by a flap of flesh. The neck gushed bright blood, and the body of Thorir the Hound pitched into the hold. Prince Vladimir screeched in terror.
Haraldr yanked the Rus Prince back up on the catwalk. ‘You need to agree to the Droungarios’s conditions immediately. The fire-ships will not wait for ever on your answer.’ Vladimir stood mute, his lips beginning to twitch. He burst into tears.
‘It is too late!’ shrieked the Rus Prince, tears streaming down his cheeks. ‘This negotiation was only to deceive the Greeks! The attack has already begun!’
Haraldr ran to the bow. The front echelons of the Rus fleet were advancing through the white-capped sea, a wall of thick hulls descending on the dhromons. The wind hurled scudding black clouds after them, and sheets of rain ripped by at a sharp angle. Haraldr could only stare in rigid agony. The advance echelon was already within range.
The night turned to fire.
‘It is impossible!’ shouted Halldor. ‘We cannot sail through it! As soon as the fire touches the pitch on our hull, we will become a floating torch!’ Halldor and Ulfr and Hord wrestled Haraldr until he stopped resisting. The burning sea lit their faces an eerie orange and brought sweat to their foreheads. The scene before them was unimaginable, the fiery lakes of damnation raised to the surface of the earth. The entire Bosporus, as far as one could see, was a sheet of flame, and upon this floating pyre scores of ships had become towering, wind-whipped flares. Here and there the flares exploded in immense orange fireballs that illuminated the glowering, low clouds; it
was as if enormous, black-shrouded lanterns had been suspended over the sea. The rain, descending in sheets, did nothing to quench these flames.
‘Get the dinghy from the other ship,’ Haraldr said. ‘Its hull is not caulked.’
‘I’m going with you,’ said Ulfr.
‘And I,’ said Halldor.
‘No. I want you two to stay and lead my men and rule Norway. This I alone must do. Bring the boat up.’
‘Haraldr,’ pleaded Halldor, ‘Maria was on the Droungarios’s dhromon. She will be safe. Wait at least until the fire burns away.’ A ship exploded and the light and sound flashed over the water.
‘No one is safe out there.’ Haraldr nodded numbly at the fire storm. ‘We now see the limitation of liquid fire in a general engagement. When the entire sea is set on fire, it burns indiscriminately. The ship that just exploded was a dhromon’.
Halidor and Ulfr could offer no rebuttal as the dinghy was quickly ferried over from the second galley. They knew that they would honour Haraldr Sigurdarson more by living to conquer Norway in his name than by leaping into his funeral pyre with him. Haraldr stripped off his cloak and wrapped a hide cape around his short wool tunic. He unstrapped his sword and inserted his dagger in his belt. He turned to Halldor and Ulfr. ‘I promised her I would come back for her. I wish I could make you the same promise.’ He paused, thinking of an old verse. ‘This is how the skalds said Ragnarok would be. “The sun grows dark, earth sinks beneath the sea. The stars fall from the skies. Flames rage and fire leaps until heaven itself is seared to ashes.” ‘ He looked steadily at his two friends. ‘I know I could live for three score more years and never have better men for my comrades. In the Valhol I will tell them to await the two best men who ever lived. Rule well.’
Ulfr rushed forward, sobbing, and embraced Haraldr. He had no words for this. Finally Haraldr had to prise him away. Halldor, grim and implacable, wrapped his huge arms around Haraldr. ‘We . . .’ His voice choked. ‘We love you, comrade.’
Haraldr leapt over the railing and into the dinghy.
The heat at Haraldr’s back was so intense, he thought even his wet hide cape would burst into flame. But there were passages through the blazing waves, twisting, treacherous, evanescent currents of orange-tinted water. And he could see Moschus’s dhromon, ringed by fiery patches but still intact, the bow spout still spitting flame.
Haraldr rowed furiously between crests crowned with fire. He turned to adjust his course, an orange burst greeted him, and he smelled his singed hair. Burning globs rolled off his hide cape and sizzled on the hull of the dinghy. He passed a blackened, floating corpse; the man’s arms were seized up, as if he were trying to claw his way out of Hell. Finally Haraldr reached a large, clear path and closed to within a hundred ells of Moschus’s dhromon; he could see marines operating the missile throwers on the deck and repulsing Rus boarders at the stern. A blackened hand swiped in front of him and he had a terrible glimpse of desperate white eyes against a greasy wave. He put his back to the oars. A fire-peaked wave rose up before him and then fell away to reveal a giant beast from Hell. Another dhromon, its pitch-smeared hull completely engulfed in flames, came hurtling out of the enraged sea. It was a wall of fire descending on him.
Haraldr threw aside his cape and leapt. He swam under water for perhaps fifty ells. He saw no flames above him. He surfaced to an immense crash and felt the shock even in the water. The burning dhromon had collided with Moschus’s flagship, bow to bow. A blinding explosion flung shattered, glowing timbers into the air. Haraldr went under again. When he surfaced, embers still drifted to the sea around him. Both bows were now rapidly descending beneath the waves.
Moschus’s ship listed to the larboard and the fire spread along the hull. The stern was still free of flames and Haraldr stroked wildly for it. Fire began to leap along the pitch-slathered strakes but the tacky surface gave Haraldr’s slippery feet purchase. He scrambled across the slope of the vast, tilting hull. He reached the railing and saw marines trying to walk upright on the steeply inclined deck. The bow was an inferno; dead marines lay on the deck in blackened armour. The ornate cabin at the stern was still intact, and Haraldr scrambled for it, ascending the increasingly sloping deck. The gilded door had been flung open and he ducked into the chart-strewn office of the Droungarios. ‘Maria!’ he screamed. An officer in a gold breastplate appeared, a small lacquer casket under his arm. ‘Where is the woman!’ bellowed Haraldr; he grabbed the officer’s arms and shook him. The casket tumbled to the deck and gold coins scattered. The officer shook his head numbly, and Haraldr released him and stepped back through the door. The slender but powerful arms seized him from behind.
‘God, you are alive!’ gasped Maria as Haraldr turned to wrap her in his arms. ‘Holy Mother, you are alive!’
‘I promised I would hold you again, even in the shadow of the dragon.’ He held her as if this embrace would last them for eternity. And because his eyes were closed, he could only feel, not see, the line of flame bursting through the deck of the dhromon in the instant before the ship exploded.
Halldor rolled over the floating, blackened corpse and studied the charred lump that had once been a head. .Unable to identify it, he pushed the corpse away with a staff fitted with an improvised grapple on the end; the body was quickly rejoined by dozens of nipping fish. ‘Who can tell?’ he said wearily to Ulfr. ‘You cannot even tell a woman from a man, much less a Rus from a Roman.’ He straightened and looked out over a calmed sea littered with countless fragments of flickering wreckage and a few still-blazing hulks.
‘Should we wait until dawn?’ asked Ulfr. ‘It is only an hour.’
Halldor shook his head. ‘We probably would have no better chance of finding them in the light of day. And who could sleep?’
Halldor hooked another floating corpse, a legless form with curled, foetal arms; the hands were merely crusted bones. He pushed it away after the most cursory examination. ‘This is no way for men to die,’ said Halldor bitterly. ‘To a flame that has no courage or loyalty, that kills friend and foe alike, that does not even allow a man the dignity of seeing the face that has sent his soul on. If this flame were set loose upon the earth, it would mean the end of all that is noble in the world. And it would shame the very gods at the moment of their death. When the gods destroy Rome, I pray that they will also bring about the end of this fire of doom.’
‘There will always be another Rome,’ said Ulfr sadly. ‘Good men, not the gods, must banish this fire from the world.’ Ulfr looked out over the strange, flame-flecked calmness of the sea. The wind had pushed the clouds to the south, and stars were becoming visible on the northern horizon. His head snapped forward and he pointed. ‘There is one who lives!’ Halldor ordered the ship to manoeuvre for the rescue. ‘There are two of them!’ shouted Ulfr.
‘One living, one dead,’ said Halldor. ‘That is devotion to a comrade.’
‘A Norseman!’ shouted Ulfr as the forms drifted closer.
‘One of the fools who started this. He’s still got his boy lover under his arm--’ Halldor froze with a sickening collision of recognition, exultation and horror. Not a boy but a dead woman. A woman with her hair singed to a matted cap. But the man lived. ‘Get this boat over there, you mindless swine!’
Halldor screamed to the crew in general. He pounded Ulfr on the chest. ‘Haraldr! Haraldr! Haraldr is alive!’
Haraldr cradled Maria’s body with his left arm, her head to a sky bluing with the first hints of dawn. He stroked weakly with his right arm, so slowly that he only succeeded in remaining afloat. His cheeks were bleeding, and much of his hair had been singed away. Ulfr and Halldor leaned over the top frame to receive him. Haraldr spat water, and his white teeth grimaced like a demon’s. ‘Help Maria,’ he said.
Halldor gently lifted the body. Only tatters of clothing around her torso had not been burned away, and parts of her legs and arms were covered with blackened flesh that stuck to Halldor’s hands. He gritted his teeth and prayed for the gods to curs
e any man who took this fire in his hands ever again. He laid her gently on the decking by the tiller and found a linen rain cape to cover her. He could not bear to pull the shroud over her head; even as seared as her face was, there was still the beauty of her features, an exquisite marble darkened with soot.
Haraldr’s woollen tunic was intact, and his head and hands seemed to have suffered the worst burns; the skin was raw but not badly charred. Ulfr lifted him over the top frame and he found his feet on the deck. He slumped with his hands on his knees and looked up with white, stunned eyes as Ulfr steadied him. ‘I lost her,’ he said, sobbing. ‘If only I could have held her tighter. She was ripped out of my arms and I lost her.’ He fell to his knees beside Maria’s body. ‘Oh, God, save her! Give her back to me!’ He turned to Halldor and Ulfr. ‘She is alive,’ he said frantically. ‘She talked to me in the water. She forgave me. Oh, merciful God . . . All-Father!’
Ulfr knelt beside Haraldr. ‘Haraldr, no one survives such wounds. Let Maria have her death.’
Haraldr calmed himself. ‘She is alive.’ He reached over and grasped her hand, oblivious to the sticky serum that coated the skin. ‘Darling, don’t go.’ Reason struck him like a thunderbolt and he remembered how she had stilled in his arms at least an hour ago. She was . . . He turned to Ulfr and whispered, ‘She is gone, I know that. If I could only talk to her again. Just once. If only I could say one thing ... it ... it would be my eternity.’
‘She is watching you from Paradise,’ said Halldor. ‘She knows. I swear to you she knows your heart at this moment.’
Almost perfunctorily, Halldor bent over and felt the pulse at Maria’s neck. He knelt, his finger still to the artery. He looked up expressionless. ‘There is life. But the thread that holds it is gossamer.’
Maria was wrapped in blankets, and Eilif, a Varangian who had learned some Roman and Saracen healing arts, put a greasy salve on the worst burns and gently prodded Maria’s abdomen. She stirred and groaned slightly. Eilif looked at Haraldr, still clutching Maria’s hand, and then at Halldor and shook his head sadly. He whispered to Halldor, ‘She’s broken inside as well. She will be gone soon. There’s nothing more I can do.’ Halldor motioned everyone away.
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