Byzantium - A Novel

by Michael Ennis

  ‘What is that?’ asked Styrkar. He pointed to a thick haze visible at the western horizon, just above a ridge line about eight or nine bowshots distant.

  Haraldr shaded his eyes with his palm. ‘I imagine it is the people of the countryside come out to see us,’ he said. ‘They will find we are no different from them.’ Haraldr turned and watched his house-karls wager on spear tosses. He remembered that he had played the same game with Olaf’s house-karls on the magic, innocent day before Stiklestad had sent his destiny gyring. I will never have more courage than I did the day before Stiklestad, thought Haraldr. No man who has seen battle can ever be as brave as one who has not. And yet I can be proud that in every one of my fights, while I was always afraid, I never turned my back. Of course I have never met the ultimate test of courage, either, as so many of my foes have. As Maria and Ulfr and Olaf and Jarl Rognvald and so many of my comrades have. Each of them showed the valour I have yet to prove. And the woman had been the bravest.

  ‘I hope the next battle is my last,’ he told Styrkar, his voice musing, distracted. His marshal lifted his fine golden eyebrows in surprise. ‘When we go south to meet King Harold Godwinnson,’ clarified Haraldr. ‘When he is defeated, that will be the end of my wars of conquest. You and Eystein Orre can settle with my remaining enemies. I wish to govern. I have fought my entire life and I have seen too many terrible battles. I will soon have grandchildren.’

  ‘You showed no reluctance to fight five days ago,’ said Styrkar. ‘The fashion in which you drew the English vanguard on, holding back your strength, and then crushed them at the centre and rear. I learned a lesson that day.’

  ‘I learned that lesson from a Greek. His name was ... It is impossible I could have forgotten. I can see his face before me. I will remember it before the day is over. He was a friend of mine.’ Haraldr frowned. ‘Nicon Blymmedes. Domestic of the Imperial Excubitores. He was transferred to Italia. I should have liked to have known what happened to him.’

  ‘If he lives, he has heard of you,’ said Styrkar, intending no flattery. Styrkar looked west again. ‘Are those our men that far off?’ he asked.

  Haraldr looked towards the ridge and saw, through a rising haze of dust, the glint of sun off steel. ‘Those are not our men,’ he said. ‘Bring Tostig to me.’

  A few moments later Tostig came to Haraldr’s side. A broad front of armoured men had begun to spill down from the ridge, a descending wall of ice-of-battle. Tostig stared out and then turned to Haraldr, his eyes sharp with frustration and rage. ‘English,’ he said. ‘You have perhaps risked too much today.’

  Haraldr studied the rapidly moving vanguard. Fast cavalry, thousands of them. That was why there was so much dust. ‘The fyrd of Northumbria could not have that many horses left,’ he observed to Tostig, his own logic chilling him.

  Tostig and Haraldr watched in silence for a long while as the horsemen, followed by a solid mass of infantry, came spilling down the ridge in glittering rows. The banners in the vanguard were like gold lanterns flickering in the dusty pall. Across the river, the cattle raiders abandoned their few trophies and began to form for a valiant defence of the river. Haraldr did not order them called back. He would need the time their lives would buy.

  The wind at last blew, almost as if the huge vault of Heaven had been stirred by the massive movement across the River Derwent. Haraldr felt the chill against his back. The gold-embroidered English banners lifted. Styrkar pointed to the tiny figures in the distance, two gold-threaded scintillae rising above the steel-silvered English vanguard. ‘There,’ said Tostig softly, incredulity reducing his voice almost to a whisper. ‘The Dragon of Wessex. And the Fighting Man of Harold Godwinnson. The banners of the King of England. Somehow my brother has attached wings to his army and flown it north.’

  ‘The wings of the dragon,’ said Haraldr as he watched the huge army come down to the river like a silver avalanche.

  ‘We must withdraw to the ships,’ said Tostig. ‘Our armour and our reinforcements--’

  ‘No,’ said Haraldr. ‘Their horse would overtake us easily and cut down our backs. I will dispatch couriers to the ships to summon Eystein. And then we will stand and fight.’

  The reed-stubbled shallows were coppery with blood. The Norse cattle raiders had fought valiantly, but the English van had forded the river and now waited just out of bowshot on the banks below the flats on the east side of the river. Their ranks were disciplined and murmuring quiet, a sound far more frightening than the pointless bravado of a rabble. The English ambassadors, a group of about twenty richly armoured officers, rode forward on their horses; at their head was a medium-sized, red-bearded man who wore a golden helm and carried a red-enamelled shield embossed with a gilded hawk. The man announced himself as a representative of the English King. Haraldr ordered his spear-bristled shield-wall to open and admit them.

  Haraldr dispatched Tostig as his ambassador. He watched from thirty ells away as Tostig conversed with the King’s representative, who remained sitting proudly in his saddle. It was obvious that the dialogue was as stiff and formal as the emissary’s postures. After a curt exchange the horsemen bowed and rode back through the shield-wall. Tostig returned to Haraldr.

  ‘He offers me a third of his kingdom if I will abandon you,’ said Tostig.

  ‘Indeed. And what is offered Norway’s King?’

  ‘He offers you seven feet of English earth.’

  Haraldr laughed. ‘Well spoken. Do you wish to accept his parlay?’

  ‘Too little and too late. I will take what is offered the King of Norway.’

  Haraldr nodded; Ulfr had not been wrong. ‘Who was the man you spoke with? He was a fine sight, so tall in his stirrups for a little man.’

  Tostig dropped his dark grey eyes. ‘That was the King Harold Godwinnson.’

  Haraldr’s rage flared momentarily; had he known, he might have sacrificed his honour to save his men. But kinship was the strangest of all bonds; he had seen that time and again in his life. ‘I understand why you would not give him up,’ said Haraldr after his anger had subsided. ‘I am grateful you did not give me up.’ Haraldr laughed again. ‘Seven feet of English earth. A man once told me that a king would one day show me mercy. But then that particular man was a craven liar.’ Haraldr turned to Styrkar. ‘We have not accepted terms. Tell the men their king has composed some verse for them.’

  Haraldr was announced, and for a moment he stood silently at the centre of the immense, square shield-fort. He wondered if Odin had merely fooled him with the verses that had seemed so fully formed minutes ago. He had become too much a Christian. Odin had been the boy’s god. And then the wind rustled from the spirit world and he found the words. The ring of spear points around him seemed ineffably beautiful, like a garden of silver blossoms.

  In Battle-storm

  No refuge we seek

  Behind our hollowed shields.

  As once I was bade

  By the highborn maiden

  High to hold my head

  When the Valkyrja flock

  To the clash of swords and skulls.

  When he was finished with the words, he could hear only the wind whistling in his ears.

  ‘Hold them back, Styrkar!’ The grotesque carpet of fallen Englishmen sprawled over the slope beneath the Norse shield-wall; the shadows of the dead had lengthened in the descending sun and begun to take on eerie life, as if they were dark little demons fleeing the flesh. The English cavalry had not sortied against the invincible Norse defences for a quarter of an hour now, a quarter of an hour in which the frenzy of the Norsemen had built with the violent suddenness of a summer storm. And now came the thunder of axes on shields, the footsteps of an army of Titans, unbidden by the Norse commanders, the spontaneous rage of men who had fought well all afternoon as defenders and now lusted for their own attack.

  ‘Hold them back!’ Haraldr shouted again, but he was already too late. The shield-wall bulged into a broad snout, and then the bright cloaks and gleaming steel
blades and helms swept down the rise.

  Nothing could be done to stop the mass suicide. The wall that the overwhelming English force had been unable to dent had now been broken by the very will that had kept it intact all afternoon. The din below was deafening as English cavalry and infantry rallied along their broad front on the river. Even Styrkar and Tostig had disappeared into the raging fray. As the Norse charged to the river, the entire English formation seemed to contract, an enormous organism preparing to engulf and ingest the Norse salient. Quickly the massed Norse attack was isolated into desperate pockets of survival. Haraldr had fostered the cult of bravery among his men, and now their deaths were their terrible homage to him. Haraldr stood on the plateau above the trickling coppery Derwent and realized that there was only one way to save Norway’s legacy. Follow the doomed attack with an assault of such devastating force that the shield-wall could re-form.

  Haraldr turned and faced the weapon-bristled ring of his house-karls, four score strong, the bravest men in the north. No words were necessary. Their proud eyes glowed with the fury of their calling. He wondered for a moment if he was still equal to such youthful passion. And then he mastered his fear with the reflex of a lifetime. Too many had gone before him, were waiting for him, for death to daunt his breast now.

  The Norse boar plunged down the embankment, at its deadly snout the King of Norway, the gold-threaded banner called Landravager snapping in the breeze above him. And as the Norse house-karls ripped aside the English ranks, the golden dragon above the head of the King of Norway moved inexorably towards the golden Dragon of Wessex flying above England’s King. But Haraldr Sigurdarson was only vaguely conscious of this collision of destinies. He knew only the cold black wind of the spirit world. He did not know how long he remained in the underworld, only that his quest in the darkness was much longer than ever before. And he emerged to a silent world viewed through a strange glass that scattered images of banners and bright cloaks and thrusting diamond-tipped spears like the tesserae of a shattered mosaic, yet presented the tiniest details in the sharpest focus: the white halo on the edge of a swinging sword, the sparks leaping like tiny fireflies as a javelin pierced a steel byrnnie.

  Finally Haraldr saw the golden Dragon of Wessex, just beyond the cobbled ford a hundred ells south of Stamford Bridge; he could almost distinguish the separate threads of the embroidery. The King beyond the creek . . . and destiny’s conundrum. Would he die this time, to serve the fate he had cheated once, or had he always been fated to conquer this way? The King beyond the creek. Odin chose for him. With a scream that literally brought the rank of English infantry before him to their knees, the Norse King charged forward, leaving even the precarious sanctuary at the snout of the boar behind.

  The mounted guard of the English King fell back from the single scything axe of Haraldr Sigurdarson, transfixed by the inevitability of his blade. Haraldr charged them, mindless of the corpses he stepped over, and felt the water cold in his boots. For an instant he met the eyes of Harold Godwinnson, before the English King was crowded back by his retreating guard. Destiny’s merchant began to ford the shallow Derwent to victory.

  After three steps Haraldr focused on another fragmented epiphany across the river. The thick, rough fingers whitened against the bowstring, and Haraldr glanced up at the English archer’s eyes and saw the red-black gleam of the raven. The arrow was still for a moment, and he could see the trueness of the shaft and the black steel barb at its head. Then the arrow blurred and flew across the river. Haraldr heard the instant, thrumming skirl just before the barb struck him in the neck. The contact felt like nothing more than a hard blow from the hand in a wrestling match. Haraldr braced himself, awaiting the adversaries who even now would not come against him. His house-karls closed behind him. Then he felt the warmth over his collarbone and was surprised to find that he had fallen to his knees. His guard swept past him, and now every sound of the battle came to him: the music of steel, the shattering of wood and the cracking of bones, the curses and grunts of men, and the high-pitched terror of horses.

  He could no longer stay on his knees and fell back, but something caught his head and held him up. He did not recognize the face looming above him until the skald Thjodolf spoke; he could not make sense of the words but somehow knew the voice over the shouts of his house-karls. He was conscious; he knew that Thjodolf and some of his house-karls had pulled him to the east bank of the narrow river. He thought he would live until he tried to breathe and felt the blood in his windpipe.

  Tostig was beside him. ‘Accept . . . your brother’s . . . terms,’ gasped Haraldr, ‘as . . . I have. Save yourself . . . and my men.’

  ‘They will not accept that, nor will I. I will drink with you tonight, Haraldr Hardraada.’ Haraldr could not answer, and he closed his eyes and accepted the beauty of his death, in the arms of a skald and a brave man, his house-karls still fierce around him. The gods loved him still. He saw the beautiful, vivid images of the life that lingered in death’s shadow: eight years old, in a dark cool forest, his fingers against the grainy surface of a rune stone. Olaf bringing him a toy ship. Elisevett as a girl, her downy cheek. Maria, her eyes like blue lanterns in the night. Daughter Maria, making a face at him as he sat in counsel on his high seat. Even his father, Sygurd Syr, more clearly than he had ever seen him. So much beauty, the deaths forgotten, only life. And then the cold hands closed around his neck and the shadows deepened and the rustle of the huge wings announced the darkening sky. Fear ran cold through his dying limbs. He girded his will to face the final test of being, to meet the last dragon. He could not even draw a final, desperate breath as he fell away from life into the dark well of oblivion.

  There was no dragon, he realized at the end, nor had there ever been one. In reality, the last dragon had no shape or form but was merely a blackness so complete and devastating that to give it any shape, however terrifying, was to endow it with a mercy that did not exist in the last endless night of the world. Here at last was the cold, dark core of being and creation, and here at last was true fear, the fear that only the dead could know. From this horrifying vastness Haraldr cried out in unspeakable, craven agony, unheard in the emptiness, crying out for himself and those he had loved, for all mankind who would some day know this terrible loneliness. Had he known death as the living never can, he would have cursed the day he was born to serve fate. Darkness would always win the final victory.

  In the unforgiving pall a light flickered, a pinpoint in the limitless void. He watched in wonder as the single star grew suddenly, expanding like a golden dome beneath an obsidian sky. The dome came over him and she came towards him out of the light, a creature of light, and he knew at once the liquid gold of her walk and the blue gold of her eyes. For a moment he was surprised that she was his other Maria as well, but then he understood. She reached out and took him in her weightless arms of pure light, as she had promised so long ago on the Bosporus. And in the last moment before his reason became infinite, Haraldr knew the truth of all she had told him. In the end, beyond the dragon, there is only light, and only love.

  Afterword

  The English King Harold Godwinnson did extend Haraldr Sigurdarson a certain posthumous mercy; he permitted Haraldr’s son Olaf to bring his father’s body back to Norway. King Haraldr was laid to rest in the royal cathedral that he had built in Nidaros, the Maria Kirke. But the King’s beloved daughter Maria was not waiting among the mourners; history has recorded that she died, suddenly and inexplicably, on the exact day and hour of her father’s death. King Olaf Haraldrson ruled Norway for several decades of such unprecedented peace and stability that the son of the world’s greatest warrior became known as Olaf the Quiet. So it was that Stamford Bridge marked the end of the era of Norse conquest in Europe. The Viking Age was over.

  But even in death, Haraldr Sigurdarson served as destiny’s instrument. Immediately following the dearly purchased victory over the unarmoured Norsemen, King Harold Godwinnson of England was forced to march his se
verely mauled army south to meet the Norman invasion force under Duke William the Bastard. On 14 October 1066, near the town of Hastings, the two forces met to determine the fate of England. Despite their reduced strength, the English were on the verge of victory when a premature pursuit of the beaten foe brought them the same fate the Norsemen had suffered at Stamford Bridge. Duke William, by far the least of the three men who contested for England in the autumn of 1066, became, almost by default, William the Conqueror. The Normans were able to exploit the wealth of England to dominate Europe for the next century and a half, as well as lead the Crusades to the Holy Land; by the time this ‘Norman century’ had ended, the shape of the modern world had begun to evolve. If Haraldr Sigurdarson had not removed his mail coat on the morning of 25 September 1066, the politics and culture of that world, even the language we speak, would most likely be very different today.

  Fate reckoned with the Byzantine Empire just five years after the death of Haraldr Sigurdarson. On 26 August 1071, at Manzikert in eastern Asia Minor, the poorly maintained armies of Imperial Rome were routed by the Seljuk Turks, and the Emperor Romanus IV was taken prisoner. The loss of the Empire’s breadbasket was a mortal blow followed by an extended, agonizing death. The city of Constantinople fell to Venetian treachery in 1204, but a pathetic vestige of the Empire was restored in 1261. Finally, in 1453, with the city virtually depopulated and most of its glories fallen into ruin, the Ottoman Turks succeeded in breaching the walls and deposing the last Roman Emperor. Today the towering walls have crumbled and there are but scattered fragments of the Imperial Palace. Only the fragile magnificence of the Hagia Sophia, stripped of the symbols of the Pantocrator who once anointed the Rulers of the Entire World beneath its golden dome, remains as testament to the enduring glory and invincible might of Byzantium.