The Varangian

by Bruce Macbain

  But, as I say, all this took up a great deal of time. A fleet of Viking raiders would have struck swiftly and been away before anyone knew we were there. The Saracens had plenty of time to know we were coming and make their preparations. Our fleet spread out over a league of water and could be seen a long way off.

  I have already said a little about these war galleys that they call dromons. During long days at sea I was able to study every detail of them with a sailor’s eye. The Pantokrator was half again the length of my old ship, the Sea Viper, and deeper-hulled, although not much broader in the beam. She had a hundred oars to the Viper’s thirty, and two masts with triangular sails that could be angled back and forth so as to sail nearer the wind than any Norse dragon ship can do. She had a crew of a hundred and fifty rowers, about fifty deck hands and artillerymen, half a dozen officers, and a complement of marines, made up of Harald’s bandon and the Khazars of Maniakes’s bodyguard.

  Maniakes kept his crews busy. Although, with the wind behind us, there was little need for rowing, the oarsmen were drilled every day. Their backs were broad and sun-blackened, their muscles like knotted ropes, their hands as hard as horn. They were Thracians, Dalmatians, Greeks and Arabs. They were free men who served willingly because they ate better aboard ship than they would have done at home. At a signal, they would rush to the benches, run out the oars, which are thirty feet long and weigh a hundred pounds each, and pull together with perfect precision to the beat of a mallet. After a dash at top speed, which they could keep up only for a few minutes, they would sink back, panting like spent dogs, and drink deep from the water pails, which they kept beside them.

  The helmsman is the most important member of the crew. Years before, I had learned to steer my ship under the eye of Stig No-One’s-Son, my teacher in all things. But, where a Viking ship has one steering oar, the dromon has two, operated in tandem by one man. I watched for hours as our helmsman pushed one tiller forward while pulling the other back, putting the ship through tight maneuvers, until I thought that, just possibly, I could do it myself.

  But what intrigued me most were the fire-breathing siphons. Our ship mounted two of them on the castle amidships and one in the prow. The composition of the ‘Greek fire’ they shot out was a deep secret—said to have been whispered by an angel of God into the ear of the first Emperor. Maniakes was not willing to waste much of it on practice, but a few times he had the gunners fire short bursts. These men wore thick leather aprons and gauntlets soaked in vinegar and, on their heads, leather hoods with eyeholes. They were arrogant men, proud of their deadly skill. I watched how they heated the fuel in bronze tanks below decks—tricky work as too much heat and the tank might explode—and how two men worked a big pump which sent the hot fuel up through a flexible leather hose to the barrel with its gaping lion’s mouth. Here a match was lit and, when the gunner squeezed a lever, a stream of the fuel shot out and ignited. Under maximum pressure a tongue of fire could leap thirty feet or more, and it burned even on the water. We had catapults too—big crossbows on swivel frames that shot arrows a great distance—as well as ballistae that hurled stones, but it was the roar of those siphons that kept our enemies at bay. Only these made the Imperial Fleet master of the sea.

  Except when he was overseeing our drills, Maniakes was seldom seen on deck or in camp. I think I know the reason for this. He believed that a commander inspires his men not through love but through fear, and the commander is feared most who is seen least. Whenever we mentioned his name, it was in a whisper, as though he could hear us wherever he was. Even Harald felt it, though he wouldn’t admit it. Stephen, our so-called admiral, on the other hand, was always strutting about, issuing orders that had to be quietly countermanded by his officers, until the whole fleet despised him for a fool.

  There was little for us Varangians to do during the long days at sea. (I say ‘us’ Varangians for I now thought of myself as one.) We watched the sailors with interest but never bore a hand in their tasks. We slept, we gambled, we talked about women. Gorm asked me about Selene, but when he saw it pained me he stopped. I read my Odyssey, translating it aloud to the men, until I came to the part where the hero and his crew passed the whirlpool Charybdis and the six-headed monster Scylla, which lived in the Strait of Messina—exactly where we were headed. Then Harald made me stop because the men were getting nervous. (I think Homer made it all up anyway because we never saw any such things when we got there.)

  At the end of our first week at sea, we came to a city called Athens and docked in the harbor of Piraeus. This city, I’ve heard tell, was once a great and famous place but it is now mostly deserted and filled with ruins. We had three days’ liberty here. Maniakes had a camp built as usual outside the walls, but Harald defied him and turned us loose in the town. We probably did as much damage as an invading army. At the end, most of the men had to be carried aboard ship because they were too drunk to walk. But I mention this because one evening while we were there I was summoned to Maniakes’s tent. Moses the Hawk, the Captain of his bodyguard, found me in a taverna where I was drinking with Gorm and four Icelanders, who were my mess mates. In broken Greek he ordered me to come with him. I was just drunk enough to be tempted to refuse, but I thought better of it. I followed him out the door with my heart beating fast.

  The general’s tent was in the center of the camp, a huge affair of white silk, flying his banner from its top. A dozen Khazar bowmen squatted on their heels around the entrance. They leapt to attention when Moses approached. Inside, the furnishings were very plain: an ordinary soldier’s camp bed, a couple of big trunks, a table littered with papers, an armchair and some stools. In one corner stood a framework with the general’s armor, sword and shield hung on it. A couple of servants lurked in the background. Maniakes had a book open in front of him as Moses and I ducked under the tent flap. He looked up and waved me to a chair. “You know what this is?” he growled in his rumbling bass. It was an accusation, not a question. He held the book up for me to see. “The Strategikon of Maurice. You have a copy and have been seen reading it. I want to know why.”

  I’d only peeked at it a few times when I thought I was alone. Was I again being watched? He thrust his head forward and starred at me hard. “There is only one general in this army—me. What use is this book to you?”

  “No use, sir. It was a present.”

  “You’re quite a reader, I understand. Your Greek is good. Are you translating this for Harald? Is that it? The big Norwegian ‘prince’, as he calls himself, aspires to learn tactics? Strategy? Order of battle?” He emphasized each word with a sneer.

  I shook my head. “Harald isn’t interested in books. And you, sir, should not treat him as a rival. He’s a brave warrior, his men are devoted to him.”

  “So you say. Then what about you? You’re a queer bird. Who are you, anyway? What are you to Harald?”

  “I have the honor to be his skald, to carry his messages and sing his praises.”

  “His praises!” Maniakes slapped the table and shouted in a voice like thunder. “His own mouth is so full of them I wonder he needs you.”

  I had nothing to say to this.

  “And you translate for him. Why doesn’t the prince bother to learn our language?”

  “Maybe he doesn’t plan to be here long.”

  “And you do?”

  “In my case it was involuntary.” I explained how I had learned Greek as a slave.

  He gave me a long appraising look. “I was a slave once. Slavery can do one of two things to a man, break him or toughen him. Which did it do to you?” He went on without waiting for me to answer. “How did you come to know Harald?”

  “We served together in Gardariki, in the druzhina, the elite regiment, of Grand Prince Yaroslav of the Rus.” As I spoke these words, I happened to glance at Moses, who was standing at attention behind the general’s chair. The fellow had a face that might have been carved from mahagony. His cheekbones were high, his lips thin, and his eyes slightly slanted. I’d n
ever seen him change expression. Now those eyes narrowed for an instant with a look that might have been surprise. Or might have been hatred.

  Again, Maniakes gave me a searching look. “And now you serve him faithfully?”

  “Of course.” Did I hesitate for half a heartbeat? Did my color change? I felt naked before those piercing eyes.

  “You’re not stupid. So many men are. I may have a use for you—what’s your name?”

  “Odd Tangle-Hair. It’s hard to serve two masters, sir.”

  “But sometimes unavoidable, yes? Well, since you’re his translator, translate this for him. He had better be careful if he doesn’t want to be sent back to Constantinople because I will brook no more of his insolence. Tell him so.”

  “I will, sir.”

  The general leaned back in his chair, touched the book with his fingers. “So what have you learned from Emperor Maurice’s handbook, eh? I myself have studied it from boyhood.”

  “I haven’t read much of it,” I answered. “One of his maxims sticks in my mind: It is better to have an army of deer commanded by a lion than an army of lions commanded by a deer.”

  “Hah! Yes, by Christ,” he laughed suddenly, showing yellow teeth. His laugh sounded like the bark of a big dog. “I know that line. And I am the lion in this army. Go back and tell Harald that in case there’s any doubt in his mind. You can go now, I have a meeting with my captains. And keep reading, young man. Maybe it’ll make a general of you too. Moses, take our friend back to whatever hell-hole you found him in.”

  We walked together through the camp, where the men sat around their campfires making their evening meal, past the horse lines where the big, shaggy-footed chargers of the heavy cavalry and the nimble ponies of the Khazar archers stood side by side. I’d seen these Khazars—Moses among them—at their drill, galloping with the reins in their teeth, loosing arrows at wooden stakes, seldom missing.

  “You’re Rus?” Moses spoke in a gravelly voice, hardly moving his lips. It took me a moment to realize he was speaking Slavonic.

  “I’m an Icelander, why do you ask?”

  “Khazars hate the Rus.”

  I laughed. “I’m not fond of them myself. Why do you hate them?”

  Moses was a man who chewed his words slowly and spat them out one at a time. I will give here in brief form what I learned of his story on our walk back to Piraeus and at other times when we talked. He came from a place called Tmutorakan on the Sea of Azov. His full name was Moses ben Manasseh and, like all his people, he was a Jew. They had once been a great people, he boasted. From Atil, their capital on the Volga, they’d ruled over a hundred cities. The trade of the Rus, the Arabs, the Greeks, even the far-off Chinese passed through their hands. Their khagan lived in a walled castle and was served by four thousand slaves. Though they were Jews, they welcomed Mohammedans and Christians to their city and treated everyone alike. This ended some sixty years ago when Prince Svyatoslav of Kiev (Yaroslav’s grandfather) destroyed Atil and scattered the people. Only a rump state remained now in the Crimea, where Moses hailed from. I had seen Atil when I voyaged to the East with Yngvar’s expedition; it was a desolate ruin now, inhabited only by ghosts and wolves. but I did not say this to Moses.

  He was born the son of a rabbi—what they call their priests—and was trained to follow in his father’s footsteps. But he preferred riding and hunting to studying books of religion. He rebelled, and his father drove him out with curses. After that, he became a wandering mercenary. He served for some years in the army of the Caliph of Cairo. There he learned to speak passable Arabic and learned the valuable skill of pigeon handling. Finally he washed up in Byzantium where he joined the Khazar regiment of the Household Cavalry. He served under Maniakes in the East and, one day, saved him from being trampled by a runaway horse. From that day on, he and a dozen of his men became the general’s bodyguard. A good life, he said, but a lonely one. His spare time he devoted to training pigeons, which the Greeks, like all armies, use for carrying messages.

  “You’ve no family?” I asked him.

  “I’m a Jew, though not a pious one. I must take a Jewish wife.”

  “Constantinople is full of Jews.”

  He spat in the dirt. “Shopkeepers’ daughters. Their fathers hide them away when they see bloody-handed men like me coming. Soon there will be no more Khazars. My generation will be the last.” There was no mistaking the bitterness in his voice.

  We continued on in silence for a while, then I asked, “What do you think of our general? You must know him pretty well by now. In my country there are creatures we call trolls. Huge, brutish, dangerous, but stupid. We teach our children to fear them.”

  This seemed to amuse Moses. He allowed himself a fleeting smile. “A troll? Maybe. But stupid? No, by no means stupid. There isn’t another commander in the army with his ability.”

  “I believe it. To rise from a waiter to a general. Extraordinary. Would you say that his ambition reaches even farther?”

  Moses stopped and looked hard at me. “What are you asking?”

  “An idle question, nothing more.”

  “Some questions are better left unasked.”

  “Of course.” We had reached the door of the taverna now. “Stay and have a drink with me, friend Moses.”

  He hesitated. “The general wants me back.”

  “Another time then?”

  “If you like.” He was a hard man to read—yet, I thought that perhaps I’d made a useful connection.

  He turned and made his way back down the lane, his bow-case and quiver swinging from one hip, his saber from the other. A time would come when I would be very glad I had made the acquaintance of Moses the Hawk.

  In the weeks that followed, we rounded the Peloponnese, sailed up the west coast of Greece to the island of Corfu, stood across to the heel of Italy, and down the coast to Reggio di Calabria, one of the last remaining Imperial outposts in the peninsula. Two miles across the strait from Reggio lay Sicily and the city of Messina. We expected to find a Saracen fleet prepared to challenge us but, to our surprise, our scouts reported that there were no ships in sight, so we sailed across.

  Our ships crowded the waterfront, the crews were confined to the harbor, while the army, as always, built its camp on high ground outside the walls, and this time the Varangians were strictly ordered to stay in it—there would be no more of the riotous drunkenness that had made a wreck of Piraeus. Although Maniakes forbade looting under pain of death, still most of the Arab population fled the town, clogging the roads with their carts and donkeys, heaped high with whatever they could carry away. Stephen and Harald crowed over this ‘victory’, which was, of course, no victory at all, but Maniakes looked grim and muttered that it was all too easy. It was decided the next day to leave the bulk of our force in Messina under Stephen’s command while Maniakes would lead ten dromons and an equal number of empty transports up the Tyrrhenian coast to Salerno, to collect the Lombard mercenaries we had been promised.

  Salerno is a pretty town of whitewashed walls and red roof tiles that rises up on terraces from the water’s edge. Duke Gaimar, a handsome youth barely out of his teens but very much in charge, entertained us for three days in his castle while his warriors streamed in from the countryside. It was obvious at once that these men were not happy to be leaving their homes and expected to get little out of it. They grumbled and gave us angry looks. In command of them was that same clever, Greek-speaking Lombard named Arduin whom I’d last seen a year ago as an ambassador in Constantinople. We gave each other a friendly greeting now.

  A band of Norman knights and their squires arrived as well. Unlike the Lombards, these men looked tough and eager for adventure. They wore their hair close-cropped, shaved their chins and carried long shields that tapered to a point. They were led by a pair of brothers, William and Drogo de Hauteville. William was powerfully built and could (and often did) bend a horseshoe with his bare hands. They were Norsemen, like ourselves, they said, whose ancestors had se
ttled on the coast of Francia, but they no longer spoke our tongue except for a few words learned from their grandfathers. There being too little opportunity for plunder in their own country, they had come south to seek their fortune. Harald affected to scorn them as no better than robbers, but I had the feeling that these were tough men, prickly of their honor, and would need to be handled carefully. Not that anyone asked my opinion.

  During these days, we swam in the warm Tyrrhenian sea and lay out naked on the white sand beach. It was as close to paradise as I’ve ever been. When it was time to set sail again, I was loath to leave it.

  We were two days out of Salerno heading south, the sea choppy, the wind blowing across our bow out of the west, giving little purchase for our sails. It was work for the rowers, and, though they rowed in shifts of fifty, they were all tired. As evening approached, the question was debated whether to put in to shore, if we could find a sheltered bay along this rocky coast, or press on to Messina. We figured we were three, maybe four hours away. Harald was for stopping but Maniakes wanted to push on, even though it meant sailing in the dark. Enemy scouts were hunting for us—a fishing boat had followed us all morning and then disappeared out to sea. We’d be defenseless if their fleet caught us on a beach. The two of them went head to head over it. Their voices could be heard all over the ship. Maniakes, of course, had the last word and Harald stamped off to the foc’sle in a black mood.