The Varangian

by Bruce Macbain

  And we were already short of provisions, even with the fleet to revictual us. By the time we entered Catania, there was little left in the town to eat. Children in the streets begged us for food but we had nothing to spare them. All around us, the Saracens were burning crops, poisoning wells, staking dead animals in the streams upriver. Everywhere was the smell of blood, of death. Burning houses, corpses of men and horses swollen to bursting in the sun. The roads were choked with refugees—Saracen and Christian alike—fleeing their villages. We took from them whatever we could lay hands on. We broke into the wine cellars of Greek houses and drank ourselves senseless. Of course, women were raped—though not by us Varangians, not after Harald hanged two Guardsmen for doing that.

  Taormina held out for two weeks—and paid a heavy price. The defenders were massacred, their women and children loaded aboard the ships to be taken off and sold.

  Here in Catania, after holding out for a month, the defenders have been allowed to leave under flag of truce because Maniakes is anxious to get on to Syracuse. Harald violently denounced this—he actually accused Maniakes of taking a bribe from the Saracen commander to let them go. There was a shouting match; these are becoming daily occurrences, with me, as always, in the middle. Arduin the Lombard and William the Norman watch these explosions of temper with worried eyes. They didn’t sign on for a campaign so rancorous and divided. The camp now is very tense. Harald keeps us billeted apart. The chief of Maniakes’s bodyguard—a man called Moses the Hawk, who I’ve gotten friendly with—tells me that the general spends hours in his tent, brooding about Harald and cursing him, especially when he’s drunk, which he now is most nights. I’ll write again from Syracuse, if your agent there can find me. Farewell.

  I folded these pages—I’d filled two sheets, front and back—and turned back to Selene’s letter.

  My darling, Gunnar has taken his first steps. He looks more like you every day… I tell him how brave you are … we both miss you ... Father sends you his love. He’s sitting here now… He’s been feeling poorly, I worry about him. But he has a new patient. A man brought his daughter to us today, a sweet little girl. Father thinks she has the falling sickness, he’s already planning how to treat her. Well, it will give him something to do and extra money for us, the man looks rich and is willing to pay … Please write again soon. I dream of you. Sometimes my dreams frighten me … I love you …

  I lay down the pages and sat with my pen in hand, trying to think what to say. My heart was full but, just as before, the words came hard. In the midst of all this blood and misery and death, what could I say that wouldn’t frighten her or revolt her? My own mother never turned a hair, listening to my father boast of the slaughter he’d done on his enemies. Selene was a brave girl in her way, but she wasn’t one of us. Should I say that the war would be over soon? I doubted it would. That I was amassing booty? I was, but how I was doing it, she would rather not know. That I was well and healthy? Not always. Like most of us, I had suffered bouts of fever in this pestilential country. (When the chills and vomiting came, the only cure was opium dissolved in a cup of goat’s milk and wine. That put me in a wonderful stupor that lasted for hours. My only fear was that I would grow to like the stuff too well.) Instead, I would describe the countryside and the people, as if I were spinning a travel yarn to a child.

  When I look up from where I’m sitting I can see a great, smoking volcano, capped and streaked with snow, that fills the whole western horizon. It is called Aetna and I reckon it is three times the size of the volcano I was born under. It has followed us for miles as we march south. Vapors rise from it in a hundred places and the peasants say that the forge of the blacksmith god Hephaestus lies beneath it. I can believe it. It reminds me of home.

  The people here have short legs and wide shoulders and hands twice the normal size. Saracens, Christians, and Jews all live side by side. The women wear veils—not only the Saracen women but the others as well. And the women carry all their wealth on their bodies—headdresses, necklaces and bracelets made of old coins. Some of the Saracens are a people called Berbers; they dress all in blue, and the dye comes off on their skin…

  And so I went on for another page, cudgeling my brain for anything that might possibly interest Selene and her father. And when I was finished, I was dissatisfied. There was so much I hadn’t, couldn’t, tell her.

  I’m sorry to hear your father is unwell. When I have more time I will write a letter just to him. I miss you all. Kiss Gunnar for me.

  I put down my pen and was just re-reading what I’d written when I saw out of the corner of my eye Halldor and Bolli—always inseparable—striding toward the churchyard. They were looking at me. How much had they seen? I could not explain these letters—even the one to my wife—without letting slip that I had some private means of delivering them. And that would be fatal. Maniakes would cut my ears and nose off. So, probably would Harald. I was a spy—even if what I had to say was of little importance. No one would defend me.

  I dropped the pen and ink bottle at my feet, stood up slowly, pretending not to see them, and walked back into the church. Father Macarius started to smile, and then changed his expression when he saw my face.

  “Burn these. Now!”

  “What? All? Why?”

  “Quickly, hold them to the candle.”

  “But parchment won’t burn.”

  The Logothete’s letter—the most damning of all.

  “Well, hide it, do something, quickly.”

  I steadied my breathing, turned and sauntered out the door, forcing myself not to look around and thinking furiously what I would say.

  “What’re you doing in church, Thorvaldsson? Not praying, I think. Not a devil-worshipper like you.” Halldor stood squarely in front of me, his legs planted wide apart, his hand on the hilt of his sword. Bolli, meanwhile, was watching the churchyard.

  “You’ve been here a long time, we passed you earlier. Reading something? Tell me what.”

  “None of your business, friend.”

  “Really? I think I’ll just go in and have a look round. Get out of my way.”

  It would take minutes to burn or hide those sheets. It would be better to provoke Halldor to fight me here in the street. Bolli had come over and was standing behind his brother-in-law’s shoulder, looking nervous. “Bolli,” I smiled evilly, “why don’t you take your handsome boyfriend off to some dark tavern where you can stroke his cock. We all know he uses you like a woman.”

  “I’ll send you to Hell,” Halldor screamed. He landed a blow with his fist that sent me staggering back against the door. Then his sword was out and the blade whistled past my head as I crouched and turned. I got my sword out just in time to parry his next cut. Steel rang on steel and everywhere in the little marketplace heads turned toward us. Now the two of them came at me together and I had no place to run.

  “Hold!”

  Gorm! He and half a dozen of his Swedish mates pushed toward us through the crowd. They threw their cloaks over our swords and pulled us apart. Halldor roared and struggled but they were too many for him. Bolli let himself be dragged away.

  “Tangle-Hair,” Gorm appealed to me with his broad, honest face. “You know you’re not to fight with these men. Harald said.”

  “It wasn’t me who started it.”

  “I think we must take this to Harald.”

  Anything to get them away from this church. “By all means,” I answered.

  Harald glowered at us, pacing up and down in his tent. Halldor was so angry he could barely speak. Luckily, that has never been my problem.

  “In a church?” Harald demanded. “Reading? Reading what?”

  I gave him an easy smile. “I’ve put it about the market that I’m interested in texts of Greek poetry—you know me. And the priest had some pages he wanted to sell me. I looked them over, couldn’t make sense of the stuff, and gave them back to him. Nothing more.”

  Halldor spat. “Don’t let this pagan filth lie to you. Something’s
wrong here. I smell it. I’m going back to the church and shake that priest until his teeth rattle. I’ll learn what this is about.”

  “You will not.” Harald rounded on him. “These people happen to be on our side.”

  “But—”

  “Let it go, Halldor. I need Odd.”

  “And you don’t need me? Your standard-bearer? Thank you very much. I’ll just collect what’s owed me and take myself back to Iceland.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. I need both of you. Look, we cannot be fighting among ourselves. What other friends have we got? Greeks? I’ve told you once and I won’t say it again. Do not draw steel against each other or, by God, I’ll flay the lot of you. Now get out.”

  “Can I ask what that was about?” said Gorm, as we walked away together. “Those two hate you. I’ve overheard them talking you know. They won’t be satisfied until they have your head on a stake, whatever Harald says. What were you doing in the church anyway? Haven’t turned Christman, have you?”

  “No,” I smiled, “never that. I’ll say something to you that Moses the Hawk said to me not long ago. Some questions are better left unasked.”

  “I wish my brother were here,” he said out of the blue.

  “Glum? So do I. He saved my life more than once. As you have just now. Thank you.”

  “Let’s drink some wine,” he said.

  “Just what I was thinking, friend Gorm.”

  We went off arm in arm.

  The next morning at dawn trumpets blew and the order was passed to fall in. We were leaving Catania, which had no more food in it to fill our bellies.

  No one, friend or enemy, would read my letters now.

  And they were the last I ever wrote.

  21

  Siege

  Syracuse held out for eighteen months. By the time it surrendered, the city would be the haunt of dogs and vultures, its defenders few, sick, and starving, and our own army worn down to the point of mutiny. And I—I would be twenty-seven years old: ravaged by fever, my skin a map of battle scars, my feet nearly crippled, and my heart sore with longing. Abandoned. Angry. If the Logothete had agents in the city I never found them.

  Maniakes had ordered a forced march from Catania, hoping to take Syracuse by surprise. We covered the thirty-seven miles that lay between them in two days. But the Saracens knew we were coming. The city was crammed with provisions and fighting men, and their commander, Ibn al-Thumnah, was a stubborn man. The city’s ramparts stand thirty feet high on the landward side. In its wide harbor is a fortified island called Ortygia, connected to the city by a walled causeway which was the work of ancient kings, rich, proud men who made their city a jewel of the ancient world.

  It was the job of our fleet to capture this island. Of course, Stephen failed at this, as he did at everything. Meanwhile, our catapults began to pound away at the walls and towers. This was work for specialists, and we Varangians were mere spectators. All day long, I listened to the creaks and groans, whoosh and snap of the great, long-armed trebuchets. I watched while boulders the size of wagons and great bundles of flaming pitch, baskets of scorpions and sacks of quicklime, arced toward the walls. The defenders hung out mats of woven hemp and sacks of grain husks to protect them, and answered our fire with their own catapults, launching showers of missiles, which sometimes pierced a man through the body or took off his head. We did some damage, breaking the teeth of the battlements, pulverizing the stone facing here and there to expose the brick core, but it wasn’t enough. The walls stood firm. And before long, we ran out of boulders or anything else we could send at them. Then the trebuchets stood silent, like cranes at an abandoned building site. Maniakes began to pace and fume. His temper grew more savage every day.

  He decided to order an assault with ‘tortoises’. We had left six of these outside Catania because they were slow to move. Now it took us a week to take them apart, load them on carts, and reassemble them. And then they were too short for Syracuse’s walls and needed extra stories added at the top. At last, one morning in the half-light before dawn, they rumbled toward a section of the wall, seeming to move by themselves, the men pushing them from inside. We Varangians, together with the Lombards and Normans, crouched behind the gangplanks at the top. Through a slit, I watched the enemy’s fire arrows streak toward us. I felt the shock of stones strike us. I later learned they had begun tearing apart old buildings for ammunition. I felt the whole tower wobble and tip crazily as if it would go over with us, heard the squeal of wheels, the grunts of the pushers. I gave a wink and a nod to Gorm, who was beside me, tightened my grip on my spear, and sent up a prayer to Odin. Finally, I could forget everything, could lose myself, in the madness of battle.

  The gangplank fell with a crash. We flung our spears and swarmed over the parapet, screaming our war cry and slashing right and left with our swords and axes. Harald was in the front, Halldor beside him, holding high our dragon-headed standard. “Varangians to me!” Harald yelled but his words were drowned by the answering roar of Allahu akhbar. from the Saracen fighters. They loosed a storm of arrows at us. Arrows in legs. Arrows in throats. Men went down, tumbled backward off the wall, falling screaming to the rocky ground below. Al-Thumnah’s elite guard faced us. Broad shouldered, with white turbans and gilded armor, they came at us, whirling their long straight swords around their heads. One of them struck me, cracked my shield with a blow, my arm numb with the shock. Step by step, he drove me back over the blood-slick stones, and suddenly I was hanging in space, legs kicking in empty air, shield gone, sword gone, fingertips scrabbling at the parapet’s edge, letting go, falling …

  Then a grip like iron had me by the wrist and pulled me up, as if I were as weightless as a rabbit. I looked into the face of the Norman giant, William de Hauteville. He covered me with his long shield while I scrambled to my feet. I snatched up a spear, used it with both hands and stabbed at two of the enemy until it shattered. Then I rushed in under another man’s guard, grappled him around the waist, tripped him with a wrestler’s move, went down on top of him, got my dagger in under his jaw, the blood spurting up over my hand. I took his sword from him—a magnificent weapon, finer steel than ours—and turned to fight another. But now the sun was coming up over the bay, pouring into our eyes, the heat beginning to tell on us. We had hoped to clear the rampart of defenders and race down the inner steps to open one of the postern gates. But we were too few.

  “Back, back!” someone shouted. We retreated, trying to carry our wounded, as many as we could. The gangplanks went up, the ‘tortoises’ began to move away, all of them shaggy with arrows, their cowhide covers smoldering, the stink of it in our throats. A shout of victory went up from the wall, Allahu akhbar, again and again. The kettle drums roared.

  Later, when Harald mustered us, some ninety men had been killed or crippled from our whole force of five hundred, twenty-three from the Fourth Bandon alone. Halldor took a sword cut across his handsome face, which spoiled his appearance and did nothing for his mood. All of us were battered and bleeding one way or another. Three of the ‘tortoises’ were a total loss and there was not enough big timber in the neighborhood to build more.

  After this, we settled down for a long siege. We scoured the countryside for food and firewood, finding not enough of either. Autumn came. Winter bore down on us with heavy rains and sickness in the camp. We grew thin. Wounds would not heal. Then summer and another winter. It was only a question now of who would break first. The defenders launched sorties against us, which we beat back, with heavy losses on both sides. Eventually, these came less and less often. And we assaulted the walls again, with ladders, but could never get a foothold.

  The passage of time could be marked by the deterioration of our kit. Shields were battered into uselessness; sword blades nicked and bent, sharpened and re-sharpened until the steel wore away; helmets dented and hammered back into shape; the leather backing of our hauberks rotted away from sweat; our red tunics and cloaks patched and faded. Everything we owned had to be rep
laced from army stores, so that at the end we looked more like Greek soldiers than Varangians. Harald took the opportunity to adopt a cavalry officer’s long surcoat made of overlapping gilded bronze plaques. Its skirt being nearly as long as a girl’s dress, the men dubbed it ‘Emma’. “Does pretty Emma keep you warm at night?” they joked.

  By the time a year had passed we had lost nearly half our men to wounds or disease. We buried them in wide trenches, and remembered them with stories—this one’s word-wit, that one’s fine head of hair. Men whose wives and parents back in Snaefellsness and Laxdaela, in Varmaland and Uppsala, in Aland and Jutland would wait and wonder and never know what became of them, and eventually set up rune stones: Thorir, or Ermund, or Bodolf fared east in Grikland and fed the crows there.

  By mutual agreement between Maniakes and Harald, who couldn’t bear the sight of each other, we Varangians continued to bivouac apart from the rest of the army. The Lombards and Normans joined us, leaving the Greeks to themselves. Although I was still not officially a Guardsman, everyone—except for Halldor and Bolli—seemed to have forgotten that I wasn’t. And because of the closeness of camp life and the brotherhood of battle, a bond grew up between me and these men that never could have happened back in Constantinople. There were a few Icelanders in every bandon and most of them were willing to be my friends, whatever my religion. Halldor, being a great chieftain’s son, tried to lord it over them and wasn’t, in fact, very popular.

  The days crept by. We devoted much time to sports. Harald insisted that we keep fit, and he took the lead in wrestling and running and lifting rocks. Every bandon had its champions, and rivalry was fierce. The nights we passed around our campfires, faces flushed with firelight and wine, drinking, telling stories (mine were always in demand), and, like soldiers everywhere, complaining. Harald took the lead in this, too. Did that brute, Maniakes, that ex-waiter, know his business? Harald spat the man’s name, always with a sneer on his face and a hard edge to his voice. He never missed an opportunity to mention Maniakes’s low birth in comparison to his own, the half-brother of a king. The saintly Olaf was always in Harald’s mouth. We stifled yawns listening to him repeat, for the hundredth time, the shining tale of Stiklestad, how at the age of fifteen he had stood over his brother’s corpse, beating back the heathen rebels; how he had escaped and made his way to Gardariki; how he wooed and won the Rus prince’s beautiful daughter whom he would marry and carry home to Norway one of these days, and damnation to her wicked mother. All of this I knew well—too well—and none of it was quite the way I remembered it. But I held my tongue.