The Varangian

by Bruce Macbain

  “By whatever you hold dear.”

  “On the body of Saint Olaf, then.”

  His half-brother? Whom I always suspected him of hating? But I didn’t quibble. “All right. In a loud voice then, in front of these men. (There were a dozen or so gathered round us.)

  And he swore.

  “You’ll take the first, third and sixth banda, I told him.”

  “Not the fourth?” That was his old bandon, the men who had stood by him during the revolt.”

  “Not them.”

  He shrugged. “You’ve come far in this world, Tangle-Hair. Mind it doesn’t go to your head.”

  “Harald, there’s a word the Greeks use: hubris. It means the pride that goes before a fall.”

  “Learn that from your little friend, Psellus?”

  “Maybe. And I just mention it because it’s something we ought both keep in mind.”

  “I’ll work on it. Are we finished here?”

  “Report to the general tomorrow. There’s lots to do. And Harald—good luck.”

  “A man makes his own luck,” he shot back. And with that he was gone.

  Psellus and I observed them now from the top of the wall.

  “This is a terrible mistake.” Psellus regarded me gravely. “We haven’t done the diplomatic preparation, we have no allies there, and no spies. I’m sending one of my agents along incognito to keep me informed, but I have no one who speaks the Lombard tongue. And Maniakes isn’t the best man for the job. How long will it be before he flogs another officer? And as for you giving Harald the command of half the Guard? Forgive me for saying so, Odd, but I think you’ve lost your mind.”

  “You worry too much, Logothete. Just pity the poor Italians. They don’t know what they’re in for with those two trolls competing to slaughter them.”

  He frowned. “If only they go no farther than that.”

  44

  Where Is Harald?

  On the eleventh of June in the six thousand five hundred and fiftieth year from the Creation of the World (in other words, AD 1042), the Empress Zoe, now sixty-four years old, and beginning to show her age with a slight tremor of the head and hands, was married for the third time. Not, however, by Patriarch Alexius, since third marriages are forbidden by the Church; he assigned one of his priests to perform the rite while he discreetly looked the other way. But later that day, in the Cathedral of the Holy Wisdom, Alexius anointed Zoe’s new husband, Constantine Monomachus, Emperor of the Romans, the ninth of that name. Much satisfaction, not to say relief, was felt by us all.

  The feeling was strong that, after a month’s rule by the two old ladies, a man’s hand was needed at the helm. Theodora had no objection and Zoe was thrilled. She consulted her circle of advisors, which now included Psellus and myself, and we drew up a list of candidates. The first one begged off. The second was poisoned by his wife. The third was Monomachus, and he was good enough, or prudent enough, to accept the offer.

  He was everything Zoe’s girlish heart could desire: rich, good-looking, though well into middle age, charming, sophisticated and fun-loving. He had been exiled to the island of Lesbos by Michael IV, for what reason I don’t know, and was living there comfortably with his mistress when the Imperial yacht came to fetch him. We Varangians formed a guard of honor to welcome him and an ecstatic crowd cheered him on his way to the palace, where his bride awaited. The wedding and the coronation were splendid affairs. The Greeks know how to do these things properly.

  But if we hoped that this man would be a restraining influence on Zoe or curb her wild spending, we were much mistaken. Instead, he indulged the two Empresses in all their luxurious habits and money continued to flow out of the treasury like a river of molten gold. But this was the least of the empire’s problems: a disaster was looming both for the State and for me and the people I loved most. The comet that we saw that month in the night sky above the city should have been a warning. But, between the picnics and the boating parties and the hunting parties and the theater and the races, we were all having too much fun to notice.

  You might have thought that Monomachus would leave his mistress behind on Lesbos. Not so. Her name was Sclerena and, while not beautiful, she was every bit as charming and witty as he was. They had been together for years, he was devoted to her and had no intention of giving her up. He persuaded Zoe to invite her to the city and before long she had moved into the palace and was sharing his bed again. She was actually given a throne, just a little less ornate than Zoe’s or Theodora’s, and the title of Augusta. Surely, there has never been such a bizarre arrangement at any other court in Europe. We now had an Emperor, two Empresses, and a royal mistress, who was virtually an Empress. And the strangest thing is that they all got along so well. Whatever Zoe privately felt about it, she kept to herself. I imagine she was happy just not to be terrorized any more. That at least was my wife’s opinion: Selene found the whole thing vastly amusing.

  It wasn’t amusing for long.

  During the next three months, while we savored the high life of the Capital, George Maniakes was prosecuting the war in Italy. The general’s dispatches were full of news of victories won by himself and Harald (although Harald got scant mention). Psellus’s private agent confirmed this in his own dispatches but added gruesome details. Before Maniakes’s arrival, the Lombards and Normans had inflicted crushing defeats on our forces and had occupied strongholds all over the South, leaving us only Messina. But Maniakes waged war against them with a ferocity that was remembered there for generations. He smashed his way back and forth across Apulia leaving a trail of smoking ruins and mutilated bodies in his wake. Men and women, monks and nuns, old and young, no one was spared. He hanged them, beheaded them, even buried them alive.

  Not pretty, but effective. The general was well on his way to reconquering the whole of southern Italy and already making plans for the invasion of Sicily. If only he could have been left alone to finish the job.

  But Fate would not have it so.

  The charming Sclerena had a brother, Romanus Sclerus, who was the opposite of charming. He was an arrogant man, a bully, and one who never forgave a wrong. He and Maniakes owned neighboring estates in Anatolia and had been feuding for years. Maniakes had once nearly beaten him to death—as, we know, Maniakes had a bad habit of beating people he shouldn’t. Sclerus now took advantage of the general’s absence to pillage his estate and even, it was said, seduce his wife.

  Then he took a step too far. He got his sister to ask the Emperor to recall Maniakes. The general had been recalled once before and spent the next two years in a prison cell. He was not likely to make that mistake again. Psellus and I and the other senior officials begged Monomachus not to do this. But he would deny nothing to Sclerena. In August, an officer was sent out to relieve Maniakes of his command. Some weeks later Psellus received a frantic dispatch from his agent who reported that the general had seized this man, stuffed his mouth and nose with horse dung, and tortured him to death.

  And then proclaimed himself Emperor. His troops, Greek and Varangian alike, raised him on a shield and cheered until they were hoarse. He was now preparing to march on Constantinople.

  I knew Maniakes well enough that I think I was the only man at court who wasn’t astonished by this.

  We had sent him off with almost the whole army, including all four regiments of the Household Cavalry. He commanded some twenty-thousand men, battle-hardened and victorious. We could muster only my three-hundred Varangians and some companies of light infantry from Thrace and the islands, a few thousand at most. The response of the palace to the news of Maniakes’s revolt was panic. Recriminations. Blame-shifting. And some very bad decisions. Sclerus should have been arrested. Instead, he was rewarded. A note should have been sent to Maniakes offering him just about anything he wanted short of the throne itself. No note was sent. For my part, I kept wondering what Harald had to do with all this. I had sent him out to be a counterweight to Maniakes. Had I been so mistaken?

  Another
message from Psellus’s agent came close on the heels of the last one. Maniakes had ferried his army across the Adriatic from Brindisi to Dyrrachium, first performing a human sacrifice, it was said, to calm the waves. Here Macedonian and Serbian rebels were flocking to his standard. Any day now he would set out along the Via Egnatia—the road that leads straight across northern Greece to the gates of Constantinople.

  In this crisis, some competent officer should have been appointed to command us. Instead, the general’s cloak was draped over the soft and scented shoulders of one Pergamenus, a eunuch of Zoe’s. In vain, I pleaded with Zoe and the Emperor to make a different choice. The man was so fat and ill-conditioned that he had to be carried everywhere in a palanquin supported by eight groaning slaves. He spoke with a lisp, his hair dripped oil, he wore earrings in both ears and a jeweled collar under his quivering chins; his cheeks were, of course, as smooth as a baby’s. He had never commanded an army, although he boasted that he had read all the military manuals. He came to Zoe as a wedding present from Sclerena. And this was the man they were sending out against George Maniakes, the Terror of the Lombards. He vowed he would bring that “damned rebel” back to Constantinople in chains. I was to be second in command.

  I was so angry I couldn’t speak. Psellus was in despair.

  On the last day of August we mustered our small force. The royal family came out to see us off at the triple-arched Golden Gate in the city’s towering ring wall. Here the Via Egnatia begins. I was taking all my men save a few old veterans who weren’t up to the march. Gorm carried my standard. What of Harald? the men asked me. Would they have to fight their own comrades again? And what could I tell them?

  Pergamenus had himself carried among the troops, gesturing to them with a fat, be-ringed hand. The cheering was half-hearted at best. We faced weeks of forced marching through some of the roughest country in Europe. Our supplies were scant, we hadn’t enough mules or wagons to carry more, we would have to live off the land, and that land yielded little. With luck we would find the enemy. With luck we would defeat him. With luck we would get home before snow trapped us in the high mountain passes. Luck was everything.

  Selene and the children came to see me off. We both put on brave faces for the children’s sake. I kissed little Artemisia, tousled Gunnar’s curly head and promised to bring him back some souvenir. He begged to come with me. “You must take care of your mother,” I told him. “You are the man now.”

  The Via Egnatia, which runs all the way from Thrace to the Adriatic, was built by those Romans of olden days with a skill that no one today can match. Following the Aegean coast as far as Thessaloniki, the going is easy. From there, the road turns inland and climbs into the mountains of Macedonia. This was territory I knew well—as did Harald—because we had been here a year before when Michael campaigned against the Bulgars.

  After three weeks of marching fifteen or twenty miles a day, we were worn out, hungry and cold. Every night a few more of the mercenaries slipped away. As we neared the little town of Ostrovo, tucked away in its mountain fastness some hundred miles beyond Thessaloniki, I began to wonder if we had somehow missed the enemy altogether. We had no cavalry scouts for reconnoitering, the locals were sullen and closemouthed and told us nothing. If we did meet Maniakes somewhere on this road, we would blunder into him without warning.

  Which is exactly what happened.

  There had been a crashing rainstorm the night before and after that a thick fog had filled the valley so that we did not see their campfires until morning. Except for Pergamenus, who slept in his palanquin, we had all slept out on the bare ground that night because the baggage with the tents had not kept up with us. We were soaked to the bone and had nothing for our breakfast except soggy biscuit and a little goat cheese.

  When the sun was an hour high, the fog burned off and we saw, just half mile away, Maniakes’s tents, his banners and standards, his wagons and his horses and men, thousands of them, stretching along the road and on the hillsides that rose above it. They were preparing for the day’s march and they were as astonished to see us as we were to see them. I formed up my Varangians in a shield wall across the road, with the mercenaries, mostly archers, slingers and javelin men, behind us. We were a pitiful force, there was no disguising it.

  Presently, Maniakes cantered down the road toward us on his great black charger, followed by a score of Khazar bowmen on their ponies. One of them was Moses the Hawk. I recognized his lean, scarred face at once. And he looked right at me, but gave no sign.

  By this time, the day had turned unseasonably hot. Pergamenus, heaved his sweating bulk out of the palanquin and came forward to parlay. “You damned rebel,” he cried. “In the name of God, I order you to surrender at once and throw yourself on the Emperor’s mercy.”

  Maniakes let out a bark of contemptuous laughter. “They sent you to fight with me? Monomachus should have saved himself the trouble.” Then he glanced around and his eye fell on me. He leaned down from his saddle and peered at my face. “Odd Thorvaldsson, is that you? By Christ, it is! Join me, man. You and your men are fine soldiers, you’ll have a place of honor with me.”

  Don’t think I wasn’t tempted. This was suicide, what we were doing. And for what? To satisfy the spite of Monomachus’s mistress’s brother? Gorm was standing beside me, holding my standard. He put his mouth to my ear and whispered, “Maybe he’s right.” I’m sure all the men were thinking the same thought.

  “Will Harald be happy to see me?” I replied. “Bring him here, I want to see him.”

  “Harald? Harald is—occupied.” There was a moment’s hesitation in his voice.

  “Then the answer is no, General. I have my duty. Turn your men around and go back to Italy. If any word of mine can spare you the consequences of this rash act, I will do my best.”

  He looked almost sorrowful for a moment. “Pity,” he said, “to die out here for nothing.”

  “Varangians don’t fear death,” I answered him back in a voice loud enough to be heard by my men, hoping that they would roar their assent, clash their axes against their shields.

  But the ranks were ominously quiet.

  Maniakes wheeled his horse around and rode back to his lines.

  “If any man wants to pray,” I called out, “let him do it now.” Some of the men knelt quickly and crossed themselves. The few priests who had marched with us sprinkled our standards with holy water. I sent up a swift prayer to Odin to strengthen my arm.

  Then, with a blare of trumpets, the Greek cavalry leveled their lances and charged us, first at a trot, then a canter, then a gallop. The ground shook under their hooves. Pergamenus, moving faster than I’d ever seen him do before, fled to the rear.

  “Form the swine array,” I shouted to my men, “crouch behind your shields, let the archers fire over you, strike at their horses’ legs. Hold the line!”

  I’d been in battles like this before and I knew that even well-trained warhorses can’t be made to charge into a solid barrier of shields without shying at the last moment. It’s only when the defenders break and run that the slaughter begins. Harald’s Varangians worried me more. But I could not see them anywhere. Was he holding them in reserve for a final blow? Or had he lost control of them? But I had little time to think about that now.

  The thrusting lances, the maces and sabers flashing up and down, the snap of bowstrings, the screams of horses and men, the ring of steel on steel, the reek of sweat, the groans and the curses. My Varangians, once engaged, fought with grim steadiness. Still the enemy drove us slowly back on our heels; they overlapped our flanks; we had nowhere to turn. If we broke, it would be all over for us. A horseman trampled Gorm, who stood beside me. I hooked the man out of his saddle with my axe and drove the spiked butt into his face. Maniakes was fighting in the front rank, flanked by his Khazars, striking left and right with his mace, shouting his war cry. He came straight for me. He wanted to kill me—I saw it in his eyes. He brought his mace down on my shield, splitting it in two, a s
econd blow landed on my shoulder, knocking me to the ground. He lifted his arm to strike a third blow that would crush my skull. Here it ends, I thought, death in a desolate place far from home—a viking’s death.

  My life was saved by Ingimund, a huge young Swede, one of my new recruits, who stepped over me, snatched up the broken half of a lance and thrust it up, catching Maniakes in the chest. The point pierced his heart. He toppled backward and crashed to the ground like a great tree falling. Moses, who was right behind him, leapt from his mount and threw himself on his body. An instant later, another Khazar sliced off Ingimund’s head with a sweep of his saber. But the lancer who carried Maniakes’s pennant wheeled and galloped away, crying that the Emperor was dead and then the others turned their horses around and followed him by tens, and then by hundreds. Our side let out a cheer and began to chase them. I swung myself up onto a riderless horse, got in front of my men and did my best to turn them back, shouting at them to let the Greeks withdraw. With an effort, I got them back under control. Gorm untangled himself from a heap of bodies and hoisted our standard again.

  I rode back through our ranks, past heaps of dead and groaning wounded, to where Maniakes lay. Moses crouched beside his body, bleeding heavily from a wound in his right arm. He looked up at me with pain in his eyes. Not physical pain—he never showed that—but the pain of a faithful guard dog that has lost its master.

  I told two of my men to carry him to the rear and bind his wound. “Take good care of him, he’s a friend.”

  And now here came Pergamenus, sweating and wheezing. “Damn you, why did you halt the pursuit?” he snarled at me. “Treachery, I call that.”

  “Call it what you like. They still outnumber us five to one, there’s no profit in driving them to the wall. And I want very much to talk to Harald.”

  The eunuch came closer and touched Maniakes’s corpse with the toe of his silk shoe. “Damned rebel. Cut off his head, Commandant.”

  What a pointless death this was, I thought. Maniakes had his faults, God knows, but he was driven to this by people who weren’t fit to wipe his shoes. “Cut it off yourself,” I said, and turned away.