The Varangian

by Bruce Macbain

“You a virgin? Don’t tell me you haven’t had lovers, you little slut.”

  “No, Mother, I have not, not like—”

  A warning look from her brother stops her before she can say, Not like you and King Olaf, you and Odd Tangle-Hair.

  “Please Inge,” Yaroslav raises his hands to heaven, “in Christ’s Name, or course we must do what we can for Harald in return for all the priceless gifts he’s sent us, and for the girl’s sake, or else see her gloomy face here forever. And yet—and yet I don’t know what.”

  But Ulf speaks up now. He and Bolli have a plan to free Harald and their friend Halldor from prison, but it can only work if there is a diversion, and a friendly ship for them to escape to. And as the Varangians talk, young Vladimir’s eyes catch fire.

  “Yes, Father, do it! And not one ship but a hundred ships, five hundred. We have them, and we have the men, eager to plunder these Greeks. We will do more than rescue Harald, we will avenge his suffering.” Vladimir is captain of the druzhina, the elite warriors of the Rus army. “My druzhiniks grow fat and lazy. And it has been a hundred years since your grandfather Igor laid siege to Constantinople—”

  “And what a disaster that was,” Yaroslav wails. “Those devilish fire-breathing machines. Who can stand against them?”

  “But his time I will be in command.”

  “And I will be with you on the deck to receive my bridegroom,” cries Yelisaveta, embracing her brother and kissing his cheeks.

  “Yes, all right, yes, my son.” Even in Yaroslav’s old breast there still beats a warrior’s heart, though faintly. He pulls down a dusty volume from his shelf, opens it to a map of Constantinople.

  And while they plan, Ingigerd, coughing and clutching her chest, staggers from the room.

  47

  Saga’s End

  [Odd resumes his narrative]

  The booming note of the cathedral’s great bronze gong, invaded my dreams with confused images of swirling robes and flickering candles. Suddenly, I sat bolt upright.

  Today wasn’t Sunday. This was not the call to prayer; it was an alarm.

  I threw off my covers and groped for my clothes in the half-light of dawn. Selene snored and rolled on her side. I took my sword from its peg on the wall and ran downstairs to the foyer. Someone was pounding on my front door. I opened it and Gorm rushed in, almost knocking me off my feet. More of my men milled outside.

  “Ships,” Gorm panted, “hundreds of them anchored offshore.”

  “Whose ships?”

  “We don’t know. Best wear your armor.”

  Upstairs, while I struggled into my mail coat, Selene and the children watched me with big eyes.

  “What is it, Odd?”

  “No idea.”

  “I’ll come with you.”

  “No, you stay here. Keep the children indoors. I’ll send word back when I know what’s happening.”

  Outside, the streets were already filling with frightened people. We pushed our way through them to the palace. There panic reigned: clerks and servants, women and eunuchs, their voices shrill with fear, rushed this way and that like a terrified flock of gorgeous birds. Gorm and I mounted to the upper gallery of the Daphne, where we found the Emperor, still in his nightshirt and slippers with a cloak thrown round his shoulders. Psellus and the other senior officials were with him, all of them gazing down upon the stupefying sight. Boukoleon Harbor and the sea beyond for as far as you could see were filled with dragon-headed long ships, their sails furled, oars at rest.

  “How in Christ’s name..?” Monomachus demanded.

  No one could answer him. How had this alien fleet rowed down the Bosporus, right under our noses in the dark of night without making a sound? Incredible. Yet here they were.

  “Thank God for the chain,” murmured Psellus, meaning the chain of massive iron links supported on buoys, that was stretched across the mouth of the Horn every night. “But for it, we’d be surrounded.”

  “Have they sent a herald?” I asked. “Do we know who they are, what they want?”

  “Obvious what they want, Commandant. We’re under attack.” This was General Theodorocanus who spoke, turning to me. A tough and capable man, he had replaced Maniakes in Italy and had only recently returned to take command of the home forces.

  Now, as we watched, one of the long ships rowed in close, within hailing distance of the shore; a warrior standing in the bow shouted to us but we were too far away to make out what he said. We ran down to the quayside. The warrior cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted again and now there was no mistaking his words: they were Slavonic.

  “Greeks! Prince Vladimir Yaroslavich greets you. You are rich, you Greeks, and you are all cowards, hiding behind your walls like women. I come to demand a ransom from you—a thousand gold solidi for every one of my ships, five hundred and twenty sail. Pay me and I will spare your fine city. If not, I will burn it to the ground. We are the Rus. No one can stand against us. You have until tomorrow morning to bring the gold.” His ship backed water and swung around.

  Vladimir! I remembered him as a handsome youth, whose mother I had bedded back in Novgorod. He knew I had dishonored him and he hated me for it. I wondered if he recognized me now: it would be the worse for us if he did. I translated his words for the Emperor.

  “A thousand gold pieces for each ship,” Monomachus bleated. “There isn’t so much coin in the city. If we melted down the statues, the throne..?”

  But General Theodoracanus gripped his shoulder and shook him roughly. “Courage, Majesty. We will pay them nothing. We will fight.” There was a moment of shocked silence. To handle an Emperor like that, even to touch him, was almost sacrilege.

  “Yes, courage,” Monomachus repeated with a quaver in his voice. “Yes, yes—fight.”

  The general released him and turned again to me. “Commandant, order one bandon of your Varangians to stay with his majesty, station the rest of your men along the sea wall. I’ll bring up reinforcements as soon as I can. I’m putting you in charge here.”

  The sea wall runs along the Propontis for a mile and a half from the mouth of the Golden Horn to the monastery of Studion. It is only a single line of fortification and not as high or strongly built as the land walls. The city’s garrison was under strength, as usual. Even if we sent every soldier to the wall, we would be stretched too thin. I sent a runner to the Varangian barracks and at once my men poured out, with shouts and war cries, racing down the streets to the harbor. I didn’t doubt their courage, but there weren’t enough of us.

  The next hours were filled with frantic activity. The city was in a turmoil. Frightened people, carrying whatever belongings they could, massed at the gates, fighting to get out, while at the same time others were trying to bring wagonloads of provisions in, in case we were besieged. Meanwhile, Patriarch Alexius and his clergy processed along the wall, chanting, swinging censers, and carrying the Hodegetria on high—the icon of the Virgin painted by Saint Luke’s own hand, the talisman that had always preserved the city in times of peril. More to the point, Theodoracanus and his officers worked desperately to put together a squadron. Many of our ships were unseaworthy, others were scattered in faraway stations. We had only a few vessels that were fit to sail and armed with fire siphons.

  Evening drew on. I paced the sea wall, checking on my men, and then helped to bring catapults and missiles from the arsenal and hoist them onto the battlements. And all that time—I confess it—I spared hardly a moment to think of my wife and children. As night fell and it seemed that the Rus would make no move, Theodorocanus told me to go home and snatch a few hours’ sleep.

  The front door was ajar. The door slave must have forgotten to close and lock it. I would punish him for his carelessness, I remember thinking. I climbed wearily up the stairs to the bedroom, calling Selene’s name.

  The blow to my head was so hard that I blacked out. When I came to my senses, I was on my back. A face hung over me—a haggard face, the blond beard long and matted with filth, t
he eyes bright with hate. Harald! And behind him Halldor, equally dirty and unkempt, and at their side Ulf and Bolli in Varangian uniforms.

  “I couldn’t leave without saying goodbye,” Harald snarled through the tangle of his beard. “It’s for me the Rus have come. While you and the Greeks were distracted, Bolli and Ulf came to the prison and told the guards that you’d ordered them to go to the harbor. It took only a minute to pry open the bars. Outside they had cloaks and swords ready for us—and here we are.”

  So this was why the Rus had held off their attack. The ransom demand was only a trick. Oh, they’d take any plunder they could scoop up, but that wasn’t why they were here: they were here for Harald.

  “You won’t get away.”

  “I think we will.” Harald grabbed me by the hair and pulled me upright. “Look around you, Tangle-Hair. See my vengeance.”

  I groaned. Two of my servants sprawled dead by the doorway. Selene lay writhing and twisting on the bed, bound and gagged. And Gunnar—my son—lay crumpled in the corner in a pool of blood.

  “Brave lad,” said Harald, glancing at him. “Came at me with his little knife. And your woman fought hard too, for such a scrawny thing, it took all three of us to hold her down. I’m taking her with me. If anyone tries to stop us, I’ll kill her. If she behaves herself, I’ll sell her in Kiev. Otherwise…”

  I spat at him. He hit me in the face, breaking my nose. The blood ran down my chest.

  “Harald, hurry up for God’s sake,” Halldor urged.

  “And now, Tangle-Hair, you are going to the deepest pit of Hel, where Black Odin reigns.” With one hand he dragged me to my feet, with the other he plunged his sword into my breast—once, twice, splitting apart the steel rings of my shirt—a searing pain, I couldn’t breathe. He drew out his blade and a spurt of frothy blood followed it. I sank to my knees. “You came to Miklagard to cut off my head, Tangle-Hair, remember? To send it back to sweet Ingigerd. Now I will cut off yours and drop it at her feet.” He drew back his arm, lifted his sword high.

  I raised my eyes to his, expecting the stroke. “What do you want from me, Harald?”

  “Your life, you black-hearted liar. You were never my friend.”

  “I could have killed you—twice.”

  “Then more fool you.”

  “Let my wife go, you bastard, she’s done nothing to you.”

  “She’s our safe passage out of here.”

  He slashed at my neck just as I lurched forward, as though someone—something—had pushed me from behind. The blade landed across my shoulders, twisting in his hand so that it struck only a glancing blow. Was it Odin who saved me? Or my father’s ghost? Or only the Norns, who did not want my death to come so soon? I cried out in pain and fell on my side. Harald reached down to drag me to my knees again.

  “Harald, for Christ’s sake leave him, he’s a dead man already,” Bolli shouted from the window. “Varangians are running this way, we’ll never make it out.”

  Harald hesitated. I saw his face working with hate. Then he sheathed his sword, grabbed my wife and threw her over his shoulder like a sack of meal. The last thing I saw was Selene’s streaming hair, her face white as bone, and her eyes big with fear. Pleading. They haunt me still.

  They ran out onto the terrace and down the steps to the water’s edge. I dragged myself after them, leaving a smear of blood on the floor tiles. Somehow, I pulled myself up on the balustrade and watched them climb into a waiting skiff and shove off. In a moment they were enveloped in darkness. But I heard the sound of their hull scraping over the chain, that enormous chain that had defied invaders for centuries. To anyone but Harald it would have been an impossible feat; I don’t how he did it.

  Then black night covered my eyes.

  The next thing I knew, Gorm was bending over me and the room was filled with my men. They had come to tell me that Harald had escaped. One of them knelt beside Gunnar. “The boy’s breathing,” he said. Another was holding my screaming daughter to me. “We found her and the nurse under the bed in the other room. She half-smothered the child to keep her quiet.”

  “Gorm, bind my wounds,” I whispered, “help me up.”

  “Lie there, you’ve lost—”

  “Help me.”

  They stripped off my armor and tunic, stuffed wine-soaked rags in my wounds, and carried me on a litter down to the harbor just as dawn was breaking.

  Theodorocanus led our small fleet out to battle the Rus, driving straight for Vladimir’s flagship. I drifted in and out of consciousness and remember only flashes of what happened next. The Greeks will tell you that the Virgin saved us, true to the promise of her holy icon. I can only say that after a brief fight, in which we did the Rus some damage with our siphons, a sudden storm blew up from the sea. Psellus said later that he had never seen a storm move so fast or blow so hard. Our ships retreated into the shelter of the harbor but the Rus were caught in the open, swamped and scattered all up and down the coast and smashed on the rocks. Our side cheered, raised their hands to heaven, and thanked God. But I could only think, She is out there somewhere.

  In the days that followed, thousands of dead Rus washed ashore, thousands more were taken alive and blinded. In fact, very few escaped back to Gardariki. From my bed, I ordered my men to inspect every corpse and captive: none was Harald, Halldor, Bolli or Ulf. None was Vladimir. None was Selene.

  The Emperor ordered a week of thanksgiving, with parades and prayers and races in the hippodrome. The populace went mad with joy.

  But there was no joy for me.

  For weeks after that I hung between life and death. The Emperor moved me and the children to a suite in the palace where his personal physician could tend my wounds and Gunnar’s. Psellus and his wife came to see me every day, as did Zoe and Theodora. Zoe, grieving like a Greek mother over a dead daughter, sobbed and tore at her hair. She really had come to love Selene like the daughter she never had. Psellus wrung his hands and apologized again and again for being the one who argued against executing Harald. I forgave him.

  It was myself I could not forgive. If only I had given a thought to my family that day. If only I had killed Harald when I had the chance. The feeling of guilt that I thought I had buried forever, from all those years ago when I blamed myself for the death of my mother and brother, returned a hundred fold to torment me now.

  When, days later, I was able to stand and walk a little, I spent hours at my son’s bedside, stroking his forehead, speaking softly to him. Harald had hacked off his right hand. He lay in his bed, not speaking, seeming not to know me. It broke my heart. He would never be a warrior now, never wear the proud livery of a Varangian.

  Day and night, as the weeks went by, I thought of Selene: Where was she? Had Harald taken her back to Kiev or had he just thrown her overboard? Was she alive? Was she a slave? Psellus put every man in the Office of Barbarians at my disposal and every ambassador, every agent was queried. None of them knew anything except that Harald had returned to Kiev along with Vladimir and the remnant of the Rus fleet. Weeks became months, months during which I hardly slept or ate, but only dragged myself restlessly about the room, and drank myself into oblivion at night to snatch a little sleep.

  At last, when I could walk and ride again, although still in pain, I made up my mind to go searching for her. Psellus pleaded with me to stay, the Emperor and Zoe too, but I would not listen. There was no peace for me there.

  They all came down to the quay one morning to see me off on a Black Sea merchantman bound for Cherson. Gorm asked to come with me. But no. Instead, I appointed him captain of my old bandon. I would have recommended him to be Commandant but he begged off, saying it was too grand a post for him and besides he was thinking he might go home to Sweden soon anyway.

  Psellus and Olympia took charge of my children—Artemisia seemed all right and played happily with Psellus’s daughter. But little Gunnar, pale and sickly from loss of blood, still would not speak. He stared silently out of vacant eyes. Finally, I closed up ou
r house and gave Selene’s clothes and jewelry to Olympia for safekeeping. I kept only a small portrait of her painted on an enamel plaque. The artist captured her beauty and her intelligence: the big, serious eyes, the half-smile on her lips. I took that with me. It is all of her that I still possess.

  I went first to Kiev. By the time I got there, Harald had married Yelisaveta and taken her back to Norway. Young Vladimir refused to see me. Ingigerd gave me a brief interview and treated me with a mixture of pity and contempt. But she told me that Harald had sold my wife to an Arab trader in the town, just as he’d threatened to do. Where she was now, Ingigerd neither knew nor cared.

  After that, I wandered from city to city, following the slave caravans—Cairo, Baghdad, Damascus, Isfahan, Bokhara, and other places I cannot even name—until my money was gone and my clothes turned to rags. I froze in winter, burned in summer, was robbed more than once and left for dead. And always and everywhere I thought I glimpsed my beloved in the crowded streets, or standing naked and chained on a slave block. I approached women, convinced that they were she, and got many a beating for it. I consulted seers and fortunetellers, too, who sent me off on fruitless chases.

  And as I traveled, despair, like a black tide, rose up and enveloped me, and I sank by degrees into dumb melancholy; the melancholy—the madness—that is in our blood, the same melancholy that had sickened my father in his last years when he would sit in his chair by the hour, staring into the fire, as silent and solitary as a stump, only his hands moving as he carved the runes. For the first time, I understood something of his pain.

  I never went back to Miklagard. What life was there for me now in that city of evil memories? Psellus would provide for my children better than I could. And I never pursued Harald to Norway. What chance did I, still crippled from the wound he dealt me, stand against him, a king, surrounded by his housecarles? And anyway I had lost the heart for fighting. Harald had bested me, he was the better man. Eventually, I heard a rumor that he had invaded England—the world was never big enough for him—and died fighting there. And what did I feel? Anything? By that time, it almost didn’t matter.