Varanger

by Cecelia Holland

  The stern tipped up and the bow went down. The ship slid forward on the shoal, and on the downstream side the bow began to float, but the stern was still stuck fast on the gravel bar. Conn gave a screech of delight at this. He was within throwing range, now, and he stopped running long enough to pick up pieces of driftwood and hurl them at Magnus’s men.

  “Run!” he yelled. “You bastards—I’m on you now—”

  The crew leapt out to heave the ship into the water, and Conn saw Magnus among them and hit him in the legs with a chunk of wood. Magnus went to his knees in the river and when he rose Conn hit him again. Raef dashed past, scrambled over a fallen log, and headed for the other ship. One of Magnus’s men—he thought it was Big Nose Olaf—hurled a rock at Conn, but it missed.

  On the second ship, the men had rushed from stern to bow. trying to walk this hull forward also, but the keel was wedged into the shoal and would not slide. The ship teetered down and back again, sticking up like a bad tooth, and when the crew all ran back to the stern again for another try, the hull broke in half.

  A wail rose from its crew. Conn bounded forward, wading through the loose jumble of driftwood, and snatching up the nearest branch for a weapon; he could see this ship was packed with cargo and knew it was the pelts. The other ship was still stuck on the downstream edge of the shoal, but the crew was poling and pushing it free, and now the men from the broken ship ran toward them, waving their arms.

  Staggering across the piled driftwood ahead of Conn, Raef reached the open shelving gravel of the shoal and swerved off toward the broken ship, but Conn jumped down from the woodpile onto the shoal and, turning, charged into the stragglers of Magnus’s crew as they tried to escape.

  He laid one flat with his club before he could even turn to fight, and when another wheeled around to face him smashed him down too. A song of triumph rose from his lungs. They would not meet him; they ran, ahead of him, five men fleeing from one. splashed out into the icy river toward Magnus’s ship, now floating away down the river. Finally they swam. Conn stopped in the shallows, panting, the club dangling from his hand.

  He saw Magnus, in the ship, shaking his fists, and his voice came too faint for words across the water. The five swimming heads bobbed up beneath his gunwale, and at first he would not let them on board. Conn began to laugh. He guessed there was no room for the men unless Magnus tossed out more of the stolen pelts. Along the waterline of the longship the five men stretched their arms up like a stand of reeds, and in the ship, now, the other men were yelling at Magnus. Suddenly a bale of pelts came flying up out of the stern, and another. Magnus turned away, slumped. One by one the men were drawn up out of the water; the longship drifted along in the current, far out of Conn’s reach, before the men went back to their oars.

  “Well done, Varanger,” said Dobrynya, behind him.

  He turned, startled. The posadnik sat his fine horse on the dry shelving bank; behind him, the shoal was thick with horsemen gathered around the broken ship. Dobrynya waved his hand, and two horsemen galloped past him down through the shallows to try and retrieve the two bales of pelts, now slowly sinking into the river. Raef was coming toward them.

  Conn said, “Not well enough done—he got away.” He admired the winking jewels on the posadnik’s golden chain. Raef came up beside him.

  “I think without you two to chase him on like that he would have gotten away with everything,” Dobrynya said. “Including my share.” He smiled; he sat high-headed on his horse like a prince, and his clothes flashed in the sun. “You are Thorfinn’s men, are you not?”

  “We are our own men,” Conn said. “We have no king. I am Conn Corbansson—this is Raef Corbansson.”

  “I am most grateful to you,” Dobrynya said. “And if you are not Thorfinn’s men, but free warriors, true Varanger, perhaps we could make some kind of arrangement between us.”

  Conn felt a start of eagerness; he glanced at Raef, and said, “What did you have in mind, Posadnik?”

  “I’m not sure yet,” Dobrynya said. “I’ll have to know you a little better before I decide. But after what you’ve just done, I think I’ll have a use for you this summer.”

  Pavo had ridden across the shoal behind them. He came within earshot as Dobrynya was saying this; he drew rein hard, so that his horse pranced, and said, “Posadnik “

  Dobrynya wheeled toward him, head high. “How much did we recover?”

  Pavo’s face was hard and expressionless as a stone. He never looked at Conn and Raef. He spoke something in their own tongue, and Dobrynya nodded and answered in a crisp voice. Pavo bowed to him, but when Dobrynya turned back to Conn the Tishats looked around at him and Raef and his face twisted into a wicked scowl. He turned and rode away, shouting orders in Sclava.

  Dobrynya said, “Will you come?” His smile widened in his sleek golden beard. “I promise you loot that Thorfinn never dreamed of.”

  “Do we have to learn Sclava?” Conn asked.

  “Pavo is my commander,” Dobrynya said. “But I’d like you to gather up as many of the other Varanger as you can.” His lips pursed, thoughtful. “Especially sailors. Seamen, not just rivermen.-

  Raef said, “Where are we going? On the river, here?”

  “We have to go to Kiev, where my nephew is the Knyaz. From Kiev . . . that will depend on how everything works out.” Dobrynya nodded at him. “I promise you gold in plenty. If you win my battles for me. Do you have weapons?” He glanced at the club, which Conn still held.

  “No.”

  “Come to my stockade. I’ll see you are well armed.”

  He went off. Conn turned to Raef. “What are we obligated to Thorfinn for?”

  “Let’s go ask him,” Raef said.

  C H A P T E R S E V E N

  Thorfinn shook their hands, and said, “You’re leaving me very short of men, but I can tell you have your own way to travel, and best be on it.” He clapped Conn on the shoulder, as he often did, and said, “Keep your head about you, boy. Come back this way, when you’re done conquering Constantinople.” He shook Raef’s hand and looked him in the face and nodded. He said, “You too,” and then went off.

  “He doesn’t care,” Conn said. “He’s glad to be rid of me, I think.” There was a bitter edge to his voice. He put his sea chest up on the bench and folded his cloak into it and his extra shirts, and the litter of useless junk he had won at dice or wrestling. “I was about to beat him at chess.”

  Raef gave a snort of laughter; he thought the slave girl Alla had something more to do with it than chess games. He said, “Well, now, though, we have to do something. Dobrynya said we should look for some others, make a war band. Leif will go.”

  “Leif is a lazy slug,” Conn said. “There isn’t one of those slackjaws and stoneheads at the wotka house that I would want to come with us.”

  “There isn’t too much else in Holmgard,” Raef said. He gave Conn a shove. “Let go see what we can get out of Dobrynya, first.”

  Dobrynya gave Conn a long sword, and Raef a two-bladed axe, and a bit of money also. They went down to the wotka house to drink it up and look over the men there for prospects for their company.

  Half the other Varanger in Holmgard were there, sitting around the crowded room; one was Leif, the big-bellied Icelander Conn had already spurned, at least to himself and Raef. Conn and Raef got a jug and sat down at their usual place by the wall, at the end of the long board table, and Leif came over, bringing with him Bjorn the Christian, who of them all Conn thought might actually be worth taking, in spite of his misplaced piety.

  Bjorn said, “That was a good lick you handed Magnus, you two. I for one was glad to see it.” He set a wooden cup on the board, and Conn immediately filled it from the jug.

  “Magnus had it coming,” Conn said. “Now, anyway, Raef and I are getting up a war band.”

  Leif settled himself on the bench. He picked at his face with a dirty fingernail. He did not seem as excited by this idea as Conn had expected. “A war band. Aren’t y
ou two a little young to give orders?”

  “Dobrynya doesn’t think so,” Conn said.

  “Oh, that’s it,” Leif said, and gave Bjorn a nod. “This is one of Dobrynya’s plots.”

  Conn leaned back, annoyed at this. “Yes, in fact. What’s wrong with that?” The cup came by him, and he emptied it, and filled it up again and handed it on to Leif. “You’ve been around here awhile, haven’t you. Have you fought for him?”

  “The last time I took up the sword for Dobrynya and Volodymyr we spent the summer walking up and down in the heat and burning villages. There wasn’t any loot to mention and it was damned hard work.”

  Conn said, “Hunh.” Raef leaned his arms on the board, listening with a frown.

  Bjorn said, “We did get a lot of slaves and cattle.”

  “And had to drive them all here to Kiev,” Leif said. “For which he gave us about three hrvnya each.”

  Raef said, suddenly, “Where was that?”

  “In the north. Against the Yotving. Gloomy people, the Yotving, and poor, and a long way between villages.”

  “What if we were heading south?” Raef glanced at Conn. “Thorfinn said that’s where the gold is. And easy, too, he said.”

  Leif’s head rose. Bjorn said, “That would be more interesting. But he’s a hard man for gold, Dobrynya. That’s why he keeps it all on him.”

  Conn said, “We’ll go find out where exactly he wants to fight. Who else could go, besides you?”

  “Well,” Leif said. “Why should I go at all—I had it in mind to go west, to the English Sea, when Marten leaves. He pays well, Marten. Safe work, and Jorvik at the end of it.”

  “If this is a raid against the Greeks,” Bjorn said, “that’s different. The Greeks are rich, and worth raiding. There’s Ulf and Skinny Harald, from Halyard’s old crew. They’ve been here awhile, they’ll be up to go viking. A couple of others.”

  “Skinny Harald was one of Magnus’s men.”

  “No. He came in with Halyard, who died a couple winters ago, he had friends with Magnus’s crew, but he’s got nothing on with you. He’ll be good, if he agrees.”

  “The trouble is,” Leif said, “there are a lot of other choices out there. Going south, that’s a risky trip, even if it is for the fat.”

  “We’ll see what the prospects are,” Conn said, getting up. “You get those men together so we can talk them into this. Come on, Raef.”

  They got up and went out of the wotka house. Conn said, “What a bunch of slackpots.”

  Raef said, “Maybe they know Dobrynya better than we do.”

  In the yard, outside the wotka house, the scrawny boy Vagn was standing under a tree, and as they went away from the door he fell in beside them.

  “I heard—you want men?”

  Conn stood and looked him up and down, a short, dark boy barely getting his first signs of beard. Not even dansker, somebody had said: an escaped slave. Conn said, “Can you row? Have you ever pulled an oar on a dragon?”

  “No.” Vagn gave a slight shake of his head. “I came here on a ship but I didn’t row.”

  “Can you use a sword?”

  The boy’s face worked, and he looked elsewhere. His shoulders slumped. After a moment, he said, “No.”

  Raef said, “He spent the winter on his own, living how he could, without any help.” He jerked his head toward the wotka house. “None of them can say that.”

  Conn gave him a piercing look, and turned back to Vagn. “Yes, then. Come. But you have to break your back for me.”

  “I will!” Vagn leapt slightly forward, his face suddenly bright, his hands rising, his fingers spread as if he wanted to grab hold of Conn. “I will,” he said, backing off. He made a gesture with one hand, like saluting. Conn and Raef went past him, toward Dobrynya’s hall.

  “We aren’t so young,” Raef said.

  Conn laughed. “Young enough not to be a fat-bellied slackpot who’d rather pull an oar than keep his sword sharp.”

  “Still,” Raef said. “Leif would be a good one to have along, if he’s fought here before.”

  His cousin banged him with an elbow. “If we accept him. I think we set the mark up there pretty high already with Vagn.”

  Raef gave him a hard sideways look. They were coming to the double gateway into Dobrynya’s stockade. Pavo himself sat there, his back to the corner and one booted foot up against the wall, and watched them down his nose as they went by, and then got up and followed them. Inside the stockade a line of well-dressed Selma men stood by the wall of the great hall, waiting to get in, but Conn went straight to the door and barged in, with Raef behind him, and Pavo behind that.

  The posadnik was sitting in his big chair at the end by the hearth, talking to the Southerner Rashid. He saw them coming and put out his hand to Rashid and scowled at them, but Conn walked straight up to him and said, “We have to talk to you about this. Now.”

  Dobrynya sat back. His hair was shining sleek and his beard braided with little blue beads. He wore the glittering golden collar, all sparkling with jewels. The crystals bothered Raef and he moved a little to one side, trying to get out of their influence. He noticed that Rashid had left his star measurer on the far end of the table, and he went that way, to look at it: a battered circle of brass, the edge notched and marked with signs. A narrow arm, fastened at the center, could swivel all the way around the disk.

  He straightened, looking over at Conn and Dobrynya, who were staring at each other as if across a chessboard. Raef drifted back toward his cousin. Music was coming from the side of the room, behind a screen, and abruptly Dobrynya clapped his hands, and the music stopped, and Rashid stood up.

  He spoke to Dobrynya in the Sclava tongue, which he seemed to speak as well as he spoke dansker, and bowed, and went off. The musicians filed out from behind the screen and left also. Dobrynya said, “Well, now, tell me what you want. I am a busy man, as you see.”

  Conn glanced over his shoulder. Raef followed his gaze, and saw Pavo standing by the door. Facing the golden Sclava lord again, Conn said, “Nobody will agree to go with you, because they think there will be nothing worth plundering. You have to tell us where you want to fight, so we can offer something more tempting.”

  Dobrynya grunted at him. “My experience is that you people have a fatal fondness for gold.” His eyes traveled over them both, speculative. “Sit down. As long as you’re here, I want to know more about you—start with your names, which I think are not dansker.”

  Conn glanced at Raef, who knew by the look which story he would tell, and they took places on the bench opposite Dobrynya. Conn said, “Our father was Irish, our mother English, from Jorvik. So the names. We fell in with Sweyn Tjugas while he was in exile in Jorvik, and he would not be King of Denmark without our help.”

  “I have heard of Sweyn Tjugas,” Dobrynya said. He made a sign with one hand, and a servant came from a dark corner and brought them carved wooden cups. “Along with your fondness for gold you people sometimes have a fondness for exaggerating your connections. If you were his friends, how did you come to pull oars for the likes of Thorfinn?”

  “Sweyn and I had a disagreement. He tricked us into going with the Jomsvikings. We wound up in the water at Hjorunga Bay—”

  “Aha,” Dobrynya said, his eyebrows rising.

  “And when Hakon let us all go, rather than stay with him, or go back to Sweyn, we came here.”

  “Hjorunga Bay. That was a very great battle. Hundreds of ships. Why didn’t you tell me this before?”

  Conn grunted at him. “Nobody is glad to be in a losing battle, Posadnik.”

  “Very well. Have you fought on land, as well? Can you ride horses?”

  “No,” Raef said, and Conn said, eagerly, “I have, a little. Not as well as Pavo.”

  From the doorway came a muffled, mocking laugh.

  Dobrynya said, “When we go south to Kiev I mean to take several boats down the river, with some goods for my nephew and his court and markets. If you cannot fin
d me crews for these boats I shall find Sclava. We are not babies on the water. After that—” He shrugged. “Volodymyr fights in the summer, and I fight at his side. With whatever men have the hearts and the arms and the balls to follow us.”

  “You mean to sail those log things,” Raef said, with distaste.

  “You’d rather fork a horse?” Conn said. He looked past Raef, down the hall, and then swung back to Dobrynya. “We will find you as many as we can. But I need gold. I need to prove to them there’s something for them in the work.”

  “Gold,” Dobrynya said, as if he spoke of some unpleasant smell. “I warn you of this once. You people will die someday of gold hunger.”

  “You said that we saved your share of the pelts. So far all you’ve given us for that is a sword and an axe and some pennies.”

  Dobrynya’s face settled a little. His bright blue eyes were fixed on Conn. His hand rose to cover his mouth. Raef thought that he had a mind full of crisscrosses, ups and downs, boxes inside boxes. Nonetheless, he realized, Conn had learned something, playing chess. At last Dobrynya lifted both hands and took off the jeweled collar around his neck and tossed it down on the table between him and Conn.

  Neither Conn nor Raef moved. The golden links with their light-catching crystals lay on the table. After a moment Dobrynya took some rings also from his fingers and cast them down.

  “No more,” he said.

  Conn shrugged. “That’s not much but it will have to do.” Getting up onto his feet, he took the collar as if it were a handful of rocks and slid it into his purse. Raef took the rings. They went down the length of the hall, past Pavo, who was standing with his arms folded over his chest, and out the door of the hall.

  Rashid was standing there, under the eave in the shade. Raef caught the sharp curiosity in his look. He thought, Yes, you would like much to know what we just said. He and Conn went on out toward the gatehouse.

  “What do you think?” Conn asked.