Varanger

by Cecelia Holland

  Raef shrugged. He held out the hand with the three gold rings on it, not enough to tempt a crowd. “He gave us as little as possible. You notice he never answered you about where we’re going. He steered all the talk around to what he wanted to say, he’s good at that. But south—” They went through the cool shadow of the gateway. “They’ve taken everything north and east. I think south is the only way they still have to go.” He slid the rings on and off his fingers, thinking. “The Sclava are river boatmen. Whatever he’s planning, he needs seamen. The Greeks are across the sea.”

  Conn said, “That’s not much to go on. We have to get Leif and Bjorn and all those others pledged to this.” He stopped, and took the jeweled collar from his purse. He spread it on his hands a moment, looking at it; Raef stood away from the annoying prickle on his nerves. The collar meant nothing to Conn, except that it was gold. Conn lifted it in both hands and put it around his neck, fixed the clasp, and spread out the crystals on his chest.

  “Come on,” he said, and started toward the wotka house.

  Raef was half-expecting to find nobody waiting for them at the wotka house, but to his relief when they came to the door he could see Leif and Bjorn inside, and in a far corner several other Varanger. At least they were interested, which was half the game. Vagn was standing tipping up against the wall beside the door, his head down. When Conn and Raef came in, the waiting men gave a. roar of laughter.

  “So that’s the kind of warrior you’re taking,” Leif shouted. and banged the table with his fist. “You two aren’t making a really good start to this, are you?”

  The room was dim, with a low ceiling, the only light coming from a lamp hanging from the center post. Conn went over there and stood under the lamp, throwing his chest out, and turned slowly to show them all the golden collar.

  Leif’s voice stuck in his chest; the rest of the mirth died down. The light glinted and sparkled on the collar, and the shards of color spitting from the crystals stabbed Raef through the eyes and he looked away. He stopped just inside the door, beside Vagn, leaving this to Conn.

  “You see,” Conn said, sweeping his gaze over them all. “If you go about it right, you get what you want.”

  Leif gave a false harumph of a laugh. “Did you knock him down and steal it? Is Pavo on your trail right now?”

  Conn said, “Come with me and Raef, and you’ll get armfuls of baubles like this. All the Greek gold you can carry.”

  All around the room, the Varanger were canted forward, their eyes on the glittering collar; Raef remembered what Dobrynya had said. Bjorn cleared his throat. “Well, it’s a lot warmer down there.”

  Leif said, “I’m still waiting for Pavo to show up.” But he stood, massive in the dim light, and held out his hand. “I’m your man. You’re a fighter, you’ve got a viking’s heart, and I’d be interested to see what kind of fight you make out of this. I’ve rowed up and down this river and the big one south of here, paddle boats and oars both, and I’ve tasted salt water.”

  Bjorn said, “Me, too. I’ve always wanted to see one of those Greek cities.”

  All around the room the men were stirring, getting to their feet, and pushing forward. Their voices rose in an eager mutter. One by one they shook Conn’s hand, and then came over and shook Raef’s, and they said names, which Raef mostly forgot, and nodded and smiled. “When do we sail?”

  “We’ll go up and tell Dobrynya, and likely look at the stars,” Conn said. “We’ll know the best day to leave.” He was grinning all over his face, back again in a war band, like the Jomsvikings, like Sweyn’s, one of the pack.

  Then he said, “Raef, bring me your axe.”

  Raef went over beside him, in front of the nearest of the drinking tables. Conn swept the dice and empty cups aside and lifting both hands to his neck took off the collar and laid it down on the battered wood. The men surrounded him, silent, intent. The lamp just overhead on the rafter turned the gold and the crystals into a glowing sun, as if they cast their own light. Bjorn whispered, “What’s this?” Conn took the axe and cut the collar into bits, carefully, to keep from hitting the crystals. When the beautiful thing lay in pieces on the table he handed one piece to Leif, and then another to Bjorn, and another to Harald, and so on, until every man who had joined them had a piece of gold in his hand. Finally he went over by the door and gave one to Vagn.

  “That’s how it will be,” Conn said, turning around toward the rest of them. “What I have or Raef has you will have. We’re all together, until the fighting’s over, and we’ve won.”

  The roar that went up shook the room.

  Even Helgi decided to go with them. Einar knew better than to ask Conn. The wind was rising, keen out of the northwest. Raef’s hands and feet itched, as if now that they were finally leaving he could not bear to be here a moment longer.

  They stood on the bank of the river and Dobrynya spoke in a long, singsong way, and then cast something out onto the water, money, Raef thought, or maybe bread. Then Conn went to the bow of the monoch and pushed it off, and Raef followed with the stern, and the voyage was begun.

  C H A P T E R E I G H T

  Raef dug the paddle into the water, driving the boat on. He was setting their course close along the western bank, where there was no current pushing against him; the sun-gilded stretch of water sprawled out ahead of him in a twisting braid, winding through sandbars and clumps of brushy driftwood. The flood was just past and the water was still sand-colored, catching the sunrays in shafts like curtains hanging into the depths.

  Here the trees grew down close on the eastern bank but on his right the oaks drew back away from the water, leaving an open glade, green with new grass. Up over the high edge of the bank he could see just the heads and horns of a herd of deer scattered along it. The river was alive with birds; as the boat wallowed by a stand of reeds, a white crane spooked up into the air, spreading its feathers like veils on the soft sweet air.

  Raef hated the clumsy monoch, made from a single tree trunk, with its stubby bow and dead feel and smell of burned wood. It gripped the water like a fist, so that he needed all his strength and constant vigilance to hold it straight, and keep sorted out in his mind the complicated currents and eddies of the river ahead of him. He worked hard to set a course that avoided the downstream push of the water but still the boat sometimes scarcely seemed to move.

  He was sitting in the stern. Conn, in the bow, and two other paddlers in between were working as hard as he was. He called to them, now and then, to go to one side or the other, to dig harder or slack off. The hull was packed with bales of fur and other trade goods, and exactly in the middle of it sat Rashid, with his birch bark and his charcoal, doing nothing useful. Raef dragged his paddle a moment, to ease the boat around past a fallen tree whose upper branches stuck up out of the water like a wooden flower.

  Higher than his head, twisted with strands of grass, the spiky branches slipped by. He looked back over his shoulder to make sure the other four monochs were coming along after him, following faithfully in his wake.

  They had left Holmgard and the broad lake south of it well behind them. The river looped wide and slow through flat lowlands where the elms grew down almost into the water. As they pulled steadily higher up the river the water was clearing out. In the slack by the bank the deep pools were turning still and green and clear. The long narrow shapes of fish hung in the deeps, and turtles sunned themselves on fallen logs. Now and again a fish leapt up with a splash into the sunlight. The river widened and spread out and the bottom shelved up and he maneuvered the boat through riffling water, past a collapse in the bank where thousands of hoofs had trodden out a muddy ramp. Beyond, the river narrowed, and the current came straight at him and he fought through it to quieter water out in the middle of the stream.

  There was no sign of Dobrynya and the horsemen but he guessed they were well behind them. They were supposed to stop at a certain place, up ahead, to make camp for the night, and Dobrynya would catch up with them then. Be
cause in the end they had gathered only eight more Varanger they had divided them up among the five monochs but the Sclava who took the middle paddles were good enough rivermen. He cut the boat across the current, pushing it back straight at each stroke, and found better water on the far side.

  Wherever the trees grew back from the bank, and the sunlight showered over everything, the flowers grew high as a man, great hairy stalks that exploded at the top into masses of foamy white. In the midafternoon they came into a long reach between trees and meadowland where the river was running clear all the way to the bottom, green to blue. Once, looking down past his paddle, he saw a sturgeon in the depths that was almost as long as the boat.

  In spite of the hard work and the bad-handling boat he was enjoying this, the traveling, the moving along, the going somewhere else at last. The wind pushed at his back, as if it urged him on, and he bent into the paddling, sensing calmer water ahead of him near the west bank.

  They came long before sundown to the place where they were to camp—Leif knew it, and anyway, there was one of the Sclava god images on the bank there, a post with four faces carved into it.

  They hauled the monochs in against the shore and climbed up a short steep bank. Under some scattered trees on the edge of the grassland, old firepits dotted the ground. The ground was crunchy with broken nutshells, and squirrels chattered angrily at them from the high branches. Conn called out orders and the men went off to find wood and stretch out their legs.

  Raef gave Rashid a hand out of the boat; the man from Baghdad stepped gingerly down onto the damp sand of the shore, holding the hem of his long gown like a woman. When he straightened up, he groaned and arched his back. Behind him, he left a space among the baggage, and when Raef reached in to lift Rashid’s pack out for him, there in among the piles of furs, he saw a leg.

  He reached down and grabbed the ankle and pulled, and dragged Janka, Thorfinn’s hun slave, out from under the cargo.

  “I no go back,” Janka was saying, even before Raef had slung him up onto the bank. “I no go back. No back me.”

  Rashid was working hard at looking amazed. Conn walked down the bank toward them, his hands on his hips, grinning. He said, “No way back you, Janka, not now. I’m glad you’re here, for one.” He stuck his hand out, and the hun gripped it in a single big shake, smiling broadly.

  Raef got Rashid’s pack up onto the bank. “From now on he can row like the rest of us.”

  Helgi had come up among them from one of the other boats. He nodded his head toward the north. “Here comes Dobrynya.”

  The horses were galloping down along the bank toward them, the riders whooping and cavorting. Raef went up to the camp, where already somebody had laid out a fire, and went off a little way to piss and see better where they were. The trees were far apart, here; he thought there had been a wildfire once, that burned everything but the great old oaks.

  An indignant yell turned him around. Pavo had ridden into their camp, and as Raef watched he swung down from his saddle and kicked the fire apart.

  “Not there! There—” He pointed off, still bellowing. “Build where I tell you! There!”

  Conn and the others were staring at him, and Conn started forward, his mouth open to argue, but Pavo leapt onto his horse and wheeled and galloped back toward Dobrynya. Conn let out a nasty oath, and kicked violently at the ground.

  “Build it here!” He tramped around, using his feet to knock the scattered wood back toward the fire site. He flung a hard look over his shoulder at Pavo, who had gone in among the other horsemen. They were building their own camp. None of the Varangers went over to join them. Janka knelt down and relaid the fire, his head swiveling to cast his gaze first toward Conn, and then toward Pavo in among the Sclava, and back to Conn. Pavo did not come back to tear it up again. Conn tramped around swearing and swinging his arms.

  Moments later a Sclava rider came over, with the forequarters of a deer slung across his saddle, and dropped it on the ground by their fire. “From Dobrynya,” he said, in raw dansker.

  “Thank him,” Conn said. “And tell him that tomorrow we’ll have the meat roasted and ready for him when he gets here.” He fired another fierce angry look at the Sclava camp.

  The Sclava smirked at him, wheeled his horse, and rode back. When he reached his own people, a burst of broad laughter went up.

  Raef said, “Are we fighting them, or some real enemy?” He stretched his arms; his shoulders ached.

  Conn slapped him on the chest. “We’ll beat them tomorrow. too. You keep doing what you do.”

  Helgi and Leif were butchering the, deer meat into chunks small enough to cook. The Icelander looked up and nodded. “You got us down here right quick, for sure, Raef. Likely you surprised Pavo, usually they have to wait for the boats.”

  Conn had gone down to ‘the boat again, and came back with a jug. He said, “Not this time.” He sat down by the fire, and unstoppered the jug, and everybody settled down to drink and eat. Janka, burning to be useful, had gathered up mushrooms, and even some birds’ eggs, to make the meal more interesting. The Sclava were gathered around their own fire now, and dark was coming, and there was no more trouble that night.

  The next day Conn roused them out of their blankets before the sun was even up, and piling into the boats they clawed their way upriver again. The horsemen broke out of their camp only a little after, and ranged along the shore almost even with them. Although the current was clear the river still wore the fresh marks of the spring floods, its banks collapsed, and its course treacherous with sandbars and riffles and heaps of deadwood, the course shifting back and forth constantly. In the middle of the morning the main stream began a long bend around to the west, and with whoops and screeches of triumph the horsemen set off to gallop straight across the bight of the curve, so the boats fell behind. Conn cursed and raged and belabored them all to paddle faster, but soon the horsemen were out of sight.

  “You can’t find us a shorter way?” he said to Raef. “Look at all these channels.”

  Raef was following the deep water through a stretch of little eddies, where on either side new streams were running into theirs, and the sandbars were like teeth waiting. “No.”

  “What about there? Or there?”

  “Those don’t go anywhere. Sit down.”

  Raging, Conn sat. The river bent back again, and they struggled through a long stretch of shallows and rushing current; around noon, with the sun beating down on them from a cloudless sky, they had to get out of the boats and carry them one by one across a broad bar. While they were doing this, Janka went upstream a little, and fished, and brought back a string of narrow deep-bodied fish Raef had never seen before. They still had meat from the previous night, and devoured that; Conn kept the fish aside, to feed Dobrynya, as he had promised.

  Rashid waded out to the boat, holding his gown up with one hand, and his shoes in the other, and climbed back into his space with a grimace, and Raef said, “Maybe you should ride with Dobrynya tomorrow.”

  Rashid made a sour face. “Better the boat.” He took his stack of birch-bark sheets on his lap, and got out a piece of charcoal. Everything was wet. He daubed with disgust at a smudge on his writing. He looked back over the bar, where Conn was furiously hauling the last boat across the gravel, and shouting and cursing the men helping him. “Your brother is a madman. What does it matter?”

  Raef made no answer. His shirt was sodden with sweat and he peeled it off and went to hang it over the stern of the monoch. With Conn roaring at him he began to paddle again.

  They drove on upstream; although the land seemed flat enough Raef could feel it rising under them, spilling the water down faster, and the river was slowly narrowing, so there was nowhere to go but into the current. The work was slow and hard, and when in the late afternoon Leif called out, hoarsely, “There it is!” and they pulled into the shore, they found Dobrynya, Pavo, and the other Sclava already in the camp waiting.

  The bank was high. The Varanger got out
of the boats and started up the short steep climb; the shouting, triumphant Sclava lined up along the top of the bank to keep them down on the river bar. Pavo rode up and down behind his men bellowing orders.

  “Raven,” he shouted. “You lose! You lase! Oolyoch! You lose!”

  Conn was red as raw meat. He wheeled toward his crews and shouted, “Everybody get a weapon!” But then Dobrynya was riding up, and calling the Sclava off.

  “I want my dinner,” the Sclava lord said, mildly, looking down the bank at Conn. “Did you bring it?”

  Conn was biting his lip with rage. He could do nothing but nod, and scale the bank, and then make his camp where Pavo told him.

  They built a fire, and cooked the fish and took it to the posadnik. Dobrynya sat on a carved chest in the middle of his camp, his feet on a splendid little rug. He accepted the fish with a nod, and gave it to his servant to put on a plate, but when Conn would have turned and stamped off, he said, “No, sit here with me, both of you. Is Rashid with you?”

  Raef said, “He’s off drawing pictures of birds.” He sank down on his heels in front of the posadnik, and put out his hand and touched the softness of the little rug. The pattern in it seemed to him like the patterns of the river, twining and coiling. Conn was still standing, still angry.

  Dobrynya said, “Sit down, Raven. You’ll learn nothing in a rage.”

  Raef glanced up over his shoulder, and saw Conn’s face alter into the set, hard expression he wore when he was losing to Thorfinn at chess. The servant came back with the fish on a golden plate and a fat little pottery jug. Pavo had drifted over to sneer at them, and Dobrynya gave him a single hard look that sent him off again. For a moment, he picked out bites of the fish, devoting all his attention to that, while Conn sat down, and Raef studied the rug.

  Finally, the posadnik waved the dish off, drank of the jug, and handed it to Conn. He said, “You think you lost today. Nonetheless I’m pleased with you. Maybe we got here first but there have been some trips where the boats took days to travel this far. My compliments.”