Varanger

by Cecelia Holland

  She sat there on his sea chest, watching him, her face slimed with tears. Her arms were around Vagn, who leaned against her, the life going out of his eyes. The boy’s hands were blackened and burned and raw, and a great wound had laid open the side of his head. A rock had hit him. Before Raef reached him, he was dead.

  Raef sank down beside her. He was thirsty and there was no more water. She turned to him, tears streaming down her face, set Vagn gently down, and bent over his leg.

  The skin of his thigh was the color of a bad sunburn and all the hair on his leg was burnt off. Little blisters had risen all along his shin where the fire had first hit him. When she tried to touch him he pulled her hand away. Volodymyr’s ship, in the center of the bay, turned and came back toward them. On Dobrynya’s ship, Pavo sat down heavily on the floor and put his head in his hands.

  Raef got onto his feet, his leg throbbing, and his knees going back and forth. Back behind them, all through the cove the black smoke rolled. If they had still been there they would have been catching fire. He went to Conn, standing amidships by the mast gallows. He wiped his face as he went, feeling nicks and sharp things all over himself, his hands, his chest, his cheeks, chips of glass in his beard. He was naked except for one leg and his drawers, and bleeding all over. Conn faced him, put both hands on his shoulders.

  “That was not what I expected. Nothing. When I saw you pulling away from us I thought you’d gone crazy. You are crazy. You saved everybody.”

  Raef hugged him. “Not me. Oleg. You. Opening the chain.” He glanced down the ship, where the men sat wearily on their sea chests, their shoulders slumped. Helgi lay stretched out on the floor. He said, “Vagn is dead.”

  “Yes, and Helgi, and some others. Not many. We came through.” Conn draped an arm over his shoulder. “Are you hurt?”

  “Not bad,” Raef said. “Watch out.” He pulled a shard of glass out of his hair.

  “Was that Roman fire?”

  “Not the real stuff, I think. Something else, something not as good, but good enough. But they ran out of it.” Raef shook his head. “Even so I don’t want to try that again right away. We have to get water. Food. Here comes Volodymyr.”

  The prince had drawn his ship up beside theirs, and stepped across the gunwales as if he stood on dry land. There was a bruise on his cheekbone and his clothes were filthy with blood and black smoky soot. He came toward them, and shook their hands, looking deeply into their eyes.

  Dobrynya sat in the stern of the next ship, watching them. “We need to get onto the land,” he said, and beyond him, Pavo growled like a sick dog. “If we can land farther west along the cape, out toward the sea, we can attack them that way.”

  Volodymyr turned to glare back at the city. “If I have to stay here three years I will take this place. I swear this on a handful of earth, and I shall take the earth from Chersonese.”

  Dobrynya said, “Three years is too long. Once the Emperor hears, he’ll send a navy to drive us off. We have to do this quickly.” His blue eyes turned toward Raef and Conn. He looked older, somehow, tired, his solid assurance cracked. He said, “We can’t let them get word to Constantinople.”

  Raef said nothing. Conn said, “Then somebody has to watch this way out. If they can’t send a ship, it will take them months to get help.”

  Volodymyr said, “You two, and this ship, you are the gate here. Don’t let another ship through, in or out. Uncle, where can we put our men onto the land?”

  Dobrynya nodded toward the cape. “That looks flat enough. out there. And there’s some little beach.”

  Raef gave a grunt of a laugh. The whole sea ran against the westernmost coast of the cape and it was a gnashing of riptides and rocks. He knew the inexperienced Sclava would have trouble managing the ships there. The Greeks would be waiting for them. His leg hurt and he wished he had some wotka. He nudged Conn, who said, “We have our orders, then. You don’t need our help from here.” Raef went back to sit on his sea chest and watch the other men get Vagn and Helgi ready to throw overboard into the sea.

  They were wrapping the bodies in cloaks from their sea chests. There were a lot of rocks in the ship and they bundled them into the dead men’s cloaks to weight them. Conn squatted down beside Helgi, and helped Bjorn tie the shroud. Coming next to Vagn, who was already wrapped up, he pulled the cloth back from the mess of the boy’s face, and bent suddenly and kissed his forehead, and then folded the cloth back. Beside Raef, Merike gave a sob, and Raef reached out to her, and she let him comfort her, leaning her tear-scummed cheek on his arm; he guessed the battle had shaken her utterly. She would think differently of Raef now. Conn rose.

  “Let’s go get some water.”

  “Oars out,” Raef said. He reached for the tiller bar.

  C H A P T E R E I G H T E E N

  Volodymyr and Dobrynya were already rowing off along the western finger of the cape, and Conn followed them out to deeper water. On the shore they could hear faint cheering from the Greeks, who likely hoped anyway their enemy was giving up. But when they had cast the dead men overboard, Conn turned the ship around, and they rowed back up the fjord toward Chersonese.

  Smoke was still rolling up from the water of the cove; the dragonship had sunk entirely. Along the point where the capstan was, three men were hauling at the wheel, trying to pull the chain above the water again. When Conn sent his ship swooping down toward them they all darted back into the high brush like birds from a hawk. Conn did not turn in to the cove; he rowed across the mouth once, looking into the harbor, and then went on a little way up the main fjord, around the stony knob at the end of the capstan point, which sheltered a little white beach.

  Here Raef climbed over the side and waded in to the shore. Merike scrambled after him, her face frantic, and he had to take Janka, because they only had two arrows left. He took Leif, also, to help carry whatever they found. The Greeks, if they were still on the point, were hiding.

  Merike ran up onto the land and flung herself down on it full length and laughed and rolled on the sand. She leapt to her feet and threw her arms up and sang. Raef looked up and down the tiny wedge of white beach, and saw no sign of water; he started inland and the others followed. As if the touch of the earth gave her new life Merike was joyous. Every few steps she came over and bumped into Raef, pushing her breasts at him, wiggling her hips.

  He understood how she felt; the change from being on the ship was wonderful, as if he had been set free from some tiny cage; he felt loose and lively all over, in spite of his hurts, and very hungry. The country was pretty, too, the rising slope, with its outcrops of white rock, studded with thickets of deep brush, spikes of yellow flowers, white roses and little red blooms like cups. The air smelled delicious.

  He fended Merike off with one hand, his body aching, and his leg sore and stiff, and went toward the trees, where there might be water. In the first crumpled hillside they found a patch of brackish swamp, and followed the trickle of a stream up to a clear freshwater spring. They all drank for long moments. When they had filled the skins in the spring, he sent Janka and Leif to carry them back to the ship, pulled Merike in behind some thorny, red-flowered bushes, and laid her down on her back.

  She was eager, sweet, tender with his cuts and his bad leg, babbling to him in her own language. He understood none of the words but the way she spoke them made him feel good. Her caresses and the thunderous release of his orgasm made him feel even better. He lay down on his back in the sun, his eyes shut, thinking about nothing.

  She went off; in a little while she was back, excited again, her hands full of berries and leaves. He started to sit up and she pushed him back down. She gave him the berries, and while he ate them, she began to peel the leaves in half. The sticky stuff inside she daubed on his leg, and then on the cuts all over his body. Twice she stopped to worry bits of glass out of his skin.

  He did sit up, hurting less, his leg no longer throbbing. He gave her a kiss in gratitude. The berries had hardly taken the edge off his h
unger. The old fruits of the thorny brush lay all around, hard and yellow. When he tried to bite through the waxy skin the hard tart flesh inside puckered his mouth like a cramp. He heard Janka whistle, and stood up. The sun was nearly to the horizon, and he was too tired to look for food now and he went down with Merike to the shore, to go back on the ship.

  In the morning two Greek ships ran for the open sea. Conn had warning, because they had to lower the chain, and he was waiting in the fjord just off the north point. The dragonship ran down the smaller Greek double-ender before she even reached the open sea. Conn was in a hurry, with the bigger, faster ship slipping by, and as soon as he caught the double-ender he stove a hole in her and left her sinking and her crew swimming for shore.

  The second ship, bigger, with a high square stern, was stroking fast for the open sea. She had at least a dozen oars to a side and her rowers were pulling hard. Conn thought they would turn with the wind, once they weathered the cape, and set sail, but the ship kept on rowing to the west. Conn got his oars working in a good rhythm, letting four men rest every hundred strokes. By midafternoon they were close enough to the Greek ship that he could see the men by the stemboard up there looking back over their shoulders.

  The freeboard of the merchantman towered over the dragonship; as the Varanger were swarming up over one side, the Greek sailors were diving off the other. Conn grappled on, and set his crew to looting the Greek ship, carrying off everything they could pack onto the dragon, casks of wine and jugs of honey and stacks of flat bread for the sailors on their journey. The rest of the cargo, much of the food, but also stacks of furs and wax and pottery, they left on board. When this was done, as his own men gorged on the food, Conn let the Greeks back onto their ship and broke their oars, so that they could only sail with the wind back to Chersonese.

  The Varanger dragon harried the big ship along like a shepherd with one sheep. Conn could tell the Greeks thought they were going to get safely home; he kept the dragon just off their flank to discourage them from any other course. The Greek sailors were good enough at managing their sail to get the merchantman up to the mouth of the bay, and there Conn stormed their ship again.

  This time the Greeks leapt off and swam toward the shore, leaving the big ship in the hands of the Varanger. Conn and half a dozen oarsmen from the dragon took over the Greek, bringing on oars from the dragon, which did not fit. Nonetheless they were able to coax and angle the strange ship back out westward again, toward the western edge of the cape, where Volodymyr and Dobrynya and Pavo had put ashore. Raef with the dragon sailed lightly along beside the Greek.

  When they came up close to the western, windward shore Raef made a growl in his throat. There on the rocky coast the wreckage of the two dragons lay in the surf, the two hulls already shattered into a hundred pieces; one of the great dragonheads lay up against a rock at the foot of the seacliff. When the sea rose there to dash itself against the cliff the curled surface carried dozens of bits of the ships.

  On top of that cliff, several men were waving their arms and jumping, and more were running up from the inland side to join them; one took off his shirt and began to shake it in the air. Whenever a wave carried the dragon high enough, Raef could see onto the flat land behind them. The great mass of Volodymyr’s army was lined up behind shields before the clumped boxy houses of the city. They had gotten up onto the city plain, and probably attacked that first line of houses, but now the Greeks were fighting back and had them pinned where they were, with the seacoast behind them.

  Conn and his little crew were struggling to get the big Greek merchantman far enough along the coast that the waves would carry it in onto the foot of the cliff below Volodymyr’s men. The sea ran back and forth here, circling and plunging along the cliff face, and Raef could feel the water trying to drive him in onto those rocks. He had been managing the dragon with the sail and the wind, but he had the other oarsmen ready, and now he had them row them farther out to sea. Volodymyr’s men were already climbing down the seacliff to meet Conn on the Greek ship.

  Conn wasn’t taking the ship any farther himself. At a yell from him his crew cast their oars overboard on the windward side and leapt after them. A moment later, the tiller pulled, Conn jumped into the sea, and started trying to swim out toward Raef’s dragon.

  The waves and the wind pushed the abandoned Greek steadily onshore, and Conn and his sailors could not swim out against the force of the sea. Their heads showed among the hurtling waves. Raef pivoted his ship, and rowed down to pick them up. Each heave of the sea carried the dragon farther toward the rocks and the cliffs and the miserable pieces of the other ships. Raef got Conn and Oleg up easily enough, but Skinny Harald and Leif were struggling farther inshore, and by the time he had pulled in the first three, the others were well east of them. Bjorn, the farthest, was also closest to the rocks.

  Soaking wet and shivering, Conn stood in the stem of the dragon, watching his men bob helpless in the sea; he said, “Volodymyr could likely use some men.”

  Raef grunted at him. “Get a cloak.” He got up and walked back along the rows of oarsmen; with the steerboard now in the front of the ship he could adjust their course better by the pull of the oars. Screeching off the halyards, whipping the sheets back and forth, the wind was luffing the sail in a useless flutter, but it pushed the ship on faster, and he swooped quickly down on Leif and Skinny Harald and hauled them up almost without stopping.

  The Greek ship now was almost into the surf. The sea had turned her sideways to the shore and was rolling her madly from gunwale to gunwale, the waves breaking up over her fat hull. Bjorn, clinging to a floating oar, was only a dozen yards from her keel. He wasn’t a good swimmer; he looked tired, and Raef imagined his lips were moving even faster than usual. Raef shouted orders. He could feel the ship drifting hard on shore, and the wind fighting to get it broadside. He got some of the oars pulling backward and some forward, to keep the ship trimmed to her course, and used the wind to gust them down toward Bjorn.

  Leaning past the dragon’s tail, he shouted, “Leave the oar! Leave the oar!” The sea carried him up with a sickening lurch into the sky. He looked over his shoulder, and on the far side of the dragon, only a few yards away, he saw Volodymyr’s men reaching the Greek ship just as she began to break up. The white spume of the surf leapt high behind them. With a roaring cheer two Sclava stood up on the ship’s flank and rode the hull in over the breaker and up to the foot of the cliff. Swiftly the men waiting in the shallow wavesurge began to haul off the casks and bails of cargo and heave them up to others waiting on the cliff above.

  Bjorn was stroking wildly toward them down the slope of the wave. Raef bellowed, “Reverse!” and leaned down as the dragon swooped downward, and got Bjorn by the outstretched arm. With the ship tipping under them in the first rise of the next wave all the crew stood in unison, leaning to hold her upright, and turned around and sat again to their oars. The ship stroked up across the wave and out to sea, fighting the rake of the wind and the pounding of the crisscross currents. She skimmed along like a seagull, out of danger. Raef wrestled Bjorn aboard, with Conn holding him by the belt.

  Conn bundled himself into the cloak Thorfinn had given him, thinking warmly of the old man. Once they were out of the reach of the inshore riptides, he got Raef to sail across the wind, past the seacliff again, so he could see what was going on.

  Volodymyr’s men were hauling supplies up the seacliff. The Greek ship was already matchwood. Several Sclava were wading out into the waves to catch floating cargo. They had gotten the bread, he saw, in its great sacks, and at least one cask of the wine.

  The sea carried the dragon upward, and Conn saw, on the plain there, Volodymyr’s shield wall, and beyond, men digging. They were trying to raise a fortification. As he watched, from the packed houses of the city, a spray of rocks came hurtling out against the workmen. One of the Greek slingers. Beyond the tiled rooflines of the houses rose the round top and upthrust cross of a Christian church. There was a row of
white stone pillars, like statues of trees with flat tops, on the slight slope below.

  Raef stood beside him, and shook his head.

  “What are they doing? Building a defense? That’s crazy. They should just attack.”

  Conn shrugged. “Not much we can do.” He thought he had better chances, anyway. He pulled back into the mouth of the fjord. After a few days another Greek ship tried to escape, this one at night, and Conn burnt it to the waterline at the mouth of the cove, to show Chersonese what was going on.

  Raef went inland again, to fill the water skins, and look for food, and because he wanted to see the inland side of the city. There were no villages, no sign of other people living around the city, no fields or pastures or flocks. He left Janka and Leif setting snares in a meadow and pushed on steadily up the rising ground, following the spine of the ridge.

  From a height he looked out on the cove of Chersonese, on his right hand. There were three merchant ships hauled out at the farthest southern edge of it and a little flock of much smaller boats, maybe fishing vessels, along the western beach. Most of the city seemed to cluster along the ground just behind this beach. A high stone wall rose at the southern edge of it. Nearer the water, on a rise, was a little squat building with a cross on top. People walked back and forth along the beach, too far away for him to see what they were doing, and through the streets. In the blue water he could clearly see the sunken dragonship, and he could even make out the line of the chain, draped across the mouth of the cove, the barrels now sunken down under the water. Inside the chain, the water was smoother and calmer.

  On his other hand, the great blue fjord reached back between this ridge and the next, deep into the higher ground, a magnificent harbor, as good, he thought, as Hedeby’s.

  The wind stroked over the trees, so they tossed their branches; the slopes were tangled masses of flowers. Insects shrilled in the trees, fat grasshoppers with transparent wings. On the far ridge he saw two deer come up from the water, angling through the brush, and vanish in among the trees. He found berries as he went along, and looked for nut trees and birds’ nests.