Varanger

by Cecelia Holland

  Volodymyr called his guardsmen around him again, leaving the lower part of the city to Conn and Raef. They sent out their men to walk the streets and chase off looters. Raef took Leif up out of the city to the broken water pipes, and they mended them back together. When he got back to his house, water was spurting up from the shell in the arms of the little green woman and flowing into the basin.

  The people of Chersonese had all gone to hide in the church and its yard, and in the stone-lined pit in the ground just beyond it, where the white stone trees were. Volodymyr told them they could go home but for a few days no one did. When the first brave ones started back, they fought over whose house and shop was whose, and Conn dragged them all down onto the beach and listened to their complaints and settled them as best he could. Raef thought he did surprisingly well and justly. He let nobody question his judgments; he knocked down the first man who tried, and after that they all did as he said.

  They understood this, Raef saw. They submitted to power and order, whether Greek, or somebody else’s. The shops began to open again. A bakery in the next street down from Raef’s house gave off delicious smells of bread.

  Merike found wonderful clothes in the cupboard in the room she and Raef were sharing, tunics of red and blue cloth so fine her body showed through, and little pots of scent, and she danced before him, teasing, smelling like roses, poking her breasts at him, thrusting her crotch forward, letting him nuzzle her there, until he bit her womanhood through the sheer cloth and dragged her down on the softness of the bed.

  The part of Chersonese that they held seemed to be the oldest section of the city. What lay outside their reach was mostly a big vineyard, the broad pit with its benches, the stone trees, and the church and the houses around it. Raef wandered around the old city, looking into the shops and the market, walking up the narrow lanes.

  He came to the wall, high and solid, made of squared-off rock set perfectly together, and laid his hand on it. Even the Danewirk was not built as well as this. The whole city was made to last. Now it had changed owners, but it was still a Greek city, and it went on as it had before, according to the ways and plans of the Greeks. Here and there, on a corner, a little fountain ran again, drenching the dried mosses in their old basins. As the people came back, the shops began to sell goods in them, people took up their crafts again.

  Whenever he came into a place, everybody stopped still and stared at him. Since he knew no Greek, all he could do was look around. He thought they expected him to loot them; they looked puzzled when he turned and left, empty-handed.

  A woman with painted eyes rushed at him from a doorway, chattering. She reminded him so much of the woman drawn on the wall of his house that he stopped, and she seized his hand and turned the palm up.

  “You be wise,” she screamed, in garbled dansker. “You king! You son be king!” He realized she was pretending to see his future. Her free hand stretched out, begging for payment. But around her neck was a big crystal that flashed and sparkled in the sunlight, as she shouted at him, and in it, for an instant, he saw her, older, with a man behind her, his hands on her neck, choking the life out of her.

  He jerked his head up, and saw, through the open door behind her, that same man, sitting at a table, cutting a slice off a cheese. He jerked his hand free and strode away.

  Back near the wall, at the marshy end, he found the ruin of a house, and decided Chersonese had once been larger than it was now. Only a few stones were left of the walls, only the traces of the rooms. A big leafy tree grew up in the middle of it, so it had been years and years before that anyone lived there.

  He wondered if some day trees would grow up through Hedeby. Through the Coppergate at Jorvik. Trees would grow through Thorfinn’s hall, through Corban’s house on the island, through every holding and building of men, bones of the earth, gathering them back in, and even the walls of Chersonese would be only stones under the ground, hidden away under the enormous red and mossy trees. He shook his head free of that, not knowing what it meant.

  He went along the wall, made of square stones fit perfectly together, made to last throughout time. He thought, These people believe they will be here forever.

  He watched the glassblowers and the people who made ear hoops and rings and pins of gold wire. They used all kinds of magical stones, too, but just for the glitter. Here there seemed to be no magic, only wealth. Maybe that was the bargain here; maybe that was what forever meant. Mirrors, and not crystals.

  In a dim shop stacked with bolts of cloth, an old man in a cap suddenly gave him a fancy red tunic, and waved off his fumbling try at buying it. Bowed to him, over and over, and said words he didn’t understand.

  The more the local people came back, the louder the place was, the streets always full, singing and shouting and arguing, children and their games, old women shrieking at each other from their upstairs windows, people selling hot sausages and wine by the cup, and the air drifted with the smells of food cooking. He passed Leif and Ulf sitting out in front of taverns playing dice. When they saw him, Ulf made a great show of hiding the dice from him, and all three of them laughed.

  Ragged beggars sat around the edges of the market, their hands out. He took to carrying bits of bread around in his wallet for them. He put bread also on the roof of his house, for the birds.

  After a while, people called something to him, as he went by in the street; he supposed it was the Greek equivalent of Goose.

  The fishing boats went out and brought back fish. A big Greek merchantman put in from the east, and unloaded crates and sacks and earred jugs of wine and sold them on the beach. In the place of these goods the ship’s crew carried bales of furs back onto their ship, some of them even sealed with the mark of the Novgorod pelthouse. A few days after that ship left, two more came in. Local merchants came down to the beach to buy and sell these cargoes, and the whole city sold the sailors bread and drink and good times while they were on shore.

  Conn took to watching the merchants trade their cargoes; he spent a lot of each day on the beach, telling people what to do. When he began taking a little bit of each shipload, mostly food for the Varanger, the merchants acted as if they had expected it.

  In the goldsmithing shop, Raef noticed that the workmen were shackled to their benches by iron rings around their ankles. The naked men who loaded and unloaded ships were all slaves. He looked around his house and realized, uneasy, they would need slaves, to live here, to clean, to carry.

  The local girls liked Conn; there were always a few of them around Raef’s house, waiting for his cousin, or just finished with him. Ulf brought in a woman from the street, who helped Merike in the cookhouse. Merike started wearing ribbons in her hair, the way these Chersonese girls did.

  The moon waxed and waned and waxed again, and a ship came in from Constantinople.

  Volodymyr ordered everybody out to meet it. Conn and his Varanger met the prince, Dobrynya, and all the Sclava as they marched down from their end of the city and walked with them to the Varangers’ beach to greet the newcomers. Conn and Raef stood on the side of the street above the beach and watched the big galley put in. The high beaked prow carried the image of a woman with snakes for hair. The hull was painted black, with gold along the gunwales and around the oar ports, and a cross stood on top of the mast. Beside the lone remaining dragon, now anchored quietly in the cove, the Greek ship was immense, shiny, important-looking.

  They had brought horn players, who got out first and lined up on the beach, and played blasts of sound through their brass tubes while a little parade of men came ashore. Conn was too far away to see much of them. He could tell by the way they clustered around one man that he was the leader—a tall, gray-headed man in a long red tunic.

  This man walked up the beach to Volodymyr, and they both bowed, and many words were said, and they bowed again, and the watching people gave a dutiful-sounding cheer, and then they all went home. Volodymyr took the fancy Greek back with him to the church, which he had made his headqu
arters.

  Raef said, “I was hoping this would not happen.”

  Conn was walking beside him up the street, toward the little church; just ahead was the cross street that had become the boundary between their town and Volodymyr’s. Conn said, “What do you mean?”

  “Now they’re going to give it all back,” Raef said. “Remember? That was the plan—to take Chersonese, and exchange it for a Greek princess.”

  Conn let out an explosive curse. “No, they’re not,” he said, and lengthened his stride, and they went up the street toward the church.

  C H A P T E R T W E N T Y

  Somehow the Sclava had found themselves horses, and now, mounted, carrying lances, wearing leather armor sewn with iron rings and iron helmets on their heads, they rode around and around the church. The crowd of townspeople had mostly disappeared. When Conn and Raef walked up to the front porch, the big double doors were closed. Pavo himself came down the shallow steps toward them, a great breastplate on him, and a plume in his metal hat.

  “No in. Only Knyaz and Emperor’s man.”

  Conn’s neck swelled, his head sinking down between the muscles of his shoulders. “You think I can’t get through you, Pavo?”

  “No.” This was Dobrynya, coming swiftly down the steps from one side. “You two leave this behind you.” The golden Sclava lord was polished up again, his clothes clean, his hair and beard combed. His blue eyes were piercing, confident, certain again. He wore an even more splendid collar of gold and crystals than the one he had given Conn. He came up between them and Pavo, and said, “I will talk to you, Corbanssons.” As if this were some great gift.

  Conn followed him off a little way around the church wall. It was an old building, Raef saw, and birds flew in and out of nests along the top, under the eave. A long graveyard stretched away on the opposite side. Before Dobrynya had stopped and turned to face them, Conn was arguing with him.

  “You’re giving this city up for nothing. Don’t you realize what this is—we could hold this place ourselves, all the wealth going in and out—”

  Dobrynya swung toward him, massive, his face set. “Volodymyr will be the brother of the Emperor. Chersonese, surely, is worth a princess.”

  “Not to me!” Conn’s fists clenched. Behind him, Raef was watching Pavo, up on the porch behind them, through the corner of his eye. “Dobrynya, you made a pledge to me, when I made one to you.”

  “You will get gold,” Dobrynya said, harsh. “Volodymyr will make a hard bargain, I promise you.”

  “Gold! You promised me treasure. Now I’ve seen real treasure and you want to buy me off with baubles. Dobrynya, we can be greater here than in Kiev. Keep the city. We can defend it—give them back their woman, keep this city.”

  Dobrynya’s face was rigid, icy. A hot red patch shone on his cheeks. He said, “Volodymyr will have what he wants. And you did give me your pledge. And you will obey me. For once.”

  “I have given you all this.”

  “You’ve been very useful. You’ll be compensated. That was our bargain.”

  Conn was giving off a steady heat of rage. In the corner of his eye Raef could see Pavo watching them intently from the porch. Then abruptly the doors behind him opened.

  A yell went up. The mounted Sclava galloped up before the porch, and Dobrynya turned away from Conn and swiftly joined them, climbing up the steps so that he was not beneath the riders’ heads. Conn and Raef went after him and stood a step behind him, on the ground.

  Two lines of guards came out from the church and made a lane. Down this corridor came Volodymyr, and beside him, the gray-haired Greek.

  The Sclava roared the Knyaz’s name, and he advanced alone out onto the edge of the porch, his arms raised, as if he blessed them. He called out, “Greetings to you, my Rus’ ! My children, for whom I do everything!”

  The roar that answered hammered off the stone wall of the church. Raef put his hands over his ears. Conn glanced at him; they said nothing.

  Volodymyr cried, “I swear in the name of God I shall build a new church here, in this place, to make memorial of what we do here now. Because on this day begins the true glory of Rus’. The glory of Rome is now the glory of Rus’!”

  The Greek stood behind him, in the shadow of the doorway. His hands were folded in front of him. All that Raef could make out of his face was that he was smiling. Volodymyr was shouting again, calling himself the Emperor’s own brother. Saying he would, when he was baptised, take the Emperor’s own name, Basil, before the Christian god. And henceforth—

  Conn turned, going, and Raef followed. They went down the steps into the mass of the Sclava and pushed through, roughly, crowding even the horsemen out of the way. Nobody tried to stop them. Raef glanced back to make sure of Pavo and saw him standing beside Dobrynya, staring after him and Conn, but not moving.

  Leif had seen them walk off, and he was coming after them, from one side, and Bjorn the Christian was following them out from the other. No one else walked away out of the crowd now cheering Volodymyr’s every word. The Varanger met together on the street, below the church. None of the guardsmen had come with them, only the dansker. Conn led them away, back to their own end of the city.

  Raef stood by the fountain, watching the water splash down the green woman’s shapely body. Conn was sitting out in the sun of the courtyard. Raef put his hand out, and let the fountain’s water trickle over his hand.

  Conn said, “We could hold this part of the city, at least, against them.”

  Leif said, “There are five of us.”

  “We took Chersonese,” Raef said.

  Bjorn said heavily, “Now it isn’t just Volodymyr against us, it’s the Greeks, too.”

  “They’re Christian,” Conn said, frowning at him.

  Bjorn shook his head. “Not my kind. They cross backwards.”

  The door flew open, and Janka came bursting in, round-eyed.

  “Empor here!”

  Conn grunted. “Nobody comes in without I say so. It’s not the Emperor, you blockhead, it’s some Greek. Tell him to go away.”

  Janka swallowed, turned, and went out.

  Raef said, “It will be a while, anyway, before they get it all confirmed in Constantinople. Months. We can do something.”

  “Loot the place down to the stone,” Ulf said.

  Raef was thinking more about talking some of the guardsmen into joining them. Overthrowing Volodymyr. The pledge had to end sometime. Janka came rushing back in.

  “Him say, him have you something.” He looked from Raef to Conn. “Him say him come in quiet, no sword, only slave to carry it. Slave and me.”

  Conn stood up, and came over to stand beside Raef. After a moment, he said, “All right. Send him in.”

  Janka left again. Raef said, “A bribe?”

  Conn shrugged. “I’m getting something out of this.”

  Once again the door swung open, and Janka and another man lugged in a chest the size of a sea chest, which they brought down into the foreyard, and set before Conn and Raef. After them came the Greek.

  It was the gray-haired man. Seeing him close up, Raef, in spite of himself, felt his jaw drop open.

  The gray-haired man met Raef’s amazed stare with an easy smile. He came into the foreyard room as calmly as if he belonged there. His voice was gently apologetic. “Thank you for admitting me. My name is Michael Lecapenus. I am a logothete of His Imperial Majesty. I know—knew the former owner of this house.”

  Raef blinked at him. He had never seen even a woman as finely made as this. He might have stepped down from one of the pedestals around the courtyard, a stone man come to life, smooth and white and beautiful. His skin was pale, indoor skin. His immaculate cloak, embroidered around the hem with red and gold designs, hung in exact folds. Under it he wore a long sleeved shirt and soft loose trousers, in spite of the heat, of stuff as fine as the tunic, shot through with gold thread. His graying hair was immaculately combed into rows of little curls, trimmed at the ears and the back of
the neck. Above the wiry beard that just traced his jawline, his cheeks were smoothly shaven, his mustache as perfect as if every hair were drawn on. His white, long-fingered, elegant hands wore gold rings with red stones in them and his belt was stitched with gold. He stood letting Raef gawk at him, a look of mild self-deprecating amusement on his face.

  Raef looked down at himself, at his new leggings filthy already from tramping in the streets, his bare aims, grimy, heavymuscled, sticking out of his frayed tunic, his fingers and palms callused from the oar; he saw his beard tangled on his chest, his hair hanging down over his shoulders. He remembered the face in the glass on the wall; a wild, bloody boy. He stared at Michael Whatever His Name Was again, his mind crowded with thoughts.

  Conn said, “Who the hell are you? And how do you speak dansker?”

  The Greek Michael seemed as at ease here as one of the birds that fluttered in and out of the courtyard. He said, in a mild voice, “May I come in?”

  Conn said, “You’re in, aren’t you. What’s this about?”

  Michael walked toward them. He even smelled good, a kind of dry woody aroma like a pine tree. He smiled as happily as if they were old friends. “You left something behind today,” he said, and beckoned to the slave, who went up, knelt by the chest, and unlatched it and turned up the lid.

  From behind Raef, in the courtyard, came a soft collective gasp from the other Varanger. The box was filled to the brim with gold pieces. Several of the coins on the top of the heap trickled down, fell off, and rang on the stone floor. The Greek Michael stood behind him, his face calmly expressionless, his hands folded in front of him.

  Conn stepped forward, leaned down, and upended the chest, so that the whole great golden heap of money casacaded across the floor, chiming on the stone and rolling off into the sunlight. He stepped back. He said, “That doesn’t cover even a little bit of Chersonese, does it.”