Varanger

by Cecelia Holland

  There, Volodymyr and his bride went by horseback and litter, with Pavo, the new leader of the Faithful Band, and all the Sclava who now were the Faithful Band, and rode along the riverbank to Kiev. But the Varanger rowed the dragon ship, and carried it around the rapids, and still got to Kiev first.

  That night Volodymyr held a great feast in his hall. The walls were draped in thick new velvets from Constantinople. The floor was laid with wonderful new carpets. The two big chairs at the dais were carved and gilded. His new bride sat beside Volodymyr, her shoulders square as a rule. In the center of the room were Volodymyr’s boyars, some of whom, apparently, were entitled to sit when the prince sat. Around the three sides of the hall stood the soldiers, most of them Sclava, who could not sit. None of the Varanger were there save Raef and Conn.

  Raef, standing midway down the long wall, opposite the door, watched the new princess closely. The hall had been made over this way especially for her, the ceiling hung with banners, the torches screened with golden sconces; the crowd of women who attended her wore silks and jewels, and her husband had a crown of gold, and a new name, Basil, like the Emperor. But the carpets hung on log walls and the floor was of wood and the table she ate from of wood, and many of the women were Volodymyr’s old wives.

  Raef thought she would flinch, her proud mouth would pucker a little in distaste. But she sat like a lily among reeds, this woman, every gesture graceful and gracious, smiling, utterly composed. Volodymyr leaned toward her always, put his hands on her, kept his greedy eyes on her, always.

  Raef lowered his gaze; he longed to be free of this place.

  In among the princess’s women, he saw, there was one who watched Conn. She served as the princess’s second cupbearer, to bring the ewer to fill the cup; she had curly black hair, and her eyes turned ever toward Conn, who stood a few feet down the wall from Raef, his hands behind him.

  Watching her, Raef lifted his head, alarmed. They were talking to each other with glances and looks all across the crowded hall, careless who noticed. This was the woman Conn had come back for. Raef’s back tingled up. The prince already distrusted them. This was not over yet.

  Volodymyr saw nothing; Volodymyr saw only his Imperial bride.

  Then the prince was standing, and raising his drinking horn high overhead. It was said this was his father’s horn, all chased and bound in gold, and that no other man had ever drunk from it. Volodymyr brandished it up, and the whole hall fell silent, the men lined up all around, the nobles in the center, and the foreign woman on the high table, all still.

  “Now,” Volodymyr said, “let us give all honor to those who served us incomparably well. First, to the dead!”

  A roar went up. The boyars hoisted their own cups. Boys in bright tunics came down the line of the soldiers, standing along three sides of the room, and gave them each a cup and filled it, and all drank.

  Volodymyr lifted his cup again, and all hushed.

  “Then Pavo Sclavovich, who held the line at Chersonese!”

  Another roar. Raef had not joined in the first and he did not join in this one, nor glance at Conn. When the boy came to refill his cup it was still full. At the head of his rank of soldiers, the Tishats strutted around, drinking and tossing his scalplock.

  “To the Faithful Band, who won us the city!”

  This time Raef looked down at Conn, and saw his lips drawn back in which Raef thought at first was a smile. And when Volodymyr, at last, said, “Conn Corbansson, who will lead our men to the aid of our brother Basil Emperor,” and the shout, tired now, went up, Conn stepped forward, flung his full cup to the floor, and shouted back.

  “Not me, Volodymyr, you traitor!”

  Raef jerked, alarmed, and shot Conn a warning look. But Conn wanted this, he strode forward as far as he could, pushing boyars out of his way, his voice bull strong.

  “We took that city with blood and death, and you gave it back for nothing! Don’t expect anything from me, you traitor!”

  Volodymyr reared back, his face flushing. Beside him, the princess was rigid as an idol, but her eyes were aimed straight at Conn. Volodymyr cast his empty cup aside. “You think so much of yourself, viking, here’s what I think of you. You’ll be first into the river tomorrow, to take my new god, and we shall name you Basil, like me, and you’ll lead my men to drive anybody who hesitates down into the river too!”

  Conn stood square before him, his head back. “I won’t. My pledge is over to you and yours. I’m a free man, Volodymyr, and I’ll stay that way.”

  Raef started forward, reaching for his belt knife, wishing he had a real weapon, that more Varanger were here. He took one step, and something sharp poked him in the back. “Stay still, Goose, or I slit you up and down,” said Pavo’s voice, behind him.

  He stiffened. Volodymyr was shouting again, but this time giving orders. From all sides the Sclava were jumping at Conn, who wheeled around, barehanded, to fight them. Raef spun, dodging away from the knife behind him, desperate, and something struck his head, and he was gone.

  He woke, lying on his side like a dumped cargo, his arms out in front of him, shackled at the wrists: Conn faced him, their wrists clipped together with four links of iron chain between the iron bands of the shackles. More chain led down to his ankles, which were shackled.

  “They were ready for us,” Raef said.

  “They’re afraid of us,” Conn said.

  Raef shrugged. “You’re the one who told them about Hjorunga Bay.” He shook his head, still aching from whatever had put him out. At least his eyes were clear. He looked around him at the narrow, cluttered space.

  Conn was staring at him. “I’m sorry. If I’d listened to you, we’d be sailing home by now.”

  Raef said, “Never mind. Let’s get us out of this.” He felt around the chains, looking for any weakness, breaks, loose links. They were in a little room, half full of wotka casks, with a tiny slit of a window at the top of the blank wall. The floor was covered with mouldy straw and rat droppings.

  There were chunks of fresh bread in the straw. Whoever had cast them in here had thrown in also bait for the rats.

  “Hold still,” Conn said, presently.

  Raef froze. A beady nose, fringed in long twitching whiskers, was poking in through a chink in the log wall. Conn lay with his legs drawn up. The rat sniffed around a while, and then crept out, nosing in the straw, making for the bread. Much of the bread was gathered up in a heap, Raef saw, between Conn and the wall: Conn had spent some effort shoving it together with his bound feet.

  Its whiskers trembling up and down, the rat found the bread. Conn lashed out with both feet and smashed it against the wall. The rat squeaked and splattered, but it dragged itself off through the chink, leaving blood behind on the straw.

  Raef felt over the chain connecting his wrists and his ankles. He found a few cracked links, but also he noticed a loose bolt in the hinge on his ankle. The door rattled, and a key turned in the lock.

  He lay still; Dobrynya came in.

  The golden Sclava was as smooth and polished as ever in his embroidered robes. He sank down on his heels in the doorway, out of reach, and said, “You are fools, you two. This is your choice. Tomorrow all the Rus’ take Christ. Either we open your chains, and you walk into the river of your own will, or we throw you in, chains and all.”

  Conn spat at him. “Get out of here. Leave me alone.”

  Dobrynya did not go. Raef inched a little closer, getting some slack in the chain so that Conn could creep within range. The posadnik said, “I want you with us. I don’t see what the difficulty is. Christ is the highest god—in the end, he will be not just the greatest but the only God. The Emperor himself bows to him. You have never seen the glory of his rites, how they carry us up to heaven. I have seen that the gods of my childhood are only steps to him. We are men now, and Christ is a god for men.” His hands lay together, palm against palm, his voice earnest. Raef thought, He’s already learned to pray like a Greek.

  Conn said, �
��Dobrynya, my father was a far-voyager, who wandered out beyond the reach of Christ and Thor and all the rest. My mother made worlds with her hands. What god do you have even as great as they? And they were only people.”

  Raef said, “This god, this Christ, he’s just a puffed-up king. He tells you what to do like a king, he takes your money, like a king, and makes the laws for you, like a king.”

  Dobrynya growled, “His curse on you, then.” He rose up, and went to the door, but he looked back, curious, and made them a light bow of his head. Then the door shut, the lock turned again.

  Raef worked furiously at the bolt on his ankles, got the shackle hinge apart, and pulled one leg free. The heavy iron ring still encircled the other shin. Conn said, “Damn!” He was watching the rats again. “There was one right there, looking out, and you frightened it.”

  “You idiot,” Raef said. The light was fading, the room gloomy, soon it would be dark, the rats’ hour. He was struggling with the other ankle shackle when, again, they heard somebody outside.

  Conn glanced at him and they hitched forward together, getting close enough to the door that Conn could pound whoever came in. He drew his feet up, and Raef gathered himself to lunge after him. The door opened. A woman came into the room.

  She carried a lamp before her, and lifted it as she came in, so the light swept up around her. It was the black-haired woman from the feast hall, and she set the lamp carefully down and fell on her knees beside Conn and kissed him.

  “You alone spoke pure and true. You are the greatest of men. I honor you, my dear one, my darling.” She kissed his cheeks and forehead and his mouth. Then she sat back and produced a key.

  Raef sighed. “Not as dear as you to me, right now,” Conn said.

  “I gave poppy to the guards,” she said, working the key awkwardly in the lock between his wrists. She wore a short silk jacket over a tunic, and her full breasts fell forward when she leaned over to open the bonds. She had skin like honey. “But somebody could come around any moment. We have to hurry.”

  The key clicked, and the lock sprang open; Conn yanked his aims free. Raef worked apart the other half of his ankle shackle. The woman was kneeling by Conn’s feet, opening his ankle bonds. She said, “When you spoke, I saw so many who agreed with you— who dared not speak—oh, you were so brave.”

  “You’re so beautiful,” Conn said, free, and took her by the shoulders and kissed her again.

  “Come on,” Raef said. “Let’s get out of here.”

  They went out into a narrow dark space, where two men snored like drunks against the wall. The woman with the lamp led them on to another door. Dark was coming. When she opened this door, with another key, they looked out on a shadowy garden, stretching away through tall narrow trees, and a wall down the slope in the distance.

  She doused the lamp, turning toward Conn. “You know where this is. You can get away from here.”

  Conn took hold of her hand. “What about you? What will happen to you? You’ll get in trouble for this.”

  She set the lamp down on a shelf by the door. With that same hand she brushed her hair back. She had a long, straight nose, full lips, that trembled; she was very beautiful, Raef realized, beautiful and sad. She said, “I am in trouble already. I will not take the Christ. I am going to refuse to serve the princess. He will find a way to end me.”

  Conn said, “I’ll take you back to your home.” He turned to Raef, his face urgent. “We can’t leave her here.”

  Raef said, “I have to find Merike.”

  Conn had the woman’s hand tight in his own. He was already standing beside her, and not beside Raef. He said, “When I’ve gotten her to safety I’ll meet you—back at the old holding?”

  “No, no, they’ll watch there.” Raef felt a nagging, growing pressure to get moving, to get out of there, before they were found and this all came to nothing, and they were back to the cell and the rats. “That tree—on the bluff south of the city, you can see it from the river, that big chestnut tree. When the sun sets.”

  “It may take me a couple of days,” Conn said. “Make it three days from now.”

  Raef said, “I’ll be there when the sun sets, every night.”

  Conn whirled and drew the woman after him, running down the long slope of the garden. Raef went off along the closer side, looking for a gate, and eventually climbed a tree, and swung over the wall that way.

  He stood by the foot of the wall, looking around him. It felt strange not to have Conn there. Dark had come to Kiev. On his right hand, Volodymyr’s hall blazed with, torches, and all across the ravine behind it, little housefires glowed. Raef walked along the wall, staying in the dark, to the trail down into the ravine, toward his old holding, on the first ledge.

  Nobody was there except Bjorn the Christian, who sat outside by the fire toasting pieces of bread on a stick and taking long pulls from a jug. When Raef came up to him, Bjorn looked blearily up at him.

  “So, you gave in,” he said. “I told you Christ would win.”

  “Where is everybody?” Raef asked. He went to the door into the hut and looked inside. It was empty. His sea chest was there, but the lid was open, and everything gone from it. Conn’s sea chest was gone utterly; they’d had to have something to carry the gold.

  “Everybody else took off—Leif, Ulf. When they heard what happened to you.” Bjorn jabbed his thumb at the room. “They took your gear, too, and all. For safekeeping, you know. Likely they’ll go south. Accept that nice offer from the Greeks.”

  Raef came back toward Bjorn. “Where is my woman?”

  “She left too. With the other hun. There’s a camp of their people somewhere south of here and they went to find them.”

  Raef wiped his hand over his face, cold, and scared. Now he had nothing, not even a good weapon. He felt Conn going farther away with every moment. He had no way of keeping hold of Merike. Bjorn said, “Although who knows if the Greeks still want us, after what you did.”

  “Now probably they want us even worse,” Raef said. “Here, I’ll take some of that body.” He got the biggest chunk of the bread. “And a little of the blood won’t hurt.” He took the jug and drank deep of it, until his head reeled. Throwing the vessel back at Bjorn, he wiped his mouth on his sleeve and turned and started walking south.

  Rachel sat in the stern of the monoch, her hand on the gunwale; Conn rowed. He had taken the smallest boat he could find, but he needed all his strength to muscle it across the stream of the river. In the night the river purred along beside them, the dark city far behind.

  She said, “There is a Radhun caravan stop two days’ east of here. If we can get there, we will find Khazars. My people. They will take us on to Samkarsh, my city.”

  “Can you ride a horse?” he asked.

  “Am I Khazar?” she said, with a toss of her head. “There will be horses, on the other bank, here. I have some money. But we have to be gone by daybreak.” Her voice was strong and proud. “Don’t fear. I will keep up with you.”

  The day was still far off. The moon had just risen, washing out the stars around it. The river rushed around them; he could see nothing beyond the water, where now the moon laid down its silver trail. Head east, toward the moon. He leaned hard on the upstream oar, trying to wedge the boat sideways across the current. The water felt dead to him, implacable, like a river of stone, and he thought of Raef and felt a sharp momentary twinge of grief.

  She said, “I am more grateful to you than you can know, Conn. You have saved my life.”

  “We’re not through this yet,” he said.

  “I never expected this of you. I have never met a man who would do this for such as me.”

  He looked up at her, startled; he said, “What else could I do— when you saved me?”

  She reached forward, then, and kissed him, and he let the boat drift a little, kissing her back.

  Reeds brushed against the side of the log, and then the hull rammed hard aground on something; yet they were far from the bank.
He let her go and sat back on the stern thwart, and worked with the oar to get them off the sandbar. Raef would not have let that happen. He got them into deeper water and pushed toward the bank again. Rachel lifted an oar, and helped him sound the bottom, and they nosed their way slowly into a marshy cove, and then to a beach.

  She was strong, and not afraid to act; he liked her more all the time.

  Just up the river a single lantern showed, a couple of furlongs away. That would be the ferry stop, directly across the river from Kiev. He climbed out of the boat into waist-deep water, and gathered her up in his arms and carried her to the beach. The bottom was uneven and sandy and he went carefully along. She lay trusting in his arms. When he kissed her she tipped her head back and gave her mouth to him, letting him kiss her as deep as he wished. He took her to the beach, and then up a little bank, under some trees, where the grass was deep and soft, and set her down. He stripped off his fancy new tunic, watching her, to see if she drew back now; but in the dark he could see her pulling off her clothes. She stood up, naked, before him, and he put his arms around her and kissed her again, her breasts against his chest, and then laid her down on his shirt and embraced her.

  In the gray before dawn, she said, “I love you. I won’t let you go.”

  He had been dozing, a little, sated. He nuzzled her throat. Her hair smelled of wild lavender.

  She ran her fingers along his chest. “Come with me. Come to Samkarsh. Then send for your brother. My father is tudun. Men are free there, and we all love freedom. The Christians’ god and the god of Islam are just children of the Jews’ god. You can live there as you wish—you and your brother. I will marry you, and make you a prince of our people.”

  He pushed himself up on one arm, listening to her, and looked east, where the dawn was coming. He felt cold, as if his skin had come off. He felt like a different man, without Raef around. A stranger. Rachel came to him again and kissed him again, and her mouth was sweet with promises. She was brave, and strong, and he wanted her again.