And now again, we saw their line of watch-fires in the night; but with no Bosphorus between us and them, only a few hundred paces of sandy scrub. And they were ready and waiting for us, and the fight that was coming with the morning would not be like Chrysopolis; not like Chrysopolis at all.
It was a spring night, but the light wind brushing through the tamarisk scrub had still an edge to it after dark, and we huddled close about the camp fires, feeding them with dry branches, long after we had eaten the evening food. We had ceased to be a fleet, and become a land army over the past few months; but old ships’ crews still had a way of hanging together, and most of us from the Red Witch had gathered to the same fire, and sat companionably going over our gear, the mail-shirts and nut-shaped helmets that made us look much like any other of the Byzantine front-line troops, and making ready our weapons against tomorrow. And rubbing away at my sword-blade, I thought suddenly that if we won this battle for him, and the Emperor had no more need of his Viking War Host, and we were paid off, and free of the oath taken in the Kieve marshes . . . But maybe we should just be dead. Tomorrow night would be time enough to start worrying about the old feud again . . . I rubbed harder at the blade; and my hand slipped and I gashed my thumb on the keen edge. It was only a small cut, but the blood sprang out dark in the firelight, and I cursed and sucked it.
Orm laughed. ‘Jestyn is so eager for tomorrow’s fight that he must start blooding his blade already!’
Hakon cocked his one eye from the new strap he was fixing on his shield. ‘At least tomorrow is like to give us work in hotter blood than we found at Chrysopolis.’
‘Chrysopolis was a shore-killing,’ I said, scowling at my gashed thumb.
‘So – but the pickings were good.’ Orm shook the chain hung with little silver pomegranates that he wore about his neck.
And Thormod said with that familiar edge of laughter in his voice, ‘You’d better not wear that into battle tomorrow, old bell-wether, or they’ll hear you coming and single you out a mile away.’
There was a snatch of laughter round the fire; but a long sough of wind came shivering up through the tamarisks, and somewhere a dog howled.
Morning swallowed the watch-fires; and the walls of Abydos that had been a low black cliff behind the enemy camp, shone dusty pale against the deepening blue of the sky. We had eaten bread and raisins, and prayed to our different gods, as men pray in the dawn before the battle. And we stood ready, drawn up in fighting-line along the dunes. The light wind that had hushed through the shore scrub all night, stirred the blue and purple standards of the Guards, and spread the black raven banners above our ranks. And across the open ground, the coloured flicker of enemy standards answered them.
The Emperor had come out from his tent to pray with his troops for victory. And now, with his standard-bearer and his staff officers about him, and his brother Constantine at his side, he came riding the length of our battle-line. Square and short-legged on a horse too big for him – he always rode horses too big for him in his younger days; but he could handle them as though he and they were one. Standing in the second rank of Erland Silkbeard’s following, I watched the sacred standard draw near, the figure of the Virgin embroidered on it jewelled and brilliant in the cool morning light, her cloth-of-gold halo catching the first rays of the sun in an answering sunburst. It drew level with our black-winged ravens, then passed on. And in its passing, all along the ranks of the Imperial Army, it left a wake of silence; the silence that comes in the last moments before battle. Only, above the heavy drubbing of my own heart, I heard from the cavalry wings the jink of a bridle as a horse here and there fidgeted and tossed its head, smelling the coming fight.
Between the helmets of the two men in front of me, I could see where the glittering banner of Bardas Phocas flew above the small tump of higher ground on which he had taken up his position. I could see the shimmer of movement among the dark knot of horsemen surrounding it, and one among them – it must have been Phocas himself by the white plume in his helmet – came pricking out from the rest. I thought I saw his arm go up; another instant and the trumpets would be yelping, the whole rebel line spilling forward to the charge.
And then something happened – we heard later that a quail, sitting tight on her nest among the scrub until the last possible moment, had got up almost under the hooves of the rebel leader’s horse. From our lines we could not make out the details, but we heard the quail’s alarm-call; and saw the sudden tumult of horses flinging this way and that under the rebel standard.
‘Someone’s been thrown,’ Thormod said, and caught his breath. ‘It’s Phocas himself by the look of things! Thor’s Hammer! what an omen for his men to follow!’
I had my eyes screwed up, reaching into the distance. ‘Looks as though he’s up again.’
‘Someone’s bringing him another horse,’ Orm put in.
All along the battle-line the murmur ran.
Then from the little group out in front of us where Basil sat his horse under the Imperial Standard, a bare blade flashed down in the morning sun; and all up and down the battle-lines, the trumpets sounded and were answered; royal and rebel Byzantine trumpets and our own booming war-horns shouting against each other like fighting-cocks at dawn. For a long heartbeat of time, both armies seemed held on the edge of movement, like wine rising on the rim of a tilted cup before it spills over; and then we moved forward. I remember the tightening in my belly, and putting one foot before the other, and knowing that the waiting was over and the thing had begun.
Between the heads of the front rank I could see the rebel standard, the moving ranks, the dust already beginning to curl up, and through the dust, the white helmet-plume of their leader. I could see also that something was hideously amiss with Bardas Phocas; the white plume was swaying from side to side, more and more widely as it drew nearer, until suddenly – and nothing startled the horse this time – he flung out his arms and pitched from the saddle.
There was a kind of faltering, a break in rhythm, in the rebel ranks. Phocas’s bodyguard came spurring forward to cover him and get him away; and in the same instant the Emperor’s sword flashed again in the sun, and we heard his voice, loud as any trumpet – even now that he is old he has the kind of voice a Ship-Chief might envy – shouting for the charge.
We burst forward like hounds slipped from the leash. We crashed into the enemy battle-line before they had time to steady again, and hurled their front rank back into the ranks behind. I heard afterwards that our men broke clear through at that first charge, and turned about to thrust home again from the rear, cutting the enemy into separate, ragged clots of men to be cut down piecemeal. I heard that the rebels fought stubbornly; but that one moment of uncertainty when their leader went down made sure of their defeat.
But at the time, all I knew of that battle before Abydos – all, I am thinking, that most men except the leaders ever do know of a battle – was a confusion of trampling and shouting and weapon-ring and choking dust all about me; and the widened eyes of the man who was going to kill me unless I first killed him, glaring at me across our shield-rims, and the snake-dart of a spear past my cheek, and somewhere the scream of a wounded horse; and the fighting-smell of blood at the back of my nose.
All the formless tumult of a dream; and only one thing real – the steadying consciousness of Thormod’s shoulder somewhere alongside mine.
13 Faces by Firelight
THE EMPEROR DID not sleep in Abydos that night. He was always a man more at home in an armed camp than within city walls, and always a man to bide with his men. So while Constantine went off in search of city comforts, he spent the night after the battle as he had spent the night before it, in his great blue and purple tent pitched beside a few oleander trees in the midst of the camp.
And for our part in the day’s fighting, he ordered that we, the Northmen of Kiev, should furnish his guard for the night.
And how it came about, I’d not be knowing – maybe it was because Erland Silkbear
d was the closest and most powerful of Khan Vladimir’s Hearth-Companions and Hakon One-Eye and old friend of Erland’s – the crew of the Red Witch were among the chosen Northmen. Which is how I, who seemed born to spend my life herding cattle in the west of England, stood my guard over the Emperor of Byzantium on the night that he was made safe on his throne.
Every detail of that night stands clear in my mind. Did I not say that I was very young? So young, even for my nineteen years, that it seemed to me a great and glorious thing to stand guard over an Emperor. I remember the sounds of the camp; passing footsteps, a voice upraised in a snatch of song. And beyond the camp sounds, I was aware of a great silence that was the silence of the spent battlefield, pricked now and again by the cry of some night-prowling beast that had smelt blood and come to the feasting. There were torches everywhere, down at the picket lines, before the tents of the generals; distant cressets flowering small and red above the ramparts of Abydos; and scattered through the camp, the watch-fires, and the darkness between, full of the shifting shadows of men lost and found and lost again as they came and went their ways. I was standing beside the entrance to the Royal Tent, leaning on my sword, and staring into the glow of the watch-fire where those of us not yet standing sentry sat or sprawled, talking low-voiced or already asleep.
Someone came crosswise out of the dark into the firelight, and glanced down in passing at the sleepers huddled in their cloaks. He checked the merest breath of time, his gaze caught by one in particular, and then was gone again into the dark, on his way to wherever it was that he was going. But it seemed to me that I could still see his face: Anders Herulfson’s face, firelit against the night; and I looked where he had looked in that brief, passing moment, knowing what – who – I should see.
Thormod was sleeping on his back with his face tipped to the sky, his cloak pulled close about him; and suddenly, piercingly, I remembered the one time that I had seen his father lying so, with the brown bearskin pulled to his chin, and the torches burning at his head and feet. And the hair rose on the back of my neck.
Last night. I had wondered how long it would be before the War Host was disbanded. But tonight, with the Emperor safe on his throne, the thought leapt out at me with more of urgency, more of cold menace, making my heart race and the palms of my hands grow wet. For one moment it was even in my mind that when they changed the guard I might slip away instead of lying down by the fire, and go hunting . . . My knife-blade under his ribs in some dark corner of the camp, and the long-drawn feud would be over, and Thormod safe from it. That would make me an oath-breaker, a faith-breaker, and among the Northmen, nothing that lives is quite so low as the man who breaks faith with his own people. But I do not think it was that that held me back; it was the cold hard certainty that the thing was not mine to do, that if I were Thormod, and someone, even my blood-brother, took it into his hands to finish my feud, keeping me safe from it as though I were a child, I would not forgive him, nor count him ever again as my shoulder-to-shoulder man.
So the hideous moment passed.
All the while, I had been aware of the rise and fall of voices from the tent behind me; and suddenly the entrance curtain was thrust aside, and squinting out of the tail of my eye, I saw the Emperor himself come out, and with him the huge square bulk of Khan Vladimir.
Basil stood in his usual position, his hands on his hips and his feet planted well apart, with the air of a man who has come out for a breath of fresh air before he lies down to sleep. And the light of the watch-fire made a russet glow on his round face and magnificent ram’s-horn moustache, as he stood rocking a little on his heels and gazing up at the stars.
‘This is a good night,’ he said, ‘a good night after a great day! God delivered the rebels into our hands, striking down their leader in the moment of his impious advance against us. The prisoners who were questioned said that he was dead when he hit the ground.’
After a winter spent in and around Constantinople, I had picked up quite a bit of ‘Soldiers’ Greek’ and could understand most of what they said.
Vladimir nodded. ‘Aye; but that was the second time. I’m thinking he must have come down on his head and broken something when yon quail startled his horse.’
‘And can you not see the hand of God in that? You do not yet think truly as a Christian, my friend. Why should the Almighty trouble to send a thunderbolt out of a clear sky, when a quail sitting tight on her eggs until the last moment will serve His purpose just as well?’ The Emperor was always a practical man as well as a devout one.
‘A quail sitting tight on her eggs. And six thousand Northmen also,’ said Khan Vladimir.
The Emperor gave a short sharp bellow of laughter, and brought his hand up to grip on the Khan’s shoulder, and his gaze down from the stars to look round at the camp fires and the men sleeping or on guard about him. ‘Nay, I do not forget your six thousand barbarians! That is why they furnish my guard tonight. A Barbarian Guard.’ (But of course he used the Greek form – Varangian. A Varangian Guard. It is a name that has won some fame for itself in the years since then.)
He was silent a while, gazing out over the camp, thoughtfully twiddling the ends of his moustache in the way that he had, then turned to look up at our savage old Northern Bear standing beside him. He said abruptly, ‘Brother, I am minded to have a Varangian Guard indeed! When the time comes that you fly north with the wild geese, will you leave me, say, a thousand of your young men, to carry their swords in my service?’
‘My young men are free, as the wild geese are free.’ I could catch the flash of the Khan’s strong yellow teeth in the firelight. ‘They would not be the first of the Viking breed to sell their swords for gold and a little glory. If you want them, ask; but ask of themselves, not me.’
‘So, I will surely ask. And I will ask of themselves.’ His hand still on Vladimir’s shoulder, the Emperor turned back into the smoky torch-lit tent, and the entrance curtain fell across behind him.
And almost in the same moment, the trumpets sounded for the second watch of the night, and the whole camp stirred into quiet movement, as one watch took over from the other. All round our fire, men were scrambling to their feet, stretching and making sure that sword sat loose in sheath, stirring with a friendly toe a comrade who had not roused at the trumpet call. There were many who slept like the dead that night, for the fighting had been hot while it lasted; and I have noticed often that after battle, men sleep like the dead, or do not sleep at all.
Orm was suddenly before me, grinning. ‘Wake up, Cub, you’re asleep on your feet.’
I was not; but I lurched on my stiffened legs when I tried to move, suddenly so weary that everything seemed unreal. ‘Drunk again,’ said Orm, cheerfully. I stumbled over to where Thormod, whose turn would not come till the third watch, still lay. He had scarcely woken for the trumpets; but I mind that as I pitched down beside him, he muttered something and turned a little towards me, pillowing his head on his arm.
Lying like that, he no longer had the look of his father. The light of the fire was warm on his face, and the little sea wind ruffled his hair like tawny feathers. And he slept now as a living man sleeps. And obscurely, I was comforted, and could not remember quite what my fear had been about.
14 The Varangian Guard
BARDAS SCHLERUS, HE that had been Commander of Asia, was out of his rock-hewn prison within a few days of Bardas Phocas’s defeat, and collecting troops from the Eastern frontiers, to make his own bid for the Imperial Diadem. So we spent the rest of that spring and summer, while the hills turned tawny as a hound’s coat, and the watercourses dried up, hunting him up and down Anatolia, sweating our guts out to bring him to battle before he was strong enough to stand a chance against us. No, hunting is the wrong word, unless men can hunt a marshlight . . .
And then at summer’s end, he sent to the Emperor, asking for terms. The reason was simple enough: he had taken some sickness of the eyes while he was in prison, and was going blind. Assuredly, God was on the side of th
e Emperor.
Basil was generous. He could be generous in his young days. Sometimes he can, even now. There were no executions; troops who returned to their old loyalties were pardoned and received back, even the leaders. At the time, most men thought that crazy. But the Emperor knew what he was about; for some of his best officers were among them. And to Bardas Schlerus, besides a pardon, he gave one of the smaller of the royal estates in Bithynia to live on, and his old title of Commander of Asia back again – empty, to be sure, like a cup after the wine has been poured away.
He received his old enemy’s submission at a banquet in the house that he had just given him. One of the Guard, who was there, told me that he should never forget seeing the old man brought in, stooping a little, but not humbled, his hand on the shoulder of the officer who acted as his guide; and how the Emperor sat in a golden chair of state at the head of the hall, to watch him come, and laughed, and said, ‘To think this is the fellow I feared might grab my throne! Now he has to be led to my feet!’
Well, as I say, he had been generous. I suppose even an Emperor’s generosity has its limits.
So the summer’s campaigning was over. It had not been at all what I had expected when we ran the keels down the Kiev ship-strand and headed south to carry our swords in the Emperor’s service; and I’m thinking I was not alone in that. By early autumn we were back in camp below the great walls of Miklagard; and the Viking War Host was paying off and disbanding and scattering to the four winds of the seas. Some of us were following Khan Vladimir north again. There would be just time to make Kiev and the lands round about, before the ice closed in. Some were pushing on into the Mediterranean for a winter of trading with maybe a flourish of piracy thrown in, before heading for the Baltic again in the spring.
And a thousand of us were biding where we were, to carry our swords in the Emperor’s service still; for Basil had meant what he said to Khan Vladimir that night outside Abydos, concerning his new Varangian Guard.