“I wish I could believe that.”
Chapter Four
Viking spiders are the deadliest of all . . .
Sidroc Guntersson was sick to his Norse gills of Byzantium.
He lay back relaxing his battle-weary muscles in the warm waters of the bathing pool, in his private chambers at the Blue Palace. They had more palaces than fleas here in Miklagard. Occasionally he used his big toe to turn a lever that allowed more hot water to enter. You had to admire the skills of the ancient Romans who first held Byzantium.
A slave girl had gone off to get him fresh drying linens. Finn was in an adjoining chamber having his nude body massaged with oil by an equally nude houri; knowing him, he was probably having her pluck his stray man-hairs, as well. And Sidroc’s mistress, Ianthe Petros, would soon arrive to take care of his other needs.
Thinking on those needs, he smiled and reached a hand down to his half-limp cock, giving it a quick squeeze, like a promise of attentions to come. His favorite appendage became immediately alert. That was not surprising. What was surprising was the size of the thickenings he got ever since that bloody head drilling. Not that he was complaining, nor were the women who shared his bed furs.
One might think that, with all these pleasures, he would be content. Not so! Life was good at the moment, true, but Sidroc knew too well that it would not last.
After five long years serving in Emperor John Tzimisces’s Varangian Guard, much of it under the direction of the wily General Sclerus, he had enough of greedy rulers, berserk commanders, and often unwarranted killings on a scale so massive and bloody it made even a Viking cringe. He would fight to the death to save himself, those close to him, women or children in peril, and rulers with just causes to fight. But that was it. No more!
He had just returned from yet another of the endless Byzantine battles, mostly against the Moslems, including the defeated powerful border emir Saif ad-Dawlah. If he never saw sand, camels, or tents again, he would be a happy man. Of course that had been only slightly better than his posting in the freeze-your-arse Balkans before that. Thank the gods, the Bulgarians finally surrendered, but then only after losing thirty thousand men in a five-year war.
Suffice it to say, he had well earned the vast treasure he’d amassed for his service as a commander in the Varangian Guard. Finally he would be able to purchase an estate, possibly in the Orkneys, where many Vikings had settled, only a day’s longship ride from the Norselands. The best part was that the weather never got brutally cold, and it was far enough away from his father and brothers, though the other side of the world would be even better. On the other hand, he was a Viking, born and bred. The ice of the North was in his veins. ’Twas a hard decision to make when choosing a home. If it were not for his father . . .
The only question was how to broach the termination of his service to the emperor in a diplomatic way, one that would result in the release of his annual pay and not land him in prison, or dead. The Byzantines hated to lose their mercenaries—actually, any of their soldiers—because they feared that the secret of Greek Fire, which they’d invented, would leave the country. Sidroc and Finn had made sure never to associate themselves with the incendiary substance that ignited almost magically and could be used ruthlessly against enemies. It was once used against an invading force of ten thousand Russians, and they were all killed. Yes, the less they knew the better, he and Finn had always contended.
Another reason for diplomacy in resigning was that the emperor could be peevish and spontaneously vicious on occasion, without warning or excuse. Like the manner in which he and others before him castrated all royal illegitimate sons and sent the illegitimate daughters to convents for life. Betimes they plucked out an eye, just for good measure. At least the emperor left them living. Unlike Sidroc’s father.
He still raged betimes over his father’s cruelty and the loss of his baby daughter. The old man had married twice more since he’d seen him last and had five more children, only one of them to his wives, or so he had heard. He wondered how many of those he’d permitted to live, considering his lack of regard for Signe.
He smarted, as well, over the ill-treatment he’d suffered at Drifa’s hand. Every time he got an aching head, he was reminded of her blow. He wouldn’t have the bitch now if she were served up to him on a silver trencher, bare-arsed naked with an apple in her devious mouth.
He had to be thankful that Finn—and six seamen—had held him down on his longship when they left Stoneheim five years before, to prevent him from returning to Vikstead and cutting out his father’s cold heart. As rewarding as that deed might have been to him emotionally, it would surely have resulted in his own death by his brothers and the Vikstead warriors, or at the very least being outlawed from his homeland by King Harald Bluetooth.
Despite his bad experience with Princess Drifa, he would seek a wife, but not right away. He could bring his mistress, Ianthe, with him, but he doubted she would be happy in colder climes, away from her Greek culture. There was a change of seasons here in Byzantium, even snow in the winter, but summers, like today, were very hot and humid. Winters in the Norselands were not for the faint of heart. Nay, he would settle a sum of coins on her, for which she would no doubt show her thanks in the way she knew best. He smiled at the erotic mind picture that prompted.
Someday he hoped to make his father—and Drifa—pay, pathetic and immature as that might be. He alternated the subject of his periodic tirades between Drifa and his father. Every time he had to suffer sand in every body orifice when on desert patrols, he muttered, “Someday, princess (Father), you will pay.” Or when he was wet and shivering cold in Bulgaria, he muttered, “Someday, princess (Father), you will pay.” Or when he had to maneuver his way amongst the bloodthirsty politics of the imperial family (they were wont to murder each other whenever an opportunity arose), he muttered, “Someday, princess (Father), you will pay.” Or when he walked a tightrope of diplomacy between the court contenders-to-power and the military leaders out in the field, he muttered, “Someday, princess (Father), you will pay.” Or when he was forced to don the ridiculously opulent uniform of the Varangian Guard for palace duty, he muttered, “Someday, princess (Father), you will pay.” Or when the empress and her royal ladies sent him off on an errand to do this or that to appease their lusty appetites, he muttered, “Someday, princess (Father), you will pay.” Or when he thought of his little daughter, long dead now, he muttered, “Someday, princess (Father), you will pay.”
“Master,” the slave girl carrying a stack of drying cloths said as she approached on silent, shoeless feet across the mosaic tiled, marble floor. “Would you like me to dry you now?”
Sidroc glanced up at the girl whose barely developed body was visible through her thin bathing shift. She bowed her head and stood still under his perusal. ’Twas obvious she would be willing if he was so inclined. He was not.
“Leave the linens and tell my mistress, Ianthe, to enter when she arrives.”
With a sigh of relief, the girl scooted away. He should be offended, but he just laughed.
Just then Finn walked in, his nude body shiny with enough oil to boil a boar. He eyed the maid’s backside as she departed.
“She is too young for you,” Sidroc said as he stood and began drying his long hair.
“Dost think so?” Finn sank down onto a bench and braced one foot on the other knee, examining his toenails, which looked fine to Sidroc.
“Aren’t you going to wipe off all that oil?”
Finn looked surprised. “Nay. The whole point is to keep the skin soft.”
A Viking with soft skin? “You’ll slip off your horse.”
“ ’Tis not a horse I intend to ride forthwith.”
“Really, with all that oil, you’ll blister liked a greased pig in the sun here.”
“Speaking of that . . .” Finn stood and showed him his backside. “Lita pointed out to me that—”
“Lita?”
“The houri who just massaged me.”
He waved a hand dismissively. “She pointed out that I am not sun-bronzed all over.” He pointed to his white arse. “She suggests I lie in the sun naked for a while to even out my bronzing, front and back.”
“Finn, you are a lackwit.”
His friend grinned.
Betimes Sidroc could not tell when Finn was jesting or not. “We are becoming too soft, Finn.”
To his surprise Finn nodded and began to wipe some of the oil from his body. “When we were in the Norselands, ’twas not uncommon to bathe in an icy fjord.”
“Recall that one winter when we had to break the ice afore jumping in,” Sidroc added. ’Twas odd the things one missed when far from home. When he was back in a smoky, drafty longhouse, he would no doubt miss the beauty and warm sun of Byzantium.
“I’m going to ask the emperor to release me from my duties,” Sidroc informed his friend while he was dragging on a pair of braies . . . not those ludicrous big-legged braies the Varangians wore whilst at court.
“If you leave, so do I.”
It was a subject they’d discussed numerous times before. Sidroc still kept a longship here in Miklagard with a minimal crew of seamen. Leaving would be no problem. Leaving with permission and an extra pouchful of gold was another matter entirely.
“You will ne’er guess who is coming to court,” Finn said of a sudden.
“Someone is always coming to court,” Sidroc said.
“Yea, but this someone is different.”
Noting Finn’s expression of impending doom, Sidroc braced himself, just arching a brow in question.
“Princess Drifa of Stoneheim is coming to the Imperial Court.”
Sidroc’s eyes went wide. “Here? To Miklagard?”
Finn nodded, gleeful with his news. “She has come to study flowers, of all things.”
Sidroc cared not why Drifa was coming here. At last, at long last, he was to be given his opportunity. In a bit of fanciful musing, he imagined himself the spider and her the unwary bug about to be drawn into his web.
With a wicked grin, he closed his eyes again and murmured, “Princess Drifa, you are about to pay.”
Fancy meeting you here, dearling . . .
The longships drew closer to the wharves lining the deepwater harbor. In fact, the city was built on an elevation surrounded on three sides by water— the Golden Horn to the north, the Bosphorus to the east, and the Sea of Marmosa on the south, all of which provided natural defenses against enemies.
A retinue of well-dressed Greek men could be seen approaching down the stone steps from the parapets in the sea wall of one of the many palaces. Their welcoming party, she assumed. Her father would have sent word ahead ensuring she would be treated according to her rank during her sojourn.
Once they emerged onto land, she, flanked by her four-hersir escort, was greeted with solemn ritual by a short, balding man wearing the most opulent jade silk robe she’d even seen on a man. It was edged and belted with gold. He wore rings on several fingers, one of them having a ruby the size of a pigeon egg. “I am Senator David Phocas, here on behalf of Emperor John Tzimisces, and this”—he motioned to the tall, ascetic-looking man in regal church robes at his side—“is our most revered Patriarch Antony of the Hagia Sophia cathedral, the papal legate in Byzantium. We welcome Your Highness, Princess Drifa of Stoneheim. May your stay in our imperial city be one of peace and joy.”
Luckily Drifa had prepared well for her journey and had studied the Greek language this past year with an elderly Greek slave her father had purchased for just that purpose. Mina had been supposed to travel with her to Byzantium but had become ill a month past and was still recovering.
Drifa bowed her head to the senator. “It is my pleasure to finally enter your wonderful country.” To the high priest, Drifa, according to prearranged ritual, bowed from the waist with her right hand touching the ground. When she rose up, she placed her right hand over the left, palms up, and said, “Bless, Your Grace.”
The patriarch raised the fingers of one hand in the shape of a Christogram. Holding that hand toward her, he pronounced, “May the Lord God of all people bless you.”
She assumed that “of all people” was meant to let her know that even Vikings were blessed by the One-God. Drifa nodded and then pointed to each of the men beside her in turn. “Accompanying me are Lord Wulfgar of Wessex in the Saxon lands, Thork Tykirsson, son of the high chieftain Tykir Ericsson of Dragonstead in the Norselands, Laird James Campbell from the land of the Scots, and Alrek, a noted warrior who serves my father good and well.” She also turned to show the four warriors standing rigidly at attention behind her. “My guardsmen.”
She hoped she gave her welcoming party pause: she did not come unprotected to an alien land. “We thank you for your warm greeting,” she added. “I bring gifts for your emperor from my father, King Thorvald.”
“An audience will be arranged for you,” Senator Phocas told her, “though the court is very busy at the moment preparing for the emperor’s wedding. We have assigned chambers for you in the Garden of Sun Palace.”
This was news to her. That she would be housed in a sun palace was wonderful, of course, but she’d been unaware of a pending royal wedding. The former warlord had become a widower many years before and had chosen the unmarried state thereafter, unusual for a monarch whose duty was to provide heirs, none of which he had yet. She had always thought there must be a story there.
“Come, my lady, we have provided for you a special escort to take you to your rooms. There is a curfew in the city, and the palace gates close from late afternoon to dawn. Just a precaution to keep the peace,” the senator said. Then he beamed as he announced, “Your guards will be your own countrymen, by the by. Varangian guardsmen.”
If the emperor’s representative and the church leader were dressed with opulence, the Varangians’ attire could only be described as splendid, a far cry from the garments back home, even when they were made of fine materials. They wore tunics of soft red wool, long sleeved and so tight along the forearm that they must be sewn on. That tightness caused the excess fabric to billow out above the elbows. Rich embroidery decorated the neckline, hem, and wrists of the garments in panels showing intertwining leaves of gold and silver thread. The men, all exceedingly tall, mostly with blond hair, wore braies of brilliant yellow and blue and pearly white that resembled loose pantaloons down to the knees, where they met highly polished black leather boots. Chalmys, long purple cloaks denoting the imperial guard status, were fastened on the right shoulder with brooches bearing the military insignia of the emperor, leaving the right arm free for weapons.
“Good gods!” Thork murmured from her one side.
“Like peacocks, they are,” Jamie murmured from her other side. “I’d like a pair of those breeches in blue.”
“It must take them hours to get clothed in the morn,” Alrek added.
“They are too pretty, by half,” Wulf concluded.
Luckily, all their remarks were low enough not to be overheard, but she suspected that the smirks on her hersirs’ faces told all.
The senator motioned for the Varangians to step forward. Anticipating her pleasure at meeting some of her countrymen in this foreign land, he smiled and stepped aside, giving her a first close-up view of the colorfully dressed men in the emperor’s elite attire.
But she did not smile.
Standing at attention, dead center of the seven Varangians, was a chestnut-haired man spearing her with luminous gray-green eyes, not unlike the much-loved girling, Runa, back at Stoneheim. It was none other than Sidroc Guntersson.
He, too, was not smiling.
Chapter Five
In the still of the night . . .
As they were led, Varangians to the front of them, Varangians to the back of them, through one street after another, then one palace corridor after another, Drifa’s head swung right and left, like a copper weather vane of a rooster she’d seen one time atop a cotter’s barn.
The senator and high pri
est had departed for the Imperial Palace, where some feast or other was being held, leaving her in the care of the emperor’s guard. Apparently she was not invited, not that Drifa would have wanted to attend in her travel-worn garments.
A huge Nubian chamberlain with rings of keys hanging from his belt—a eunuch by the looks of his smooth-faced, almost feminine features—was leading them to their assigned rooms in one of the smaller palaces. It appeared as if many of the lesser palaces were connected to the central palace by opened-sided passageways, like spokes on a wheel. Everywhere there were fragrant gardens and tinkling fountains. Drifa couldn’t wait to examine them.
“I feel as if I’ve entered Asgard, a paradise beyond description,” Alrek whispered at her side.
“The only thing missing is a few dozen—” Jamie started to say.
“Valkyries,” the rest of her group finished for him.
They all laughed, even some of the Varangians. Not Sidroc, though, she noticed, turning to peer at him over her shoulder. Mayhap he took his guardsman duties seriously, never daring to waver from watchfulness, and that was the reason for his sour demeanor. Probably not, though, because when she glanced to his side, his friend Finn winked at her.
Turning forward once again, her face flamed. She would need to talk to Sidroc soon, and how he would take news of Runa’s—nay, Signe’s—presence at Stoneheim boded ill for Drifa. Her greatest fear was not his fury over her striking him down, but that he would take Runa away from her. But she would not let that prospect dampen her spirits on this great adventure of hers.
Drifa’s mind and all her senses boggled at the passing scenery. As dusk rose over the city like a gossamer cloak, colors swirled and changed on the marble, glass, and mosaic tiles. All the splendor was highlighted by the gold dome of the magnificent Hagia Sophia cathedral in the distance.