The Golden Horn Read online

  They went south for many days, between timbered banks that became increasingly verdant as they fared farther, and through marshlands whose skies were clamorous with birds. At Kiev they halted to join the fleet assembling there. This was a still larger and wealthier town than Novgorod, showing more of Constantinople in its buildings, and Harald was well entertained; but his head was too full of Miklagardh the Golden for him to be much impressed.

  When they set forth again, the river was nigh . decked with ships, loud with creaking oars and men's voices, bright from sun blinking on metal. At night, when the travelers camped ashore, their fires twinkled along the banks as far as Harald could see.

  Slowly, the forest thinned out until the river lazed through rippling hugenesses of grassland. It grew warmer by the day, sweat gleamed on sunburned faces and helmets were dipped overboard for a drink.

  When they had come yet farther, the land climbed and the water rang aloud, green and swift under steep bluffs. At the rapids they must unload, carry the cargoes around, tow the empty ships or, at the wildest reaches, get them overland on rollers.

  Reloaded, they went on south, day by day, camping ashore at night, until Harald thought the voyage would have no end. Yet at last they came out on the Black Sea. It was, in truth, of a deep blue, the foam dazzling white upon waves that chuckled against hulls. Sunlight poured from an enormous bowl of sky, to spatter off the waters in knife-sharp shards.

  Currents here were dangerous. The ships must hug the western shore and crawl forward on oars. The high coast to starboard became only so many miles to pass, while Harald sat and chewed on his soured eagerness.

  But the days ran out, and they neared the Bosporus, and their goal opened before them.

  Green hills, jeweled with towns and villas, rolled from the surfless strand. A war fleet kept the narrows: long dromonds, with rams on the sheer prows and shields hung along the gunwales, twin lateen-rigged masts and double banks of oars; these ships of the line were attended by smaller but swifter chelands. Upon their decks Harald saw tubes for spouting the dreaded Greek fire. He went aboard the flagship with the trading captains to get a pass from the commander.

  The Byzantines were short and stocky, dark-skinned, big-nosed, curly-haired; more blood of Anatolia than of Hellas flowed through this empire which called itself Roman. Their officials were clad in robes and gold-buttoned copes. Two classes of soldiers were on hand. The archers wore knee-length tunics, light scale-mail shirts, and hobnailed boots. The scutati had longer and thicker coats of mail that ended in breeches, skirts also to the knee, helmets, greaves and brassards. Every man wore his hair cut short, and those who were not clean-shaven trimmed their beards closely. Harald had to admire the way their officers could blend courtesy and arrogance.

  After much paperwork, the Russians got leave to proceed under escort. The water grew dark and littered, stinking from earth's mightiest harbor, but Harald hardly noticed. Miklagardh, Constantinople, New Rome lay before him! To larboard the city walls rose like fjord cliffs, overtopped by a multiplicity of towers and domes that blazed with gold. A mist hung over the city, smoke and dust; the grumble and growl of wheels, hoofs, feet sounded far over the strait. To starboard, beyond the ships lured here from half the world, Galata and its suburbs covered the land. Ahead was the Golden Horn.

  There the traders tied up at great stone piers, among Grecian galleys, Saracen dhows, and vessels stranger yet. The crews debarked in a rush, chattering of pleasures they would soon seek. "Are we leaving none to guard?" asked Harald.

  "The harbor watch does that for us, highness, better than we could," answered the skipper of his craft. Harald frowned, somewhat daunted by such a token of the Emperor's might.

  City guards conducted them to the suburb of St. Mamo, where Russian merchants had quarters by treaty. Harald and his closest followers were guested at the villa of one such. It stood in a walled garden that bloomed with a sunburst of flowers. The king's son wandered about admiring the airy lightness of it, the intricate decoration, the sensuousness of silk and velvet rarely seen in the North. For the first time, he looked through windows of glass. He barked his Greek at the household slaves and wondered if they laughed at him behind his back; already he was discovering a smoothness of manner here that was like trying to grasp water, a subtlety on which anger could find no hold. The Norsemen drank deep and talked loudly among themselves to hide a certain feeling of lostness.

  * * *

  Harald might have been left to cool his heels for weeks if he had been a lesser person; but the Byzantine had news from many corners, knew well enough who he was and what his errand. The summons to an audience came already on the second day.

  The horses here were larger than in the North, but he had still not been provided with a big enough one and felt laughable on it. His first ride was not one to forget. The guardsmen who led him and his men wished to impress their visitors, and took him over the bridge at Blachernae and in that gate, so that he entered the city from the north and went through most of it to reach the Imperial palace. Through a maelstrom of crowds, avenues, soaring churches, prideful houses, workaday buildings finer than a king's hall at home, the leaping sparkle of fountains and the white ancient loveliness of statues, he held stiffly to the knowledge that he was also royal and a warrior.

  Across from the mighty walls of the Hippodrome rose the outer gates of the palace. Here, for the first time, Harald saw the Varangians he had come to join, big fair men, his own sort, in mail and livery of the South but with good honest double-edged axes to hand; they stood unmoving, but their eyes followed him as he dismounted.

  Hall and courtyard, sculptured columns, mosaics glowing from marble walls, corridors, gardens, fountains, roofs and domes of many separate buildings went past as his striding feet spurned the paths and the rare Persian carpets. At the end of it all, curtains of crimson silk were drawn aside, and there was music which thundered in his bones—organ music—as he entered with a courtier on either elbow. Across the vaulted hall, he spied robed officials and armored guards, deathly still, and at the middle of them a golden throne like the seat of God. There were golden trees with leaves and birds that were jeweled, two golden lions that rose up and roared—and inside his wall of gold-stiffened robes, under his roof of crown, was a handsome young man with sharp swarthy features, flesh and bone nearly lost in all that splendor. This was Michael IV, Emperor of the Romans.

  He did not move or speak as Harald made the obeisance he had been taught, nor as slaves brought in Harald's gifts of ermine, sable, and other slaves. Not a word was spoken when Harald prostrated himself again and backed out.

  "There, now!" said his guide when they were safely away. He was a plump jolly fellow with white hair fringing an egglike head. "Now you've seen the Emperor, despotes."

  "But I wanted to speak with him!" said Harald resentfully.

  "There is a rule in these matters, despotes. You will find that all our lives here are governed by law and custom going back many centuries. . . ." The courtier paused, rubbing a smooth double chin. He looked almost womanish in the embroidered cope and dalmatic; it was only later that Harald found he was a clever, hardworking man and that the paper which went through his bejeweled hands held the lives of many thousands of peasant families. "Nor can you expect His Sacred Majesty to consider every detail of the world's greatest empire, the more so when he has borne the crown so short a time, only since Easter this year."

  "No," said Harald thoughtfully, "I suppose not. : . . He must be lonely."

  There was a banquet that evening, with golden tableware, actors, dancers, a choir to sing the praises of the Emperor as he sat high above the rest. Harald felt clumsy, unsure what to do with himself, prickling with the idea that a hundred eyes were watching him through secret laughter. He hardly tasted the delicate foods, he sat lumpishly silent while conversation buzzed around him.

  But the next day he went to the Brazen House, the immense building in which the Varangians were barracked, and at once felt
himself home. These long-legged boys swarmed around him, shouting in the dear rough tongue of his mother, breathlessly asking the news and listening wide-eyed. Their mirth was enormous when they were off duty. He felt a sureness rising in his breast.

  "We'll have wars again erelong," said one. "The Saracens are getting above themselves in Syria, raiding the Greek ships and coasts. It's time we hammered some manners back into them. Come be our chief!"

  "That must needs be later," laughed Harald. "You have your own officers." But he had no intention of going under any other man.

  "I think it'll begin this summer with another sea voyage to hound out the corsairs," he was told. "You brought men with you, a force of your own, they'll be useful; and some of us can get leave to come along."

  Harald nodded. It would do for now to be a sea king, if that led to the captaincy of the Varangians.

  He spoke with the Byzantine officials in charge and made the arrangements; on the advice of his new friends, he gave lavish gifts and the business went smoothly. When he had taken the oath of service to the Emperor, he sprang happily into the work of readying his fleet.

  III

  Of Kings in Miklagardh

  1

  Varangian was the Byzantine word for all Northern barbarians: Russian, Northman, Englander, German, Fleming—the young folk spilling down from pine and birch forest, gray seas and whistling winters, south to the sun. In recent generations, many of them had been taken as mercenaries. They were in the Imperial bodyguards, the city police, the fleets and armies which stood like a wall between eastern Christendom and the Saracen fury. At this time most of them were from the viking countries.

  There were two men of Iceland in the Varangian Guard, both a little older than Harald, bold warriors and good leaders. One was Halldor Snorrason and the other Ulf Uspaksson. They, with others, got leave to accompany him on his ships, and were soon his close friends. Halldor was a tall fair-skinned man with drooping yellow mustache under a handsome hollow-cheeked face; it was odd that so much strength should lie in his gaunt frame. He was mostly of a calm and thoughtful temper. Of him there is less to be said than of Ulf, who was short for a Northman but very broad and powerful, with black hair, green eyes and looks somewhat marred by pockmarks. He was merry and open-handed, though sometimes he would fall into gloom and always he spoke with a rasp.

  Long had the Saracens been harrying the Greeks at sea from their bases in Africa and Sicily. In this year Lycia and the Aegean islands suffered cruelly from their raids. It was against these that Harald sailed. He was in charge of several dromonds and chelands manned by his own folk with a scattering of Greeks; the whole fleet, adding up to some twenty craft, was under a Thracian whom Harald grudgingly admitted was an able sailor.

  They went down the Sea of Marmora and out the Dardanelles, to find themselves in water which sparkled a lighter and happier blue than the Black Sea. Islands dotted it, rising steep and rocky to a little green and a few huts on top; humble fishing and trading boats cruised by, to be hailed and asked if they knew aught of the enemy's whereabouts. It was a stain of smoke on a cloudless sky which told that.

  The fleet rowed into a harbor in the Cyclades where a town was burning. It was not a large town, a huddle of cottages near the shore, nets still staked on the beach and boats drawn up. Harald rowed in with some others to make inquiry.

  He saw a woman sitting on a charred beam. The house behind her was a sour, stinking ash heap, blackened walls gaping to a careless heaven. She was fat and middle-aged, dressed in worn clothes, and she held a man's head in her lap. The man was dead with a spear thrust between his ribs, and the blood had clotted on the woman's skirts.

  Harald loomed over her, the sunlight savage off his mail. She looked up, blindly, her eyes red but dry as if she had wept out all her tears long ago. "Who are you?" he asked.

  "I am no one," she said. "No one at all."

  "Was that your husband?"

  She shifted the gray head on her knees. "They killed the priest," she said in a thin frightened voice. "How shall he get Christian burial?"

  "I want to know which way they sailed," said Harald patiently.

  Something like hope flickered in the dimmed eyes. "If you can catch them ... my son is aboard," she whispered. "They took him for a slave. They'll geld him and ... He was a good boy, he was a good boy, wasn't he, Georgios?" She stroked the dead man's cheek.

  "They didn't take the baby," she said after a moment. "They dashed his brains out against a wall. Then the house fell down and he is under the ashes. My baby is cooked like a pig. ... I heard the flesh sizzle on his small bones, I swear I did." She shook her disordered head, vaguely. "North. Their ships were black."

  Harald laid a gold coin in her lap. She didn't seem to see it, and he wondered what she could buy with it anyhow. But ... as he turned away, she began singing her husband to sleep.

  "Northward, eh?" The Byzantine captain frowned. "I think I know the way they are headed, then. Perhaps we can overtake them. They haven't much of a start, but we'd best move fast."

  "You have some evil foes," said Harald.

  "These were not men of the Saracen host who did this. They must be stateless pirates, using the war for their own good. The infidels fight honorably, if only because we may be the victors, but corsairs have nothing to await save impalement."

  With a clash of armor and rattle of anchors, the galleys got under weigh. It was a hot, windless day, tar bubbled between the deck planks and the creak of oars was loud and weary. Impatient, Harald went below to see if more speed could be gotten out of the rowers.

  They were free men, rather well paid for their brawn, but this was not a Northern vessel, open to the clean sea winds. Here was a narrow foulness lit only through the ports by shifting streaks of sunlight that gleamed off sweat runneling down nearly naked bodies. The beat of the coxswain's drum would soon have maddened him. Almost as loud as the drum and the creak of shafts in tholes was the sound of harsh breathing. He returned topside, for it was plain to see that nothing indeed could be done to hasten the ship . . . and that was a refined torture by itself.

  But in the late afternoon, the Imperialists did raise the corsairs, whose smaller and doubtless foul-bottomed craft had less speed, though they looked rakish enough. A roar went up among the Varangians. Harald climbed the mast and peered ahead, sensing a thrill run through his body. These would be the first Moslems he had seen, other than slaves or traders in Constantinople. Their force was somewhat less than that of the pursuit.

  The chelands darted forward like unslipped hounds. Harald heard faintly a clamor of trumpets as the pirates readied for battle, saw their galleys go into formation and spit stones from engines mounted on the decks. Then fire sprang from the chelands, the blue Greek fire which burned on water, pumped from nozzles by men sworn to keep the secret of its making. A gout of flame ran up the rigging of one enemy craft, smoke lifted thick, then red and yellow burst free. As Harald's dromond wallowed up, he saw men run screaming, ablaze. Most leaped overboard in search of a better death.

  "Damnation," Harald grumbled, "will we get no fight at all?"

  "Oh, we will that," Halldor told him. "Only wait and see."

  Fire took out just three vessels; otherwise it missed, or hit but was quenched. Meanwhile the Greeks closed, and it became a strife of ship against ship. The Thracian shouted orders. His steersmen sent the dromond against a chosen galley. That one veered to avoid the ram, but the beak sheared through oars and Saracen rowers shrieked as shafts recoiled on them and broke bones. The Byzantines had drawn their own oars in on that side. Hulls grated together, grapnels bit fast, the linked craft became a battlefield.

  Harald had already marshaled his Northerners. Now he led them in boarding the enemy. Dark, turbaned faces glared at him from behind shields, spears, uplifted blades. The king's son attacked a man in the line who was almost black of skin. The westering sun flared off eyeballs, teeth, curved swords that whistled about and downward:

  He caught t
hat blow on his shield. It had taken him weary, often bruising hours of practice with wooden weapons, to master the Southern war gear. A shield here was metal-rimmed, meant to deflect rather than catch a hostile edge; it was held by loops through which the forearm passed. A fighter moved it only slightly, yet it was in its own way a tool of attack, letting him strike past top and sides while he pressed close or withdrew to gain room for a swing.

  Steel dinned. Harald hewed with care, seeking an opening. His was the greater reach, weight, strength, but strugglers were still crowded together; he almost had to elbow men aside to get at his chosen prey. Then suddenly he saw his chance. His straight blade whirred, struck the wrist behind the scimitar, made blood spout. The pirate wailed and stumbled backward. Harald followed.

  Defensive line breached, the fray spilled widely across the deck. Harald finished off his first opponent. Hardly could he turn to see what was happening elsewhere, but three more were upon him. Metal banged on his helmet, rattled along his byrnie. He sought a corner where he could make a stand, but the three kept him surrounded as wolves might harry an elk.

  All at once, the corsair circling to get at him from behind uttered a yell. Harald struck aside the blade of a comrade and turned on his heel. Ulf Uspaksson was there, an ax awhirl in his hands. The Saracen lay dying at his feet. The Icelander whooped and smashed in the helmet of another. Harald killed the third.

  "Thanks!" gasped the king's son. "Best we stay together."

  Ulf nodded. "Bare is brotherless back," he said, a word old in the North.

  They sought their fellows. Harald bellowed orders to get into formation, fight like soldiers and not like tavern brawlers. The Varangians heeded, although, perhaps, they would have done this anyway. Most of them knew as much about war as their chief did. The pirates fought desperately, calling on their God; a few Norsemen forgot themselves and shouted the names of Odhinn and Thor.