Raven (39 page)

‘King Menestheus was one of Helen of Troy’s suitors,’ Nikephoros said, ‘though she married the Spartan King Menelaus. Things turned bad when a Trojan prince called Paris, who was visiting King Menelaus, stole Helen. He carried her off back to Troy.’ He smiled then. ‘I suspect she had fallen in love with this Paris,’ he said, ‘but that would have been harder for the Spartan king to swallow.’

‘All this talk of marriage and love is sending me to sleep,’ Bjarni moaned at me as though it were my fault. ‘You can leave those bits out, Raven.’

‘You’ll get what you’re given and be thankful for it, Bjarni,’ I gnarred as Nikephoros continued with the story.

‘Either way the Greeks wanted her back and King Menelaus gathered the mightiest army the world has ever known.’

The tale was a long one and got better as it went, ending with some low cunning by the Greeks involving a wooden horse and plenty of killing and plunder, which is the way all good stories should be.

At the end of it Nikephoros looked exhausted and Egfrith whispered that he suspected the imperial tongue was not used to flapping quite so much, because in Miklagard Nikephoros had others to do his talking for him.

No one had enjoyed the story of the Trojan War more than Sigurd, who seemed to like the idea that a warrior king had moored on this same shore all those years ago.

‘I will go to Miklagard myself and see with my own eyes what we face in helping Nikephoros back on to his throne,’ he said, looking north. Some ayes and nods at this, but more rumbles and moans, perhaps because they did not want their jarl putting himself at risk, or perhaps because they were jealous that he would see the Great City before them. ‘The emperor will stay here.’ He grinned at Nikephoros, who gave a slight nod, thumb and forefinger worrying at his crow-black beard. ‘How can he pay us if he’s caught or dead?’ Sigurd said, which stirred murmurs of approval. ‘General
Bardanes and the warrior Theo will show me what I need to see.’

‘You can’t go off with them alone!’ Svein the Red gnarred. He spat dryly. ‘I don’t trust either of those two. Slippery as two snakes in a bucket of snot they are.’

‘Black Floki and Raven will come too,’ Sigurd said, which did nothing to wipe the frown off the giant’s face, because Svein had not heard his own name mentioned.

‘I speak some Greek,’ Egfrith said with a shrug, easing those words between us all like a twist of resin-soaked hair between two ship strakes.

Sigurd stared at him for a heartbeat, then nodded. ‘The monk comes too,’ he said, piling more misery on to Svein.

As for me, my skin was prickling at the thought of being one of the first to see the golden city. The hairs on the back of my neck were still bristling at dusk two days later when
Wave-Steed
sneaked back into our cove with her captured prey – a fishing boat – trailing at the end of a rope lashed to her stern post.

The fisherman was silver-haired, brown as old shoe leather and spindly and shrunken with age. His boat had been repaired many times and looked less than seaworthy, which was all to the good, said Sigurd, for no one would pay such a boat approaching Miklagard any notice. As it turned out its owner was a better fisherman than I, for the bilge of his skiff was choked with a great mound of shifting silver. Maddened by their own silver-lust, gulls wheeled and tumbled above, the bravest of them diving now and then but veering off at the last moment.

We would have taken the Greek’s fish anyway, but we did not need to, for when Bardanes told him he was in the presence of his emperor he fell to his knees and began to tremble so that I thought his old bones would crumble with the force of it. As all he had was his boat and his fish he offered all his fish to Nikephoros, which was at least wiser than giving away his old
boat. Bardanes questioned him and was none too friendly about it either, so far as we could tell from the bits Egfrith translated and some scraps that Bardanes himself threw our way. In a stuttering voice as rough as oak bark the man said he was a simple but loyal subject who knew nothing of imperial affairs. He claimed he did not even know that Basileus Nikephoros had been usurped, which looking at him I thought was likely to be true.

‘This man is a free man?’ Bjarni asked, scratching the bristles on his upper cheek.

‘He’s free,’ Olaf said, ‘but I know what you mean. Even the most worthless of my thralls back home doesn’t show me the respect this shrivelled old hole shows his lord.’

Bjarni shook his head. ‘He’s terrified, Uncle,’ he said. ‘He’s wearing the same face I’d put on if Thór appeared before me bollock naked with Mjöllnir over his shoulder still dripping giant’s blood.’ We all thought that was well said by Bjarni and it made us look at Nikephoros again. Here was a man as powerful as King Karolus. Or at least he would be if some upstart hadn’t stolen his throne from under his imperial arse. Now it was our job to get him back on that throne and one of the first things that had to happen to do that was for the fisherman to take us to the Great City.

IT WAS FURTHER THAN I HAD THOUGHT, ESPECIALLY IN A LEAKY
, old, fish-stinking skiff with five other men to upset the balance every time one of them moved to scratch his arse or undo a cramp. Bardanes had not come with us as it turned out. Nikephoros would not risk his general being recognized in the city and this was probably wise because if the emperor’s enemies captured Bardanes they would know that Nikephoros was not far away. So Theo was to be our guide and that itched more than a little. It is hard work trying to be well-mannered towards a man who has killed your friend, though I suppose that the fight being fair should have made it a touch easier. And so we five, simply dressed and armed only with knives, along with the fisherman were crammed into that boat like salted cod in a barrel, hoping the wood would not split and spill us out to sink to the bottom like wyrd-cursed nithings. But the fisherman, whose name no one cared to use or remember, was as good a sailor as he was a fish killer and he handled the small sail deftly, hopping in and out of our tangle of legs and arms to get the most out of the wind, for with us aboard his boat was heavier than it should have been.

Through the milky fog of breaking dawn we saw one of
those terror-stirring Greek dromons tacking down the eastern coast, making great sawtooth turns against the wind. But we had no reason to fear it in that worthless skiff. There was more chance, Black Floki said through a twist of lips, of some sea-creature thinking we were an insect fallen on to the sea and swallowing us, than of our being burnt.

‘Like Jonah and the whale,’ Egfrith chirped, though no one knew what he was talking about and we didn’t ask either.

Through the dawn mist we began to see many other craft coming and going, yet none took any interest in us, and it was not until daylight broke, a pale gold wash flooding out of the east, that we saw it.

‘By the gods,’ Sigurd breathed.

‘Merciful Father,’ Egfrith murmured, making the sign of the cross.

Black Floki’s eyes looked as if they would burst, as if they were simply too small to hold such a sight. I felt my mouth gaping, warm air on my tongue, and Theo half smiled, clearly pleased with our reaction.

Miklagard! The Golden City revealed itself, like a treasure hoard through the smoke of a burning hall: the great domes of Christ churches and palaces pushing head and shoulders above the vast swath of tightly packed white dwellings and all tumbling off seven hills in a glittering array. It was a sight that sucked your breath out of your belly, casting it windward to leave you gasping like a fish.

‘Don’t tip us out now, Greek!’ Black Floki growled to the old silver-hair whose yellow teeth worried his bottom lip as he worked the sail ropes, threading us between two larger trading vessels that were passing in opposite directions. Some men peered over one of those ships’ rails and laughed at us – five men and a monk packed into a skiff that boasted barely a hand’s breadth of freeboard, so that one good wave would swamp us and be the end of it. Sigurd snarled at the indignity of it and hurled a curse back at Rolf on Elaea for not finding a
better boat to take his jarl to the Great City. Then, unbelievably, one of the jeering men lobbed a chicken’s leg bone at us, which hit Egfrith. The monk grabbed the fleshy bone and held it up like a rune stick.

‘
Utinam barbari spatium proprium tuum invadant!
’ he called.

‘Don’t waste your prayers on those goat-fuckers,’ I said, eyeballing the Greeks as we cleared their stern.

‘Prayers?’ Egfrith said. ‘I told them may barbarians invade their personal space!’ And this made us laugh as we drew into the great harbour which was noisy with shrieking gulls, creaking boats and men calling from ship to ship. What was even funnier was that we had thought to raid Miklagard with less than fifty men and I said so, at which Sigurd shook his head bewildered, glaring up at the enormous dawn-stained harbour walls.

‘You could not do it with five hundred men,’ he said and that was true enough.

The closer we came the larger Miklagard grew. It seemed to swell, rising into the sky before our eyes, so that I suddenly knew how an insect must feel when it looks up at a king’s hall. You cannot imagine such a wonder, all glitter and gleam and whitewashed brilliance blazing beneath the pink-blushed morning light. All rolling off its seven hills on that fat thumb peninsula thrust into the sea. Tendrils of smoke from countless hearthfires coiled and wove together, drifting upwards to swell the huge filthy brown pall hanging over the heights.

We were amongst smaller craft now that we were so close to the cliff-face that was the harbour wall rising up from the sea. Tenders ferried crews out to larger vessels and skiffs carried food and other goods from place to place along the waterfront and everywhere was chaos. Men were calling to us from the quayside and from several boats, fighting to get our attention with waving arms and smiles, so that I grudgingly accepted that we were lucky to have Theo with us, for a few Greek
words from him was enough to deflect their offers of help and trade on to others. On we went, slowly now because there was not much wind in the lee of that huge wall and what there was seemed to swirl in all directions, so that after a while old Silver Hair muttered angrily, wriggled between us and thrust his oars into the water. But his spindly arms were about as useful as throwing a drowning man both ends of a rope, said Sigurd, and so I took the oars off the old man and rowed us the rest of the way, which was harder than pulling an oar on
Serpent
.

Several times I had to use an oar to push other craft away, for as we drew nearer to one of the many thronging mooring places, the boats became thicker than flies on dung.

‘We could walk to the shore from here without getting our boots wet,’ Black Floki suggested only half in jest. But someone was bound to take offence at us tramping across their boat to get ashore and even Floki had to admit that a fight would probably not help our chances of entering the city unnoticed. Theo pointed to a narrow gap at the wharf between two larger fishing boats and I aimed for it, though before I had pulled three strokes a rope slapped the inside of the hull, thrown by a boy on the dock. Theo pulled us in and we clambered ashore but not until the Greek had threatened the fisherman with some or other horrible death if he told anyone about having seen the Basileus alive.

‘He could have just paid the poor man,’ Egfrith said unhappily. ‘We took his day’s catch after all, and made him come all this way.’

Sigurd slapped the monk’s back, making Egfrith wince, then said: ‘And he’d have taken the coin to the nearest tavern, drunk like a jarl at Yuletide and told anyone who would listen that he now supplied fish to the emperor himself.’ Which was all true of course. Though Theo did flick a small coin at the boy who had thrown us the rope and that didn’t really seem fair on old Silver Hair.

The wall was the height of ten men, a huge curtain of red
stone which we followed east, half gazing up at its heights and half watching the chaos out in the harbour. Armed men in red cloaks collected harbour taxes from ship captains. Boys ran up and down, shrieking and making deals and offering themselves as guides to new arrivals. Barrels, chests, huge clay storage jars and boxes were piled everywhere along the wharf’s edge and the air was thick with the yells of buyers and sellers and captains and crewmen. Every few steps brought a different food smell to my nose: meat, onions, garlic, spices, and we were not even inside the city yet. But there was also the foul stink of shit and slops and refuse of all kinds, which wafted up from the thickly scummed water.

Then we came to a seething throng of folk before one of the massive gates in the red wall, all eager to gain entry to Miklagard. Spear tips glinted in the morning sunlight, so that we knew there were soldiers manning the gate, checking who was entering the city. I looked down at my hands, noting how brown my skin was now after sailing the southern sea road. Yet we would still not pass for Greeks, not least because Sigurd’s hair was as gold as Cynethryth’s and most of the Greeks I had seen had black hair. Then there were our scars and our bulk, for the Greeks were certainly smaller than us on the whole. I was thinking all this when Black Floki stopped us by clasping Sigurd’s shoulder, so that the jarl turned to him, the crowds flowing round us like a stream round a boulder.