Raven (42 page)

‘Somewhere quiet,’ Egfrith wheezed, putting a hand to his face to see if he was bleeding. He was, but only from a scratch where someone had made a grab for him in the snarl. I ached all over after that bone-rattling, but nothing inside me was broken so far as I could tell.

I shook my head. ‘No, monk. Crowds. We want crowds,’ I said, knowing that losing ourselves amongst Miklagard’s hordes would be the best thing we could do. Egfrith thought about this for a moment then agreed with a curt nod and so we loped off east, the sun at our backs, heading for the Mese, which Egfrith had said was Greek for middle and which was, at twenty-five paces wide, the main thoroughfare of the Great City.

The street was not swarming as it had been earlier in the day, but there were still enough folk on it for us to become inconspicuous, the thinnest grey thread amongst a great colourful weave of merchants, pilgrims, traders and Greeks. We did not walk in the middle, instead sticking to the darker, shaded, column-lined porticoes that ran along both sides of the street and which housed permanent stalls selling every type of goods imaginable.

‘There can be no other city like Constantinople on God’s earth,’ Egfrith said as much to himself as to me as we stood for a few moments catching our breath and glancing around for signs of danger. It seemed we were safe enough for now and I said as much as we went on, following the road past the Hippodrome – the sword-blade shaped arena used for horse races – and two palaces either one of which any Asgard-dweller would be proud to own. After about six hundred paces we came to the Forum of Constantine that was to me as impressive in its way as the grandest buildings we had already seen. An ocean of smooth stone with huge monumental gates to the east and
west, it was dominated by a gleaming red column that must have been taller than any of Thór’s enemies in Jötunheim and upon whose top stood a naked spear-armed warrior of bronze. Islands of men and women stood here and there talking and laughing. Christ priests traded words, beggars rattled dishes at passers-by and all clung to the cool shadows of countless other statues and monuments, like clusters of mussels in tide pools.

This is where the jarls would hold great tings
,
where warriors would talk of raiding and ships and plunder to be had
, I thought to myself,
if Norsemen lived in Miklagard
.

Here was yet another of the Great City’s wonders: a statue of a hulking beast with massive ears and a long snaking nose. One monstrous foot was raised, as though the beast was about to stamp down and crush its enemy, and I asked Egfrith what story ever mentioned such a creature.

‘The Greeks used to invent monsters to make their tales more exciting,’ he said, shaking his head disapprovingly. But I smiled because at last I had found something we shared with the Greeks, though even then there were no people better than the Norse at weaving colour into a story to make it the brighter.

We decided to go south, agreeing that the harbour was where we would find the others if they had not been caught or worse. And find them we eventually did, Sigurd and Black Floki sitting on the edge of the bustling quayside each gripping a wooden cup as they looked out across the glittering, ship-strewn harbour. A saggy wineskin sat between them and they looked as if they had not a trouble in the world.

‘I can see you are worrying yourselves sick about us,’ I said, at which they both twisted their necks, grins splitting their beards. ‘But we are safe, so do not concern yourselves about it.’ I raised a hand to allay their absent fears.

‘We were just saying what a black thing it was for you to meet your life-thread’s end in a White Christ house like that,’ Sigurd said, shaking his head. They both wore felt hats with wide brims of the sort that many in the Great City wore and
the jarl seemed rather taken with his, though I thought they looked ridiculous. ‘It is no lie that Black Floki was just about to sail to Asgard,’ he said, pointing at a tiny skiff bobbing at its mooring, ‘to burn the Norns’ loom for their being such cruel bitches. But here you are!’

‘You’ve saved me some hard rowing,’ Black Floki said through the twist of a smile.

‘Anything for you, brother,’ I said with a smirk and bow. ‘The truth of it is I might have been dead if not for Egfrith,’ I added, as surprised to hear it as I was to say it. ‘He can be fearsome with two foot of Greek wood.’ The Norsemen looked at the monk dubiously from under their hat rims. Egfrith wafted the praise away.

‘I took no pleasure in Raven’s ungodly deceit,’ he said, making the sign of the cross, ‘or in my own base actions. Violence is the last course only taken when there is no other way.’ He touched the sore-looking cut on his cheek. ‘I delivered some poor man quite a blow,’ he said, shaking his head, though I felt sure there was the smallest sliver of pride in him all the same, like a splinter from a short length of cedar.

‘Quite a blow? I’ll wager he choked on his own teeth,’ I said, unable to tame my grin. ‘I think I saw his ears fly off and slap some woman across the face.’

‘That’s enough, Raven,’ Egfrith snapped, raising a finger at me and turning back to Sigurd. ‘What of Staurakios?’ he asked. ‘And where is Theo?’

‘Sit down, monk, and you, Raven,’ Sigurd said, ‘before you give away our disguises.’ We sat watching the boats coming and going as Sigurd told us how it had gone for them in the Hagia Sophia. When Egfrith had screamed that the statue – which he told me was of Mary, the White Christ’s mother – was weeping blood, the kneelers and groaners had rushed from every corner of the place to see the miracle for themselves. In the tumult the soldiers guarding Staurakios had panicked and, grabbing their charge, tried to force their way out through the crowds.

‘I think some of the Christ folk thought they were trying to stop them seeing the weeping stone woman,’ Sigurd said, ‘and they got angry as wasps about that.’ He shrugged and grinned. ‘In that chaos the Red-Cloaks did not see us coming at them.’

‘I near enough had to step over one of them,’ I said, glancing at Floki, ‘and I recognized the knife in his throat.’

‘That was a good knife,’ he said wistfully.

‘So you got him?’ I said, meaning Staurakios.

Floki nodded. ‘We got him.’

‘But we feared the Greeks would first come here to the harbour looking for him,’ Sigurd added. ‘They do not know our faces but they know Staurakios. For now Theo is hiding him deep inside the city where they will never find him.’

It turned out that Staurakios had played his part too, dropping two Red-Cloaks with a ferocity, if not skill, that had impressed Sigurd.

‘But what I am itching to know, Raven,’ Sigurd said, wincing as he removed the felt hat and scratched his head, ‘is how you came up with it.’

I was watching two skippers yelling at each other furiously, arguing over who had been first to the quayside and so had the right to the berth from which another vessel had just slipped her moorings. One of the traders had had its bows half in the berth when the other had nosed in, so that now the ships were clunking together with the harbour’s calm sway whilst their crews hurled insults across a foot of sea.

‘I had been thinking of Freyja,’ I said honestly, then shrugged. ‘The goddess put the scheme in my head.’

‘Not Loki?’ Black Floki asked, surprised. I shook my head. ‘Then you have more luck with goddesses than you do with mortal women.’ I suspected he was alluding to Cynethryth. With a grimace I admitted that was true and said that if not for that worm Ealdred Cynethryth and I might have been married and breeding pigs on some small farm in Wessex by now. But the Norsemen laughed at that, Egfrith too as it happened,
though why they thought that idea was so funny I could not say.

We stayed long enough to see which crew won the mooring and it turned out that neither of them did, because some plume-helmed harbour master, all gold, mouth and strut, came at the prow of some runt of a Greek dromon and threatened both captains and sent them on their way, leaving the berth free for some trade cog full of wine jars. Which was just as well given that we needed a boat to take us back to Elaea. The skipper of this boat had barely tied up before he was casting off again, his purse heavy with Sigurd’s silver and us in his bows sampling the wares.

‘Which god put this scheme in
your
head, lord?’ I asked, pouring more wine into Sigurd’s cup. I was enjoying this journey a thousand times more than I had the one in that cramped fish-gut-stinking skiff. Sigurd banged his cup against mine, sloshing wine into the bilge.

‘Ah, this one was all my own,’ he said, his face towards the westering sun that was turning the sea to burnished bronze.

BACK ON ELAEA AND IN REACH OF HIS SEA CHEST SIGURD BOUGHT
every last drop of wine the Greek had and almost all his water too, which was the sensible thing to do for two reasons I could think of. Firstly because the men were able to slake their thirst and they had fostered a strong liking for wine, and secondly because, having sold all of his stock for a good price, the merchant would head off south again next morning to resupply, meaning he would not return to Miklagard with news of a heathen war band camped out on Elaea. Of course, there was a chance he would pass another crew and tell them about us and they could take that rumour to the Great City, but Sigurd had told the wine merchant through Egfrith to stop at Elaea on his way back for there was every chance we would be thirsty again by then. And men set on becoming rich rarely tell others where to find good customers. Besides which, we had far bigger problems than that, as Sigurd was now telling everyone by the flickering glow of the dying meal-fire.

The men’s faces had changed over the course of the telling and were now as grim as cliffs and dark-browed. They had been waiting on the sand and shingle when we had returned, hurling questions at us against the wind even before we had
cleared the breakers, more thirsty for news than for the cargo we brought. They had wanted to know if the buildings in Miklagard were really made of gold and how many rich Christ houses there were ripe for plundering. They slathered to hear what the women looked like and how much silver it would cost them for a roll with a pretty whore. Even Svein had got over his sulking at being left behind, the scowl I had seen as we came ashore slowly melting, until he was grinning like Grendel chewing a leg bone as Black Floki came to the fighting part.

The story grew taller as the wine jars grew lighter, so that now there had been twenty Red-Cloaks and the raised platform I had fallen from was as tall as an oak. Father Egfrith had even killed two men in our escape, which had a few of them slitting eyes and scratching chins, but clearly impressed others, and we let them lap it all up, revisiting the Great City’s marvels through the men’s changing faces, as the sun slid into the western sea. They particularly enjoyed the telling of my trick with the statue of the Christ mother and her tears of blood, shaking their heads and growling about how that was as low-cunning a ruse as they had ever heard of.

Sitting amongst his own men, his patience worn thin as a hen’s lip, Bardanes had demanded that we get to the part about Staurakios, but Sigurd had refused to humour him, saying that he who rushes a good story makes himself almost as unpopular as he who demands the ending before the end. So the Greek had glowered at the jarl from then on, his eyes murderous as an eagle’s and the muscle beneath his black beard pulsing restlessly. But when, after deliberately dragging it out, it seemed to me, Sigurd finally announced that Staurakios was safely stashed and Theo with him, Bardanes and Nikephoros had nodded soberly and the emperor had taken himself apart and knelt to give thanks to his god.

‘Bastard ought to be thanking Sigurd,’ Penda growled at me and I could not disagree with that.

Now, though, Sigurd was finished with the skald-weave of it
and deep into the cold hard truth, which sobered men up like a walk through snow. There was no way, he said, that we could get ourselves and mail, shields and blades into the city. Even if we got past the dromons guarding the port, into the harbour and on to the quayside without the Greek soldiers knowing about it, the city walls would stop us. Perhaps we could fight our way through the gates but by then every soldier in the city would have come and according to Bardanes there were many thousands of them. They could close the gates and trap us inside the city and we would die. If by some miracle we got inside the city and fought our way to the palace, the dromons would return to the harbour, burn our ships and spew more men for us to fight.

‘Miklagard is rich beyond anything you have ever dreamt,’ Sigurd said, at which wolf grins glinted by flamelight. ‘But it could not have become the city it is if its people did not feel safe enough to make themselves rich instead of pissing their breeks about who might be coming to kill and steal. It is my thinking that not even King Karolus and all his Franks could sack Miklagard.’ Lips sheathed teeth once more and I heard some grunts and gripes.

‘So you have told us how it cannot be done,’ Beiner the Dane rumbled, ‘now tell us how it can be done.’ This got a chorus of ayes from men who had been with Sigurd long enough to know that he would be sitting on a plan as a hen sits on its egg.