Raven (43 page)

Only this time there was no plan. And Sigurd said as much, telling Beiner that he needed more time to come up with one. This sank like poor Tufi with that Christ cross snagged in his belt, though it made me think that nothing was as heavy as a jarl torc, which Sigurd knew better than anyone. Men give their oath to a jarl and in return he must give them fame and silver, neither of which they can enjoy if they are dead.

‘What about you, Hrafn Refr?’ Beiner said, turning to me. Hrafn Refr – Raven Fox, the fox part because my reputation for low cunning was growing amongst the Fellowship. But
like the rest of them I had been expecting Sigurd to pull some scheme from that silly hat he was still wearing.

‘This Arsaber lives in the Bucoleon Palace,’ I said, ‘which is so close to the water it might as well have oars poking from the windholes. We can swoop in like eagles and make our kill.’ Yet even as I said it I knew it could not be done like that after all, though until that point I had thought it could.

Sigurd shook his head. ‘I have seen it over and over in here,’ he said, tapping two fingers against his head, ‘and every time we fail.’ Beneath the hat’s rim the jarl was dark-browed and sullen. ‘I thought as you did, Raven, when we stood on that hill looking down on to the palace and the harbour beyond. But that, I think, is the thing about the Great City. Everything seems possible when you are there.’

‘The gods have always favoured us for our boldness,’ Svein the Red said. ‘This is no time to become old women.’ This got some rumbles of agreement, but they were muted ones because the whole Fellowship knew that if Sigurd said something could not be done the chances were it could not.

‘You are wise, Jarl Sigurd, not to risk a direct assault on the Bucoleon,’ Nikephoros said, gesturing at one of his men to feed the fire. ‘Its walls rise from the water more than six times the height of a man. With a hundred men the traitor Arsaber could defend those walls until Judgement Day.’ The fire flared, staining Nikephoros and his dark-eyed Greeks red. ‘There is a small harbour,’ he said, ‘but there will be three, maybe four imperial dromons moored there. Your dragon ships will not get close.’

‘If Arsaber sees us coming it is over,’ Bardanes said, staring into the flames. ‘We are like the snake that has only enough venom for one kill. If we strike and miss Arsaber’ – a sneer slithered across his face – ‘they will crush us.’

Penda dug an elbow into my ribs, making me spill wine across my breeks. I called him a rancid goat turd and followed his gaze to where it rested on Sigurd. It was dark and men’s
faces were all shifting shadow and flame, but I saw what Penda had seen, which was the lightest twitch of a smile tugging at the jarl’s lip, like a minnow on the hook in the dark depths.

‘Nikephoros,’ Sigurd said, which clearly annoyed Bardanes who thought that the emperor should be addressed with his titles, of which, as far as I could tell, there were dozens. ‘Tell me again about the war between the Trojans and the Greeks.’ He removed his hat and his eyes glinted in the red half-light, though he kept that minnow-twitch smile below the surface. ‘Don’t waste your breath with the women and the fighting and the half-god warrior Achilles.’ Some grumbles at that because the men had come to like Achilles. He had reminded us of Beowulf. ‘Tell me again about the trick the Greeks played on the Trojans when it seemed they had lost the war.’ Sigurd stroked his beard, his eyes becoming slits. ‘I want to hear more about that wooden horse.’

Nikephoros thought about this for a long heartbeat and then nodded, and it seemed to me that he enjoyed playing the role of skald for all that he was a piss-poor storyteller. So he began and most of us filled our cups again whilst others built up the fire and the sea lapped at the edges of Elaea. And, as the night drew on and men began to snore and fart themselves to sleep, Sigurd’s minnow grew into a codfish.

We came at night, a full crew pulling
Serpent
’s oars with more men standing in the thwarts and at bow and stern. Our painted shields were slotted in the rails for effect and Jörmungand, our snarling prow beast, was mounted. The moon was almost full, itself a great burnished shield suspended against the immense black warp of the night sky. Moon-silvered clouds were the weft, weaving themselves in and out of the darkness as they moved westward on a warm breeze that brought the exotic scents of Miklagard to our noses.

From a distance it had seemed that the stars in the north were tumbling down to earth, but as we drew nearer to the
great harbour we could see those flickering lights for what they were, pinpricks of night flame leaking from the thousands of dwellings, palaces and Christ churches spilling off the hills.

If Basileus Nikephoros was afraid he showed no sign of it, which was impressive given the risk he was taking in going along with Sigurd’s plan. If I’d been him I would have been bladder-clenched and trembling like a drunk the morning after with each oar stroke that brought us nearer to Miklagard. Instead, Nikephoros was grim-faced and straight-backed, his short beard trimmed and glistening and his eyes hard as rivet heads.

‘Here she comes, lads,’ Olaf yawped from the mast step, his face moon-washed white as a corpse. ‘Keep it nice and steady now.’

A dark shadow loomed off our port bow, the creak of timbers and the wash of its wake whispering out there in the night.

‘I’ll wager the whoresons are stoking up that liquid fire ready to light us up like a king’s pyre,’ Gap-toothed Ingolf called from three benches back.

‘Shut your hole and row, Ingolf,’ Olaf barked, ‘or you’ll spend the rest of the night looking for my boot up your arse-cave!’

Ingolf had only said what we were all thinking, which was why we were all twisting our necks every few strokes, watching the moon-dappled Greek dromon for the first flame that would tell us we were about to be roasted like pigs at a Yule feast. Nevertheless, we rowed and those of us doing the work were the lucky ones because the other men had nothing to take their minds off the grim thoughts of burning. Soon, though, we were into the sheltered water of the harbour, amongst the hundreds of other ships anchored and tethered and bobbing in that sleeping sea and manned by skeleton crews while the rest were ashore. If the Greeks were going to burn us they would have done it before now, for here they would risk us slewing into any number of other craft and setting fire to the whole damn lot.

So far so good
, I thought, watching Cynethryth who stood at the bow as still as the stone woman from the Hagia Sophia, one hand snarled in the silver fur of Sköll’s neck. The beast was tense and quiet, its tail pointing sword-straight behind it, which a wolf will do when it is hunting, and I shuddered at that because it seemed that Cynethryth and the beast could somehow understand each other.

‘Not long now, lads,’ Olaf growled.

My bowels melted. I felt naked as a bairn and almost as helpless. We were wearing tunics and breeks and that was it, not a blade, spear or brynja between us, so that you would have thought we were giving a new boat her first sea trial in a peaceful summer fjord. We were unarmed and all but defenceless, but that was what we had to be for Sigurd’s scheme to have a chance of working.

I pulled my oar and breathed the strange spice smells of Miklagard, wondering if our gods were watching – wondering if they could even see so far, for surely we were as far from the fjords of the north as a Norseman could go. But then, the Norns had woven our wyrds and so they must know Miklagard well enough. And if the Spinners knew it then so must the other Aesir, which meant that the gods must be watching and if they were they would admire our daring to go amongst our enemies as defenceless and thin-skinned as old men. It was that thought which I rolled around my skull to try to keep my mind off the sting in my bladder.

‘Now I know how Týr felt,’ Beiner said, leaning on the sheer strake watching the Greek ship which we could see better now because of the flaming braziers lining the quayside. It was well said by Beiner, for Týr had put his arm in Fenrir Wolf’s mouth and that’s what we were doing, except we were putting our heads right in there too and having a good look around. Týr’s bravery had lost him his hand.

‘This place makes Paris look like a dung heap,’ Penda muttered beside me. We had passed the main ship-strewn harbour now,
the sound of men carousing in the harbour-front taverns fading off our port side as we approached the western edge of the Bucoleon Palace. Behind the great walls the city rose into the black sky, its domes and palaces night-shrouded and only half glimpsed by the winking lights of countless small flames.

‘Paris
is
a dung heap,’ I said. ‘If we’re still alive come sunrise I’ll show you some sights that will make your eyes sweat.’

‘Hold your tongues, you blathering women!’ Olaf growled.

The oars dipped and pulled in even strokes and I tried to lose myself in the rhythmic soft-plunge sound of it. Somewhere off our steerboard side a seabird took off shrieking into the night, its wings slapping noisily, and I wondered how Nikephoros’s Long Shields were faring out there in the dark. For they were rowing
Wave-Steed
to Miklagard’s south-western harbour. They would convince the harbour master there that they were from one of the imperial dromons patrolling the Marmara Sea and that they were bringing in a captured ship. That had been Bardanes’s idea and I had to admit it seemed like a good one, for we would need those men soon enough.

Sigurd, Bardanes and Nikephoros stood at the mast step talking in low voices and Bardanes was unhappy by the looks. The general was shaking his head and pleading with Nikephoros, when Sigurd stepped up and backhanded the emperor across the face, sending him staggering. Wide-eyed, his balance recovered, Nikephoros put a hand to his mouth and examined the blood on it. Bardanes was glaring at Sigurd, his hands balled into white fists by his side. Then Sigurd took another step and smashed his own fist into the emperor’s right eye and this time Nikephoros fell to his knees, clutching his face, and Bardanes spat rage at Sigurd as he bent to help his lord and master. But Nikephoros pushed his general away and climbed to his feet and his blood-smeared lips were clenched in a tight smile. He nodded at Sigurd and the jarl nodded back and we pulled our oars, hoping that the weaves of our lives stretched beyond this warm, gut-twisting night.

‘Back oars!’ Olaf called and I twisted my neck to see that we were fast approaching the Bucoleon’s small berth and would have to slip in between two tall-sided dromons. In that glance I had also seen warriors lining the quayside, their shields, helms and spear blades glinting in the brazier light.

‘Looks like a good turn-out,’ I muttered.

‘Fifty or five hundred we’re screwed either way,’ Halfdan said as we churned the water, killing
Serpent
’s momentum. We pulled our oars in for fear of them hitting the Greek ships, then Olaf and Sigurd threw our bow mooring ropes to the men on the quayside, who tied us up before any words were spoken.

‘Stow oars then back to your benches,’ Olaf barked and men repeated the order throughout the tightly packed ship. We took longer than usual putting our staves up in the oar trees because we were busy getting an eyeful of the soldiers and the Bucoleon and the lie of the land, but when we had done it those of us who could sat on our sea chests facing the palace. The Greek spearmen lining the wharf were silent, as were the archers who suddenly appeared along the sides of the dromons, their bows drawn and their arrow points aimed down at us.
That is not good
, I thought to myself with a shudder.

‘Jarl Sigurd! Welcome to Constantinople!’ The Greek shield line – you couldn’t call it a shieldwall, not with two foot of space between each soldier – parted so that a gaudy cockerel of a man could make the scene he’d so obviously played out in his thoughts before now. He was sheathed in fish-scale armour and his helmet sported a great plume the same purple as his cloak which was fastened with a gold, jewel-encrusted brooch. At his right shoulder stood another man dressed in the same armour except that his plume and cloak were red. His face was all sharp angles in the firelight and bore a warrior’s scars.

Sigurd stepped on to the bow fighting platform and greeted the cock, who, in snot-slick English, introduced himself as Patrikios Arsaber. ‘I hope you have honoured our agreement
and come unarmed,’ Arsaber said, directing some of his torch-bearing men forward to hold their flames over our bow as their eyes scoured us for weapons.

‘Get those flames away from my ship,’ Sigurd growled, but Arsaber ignored him until his men nodded at him that we were bladeless.

‘I thought only the Roman emperors could wear purple,’ Sigurd baited the man, for the moment ignoring Nikephoros who stood bound and shoulder-slumped behind him.

By the light of the hissing brazier flames Arsaber’s smile was thin as air. ‘I am emperor, Sigurd, in all but name. We shall make it official soon enough.’

Sigurd nodded and gestured at Olaf, who shoved Nikephoros forward on to the platform. ‘Here is the emperor,’ Sigurd announced, which brought a twist to Arsaber’s lips. Then Nikephoros lifted his head proudly, so that Arsaber and his men must have seen the blood-oozing split in his lip that had soaked his dishevelled beard. Perhaps they even saw the purple-black bruise blooming around the man’s right eye, though they kept their own faces stony.

‘You have done well, General Bardanes,’ Arsaber said, at which Bardanes stepped out of the press of Norsemen behind Sigurd.

‘My lord,’ he said simply, bowing his head, then turning it away from Nikephoros’s red-hot withering glower.

‘I will have use for a man with your enterprise, though I will have to keep one eye on you, it seems.’ The big man to Arsaber’s right grinned at that. Then Arsaber glared at Sigurd. ‘Well, heathen? Hand the prisoner over. I am a busy man.’

‘The silver first,’ Sigurd demanded.

Arsaber stepped up to the wharf’s edge, close enough to reach out and touch
Serpent
’s stem post. ‘Look around, Sigurd,’ he said in a voice only just loud enough for the rest of us to hear. ‘Even a barbarian like you can weigh up this situation.’ There was that piss-thin smile again. ‘You are in no position to make
demands of me.’ Sigurd made a show of looking up at the archers in the dromons either side of us.