The Ice Queen (25 page)

He came on as in a dream, slowly—and slowly a Pecheneg archer marked him and drew back the feathered arrow to his jaw. Einar toppled from the saddle, the arrow deep in his side. But as he fell, his foot caught in the stirrup and the terrified horse plunged into our midst, dragging him with it. As he came within reach of my sword, I slashed at the leather and cut him loose.

I knelt down, covering him with my shield, as the roar and rush of battle, suspended for that frozen moment, broke in on me again.

“Tree-Foot!”

“Aye,” he croaked. “Tree-Foot's not—not the man to lie low when a mate's in trouble. Eilif's turned the Swedes around, heading back to Vyshgorod. I seen 'em from the wall. He's left you to die.”

“Then, we'll die together, Jomsviking—take my hand!”

I hauled him to his feet and got his arm around my shoulder. I wasn't far from Harald and shouted to him that we were betrayed. I doubt he heard me, though, for just then a great shout went up from the walls of the city.

Hundreds of paces behind and above us, the great gate swung open and a lone figure on a white horse came flying down the slope that descends from the citadel to the riverbank. For a few breathless moments he was all alone, heading at a dead run straight for the Pecheneg band that blocked our retreat. And something that he held cradled in his arm—I thought at first it was a shield—flashed golden in the rising sun. The white horse, struck in the chest with an arrow, fell to its knees and the rider pitched forward—surely to his death—in a swirl of flashing sabers. But now behind him the Kievans, screaming like berserkers, poured through the gate after him. Seeing this, our courage rose and our strength redoubled. We and the Kievans struggled towards each other, trampling the Pechenegs down between us. The blood lust rose in my chest. I screamed my father's battle cry and swung my ax right and left and felt the crunch of bone under its blade.

As we linked hands, I glimpsed again, above the sea of bodies, that heroic rider; realized, that it was the boy Volodya! He had mounted a Pecheneg pony and still clutched to his chest his golden ‘shield, which was, I saw now, a great gilded icon of Saint George.

Led by Volodya and backed by the Kievans, we made a fighting retreat up the slope. As the last of us passed within, the gate swung shut in the faces of the Pechenegs, who howled with fury and sent flight after flight of arrows against it. I leaned against a wall, my legs trembling, chest heaving. With an edge of my tunic I wiped sweat and Pecheneg blood from my eyes.

The folk of Kiev mobbed us. Men and women, young and old; some fell on their knees before Yaroslav while others stretched out their hands
to touch him, and all of them cried his name, hailing him, as they had once hailed his father, ‘Velikiy Knyaz—Grand Prince'.

Mstislav—naked, filthy, and bloody—was not even recognized.

Young Volodya, wearing a mail shirt several sizes too big for him and dragging a man's sword from his belt, pushed through the crowd toward his father. Like everyone here, he was pinch-faced and haggard, but otherwise unhurt. Looking at him, it was easy to see the lineaments of the warrior he would one day be—the high forehead and piercing gray eyes, the strong jaw, which owed more to Ingigerd than to Yaroslav. The meeting of father and son amidst the wild cheering of the crowd was wonderfully moving. Tears streamed down both their faces as they embraced.

“My eagle, my young falcon,” cried Yaroslav, breathlessly, “what madness seized you? You could have been—he's only a child—who permitted this?” He didn't know whether to be glad that his son was alive or furious with the guards who had obeyed the boy's command to open the gate. “Ah, but God himself held his hand over you, didn't he, and Saint George shielded your breast!”

That much was certainly true; the heavy oaken board was shaggy with arrows.

“We found your messages,” answered his son. “I did the only thing I could think of. I knew that our people would fight like madmen to rescue both me and the icon. Father, I return your city of Kiev to you, undefiled by even one pagan foot.”

The crowd went mad, seeing in this brave and serious boy the image of his grandfather.

But I could not give myself completely to joy. A victory that cost the life of Einar Tree-Foot seemed almost too dearly bought for me. He was still breathing as I laid him down beside the gate and wondered if I dared cut out the arrow head, which was so deep. But he reached around with his left hand and wrenched the barbed shaft straight out. “You feed your hirdmen well, Jarl,” he cackled aloud, “see how much fat clings to the tip.”

Where were his wits wandering? Was he young again on some battlefield of long ago? One of those vanished warriors who made grim, laconic jokes at the moment of their death?

“Einar, it's me, Odd.”

“Odd? Young Odd—?” Letting the arrow slip from his fingers, he
gripped my shoulder and drew himself up till his face was close to mine. “Einar Tree-Foot's done what he longed to do—die with steel in him. Won't the Valkyries carry me to Valhalla now?” It was his one fear, that he would die a peaceful death and be nothing but a squeaking ghost in Hel's gloomy hall.

“But Tree-Foot,” I said, “these bastards have made us into Christmen, and now they say we can't go to Christ's mansion and Odin's mead-hall both.”

“Eh? Rubbish! Didn't that scrawny priest tell how Christ was pierced in his side with a spear?

“He did.”

“Well, by the Raven, then he's earned his right to sup at Odin's table too! Ha, ha …”

The laugh became a rattle in his throat; a shudder ran along his limbs; his grip on me loosened. So died my friend. An Age, I do believe, died with him.

“Tangle-Hair!” came Harald's voice from the parapet. “My fine fiery poet! Get you up here at once and stand beside me as a skald should. Hah! What a day! What a victory! What glorious poetry you'll make of it!”

With a bitter taste in my mouth, I left Einar for a while to go up on the wall. There I found Harald, Yaroslav and his son, and Mstislav, looking more dead than alive.

The fat khan, his back in shreds from the dragging he'd suffered, was slumped like a flour sack over the edge of the parapet. His groans were like music to us. A slave-woman of the town who had lived with the Pechenegs and knew their language was fetched to act as interpreter. Harald spoke in Norse to me, I translated his words into Slavonic for her, and she, in turn, shouted them in Pecheneg to the khan's warriors, who were gathered in their hundreds at the foot of the wall. In this cumbersome fashion Harald harangued the enemy.

He demanded first that the lesser khans come forward to parlay with him. When they appeared, he told them he would return their master in exchange for all the prisoners they held. At this Yaroslav looked up in surprise. Harald, in typical fashion, had not thought it worth his while to confer with his own prince before parlaying with the enemy.

Below, after a brief conference, the khans agreed to his terms, and pretty soon the surviving captives from Chernigov, Smolensk, and Pereyaslavl
were shepherded up the slope, those who could walk carrying those who couldn't. The gate opened to admit them but the Kievans watched them enter in stony silence. How could they be fed in a city already starving?

When he saw that the survivors were safely inside, Harald spoke again through the interpreter, saying that we would give them back their khan only in exchange for a hundred of their nobles, to be handed over at once.

The Pechenegs spat on the ground and glowered at us but eventually the hundred ‘nobles' appeared marching up the slope. They lay down their weapons as they entered the gate. Our druzhiniks had all they could do to keep the townsfolk from tearing them to pieces.

(In my opinion they were not really nobles at all, but rather the poorest of the Pechenegs dressed up in fine clothes and costly armor, and ordered to sacrifice themselves for their betters. How would we know the difference?)

Then Harald laughed at the khans and mocked them: “You fools! It's true what all the world says, that the Pechenegs are the stupidest of men! Did you imagine that Grand Prince Yaroslav of Kiev would ever consent to give back the murderer of his grandfather? Now, watch and you will see how we deal with him. Kraki, the loan of your axe.”

Kraki, one of his bodyguards, handed him the weapon.

I had never before seen done what Harald did then, although my father had described it to me once, on one of our wild nighttime rambles: the ancient ritual slaughter of the ‘blood eagle'.

Tyrakh screamed just once as Harald, standing behind him, brought the axe head whistling down and split his spine lengthwise. Wrenching the axe out he struck twice again until the body was opened all down the back from the base of the neck to the tail bone. We were all spattered with his blood.

Then, tossing the axe aside, he put his hands into the crevice, grasped the ribs, and, with a cracking of bone, wrenched the two halves wide apart. Into the cavity he thrust his arms and pulled out the lungs, which he spread across the dead man's shoulders so as to resemble the wings of a bird. Gouts of blood dripped from his fingers.

Volodya turned away and was sick, while Yaroslav and many another looked pale around the gills. But in Mstislav's dull eye there flickered a gleam of satisfaction.

Taking up the axe again, Harald lopped off the Khan's head and tossed it casually to me, telling me to keep it safe for he had a use for it.

“And now,” cried Harald, “let us see if this headless bird can fly to its roost.” And lifting the mangled carcass up by its legs, he tipped it over the edge. It hit the ground with a sound like wet slops tossed from a window. The Pechenegs drew back and gazed in horror at the bloody mess. Harald had given these cruel men a lesson in savagery that surpassed anything they knew. They were more than beaten; they were shaken down to the soles of their feet.

“This,” he shouted at them, “is how Northmen deal with the Pechenegs and always will!” And he spat at them.

Throughout the Pecheneg camp now arose a shrill keening, growing louder as more and more took up the cry. The great khan was dead.

Nothing could be done now until he was wailed over for many days and finally buried with his horses and his women, in a mound by the bank of the Dnieper far to the south. Meanwhile a murderous struggle over the succession would begin at once among the lesser khans, who were all his sons or grandsons by various wives and concubines. Much blood would flow before one of them emerged victorious.

“Grand Prince, look there—” said a Rus warrior to Yaroslav, pointing toward the west. We all looked and saw a dust cloud, which soon grew into a line of horsemen, hundreds of them, racing over the plain. The Pechenegs ran in terror, leaving behind everything but the remains of their khan. And this time it was not the wily feigned retreat for which they were so famous, but the genuine thing.

Within minutes not a live Pecheneg could be seen from the walls of Kiev.

“Our cursed luck!” said Bryacheslav, Prince of Volhynsk, to Pozvizd, Prince of Izyaslavl, as they reined in their sweating mounts. “To have come all this way and missed the fun!”

After the flight of the Pechenegs, Harald, Yaroslav, and I rode back across the littered plain to fetch Eustaxi from Vyshgorod and unite him with his father. We took armed men with us, as we were uncertain what sort of reception to expect from the Swedes.

We ought not to have worried. They mobbed Harald as he rode through the gate, holding onto his stirrup, calling him ‘Jarl' and ‘Boyar', and begging his forgiveness. Helgi Whale-Belly held up Eilif's head on the point of a spear.

“He lied to us, Jarl Harald,” pleaded Helgi. “He came out of the woods, where he'd been hiding, just as we were making ready to attack the camp. He called us fools, for we'd be massacred, he said, while you and your men plundered the khan's tent and made off with all the treasure. Well, we didn't know what to think, for it's plain you've always favored your own men over us. He convinced us to stay back and wait for you to be killed. Pardon us, Harald, we were too hasty. See, we've punished the liar as he deserved. Now let us be your men. One druzhina, one captain!” These last words were taken up as a chant by all the others crowding around.

Harald looked grim; I had an idea what he was thinking. We had only ourselves to blame for this. Allowing the Norwegians to be a guard within the guard had been a mistake from the beginning, it was easy to see that now.

To the Swedes' entreaty Harald replied only, “You'll oblige me by
helping the people of Vyshgorod to bury their dead and repair their houses.”

Thinking this to mean they were forgiven, they rushed to obey.

We proceeded to the church to see Eustaxi. He was feverish and seemed weaker than he had been the day before, but he understood us when we told him of our victory, and he was anxious to see his father. We carried him to Kiev.

It would be hard to say which of the two looked more pitiful. Mstislav lay in bed in the bishop's house while healing-women plastered him from head to toe with moss and mud, and others massaged his shoulders. I was there and saw their faces—father and son, each so full of pain at seeing the other's condition, and neither admitting to being hurt himself. We shooed the women out and left them alone. What words passed between them, no one would ever know.