Blood Feud (13 page)

And we would so have it, for that year past we had found him to be a leader worth the following; as hard as any sea king, despite his silken ways, fierce as a mountain cat, one who could be merciless to his own men, but in the end would stand by them to the last barricade. So we set up a shout for
Erland Silkbeard and a shout for the Emperor; and as the heralds wheeled their horses and clattered out of the camp, some of our lads were already spilling forward to take their knucklebones from the shield before Khan Vladimir’s tent.

I mind looking after the three riders in their dark cloaks, and thinking, Thormod and Orm beside me, thinking, it seemed, the same thing.

‘It would be beneath the Emperor’s dignity to come beating up a following himself like a sea-roving chieftain,’ Orm said at last.

I was not so sure. ‘He said, the night after we freed Abydos, that he would ask. Khan Vladimir said if he wanted us, he must ask it of ourselves, and he said he would . . .’

‘A big horse, that one was riding, for a smallish man,’ Thormod said consideringly, ‘couldn’t see much of his face under that cloak, but I’d swear there was only one moustache like that in all Miklagard. I’m not thinking any herald would use that kind of blunt soldiers’ tongue – and he forgot, and started to leave the Emperor Constantine out of it, half-way through. No herald would have done that.’

Someone in the crowd started to sing:

and the laughter and the singing spread, and more and more men began going up to take their knucklebones from the hollow of the great shield.

‘Well, whoever it was that asked,’ said Orm, ‘what are we three going to answer?’

Only we three, out of the whole crew of the old
Red Witch
; we knew that. Four men we had lost during the summer’s fighting, and Hakon One-Eye had already said that if the Emperor
did
form a new bodyguard it would be for young men, and he was too old to change his ways. He was for
pushing south and a winter’s trading, and those that were left of the crew, and a few others, were throwing in their lot with him; they had their gift-gold to get together a fresh cargo.

Thormod and I looked at each other; but although it was he who had voiced the question, Orm had no doubts. ‘There’s not like to be too much time of peace, with the Bulgars still loose in Thrace, and if there’s rich looting to be had in time of war, that’s good enough for me.’

‘And there was nothing said as to the laying-by of old blood-feuds,’ said a voice behind me.

I swung round, and it was Anders; and his mouth was grave but those odd grey and blue eyes of his were dancing.

‘So you’re for taking one of the Emperor’s knucklebones?’ Thormod said – he might have been speaking to another of the
Red Witch
’s crew, save that a muscle twitched at the angle of his jaw.

‘It’s not likely that we shall ever have another chance to serve in an Emperor’s bodyguard, and I’m for trying anything once, to see what it tastes like.’

‘Even if it is for only a day, or a few days? The War Host is already disbanded.’

‘It is the things that last only a day that taste the sweetest on the tongue,’ Anders said.

And on the surface, they laughed.

I think Orm understood them better than I did . . .

Well, so the four of us went up and took our knucklebones together from the hollow of the shield before Khan Vladimir’s tent. And the oath that three of us had sworn two years since, on Kiev marshes, was blown away like thistledown on the morning wind; and we were free to take up the old Blood Feud again.

We were ordered quite simply – it is all much more complicated
now – into ten companies of a hundred, each under our own Illarch, our own Hundred Commander, with Erland Silkbeard over all; and next day at noon, in the great Hippodrome which is used for many kinds of gatherings and public occasions as well as the chariot races for which it was built, we carried our shields before the Emperor for the first time. Oh, Constantine was there too, lounging around the Imperial Box flanked by its huge bronze horses, playing with a hound and laughing behind his hand with a favourite eunuch; but he was too bored to do more than glance at us, and so we did not trouble to give much heed to him. It was to the Emperor Basil, more plainly clad than any of his nobles, and standing in his usual position with his hands on his hips, his moustaches bristling to the noonday sun, that we swore our loyalty, formally setting our drawn swords at his service for life or death. We wore the grey chainmail and nut-shaped helmets that we had worn all summer long; but they had left us our own weapons that we had carried down from the north, murderous pole-axe and light, deadly throwing-axe and the great two-handed Viking sword. All that is changed now also and the Varangians carry the weapons of Byzantium; but that day we saluted the Emperor with our own weapons, and were glad.

And that night, proud as fighting cocks in our new white ceremonial tunics with the thick blocks of embroidery on breast and shoulders, and our cloaks of fine Khazan wool fringed with hanging silver acorns, we stood our first turn of duty as Palace Guards.

The Imperial Palace is like a city in itself, palaces and pleasure pavilions, armouries and stables, even the lighthouse and the Royal Mint, all set in shady gardens sloping to the Bosphorus. And everywhere one looks one sees beauty and strength and splendour. In the greatest things, the mighty tower of the lighthouse with its blazing crest of flame that
speaks to shipping far across the waters of Marmara and up the straits towards the inland sea; in the smallest – the colonnade before the Emperor’s private quarters, opening on to a tiny court, and in the court a tiny tree whose leaves were all of beaten gold. Every time I turned in my sentry walk to and fro, I saw that little tree, its shining leaves touched by the white light of a waning moon and the red light of the cresset that burned at the end of the colonnade, and among the leaves, tiny golden birds that seemed as though in another moment they must break out singing. So the Emperor could have summer in his little golden tree, even when there was snow on the ground. A god could do no more.

And I, who had felt the chafe of a thrall-ring on my neck, felt now the light pressure of a golden collar. The rest of the Army, even the guards, do not wear golden collars, only the Varangians; it is our badge, our own especial honour.

Yet it did not seem to me that night had such a proud shine to it as the night when the crew of the
Red Witch
had mounted guard over the Emperor’s tent after Abydos.

NEXT DAY, THE
Third Company – that was my Company, and Thormod’s and Orm’s – Anders’s’ was the Fifth – was ordered across the City to the Blachernae, the small palace tucked away beyond the timber yards and fish quays of the Golden Horn.

The Blachernae is a hunting palace of many stables and kennels, for being close under the land walls it saves having to get the horses and the hounds or cheetahs right across the city every time the Emperor wishes to ride out after boar or gazelle. It is also the place where the Emperors withdraw when they wish to pray at the near-by Church of St Mary, a great place of pilgrimage by reason of the Virgin’s robe, which is its cherished and most sacred possession.

Well, so the Emperor Basil went to pray, and we, the Third Company of his Barbarian Guard, went with him.

That night we had the first of the autumn thunderstorms. It was as though all Miklagard sighed under the rain, stretching and slackening after the long heat. And the next morning the Emperor took a day off from the solid work of ruling his Empire (I have never known any man so strong for sheer hard work, whether it was soldier’s work or the duller business of administration), to go hunting with a few of his nobles.

Orders came down to the guardroom, for eight of us to hunt with him. ‘It must be hard to be an Emperor and not free even to chase a little gazelle unguarded,’ someone said.

Eight of us were ordered out, myself among them, since I was one of the first that the Illarch’s eye chanced to fall upon. Orm, who was left on Palace duty along with Thormod, had a few things to say about those who hung around under the
eye of their superiors, and so got themselves a day’s hunting while their friends had to work.

The eight of us rubbed the sleep out of our eyes – the morning sky was still green beyond the high guardroom windows, and the lamps that burned all night were still casting thick shadows – and pulled on old leather jerkins instead of our fine linen tunics, hurriedly downed some bread and meat and a few swallows of ale, and headed for the palace forecourt, where the horses were being brought out, and the leashed hunting leopards.

The Emperor and his companions came out, and mounted their fretting horses. The huntsmen were up already, with the cheetahs clinging to the pads behind their saddles. Horses used for hunting with leopards are carefully made used to the beasts they carry on their backs; but every horse is born afraid of leopard as they are born afraid of fire; and you could see how they trembled and showed the whites of their eyes when the beasts leapt shadow-light on to their haunches. We of the Guard swung into our saddles. I mind now the quick thrill of pleasure in that moment, for though our mounts were not much taller than ponies, they had Arab blood in them, and I had never had such a fine beast between my knees before. And with the sun scarcely into the sky behind us, we were out through the Palace gates and the Kirkoporta close by, and heading across the churned and littered valley where the Viking camp had lately been, for the low hills westward.

The hills were parched tawny, and the warmth beat up from the ground even while our shadows still ran on eager as hounds before us; but in the dry white watercourses there was dampness under the stones; even a dwindling pool here and there, left by the night’s rain; and scent, that had been dried out by the summer’s sun, had already begun to return to the world; the faint green scent of grass and oleander leaves,
and the aromatic breath of sage and lentisk and rosemary from the hillside scrub.

Scents of another kind, too, that we could not catch, but that made the cheetahs lift their muzzles to the faint breeze, searching the distance with those strange amber eyes. Hunting with cheetah, I soon found, is not at all like hunting with hounds. They are not pack-hunting animals, and one does not unleash them as a pack after the quarry, but one or two at a time. They can run faster than any hound I ever knew; so that their quarry scarcely ever escapes them. It is for that reason, maybe, that I never really liked hunting with them. Besides, one cannot think with cheetah as one can with hounds . . .

We had good hunting and killed several times. And at last, the carcasses flung across the backs of the pack ponies and our shadows growing long once more, we turned back towards Miklagard. But when the huntsmen came to leash the cheetahs again, one of them was missing. She would not come for shouting nor for sound of horn; in all likelihood she was already far beyond hearing. And while the rest of the hunt followed the Emperor on his homeward way, a handful of us, mostly huntsmen, scattered to search for her. Why I was one of them I do not know; maybe, being used to rounding up strayed cattle, I had some idea that I had a special skill for rounding up strayed cheetah. Maybe Fate touched me on the forehead; I do not know.

What wind there was had gone round with the evening and was coming from the north. The merest whisper again, but it might have carried with it some scent of game that had called the creature to her own hunting; so two or three of us turned northward. Our ponies were weary, their speed gone from them, and we should probably be out all night, unless she had killed near by and we had the luck to find her on the carcass; but a trained hunting leopard is a valuable animal,
and a deadly one, and not for leaving loose on a countryside.

We split up, fanning out in our search, and soon I had lost all touch with the others. I was in autumn-touched birch and bracken country that reminded me a little of my old world, save that the mountains of Thrace, blue in the westering distance, were different from any hills that I had known before, and the sunlight was a different colour, and the scent of lentisk and wild lavender mingling with the breath of the bracken was no scent of England. I came on a track looping down a shallow lightly-wooded valley, and on the far side, beyond the dusty wayside scrub, a plantation of almond trees, green and cared for. I must be on the edge of a farm or one of the small country estates some of the well-to-do have to provide them with fresh food and summer lodging outside the city. I checked the pony and sat for a few moments, wondering which way now. I remember now the close evening stillness, and the chirring of the cicadas that was like a voice given to the silence and the heat. And then, from somewhere down the track, where it swung left and was lost behind the almond trees, I heard, almost in the same instant, the terrified cry of something that might be a goat or a deer, and the coughing snarl of a leopard, and a woman’s scream.

I drove my heel into the pony’s flank, sending him plunging forward. The stones of the track scattered backward under his hooves, and the tangled worry of sounds swelled nearer; at the turn of the track I hauled him back on his haunches and dropped from the saddle. I flung aside the lasso and the lure of meat I carried with me – there would be no time for those – and freed my hunting-knife as I ran, crashing through the scrub towards the yowling of a leopard on its kill. I came out through the aromatic tangle into the open beyond the last of the almond trees – and saw what was there to see.

Among the twisted roots of an ancient wild olive, a girl was
huddled over something that she was trying to protect from the cheetah, who crouched before her, striking out with taloned paws. I saw the red streaks on her arm and on the fallow hide of the thing she shielded, as I ran in with my knife. I flung myself on the creature as it half-turned on me, got my arm under its chin and drove in the blade. I felt the hot blood spurt over my hand as I heaved the brute aside from the two among the olive roots.