Scramasax (16 page)

‘Yes,' shouted another, ‘Maniakes. Where is he?'

Harald Sigurdsson tossed his head. ‘You heard the Empress. Her messengers have instructed him to meet us here. If he comes, he comes. If not, not. So much the worse for him.

‘Vikings,' shouted Harald, ‘we're fighting for good reason, but more than that …' He paused and looked around him, and almost every man there would have sworn he was looking him in the eye. ‘Do you worship our gods? Or White Christ?' Harald's mouth curled. ‘Ha! Or both? Be brave then, be loyal, and your reward will be great. Not only plunder! Not only safe passage! Fame here on middle-earth! And a second home in Asgard, or in high heaven. You are Vikings!'

Georgios Maniakes, commander-in-chief of the Byzantine forces and fleet, was a mountain of a man. Not only was he almost as tall as Harald Sigurdsson – himself a head taller than most other men – but he was built like a barrel. His shoulders were broad and his torso was like a tree trunk. He had huge hairy hands, square as spades, and beetling dark eyebrows.

From the moment he stepped ashore, Harald disliked the sight of him. And when Maniakes opened his mouth and Harald heard what he had to say, he disliked him even more.

After giving Harald a peremptory greeting in the name of Christ, the Emperor Michael and Empress Zoe, he demanded, ‘What kind of place is this? There's no room here for all my men. Almost one thousand Turks and Greeks.'

Harald bristled. ‘Not as many as we are, then,' he replied. ‘We've been camping here while you kept us waiting. Seven days.'

‘I keep no one waiting,' Maniakes retorted. ‘People wait on me.'

‘Anyhow, there's plenty of room for you and your … crew,' said Harald, gesturing towards the low land abutting the cove to the east. ‘Over there.'

‘Take down your tents,' Maniakes ordered him.

Harald Sigurdsson glared at the commander. His left eyebrow, the higher of the two, kept twitching and jumping.

‘I take orders from no one except Empress Zoe and Emperor Michael,' Harald Sigurdsson replied.

Georgios Maniakes glowered, then he snarled like a wild dog.

The cove cliff heard him, it snarled back at him, and Harald Sigurdsson put his hands on his hips and laughed.

‘I'm not camping over there,' Maniakes declared. ‘Look how green it is. Damp. Boggy.'

‘Suit yourself,' Harald told him.

Maniakes growled, and with his right hand he reached for his sword. ‘Take your tents down. I'm your commander, and I'll choose where my men camp.'

Harald smiled. ‘I thought we'd sailed here to fight the Saracens, not to scrap with each other.'

‘For the third and last time,' Maniakes grunted, ‘take down your tents.'

Harald Sigurdsson turned on his heel, stooped, and picked up a grey pebble a little smaller than his fist. He tossed it from hand to hand.

Then he stalked over to Snorri and Skarp. ‘A brute!' he confided. ‘He's an ugly troll.'

‘A Turkish troll,' said Skarp.

‘He may be a good leader,' Harald told them. ‘A good strategist, that's what I've heard. But he's also a bully, and I'm going to teach him a lesson.'

‘That's right,' agreed Snorri. ‘Begin in the way you mean to go on.'

Harald kept tossing the pebble from hand to hand. He walked a little way around the foreshore on his own, weighing up what to do, and then he returned to Maniakes.

‘You are commander-in-chief of the Byzantine forces and fleet,' he began.

Maniakes glared at him under his beetling eyebrows.

‘All my men heard the Empress,' Harald told him. ‘“You will fight alongside Georgios,” she told me. Alongside Georgios, not under Georgios.'

‘Bah!' exclaimed Maniakes.

‘We Varangians who serve the Emperor and Empress are free. We're independent. That's the right we've been granted, and—'

‘No army can serve two masters,' Maniakes interrupted him.

‘However,' continued Harald, ‘you and I can't be having arguments all the time about whose ships are going to put in first, whose horses are going to be fed first, whose tents are going to be pitched where, and Thor knows what else. Now Empress Zoe … she commanded me to be even-handed with you.'

‘You talk too much,' Maniakes said.

‘I'll cast lots with you,' Harald volunteered. ‘If my lot is chosen, we Varangians will have first choice. If your lot's chosen, you Byzantines will.'

Maniakes sniffed. He hadn't the least intention of sticking to any such arrangement, but seeing Harald Sigurdsson was so stubborn, he recognised that this could be the best way to settle their argument without shedding blood.

‘Who'll draw lots?' he demanded. His dark eyes glittered.

‘Oh!' said Harald, looking round him. ‘An innocent eye. How about that young girl over there?'

Standing with the other galley-women, Solveig realised Harald was pointing straight at her.

‘Innocent?' exclaimed Maniakes. ‘Is that what you call your camp followers?'

Harald shook his head. ‘No, no,' he said. ‘She's just …' He waved his right hand in exasperation. ‘Take my word for it.'

‘I'll take your word for nothing,' Maniakes replied.

Harald inspected the stones at his feet and picked up a second large grey pebble much the same size and shape as his own. He passed it to the commander-in-chief.

‘You mark yours and I'll mark mine,' Harald told him, ‘and we'll each show our mark to our henchmen.'

‘I'm not a child,' Maniakes retorted in a scornful voice. ‘I don't need you to tell me how to cast lots.'

Then he and Harald Sigurdsson turned their backs on one another and drew their short knives.

Maniakes was still scratching a six-pointed star on his stone when Harald called out. ‘Maniakes! Let me see your mark. What if we both marked our stones the same way?'

So Maniakes showed Harald the star on his stone, and Harald sniffed and backed away and scratched a mark on his own stone. He showed it to Snorri and Skarp and Halfdan.

‘All right!' said Maniakes. He pointed at one of his men who was wearing a bandage around his head, and gestured to him to unwind it.

‘Stop that!' Harald commanded him. He strode over to his horse and pulled off his saddle-cloth. ‘Better sweat than blood,' the Viking observed, and he laid the cloth on the foreshore. Then he and Maniakes stooped and placed their marked stones on it, without allowing anyone else to see which stone belonged to whom.

‘All right!' barked Harald. He turned to Solveig and called her forward.

‘All you have to do,' Harald told her, ‘is choose one stone. Choose it and say, “The man who marked this stone will have first choice.” Isn't that right, Maniakes?'

‘Get on with it,' Maniakes snapped.

‘You heard him,' Harald told Solveig.

Solveig eyed the two identical grey pebbles … she wrinkled her nose … for a moment she hesitated, and then she picked one of them up. At once Harald snatched it from her, bent his arm and hurled it as far as he could into the dancing waves.

‘Mine!' he yelled. ‘You chose mine!'

Maniakes' dark eyes glittered like freezing stars. ‘Why?' he demanded through his barred teeth. ‘Why didn't you let anyone see it?'

‘Ha!' exclaimed Harald. ‘Look at the other one. You'll see it's yours. It's got your mark scratched on it.'

Harald scooped up the pebble.

‘Leave it alone!' growled Maniakes.

Harald presented the pebble to one of Maniakes' henchmen, and the commander could plainly see the star on it.

Harald permitted himself a dawdle of a smile. ‘Over there,' he said, waving at the boggy green field abutting the cove to the east where Maniakes had refused to pitch his tents.

‘You snake!' Maniakes snarled. ‘You won't get away with this.'

But Harald turned and walked away, taking Snorri and Skarp and Halfdan with him. Before long, Solveig heard the four of them laughing loudly. She was sure Harald had played some trick on the Byzantine commander, but she couldn't work out exactly what.

One thing I know, she thought. If Harald can't win by fair means, he'll win by foul. He'll use force or cunning. He tricked Maniakes, I'm sure he did.

Would he trick me like that? He's smiling on me now, but can I trust him?

‘C
lear off!' exclaimed Solveig.

With both hands she swiped them away, not all the tireless, jumpy sandflies attracted by her damp wrists, the insides of her elbows and salty folds of her neck, but the tiresome young Vikings who had a way of gathering around her, sometimes in small swarms.

Without making any particular effort to do so, she attracted them and made them somehow homesick, recalling their own sisters and mothers and the girls on neighbouring farmsteads, reminding them of the creature comforts of home.

Yes, sometimes they surrounded her, sometimes jostled her, and of course this didn't escape the attention of the other women accompanying the Varangian guards – Vibrog and Edla and the drudges who did the endless round of cooking and grooming the horses, Silkisiv and the women, tawny-eyed and dark-eyed as lionesses, with whom the guards pleasured themselves.

Vibrog and Edla were jealous of her and wagged their tongues at the way Harald Sigurdsson so favoured her, but the others simply ignored her. None shared secrets with her in the way Edith had done.

They're as tough as the men, Solveig thought. At least they pretend to be. Perhaps this is what happens
to women who spend too much time in the company of mercenaries. They grow a shell.

Is there no room in our ranks for pity – or for grief?

Is a man less of a man if he allows himself such feelings?

Solveig braced her shoulders and stuck out her elbows. ‘You're as bad as a cloud of mosquitoes,' she told the young guards.

‘That's right,' said Egil. ‘We drink blood.'

‘Go away!' she exclaimed.

‘Away?'

‘Why?'

‘When we're enjoying ourselves?'

‘And annoying me.'

‘Come on, Solveig. Life's for living.'

One guard, Gorm, put his arm round Solveig's shoulders. ‘I can help you,' he said. But all he got was a sharp elbow in his ribs.

‘Not a chance,' another guard told Gorm. ‘She's sweet on Tamas.'

‘I'm not,' Solveig protested.

‘Yes, how long was she down in those horse-stalls with him?' asked Egil.

‘Quite long enough!'

All the young guards, at least half a dozen of them, guffawed.

‘Sweet!' they taunted her. ‘Sweet!'

But even as she denied it, Solveig knew that she was.

At this moment, Harald Sigurdsson walked past.

‘You layabouts!' he reproached the young guards, without breaking his pace. But then he thought better of it and swung round. ‘Pestering an innocent young girl.'

‘She was lonely,' said Egil in a mournful voice.

‘And lovelorn,' added Gorm.

‘Anyhow,' Harald told them, ‘it will be a different
story tomorrow. I've got that obstinate Turk to see sense at last – after two precious days. We'll strike camp at dawn.'

The young Viking guards cheered and waved their fists, and Gorm put his arm around Solveig again.

Harald towered over them, squeezing his blonde beard. ‘Yes, Solveig,' he said. ‘I told you. You'll be needing your scramasax one way or another.'

Solveig lowered her eyes. ‘I can look after myself,' she told him.

‘And in the meantime,' Harald told her, ‘go and look after your father.'

‘Why?' asked Solveig. ‘What's wrong?'

‘Ask him,' said Harald. And he walked off.

‘What is it?' Solveig asked her father once she had found him, sitting on one of the oarsmen's benches aboard their
ousiai
. ‘What's wrong?'

Halfdan pushed out his lower lip.

‘Your hamstring?'

‘My gut.'

Solveig frowned. ‘The pork? No, it can't be. I ate it too.'

‘Nothing like that,' Halfdan said. ‘My gut feels knotted. I can't explain exactly. All I can say is it doesn't feel right.'

You never complain, Solveig thought. Not about your hamstring. Not about anything.

‘We're going to a hill fort,' Halfdan told her.

‘To attack it?' asked Solveig, grimacing.

‘To lay siege to it,' Halfdan replied. ‘Slow strangulation, until the Saracens are gasping and begging for mercy.' He clasped his hands over his stomach. ‘If this gets worse, I'll ride back here.'

‘I'll come with you,' Solveig told him. She wrapped her gold-flecked arms around his neck and nuzzled him.

‘Solva!' murmured her father.

Solveig swallowed and cleared her throat. ‘Your Solva suspects you, though.'

Halfdan frowned.