Scramasax (28 page)

‘But …' began Solveig.

‘No,' he said. ‘I can't go back to the palace.'

So many questions were whirling around Solveig's head. Who will lead all the guards? What will become of me and my father? And Maria? What about her? Will the Empress take vengeance? Where will Harald go?

‘You, Solveig,' said Harald in a voice that brooked no argument whatsoever, ‘you'll go back to the guardroom.
On your own. Be very careful not to draw attention to yourself. Don't scoot, don't run, but be as quick as you can.'

Solveig looked up at Harald, wide-eyed.

‘Tell Snorri and Skarp and your father that Harald Sigurdsson is free.'

Harald released Solveig's hands and clenched his fists. ‘Have them hurry my men down to the quay and board our two boats there. Two hundred men. No more, no fewer. And then, my little sister, tell your father to shoulder Land-Ravager, my battle standard. You understand? All this?'

‘Yes,' whispered Solveig.

‘Listen!' Harald told her. He hesitated. ‘In each of our lives, little sister, there come moments such as these. Everything depends on you; success or failure depends on you.'

Solveig held her breath.

‘Snorri and Skarp must find their way to Maria's chamber,' Harald told her in a low voice.

‘Oh!' exclaimed Solveig. From the top of her tingling head to her toes, her blood thrilled inside her.

‘Maria's chamber,' Harald repeated.

‘I'll show them.'

‘Very good,' said Harald, as if this were Solveig's idea and he hadn't already thought of it.

‘Nothing is to stop them. If anyone challenges them …' Harald clenched his fist. ‘They're to bring Maria down to my boat.'

‘You mean—'

‘Tell them to bind and gag her, just in case … You, Solveig, you come with her and reassure her.'

Solveig was quite breathless now. ‘Oh, yes!' she gasped. ‘Yes, I will.' Her eyes filled with tears of joy.

Harald! Harald Sigurdsson! He was such a man! So
strong. So bold. So brave. Such a leader. There, at that moment, in the darkness of Miklagard, Solveig would have done anything for him.

Listening to all this, Edwin kept shifting uncomfortably, first putting his weight on one foot, then on the other. Several times he cleared his throat, and seemed about to interrupt Harald, before thinking better of it.

‘And you, my friend,' Harald said to him, ‘you'll escort my saviour, my nameless saviour, back to her house.'

‘I will,' Edwin reassured him. ‘And then I'll come to the Varangian quay. By the light of the Morning Star.'

‘N
ow!' growled Harald.

Nico thrust his head forward and peered down the length of the boat. He checked the twenty-five pairs of Viking oarsmen were all at their benches. Then he stared out across the Horn, still night-grey, still gloomy. He glanced up at the mast and down at the quay.

‘Get on with it!' croaked Harald.

‘Ship the planks!' Nico called out. ‘Slip the knots!' And then he waved to the helmsman of the second Varangian boat, tethered to the bollards behind him.

As soon as the oarsmen had levered the boat away from the stone wall of the quay, Nico ordered them to bend their backs.

‘Twenty strokes,' shouted Harald. ‘In … out. Two … out. Three … out!'

Nico screwed up his brown, weatherbeaten face. ‘Twenty?'

‘Then let the other boat come alongside,' Harald told him. ‘Seven … out. Eight … out.'

Solveig was standing with her back to the mast, both arms wrapped around Maria, and Maria, still gagged, was wearing nothing but her silken nightdress, that and a creamy woollen shawl. She was trembling and kept making muffled squeaks, like a little animal in terrible pain.

I'm untying the gag, thought Solveig. Here and now. I don't care what Harald says.

‘It's all right,' she promised Maria. ‘You're going to be all right. Harald told me to reassure you.'

Solveig reached up behind Maria's head and began to tease the knot, but before she was able to loosen it, her father plunged past her shouting, ‘Harald! Harald!'

‘What?'

‘The chain!'

Several voices at once echoed him. ‘The chain! Yes! The chain across the Horn!'

‘Nineteen … out. Twenty … out!' Harald raised his right hand, and the pairs of oarsmen rested their oars, the boat gliding across the glassy water. ‘The chain,' he barked. ‘Do you really suppose I've forgotten it?'

Halfdan raised his shoulders.

‘I can scarcely ask the Empress's harbour master to remove it, can I? My friend, we're sea horses. We're sea stallions. Side by side, we'll charge at the chain.'

‘Charge?!' exclaimed Halfdan.

‘Like as not, we'll snap it. If not, we'll ride over it.'

Harald impatiently waved Halfdan away, and then he saw Solveig was untying Maria's gag and curtly told her to leave it alone. Keeping an eye on the second boat as she drew alongside, packed with so many men who had served with him and under him, Harald checked all his own oarsmen were at the ready. He missed nothing, nothing at all. He was like a blond giant with eyes at the front and the sides and the back of his head.

‘Now then …' he said under his breath. ‘Now then.' He raised both arms and beckoned everyone except his oarsmen to join him in the stern of the boat. The Varangian guards, the cooks, everyone.

‘You, too,' Harald shouted to Solveig. ‘Maria. Everyone.'

Shoulder to shoulder, cheek by jowl, more than fifty lives crammed into the space between the mast and the helmsman. Seeing what was happening, all the guards and women on the other boat, everyone except the oarsmen, did exactly the same.

Then Harald ordered his oarsmen to row, row straight at the chain stretched across the Golden Horn.

The two boats reached the chain at exactly the same moment. It grated and ground and scrunched against their keels, and at once Solveig remembered the ghastly grating and gouging when her little skiff collided with a sheet of ice in the fjord. She hugged Maria and screwed up her eyes.

Many of the Vikings began to yell and wail, but Harald's voice soared above them. ‘To the bows! The bows! All of you!'

‘Follow me!' yelled Halfdan.

At once Solveig's father hurried down the length of the boat, picking his way past the oarsmen, and shouting, swearing, stumbling, tripping, everyone followed him.

For a moment Harald's boat seemed almost to seesaw on the chain, no longer in the water but out of it, swaying between imprisonment and freedom. Then, quite slowly, she tilted forward and slid gracefully into the wide, welcoming channel beyond.

But even as some of Harald Sigurdsson's men began to cheer and embrace, others saw what was happening to the second boat.

The chain did its grim work: it cut deep into the keel, it opened the seams between the planks, and when everyone aboard waded to the bows, the timbers groaned, they growled and screeched. Then the keel itself snapped. The boat's back broke.

The chilly, dark water was full of flailing Vikings, Egil and Bolverk and Gissur among them, and Harald and
Nico were unable to save them because the tide pouring into the Horn was driving their drowning companions away from them, and they were on the other side of the iron chain.

By having his oarsmen stay their boat, Nico was able to rescue half a dozen men who had grabbed hold of the chain, but that was the sum of it; and even then, one guard lost his grip while he was hauling himself up the slimy rope Nico had dropped over the stern. He was swept away, gargling.

For some time Harald stood on his own, and no one thought it wise to speak to him, not even Snorri or Skarp or Halfdan. He surveyed the broken boat; he listened to the last cries of his companions and, after them, the suck-and-sob of the saltwater.

At length Harald turned to Nico. ‘I hold Empress Zoe responsible for this,' he said, his voice dark and deliberate and angry. ‘Empress Zoe and the boy-man. They will pay for it.'

In the bows, Solveig at last managed to remove Maria's tight gag and was shocked to see it had left a welt on either side of her mouth.

‘You'll be all right,' she kept saying, but Maria couldn't stop shaking and sobbing.

‘You're safe,' Solveig told her. ‘We all are. You'll be all right.'

Solveig hugged Maria again. ‘I'll go and talk to Harald now. I'll ask him to come to you. He'll tell you himself.'

Solveig kept an eye on Harald while he talked first to Nico, then to Snorri and Skarp. She heard him becoming more animated; she overheard him saying that at least all the booty they had brought back from Sicily – the silver, the gold, all the ivory and coins and church plate – was safe in the hold of their boat; and when
Harald threw back his head and roared with laughter at something Skarp had said, she judged she could approach him.

What a maelstrom of a man he is, she thought. Turn by turn he's wild, grim, resolved, caring, a cunning trickster, a loyal friend. I'll never understand him.

‘Little sister!' Harald exclaimed.

Solveig gazed at him. She shook her head.

‘The gods wanted them,' Harald said in a hoarse voice.

‘The waste!' cried Solveig. ‘The waste of it.'

‘Tamas!' exclaimed Harald. ‘Priskin. Egil. Bolverk. Gissur. All my young men.'

At once Solveig's eyes grew hot and bright with tears.

‘The gods loved them,' Harald told her. ‘They needed them.'

‘I loved him,' choked Solveig. ‘I …' But then she minded why she had come to speak to him. She swallowed and rubbed her eyes with the sleeve of her cloak. Then she almost cupped her hands between her breasts, as if she were offering him something precious.

‘Well?'

‘Maria,' whispered Solveig.

‘Thanks to you!' Harald replied at once. ‘Without you, she wouldn't be aboard this boat. If you hadn't carried my message from the Black Tower to Snorri and Skarp, none of this …' Harald spread his hands. ‘Our success, Solveig, depended on you.'

‘Are we sailing to Kiev?' Solveig asked him.

‘We are, and as quickly as we can. Before ice locks the great river.'

‘And that's where you'll marry her?'

Harald Sigurdsson frowned.

‘Is it?'

‘Marry her,' Harald repeated.

‘Maria.'

Harald puffed out his cheeks, his hot breath blasted Solveig in the face. ‘Marry Maria!' he exclaimed. ‘Where did you get that idea?'

Solveig stared at Harald, aghast.

‘I'm not marrying Maria,' Harald told her, almost laughing. ‘I'm marrying Ellisif.'

‘Ellisif! But I thought … I thought …'

‘No, no! Ellisif. King Yaroslav's daughter.'

‘I know who she is,' Solveig said fiercely. ‘I've met her.'

‘That was the message Edwin brought me,' Harald went on. ‘If I'd agree to return to Kiev at once, with two hundred men, and help King Yaroslav to fight the Pechenegs, the king would give me the hand of his youngest daughter, Ellisif.'

‘She's only twelve,' cried Solveig.

Harald shrugged. ‘I'll wait,' he said. ‘We'll marry when she's fourteen.'

Solveig buried her face in her hands. ‘But Maria,' she half sobbed. ‘Maria.'

Harald said nothing.

‘What about Maria?'

Nothing.

‘Why? I mean … Why did you ask me … ?' Solveig felt utterly helpless; she couldn't even find the right words.

‘You're asking me why Maria's aboard this boat?'

Solveig nodded.

‘She's my hostage,' Harald said in a cold voice. ‘I'm taking her to Kiev to show Empress Zoe just how powerless she is.'

Solveig glared at Harald Sigurdsson. She bared her teeth; her eyes blazed.

‘How can you?' she demanded. Her voice was
quivering. ‘You went to see Maria alone in her chamber as soon as you disembarked. You led her to believe. With your words and body you did. You misled her to suit yourself.'

‘Little sister—' Harald began.

‘I'm not!' snapped Solveig. ‘I'm not your sister. You, Harald, you tricked me when you asked me to lead Snorri and Skarp to her chamber and told me to reassure Maria. And you've not only deceived her, you've cut her off. How can you?' Solveig could hear her voice rising, but she also knew that she was saying exactly the right words, the words she wanted Harald to hear.

‘I was stricken! I was so sorrowful when my father left – left after promising that if ever he went away, he would take me with him. All winter I was wounded. Then I sailed away from home, I crossed the mountains, I turned my back on Mother Norway. But you, you've cut off Maria from her dying father, her imprisoned mother. How can you? You're a monster! A man without a heart!'

Then Solveig shrieked and threw herself at Harald Sigurdsson. She reached up and clawed at his face and tried to gouge his eyes out.