he had in his byrnnie, but his features would have made a woman happy; he had a thin, graceful nose and the finest silken hair. ‘This is Ulfr Uspaksson.’ The smaller man nodded. He had a strong, blocky face with big, sensitive eyes. ‘We’re comrades from Iceland. From the same village.’
Haraldr nodded silently. Let them announce their intentions.
‘Where is Jarl Rognvald?’ asked Halldor.
Haraldr quickly decided that he needed a reaction, a gauge of Halldor’s sincerity. He watched his face carefully. ‘Jarl Rognvald is at the ale benches. In the Valhol.’
Halldor’s face registered nothing. Then he said, ‘That shames us. I, and the men with me who survived, owe our lives to the Jarl. And you.’ But Halldor’s voice was a dry drone, as if he were idly passing off some clever, ironic remark.
Haraldr stared coldly, and his grip welded his hand to his sword. Hakon could at least have sent an able performer.
Ulfr looked nervously at Haraldr and then at Halldor. ‘Halldor,’ he said, ‘I think you had better let me empty our breasts.’ Ulfr’s voice had the low-key resonance of the careful-tongued, sincere sort of skald. Haraldr guessed that he might be a fellow poet.
Ulfr turned anxiously to Haraldr. ‘Excuse my friend. His voice is like a road in Rus Land. Never up, never down, just straight on for ever. But as I’m sure you know, the melody of a man’s voice has little to do with the music in his breast.’
Halldor just shrugged at the comments. In spite of himself, Haraldr was charmed by the relationship between the two men. They weren’t lying when they said they were friends. He went off his guard a bit and wished that he had been able to enjoy companions his age these past years. But his only friend was an old man now lying under a canvas shroud.
‘What we would like to say,’ Ulfr went on, ‘is that we are all ashamed. Hakon easily could have saved your Jarl. And our own men. The Pecheneg helmet-hail did not pursue Hakon. He spent the afternoon executing prisoners, and with the exception of Halldor and those few who were with you, we Varangians spent the day kicking sand. Hakon never told us that there was any trouble up the beach. He deliberately let those men die. And we are ashamed to be pledged to such a man.’
‘Most of you seemed to enjoy your employment in Kiev,’ snapped Haraldr angrily. ‘But now that a few of you have been offered up to the gulls of fray, you come whining to me.’ His tone implied the obvious question. Why?
‘We’re not all loudmouths and strand-wanderers,’ answered Ulfr. ‘Why, you won’t find better men. Certainly they scorned you that night in Kiev, but I can assure you they laughed the way the rooster laughs when the axe is over its neck--’
‘Well, you did look foolish that night,’ interrupted Halldor. Ulfr shot him an uncomfortable glance. ‘But then’ – he shrugged – ‘the mead horn has cut down more men than the sword.’
Haraldr cocked his eyebrow. He liked this Halldor’s tart candour. If Hakon had been interested in concealing a treachery behind flattery, he wouldn’t have sent this one.
‘What we’re saying--’ began Ulfr.
‘What we’re saying is this,’ droned Halldor. ‘There’s not a man among us who enjoys the leadership of Hakon. He disgraced us all today, and believe me, none of us admire his oafish behaviour. We’re not simple bumpkins. But we are pledge-men and we made our oath to him, and that pledge is the single honour we must preserve. Otherwise we are not Varangians.’
Haraldr deliberately made no response. Halldor searched Haraldr’s face for a moment and then smiled. ‘Besides,’ he said, ‘Hakon is an important man in Miklagardr. We don’t want to be known as the unit that mutinied against an officer of the court. The only honourable and acceptable way for us to eliminate Hakon would be for one of us to challenge him to an island-going.’ Halldor looked over at Ulfr. ‘But there isn’t a man among our five hundred who would return from such an excursion with his head still attached to his neck.’
‘So I shovel the Varangians’ dung heap,’ said Haraldr evenly. ‘A spade carved from green-wood.’
Halldor looked Haraldr right in the eyes. ‘Yes.’ Then he smiled at Haraldr’s barbed jest.
‘I would think the main requirement for fighting your Hakon would be feet swift in pursuit,’ said Haraldr.
Halldor fixed Haraldr with eyes as implacable as slate. ‘Hakon did not run with fear dribbling from his breeches. You know that. Ulfr says that after he deserted you today he deliberately let himself be surrounded, and then killed a dozen Pechenegs by ripping their windpipes out with his bare hands. I will be honest with you. I think you alone have a chance against him. But a very slender chance. Still, our honour commands us to risk a wager on your chance.’
Haraldr returned Halldor’s obdurate stare. ‘It seems as if
Halldor paused, making sure of his next words. ‘If you challenge Hakon to single combat, Ulfr and I will stand as your seconds. If you lose, so will we, but in that way our deaths will ensure that the honour of our unit will remain unstained.’
Haraldr nodded. A few minutes ago he would have suspected that these men would second him with a dagger in his back. Now, almost instinctively, he believed he could trust them. They had just placed their lives in his hands.
‘And if I win?’
Halldor and Ulfr both grinned broadly. ‘If you win,’ said Halldor, ‘you take everything that is Hakon’s. His tunics, weapons, coins, treasures, slaves.’ Halldor’s laconic tone took on a droll hint. ‘His women too.’ Then he paused and his voice became grimly earnest. ‘And also the command of his five hundred Varangians.’
When Maria awoke, she smelled the sea. She had left the arcade of her summer bedchamber unshuttered, and the breeze, warmed by the morning sun, was already sultry. The light flooded the open balcony overlooking the silver-spangled water and blurred the white columns of the arcade into molten shafts. She turned away. Giorgios was looking at her, his fawnish eyes intent and adoring. Alexandros was still asleep.
She kissed Giorgios and pressed her body fully along his, revelling in his tension, his heat, and the steely erection against her thigh. When he tried to enter her, she pushed him away. ‘Don’t.’ Giorgios’s eyes were wounded; she had not allowed him to make love to her the previous night, though she had let his hands explore wherever he had wished.
Maria turned back into the morning’s flaring apocalypse, wrapped her hand around Alexandros’s priapic, dream-swollen shaft, and squeezed tightly. Alexandros’s eyes shot open. She mounted him swiftly and began a low, churning ride, her breasts swaying to the rhythm of her pleasure. She looked down at Giorgios and smiled.
Her paroxysm came even before Alexandros’s, and she quickly dismounted and walked naked out onto her balcony. Giorgios squinted and could no longer see her; it was as if she had been consumed by the white fire of the new day.
‘Yes,
He turned and gestured at the arena that had been prepared for the morning’s combat. A burlap cloth ten ells on a side had been spread over flat ground, surrounded on three sides by trenches and then a rope fence. Outside the rope, the enormous throng was already assembling; despite the carnage on the river, seven, perhaps even eight, thousand Rus had reached St Gregory’s Island. As Hakon had requested, Grettir had seen to it that the prettiest slaves were brought up closest to the rope. Hakon had mentioned something about wanting to see ‘their white skins speckled with raven’s-wine’.
No trench or rope ringed in the fourth side of the cloth. At the suggestion of Hakon – and strangely enough, the condition had been acceded to by that eagle-meat, Green-wood – the fourth border of the arena was a drop of one hundred ells off the sheer rock cliffs that thrust the island up from the Dnieper.
