Byzantium

his praise-tongue today will make him a better man.’

Haraldr nodded his agreement. Grettir had come literally on his knees to Haraldr, begging forgiveness and a chance to serve. Haraldr had demoted him to a menial stewardship but had promised him consideration as a skald if he showed a more worthy attitude.

‘Well,’ said Halldor drily, ‘it’s as useless to argue with poets as it is to butt heads with an elk. That’s my advice, and I leave it at that.’ He slipped his knife back in its sheath and stood up. ‘It’s not an urgent matter, anyway. Sleep is.’ He examined the blood-encrusted linen bandage around Haraldr’s deeply gashed forearm; other than that and a quick rinsing of the blood from his face, Haraldr’s wounds had yet to be treated. ‘I’ve found a healer for your wounds. This healer is from somewhere to the east. They say she’s very skilled. She speaks some Norse.’ Haraldr thought he detected some signal in Halldor’s implacable eyes. ‘I’ve told her to be available for as long as you need her.’ Halldor turned and left without further ado; Ulfr embraced Haraldr and followed.

Sable-haired and swan-white, thought Haraldr as the healer entered the pavilion. She was the slave he had praised in Kiev. Her chin was cocked haughtily and her agate eyes confronted his. Her linen petticoat whisked over glimpses of white ankle. Her bare arms cradled a small carved wooden chest, folded linen and a silver bowl.

She set the chest and linen and bowl on the camp stool next to Haraldr. Standing while he was seated, her eyes were slightly higher than his. She was more beautiful than Elisevett, Haraldr thought. The closeness of her made his breath come with difficulty.

‘Take off.’ Her voice was high and melodic, with a thick accent Haraldr had never heard before. She gestured with elegant movements of her slender fingers.

Haraldr blushed. The healer seemed amused and politely looked at her feet while Haraldr removed his sweat-soiled wool tunic; he was wearing only breeches beneath.

She began with the lesser wounds. He closed his eyes when she washed his forehead, and he could smell her sweet skin, faintly scented with myrrh. She tended a shallow gash on his thigh, and he was embarrassed by the stirring in his groin.

Her eyes searched his with a seemingly innocent curiosity. ‘I call you Jarl?’

Haraldr shook his head. ‘I’m not a Jarl. And you no longer have a master.’

Her eyes narrowed suspiciously. ‘You . . . not master?’

‘I gave all of Hakon’s slaves their freedom.’ Haraldr spoke very deliberately so she would understand. ‘You are free.’

‘Yes,’ she said proudly, as if he had merely expressed the natural state of things. She pressed her lovely fingers to her breast. ‘Khazar.’

So, thought Haraldr, she is from the desert. The Khazars were a proud and noble people who had once owned a great empire round a vast inland sea to the east. Lately their power had been usurped by a race of horsemen said to be as dark and savage as the Pechenegs but far more intelligent.

‘You don’t belong here, do you,’ said Haraldr, almost to himself.

‘Caught,’ she said angrily. Apparently she understood Norse better than she could speak it. ‘Brothers . . .’ She vehemently brushed the air with her hand. They had been wiped out. She probably had been sold to Norse traders in Khoresm.

She touched her breast delicately again. ‘Princess.’

The word seemed to strike Haraldr’s heart. Yes. She had the air. She probably had learned to heal by binding her brothers’ wounds. She’d certainly not been raised as a servant. His breast pained for her as it had that night in Kiev. I already love you, he silently confessed. But I can see that you have another love, and because of it, you could never be happy with mine.

With one trembling finger he touched her chin. She did not flinch. ‘When we get to the Rus Sea, twenty of our ships will leave to dock at Kherson. I’ll send you with them and see that from there a ship takes you east. Home to your people.’

She understood. ‘Home,’ she said. Her eyes shifted focus, as if she could see some glorious vista far beyond the silk walls of the pavilion.

When she had finished with the small wounds, she began to rummage through the gear scattered about the pavilion; she finally located a half-full wine bag. As she moved about, the lamplight shone through her linen petticoat and Haraldr could see the outline of her slender flanks and the contour of her breasts. She took a small silver goblet from the chest and mixed an ochre powder with the wine. She drank some first to show Haraldr that it was not poison.

‘Not hurt,’ she said as she began to pull the blood-caked linen from Haraldr’s forearm. The wound was deep but clean. She daubed ointment from a jar into it. Haraldr began to feel drowsy and very comfortable. His head nodded.

‘Lie.’ She gestured at Hakon’s bed. It was an enormous, intricately carved wooden frame covered with thick, down-padded silk covers. Disgusting, Haraldr had thought when he had first seen it that morning. Just another reason why Hakon’s Varangians, who would sleep tonight on hard ground beneath coarse blankets, had so willingly endorsed the usurpation of their leader.

Haraldr shook his head and looked for his own gear bag. He couldn’t find it amid Hakon’s splendid clutter. He did want to lie down.

The healer guessed at Haraldr’s reservations and dragged the down covers off the bed and spread them on the floor beside him. Haraldr wondered briefly if she had been forced to sleep beneath them. He felt very good. He slid off the camp stool and lay down on the covers.

The healer knelt beside Haraldr and began to wrap clean linen around his forearm. The light behind her gave her raven hair a golden aura. He reached up and grazed her arm with the very tip of his fingers. He did not feel her soft skin so much as a curious shock, like the sparking when one touched a kettle or a knife on a cold, dry day.

She shuddered at some similar sensation. She studied the cup of medicine for a moment, and then drank the rest of the narcotic draught. The wine slicked her lips with a brilliant sheen.

‘Swaa . . . swaan?’ she asked.

Haraldr’s groin tingled. She remembered his words in Kiev. ‘A swan is a white bird,’ he answered, drawing the curve of the neck in the air. ‘Noble and white. And soft.’ He touched her again.

Her erect torso swayed slightly. ‘Serah,’ she said, touching her breast.

Her name was unlike any Norse sound, and it made a beautiful and mysterious music. He thought momentarily of Elisevett, but she was a distant thing of cold beauty, a glacier diminishing into a sliver of icy light beyond the horizon. Serah.

Serah’s hand burned and chilled his chest. His body lost weight, as when he had flown above the river today. But now there was no fear.

Wizard-quick, Serah rustled, white revealing white. She threw the linen petticoat aside. Dark hair fell around Haraldr’s face. Serah tugged at his breeches. The still air felt like a summer sea-wind over his nakedness. He was as hard as an axe staff. Serah’s body settled over him like a silk drape.

This was different from the two times before. The first, a whore, had been a meaningless lesson in the art-skills a king must know. Elisevett had been a passion that had rushed along like a torrent before exploding in a moment of aching, ungraspable ecstasy. Tonight was a deep pool, dark and warm, and in it Serah slid against his tingling flesh, drawing him deeper into the iridescent blackness. There is another place, Haraldr whispered to himself. Not the cold, dark place where the dragon lurks. A place he had never sensed before, a place where only a woman could take him. He plunged deeper into these depths, his pleasure more liquid and languid, only a single steel core left to his body. For an instant he wondered if there was danger in this place as well, but Serah gripped him and whispered, and the thought drifted away on the warm current.

Long after they had finished, they held each other and listened to the sigh and hiss of the Dnieper. Finally Serah tilted her head to look into his eyes and said, ‘Serah. Princess. Khazar.’ Her finger gently pressed against his chest. ‘Har-- Haraldr . . . ?’

Haraldr held her close again. ‘Haraldr. Prince,’ he whispered distinctly, realising she was no threat, wanting her to share with him the secret that he held as dearly as life. ‘Like you, I am far from my people.’

She understood, and this new bond brought desire to another pitch. Her hands began to brand his chest. Her lips devoured his face and neck. ‘Haraldr, Prince,’ she said next to his ear, her voice urgent with passion. Her lips moved down his chest.