such intercourse. The two exchanged greetings and spoke for a few moments, then the first man sat down on the bench beside the amorous couple while his friend continued the sexual act to its consummation, whereupon the two men then changed places and the second man took up where the first man had left off.
The iniquity of it was breathtaking. I could only shake my head in despair. But they were barbarians, after all. It did me good to remember this from time to time.
As it happened, Njord was similarly occupied in another house nearby. When he had finished his drink and his woman, he came along with Gutrik, who claimed his silver by presenting the pilot to King Harald saying, 'The best helmsman from the White Sea to the Black stands before you. I give you Njord the Deep-Minded.'
The man who stood before the king could not have been less impressive. A wizened stick demands greater consideration. Njord was a hump-shouldered, long-boned, jug-eared Dane with skin creased and tanned to leather from the wind and sea salt; like Thorkel, he was squint-eyed, and his long moustache all but covered his mouth. His hands were rough from the ropes and tiller, and his stance splay-footed from maintaining his balance on the slanted boards of a heaving hull. The hair on his head had been blasted to a mere grizzled wisp of sun-faded grey. He looked like a gristle-bone the dogs had gnawed clean and discarded.
'Greetings, friend,' bawled the king. 'We have been hearing of your skill and knowledge from your friends. They speak most highly of your shipwise abilities.'
'If they do me honour, my thanks to them,' replied the pilot with a small bow of his round, grizzled head. 'If they do me insult, my curse on them. I am Njord, Jarl Harald, and my best greetings to you.'
'Friend,' said the king expansively, 'it would cheer me to have you drink with me. Cup bearers, be about your work! More ol! Our bowls are empty and our throats are dry!' Turning to Njord, he said, 'All this talk has made me hungry, too. Let us sit down and eat together, and you can tell me of your journeys.'
'A man must be careful when sitting down with kings,' observed Njord narrowly, 'for it is a costly business paid out in life and limb.'
I understood then why he was called Deep-Minded, for it soon became apparent that he believed himself a philosopher with a gift for expressing his insights in witty aphorisms.
The men around him stared, but the king threw back his head and laughed. 'Too true, I fear,' Harald conceded happily. 'But let us hazard health and fortune, heya? Who can say but it may prove worth the risk.'
Thorkel and I found a place for the king and his strange new friend. Gutrik, Snorri and the rest joined us, shoving aside others in order to remain near enough to reach the meat and ale that soon began appearing on the board. So we settled down for a meal that stretched all the way to dusk, and ended with the king and Njord exchanging solemn, if drunken, vows: the pilot to guide us past the treacherous cataracts, and the king to reward him handsomely out of the proceeds of his business venture. The precise nature of this venture, I noticed, Harald failed to articulate.
The small matter of Njord's obligation to lead his own jarl's ships on their homeward voyage was quickly overcome when Harald offered to repay the pilot's share of the summer's spoils as compensation for the loss of his services. The ship's master was summoned and quickly agreed; the bargain was struck on the spot.
Having obtained all he came for and more, the king was now eager to depart. Up he rose from the table, and hastened for the door, trailing a considerable body of serving men, each demanding payment and shouting at the top of his lungs to make himself heard above the others. The king's progress was halted at the door; he turned and reached into his belt and brought out a handful of silver. This he delivered to the foremost server, saying, 'Share this out among yourselves as you deem best.'
The serving men gaped in astonishment at the paltry reward and shouted all the more loudly. 'This is our reward?' they shrieked incredulously. 'A whole day's food and drink, for this?'
But the king merely raised his hand in admonishment as he stepped through the door. 'Nay, I will hear no word of thanks. For the pleasure was mine alone. Farewell, my friends.'
Njord nodded his head in admiration of Harald's aplomb. 'There breathes a king indeed,' he muttered.
Even though it meant exchanging one stench for another, it was good to be quit of the drinking hall, I thought, as we passed the wooden post of Odin with its rancid gifts. A whole day weltering in the sun had made the putrefying sacrifices most pungent. Yet, on the whole, the stink of rotting meat was preferable to the noisome stew of smoke, sweat, faeces, sour beer and vomit dished up in the drinking hall.
There was no one aboard ship but the guards-not the same ten who had been left behind to watch the vessels, for these had been replaced earlier in the day by kinsmen who had sated themselves on both cup and copulation, and who were now fast asleep on deck. The sleeping men were roused and commanded to retrieve their fellow shipmates.
Separating the Sea Wolves from the delights of Kiev proved far more difficult than anyone could have foreseen. The pleasure houses were large and contained many rooms-some of which were completely enclosed, for those seeking more private expression of the carnal arts-and each house and room had to be searched and the seafarer led or, more often, carried back to the waiting ships.
The moon had risen and gained its peak by the time all Harald's raiders were assembled once more and the ships pushed away from the bank. Fortunately, rowing was not required; the southward flow of the river carried us along. Thus, no one was forced to grapple an oar and disaster was held at bay.
The next day, however, we were not so fortunate. Below Kiev the Dnieper passed through ragged hills that squeezed the river into a swift-running stream carving its way through high stone banks barely wide enough to admit the ships. Sure, an oar held either side would have been scraped to splinters. It was all Thorkel could do to keep the keels centred in the deepest part of the channel. All day long he wore a brow-furrowed haunted look, as if he expected calamity to overtake us at any moment. Njord, on the other hand, spent the day with his head under his cloak, sleeping off the revel of the night before.
When he finally emerged, the worst of the passage was behind us and the water had grown placid once more. 'Ah, you see now,' he declared, looking around, 'this is splendid. I think you are a true helmsman, friend Thorkel. Your skill is equal to mine in every respect save one.' He declined to say what the singular lack might be, but went on to pronounce upon the seaworthiness of the ship instead. 'Oh, but it is a fine ship, heya? I think so. Stout-masted, but easy on the tiller-a fine longship all in all.'
'We have always thought as much,' replied Thorkel a little stiffly. 'But I am glad to hear you say it.'
'In three days the contest begins, however,' Njord continued. 'The first cataracts are not so bad-little more than rapids. We shall go through four of them very easily, for the water is not so swift this time of year. When the spring rains flood the valleys, it is an entirely different matter. We have good reason to thank our stars it is not spring.'
'What of the remaining cataracts?' wondered Thorkel.
'Every man acquires debts,' answered Njord cryptically, 'but only a fool borrows trouble.' He walked away, running his hands over the smooth rail.
'I did not care to borrow it so much as to merely catch a far-off glimpse,' muttered the pilot.
The Lord Christ himself said that each day's cares are sufficient to the day and that tomorrow's worries are best left for the morrow. This I told Thorkel, who only blew his nose at the notion and would not speak to me the rest of the day.
25
The first three cataracts were mastered with poles. As Njord had predicted, the water was low in the pinched crevices through which the river pushed its way to the Black Sea. Using the ends of the oars, we poled the boats slowly around the rocks-now bracing, now guiding, now pushing-until we reached calm water again. By the time we had cleared the third cataract, King Harald was wishing he had not brought so many ships with him; after the fourth, he was contemplating the wisdom of leaving two boats behind and retrieving them later.
Greed awakened just in time to persuade him that he would need all his ships to carry the plundered wealth of Miklagard away, and that, if anything, he was foolish not to have brought more and even larger vessels.
The fifth and sixth cataracts taxed the strength and endurance of every crewman, save the king and ten warriors who stood on the bank to guard the supplies against ambush. A devious local tribe known as the Patzinaks liked, according to Njord, nothing more than to lie in wait where the boats were most vulnerable.
