‘Death,’ said Snake in the Eye, ‘so my mother told me.’
The emperor pursed his lips, impressed.
‘I have always paid attention to things like this. It is an important mark, something from God.’
‘Our people say it is an image of the world snake — a serpent whose coils stretch across the whole earth. When it shakes, the seas boil and the land splits.’
‘Would you shake the earth and boil the seas, Snake in the Eye?’
‘I would, sir, on your behalf.’
The emperor touched his tongue to his upper lip.
‘A snake in a boy’s eye. One thing among many strange ones recently. Two days ago — you saw the fireball in the sky?’
‘It was a good omen.’
‘We made sure it was. I had to drum up a legion of fortune tellers and wonder workers to convince the men it was a sign God was with us.’
‘He surely was, sir.’
‘Who knows what these things mean? Men call comets the terror of kings. I tell you for nothing, it put the wind up me. Must have been a good sign, I suppose. We won, didn’t we?’
Snake in the Eye stayed silent. He sensed the emperor just wanted to voice his concerns. Snake in the Eye’s one purpose was to provide a pair of ears so Basileios could talk out loud without considering himself mad.
‘The rebel drops dead in front of me, then this downpour arrives out of nowhere in high summer in a land that hasn’t seen rain in a year. What do you think of that?’
‘The land is grateful. You have removed the rebel and reset the natural order. Perhaps the rebellion caused the drought.’
‘You speak like a man twice your age. Are all the Varangians like you?’
‘I come from a line of wise men and have been brought up in their company but I am wise enough to know that I know only a little of the world. This is why I spend my time listening, when I can, to people who know more.’
‘A good policy. It is better to listen than to speak, even for kings. Only the king who keeps his secrets to himself knows he can never be betrayed.’
He took a sip of his wine and swirled the remaining liquid around in the bottom of his cup, staring into it as if he expected it to reveal the answer to some troubling question.
‘There are envious men working against me by supernatural means, I am sure, envious men in league with envious demons. Fascinus, St Jerome called it, so says my chamberlain. Envy turned to hurt. Harm in the gaze. Was it Christ who came to our aid? I hope so. But this will excite the envy of demons even more. If the rebel can be struck down in such a way, why not me? These past years I have…’
He stopped speaking.
Snake in the Eye had spent his time in the Greek camp learning everything he could about the emperor and the organisation of the Byzantine forces. Basileios had not had a woman in five years. His closest advisers insisted he had no time for such things. He thought of conquest, not women. The soldiers whispered that an Anatolian witch had cursed his cock to limpness for the ravages of his armies. That explained why he didn’t marry. But there again his mother had been a murderous witch — she killed her husband, the emperor Romanos, with poison and married his successor. When she grew tired of him she had him killed too and would have married a third emperor if the Church hadn’t interceded. With a mother like her, Basileios had learned to be wary of women. He was known to be a superstitious man and may have seen wives as bad luck.
The emperor seemed to get irritated with his own deliberations. He pointed to the boy’s eye.
‘An interesting mark. Perhaps a sign of great fortune.’
‘Not for my enemies,’ said the boy.
Basileios laughed. ‘Ah, let’s hope not. You amuse me, Snake in the Eye, and that in itself is a great fortune.’
‘I hope to be of greater service than making you laugh, lord. I am a man now, just, and my axe is restless in my hand. I would kill for you. That is my destiny. I was raised as a merchant but in the northern way — as a warrior too. I have a skill at arms unmatched by my fellows and one day it will be unmatched by men throughout the world. Your enemies are my enemies and I would watch them fall.’
Snake in the Eye believed the words as he said them. He beat most older boys in their fighting games, despite his size. Would it be so different to face a grown man with sharp steel? Not if you kept your wits, he thought.
‘Perhaps you will, one day. If you get some hairs on your chin and a sword, I think that would be a start. First, tell me about these Norsemen, their customs and their ways. To command them, I must know them.’
So Snake in the Eye told the stories of his people — of battles, journeys by ship, incredible hardships. The emperor listened with conspicuous pleasure — happy he had secured the services of unusually violent and hardy men. One fact particularly pleased him.
‘When we give an oath it is our solemn bond,’ said Snake in the Eye. ‘We will not break it for anything — not starvation, not death or poverty. A man, to us, is only as good as his word.’
‘That is your boast, but is it your practice?’ said the emperor. ‘Many men who swear loyalty to Christ do not act as Christians when their betters are not looking.’
‘If our men swear, they swear in earnest,’ said the boy. ‘In the market at Birka I have never known a man of my people fail to keep a promise. When a Norseman says he will pay you in ten days, you will be paid in ten days, even if he has to cut another merchant’s throat to do it.’
The emperor glanced at the cloaked back of the Hetaereian guard who sat cross-legged in the rain at the small open entrance to the tent.
‘Romans have no such code,’ he said. ‘They live in terror of the emperor or they slit his throat. They have known no other way since the beginnings of the empire.’
‘Our men are not like that,’ said Snake in the Eye, who had not mistaken the direction of the emperor’s thoughts. ‘If we pledge allegiance to a lord, we will die rather than betray him. We are dependable. Above all else, we are dependable.’
The emperor took a fig from a silver bowl at his side and toyed with it in his hand. ‘Did you take an oath to Vladimir before you deserted him?’
‘We did but he released us from it to send us to you.’
‘He never paid you. Six thousand of you and no attempt at rebellion?’
‘Our leaders had sworn. That was the end of the matter.’
‘I will think on it,’ said the emperor. He replaced the fig and fell to silence.
The rain kept coming, harder and harder. Eventually the emperor grew tired and ordered the flap of the tent closed to the minimum necessary for ventilation, and had the coals in the brazier reduced to just a couple. The soaking eunuch guard ducked into the tent and went to shoo the boy out but the emperor raised a hand.
‘He has earned a dry night,’ he said.
Snake in the Eye lay down to sleep on a silk cushion, pulling a blanket of fine goat wool about him, and staring up at the tent’s roof by what remained of the brazier’s glow. He glanced across at the head of the rebel. He smiled to see the swollen slits of eyes watching him in the dim light.
You were greater than me, he thought, but now look at you. The poets will sing of me, not you.
His limbs were sore from the day’s exertions but he was not sleepy. His mind hummed with the thrill of battle. He ached to do it all again, but this time, this time at least, to get in on the kill. At the great northern market at Birka Snake in the Eye met many foreigners and saw many remarkable sights but nothing like he had seen that day.
He’d stood next to the emperor, translating his commands for the Varangians as the armies engaged, right by his standard and the portrait of St Helena exhibited on a pole to face the oncoming enemy. The emperor’s Greeks, foot soldiers at the front, slammed into the rebel’s iron-armoured Armenians with a sound like the fall of a million metal plates and the battle started. Images from the day came back to him — the rain of arrows from both sides, the strangeness of the enemy’s Bedouin camel riders, the grace of the Anatolian cavalry as they harried the infantry with arrows dispatched at full gallop, the similarity of the troops as Greek fought Greek in tight and ordered lines. With the fighting at its fiercest, the rebel led a charge with his heavy cavalry into the emperor’s flank.
