Varanger Read online

  “Thorfinn Hrolfsson,” a strange voice bellowed, from under the oak tree. The man with the gold-handled staff stepped forward and banged the butt of his stick on the ground. He spoke dansker, not well. “Come forward to this council!”

  Thorfinn straightened himself, pulling his sleeves down, glanced around him at his men, and walked out into the open before the council. The men under the tree—they were all Sclava, Raef saw, like the golden-haired man in the fancy cap—stopped their mingling together to watch him come; in the back, the man in the fancy cap leaned forward to see him better. Before them, Thorfinn bowed down from the waist, and said his name.

  He spoke dansker to them, although Raef knew he spoke Sclava well enough. He said, “I have come back with many goods for the markets of Holmgard. And I ask permission to be allowed to stay here the winter, and do some buying and selling, as I have done since my father’s time.”

  Behind the rest of the council the fair-haired man in the cap stood up suddenly. When he did the other Sclava all fell still and turned to watch him. In a respectful hush, he stepped forward, coming around the side of the benches, past the man with the staff. He had eyes so blue Raef could see them from across the crowd.

  “Thorfinn,” he said, his voice loud and strong. “There was talk you would not come this year. Some agreement with another fahrman. Is this going to make trouble for us?”

  Thorfinn stood solid, on wide-planted feet. “I am here now, Dobrynya. That other thing, that’s a matter for the Varanger.”

  “Varanger or no, we are all Rus’, and while I am posadnik of Novgorod I will not tolerate trouble in my city.”

  Thorfinn said, “I intend no trouble. I have bought and sold here since my father’s time. Since your father’s time, Dobrynya. And this is business of the Varanger, not you. Holmgard, not Novgorod.” His voice was hard as a stone, but he was taking a purse from his belt. Raef heard it jingle with coins. “In token of my goodwill, then, I shall give you my tithes in advance.”

  Dobrynya drew back, looking angry at that, as if he saw it for a bribe, but the man with the staff hurried eagerly forward, his hand out. All the other men on the benches craned their necks to watch, as the man with the staff took the purse, held it calculatingly a moment in his palm, and turned back to nod to them. The men under the oak tree clapped their hands.

  “We welcome our good friend Thorfinn Hrolfsson,” said the man with the staff.

  “Very well, then. I defer to the council,” said Dobrynya. “Only, Thorfinn, keep the peace, Holmgard, or Novgorod. We are all Rus’ here, remember.”

  Thorfinn bowed again and stepped back, in among the men of his crew. Raef saw a light sheen of sweat on his neck, in spite of the cold: he had been worried about this. The council lapsed back into their own speech, and several people came up before them and spoke with feeling, waving their hands.

  Thorfinn said, “Let’s go. I’ll empty a cup with all of you, back at my hall.”

  He turned on his heel and tramped off through the onlookers, away from the council. Einar and Helgi followed after him, with the other two men, Bjorn and Vagn; Raef and Conn trailed them all. Conn said, “I’m not much interested in going back to that hall, are you? Yet, anyway.”

  “There’s daylight left,” Raef said; he glanced up at the hazy winter sky. Thorfinn was getting farther ahead of them with each step. “What do you want to do?”

  Conn said, “I want to find a woman.”

  “Hold on,” Raef said. “Something’s going on.”

  Thorfinn and his crew had left the crowd behind, and headed off through the empty market, but then suddenly from one side a swarm of men stepped out to block the way.

  Thorfinn stopped in his tracks. Face-to-face with him stood a square-shaped man with hair and beard as red as a new brick, and a face all squinched up in the middle like a purse string drawn shut.

  Conn said, “Come on. This is what he needs us for.” He strode up to join the men around Thorfinn.

  “Get out of my way, Magnus,” Thorfinn’s voice boomed.

  Raef followed a little slower, staying off to one side, so that he could look this over. Now he understood why Thorfinn was worried. Whatever the right of their dispute, Magnus had two men to each of Thorfinn’s. Some of them had swords. Raef glanced at Conn, saw him taking all this in; Conn folded his arms across his chest, his gaze on the red beard.

  “You aren’t even supposed to be here, Thorfinn,” Magnus said. “We had an agreement, remember?”

  Thorfinn set himself, his feet wide apart. “You broke the agreement, Magnus. I kept my end, but you never paid up.”

  Magnus laughed, as if that was a joke. “Well, maybe I clipped a few pennies. But a deal is a deal, isn’t it? And I’m here now, Thorfinn.” He lifted his gaze and stabbed it at Thorfinn’s outnumbered crew, and his voice rang out hard and loud. “You men, there, I’ll give you a chance. You can stay with Thorfinn, and suffer with him, or you can come to me, and be with the winners. The best of food and drink in my hall!” He leered at Thorfinn. “We’ll see how many of you are left standing at the end of the winter, Thorfinn.”

  Then abruptly the golden Sclava lord, Dobrynya, was pushing in between them. He was a stout man but he moved lightly as a deer. Both Thorfinn and Magnus stepped back away from him; Magnus staggered in his haste and almost fell.

  Dobrynya said, in a high strong voice, “I will warn you both again—I will allow no fighting in my city. We are all Rus’ here, and I will throw any man out who fights. You, Thorfinn, this way, and Magnus, that way, and go now, all of you.” Standing alone between them, magnificent in his bright clothes, he thrust his arms out at them, driving them apart. “Start now, or I will get Pavo and his whip.”

  Thorfinn turned on his heel and walked off toward his hall. Behind him, Raef heard the red beard say, “Dobrynya, this is a Varanger thing. Let us deal with it.” He did not catch what Dobrynya said back. Beside him, Conn said to Thorfinn, “What is Varanger?”

  “We are,” Thorfinn said.

  “Then who are the Rus’?”

  Thorfinn crowded his shoulders together. “Everybody—Varanger and Sclava together. That’s what Dobrynya calls us when he wants to wield power over us. Come on.” He bustled them all along toward his hall.

  C H A P T E R T W O

  “There are actually two cities here, in a way,” said Thorfinn, later. He leaned his forearm on the scarred wooden table. Everybody was crowded into his hall, not only his crew but the whole household, and he sat with Conn and Raef near one hearth in a little alcove, which was warm, and quieter than the rest of the place. A rushlight glowed in a niche in the earthen wall, so they could see each other. “One city is Holmgard, our city, the Varanger. Novgorod is the city of the Sclava. Dobrynya would say, of the Rus’.”

  “What does that actually mean, Rus’?”

  “That’s a long story. It’s a Sclava hearing of a Swedish word, I’ve heard. They had a king once, who was a Swede, whose name was Rurik, something like that. So they use that word to mean the whole kingdom here. But the real name for people like us is Varanger, because we are free men.”

  “Sounds like trouble to me,” Conn said.

  “It works out, mostly. We’ve been coming here a long time. My father was one of the first, in the early days, he came to trade and put up for the winter. In the spring, the pelts here are incomparable.”

  His hands moved, up and down and crosswise. “Holmgard is a wonderful place for us. From here you can get anywhere, back to the west, for instance. Or south along this river into the lake down there and out onto another river, and walk a little to a big river that runs a long way south, and you will come to some fine places, I’ll tell you, good markets, soft people, lots of money.” His eyes shifted; he contemplated these far places a moment in his mind’s eye, a wistful smile on his face.

  Abruptly he shrugged himself back into the moment. “Then there’s Novgorod, the Sclava city. It was here first. Holmgard is in it like a mist in the w
oods in the morning. We Varanger always know Novgorod is here but to the Sclava Holmgard’s a passing nuisance. The farmers here, the cattle and horses, the workmen, the gardens, that’s all Novgorod.”

  “And the men under the oak tree,” Raef said. “And this Pavo, with his whip.”

  Thorfinn leaned back a little, his hands on the table before him, fingers splayed apart. Raef could see he liked talking about this. “The Sclava aren’t warriors. They like growing things and racing their horses and cooking their wotka and drinking it, and they’ve been sitting on this road here down to Miklagard for a while, picking off what they can out of what comes by and doing pretty well at that.”

  “What about Dobrynya?” Raef said.

  Thorfinn made a face, his head tipping to one side and then the other. “That’s the problem, as I see it, right now. The seed of Rurik still rules here. The Knyaz, as they call him, Volodymyr, down in Kiev, his father was one of us, but his mother was pure Sclava. Dobrynya is her brother, and he fostered Volodymyr. And made him Knyaz, when he wasn’t the true heir. With the help of a lot of Varanger, this was. But Dobrynya calls us all Rus’, and doesn’t want to make distinctions.” He rocked his head side to side again, fretful. “Some distinctions are important.”

  “Where does Magnus Redbeard come into this?” Conn asked.

  “Magnus is a swindling bastard. Here’s what happened between me and Magnus. He had me in a tight spot, I won’t bother you how, but to get out of it I sold him my station here.” Thorfinn’s face worked; Conn saw that this gnawed at him like a worm in the belly. He turned and spat out into the hall. “Then the bastard didn’t even pay me.”

  Conn took another head-whirling sip from the cup; what it held was not mead, but something past that, an icy liquid fire with an oily aftertaste and a kick that exploded up somewhere behind his eyes. He glanced around at Raef; their eyes met, and his cousin gave a little nod.

  Conn turned around toward Thorfinn. “I have to go outside—save me a swallow or two.”

  “Wait,” Thorfinn said. He shuffled around on the bench. “I said you would not regret helping me. You will need these.” He stood; the bench he sat on had a lid, which he opened, revealing a deep box. From this he took a dusty fur cloak and handed it to Conn, and then after some shuffling through the chest found another for Raef. “Go on,” he said. “I’ll see you later. There’s plenty of the wotka.” He shut the bench and sat down on it again, slumping on one elbow over the table, and reaching for the cup.

  Conn shook out the fur cloak, a black bearskin, sending up a haze of dust. He said, “I don’t know about this.” But he took the cloak with him, slung over his shoulder.

  With Raef on his heels he went out into the darkness, walked around the hall toward the horse pens, and made water. The horses had all gone in under the lean-to shelter at the north end of Thorfinn’s hall. The sun had just set and the night was clear and cold enough to set his teeth ringing together almost at once. The ground crunched underfoot with new frost. He swung the cloak around him, glad now for its musty depths. With Raef beside him he went off through the city again.

  “What do you think?” he said presently.

  “I want to get out of here,” Raef said. “Thorfinn’s on the short end of this, and it’s too cold.” He glanced behind them. “Here comes Einar.”

  Conn looked back; tall, yammer-mouthed Einar was striding up toward them, bundled in a heavy hooded cloak. The scrawny rat-faced boy trailed after—Conn had heard his name and forgotten it, not a dansker name. Einar strode up toward him.

  “So, what do you think, what do you think? Is Thorfinn more trouble than he’s worth? He’s lucky Dobrynya even let him stay here.” The scrawny boy had stopped a few feet behind him.

  Conn grunted at him, annoyed. Einar slapped his hands together. “Remember what Magnus said, he’ll take us on. He’ll pay us as well as Thorfinn will, I think.” He looked from side to side, as if a whole crowd watched them. “We could do that, don’t you think?”

  Conn said, “I don’t like jumping from one ship to another.” Thorfinn he knew was an honest man.

  Einar spun around suddenly, yelling. “Vagn, get out of here! Stop following me!” He stooped for a chunk of ice and flung it at the rat-faced boy, who darted off into the dark.

  “Isn’t he one of Thorfinn’s men?” Raef said.

  “No,” Einar said. “He’s nobody and belongs to nobody. He’s not even dansker. Probably he escaped from a slave pen somewhere. Thorfinn just took him on today for another body to stand against Magnus. Which is how desperate Thorfinn is.”

  Conn started off again; it was too cold not to be moving. They went up through the maze of pens, between the steep thatched eaves of houses, past a tree with another carved wooden post beneath it. A lanky dog was wolfing down something left in front of it. The moon was rising and the air grew steadily brighter. They came into the market, broad and empty, the oak tree a great black tangle in the center.

  “Up there,” Einar said. “There’s a house that sells wotka. When there’s a branch over the door, that’s what it means.” He nudged them, and Conn veered that way, past the oak tree. Where there was good drink, he had learned, there often were good women too.

  Raef gave a yell of warning. Conn wheeled around, his dream of good women flying out of his head; half a dozen men were charging at him out of the cover of the oak tree.

  He had no weapon but his knife and he left it in his belt. Raef was just behind him, Einar back of him. The first of the dark mass of bodies hurtled down on him, one step ahead of the others, swinging a club. Conn stooped down, the lumpy head of the club sweeping by his shoulder, and lunging forward he sank both his bare hands into the man’s fur coat. The swing of the club had the attacker already off-balance. Leaning hard against his weight Conn swung him around the same way he was already going, pivoted him off his feet, and slung him back into the path of the others rushing at him.

  When he let go of the fur coat he slipped down to one knee. He cast off the musty bearskin cloak. Raef shouted, beside him. The attackers had stumbled over their leader, but they came now through the dark toward him and Raef, spread out, in a rush. Conn got his feet under him and drove upward, rammed his shoulder into the body before him and flung it backward. He glimpsed Raef battling somebody with a long staff; beyond, Einar was down. A fist bounced off Conn’s shoulder. Somebody nearby screamed in pain.

  Off to one side, above him, there was a bellowing voice. He couldn’t heed that. Legs braced, he was wrestling chest-to-chest with somebody struggling to get one arm up and free and Conn knew there was a knife at the end of that arm and he was clutching and wrenching at it, trying to pin it fast to the other man’s body, hot breath in his face, and a stink of onions, and he swung one leg around and tripped the thrashing body down flat on its back.

  He stumbled away a step, and from behind him something struck his shoulder like an arrow. He yelped, feeling the burn of a wound, saw the light behind him, and wheeled around.

  Somebody there had a torch—somebody on a horse; and between the torch and him was another horseman, his cocked up. As Conn gathered himself to jump out of the way the arm swung forward and through the hazy torchlit air came a thin black uncoiling lash reaching straight for his eyes.

  He flung himself sideways onto the ground. The whip cracked in his ears like a great branch snapping in a high wind. He hit the frozen snow and rolled away and at a safe distance bounced up onto his feet again, facing the man with the whip.

  “No fighting!” this man roared; he was too big for the horse, sat there with his feet thrust down halfway to the ground; the torchlight showed only the beak of his nose and the jut of his long jaw.

  Conn’s shoulder throbbed. “Get them, then—they started it!” He thrust his hand out, pointing; he could see Magnus’s men sneaking away into the darkness. Einar had gotten up on one knee, breathing hard, and Raef stood beside him, holding the long staff. Two other men on horseback had come up behind them.


  The torchbearer had come closer, to put them all into his light. The big man was coiling his whip. At first Conn thought he was wearing a cap with a long tail but, then he saw it was his hair, bound up on the top of his head into a single braided hank that dangled down past his ear almost to his shoulder. And they had let Magnus’s men go. Conn strode straight at him; the idea of being whipped burned worse than the wound. “Get them! What, are you afraid of them? Did Magnus pay you to let them go?”

  “They’re moving. You get moving too,” the big man said, in bad dansker. “Or I will put another stripe on you.”

  Conn went up to the head of his horse, stood looking straight up at him. “I’d like to see you try.”

  The big man jerked his head back, angry, and his arm swung, uncoiling the whip; Conn jumped straight at him, up on the horse, and wrapping his arms around the big man’s body he threw himself sideways.

  Off-balanced, the horse went down with a crash. Conn’s left arm hit the ground hard, and he lost the feeling in it, but he had hold of the big man still. He squirmed on top, punched the big man in the chest, and got one foot on the other man’s arm. Under him the big Sclava surged strongly up, kicking out, bucking him off. Conn bashed him in the chest again, grabbing for the scalplock.

  Under him the massive body twisted, heaving up sideways off the ground. Conn slugged him in the face, aiming for his nose, and snatched again for the flying hank of hair, and then from somewhere else something huge and hard smashed against his head and knocked him instantly cold.

  Raef had never seen Conn beaten before. When his cousin crashed to the ground, he gaped a moment, still as stone; the big Sclava scrambled up off the snow and roared up onto his feet, his arms over his head, his voice like thunder. Almost under his feet Conn sprawled on the ground, unmoving.