Morning comes dark, wet, and blustery. We weigh anchor at dawn and row, five ships abreast, along the European shore, letting the swift current do most of the work. As the channel narrows, low wooded hills come into view on either hand, thickly grown with oak, pine and black cypress. The current sweeps us past fishermen’s’ cottages, white-washed and thatched, each one perched on its own little cove along this snaggle-toothed coast. As we draw nearer to the city, scattered houses collect in drowsy villages and these grow into bustling towns. And now grander buildings appear at intervals: princely villas and silent monasteries, lifting up their red-tiled heads above strong, encircling walls. Soon the strait is thick with vessels of every size and description, darting this way and that on their various errands.
But we are not the lads to make way for anyone. We are the Rus!
On we sweep, rank after rank, still five abreast and holding to our course, with oars rising and dipping in perfect time to the booming notes of the oarsmen’s song.
Boats that are not quick enough to yield the right of way are swamped in our wake. Their passengers shout curses—from a safe distance. We ignore them.
We are the Rus.
And it must seem doubtful to those gazing at us from shore whether we have come to trade or to fight.
My shoulder being still too painful for rowing, I stand in the prow with Stavko. Only one rank of strugi precedes ours. Of these, the middle one is captained by Vyshata Ostromirovich, a crusty old boyar who is the commodore of our fleet, and responsible for dealing with the Greek authorities. We are not yet in sight of the city when three warships appear, beating up the channel towards us.
“Imperial dromons,” says Stavko with a hint of borrowed pride. “How would feel to have ship like that under your feet, eh, Churillo?”
They are more than twice the length of the biggest of our strugi and broader in the beam. Two hundred oars in double banks propel them and each ship has also a pair of masts rigged with sloping three-cornered sails. Emblazoned on the sails in black and gold is the eagle of New Rome. And something else I have never seen before: their prows end in massive bronze beaks that cut the water like plowshares, flinging up sheets of white spray as they come on.
“Will there be trouble?”
“No, no, no. Is only escort. Every year same thing. They must look us over, count us, tally up value of cargo, write it all down—not once, but three, four times, this copy here, that copy there.”
“Why?”
“Why? Because they’re Greeks, that’s why.”
The two flanking ships swing out to right and left, athwart the current and drop anchors, barring our way. The middle ship draws alongside Vyshata’s and throws out grappling lines. The strug backs water furiously and passes the order down the line—which still does not save us from collisions and tangled oars as our fleet slows to a halt.
The dromon towers over the strug. Her gunwales are crowded with archers and javelin men, all in conical helmets and hauberks of iron scales. Her deck bristles with catapults and with slender, bronze tubes mounted on swivels, whose open mouths are fashioned to resemble the heads of roaring lions. I take them at first sight for trumpets and wonder aloud why no one sounds them.
“Pray you never hear their music,” Stavko says, crossing himself, “is roar of hell-fire.”
The lion-headed ‘trumpets’ direct their glittering eyes at Vyshata’s deck. A rope ladder is let down, by which the boyar mounts. The dromon’s captain, reclining on a couch before his cabin, rises and permits his orderly to drape a plum-colored cloak around his gilded corselet. And Vyshata, that proud old warrior, kneels before this man!
“Stavko, how many ships like that do they have?” I whisper without taking my eyes from the scene before us.
“You’re asking me? Maybe two hundred, maybe twenty, maybe not that many. No one gets close enough to military harbor to see. Is only one of many well-kept secrets here: secret of silk, secret of throne that floats in air, secret of those accursed fire-tubes—secret of their power. Is it still as great as in Basil Bulgar-Slayer’s reign? Or is only mummers’ show now, all masks and pretending? Who can say? Miklagard is city built on secrets, Churillo Igorevich. Mystery is her strength.”
It is late afternoon before we begin to move again. The dromons come about (despite their enormous size they handle smartly) and lead us the last few miles to the harbor of Saint Mamas, where our quarters await us. Stavko leaves me to go aft and look after his human cargo.
Alone, I sink again into that mood of doubt and discontent that never leaves me for long. My thoughts circle uselessly round and round the same few questions: have I done right to come here? Am I fated to die here, far from my home with my vengeance still unsatisfied? If only I might have a dream or a sign to guide me, but my father’s ghost has been silent for a very long time. Is he angry with me?
Then, as I stand lost in gloomy thought, the starboard shore falls away sharply to form a deep bay and, at the same moment, the setting sun breaks through the clouds in a blaze of molten orange. Spread out before me across the sparkling water is a sight dazzling to the eyes: a series of rising terraces clothed in marble, acres of it—walls, columns, arches, steps, piled one atop the other and everywhere crowned with golden domes, touched to sudden life by the fire from above.
It is all true, those boasts of Leonidas’s, that sneer of Ingigerd’s. But no one’s words could have prepared me for this, just as no words of mine are big enough for it now. The sight of it comes like rain to my barren spirit. Curiosity and wonder—feelings I have forgotten I possessed—stir in me again like seeds in the damp earth. To walk those avenues, to enter those cool marble towers and hear the whisper of silk along their secret corridors …
“Aye, Tangle-Hair,” says a voice within, “but, for all that, don’t forget what you must do here. In one of these gleaming piles you will find Harald—or he’ll find you. Make no plans to outlive that day.”