She would not even look his way, having realized three verbal jabs ago that he deliberately baited her when he had shown her a stall with the testicles of every possible animal you could imagine, and another where the mandrake root was being sold. He had to explain to her that the mandrake root resembled a woman’s female parts. As if she would know what she looked like down there!
So now she bit her bottom lip for silence. Glancing skyward, she saw that the sun was overhead. It must be about midday. “We should return to the palace if I am to prepare for my audience with the emperor.” She directed one of her guardsmen to pick up the case of amber that she had left with Ianthe for her inspection.
“I would get it for you,” Sidroc said, although she hadn’t thought to ask him to, “but I have an appointment with General Sclerus. ’Tis best I be in uniform for what I have to say.”
“Your request to quit the Varangian Guard?”
He tilted his head in surprise.
“Ianthe told me.”
“What else did she tell you?”
Oooh, I like the look of worry on his sorry face. “Plenty.”
When he waited and she said no more, good soldier that he was, he chose to attack from a different angle.
She should have been prepared. She should have had her drawbridge up and her defenses mounted.
“So, tell me about your child’s father. The man you presumably bedded right after you abandoned me to near death.”
“I did not . . . he is not . . . I will not . . .” she sputtered. Oh gods, oh gods, oh gods! The web of my lies keeps getting bigger and bigger. She calmed herself by inhaling and exhaling several times. “ ’Tis none of your concern.” How I wish that were true.
“You lie,” he said. “Believe you me, your face tells all when you utter falsehoods. But I wonder why.”
“Leave off, Sidroc, I have too much on my mind to answer your questions.” And I need more time to polish my lies. Or polish the truth when I give it to you.
“You lie again. All right. We will delay speaking of your lover, but what I want to—”
Just then they were interrupted by several little girls who ran in front of them, chasing after a goat that had gotten loose from one of the stalls. Laughing and giggling, they dodged this way and that, their long hair whipping about their sweet faces.
Drifa was reminded of Runa, of course, whom, of a sudden, she missed sorely. How Runa would love seeing the bazaar! Drifa vowed to buy the little girl many gifts to make up for her absence. Maybe even that marble game she’d seen. And a Greek gown in her favorite color, blue. Dozens of ribbons of every color in the rainbow.
She inhaled and exhaled to calm herself as they resumed walking. Only then did she realize that Sidroc was studying her closely.
“What now?” she asked.
“Tell me about your child?”
Chapter Ten
Viking James Bonds, they were not . . .
As he and Finn waited for their appointment with General Sclerus, Sidroc mulled an untenable, too-horrifying-to-contemplate prospect.
“Could Drifa’s child be mine?”
“Whaaat?” Finn nigh shouted.
Sidroc hadn’t realized he’d spoken his concern aloud. Well, too late now. “Every time I mention Drifa’s child, she gets skittish. In fact, you could say she is downright fearful. And not once does she answer my questions about the girl . . . Runa by name, I think.”
“Could you have forgotten having tupped her?”
“Holy Thor, nay! I am not demented enough, despite the hole in my head, nor so widely tupped, to forget such an event, especially with a Norse princess. But what if she swived me whilst I was in the death-sleep?”
Finn’s eyes widened at the possibility, but then he pointed out, “I was there most of the time at your bedside.”
“But there was that time when you went to Vikstead to look for Signe?”
“You have the right of it, but honestly, Sidroc, I have ne’er heard of such happening afore. Although ’tis a well-known fact that men’s cocks sustain enthusiasms whilst asleep. In truth, one time my morning enthusiasm was so big I would have bronzed it if I could.”
That was not a picture Sidroc needed in his head. “Is it so far afield to think a woman couldn’t hop onto an erection and have her way with a helpless man?”
“Yea, it is too far-fetched.” This from Finn, the master of far-fetched. “But we come back to the question: Why is she so scared?”
“I do not know.” You can be sure I will find out, though. “Still . . . I cannot fathom it. Drifa? The princess of prim?”
“She did have a passion for you once.”
A short-lived one that ended in a wallop over my head. “Why would she take advantage of me whilst I was in the death-sleep? If she wanted to swive, she only had to ask.”
“Mayhap she yearned for a child . . . your child, and feared you would ne’er wake up to give it to her the natural way.”
Impossible! It never happened!
Did it?
“Ahem!”
He and Finn turned to see a servant standing in the doorway. “The general is ready to see you now.”
As they stood and prepared to walk into one of the smaller reception rooms, a half-dozen men in uniforms walked out. They were minor generals in both the tagmatic and thematic armies, each of whom Sidroc and Finn knew. Short greetings were exchanged by all.
Byzantium was divided into military districts called themes, each of which had its own armies, garrisons, and such. Then there was a whole other group of military men assigned to the palace in Miklagard. These were called tagmatic armies. General Sclerus was the commander-in-chief of them all.
But the presence of these generals together and the way they’d regarded Sidroc caused a prickling sensation to run up the back of his neck.
“Uh-oh!” Finn said.
“Definitely,” Sidroc agreed.
More uh-ohs resounded in their heads once they entered the room where General Sclerus was studying a huge map spread across a table. He was not alone.
The emperor, John Tzimisces, wearing a simple tunic and braies—not his usual royal garb, though the garments were of what appeared to be silk or softest wool—lounged before a table, sipping at a goblet of wine. Also, there was Patriarch Antony sitting rigidly and somber, telling his beads in his lap; leastways, that’s what Sidroc hoped he was doing with his hands in his lap. And even more ominous was the presence of Alexander Mylonas, the rodent-faced eparch of Miklagard.
While the emperor ruled all of Byzantium, the eparch, or prefect, controlled almost every facet of life and business in the Golden City. He was a man much feared by the merchants and common folks, with good reason. Ianthe had endured more than one encounter with the vile prefect.
“Your eminence,” Sidroc said as he and Finn bowed from the waist before the emperor. They waited to straighten until the emperor replied, “Welcome Lord Guntersson. Welcome Lord Vidarsson.”
Neither of them were lords by any stretch of the imagination, but they did not bother to correct the ruler. Not anymore. They had done so on several occasions in the past to no avail. If the emperor wanted to think of them as Norse lords, so be it.
Still standing, he and Finn parroted, “Your holiness,” to the patriarch, who nodded at them. They also exchanged greetings with General Sclerus and Prefect Mylonas, both of whom acknowledged their presence but with no particular warmth.
Oh well. So that was how it was going to be.
“You wished to speak with me?” the emperor said right off.
Was it meaningful that he and Finn were not asked to sit and share a cup of wine?
Probably.
“Your majesty, we wish to resign from the Varangian Guard and return to our homelands,” Sidroc said. No one in the room seemed surprised by the request, but as silence loomed, Sidroc went on, “Finn and I have served you well these past five years, but ’tis past time we settled our own estates.” Not that they had any at the
moment, but the emperor didn’t need to know that.
The general glanced up from his map reading and asked, “Do you have any grievance over the way you have been treated as Varangian guardsmen?”
“Not at all. We have been well paid and respected.”
“Except for our pay for this past year’s service, which is due about . . . oh, now,” Finn added with the subtlety of a bull in a glass palace.
“Is there a reason why they have not been paid?” the emperor asked General Sclerus.
Red-faced, the general said, “So many men are to be paid from this last returning group. ’Tis just a delay.” To Sidroc and Finn, he said woodenly, “If you go to the minister of finance today, you will be paid.”
“Many thanks,” he and Finn said.
“When would you like to end your service?” the emperor asked then.
“As soon as possible,” Finn blurted out.
Sidroc shot him a glare of warning. “We have returned from a long mission only days ago. We would not like to delay our passage until the Norse fjords freeze over the winter months.” A perfectly logical explanation. Now, if only they would accept it!
The emperor, the eparch, and the patriarch exchanged meaningful glances, which could only spell trouble.
He and Finn exchanged meaningful glances, too. Theirs spelled, “Uh-oh!” Again!
“There is a short mission we would ask you to complete before you leave,” the emperor said.
“Both of us?” Finn demanded.
Sidroc was going to kill Finn for his rudeness, if someone else didn’t do it for him.
“One would be fine, two would be better.” The emperor’s tone now was not as friendly as when they’d first entered.
“What is it you would have us do . . . if we agree?” Sidroc emphasized. It was one thing to be polite, another to be weak.
The emperor waved a hand for General Sclerus to explain.
“The muscle of the Byzantine empire has been increasingly in the strongholds we have in the borders, where our warlord generals have maintained a defense against the Moslems. But many of these warlords, the dynatoi, have grown too powerful. We cannot allow it to continue.”
“Greedy. And ungodly,” Patriarch Antony said, speaking for the first time. “They must be stopped lest Byzantium becomes another Sodom and Gomorrah.”
The emperor raised his brows at that possibility, but did not correct the holy man. It was an exaggeration, Sidroc presumed. And really, didn’t the emperor come from warlord stock himself?
Sidroc was familiar with that biblical story of Sodom and Gomorrah, and he would be damned if he was going to be the Greek’s pillar of salt. As if reading his mind, Finn whispered to him in an undertone, “I would not look good in salt.”
“What did you say?” the general demanded.
“Just telling Sidroc that we need more information,” Finn lied.
“Precisely what do you want us to do?” Sidroc asked, looking at the emperor, Sclerus, and the patriarch in turn. He had no idea what role the eparch played in all this.
“The border properties are not paying their taxes properly,” the eparch said, “and we suspect they are harboring criminals who must be brought to justice.”
The eparch was second in power only to the emperor in Miklagard. He enforced the law of the land, tracking down culprits and trying them in the courts. Sometimes criminals were flogged on the spot. He supervised all the people and goods coming into and leaving the country. Anyone who wanted to do business in the city needed to get a permit from him. He even set prices and wages for goods and services, and regulated taxes. Some said he had a thousand people working for him from his headquarters in the Praetorion, which also housed the prison, on the Mese halfway between the Augustaion and the forum. A man not to be trifled with, for a certainty.
So, seeing the eparch’s involvement, Sidroc concluded that this was about money as well as fear of eroding power.
“I repeat, what would you have us do?” Sidroc was beginning to suspect they had been set up. Recognizing that he and Finn wanted to leave, they were using that as leverage. “Surely you do not expect us to lead troops into those areas. It sounds like a massive operation.”
The general shook his head. “We are not looking for an outright fight. Not at this point, anyway. What we want is information.”
“Spies? You want us to spy?” Sidroc was incredulous. He was a fighter, not a slyboots who could slip in and out of dark corners.
“Yes,” the general answered, “but only on one warlord, Steven Bardas, and his holding, two days’ ride by horse or camel in the mountains close to Byzantium. You would only be gone a week, or two.”
The scorn in the general’s tone was telling. It was a well-known fact that the Sclerus and Bardas families had been at odds with each other for generations. They were dynasties, really. Warring dynasties. And the connections were many and complicated. For example, the emperor’s first wife, Maria, had been a Bardas.
“Would not Greek soldiers do better for this role?” Finn asked. “Sidroc and I do not exactly blend in.” ’Twas true. They were taller than the average Greek and clearly Nordic in appearance, Finn more so with his blond hair.
“That is the best part,” the emperor interjected. “Apparently Bardas is recruiting mercenaries, including my Varangian guardsmen.”
“Won’t he be suspicious?” Sidroc could not believe he was even considering another assignment, and one as a spy, at that. He was a soldier, not a sneak-about.
“You two can convince him otherwise,” the general said. “We would not ask if we did not think you were capable.”
Right. Why not just ask us to walk through fire, or put a sword through our own hearts? “If we undertake this one last mission,” Sidroc addressed the emperor, “do we have your oath to release us from our duties, with bonus pay?”
The emperor stiffened at their demand for a promise, but then he looked to the patriarch and said, “I give my oath afore God.”
That was good enough for Sidroc. When Finn started to say something, Sidroc stepped on his foot.
Specific details were given to them then as they all scanned the map of the region in question. Forget about horses or camels, they would probably need goats to climb that mountainous area. Or at the least, mules. How humbling was that for a Viking? Gods, I need to be back on a longship again. Thinking of that, he decided to send word to his men serving under him here in Byzantium to make ready his longship and bring it to Miklagard forthwith. It had been beached near a harbor outside the city gates these past five years.
Now that the meeting was over, the eparch looked at Sidroc and said, “What will your mistress, the pretty jewelry maker, do when you resign?”
The pretty jewelry maker? Flags of warning went up in Sidroc’s head. “She will work as usual.”
“She will not be leaving with you?”
Sidroc shook his head, warily. Mylonas’s interest in Ianthe alarmed him. There was so much he could do to thwart her business and personal life, if he so chose. “Does Ianthe have reason to be concerned? Are her trade permits not in order? Is she behind in her taxes?”
“No. I was just asking.”
He and Finn exchanged glances. Sidroc would definitely need to hire a guard or two for her, aside from the daytime shop guard. In fact, she might be better off living outside the city, making her jewelry there, and hiring someone to manage her shop.
He sighed. One more problem to resolve before he left the city that was beginning to feel not so golden to him.
But then he had still another problem to deal with.
“I believe I will be meeting one of your countrywomen shortly,” the emperor said as his chancellor of the bedchamber helped him into formal robes. “A Norse princess.”
“An Arab,” Sclerus said scornfully. If there was anything the Greeks hated more than Arabs, Sidroc did not know what it was.
“An Arab? In the palace?” Mylonas’s ears perked up with interest.
>
And the patriarch spat out, “A pagan? Is she a Moslem?” The priest’s eyes were practically bug-eyed with outrage.
“Nay, nay, nay! Drifa is a Norse princess. Viking to the bone. Her father is the powerful King Thorvald of Stoneheim.” Sidroc could not believe he was defending the traitorous baggage . . . the woman who might very well prove to be the mother of his secret child. “Really, she has only a speck of Arab blood from her mother’s side.”
All three men gave Sidroc dubious assessments, as if to say, We shall see.
“In any case, ’tis time for me to hold audience,” the emperor said, and all three men left the room.
“Holy Valkyries!” Finn said.
“My thoughts exactly.”
“Dost think we should follow and see what Princess Drifa faces?”
Sidroc sighed deeply. ’Twould seem a Viking’s work is never done.
Chapter Eleven
And then the other shoe dropped . . .
Drifa had thought she’d seen every marvel in the world in her two days in Miklagard, but it was nothing compared to what she witnessed in the Hrysotriklinos, or Golden Hall, where visiting envoys and delegations were formally presented to the emperor and empress.
The long room that resembled a cathedral in its grandeur had marble and colorful mosaic floors. Like paintings, they were. Even the ceilings were adorned with frescoes, mostly biblical scenes. Off to the side were columns, between and behind which court visitors stood. In fact, everyone—at least two hundred people—stood. Only the emperor and empress sat during the lengthy court rituals. Now that the delegation from the Rus lands and some nuns from a mountainous convent in Crete had been heard, it was her turn.
The logothete, or chief minister, led Drifa and her contingent of four hersirs forward, each carrying gifts for the royal heads of state.
They proceeded down what felt like a gauntlet of visitors, as well as court officials and their assistants, many of whom were eunuchs. In a conversation her father had been engaged in one time with Rafn, he’d referred to eunuchs as the third sex of Byzantium. There were so many of them because they were considered trustworthy, without high ambitions.