coats and metal helmets, round shields and spears.
The officer was splendid, in that armour of little metal leaves over leather that they call lamellar and a splendid helmet made to look like it was fashioned from the tusks of a boar, surmounted by a falling wash of horsehair plume.
‘You could beat them all with an empty waterskin,’ growled Finn and spat over the side. ‘These are half-soldiers.’
He was right: half-soldiers, called-out men who were tradesmen most of the time, but issued battle-gear when need or ceremony demanded. I felt easier, until I saw another group, this time a huddle of servants and one of the carrying-seats we knew well from the Great City. I realised, suddenly, that the knees were out of my breeks, my tunic salt-streaked and stained.
The carrying chair halted and a figure got out, rearranging the folds of his white robes. He was bald save for tufts of grey hair sticking from the sides of his head and clean-shaven but for a wispy lick of beard. That and his flap of ears made him look like a goat, but the officer saluted him smartly enough.
I had ordered Finn and others into what battle-gear we had, so that they made some appearance, grim being better than ragged. I slid into mail, greasy against almost-bare skin and borrowed a pair of better breeks from Amund, who then had mine, which were shorter in the leg on him. He stood behind the others on deck to hide his shame.
So I stepped ashore, flanked by mailed men, trying to look like a jarl while the bright sun beat down and the waves slapped. Goat Face stepped forward, glanced around and gave a slight nod.
I nodded back and he rattled off in Greek. I knew the tongue, though could not write it then, but he spoke so fast that I had to hold up a hand, to slow him down. That stunned him a little, for it seemed an imperious gesture, though I had meant no such thing. Even as he blinked, I realised that he had been asking which one was the leader here, never imagining it could be the most boyish of them all. By cutting him off in mid-flow, I had announced myself and with some force.
‘Speak slowly, please. I am Orm Ruriksson, trader out of the Great City, and this is my ship, Volchok.’
He raised an eyebrow, cleared his throat and said – slowly – that he was Constantine, the Kephale of Larnaca, which title I knew meant something like a governor.
The officer removed his helmet, revealing a moon-face and sweat-plastered thinning hair, to present himself, with a nod of the head, as Nikos Tagardis. He was kentarchos here, a chief of several hundred men – though if they were all like the ones sweating and shifting behind him, it wasn’t much of a command.
They were, it turned out, delighted and relieved to have us, for it seemed that the last time they had been visited by Varangi there had been more trouble about it. Constantine remounted his carrying chair and led a little procession of us away from the sea and into the town.
Behind, I could hear the noise change as the people surged forward and the Oathsworn clattered off the boat, Finn already booming out his few words of Greek. I hoped Radoslav and Brother John did as I had requested and sold only enough cargo to pay what we would owe.
The town was a deceit from the shore, since most of it lurked, sleepy and hidden, in a hollow between the scrub-covered hills and the sea. But it had a huddle of white houses and crooked alleys, a score of wells and several Christ temples, at least one of which had been a temple to a goddess of the Greeks before that. It even had a theatre, though I did not know what that was then.
There was also an area I knew was called a forum, which seemed to be a big square surrounded by columns, like a row of trees. It had a big, white building on one side of it, which turned out to be a bath-house.
We marched up to it and went in – the rich Greeks liked to trade in a bath-house and I came to enjoy it more than I did then. Inside, wine was served and my ‘guards’ scowled outside, given only watered ale. Then we spoke of this and that – and previous visitors.
‘It was five years ago now,’ said Tagardis, telling of the last visit of my ‘countrymen’. ’They raided along the coast, but always managed to escape before I arrived with my troops.’
An escape for you, I thought as I smiled and nodded, for if they had decided to stand and fight, you would not be looking so plump and pleased now.
‘In the end,’ he said, looking at me levelly, ‘they got themselves so drunk on pilfered wine that they ran aground and could not easily escape. Those we did not kill languish in our prison to this day.’
Hitting me on the side of the head would have been a more subtle threat. I lost my smile at that and the Kephale cleared his throat as he saw my face.
‘Of course,’ he smoothed, ‘Trader…Ruriksson, is it? Yes. Ruriksson. Yes. He has much more peaceful and profitable reasons for visiting our island, I am certain. What cargo do you carry?’
He was pleased with the cloth, less so with the spices, which I had suspected would be the case – the best prices for them came the further away from their origin and Cyprus was just this side of too close.
Then I announced my intention of visiting the Archbishop Honorius and the ears went up like questing hounds, for I had made it sound like I was dropping in on an old friend.
‘You know our Archbishop?’ the Kephale asked smoothly, lifting his cold-sweating cup.
‘I am paying my respects to him, from Choniates in the Great City,’ I answered casually. ‘I have a letter for him.’
‘Architos Choniates?’ asked Tagardis, pausing with cup to lip.
I nodded, pretended to savour the wine with my eyes closed. Under my lashes, I saw the pair of them exchange knowing looks.
‘My commander will no doubt wish to have you presented to him, if you will. Later this evening?’ said Tagardis. ‘The Archbishop will also be there.’
This was new. I thought he was the commander and said as much.
He smiled and shook his head. ‘A compliment which I accept gratefully, my friend,’ he said, all teeth and smiles and lies. ‘But I am garrison commander in Larnaca only. The commander of the island’s forces is a general, Leo Balantes.’
That smacked me in the forehead, though I tried to cover it by coughing on the wine, which was one of those deep-thinking moments my men praised me for; all Greeks think barbarians like us cannot drink wine, or appreciate it when we do. They smiled indulgently.
Leo Balantes, the one rumoured to have tried to riot the Basileus out of his throne the year before. So this was what had happened to him: a threadbare command at the arse-edge of what a Greek would consider civilisation, surrounded by sea-raiders and infidels.
I remembered that he was a sword-brother of John Tzimisces, the general they called Red Boots and the one currently commanding the Basileus’s armies at Antioch. That favour had at least prevented Leo from being blinded, the Great City’s preferred method of dealing with awkward commanders.
We met in a simple room at the top of that solid-square fortress, dining on what seemed to be soldier’s fare – fine for me, though the Kephale and the Archbishop hardly ate. Balantes was square-faced and running to jowl, with forearms like hams and iron-grey hair and eyebrows, the latter as long as spider’s legs.
He requested the letter, even though it was addressed to Honorius. It seemed, even to me, that we were conspirators, confirmed as Archbishop Honorius, a dried-up stick of a man with too many rings and a face like a ravaged hawk, started to explain the situation and began by looking right and left for hidden listeners. It was almost comical, but the implications of it made me sweat.
‘The…package…that you have to deliver to Choniates,’ the Archbishop said, while insects looped through the open shutters and died in a blaze of glory on the sconces, ‘is in the church of the Archangel Michael in Kato Lefkara. It was left in the charge of monks there, to be delivered here.’
‘What is it?’ I asked.
Balantes wiped