Harry Harrison - Hammer-Cross 03 - King And Emperor

King and Emperor

Harry Harrison

The Hammer and The Cross, book 3

CONTENTS

Stamford

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Envoi

Stamford—March, Anno Domini 875

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"Just a village," they said. "A few huts by the roadside. Capital of the North! It's not even Capital of the

Fen. Never been anything, never will be."

The inhabitants of Stamford, both the old ones and the many more numerous incomers, bore the taunts

of their neighbors easily. They could afford to. For whatever its history, whatever its native merit or lack

of it, Stamford was now chief residence of the King of the North, once a co-king, once a jarl, before that

a mere carl of the Great Army now destroyed, before that, almost, a thrall in a fenland village. Now they

called him the One King, for so he had proved himself, and to his name and title, King Shef, his Norse

subjects added the nick-nameSigrsaell , his English ones, with the same meaning and in almost the same

wordSigesaelig : the Victorious. Truly he was a king who ruled by his word alone. If he declared humble

Stamford the Capital of the North, then so it must be.

After his now-legendary defeat of the Ragnarsson brothers in the great battle of the Braethraborg in the

year 868 of the Christians' count, that itself following on his defeat of the King of the Swedes in single

combat at the Kingdom Oak of Uppsala, Shef the One King had received the submission of all the petty

kings of the Scandinavian lands, of Denmark, Sweden and Norway as well. His fleets filled by levies

from his under-kings, prominent among them Olaf of Norway and his own comrade Guthmund of

Sweden, he had returned with massive force to the island of Britain, regaining power not only over the

kingdom of the East and Middle Angles which he had been granted previously, but rapidly overawing

also the petty rulers of Northumbria and the southern shires, and after them exacting submission further

from the Scots, the Picts and Welsh. In the year 869 King Shef had launched the great circumnavigation

of the island of Britain, which set out from the port of London, cruised to the north along the English and

Scottish coasts, descended like a cloud on the disbelieving pirate-jarls of the Orkneys and Shetlands, left

them chastened and afraid, and then turned south and west again through the many islands of the Scots

and down the lawless western coasts to Land's End itself. Only there did it recognize friendly power,

sheathe its talons, and sail east in company with the escort-ships of Alfred, King of the West Saxons, till

it reached home harbor once more.

Since then the inhabitants of Stamford could boast that they sheltered a king whose power was

uncontested from the westernmost isle of Scilly to the tip of the North Cape itself, two thousand miles

north and east. Uncontested and—most said—shared only in theory with King Alfred, whose narrow

boundaries King Shef persistently continued to honor, in obedience to the agreement of co-kingship the

two had entered into in dark days of threat almost ten years before.

What the inhabitants of Stamford could not say, and did not care to think about, was why the greatest

king the North had known since the times of the Caesars should make his home in the rural mud of

Middle Anglia. The king's advisers had said the same thing, many times. Rule from Winchester, some

said, to be frowned down by an angry one-eyed stare: for Winchester remained the capital of Alfred and

the South. Rule from York, suggested others, from the stone walls that the king himself had stormed.

London, said others, long a wretched backwater without a king or a court to fill it, but now increasingly

the rich center of trade from the fur-lands of the North to the vineyards of the South, crowded with ships

carrying hops, honey, grain, leather, tallow, wool, iron, grindstones and a thousand luxury goods: all

paying toll to the officers of the co-kings, Shef's on the north bank and Alfred's on the south. No, said the

many Danes among his counselors, rule from the ancient stronghold of the Skjöldung kings, from

Hlethraborg itself, for it is the center of your dominions.

The king rejected them all. He would have chosen a town in the fenlands themselves if it had been

possible, for he was a child of the fens. But much of the year Ely stood inaccessible in the swamp, and

Cambridge little better. In Stamford he was at least on the Great North Road of the Romans, now relaid

with hard stone on his own instructions. It was there, he declared, that he would set theWisdom-hus , the

House of Wisdom, that would be the central achievement of his rule: the new College of the

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Asgarth-Way, not replacing but overshadowing the old one at Kaupang in Norway. There all priests of

the Way would be welcome, to teach their crafts, to learn crafts from others.

It was part of the Wayman law that all priests should pay their way by work, not living from tithes and

soul-taxes like the priests of the Christians. Nevertheless the king had given to the College a skilled

reckoner, once a Christian priest himself, Father Boniface, to give money to any Way-priest for his own

support, such money to be repaid when convenient in work, in knowledge or in good silver. From all

over the north priests came, now, to learn the craft of milling, by watermill or windmill, and dispersed

again, taking with them the knowledge of how to grind corn, but also how to beat out iron with powered

trip-hammers and draft-bellows, how to adapt the new power to many tasks once carried out by

slave-muscles alone. Father Boniface, by the king's permission but without his direct knowledge, often

lent money to such visitors in return for a share of the profits of some new mill for five, ten or twenty

years into the future.

The silver that flowed into the coffers of the king, and the coffers of the Way, would once have brought

ten thousand Vikings on the trail of loot. But across the North there were now not even many bearded

corpses dangling on coastal gibbets as a warning to their kind. Royal warships patrolled the seas and the

port-approaches, the few towns and fjords that kept to their old piratical customs were visited one after

another by overwhelming fleets drawn from the powers of too many sub-kings to resist.

What Stamford did not know, did not wish to know, was that its very insignificance and lack of history

had been a recommendation to the king. He had said in the end to the chief of his advisers, Thorvin priest

of Thor, whom he had set over the College as its director: "Thorvin, the place for new knowledge is

somewhere where there is no old history, no old tradition for people to imitate and follow and

misunderstand. I have always said that as important as new knowledge is old knowledge which no-one

has recognized. But worse than anything is old knowledge which has become holy, unquestioned, so well

known to everybody that no-one thinks about it any more. We will begin again, you and I, somewhere

that no-one has heard of. Where there will be no stink of ink and parchment in the air!"

"There is nothing wrong with ink and parchment," Thorvin had replied. "Or vellum for that matter. The

Way has its books of holy songs. Even your steelmaster Udd has learnt to write down what he knows."

The King frowned, reconsidering what he meant. "I have nothing against books and writing, as a craft,"

he said. "But folk who study books alone come to think there is nothing in the world outside them. They

make book into Bible, and that is old knowledge become old lore. I want new knowledge, or old

knowledge recognized. So here in Stamford at the House of Wisdom we will establish this as a rule.

Anyone, man or woman, Wayfolk or Christian, who brings us new knowledge or shows us some new

and useful way to use old knowledge, will be better rewarded than they would be for years of toil. Or

years of Viking robbery. I want no more Ragnarsson heroes. Let people show their courage some other

way!"

By the year of Our Lord 875—for the chroniclers of the Asgarth Way kept to the Christian count while

they rejected the Christian Lord—his capital was established, his policy bearing fruit: sometimes sweet,

as often sour.

Chapter One

High in the sky, small white clouds scudded before the strong wind from the south-west. Their shadows

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raced across the bright green of new grass, across the strong rich brown of plow-furrows, the heavy

horse teams drawing slow lines across the springtime fields. In between the sun shone, hot and welcome

on England emerging from its winter sleep. Emerging too, many said, from the long dark into a new day

and a new spring under its young ruler and his iconoclastic but fortunate rule.

In the market place of rustic Stamford maybe as many as two thousand people were gathered to witness

the strange experiment that had been promised. The thanes and churls crowded in from the fields, wives

and children with them, pushing back their hoods to take the sun, even shedding their cloaks with due

caution against the return of the spring showers. The slow heavy faces showed pleasure, wonder, even

excitement. For today someone would indeed show a new kind of courage that not even Ivar the

Boneless or his brother Sigurth the Snake-eye might have matched. Today a man would leap from the

great stone tower of the House of Wisdom itself. And fly!

Or so it was said. The crowd would be happy to see flight, to tell their children and grandchildren about

it ever after. But they would be happy also to see dramatic fall. They munched bread and good

blood-sausage in even-tempered expectation of either.

A blare of horns set the spectators moving slowly to either side of the square, as towards them from the

king's great hall came the king himself and his guests and officers. At the head, walking with deliberate

ceremonial just behind the troop of champions blasting challenge from their enormous, long-preserved

aurochs horns, came the two kings themselves, Shef and his guest and partner Saxon Alfred. Those who

had not seen them before stared uncertainly at the contrasting figures, wondering—till their

better-informed neighbors hissed the truth in their ears—which was the mighty one, which the tolerated

partner. Indeed it was Alfred who caught the eye, dressed like a king in scarlet cloak, sky-blue tunic,

gold circlet on yellow hair, left hand resting easily on the gold hilt of an ancient sword.

The man beside him wore scarlet also, a cloak of wool woven so fine it seemed as soft as its magnificent

silk lining. But the tunic and breeches beneath it were plain dark gray. The king carried no sword, indeed

no weapon at all, stalking along with his thumbs in his belt like a churl coming home from the plow. And

yet, if one looked closer, it seemed possible that this was after all the man the Norse-folk called

Ivarsbani, Sigurtharbani , the man who had killed both Ivar the Boneless and Sigurth the Snake-eye

with his own hands, and King Kjallak the Strong of the Swedes as well. Had overthrown too the power

of Charles the Bald and his Frankish horsemen at Hastings, in the year of Our Lord 866.

The king was now in his late twenties, and he had the body of a swordsmith in his prime: broad

shoulders, powerful hands, a stride that swung from the hips, a waist so narrow he might have traded

belts with his wife—if he had had one. Yet his face was that of a man much older. The black hair was

streaked, and more than streaked with gray over the temples. More gray showed in the short clipped

beard. The king's right eye was covered with a plain black patch, but round it men could see the flesh

drawn in, wasted, the one cheek hollow. Lines of care ran across his brow, an expression of constant

pain. Or was it regret? Men said that he had returned from his duel with the last of the Ragnarssons

friendless and alone, having bought his life and his victory with the loss of others. Some said he had left

his luck behind on the battlefield with his dead friends. Others, better-informed, said that his luck was so

great that he drained it from others, brought death to those who came too close.

Whatever the truth, the king felt no need to display wealth or rank or power. He wore no crown, no fine

jewelry, gave no employment to cunning goldsmiths. Round his arms, though, there ran half a score of

golden bracelets, plain and unworked: worn without show, as if they were merely money.

Behind the two kings came their retinues, chamberlains, bodyguards, Shef's swordbearer, Viking

sub-kings and English aldermen of shires anxious to be near the center of power. Close on Shef's heels

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strode one man who brought murmurs of wonder to the rustics in from the fields, a man nearer seven foot

than six, and one who would never see twenty stone again, nor twenty-five, a man head and shoulders

above all but the mightiest even of the picked bodyguards: Brand the Viking, Champion now of all of

Norway and not only of his native Halogaland, rumored in whispers even in the depths of England to be

the relative of trolls and a kinsman of marbendills of the deep. Few knew the truth of what had happened

when the king had been hunted into the farthest north, and few dared to enquire.

"But where is the man who is to fly?" whispered one anxious rustic to his town-dwelling cousin. "The

man dressed like a bird?"

"Already in the Wisdom House with the priests," came the reply. "He feared his feather-hame, his coat

of birds' feathers, might be crushed in the press. Follow the kings now, and we shall see."

Slowly the crowd closed in behind the royal procession, and trailed them down the hard stone of the

Great North Road itself. Not to the town walls, for in demonstration of power Stamford had none: its

defenses lay far out at sea, in the catapult-mounting battleships that had crushed Vikings and Franks

alike. But to the edge of the wooden huts of the common folk, where beyond them in a meadow stood

the great square of dormitories, workshops, forges, stables and storerooms that was the College of the

Way in England, with lifting over it the tall sails of windmills. And at its center the stone tower Shef had

ordered to outstrip the works of the Christian kings: sixty feet high and forty square, its blocks of stone

so massive that visiting churls could not believe they had been raised by men with cranes and

counterweights, but told strange tales of devils compelled by magic.

The kings and dignitaries entered the high iron-bound doorway. The common crowd spread itself round

in an expectant semi-circle, gaping up.

As he reached the top of the staircase, Shef stepped ahead of his co-king for the first time and walked

out onto the flat roof, surrounded by battlements. Thorvin was there to meet him, dressed as always in

the plain but shining white of a priest of the Way, silver hammer round his neck as a sign of his devotion

to Thor, a real double-headed hammer tucked into his belt as a reminder of his craft. Behind him, but

surrounded by other priests, was the man who was to fly.

Shef walked thoughtfully towards him. The man was dressed in a woolen suit of the plainest homespun,

but not the usual tunic and breeches. Instead what he wore seemed to have been cut and sewn as one

piece, to fit as tightly as possible. But round him and disguising his body-suit was a cape. Shef looked

closer, still unspeaking. Thousands upon thousands of feathers, not stuck into some other material, wool

or linen, but sewn tightly, quill to quill. The cape was strapped with sinews to wrists and ankles, stitched

also along the line of the shoulders and down the back. It hung loose, though, round the man's sides.

Suddenly the man, meeting the king's eye, threw his arms wide and straddled his legs. The cape took

shape, like a web, like a sail. Shef nodded, recognizing what was intended.

"Where do you come from?"

The bird-man nodded respectfully towards Alfred, standing a pace behind Shef. "From the land of

Alfred King, my lord. From Wiltshire."

Shef forbore to ask why he had come to the land of another king. Only one king paid silver for new

knowledge, and at a rate that drew experimenters from all across the Northern lands.

"What gave you the idea?"

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The bird-man drew himself up, as if ready with a prepared speech. "I was born and baptized a Christian,

lord, but years ago I heard the teachings of the Way. And I heard the story of the greatest of smiths, of

Völund the Wise, whom we English call Wayland Smith. It came to me that if he could rise and fly from

his enemies, then so might I. Since then I have spared no effort in making this garment, the last of many I

have tried. For it says in the 'Lay of Völund', 'Laughing, he rose aloft, flew with feather-hame.' And I

believe the words of the gods are true, truer than the Christians' stories. See, I have made myself a sign in

token of my devotion."

Moving carefully, the man pulled forward a silver pair of wings, hanging from a chain round his neck.

In response Shef pulled from under his tunic the sign he himself bore, thekraki , the pole-ladder of his

own patron and perhaps-father, the little-known god Rig.

"None have worn the wings of Völund before," Shef remarked to Thorvin.

"Few wore the ladder of Rig either."

Shef nodded. "Success changes many things. But tell me, devotee of Völund—what makes you think

you can fly with this cape, besides the words of the lay."

The bird-man looked surprised. "Is it not obvious, lord? Birds fly. They have feathers. If men had

feathers, they would fly."

"Why has it not been done before?"

"Other men have not my faith."

Shef nodded once more, leapt suddenly up to the top of the battlements, stood on the narrow stone lip.

His bodyguards moved forward urgently, were met by the bulk of Brand. "Easy, easy," he growled. "The

king is not a Halogalander, but he is something of a seaman now. He will not fall off a flat ledge in broad

daylight."

Shef looked down, saw two thousand faces staring up. "Back," he shouted, waving his arms. "Back

from under. Give the man room."

"Do you think I will fall, lord?" asked the bird-man. "Do you mean to test my faith?"

Shef's one eye looked past him, saw in the crowd behind Alfred the face of the one woman who had

accompanied them to the top of the stair: Godive, Alfred's wife, now known to all as the Lady of

Wessex. His own childhood sweetheart and first love, who had left him for a kinder man. One who did

not look at others to use them. Her face reproached him.

He dropped his gaze, gripped the man by the arm, careful not to disturb or disarrange his feathers.

"No," he said. "Not at all. If they are too close to the tower they will not see well. I wish them to have

something to tell their children and their children's children. Not just, 'he flew too fast for me to see.' I

wish you the best of fortune."

The bird-man smiled proudly, stepped first onto a block, then, carefully, onto the wall where Shef had

stood. A gasp of amazement came up from the crowd below. He stood, spread his cape widely in the

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strong wind. It blew from behind him, Shef noted, flattening the feathers against his back. He thinks the

cape is a sail, then, which will sweep him on as if he were a ship. But what if it should instead be a...?

The man crouched, gathering his strength, and then suddenly leapt straight out, crying at the top of his

voice, "Völund aid me!"

His arms beat the air, the cape flapping wildly. Once, and then as Shef craned forward, again, and

then... A thud came up from the stone-flagged courtyard below, a long simultaneous groan from the

crowd. Looking down, Shef saw the body lying perhaps sixteen feet from the base of the tower. Priests

of the Way were already running towards him, priests of Ithun the Healer. Shef recognized among them

the diminutive shape of another childhood friend, Hund the one-time slave, who shared a dog's name with

himself, but was now thought the greatest leech and bone-setter of the island of Britain. Thorvin must

have stationed them there. So he had shared his own misgivings.

They were looking up now, shouting. "He has broken both legs, badly smashed. But not his back."

Godive was looking over the wall now, next to her husband. "He was a brave man," she said, a note of

accusation in her voice.

"He will get the best treatment we can give him," Shef replied.

"How much would you have given him if he had flown, say, a furlong?" asked Alfred.

"For a furlong? A hundred pounds of silver."

"Will you give him some now, as compensation for his injuries?"

Shef's lips tightened suddenly into a hard line, as he felt the pressure put on him, the pressure to show

charity, respect good intentions. He knew Godive had left him for his ruthlessness. He did not see himself

as ruthless. He did only what he needed to. He had many unknown subjects to protect as well as those

who appeared before him.

"He was a brave man," he said, turning away. "But he was a fool as well. All he had to go on was

words. But in the College of the Way it is works alone that count. Is that not so, Thorvin? He has taken

your book of holy song and turned it into a Bible like the Christians' gospel. To be believed in, not

thought about. No. I will send my leeches to him, but I will pay him nothing."

A voice drifted up from the courtyard again. "He has his wits back. He says his mistake was to use hen's

feathers, and they are earth-scratchers. Next time he will try with gull-feathers alone."

"Don't forget," Shef said more loudly and to all, still answering an unspoken accusation. "I spend my

subjects' silver for a purpose. All this could be snatched from us any summer. Think how many enemies

we have over there." He pointed at right angles to the wind, out across the meadows to the south and

east.

If some bird or bird-man could have followed the wave of the king across sea and land for a thousand

miles, across the English Channel and then across the whole continent of Europe, it would have come in

the end upon a meeting: a meeting long-prepared. For many weary months go-betweens had ridden

down muddy roads and sailed stormy seas, to ask careful questions, in the languages of Byzantium and of

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Rome.

"If it might be that theImperator , in his wisdom, might be prepared to consider thus and so; and might

attempt to use such slight influence as he has with His Holiness the Pope to persuade him in his turn to

reconsider such and such a formula; then (accepting the foregoing as a working possibility or if I may use

your so-flexible tongue, ahypothesis ) could it be so that in his turn theBasileus might turn his mind to the

thoughts of so and thus?" So spoke the Romans.

"Esteemed colleague, leaving your interesting hypothesis to one side for the moment only, if it were so

that theBasileus might—saving at all times his orthodoxy and the rights of the Patriarch—consider a

working and perhaps temporary arrangement in such and such a field of interest, might we then enquire

what the attitude of theImperator would be to the vexed question of the Bulgarian embassy, and the

unhappy attempts of previous administrations to detach our newly-baptized converts from their faith and

attach them to the allegiance of Rome?" So replied the Greeks.

Slowly the emissaries had conversed, fenced, felt each other out, returned for further instructions. The

emissaries had risen higher and higher in rank, from mere bishops and second secretaries to archbishops

and influential abbots, drawing in military men, counts and strategists. Plenipotentiaries had been

dispatched, only to discover that however full their powers might be, they did not dare to commit their

emperors and churches on their word alone. Finally there had been no help for it but to arrange a meeting

of the supreme powers, the four greatest authorities in Christendom: the Pope of Rome and the Patriarch

of Constantinople, the Emperor of the Romans and the Emperor of the Greeks.

The meeting had been held up for months by the discovery that in his eyes theBasileus of the Greeks

considered himself the true heir of the Caesars and so Emperor of the Romans as well, while the Pope

bitterly resented the termination "of Rome" being added to his title, regarding himself as the heir of St.

Peter and the Pope of all Christians everywhere. Carefully formulas had been arranged, agreements

reached not only as to what might be said but what mightnot under any circumstances be said. Like

mating hedgehogs the powers drew together: delicately, gingerly.

Even the place of meeting had required a dozen proposals and counterproposals. Yet now, at last, the

negotiators might look out over a bluer sea than any the barbarian kings of the North would ever view:

the Adriatic, looking west towards Italy, at the place where once the mightiest of Roman

administrator-emperors had built his palace for retirement—Salonae of Diocletian, called already by the

Slavs filtering into the region, Split.

In the end, and after days of exhausting ceremonial, the two military leaders had lost patience and

dismissed all their retinues of advisers and translators and chiefs of protocol. They sat now on a balcony

overlooking the sea, a pitcher of resined wine between them. All serious issues were settled, the

agreements at this moment being embodied by relays of scribes writing a massive treaty in multiple copies

in gold and purple ink. The only possible check now could come from the religious leaders, who had

retired to talk between themselves. And each had been given the strictest and grimmest of warnings by

his earthly colleague and paymaster, to cause no trouble. For there were worse things that could happen

to the Church, as theImperator Bruno had said to his creature Pope John, than a misunderstanding over

the exact nature of the Nicene Creed.

The emperors sat quietly, then, each with an ear cocked for the return of the churchmen, discussing their

personal problems, as one ultimate ruler to another. It was perhaps the first time either had talked freely

and frankly of such matters. They spoke in Latin, native to neither of them, but at least allowing them to

communicate without intermediaries.

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"We are alike in several ways, then," mused the Emperor of the Greeks, theBasileus . The imperial name

he had chosen, Basil I, showed a certain lack of imagination unsurprising in one with his history.

"Hoc ille," agreed theImperator of the West, Bruno Emperor of the Romans as he claimed, but in

reality of the Franks, the Italians and most of all of the Germans. "That's it. We are new men. Of course

my family is old and distinguished. But I am not of the blood of Charlemagne."

"Nor I of the house of Leo," agreed theBasileus . "Tell me if I am wrong, but as I understand it there is

none of the blood of Charlemagne left."

Bruno nodded. "None in the male line. Some were killed by their own vassals, like King Charles the

Bald, on account of their failures in battle. I had to take measures against others myself."

"How many?" probed Basil.

"About ten. It was made easier for me in that they all seemed to have the same names. Lewis the

Stammerer, Lewis the German. Three sons for each of them, and still with the same names, Charles and

Lewis and Carloman. And some others of course. But it is not quite true that there is none of the blood of

Charlemagne left. He has great-great-granddaughters left. One day, when all my tasks are done, I may

ally myself with one."

"So your position will be stronger."

A yet fiercer look crossed Bruno's craggy, rock-hewn face. He straightened up in his chair, reached

behind him for the thing that never left him, that no negotiators could persuade him to abandon. The lance

with the leaf-shaped blade, its plain head now shining once more with inlaid gold crosses, set on a shaft

of ash-wood barely visible beneath gold and silver wire. His ape-like shoulders stretched as he swung it

before him, thumped its shaft on the marble floor.

"No! My position could not be stronger in any way. For I am the holder of the Holy Lance, the lance

with which the German centurion Longinus split the heart of our blessed Savior. He who holds it, he is the

heir of Charlemagne, by more than blood. I took it in battle with the heathen, brought it back to

Christendom."

Reverently Bruno kissed the blade, laid the weapon down with tender care beside him. The bodyguards

who had stiffened into readiness yards distant relaxed, smiled warily at each other.

TheBasileus nodded, reflecting. He had learnt two things. That this strange count from the furthest

extremity of the Franks believed his own fable. And that the stories they told of him were true. This man

did not need a bodyguard, he was his own. How like the Franks to elect as their king the one the most

formidable in single combat, not astrategos but a mere champion. And yet he might be a strategist too.

"And you," probed Bruno in his turn. "You... put from his throne your predecessor, Michael the

Drunkard, as he was called. I take it he has left no seed behind to grow rebellion."

"None," replied Basil curtly, his pale face flushing over the dark beard.

Basil's supposed second son, Leo, is in reality the child of Michael, Bruno's spies had reported. Basil

killed the Emperor his master for cuckolding him. But in any case the Greeks needed an Emperor who

could stay sober long enough to marshal an army. They are pressed by the Slavs, the Bulgars, even by

your own foes, the Vikings raiding down the great rivers of the east. Not twenty years ago a Viking fleet

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menaced Constantinople, which they call Byzantium. We do not know why Basil allowed Leo to live.

"So. We are new men, then. But neither of us has old men waiting to challenge us. And yet both of us

know we have many challenges, many threats. We and Christendom at once. Tell me," Bruno asked, his

face intent, "where do you see the greatest threat to us, to Christ, and to his Church? You yourself, I

mean, not your generals and your advisers."

"An easy question, for me," Basil replied, "though I may not give the answer you expect. You know that

your adversaries, the heathen of the North, the Vikings as you call them: you know that a generation ago

they brought their ships up to Byzantium itself?"

Bruno nodded. "It surprised me when I learned it. I did not think that they could find their way across

the Italian Sea. But then your secretary told me that they had not done so, had somehow brought their

ships down the rivers of the East. You think they are your greatest danger? That is what I hoped..."

A lifted hand interrupted him. "No. I do not think that these men, fierce as they are, are the greatest

menace. We bought them off, you know. The common folk say that it was the Virgin Mary who routed

them, but no, I remember the negotiations. We paid them a little gold. We offered them unlimited use of

the great municipal baths! They took it. To me they are fierce and greedy children. Not serious.

"No, the true danger comes not from them, merepagani that they are, immature rustics. It comes from

the followers of Muhammad." TheBasileus paused for wine.

"I have never met one," Bruno prompted.

"They came from nowhere. Two hundred and fifty years ago these followers of their false Prophet came

from out of the desert. Destroyed the Persian Empire. Took from us all our African provinces, and

Jerusalem." TheBasileus leaned forward. "Took the southern shore of the Italian Sea. Since then that sea

has been our battleground. And on it we have been losing. You know why?"

Bruno shook his head.

"Galleys need water, all the time. Oarsmen drink faster than the fish. The side that controls the

watering-grounds controls the sea. And that means the islands.Kypros they took, island of Venus. Then

Crete. After they conquered Spain, they seized the Balearics. Now their fleets press again on Sicily. If

they take that—where will Rome be? So you see, friend, they threaten you as well. How long since their

armies were at the gates of your holy city?"

Opening doors, raised voices, a shuffle of feet, said that the conference of Pope and Patriarch had

broken up, that the Emperors of East and West must turn their minds again to ceremonial and treaties.

Bruno groped for a reply, amid several. TheBasileus is an Easterner, he thought, like Pope Nicholas

whom we killed. He does not realize that destiny lies in the West. He does not know that the Way-folk

are not the greedy children bought off in his father's time. That they are worse than the followers of the

Prophet, for they still have their prophet with them: the one-eye. I should have killed him when I had my

sword at his throat.

And yet maybe there is no need to argue here. TheBasileus needs my bases. I need his fleet. Not for the

Arabs. Just to sweep the Channel so I can put my lancers across. But let him have his way first. For he

has the one thing that the Way-folk do not...

The Emperors were on their feet, the churchmen approaching, all smiles. A cardinal spoke, bowing, the

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Harry Harrison - Hammer-Cross 03 - King And Emperor

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