No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information or storage retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author.

The author wishes to acknowledge his indebtedness to the following works, upon which he has based much of his research and a great deal of his writing:

Saxo Grammaticus. The First Nine Books of the Danish History of Saxo Grammaticus. Denmark, c.1200. As translated by Oliver Elton, B.A. London, 1893, with consideration toward the translation by Peter Fisher. Cambridge, 1979.

Author unknown. Arrow-Odd: A Medieval Novel. Iceland, c.1200. As translated by Paul Edwards and Hermann Palsson. New York, 1970.

Authors unknown. The Hrafnista Sagas. Iceland, c.1200. As translated by Ben Waggoner. Lulu.com, 2012.

Author unknown. The Saga of King Heidrek the Wise (Hervor’s Saga). Iceland, c.1200. As translated by Christopher Tolkien. Oxford, 1960.

Vernadsky, George. The Origins of Russia. Oxford, 1959.

Pritsak, Omeljan. The Origin of Rus’. Cambridge, Mass., 1981.

Davidson, H.R. Ellis. The Viking Road to Byzantium. London, 1976.

Dunlop, D.M. The History of the Jewish Khazars. New York, 1967.

Author unknown. Gautrek’s Saga. Iceland, c.1200. Translated by Hermann Palsson and Paul Edwards. Middlesex, 1976.

Vatsyayana Mallanaga. The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana. India, c. 200 BC to 400 AD Translated from Sanskrit by Richard Burton, Bhagavanlal Indrajit, and Shivaram Parashuram Bhide, 1883.

Cleland, John (Jane?). Memoirs of Fanny Hill. London, 1749.

CHAPTER ZERO POINT ONE (Previously From Book 3, Chapter 31)

0.1 THE BIRTH OF IVAR THE BONELESS (Circa 896 AD)

“Erik came to me in a dream and he said, ‘Ivar the Boneless

is Prince Igor of Kiev’, so I researched Ivar the Boneless. It was said in

the Sagas that he had no bones in his legs. Then I researched Prince

Igor of Kiev, hoping to find a similar nickname, but I could find none.

‘Show me,’ I pleaded with Erik. ‘Show me.’ He came to me in a

dream again and repeated ‘Ivar the Boneless IS Prince Igor of Kiev.’

So I researched further and read of Emperor John Tzimiskes telling Ivar’s

son Svein what had happened to his father: ‘on his campaign against the

Germans, he was captured by them, tied to tree trunks, and torn in two.’

But Prince Erik said, ‘Prince Igor of Kiev IS Ivar the Boneless.’ Perhaps

he did not die from the trap. But even if he did, he still would have been

called ‘the Boneless’ post-mortem anyway. It was the Viking way.”

Comments: ‘The History of Leo ‘the Deacon’ as read by BH Seibert

THE GHOST OF PRINCESS ALFHILD

(896 AD) King Odd had been spotted returning from the north in his longship, Fair Faxi, so a great crowd of Hraes’ people were on the quays of Kiev to greet him. A harbourmaster had brought the message to Prince Erik in his palace and soon he would explain to Oddi that over the winter he had married the mother of the twelve berserker brothers that Oddi had killed, and that they were now trying to have a baby together even though it was a little late in life for children.

“I’ll have to leave for Gardariki immediately,” Oddi stated quite emphatically. “It is her family duty to avenge the deaths of her sons, not to mention her father, King Frodi!”

“Princess Eyfura has assured me she has no intention of seeking vengeance,” Erik repeated, as Oddi stepped down from the highseat he was sharing with his father and searched the hall for spies, checking behind draperies and statues. He could find no others in the hall, so he rejoined his father on the second highseat.

“You are in love,” Oddi said, “and blinded by it. Princess Eyfura is a royal and will not give up her right to vengeance. That is not how royal bloods operate. They hold all the rights and give up none. They not only support slavery, they depend on it. A free man wouldn’t wear a king’s yoke if he did not have a slave wearing his own yoke first. Where there are royals, there are slaves.”

“You are now a royal, yourself, King Odd, and Princess Eyfura is not like that. She is the spitting image of her mother, and Alfhild was not like that, not vengeance minded.”

“I saw vengeance in the havoc her nails wreaked upon Frodi’s face as he perpetrated his foul deed. How could I have seen that? I have always felt connected with Queen Alfhild somehow…I don’t understand it, but I do understand I cannot stay here!” Oddi again searched about the hall, prodded the tapestries, for a spy.

“There is no one here, son.”

Oddi had arrived late evening in Kiev and Erik had sent everyone away from the hall of his palace. Only preparers of food and purveyors of wines entered and left the hall and none were presently in the chamber. “I told all to leave us alone. I wanted to be the first to tell you of my troth with Eyfura. She is the love of my life. She is Alfhild and Gunwar as one. I am afraid I have failed you again. I cleared this with Eyfura, ensuring that she bid you no ill will, but I should have cleared it with you as well. For that neglect I am sorry.”

“You have not failed me,” Oddi reassured his father. “I am glad you have found love again. I hope you have found a love such as I have for Queen Silkisif, or a love such as Hjalmar had found with Princess Ingibjorg. But he paid with his life for that love. Angantyr didn’t kill Hjalmar; your famed blade, Tyrfingr, did. Your arrow of the gods. It bit into Hjalmar sixteen times and, each time, the poison in that blade worked its evil magic on my friend until he could barely stand in the end. Had Angantyr not fully exposed himself to Hjalmar’s final death stroke, Hjalmar would not have had the strength left to kill him. Angantyr deprived me of my victory, deprived me of all twelve berserker brothers. I was so angry I almost didn’t bury the boys. But I promised the brothers full burial with weapons, so I built them a howe and Angantyr sleeps atop Tyrfingr. I’m sorry, I should have brought the blade back to you.”

“I gave the sword to King Frodi,” Erik explained, “and he gave it to Prince Arngrim, and Angantyr was given the blade expressly for the holmganger. So, I guess it is fitting that it should rest with him. Tyrfingr is not evil. It is just dangerous. I forged it out of a starstone metal that radiates intense energy like a fire radiates heat. The energy is the poison and any cut from the blade will never heal and will result in death, no matter how slight the wound. I’m sorry it bit your friend, Hjalmar. Tyrfingr is best left buried with Angantyr on Samso Isle.”

“Angantyr told us before he died that he had no interest in Princess Ingibjorg. That he just wanted my head for King Frodi. Hjalmar and Ingibjorg were in love and both died because King Frodi wanted my head. What makes a man do what Angantyr did just to impress his king?”

“You must not blame yourself,” Erik said. “They didn’t call him ‘the Hanging God King’ for nothing. Angantyr Frodi. Hanging Tyr Frodi. I called my sword Tyr’s Finger, Tyrfingr, after the god of justice. I conquered many lands with that sword for King Frodi, and I did it because I loved his sister, Princess Gunwar, your mother. I am so glad I finally learned the truth of your birth. It is best you buried the thing. The crushing burden of that blade was wearing on me.”

“Then I’m glad it rests between the shoulder blades of Angantyr on Samsey,” Oddi stated, seeming a little less perplexed.

“You left it in its sheath, I hope.”

“Yes. It seemed to glow without it.”

“You could see the glow? That is good. Most people can’t. It is best left buried.”

“But I must leave here. I must return to Gardariki. It will always be your city, yours and my mother’s,” Oddi said. “But I cannot stay here.”

“If I can stay here,” Prince Erik said, “then you can stay here, for I too have a connection with Queen Alfhild. Her spirit visited me soon after she had died. She came to me on the battlefield and she warned me that a witch was planning to poison Gunwar and that she was pregnant with you at the time. The witch, Gotwar, had already terminated eleven of Gunwar’s pregnancies and you were to be the twelfth and final one, dying together with your mother, in revenge for my slaying the witches twelve sons and for razing the House of Westmar. I rode back to Gardariki to save your mother and we lost the battle against the Huns while I was gone. I never told your mother this, but I slept with the spirit of Alfhild as repayment for her warning. I would do it again to save you both, but I fear that Kiev is haunted by Queen Alfhild’s spirit, and I don’t want to be here. I told Eyfura this, but she wanted to come live in Kiev anyway.”

“I shall make time and stay for a day or two,” Oddi told his father.

“Timing is the soul of soldiery,” Erik started, “and your timing is perfect. We have just received a delegation of the Poljane and Drevjane and they are cooperating with the reopening of the Southern Way. Without the wealth of the Way trade, the Slavs are turning on each other. They do not want to miss another trading season. I would like you to help with the negotiations.”

“Southern Way trade without slave trade, right?”

“They would have it no other way.”

As Erik and Oddi went through the details of the new Southern Way trade, Oddi would occasionally look about the hall as if expecting to find spies lurking in the tapestries, but he should have looked up. High above the highseats, in amongst the heavy ochred oak rafters, where the Scythianened war arrows rested, laid a red war shield, and curled up on it hid Hervor, Princess Eyfura’s young handmaiden.

“Now that you have told me all that was said between Oddi and my husband,” Princess Eyfura started, leaving a long pause, “there is something I must tell you of your birth. Your mother was my handmaiden, but your father was not a slave. He was my eldest son, Prince Angantyr. When your mother died following your birth, I had you raised in our household, but, for your own safety, I kept your true lineage a secret. Your father was too drunk to remember your conception, but your mother would not spare me the details. You must avenge your father’s death, as I must avenge mine. You shall begin training in the morning.”

Hervor, a lithe young woman with bright green eyes and long auburn hair, was happy to learn that she was not slave spawn, but of royal blood. She reached out to her grandmother and Eyfura hugged her coldly. “We must keep the truth of your birth a secret until we have avenged our fathers.”

Oddi stayed in Kiev a week before they had a contract hammered out with the Slavs, then he and his crew left for Gardariki in his longship, Fair Faxi. Right after he left, Hervor’s training as a shield-maiden began. The more skill she gained, the more independent she became and she would often squabble with Eyfura’s household slaves. When handmaidens refused to believe Prince Angantyr had been her father, Hervor went to her grandmother for support. “My son was drunk when he raped your mother,” Eyfura started, “and your mother tried to kill herself afterwards. I saved her and kept her close while she carried you and after you were born she did kill herself. Is that what you want me to tell them?”

Once news of the Way’s reopening got out, it spread like wildfire and many merchant ships returning from Baghdad and Constantinople took the southern route instead of the Nor’Way, paying a double tithe just to save time. Once the fall trading season was complete, and all the merchant ships were plying their various routes, Prince Erik had more time to spend with Princess Eyfura. She was so much like the Princess Alfhild he had known a generation earlier and he remembered watching his young queen with child walking with her King Frodi and he and Gunwar had been so envious. He often wondered what would have happened had he not had that moment of anger so many years ago when Alfhild told him she needed a blooded king for a match, that he was not good enough for her, and he had lashed out at her mentally and struck a blow that had ended his love for her. Then he realized that it was his greatest fear that he would repeat that mental bow with Eyfura and ruin it all. That was why he had feared a confrontation between Eyfura and Oddi. That was why he had allowed Oddi to go to Kiev without meeting his new wife. He instinctively knew that his newfound love for Eyfura was a fragile thing that would need protecting, a protection that his love for Alfhild had not received. Eyfura was as proud as her mother had been, perhaps even more so. She had so much more to be proud of.

“What are you thinking?” Eyfura asked her husband as they rested on their bed together. “You’re so deep in thought.”

“I was thinking, you have so much to be proud of,” Erik answered. “You have survived so much in this hostile land. I look upon you with so much pride. Our child shall be lucky to have you as a mother.”

“I am afraid to be a mother again,” Eyfura confessed. “What if the potion doesn’t work?”

“If the potion doesn’t work,” he said. “Then we’ll just have to work at it harder. There is an old Roman saying that goes…If you love your work…then your job must be…trying to get your wife focking pregnant!” and he pushed Eyfura onto the bed and kissed her passionately. They made love on the bed and then they made love again. As they rested, Erik said, “There are two kinds of sex. There’s having sex while you’re trying your damnedest not to get your woman pregnant, and then there’s having sex while trying to knock up your wife, and I have to say that I, by far, prefer the latter.”

“I can feel the difference,” Eyfura agreed. “You spout like a whale!”

The next morning, Eyfura asked her husband if he was still anxious about living in Kiev. He told her that sometimes he could feel the presence of Queen Alfhild’s spirit in the palace. He told her he was thankful that King Frodi and Queen Alfhild’s bedchamber down the hall was kept shuttered under lock and key.

“You must get over your fear,” Princess Eyfura told Erik. “The ghost of my mother doesn’t haunt the palace of Kiev.”

“Queen Alfhild’s ghost doesn’t frighten me. I told you what happened to me on the battlefield of the Don plain many years ago. We made love shortly after she had died and I still feel bad about it.”

“You shouldn’t feel bad,” Eyfura said. “It wasn’t your fault.”

“I don’t feel that kind of bad…”

“What kind of bad do you feel?”

“I feel bad that she was so good! Once you’ve had spirit, well…nothing comes near it.”

And Eyfura pummelled her husband, and then they had sex on the bed again.

“But seriously,” Erik started, as they rested after. “She was my first love, your mother. But she chose another. A true king. Your father, King Frodi.”

“And I’m glad she did. If you were my father, I could not have married you….even this late in our lives.”

“And I am glad as well,” Erik breathed into his wife’s ear as he rolled out of bed. “I shall stay in Kiev then, but I will depend on you to keep me safe here.”

“I will not trust my mother, Alfhild, alone with you,” Eyfura chimed. “Not even her ghost!”

One night Erik held on to Eyfura as she slept, fitfully. She tossed and she turned but was asleep when he heard an odd noise down the hall. Erik slipped out of bed and crept into the hallway and he saw her….Alfhild. She was young again, her wispy blonde hair catching up the light of the tapers as she spun and walked toward the king’s chamber, trailing a hand and a finger as though to compel him to follow. When he entered the room, she was on the bed, so he closed the door behind himself. They never said a word, he just brushed her hair back and kissed her and her silks fell open and he kissed her all over as if to consume her so she could never leave again. He remembered that night on the bed in King Gotar’s high seat hall, with Tyrfingr sheathed between them, and all the nights since fell away like rose petals in the darkness of denial. A lifetime of denying their truth, denying their young love, fell away with each kiss. And they made passionate love for what seemed hours, what seemed days, then Alfhild fell asleep in his arms on the bed and Erik slipped his arm out from under her tender throat and he could see by the tapers that there were no strangle marks about her neck like the first time they made love in his campaign tent on the Don Plain, and he realised that she was younger now, from before she had died, and he slipped out of the room and returned to the bed of Eyfura. She was still sleeping fitfully as though in a trance and Erik thought this must be a dream.

The next morning Prince Erik got up early to check King Frodi’s bedchamber but it was still locked. He asked some of the handmaidens and servants if anyone had been in the room and they all answered not in years. It was a dream, Erik thought. Just a dream. What a dream.

The next night Prince Erik went to sleep with Eyfura as before and he drifted off holding her in his arms and she woke him up with her tossing and turning once more. Again, he heard an indistinct noise out in the hallway. Erik slipped out of bed and crept into the hall and he saw her….young Alfhild. She was at the door of King Frodi’s bedchamber and she was waving him to hurry to her and they entered the room together and she stripped off her silks, and as she slowly peeled away Erik’s linen bedclothes he could see she was even younger now and she wore her hair as it had looked when he visited her in her mother’s hall when the matron was sick and coughing in her room. Again, they never said a word. He just brushed his naked body up against hers and he held her and kissed her and then he hugged her and lifted her off the floor and he slid her onto himself and she touched the floor with her toes and she went up on her toe tips and she went back down then up on her toe tips and down again and she did this until waves crashed through their bodies and they held each other for what seemed hours and Alfhild fell asleep standing in his arms. He picked her up and they disengaged and he laid her out upon the bed and he stroked her beautiful blonde hair and he stroked her beautiful young face and then he stroked her beautiful lithe body and he covered her in her shimmering silks and then covered her with a sheet and he left the room and returned to the bed of Eyfura, who was still sleeping fitfully as though in a trance. Erik slid into bed beside Eyfura and he realised that this was not a dream.

The next morning Prince Erik got up early to check King Frodi’s bedchamber but it was still locked. He asked the handmaidens if anyone knew where the key to the chamber was kept, but nobody seemed to know. ‘It was not a dream,’ Erik thought. ‘But it is not a dream that I don’t want to stop.’

The third night Prince Erik went to sleep with Eyfura as before but he didn’t drift off, staying awake as she fell asleep in his arms, and when she started tossing and turning as though in a trance, he slipped his arm out from under her and slid out of bed. He stood by their chamber door until he heard that undefinable noise out in the hallway. He stepped out into the hall and he saw her again….youngest Alfhild. The Alfhild he had seen his first time entering the Vik when she stood high upon a headland and the sun played and danced with her wispy blonde hair and drove away the shadows casting in the cliffs. She entered the king’s bedchamber and Erik did follow, and she kept her silks on and she stripped Erik naked and she led him onto the bed and she sat him against the headboard and she kissed his forehead and she kissed his lips and she kissed his chin and she kissed his throat ever so gently and she kissed his chest three times working her way down, and she kissed him and had him in her mouth, as much as she could take, and when he was wet enough she rose and sat astride him and took up the rest and she bounced high in her saddle like a princess riding out to a picnic in the woods and he exploded within her and hugged her so she would stop. But she had a nice gait going and she was still riding Erik when Princess Eyfura walked into the room and saw her handmaiden, Hervor, riding her husband’s steed.

“Eyfura, you must leave the room at once,” Hervor cried, but the voice wasn’t her’s….it was Queen Alfhild’s. And Erik woke and he pushed Hervor away from himself, as though he had seen a ghost, and Hervor said in Alfhild’s voice, “I tried to scratch his eyes out in this very bed, I clawed his face to the very end.” Then Hervor awoke and she was a frightened young woman tearing away the silks and then pulling them around her again to cover up her nakedness.

“What have you done, Hervor?” Eyfura whispered hoarsely. “You are possessed!”

Hervor sat upon the bed, hugging her knees and crying, with no idea how she had gotten there.

“It is the ghost of Alfhild,” Erik lamented. “She has tricked me. Please forgive me, Eyfura. I should have never come to Kiev!”

“Hush, girl,” Eyfura cooed, trying to calm the young woman. “How long has this been happening?” she asked her handmaiden, but the young woman had no recollection.

“I think it has been happening three nights,” Erik answered. “I remember it happening now, as one recollects a dream. Three nights! I should have not come here,” and he sat on the bed with his head in his hands. “Three nights in a row and you’ll get a Bo. When did you last have your period, Hervor?”

Hervor answered in a weird Alfhild voice, “Three nights in a row and you’ll get no Mo.”

“Ask her!” Erik demanded. “Ask her when she last had her period,” and Erik held out one finger on one hand and five fingers on the other where only Eyfura could see them.

So Princess Eyfura asked Hervor how long it had been.

“Just over two weeks,” she said.

Then Prince Erik recited this verse:

“Wait fifteen days, after menstrual flow

Then fock your wife and you’ll have a Bo.

Wait only a day, then have your way,

And a girl will come, come birthing day.

“It is a Warlock Song,” the Prince said. “And why did you wake up?” Erik asked Eyfura. “You were tossing and turning like you were in a trance when I left you.”

“I remember tossing and turning, but then I stopped and I woke up and then I heard a noise in the hallway.”

“What kind of noise?”

“I don’t know. It was just a noise.”

“Ghosts can’t make noises,” Erik explained. “They can only make you think you’ve heard a noise, so it’s always just a noise, but can never be described.”

“We shall never talk about this again,” Eyfura said, as a shiver coursed through her body. “Ever!” And she sent Erik back to their room as she escorted Hervor back to the servants’ chambers.

When she got back she found Erik asleep in their bed, exhausted. “Sometimes I think my mother was a witch,” she complained, sliding into bed next to her husband.

The ghost of Queen Alfhild did not return, but Princess Eyfura had no doubt that the affair was the work of her mother and bought charms and potions to keep her ghost away. She loved her mother, but she loved her husband even more.

They all stayed in Kiev together over the winter; Hervor was with child and they wanted to keep it quiet. Prince Erik went to Gardariki after the spring trading rush, but Eyfura stayed at home with her granddaughter as Hervor’s belly swelled. Eyfura kept Hervor under lock and key, ‘for the good of the baby’, she claimed. Princess Eyfura became inordinately determined that the child be born in Kiev and that no one learn that it was Hervor’s. Secretly born in the summer, Eyfura passed the baby off as her own, naming the boy Eyfur, or Ivar, after herself. And Erik and Hervor did not dispute her choices. The Poljane Slavs around Kiev called him Igor Rurikslavich in line with the naming and they called him Prince Igor of Kiev because he was their prince.

When Arrow Odd got back to Tmutorokan from Khwarizm for the fall trading rush, he learned he had a younger brother named Eyfur. And when he visited Kiev he noticed a distinct difference in the way Princess Eyfura addressed him. It was ‘King Oddi Erikson this’ and ‘Prince Eyfur Erikson that’ and he was astonished at how her pregnancy had changed the princess. She seemed to want to make sure that all knew they were brothers, even though there was a great age difference between them. But he was still nervous with the princess being around him; he had, after all, killed eleven of her sons, and so was relieved when it was time for him to return to Gardariki for the spring trading season.

CHAPTER ONE

1.0 RAISING PRINCE IVAR (Circa 900 AD)

Princess Eyfura of Kiev and Novgorod

“Those who were chosen on the fields of the slain were called in Asgard the Einherjar. For them Odin made ready a great Hall. Valhalla, the Hall of the Slain, it was called. Five hundred and forty doors had Valhalla, and out of each door eight hundred Champions might pass. Every day the Champions put on their armor and took their weapons down from the walls, and went forth and battled with each other. All who were wounded were made whole again, and in peace and goodly fellowship they sat down to the feast that Odin prepared for them. Odin himself sat with his Champions, drinking wine but eating no meat. And the Valkyries, the wise and fearless battle-maidens, went amongst them, filling up the drinking-horns with the heady mead.”

THE CHILDREN OF ODIN The Book of Northern Myths By Padraic Colum

(900 AD) When Prince Ivar was four years old, his mother, Princess Eyfura, was teaching him how to paint and he designed his own coat of arms. It was a lone fir tree growing on a rock, an island. The name Eyfura meant island fir and Ivar, or, more properly, Eyfur, meant the same in the masculine, for his mother had named him after herself. But there was something special about his painting. It had the simple strokes of a four year old in the vibrant greens and browns of a child, but those few strokes said ‘I stand alone in a sea of troubles’ and his mother was touched, for that was her life on vellum. And she told Ivar that that would be his life too. He painted more haunting strokes and, in them, his mother saw a gift, saw a link to the past.

When his brother, Prince Oddi, saw his paintings, he saw caves in Spain and in Giantland and, likely, in the caves of Ragnar’s youth, in Beowulf’s Heorot, and he knew what that link to the past was and he loved Ivar for it. He told Ivar that as long as he breathed the boy would never stand alone. And Ivar loved his older brother and thought the world of him. But the world kept taking his older brother away from him, away to Kiev or to Constan….far off lands. And Oddi would come back with stories of these mysterious lands and tales of his grandfather, Ragnar Lothbrok, and the slaying of Fafnir, the fire breathing dragonship. And he would tell young Prince Ivar tales about his father, Erik and his Battle of the Goths and the Huns, but he would never tell tales about himself.

But his father would. Tales of Arrow Oddi and his Ship of Boys at the Battle of Constantinople and his discovery of a New Ireland and Scotland and Angleland at the far edges of the western sea, the Atlantean Ocean. And of the travels of Saint Brendan before them and even tales of long lost Atlantis itself.

When Prince Ivar was six years old, he began his education, learning other languages besides the Norse tongue, and learning numbers, and learning art and poetry and learning how to play the lyre. A Greek teacher named Artimis had been brought to Kiev from Constantinople and he was charged with young Ivar’s education. And for the lyre, Artimis had selected a local Kievan musician to teach his charge all about stringed instruments, the lyre, the harp and several single stringed instruments that Ivar almost liked. But the lyre he hated with a passion. Bohdan was the local musician teaching him, a young local Poljane man, and he could see that Prince Ivar had talent, but lacked focus.

Bohdan decided one day to take young Prince Ivar into the music quarter of Kiev to let him pick out a lyre of his own choosing. He got permission from both Princess Eyfura and Artimis for a field trip and they set off from the palace with two guards in tow. While Bohdan was examining the lyres, Ivar heard a sound emanating from the back room of the shop. He followed the sound and in the back he saw a young boy, about his own age, playing a lyre most splendidly.

“What are you playing?” Ivar asked the boy in Slav.

“It is a folk song,” the boy replied. He looked about and said, “The shop owner lets me practice here sometimes. I don’t have a lyre of my own.”

“And you learned how to play like this on your own?” Ivar asked.

“Yes. My parents work for the Hraes’ Trading Company, so we are far from our village and our land. My uncle plays, but he didn’t come with us to Kiev.”

“You must come practice with me,” Ivar offered. “I have a great teacher. What is your name?”

“I’m called Darko,” the boy said.

“I am Eyfur,” Ivar said, then he heard a commotion coming from the front of the shop and saw that Bohdan and the guards were searching for him, so he took Darko by the hand and led him to meet Bohdan. “This is Darko,” Prince Ivar said, introducing the boy to a relieved Bohdan. “I would like him to learn the lyre with me.”

Bohdan had Darko play for him and agreed with the prince that he had a gift, so it was arranged for the boy to come to the palace on the days that Ivar was scheduled to learn the lyre.”

Prince Ivar still hated the lyre but he admired the passion that Darko had for the fickle little instrument and the company made the lessons tolerable. When Ivar determined that Darko would stay to learn, he gave the boy his old lyre. One day, Darko brought some music from the little lyre shop in the music quarters and Ivar was surprised that Bohdan could read the music notation but he could not read the Latin words. He then arranged for Bohdan to sit in with him during his Latin lessons with Artimis.

“You’ll soon have an Academy of Plato here,” Artimis declared as Prince Ivar kept adding students to sit in on his classes. But Ivar learned from his experience with Darko that he learned faster with others around him. The competition kept him focused and he was always amazed at how well people learned when they were passionate about the things they studied. These passionate students were always better than he was at their given subjects, but he was always better than he would have been had he been learning on his own. Artimis saw this in Ivar and encouraged it. He saw it as a natural leadership that Ivar wore about himself like a cloak.

At the end of one trading season, Prince Erik returned from Gardariki with a group of Alchemists who were going to set up a real Academy in a quarter just outside the palace grounds. He brought several medical Alchemists, a metallurgical Alchemist, an optical Alchemist and a number of academic Alchemists specializing in mathematics, science and philosophy. Artimis did not like this and there seemed to be some real friction building between the academy within the palace and the one without.

“These are two different schools of academia,” Prince Erik explained to his son. “The Alchemists believe that knowledge belongs to all men and must be cherished and protected by all, and the Roman academic system comes out of their military engineering and they believe that knowledge belongs to the state. And this difference in philosophy is what causes problems between them.”

“Which one is correct?” Ivar asked his father.

“It’s not so much which one is correct,” Erik said, stroking his chin as Ivar sat on his lap, “as it is, which one is safer. For example, chemical Alchemists came up with the formula for Greek fire and were wise enough to keep it from states but Roman scientists used espionage and bribery to get the formulation and to weaponize it. Now it is known as the terrible fire breathing dragonships of the Romans that cause death and destruction upon the seas and it is a very terrible way to die.”

“So Roman science is evil?” Ivar asked.

“Well, not so much evil as turning new scientific discoveries into weapons first, then perhaps beneficial things last. You told me last year that Artimis called your classes Plato’s Academy. Well, Plato was an Alchemist and he started his famous Academy in 428 BC just outside the Greek city of Akedemeia near Athens. The school was the first true Academy and was run for hundreds of years. In the year 86 BC, the Roman General Sulla conquered Athens and burned Plato’s Academy to the ground and the Romans have never allowed its rebuilding. So, while the Romans consider their science to be good, the rest of the world is not quite convinced.”

Prince Ivar went to his mother and asked, “What’s B C?”

“B C?” she asked. “Could it be the Baltic Sea?”

“Father said Plato’s Academy was started in 428 BC. What’s B C?”

“Oh! That’s Before Christians. That would be four hundred and twenty eight years before the coming of Christians. And now we are nine hundred and three years after the coming of Christians…so that would be over thirteen hundred years ago.”

“Christians have been around that long?” little Ivar asked.

“Yes, almost,” Princess Eyfura said wistfully. “A terribly long time, but I shouldn’t say that. Your grand aunt was the first Scandinavian Christian. Princess Gunwar converted to Christianity and Odin struck her down in battle just days later.” Eyfura put down her quill and ink and rose from her desk and knelt down in front of her son. “Just remember that, Eyfur. Worship gods that give you victory, not gods that give you peace.”

Prince Ivar followed his mother’s advice and continued to worship Odin but he would ask Bohdan about his god, Perun, and he would ask Artimis about his Christian god. And as the friction heated up between the Roman academics and the Alchemists, Ivar took comfort in the local people that he had surrounded himself with and in the one subject at which he stood out from all those around him, his art. He saw it as his art because it was different from the two dimensional iconography of the Romans and the three dimensional carvings and drawings of the Norse and the Slavs. His art was vibrant earthy colours that pushed Roman knighted cataphracts out of the velum, offset by dark disturbing voids that drew the viewer in. Not life against death as much as existence against abyss, the great ginungagap.

Prince Erik noticed that his son seemed to be favouring his Roman tutors over Erik’s Alchemists and one day he asked his son why.

“Mother told me to worship gods that grant victory,” the young boy explained, “over gods that give peace. In kind, I prefer to follow science that gives me victories over science that gives mankind peace.”

“Well spoken,” his father responded, then thought, ‘someday he shall be a great leader of men.’

That evening, when Prince Erik and Princess Eyfura went to bed, he told her he thought that Eyfur’s academy should have a concert.

Eyfura thought it a great idea, “But only if you recite Gunwar’s Song. I slighted my aunt and now you must make up for it by reciting her song of praise. I can’t have her spirit mad at me.”

“How did you slight her?”

“I told young Eyfur that she became Christian and, days later, Odin let her die in battle. I told him to follow gods that give victory, not gods that give peace. I slighted my aunt, may she rest in peace.”

“Prince Eyfur did mention something like that. He told me he prefers to follow science that grants victory, not science that gives world peace, so now he is following the science of Emperors, the science of Rome. I almost told him that the gods were invented for women and children and that real men knew there was nothing after death…only the vast Ginungagap.”

“Don’t tell him that,” Eyfura said, jabbing him in the ribs. “He’s still a child.”

“It’s already in his paintings,” Erik replied, pushing her down on the bed and kissing her breasts. “The vast Ginungagap. But I will recite her song,” he added, “and I’ll recite a song of praise for you.”

”You’ve written a song of praise for me?”

“I’m still working on it. Do you remember when we first made love and you told me you’d been infatuated with me since you were a young virgin girl?”

“I don’t remember the virgin part being in there, but I was. I was so infatuated with you. You were my hero. My mother had died. Gunwar had just died in battle and you were in Sweden trying to rally the north to bring vengeance upon the Huns. You wrote Gunwar’s song while wracked in grief and you saved your neck by writing a full drapa overnight in praise of…who was it? King Bjorn of the Barrows? You gained the full support of Sweden overnight. Kings flocked to your aid. My father, King Frodi, asshole that he was, even packed up Prince Alf and myself and we left Kiev to support you in Uppsala. I wasn’t infatuated. I worshipped the ground you walked on. I still do,” she said and her eyes watered as she looked up at him.

Erik stroked her cheek and kissed her forehead then whispered:

“Infatuation can be love, infatuation can be…

Infatuation can be love, infatuate me…please.

I loved Alfhild, and lost her love.

Infatuate me…

I loved Gunwar, and lost her too.

Infatuate me…

And now I’ve fallen again in love.

Infatuate me…

I’ve fallen hard, so hard for you…

Infatuate me too.

“Infatuation can be love, infatuation can be…

Infatuation can be love, infatuate me…please.”

“I’d say there was too much infatuation in the song,” Princess Eyfura started, “but there isn’t. I married Prince Arngrim as my father wished, but it was you I loved. When you avenged the death of Gunwar, I pretended that you avenged the murder of my mother as well. You gave me great comfort and I was still young enough to believe in the gods again. That’s why I invited you to come live with us in Novgorod while you searched for your lost son. I loved you and wanted you near me. Prince Arngrim was hard, but he was a good man and I loved him. But he was not you.

“I still remember you sitting with my sons and telling them your tale of that Danish prince, that Amleth. They all loved you so. We all did. Even Arngrim. He would have fought for you to the ends of the earth.”

It was Erik’s turn for watering eyes and he said, “I hope I’ll have your song of praise done in time for the concert.”

“If you can do a drapa overnight for a barrows king, you can do this song for me!” she exclaimed and began kissing him all over his body.

“King Bjorn didn’t distract me,” he complained, pulling her against himself.

CHAPTER TWO

2.0 THE SIEGE OF CONSTANTINOPLE OF 907 AND TREATY OF 911

“Thus Oleg (Helgi) ruled in Kiev, and dwelt at peace with all nations.

Now autumn came, and Oleg bethought him of his horse that he had

caused to be well fed, yet had never mounted. For on one occasion

he had made inquiry of the wonder-working magicians (warlocks)as to

the ultimate cause of his death. One magician replied, “Oh Prince, it is

from the steed which you love and on which you ride that you shall meet

your death.” Oleg then reflected and determined never to mount this

horse or even to look upon it again. So he gave command that the

horse should be properly fed, but never led into his presence.”

The Hraes’ Primary Chronicle

(907 AD) When Prince Ivar was eleven, his brother was called away again, this time to Constantinople, and, for the first time, his father went as well. They sailed together on a huge dragonship at the head of a great fleet of ships and his mother wept when they left Kiev. There had been a trade dispute between the Hraes’ and the Romans, who were engaged in a war with Baghdad. Word had come in the early spring that the Great Fleet of the Greeks was engaged in sea battles off the Levant, so the time to settle the dispute was at hand. The Hraes’ planned to raid the areas around Constantinople and force the Greeks to grant them trade concessions. And they hoped to be back in time for the trading season. That was their plan.

As soon as the troops left Kiev, Princess Eyfura had her son begin his military training. He had always practised with weapons, wooden weapons at first, then bronze and then steel, but it was all informal and fun. Now, Erik had arranged for the finest swordsman from Liere to train his son in the use of the broadsword and buckler. He had hired a master archer to train his son in the use of all bows, from Mongolian hornbows to Anglish longbows to Turkish footbows. He even arranged for an engineer from Cathay to train his son in the design and use of siege engines. And he still had to maintain his studies in painting and poetry as well as arithmetic and languages, both oral and written. Many languages….and, unlike his father, he did not learn them easily. His mother would monitor his training and, when she could not, her handmaiden, Hervor, would.

Prince Ivar had always liked Hervor. She had always treated him as though he was important and she always took a special interest in him. So, he always worked harder at his studies when she was watching and now that he was older, harder at his training, for she was a beautiful woman in her prime and Ivar was becoming interested in women. She was tall and lithe with long auburn hair and penetrating green eyes and her lips were full, as were her breasts. In the close quarters of the palace, Ivar would sometimes catch a glimpse of her partially clad and things within would begin to stir.

Hervor soon began training as well. Princess Eyfura arranged for her to learn riding skills and languages and weapons training and sailing. These were unusual skills to be teaching a handmaiden, but his mother told Ivar it was for the family’s protection. While the men were gone, it was the women of the household that would have to take care of things and they should all be prepared and trained to do so. “There were shield-maidens in our family line,” she’d told her son.

In Constantinople, the Hraes’ had the great Roman walled city surrounded. King Oddi sent cavalry units out into the surrounding farms and estates to pillage. They loaded livestock and valuables onto the farmers’ heavy wains and wagons and drove them into the shoreline camp of the Hraes’ fleet. The goods were loaded onto ships, the livestock fed the troops and the wagons were modified to transport the Nor’Way longships overland, just as some ships were portaged around a rapid of the Dnieper River called Essoupi. Two weeks of pillaging and modifications led to two hundred Nor’Way ships being portaged from their shoreline anchorages through the surrounding village roads to the northern end of the Golden Horn port, thus bypassing the massive chain that barred the southern entrance of the port from the sea. As the ships slipped into the water from the streets leading down to the port, the Greek fleet was caught by surprise. All the Greek fire breathing biremes were at the other end of the Roman fleet, facing the chained off sea, and in the congested harbour, they had no way of getting to the Hraes’ fleet that was attacking their rear. The Nor’Way longships drove the Byzantine biremes away from the main gates of the city and a longship called Fair Faxi was tied off at the main quay of the gates. Oddi leapt onto the dock and extended a hand to his father as he stepped over the top strake.

King Oddi nailed a shield to the left gate and Prince Erik tacked the vellum list of their demands, written in his best Greek, onto the shield. The rest of the Varangian fleet kept the Byzantine fleet hemmed in at the south end of the port while Fair Faxi was sailed off to the north end of the port and was portaged back to the main Hraes’ camp.

The next day Erik and Oddi returned to the quay of the main gates and found a treaty tacked to the shield still nailed upon the left gate. Two camp chairs were carried to the main gates and Erik and Oddi sat and went through the details of the treaty, which was written in both Latin and Greek, as the shield wall sheltered them from the sun. Erik crumpled up the Latin documents, even though he was more fluent in reading that language and he perused and signed the Greek documents. He then passed one copy of the treaty to Oddi, who tacked it to the shield upon the gate.

The raid on Constantinople lasted longer than anticipated, so Princess Eyfura handled the spring trading in Kiev with the help of Hervor and young Prince Ivar. Queen Silkisif handled the eastern trade in Gardariki. Hervor enjoyed their new responsibilities together and she took pride in how young Ivar handled himself. When the men came back from the raid with a new trade agreement, they resumed all the trading duties, but nobody ever wondered at Hervor’s training anymore. She just continued it.

When Princess Eyfura had finished handing over her duties to Prince Erik, she met with Hervor in private and said “There is something I must tell you of your birth. Your mother was my handmaiden, but your father was not a slave. He was my eldest son, Prince Angantyr. When your mother died following your birth, I had you raised in our household, but, for your own safety, I kept your true lineage a secret. Your father was too drunk to remember your conception, but your mother would not spare me the details. You must avenge your father’s death, as I must avenge mine. You shall continue your training to that end.”

Hervor was happy to learn that she was not a slave and of royal blood. She reached out to her grandmother and Eyfura hugged her coldly. “We must keep the truth of your birth a secret until we have avenged our fathers. When my son Angantyr, your father, was killed by Hjalmar the Brave and Prince Oddi,” Eyfura started, “your mother tried to kill herself but I saved her and kept her close while she carried you and after you were born she did kill herself.”

(911 AD) Four years after the Treaty of 907, Erik and Oddi once more led a fleet against the Romans. This time Prince Ivar was old enough to accompany them. At first, Price Erik and Princess Eyfura felt their son was too young to go, but he reminded them that his brother, Oddi, had participated in the Battle of Constantinople when he was his age. Heavily armed longships accompanied the spring throng of merchants heading for trade in Constantinople. The longships waited on the Sea of Marmara while the merchant ships carried on with their trade in the city. The full Roman fleet was home and on manoeuvres around the Golden Horn, so there was much belching of Greek fire and a number of target ships were burned in warning. Prince Ivar witnessed first-hand the courage that would have been required to attack a fire breather as his father and grandfather had. The standoff carried on for several weeks until, eventually, a large number of Hraes’ merchants and sailors were released from Greek custody.

The previous year’s trade had been marked by numerous storms on the Bosporus and the Scythian Sea and a number of Hraes’ merchant ships sank or broke up on reefs and many of the survivors had been captured and enslaved by the Greeks and forced to row in the bellies of Byzantine biremes. So, the Byzantine-Hraes’ Treaty of 907 became a fuller, more encompassing Treaty of 911 that included maritime laws protecting the rights of stranded and injured sailors and merchants of any nation. Strand laws more favourable to those being shipwrecked were implemented, as well as mutual laws in the handling of crimes.

CHAPTER THREE

3.0 THE DEATH OF ARROW ODD (Circa 912 AD)

Arrow Odd with Hjalmar dying

‘He (Helgi) thus summoned his senior squire and inquired as to the

whereabouts of the horse which he had ordered to be fed and well

cared for. The squire answered that he was dead. Oleg laughed and

mocked the magician, exclaiming, “Soothsayers tell untruths, and their

words are naught but falsehood. This horse is dead, but I am still alive.”

‘He rode to the place where the bare bones and skull lay. Dismounting

from his horse, he laughed and remarked, “So I was supposed to receive

my death from this skull?” And he stamped upon the skull with his foot.

But a serpent crawled forth from it and bit him in the foot, so that in

consequence he sickened and died.’

The Hraes’ Primary Chronicle

(912 AD) Once the treaty was concluded, Prince Erik and Ivar returned to Kiev, but Prince Oddi had business in Baghdad and then east on the Caspian, so he bid them farewell on the Scythian Sea. Prince Ivar noticed that his older brother seemed to be avoiding spending time in Kiev. He seemed to fear Princess Eyfura and Ivar was old enough to understand the history behind the fear. He had heard the tales of Oddi and how he had killed the twelve berserker sons of Eyfura and how he had killed her father, King Frodi, but that was before he knew he was a Prince, the son of Prince Erik. He was a Viking then, and a mighty warrior. Now he was family. Still, he feared Princess Eyfura and he kept a distance from her.

Princess Eyfura and Hervor waited through the spring trading season without a sign of Oddi. They were hoping he would have visited Kiev and his father, but he had sent word that he was rebuilding Berurjod in Jaederen Province and would arrive in Kiev after the spring trading season. Prince Erik was waiting on the main quay of Kiev, when Oddi sailed up in Fair Faxi. He saw his father, Erik, and leapt onto the dock. As they embraced and hugged below the dragonhead of Fair Faxi, a slight hooded figure approached and pulled a long blade out from under a cloak. The spectre thrust out the blade at Oddi, who instinctively blocked it with his wrist band, and he smashed the figure down to the dock and the spectre curled up in pain and lashed out with the sword again, and the edge bit Oddi’s ankle to the bone. Then the sword went flying across the dock and clattered on the boardwalk and Erik saw right away that it was Tyrfingr. Oddi pinned the assailant to the decking and pulled back the hood to expose Hervor, dazed but still breathing with a Scythian bolt of lightning painted across her grey stained face. Erik threw his fur cloak over Tyrfingr and saw Eyfura approaching from the longhall, so he rolled the sword into the fur and kicked it into the river. “The water will protect us from the rays of the blade,” Erik explained to Oddi as his wife drew near.

“I saw Hervor quickly leave the hall,” Eyfura said. “What has she done now?”

They returned to Oddi and Hervor. Erik inspected Oddi’s wound while Eyfura revived Hervor. Erik tore the white silk shirt from his chest and tore off a strip of it to tie around Oddi’s left leg. He then stripped his belt of his seax and used the sheath to twist the silk strip tight around Oddi’s leg. He pulled out the seax and told his son, “Your leg has to come off at the knee!”

“You’re mad!” Oddi cried, pulling his leg free of his father. “This limb isn’t going anywhere.”

“The sword she cut your leg with is Tyrfingr. The blade is poisoned. If I don’t take it off at your knee, you’ll be dead within hours.”

Oddi sat down on the dock, hugging his legs to his body. “I know. I saw what it did to my friend, Hjalmar. It’s probably too late already.”

“Let me take off your leg, son. Please. We can fit it with a prosthetic.”

“And I’ll join one of your Special Centuriatas?”

Eyfura had fully revived Hervor by then and both women watched the father arguing for the life of his son.

“No, father,” Oddi continued. “It is too late. I can feel the poison at work already. I think the hours you gave me may have been overly optimistic.” Oddi remembered watching Hjalmar die and he realized he was sitting just as Hjalmar had been sitting. “I want to die with us holding each other in our arms.”

By now all Oddi’s men had come from Fair Faxi, gathered round their captain and began clamouring for Hervor’s head. Eyfura huddled over Hervor as if to protect her from the throng. Oddi ordered his men to respect the fine blood of the women and sat down on a bench below the forestem of Fair Faxi. Erik sent for some camp chairs and fine wine from King Frodi’s highseat hall and they sat in the warm spring sunshine as Oddi’s strength waned.

Erik helped his son into a camp chair from the bench. “Is there anything I can do for you?” he asked.

Oddi asked him to record in Latin the Death Ode of Arrow Odd so his father sent for vellum and ink and asked one of his men to find Prince Ivar. The ink came quickly but they were still looking for the young prince. King Odd began to recite his story. He was almost to the end of it when Prince Ivar was led down the quay.

“She lashed out with the poisoned blade,

and I knocked her down, but as she fell,

she nicked my leg with the blood-snake, Tyrfingr,

its poison’s in my body, my blood doth start to jell.

“My father offered to amputate my leg,

but I just said no, the poison’s going to my head,

I just saw Angantyr, he warned his daughter,

about the blade and tells me she’ll soon be dead.

He’s asked me for a favour to bring her to Valhall,

my shield-maid can enter the warrior’s paradise,

she can watch us battle, then bring us our sweet mead,

Asmund’s there, he does swear, I see it and it’s nice.

I know I took the faith of Christianity,

but I had fingers crossed when in waters they dipped me.

Promise me young Hervor, for you are soon to die,

you’ll come with me to Valhall in a burial at sea.

I bid you farewell father and love you in my heart,

And love you Prince Ivar, Eyfura, you’d your chore.

To Silkisif send love and to my sons also,

send them all my greetings, I’ll go there no more.”

Prince Ivar stood beside his older brother, Oddi, completely speechless.

“Angantyr came to you?” Princess Eyfura came up close. Prince Erik was transferring Oddi onto a great bearskin one of his men had laid upon the dock.

“Yes. He came to me and added a bit of verse,” Oddi said weakly. “Angantyr wants me to bring Hervor to Valhall with me.” While Erik and Eyfura were attending to Oddi, Hervor was tearing off her clothing and she laid herself naked beside Oddi. She hugged him and tried to be him and she whispered, “I shall treat you so fine in Valhall, this I promise.” Prince Erik could see a grey pallor to the skin of Hervor and it was a grey he had seen before. He knew she was not long for this world.

Oddi took Hervor under his arm. “Finally,” he said, “a shield-maiden here to my liking,” and she hugged him. “If you ever go to Ireland, Father,” Oddi began, “could you stop and visit with my wife and daughter in Dub-Lin? Tell them both I love them and was thinking about them at the end.”

“Anything else?” Erik asked, as more wine was poured.

“Yes. Give my scale mail shirt to Ivar here. It will fit him soon. It has saved my life more than once. Ragnar Lothbrok and Ladgerda left it with the King of Ireland and I got it from his daughter.”

Oddi’s forty picked men sat about, watched and listened. They all knew they were witnessing a most famous death, a death foretold.

“Your brother, King Roller figured the prophecy out,” Oddi said weakly as he savoured the wine as if it might be his last. “When the witch Heid foretold your future, Father, she said your son would die from the bite of a poison snake that crawled out below the skull of Fair Faxi. Because your father, Ragnar, was in the room with you, everyone thought she was talking to him and that the son was you. When I was twelve, you and Grim gave me your ship, Fair Faxi, and that same witch foretold that I would die from the bite of a poison snake below the skull of Faxi. In Heid’s first foretelling, she was talking to you, father, not to Ragnar. It is your son dying under the skull of Fair Faxi.” And Oddi looked up at his ship and laughed, bravely. “Tyrfingr, your arrow of the gods, is that poisoned blood-snake that crawled out under the skull of Faxi. I am, indeed, dying below its weathered skull. It has all been preordained. Fate is all. Of the great things we have done, this will be the most famed.” Oddi laughed again, but then he coughed and then coughed up blood. He quickly drank more wine and this time it was his last. Below the skull of Fair Faxi, from a poisoned blood-snake bite, he died.

Hervor was crying at Oddi’s side and Princess Eyfura was trying to console her. She got up, naked, and began walking back up the quay toward the main gates of Kiev and when Eyfura followed and tried to cover up her up with a blanket, she pushed it away. Erik had his men carry Oddi’s body into the hall and he held Ivar’s hand as they walked beside the body. His men laid Oddi out on his highseat and covered him with a blanket. Erik left Ivar with his mother and he went to Hervor, standing naked in the hall and he stroked her hair. “Where is the scabbard?” he asked gently. “We must sheath Tyrfingr. The water will shield us from its poison, but it is still dangerous.”

“The scabbard is in my room under my bed,” Hervor blurted. Prince Ivar watched as Erik and Eyfura led the naked shield-maiden to her room and Erik recovered the scabbard while Eyfura put Hervor to bed. Erik went out to the dock and into the river to sheathe Tyrfingr. The blade glowed dangerously until he got it in the leaden scabbard. Trapped under the bones of Angantyr, the blade’s power had grown.

“Quiet, child,” Princess Eyfura whispered, as she tucked Hervor into bed. “We wanted revenge and we got it.”

“But he died so bravely, grandmother. And I feel so bad. It’s all so sad.”

“It was our duty to avenge our fathers. And we did it. I’m proud of you, Hervor,” she said, hugging the girl.

Later, in bed, Erik told Eyfura that he suspected Hervor may have been overly exposed to Tyrfingr’s poison.

“How overly?” Eyfura asked.

“She will likely be dead in two days.”

“I don’t know what caused her to do all that,” Eyfura said. “Angantyr’s sword. The lightning bolt painted on her face. She stained her body grey. It’s all so sad.” She rolled over and went to sleep.

Erik watched the beauty of her form as moonlight filtered into the room. The faint light glistened on her bare shoulder and followed down her side, dipping at her covered waist then thrusting up to follow the curve of her hip and tapering down her shapely legs. Perfection in form…if not in substance. He wondered how much of the blade Eyfura had been exposed to.

Two days after Oddi’s death, Hervor joined him. She had bequeathed her only possession, the sword Tyrfingr, to her son Ivar. Erik prepared a great feast and funeral for his son and Oddi and Hervor were burned together in Fair Faxi on the Dnieper River in a stone ship burial at sea. Two months later, Prince Erik left for Gardariki and Queen Eyfura and Prince Ivar remained in Kiev to rule in her father, King Frodi’s name.

It is also recorded that all the people mourned for King Odd in great grief. They bore him away and buried him upon the hill which is called Shchekovitsa. His burial howe stands there to this day, and it is called the Tomb of Oleg. But this cannot be true because Queen Silkisif would have demanded he be buried in Tmutorokan, where he had reigned with her for many years.

CHAPTER FOUR

4.0 PRINCE IVAR AND PRINCESS HELGA (Circa 914 AD)

“6421 (913). Igor (Ivar) succeeded Oleg and began his reign. At the same

time began ·the reign of Constantine, son of Leo and son-in-law of

Romanus. The Derevlians offered resistance to Igor’ after Oleg’s death.

6422 (914) Igor’ attacked the Derevlians, and after conquering them,

he imposed upon them a tribute larger than Oleg’s.”

The Hraes’ Primary Chronicle

Princess Helga (Olga) of Kiev

(914 AD) “I still love your father,” Queen Eyfura told her son, Ivar. “He rules in Gardariki and we rule here in Kiev, as queen and royal regent. Your father is a prince, but you are the grandson of a king. You, too, will be king. It is in your blood.”

“But will father ever join us here?” Prince Ivar asked.

“He will come to Kiev when he is ready,” Eyfura answered. “He thinks Kiev is haunted by the memories of your grandmother, Queen Alfhild. She died here.” Queen Eyfura did not tell her regent son how her mother had died. No one ever talked of that.

“Father will never join us here,” Ivar exclaimed. “And Oddi will never join us again,” he complained. “And Hervor will never…” He set his jaw and shook his head. They were Hraes’, Varangians….Way Wanderers, masters of the Nor`Way and of the Southern Way….the Dan’Way.

“You’ll lead the troops for the first time tomorrow,” his mother started, “and gather tribute from the Poljane, Drevjane and Radimichi. You have the lists for the required slaves, furs, honey and grain. If they are short on tribute, they must be harshly dealt with. Your lieutenants will help you with that. The slaves may be short. Prince Oddi was negligent in collecting the slave tribute. Other goods may be substituted until the practice is fully reinstated.”

Prince Ivar led his troops to the city of Chernigov, a day’s ride north of Kiev, to collect tribute from the Drevjane Slavs who had founded the town. As he was leading his horsemen down the main street, he saw a local Hraes’ princess walking along the sidewalk. She was tall and lithe with long flowing blonde hair and she reminded the prince of Hervor. He learned from one of his men that her name was Helga and her father was a merchant prince from Sweden, so he had her invited to the Hraes’ palace in the town. She fell in love with the prince that night and the inseparable couple were soon married. Late fall in Kiev brought the arrival of a daughter to the royal couple, Princess Alfhild, named after Ivar’s great grandmother. Prince Ivar invited his father to her pagan sprinkling, for Princess Helga was a follower of Freyja and she wanted her daughter raised in the Aesir faith. Prince Erik suggested that perhaps young Princess Alfhild should be sprinkled with water in Tmutorokan.

“You shall have to overcome your fear of Alfhild’s ghost in Kiev,” Prince Ivar admonished his father, “especially now that your grand-daughter is named after her.”

So little Princess Alfhild was sprinkled with water in the Temple of Freyja at the Grove of the Aesir in Kiev. The ceremony was small and very private in a small wooden temple amongst the oaks of the Aesir and other larger temples dedicated to Odin and Thor and Tyr and many other lesser gods of the Norse pantheon, for Freyja was a goddess of the Vanir who had joined the Aesir, leaving the southern pantheon.

Once Prince Erik had left for Gardariki, a Swedish king named Halfdan arrived in Kiev seeking the aid of Prince Ivar and Princess Helga. He was the son of the late King Erik of Sweden, son of King Bjorn of the Barrows, the skaldic king who had spared the life of Prince Ivar’s father many years ago. He had come seeking support in his struggle against twelve Norwegian berserk brothers who were continually attacking his Swedish realm. His father, King Erik, had been a brother of Princess Helga’s father, making them cousins of a sort, so Prince Ivar, eager to experience his first engagement, agreed to lead a force against the Norwegians even though his father was originally from the Nor’Way. He was also, very briefly, a former King of Sweden, Ivar rationalized.

Prince Ivar assembled a fleet of fifty ships and joined King Halfdan’s fleet of thirty ships and they sailed up the Dnieper and down the Dvina and across the Baltic to Uppsala in Sweden. But one of Prince Ivar’s ships slipped away on the way and headed for Denmark. Marching across Sweden, the large army soon had the allies of the Norwegian brothers fleeing back to the Vik, but the twelve Berserks were securely holed up in a castle on a rock in the middle of a raging river that could only be accessed via a drawbridge which they controlled from the castle. The brothers were excellent warriors supported by their own personal retinues and were confident they could hold their small stronghold against any number of foes.

These warriors were of valiant temper, young and stalwart, of splendid bodily presence, renowned for victories over giants, full of trophies of conquered nations, and wealthy with spoil. The names of some of them were recorded as follows, but the rest have perished in antiquity: Gerbiorn, Gunbiorn, Arinbiorn, Stenbiorn, Esbiorn, Thorbiorn, and Biorn, who was said to have had a horse which was splendid and of exceeding speed, so that when all the rest were powerless to cross the river it alone stemmed the roaring eddy without weariness. The rapids came down in so swift and sheer a volume that animals often lost all power of swimming in it, and perished. For, trickling from the topmost crests of the hills, it came down the steep sides, caught on the rocks, and was shattered, falling into the deep valleys with a manifold clamour of waters; but, being straightway rebuffed by the rocks that bar the way, it kept the speed of its current ever at the same rushing pace, and so, along the whole length of the channel, the waves were one turbid mass, and the white foam brimmed over everywhere. But after rolling out of the narrows between the rocks, it spread abroad in a slacker and stiller flood, and turned into an island the rock that supported the brothers’ fortress. On either side of the rock jutted out a sheer ridge, thick with fir trees, that screened the river from distant view. Biorn also had a dog of extraordinary fierceness, a terribly vicious brute, dangerous for people to live with, which had often singly destroyed men by the dozens. Biorn stole the dog from the giant Offot, who had used it to watch his herds amid pastures in Giantland.

Now these warriors, who had often pillaged the neighbourhood, plundering houses, cutting down cattle, sacking everything, making great hauls of booty, rifling rans, then burning them, massacring males and females indiscriminately, were caught off-guard while on a reckless raid, and Prince Ivar, King Halfdan and a large cavalry force drove them in battle back into their stronghold; and managed to seize Biorn’s immensely powerful horse, left behind in the haste of retreat. That night back in camp, while celebrating their small victory, Prince Ivar proclaimed that he would pay the weight of the dead body in gold to any man who slew one of those brothers. The hope of the prize stimulated some of the champions to go secretly the next day to the prince and promise to attempt the task, vowing to sacrifice their lives if they did not bring home the severed heads of the berserks. Prince Ivar praised their valour and their vows, but bid them wait, and went that night to the river with a single companion, a slave. For, not to seem better provided with other men’s valour than with his own, he determined to forestall their aid by his own courage. Thereupon he crushed and killed his companion with a stone and flung his bloodless corpse into the waves, having dressed it in his own clothes; which he stripped off, borrowing the cast-off garb of the other, so that when the corpse was seen it might look as if the prince had perished. He further deliberately drew blood from his horse, on which the slave had ridden, and bespattered it, so that when it returned back to camp, he might make them think he himself was dead. Then he set spur to Biorn’s great horse and drove it into the midst of the eddies, crossed the river and alighted, and tried to climb over the rampart that screened the stronghold by steps set up against the mound. When he got over the top and could grasp the battlements with his hand, he quietly put his foot inside, and, without the knowledge of the watch, went lightly on tiptoe to the house into which the bandits had gone to carouse. And when he had reached its hall, he sat down under the porch overhanging the door. Now the strength of their fastness made the warriors feel so safe that they were tempted to a debauch; for they thought that the swiftly rushing river made their garrison inaccessible, since it seemed impossible either to swim over or to cross in boats, for no part of the river allowed fording.

Biorn, moved by the revel, said that in his sleep he had seen a beast come out of the waters, which spouted ghastly fire from its mouth, enveloping everything in a sheet of flame. Therefore the holes and corners of the island should, he said, be searched; nor ought they to trust so much to their position, as rashly to let overweening confidence bring them to utter ruin. No situation was so strong that the mere protection of nature was enough for it without human effort. Moreover they must take great care that the warning of his slumbers was not followed by a yet more gloomy and disastrous fulfilment. So they all sallied forth from the stronghold, and narrowly scanned the whole circuit of the island; and finding Biorn’s horse they surmised that Prince Ivar had been drowned in the waters of the river. They received the horse within the gates with great rejoicing, supposing that it had flung off its rider and swum over. But Biorn, still troubled with the memory of his vision, advised them to keep watch, since it was not safe for them yet to put aside suspicion of danger. Then he went to his room to rest, with the memory of his vision deeply stored in his heart.

Meanwhile the horse which Prince Ivar had besprinkled with blood, burst all bedabbled into the camp of his soldiers. They went straight to the river, and finding the carcass of the slave, took it for the body of the prince; the hissing eddies having cast it on the bank, dressed in royal attire. Nothing helped their mistake so much as the swelling of the battered body; inasmuch as the skin was torn and bruised by the rapids, so that all the features were blotted out, bloodless and wan. This exasperated the champions who had just promised their prince to see that the robbers were extirpated: and they approached the perilous torrent, that they might not seem to tarnish the honour of their promise by a craven neglect of their vow. The rest imitated their boldness, and with equal ardour went to the river, ready to avenge their prince or to endure the worst.

When Ivar saw them, he hastened to lower the bridge to the mainland; and when his champions joined him, they cut down the watch in their initial attack. Prince Ivar went on to attack the rest and put them to the sword, all save Biorn; whom he tended to very carefully and cured of his wounds; whereupon, under pledge of solemn oath, he made him his colleague, thinking it better to use his services than to boast of his death. He also declared it would be shameful if such a flower of bravery were plucked in his first youth and perished by an untimely death.

Back in Uppsala, Prince Ivar met up with the captain of the ship he had sent onwards to Denmark. The captain informed him that he had learned that a King Hiarn now ruled Denmark, the kingdom of Ivar’s grandfather, King Frodi. And all the people of Denmark had elected him king, thinking the line of Frodi had ended with the death of King Alf at the hands of Arrow Odd. “King Hiarn would not likely be giving back his title without a battle,” the captain added, “and that might require a fleet of more than fifty ships.”

Prince Ivar broached the idea of his reclaiming the Danish crown with King Halfdan of Sweden and Halfdan replied, “I have heard of this Hiarn and he is quite the commoner. Being the grandson of King Frodi, your rights to the realm should certainly take precedence and I will support your effort to that end with a hundred ships. My grandfather, King Bjorn of the Barrows, named my father, King Erik, after your father, Erik Bragi, and my family has always been supportive of the Hraes’ Trading Company and now that you have married my cousin, Princess Helga, we are blood.”

When Prince Ivar returned to Kiev, he told his mother all about King Hiarn and reminded her that she could no longer call herself Queen Eyfura, as Hiarn’s wife now held that title. This started in motion a movement to support Prince Eyfur in the taking back of the Danish crown. Princess Eyfura reasoned that if Prince Eyfur became king and Princess Helga became queen, at least she would be queen mother. But Prince Ivar would soon have other plans.

CHAPTER FIVE

5.0 PRINCE IVAR ATTACKS THE PECHENEGS (Circa 915 AD)

6423 (915). The Pechenegs entered the land of Rus’ for the first time,

but when they made peace with Igor’, they went their way to the Danube.

At this time, Symeon subjugated Thrace, and the Greeks summoned the

Pechenegs to aid them. When the Pechenegs arrived and wished to attack

Symeon, the Greek generals quarreled. The Pechenegs, on seeing how

they were quarreling among themselves, returned homeward, but the

Bulgars came to blows with the Greeks, and the Greeks were cut to pieces.

The Hraes’ Primary Chronicle

Pecheneg Mounted Warriors Attacking Foot Soldiers

(915 AD) The Pechenegs came from the east, from beyond the Khazar Empire, and the Khazars sent emissaries to Prince Erik of Gardariki and Queen Silkisif of Tmutorokan warning them of their coming. “They are numerous beyond numbers,” the Hun envoys claimed, “and they are as fierce as Atli himself.”

Prince Erik sent messengers to Kiev to warn his son, Prince Ivar, of their coming and then he gathered his forces and awaited them on the Don Heath. Erik sat at the head of his five thousand cavalry, a thousand light horse consisting of scouts and skirmishers on fast quarter horses, a thousand regulars with lances and bows and heavier horse and three thousand Roman equipped cataphracts, heavily armoured knights and heavy draft horse, who sat in front of his hollow square of twelve thousand Norse equipped foot soldiers. The hollow square had three thousand men on each side, protecting a baggage train and cavalry command operations in the center, but The Prince wanted his Roman cataphracts front and center and on display as a vaster array of perhaps twenty thousand Turkic horsemen passed by just north of them heading west. In amongst the warriors could be seen horse drawn carts and wagons carrying women and children. Round earth mounded steppe forts had been built over the years that were a day’s journey apart , and Prince Erik had provisioned the forts with water, food and fodder that was offered to the Pechenegs as they progressed in their migration. Erik led his force well behind the Pechenegs across the great steppe between the Don and Dnieper Rivers until they met up with Prince Ivar’s force that sat at the Dnieper Rapids just north of the Pecheneg migration path.

“You’ve provisioned the steppe forts west as I requested?” was the first thing Erik asked his son as the two armies met on a plain south of the rapids.

“Yes,” Ivar answered. “And at great expense. I don’t see why we don’t just attack them and drive them back east.”

“Do you trust the Khazars?” the Prince asked.

“No. Of course not.”

“And you watched the composition of the tribe as it passed?” the Prince asked further.

“Of course.” Ivar answered. “A vast array of warriors surrounding the carts of their women and children. Just as one would expect from a migrating horde.”

“Did you happen to notice that the carts looked more like a baggage train, that the women looked more like camp followers and that none of the children were under twelve years of age?”

“Maybe the younger children were being kept in the carts. They were covered wains, you know.”

“Or maybe this is a scout army for a far larger horde?”

“Like your dreams?” Ivar asked. “Is this the Spear Odd of the vast horde you saw in your dreams? The one that crushes us?”

“No,” the Prince answered. “That happens long after you and I leave this earth. But why would the Khazars warn us of their coming? Perhaps to give us time to prepare to attack them? It makes no sense.”

“What should we do?”

“I had my best language experts stationed at the steppe forts to learn their language as they passed out supplies. And we even managed to embed a few guides that rode along with the horde between forts to learn as much about them as possible. They speak a form of Oghuz Turk that no one has heard before. They are following the path of the Magyar horde that migrated through here in King Frodi’s time. They may have learned how well the Magyars are doing on their Dzungarian plain west of us and they seek to emulate them. I think they mean to settle here on this plain south of the Dnieper.”

“That will impact the Dan’Way!” Prince Ivar shouted. “We have to attack them!”

“We have to see how great this horde actually is first. I’ve always known this plain wasn’t going to sit idle forever. We’re lucky it has been left empty as long as it has. The Avars have been gone a long time. We may have to work with them. Use them against the Romans, the Bulgars, even the Khazars themselves. This plain won’t stay empty forever and if we can work with these people we should and if we can’t, we shall drive them back or further west. But let’s see if we can work with them first. If we destroy them and another horde follows, the new group may be worse. The future horde I saw in my dreams were nothing but rapists and murderers and nobody will be able to work with them. They shall subjugate all great empires that lay before them at the cost of millions of lives and shall only be stopped by their own inherent evil.”

Ivar shook his head in disbelief. “That is why we call you ‘The Prince’, father,” Ivar said. “I shall follow your advice in this matter to the letter. I sense great danger here and I think you are correct in that it emanates from the Khazars.”

“Thank you, as always. We must handle this correctly or we shall pay dearly.” Prince Erik dismounted from his stallion with a grace that belied his age. The armies were setting up camp for the night and the Kievan forces would take over tailing the Pechenegs on the morrow while the Tmutorokan forces returned east to watch for a larger Pecheneg horde. The evening overlap gave the two princes a chance to catch up on things.

“How did everything go in Sweden?” Erik asked, as they sat around a campfire between the two large command tents.

“King Halfdan sends greetings,” Ivar answered. “We managed to quell the berserk attack he was under. But I focked up,” he admitted.

“How so?”

“I drank too much after a minor victory we had against the berserks and I promised to pay the weight in gold for any berserks our champions killed.”

“That sounds like a lot of gold.”

“I know. I don’t have that much, so I had to sneak into the berserks’ fortress and kill them all myself. I know what you’ve told me about putting myself in harm’s way, but I did let down the fortress drawbridge and let my troops inside before I attacked them.”

“Never put yourself in harm’s way if you can avoid it!”

“Avoid it!” Prince Ivar echoed simultaneously. “I know. I know. I’ll keep my big mouth shut henceforth. But I did capture one of the berserks, a youth named Biorn, and he serves me now in Kiev.”

“I hope you know what you’re doing.”

“Speaking of harm’s way, King Halfdan told me that King Bjorn of the Barrows named his son, King Erik, after you. Only after you wrote him his drapa that saved your neck. I knew that he had spared you, or I wouldn’t be here, but did he actually come to like you so much that he would name his son after you?”

“I know!” Erik exclaimed. “I wrote Gunwar’s Song for your aunt after I learned of her death, then I recited it to him and he considered himself to be a bit of a skald and he wanted a drapa for himself, overnight. So, I wrote him one and, just between you and me, it wasn’t my finest drapa, but he loved it. He supported me in every way possible in my struggle against the Huns and we continued to support each other over the years until he died and King Erik took over. Then Erik sent his brother, Prince Helgi to us and I set him up with a Hraes’ station in Chernigov and we’ve been allies of the Swedes ever since. And now you’ve married his daughter, Princess Helga, and you have Princess Alfhild. It’s the things that I don’t foresee that give me the greatest pleasure.”

“King Halfdan said that your writing of the drapa was a turning point in the north…that it brought the Norse together somehow.”

“It was,” Erik admitted. “I didn’t know how I was going to put together a force large enough to avenge the death of Gunwar. Your grandfather, King Frodi, had all but lost his mind over losing Queen Alfhild, I’m being polite here,” and Ivar nodded, “and I was just a prince trying to get kings to support me in a war against a Hun horde in a far-off land. But King Bjorn reminded me of my duty and offered me his full support for the price of one drapa overnight and when I delivered he made good on all his promises and then some. When word of the drapa story spread across the north, all kings were vying with each other in who could offer me the most support and King Bjorn welcomed their retinues and their armies to Sweden at great expense and then even King Frodi arrived in Sweden to help and he brought your mother and uncle with him. Your mother told me she became infatuated with me as everyone rallied about me to avenge her Aunt Gunwar. And later, when Vadim the Brave drove her out of Novgorod, she joined me in Gardariki and I fell in love with her. After I lost Princess Gunwar, I thought I would never fall in love again. I was infatuated with your grandmother, Princess Alfhild, but then I met your aunt, Princess Gunwar, and I fell head over heels in love. We were married and King Frodi married Alfhild and your mother was their greatest achievement. When I met your mother, she was a combination of the best of both Alfhild and Gunwar, the only two women I had ever loved, so what were my chances of my eluding a third greatest love?”

“All that from a drapa!”

“And how did you meet Princess Helga? Was it love at first sight?”

“It was actually. I was leading a force into Chernigov and one of my lieutenants saw her walking down the boardwalk and he pointed her out to me and said she was a royal princess of Sweden. And I looked at her walking and she was so beautiful I almost fell off my horse. Seriously…I craned around so hard watching her as we went by each other that my saddle slipped a bit and I almost took a tumble. She is the love of my life and I don’t think I’ll live as long as you to have three such loves.”

The next morning Prince Ivar brought up the matter of King Hiarn of Denmark with his father. “I told mother she was Princess Eyfura again,” Prince Ivar added.

“And how did Queen Eyfura take that?” Prince Erik asked.

“She was not happy,” Ivar said. “Not happy at all.”

“We’ll have to see what we can do about that. It seems to put more importance on how we handle the Pechenegs. If we can work with them, it will free us up to deal with your Danish subjects.”

By noon, the camps broke up and the armies headed their respective ways, one west following the Pecheneg horde and one east, watching for another. As the Tmutorokan Hraes’ retraced their steps east through their steppe forts, Prince Erik gathered up his linguistic experts and they all conversed in Pecheneg as they progressed back across the steppe. By the time they reached the Don Heath, Prince Erik was getting a feel for the language and was shouting out orders in Pecheneg as he organized the restocking of the steppe forts for the larger horde he was expecting. A few days later, Queen Silkisif arrived on the heath in a royal carriage with a caravan of supplies and toys in tow and announced to her father-in-law that a larger Pecheneg horde had been spotted by scouts and this horde had plenty of young children running about the carts and wains of the women.

“This is the horde we shall intercept,” Prince Erik said in Pecheneg to the widow of his son Arrow Oddi.

“What?” Queen Silkisif replied. “Is that Pecheneg?”

“All of my officers have been learning it. I said this is the horde we shall intercept and introduce ourselves to. I’m glad you brought toys with you,” Erik said, admiring the carved horse and rider Silkisif pushed into his hands. “If the mothers and children approve of us, half the battle is won.”

“How did young Prince Ivar handle himself?” the queen asked.

“He is learning,” Erik answered.

“He wanted to attack the scout army, didn’t he,” Silkisif stated, a worried look on her beautiful face.

“Like I said, he is learning.”

When the main horde arrived on the Don Heath one warm afternoon, Prince Erik, surrounded by his officers, rode out to meet and welcome the Pechenegs in their own language. The migrants halted there and began setting up their camp, and supply wagons came out from behind the Hraes’ army and food and water was offered. Queen Silkisif rode out with her carriages of toys and in short time they ran out of gifts for the children.

“How many are there?” she asked Erik, as she prepared to return to Tmutorokan.

“There were about twenty thousand in the advance group,” Erik estimated, “and this main horde is about four times as big, so…a hundred thousand, give or take a few.

“And twenty thousand or so would be children,” Silkisif said. “I’m going to need more toys.”

Erik could see that the sheer numbers were overwhelming his foster-daughter. “Go to Gardariki and help yourself to the Hraes’ warehouse there. We received a big shipment from Cathay and it includes toys and kites and sky lanterns. Also, I had some Raven banners made up in silk, and I may have a new use for the ones with a gold background, so bring them all as well. This was a great idea you had, we just need more. Much more.”

Queen Silkisif led her carriage caravan south to Gardariki while Prince Erik rode north for a feast at the main Pecheneg camp. There he was to meet with the Pecheneg Kagans, for there were eight Pecheneg tribes in this migration with the same number of great princes or kagans. The tribes were these: the name of the first tribe was Yavdi-Erdem of the shining gold horses under Kagan Baitzas; second was Kuerci-Cur of the bluish horses under Kagan Kouel; third was Qabugsin-Yula of the bark hued horses under Kagan Kourkoutai; fourth was Suru-Kul-Bey of the silver-grey horses under Kagan Ipaos; fifth, Qara-Bey of the Scythian horse under Kagan Kaidoum; sixth, Boru-Tolmac of grey horses under Kagan-Bek Kostas; seventh, Yazi-Qapan of the dark brown horse under Kagan Giazis; eighth, Bula-Copan with piebald horses under Kagan-Bek Batas. After Prince Erik was introduced to the Pecheneg leaders he introduced himself as Kagan-Bek Erik Bragi of the Hraes’ in the Pecheneg language. When one of the princes asked him where the Hraes’ Kagan was, Erik told him that their great kagan had died and his grandson, Kagan Ivar, was being trained to replace him. The princes all laughed and repeated, ‘a kagan in training,’ and they all laughed some more as they entered the huge yurt of Kagan Baitzas and began their feast.

At first, discussions were quite reserved but, as the mead flowed, Erik was able to learn that the Khazars had brokered a deal whereby the Pechenegs were to support the Romans as light cavalry in an upcoming war on the Balkan Bulgars in exchange for land grants in the conquered Bulgaria. The Pechenegs were looking to emulate the Magyar success on their Dzungarian plains. And the Khazars had attempted to double up their own benefits by not telling the Hraes’ the vast size of the Pecheneg horde in the hopes the Hraes’ would attack the smaller Pecheneg scout army.

Kagan Baitzas had noticed the Scythian Raven on red background banner of the Hraes’ standards and said: “If the Raven is your sky spirit then I know we shall get along, for the Magpie is our bird and they always get on together.”

It took Erik and a few of his officers a bit of discussion about what had been said in Pecheneg and then the Prince had eight Raven banners brought in and presented one to each Pecheneg prince. One of Prince Erik’s officers then went out to his horse and pulled a jar of signal paint out of a saddle bag and showed the Kagan how easily a Scythian raven could be turned into a Magpie with a few dabs of white paint in the right places. He immediately had a line of Kagans and Kagan-Beks all wanting their Ravens painted into Magpies. The Pechenegs were unfamiliar with heraldry but were quick to appreciate the art form.

The next day the Pechenegs were packing up their camp and moving on as Prince Erik began organizing the re-provisioning of the steppe forts to assist them in their migration. His legion of cataphracts and legion of foot-soldiers continued tailing the migrating horde under the command of a Goth general, the son of Yggerus, but Erik headed back to Gardariki to see how his daughter-in-law was coming along with her toys. He met up with her carriage caravan a day’s ride out of Gardariki.

“Did you find everything you needed at our Hraes’ warehouse?” he asked her.

“That and more,” she answered. “I took the liberty of getting silk dresses for the wives of the Kagans and implements to help all the wives in their migration.”

“Excellent,” Erik stated. “I thought as much when I saw that your carriage train had doubled in length.” Prince Erik had his retinue set up camp and make lunch for the train drivers. “I’d like you to return to Gardariki with me,” he told the queen as he went through the Raven Banner standards she had brought him. He gave all the one hundred gold background standards to one of his officers and asked, “If you ride in one of these carriages, can you turn these ravens into magpies before you reach the Dnieper?”

“No problem,” the lieutenant replied.

“Good,” Erik said, turning to Silkisif. “Now we just have to make seven hundred more in different background colours and we’ll present each tribe with Magpie Banner standards in their own clan colours.” Prince Erik and Queen Silkisif rode back to Gardariki in her royal carriage and he told her about his conversation in Pecheneg with the Kagans about Prince Ivar being a kagan in training. “They found it quite amusing,” he told her. “But I think he is being trained by his mother, and that may not be enough.”

“How so?” Silkisif asked curiously.

“She is a royal, just like her father!” Erik exclaimed. “She is a ‘my blood is blue even though it is red’ royal who believes she is above all others and others are above the slaves they own.

“I’m a royal,” Silkisif said, “and I don’t believe that”.

“But you are half Slav, just like me, and Slavs will always be against slavery. She is a royal who depends upon slavery. Her free subjects can take the lives of their slaves without consequence, just as she can take the lives of her subjects as she sees fit. Without slavery, her subjects would not stand for such a social contract.”

“But you’ve said yourself that slavery will end when the time is right,” Silkisif reminded her foster-father. “Has something changed?”

“I had a dream about my brother, Duke Rollo, when I was in Kiev. He has become a royal once more, and from him shall arise a great line of Norman kings and one grandson shall conquer the Saxons of Angleland and he shall lord over them as a true king and make slaves of them all and he shall take their lands and property for himself and he shall rent vast tracts of his new land to his Norman lords and the Angles and Saxons shall spend the next thousand years buying back their lands from their Norman overlords one small parcel at a time. And even after they have bought it all back and can elect their own Anglo Saxon leaders, anything they do must first be approved by a Norman House of Lords.”

“That is such a sad dream,” Silkisif said. “But at least they do find freedom.”

“Do they find freedom?” Erik asked. “Or do they just find slavery in a newer subtler form?”

“Well at least that place is far from here,” Silkisif said, looking out a carriage window.

“Not far enough,” Erik responded. “When the Normans conquer Angleland all the freedom loving warriors of the Angles and Saxons will be joining us here, joining the Varangian Guard with our Danes and Swedes in Constantinople, or joining us here in Tmutorokan.”

“Thank the gods you have dreamed of a future Tmutorokan,” Silkisif cried. “With all these Pechenegs hordes roaming about, I was beginning to worry.”

Erik took Silkisif under his arm and she leaned against him and slept all the way back to Gardariki. “We shall never get off this rock,” he thought and he wondered from where that thought had come…what dream…what vision.

The Pechenegs continued on their western migration and made their way to the Danube River. The war between the Romans and the Bulgars had already begun and Tzar Symeon and his Bulgar forces had already subjugated Thrace. Kagan Baitzas led his Pechenegs to Adrianople where they found their Roman employers fighting among themselves over strategies and priorities. “These are not serious people,” the Kagan told the other Kagans and Kagan-Beks. “I can’t see them winning a war together.” So, the Pechenegs started a trek back east. When the Bulgars came to blows with the Romans, the Romans were cut to pieces in a disastrous battle and Adrianople fell.

Word of the Roman defeat arrived quickly by sea at Cherson, the Greek city on the Crimean peninsula, and from there it spread to Tmutorokan and Gardariki. The Romans blamed their defeat on the Pechenegs who abandoned them and returned east, so Prince Erik knew they would not be settling in Bulgaria anytime soon, which would likely be bad for the Hraes’ trade routes. He equipped his army for war and they sailed across the Sea of Azov and marched to the Dnieper Heath. There they watched from a hilltop as, miles away, Prince Ivar and his Kievan legions engaged in a battle with a large Pecheneg force and from the Scythian and white colour of their horses, it looked to be the Bula Copan tribe of the piebald horse.

Prince Ivar’s cavalry would move out from the center of his hollow square of foot soldiers and clash with the Pecheneg horse and the Pechenegs would retreat, shooting their bows as they did, then they would turn and attack again then retreat, slowly drawing the Hraes’ cavalry further away from the security of their hollow square of foot soldiers. Prince Erik couldn’t make out his son, but he could see the Raven Banner standards he was riding under. A small party of Pecheneg horse came riding towards Prince Erik and his army and they were the golden horse of the Yavdi-Erdem and Kagan Baitzas rode with them. Erik gathered an equal number of officers about himself and they rode out to meet him.

“We came to observe your Kagan in training,” Kagan Baitzas shouted in Pecheneg.

“He is being drawn away from his main force,” Kagan-Bek Erik shouted back in like tongue.

“He will learn,” Baitzas said, riding up. “The Bula Copan are learning as well.”

“How did this start?” Erik asked.

“The Romans lost their war,” Baitzas shrugged.

“They claim it was because you abandoned them.”

“The Romans were fighting amongst each other before we arrived. It was, how do you Rhos say it, ‘focked up’ long before we got there.”

They watched the Bula Copan of the piebald horse bait the Kievan Hraes’ cavalry further away from their hollow square. The Pechenegs would take a beating when they attacked the Hraes’, but would inflict casualties with their bows while retreating again.

“We were returning east when the young ‘Kagan in training’ attacked our lead force, of the Bula Copan.” When Kagan Baitzas had judged that the Hraes’ cavalry was far enough away from their foot soldiers, he signaled for his men to begin waving the golden Magpie standards that Erik had sent them. Over a distant hill rode the Yavdi-Erdem of the golden horse horde and they charged across the valley between the Hraes cavalry and their square of foot soldiers and took a position atop a hill while another horde took a position atop the hill the Erdem had just vacated. Prince Ivar halted his attack on the Bula Copan and began a cautious retreat along the valley floor between the two hilltop hordes and rejoined the hollow square of foot soldiers.

“Now the Bula Copan know how to set a trap,” Kagan Baitzas began, “and your young ‘Kagan in training’ has learned how to avoid being caught up in one. Thank you for the banners by the way.”

“I have more for you,” Erik offered, as he waved some wagons forward from his baggage train. “We have colour banners for each of your tribes. And gifts for you and your people.”

CHAPTER SIX

6.0 THE CREATION OF IVAR THE BONELESS (Circa 916 AD)