Michael Chabon: Gentlemen of the Road

At once all the Northmen got up and unsheathed their blades or spoke eager promises to their axes. There were at least two hundred of them, and though rumor had described them as flux-ridden and liver-sore and spent, they were now in possession of a kingly treasure, with the promise of an elephant and a chance of bloodshed, and looking fresher and gayer by the instant. The archer had his twenty men, their shooting skill blunted at close range, their daggers inadequate. High up on the walls of the city another company of archers looked down, fine marksmen all and as prone to outrage at the scandal of the looting of the elephant, but their grasp of the situation at a bowshot was no doubt limited. Meanwhile, the bek's personal bodyguards, thick-skulled glowering Colchians, owned impenetrable minds and loyalty only to their paymaster.

“Must you,” Buljan said in a distracted way, watching the magnificent old animal swing down the ramp with its womanly gait, ringing like gongs the sawed planks each as thick as a strong man's wrist. When the captain had last seen the beast she was caparisoned and painted like a whore at carnival, but now she came wearing nothing but the rich gray terrain of her hide, scarred and dignified and so replete with power in the shifting under the skin of her monstrous musculature that she seemed to the captain to embody the antiquity and might of the kaganate-and in her imminent journey from the embankment to the barge that stood waiting to tow her up the river to the home of the Northmen, where she would surely perish in the cold and the dark, that empire's passing. “I wonder how?”

And Buljan drew his own short sword and before the captain of archers could flinch or turn heaved it up into the soft exposed region just under the captain's arm. There was no pain, at first, only heat and the rank breath of Buljan whistling through his teeth, and an unbearable sadness, and then one of the Northmen laughed as the captain sat down on the dock, and then it hurt. The Rus moved in a boiling tangle like a troop of murderous monkeys the captain had once seen ravaging a village, far away to the southeast in Hind, and his men unsheathed their daggers, and the captain closed his eyes. To his great surprise his death was accompanied or heralded by the sounding of ram's horns, which struck him as a little showy, perhaps, and then there was a silence that accorded more with his expectations, and he opened his eyes and saw his men standing with daggers ready and the Northmen milling, shoulders together and sullen-eyed like boys caught at mischief From the shore there came a coin-chink of stirrup and mail and harness bit, chiming over and over like some kind of bellicose carillon, and he turned and saw an army, the army, his army, wave after wave of riders and footmen pouring and clattering onto the embankment and filling in every inch of space between the wharves and the walls of the city And in their midst or at the head of them rode a slender young man with head erect and mouth full and scornful.

He rode down the ramp and as he passed the elephant, reached up to stroke her flank. He reined his horse by the captain of archers and looked down, a beautiful young man, breathing hard like a green recruit about to make his first bloody charge.

“Are you all right?” he said to the captain of the guard.

“I may well die,” said the captain of archers, feeling as grateful for the sight of the young man as for a cold drink of water. And in fact the youth now threw down a waterskin, with a solemn nod. Then he leapt from the back of his horse and rushed at Buljan the usurper without warning or art, chopping with his sword as if it were an ax. It was an ugly move, and Buljan, who was among the best swordsmen of his people and generation, easily ducked it and sidestepped. The sword came whistling down and lodged with a discordant twang in the timber of the dock, and while the youth struggled to free its edge from the grip of the hard wood Buljan leaned forward, peering curiously at the face of the young man, and then catching hold of the youth and wrapping his long arms around him did something that struck the captain of archers, and no doubt every soul animal or human on the wharf that afternoon, as strange: he smelled him.

“You,” he said, dismayed or delighted, it was hard to say The youth struggled, kicking and squirming and trying to reach around with his teeth and bite at Buljan, but the usurper held him easily and fast. He laughed a false laugh that held genuine bitterness, and turned to the army that watched motionless from the shore. “This is your new bek?” he called out. And he unsheathed his own dagger now and held it to the fine young throat. “This is no bek. This is the mother of a bek. She carries my seed in her belly!”

The dagger flashed and his arm came up. It never came down. A thick gray vine snaked down and took hold of it and, like a Rus ceremoniously killing off an amphora of wine, hoisted Buljan into the air and brought him down against the dock. The breath huffed from Buljan's lungs and certain of his bones could be heard to break, and he lay there stunned, and no thing but the river moved or made a sound. Then Buljan's wife screamed as the elephant laced its trunk around his ankles, hoisted him again into the air and slammed him down once more, ensuring the fracture of skull and vertebrae. The elephant appeared to enjoy the business and repeated it several more times, and when the captain of archers at last averted his gaze from the mass of pulp and leather he saw that a ghostly scarecrow clad in black had appeared behind the twin daughters of Buljan to blindfold their faces with his long white fingers. At last the elephant lost interest or took pity and dragged the broken body across the timbers, leaving a bloody trail, to lay it-with a tenderness in which a sentimental man might infer a note of apology-at the feet of the widow of Buljan.

The youth rose shakily to his feet and raised his sword and turned, slowly, around and around. By now the Rus were scrambling into the barge intended for the transport of the elephant, showing considerable alacrity and even a cowardly grace. The youth pointed to Ragnar Half-Face, who in his haste to flee had stumbled over several bolts of fine blue silk of Khitai, and a big man with skin the color of tarnished copper ran after him, surprisingly fleet for a gray-hair, and caught the Rus chieftain, and dragged him back to face the young man.

“Who are you?” Ragnar said.

“I am Alp,” said the young man, and the captain of archers knew him then, recalled from some parade or guard detail the piercing green eyes of the boy's mother's people.

“You are not Alp,” Ragnar said. “You resemble him. But Alp died puking blood over the side of my ship, chained to a rowing bench.”

The youth reached for his sword, but now the pale hand of the scarecrow shot out and took hold of the young man's wrist.

“Enough,” he said.

“You will die a far more unpleasant death still,” said the dark-skinned giant, “unless you return all that you have looted from the shores of this sea.”

The giant pushed him to his knees, and Ragnar looked down, his greasy yellow braids tumbling around his face. Then he looked up again with a mercantile glint, his half-face twisted as if in wry pleasure, looking from the pale man to the dark.

“What a pair of swindlers!” he said admiringly. “Gentlemen of the road, hustling a kingdom! Who are you?”

But if any reply was made to this question, the captain of archers never heard it.

That night Zelikman and Amram welcomed the Sabbath in the dosshouse on Sturgeon Street, with Hanukkah and Sarah and Flower of Life and a number of infidel whores who saw no greater harm in marking the sacred time of the country than in accommodating the needs of its men. The women and men alike covered their heads and hid their faces behind their hands and blessed the light. When the candles had burned down and the first of the night's clients-foreigners, sailors, Christians and the lapsed-had arrived, Amram took to a bedroom with Flower of Life. One by one everyone got up from the table and went through the curtain to work, leaving Zelikman and Hanukkah alone.