The Golden Horn by Poul Anderson

Author:Poul Anderson
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Historical Novel
ISBN: 9780890835975
Publisher: Zebra
Published: 1980-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

He was often sleepless at night, but the days could be more than sweet. Neither Harald nor Maria might escape their work; oftimes the better part of a week went by without sight of each other, but he found how a man can live on memory. He flung himself back into steering the Guard, as one way to fill such emptinesses.

The year waned in autumn storms and winter chill, the new was rung in by chimes that shuddered through rain. As he came out of Hagia Sophia, Harald felt a raw wind blowing in off the Bosporus, driving a downpour before it that smoked along the streets and gurgled in the sewers. Belike there was snow at home, he thought, white and still. They seldom got snow here. More and more he wanted to go home.

Early in the year he found himself with a free afternoon, and so did Maria, and sainted Olaf—who had himself loved—made it warm and bright. They sat together in the walled garden of Nicephorus, alone except for the needful duenna. Her father had provided the oldest, deafest, dimmest-eyed poor relation he could find; she fell asleep in her chair and Maria came to join Harald on a bower bench.

Her hand lay in his with a trustfulness that turned over the heart inside him, but they talked quietly. She had set herself to learning the Norse tongue, beginning with his name.

"Hah-rrahlt. No, there's a delta on the end, is there not? Hah-rrald!" She wrinkled her nose at him. "What a language! You sound like a bear waking up angry."

"Not angry at you," he said. "I could never be that."

"Well, teach me next to say, 'I love you.' "

He did, and she said it in Norse, and he kissed her for it. She felt how his hands strained not to close on her with their full bone-breaking strength.

"Poor darling." She rumpled his hair. "This betrothal time is not so easy for you, is it?" She flushed. "We have not long to wait. And then . . . And next year, God willing, to travel with you toward the Pole Star. With youl"

"I'll make you queen over the whole North, Maria."

"It will be enough to be your wife. Truly, I wish no more. Oh, I'm proud as Satan when they talk at court of your victories. Nevertheless—"

"Go on." He lifted her chin in his hand.

"Oh ... I am being weak and foolish, I know. But I cannot keep from thinking of the other women, whose men never came back. And the peasants dragged off to war, who asked nothing but leave to work their fields in peace. One night I dreamed I stood before the Imperial throne, the Emperor was on it and somehow the Emperor was you, too, but the throne was wet with blood and when you—he—lifted his hand, I saw blood clotted between his fingers."

They had talked somewhat of this erenow. "The Norse throne I must have," he said. "If I take that not, I am a craven who cheats his own sons.

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