Blood Feud by Rosemary Sutcliff Page A

down-river into Kiev, close on a year after the unfinished Holm Ganging, all was ready, men trained and armed, ships fitted for sailing.
    On the last day, there was a great service held in the church of the White Kristni, long since finished, to pray for the victory of the Viking fleet – and for the victory of Byzantium over the rebels, but that was an afterthought.
    In the old dark God-House above the boat-strand, men gathered also, the men who had come down that summer from the north, the crews of the ships that did not belong to Kiev and therefore were not bound to the Khan’s new faith.
    I went to the God-House with the crew of the
Red Witch
.
    It was not easy for me, the choice; and I lay awake most of the night before, pulled now this way and now that, between two loyalties. But when the great bronze bell that we had hauled up the hill through rejoicing crowds to the new church in the spring, sounded its call to Christian Kiev, I did not answer it.
    Many of those who went with Khan Vladimir to fill the church and crowd the open space around it, would be down at the God-House later, I knew; as Erland Silkbeard had said, one need not desert the old gods because one occasionally prayed to a new one; the Viking Kind can always make room for another god, having several of their own to start with. But I could not do that, having only one to start with. So I went away and sat on the shore where the wild birds were calling, and prayed, all the same, with my face in my hands. ‘Dear God. I do not ask you to forgive me, only to believe that there isn’t any other way.’
    And when the day faded into the dusk, and the Viking Kind came down with their torches. I got up and went and joined them.
    The Leaders and the Ship-Chiefs went inside; the rest of us, for whom there was no room, crowded before the door, in the russet light of the torches and the white light of a waning moon. We heard the dying bleat of the goat, and saw the priest come out to daub the blood on the dragon-carved door-posts, and took the oath on Thor’s Ring that he held up for us to see, to maintain the War-Brotherhood until the Host should be disbanded. And standing there beside Thormod. I looked across and saw Anders in the crowd, and met his gaze, as if it were waiting for mine. We had kept the vow for almost a year already, letting the feud lie fallow. But now? How much longer? A few weeks? A few months? I wished again that I could feel this long-drawn quarrel as my own;that I could have the anger in my belly to warm the waiting. And now I had prayed to strange gods, and so in all likelihood I was damned. But I wasn’t wasting time regretting that, it was just a fact. I was Thormod’s shoulder-to-shoulder man, Thormod’s follower wherever he went; and I supposed I could face damnation with Thormod if I had to; assuredly I could not leave him to face it alone. It was simply, as I had explained to my own God, that there wasn’t any other way.
    The torches shifted, and I lost Anders among the crowding shadows.
    Next day we ran the ships down the keel-strand and the southward voyage began. Squadron after squadron, we went, each following our own Raven – Erland’s, it was said, had golden hairs from his own beard stitched into its eyes and beak and talons – all following the great black-winged banner of Khan Vladimir. And so we headed down the Dnieper; close on two hundred long-ships in all; six thousand men of the Rus and the north, sweeping down the Viking wind, to the aid of the Golden Emperor in his golden city.
    Orm, who had a knack with such things, made a song about it, and we sang it as we swung to the oars.
    Here we come with the wind behind us,
    Lift her! Lift her!
    A long pull for Miklagard.
    The wind in our sails and the oar-thresh flying,
    A strong pull for Miklagard.
     
    Emperor in your Golden City,
    Lift her! Lift her!
    A long pull for Miklagard.
    Look to the north and see us coming,
    A strong pull for Miklagard.
     
    You shouted for