Austrvegr - A Varangian Guard Quest

Your path is slow, at first. The east is a wide land, and it's rivers are cold and ice-bound. Many times, you and your hird are forced to raise your ships from the water and carry them overland until the rivers flow freely once more. These lands are cold and harsh, but they are peopled. A tall race lives here, pale men with dark hair and dark eyes, who sign themselves with the cross of Christ and speak a tongue strange to your ears. It is like your own tongue in many ways, but distorted and slurred, thick and barely intelligible. The further you travel from your homelands, the harder it becomes to understand the tongue of the Rus, as they call themselves, but you are able to puzzle out enough of their foreign speech to reliably ask directions. That, at least, is easy enough. You are not the first to sail upon the austrvegr, and again and again the Rus guide you to the next pass orestuary or ford upon which you must sail to reach your destination. One word occurs again and again in their thick speech, toned with awe and something beyond fear, said in the same tone with which men speak of Valhalla.

Miklagard.

Slow though it may be, your path is not difficult. Your hirdmen are tough, seasoned sailors and travelers who are well-used to harsh climates and unforgiving country. You travel by day, guided by Sol's blazing chariot ever-eastward. At night, you sleep under Mani's cool light, warding off the northern chill with heavy furs and bright fires. After perhaps two weeks of traval, you reach a point where the many rivers bleed into one, and after a day or so more of sailing, this river in turn bleeds into a great ocean that spills out into the horizon. You have reached the Black Sea.

Tongue Learned: Rus (Rank I)
Route Learned: The Dneiper. Traveling this passage will be easier and faster in the future.

The directions the Rus have given you all end here. At the great sea, they say, sail south over the waters. There lies Miklagard. When you inquire further for landmarks or more detailed directions, the Rus merely smile dark smiles that do not reach their eyes. All men know Miklagard when they see it, your guides intone religiously. It cannot be missed.

As you soon discover, they are not wrong. You are the first to see it, standing on the prow of your foremost longboat. It cuts through the early-morning fog like a rising star or a second sun, gleaming a thousand thousand colors in the morning rays. It is like no city you have ever seen, like no place of human hands in all the world. The harbor alone is packed with more ships than you have ever known in all your days, ships of foreign make and foreign build that blacken the sea with a million masts, and beyond it -- stupendous walls, so massive as to take your very breath away, walls so vast that a dozen dozen men standing end on end might not reach halfway to their top. And yet, despite the stupendous size of the walls, the city beyond rises above them.

You stare, open-eyed, trying uselessly to take it all in, but everywhere your eyes fall there is something to baffle them, some new wonder or amazement. Here, a statue so colossal it dwarfs trees. There, a building that shines in the sun like gold -- because it is gold, all without and within. White buildings in their dozens and their hundreds, great towers that blot out the sun, giant palaces that shine golden and silver above the world, titan churches and looming spires spilling in all directions for as far as the eye can see. No matter where you gaze, it stretches out into eternity, shining and splendid, terrible and amazing, wonderful and endless. Above all, rising toppling and tyrant above rooftops and towers and wonders all, is a great domed building like the head of a god, massive enough to hold your entire village ten times over, which gleams so furiously it seems to challenge the sun itself for supremacy of heaven.

You have seen, in your youth, the great cities of the Franks on the shores of the Seine. Even the grandest of those is a hovel, dim and pitiful before the splendor which lies now before you. For a moment, you wonder idly if you have died, and perhaps this is the very hall of the gods.

Miklagard, the Rus called it, the Great City -- and you know now why their voices trembled.

You sail your longships -- so small now, so terrifyingly small -- past the great walls which line the sea into the harbor of the city. Your men are nearly speechless, turning their heads this way and that to take in the sights around you. The air is thick with sea salt and smoke, with Arabian spices and eastern scents from lands beyond the rising sun. The clamor that meets your ears is like the rolling of a dozen thunderbolts, a frenzied mix of voices and calls and languages that you have never heard and accents of which you have never dreamed. And the people. You have never in your life seen this many people. There are hundreds of hundreds in the harbor alone, leaning over the decks of ships or hawking their goods on the docks, and hundreds more crowding the harbor. Yelling to be heard over the great din, you manage to direct your men well enough to find a free space at which to anchor your ships, and clamber up onto the docks which line the harbor.

Almost as your boots land on the wood, you are approached by a dark-skinned man in long, colorful robes. He runs his hand through a thin beard, peers at a parchment in his hands, then growls something at you in a strange language. When you respond with a puzzled shrug, he barks at you again, this time in a different tongue. Again, you meet him with a cocked eyebrow and gesture that you can't understand him. He tries again, but this time in a growling scratchy language that you can just recognize as the tongue of the Rus.

"Boat...city...", the man begins, his voice faltering. You nod in understanding, and he continues, encouraged. "Boat...in...city...pay." He gestures at the boats a few more times, then at his parchment to make the meaning clear.

Ah.

Well, that you can understand. You begin fishing for a coin pouch when a third voice booms into your conversation.

"Hold off on that for a moment, pup."

A massive hand claps the dockmaster's shoulder, and it's owner, a great bear of a man with short-cut red hair and piercing eyes, lumbers in between the two of you. He snarls something at the dockmaster in a language you cannot understand, then jabs his thumb away from him in the universally-understood sign for "fuck off, will you?". After a few moments, the dockmaster sneers, mutters something in his own tongue, then turns and marches off. The Norseman --for he could only be a Norseman-- turns to you, his beard parting in a wide grin.

"Well, well. Look at you pups. Fresh off the boat, eh? And nearly pissin' yourselves at the sight of it all."

You find your voice, long fled, and raise it to be heard above the harbor din. "Miklagard is...it's something else."

"It's a fucking lot is what is, especially if you've never seen a real city before. Iceland boys with you, eh? Doubt they've ever seen a city bigger than five sheds and a cow. Doubt you have, either, by how your eyes are rolling out your head."

He looks your group over again, as if confirming his own assessment, then widens his grin. "Lucky for you pups, I decided to grace the docks with my presence today. That Greek would've skinned your purse once he caught on you'd never been to the city before."

He reaches out an arm. "Halmar, Sigurd's son."

You clasp his arm firmly. "Haestinn. Svenn's son."

"Come to sign with the Væringjar? You couldn't have picked a better time, pup. The Old Man's making his big march on the Bulgars soon, and you'll want to be with him then."

Wholly baffled, you pick on what you surmise is the most important part of the sentence. "The Old Man?"

Halmar chuckles. "I forget you pups don't know shit." He sighs melodramatically and points at one of the larger palaces rising over the cityscape -- the largest, now that you fix your eyes on it properly.

"The Old Man. The King of the Greeks and Emperor of all the Romans. Our good prince Basil, second of his name, the morning and evening star - may he not live forever. Your new boss -- naw, fuck that, your new god. You breathe when he says breathe, you kill when he says kill, and you shit when he says shit. Know why?"

Halmar stares at you for a second as if he expects an answer, then laughs when you don't respond.

"Course you don't, pupling. Well, that big-ass building is his house. When he dies, he says we get to take everything we can hold from it. So...we do whatever the fuck he says."

You blink. Your time a-viking has taught you to that most of what people say is irrelevant. Focus on the important bits, get the right information, and toss away everything else. Right now, there's only one thing that you've just heard that stands out to you.

You cock your head at Halmar. "Everything?"

The big Norseman smiles, his teeth white in the morning sun. "Everything."

You walk down a long hallway lined with rich red tiles. The walls are shiny white stone that reflects you perfectly as you gaze at it -- which you do more than once. At your side are two of your hirdmen, Olav and Asmund, both clad in simple fur-and-mail that feels more than a bit drab in such opulent surroundings. As you watch, Asmund preens himself, grinning at his own reflection.

"Look sharp, pups." Halmar calls from ahead of you. "The commander's likes men to have the right tone in their voice when they talk to him. No horseshit."

It's been a day or so since you landed in Constantinople. Halmar had you and your men put up in a house near the harbor while he arranged things for you to be properly inducted into the Guard. Now, he's led you here, to this big palace which is several times taller than any building you've ever seen. The bearlike man has changed since you saw him last -- now, he is wearing strange metal armor made of ringed plates which are fit tightly together. Try as you might, you can't see any point where you could slip a sword between them. Even arrows look like they would bounce right off.

"This Emperor of the Greeks," you call ahead to him. "What sort of man is he?"

Halmar laughs, his rolling belly-chuckle ringing in the hallway.

"Oh, you're fuckin adorable, pup. Hop right off a boat and talk with the Old Man himself like trading words with a jarl. No, no, no, you're not meetin with the Old Man just yet. Gotta get things sorted out with the commander first."

He continues explaining as he walks, but doesn't slow down for you or your men, forcing you to speed up to keep up with his big strides. Every now and then you pass a Greek, water-fat dark-skinned men and women who stare at you and yours with wide eyes. Truth be told, you are just as baffled by them as they are of you. Every one of them wears fine robes of silk and other shimmering materials which you have no name for, and fat golden rings and bright silver torcs that nearly set you to salivating. One portly Greek you pass in a doorway is wearing a literal king's ransom in jewelry -- one of his rings, you have no doubt, could be the ransom of a Danish lord.

"The Greeks don't much trust us to manage ourselves," Halmar explains with a jovial tone, "so they put a Greek in charge of us."

A question rises to your lips. "How many of 'us' are there?"

"Couple thousand," Halmar snaps back with a laugh. "Wouldn't trade jobs with the poor fuck for all the gold in the city."

As he speaks, he draws to a stop in front of a wide square door. "Right, here we are. Remember, imagine the Jarl's come to visit whatever bundle of sticks village you're from, then act just like that. Kneeling, scraping, the whole kibosh."

You raise an eyebrow.

Halmar shrugs. "Listen to me, don't listen to me, fuck do I care? I'm not the one paying you."

He pushes the door open.

How do you enter the presence of the commander of the Varangian Guard?


Inside, a thin man with long black hair stands at a table, thumbing his beard and surveying a scattering of books and maps. Like all the Greeks, he is bronze-skinned, and regards you with a pair of steel-grey eyes which peer out from behind bushy eyebrows. On his head, he wears a strange, wide hat with a red tassel that falls to his waist. As you enter, he raises his head and watches your display with a cocked eyebrow, his expression betraying no emotion. After a few moments, he nods, and speaks.

"The new ones, I suppose? It seems there are always more of you each day." The words of your native tongue seem bafflingly strange coming from his lips. He speaks Norse with a clipped, practiced tone, and his words are thickly accented and stilted to an uncomfortable degree.

"I am Leon Phrazantes, akolouthos and primikeroi to the Varangians. Should you enter the service of my emperor, I will pay you, house you, and in times of war, feed you and command you. How many come under your command?"

"I bring with me twenty-three good men from Iceland."

Leon nods, grabs a piece of charcoal, and makes a note on one of his parchments. "I can find place for you in the Quarter of Saint Mamas with the rest of the Varangians. As privilege for your people's continued leal service to the Emperor, you are permitted to command your own men and organize yourselves as you wish, save that you report to me in the field. Your people's trend has been to elect their own battle-leaders from among themselves -- I would suggest integrating yourself with your fellow northmen if you aspire to such heights of leadership. Lastly, would you prefer direct pay, or spoils?"

At your cocked eyebrow, Leon waves a hand and explains. "You will receive direct monthly pay from the Imperial Treasury, as all soldiers of Rome do. You are entitled as members of the Varangian Guard to willingly forego this pay in favor of first pick of the battle-loot, before your commanding officers or even the emperor himself. I will warn you -- should you pick to receive your pay in spoils, you shall likely have to volunteer your service to the emperor far more frequently. During times of peace, it has even been known for Varangians to volunteer for border-service to make ends meet, absent a stable pay."

"Of course," he continues, "we are not now in times of peace."

How will you receive your pay?


The akolouthos nods and marks your choice down on another sheet of parchment.

"Very well, then."

He clears his throat, breathes in deeply, then speaks.

"Do you swear by the omnipotent god, by his only Son our Lord Jesus Christ Pankreator, by the Holy Spirit, by the glorious and perpetually virgin Mary, by the Gospels truthful and eternal, by the archangels Gabriel and Michael, and by your own eternal and immortal soul, to be loyal and ever faithful to our imperial master Basil, who is crowned in the grace of Christ Emperor and Autocrat of all the Romans, and to act faithfully and with the utmost fidelity in his service, to discharge his will to the best of your mortal ability, and to devote all your efforts to that end, giving no consideration or service to other masters, and promising that at no time will you ever knowingly or unknowingly oppose him, or permit any other to do so while you draw breath? Do you swear yourself also, in body, mind, and spirit eternal, to the safeguard and safekeeping of the Imperial person until the day of your dying or his own, understanding in full the great responsibility which he in his kindness has lain upon you?"

You blink. Did he...do that off the top of his head?

And does he...expect you to?


The imperial commander regards you again for a long moment, his eyes unreadable. Finally, as if accepting that you have meant what you have said, he nods and reaches for a jar on his desk. A handful of finely carved sticks rattle around inside it. As he lifts it, you see that each one is brightly painted a different color.

"We assign monthly duties in the Guard through the drawing of lots. Plenty of spots left for you and your men. Go ahead. Close your eyes and pick one."

He rattles the jar expectantly. You shut your eyes, reach out, and draw forth one of the sticks. After a moment's pause, you glance down at it.

You have drawn...


Leon regards the stick coolly, then returns it to the jar. "That will be all. Halmar will see you to the Varangian Quarter and your barracks. I'll send a messenger within the week to see about getting your men outfitted properly, and to ensure that you're settling in well."

He moves to turn away, then pauses as if he's forgotten something.

"Welcome to the Varangian Guard."