IRENE, EMPRESS OF THE EARTH

A gulf of blackness and the curtain lifts again upon a very different
Olaf from the young northern lord who parted from Iduna at the place of
sacrifice at Aar.

I see myself standing upon a terrace that overlooks a stretch of quiet
water, which I now know was the Bosphorus. Behind me are a great palace
and the lights of a vast city; in front, upon the sea and upon the
farther shore, are other lights. The moon shines bright above me, and,
having naught else to do, I study my reflection in my own burnished
shield. It shows a man of early middle life; he may be thirty or
five-and-thirty years of age; the same Olaf, yet much changed. For now
my frame is tall and well-knit, though still somewhat slender; my face
is bronzed by southern suns; I wear a short beard; there is a scar
across my cheek, got in some battle; my eyes are quiet, and have lost
the first liveliness of youth. I know that I am the captain of the
Northern Guard of the Empress Irene, widow of the dead emperor, Leo
the Fourth, and joint ruler of the Eastern Empire with her young son,
Constantine, the sixth of that name.

How I came to fill this place, however, I do not know. The story of my
journey from Jutland to Byzantium is lost to me. Doubtless it must have
taken years, and after these more years of humble service, before I rose
to be the captain of Irene's Northern Guard that she kept ever about her
person, because she would not trust her Grecian soldiers.

My armour was very rich, yet I noted about myself two things that were
with me in my youth. One was the necklace of golden shells, divided from
each other by beetles of emeralds, that I had taken from the Wanderer's