Shef looked more attentively at the stains on his friend's tunic.
“You are trying to beg me off? From Ivar?”
“Yes.”
“You and Ingulf? But what do I matter to him?”
Hund dipped a lump of hard bread in the remaining water and passed it over.
“It's Thorvin. He says it is business of the Way. He says you have to be saved. I don't know why, but he is totally set on it. Someone spoke to him yesterday and he came running over to see us at once. Have you done something I don't know about?”
Shef lay back in his bonds. “A lot of things, Hund. But I'm sure of one thing. Nothing is going to get me away from Ivar. I took his woman. How can I pay boot for that?”
“When bale is highest, boot is nighest.” Hund filled the crock with water once again from a skin, placed a handful of bread beside it on the ground, and passed over the length of dirty homespun he had been carrying over his arm. “Food is short in the camp, and half the blankets are being used for shrouds. That's all I can find for now. Make it last. If you want to pay boot—see what the king can do.”
Hund jerked a chin toward the corner of the pen, beyond where the dying warriors had sat, called something to the watching guards, rose, and left. The king, thought Shef. What boot will Ivar take for him?
“Is there any hope?” hissed Thorvin across the table.
Killer-Brand looked at him with mild surprise. “What sort of language is that from a priest of the Way? Hope? Hope is the spittle that runs from the jaws of Fenris Wolf, chained till the day of Ragnarök. If we start only doing things because we think there may be some hope—why, we will end up no better than Christians, singing hymns to their God because they think he may give them a better bargain after death. You are forgetting yourself, Thorvin.”
Brand looked with interest at his own right hand, spread out on the rough table next to Thorvin's forge. It had been split open by a sword-blade between second and third fingers, cut clean open almost down to the wrist. Ingulf the leech was bending over it, washing the wound with warm water from which a faint scent of herbs drifted. Then he slowly, carefully, pulled the lips of the gash apart. White bone showed for an instant before the oozing blood covered it in the track of Ingulf's fingers.
“This would have been easier if you had come to me straight away, instead of waiting a day and a half,” said the leech. “Then I could have treated it while it was fresh. Now the wound has started to clot together, and I have to do this. I could take a chance and stitch it up as it is. But we do not know what was on the blade of the man who struck you.”
A trickle of sweat broke out on Brand's eyebrow, but his voice remained mild, contemplative. “You go ahead, Ingulf. I have seen too many wounds go bad to take that risk. This is just pain. The flesh-rot is certain death.”
“Still, you should have come earlier.”
“I was lying among the corpses for half a day, till some clever warrior noticed they had all gone cold and I hadn't. And when I came round and decided that this was really the worst wound I had, you were busy with more difficult tasks. Is it true you pulled old Bjor's entrails out, stitched them together and pushed them back in again?”
Ingulf nodded, pulling with sudden decision at a bone splinter with a pair of tweezers. “They tell me he calls himself ‘Grind-Bjor’ now, because he swears he saw the gates of Hell itself.”
Thorvin sighed gustily, and pushed a tankard closer to Brand's left hand. “Very well. You have punished me enough with your chatter. Tell me, then. Is there any chance?”
Brand's face was paling now, but he answered with the same even tone. “I don't think so. You know how it is with Ivar.”
“I know,” said Thorvin.
“That makes it hard for him to be sensible over some things. I do not say ‘forgive’—we are none of us Christians to pass over an injury or an insult. But he will not even listen, or think about where his interest lies. The boy took his woman. Took a woman that Ivar—had plans for. If that fool Muirtach had brought her back, then maybe—But even then I don't think so. Because the girl went willingly. That means the boy did something Ivar could not. He must have blood.”
“There has to be something that would make him change his mind, accept compensation.”
Ingulf was stitching now, needle rising high over his right shoulder as he pierced and pulled, pierced and pulled again.
Thorvin placed his hand on the silver hammer that hung on his chest. “I swear, this may be the greatest service you or I may ever do for the Way, Brand. You know there are some among us who have the Sight?”
“I have heard you talk of it,” admitted Brand.
“They travel into the realms of the Mighty, of the gods themselves, and return, to report what they saw. Some think these are just visions, no better than dreams, a kind of poetry only.
“But they see the same things. Or sometimes they do. More often it is as if they all saw different parts of the same thing, as there might be many reports of the battle the other night, and some would say the English had the best of it, and some would say we did, and yet all would be telling the truth and all would have been at the same place. If they confirm each other, that means it must be true.”
Brand grunted. Perhaps in disbelief, perhaps in pain.
“We are sure that there is a world out there, and that people can go into it. Well, something very odd happened only yesterday. Farman came to see me, Farman who is priest of Frey in this Army as I am priest of Thor, or Ingulf of Ithun. He has been in the Otherworld many times, as I have not. He says—he says he was in the Great Hall itself, the place where the gods meet to decide the affairs of the nine worlds. He was down on the floor, a tiny creature, like a mouse in the wainscoting of one of our own halls. He saw the gods in conclave.
“And he saw my apprentice Shef. He is in no doubt. He had seen him at the forge; he saw him in the vision. He was dressed oddly, like a hunter in our own forests in Rogaland or Halogaland, and he stood badly, like one who has been—crippled. But there was no mistaking the face. And the Father of gods and men himself—he spoke to him. If Shef can remember what he said…
“It is rare,” Thorvin concluded, “for any wanderer in the Otherworld to see another one. It is rare for the gods to speak to or notice a wanderer. For both to happen…
“And there is another thing. Whoever gave that boy a name did not know what he was doing. It is a dog's name now. But that was not always so. You have heard of Skiold?”
“Founder of the Skioldungs, the old Danish kings. The ones whom Ragnar and his sons would drive out if they could.”
“The English call him Scyld Sceafing—Shield with the Sheaf—and they tell a foolish tale of how he drifted over the ocean on a shield with a sheaf beside him, and that was how he got his name. But anyone can tell that Sceafing means ‘the son of Sheaf,’ not ‘with a sheaf.’ So who, then, is Sheaf? Whoever he was, he was the one who sent the mightiest king of all over the waves, and taught him all that he knew to make the lives of men better and more glorious. It is a name of great good luck. Especially if given in ignorance. Shef is only the way the English in these parts say ‘Sheaf.’
“We have to save that boy from Ivar. Ivar the Boneless. People have seen him on the other side too, you know. But he did not have the shape of a human being.”
“He is not a man of one skin,” agreed Brand.
“He is one of the brood of Loki, sent to bring destruction on the world. We have to get my apprentice away from him. How can we do it? If he will not do it on your urging, Brand, or on mine, can we bribe him? Is there something he wants more than vengeance?”
“I do not know how to take this talk of other worlds and wanderers,” said Brand. “You know I am with the Way because of the skills it teaches, like Ingulf's here, and because I have no love for the Christians or for the madmen like Ivar. But the boy did a brave deed to come into this camp for a girl. It took guts to do that. I know. I went into the Braethraborg to bait the Ragna
rssons into this venture, as your colleagues told me to, Thorvin.
“So I wish the boy well. Now I do not know what Ivar wants—who does? But I can tell you what he needs. Ivar may see that too, even if he is mad. But if he does not, then the Snakeeye will make him.”
As he spoke on, the other two nodded, thoughtfully.
They were not Ivar's men who came for him, Shef noticed as soon as they appeared. Just from his few days in the Viking camp he had come to be able to discriminate at least in an elementary way between the various grades of heathen. These were not the Gaddgedlar, nor did they have the somehow non-Norse or half-Norse air of the Hebrideans and Manxmen whom Ivar recruited in such numbers, nor did they even have that vaguely footloose and less-than-respectable look that so many of even his Norse followers had. Younger sons and outlaws, the bulk of them, detached from their parent communities and with no homes to go to and no lives outside the camp. The men who came into the stockade now were heavily built, mature in years, almost middle-aged; their hair was grizzled. Their belts were silver, gold armlets and neck-rings shone on them, to prove years or decades of success. When the warden of the pen blocked their self-assured way, ordering them back, Shef could not hear the reply. It was given in a low voice, as if the speaker no longer expected to have to shout. The warden replied again, crying out and pointing down the ruined campsite, as if to the burned tents of Ivar. But before his sentence had ended there was a thud and a groan. The leader of the newcomers looked down for a moment, as if to see if there was any chance of further resistance, slid the sandbag back up his sleeve, and marched on without deigning to look round again.
In a moment Shef found the lashings on his ankles cut and himself jerked to his feet. His heart leapt suddenly and uncontrollably. Was this death? Were they dragging him out of the pen to a clear patch of ground, where in an instant they could force him to his knees and behead him? He bit his lip savagely for an instant. He would not speak or plead for mercy. Then the savages would have the chance to laugh, to mock the way an Englishman died. He stumbled along in grim silence.
Only a few yards. Outside the gate, along the fence-posts of the pen, and then, jerked to a stop in front of another gate. Shef realized that the leader of the newcomers was staring hard at him, deep into his eyes, as if trying to burn an understanding into the tough hide of Shef's face.
“You understand Norse?”
Shef nodded.
“Then understand this. If you talk—doesn't matter. But if he in there talks—maybe you live. Maybe. Lot to be answered for. But there's something in there that could mean life for you. Could mean more for me. Whether you live or die, you may need a friend pretty soon. Friend in court. Friend on the execution ground. There's more than one way to die. All right. Throw him in. Rivet him good.”
Shef found himself hauled inside a shelter propped up against the side of the pen. An iron ring hung from a stout post; a chain from it to another ring. In an instant the collar was being fitted round his neck, a bolt of soft iron forced through its two holes. A couple of blows with a hammer, a quick inspection, another blow. The men turned and tramped out. Shef's legs were free, but his hands still bound. The collar and chain round his neck gave him only a few feet of space to walk.
There was another man in the shelter, Shef realized, secured as he was; he could see the chain running down from a post into the half-darkness. Something about the figure sprawled there on the ground filled him with unease, with shame and fear.
“Lord,” he said doubtfully. “Lord. Are you the king?”
The figure stirred. “King Edmund I am, son of Edwold, king of the East Angles. But who are you, that talk like a Norfolk man? You are not one of my warriors. Did you come with the levies? Did they catch you in the woods? Move, so I can see your face.”
Shef moved round. The sun, now westering, streamed in through the open door of the shelter and caught his face as he stood at the limit of his chain. He waited in dread for what the king would say.
“So. You are the one who stood between me and Ivar. I remember you. You had no armor and no weapon, but you stood before Wigga my champion, and held him for ten heartbeats. If it had not been for you those would have been the last heartbeats of the Boneless One's life. Why would an Englishman wish to save Ivar? You ran from your master? Were you a slave to the Church?”
“My master was your thane Wulfgar,” Shef said. “When the pirates came—you know what they did to him?”
The king nodded. With his eyes adjusting to the light Shef could see the face that turned to him. It was pitiless, resolute.
“They took his daughter, my—my foster sister. I came to try to get her back. I was not trying to protect Ivar, but your men were going to kill both of them, all of them. I just wanted you to let me pull her aside! Then I would have joined you. I am no Viking, I killed two of them myself. And I did one thing for you, king, when you had need of it. I…”
“So you did. I called out for someone to break the ring, and you did it. You and a gang of churls from nowhere, with a ship's timber. If Wigga had thought of that, or Totta, or Eddi, or any of the others, I would have made him the richest man in the kingdom. What did I promise?”
He shook his head in silence, then looked up at Shef. “You know what they are going to do to me? They are building an altar now, to their heathen gods. Tomorrow sometime they will take me out and lay me on it. Then Ivar will get to work. Killing kings is his trade. One of the men who guarded me told me he was standing by when Ivar killed the Irish king of Munster, told me how he stood there while Ivar's men twisted the rope and twisted the rope and the veins stood out on the king's neck and he called out curses by all the saints on Ivar's name. And then the crack as his back broke over the stone. They all remember that.
“But tomorrow Ivar prepares a new fate. They tell me that he meant to save this for the man who killed their father, for Ella of Northumbria. But they have decided I merit it just as much.
“They will take me out, and lay me on their altar, face down. In the hollow of my back, Ivar will place a sword. Then—you have felt how your ribs make a house of bone, and how each of the ribs fits into its place on the backbone? Ivar will cut each of them away, working up from the lowest to the highest. They say he will use a sword only for the first cut. After that he will use hammer and chisel. When he has cut them all away, he will cut the flesh free, and then he will put his hands in and pull the ribs up and out.
“I expect I will die then. They say he can keep a man alive to that point, if he is careful not to cut deep. But when they pull the ribs out, your heart must burst. When it is done, they pull your lungs out of your back, and then turn the ribs out so they look like a raven's wings, or an eagle's. They call it ‘cutting the blood-eagle.’
“I wonder what it will feel like when he first puts the sword in the hollow of my back. You know, young churl, I think that if I can hold my courage at that point, the rest will be easier. But the feel of the cold steel on skin, before the pain begins…
“I never thought that I would come to this. I have defended my people, kept all my oaths, been charitable to orphans.
“Do you know, churl, what the Christ said when he hung dying on the cross?”
Father Andreas's lessons had been confined usually to the merits of chastity or the importance of paying contributions duly to the Church. Shef shook his head dumbly.
“My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”
The king paused for a long while.
“I know why he means to do it, though. After all, I am a king too. I know what his men need. These few months have been bad ones for the Army. They thought they would have an easy start here for their real march on York. And so they might have—if they had not done what they did to your foster father. But since then they have made no gains, caught few slaves, had to fight for every few beeves. And now—say what anyone wishes, there are many fewer of them than there were two nights ago. They have seen their friends die of wounds, and more of th
em are sitting waiting for the flesh-rot. If there is nothing grand for them to see, then they will lose heart. Ships will row off in the night.
“Ivar needs a display. A triumph. An execution. Or…”
Shef remembered the warning of the man who had pushed him into the pen.
“Do not speak too freely, lord. They want you to speak. And me to listen.”
Edmund laughed, in one sharp bark. The light had almost gone by now, the sun well down, though the long English twilight lingered.
“Then listen. I promised you a half of Raedwald's hoard if you broke the Viking line, and break it you did. So I will give you the whole of it, and you may make your own bargain. The man who gives them this can have his life and more. If I gave it to them, I could be a Viking jarl. But Wigga and all the others died rather than speak. It would not be fitting for a king, one of the line of Wuffa, to give way out of fear.
“But you, boy. Who knows? You may gain something.
“Now listen and do not forget. I will tell you the secret of the hoard of the Wuffingas, and from that I swear by God a wise man can find the hoard.
“Listen and I will tell you.”
The king's voice dropped to a hoarse murmur and Shef strained to hear.
“In willow-ford, by woody bridge,
The old kings lie, keels beneath them.
On down they sleep, deep home guarding.
Four fingers push in flattest line,
From underground, Grave the northmost.
There lies Wuffa, Wehha's offspring.
On secret hoard. Seek who dares it.“
The voice trailed away. “My last night, young churl. Maybe yours too. You must think what you will do to save yourself tomorrow. But I do not think the riddle of an Englishman will prove easy to the Vikings.
“And, if churl you are, the riddle of the kings will do you no good either.”
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